Radio Silence: The Return of “Ministry Monday”

A quick look at the Wikipedia definition reveals that “Radio Silence” is observed when you “stop transmitting for safety or security reasons.”[i]  Although there has been no imminent, physical danger; I have, indeed, needed to regroup, to assess this life, to take a little bit of time for soul care and social media quiet (not quite silence), and to seek direction for where Flip Flops, Glitter, and Theology should venture next.

And, I’m back…

Ironically, this figurative radio silence has led to a literal on-the-air podcast, so that’s pretty funny.  Also, I have determined to resume a daily blog covering (parts of) the daily office, but it has become obvious to me that the original content of FGT (Ministry Monday, Thursday Theology, and Sacramental Saturday) needs to ‘live’ here, at the original Flip Flops, Glitter, and Theology blog.  There are new links on the side to check out the additional features, connected but not consuming FGT.

So… how about an update on life and ministry, today, from my perspective:

Everything is flexible.  Everything.

It’s almost the middle of June, and my life looks nothing like I expected it to!  You’d think I’d be used to this by now, but it never gets easier.  Thankfully, I didn’t set out looking for something easy.

Our family is picking up a moving truck, tomorrow morning.  We just finished a spur of the moment, 3 day garage sale, and we’re going to load up the truck with what’s left from that and drop some of it at a family member’s house for their upcoming sale and the rest of it at the Salvation Army Store.  Then we’re going to load it up again, and the truth is… we don’t know where we’re taking it!  This is not, in fact, the first time this has happened in our lives.  I should be panicking, but I’m not.

We have a place to stay for the summer… the one bedroom apartment overlooking downtown Peru, where we are totally pretending this is a fabulous hotel suite and we are simply vacationing indefinitely at this point.  Except it’s neither really indefinite nor really a vacation.

I have a genuine need for this family to be settled by Labor Day.  I am tempted to “recap,” but it has just occurred to me that I have no desire, whatsoever, to wax sarcastic, today; because I legitimately do not feel cynical, yet I know it would come across as exactly that.  There are no sufficient words for what life in ministry (or life in general) has looked like for us as of late.  How do I express how very, very good and very, very awful it has been?  I can’t.

Some months back, I wrote about how I had a “Plan A”… and for the first time in my life, I had plans lettered all the way down to “E.”  They all failed.  All… of… them…

But again, please hear me clearly, the sarcasm… the cynicism… it’s not there.

Here’s what I want:

I want to join God in God’s work and to be used by God in whatever capacity is most redemptive for the people and places with whom and in which I find myself.  Period.

Here’s what I need:

A little bit of direction to those people and places.  Oh, and coffee…  I need coffee…

I should be used to this.  Or I should be panicking.  And I promise I’m not drunk or on drugs.  But seriously, when’s the last time my kids didn’t have three meals in a day or a place to lay their heads at night?  The answer to those questions is never… at least not unintentionally (we don’t have to count the all night rest station stops when I was too cheap for a hotel on the road trip, right?) 

Psalm 29:11, “The Lord gives strength to his people; the Lord blesses his people with peace” (NIV).

Strength and peace.  At least for now, it’s enough…

L.

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[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_silence

Best Laid Plans

Isaiah 29:15, “Woe to those who go to great depths to hide their plans from the Lord, who do their work in darkness and think, ’Who sees us? Who will know?’” (NIV).

I’m a planner by nature, and it’s hard for me when things don’t come together in exactly the ways I think they should.

Growing up, I can remember my mom talking about having a ‘Plan A’ and a ‘Plan B.’  To be honest, I’ve never been much of a ‘Plan B’ kind of girl.  And yet, I have often lived a ‘Plan B’ kind of life, because… let’s be real… doesn’t everybody?

I have put a lot of pressure on myself to succeed at everything I do, and if you’ve known me for very long or read much of my work, you’ve heard the spiel about how I am a type A, introverted, melancholy, choleric, INFJ (advocate), perfectionist.  And frankly, the list of adjectives I use to describe myself keeps growing and changing at an alarming pace.

