Bark Less, Wag More

I've sat down a number of times to write about my trip (see previous post for more details), but there are so many things to say that I end up feeling a bit overwhelmed. I could write a snarky essay about how Europeans must surely perceive Americans (pushy, overweight, and some word that means the opposite of classy and stylish). I could share some of the weird experiences we had, like the public toilet (yes, singular) in the middle of a busy French street, with a revolving door that only stayed shut for 20 seconds, or the Spanish-speaking Asian woman who accosted us as we lay on the beach, literally picking up our feet and vigorously rubbing them while begging for money.

I could write about getting a personal tour of the statue of David, of dashing through the Vatican Museum like video game characters, dodging tour groups, wheelchairs, and strollers, of seeing one of the grandest basilicas in the world and feeling--well, feeling nothing at all, oddly enough. I could try to find words for how grateful I felt to be visiting some of the most famous, important, and beautiful cities in the world, or how taking it all in was like drinking from a fire hose, as one friend put it.

I could go in a different direction and write about my children, how impressed I was by the responsibility and resourcefulness they showed while we were gone. I could brag about my 69-year-old mother,who stepped in and ran a family full of busy children as if she does it every day, and who never complained, not even when the dog dragged her through the dirt and left a horrible leash-burn on her hand. I could affirm that it truly is difficult for a mom to be gone in May, every bit as difficult as I had imagined, and that one can experience joyful, awe-filled gratitude and wonder in Italy while at the exact same time feeling heart-sick about missing the band concert at home.

But I want to do more than amuse you. I'd like to try to offer something that could change your day--maybe even your month or your year. That's a lofty goal, but here's what I've got: Be pleasant company. 

As I mentioned in my last post, I signed up for this trip reluctantly, even grumpily. I hated how that felt, and I asked God to change my hard heart. It didn't happen overnight; in fact, it didn't happen with much time to spare. But three or four weeks before we left, God impressed on me to be pleasant company to my husband. It was his trip, and I was his very fortunate guest. The least I could do was to be a pleasant traveling companion.

Was I tested on it? Yes, hourly. Did I master it? Not even close. A Mediterranean cruise sounds pretty cushy, but travel is stressful, whether you're going to a funeral in Des Moines or a vacation in Spain. There are so many unexpected circumstances that can bring out the worst in a person. But it all goes a lot better if you're committed to the idea of being pleasant company to the people you're traveling with.

Most of us inherently know what pleasant company looks like. We practice it with strangers but forget to practice it with the people closest to us. It's pretty simple. Start by smiling more. Laugh more. Be playful. (Why is it that middle-aged parents are so serious all the time?) Say thank you, A LOT. Be agreeable and flexible. Be willing to try things a different way than how you normally function. Don't feel the need to share your every complaint and negative thought. For women especially: Don't parent your husband. Don't correct him or fuss at him. Don't question his every move. Let him lead.

There is nothing more attractive than a man boldly, decisively, confidently leading. Let the feminist choir rise up against me and throw rotten tomatoes; I don't care. I think there are a whole lot of women who would agree with me that confident leadership, assuming you're married to a decent guy, is super attractive.

If you're traveling this summer, experiment with this idea. Focus on being pleasant company. If it goes as well for you as it did for me, take it up a notch and try being pleasant company at home. I know, right? Crazy! Home is supposed to be the place where we can be ourselves, let our hair down, be real. But if that's not working out so well, try being pleasant instead. You may have to work at it. You may even have to fake it a little. That's OK. We are creatures who love rewards, and if your experiment goes as I think it will, the rewards will be worth your effort.

Life is hard. God mercifully gives us other people to travel with through the hardness. My hypothesis, still undergoing much testing, is that it's much easier if we travel as pleasant company.

A Practical Lesson on Love

"If someone asked me if I loved my wife, I'd say of course I do. I love her so much I'd give my life for her without a second thought. But if we're on a road trip and she wants to eat at Subway and I want to eat at Taco Bell, I will fight her tooth and nail to get what I want."

Though not verbatim, my pastor shared this example about a year ago while teaching on love. Do you know that feeling when a speaker says something and time seems to stop? Everyone else in the room disappears, and it's like he called you out and began speaking specifically to you? That's what happened to me when he gave that example.

Months prior to hearing that message, my husband had asked me to go on a Mediterranean cruise with him. In the 20 years we've owned our business, he has earned several trips through one of his suppliers, and several times, he has asked me if I would be willing to go. Each time, I've said no. Without a thought. The reason is because the trips are always in early May, and we have four children. I don't want to do the work or miss the activity that being gone in May would require.

