Kingdom Civics Figuring out how to be a good citizen in the Kingdom of God

It is fitting that in my first memory of my father, he is running.

I am about four years old, and he is running toward me with a weird smile on his face.  I don’t understand why he is coming toward me so fast, but he is smiling that strange smile, so I can only assume that he is happy and wants to hug me or something.  He doesn’t slow down as he approaches, and I tense up, both confused and anticipating.

He runs right past me.

He runs to his pickup truck and grabs something out of it.

Then, he disappears through the bushes into our neighbor’s yard.

I stand there, trying to piece it all together.  My mom walks out.  She looks in the direction my father went.  She looks worried.

“Why was Dad running?”  I ask.

“There is a fire at our neighbor’s house,” comes the reply.

I ponder this.  “But why was he smiling?”

She stares at me.  “He wasn’t smiling.”

Years later, I learn what a grimace is.  And years later, I can tell you what he grabbed out of the back of his truck:  it was a fire extinguisher.  I know that because he carries one in the back of his truck to this day.

I say that this is a fitting memory for my father because it is how I see him:  He is a man of action.

Here is another memory:

I am about twelve years old.  My family is walking through the mall one evening.  We are on the second floor, near Sears, and we stop at Baskin Robbins for some ice cream.  We sit on one of the benches that overlook the bottom floor of the mall while we eat our ice cream.  We hear a commotion across the way, on the other side of the second floor.  A fight has broken out in the mall.  I have never seen a fight before, and I look up in time to see one man throw another man into a store front.  The plexiglass undulates with the impact.  People are lining the railing around the second floor watching.  No one is moving except the two men.

Well, no one is moving except the two men and my father.  I do even know my father has left us until I see him across the way, pulling one of the men off of the other one.  Another man, with silver hair, also intervenes and stands between the two fighters, his arms outstretched toward each one, trying to keep them apart.  Together, my father and this other man break up the fight.  Strangely, I am horribly embarrassed by all of this.  In my self-centered, self-conscious little world, I am embarrassed that my dad is part of such a public spectacle.  Dad rejoins our family, and people watch us as we walk out of the mall.  My embarrassment deepens.

Looking back, I am proud of him.

Another story:

I am approximately seventeen.  My brother and I are sitting in our trailer way back in the woods on our church’s property, of which my parents are caretakers.  He and I are sitting up late, talking.  Dad is asleep on the couch.  I start to say something, and Mike shushes me.  He hears a noise.  I laugh at his scaredy-cat nature, but he gets up and looks out the back window, the one closest to the road.  I hear him wake Dad.

“Dad, Dad!  There’s a car coming, and it’s driving all crazy, slinging gravel and stuff!”  It is awfully late for a car way back here, especially one driving out of control.

From a dead sleep, my Dad leaps off the couch and shoots out the front door.  Stunned at Dad’s failure to grab a gun or to consider notifying the authorities, Mike nevertheless plunges after him, always loyal.  Dad and Mike leap past the porch stairs and disappear around the side of the house.  Beams from headlights bounce crazily into the trees.  Mike yells, “They’re coming through the yard!”  And then…

And then, I hear Dad let out a war cry and Mike follow suit.  Lightning flashes across the sky, and thunder rumbles (it really does).  Mom walks out on the porch, and says, “I’m calling the police.”  Icy fear grips me in this completely surreal moment.

Brakes squeal.  An engine roars again.  The headlights turn away.  I run back through the house and out the other side to see what has happened.  Gravel is spraying everywhere as the car beats a hasty retreat.  Mike is screaming expletives and throwing fistfuls of gravel after it.  “Let’s go after them, Dad!”  he yells.  But now that the immediate danger is averted, Dad is calm again.  “No, no, go inside.  We are not going to ‘go after them,'” he chuckles.

After he has calmed us kids down, Dad  and Mom go after them.  Long story short, they find them and report them to the police.

(Later, I learn that in the moment that Dad let out his fearsome yell, he charged the car.  On foot.  With no weapons.  I ask him, “Dad, what were you thinking?”  He answers, “I’ll tell you what I was thinking.  I was thinking, ‘If I can just get one hand onto that door handle.  Just one hand…”)

One more story:

Dad and I are sitting in a Toyota dealership in early 2009, buying a Sienna.  The man who has sold us the car is filling out the loan information, and he reveals that he recognizes Dad.  He says, “You live on the lake, right?”

“Yes,” Dad chuckles, “How do you know that?”

The man grins sheepishly.  “I was stranded on the water, and you gave me a tow.”  Dad and I laugh, too.  I know that Dad always helps people who are stranded on the lake.  Strangely, the man also knows this.  “You are always giving people tows,” he says.

