Today I had the traumatic experience of seeing my body in a dressing room mirror. Actually, I saw my body cubed, to the third power, you know, like in algebra. Those three-way mirrors are so useful, aren't they? It's helpful to get three different views of cellulite. Why don't they just go all out and make them 3D?! Then we could reach out and put our finger in the dimples!
It's a catch 22, isn't it? The more we avoid shopping, the crappier our wardrobe gets. But in order to look less crappy on a daily basis, we have to feel like crap in a dressing room. "You've got to feel like crap to avoid resembling it."
As I drove away from the mall choking back tears I tried to remember what my body looked liked before kids. This led me to wonder if Jesus could have been overweight. I figured he wouldn't overeat or make an idol of food, but was he the type of personality that went running at 5 am everyday? Was he blessed with a fast metabolism or was food and weight gain a constant temptation and struggle?
I'm interested in the answeres to these questions, but the one I really want answered is "How can Jesus help me lose twenty pounds?" I saw the final episode of the show The Biggest Loser tonight. These people are amazing. Several of them lost forty-some percent of their body weight! I should be inspired by them. If they can lose 120 lbs, surely I can lose 20. But in spite of their success I still don't feel hopeful. If I could get a personal trainer to meet me at my house everyday with a babysitter and a personal chef who'd prepare delicious healthy meals, then I would be hopeful.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Thanksgiving for Dummies
I set out to be thankful all day today, being that it's Thanksgiving Day. I wondered what it would be like to spend an entire day in a state of thankfulness. Could I do it? How would I know if I was succeeding?
Grumbling or complaining, whether out loud or in my head, would definitely constitute a lack of gratitude. Being irritated with someone, likewise, wouldn't cut it on a day of pure thankfulness. Those were the two biggies in my mind, and I wondered whether I could go a whole day without either of them.
Turns out I couldn't. I may have spent the first three hours of the day in a state of thankfulness, but the first internal grumbling came when I couldn't find anything suitable to wear for me or my 18 month old son. Later I became irritated with son for making so many whining sounds that I could't decipher. The biggest trouble, however, came when my parents stated that my brother and his family were thinking they'd like to come to Oregon for Christmas.
I love and like my brother and his family, that wasn't the issue. The trouble is that Andy and I had the holidays all figured out until this little turn of events. Last year we spent Thanksgiving at the two homes of Andy's family and we spent Christmas with my family in Arizona. This year, we were spending Thanksgiving with my parents (who were planning to go to Arizona or Florida for Christmas) and spending Christmas Eve with Andy's dad's family and Christmas Day with Andy's mom's family. It was perfect. Squeezing two Christmas family celebrations into one day wasn't even a remote possibility since my parents would be out of town. Everyone would be happy, including us.
I emailed my brother tonight to ask what the percentage of certaintity was that they would be coming to Oregon for Christmas. I was diplomatic, of course; hiding the fact that I was feeling exactly like Charlie Brown in the Thanksgiving special I was watching who said, "Holidays are depressing." But I was keenly aware that inside my little heart I was not feeling thankful about divvying up Christmas between three loving groups of relatives whom I might not be able to please.
These are the kinds of things they don't teach you in school. Where was the "Handling the Holidays Without Ticking Off Extended Family" course? And those authors of the Boundaries books - Boundaries, Boundaries in Marriage, Boundaries With Kids, Boundaries With Pets (not really)- why haven't they written Boundaries With Holidays? (Probably because they're setting boundaries with Boundary books!)
The day at least ended with a tone of thanksgiving. While I was irritated with my son for pouring salt all over the floor, two minutes later I was overwhelmed with gratitude as I saw the huge smile on his face as he bounced through the kitchen in Andy's arms. My daughter and I ended the day by making a "thanksgiving chain" where we wrote something, or someone, we were thankful for on strips of construction paper and then looped and stapled them together to form a long chain. She said "Jesus" before I thought of him and she decided that "whipped cream" was worthy of it's own chain link (not merely to be lumped in with "food").
If any of you have any advice or words of wisdom for me on how to make the whole fam damily happy at Christmas, including our immediate family, please comment. And no, "fam damily" is not a typo, it's a term of endearment one of my mothers-in-law taught me. :-)
Grumbling or complaining, whether out loud or in my head, would definitely constitute a lack of gratitude. Being irritated with someone, likewise, wouldn't cut it on a day of pure thankfulness. Those were the two biggies in my mind, and I wondered whether I could go a whole day without either of them.
Turns out I couldn't. I may have spent the first three hours of the day in a state of thankfulness, but the first internal grumbling came when I couldn't find anything suitable to wear for me or my 18 month old son. Later I became irritated with son for making so many whining sounds that I could't decipher. The biggest trouble, however, came when my parents stated that my brother and his family were thinking they'd like to come to Oregon for Christmas.
