Will the real cool kids please stand up?

"She wants to be nice to her friends, but who she is gets in the way of that."

-a children's ministry leader, on a certain "relationally tricky" child

How I laughed when my fellow CM worker described a child this way--and how I related.  Of course I want to be nice to people, and think well of them...but who I am is a bit of a problem sometimes.


I was challenged all weekend at the recent women's retreat to be mature and confident.  First of all, we were encouraged to find our own roommates for the hotel stay.  I asked six different women to room with me and they all turned me down--a blow to shaky self-esteem even if they did have other plans for the weekend.  


I maturely signed up anyway, after which I was assigned a young lady for a roommate that I was absolutely thrilled to have--someone I didn't know was going, whom I love and admire, and was excited to catch up with.  She was likewise pleased to room with me and we made plans to ride together and have dinner together.  It was shaping up to be a lovely weekend after all.   


Then my roommate got sick right before the retreat.  As in, collapsed-in-public, in-the-hospital, needs-surgery sick.  So, probably not a ruse to get out of spending the weekend with me.  


Again, I gathered all the maturity I could muster and courageously drove myself to the hotel, survived a minor panic attack when I couldn't find a parking spot and had no one to help me find one, and checked into my solo room, reassuring myself that the weekend would be extra restful for me in my quietude. 


As we were meeting in a conference room with tables, I picked up my name tag fervently hoping for assigned seats.  I could already see that people were making their way into the conference room in groups with their roommates.


No assigned seats.  


Praise Jesus, another chance to muster maturity and confidence.  


I timidly asked if a seat was taken next to someone I marginally knew, and was relieved to hear that it was available for me.  


The opening session was good, my marginal acquaintance took charge of leading the discussion questions at our table after the presentation, and by the time we were done I was feeling bonded and comfortable with my group.  


Then I found out we were to be in a different conference room the next day, so--all new tables.  


Perfect.

Do bunnies worry about fitting in?

However, also at the opening session, word started to leak out that I had an empty bed in my hotel room, and then offers started to come in.  Many women were bunked up so snug that they were sharing beds.  My friend at the discussion table was one such lady, and I gladly welcomed her to join me in my room instead.  

The relief I felt at having a roommate was accentuated by discovering that right next door to my room was a room of four ladies.  All of them live near each other in real life, are friends, and are the ones who turned it into a party by bringing bottles of wine, Solo cups, and other assorted adult beverages.  I heard them giggling together late into the night.  

They spoke in my ear both before and after the opening session that they had wine and would I join them that evening in their room?  I was of course happy to be included (and who doesn't like wine from a Solo cup in a hotel room).  

We laughed and talked and they were sweet and kind.  Maybe my maturity had just been strained too much, or maybe I'm too deeply scarred from middle school...but it's so hard for me not to often feel like an outsider looking in.  They all knew each other from way back when, had gone through pregnancies together, had gone to the Caribbean on vacation together.  They're beautiful and savvy and look cute in their pj's and bed hair.  

And I'm convinced in those moments that I'm still an awkward, nervous 12-year-old.  

It's painful.

Is 38 too young to hope to be over pubescent insecurities?

Apparently.

Sometime after the retreat my friend who also happens to be the children's ministry director at our church--a very visible and well-known position--asked me to have lunch with her.  I like her so much I accepted without hesitation, even knowing that it was possible she had an agenda--like some role she wanted me to consider filling, or brainstorming about programs or something.  

Lunch began with an assurance that she did not have an agenda, and then chastisement for me thinking that she didn't like me very much.  "How could you think that?  You need to start believing truth!"

We compared notes about the retreat.  She roomed with her mom just on the other side of what we agreed was the "cool kid room."  I confessed my insecurity when no one wanted to room with me, and she told me that no one had ever asked her to room with them on a retreat.  I was taken aback.  Why didn't you ask me? she said.  I spluttered that I figured she was so important (famous, as my kids say) that she always has roommates and tablemates and friends lined up.  I tried to insist that she is one of the cool kids, just like the ladies next door to us.  She came back that she sees me as one of the cool kids.  I became thoroughly confused.  Do you even know me at all?

I remember one wise friend I had in college, a couple years ahead of me.  We were both involved in a large campus ministry group, several hundred students or so.  He said that he spent a long time trying to get into the "inner circle"--the cool kids--and when he finally got there, he discovered that everyone there was also trying to find the inner circle.  

In other words, no one believes that they themselves are one of the cool kids.  

When I was twelve, it was very clear to me who were the cool kids and who were not.  I have a hard time wrapping my head around the thought that they themselves did not know they were In.  

But if the gospel I believe tells me anything, it's that we are all the same.  The human condition is sin, yes, but also fear, uncertainty, desire to fit in, and disconnect with our fellow (wo)man.  I don't think I can bring myself to believe that there aren't others who aren't genuinely funnier, prettier, and slicker than I am.  But I must believe that even they are hurting inside at the fear of rejection and in need of kindness, even from me.

Mother is the necessity of invention

...meaning that sometimes when you're a mother, and your daughter wants to be a white cat for Halloween, and the only cat costumes the universe sells are black cats, and you have no sewing skills to speak of, it becomes necessary to project confidence, bravely gather all the white fluffy items you can find, and start inventing.

And then you thank God that at age eight, your daughter hasn't yet set the bar too high for your best hasty efforts.

And that your kids are cute no matter what they're wearing.

Halloween, after all, is a time to celebrate candy (as Ada says) and make yourself ridiculous...

...dressing as a construction worker, a knight, a butterfly, a flamingo, a redneck, or a white cat, as the case may be.

