Category: Faith

Do One Thing Right

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Coaching taught me that you better never call a time-out unless you have a plan.

What in the name of sweet baby Jesus are you doing out there????? is not a plan.

Once I made the commitment to come to a time-out with a plan to climb out of whatever hole we were in, I was forced to look at the game differently.

I had to see what we were doing well.

How else could I have a plan? You can’t tell your team Keep doing that thing that’s not working and hope to hell it works this time. When one part of our game fell apart, we had to make up for it somewhere else. So when I called a time out, I tried to start it with Ok, here’s how we’re going to fix this.

(Tried. Tried so VERY hard. But sometimes sweet baby Jesus got the best of me…)

In our worst moments, the plan was to take it all the way back to the basics.

Pass, hit, serve.

Do one thing right. Then do two. Then three and four and on and on until it’s finished.

Gabriel just played a game like this, against a team that beat them badly the first time they played. Nothing worked. Not one thing.

But this time, the defense got their feet under them and it was a different game. They still lost, but it was a victory too—they stood their ground against a team that is bigger and faster than they are. We can’t win every game, but we can win moments and quarters and halves. And sometimes that’s enough.

Life is like this, too.

It’s very rare for everything to go bad at once. Usually, it’s one or two things, but I can get so focused on them that I feel overwhelmed.

Instead, I have to see what I’m doing right, and keep doing it. I have to take it back to the basics of faith, hope and love. I have to solve one problem, live through one hour, take one step. That’s all. Just one. Then two. Then three and four and on and on until I am back on my physical, emotional or spiritual feet.

This is how we welcomed our second child, and then our third. We folded those babies into our lives one hour, one day, one week at a time.

It’s how I survived my cancer and post-partum anxiety—one doctor’s appointment, one medicine, one blood test at a time.

It’s how Dana is surviving her summer—one breath, one prayer, one decision at a time.

So when it feels like I’m getting beat four ways til Christmas, I try to remember these rules:

Don’t call a timeout unless you have a plan.

Focus on what’s working, instead of what’s not.

When all else fails, go back to the basics.

Do one thing right.

Ignoring the Elephant

About Planned Parenthood.

The Senate voted 52-47 against defunding the other day, with 8 Republicans breaking rank. They aren’t going to defund it.

Americans have strong feelings in both directions of this debate. But that’s having no impact on the lawmakers. Oh, they’re talking and holding hearings. But the Senate vote tells us this is a moot point.

So why the Congressional circus?

It’s a really important question.

Back in July when this all started, a local minister published a blog post helping his congregation understand his position on this issue. My warning bells began ringing at a line (since removed) that referenced the fetal parts being sold to China, or other Eastern countries.

It felt like a hollow and racially charged dismissal of what was to me a huge piece of the puzzle: Why does anyone want fetal parts?

(Let me just state now that I know the position of Planned Parenthood is that they did not “sell” anything, since that would be against the law. They were simply charging for processing and shipping of donated parts. I have read the justifications over the high fees. I understand what is happening there and why.

But since there is an undeniable market for fetal parts, I am sticking with “sell”. Call me stubborn.)

I did some very basic research, which led me to Stem Express and this inconvenient truth: the fetal parts are sold to research universities and firms in this country. You can read the New York Times article for yourself, but you need to know that most of the top universities in this country—from which many of our top politicians graduated and some of which are tax-payer supported public schools—are doing business with Stem Express, and therefore Planned Parenthood.

While there was early chatter about Stem Express when this all broke, they have disappeared from the targeting around this issue. The sights have settled firmly on Planned Parenthood.

Why?

I don’t mean why are we targeting Planned Parenthood—I get that part. I mean why are we ONLY targeting Planned Parenthood?

Why not the laws that make this type of transaction legal? Why not the universities who sponsor this research? Why are we not defunding all of it—and yes, our tax dollars fund fetal tissue research, in some estimates to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Well, the universities are using the fetal tissue to do stem cell research. To find cures for diseases which plague us. To make the blind see and the paralyzed walk and the cancer ridden rise from their beds healthy.

To save man from that which he fears most: death.

That’s another inconvenient truth.

There’s big money in this research, biggest of all for pharmaceutical companies. Just last week we saw what a whimsical racket that can be. And while some are howling that Planned Parenthood is using their lobbying money ($856,000 in 2012) to bully politicians into supporting them, that financial leverage is small potatoes when we start to understand the powerful machine that is Big Pharma ($148 million in 2012).

And that’s when I decided that this is a faux argument.

It’s the perfect set-up, where everyone gets to flex their beliefs. The pro-life folks can picket and pray. The pro-choice folks can stand shoulder to shoulder in defense of women’s rights. The presidential candidates can fire up their stump speeches and get cheap and easy cheers from their base. Everyone walks away with a “we showed them” fist in the air.

It’s easy. Too easy. And anything that is this important should not be easy.

If I said that Big Pharma will not allow Big Abortion to be defunded because then they would lose their supply of research material, I might sound like a conspiracy theorist.

So I won’t say it. But I will say that we are having a costly and headline-generating discussion on Capitol Hill about something that sure looks like it will never happen. Babies will continue to be aborted. Their parts will be sold to researchers in the US and used to create medicines and procedures that might save lives but for sure will make everyone involved a ton of money.

It’s awful to consider that our leaders think we are that stupid.

But maybe we are, clinging so tightly to our notions of pro-life and pro-choice while the elephant in the room gets rich off our single-mindedness.

Called to Less

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Last weekend we met the coolest family camping.

The kids met first, as kids will do in a campground. Kate and Ezra were a perfect match, two cuties in glasses laid out on a blanket playing with their dolls. Her younger brother Phoenix, and Annie, just a year apart, took to each other like fish and water. There was a dump truck involved, and lots of giggling. At one point they were just laying on their backs in the sunshine, laughing up into the clouds.