I could tell so many more stories, but those four do well to exemplify my father.  When people are in need or in danger, he does not hesitate to intervene.  And when his family is in trouble, he will walk through fire to save them from danger.  Perhaps many people will do the latter (although probably not with Dad’s gusto),  but I don’t know too many people who faithfully practice the former.  For example, when I was in college minoring in Psychology, I learned about the Kitty Genovese case.  To summarize it, Kitty Genovese was a woman in New York who was stabbed in three separate attacks by the same man one evening over an extended period of time.  Although she screamed for help, no one in the apartment complex called the police until it was too late.  According to the Wikipedia article in the link, some of the facts surrounding the case have recently come into question, but the shocking reality remains that many people heard Genovese’s cries and assumed that someone else would do something about it.  In light of this case, psychologists started researching what they called “the bystander effect.”  In large crowds of people, they found that individual intervention into problems was actually less likely, since, for a variety of reasons, everyone tends to assume that someone else will handle the situation.

I think of the bystander effect when I think of all those people at the mall, watching the two men brawling.

I think of the bystander effect when the jet ski I’m riding has broken down on the lake, and all the boats continue to zip by as I wave my arms for help.  I am always shocked at the lack of response.

My Dad doesn’t stand and watch people beat each other. 

My Dad doesn’t pass by when someone is waving for help.

My Dad will charge a coming car if he has to.

And my Dad is the man I’ve watched my whole life.

I think it is because of my dad that when I hear about an issue, such as child slavery, I feel the need to do something to intervene.  Or I hear about a situation at church and feel actual discomfort if I don’t do something, however small, to impact the situation.  It has to be my dad’s influence, because my own natural impulse is to shy away from such problems.  It is easy for me to hear about a problem in the world, like human trafficking, or, for that matter, to hear about a problem in the local church, like a young mom who is having a really hard time, and think, “Why should I be the one to get involved?  What can I do?”  It is easy for me to let self-doubt and second-guessing and even plain selfishness get in the way of helping the victim bleeding on the side of the road.  Like the priest and the Levite in Jesus’ story, I am tempted to cross to the other side, away from the messiness of intervention.  But that’s not how I was raised.  That’s not how my Dad is.

Instead of, “Why me?” he thinks, “Why not me?”

Instead of, “Someone else will handle this,” he thinks, “I need to handle this.”

He is a man of action.  And I want to be a woman of action.  And my dream is for the church to be a people of action, to be  the type of people who, when they see atrocity, or injustice, or desperate human need, say, “Not on our watch.”

Sometimes, when I see a problem, I honestly don’t know what to do.  Sometimes, I can do precious little.  But I do know one thing:  Doing nothing is not an option.

My Dad taught me that.

Wow, so last night I was reminded why I’m doing all this lighting and loving, and also why it is so important to build a home of peace and calm.  For one thing, you have to have peace and calm to anchor you when the crazy comes out!

Last night was a night of the crazy.  After a 12+ hour day, Greg came home to tell me that one of “our” kids–let’s call him Kid 1–got drilled in the throat with a ball going over fifty miles an hour while at baseball practice.  He tried to walk off the field, and then collapsed, vomiting blood.  Shortly afterward, he complained of difficulty breathing.  Obviously, the next step was to take Kid 1 to the hospital.  Thankfully, he is now just fine, but Greg had been talking to his mom over the phone, while on the way back from a community cookout, and was still a little shocked by it all.

We processed the events of the day together, and then I went to bed around 10:30.  A few minutes later, Greg came in and told me that another kid–let’s call him Kid 2–just called, and that he was home alone and (rightly) scared because of some stuff going on with his family.  Since there was a good chance that he was in danger, Greg said he would go pick him up and let him spend the night with us.  After Greg left, I got out of bed, moved both my kids to my bed, and changed Luke’s sheets for Kid 2.  To round out the night of musical beds, Greg would sleep in Anna’s room, since we can sleep 2 kids, one adult in our bed, but not 2 adults, one kid.  (And certainly not 2 adults, 2 kids!).

While Greg was on the way home with Kid 2, he saw on Facebook that Kid 3, a toddler, was taken to the hospital after falling out of a moving car.  He texted the mom, a friend of ours, and it seemed like the kid was alright, but I was freaked out anyway. After I got Kid 2 settled in for the night, I laid in bed texting the mom of Kid 3 to get updates until he was out of the hospital.  It was after midnight before I went to bed…and I am not a night owl!

But there was no time to sleep in this morning, because I needed to take care of Kid 2…and then prepare for Kids 4-8 to come over to play!  They had asked if they could come over last night at the cookout, and I didn’t see why not.  They will be here in about fifteen minutes.

Good grief–it seems as if God was like, “Are you really serious about that stuff you just wrote?  If so, then it’s time to make good on it!”

Lesson learned:  Be careful what you write on the internet:).

I love our house.  I think it is perfect for us.  I love it’s size, I love its layout, I love it’s backyard, and I love the views.  I love the views from our window, the views from the road, the view from our swing in the backyard.  In fact, there is only one view of our house that I don’t love:  the view of our house as a small, red icon, obscured by two bright, green dots.

That’s what our house looks like on the sex offender registry map.  There’s our nice, cozy house…two doors up from one sex offender, and two doors down from another.

