I Want A Lot

Psalm 20:1, 4, “May the Lord answer you when you are in distress… May he give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed” (NIV).

I am an excellent planner, but everybody knows I have these moments (OK, read this, decades) during which I am certain I can accomplish more than any human being actually can.

There have been many times in the past couple of years when I have felt like I either have to choose to be a fabulous mom or a brilliant theologian.  The truth is, I’m probably not either, but if you’ll humor me for just a minute here, perhaps we can all admit that I would like to be both.

Yesterday I spent eight hours in my vehicle.  I promised myself that when I finally landed a job, I was not going to be the jerk who complained all the time on social media about how busy I was and how difficult the schedule panned out.   When I promised myself this, I somehow thought the job was going to be ministry related.  I was going to be a pastor or a chaplain or on staff doing something… anything… at a University.  Never, in all my life, did I think I was going to be singing and dancing for a paycheck in an early childhood setting (or… let’s be real… anywhere…  it just so happens this is the only venue that would ever work for me for this type of vocation).  Everybody laugh.  It was funny.

It is difficult to look at your life and think to yourself, “This is what I always wanted to be doing…  twenty years ago…”  At this stage, oh my goodness, I never would have imagined that I would reach that far back and become “Ms. Yisa” again.  (Not a typo, I have the most precious child in my Friday preschool class who calls me this). 

In these first five weeks, there have been a few rough patches.  There have been a few incredulous moments when I stop to wonder if I’ve lost my mind.  There has been a ton of singing, and I don’t just mean at work.  I sing pretty much everything now.  All day long.  Everyday.  I’ve cried a little bit, but I really need people to understand that it’s not about the job.  My job is actually pretty fun… and I love the kids… and I love the parents and grandparents and babysitters… and I love the music.  In some ways, it’s like living a dream.  But it feels like someone else’s dream… which is OK… because I know whose dream it is.  It’s the dream of 17 year old L.  And I can do it.  I’m even good at it.  But I have to put some boundaries into place that keep me grounded but not pigeon holed.

For months now, my motto has been “Stay the Course!”

At the moment, that means a couple of very specific things.  In addition to my new/old life as an early childhood educator, I am very close to the completion of my M.Div.  As of this second, I still have a 4.0 in the pastoral ministry part of the program.  I would have to really bomb out on my last few assignments (which are already turned in) in the current class to lose that status.  Then I have a week off and just one more seven week session.  I need to finish strong. 

I have a number of tasks that I need to complete in order to be ready to apply for doctoral fellowships for next fall.  I honestly have no earthly idea if I am actually good enough to land such a fellowship, but I am giving it my best shot.  I want to say things like, “A nice, long break would be nice,” but the truth is, if I don’t get in I am going to sob so long and hard that I expect to be unrecognizable.  Anyone who may run into me deserves to know this upfront.  (There are months, yet, to prepare).

The most life giving thing I am doing, right now, is editing essays for a prolific theological blog.  I haven’t talked about it, because I know it is probably the most likely thing that someone looking at this from the outside would suggest as a reasonable “cut” if my schedule is too busy.  But I need this.  I need infrequent synchronous chats and my name on an email list that feels like it matters.  It’s the weird introvert who suddenly needed extrinsic motivation thing.  I don’t know where that came from, but I’m living with it now.

And I need theological conferences.  Because I love them.  And somehow, they give me focus and purpose.

What I do not need is for anyone to think I am less of a person or less of an academic or less of a worthwhile risk, because I also care so deeply about my family it hurts.  And this weekend, it physically hurt, because I was so exhausted when I got home yesterday afternoon that I couldn’t get my paper done in time to make the drive to Quizfest to watch my kids win and my oldest daughter three-peat as the top quizzer.  I feel a little bit sick about it, but it will be OK.  I mean, it has to be OK, because I can’t change it now.         

Balance is hard. 