I love and like my brother and his family, that wasn't the issue. The trouble is that Andy and I had the holidays all figured out until this little turn of events. Last year we spent Thanksgiving at the two homes of Andy's family and we spent Christmas with my family in Arizona. This year, we were spending Thanksgiving with my parents (who were planning to go to Arizona or Florida for Christmas) and spending Christmas Eve with Andy's dad's family and Christmas Day with Andy's mom's family. It was perfect. Squeezing two Christmas family celebrations into one day wasn't even a remote possibility since my parents would be out of town. Everyone would be happy, including us.
I emailed my brother tonight to ask what the percentage of certaintity was that they would be coming to Oregon for Christmas. I was diplomatic, of course; hiding the fact that I was feeling exactly like Charlie Brown in the Thanksgiving special I was watching who said, "Holidays are depressing." But I was keenly aware that inside my little heart I was not feeling thankful about divvying up Christmas between three loving groups of relatives whom I might not be able to please.
These are the kinds of things they don't teach you in school. Where was the "Handling the Holidays Without Ticking Off Extended Family" course? And those authors of the Boundaries books - Boundaries, Boundaries in Marriage, Boundaries With Kids, Boundaries With Pets (not really)- why haven't they written Boundaries With Holidays? (Probably because they're setting boundaries with Boundary books!)
The day at least ended with a tone of thanksgiving. While I was irritated with my son for pouring salt all over the floor, two minutes later I was overwhelmed with gratitude as I saw the huge smile on his face as he bounced through the kitchen in Andy's arms. My daughter and I ended the day by making a "thanksgiving chain" where we wrote something, or someone, we were thankful for on strips of construction paper and then looped and stapled them together to form a long chain. She said "Jesus" before I thought of him and she decided that "whipped cream" was worthy of it's own chain link (not merely to be lumped in with "food").
If any of you have any advice or words of wisdom for me on how to make the whole fam damily happy at Christmas, including our immediate family, please comment. And no, "fam damily" is not a typo, it's a term of endearment one of my mothers-in-law taught me. :-)
Sunday, November 13, 2005
The Church Club
Andy and I are reading a book called The Present Future with a group of 40+ others at our church who are exploring new ways of showing and sharing God’s love with others. We’ve only read the first two chapters but, WOW!
The author says that churches have been asking the wrong question: How do we do church better? (How do we get people to join our church?) The right question, he says, is: How do we deconvert from Churchianity to Christianity? (How do we connect people to Jesus?) Check out these two excerpts.
The church culture in North America is a vestige of the original movement, an institutional expression of religion that is in part a civil religion and in part a club where religious people can hang out with other people whose politics, worldview, and lifestyle match theirs. As he hung on the cross Jesus probably never thought the impact of his sacrifice would be reduced to an invitation for people to join and to support an institution.
People may be turned off to the church, but they are not turned off to Jesus. Jesus is popular. He still makes the cover of Time and Newsweek every year (generally around Easter). Church people sometimes get excited by this but fail to understand that people in the nonchurch culture don’t associate Jesus with the church. In their mind, the church is a club for religious people where club members can celebrate their traditions and hang out with others who share common thinking and lifestyles. They do not automatically think of the church as championing the cause of poor people or healing the sick or serving people. These are things they associate with Jesus. They believe the church is out for itself, looking out more for the institution than for people.
For any of my friends outside the church culture who are reading this, I want to offer a personal apology for the church’s gross misrepresentation of the person we claim to follow. I have been part of this institutional blindness and negligence and am guilty of putting my focus and energy on things that Jesus did not center his attention on. Please forgive me and the church.
May God also forgive us. May God give us the humility to admit that we’ve been more of a self-serving club than the hands and feet of Jesus. May God help us make the radical, downwardly mobile shift from lives of preoccupation with the institution into lives of service to people.
The author says that churches have been asking the wrong question: How do we do church better? (How do we get people to join our church?) The right question, he says, is: How do we deconvert from Churchianity to Christianity? (How do we connect people to Jesus?) Check out these two excerpts.
The church culture in North America is a vestige of the original movement, an institutional expression of religion that is in part a civil religion and in part a club where religious people can hang out with other people whose politics, worldview, and lifestyle match theirs. As he hung on the cross Jesus probably never thought the impact of his sacrifice would be reduced to an invitation for people to join and to support an institution.
People may be turned off to the church, but they are not turned off to Jesus. Jesus is popular. He still makes the cover of Time and Newsweek every year (generally around Easter). Church people sometimes get excited by this but fail to understand that people in the nonchurch culture don’t associate Jesus with the church. In their mind, the church is a club for religious people where club members can celebrate their traditions and hang out with others who share common thinking and lifestyles. They do not automatically think of the church as championing the cause of poor people or healing the sick or serving people. These are things they associate with Jesus. They believe the church is out for itself, looking out more for the institution than for people.
