Tag Archives: Random

Random Bits

Posted on by

1

Today I’m filled with a lot of little random thoughts.

First of all, I have been on a quest to acquire excellent running gear lately.  I have been in need of new shoes and I am getting tired of doing so much laundry because I only have one pair of pants I like to run in.  So, I’d like to introduce you to…

My New Shoes - The Saucony Kinvaras

I ran in them this morning and they are great…so far!  It’ll probably take a week or so to really figure out how they help or hurt my feet and joints, but there was no pain as I ran today.  They are extremely light and well cushioned.  The only complaint people have said is that they don’t have enough heavy black sole material on the bottom, causing them to wear out faster.  It looks like this:

The black is the tough but heavy sole material, the blue is soft but light midsole.

The lack of black is one thing that makes the shoe so light.  I’ll have to just wait and see how long they last for me.  I’ll keep you updated on how well I like them.

I also ran in these today:

New Balance Women's Go 2 Running Tights

I absolutely LOVE these.  I want to wear them every day.  But that would be gross.  They are great to wear in the wet and rainy weather because I don’t have exposed calves to splash water on.  I really don’t like that feeling.  I got them on clearance at Fit Right Northwest.  I love their clearance rack!

And I kept my ears warm (and my head visible) with this:

Brooks Infiniti Nightlife Headband

I usually don’t like wearing headbands because they are so thick (usually fleece) and make my head sweat.  But this one is made of lycra.  It’s really thin and provided just enough protection to keep my ears from hurting while not making me too warm.  And Eryn, my running partner, said I was REALLY visible.  :-)

Then I took a trip to my church to drop off some sound equipment, some clothes to donate for the youth group mission trip and some treats that I HAD to get out of my house.  As I was getting into my car my friend Meredith drove up.  I love seeing friends when I don’t expect it.  She was bringing eggs to someone.  She has chickens.  Lots of them.  Which means she has eggs.  Lots of them.  She had a pair of capris for me that she found on clearance at Kohls.  They were only…wait for it…$12!!!  Can you believe it?!?!?!  They are the older version of these:

Nike Running Capri Tights

Did you think I was going to post a picture of ME wearing the capris???  Ha.  I don’t think so.  I’ll wear them running because you only see me for a second then I’m gone!  But I won’t let you see me for an extended period of time in anything tight like these. Thank you Mere for the excellent capris and for being a bright spot in my day (just by seeing you…not even because you had pants for me!)

Next random thought.  Meredith, the friend I was just talking about, is having a giveaway on her blog.  She’s giving away some really cool headbands.  They are great for running or just running around town.  And there are children’s sized ones too!  Head over to her blog to enter the giveaway!

Random thought #3, or #7…or maybe #21:  I made these muffins today from the Our Best Bites site and they are FANTASTIC!!!

 

Easy Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

They are great for so many reasons.

1. Egg and nut free.  And I didn’t even have to use egg replacer (which is not cheap).

2.  Only three ingredients.

3.  Super easy with nothing to measure.

4.  Um…chocolate!!!

5.  ALL of my kids liked them.  I liked them.  Colin will like them when he tries them later.  That is a very successful snack trial.

They are so good they could easily be cupcakes with some frosting.  I think I’ll make more and frost them with cream cheese frosting for Shiloh’s birthday party this weekend.  They are packed with pumpkin, so they are relatively healthy for a birthday treat.  You could probably use carrot puree instead for a “carrot cake” type of taste.  Butternut squash puree would work too.

And finally, I’m very excited about the Run Like A Mother event tonight at Old Town Battle Grounds!!  Sarah Bowen Shea is going to read some from the book, answer questions and bring her books and shirts to sell.  I hear there will be giveaways also.  This is the book I wanted to quit earlier this fall, but I’m glad I pushed through.  I’d recommend it to anyone who loves running or fitness in general.  Especially if you are a mother.

 

Run Like A Mother

That’s the end of my randomness for the day.  Not because I’m out of random thoughts, but because naptime is over.  Time to take a break from blogging to be a mommy.

Living Missional – Part Three What’s The Next Step… (repost)

Posted on by

1

It’s taken me a long time to start this post.  I’ve actually completey avoided it.  I think it’s because I’m learning something.  A huge lesson God is working in me right now is that there are things I am called to and things others are called to – and they don’t have to be the same.  It’s ok if I’m called to something crazy and “out there” and my church is not.  It’s ok to be drawn to the city while friends have a heart for rural folks.  It’s ok.

