Nothing says "I love you" like ice cream. And the truth.

Last week I shared life with a few different friends.  Someone I've known for about two years showed me hospitality by allowing me to bring ice cream over to her new house.  We chatted and enjoyed our sweet treat while we watched her husband paint their kitchen (neither of us being great painters).  We had just heard a sermon about hospitality as not only giving but also allowing yourself to be interrupted, so I especially appreciated the time we were able to spend together, even in the midst of a busy week for her family.  Later, I talked with a friend I've known for six years, and while self-admittedly whining about a few anxieties in my life, she said the following words, kindly, but definitely not pulling any punches:  "Kathryn, you don't have to make a decision tomorrow, or even tonight, or even next week.  And the only pressure out there is pressure you're putting on yourself."  Yep.  Nothing says "I love you" like ice cream.  And the truth.

Perspective

As I caught up with a friend during a long overdue phone date last week, I was struck by how often she expressed gratitude or amazement over how my life has come together over the last three months.  When we last talked, it was January and I was experiencing both a frozen winter on the outside and a burned-out heart on the inside.  So many little (and big) things have happened since then, and I suppose her advantage in this conversation was being able to see all the changes at once.  When I step back and wiggle myself into the place from which she views my life, I find the results rather awe-inspiring too.  In the almost nine months since we last talked, and mostly in the last three or four months, I have changed jobs, moved, traveled a small chunk of the world, embarked on new adventures around town, and totally opened up the possibilities for my future.  However, during that phone call, I was a little confused.  Isn’t my life really hard right now?  Am I or am I not always involved in some seemingly important, internal, existential debate?  Am I not stuck between, well, anything and everything right now?  


Here is where it turns out that I have been mistaken in my perspective on my life over the last nine months (or really, let’s be honest- it’s more like two years).  Because I have not felt close to God, I have assumed that God has not felt close to me.  Because I assumed God is not close to me, I have also assumed that I’m on my own as far as plans go.  The conclusion, then, is that where I am right now is a product of my own planning, or mostly, where I have landed by chance as I have stumbled along the way.  But this sweet friend seemed to be under the impression that God has been directing my life all along, leading and guiding me, but mostly just providing for me when I have not been able to provide for myself.  The biggest example of this is where I am living, which my friend referred to as my “soft place to land.”  What a beautiful image!  But more importantly, what a beautiful truth.  I am not alone, and I am not in charge.  Now, of course, I know that, and have known it for as long as I can remember.  But there is a difference between knowing truth and living in it, and I suffer from the human condition of being stuck in that gap, halfway between intellectual assent and a changed life.  


Proof that I have known this truth before is found in my deep affection for the book The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis.  This book expresses this truth in such a unique and beautiful way.  The last time I spoke at youth group, I read the students my favorite part of this story, where Aslan reveals where He has been at work in young Shasta’s journey.  The revelation is not what any of us expect- sometimes He has seemed like an enemy instead of a friend, but the beauty of the providence is heart-rending.  I can’t even write about it without getting emotional.  The proof that, while I have known this truth, I have not lived this truth is found at the beginning of this paragraph, and in my fear about whatever is coming next, insecurity about hastily constructed plans and seemingly wasted time, and general ingratitude for where I am right now.  My hope is that each time I “know” this truth anew, I move one step closer to living it, because it seems to me that living this truth opens the door for the gracious spirit of humility and thankfulness that my friend shared with me last week to creep into every corner of my life and gently but forcibly remove the spirit of fear and timidity currently causing me to miss the goodness of God right before my very eyes.  And I, for one, will take thankfulness over self-imposed, needless misery any day.

My Favorite Things

In college I discovered that I love writing parodies of songs, particularly ones from musicals.  Also, the cheesier, the better (for a truly awesome example, please ask me about a certain tall person from my university and a song from the musical Wicked).  But really, it all began many, many years ago, with a project for my 8th grade health class called the Me Book.  It was one of those generic self-awareness-increasing, personal-history-recording sort of things.  I remember this project in particular for two reasons. One, I got to use cute paper and quasi-scrapbook my life (pretty much always a plus in homework assignments, to both my delight as well as my mother's).  Two, I finished it while on vacation with my family for Memorial Day Weekend, at an annual baseball tournament that my brother's team was playing in.  My teacher, Mr. Alvarez, has a son my brother's age who was on the same team that year (and many years to come, actually), and I can distinctly remember setting up scrapbook shop on a picnic blanket some distance from the baseball field and watching Mr. Alvarez while he lounged in a lawn chair, watching baseball without a care in the world.  I thought the whole thing was very unfair.  Actually, I still do.  That was 10 years ago.  Apparently I have a hard time letting go.  But back to the whole point of this long-winded story:  the Me Book required a variety of entries and themed pages, one of them having to do with things we liked.  I decided to write a parody of the song "My Favorite Things" (courtesy of Rodgers and Hammersteins' The Sound of Music).  It was pretty epic, especially for an 8th grader.