Balance is hard, and I’m not great at it.  I’m like a steamroller.  I see a task and I push and push and push to completion, sometimes at the expense of everything else around me.  It’s not that I can’t multi-task.  Clearly, I can.  But there is a point at which I max out.  And I’m there.  And I’m going to need a lot of mercy to push through to whatever’s coming next.          

Psalm 116:1-2, “I love the Lord, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy.  Because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live” (NIV).

L.

A Guest Post From Q

In the midst of an incredibly busy week at Q,

here's a guest post from Grace Michaels.

This is the essay she submitted for the discipleship scholarship,

which she was awarded during the Wednesday night plenary session.

I am proud of her for many reasons,

but mostly because she loves so well.

*****

“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.  Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone.  Forgive as the Lord forgave you.  And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” –Colossians 3:12-14

Loving, forgiving, putting on compassion and kindness and humility and gentleness and patience, has at times been a struggle for me—perhaps especially so during Bible quizzing.  Maybe that sounds awful, but even in such a widespread community of quizzers and fellow Jesus disciples, there are going to be people who aren’t your best of friends…people with whom you don’t get along well…people who hurt you in a lot of ways.  Basically, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.  And it never will be.

I quizzed on a new district this year, and it was one of the best things that has happened to me during the course of my Bible quizzing career.  I get along with everyone on my district.  We’re all friends.  None of us are perfect, but we still love each other.  Loving, at the least loving the people on my district, has been pretty easy for me this quiz season.  But that makes me stop and wonder: Am I only striving to love when it’s easy?  In that case I’m not obliged to strive that much at all.  There are still people who aren’t easy to love—and maybe I’m not really loving them yet.  Maybe I’ve pushed them off to the side now that they aren’t as close as they used to be, and maybe I’m forgetting about them.  Maybe I’m dismissing them because they hurt me.  Maybe I’ve made a choice in the back of my mind not to love them and not to forgive them.

If as “God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved,” we are to clothe ourselves with “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience,” that means compassion for everyone, kindness towards everyone, humility in every situation and no matter who we are facing; gentleness towards everyone, patience with everyone.  Everyone is a lot of people.  Studying these three verses from Colossians has reminded me that sometimes I don’t follow these instructions.  I ignore the people I just don’t want to love or spend my time on.  I say they’re not worth it.  But the truth is…I’m not worth it, either.  Nobody is.  But Jesus loves us anyway.  Who am I to not love everyone in the same way?

Sometimes it’s easy to say I’ll show compassion, I’ll be kind and gentle, and I’ll even forgive and have patience and humility,  but I don’t want to actually say that I will love—especially not my enemies.  The thing is, though, that love binds all these virtues together in perfect unity.  The rest of this doesn’t really matter without love, because love holds it all together.  And saying I have all these other virtues but not love is a false statement—because I can’t truly have anything else if love is not present within me and I am not pouring it out, to anyone and everyone.  So I have chosen to “put off my old self,” the self that wants to dismiss as unimportant the act of loving those who hurt me.  I want to do the most loving thing in any and every situation.  I want my whole life to be love, for love, and lived in love.  If I don’t love, I can’t forgive. I can’t clothe myself with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. I can’t bear with and forgive others if I have a grievance against someone.  I have to have love and live love—or I have nothing, and I literally am nothing at all.  Colossians 3:12-14 has been my reminder of this throughout the quiz year, and I find that the more I put love into practice, the easier it becomes; not because it is easy to love everyone, but because love grows within me to the point where it is all that is flowing from me.

When Your Hands are Tied

Life is funny, sometimes.  Literally.

The other day I watched a movie that I don't feel that I can recommend for entertainment purposes, although it sure was an interesting watch if you ever want to contemplate a variety of positions on the afterlife.  At any rate, there was a takeaway phrase (well... two... but you'll understand).  Here are the words:

"Sometimes when you win, you lose," and, "Sometimes when you lose, you win".

I don't like to lose.  Ever. 

