To go deep, be in relationship

This week has been a whirlwind, a week full of blissful answered prayers and preparations for our closing and move to our new house. I have been profoundly grateful to God, and at the same time tired and stressed enough to keep realizing my need for God's grace (was that me screaming at the kids again?).

And so I wasn't really expecting God to give me a direct challenge.

I said before that I don't often hear God's still small voice in my head. But God uses other people with me to pound home the message. I ran into my neighbor in the hallway who has been in Wales for a number of months. He was talking about my church, and how he'd gotten to know some of the senior ministry staff there through some consulting he'd been doing with them on their property search. He had made true friendship with the church leadership he'd said, and then one day he asked them why, when he knew he was born gay, would they say God didn't love him the same as anyone else? If God created him this way, how could they think this would be wrong?

I'd never heard anyone in the church pulpit say anything overtly anti-gay, but to be honest I've feared going deeper in relationship with the church because if I went to the membership class and I heard something I didn't agree with I would have to make a choice: leave the church, or stay and step out of the shadows.

I've enjoyed the music and sermons and retreats and small groups, and I don't want to leave. But I've also been on the sidelines and haven't really stepped up to serve or get to know the pastoral staff.

The next day, just in case God thought I wasn't listening, the sermon that Luis gave was all about the early church teaching to the gentiles - a group that the early church leadership was firmly opposed to. Luis spoke about Peter's reluctant obedience to God and how it was the turning point in the early church and affected untold number of people.

I am reluctant God. I am uncomfortable. Are you sure I shouldn't be focusing in on my new house and all its abundance?

So, I know that some uncomfortable conversations are in my future, and even in my reluctance God will use me. I also know that to go deeper into anything important, the relationship usually comes first. It's time for me to step up and get more involved at church (sigh). It has been people at church, in my small groups and on retreat, who have challenged me in my faith so far and forced me to grow. And I know that growth will come from this too, reluctantly.

The winding road

I am staying up in the mountains on vacation with my boys this week. We've been driving to and from our cabin to the lake each day through a series of winding turns and roads. Every morning I've been able to drive down the hill and find my way without too much difficulty. And every afternoon on the way home I've gotten lost.

To me, it just looks a LOT different on the way back up. Roads I didn't notice veering off on the way down suddenly seem like the right turn on the way back up. Luckily I had my map. And today getting home was a bit easier.

I realized that when things get hard for me in life it's easy to get sidetracked. Diversions that I didn't notice before now seem important. But perhaps the opposite is just as true: when I'm cruising downhill I don't even notice the roads I'm supposed to take. I think that finding God is always easier for me in the rough patches since I'm usually paying more attention - and I need God more too.

After two sleepless nights out of pure excitement, I think I'll finally be able to rest tonight. It looks like (fingers crossed) our family will be moving to a new home in the middle of the woods in San Francisco. Jeff and I joked that we needed a "country house" but instead what we really dreamed about was a country house in the middle of the city. The house's disclosures listed "a family of four coyotes that sometimes comes into the backyard". Awesome.

Thank you God for answered prayers and the abundance of life. Amen!

Dream Big

The past couple of months I've been working through a book that Keiko sent me called "Your Heart's Desire: Instructions for Creating the Life you Really Want" by Sonia Choquette. Like any project that takes a good amount of both perseverance and timing, I've had the book for months, and had only skimmed through it.

This summer I've gotten serious about working through the exercises in the book and have really honed in on three heart's desires. This week it looks like one of them could come to fruition.

I have a weird way of dealing with God when abundance is knocking on my door. This is the prayer chain I run in my head. "God, this would be great. Really. But if it isn't meant to be, or isn't in your plan, that's okay. God, please make this work out the way it's supposed to."

It occurred to me that in reality this is really an expression of lack of faith, and some kind of lack of confidence in my relationship with God and what God can do in my life.

Tonight I'm changing my prayer. I've decided to ask, unabashedly for what I want. "God, I want this. I know you can make it happen. Please make it happen!" I may not get it, yes, but I remember what it says in Matthew 7:7 "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you."

Asking for what I desperately want is an expression of faith. So is the initial process of discernment and meditation to figure out what I really want in the first place.

I went to a community planning meeting about building a new local recreation center (or renovating the old one). A few people cited costs that were just unrealistic in terms of the various plans we were looking at. But one of the organizers said not to limit ourselves with cost when creating our vision. She said that only projects that had master plans with a broad scope would get funded - that when funding comes that we could pursue it with the plans in place, or raise money to get the vision funded.

