When we’re children, our moms seem like know-it-alls.  They are the ones in control. The ones who say when we go to bed and how many bites of green beans we have to eat before we get any ice cream and then how long we have to wait after eating to go swimming.  They always have sunscreen and Band-aids and snacks in their gigantic purses.  They hold all the cards, and they always seem to know what they’re doing.

My amazing mom and me

Imagine my surprise when I became a mom myself to learn that when they hand you your baby for the first time, they don’t also hand you the magical secrets that all moms know, all the instructions for how to know what to do at every moment, and all the answers you’ll need for all the questions your children will ask. 

I remember insisting that the first night home from the hospital with our new baby that my husband and I be left alone.  I kicked all the relatives that had gathered out of the house with this picture in my head of the sweet little nuclear family bonding all alone together…  Let’s just say that night and future nights convinced me of how much I had to learn.   

The next morning my mother called to see how things went and heard the sound of my voice.  A little while later she called back: Jessica, she said, I’m on my way there. And I’ve packed a bag for several nights. I think you need help, and you just don’t know it.

She was wrong about one thing: I knew it! I was not in control and one night alone with my husband and that newborn baby told me so.

During those early weeks of motherhood I remember trying to stay awake to finish reading all of those baby-care and parenting books that seemed so important at the time – like they were going to tell me all the things I desperately needed to know about becoming a mom.  

On the way home from the hospital with Drew

There were some good tips here and there, but they all came up short of telling me what I was really looking for.  I was looking for someone to tell me what it meant to “become a mom.” Not what it meant to schedule feedings, or sleep-train, or plan date nights or locate amazing child care.  I wanted someone to explain not just what was happening to the baby, but what was happening to me. This whole identity shift from who I was before to the person I was becoming, mostly without my control or consent.  

What did it mean to be the new me?  The person whose life now obsessively rotated around a three hour cycle of nursing, changing, sleeping, changing and nursing again.  My life was totally consumed. I wasn’t sure who I was anymore, and I didn’t really have time to think about it.

The tiny part of me that had a few extra brain cells for self-reflection wondered:  
In the middle of figuring out my baby and his needs, when would I have a chance to figure out who I was again?  Where had the me gone that I once liked so much and was so attached to, and would I find her again?

Back in my more put-together days, when I could browse in bookstores and leave the house on a whim to go shopping for no reason, or to “run into the store” without 50 pounds of baby gear, I remembered seeing new moms who were venturing out in public for the first time.  They were unaware of their smeared mascara and baby spit-up dried on their shooulder, their clothing not fitting them right, their hair thrown up in a ponytail at best, their sense of arriving somewhere on time or making eye contact in a grown-up conversation totally forgotten.  

And a phrase that I had heard people use about women in that stage (and other stages) of life came to mind.  Forgive me, but I thought to myself: “She’s let herself go.”  

When I had a chance to throw my own unwashed hair into the new-mom ponytail and glance for half a second in the mirror to see the spit-up on my shoulder, I wondered the same thing about me. Had I let myself go?

The answer is yes.  And in a way, it’s not a bad thing.  Because really I cared about way too much in the past that wasn’t really me.  Some of those things I’ve lost control of were not the things I should’ve been controlling in the first place.  I wasn’t losing myself, just the scaffold of image I had created around the identity that is truly me.

There are things I don’t really have time to care about any more.  
Do I have the right haircut to frame the shape of my face?  
Have I bought the latest sandals for this season?  
Is my purse SO last year?
Have I read all the issues of the magazines that arrive at my house and am I getting the right magazines?  
Have I made an effort at friendship or acquaintanceship with the people that it seems important for me to impress?  
Do I sound smart to my colleagues? 
Are my roots showing?  
I mean: Who has time to think such thoughts anymore?

Having children makes me think daily about what’s really important and what’s not.  Because there’s not time for both!  And because of that, I may not have let myself go after all. I may have been forced to find who I really am.    Because there’s just no extra time or extra brain cells left to pretend to be anyone but my true self, not even to pretend it to myself. 

With Drew at 18 months

I find myself, on the verge of having a newborn again, this time with a bonus toddler thrown in for fun, frantically re-evaluating my life once more. Because I know I’m about to lose myself all over again.  My little reflection time is spent thinking again about what is most important for me to do and to be, and how to protect and preserve that.

