Birch tree leaves look like hearts

Did you know that? I didn't. But I was looking for a picture of a birch tree for a tattoo that I keep promising myself I will get when my son finally weans, and I found one in some sort of wicca pagan book that had the symbolism of birch trees, plus that they have heart shaped leaves.

I am so into that. I LOVE that they have heart shaped leaves...it seemed like a sign to me because I want to get this new tattoo to remind myself of my family (Birch tree is what my last name means in German) and to keep taking care of my heart. I had a scare a few months ago when I was in the hospital for something else (see Benny Hinn blog below) and had to get a routine EKG, and it turned out to be abnormal. I got an Echo (which is what they're always squawking about on hospital shows, but was actually very relaxing and comforting) and all was well...my heart just has some sort of funky rhythm to it. Which I kind of dig. But it was enough to make me remember what my life is worth to me, why I do what I do.

Anyway, I have been doing pretty well for the past few years with my taking-care-of-my-heart initiatives. But in the past few months...okay, maybe the past six months...I've been letting some things slide. I'm still running...won't let that go...still doing yoga, which I love, but mamas, I have been eating like there's no tomorrow. Literally, like there's no tomorrow in which I will be able to eat (fill in the blank food). I haven't gained that much, but it was enough to make my heart sort of sink when I saw the number printed out at my beloved, but neglected as of late, Weight Watchers meeting.

So even though I don't have my tattoo yet (boy will wean someday, I'm sure of it, or else I'll just follow him to college), I keep thinking about it. I keep visualizing that birch tree with its gorgeous trunk of peely bark, skinny but strong. I keep thinking about those leaves made of hearts, with one colored red to remind me that this is not a joke, this is not practice, this is real life, and I want to be fully present for it in all ways possible.

Why I am old

I have been suspecting this for a while now, but it's been confirmed.

I am officially getting old. Here are some of the signs:

1. I've been seeing wrinkles. I mean, big time, serious wrinkles, in all the places my mom has them (especially that frowny line between my eyebrows!). So I bought a night cream and I've been faithfully washing my face, using my night cream, and feeling Very Very Old.

2. I can't remember stuff. I had always heard about this, but something will be on the tip of my tongue (Jamie Lee Curtis? Jodie Foster? No, that other chick who's in movies and is good at them and slightly androgynous in a sexy way...) and I cannot figure out what it is. A friend of mine was detailing this phenomenon as "The Time when I Went to Home Depot and Forgot the Word for Plywood." Exactly.

3. This is the most telling of all, and the most completely embarassing. I cringe even writing it. I was having an awesome long run on Saturday, in beautiful 60 degree, sun-poking out of the clouds, just after a rain weather, and I was listening to some random radio station on my music player and thinking how great the station was! How did they know just what I wanted to hear? Why did I know ALL the songs? It was so great until I heard the station identification.... "B 98.5, Home of the 80s, the 90s, AND today!"

I AM SO OLD.

Easter hangover

Easter hangovers SUCK. And we have them in such abundance at our house! Every single year I don't know what we're thinking....we're NOT thinking usually...both pastors and both kids are tuned into some relentless march toward Easter frequency and can't even think of what will come next.

And what will come next is for me, the chickpastor, FATIGUE. I cannot get caught up on sleep no matter how much I get a night for some reason. Part of that is my old friend, anemia, coming back to see me, and part is the driving and preaching and anticipation that comes during Holy Week. And the fact that I ended up, somehow, COOKING on a Sunday night, an abberration that will NEVER. HAPPEN. AGAIN. This is my solemn vow.

For partner o'chickpastor, Riverpastor, it's the letdown. He gets all freaky before Easter because, I don't know, he's expecting ten million people to show up, and for him it's all about the one day. It's also his year anniversary at his church so there's pressure there, and once the day is over he just doesn't know what to do.

Chickpastor children, who enjoyed the company of their beloved Nana for a few days pre-Easter and then the candy and egg hunts the weekend of, had the day "off" from school and just tore each other and us apart with screams and kicks. It was cold and disgusting, blowing snow of all things, so kicking them outside was not an option. So we stayed inside, at home, and stewed in our collective misery. The end of the day everything kind of cleared up. We took a walk in the chill, I tucked the kids into bed and there was a lot of giggling in a good way, that made me realize that it is actually true that with children, the rare lovely moments DO make up for the days of monotony.