This week has been something of a challenge for me, but please don’t misunderstand…  I mean this in the most positive way possible.  I love a good challenge.

I went into this week with a definite ‘Plan A.’  The truth is, it hasn’t changed.  I have this image in my mind of where I hope to be standing on a beautiful fall day in September, ready to take a selfie and proclaim to the social media world that in spite of the obstacles of the past few years, I have arrived exactly where I would have been at that particular moment, all along.  I hope I get to take that picture, but…

There is always a danger in looking for the ‘I have arrived’ moments.  I cringed when I first wrote these words, but I knew I had to keep them, because this is important stuff.

It’s good for me to get out of my comfort zone, so I flew 2000 miles to attend a conference about communal worship, by myself.  Mid-week, I joked on Facebook about how I should have planned that better, but it was actually perfect.  Ordinarily, when I make trips like this, I rent a vehicle at the airport.  This allows for a certain amount of self-sufficiency and privacy, but I was really trying to make this conference as cheap as possible, so I decided to rely on other (gracious) people for rides.  Friends…  I even got into an SUV with complete strangers at one point.  Sometimes I worry about my lack of caution, lately, but it was all good.  In fact, this was a turning point for my week…

As I sat having lunch with people I had never met before, I began to realize how amazingly God is working in the hearts and lives of others in similar ways to how God is working in me…

And a ‘Plan B’ began to form…

And a ‘Plan C’ began to form…

And a ‘Plan D’ began to form…

And a ‘Plan E’ even began to form…

Are you kidding me?  I’m relatively positive that I have never had a ‘Plan E’ in my entire life!

There are many things I need to say, but I’m still processing them.  The one thing, though, that keeps coming to mind is this: whatever happens, I’m going to be OK.  I don’t think I’ve felt like that in a long time. 

Psalm 112:4, “Even in darkness light dawns for the upright, for those who are gracious and compassionate and righteous” (NIV).

L.

Surprise

For as long as I can remember, I have not liked surprises... even good ones... ever...  OK, once, but being so honest is really blowing my hyperbolic blogging...

It's not that surprises can't be really great.  It's not that they can't be turning point moments or important markers in our lives.  They certainly can, but I'm a planner.  It's not that the best laid plans don't ever end up as a pile of garbage at the end of the day.  Heaven knows this has happened to me over... and over... and over again.  But I guess I'm more like Effie than Han (don't worry, friends, more YA fiction references are coming your way all week long).  Go ahead and give me the odds.  That doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to make the choice with the smallest risk.  In fact it'll probably go the other way, because that's just who I am.  But at least I'll know what I'm up against... 

If you need a good example regarding my lack of love for the spontaneous, let me share a middle school story.  I was thirteen years old...  eighth grade... totally boy crazy... and I finally had a "boyfriend," which seems a little silly to me now, because in that era the verbiage was that we were "going out," but where do thirteen year olds really go? 

School hallways.  With lockers.  After dances in the cafeteria.  OK, fair enough.

After much contemplation about whether or not I was ready for my first kiss, I planned it.  Who does that?  It's rhetorical.  That poor boy.  I mean, we had to talk about it for a full week... on the phone... every day... before it could happen.  I am withholding his name, because the truth is we're Facebook friends, decades later, so this post will show up in his newsfeed, and it's bad enough that I'm subjecting my own family to this story.  I'm sure he neither wants nor needs this kind of Internet fame...

On a warm night in May, dressed in a pink and black flowered bodysuit (I'm trying to decide if it's more appropriate here to tell you that I kept that thing for almost forever or to ask why my mother let me wear what were essentially onesies for middle-schoolers), smelling like Teen Spirit (how I wish this was a clever nod to the song, but it's actually a reference to my deodorant of choice at that time), I experienced my first kiss backed up against my locker, just praying no adults would walk around the corner, because I was terrified I'd get in trouble!  It was exactly like I'd planned it, and today I can't decide if I remember every detail because first kisses are memorable or because I ran through the plan so many times, before the actual kiss, that I had it down to a science (much better science than that time my eighth grade science teacher brought in mercury for all of us to touch or that other time when we blew up the science lab ceiling).