That’s something I honestly didn’t think about much about when my whole life was mostly dedicated to me – before I lost myself. 

Losing something can actually help you find what’s really there.  It’s actually a chance to let go of what we thought was important and reestablish who we want to be. There’s just no time any more to invent our identities based on what other people will think of us.  

Caring about what other people think is a luxury we do not have time for when we spend our lives caring for others.  What’s important now is to figure out who we really want to be, who God has created us to be and who he’s transforming us to be, and grab onto it with a death-grip that will not let go.  Because we have to fight not to lose the really important things.

Because all of those details that involve keeping small people alive and nurtured are going to overwhelm our lives and our thoughts, and if we want to have any self left over when they are old enough to keep themselves alive we are going to have to fight for it now.

Who am I now?  None of those parenting books had a chapter that can tell me the answer to that question.  What part of me did not go away when I stopped caring about the things that weren’t really me in the first place?  What part of me do I miss and want to reclaim badly enough that I will go through the gargantuan task of finding someone else to care for my child for a short time while I pursue it?  

And where does my relationship with God fit into this picture?  Was it so superficial that it was easily discarded when my life became consumed by children?  Or is it a part of me that now I long for all the more, especially when I have the least time for it?  

Jesus’ cousin John the Baptist said about Him: I must decrease, so that He may increase. As the parts of me that I have less and less time for slip away, am I holding onto the identity of Christ in me in a new way?  

Parenting is a glorious opportunity to become more like Jesus through acts of sacrifice and submission that I may never have had otherwise, to serve the Lord while I serve my family. It’s also a chance to see Jesus’ character grow in us in the places where less substantial things have withered away from lack of attention.  

The desire to claim a new you that reflects the character of Jesus and the individual, beautiful person he made you to be is emerging as the stuff that doesn’t matter fades into the background. That’s a gift.  

Losing what you thought was you is a gift, but only if you use it as an opportunity to find out who you really are with God’s help.  You don’t have the time to waste on the trivial stuff anymore.  

The desired outcome of parenting for our children can be found in those books that I still have on the shelf. I should probably go back and read some of them again – in my spare time – before the new baby comes.

They tell us how to get the outcome we want for our kids – We want them to be well fed, well rested, well adjusted individuals who love Jesus and contribute to the world in a way that matters.

But the outcome of parenting for us is not in those books.  It is something we have to take the time to wrestle with if we’re going to lose the parts of ourselves that don’t matter and find the parts of ourselves that do.  

To get a little out of control in order to place ourselves and our children in the hands of the One who ultimately is in control after all. 

To let ourselves go.

The journey of Holy Weekend begins on Maundy Thursday.  Thursday was a big day for Jesus.  A friend said to me tonight: It started out with a party, but it didn’t stay that way for long.

Jesus went from washing his disciples’ feet to eating a supper he called his body and blood. At that party one of his closest friends betrayed him and left, which must have really killed the mood.  And then he ended up in a garden with a handful of friends who fell asleep while he prayed that God would come up with some other plan than this ridiculously painful thing that was about to happen to him.  He didn’t.  In the end his enemies arrived and arrested him.  And Jesus surrendered.

Surrender is a great word to describe what happened in that garden.

Gethsemane, January 2012

The garden is named Gethsemane, and it is my favorite place in all of Israel.  Going there made me feel connected to Jesus in a deep way, because I can picture exactly what happened there.  Of all the places I’ve visited on my two trips to the Holy Land, Gethsemane still looks and feels somewhat the same as it might have the night Jesus prayed there.  The ancient, gnarled olive trees with root systems around 1700 years old are descendants of the trees Jesus knelt by, watered with his tears and sweat in the agony of prayer.

Gethsemane is a place of surrender in a couple of ways.  It was there that Jesus surrendered spiritually to God’s plan, saying “Not my will but yours be done.”  And then at the end of the night he surrendered physically to the soldiers who arrested him. 

One act of surrender seems active: a wrestling and inner struggle so powerful that we’re told his sweat came out in great drops of blood.  The church next to the garden is called the Church of the Agony.  Those Catholics are always so cheerful in when they name things.  The night Jesus spent there in prayer was one of agony.  He’s described as distressed, agitated, grieved, even unto death

If his surrender to God in prayer is an active one, filled with overwhelming passion and struggle, the military surrender that follows seems almost anticlimactic. A passive act. What we usually think of as a submissive relinquishment, the waving of a white flag:
“Go ahead and take me.  I won’t fight. I surrender.”