Fast-forward 10 years.  My trip to Germany this summer found me next door, visiting Salzburg, Austria, where much of the story of The Sound of Music takes place.  No thanks to our hostel and the millions of souvenir shops in that small town, various musical snippets from that show have been stuck in my head for the past two months.  When my birthday rolled around a few weeks ago and my friend Kerry bravely volunteered her sister and brother-in-law to host my party, she asked what the theme should be, and I replied without really thinking about it, "My Favorite Things!"  We ended up celebrating three early September birthdays that evening, so I forewent the theme, glad to share the occasion with friends quickly becoming my Spokane family, but my idea for a invitation with wording that fit into that of "My Favorite Things" is still bouncing around my brain.  Pair that with an attempted discipline of gratitude, and my new idea is to write a parody of "My Favorite Things" using things I am grateful for in this season.  Here's my attempt- please sing along.  No mocking though, because I'm a little out of practice, and this isn't a joke, it's my prayer of thankfulness.  Here it goes....

(boom-chuck-chuck, boom-chuck-chuck,
boom-chuck-chuck, boom-chuck-chuck)

Teardrops on Sundays, and sweet puppy faces,
Bright, shiny books, and bookmarks to keep places,
Birthday gifts, postcards, even bills and dumb things,
These are a few of my favorite things.


(boom-chuck-chuck, boom-chuck-chuck,
boom-chuck-chuck, boom-chuck-chuck)

Brand-new grandbabies, with sweet crocheted hats on,

Nights out with friends and nights in with movies on,

Sitting on my porch watching the sunset,

thinking to myself how I am so blessed.

(boom-chuck-chuck, boom-chuck-chuck,

boom-chuck-chuck, boom-chuck-chuck)

People with soccer balls, laughing and running,

even the sweat from our nose to our stockings,

Long-lasting summers that stretch into fall,

These are the things that I like best of all.

When the night comes, when my heart hurts,

when I'm feeling sad,

I simply am thankful for all of things,

and then I don't feel.......so baaaaa----------------------d!

Should-a-would-a-could-a

Confession:  I've been avoiding blogging.  Until this morning, writing something to post on here meant some reflection and self-evaluation, and honestly, that hasn't sounded like too much fun lately.  This morning it struck me that one of the things that is driving me most nuts about this season of self-imposed ambiguity is the lack of framework for my experiences.  I have been such a rule-follower for so long that I often wonder "Should I be doing this right now?" about any given activity.  I believe that this is a valid question, because in so many ways, there are less safety nets now that I'm out of school and not living at home (at least not as my parents' home).  So the question "Should I be doing this right now?" when I'm standing at Borders with an armful of books I don't really need to buy right now, or considering another trip to Europe, or trying to figure out how many chiropractor appointments to schedule is worthwhile.  My bank account will be grateful I paused for reflection.  But in other ways, this question is a bit silly.  This morning is a morning off for me, and I devoted most of it to sitting in a big comfy chair, just reading.  This sounds delightful.  This is what I have been waiting to do forever.  And yet, the ever-present question of "Should I be doing this?" was lurking just behind me, whispering itself over and over again.  Most of the time, I don't know what the correct answer to this question is, but for now, I'm going to try to dismiss it in the situations that don't require its presence.  That is one of the gifts of this season.  There are no "should"s for having seven-year olds braid your hair, or reading a book snuggled up in a chair, or sharing meals with people rapidly becoming your family.  So, should I be fully present to the people and experiences around me?  I think I know the right answer to this one.

The Box

When I got home today from a fun morning/early afternoon of Benson Family/St. Mark's/Choir Camp Prep, I realized that I had nothing particular to do with the rest of the day (someday I'll stop being surprised by this).  So I made a few phone calls on the "not-so-much-fun-but-necessary" list and then looked around, asking the invisible, yet ever-present task master in me, "what next?"  

The answer turned out to be...