And maybe my church really isn’t called to what they think they are called to.  Maybe they aren’t supposed to be about business and system and rules and structure.  Maybe they have too many events and don’t equip people for leadership or service.  Maybe they worry too much about money and not being “taken advantage of”.  Maybe they miss the gray in their world of black and white.  Maybe God does want to change them.  Maybe.

But God has made it clear that, for now, I need to ignore that.  Nobody’s perfect.  Least of all me.  So, he’s working in me that there are things he has to work in me.  I’m not saying I don’t believe all those things I wrote about living missionally.  I do.  But I have heard quite clearly that God is teaching ME these things, and I need not worry whether or not my organized church is learning it too.  I think he’s saying “Learn and Do – and I’ll take care of the rest”.

So as I think about what the next step is, I have a hard time writing it.  Mostly because I only know what the next steps for me are, and the general gist of where I think church needs to go next.  But I guess I could start there.

Next comes…

…sharing life with people that are not my family DAILY. And when I say life I mean my house, my schedule, my time, my food, my LIFE.  I want to live where people can come over, bring their family and hang out.  Where I can just throw more food on the table and welcome them.  Where they can drop their kids off and run to the store alone without even calling first.  Where they can come over at 10am because they ran out of coffee and know I always have a pot ready.  I want to trust people to care for my kids and love theirs enough to care for them also.  I want to share life.  We experienced a taste of this when our best friends lived here – and we want it again.  More of it.

…sharing a common mission, focus or passion with the people I am sharing life with daily. I want to be encouraged by those I commune with to serve God and love people.  Whether it is a passion to serve high school kids, teen moms, the homeless, drop-outs, the unloved and unwanted, orphans, or our neighbors – I want to passionately live to serve people together as a community of faith.  I want to share a purpose.  I want to share a mission.

…living as if my comfort means nothing.

…seeing need around me.

…taking ownership for my part of the oppression and sadness that surrounds me. “We’ve gotta hold up the mirror and share in the blame.” (that’s Caedmon’s Call, by the way).

…BEING the incarnational church (the body of Christ incarnate in this world) to those around us. There are millions of people who are hopeless, downcast and oppressed.  We are called to love our neighbor as ourselves.  If someone treated me the way I see others being treated, I would not keep silent.  So, I must speak on their behalf anytime I can.

…seeing what God has given me and figuring out how to use it to bless others. From my used clothing to my cans of beans to my photography skills to the love my family has – it’s not just for us.  It is to share.

…being willing to sell my plot of land, bring the money in and put it in a pot for anyone who needs it. I want to live where I can give as easily as I can take – but where I feel the freedom to do both.  We are too proud most of the time, and are not good at taking when we need to take.  I’d love open pot living, where money is given freely for whoever needs it, and those who need it feel the safety to come and take without fear of judgment or second glances.

…not caring what music is played, what color the chairs are or who shakes my hand. I am way too consumeristic.  I need to lay down my ideas that things need to be pleasing to me and instead, actively search for God in everything.  I get too caught up in my own opinions and comfort.

…realizing that church happens more outside of Sunday service than inside. Sermons are great, as is gathering and fellowship and communal worship – but the vast majority of our lives happen outside of Sunday morning.  God doesn’t stop working after the closing prayer.  On the contrary, most of what he’s doing is in the streets, houses, schools, soccer fields, swim meets, office buildings, gyms and coffee shops.  We need to remember that Jesus CAME TO US.  And we are called to do the same.  Sometime I think most of the work that we do on a Sunday morning falls under the category of Modern Day Pharisee.  “And it feels like the church isn’t anything more than the second coming of the Pharisees.  Scrubbing each other ’til their tombs are white, they chisel epitaphs of piety…”  (that’s Andrew Peterson).

…remembering the greatest commandment(s) – Love God, Love others. And, to quote DC Talk (gotta love that old school christian rap!)  “Love is a verb”.  We must go.  We must do.  We must reach.  We must give.  Not because we have to. But because we love, and loving is doing.  You can do without loving, but you can’t love without doing.  Talk is cheap, right?  We’ve got to BE the church – Jesus body in motion as an outpouring of His love for all that He created and died for.  Again, NOT BECAUSE WE HAVE TO, but because when we love, our hearts are compelled to.

This is vague and somewhat abstract, I know.  It’s because I want you to jump in and add detail.  Where is God calling you to live with mission?  How do you share life with people?  What do you think needs to be changed?  What is He changing in you?  Who has He called you to love?  How is God calling you to live more communally, more missionally, more intentionally, more uncomfortably, more freely?  What’s next for you?  I know things are changing and I am listening intently for you to tell me how.  God’s expression of church, body, mission and love are different everywhere (though He is unchanging).  How do these things express themselves where you are?

