Vote for Addison!

Two Mondays ago, I found myself sitting in a sound-proof room watching five huge video images of my daughter Addison. She was in the room next to me making salad in front of a film crew. Sort of sounds like I was dreaming, doesn't it?

On a lark, my 11-year-old girl entered a cooking context sponsored by Sodexo, the company that provides food service to her school. The theme this year was salad, which is comical, because until recently, salad was the least served dish in our house. We consulted my best friend Kendra, who knows her way around a kitchen and cares about things like good nutrition. She e-mailed us some ingredients, we threw them together and modified a bit, and voila! The Tropical Power-Packed Salad was born. Out of a field of 112, she was one of ten students in our district selected for the local contest. With poise I didn’t know she had, Addison boiled quinoa, chopped strawberries, and presented her dish with flair in front of a live audience and five judges who were intimidating even to me. She won first prize, $300 worth of cooking utensils—I call it a “bridal shower in a box”—that are packed away and waiting for her first home.

Then a couple weeks ago we found out she had won two more contests, which apparently happened without us, and was a finalist for the national contest—just one of five kids in the whole country to make it this far! You know where my mind went. Did this mean an all-inclusive trip for six to DisneyWorld, where Addison would make her salad in front of a panel of distinguished judges? (Goofy, maybe?) Or what about Hawaii, since hers is, after all, a tropical salad?

Well, not exactly. Instead, we got to drive ourselves over to the school district building, where she made the salad in front of a video camera and some tech guys. As this was not the top priority of the district tech guys that day, it was thrown together pretty hastily and without much prep, but it was still a hoot to see my little girl up there doing her best Rachael Ray imitation and cracking jokes about fiber.

The result is posted on YouTube. The contest is no longer about taste or appearance or healthfulness. At this point, it’s strictly about how many votes she can get from people like you. Will you check it out and give her your vote? And will you tell your friends?! (We're not on Facebook, but I bet you are!) You’ll get a great salad recipe in the process.

If you want to see her video and get the recipe (she's the first one), click here. 

If you prefer to cut to the chase and just vote, click here.

Voting lasts through April 30, and you can vote as many times as you’d like. Thank you!

Why so angry?

Has anyone else noticed how mad everyone seems to be all the time? I can barely get through a week of driving without being honked at (and not because I’m looking so fine in my 1998 minivan) or flipped off. Seriously, flipped off. What’s up with that? Who are these people who are so angry that I haven’t moved quickly enough through an intersection that they’re willing to roll down their window and throw out a vile gesture to a woman driving six kids in a minivan? Who are these people who shout at their kids at the top of their lungs in stores and restaurants? And the hate bloggers? Who is so passionately angry that they’ll spend hours raging against strangers who don’t share their same view on gun control or same-sex marriage? I wonder how they find the time and the energy to be so angry.

There’s a bumper sticker out there that says, “If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention.” It’s one of my favorites, because I like to pull up alongside those people and smile real big. Sometimes I’ll mouth, “I’m not angry.” True, I’m probably not paying attention, but I also have low blood pressure and a lot of friends.  

 Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past ... to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you. –Frederick Buechner

My Meager Bucket List

I recently met a woman who had been to the London Olympics over the summer. She commented, “Checked that one off my bucket list!” I watched the movie like everyone else so I know what a bucket list is, but I hadn’t thought of such a list for myself until she mentioned it. I wondered if I should start one. I began thinking about it in those early-morning hours when there was no sleep to be had. What would be on my bucket list?

I used to want to travel the world. I was planning a trip to Russia to kick things off about the time Kevin proposed to me. When it came down to paying for a trip or a wedding, I chose the wedding, and I’ve never had any regrets. Oddly enough, I’ve also never regretted that my travels take me to parks and McDonald’s and soccer fields and pediatrician’s offices instead of oceans and cathedrals and historical landmarks. Now halfway through my life, besides a few jaunts to Mexico and sticking my toes over the Canadian border, I’ve not been out of the country, yet I’m completely content. I’d like to go on a missions trip some day, but I’m not sure even that would go on my bucket list.