I remember the first time I saw it, shortly after we moved in.  In the two seconds it took me to orient myself to the map and to figure out where our house was, my heart almost stopped.  I thought, “You have got to be kidding me.’  I quickly called Greg to the computer so that he could share my horror.  We then spent the next half hour looking at that and several other sites, trying to gather more information about the nature of these people’s crimes.  To us, the sites were pretty opaque, but from what we could understand, their crimes were more “low level,” less serious…whatever that means.  Still, the realization of the darkness that surrounded us led to a serious talk.  I lamented that we hadn’t checked the registry before we moved in, but Greg disagreed that it should have made a difference, and ultimately, I saw his point.  The reality is that you cannot control who lives around you.  People move in and out all the time, and there are tons of people who should be on the registry, but aren’t.  At least here, we know what we are dealing with.  And on a larger scale, there are tons of dangerous people in this world, not just sex offenders, who could be living around us right now, and the only reason we don’t know it is because there isn’t a worldwide heinous-sin registry online (thank God).

The truth is, we generally have no idea who surrounds us day in and day out; we have no idea who we live alongside, drive alongside, shop alongside, worship alongside.  We can barely understand the darkness that lives in our own heart, much less the hearts of others, even our brothers and sisters in Christ!  That rather morbid awareness constantly looms over me.  At the worst level, it makes me fearful, and at a neutral level, it makes me vigilant regarding my children.  At the best level, though, it gives me a mission.

See, when I get a glimpse of the darkness of this world, be it through the nightly news or the sex offender registry, it makes me realize how important it is to build a home of light and love.  I work hard to build up my house, to make it a place full of love and joy and peace.  I want my house to be a safe haven for my family, both a training ground for action and a welcoming retreat from battle.  I want it to be a place where our souls can rest, can be refreshed…a place where our hearts are filled back up with love, which gives us the strength and confidence to take that love with us to the world.  The goal is to build a home that we can carry out with us into the world.  Ultimately, I want the love experienced in our house to internalize itself in each of our hearts, so that we can take that love and light with us into the darkness.  I want that “home” to never leave us, even when we leave it.  That’s a big part of my mission.

Also, I’m slowly realizing how those goals for my home can help more than just my family.  My home can even perhaps be that safe haven of love for others.  I first started thinking about this when some friends from school came over.  There was a boy about Anna’s age, who was recently adopted, and who always hovered close to his mom.  It was as if he was afraid that she would leave him without telling him.  They had been over once before, and although the boy ventured off to play several times, he was quick to come “check in” with his mom, just to make sure she was still there.  Well, on this visit, the older girl ran outside to play with Luke and Anna right when she got here, and the younger boy disappeared inside.  The mom was shocked.  She called his name and eventually went to find him.  He was in our family room, happily playing with Luke and Anna’s toys.  I didn’t think much of it, but the mom was flabbergasted and told me that he had never done that.  He had never felt comfortable enough at any other house, where he would just run off an play.  And then she said something that went straight to my heart; she said, “He must know that this is a house of peace and love.  He feels safe here.”  That blew me away.  It reminded me of something weird Greg had said earlier that week.  We had marveled over all the animals that we had seen around the house (five deer, a turkey, and a family of foxes living at the end of our driveway), and he had come in from the woods with news of more.  He said, “There is something big bedding down in the woods, like a deer or something.  I see the flat spots where it is laying.  Apparently,” he added jokingly, “the animals must know that this is a house of peace.”

I thought about his joke again last night, when we had an impromptu cookout for Memorial Day.  It started when we invited a couple over from church, and somehow that expanded into us inviting all the families at church (it’s not a big church).  So last night, we had about thirty people over to grill out and enjoy each other’s company.  It was especially cool to see how the older kids interacted with the younger kids, and especially how sweet they were to Luke and Anna.  One boy, especially, impressed me.  He was quiet, but happy throughout the evening.  At one point, when a young mom pulled up to the house with her three kids, he ran out in the rain to help her inside.  At another point, he came and told me that the trash was full and asked if he could take it out for me.  I thanked him for telling me and took the trash to the garage myself, but when I came back, he was digging out the food-covered plate that my son had thrown in without realizing there was no liner.  Throughout the night, he was so helpful and kind to the children, but always in an unassuming, natural way, not in a “look at me” way.  He just seemed to be such a good kid.  Afterward, I commented to Greg about how much I liked him.  Greg responded, “Yes, he has a good heart, and he can be a great kid…when he doesn’t feel threatened.  When he feels insecure though,  he can be a handful.”  Turns out, this sweet, thoughtful boy was currently suspended from Y.E.S. because of blatant disrespect.  And he was also known to pick on other kids!  What??  That revelation shocked me, but I think that Greg’s prognosis was right on.  The environment last night was non-threatening.  It was welcoming and happy and loving.  And it gave him the space to be a good person.  See, it’s easier to be light when you are surrounded by light.  It’s easier to show love when you are surrounded by love.  And that’s why it is so important to have an environment, a “home base,” of light and love.  I realized last night, yet again, that my home can be that refuge for other people besides my family.  In fact, I realized that that is my mission.  This world is so dark.  I want to be light.  But I don’t just want to be an individual light; I want to share that light with others.  After all,  I didn’t create my own light.  It originated from God, and it was passed to me by my family and so many of my wonderful friends.  And now my job is to keep that light burning, to keep that love flowing, so that it will pass on to others.  So that people like that teenage boy can come to our church, can come to my home, and be filled with enough light and love to sustain him when he goes out into a dark and threatening world.

