Making Radical Normal

I’ve been thinking a lot about an article my friend Becky sent me. It started this way:

“If you're the parent of a Christian teenager, Kenda Creasy Dean has this warning: Your child is following a ‘mutant’ form of Christianity, and you may be responsible. Dean says more American teenagers are embracing what she calls ‘moralistic therapeutic deism.’ Translation: It's a watered-down faith that portrays God as a ‘divine therapist’ whose chief goal is to boost people's self-esteem.”

Dean interviewed 3,300 teenagers and found that most who called themselves Christian were “indifferent and inarticulate” about their faith. No surprise there. But it’s her solution that screamed for my attention. The article goes on to say that “parents who perform one act of radical faith in front of their children convey more than a multitude of sermons and mission trips.”

“But it's not enough to be radical—parents must explain ‘this is how Christians live,’ she says. ‘If you don't say you're doing it because of your faith, kids are going to say my parents are really nice people,’ Dean says. ‘It doesn't register that faith is supposed to make you live differently unless parents help their kids connect the dots.’”

So what does radical look like? I’m reading a book about it (that’s always where I start), and I’m starting to test the waters of actually living it. I don’t know if Ms. Dean or anyone else would call my family’s life today radical. We live in a perfectly acceptable, if somewhat unconventional, space above our shop. It’s not exactly radical for a family of six to have one bathroom and no closets, but it’s definitely not the norm in our culture.

We see things and meet people here that make us uncomfortable and would never be part of our lives in the suburbs. Again, probably more “interesting” than “radical,” but I am praying that some day the kids will see living counter-culturally and so far out of our comfort zone as "an act of radical faith."

For now, I want them to see it as normal, that “this is how Christians live.” That instead of feeling fear or disgust at the homeless, the drug dealers, the prostitutes that walk down our street and shop at our Walmart, they’ll feel compassion. (I have so far to go on that journey myself.) That they’ll go a giant step further than their parents and not just watch and wonder about these people, but actually engage with them. I hope we’re exposing them to a world beyond their upscale school and Saturday soccer matches—and to a God who cares much more about their selflessness than their self-esteem. I hope that one day they’ll be very different from me—that they'll be comfortable living in that world, that they’ll love the strange and the scary and the outcasts the way Jesus did. Whether that’s radical or normal, I pray that my kids will believe that that's the way Christians are supposed to live.

40

This is it—the week I turn 40! I think I’m so tired of thinking about it that I’m glad it’s finally here. And I’ve decided “here” is just the place I want to be.

The other day I was hustling all my kids through a busy parking lot when we were stopped by a woman who appeared to be in her late 70s. “Are they all yours?” she asked. “Yes, all mine,” I answered, expecting the standard, “You-sure-have-your-hands-full” line that I often get. But she surprised me by saying, “What I wouldn’t give to go back to where you are, just for a day, and relive that time with my children.” She smiled and walked away, and I buckled everyone into the car with a bit more gratitude for my place in life.

My friend Linda, now 60, says her 40s were the best years of her life. I have a feeling I may end up agreeing with her. The hard work of all that physical parenting in my 20s and 30s is behind me. I am absolutely loving being an elementary-school mom and the more emotional/spiritual/psychological parenting that comes with it. I happily (mostly) did all the nursing, spoon-feeding, swaddling, rocking stuff, but it’s now that I feel like I’m really in my element. All of my kids’ friends’ parents are turning 40 with me, along with my much-loved junior high, high school, and college friends, all of which contributes to the feeling that I’m just where I want to be.

At 40, my marriage, my patience, my cooking, and my abs are all better than they were at 30. I am much less satisfied with the things of this world, much more grieved by my sin, much more desperate for a Savior, much more homesick for the place I was created for.

So, welcome 40. I can actually say I’m glad you’re here. Just please be sure to stick around a long, LONG time.

Gym Mom

One of our moving bribes was a family membership at the YMCA. For the past 11 years, I’ve been holed up having babies, gaining and losing weight in the privacy of my own home. I’ve got every Billy Blanks VHS tape and DVD there is and have been content to work out with “Billy, Shellie, and the gang” in my basement all these years. After a decade together, these people are like old friends. They never judge my sit-up technique. Their ’90s workout clothes never show me up. They don’t bat an eye when I stop for a drink or walk out on them early. I don’t have to shower with them. They are the perfect workout buddies.

But for the past month, I’ve been exercising with real people. I’ve had some victories and some major opportunities for character development. One of the first classes I attended was step aerobics. Though I was warned the choreography was “moderate to difficult,” I had no fear of keeping up. Afterall, I was a gymnast and a cheerleader in my former life. After about five minutes, I concluded that every woman in there must have once been a Laker Girl, although at least half of them were old enough to be my mother. The instructor counted so quickly and used such foreign terminology that it felt like trying to keep up with a Spanish soap opera. The me I think I am did not show up that day. TWICE the instructor actually came up to me and said, “I’m afraid you’re going to hurt yourself,” in that “oops-I’m-wearing-a-headset-and-just-broadcast-that-to-the-entire-room” sort of way. It was confusing, awkward, humiliating—sort of like an entire year of junior high boiled down to one hour.