I will keep deepening my vision of my heart's desires AND I will ask God for what I want. One day I will relish in the abundance of those dreams coming true. And today I will relish in the abundance I've got now.

"Shout for Joy, see what Love has done, he has come for us, he's the saving one" - I love this uplifting rock song by Lincoln Brewster.

The (Grumpy!) Waiting Place

Yesterday I hit my grumpy low. I was tired, irritated at the kids, and just grumpy.

It took me a while to figure out - why the grumps?

I realized that this is a period of intense transition for me, and I'm anxious to get started. We've been on the road 10+ days now, and while I've been enjoying time with family and friends, I'm thinking about what's at home - projects unfinished and waiting to begin, and a job search and networking to launch. The worst part is that I've scheduled another two weeks away for the family right when we return. In my effort to savor the last summer of home-with-the-kids I think I might have scheduled us too much.

I read a good book this summer called "The Waiting Place - Learning to Appreciate Life's Little Delays" and in it the author talked about her journey - through a husband's breakdown, her kids' growth, and her own track toward career and writing.

I know that the Waiting Place is part of the plan. I need this time to mentally discern next steps, and have the growth I need to get there and be ready when I knock and the doors open. But I'm still grumpy about it now.

My son Alex asked me - how can Jesus be in everyone's bellies at the same time? And I can't hear God talking to me! - both good questions I told him.

I can't hear God in my head either, at least not that I realize. But every once in a while, a big bird shows up in an unexpected place. There was the time last winter when I stood four feet away from a red tailed hawk on a fence in the middle of San Francisco. And last week I saw a large heron on the lakeshore when I was out for a run. Then this morning I took a bike ride, and on the way back, in the irrigation ditch between a corn and a soybean field, I saw a large heron. I think God is showing up in these big birds when I need a little encouragement. "I'm here" I imagine God saying. "In the City. By the Lake. In the middle of a cornfield. I am here."

And especially in the grumpy waiting place.

Summer of Bald, update 1

I had a great trip in Minnesota, and except a few hours on the sunny beach, wore my bald head all the time. I posted before that the hardest part about going about bald is that I always got the cancer question - and it's pretty awkward to say no, just alopecia, especially to survivors.

And in Minnesota I got no cancer inquiries. None. Great Necklace! Nice Shoes! Love your earrings. But no one mentioned anything about the bald head.

One person walking by said "Nice haircut!" I think that was about the closest a Minnesotan could come to acknowledging the situation directly. It was refreshing in a way to not have to answer the question, but there was a small part of me that was thinking "Do people think I have cancer and just aren't saying anything? Don't they care?" Minnesotans are pretty well known for a syndrome called Minnesota Nice - they are pretty darn nice to everyone they meet, but it may take a while to get to the heart of the matter and get to know them in a more intimate way.

So it was refreshing to reconnect with some old friends, and really share some of our joys and pains as honestly as we could.  Kindness is good. So is intimacy, and asking the hard questions. I'm going to try and do both.

Savoring the Present

I'm in Minnesota right now and there's one thing I love about Minnesotans more than anything else: they love their summer. It's 8:30 at night on a Wednesday, and there is an outdoor church service with rock music (which was fabulous) and a free concert at the local park, and oodles of people out walking, biking and enjoying the evening. After a long winter, Minnesotans know how to savor their summer, and the energy is contagious.

We have been blessed with lots of grandparent support and help over the past six years. The past few days I've been watching Grandma Jan interact with the kids, and I'm so impressed by her enthusiasm and meeting the kids right at their level.  She hasn't been home every minute that we've been visiting, but when she is home or with the kids she is fully engaged - playing card games, listening to stories, jumping in to help. She is operating fully "in the present" moment and the kids respond with glee.

One of the hard things about being a parent is being fully present in the day to day lives of our kids or families. We need to check email, do laundry, prepare meals and give the kids their due attention. It's hard to feel like I'm always where I'm needed to be when I'm doing too many things at once.

And I realized that one of the keys to being present is absence. The reason Minnesotans get wild about summer is that they miss it during the long winter, and they savor the summer when it comes. And grandparents aren't burned out by being with the kids all day - so when they get their moments to connect they take full advantage of them.

For me, I may need to create more moments of absence for myself - a couple of more hours with the babysitter so I can finish that project, or time away so I can meditate and regroup. Then when I do come back I won't feel quite as pulled in many directions - and I'll do my best to be present.