So next year, someone remind me, PLEASE, a few months before Easter, that I should make some f'ing reservations somewhere fun for a few days???? Money be damned, we need to get out of town after Easter, and soon. Ideas are welcomed...somewhere kid friendly with lots of fruity drinks for the adults. A playground, a spa, somewhere to run. I'm already looking forward to it.

More stuff

This link from my "boyfriend," No Impact Man, has a great cartoon. I always love his stuff (so much so that my partner now refers to him as the "old boyfriend"....my new boyfriend of course is Dave Farmar of power yoga fame) but today's was so fitting.

I have had a much harder time than I thought not buying stuff during Lent. It basically turned into a debt-free six weeks, which OH MY GOD I needed to do for myself and my checkbook, but I had gotten so used to being able to just click and buy, or go to the store and buy, even when I didn't have the money. I know, I know, it's the American way, but the only term I can think for it is F'ed Up. Who told us we could buy stuff when we couldn't pay for it? Ridiculous.

I will admit also that I have been spending an inordinate amount of time flirting with particular pairs of shoes that I want to buy immediately, post-Lent. And per the cartoon, I'm sure that on my deathbed I won't care if I bought the freaking "Keen Carmel" or the "Merrell Sierra" or whatever....I'll just be glad I mostly had shoes to walk around in that were comfortable and fit my feet.

But the itch persists....the itch for more stuff. As ridiculous as it is, it stays with me. I've just had to sit with the itch, without scratching at all, for forty days, and it's been more uncomfortable than many things I've ever done. It's been a craptacular (thanks, Our World Together!) few weeks because my sweet little boy cannot seem to shake a stomach bug and I've been out of commission taking care of him and cleaning a lot of unspeakably disgusting clothes and sheets.

And I've been thinking how some shoes would make me feel SO. MUCH. BETTER. I'll let you know when they arrive if they instantly turn my life into bliss, which is totally what I'm expecting!

How goes it

Well, all I have is a bunch of random thoughts, but I had pledged to blog more and now it's into March with no blog. I have excuses involving vomit and lots of driving, but I have had plenty of time to blog, truth be told. I just have wanted to completely zone when I have some free time at night. I always THINK that I can be so very productive after the kids go to bed (now that they actually go to bed and stay there, most of the time, unless, see above under "vomit"). But something in me wants to do the opposite of work, typing, yoga, web design, which usually translates to me sitting on the couch or floor watching my new addiction, Dexter.

Anyways. I am on a roller coaster with my job lately, with them maybe getting a candidate but then some complications ensued so maybe not. I was so sad when I heard they might get someone, it shocked me! And every time I make the drive I half-way (okay, maybe a quarter-way) want to chuck it all and move out to the country and be their small-town pastor. I keep wondering if there's a way to meet in the middle, and perhaps there is, but that remains to be seen. I also am wondering if it might be good for me to live far away and still serve as pastor...that it might be like people who are married yet live in separate apartments, or even towns. They always say it works well because it preserves the mystery. Heh. SO not like my partnered life, but it might work for ministry. Very self-sufficient, these folks, and while they want someone to depend on for the heavy lifting, so to speak, they take care of each other just fine, thank you very much!

Back and forth, back and forth. So it goes. I'm also scrapping out another part-time job through doing weddings for pastors around these parts who don't want to, or can't, do weddings for non-church members. Lovely, and relatively lucrative.

And I haven't put pen to paper yet (I don't think I could type them!) but I have snippets of poems running around my head. Finally! I used to think this way, and it seems to be returning as well. So that's how it goes with me.

Lent, Yoga, and Lands End

So I gave up two things for Lent this year, actually. I gave up one very consciously, which was meat, AGAIN, and it's going fine. I miss it more this year but it's not a huge deal.

I gave up something else, sort of spur of the moment and out of some necessity, and it is driving me a little bit crazy. I decided, after looking at my spare spending cash (not much) and plans for the spring (many races, two trips), that I should give up buying clothes and shoes for Lent.

Buying clothes and shoes is primarily how I soothe myself. I don't say that proudly...just trying to be honest, here. After giving up so very many things in the past few years that I used use to soothe myself, now, when I need a fix, I buy a new shirt or new pair of shoes.