Is surrender an active fight? Or is it when we passively stop fighting

I would say it’s both:
Surrender is the fight to stop fighting
———————————-

Life has never seemed like a passive prospect to me

I’ve always been what you’d call “Goal Oriented.”  Ambitious, even. 

Growing up I became accustomed to seeing what I wanted and working to get it.  The achievement of one goal always led to another ladder to climb, another target to accomplish. 

When God knocked me for a loop halfway through a pre-med degree and pointed me in the direction of ordained ministry, I’m not sure I surrendered to that call.  I really just found in it another series of goals to pursue. 

Preparing for ministry is great if you’re an over-achiever.  There’s an academic track to complete (graduate school with courses to cross off a list) and a set of hoops required by the church to reach ordination (tests, papers, meetings, and several levels of board interviews).  Once you climb one rung, you find another.  At the end of it all a bishop prays over you and you’ve reached the rank of pastor.

The same year I got ordained Jim and I got married and moved to the church where we currently serve.  It seemed like the perfect timing to pursue the other big goal I had felt all along, the dual calling to ministry and to motherhood.

Achieving this second calling seemed like it would be easy enough, just another goal that would be simple to grasp.  But it turned out I was wrong about that.  For the first time there was something I wanted that I couldn’t just make happen.

What ensued was a 4 year struggle with infertility and the loss of several pregnancies.  In the midst of the grief and even times of depression that followed, I still held onto my active, goal setting nature. 

I came up with detailed plans about what doctor to see next, what drug to take next, what procedure was around the corner. My medical background and access to the internet meant that I read and researched so much I think I scared my doctors by telling them the best course of treatment before they could tell me.  With all that was completely out of control in my life, I continually found ways to be as in control of the situation as possible, even if only in my head.  But nothing that I did meant the realization of my dream.

———————-
Strangely enough around the same time I developed a phobia, a sense of uncontrollable anxiety and fear.  Every time I got into the passenger’s seat of a car and someone else started driving, my heart began racing.  As soon as they turned onto the road and I realized I didn’t have control of the wheel I would get nervous, panicky even, several times I bordered on an anxiety attack, just because I could see where we were going, but I couldn’t steer. I couldn’t brake. I wasn’t in the driver’s seat.

I realized one day there was an uncanny parallel between the lack of control in doctors’ offices – my feet pressing into stirrups as I searched for ways to control this out of control experience of infertility – and the anxiety of my foot pressing the floor of the passenger’s side – my reflexes looking for a brake even when it was obvious that there would be no controlling the journey.

The years we spent in and out of doctor’s offices, up and down the roller coaster of infertility and pregnancy and miscarriage, taught me more about surrender than I cared to learn.

I learned over and over again about the fight to stop fighting.  I had no choice. I had to surrender and let happen a future I couldn’t control or predict.

When we got pregnant with Drew we went to a high risk doctor for a while, holding our breaths at every visit while we waited for the heartbeat to flicker on the screen, waiting to see if this was finally the baby who was going to make it.  There were drugs and tests and daily injections with crazy side effects and lots of statistics to read about on the internet and worry over – as if I had one ounce of control over the outcome.

At the end of our time with that doctor she released us to the care of a regular obstetrician. I’ll never forget that day.  I should’ve been ecstatic.  I had reached a goal! I was graduating!  Instead the day I walked out of the high risk office doctor’s was one of the hardest days of my life.  Our doctor took me off every medication. She took away my daily injections. She stopped the weekly visits and ultrasounds that kept me going.

 Before I left I asked her: “And what do we do now?”
“Just let it happen,” She said!
Let it happen?  That was not in my vocabulary! I made things happen. I didn’t let them happen.  I panicked. The passengers’ seat was not a comfortable place to be.

It was tempting to replace research and medical intervention with constant worry.  The fight to stop fighting was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. 

Even today, with a healthy two-year-old and pregnant with our second child, I forget sometimes that I don’t have to actively plan and orchestrate this baby’s growth.  What am I supposed to be doing? If I don’t think about what organ is developing or what phase of growth this baby is in, will it still happen?  I forget that something is happening TO me, someone is growing inside of me without my help or even consciousness, and I’m supposed to just let it happen.