And so we continue to try to bring that light in our cozy house, nestled between two sex offenders.

How do you bring light?

I’m behind right now.

I’m behind on blogging (obviously).

I’m behind on cleaning.

I’m behind on our family’s yearly scrapbook.

I’m behind on my reading, Bible and otherwise.

I’m behind on laundry.

I’m behind.

Also, things aren’t going like they’re supposed to.

For example, this morning at 2:00 am, I was supposed to be sleeping.  Instead, I was holding Anna’s hair back while she puked.

Same story at 2:55, 3:45, 4:30, and 6:00.

At 1o:00 am, I was supposed to be hosting a tea party for Anna’s little preschool classmates to celebrate the end of school.  Luke was supposed to be at school for his last full day.  Greg was supposed to be at work.

Instead, the kids and I were in our pajamas, since Luke swore up and down that he felt sick, as well.  They were making who-knows-what out of spare pieces of felt, velcro fasteners, and tape.  Greg was running out to get popsicles before heading to work after letting me sleep a little bit.  I was trying to wake up by drinking coffee and reading last week’s Entertainment Weekly.  After I finished the movie reviews (and decided that I do, actually, want to see Battleship), I stared at the grungy craft-pocalypse landscape of my living room and reflected that I was “supposed to” be surrounded by little girls in princess dresses eating petit fours right now.

And then I paused…and I thought about those two concepts:  “behind” and “supposed to.”

I considered the areas, listed above, where I felt “behind.”  And then I considered where I wasn’t behind:  I wasn’t behind on loving my kids; I wasn’t behind on snuggles; I wasn’t behind on end-of-school year involvement or trips to the pool; I wasn’t behind on dates with my husband or time with our parents; I wasn’t behind on participation in my church; I wasn’t behind on my friendships.

Maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t actually behind on anything.

And as far as “supposed to,” who said that today I was supposed to have a tea party?  Or that Anna wasn’t supposed to get sick?  Where was that written?  Who said that today was supposed to unfold any differently than it actually did?  What does “supposed to” even mean in this context?  I don’t know about you, but the events of my life generally don’t ask me beforehand if they are “supposed to” happen.  Reality doesn’t seem to care what it is “supposed to” look like.

Maybe, just maybe, my day was supposed to look just like this.

Now, there are definitely times when I am legitimately behind on important commitments that I’ve made, and in those times, I am “supposed to” fulfill my responsibilities, be they to the church, the state, my family, my friends, etc.  But I’m beginning to think that there are just as many times when “behind” and “supposed to” have no actual bearing on reality and that they merely represent these imaginary, parallel universes that I’ve created.  And the problem with these parallel universes is that they distract me from the perfectly legitimate reality that surrounds me.  They make my reality seem “less than,” and my efforts like failures.  They rob me of the peace and contentment that comes with accepting the life that God gives me, moment by moment.

I might come back and elaborate on these points later, because they are very intriguing to me, but right now, in Luke’s mind, I am “supposed to” be playing with Legos.  I think I will oblige…after I swing by the fridge and grab one of those petit fours that I just remembered I had!

Do you ever feel controlled by “behind” and “supposed to”?

A few months ago, while tutoring at Y.E.S., I was helping a 4th grader with a worksheet on commas.  The worksheet provided two paragraphs, with these instructions:  “Insert the missing __ commas.”  One paragraph’s instructions said seven, and the other’s said fifteen.  Those were the only instructions, and I could see no other grammatical errors in either paragraph besides missing commas.  While filling in the worksheet, however, we twice came across sentences like this:

Jack picked up his baseball glove he went to the game.

In case your English classes are a little fuzzy in your memory, those are two independent clauses (“Jack picked up his baseball glove,” and “he went to the game”) smushed together (update:  apparently, “smushed” is not a word).  In English, there are three ways to separate independent clauses:  a period, a semi-colon, and a coma + conjunction.  You can NOT put just a comma between them.  Two independent clauses separated by a comma is called a comma splice, and it is considered a major grammatical error.  And yet, the instructions only allowed the student to place commas to correct the errors.  Hence, the worksheet was prompting the student to form comma splices.

As an English nerd, I was appalled.

I refused to let the student put a comma there; instead, I had her put a semi-colon.  Who cared that she did not even know what a semi-colon was (*sob*)?  We were not going to make comma splices on MY watch!  I also wrote a little note to the teacher at the bottom of the page reminding her about comma splices (yes, I did).  I then vented to everyone around me who would listen, and left the tutoring session full of indignation.

Later, however, I began to second-guess myself.  I had to admit that comma splices were an epidemic among my college students, and they were having a really hard time wrapping their minds around the idea that they were wrong.  Plus, I had to admit that I saw comma splices everywhere I looked, even on advertisements and in published materials.  I even stopped reading Luke the Magic Treehouse series because of all the comma splices and sentence fragments!  So…maybe comma splices were okay now?  Even though I was raised to think that comma splices were wrong, and the grammar manuals to which I had referred throughout the semester also seemed to think they were wrong, I had to admit the possibility that such teachings were outdated.  After all, language is fluid, and the rules of grammar are always subtly shifting.  If my college students had not been taught that comma splices were wrong, and these elementary students were apparently being taught that they were just fine, then maybe I was the one who was wrong!  Maybe comma splices weren’t “still a thing.”