 

Living Missional – Part One (repost)

Posted on by

0

This week I was scheduled to speak at my MOMS group.  The leaders wanted Colin and I to share about missional living.  We were very excited to talk about it and had finished our planning on Monday night.  Then, later that night (about 2am), Payton started throwing up.  Every 30 minutes he threw up.  By morning he couldn’t walk upright because his stomach hurt so bad.  At noon on Tuesday I finally got a hold of his doctor’s office and they suggested we take him to the ER.  Likely appendicitis, they said.  We were in the ER at SWWMC for 6 hours with no conclusive test results when we were transferred by ambulance to Doernbecher’s Children’s Hospital.  Eventually the surgeons decided that it was probably some kind of abdominal infection and sent us home with instructions to bring him back if it got worse.  Luckily, he began to feel better.  Wednesday Colin woke up sick and didn’t go to work.  But everyone felt better by the end of Wednesday (except myself…I was worn out) so our talk was to take place as planned on Thursday morning.  Thursday morning at 2am, guess what happens.  Ellie starts throwing up and Colin wakes up feeling sicker than ever.  I went to MOMS alone (well, with Shiloh – who is the only other healthy Rush) and decided to wing it.  Apparently there must have been something secretly profound and amazing that God had to say through me for the Enemy to work so hard at keeping me away.

So, since the subject was missional living this morning and everyone seemed to be interested in it (and since Satan seems to want to keep me from sharing my thoughts), I have decided to repost a series I wrote last year on the subject.  I don’t claim to have the answers or do anything perfectly (or even “well’), but I love thinking about loving people.  Feel free to join in the conversation.

Originally posted May 8, 2009

There has been a question floating around me lately than I am very interested in.  It is shaping my life, in fact.  People want to know what it means to live missionally.  I know in the Christian culture words are thrown around, catch on and are overused.  They are twisted, morphed and changed to mean something they are not (gospel, ministry, community, authentic, “share your faith”, outreach, worship…just to name a few).  Missional living is a very popular idea in some circles right now and I want to explore what it really means before the church twists it into something else. And just as a disclaimer, I am not an expert on this so please feel free to engage in this conversation with me.  I am still learning and in no way want to be one that misunderstands being missional.  By the way, if I use the words I listed earlier in their morphed and twisted way, I’ll put them in quotes.  Later I’ll explain what I believe their true definitions may be.

In my experience, living missionally is a very difficult thing.  Not because it is hard in itself, but because it is completely the opposite of how most of us were raised and taught.  In order to effectively be mission minded we must reverse our thinking of what the church is, what ministry is, what the body of Christ is and what it means to serve.

In the last 400 years or so Christendom has been a part of the modern movement.  It begun as scientists discovered new laws governing the way the world works.  Things became clear and concrete.  Everything was run by rules that were very black and white.  This took Christ from being the God of the affluent to being available to everyone (a good thing).  After all, rules are rules and the truth does not change because you are rich or poor, farmer or banker, sinner or saint.  “The gospel” became a clear cut list of facts you either believed in or you didn’t.  Missionaries and preachers went out sharing the “Good News” with lost people, showing them their sins and letting them know the steps to repentance and forgiveness.  All of this was a good thing.  The message of Christ reached far and wide and, in most cases, was very clearly preached.  There were also many negatives of this movement.  Preachers who “knew the truth” often became arrogant, fake and mocking.  They preached the message but did not care about each person they were preaching it to.  They became more interested in winning converts and increasing the numbers in their “saved” book than caring about the desperate state (financially, emotionally, physically) of the people that they were trying to save.  Saving them spiritually was enough for them – they didn’t need to worry about saving them in any other way, because in the eternal perspective those other ways didn’t matter.  Now, not every preacher was or is like this.  This is a generalization of what could happen to modern style preachers.

Most of us were raised in this style of church.  There is a lot of difference on the modern spectrum, but a generalization would state that the modern church of the 1960′s and beyond focused on preaching “the gospel”- which was telling people 1. They are sinners, 2. Christ died on the cross, 3. He bridged the gap to offer us forgiveness and make a way to heaven, 4. We can live in forgiveness if we accept his offer and pray a little prayer.  You were encouraged to bring your “unchurched” friends to events so they could hear the message.  You were instructed to pray for the lost, support missionaries traveling across the world to save the lost in other countries and help organize events at your local church building so people could be invited in.