All of that surrendering has been great training for parenthood, for learning that no matter how much I plan and read and act, I actually have much less control than I would like over the two year old in my house, his behavior, and the person he will become.

Surrender has been great training for my relationship with God too.  As much as I’d like to think otherwise with my work and prayer and study and ministry and feverish effort to contribute to His Kingdom, God is just not a plan I can work. He’s not a ladder I can climb one spiritual discipline or ministry act at a time.

The most powerful force in the universe is actually the one working on me, not the other way around. And my job is to let him. To surrender.

I’m not the one in the driver’s seat.  And the life of the Spirit is growing in me slowly, moving inside of me, gradually, taking over every system of my life. I’m not making it happen – I’m letting it happen to me.

I’m in the midst of the biggest surrender of my life – a fight to stop fighting the God who has a grip on me so tight that I can let go. I can loosen my grip a little. And it will be OK.

———————————-
Gethsemane means “The Olive Press.”  When olives are pressed, they surrender the most valuable substance they have to offer: their oil.    It is a staple in parts of the world for cooking, but also for healing wounds.  That oil has been known to be a nourishing and a healing balm for as far back as people knew what an olive tree was.  But it only comes out when the olive is crushed. 

The Mount of Olives where the garden stands has a perfect view of the opposite hill where Abraham laid Isaac on an altar and surrendered.  It overlooks the city where Jesus was hung on a cross and surrendered his spirit and died the very next day after his prayer in the garden.

The story of Gethsemane in Luke tells us that under pressure Jesus sweat great drops of blood in that garden that fell to the ground and into the roots of those trees.  That means that the first blood of the cross didn’t fall on Golgotha, it was spilled in prayer on the ground of Gethsemane, the olive press, the place of surrender.

The place where Jesus taught us about the fight to stop fighting God and say: “Not my will, but yours be done.” 

At the end of that night in the garden, when Peter went rogue and pulled a sword to try to start fighting the soldiers who came to arrest Jesus in Gethsemane, he had no idea that there was no reason to go into battle.  It was already over.  The surrender had already happened before those soldiers even showed up

And because of that there was nothing they could take from Jesus – he never actually surrendered to them because he had surrendered already. To his Father. The battle was basically done on Thursday before the cross ever appeared on Friday.

That’s the power of surrender. There’s nothing the world can do to us – because the control has already been handed over to the one who understands the power of surrender better than we ever will.

Jeff was one of our favorite speakers to invite to speak to our youth groups.  He always had a powerful presentation, always held the attention of even the most A.D.D. teenagers, and (cardinal rule of youth ministry) he always had them crying by the end.  Jeff’s testimony centered around his own teenage years, when he had been rebellious and wild, rejecting his parents’ Christian views and filling his life with parties, alcohol and sex.  At the pinnacle of his story, Jeff left a party under the influence of alcohol and tried to drive his car home.  When his best friend stood in his way, intending to stop him from driving drunk, Jeff didn’t see him in his rear-view mirror, and unintentionally backed over his friend, killing him instantly.  The wake-up call was immediate.  In the midst of grief, confession and repentance, Jeff gave his life to Jesus and pledged to go into ministry telling his story to prevent other teens from going down the wrong path.

Teenagers loved the drama of Jeff’s story and the transformation they saw in him.  Each time he told it, a handful of them realized they were on the same path of rebellion and made a dramatic turn with their own lives.  

But then there were the rest.  Good, church-going kids, many of them had already given their lives to Christ.  Most could not identify with the dramatic circumstances of Jeff’s life. Many of them lamented: “I don’t really have a testimony. God hasn’t done much in my life compared to Jeff.”  They didn’t realize they were being daily transformed in little ways, or that it was important to expect God’s help with the smallest things.  Turning their temptations towards greed, lust, selfishness and materialism over to God bit by bit was forming a dramatically different future for them.  They were  becoming new and different people, but sometimes the alterations were almost too small to see.

When God changed Abram and Sarai’s names to Abraham and Sarah, the transformation might have seemed small.  In Hebrew it was just one tiny letter a piece. But when God makes changes, the tiniest adjustment can communicate big things, to us, our futures, and to those whose lives we impact.  

Abram and Sarai each receive the same letter as an addition to their names.  In Hebrew the letter is called “Hey” and is written like this: ה

אַבְרָם(Abram) becomes אַבְרָהָם (Abraham) and שָׂרַי(Sarai) was renamed שָׂרָה (Sarah).