My sweet husband was not asking me to dig ditches, foster feral kittens, move back into the shop, or watch ten hours of motocross in the hot sun (that one he's asked before). He was asking me to take what other people might call the trip of a lifetime, with him. I had enough sense to reluctantly agree to the cruise because it seemed so important to him, but when he asked about adding on extra days at the end of the cruise, I snapped back that he would need to find someone else to take with him, because there was no way I was going to be gone "extra days" in May.

The only way this makes sense is if you're a mom who has lived through May before. Dumping four children on someone else for 12 days during the most insane time of the year feels like irresponsible parenting. Then sign one of those kids up for competitive soccer and the other for three sports in one season, add in three music lessons a week and four AP tests, Awana, youth group, birthday parties, and a dozen events that require 10 bucks and  a dozen cupcakes, and it feels sickeningly indulgent and utterly undoable. If the trip had been in June, I would have kicked up my heels and bought a copy of Italy for Dummies. But May? All I did was grumble.

And then my pastor shared his little story. It was like a news-alert scroll was turned on inside my head. The message running loudly through my brain was this: "Want to know how to love your husband well? Do what he wants to do. And do it cheerfully."

It is humbling to realize that all it takes to bring out your ugly is for your husband to invite you on a cruise at the wrong time of year. But humbling is not a bad thing. In this case, a good dose of Holy Spirit humbling gave me a kick in the seat to start changing my attitude. It was slow going for a good, long while. I lived in absolute dread of having to plan schedules and line up rides for children whose lives we can barely manage ourselves. Sure enough, it has been a ton of work. My brain feels like it's been tossed into a blender. I have had to do battle with that guilty sense of indulgence that taunts me at every turn. I have had to remind myself often why I am doing this. I will have to make a conscious choice on Saturday morning at 10:58 a.m. to turn off the all-powerful carpool mom part of my brain and rediscover the fun wife part. But that's what I'm going to do.

Because what greater thing can a wife give her husband than the gift of her full attention? For 12 days? In May? How can she demonstrate more clearly that she loves him than doing what he wants to do? Cheerfully?

(And probably the Mediterranean won't be so bad either.)

Eleven Witnesses

I wonder if anyone has had their whole life come down to one minute? A minute in which all that they'd been taught, all they'd been hoping for, all that mattered in the world to them was fulfilled. A minute that knit together every day of their past and radically shaped every day of their future?

That's what happened to eleven men in Jerusalem. For three years, they had been following around this man named Jesus. They had seen him do many unexplainable things and heard him speak of mysteries beyond their understanding. He was strange, but he was also their friend. They trusted him. They trusted him enough to give up everything and follow him all around the countryside, doing whatever he said.

They were good Jewish boys. Their mamas and daddys had taught them well. They knew the Scripture; they followed the Law. They knew that Yahweh had promised them a Messiah, a rescuer who would save God's people and rule forever. Just about the time they began to think that Jesus might be the One they were waiting for, just about the time they were thinking he would stick it to the Roman leaders and set up Jewish rule once and for all, something crazy happened. He died. His body was put in a tomb. And that was that.

"What in the world was that about?" they must have wondered.

Could they eat? Sleep? I don't think so. All they could do was wonder, and weep, and stumble through what must have been the greatest disappointment of all time.

But then their moment came. THE moment. And it happened so simply.

One minute they were alone, and the next he was there with them. He appeared out of nowhere, very much alive. They were so startled they thought he was a ghost. He knew how jarring his appearance would be, so he let them examine his nail-scarred hands and feet. He ate with them. And then he did something that must have seemed to them even more amazing than raising from the dead. He put every second of every day of their entire lives in context.

He said something like this: Everything you've hoped for your entire lives, every lesson you ever learned, every law you ever followed, every scripture you ever memorized was all about me. This life? All about me. This world? All about me (and, by the way, I created it). The future? All about me.

"Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, 'This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things'" (Luke 24:45-47).

Grief and confusion and disappointment were immediately sucked out of the room. "Ah-ha" moments broke out. Connections were made. Lives, on the spot, were changed, never to be the same. The world was changed, never to be the same. And it all began with those eleven.

Sometimes I marvel over what it's like to be alive right now, in this moment in time. On my watch, the world changed at the hands of technology. The world I was born into looks nothing like the one I inhabit now. I think that's pretty amazing. I wonder how I got to be a witness to such things.

But it doesn't hold a candle to what those eleven in Jerusalem witnessed, when all of history and all of eternity converged in that one holy moment.

He is risen. And this crazy world make sense.

Snow Day!

It's April, and mothers everywhere are a hot mess. OK, maybe not all mothers; maybe it's just those of us who have kids in school. And maybe it's not everywhere, but it's certainly everywhere I'm looking.

