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. 

Truth and Love

I want to love the way Jesus loved. I want to pull the planks out of my own eye before I look at the specks in other people. I don’t want to cast judgment or throw stones. But I also want to be on the side of truth. People, and this crazy culture we live in, make that a tricky balance.

A family in our city is suing their school district for not allowing their transgender child—a boy, with male anatomy—to use the girls’ restroom. The child is six. SIX!! According to the newspaper article I read, he—and I will continue to call him a he because that’s what simple biology says he is, no matter that he wears dresses and hairbows—started “expressing himself as a girl” at 18 months. I remember 18-month-olds. Mine expressed themselves by poking Cheerios up their noses and drawing on the walls with my lipstick. They also threw fits, hit other kids, pulled the dog’s tail, and stole candy from Walgreens. Like most every parent, instead of deciding this is who my child was—a thief, a bully, an animal torturer, or a psychopath—my husband and I worked hard to steer their behavior in other directions. We didn’t let them choose their clothes, their friends, their food, their religion, or their political affiliation at 18 months.

But gender is a whole other issue today. It’s close-minded, bigoted, ignorant, and just plain mean to question someone’s gender confusion today. Probably the very term “gender confusion” just marked me as an uniformed, bullying religious zealot.

I don’t know what it’s like to raise a boy who wants to wear dresses and play with Barbies. I’m all too familiar with raising girls who only want to wear “boy shorts” and play in the dirt, but I realize that is different. I don’t personally know people dealing with gender confusion in young children, and I don’t know for sure what I would do under those circumstances. I do feel compassion, and I hope that if I ever meet someone in that situation, I’ll be a loving friend. I also think the parenting issue looks different when the child is a teenager, capable of making his or her own choices.

But when do we rise up and say, “An 18-month-old with a penis is a boy, and he should be treated as such”? What about a 6-year-old? Is it the best use of his parents’ efforts to be fighting for access to the girls’ bathroom? Are they doing all they can for this child by suing the school—a school which has, by the way, offered him his own private bathroom in the nurse’s office any time he needs it? When do we rise up and say little girls shouldn’t be bullied by lawsuits into sharing school restrooms with boys?

Truth and love. They can and should coexist. To love like Jesus loved, we don’t have to compromise or deny truth. The Bible tells us, “Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church” (Ephesians 4:15). That brings me peace. More than being right, more than winning a culture war, more than being politically correct, I want to grow more and more like Jesus. 

Killing My 'Self' with Paul and Lewis

You know that whole biblical idea of dying to self? That line Paul writes in Philippians 1:21, “to live is Christ, to die is gain”? I’ve always struggled with that. Is it OK to admit that I kind of like myself? Self-preservation is hard wired into me, and the idea of “killing” that self has always seemed confusing and unattainable to me. I’ve sort of figured out that it means not serving my selfishness, putting others ahead of myself, and following the Golden Rule, but those things are definitely not the “natural” me.

Who is my true self, anyway? Am I trying to find it or will it to die? What about all those people who are on a quest to “find themselves”? Is that a noble pursuit? And what are they going to do once they find themselves?  

C.S. Lewis has some revealing thoughts on such things. They come at the very end of Mere Christianity. I’ve written before about my pathetic attempt, at age 19, to read this book. I gave up about five pages in, convinced all the Lewis fanfare was a bit over the top and it just wasn’t for me. It was tempting to think, when I recently picked up the book again, that C.S. Lewis had really come a long way. “He’s so much more accessible now. His writing has really improved,” I thought for a second. But of course it’s not the writer who changed but the reader. Thank God that it’s me who has come a long way!

Hear what Lewis has to say about dying to self.  

The more we get what we now call ‘ourselves' out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become.

The more I resist Him and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and natural desires. [I don’t know about you, but there’s a lot about my heredity and upbringing that I’m happy to “kill.”]

What I so proudly call ‘Myself’ becomes merely the meeting place for trains of events which I never started and which I cannot stop. What I call ‘My wishes’ become merely the desires thrown up by my physical organism or pumped into me by other men’s thoughts. . . . I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a person as I like to believe: most of what I call ‘me’ can be very easily explained. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.

Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most 'natural' men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike are all the great tyrants and conquerers; how gloriously different are the saints. [I like that a lot.]

Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in. 

That last part is hard to accept. Most people won’t buy it. We kinda like ourselves. But the longer we spend really getting to know ourselves, the deeper we understand who we are, the more honest we have to be about what’s inside. There’s some good, for sure, but there’s also loneliness, hatred, despair, and decay. That’s what I am happy, eager, grateful, to kill. And when I do, I am filled with the wholeness—the love, hope, and fullness of joy—of Christ. To live is Christ, to die is gain. Yeah, Paul, I get it. 

Small Investment, Big Pay Off

Around this time last year I did something I’ve never done before. I tracked down a prisoner and wrote her a letter. I had followed her story in the local paper for months. She was a veteran and a very young single mom who, in a moment of stupid, selfish neglect, accidentally killed one of her babies. Normally, I would read a story like this, feel sick, and be glad she was getting what she deserved, which was a whole lot of jail time. Instead, all I felt was sympathy and compassion.

It reminded me of all the stupid, selfish things I’ve done as a mother. I can’t remember ever jeopardizing my kids’ lives, but I’ve certainly allowed some things that could have turned out badly while I sat with my back turned at the computer or hid out in a locked bathroom for five minutes of alone time. All I could think was, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Yet reading the online comments about this woman was like attending a modern-day stoning. And here critical, judgmental me had no stone to throw. Weird.  

I thought about writing to her dozens of times, but I never got around to it. It seemed like too much work to track her down, and besides, what would I say? But as the months went on, I felt the prompting to write her getting stronger and stronger, until I knew I needed to at least try. So early last February, I used my remedial internet skills to see what I could find. I landed on the Department of Corrections site, only to learn that I didn’t have enough information to get beyond the first step. I tried a few times, but no luck. Days passed. I tried again. Nothing. I decided to forget about it, but the nagging thought continued. In mid-February, I tried again, and this time, all sorts of information popped up, things like her middle name, her prisoner number, her location, and the history of her transfers to different facilities. I sort of felt like I was invading her privacy. Then I saw her birthdate. It was February 29, 1988. She was a leap-year baby, and it just so happened she would be celebrating her “sixth” birthday in a few weeks. (As my friend Nate says, “Oh, God, you have fun with your kids.”) Now I knew what I would write.  

Side note: You don’t realize how singularly minded birthday cards are (“Whoop it up!” “Party all night!” “Eat more cake!”) until you’re trying to find one for someone in prison. I finally landed on a “thinking of you” card.

My mom, who knows about such things, told me I couldn’t send anything in the letter. If I sent pictures or stamps or even a bookmark, it would probably be confiscated by the prison guards. She also warned me that the letter may not reach her at all. Using an address I was only about 50 percent sure of, the kids and I prayed over the birthday card and dropped it in the mail about 10 days before the birthday.

Weeks passed, and I didn’t give the letter another thought. I’d given it a shot, and I was done. But actually, I wasn’t done at all. In fact, I’d just begun, because she wrote back. I’m not a terribly emotional person, but when I read her response—when I read that my card had arrived on her real leap-day birthday, and that it was the only one she had received—I crumbled into the fetal position on my dirty Shome carpet. Sobbing, I read how much my words had encouraged her, how they’d given her hope, how they showed her God’s love in a real and powerful way. She said she was thankful to have me as a friend. A friend!

Never have I seen so clearly how such a small, seemingly insignificant act of obedience could reap such monumental blessings.

We have written back and forth for the past year. My letters are short. I never say anything profound. Sometimes I share a verse I’ve recently read, or I just ask her how she’s doing. No matter how lame the words seem to me, every time she writes back she tells me how thankful she is, how blessed she is to have me as her friend. To me, a friend is someone you eat dinner with or have over to your house. To her, a friend is someone who writes a letter every once in a while and tells her that she can get through this. Amazing.

Amazing that we have a God who can turn our paltry little offerings into more than we could ever imagine.