In Hebrew, letters have significance beyond just a pronounced sound.  Each character of the Hebrew alphabet is infused with meaning.  The letter Hey, for example, also signifies the number five, since it’s the fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet.  Hey sometimes represents the divine breath, revelation, and light. In some Jewish teachings, Hey is a picture of the presence of God within the human heart.  Adding Hey at the very end of a Hebrew noun gives the word a feminine character, which can metaphorically mean the word has become “fruitful” or reproductive.

What might that little letter have meant to Abraham and Sarah?  Hearing their new names spoken by God they might have seen clear picture painted of their future.  Not just a picture of becoming the Father of Many Nations, or A True Princess (the meanings of their new names), but a picture of a God who wanted to dwell in their hearts, making his presence as accessible as their next breath.  A picture of a new life that was fruitful and reproductive, infused with hope of a family that they had dreamed of for years and a God who would surround and bless them.

Too often we underestimate the value of small changes God makes in our lives.  What looks like one little letter to us meant the whole world to Abraham and Sarah.  Dramatic testimonies are inspiring, but if we miss the small changes God is making, we will miss the big picture He’s painting for a big future.

 “God works powerfully, but for the most part gently and gradually.”
-John Newton, who wrote Amazing Grace

(Note: To learn more about the Hebrew alphabet, follow this link and click on individual letters to learn their character and meaning.) 
http://hebrew4christians.com/Grammar/Unit_One/Aleph-Bet/

Can you think of someone whose life was changed in a small way by God?  I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Today I’m giving a presentation on “Social Media and Ministry” to a group of Christian Educators.  It was fun actually using social media to prepare for the presentation by posting a request on Facebook and Twitter for people to share ways they’ve seen social networking impact ministry in positive and negative ways.  The response was amazing.  I got comments, twitter responses, and phone calls – all because people wanted to talk about how this topic is changing the way they do ministry.

Although I’m not a professional in social media, I am a practitioner.  I love the ways that it has helped me connect with people inside and outside my church for ministry and relationships.

I also feel it’s misunderstood and ignored by many churches and people in ministry.  We need to be talking and learning about how this can be a great asset to ministry.  As great as the first printing press was for the Bible.  The church needs to stop lagging after cultural trends and be on the leading edge of how people communicate, relate, and learn.

I want to offer you some of the resources I’m using in the presentation. If you know of others, please add them in the comments.

Here are some websites and resources to get you started:

Social Media Revolution Video (4:19)

Justin Wise has an exhaustive compilation of resources here. Many of them are great places to start. This is the list that I would type here, only Justin has already done it for me.
http://justinwise.net/social-media-resources#more-1451

Church Marketing Sucks blog
http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com/ 
Start with their “Read This First” tab – especially the series: “Facebook for Churches”

Church Social Media
Blog http://churchsocmed.blogspot.com/
Twitter @chsocm

Here’s one on from Justin Wise on understanding the relationship between an overall communications strategy and a social media strategy. Both are so important.
http://justinwise.net/communications-pyramid

What else would you add?

Only epic Facebook news could produce 314 “likes” and 195 comments.*  
And epic news is what we have.  Jim and I were blown away by the congratulatory responses to our announcement on Facebook last week that we are expecting a baby in June of 2012.   Who knew so many people wanted us to continue to procreate?  We are awed and grateful at everyone who wished our growing little family well. 
*(Cumulatively between my status announcement timed precisely with Jim’s status announcement. Can’t have one parent scooping the other on the internet!)

Playdough Alien, or Living Proof?

Going public with news that has been a family secret for a few months has been fun – and a little overwhelming.  Public for us means MUCHO public, like 1400-Facebook-friends and 9000-church-members-public.  Jim was keeping count of how many people he had never met before came up to congratulate him at church Sunday.  He has it easy – I got “belly-groped” the very first day I started telling people at church.  As in – “I’m only 13 weeks pregnant and that’s just my chubby abdomen you’re rubbing, lady.”  I’m sure I’ll have enough material for a full post about belly-groping soon, so I’ll save it now.

When I told people that I was pregnant with Drew, I was amazed at how excited relative strangers were for us, and how personal people immediately got with me.  How eager they were to share very, very specific details of their own pregnancies, deliveries and (yes, Virginia) breast-feeding experiences without prompting.  