A reminder hanging in the hallway at my college.

Confused, I resolved to ask the head of the English department the next day at school.  I ran into him and another veteran professor in the hallway and posed the question, “Are comma splices still wrong?”  Now, I have to tell you that both of these professors are rather liberal in matters of grammar, as the trend among teaching writing is to move away from grammar and focus on content.  Even so, the rain of indignation that immediately poured down upon comma splices left no doubt as to their current, taboo nature.  Words like, “very, very wrong,” “major grammar error,” and “inelegant” abounded, and the veteran professor even said, “It tells me that they don’t know what constitutes a sentence.”  There was no doubt that these professors thought comma splices were wrong.  I felt better; after all, I had been waging a one-woman war against comma splices all semester!

Even though my heart told me that comma splices were “still a thing,” I felt like I had to ask because of all the evidence that suggested it wasn’t still a thing:  it was apparently being taught in public schools, most of the twenty-somethings I knew had no problem with it, I seemed to see it everywhere in culture, and people seemed to be forgetting why it was wrong.

So…along those lines, I also feel compelled to ask,

Is premarital sex still a thing?

No, really.  I’ve been raised to think it was wrong, and the Bible seems to clearly define proper sexuality as being solely within the realm of marriage, but based on the anecdotal evidence of Greg’s twitter feed and my 173 young, single, mommy friends on Facebook (not really, but it’s a lot), plus the not-so-anecdotal evidence of studies likethe one mentioned in this article, I am beginning to think we are undergoing a shift in thinking about sexual morality, not just in society, but in the church.  Because you see, 98% of Greg’s twitter friends and my Facebook friends are people whom I met in church.  Most would call themselves Christians. 

Now, before I ask my next question, I’ve got to say this:  I agree that the church has mishandled the sex issue in all sorts of ways, and I’m glad that we are exploring different ways to get our point across.  For example, in a recent post, Richard Beck argues that it is perhaps more relevant to talk about sexual promiscuity to college students in terms of wisdom and foolishness, rather than sin.  Also in the recent past, Rachel Held Evans has claimed that sex is one of the church’s blind spots, that we often use the virgin/whore dichotomy of looking at the issue, and that such talk further alienates sexually active people, rather than bringing them to repentance.  Even more recently, there was a debate on the site, Mere Orthodoxy, where one side was advocating that, given the number of sexually active young Christians, the church should start teaching about contraception.

So…okay, I get all that.  And part of me is glad that we are thinking outside the box here, seeing that our past efforts have tended to fail miserably.  But sometimes I just want to ask, “Can we still say that it is wrong?”

Seriously–can we?  Like, to people we know who are sexually active?  Should we?  Would it help, or would it only alienate?  I really wonder these things, because sometimes, for me, it often seems like the elephant in the room.  It sometimes seems that, while all of us in our little Christian bubble are yelling about the importance of sexual purity, we don’t always do a good job of effectively conveying that concept to people outside of our little Christian bubble.  Thus, we seem kind of like my English professors, ranting about comma splices, while most of the world doesn’t even know what comma splices are.  The problem is, I don’t really know how to pop that bubble, practically speaking, in my own life.

Now, don’t get me wrong:  as a youth minister’s wife, I’m not uncomfortable talking to teens about sex (sample question from teen when I first got into youth ministry:  “Have you ever had sex twice in one day?  What about six times?”).  I didn’t necessarily answer all those questions, but trust me, I have not the slightest problem telling young teenage virgins, pseudo-virgins, and almost-virgins to wait until marriage.  That conversation gets substantially more awkward, however, when I’m dealing with twenty-somethings who have been sexually active for a decade and truly see no problem with it.  I feel like I sound backwards, a complete relic of a bygone era.  And I don’t always handle it well.  Here, for example, is an excerpt from a conversation I recently had, in which I tried to work the concept of sex within marriage:

20-something woman:  Yeah, my mom has had a boyfriend for six years.  Before you ask, they don’t have plans to get married.

Me [laughing uncomfortably]:  Well…I mean, I kind of understand where they are coming from…

Woman:  Yeah, all my friends think I’m weird when I say I want to get married.

Me:  I think it’s good you want to get married.  With your mom, though, I was saying that I understand where she might be coming from because if she’s not a Christian….see, the Christian view of marriage is that [glancing back at my kids in their carseats] you wait, you know, until you get married, so…there’s not much chance of someone just staying together for years and years without it. 

Woman:  [laughs]

Me [pressing forward through the awkwardness]:  See, the Bible teaches that marriage is supposed to last forever, and most people don’t think of it like that today.  And so, you know, if you aren’t a Christian and don’t follow the Bible, then I could see why you wouldn’t want to get married…

What on earth?  What was I even trying to say?  I guess I was trying to remind the woman that marriage is more than just a word, since she said she wanted to get married one day, while at the same time trying not to come down too hard on her mom.  Good grief.  I sarcastically thought to myself, “Well, you handled that well,” and the conversation moved to something more benign.

