Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake

I just returned from vacation.  I always accuse my kids of over packing when we go on a trip.  My one daughter packed six pairs of shoes, and because we traveled with 4 kids and dog, the car seemed loaded down from the moment we pulled out of the driveway but I of course, over packed as well, not only too many clothes for a week at the lake but too many books to read in 5 short days.   However, I did finish 3 books during the week and got reacquainted with one of my best friends. Ann Quindlen's book, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake  was the perfect read to round out the week.   Ms. Quindlen and I share very few of the same beliefs when it comes to politics and religion but I knew we were kindred hearts when she shared her views on marriage, family, and mothering.   I am a little behind her in age, although only by about a decade but I am already sensing much of what she has experienced and shared in this recent memoir.  From her initial penning of what she would grab in a fire, (a few old pictures and her dogs, and the jewelry she was wearing, which would include her wedding ring), she insightfully reminds me that "she'd miss the rest, but she wouldn't mourn it."   I too have found myself taking that approach towards life.  I can find myself lost in her life when she writes, "I find a pronounced urge now to shrink my surroundings, to stick to  just a few comfortable rooms, to have less instead of more".  One thing she does not wish to have less of is love.  She illustrates this well in her writings about marriage.

As she shares part of her wedding vows, I am drawn into her love for her husband.  She recognizes that at the time, the words may have been borrowed from Walt Whitman with the romantic notion of two young lovers, but she recognizes that those words were a preface to the journey they would endure.  "A journey that includes shared setbacks, challenges, knowledge, and many many things that make you crazy as well as some things that make you happy"   She goes on to say, "it's love, sure, and inside jokes, and conversational shorthand but it's also families, friends, traditions, landmarks, knowledge, history.  It's children, children whose parents' marriage is bedrock for them even when they're not children anymore, perhaps especially if they're not children anymore".

When Ann shares about her friendships, I found myself close to tears.  I have a few of those treasured friendships, some in my sisters and sister-in-laws, and some in dear friends, who offer us time at their lake house.  I have those friends that she describes, as "real friends offer both hard truths and soft landings and realize that it's sometimes more important to be nice than honest".

As Ann has realized and writes so fluently in her memoir, as we age, women especially become more insightful to the lives around us but more importantly to ourselves.  We let loose of the illusion of control, we let loose of the illusion of a being a size zero, we let loose of many of the things that we previously thought were impossible.   I am beginning to reach that phase in my life, although being a size zero still appeals to me.  I love the words she says as she talks about growing older, "by the time you've lived for fifty or sixty years, you are better armored to embrace the things about yourself that are true, even if you might think the world sees them as odd, eccentric".

She embraces solitude and embraces the happy and sad moments that life has dealt her. She helped me begin to understand what it means to be the parent of an adult child, which is applicable since my oldest will turn 21 next month.  As I read her analysis of the doctor telling her to "push" as her child was born, I began to cry as I completely understood her next sentence, "little did I know I would have to do that from then on, push to do the right thing for their sake, push to be a better because of their example.  The older I get, the more I want to be like them".

As Ms. Quindlen says near the end of her book, " I couldn't have imagined it would be like this",  I finished her book saying, I couldn't have imagined that a woman, older than myself, from a feminist generation, whose religious and political viewpoints so differ from mine, could impact me so greatly.  That, in my opinion, is the mark of a great author.  She drew me in, she opened her heart, and somewhere along the way, I opened mine too.

Deep and Wide

Today I was part of an amazing experience in my local community.  I was there for the first Sunday of a start-up of a new church.  I've been on a journey for about the past 18 months that has many times felt like I was climbing up a huge mountain and that the air was thinning and it was getting more difficult to breath the harder I had to climb.  What I didn't realize was that in the quest towards the top of the mountain, I would be growing closer to God.   I read my Bible but also read a lot about what Christianity really looks like, not necessarily what it means to be "religious".  Deep and Wide by Andy Stanley was one such book.  The subtitle on this book, is "Creating Churches Unchurched People Love to Attend.  The whole concept of this book, caused me to pause and think about how I view my own faith and how God wants me to live that faith out.   A quote from The Tale of Three Kings, by Gene Edwards summed up many of my feelings over the past year, "Beginning empty handed and alone frightens the best of men.  It also speaks volumes of just how sure they are that God is with them".  It is reading quotes like this that reinforce to me that when I felt truly empty as I headed up that mountain, was when I began to be assured that God was with me.  As Mr. Stanley points out, "What began as unexplainable, became institutional.  Before long, the church was less movement and more establishment.  Two thousand years later, the church is still struggling to regain it's original identity, purpose and passion".  This morning, I was blessed to feel the passion of those around me, to once again be reminded of the purpose, and to be filled with hope of what the future holds.

I wish I could say that the path will be easy now, but that would be assuming too much, and I have come to realize that it's at the times when I begin to think it will be easy, that Christ brings me back to that place of empty handedness so that I can be reassured that He is with me.  However, I spoke of the hope I felt, and although much of that surrounded the church launch, more importantly a key point from Deep and Wide was demonstrated to me.   In summary Andy Stanley says, " the cornerstone or foundation of "the church" is the belief that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God".  He goes on to say, that "two millennia later, that is still the unifying factor within the church".   This concept of unification was so clearly illustrated by other local churches, who bowed their heads in prayer that through this church, the Kingdom would grow and that others would come to know Christ.

The author shares many thoughts throughout the book on transitioning, reaching the lost, and bringing about a new generation of young adults who are passionate about the church.  This is what motivated me to look at my life, my religion, my spirituality.  I have four kids, ages 13-21 and just as scripture says, "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth".  Because of this, I join Andy Stanley in staying, "surely we can find some common ground around out passion to recapture the attention and imagination of a generation of kids that is growing up in a church that can't wait to leave"   I believe this morning, I was standing on some of that common ground, in the midst of my city, singing, "Greater Thing Are Yet To Be Done In This City", all the while humming softly to myself, that old childhood Sunday School Song, "Deep and Wide"  Thank you Andy Stanley for being one of many that God has used this past year to grow my faith Deep and Wide.

Starting Over

                                    


I just finished listening to Once Upon A Time by by Debbie Macomber on audio book as well as being in the process of finishing Start by Jon Acuff and both authors challenged me that it is never to late to start over and that sometimes it is just the process that helps set me on my course to awesome or my very own happy ending.   Both authors write in different styles and both would agree that their faith is evident is all they write, although they both express it in much different ways.  Mrs. Macomber brought me to tears at times as she shared her life story and Mr. Acuff, brought me to tears of a different kind as I laughed out loud as some of his challenges to get me started on the road to awesome.  

One way that God worked through both of them is that He helped me identify that I sometimes just need to begin the process, or in this case, start the process again.  I hope you'll join with me as I write about what I am reading or which book I am listening too and how they have brought me a little closer to my "Happily Ever After" while traveling the road to Awesome.

I'll be getting up a few minutes earlier to write and study a little everyday, so I don't take time away from my precious family (thanks Mr. Acuff), and I'll be writing something everyday without concern for if it is good or if others will read it (thanks Mrs. Macomber).  If all goes well, I'll be sharing my book blog every couple weeks.  Of course, in the process, life will get busy and some weeks, you may get a repeat or a guest blog or even possibly a little glimpse of the life of a wife, mother, nurse, and wanna be writer.  

I hope as we journey together, you'll aspire to "Start" and  reach your awesome and maybe along the way,, your "Once Upon A Time" will end up with a happily ever after.