I don't go crazy with spending, even, I'm not that kind of girl. I just browse the Goodwill or the Target or the mall sales and I'm lulled into some kind of peace. When I actually purchase something, it momentarily makes me happy, and it makes me happy again when I wear it the next day. I can't explain it; it just feels good. Shopping endorphins, I've heard it called. Whatever.

So it has been much, much, harder than I ever expected. I really don't have the money anyway, so it was a great and practical idea in theory, but I am SO missing the fix! I got a coupon for a whopping $20 off a pair of shoes on a shoe site that I frequent. The cutest bathing suit in the world is on a giant sale at Lands End right now. And I will admit that both are in my virtual "shopping cart" and if they are still available when Lent is over I will be purchasing them immediately.

I'm also doing a lot of yoga this Lent, from this podcast. It is pretty much the hardest yoga I've ever done, and I sort of love it (my partner is now calling the guy my new boyfriend). He asks you to sit with discomfort, to make friends with it, to breathe through it, because "only when you want to come out of a post does the yoga begin."

So with my aching quads I'm trying to "sit" with my discomfort at not buying the swimsuit, at not buying the shoes. Voices are yelling at me at every turn....it's on SALE! it's in your SIZE! what if they sell OUT?! But I'm doing my best to just sit with the discomfort, to visit my swimsuit and my shoes on their respective sites and not hit the "Buy" button, to breathe through it all. Happy Lent.

Veggie Chili

My new little church, at which I am very part-time, is so lovely they almost bring tears to my eyes.

It has been so interesting for me, after being at such a dysfunctional small place, to be in a place that is not dysfunctional, just small. I did not mean to start to love them...it was meant to be a step on the road to SOMEWHERE, because, wow, are they NOWHERE, take a left. It takes me an hour and forty-five minutes to get there for one hour of confirmation and one hour of worship, some visits, and then one hour and forty-five minutes home, not including my now-traditional stop for Subway.

Here are the two things that have stuck in my mind about them. I know it might seem like it's all about me, and okay, it sort of is, but they are also signs of the general health and compassion of this congregation.

First of all, they gave me a Christmas bonus. My last church did not EVER give me anything for Christmas, and did not give me so much as a card at our last worship service together, so this was huge. My new place is small, as I said, with not much money between them, but they still took up a collection for a gift because they value their pastor. I was completely surprised when they gave it to me, and I couldn't stop talking about it. A small, lovely, thing, in the midst of many friends/colleagues experiencing ugliness from their churches.

Second of all, today, they made me veggie chili. Last week in my sermon I had talked about how I had given up meat for Lent for the second time, and this week, there was a little pot of veggie chili next to the meat chili. Again, a small, lovely instance of someone actually caring.

I don't know how long this "relationship" will last...I'm an interim and they're so far away that there's no real potential for long-term. But I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts, to soak it up, to know that it's okay to feel safe and healed and appreciated, and in fact, it's the way things should be.

Just like Dad

So, I was sitting the 2.5 year old on the potty, hoping he'd pee before the bath instead of like every night, IN the bath. I said, "Go ahead and pee, honey, in the potty." He said, looking down at his anatomy, "Just like dad?" I said, excitedly, "Yes, just like dad!"

And then he said, "But I can't! I don't have a book!"

On the edge

If I don't get to the end of this post, here's one thing to remember: Try using a neti pot for sinus problems! Google it or just go to your Whole Foods and buy one. It has changed my life.

Something was weird to me about that year in review that I wrote a few weeks ago, and I think I know what it was. I didn't really blog that much about what I was REALLY thinking about. I blogged between diapers and in the middle of general chaos, or at night when my brain was mush from, well, all the yelling and wiping that I do on a daily basis.

This year, though, I feel different. I still live in constant fear that we will be struck down by some awful virus for days and days again (of COURSE we will), I still wipe and yell on a daily basis, I still feel taken up by my children and their constant need for a sippy cup or to get some blob of something out of the DVD player, but something has shifted.

I think it's okay to write about this. Maybe. I'm so superstitious about it though, especially the sleep part, that it has taken me so very long to even hint at the possibility that I may (though I am NOT saying for sure!) make it through most nights without a small person crying out for me and my breasts. I'm superstitious that something is going to crash, that someone is going to wake up every hour on the hour again, that one of them is going to morph back into an infant, needy and attached, literally, to my body, for days on end.