The Box.  

When I left my church job in June, I piled all of the various notebooks I had been using to store chord charts for the last five years into The Box, determined to consolidate and organize the whole mess into one resource that I could actually use successfully at some point in the future.  Well, I've been kicking The Box and scraping my knees on its edges all summer, and today I realized that one of the cool things happening in my life right now is the ability to do (a few of) the things I always wish I had time to do.  I didn't do an A-plus job, and The Box is still in my room, but the five notebooks have become three, and everything is in place for the next round of organizing and purging.  My old standards (and perhaps lifestyle) would have demanded that I finish the whole thing in one go because this was the only chance I had to complete the task at hand.  But now, sooner than I can imagine, there will be another afternoon where I will have nothing more pressing than alphabetizing and organizing, and so The Box remains.

There are several other boxes in my room right now, and my work with The Box today led me to empty another box, this one full of leftover notebooks from the worship team members I played with during much of college.  It was a bit eerie to wade through multiple years of my life in terms of a weekly worship service I helped plan and lead.  One notebook still had every set-list from my senior year.  In The Box, I saw parts of my history fly by- the teams I had been a part of, the teams I had led, the music that characterized each of those experiences.  And now in this box, I remembered more clearly the individual roles of the people I was privileged enough to play and sing with for those years.  And while sorting through all this music was not necessarily been thrilling, it did help me feel a sense of gratitude.  For the songs and stories we have shared over the years, for the gifts and talents we have developed and served with, for the people who have been a shaping force in my life and who continue to influence me now.  Many of them come to mind when I hear a song that they led in a particularly unique way.  A ringing open E chord will always bring my guitar-playing friends to mind.  An egg shaker makes me shake my head and laugh a bit.  The sound of a djembe.... well, I could go on for a while.  But the point is that, even in this confusing season, I can find things that ground me, reminding me of who I have been, and maybe, just maybe, who I can be again.

Is this what Saturday feels like?

Today is Saturday.  In recent history, the word "Saturday" hasn't mean anything special, like I vaguely recall it did when I was a kid.  Saturday meant Dad was home all day, there was a possibility of some sort of special breakfast, probably a random sporting activity, and maybe a trip to Home Depot if we were all lucky.   By the time I got to college, Saturday was the one squander-able day of the week.  Homework could be put off until Sunday and there was a very real possibility that I could sleep in as long as I wanted (provided there were no choir tours, retreats, or special meetings).  For the last two years, Saturday has pretty much just been another work day, and often was simply The Day Just Before Sunday (insert stressful music cue here).  But now, I think, things are a little different.  Here's what today looked like:

4 AM     Wake Up
11 AM   Done with Work
1 PM      Shopping and Lunch Date with Mark and Lisa
4 PM      Nap Time
6:30 PM Wake Up (again, this time for dinner)
7:30 PM Water Balloon Toss with Madelynne
8 PM      ......um......

This is when it hit me that I was reentering the normal world.  What do you do with a Saturday night?
I don't have anywhere to be tonight.  
I don't have to be anywhere before 9 AM tomorrow, so I don't have to go to bed yet.  
I don't have anything looming over my figurative head, giving me literal shoulder tension.  
I guess I could do something for fun.  

Then the room began to spin with possibilities..... watch a movie.... read a book... aimlessly wander Facebook for hours (ambitious, I know) ... call up old friends... reorganize my collection of magazines.... knit something.  I don't even know where my knitting needles are, but the point is that if I wanted to knit something, I could.  What freedom, what exhilaration!  Before I let the bigness of it all sweep me away forever, I found a letter of recommendation I needed to write for a student and settled down to the task at hand.  But I'm rebelling against the old definition of Saturday in small ways.... buying the Mumford and Sons album on iTunes, texting with a friend I want to catch up with, thinking about eating some leftover chocolate from Germany.  This, my friends, could be the life.