I decided a full year ago that 2018 would be the year I finally throw a big Halloween party, complete with games, costumes, oodles of kids, and a garage-turned-haunted-house.

And a special bonus:  Madame Zola came and told fortunes!  She was a big hit.

Jed very impressively made his own costume, entirely out of cardboard boxes and spray paint.

Roads

Jason accused me recently of being a glass-half-empty kind of person when I flinched and squealed from the passenger seat because the gigantic semi truck next to us was coming way over the line.  "Look on the bright side--the truck is half in the other lane."

[It wasn't the only car-related alarm recently; I was driving one day when a small voice from the back seat said, "Um, I have a situation..."  I turned around to see my small child with the neighboring seat's seat belt looped around said child's neck like a noose, being gingerly held with two hands to preserve the little slack still left.  

These are situations where with all your might you just want to know WHY, but the time is not appropriate to ask probing questions.  Nor is it appropriate or necessary to deliver the indignant, wisdom-imparting lecture once the trembling child has been extricated from his or her self-made hazardous predicament.  We've been here before.  Sometimes one memorable experience really is the best teacher of wisdom to our children.]

Apropos my last post, we were surviving the errant semi truck on the highway because we were on our way to my brother's ordination weekend.  

My brother, my brother--whom I've known all my life, who alternately played with me and tormented me as kids, who wore a perpetual scowl when he had to take me to high school every day, who went off to college and met Jesus and subsequently persuaded me to join him there and threw me a surprise 18th-birthday party with all his friends on freshman move-in weekend so I would have some friends, who was my friend throughout college minus the tormenting, who eventually, sadly, moved out of town--is now a PCA pastor.

I'm so glad I got to be there.

Coming fresh off my weekend retreat where I pondered Jesus' words of life and the determination some old friends have made to turn away from them, I watched my brother make holy vows to serve the Lord and His church as pastor, and listened to what his shepherding and examination elders had to say about him, and I wept.  

How is it that some believing friends have wandered away, and here is my brother, and me, and various others I know--in the same circles twenty years ago--all these years later, still pressing in to Christ?  

I saw clearly, sitting in that church service, the divergent paths we have taken, all of us seeking the good life, and I wept for God's persevering mercy on my brother, and on me. 

Photo by Fahrul Azmi on Unsplash

Fake news

Caleb, zooming a toy helicopter around the school room and imitating a news reporter:  "Buck is not out.  This is not fake news."

Buck usually is out of his cage during school, which is why that particular moment was newsworthy in Caleb's eyes.  The fence shown below is only to keep him away from library books, which get expensive to replace and are apparently tasty.

Jason held down the fort while I went to an overnight women's retreat.  The first talk in the evening was about John 6:66-69:

As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore.  So Jesus said to the twelve, "You do not want to go away also, do you?"  Simon Peter answered Him, "Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have words of eternal life.  We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God."

Earlier in chapter 6, Jesus had fed the five thousand with five loaves and two fish.  The crowds went wild.  Campaign slogans started forming: Jesus for king!  They followed him across the sea and said, "Do it again!"


That's when Jesus started saying things like:


The will of God is more important than food.

I alone can satisfy your soul.

I am the answer to all the prophecies.

Apart from Me you are condemned.


And as a result of these statements, many disciples withdrew from Jesus and were not walking with Him anymore.


There was so much going on that the twelve didn't understand.  Why didn't Jesus take the throne?  Why did He insist on saying things that drove his friends away?  And why on earth did He talk about people needing to eat His flesh and drink His blood?


But as our speaker pointed out, the twelve got the main thing:  Jesus = life. 


We don't understand.  But where else can we turn?  

On Ada's birthday shopping trip, I took her out to dinner at The Cheesecake Factory.  The restaurant was crowded, so I sat with my 11-year-old daughter at the bar--a first for her.

Toasted Marshmallow S'Mores Galore cheesecake.

Later that evening some of us socialized back in the hotel room over Solo cups of wine.  And one woman told me of several old college friends--friends I was in Bible studies with, friends I prayed with, friends I partnered with to share the gospel--who are no longer following Jesus.


It hurt me deeper than I would have guessed to hear this news.  I kept thinking but that can't be, while recalling the times spent together with these friends in campus ministry.  I thought their faith was so solid.... but they gave it up.


I've long ago lost touch with these friends (obviously).  And I don't know their hearts or their circumstances.  But I found myself unable to stop thinking of them the rest of the weekend, and indeed into the next week.  If I could talk to them, I would say,


Have you found someone else with words of life?


Who is it?  Where is it?  If there if life out there, satisfying, eternal life, that doesn't say or do confusing things, and doesn't ask anything of me, tell me; I want to know about it.  


Jesus says terribly inconvenient things. 


No one comes to the Father but through Me.  Take up your cross and follow Me.  Whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.  


And a million more.  And on account of this, many turn back and walk with Him no more. 


But to whom do they go?


Believe me, if there was a way that made perfect sense, I'd be on board.  How pleasant it would be to have a god who would demand nothing of me, who wouldn't promise me I'll go through the valley of the shadow of death in his service. 


But where are the words of life?


To whom, really, would I go?  I've yet to find a better explanation for the universe's existence, the human condition, and the claims of various world religions, than that Jesus really is the voice to listen to. 

Feast on Jesus' words.

It seems to me the choice is between a very demanding offer of eternal life, or a much easier offer of ignoring Jesus' words for a few more years, preferring instead to listen to any voice that says we're all just fine.  Many of Jesus' own disciples--then and today--have turned back from Him, after all.

Lord, to whom shall we go?