April is the beginning of the end. We're rounding the corner of the home stretch. There's a light at the end of the school-year tunnel. It's faint and there are a hundred obstacles between here and there, but just knowing it's there encourages us onward. But the final stretch is almost always the hardest. We break out into a sweat as 3:00 arrives, knowing it's a dead sprint until bedtime. We live out of our cars and eat out of crockpots and drive-thru's. We shiver through soccer games, baseball games, and track meets. We fix hair and tune instruments and drive, drive, drive to rehearsals, concerts, and recitals. We pack sack lunches for field trips and clear our schedules to chaperone them. We throw birthday parties and buy presents for other people's kids. We take in treats to keep the teachers encouraged. We feed and urge on the older kids studying for SATs and AP exams.We try to remember that we are wives and have some interaction with our husbands beyond who's picking up whom and please don't forget the cupcakes. We attempt to keep all this up while maintaining our own friendships, work obligations, fitness regimens, and spiritual disciplines.

(Yes, spring break was just last week, but "break" is an oxymoron when you spend 41 hours in the car with your children. Our time visiting colleges was productive, but there was no "break" involved, and certainly no recharging for the month of April.)

Then we wake up to snow. Lots of it. And the messages start rolling in. School cancelled. Meeting at work cancelled. Soccer cancelled. Track cancelled. Piano lesson cancelled. Band concert cancelled. The children who were scheduled to within an inch of their lives now get to spend the day building snow men in the yard. Everyone stays in their jammies. A party breaks out over cocoa and board games. Life as we know it has come to a screeching halt, and we can all stop and breathe.

I don't begin to claim to know how God works. But I think for harried mothers in states with erratic weather, He sends snow in April, His little present to remind us to slow down, actually enjoy our children, and focus on the goodness of this life.

To See and Be Seen

I'm reminded again that one of the greatest gifts we can give to another person is our focused, personal attention. A group of my friends recently traveled to Russia to host a retreat for women who grew up in orphanages and are now trying to raise their own children--with very few role models or personal examples to draw on. My friends taught classes on parenting, conflict-resolution, self-esteem and the like, but the most meaningful thing they may have done was to paint the Russian women's nails. It's intimate work. It's "I-care-about-you" work, especially in this context. No money was paid; no expectations were made. It was just one woman focusing all of her attention on another, serving her humbly and with love just like Galatians 5:13 tells us to do.

Children who grow up in institutions don't get personal attention. Moms doing the hard work of raising children, sometimes alone or with little support, are rarely acknowledged by others. I don't know many American women who have had another person look them in the eye and say, "You're doing a great job raising your children. Don't lose heart!" How much more must this mean to someone who's never really been seen at all.

To be seen. It's one of our most essential human needs. It's why God reveals Himself, in the book of Genesis, as El Roi, the God who sees us. And not just us, but you. And me. And her over there sitting by herself in the corner, thinking no one in the world notices her or cares about her. God notices! And I think He loves it when we follow His example.

Not many of us will find ourselves painting the nails of grown-up orphans in Russia. But surely we can all find someone who needs to be "seen" this week. Cooks at restaurants, janitors at schools and churches and airports, workers taking a smoke break outside Walmart. These and so many like them serve us behind the scenes, and we rarely take notice. I urge you to pay attention in the next several days. "See" someone you've never seen before. Give that person your focused, personal attention, even if it's just for 10 seconds. That 10 seconds could make all the difference in someone's day. Or maybe, because El Roi is such a big God, it could change a life.

Life Is Good: A Fresh Message

In the wake of five suicides in our school community over the past 14 months--four students and one parent--and six at a neighboring high school, my friends and I are left heartbroken and confused. Perhaps the most puzzling part to me is that many of these kids were followers of Christ.

Each of these stories is unique, personal, and complicated. I can't possibly know or understand the reasons for their actions, and I certainly won't make any attempt at blanket cause-and-effect statements. But I will share the thoughts God has given me personally as I relate to my own kids.

Vision casting is one of my biggest parental roles, and this has come as a surprise to me. When I was 16, my head was exploding with vision. I had such big plans for my life, such hope-filled dreams. I attended camps and signed up for activities that would give me a bigger taste of the grown-up world. I instinctively knew that there was so much more to life than high school, that this was just a drop in the bucket of my existence, and that bigger, better things awaited me "out there." (I was right!) My own kids don't seem to be hardwired this way. They have vision for tonight's homework and their next meal. They might have a vague sense of anticipation for the next school break or summer vacation. But big dreams for their lives? Not so much.