The chances of this, I know, are slim.

But here's the funny thing. Lovely partner is out of town this week, and I don't even seem to mind. It's not that I don't miss HIM....I do, in that funny way that I remember missing him before it turned into NEEDING him and then resenting him for being gone and being able to pee by himself for days at a time. I miss him because I like having him around, because it's nice to talk to someone else and catch their eye over the head of a small hilarious person. But I don't miss him because I can't handle it. I don't miss him because things are completely going to shit around here and I'm about to lose my mind. This would be a significant change from this time last year.

I feel like I'm on the edge of something....like graduation, spring, fill-in-a-transition time. The signs are everywhere...I'm writing again, I'm meeting friends for drinks and even (gasp!) movies, I can pee alone, most of the time. I'm even thinking about writing some poetry, taking a class, taking a trip.

My friends talk about third babies on nearly a daily basis, those with two. I know a few lovely third and fourth very wanted babies. But aside from a miracle of birth control malfunction or insanity, I am done. My children are the funniest, smartest, stubborn-est, creative-est people I have ever met, and I cannot imagine my life without them. And now, I plan to spend the rest of my life enjoying them. And occasionally peeing with the door SHUT.

My year

I am shamelessly stealing this from Our World Together, because hers was pretty amazing. I'm taking the first sentence of each blog from each month of the past year and letting them sum up my '07:

January: I came home from a playdate the other day, and told my husband that the family who M was playing with had a servant.

February: So, it's been a whole month since I posted, and this is going to be a drive-by post as well

March: Just wanted to show off my boy with his new haircut, already driving.

April: I have been an official "stay at home mom" for about eight months now.

May: (no blog, embarassingly)

June: So here they are, the Five Things I Dig about Jesus

July: This is where I feel, most of the time [in the middle].

August: I was sitting at the pool while my kids played today, thinking to myself,
"if I were a man..."

October: I have been back into yoga for several months now, inspired by one of my best friends, a single mom who fits it into her busy days with a video on her laptop, so I figured I could do the same thing.

November: So, when I was busy bitching this summer about if I were a man, this all would be happening very differently, I had no idea that it would be THE topic of conversation during Thanksgiving week!

December: I'm not quite sure how to write about this, but it was such a strange week that I need to get something down on, er, paper, so to speak.




I write really, really long sentences. Something to work on in the New Year?

My husband is Benny Hinn

I'm not quite sure how to write about this, but it was such a strange week that I need to get something down on, er, paper, so to speak. I won't give too many details, because I am a person who appreciates not hearing the details of OTHER people's stomach flu experiences, but I will tell you that our whole family had the stomach virus last week...it ran rampant and was not enjoyable.

I could not get over it. Could NOT. Everyone else was eating and rehashing their experiences (my two year old, "Mommy, I SO SO SORRY that I puke!") and I was still feeling horrendous, in bed, practically comatose, and having "episodes" frequently.

Wednesday night I was laying in bed, covered in itchy hives, of all things (the nurseline said it happens sometimes with viruses--gee, thanks!), shivering, miserable, and my husband put his hands on my head and prayed.

We do this fairly regularly in our house. We have seen enough stuff to more or less believe in demonic possession of one type or another (see some below blogs about my last church) and we don't do it lightly, either. So he prayed, and I fell asleep for about an hour. After that, it gets blurry, but the story goes that I got out of bed to make yet ANOTHER unhappy trip to the restroom, and I passed out, fell, hard, on my shoulder, and came to when my husband started trying to get me awake. He got me into bed, and after calling our neighbor to stay at our house, we went to the ER.

Our local hospital is lovely and kind; it's where my son was born peacefully and everyone was respectful, quiet, and caring. They hooked me up to an IV, gooooood drugs, and I finally, finally, felt better.

The next day, I pretty much felt better. By last night, I was feeling good, even. And today, aside from a bit of weirdness, I'm almost back to normal.

I didn't connect the casting out of the demon and the fainting/ER/feeling much better until last night. I don't know if you believe in this stuff, and I almost cringe when I read it too, but it's happened several times now, and I have to say that I think there's something to it.