If you and I are on a first name basis, I’m not talking about you here.  I was so new and green to the whole mommy-hood experience that I was seeking advice from all familiar quarters.  But it’s a little disconcerting to have someone whose name you don’t actually know share the inner secrets of their lady-parts, their ability to squirt milk across a room, or the fact that they breastfed their children until they were seven years old.  (None of these stories are exaggerated, I assure you.)

The personal nature of conversations with strangers wasn’t limited to their experiences. People had questions.  Lots of questions.  If people shared personal things during my first pregnancy, they were even more adamant in their personal questions.  They wanted me to reciprocate with information about my pregnancy and delivery and parenting plans.  This week that trend has begun again, including a question that I don’t remember being asked the first time around: 

“Were you trying?”

A gentleman in his 60′s first asked the question the day we went public with our info, and I just stared at him for a moment, dumbfounded.  My answer to personal questions, as always, is just not to answer at all.  So he just kept talking: “I didn’t know you were trying.”  My response: “It’s not something you generally post in the church newsletter.”  Not taking the hint he responded: “Well, maybe that’s something you just share with your girlfriends, I just didn’t know you were going for it again!”  I wasn’t aware that he expected an update!

Several more questions about “trying” (though slightly more delicately worded) have been posed this week.  I’m sure many people aren’t shy about sharing that they had a plan for family planning, or that they intentionally planned their children a certain number of years apart.  (Although what’s the alternative response to this question?  ”No, it was a total accident! Things got out of hand after a couple of shots of whiskey one night and we just threw caution to the wind…”  Is that a response they’re prepared for?) 

For many people I’m sure that answering questions about the intentions behind their pregnancies is just a normal part of a normal childbearing experience.  But it feels like a very, very personal question when you haven’t had any “normal” in your childbearing experience at all.  When your experience involves infertility and miscarriage, doctors offices and tests, surgeries and treatments, when grief is as much a part of your efforts to build a family as hope, “trying” is a very trying process indeed.  One that we’ve not shared with many people outside of our inner circle.  

When a baby is the result of years of a private cycle of ardent hope and shattered dreams, when a plus sign on a stick doesn’t always have a happy ending, going public feels a little like wearing your heart on the outside of your clothes.  The first few months of keeping the news to ourselves feels like we have a delicious secret, one that we’d love to share with people, but also one that we’re not quite ready to fully admit to ourselves.  The moment of telling, of taking the personal and putting it in the public domain, is a bittersweet one.  My voice catches a little in my throat when I say the words “I’m pregnant!” to people.  Because I’m not just telling them.  I’m really telling myself over and over: This is for real. It’s happening.  It’s time to stop being scared and be happy. And then be scared again.  
Because, Oh My Gosh, how on earth will I ever handle two???

Commenters: Have people ever shared or asked you for too much information?

The night that Casey Anthony was acquitted, my Facebook and Twitter feeds lit up with people raging against the perceived lack of justice that had been done by letting her go when most of the nation believed her to be guilty.  

Used by permission - flickr account was_bedeutet_jemanden

Statuses on my Facebook wall ranged from: 
“Justice is in God’s hands only.”
to “Casey Anthony is free. God help her, because I wouldn’t.”
to “That bitch needs to get cut before she leaves the courthouse.”
What can I say?  I have an eclectic set of friends.

By late afternoon a new kind of post was circling the web, an invitation to “Leave the light on for Caylee.”  The idea was to turn your porch lights on that night and leave them on until the morning as a sign of love and support for the deceased, Caylee Anthony.  Two million people RSVP’ed to a Facebook group, pledging to light up their porches for Caylee the night that her mother’s trial ended.  

Now, I understand that people needed a constructive outlet for their rage and grief over something that the media had blown up in our faces for months, only to be dropped in a hot potato of disappointment.  But then again, that’s just it. This wasn’t a constructive outlet. Running up electric bills for a few hours did nothing to help Caylee, or better yet to help children like her who live in abusive and perilous households.  In fact, I think it hurt the cause of those living children instead of helping them.  Here’s why.

Every time someone participates in an act of cyber-activism they are bolstering their own image as someone who cares, in their own mind and in the mind of others.  It’s easy to believe that I’ve done something constructive when I say “Post this as your status for an hour if you know someone who’s been touched by cancer,” but in fact, all I’ve done is make myself feel like a person who does something to help a cause.  Clicking “attend” on a pseudo-event where I promise to leave my porch light on just means I’ve cast myself in my friends’ eyes as someone who cares.  I can go to bed at night sleeping easier thinking I’ve done something, when in fact I haven’t.