Even the older ones, Micah and Gabriel, found kinship in their reading habits. As I listened to them talk about books, I felt the sweetness of a conversation between a boy and girl just on the edge of being too embarrassed to talk to each other.

Mom and Dad—Amber and Sundance—made the most amazing decision a year ago.

It’s not for everyone. But it confronted Shea and me, in a good reflective way. So I’m going to share it.

They sold their house and bought a trailer.

Sundance has a job that travels for weeks at a time, and Amber and the kids got to missing him. So Amber did a little research on homeschool and talked Sundance into making their lives mobile.

Usually they go where he goes, but Amber wanted to spend the summer among the redwood trees, which is how they ended up in Klamath, camping across the row from us.

All of the questions that may be popping into your head can be answered over at Amber’s blog, www.notsopermanentpillow.com.

I will tell you that when I asked if it was forever, she shrugged and said that was the beauty of it. If they are done, they’ll just go back home. In the meantime, they are together, having adventures and learning how to function as a family in a 28 ft trailer.

That was the part that confronted me. They down-sized their quantity of life to up-size their quality of life.

No big house where everyone has their own room, tons of toys and three TVs. Just one shower, one toilet and one closet.

It made me think What would it take to get my family down to one closet? The answer is a lot. It would take a lot. And that made me sad.

It’s been on my heart for a while now. Our home in Oregon is everything we thought we wanted in a home, brand new and beautiful. Our So Cal money went far in Oregon, but the truth is, we could have chosen something smaller. Something less. That would have allowed us room to travel more, tithe more, share more of what we have.

But when we bought this house last year, we let our egos make the decision. That’s a hard and humbling thing to admit. And now too much of what we have is tied up in the house.

I don’t think it was by chance that Amber and her family were camped across from us at the mouth of the Klamath River.  I think God was saying Look. Listen. See what life can be when you stop trying to keep up. You already know that keeping up is not what I want. But you have to find the courage to let it go.

I’m not packing up my kids and heading off into the sunset, because homeschooling is not my gift. No, no, no.

But Shea and I have some praying and listening to do over the next year.

 

 

 

When an Apology is Not

Braeburns at Riley's Apple Farm in Oak Glen

Not all apologies are created equal.

As Rhett Butler said to Scarlett “”You’re like the thief who isn’t the least bit sorry he stole, but is terribly, terribly sorry he’s going to jail.”

I recently read an article that talked about the difference between remorse and repentance.

Remorse is when we cause someone pain and feel guilty and will do anything to make our guilt go away. It’s me focused.

Repentance is when we desire to understand the pain we have caused others, to acknowledge we have work to do on the inside and humble ourselves enough to do it.

Remorse makes us say I’m sorry for all kinds of wrong reasons: to make something stop, or go away; to distract; to regain power; to inflict pain.

Repentance gets us back into right relationship with God and the person we hurt, which is a place where true understanding and forgiveness heals the wound.

Remorse looks like a bandaid, until the next time. Repentance is a tree of life.

I guess this is on my mind because I’ve noticed a trend in apologies that seem long on remorse and short on repentance.

This was handled years ago…I can’t change the past…let’s move forward, I promise to do better…I never meant to hurt you…I didn’t know.

Other people’s sins are not our business, it’s true. But in this day of instant social media, we are privy to more information about people than ever before. Sometimes, the apologies of public figures help us decide if we can vote for them or continue watching their show or buying their products or listening to their music or cheering for their team.

We do have to judge, in that sense, the quality of their character based on the quality of their apology.

We know a bandaid when we see it.

We should look for the life-giving tree.

For the Rookies, on the First Day of School

For the rookies in 2015-2016!

There's nothing better than brand new school supplies!
There’s nothing better than brand new school supplies!

At the very core of education, in your own classroom, there is nothing like the magic of educating kids. Nothing. You see moments in a kid’s life, flashes of brilliance and frustration; you hear them laugh, you see them cry. You are mom, friend, sister; you are at once the coolest cat and the biggest bitch; you will love them, and have days where you could climb a mountain; you will hate them and have days where you wish it was still legal to smack them.

You will love their parents. You will hate their parents. You will see some beautiful souls and some souls bound for the deepest parts of hell. You will hear stories that make you believe in the human spirit, and stories that give you nightmares. Students will lie to your face; parents will lie to your face. One day, a student will tell you a truth so terrible that you will wish they had lied. You will help them while your heart is breaking inside.

You will want to save them. Then you will learn that some kids are not meant to be saved by you. And you will cry.

You will know you are on the right track when the question of your reputation results in fierce debate between the kids who love you and the kids who hate you. Change is hard for teenagers, just like for grown ups. When you push them, they’ll push back. Stay strong. I once had a student named Jerome revise a paper 9 times to get a B and when he did, he hung that thing proudly on the fridge. And didn’t speak to me for two weeks.

I was so proud of him.

You will make mistakes. Tons. There’s no way to talk to 200 kids a day and not say something stupid on a fairly regular basis. When you do, just apologize. They will respect you forever because no one ever apologizes to teenagers. Let them learn from you that apologies don’t make you weak, they make you honorable.

The kids–they will strip you down and make you see who you really are. Then, if you let them, they will make you better, even the ones who make you crazy first.

Maybe them most of all.

So best of luck. You’ll need it between principals trying to make quotas and veteran teachers with an ax to grind and an entire political system that likes to demonize your profession. But it’s not cliche that you are in charge of the future so you have to find a way to manage. You’ll want to quit. All of us wanted to quit sometime in that first year, usually in January or February.

But hang on.  I promise that by May you will feel much better.