Monthly Archives: August 2013

Sea Glass and Other Treasures

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Just over there where the tide roles they light fires. The garbage from the day, the tourist trash. The glass bottles shatter on the bottom of the ocean here in the Gulf of Thailand. All of it dragged out to sea the burned up and the broken. We collect the treasure left behind, the sea glass and the shattered and dead shells. See that, how the sand of it runs through your fingers?

The days they just slip sometimes don’t they? Sqaundered on the small or discontent moments. The legacy we wished we were leaving or the things we wish to be to other people eclipsed because we just cannot quell the selfish…how it wants you to really see me. All the wish we hads or the too much pain or the heaviest heart.
But I won’t trade it.
I rise up…back arched in the breaking waves. I wonder how many times you can do that in a life? Bath in the salt water of tears pinned to the bottom by the crashing waves?
But then. There you are…the rock solid core smashed apart, shrunk down and tumbled. Only the core left, that place there right around your heart, the ‘made in the image piece’. Your failures are guaranteed, your flesh already failing you. So can’t we then stop forgetting our dim reflections? Please, can’t we have permission to do the next tiny and glory laden thing? Forget about the magnificient things…they are built from your daily work, one on top of the other. Faithful with sand, seeing the profound beauty in it.
You can burn me down, break me up, tumble me on the bottom…just as long as I find myself smooth in Your hands…

A Church Lady Rant (or about that time I was accidentally naked in front of several semi-truck drivers)

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It happened about six weeks ago. 

My boss called from Texas to tell me that a visiter from the MINISTRY OF HEALTH was coming to my office to hear about our work. She would be accompanied by the people who hold our funding (i.e. the money that pays all of our bills) and representatives from the Health Authority. My boss said “It would be great if you could host them, this is very important”.  Of course I said, though it was on my day off, though I would need to find some extra babysitting. The day before the important meeting I prepped the office, posted the posters that best illustrate our work, found some handouts they might like to see, dusted the meeting table. You know…the works. So all was looking great.

But. Then. My daughter woke up sick. Needed LOTS of me. She wanted to work in the garden so off we went.  In sweat pants. Flip Flops. Unshowered. No make up. And…somehow…we lost track of time. At 2 pm, I realized we needed to hustle if we were to pick up my son from school on time. We ran out the door.

Flip flops. Sweat pants. No make up. No shower.

We met O after school, walked to the playground, visited with some precious friends, including another pastors wife from church. 

At 3 pm we got in the car. I picked up my cell phone and a calendar alarm is going off. Isn’t that strange? What could that be?

Oh. Oh My. 

My meeting is in 30 minutes. I have two children in my car. I AM IN SWEAT PANTS. I live in the woods, if I drive all the way home and back I will miss the meeting completely. I chase my friend from church across the highway and say:

“Hey, can my kids come play for an hour, I forgot about something”.

“Of course, my kids will be thrilled”

I literally put my kids on her stairs and squealed my tires out of the driveway. I drive fast. I find myself at Marks Work Warehouse (the only clothing store on this side of town). I RUN in. Grab a dress from the rack. I pay for it without trying it on. I run to my car. I start towards the university. I stop at a red light and I take off my shirt. 

I can’t explain it.

I just did it.

It is more shocking to me than to you ok? Seriously. I don’t know what happened to my panic-stricken mind but in that moment of getting my new dress on, all I could think was “I CAN’T BELIEVE I FORGOT ABOUT THIS”.

So once I was dressed again and looked up to find my little Subaru surrounded by semi trucks terror-struck deep in my heart. “Did I just see Pastor Joel’s wife…???? No. Couldn’t be”. At least…I hope that is what everyone at Hwy 97 and Mccurdy thought.

You guys? I strode into that meeting less than five minutes late. My boss got an email from the Minister of Health telling her that isn’t it “so amazing when you get the right people in the right jobs?! Melissa is great”.

I picked up my children one hour later…they wanted to stay at my friend’s house.

SO WHY DID I TELL YOU THIS HORRIFYING TALE (it might also be awesome….my friend Alison sung me Amy Grant at a dinner party…I just heard this song for the first time and am dying) YOU ASK? Here is the point:

“Destination” churches are dying. Young people don’t believe in slick programs anymore. Driving across town to go to church DOES NOT MAKE SENSE. You need to build your community with the people with whom you are ACTUALLY doing life with. The friend I described above and I have been serving in the same ministry for almost a decade, but we did not become close friends until OUR LIVES STARTING CROSSING OVER. You can’t have genuine relationship with people you see once a month. You cannot be involved in someones life if you only see them across a busy foyer. You need to meet regularly in the nitty, gritty of life. In the school yard, the grocery store, the church service events, the small groups AND THE foyer.

I am not good at this friends. Ask anyone. I like my space. 

Some people need loads more time than I do to fall into intimacy with people…I need very little to feel like we are best friends (it makes me kind of crappy a friend, except for the fact that I am in it for life). But the truth of it is I am ready to collect my people. I want you all in one place. Those of you who are wandering, not participating anywhere, why not come build the church of our dreams? 

Or commit to your neighborhood church. I don’t care where you go actually. But it is time that church stopped being a destination to you. You do not need to go to EVERY event, that EVERY church has. You need one church. You need lots of different types of people. You need to be reminded of the beauty and the burden that is community.