Being OK with less than perfect

Many years ago, I was on the search committee for a new minister at our small church. It was humbling in many ways to be part of a search team that was looking for the "right fit." In the end I didn't feel a strong connection with this minister and left the church to find a new one that was closer to home - a big irony since I had helped pick her! It was a good reminder that we can't always know what we need or want, and I need to leave a lot of my control up to God about what I think is right.

I'll never forget something this minister said in the search process when asked whether she would consider a part-time position. She said "There's no such thing as part-time work, only part-time pay." I thought it was a bit sarcastic at the time, but as I'm considering going back to work and (hopefully) part-time I can only anticipate the slippery slope between working more hours but not being paid for them.

I just had a great afternoon with an old friend Nicole today. We spoke about juggling work and family time, and the importance of setting boundaries with work to protect the time we have at home. She could have gone to a summer camp she was helping run every night this week - but she chose not to - and the camp continued on well enough without her.

But Nicole said something else that I thought was even more important: it's harder many times to say "that's enough" to ourselves. Sometimes I know if I spent just a few more hours on something I could do a better job. Or I think that this work is important - and I really want to be there at that next event. But that perfectionism can only lead me to burnout.

I've been in a small group at church and one thing we just talked about is that sometimes saying yes to God means saying no to other things. Saying yes to our heart's desire means saying no to things that we also, really, really want to do. And saying no to myself is important too - when I lean toward really digging in and going overboard in a job or project, it's okay to say I could do better - but it's time to move on to the next thing. That's enough!

Being an Advocate

I'm typically a shy person when it comes to asking for things in public. Someone might be smoking too close to me and instead of asking them to move, I'll just move away to make things easier on myself. Salary negotiations give me no small amount of anxiety.

I've been forced to get over that discomfort a bit since my son and I both have food sensitivities. His are so severe that he wasn't growing before we figured it out, and he quickly gets sick if he's gotten accidentally exposed to something - mostly gluten and dairy. I've had to be okay asking someone to please make another hamburger without the bun - no, they can't just take the bun off because it's a food allergy (and hoping I'm saying it nicely enough that they do what I ask).

Last week was a bit hard for me in the advocacy department. Since we were at camp, all our meals were served in the communal dining hall. I brought a special bag of food to store in the walk-in fridge since I knew the drill from last year, but even sneaking back into the bustling big kitchen to get the bag felt like an imposition.  I felt too uncomfortable asking them to make special pasta, or getting them to tell me all the ingredients in each of the dishes, for all three meals. I just made my best guesses re. the food and supplemented with the bag we brought.

Then Alex got sick. I felt angry that I was saddled with this burden of asking, and angry at myself for being so uncomfortable about asking and having failed the test.  And then, while drinking my gluten-free beer in the dinner line, I met another gluten-free woman who has celiac. She would go in the kitchen in the morning and get the run-down as best she could from the cook, and I'd ask her the report. And the next night, miracle of miracles, she even asked the cook to make us some eggplant parmesan with no breading. I still had to hold up the dinner line asking for my special meal, but I savored every bite of that delicious eggplant.

It was so nice to find someone else on the journey, who ended up being my advocate too as she asked about her own needs. It took the pressure off me, but it also reminded me an important thing: ask, you and you shall receive eggplant parmesan.

Summer of Bald

I just spent a blissful, unconnected week in the mountains at a family camp run by our city's park and rec department. The setting was rustic, and it was my chance to start the "summer of bald."

I knew I wasn't going to bring my wig(s) - on the trip. They don't work well in the pool, or the lake. I did bring lots of hats - it got cold at night, and big hats for lakeside. But I went bald lots too.

I got one cancer inquiry - but she said she doubted it since I looked so healthy. And it gave me the reason to talk to another woman who confided that she was suffering from extremely serious autoimmune issues, including the removal of her colon.

I got a chance to think about a lot of things over the unplugged week - including crafting some big goals and heart's desires that I am working toward.

And I realized a few important truths as well, including:

I am healthy.

I feel so good right now. I can run, I can play soccer. I can bike to the baseball game and home again and not think twice about my body.

A friend told me that there was another woman at the camp with Alopecia, but I didn't know it. She said she wore a hat all the time, so I didn't notice any bald spots.

And so, this summer, I invite all you women and men out there to the Summer of Bald. I will see you in the airports, shopping malls, and swimming pools. And I will be extremely grateful that I am healthy.