For any of my friends outside the church culture who are reading this, I want to offer a personal apology for the church’s gross misrepresentation of the person we claim to follow. I have been part of this institutional blindness and negligence and am guilty of putting my focus and energy on things that Jesus did not center his attention on. Please forgive me and the church.
May God also forgive us. May God give us the humility to admit that we’ve been more of a self-serving club than the hands and feet of Jesus. May God help us make the radical, downwardly mobile shift from lives of preoccupation with the institution into lives of service to people.
Saturday, November 05, 2005
Desperation
I haven’t seen the show Desperate Housewives but I think might after reading a couple of the show’s reviews on the Hollywood Jesus website. If you watch the show, I’d love to hear why you like it. Check out this excerpt from one of the reviews.
"We all have moments of desperation," Mary Alice Young narrates. Desperation points to a hole within us, a hole we want to fill by any means necessary. Stephen King once wrote a book titled Desperation whose main theme was that if you weren't in a state of faith, you were in a state of desperation. It all boils down to the conversation that Gabrielle has with her gardener-turned-lover. When asked why she married her husband, she answers "Because he promised to give me everything I ever wanted." Since the husband, in fact, gave her all of those things, yet this gardner still finds himself in bed with her, he logically asks "Then why aren't you happy?" She tells him that it "turns out that I wanted all the wrong things."
I can relate to that statement. I couldn’t have said this two years ago, but today I can admit that there is a darkness and sickness in my soul that actually desires the things that would eventually destroy me. Frederick Buechner said, "Lust is the craving for salt of a man who is dying of thirst!" Can you imagine being collapsed on the ground in the middle of a desert, literally dying of thirst, and craving salt?! Instead of craving that which would help, heal and give us life, we often crave what would hurt, humiliate, and ultimately destroy us.
Desperation is also a theme in Switchfoot’s music. (Yes I’m still entrenched in their new cd “Nothing is Sound”).
Desperate we are young. Separate we are one.
I want more than my desperation. I want more than my lonely nation.
(“Lonely Nation”)
Is this the new year or just another night
Is this the new fear or just another fright
Is this a new tear or just another desperation
Is this the finger or just another fist
Is this the kingdom or just a hit and miss
I miss direction most in all this desperation
(“The Blues” written on New Year’s Eve)
Lately I’ve been asking God to transform my desires so that my desires match up with his desires. “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” (Proverbs 37: 4) I’ve come to realize that this proverb doesn’t mean that if I obey God he will grant me whatever my little heart desires. It means that as I delight in who God is and in my relationship with him, he will actually give me new desires to replace the messed up ones that formerly occupied my heart; desires that when fulfilled will bring me wholeness, freedom, and joy.
"We all have moments of desperation," Mary Alice Young narrates. Desperation points to a hole within us, a hole we want to fill by any means necessary. Stephen King once wrote a book titled Desperation whose main theme was that if you weren't in a state of faith, you were in a state of desperation. It all boils down to the conversation that Gabrielle has with her gardener-turned-lover. When asked why she married her husband, she answers "Because he promised to give me everything I ever wanted." Since the husband, in fact, gave her all of those things, yet this gardner still finds himself in bed with her, he logically asks "Then why aren't you happy?" She tells him that it "turns out that I wanted all the wrong things."
I can relate to that statement. I couldn’t have said this two years ago, but today I can admit that there is a darkness and sickness in my soul that actually desires the things that would eventually destroy me. Frederick Buechner said, "Lust is the craving for salt of a man who is dying of thirst!" Can you imagine being collapsed on the ground in the middle of a desert, literally dying of thirst, and craving salt?! Instead of craving that which would help, heal and give us life, we often crave what would hurt, humiliate, and ultimately destroy us.
Desperation is also a theme in Switchfoot’s music. (Yes I’m still entrenched in their new cd “Nothing is Sound”).
Desperate we are young. Separate we are one.
I want more than my desperation. I want more than my lonely nation.
(“Lonely Nation”)
Is this the new year or just another night
Is this the new fear or just another fright
Is this a new tear or just another desperation
Is this the finger or just another fist
Is this the kingdom or just a hit and miss
I miss direction most in all this desperation
(“The Blues” written on New Year’s Eve)
Lately I’ve been asking God to transform my desires so that my desires match up with his desires. “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” (Proverbs 37: 4) I’ve come to realize that this proverb doesn’t mean that if I obey God he will grant me whatever my little heart desires. It means that as I delight in who God is and in my relationship with him, he will actually give me new desires to replace the messed up ones that formerly occupied my heart; desires that when fulfilled will bring me wholeness, freedom, and joy.
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