Listen Up

I was talking with someone yesterday about my current life direction (or lack thereof) and the piece of advice that kept surfacing in our conversation was this:

listen

Funny, I keep thinking that I need to think, and make lists (maybe even t-charts!) and this dear person kept bringing me back to just one word.

listen

At least the scenery is pretty

I'm writing this post from the deck of the McIvor family cabin on Priest Lake in northern Idaho.  Sometime today, I'll head back to the relatively waterless abyss that is Spokane these days, but for now I'm enjoying the quiet morning with a cool breeze and sparkling water- yes, it actually does look like Ariel's dress when her dad turns her into a human at the end of The Little Mermaid.  I've been up here for a couple days, with an aunt, uncle, and various other family members, and as much as I love it here, the quiet has honestly been terrible!  I know that I have a hard time being silent (the day we spent in silence and solitude at Tall Timber over JanTerm three years ago practically killed me), but I have an especially hard time being silent when my heart is restless.  So, naturally, being the good little escapist that I am, I have done pretty much nothing but read since I got here.  I finished one book, and have read three more in the course of the last two days.  And we're not talking Boxcar Children here- I have been a reading maniac.  Only now the problem is, in addition to all my own mixed up thoughts, my mind and heart also now contain all the mixed up thoughts of the characters in the books I've been reading.  I have a hard time with emotional boundaries, and now I've let all these fictional people (and in one case, real people) waltz on into my heart and sit down for a cup of tea while they tell me about all the problems in their version of the universe.

This is ridiculous.

I have got to figure out who the heck I am.  What do I really care about?  What really matters?  What do I really want?

Since I have no hope of solving the world's (or my) problems today, I'm going to start small.  What do I really want?  A cup of hot chocolate.  This I can do.
Baby steps, my dear one, baby steps.

And so it begins

I titled this blog "The Season" because I'm hoping that by some miracle this season in my life will be the definitive one- you know, the one that answers all of the deepest questions and sorts out the issues in me that I've been meaning to address for a while now.  The last two years in my life have been marked by a crazy schedule and pace of life that leaves me wondering at the end of it all "Where did all that time go?" And yet, in many ways, that season was extremely definitive- I held my first ministry job, navigated the wonderful waters of rent and utility bills, balanced two jobs with friendships and a long commute, and learned a ton about how I function within relationships, workplaces, and under pressure.  I have definitely been shaped by that season.  But I think it left me with more questions than answers, and I'm looking forward to taking some time in this season, (The Season, remember) to intentionally explore some of those questions, like 

• If I really believe God loves me (and everything that implies), why am I trapped in a pattern of trying to earn the affections of those around me?
• If I really believe that my identity is found in the new life given to me by Jesus, why do I feel so lost all of the time?
• How do I reconcile the brokenness I see in the world around me with the goodness I know to be true of God?
• Is it hypocritical to reach out to help others when I don't want to face the brokenness is my own life and family?
• How the heck can God choose to work through the institution of the Church?  Is there any hope for something that seems so thoroughly human some days?

You know.  Questions like that.  In theory, I'm ready to bust out my theology texts and do some studying, but in reality, I need to get ready to search my own heart.  Sure, it's embarrassing to think that God already know exactly what I'll find in there, but ignorance is almost bliss in my lack of self-knowledge.  But I think that the key to being grounded in life lies somewhere in knowing who I am- the good, the bad, the already, the not-yet- and who God is, to the extent that I can know those things.  

So, I'm almost three weeks into "The Season" and I have done pretty much none of the work I have outlined for myself.  Part of that is that it took me twice as long as it should have to pack up my office when I left my ministry job, and part of it is that I was suddenly free to spend time with friends I hadn't seen in a while, and part of it is that I'm leaving for three weeks of European travel on Monday, but the bottom line is that this season will be just like any other season:  exactly what I make of it.

One of the things I'm choosing in this season is to be more grateful, so before I head off for my adventure, I'm going to take a few minutes to practice the discipline of gratitude, and maybe, just maybe, when I'm stressed out about some train schedule or funky hostel or closed museum, I'll be able to remember that my life is pretty darn good.  

Things I'm thankful for this morning:

• The wonderful Sherwood family.  I'm sitting on the front porch of their beautiful home, feeling just like family and loving it.  I've been living here for a month, and have felt so welcomed and cared for.  
• Toe-nail polish.  It just makes life better.  Although I'm thinking about changing the color I put on just before writing this post.
• Friends who have cared for me in the last few weeks-  from cards to gifts to lunch, dinner, and ice cream dates to simply listening while I process through the closing of one season and beginning of another.
• My parents, especially my dad, who have worked tirelessly to keep up with me and my changing plans, and who are always willing to bear the brunt of my crummy attitude when I get stressed out.
• Sunshine, breeze, geraniums.
• Jessie, Stacy, Bambi, and Kelly- I can't wait to read the next round of updates from some cool internet cafe in Germany!
• Grace.  Because I am going to need it....

See you in a few weeks!  

kathryn