Here’s the rub:  I think premarital sex is still a thing.  I think that it is wrong.  And I don’t say this as a cultural warrior, or someone who is ringing her hands and fearing for the future of our country (love casts out fear, my friends).  But I say this as a person who knows a lot of single moms…and to a woman, not one of them seems happy with her life.  In fact, the default setting for them seems to be “depressed and overwhelmed.”  And I don’t blame them one bit.  I cannot imagine raising children on my own; it’s hard enough when you are blessed with a support system.  And I do see it as a natural part of my Christian identity to help the single moms as much as I can.  Yet, with all that I do, I cannot replace a husband.  Being in this situation, I can’t help but think that it almost seems like I would be doing people a favor to overtly and regularly discuss God’s plan for marriage.  And yet, again, how do you do that in a culture when sex outside of marriage is the norm without alienating people?  I really don’t know yet.

By the way, a few week’s later, I asked the student from tutoring about her teacher’s reaction to my comma splice note.  The student shrugged her shoulders and said, “I don’t know; she just seemed kind of confused.”

So am I, teacher.  So am I.

Any thoughts on how to handle the sex issue with twenty-somethings in the church?  And do you think premarital sex is still a “thing”?

I just have to share this.

Today as I was deciding what to wear, I chose a black short-sleeved shirt, with a tangerine (?) skirt (I’m horrible with colors).  It sounded like a nice, comfortable outfit, but suddenly, I froze:

Church is tonight, and I wore that black shirt on Sunday.

Yes, this was the thought that stopped me in my tracks.  I’m no fashionista–far from it–but you see, in the South, we have rules.  For example, you are not supposed to wear white in between Labor Day and Easter.  You’re just not.  Don’t ask me why.  But even though I think that rule is ridiculous, I can tell you that both females in this house follow it.  Even this year, when it was eighty degrees in early March, and Anna only had two pair of sandals, one of which was white, I made her wear her pink sandals repeatedly until Easter.  Only then did the white ones come out.

Another apparent rule is that you don’t wear the same thing to church two Sundays in a row (and I can only imagine that Sunday and Wednesday would be even worse).  Growing up, this was a familiar Sunday morning theme at our house:

“Did I wear this dress last Sunday?”  or

“Go change–you wore that last Sunday.”

And let me emphasize:  my mother is not a vain person.  But...those are the rules.

Nowadays, I am beginning to question these rules more and more.  One of my recent lines of inquiry has been regarding my appearance.  Specifically, how much time, money, and effort should I spend on my appearance?  The conclusions to which I have come at this time are as follows:  I want to be attractive for my husband.  I want to be modest for my Christian witness.  I want to be clean and hygienic for my health and for the sake of other people.  Other than that, I don’t need any rules about how and when to wear makeup, how many clothes I need to have, or how fashionable I need to be.

Basically, I’m trying to shed as much of the cultural baggage as possible in order to focus more of my energy on my real mission in this life.  And my mission is not to look like a 25-year-old forever.  Or to look like a runway model (haha).  Or to chase after a standard of beauty that is becoming increasingly unattainable.

Instead, my mission is to reflect God’s glory and be His ambassador on this earth.  

I don’t see how wearing the same shirt to church twice in a row is going to hinder that mission.  And so, daggonit, I’m wearing my black shirt tonight!  And there’s nothing yo can do to stop me!:)

Yesterday in church, we sang some older songs, and this was one of them:

I love to tell the story 
	of unseen things above, 
	of Jesus and his glory, 
	of Jesus and his love.  
	I love to tell the story, 
	because I know 'tis true; 
	it satisfies my longings 
	as nothing else can do.  

	I love to tell the story, 
	'twill be my theme in glory, 
	to tell the old, old story 
	of Jesus and his love.

One thing I love about older songs is that, as I sing them, I imagine all the people in the past who have sung and clung to the song.  I picture all of us thinking about the words that we are singing, really meaning them, and allowing them to sink into our lives.  I wondered what, in particular, this song meant to people in the past.  What did “telling the story” look like to them?  How did they share the gospel?

As we sang, the words of the hymn filled my soul, and I thought, “Yes!  This is what I want to do!  I want not just my words, but my whole life to tell the story of Jesus.  I want my actions to put flesh on ‘unseen things above.’  I want my words and deeds to reflect ‘Jesus and his glory, Jesus and his love!'”  As I pondered this concept, several people in my life rushed to mind, people who needed to see the unseen, to see God’s glory and love at work in their lives.  I thought of tangible ways to tell this story to them, and I hope that I will follow through on those ways.