I have since found a couple of classes that are more me. I have learned that rather than dance moves and eight counts, I should stick with good ol’ fashion jump roping and squat thrusts. (Two words I never thought I’d use on my blog.) I was even starting to get a bit cocky, thinking I hadn’t found a class that was hard enough for me, Mrs. Billy Blanks TaeBo Queen.

Then I went to Lori’s Ultimate Conditioning class this week. Lori was obviously a Marine. And a Chinese gymnast. And a torturer. I left the room unable to walk. And then I really started to hurt.

If the classes are not traumatic enough, there’s always the locker-room. Do you ever get used to seeing 75-year-old women streak across your path? How can that possibly make you feel good about the future? (And these are the toned 75-year-olds!) And I’m just not sure I’m mature enough to have a conversation with the mom of one of my Awana kids while wearing nothing more than a towel and my shower slippers.

But I’m almost 40 and getting more jiggly by the minute, so I’ll put in the time and hope all the squeezing and tucking pays off. And if it doesn’t work out, Billy, Shellie, and the gang are always waiting for me at home.

A Must-Read for Anyone in Pain

Have you ever hurt? Physical pain or emotional pain? Maybe both at the same time? Are you hurting now? Or do you think it might happen some day? Yeah, I’m thinking that covers just about everyone. Then stop what you’re doing! Now! (Please.) And investigate this book. It’s called Don’t Waste the Pain, a book I got to edit last fall. It’s the best book I’ve ever worked on and one of the best I’ve ever read. I eagerly set my alarm clock for 4:30 a.m., even earlier sometimes, so I could dig in before I started my day. I needed this like some people need coffee. It filled me with the truth and grace of God. It also made me weep, nearly every morning.

One of my earliest blog posts was called Stewarding the Pain. My friends David and Linda have written a whole book on this topic. They’ve lived this topic. They’ve changed me, and many, many others, because of the way they lived it.

If my endorsement doesn’t convince you, take it from Larry Crabb. He writes this in the foreword to Don’t Waste the Pain:

“Do not expect my foreword to offer either a critique of this book or an easily marketed endorsement. I was far too personally caught up in what I read on every page to respond from an evaluative distance or to cheerily advertise its message. The two authors, brother and sister, wouldn’t let me hide from the fear that I know is rumbling somewhere inside me, the fear that I prefer to leave buried beneath promises God hasn’t made.

“Worse, they stripped away whatever remnants remain of naïve “Christian” optimism and fluffy “biblical” theology that tell me to believe God will somehow numb the pain of whatever suffering He calls me to endure. After reading only a few pages, I put the book down, looked nowhere in particular, and with a freshness I didn’t much like, acknowledged what I’d rather deny: I’m scared and pain hurts. God offers no guarantee that what I dread will never happen, not to me; and He makes no promise to provide anesthesia if it does. . . . David and Linda make the outrageous claim—no, they live the unpopular truth—that life-giving hope grows in the raw realism of suffering. In undiluted pain, the God who is there becomes slowly recognized as the God who is here.”

Convinced? If you live in town and want to borrow a copy, let me know. Or take a chance and buy your own!

Waiting for Bread and Water

All summer, I’ve been praying for two miracles. They may not seem like miracles to anyone else, but they are to me. One is big and life-altering, one is small but very important to me. I’ve asked God to sell our house—quickly, supernaturally, in a way we know couldn’t have happened by any other means—and to resurface my lost camera that holds pictures from the past 18 months of our lives.

Prayed. Faithfully. Expectantly. All summer. The great discouragement managed to stay away until August. It settled in and put down roots by Labor Day. That weekend, our church sermon centered on this question from Exodus 17: “Will I trust God when there’s no bread and water?”

It’s easy to judge the Israelites for their lack of vision and patience. We think, “C’mon, guys, God just parted the Red Sea and delivered you from slavery, for Pete’s sake. Stop your whining and show a little perseverance, a little faith.” Perspective is a wonderful thing. But when it’s our own story, we don’t have that kind of perspective. All we can feel is the dryness in our throats and the grumbling in our bellies. (Or, in my case, another looming house payment and a year’s worth of lost memories.)

Moses asked the whining Israelites, “ Why do you put the Lord to the test?” We only need to look at the story of Ananias and Sapphira to understand how God feels about being put to a test. (“How could you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord?” Peter asked Sapphira, just before she dropped dead.) I wondered if my prayers for miracles were actually more of a test. Would God come through for me like I wanted Him to? Could I convince Him with my prayers to act on my behalf the way I wanted? Or was my heart pure, just desperate to tangibly feel His favor?