When I started writing this, there was a point...

I like to have a good plan.  I like to know how things are going to turn out.  I like it so much that I will even sacrifice a pleasant, surprising, spontaneous moment for the sake of being prepared.  Every... single... time...

But there's a flipside, because even though some surprises could be nice, many of them just aren't.

The other day I posted a vaguebook status that read, "A year ago, if you had asked me what I thought I would be doing or how I would be feeling right now, this would not have even been on my radar..."  I posted this at 4:50am.  I did not expect it to be widely read.  And yet, there were comments.  The first one took me by surprise, but it shouldn't have.  The first comment was clearly made by someone who assumed that I was excited about this moment in life.  I mean, what else could I have possibly meant at this hour of the morning?  Everyone loves a good pre-5:00am departure time, right?  The comment was about how amazing God is, and please don't misunderstand, I completely agree.  God is amazing.  God is really, really amazing.  But it the midst of feeling super horrible about the surprising way my year ended up, I was not in any way willing to credit this awfulness to God.  Not to my God, anyway.  Not to the God who loves me and has been with me through every single moment that has sucked.  Not before the sun rose and I pulled out of the driveway to do the things I never dreamed I'd be doing, because they were not the things I wanted to be doing.  Not on that day.

Later in the day, I read a quote that said, "Adulthood is like looking both ways before you cross the street and then being hit by an airplane" (Purple Cover).  Well, that resonated deeply.  Too deeply.  Imagine, I couldn't stop laughing because it resonated so deeply...

But the best part was something my friend, Pat, said: "There are times that it isn't good to know. We would be overwhelmed!"  Oh.  Yes.  This.

The truth is, if I had every detail planned out, and if I knew... with certainty... that everything would always go as planned, I would probably never be able to do anything.  I would constantly be trying to find a way to make things better... more perfect...  just perfect.  If I always knew what I would be doing or how I would be feeling in the wake of every choice; it would be difficult to choose.  I would never be able to choose between good choices, that's for sure.

And I think that might be the crux of it for me.  What I'm doing right now is really, really good.  I can't run around feeling guilty, anymore, about the fact that I can only pour my life into a couple of places at a time.  I am the queen of stretching myself thin... or something...  I love deeply.  I love so deeply that it literally, physically hurts when I can't be where the people I love are, especially when they're hurting... especially when they have needs, and I can see how I could help, but I'm not there.  Especially because I'm not there, because I wasn't good enough to get there.    

But here's the thing...  If I was there, I would be crying and bleeding over the people who are here.  So whatever.  I guess it's gonna have to hurt (there's the song reference).  But that doesn't mean there isn't something incredibly good yet to be squeezed out of this.  I wonder if there's a plan...

L. 

Oh, March Forth (or fourth)

Psalm 90:12, "Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom" (NIV).

I always think of how this date on the calendar sounds like a command to action... every... single... year...

Not knowing what might happen next can be paralyzing.

As I type these words, the self imposed deadline for the thing I wanted most, right now, has just passed.  It's not that I am impatient.  It's that I know I have reached a place in life where I have to get moving.  I can wait for "Plan A" for the rest of my days, if I really want to, but the problem with that is that I will miss "Plan B"... and C and D and X and Y and Z and... well... maybe everything.

It's OK.  It has to be OK, because I don't want to waste any more days.  Sometimes waiting is not a waste.  In fact, I would say that often waiting is not a waste.  But there are moments when you cross a line, and you know that the time for waiting is over.  Today is like that.

"Plan B" (in this case) is really only separated by what I wanted most in a matter of degree.  The truth is, it's the best plan for my family, and most of the time that's what I really want most, anyway.  I am, admittedly, occasionally selfish.  I'm not saying it's right... just that the struggle is real.  I'm going to let go of myself, tonight... at least for the foreseeable future...

Psalm 90:1, "Lord, you have been our dwelling place" (NIV).

Psalm 90: 17, "May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us; establish the work of our hands for us - yes, establish the work of our hands" (NIV).    

It all fits together so well.

 
L.