There’s a picturesque village of 4,300 people in Australia’s Blue Mountains that I’ve dreamed of visiting since I heard about it at the age of 20. The name of the town is Leura, and it just seemed meant to be that I would travel there and have my picture taken outside the Leura Post Office or the Leura Nail Salon as some of my friends have done. I thought I might go when I turned 30, but I had a one-year-old who I couldn’t bear to leave or bring along. And when I turned 40, the child count had grown to four and the discretionary vacation funds to nil. There’s always my 50^th—but even my longing to visit Leura has subsided over the years. I don’t know if I’d put it on my bucket list.

I used to love thrill rides and couldn’t imagine anything more sensational than jumping out of an airplane. That doesn’t make the list anymore. I’m a lifelong writer with no desire to write a book. A lifelong runner with no interest in ever doing a marathon. So what would I put on my list?

Of course there are a lot of things I’d like to see and do, things that sound fun or adventurous. But if I’m correctly understanding the purpose of a bucket list, it’s to focus on rich experiences that will add to one’s remaining days on earth. If my bucket list contained only those goals that were truly the most important to me, that I really wanted to do and do well before I die, it would be a pretty simple list.

I want to know God as deeply as I can.

I want to get over myself and love people well.

Maybe that’s a boring list? If I had seen it 20 years ago, I would have thought it was created by someone who’s not much fun. But time and perspective have shown me there’s nothing more adventurous, nothing more challenging, nothing more fulfilling or pleasurable than knowing God and doing what He says. I’m sure I’ll never get my items fully checked off my list, but I’m happy to know I’ll die trying. 

A Man after God's Own Heart

I am loving the new pope! As a lifelong protestant, I’ve never been all that aware of the pope or the business of the Catholic church. But with the choice of Pope Francis, they’ve got my attention.

The pictures of the Pope on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday were shocking. A pope—a 76-year-old pope, no less—lying prostrate on an alter to worship Christ? The world’s most recognized religious man kneeling before a group of prisoners, washing and kissing their dirty feet? It’s outrageous! How beautifully, perfectly outrageous.

Before the feet-washing pictures began screaming from the newspapers, I didn’t even know that was a common Holy Week practice among popes. I learned that traditionally, the pope has washed the feet of 12 of his bishops, men dressed in elaborate, flowing robes of honor, in Rome’s grand St. John Lateran Basilica, as a remembrance of one of Jesus’ most famous earthly acts. But Pope Francis does not appear to be overly concerned with following tradition. He washed feet all right, but they were not clean, honorable feet. They were the feet of the poor, the prisoner, the rejected, the outcast—even the Muslim.

“This is a symbol, it is a sign—washing your feet means I am at your service,” Pope Francis told them. This same man was washing feet long before the rest of the world cared. As the archbishop of Buenos Aires, he washed feet in jails, hospitals, and hospices. Newspapers and blogs attest to the fact that his attention has always been turned to the poorest and most marginalized of society. He says he wants the church to be for the poor. What a concept!

The pope’s lifestyle indicates that these are more than just headline-making words. In Buenos Aires, he chose to live in an apartment instead of the palace that was provided for him. He cooked his own meals and used public transportation. He has eschewed the elaborate papal robes. Upon his first public introduction to the world as pope, he refused to be elevated on a platform above the other church leaders, saying simply, “I’ll stay down here.”

I have to wonder if the Catholic church knew what they were getting into with this man. If they knew that he would choose for himself the name Francis, after St. Francis of Assisi, who sought not to abolish poverty but to make it holy. If they knew he would choose simplicity over ceremony and prisoners over priests. Maybe they didn’t know, but surely God did, and I have to think He is very pleased. The Bible calls King David a man after God’s own heart. From what I’ve seen so far of Pope Francis, I think he may be called that, as well.