However, there are a variety of ways in which these statements could be applied to recent events in my life, and I think they hold more truth than I might like to admit.  There is a whole lot of unpacking I could do on this idea, but, mercifully, something rather amusing and a little bit crazy happened, today, and it will make the point just as well.

If you don't already know it, we are a Bible Quizzing family.  Today my three oldest kids participated in a tournament.  Although they have won several tournaments during their quiz "careers", a victory at this one has eluded them, which is actually sort of ironic for multiple reasons.  Leading up to this day, I hoped this might be the year they finally won it, but I wasn't sure they were prepared.  The truth is, their quizzing wasn't beautifully executed, today, but after the preliminary rounds, they entered the single elimination tournament seeded second, and they fought their way to the final round.

I've been around the quiz world for 21 years.  As a quizzer, I spent a lot of time on the seats praying things like, "God, please let us win.  Please let me get this jump.  Please help me remember how to finish this question.  Please help me remember what I studied.  Please help my team members remember what they studied.  OK, God, please help them to remember what they didn't study, because I know they can't pull this one.  Please let us guess well.  Please let us win!"  As an adult, I have spent much more time praying for quizzers as they come through my room; that their lives would be blessed and they would use their knowledge of Scripture to become the people they were created to be and to bring the Kingdom of God to their unique contexts.  I guess I just needed you to know that, since I was so honest about my consuming desire to win, as a teenager.

At some point during the semi-finals round, though (I think it was after I exited the room for the second time to not so gently let the teams who were running through the gym, screaming, that they had better can it, because they were disrupting quiz rounds...  I have been known to morph into "psycho quiz mom mode," although I'm trying to be better), I found myself saying, "You know, God, it would be nice if they could win today..."

Well, the final round was fairly evenly matched (that's usually the case).  On question 18, Seth quizzed out to tie the score.  On question 19, Caleb errored out, and the other team went up by 20.  And on question 20, Grace quizzed out to tie the score... again.  This means that the quiz had to go to overtime.  The next quizzer to answer a question would determine the winner of this round and, subsequently, the winner of the tournament.  A correct answer means the win in this situation.  An error means a loss.  It doesn't happen all that often, but when it does, it's usually intense.  Today would have been no exception, if it hadn't been so painfully obvious that we had already lost.  It was completely out of our hands.  All three of my kids gave everything they had, and that resulted in no one left on the seats for our team.  With no quizzers to jump, the other team could simply wait for a question they knew, for sure, and then answer for the win.  Question 21 went unjumped.  Most everyone in the room chuckled a little bit.  Question 22 went unjumped.  Even I laughed.  Question 23 was read, and one of the opposing quizzers jumped.  There was too much time and space between her jump and her words.  She began to answer, and in the 30 seconds that followed, it became more and more clear that she was going to error.  And she did.  I think there was, perhaps, a brief moment during which everyone in the room considered this odd turn of events, shaking our heads.  And then we all laughed... both sides... because we are, after all, friends.  It will be a good story for a long time to come, but it was truly the most anti-climatic tournament win I have ever experienced.  Maybe a picture is worth a thousand words...

 This has me thinking about that idea that, "Sometimes when you lose, you win."  I still don't like to lose.  I sure don't like to lose on question 20.  But, perhaps, I don't always look far enough ahead to see what happens at question 23...

I mostly just wanted to share this story... this piece of our lives in this moment in history that won't really make or break anybody in the long run.  My Scripture reading, this evening, though...  Just wait for it... 

"May he give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed.  May we shout for joy over your victory..." (Psalm 20:4-5a, NIV).  Possibly pretty bad proof-texting, and believe me, I get it that every kid on that platform deserved to win, not just mine, but you have to admit the irony is thick, here...

I loved this one more, though...

"What shall I return to the Lord for all his goodness to me?" (Psalm 116:12, NIV).  I hope that's the one I live out on most of my days...

L.