Gifted and Called. Yes, you are.

It is all the rage nowadays to be nurturing your unique gifting and making it your calling.  People are chasing their dreams, taking life by the horns and rocking it.  It’s happening all around me and sometimes I’m in that group, but other times I doubt.  Anyone with me on that? What I love about being saved though is having Scripture to lay out life - and this passage does exactly that for me.  

Colossians 1:9-12 (The Message)

We pray that you’ll live well for the Master, making him proud of you as you work hard in His orchard.  As you learn more and more how God works, you will learn how to do YOUR work.  We pray that you’ll have the strength to stick it out over the long haul - not the grim strength of gritting your teeth but the glory-strength God gives.  It is strength that endures the unendurable and spills over into joy, thanking the Father who makes us strong enough to take part in everything bright and beautiful that he has for us. 

It says to be working hard in His orchard.  It drives me crazy is when people align being in ministry to working in an actual church setting.  There are a lot of people doing exactly what God called us to do - love God, love people - in settings outside of the church; does that mean they’re doing anything other than working in ministry?  I’m a full-time mom, but I believe I’m working in ministry just as much as any pastor, teacher or evangelist.  And God’s orchard, to me, means that which He is tending to: His people.  And who are His people?  All of them - all the people.  He loves ALL of them, both inside the sanctuary and outside on the corner. So, is what you love to do, is what you’re naturally gifted at being utilized in a way that is loving and blessing people?  Also, it says working hard.  There’s a difference between punching in your time card and browsing Facebook for 4 out of the 8 hours of your workday versus actually putting your mind, passion and quality time into what you are doing.  I want to be the latter.  Fully investing myself in what’s in front of me.  As a friend of mine would say - “Don’t half-ass it, full-ass it”.     

The passage also says to keep learning more and more about how God works because that will translate into how you do your work.  Pretty self-explanatory.  I never want to stop pursuing a friendship with Jesus.  Learning more about Who and how He is will only influence me in my life to be less selfish, more giving, less judgmental and more kind.  

Next up, stick it out when it gets hard.  Life isn’t easy and following any particular path into a bright future isn’t going to just happen.  You HAVE to put in the work.  At the gym I go to they have workouts on a board with specific reps written down that you need to follow.  These reps aren’t a suggestion.  They aren’t a starting off point for negotiation.  You do ALL of them.  Because you want to get better and stronger and faster.  If you don’t do all the reps you’re cheating yourself and you’ll end up wondering why your body isn’t changing and you can’t keep up with everyone else.  And I get it, coming in last sucks, and I come in last frequently.  Or at least I used to. But I kept my head down and have worked really, really hard and now it’s a 1 out of 4 situation when I’m bringing up the rear.  Because my body is truly changing.  And at this point I know it’s a genuine victory, not one that I happened to get lucky in. 

Fourthly, through the hard work recognize change happening - maturity perhaps.  Humble confidence.  The kind that doesn’t flaunt your gift every chance, but is wise and recognizes when to take risks and when to hold off.  The appreciation for your work growing and the thankfulness for God’s grace in helping it reach new depths.  Becoming stronger and recognizing God in the work changes it from grit-strength to glory-strength.  It’s a foolish notion to look at someone that is in a position that you want to be in and think that they got there easily.  Sure, some did, but the ones that truly dig in and move your soul and have gravitas to their work - they struggled to get there.  It’s given them an undercurrent of character that draws people in.  

And lastly, getting to the point where you can enjoy everything bright and beautiful that God has for you.  Note, not relaxing, slipping your shoes off and saying “Ok. I’m done, I’ve made it.”   Cause the beauty is you’ll never want to stop evolving, growing, learning - if you’re doing it well and doing it right. 