Either way, I'm grateful for whatever it was that caused things to come to a crisis so that I could truly get well. To quote The Princess Bride, "If you haven't got your health, well, you haven't got anything!"

Just for fun

Really, if you don't have dial-up and have a few minutes to spare, PLEASE go watch this. Laugh your head off at my silly family, then go make your own. Happy Holidays, y'all.

Ahead of my time! ***Warning*** political blog ahead

So, when I was busy bitching this summer about if I were a man, this all would be happening very differently, I had no idea that it would be THE topic of conversation during Thanksgiving week!

If you haven't heard Hillary's quote after John McCain laughed at a woman who said, "How do we beat the bitch?" then here it is:

"He's not criticizing me because I'm a woman; he's saying that because I'm winning."

LOVE it. LOVE IT! My opinion is that the guy had no idea what to say to the perfectly coiffed woman who asked the question. And who asked her, anyway?

On The View on Friday morning, which I watched through a feverish post-Thanksgiving virus-induced haze, the ladies were all up in arms about Hillary and how things would be different if she were a man. How fabulous is that? That she can absolutely not be a person of power and actually have power without seeming like a bitch. There was also an editorial in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about how women with power are not "likeable."

Which really gets me thinking about what we consider "likeable" for a woman. Powerless?

Halloween Fairy Tale

See if you can guess which one.....hint...the grandma and the woodcutter are also in the story.

Wisdom from Yoga Today

I have been back into yoga for several months now, inspired by one of my best friends, a single mom who fits it into her busy days with a video on her laptop, so I figured I could do the same thing. I've been using Yoga Today, which is free yoga on the internet, streamed for anybody. It seems way too good to be true so I'm afraid that some company is going to co-opt it and charge for it, but right now it's free and wonderful.

The class above, if you have fifty-eight or so minutes of time on your hands, is an example of why yoga is just a good thing to have as part of your day. It's a balancing class, and it's hard. I mean, like, they do stuff that you think is a total joke until you see the lovely teacher, Sarah Kline, actually DOING it.

But here's why it was just so helpful. She shares this wisdom as she tells you to do nearly impossible things... "You will fall. And that's good! Just approach the difficult asanas [postures] with a sense of humor, not as something that 'must be done.'" And I did fall, and because I had in my head a sense of humor rather than "I must be the very best yogi in the whole world," it was all pretty hilarious and exhilarating. I fell, but I did a few things for the first time, and the rush of doing that really rocked me in the best way.

So please try it, or at least one of the Yoga Today classes, and approach it, and all things difficult, with a sense of humor, and see what happens.

Reformation Day Sermon

(This is my sermon, more or less, that I will preach this Sunday)

A few people I know, mostly women from my home church in Tennessee, came to a retreat a few years ago here in Georgia. They came from different places in life, as all of us do, and they came on this retreat to get away from something and be together…and to experience a little bit of spirituality.

Over the course of the weekend, they were talking and I happened to be there visiting. One of the retreat speakers asked what they would do if they had one year left to live, and they knew they only had one year. I know these women pretty well, but I was amazed at the responses. One said she would divorce her husband of 30 years and go out with a whole bunch of people. One said she would quit her job, a job she worked hard for, including a PhD a few years back, but she would quit it and go travel all around Europe. Another said she’d tell everyone exactly what she thought of them, and it wasn’t all pretty. The other responses were similar. If they had one year to live, they would make BIG, sweeping, changes in their lives.

I also read a book recently that I just saw is on the top of the bestseller’s list. It’s called Eat, Pray, Love. It’s about a women who didn’t have a disease or anything, but who decided that she was going to do what she would do if she only had one year to live…she was going to do exactly what she wanted and needed to do to find healing, and to find God, and to find love in her life.

Just like my friend wanted to do, but hasn’t done yet as far as I know, she quit her job, divorced her husband, and moved to Italy to eat and just enjoy life for four months. In an interview, she said that her American friends were shocked…one of them said, “You can DO that?” The Italians were not surprised that someone would want to come to Italy just to enjoy themselves…they are the pros, and so that’s what she did. Then, she went to India for four months to live in an ashram and meditate and pray. She had amazing experiences of the presence of God, because she took that whole time to be quiet and to listen to the voice of God speaking to her. Then she went to Indonesia, to try to figure out how to put it all together, and has more adventures there, ending up finding someone to love, which she never expected.