Even more than with specific actions, though, I want the very fabric of my life to tell that story.  Recently, I have realized more than ever how simply having a stable, godly marriage tells a story.  Loving my children tells a story.  Keeping a peaceful, welcoming home tells a story.  My life tells a story when we are giving kids rides to and from church, through the mundane conversations we have.  It tells a story when I interact with my kids at church and at Y.E.S.  It tells a story even when I’m not directly speaking to the kids who are watching me.  Knowing that I’m always telling a story makes me realize how important it is for my life to tell the right story.  I want to tell the story of Jesus’ glory and His love, not the story of petty human selfishness.  I screw up this story regularly, of course, but I pray that the overall narrative remains true to the gospel.

Anna’s little life told that story to us on Saturday.  From allowance and other sources, the kids had saved up about twenty dollars each, and we were going to take them to the mall to spend some of it.  Before we went, we asked them if they wanted to set any aside to give to the church.  Luke considered, and set aside $3, a perfectly reasonable amount.  Anna thought about it, and set aside $15.  The way she put it was that, “My heart told me I should give it to the church.  My heart told me that I had enough things.”  

How’s that for telling the story of Jesus’ love?  Greg and I were floored and asked her several times if she was sure she wanted to give so much.  Even Luke, my sensible child with his furrowed brow, said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa!  Anna, are you sure?”  Anna was quite sure.  When he found that he could not appeal to her sense of reason, he sighed and said, “Well, if you find anything that you want but can’t afford, I will buy it for you if I have enough money.”  And with his generosity toward his sister, he told a story, too.  

Anna’s story was a little loud this morning, when she matter-of-factly dumped $15 in change into the collection plate without a second thought, and then went back to playing with her Strawberry Shortcake dolls.  Usually, though, the Christian stories being told all around us are quiet, behind-the-scenes affairs.  I am blown away by the stories of  Jesus’ love that I see all around me on a regular basis, and I can only hope that the story I tell will point to Jesus as well as those others do.

How do you tell the story?

I’m taking a little break from blogging this week.

I plan to resume my regular schedule next week.  See you then!

But first, a brief story:

On Tuesday, I went with Luke’s class on a field trip to see a play.  Anna came, too, and we all sat and laughed as the silly animals onstage revolted against their silly farmer.  There was singing and dancing and plenty of comic relief.  It was great.  After the play was over and the house lights came up, Luke’s classmates, Darvon and Juan turned and looked at me, beaming.  I grinned and raised my eyebrows at them.  “Did you guys LOVE IT??”  I asked.  “Yeah!” was their enthusiastic reply.  Then, Luke and Anna started chatting with them about their favorite parts.  Much smiling and laughter ensued.

They chattered on while we waited for our bus to be called, and I leaned my head against the back of my seat while I waited.  “I hated that play,” said a voice behind me to his friend.  “Me, too!”  his buddy replied.  “It was so kiddish.”  “Yeah, I hated it, too,” said a third, “It was stupid.”  I glanced around and saw that the original speaker was an adorable blond headed boy talking to his friends.  His hair was long and swooped across his forehead like a little Abercrombie Kids model.  He and his friends wore the matching “field trip shirts” from a wealthier school in town.

“Please, God,” I silently prayed, “save my kids from that attitude.”

“Oh,” I added, “And thank you for Luke’s classmates.”

And now, a second quick story:

That same afternoon, I sat on my friends’ couch while our children played happily in the backyard.  She had told me on Sunday that she was praying for God to bring helpers to our church–our “little wisp of a church,” as I affectionately call it.  Just that day, two of her (Christian) friends called expressing interest.  One of hers approached the subject like this:  “My daughter is really starting to worry and frustrate me.  She feels so entitled all the time, and seems to honestly think the world revolves around her.  I’m not sure what to do…..So, tell me about your church.”  I laughed.  It’s no secret that our church will change your perspective on life and especially on materialism.  I understood her friend’s hope that maybe getting to know her lower-income neighbors would help her daughter reexamine the difference between wants and needs.

These two events rattled have rattled around in my heart and have finally coalesced into a silent prayer that my soul prayed all day yesterday:

God, please be with my children…our children…the children of your church here in the West.  Protect them from the self-absorption and greed that are such hallmarks of their culture.  Guard their souls from ingratitude and wastefulness–the wastefulness of their resources, their opportunities, their lives.  Show us as parents, Father, how to guide our children into your Kingdom.  Show us what it means to live in the world, but not of the world…because honestly, God, I’m not sure what that means half the time.  Show us how to spur our kids on to the radicalism to which you have called us all, without making them resentful toward it.  Show us how to challenge them without exasperating them.  But mostly, God, I pray you protect them from the evil one.  So often, I pray for their protection from the physical manifestations of evil.  Today, I pray for protection from the spiritual.  As scary as the physical can be, the spiritual dangers are so much more prevalent.  Protect them, God.  Protect us all.  Amen.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

What do you pray for your children?

In my mind, there is no chore worse than spot cleaning my carpets.  The carpets in this house are especially light, and thus, they inevitably get various spots on them throughout the week.  These spots drive me crazy, but in order to maintain sanity, I limit my cleaning of them to once a week when I vacuum.  In the meantime, I content myself with thinking bad thoughts about them and giving them the “stink eye” whenever I pass.  That way, once vacuuming and spot cleaning day comes, I am usually more than ready to take them out.