So how do you know what your gift or your calling is?  I think there’s a pretty simple way to figure it out.  It’s a scene from one of my favorite all-time movies.  Whoopi Goldberg’s character, Sister Mary Clarence, is talking to Lauryn Hill’s character, Rita, about singing since the former loves it and has a sneaking suspicion the young prodigy in front of her is being resistant for foolish reasons.  Sister Mary tells Rita about an excerpt from a book called “Letters to a young poet” she read by Rainier Maria Rilke.  She looks Rita in her eyes and says this: “Fella used to write to him saying ‘I wanna be a writer, please read my stuff’. And Rilke says to this guy ‘Don’t ask me about being a writer.  If when you wake up in the morning you can think of nothing but writing, then you’re a writer.’ I’m gonna say the same thing to you.  If you wake up in the morning and you can’t think of anything but singing first…then you’re supposed to be a singer, girl”.  

What is it that you think about when you wake up in the morning?  Getting into the kitchen and coming up with a delicious recipe?  Sitting at your computer and writing down your thoughts on any particular topic?  Pushing your body to become stronger and more capable?  Living in a different country and holding kids that haven’t been loved on?  Capturing life through a lens that allows the beauty of God’s creation to be focused on?  Getting on your hands and knees and being present with your kids?  Taking the :30 that your customers are at your drive-up window to interact with them and give them a genuine sense of worth and love?  

Take what you’ve been given - that is your gift.  And do something with it - THAT is your calling.   

Laundry and sin. One and the same.

Let me explain how laundry works at my house.  In my closet there is a huge laundry bin that my hubs and I use to put our dirty clothes in and it gets full rather quickly and kind of lopsidedly (omg “lopsidedly” is an actual word; I was waiting for spellcheck to underline it in red and call me a moron).  I put my dirty clothes in the bin as soon as they’re dirty slowly filling it, while other parties *ahem* put them there once they’ve gathered enough dust on the side of our bed to become a health hazard.  Also, the amount of clothes each person contributes to this bin is not quite equal.  Again, not mentioning any names…4 outfit changes a day.  

I digress, every couple days when I go to start a load of laundry I have a hand-held basket that I’ll use to transport the clothes from our laundry bin down to the washing machine in our basement.  Obviously the hand-held basket is smaller so I can’t fit the whole bin of clothes in, just the top couple armfuls of garments.  Those get taken downstairs and put directly into the washing machine or if I’m really on a rampage I’ll take several loads in the little basket down in a row to get it all into a big basket I keep next to the washer.  

The only problem with this system is that there are two groups of clothes: those that get washed regularly and then those that don’t…for a long time.  The freshest clothes that just got tossed in our closet bin usually get washed within a day or so, but the clothes that are in the second half of my closet bin have a tendency to end up on a missing persons report because of placement. Only when I do the bin purge and then about 5 loads in a row do I end up finding these delightful shirts, workout socks and pants three weeks after I last wore them. 

I know this is a random comparison, but it really stuck out to me this morning and it’s that sin is kind of similar.  

There’s these areas of questionable choices that are everywhere right now and how we treat them can be so nit-picky it makes me want to punch a wall.  They’re the “Why one beer is enough if you love Jesus”, “Christian girls shouldn’t wear short shorts”, and “Seven ways to know you’re a better mom than every other person in your life” arguments.  These are the clothes that are freshly dirty, that always end up as the topic of conversation, that are always on top of the closet bin and are seemingly washed over and over but just keep ending up in the same spot.  

Picking apart a person when you haven’t walked in their shoes and don’t know their life is easy.  You can, on your expert authority and opinion, state exactly why they shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing or saying what they’re saying.  And I’m guilty of this - these topics can be tricky for me.  Because while what Scripture says and doesn’t say is clear, how I interpret that and how the Holy Spirit presses on my life can be different from others.   

Now...do I think you should get hammered every weekend when you have a role as a worship leader at your church?  No. But if you like the taste of wine and have a glass during worship practice - I think that’s totally cool.  Does Scripture say that booty shorts are not to be worn?  I don’t think “booty” is anywhere in the Bible actually.  But at the same time is that showcasing all that God has made you to be?  Is it being respectful of those around you?  Probably not.  The human body is incredible, but seriously when you post Instagram selfies of your stomach wearing jean cut-offs pulled so low I can almost see your pubic hair and you write about relaxing in the park with your Bible I WANT TO PUNCH YOU IN YOUR VAGINA.  And the mom thing.  Look, we all love our babies and they are a priority.  But you don’t know my life and I don’t know yours.  Let’s just leave it at that.  