This feeling of doing good without having done anything at all is called slacktivism. I’ve done my bit in the virtual world, so I no longer feel burdened to actually help anyone.  I won’t sign up to be a CASA court appointed advocate to help prevent other children from ending up like Caylee because I already left a light on.  I won’t give money to cancer research because I’ve soothed my conscience.  I’m an activist on screen so that I don’t have to make the effort to be one in real life.

October is breast cancer awareness month, where companies produce five dollar bags of pink M&M’s so that we’ll buy them and feel like we’ve helped the cause because of the fraction of a cent they send along to help research.  On Facebook an annually annoying campaign has already begun: women posting cryptic statuses with innuendos that are supposed to somehow raise awareness about breast cancer.  Two years ago the mysterious status posted was the color of their bra. Last year they posted the location of their purse in statements like: “I like it on the kitchen table.”  That was a joy to see on the Facebook statuses of the teenagers I know. 

This year’s innuendo status has women posting that they are pregnant and having cravings. 

Facebook status used by permission of a friend who wished to remain anonymous

It doesn’t explain anything about the origin or meaning of the prank.  Even when friends and family comment “Congratulations!” women are warned not to give away the real reason for their status. Can someone explain to me how this helps people with breast cancer get well?  Or how it prevents the next generation from getting breast cancer at all? It doesn’t.  If you want to stop breast cancer, volunteer your time and give your money toward the cause itself.  

Stop raising awareness. If you are aware of a cause or a need already, it’s means you’re supposed to do something about it.  Put your money and actions where your cursor is. Your status isn’t doing any good.

What do you think?

courtesy of domeheid via flickr

 I owe you a blog post. Several, actually, but let’s not get into that. 

I’m super-excited to be working on a new Bible Study series called Namesake.  This is the culmination of years of a minor-obsession I have with names in the Bible, where they come from, and how God often changes people’s names when He changes them.  The series will start August 21 on Sunday mornings and Tuesday nights.  I’ll put the complete schedule at the end of this post.

LaGrone X 3

All this thinking about names has me remembering the conversations we had when trying to find a name for Drew.  For months it was hard to get the iHusband to be serious on this topic. I would throw out an idea and he would counter with: “How about Belteshazzar?” Funny? Yes. Helpful? Not so much.

When we finally got down to business, we decided to continue a little family tradition – just two generations running – of giving a kid his dad’s first name as his middle name.  Drew’s name is Andrew James.  His dad, Jim’s, is James Robert.  His dad (Drew’s Pawpaw) is Robert Alan.  You see how it works.  It’s a way of embedding a little bit of history in a name. A subtle nod without going so far as: “Jim Junior.”  LaGrone men tend to resemble one another anyway (those are some strong genes!), so naming him full-on after his dad would be just too confusing.

I grew up around quite a few guys named “Junior.”  It took me a while as a kid to figure out that wasn’t their proper name, but a place-holder.  A way to distinguish them from their male relative, usually their dad, for whom they were named.  Some guys went by “Bobby” while their dad was Robert, or “Little Ken” when their dad was Kenneth.  I even knew a few that were the third bearer of their given name.  John Tristan Alexander III went by “Tripp.”  Norton Barrett Hargis III was “Tres.” Clever.

My favorite, though, is one of my father-in-law’s cousins.  Named “John” after his father, from an early age he was simply called “Ditto.”

Ditto. That’s really what these families are saying when they give a child the same name as one of their parents or relatives. Ditto. Repeat. Do it again.  You give someone the name of another person because you want them to emulate the qualities that make that person great. You want them to grow up to be, not a copy of that person, but a reflection of their strengths.

No one ever names their child after someone who really hurt them, or annoyed them, or gave them the creeps. That’s one of the issues expectant parents face when they begin the tough task of agreeing on a name for their baby-to-be.  One prospective parent likes the name Sydney. The other dated a Sydney who broke his heart, so that’s out. One likes Lucas. The other remembers back to Kindergarten, where little Lucas ate paste and smelled funny. No chance for that one.  This gets especially complicated when your spouse has been a teacher (like mine) and hundreds of names are already ruined by little punks from classrooms past.  