Each week, there are inevitably one or two spots that drive me especially crazy, perhaps because of their location or their darkness.  I tend to fixate on those big spots; whenever I pass them, I think, “Oh, I can’t wait to get that spot out!”  A funny thing happens, though, on spot cleaning day.  I come marching up to my spotty enemy, armed with Spot Shot (very aptly named) and a clean, damp washcloth.  And then, I annihilate that spot, much to my own satisfaction.  I bask in the triumph, but only for a second…because now that the offending spot is eliminated, I see a smaller spot nearby, a spot that went unnoticed while Big Daddy was alive.  Hmph!  I promptly take out spot #2.  But oh no!  Now that #2 is gone,  a cluster of five smaller spots comes into focus, a little group that would have never bothered me while the others were there.  In fact, now that I’m down at carpet level, I see all kinds of spots, and–even more alarmingly–there appear to be several swaths of light gray that I have successfully ignored until now.  Confronted with this horror, I tend to then fly into a spot-killing frenzy, zapping and scrubbing spots until I finally give up and admit to myself that I need to borrow or rent a carpet cleaning machine.  And then I realize that will probably involve phone calls (ugh) and money changing hands, and it all seems too hard, and I never do it.

I repeat this process every week.  It sounds lovely, doesn’t it?

Honestly, I think part of the reason that this futile, spot-cleaning cycle comes so naturally to me is that for years, I tended to treat my sin the same way.  I would identify a particularly egregious sinful habit that was bothering me, and then I would launch a self-control campaign against it.  With focused effort and willpower, I was often moderately successful at eliminating this sin from my life–at least for awhile.  The only problem was that once that sin was removed (pushed to the back burner, really), I would notice another sin that needed attention.  And then another.  All manner of sins would come springing into view once I started focusing on my shortcomings, and after a season of sin-zapping, I would find myself exhausted and defeated.

In truth, my approach to sinfulness tended to mirror that of Benjamin Franklin.

In his famed autobiography, Franklin recalls his attempt at achieving what he termed, “Moral Perfection.”  In order to reach this lofty goal, the young man created a list of thirteen virtues to cultivate:  Temperance, Silence, Order, Resolution, Frugality, Industry, Sincerity, Justice, Moderation, Cleanliness, Tranquility, Chastity, and Humility.  He then spent a week focusing on each virtue and recording his moral successes and failures with that virtue on a chart in a journal.  His plan was to perfect one virtue a week, which meant that after thirteen weeks, he would be…well…”morally perfect.”

Of course, Franklin freely admits that he was not perfect at the end of his project, although he does claim more success than I would have had, if my own track record is any indication.  And honestly, I tend to chuckle when I read of Franklin’s little experiment, and to think, “Yeah, right.”  Either he is being tongue-in-cheek in his autobiography, or he is deluding himself to think that this is a plan that would ever work.

The Bible portrays a different reality than is suggested by Franklin’s plan, and to be honest, the biblical reality is even more maddening to me.  In contrast to the “Protestant work ethic” so evident in Franklin’s little charts, the Bible tends to view us as ultimately passive recipients of transformation, which is effected by the Holy Spirit’s work within us.  Yes, both Jesus and Paul give much instruction regarding our actions in this life, but they also both acknowledge the futility of trying to achieve these things by ourselves.  Jesus says things like:

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

And Paul tells us to do such seemingly impossible things as “be transformed” and “be made new.”  Notice the passive tense there.  Clearly, Paul sees that another Force is at work to meet the standards that he sets in his letters.  That’s part of why I don’t see the Sermon on the Mount as a list of rules anymore.  While I view its fulfillment as the goal of my life, I have come to realize that only God’s Spirit, working within me, will ever meet that goal.

That’s why I honestly don’t take the “spot cleaning” approach to sin these days.  And I’m so over Ben Franklin’s charts and lists.  Maybe it sounds bad, but I really don’t have a mental list of “things I need to improve” that I keep with me at all times.  I’ve failed at that for too long, I guess.  I’ve given up.

Instead, I try to seek God with all my heart.  I figure that I’m nothing without Him, and so my only job is to make sure my wagon is firmly hitched to that Star.  Thus, when I get frustrated with myself and my daily failures, I don’t brainstorm ways to overcome them anymore.  Instead, I just say, “God, please help me!  I need your Spirit so much right now!  I’m screwing everything up!”  And then I just hope He comes through.

That passivity used to bother me.  I wanted to think of myself as a “self-made” person.  I have come to see, however, that that kind of thinking is delusional.  No one is self-made, and my own list of shortcomings is so long that I could never conquer it through willpower.  Instead, I have to surrender my efforts, my quest for moral perfection, to another Force entirely.  The funny thing is, I find that when I do turn my transformation over to God’s Spirit, I am much more effective in God’s Kingdom.  My acknowledgement of my dependence on Him makes me hunger and thirst for Him more, and I am finally able to see what David was talking about with that deer imagery.  Overall, it is a much more satisfying, peaceful existence.

At the very least, it sure beats that infuriating spot-cleaning!

On the spectrum from active to passive, how do you tend to see yourself in the process of attaining morality?