Are these topics and countless others really addressing sin so much as gray area?  Meh.  All I know is that it’s all people seem to want to talk about and really I think there’s a much bigger picture that believers could focus all that passion on.    

Which is where that second group of dirty laundry lies.  These are the clothes aka sins that somehow remain under the radar, never rising to the top because they’re not trendy, just sinking down to the bottom becoming dirtier and stinkier.  It’s the internal stuff that is masked over and not regularly addressed.  It’s the insecurities, the hard headedness, the pride, the fear, the hatred, the anger - it’s all the stuff that somehow manages to sit in that freaking laundry pile for way longer than necessary because it’s able to.  It sets up shop under the popular fresh sins when it’s up in my closet basket and then gets uncovered temporarily when I do a load or really upended when I purge our whole closet bin into my little basket.  But even when the latter happens, sheer gravity puts those dirty clothes again down on the bottom of the basket in the basement and then they just sit there.  Fo-re-ver.  And it’s the stuff that matters.  The heart stuff.  The sins that are hard to deal with because it’s more than behavior and more than a thought or intent.  It’s looking hard at the truth, being honest with who I am, being humbled by the ugliness of my flesh and feeling embarrassed but also relieved that I am saved and my God loves me.  He knows me.  All of me.  And loves me big.   

What’s the solution?  Pretty simple. I need more Jesus. Cause laundry piles up.  There are distractions to this life and projects and so many things happening good and bad that can draw my attention away from this regular chore.  But I know if I just regularly did my laundry those gross dirty clothes wouldn’t fester.  If I were regularly washing myself in the Word then those dirty heart sins would still happen, but they wouldn’t be able to hide away.  The closer I am to Him the darker anything other than what He has for me shows up and is evident.  Now excuse me while I go start a load in the washer and listen to Jay-Z tell me to get that “Dirt off my shoulder”.  HOVA indeed.   

90 days

It's safe to say my food practices have changed over the last three months.  For starters, the amount of vegetables I've eaten in the last 90 days outnumbers the amount I've eaten in the last year.  This is not an exaggeration.  Also black coffee is now my jam.  I used to get an americano with a little honey and cream, but now - just black.  And it's smokey and bright and delicious.  Lastly - desserts.  My favoritest of all favorite things have been reduced to maybe 6 or 7 for the last three months whereas before that was easily my weekly allotment.

Here's the deal, losing weight is really simple.  I know there's countless magazines and diet plans and ideas about how to do it and what is best and what to cut out and what to eat and how often and how much and all the rest, but here's the basic truth:

Stop eating crap.

Work out hard.

Period.  Done.  That's it.

90 days ago I started on a nutritional reset with the help of the female owner of my gym.  Her name is Codi and she is one of my favorite people.  I love her.  She takes what she does seriously and her keeping me accountable forced me to think about it more intensely than I had before.

I had tried several different eating plans but this one seemed more structured.  Less gray area, cause when there's options I'll go DARK.  So I needed a plan with a strict outline of "yes" foods and "no, don't think about it or I'll cut you" foods.  I started March 1st and my starting weight and yes, I'm actually going to write this for the whole world to see, was a few ounces under 150 pounds.  That's roughly 143 pounds heavier than my birth weight, 52 pounds heavier than my weight when I graduated high school, 35 pounds heavier than my weight when I got married and 22 pounds heavier than my weight when I first got pregnant with Izzy.

The nutrition reset plan was relatively simple - cut out dairy, grains, fruit, sugar and processed foods.  All of it.  ALLLLLLL of it.  At first I thought it wasn't going to be that big of a change from how I ate because we don't eat a lot of pasta or rice and we axed dairy out of our diet back when Izzy was a baby.  Shouldn't be too tough.

Ha.  Hahaha.  Hahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahhahaha.

It has been without a doubt the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life as far as self-control is concerned. But oh, the results.