It seems to me there’s a fine line between praying expectantly and praying with demands. This isn’t one of those entries where I get it all figured out and wrap it up with a bow at the end. I don’t have this figured out. I’m not sure I ever will. We did get an offer on our house this week, which we accepted, but a sea of hoops and obstacles looms before we successfully close on this house. It’s certainly not the miracle I was hoping for, which looked more like someone proclaiming, “God told me to buy this house from you, and I don’t care how much work it needs. Name your price!”

I may need to look a little harder for miracles. They might not be as obvious as I had hoped. I also need to do the hard work of surrendering my expectations and more faithfully pray, “Not my will but yours be done, Lord.” Will I trust Him without grumbling if we have this house in another year? If I never see my camera again? Will I trust Him when there’s no bread and water?

Recognizing That Ugly Entitlement Attitude

A former neighbor and I were talking a few days ago about the feedback we’ve gotten on our still-for-sale house. “No yard, no views,” said one person of the house we bought for the yard and the views. One perspective buyer’s only comment was that it was odd there was a garage door opener in the crawl space. Yes, it is odd, but did you happen to see the rest of the house? The part one would actually live in?

My neighbor was not surprised by the nitpicky comments. She works at Pottery Barn and sees it all day long. “People nitpick because they believe they deserve something more, something better.” She cited examples like customers requesting a discount because they were paying with cash or because they bought four of the same item. What?!

We all decry the younger generations and their entitlement attitude, but do we stop to take a good look at ourselves? This attitude didn’t just pop up overnight in 1986.

An older lady came to my husband’s shop, and things didn’t go according to her schedule. She believes she was delayed and inconvenienced, and apparently she was the first person in history to experience this. She has demanded $200 for her time or she will go to the ends of the earth to tear down our good name. (Along with irrational entitlement, the word “extortion” comes to mind.)

Yet as I say good riddance to another too-hard, not-enough-fun summer, I see the same entitlement attitude in myself. I didn’t go so far as to write God a letter demanding $200 for my pain and suffering, but I might as well have. Somewhere along the way, I got the idea that summers were supposed to be fun. That I was supposed to have a good time and enjoy myself. That I deserved to have a good summer. But the fact is, I don’t deserve a good summer (or any other season for that matter) any more than my children deserve a treat for finishing their homework. Despite the advertising industry’s best efforts to convince us otherwise, we don’t deserve anything. Good summers and days that go according to our plans—and hey, while we’re at it, let’s add fulfilling jobs, good health, and functional families to the list—are blessings from God and nothing else. They’re not things we can earn or demand. It’s startling to realize that this unconscious expectation that things go our way is the exact same sense of entitlement that we despise in other people.

God gave me what I needed this summer, and whether I enjoyed it or not, I need to find the maturity to simply thank Him for it. Gratitude may well be the best antidote for entitlement.

Lord, Make Me Drano

Our pastor talks a lot about “plumbing theology,” or, in other words, what we do with the grace and love God pours into us. Do we catch it and store it up for ourselves like buckets? Or do we let it flow out of us into other people like pipes?

This week we talked about what happens when our pipes get blocked. We want to be pipes; we’re trying our hardest to be pipes. But we’ve got some sort of blockage that’s keeping the love and grace from flowing through us. Our pastor asked us to identify that blockage for ourselves. For some people, it’s their own woundedness. For some it’s a reoccurring sin issue. For many people, it’s just something in their past that they cannot shake.

I don’t ever want to put a plug in my kids’ pipes. One of my biggest goals as a mom is to introduce new adults into the world who hit the ground ready to give and love and serve. I don’t want them to have to spend half their adult life in counseling trying to correct the damage from their childhood. I want to be the one who greases up their pipes so love flows forcefully, passionately out of them. I wanna be their Drano.

But it’s not just things from our past that block our pipes. When I thought hard about the biggest blockage in my own pipe, one simple phrase came to mind:

The self-centered pursuit of my own agenda.

I’ve got so much I want to do—places I want to visit, things I want to buy, books I want to read, hobbies I want to pursue, people I want to hang out with, dear Lord, naps I want to take! But rarely do these things include serving anyone but myself. These are not bad things on their own, just like a single strand of hair is not so bad for your pipes. But they can entwine together to form a gigantic hairball that lodges firmly, unbudgingly, in my pipe. That’s my plug, alright, and the only way to push it out is to keep doing the hard, inconvenient work of serving and loving other people. Not just people who can love me and serve me back, mind you, but the kind who are difficult and messy and often unappreciative. How I pray I'll get better at this.

It's not just the woundedness hairball I have to keep out of my kids’ pipes. I can dedicate the next 15 years of my life to protecting them from physical and psychological damage, but if I’ve not taught them how to lavish God’s grace and love on others, I’ve done nothing for them. And the only way to teach them something so important is to show them.