Now. You might say that this experience of this woman is unusual, and for sure, it is, because she’s the only one I know who’s done this, written a book about it, and ended up on the bestseller list for sure. My friends who talked about only having one year were really just imagining it…they wouldn’t really LIVE like that, right? People don’t just do that, unless they actually have this happen to them.

But why not? Especially for Christians, why not? Especially for Lutheran Christians, on this day of Reformation, WHY NOT?

You might remember that Martin Luther had an experience that changed his whole life, and that changed all of our lives too, because here we are in a Lutheran church, 500 or so years after the fact. He was a monk, and had tried everything to earn God’s love and forgiveness. He had whipped himself…he had walked up stairs on his knees…he had said who KNOWS how many Hail Mary’s, trying to get himself right with God, trying to earn God’s love. And he couldn’t, he couldn’t ever do enough, and he felt terrible about this. What else is there? What else can I do to earn the love of God?

And then it came to him, while he was reading our lesson for today, Romans. There’s nothing else you can do. In fact, there’s nothing you can do to earn the love of God, simple as that. Faith comes through the grace of God, not by anything we do…it’s a gift, like that moment of inspiration was a gift to Martin Luther from the Holy Spirit, opening his mind to understand the love of God through the Word, through scripture.

To Martin Luther, this meant that he was free. For the first time in his life, he was free to pray, or not. To sin, or not. To get married, or not. He was set free by these words from a lifetime of slavery to sin…and his particular sin was thinking that he could earn God’s love if he were just a little better, did just a few more things on the checklist. He was now free from that sin. Can you imagine? He was so free that he went out and stood up to the Pope, his boss, on matters that he didn’t agree on, like that the church shouldn’t make people pay to get their relatives out of purgatory or hell. He was so free that he DID get married, married a nun, in fact, had a bunch of kids, led, basically, a seminary from their house, preached a bunch of sermons, wrote a lot of songs, and, from what we can tell, had a lot of fun. After he was freed by the Word of God, yes, he had a lot of hard work to do, but he had a lot of fun with his life, with his family, with his students.

Because when we are set free by God in Jesus Christ, what are we set free FOR? To live as though we still had a thousand years to go on a treadmill and we hated every step? Not so much, I think.

If you had one year left to live, what would you do? This theme keeps coming back in books, movies, TV. On a recent TV show a woman gets told that she is dying. That they are releasing her to hospice care because there’s no more that they can do. She starts crying hysterically and the doctors can’t figure it out, until they realize that they had messed up the room numbers and told the wrong person. Before they can find her, she checks herself out of the hospital, quits her job, dumps her loser boyfriend, and books a flight to a tropical island to live out the rest of her days. When told that she’s actually NOT dying, then, she REALLY gets upset!

What would you do? God sets us free, not necessary to go to tropical islands, but to continue our journey into the heart of God, as the people of God, knowing that we can make mistakes, we can mess it all up, we can sin boldly, as Luther says, knowing that we are free to do all that. The Bible verse says, “It’s for FREEDOM that Christ has set us free.” Sounds simple, but so many times we as the humans we are try to set all kinds of rules about how Christ has set us free and WHO Christ has set free and what we should be doing for that freedom when it’s really just for FREEDOM that Christ has set us free. For freedom. That’s all. It’s a gift, and one that we cannot possibly repay. We simply live in our freedom, maybe as we would live as if someone told us we had one year left, or one week, or one day, because Jesus has already died and risen again for us to give us that freedom, that life more abundantly, in his name.

What would YOU do?

Article on my bitter theme...not so bitter...

If anyone is still reading my blog....argh....I wanted to share this article that is on the same theme as my last post. Which I'd like to mention was more than a month ago. Argh. Argh. Truth-telling article, though. I think we're only starting to crack the surface as far as "equality" goes.

Women in Film

If I were a man

I was sitting at the pool while my kids played today, thinking to myself,
"if I were a man..."

If I were a man maybe I wouldn't struggle with this feeling of "I SHOULD be grateful."

If I were a man, no one would be surprised that I am searching for a call, and would, in fact, be asking me multiple times how it was going.

If I were a man, women wouldn't have pulled me aside as soon as I said I was taking some time off and said to me, "You'll never regret it!" as if it were something I should have been doing all along. (I do regret it, sometimes.)