For one, walking past mirrors is awesome now.  I'm like "Oh, heeeeeeey, girl". Trying on clothes in a dressing room even if it's only fluorescent lighting - not the worst thing ever. Buying clothes two sizes smaller than before - whaaaaaaat?

And I don't want to sound braggy but it just is so simple. And people don't do it. They make eating healthy and working out the exception and not the rule. And that's not going to cut it. This is coming from someone who had that mindset for years and all I managed to add to myself was more pounds.

And there are my pictures.  Putting pics in this blog post proved to be a tad too difficult for my technologically challenged brain, so the three side by sides on my Instagram page are my front, side and back pictures from day 1 and this morning.

My weight this morning is just under 135, so I lost a full 15 pounds.  To some that might not seem like a lot, and to others that might sound like a ton - to me it was perfect.  But aside from the change in my body where I've really changed is in my relationship with food.  Don't get me wrong, I still really like it.  But it's not something that I've turned to for comfort in these last months.  It's not something that I've used in social situations as a buffer.  It's no longer a mindless act fueled by boredom.  Now it's fuel.  It gives my body the energy I need and believing AND acting on that knowledge is incredibly empowering.

Bottom line, if I can do this anyone can.  I have tried unsuccessfully for YEARS to lose weight.  The solution was really this simple though - make the choice and stick to it.  For longer then you're comfortable.  And for longer then is easy.  The payoff is ridiculous.

The grey.

Mornings like today are some of my favorites.  Sweeping my floors awaiting a visit from a friend I got a glimpse of a perfect snapshot: on my kitchen counter a white mug full of tea steeping away and producing a swirl of steam, my pigtailed daughter in the background sitting at the dining room table coloring, beyond that my quiet street lit by the sun, but shaded through the thick clouds that were heavy outside.  I like the grey.  This time of year is usually giving way from the cold and rainy to the blue and bright and most people seem to look for summer with baited breath, but I always feel like the heat could wait.  I know this next phrase probably makes me an outcast, but I'm cool with it - I don't really like summer.

It's too much of a good thing.  Sweating constantly under the hot sunshine, bees / bugs / mosquitos, slathering on toxic chemicals that probably cause just as much skin cancer as the vitamin D rays they're supposed to shelter us from, so much dirt on my children...everywhere...crowds of people and everyone's trying to do the same thing - stay cool.  I'm truly an inside in the a/c girl once the outside temp hits about 80.

Life's seasons can be like that too. A lot of times I find myself wanting summer from God.  Summer, summer, all the time!!  I want good and bright and happy and positive, and I want it now.  I don't want to be in the cold rain of confusion or pain for extended periods.  But as I was enjoying the beauty of this morning, I couldn't help but ponder the cloudy seasons of my life and the loveliness that lies within.

Take my marriage to the man I chose and who chose me.  Lordy Lord, we can get under each other's skin.  I have talked before about wanting a padded room so we can form tackle each other from time to time because we are complete opposites in so many ways.  What he calls "organization" I call chaos.  And what I believe to be "down time" he'd term laziness.  And those differences (and countless others) are tricky to work out.  How do you remain true to what you believe is right and try and push your partner towards seeing your view without the veins in your neck bursting or your eye twitching when you've stated and re-stated your point only to have it met with disbelief and even *gasp* eye rolls?!

Oh no, you didn't.

And then love that person in the midst of those disagreements.  I mean really love them.  Pick up after them, provide for them, give them good kisses, tell them they're important to you - it's tricky.  But those times when there's a storm cloud over the house, those produce the most beautiful work.  My grey sharpens his, like iron on iron.  And the sparks that fly off are magic.

And just like that the afternoon happens...and there's sun.  And it's my favorite kind of sun.  Because the clouds of the morning have been here it's tempered the heat, so it's now bright and beautiful, but it's also mild and breezy.  I could hang out in that all day.

Seasons happen, and I want to be thankful and hopeful and at peace in each one.  To find beauty in the unconventional and to find happiness when it's not obvious.  Because I know that God works in those dark and difficult places.  Usually it's where He shows up the most.  And how lovely is His dwelling place.