I've tried to help them build vision for the future, and I've also spent a lot of time preparing them to live in a culture that's hostile to the values they've grown up with. Like all good Christian parents, I've been teaching my kids to see themselves as strangers in this world ("This world is not your home!" they've heard me say since they were toddlers) and to expect this life to be challenging at best and an out-and-out battle at worst. They hear Christian adults tell them: "Put on the armor of God, kids, because there's a battle raging over your hearts and minds!" With a bit more reflection, I see that this might not be the best way to beckon them to a captivating adult life.

It's all true, and it's hugely important. But I wonder if I, and others like me, haven't unwittingly left out the part about how good this life is. Do I emphasize the fallenness of this life way more than the beauty of it? Have we been so busy preparing for a cultural war that we've lost sight of God's daily mercies and graces? Am I helping them "taste and see that the Lord is good" in equal proportion to teaching them how to do battle with the sword of the Spirit (God's Word, according to Ephesians 6:17)?

As I help them with vision, is it about college and careers and healthy marriages more than purpose and mission? Do they know that they're part of God's Big Story, that He's given them a unique role in something so much bigger than themselves? They're here to point the way to Life and Truth and Hope--to Jesus. They're His hands and feet, His ambassadors, His vessels on this earth. They've got work to do, not because God needs them (He doesn't), but because He has chosen them to play a part in His redemption of the world. They've got purpose--rich, deep, meaningful purpose, and nothing will fill their hearts and souls like living out the assignment He's given them. And oh, the goodness they'll taste and see along the way!

I am freshly convicted to start focusing on these things. Life is good. That's more than a t-shirt motto; it's beautiful truth. Life is good because God is good. Help me, Lord, to live and speak that message every day.

Progress Covers Its Tracks

In his book Utopia Is Creepy, Nicholas Carr included an essay on the generational effects of new technologies. He used electricity as an example. When people lit their homes with candlelight, the wick brought them together. Families sat together in one room, reading or talking by candlelight. The electric light, conversely, sent people into different rooms. It gave individual family members more options and more independence. Carr wrote, “Each person gained more privacy and a greater sense of autonomy, but the cohesion of the family weakened.”

When I was in college, I borrowed a mini cassette recorder and interviewed my 90-year-old great grandma. I had spent a lot of time with her growing up, but it wasn’t until I was in my 20s that I realized there was more to her than just making jello and playing a mean game of Uno. It occurred to me that Grandma Goodman had lived through a lot. She was born in 1902 (“I’m two years younger than the year,” she would tell us), which meant she was born into a world of horse-and-buggy, reading by candlelight, and cold midnight trips to the outhouse. She remembered all of this, as well as the first time she drove a Model T, the first time she heard about air travel, and what she was doing the day Neil Armstrong walked on the moon (making jello, no doubt). My grandma saw a lot of change.

I’ve never once listened to that recording. The microcassette tape sits in my jewelry box with no way to be played, and sadly, no one who’s itching to hear it. Grandma Goodman died in 1999, and with her, the memories of a different world. I was pregnant with my first child when I attended her funeral. The old had gone; the new had come. She was among the last of a generation who had seen such great change over the course of their lifetimes, but her way of life seemed so outdated and stale. Who in the 90s was sitting around relishing the glories of the horse-and-buggy?

But though she had only a high school education, lost numerous babies who today probably could have been saved, and endured two horrendous world wars, I’m less and less sure that my world is superior to hers. Or that hers was the generation that witnessed the greatest changes in the history of mankind. I wonder if those of us born in the 70s might not hold that distinction.

These words in Carr's essay caught my eye:

“All technological change is generational change. The full power and consequence of a new technology are unleashed only when those who have grown up with it become adults and begin to push their outdated parents to the margins. As the older generations die, they take with them their knowledge of what was lost when the new technology arrived, and only the sense of what was gained remains. It’s this way that progress covers its tracks, perpetually refreshing the illusion that where we are is where we were meant to be.”

I was among the very last group of college students who had never heard of the internet. I started my first job the same year it became readily available. I have a complete, full, beautiful memory of a fully offline life--a life with no computers, no cell phones, no Google or texting or social media. I remember discovering and poring over encyclopedias. I remember conversations with friends in which no phones chimed in with an urgent update. I remember eating family meals together every night and watching the 6:00 evening news. I remember exchanging long, handwritten letters with my friends and talking for hours on the phone. I remember playing outside with the kids in my neighborhood every single summer night. I remember when strangers sat in waiting rooms making eye contact and chitchat.

If I take after my Grandma Goodman in longevity, at the end of my life, I will be among the last people alive to hold such memories. And will anyone care?

Progress covers its tracks and makes us think that where we are is where we're meant to be. Something to think about.