Now, those things I just wrote about are very good things.  But they are incomplete.  They basically state “I have what you need.  Come here, to my turf to get it.  Join me in the right way of doing things.”  As you can see, this can leave many people out.  What if I am seen as an outcast by those on your turf?  What if I am covered in tattoos and piercings with a bright pink mohawk?  Will you welcome me in your building for events without staring and judging?  What if I am housebound?  What if I am so hungry that I don’t want your events, I just want food?  What if I have been burned by the arrogance and judgment of a fellow Christian of yours and I don’t want a God like that?  What if I don’t want to be accepted and welcomed into your building for an event – I just want to know that someone loves me right where I am at (at the bar, the nightclub, the little league diamond, the PTA meeting, the grocery store)?  What if I don’t need to be convinced that I am a sinner (for that is all too clear to me) and I have no faith in anyone who says they love me because I have never known unselfish love (or any love at all)?  What if I am tired of people trying to convince me that I need God when they don’t even take the time to know me?

As you can see, there are a lot of things that prevent people from responding to this kind of ministry.  And even more so, the way people think about truth is changing.  The way people think about everything is changing.  The way people communicate, receive love and view God is changing.  The modern ways of doing things and seeing things is changing.  And no matter how many events we hold at our churches, we cannot push the tidal wave of culture back in the other direction.  As Bob Dylan says, “The times, they are a-changin…”

Next up:  Living Missional – Part Two  Where We Are Headed…

By the way, please comment with your thoughts, questions, input.  I intend for this to be a conversation, not a lecture or sermon.  There are many things I have questions on and need to learn as well, and as I write I am not saying I know it all or even fully understand anything.  I am just trying to put words to what I think is happening, as best as I can in my very limited way.  Please, add to the dialogue.

Special Day

Posted on by

7

So, I’m sitting here on my birthday in my living room watching the Boston Red Sox game. I’m not a Red Sox fan. I didn’t wait all day to watch the game. And, yet, here I am. My kids are asleep, my mom is asleep, and my husband is chaperoning the RRHS homecoming dance. This wasn’t my idea of a very special birthday. But, lately, my expectations have been adjusted a little.

I’m starting to realize that I think my life should be perfect. I look at people around me that have struggles and I genuinely feel for them, but I don’t ever want to be the one people feel for. So, I either pout (always very effective) or pretend everything is fine. Either way, not too healthy.

We are living in a town that I wouldn’t ever choose to live in. We have no friends here that actually know us. We are very busy with Colin’s job schedule. We don’t understand how to fit in here. It rains a lot. More than usual. There is nothing to do. And I can’t find a moms group that I don’t have to pay to be a part of. Plus, our gym doesn’t open until December because it’s still being built so I’m finding it hard to stay in shape.

However. . . God has blessed us. He has poured his blessings on us and on our future.

To understand this you may need a quick refresher on our past few years. We’ve been waiting, yearning and wrestling with our desire to live in close community with believers. We believe we are called as the body of Christ to live in close communion with believers as we strive together to love the world we live in. We know we are made for relationship, and we know that the world is filled to the brim with people who are drowning in hurt and hopelessness who need our compassion. So, we have been trying to figure out how to live those beliefs out in the crazy, individualized, keep-up-with-the-Joneses-but-never-get-to-know-the-Joneses world of the suburbs we have been placed in. And it has been very, very frustrating. We’ve been waiting and praying and hoping God would show us what’s next. That’s where the blessing comes in.

Amidst this world of Lacey that I would not choose, God has brought us into a community that lives out all that we’ve been yearning for. Community, service, mission, all that we long for as a way of life – because they, like us, believe God created us to function that way. We are entering this community just as they are trying to figure out how to start these “missional communities” in the Olympia area and make them relevant for the neighborhoods we live in. We are coming in at ground level. Through all the things I can complain about, I kind of feel like we were led here “for such a time as this.”

So, though I’m sitting here watching what has turned out to be a great ALCS game on my birthday, I am not disappointed. I’ve gotten calls, texts and cards from so many people that I love very, very much. My husband took me out to lunch. I got a pedicure and an haircut. I colored my hair red (yes, you read correctly) and actually love it. And God has blessed my life.

What’s the purpose?

Posted on by

1

I wonder if it would seem less amazing if every day started like this...

So, I’m not sure why I created this blog. A part of me wants to say it’s to keep in touch with long lost and far away friends. But, while I miss you all, I don’t think that’s it. Another part of me is making fun of myself for waiting this long to actually enter the cyber-world. You may or may not know that it took me years to actually get a cell phone (I only caved in August, because my husband’s employer picked up the tab for it). I just got an ipod, and must admit that I’m not … Continue reading →

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...