I am a big believer in pendulum shifts in the church. Back and forth with the worship and the service and the evangelism and the discipleship. She swings wildly sometimes and us in service hold on tight. If the scaffolding is Jesus we will stand, if it isn’t? Well…Then we fall and start again and build up from the ground.

I’ve prayed it every year of our ministry. Every week of youth. “Lord God be ruthless with us, tear out every piece of us that hinders, collapse every aspect of us that ceases to glorify you”. You know what? He does…God help us…He does.

But it is a season to build. Will you join us? 

Fall at Willow Park is going to be amazing. Pursuit is cooking. I am excited to build something that stands time, my friends. I want to watch you get married and I want to bring you a casserole when you have a baby. I want to sit beside you when the big uglies of life strike. I want to chase Jesus with you. I want you to have my back too.

If you are a Pursuit woman….will you join us on Sunday? Sarah Bessey (one of my favorite writers and author of an important book coming out this year) is speaking and then we are just going to spend the day having picnics and getting to know each other. Think of it like you are coming for a long tea party in the woods. Its going to be adorable.

I hope you will join us; in all sorts of ways.

(Sorry to spam your life…looks like I got over my finger laryngitis)

A Marriage Letter: To The King of the Exclamation Point

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The luckiest girl in the world...

The luckiest girl in the world…

To the King of the Exclamation Point,

My friend Michelle asked me what my Myers Briggs personality type was last week. I told her and then out of curiosity read a description (it had been a long time ago at work that I learned I am a Dreamer/Idealist. Who knew?). I couldn’t stop reading it aloud to you and being appalled by the fact that I am a raging cliché (which INFPs hate…read about that in paragraph 3). We did your typing next and then held the pair up side by side and marvelled at a marriage that has stood nearly 15 years…we could not be more different. You the king of the exclamation point, me…the queen of the ellipsis.

You’ve noticed that haven’t you? The way I have no capacity to finish a thought, how it keeps spinning and spinning around my head. We will have a conversation and then an hour later I will pipe up with no lead in about what I was trying to say. You have no idea what I am talking about…that conversation for you ended an hour ago with an exclamation point. It is midpoint of our ministry summer, and summer is the time of year when we forget how to communicate. We actually have to repeat things several times for the other to understand. You say we get out of rhythm. That is the truth, for it takes a fine balance to match your exclamation points with all of my ellipses…

You are a preacher. I am a storyteller. Preachers say it is finished. Story tellers keep tracking the back story…but then what happens? You can see it in your sermons, your emails, your invitations to people. You can see it in my text messages, my tweets (even when I am desperate to save characters)…I even tried to slip an ellipsis into an academic piece once. Turns out ellipsis are not part of APA format (learn to use a comma for Petes sake Melissa).

It says a lot about how we process the world. The black and white you see. The gray I get lost in.

I’ve been having those dreams again this summer. You know the ones? Cold sweats, full run, beating heart.  My anxiety has raised its ugly head for the first time in a few years, and though I can manage the beast just fine during the day when the night falls it is a different story. You will find me searching the house for someone or something.  It crossed my mind as I watched you swim with the littles today that maybe it is you I am always looking for, worried about. Or maybe it runs away further when I don’t see you here, always so calm, so dependable, so reliable.

We both know the truth of this thing don’t we? How you are the stabilizing force. How I am desperate for you to put an end to certain thoughts. To finish an idea. To start a new conversation. To have hope in our outcome when, if left to my own devices I would never, ever stop with the “WHAT IFS?”. We both know the truth of it…me without you? I would be under the train for sure…caught in the wreckage of too many thoughts. You are the one that tends to keep me on the tracks, pointing due North.

The first Valentines Day we spent together, I was sixteen and you picked me up in your Ford Escort, the hatch was filled with red roses and blankets and supplies to start a fire by the river. You were just getting started with your setting things on fire, punctuating most moments of our lives with the exclamation points, exuberance, excitement, finality, trust. 

I never told you this before. Three weeks before our wedding, one of my dramatic friends asked me how, someone like me, occasionally lost in my own mind with too many thoughts, and too much internal drama, how could I marry someone with a heart so light, one who carried the world in a completely different sort of basket? Could I deal with that much joy or would it drive me over some metaphoric cliff?

The truth of the matter is that she made my already cool feet turn to ice.

But she didn’t get it and I was just starting to see it. The way we were melding to bring out the best in each other. How being with you made me want to be better, stronger, faithful, honest. How your choosing me gave you some shades, freed you to pursue your call like other relationships might not. How I needed someone to make me laugh like that. How I just plain like to be with you.

It makes me laugh sometimes, all the people we know getting divorced. They say it is because they are too different. We’ve taught each other there is no such thing.

Anyways…We will fall back into rhythm soon. The fine balance of passion and stability that we teeter on.

Till then know that we are missing you something fierce this summer. We are lonely and the balance of this whole place is off… there is just something important missing.

With all my love,

The Queen of the Ellipsis

(Linking with Amber  and friends…so happy you are doing this again! I am linking this letter I wrote this summer to the man…I kept going!)

And if you are looking for more of the marriage letters you can find them here)