If I were a man, my simultaneous calls to my children and my church would not be in question.

If I were a man, my restlessness at being at home, at being at small people's beck and call all day long, would be perfectly normal. Of COURSE he gets bored...he's a pastor!

If I were a man, perhaps I would not question my own call as much as I do.

If I were a man, I would be allowed to be sad for my church that died under my care, and not told it was all for the best because then I got to be home.

There are many reasons I'm glad I'm not a man, but this bitter post has been simmering for a while, and now it's written down, and it's out there. And I'm glad.

Young Leaders (or, I get carded at a church function)

I just got back from a conference at our churchwide assembly in Chicago. To tell you the truth, I mainly went at first because a) it was mostly FREE, b) a few of my friends were going, c) it was in Chicago, d) um, FREE!

I'm at the point in my (for lack of better terms) faith journey where I'm religious, but not spiritual so much. I practice disciplines that I know are good for my relationship with God, but I don't get so much of the goose-bump-y happy God feeling that I used to get in say, high school or college. However, they do happen, and when they do I am always surprised and always crazily grateful for them.

Last week was one of them. I had a moment of realization as I sat in a Starbucks on Michican Avenue that I had not skipped out on one bit of the conference (er, unless you count that moment when I was, in fact, sitting in the Starbucks). That is way out of character for me...I'm a skipper-outer. I sit in the back so I can jet out if it doesn't appeal to me. That's just how I deal with church conferences. But this one, I stayed in. I realized why--it was because I wasn't on the fringes. I sat in a room with 90 of my peers, my true peers, women and men who were under 32 and mostly ordained and struggling to find where they fit in ministry and life. It was the closest thing that I've experienced since church camp, back in high school, where I sat in a room and knew that everyone's concerns and prayers and experiences so closely mirrored my own that we had our own shorthand and could begin conversations in the middle without all those crazy introductions (yes, a PASTOR, not a youth pastor, the PASTOR, I preach, etc).

It was an insanely beautiful thing.

I even got to feel old and wise because I was only one of two participants with more than one child, and I had been ordained the longest, six years. I got to hear amazing women's voices who were frustrated with their organization's higher-up's lack of listening to what they needed in a call, and I got to hear someone describe the candidacy system as "fucked-up" (to much applause).

I got to partake of the open bar with my new and old friends, and yes, I got carded, for being a "young pastor" trying to enjoy herself. Hilarious.

It ended for me like any mountaintop experience...not wanting to come down, but knowing that somewhere, your PEOPLE are out there, and they are with you. We'll call, we'll email, we'll maybe do it again, but mostly, we'll know that there are others like us, trying to figure it all out, trying to do the best we can in a world where we're still on the edges.

In the middle

This is where I feel, most of the time. And most of the time I guess it's a good thing. But what I'm talking about mostly is parenting.

First of all I should say that I really really hate the judgement that everyone loads on each other as far as parenting goes. It's been happening forever and ever, I guess, but I'm in the middle of it right now (see a theme here?) and it's getting on my last "nervous," as one of my daughter's friends says.

To one segment of people with whom I associate, I'm a freak. I put my kid in cloth diapers, I don't take them to McDonalds, we eat bunches of fruit and veggies, and I nursed both kids til two (Mr. Man...STILL GOING). I don't like using my car when I don't have to (like, to drive to the neighborhood pool, for crying out loud) and I'm a vegetarian. So, total freak. My neighbors look at me weird, and other moms at my daughter's school trade stories in front of me (while I'm nursing my toddler) about how they couldn't nurse past (insert shorter time period here, three months, three weeks, whatever). Freak! That's me.

But then there's another segment of the population, and I don't quite fit there either. I don't sleep with my kids in the bed as a regular practice, past the age of about 9 months. I drink Diet Dr. Pepper on a regular (that is to say, daily) basis and my kids eat popsicles, Frosted mini-wheats, and goldfish crackers. I didn't birth at home, I send my kids to school, and I'm REALLY looking forward to a couple weeks away in a month or so.

And where this all leaves me is in the middle. Not crunchy enough, too crunchy. I console myself by repeating Anne Lamott's wise advice, as always, "the most subversive thing I could do is show up for my life, and not be ashamed."