When you share a name with someone, you want the commonality to mean a resemblance of sorts.  For the namesake to share more than just initials. To grow up into a likeness that the original can be proud of.

When you pray, pray in my name, Jesus said.

I’ve been wrestling lately with what Jesus really meant by that. I’m pretty sure it’s not some kind of spiritual credit card where we can charge up what we want, like: Just put it on my Father’s tab.

I think it might be closer to:   Take my name. Call yourself after me.
Be my namesake. Let your prayers be my prayers. Your actions be like my actions.
Ditto.

That’s a tougher one than just ordering up the prayers I want and naming Jesus as a kind of magic word at the end. Abracadabra… In Jesus’ name! Instead, while I’m praying I’m supposed to check my motivations, survey my heart. What do these prayers say about me? If I’m growing into the name “Christian,” do my desires reflect the Christ at the center of that name?

I want to grow up to resemble that name that I’m praying in. 
I hope Jesus is proud that he offered it to me in the first place.

————–

Namesake is a 6 session Bible Study series that I’m teaching this August and September at The Woodlands UMC.  On Sunday mornings August 21, 28 and September 4 I’ll be preaching the 8:30, Harvest and 11:00 services, and then teaching again on the following Tuesday evenings at 7:00 (in the sanctuary) for Tuesday Teaching and Conversation.  We’ll record those sessions on DVD to be used later in Bible Study format by other churches and groups.  I’d love it if you’d join us for the launch and be in the “live studio audience” for the recording of this new series!

Do you have a story of someone who is named after someone else?  How did names of people in your family or in your past influence your choice of names for your children?

Our little family is on a road trip together this weekend.  One day’s four hour drive and the next day’s six hour drive (with a one-year-old in the back seat) are almost complete, and I’ve only wanted to bang my head on the window a few times during the thousandth rendition of “The Wheels on the Bus.”  The wipers. Swish. Swish. Swish. Please: Make. Them. Stop.

We’re headed west to a camp near Amarillo for a family reunion.  It’s that season, where families get together and eat watermelon and try to figure out how distant cousins are related: Are you my first cousin twice removed or my second cousin once removed?  

That may get a little interesting to explain at this one, because when asked how we’re related, we have a slightly awkward answer: We’re not.

That’s right, we’re attending a family reunion for a family we’re not even related to.  Remember the movie “Wedding Crashers?” That’s us.  We’re crashing some other family’s reunion.  

This story goes back a few years to when my iHusband Jim was in college at Texas Tech.  Jim grew up in a faithful Christian family in a very loving Methodist Church.  But like a lot of us, he hit college not really owning his faith for himself.  A year or so into it he had exhausted all the usual college options for trying to fill oneself up when not looking to Christ for fulfillment.  He was tired of the party scene and tired of the story he was living. That’s when he met Kim.  Kim was a clarinet player in the Tech band. Jim played saxophone. Their friendship led to spiritual conversations, and Kim re-introduced Jim to Jesus one night sitting on the hood of a car in a university parking lot. That one conversation changed his life story, and, down the road, it changed mine as well.  Kim invited him to the Wesley Foundation, an amazing campus ministry dedicated to growing strong Christian leaders.  That’s where my husband was really discipled, grew in his faith, and became the amazing Christian man I know and love today.

Kim is part of a big family.  Her dad is one of four children, and between those four siblings there are ten granddaughters.  That’s right, her generation is all girls, no boys. At least four of the girls were in college at Tech at the same time, and they all included Jim in their friendships, mischief, and fun.  He went home with them on vacation and holidays, got to know their parents and grandparents, and somehow got unofficially adopted.  They were excited to have a grandson at last.  Once or twice someone in the family wondered which of the girls Jim was dating, but the truth was he was in love with all of them, with this whole crazy, fun family that loves Jesus and each other and truly enjoys being together.  

Over time he’s been to reunions, birthday parties, ushered at weddings and even been given a copy of the family genealogy that one of the uncles wrote up.  They think they may have even found a way that Jim is actually distantly related somehow!  When we married, Kim’s husband Tom was Jim’s best man.  Their daughter was our flower girl.  That summer the whole group welcomed me with open arms at my first family reunion.  Their grandmother gave me a big hug and told me how happy they were that “their boy” had found someone so wonderful.

I remember learning that the family we grow up in is called our “family of origin.”  Much of our identity, our traits, strengths, baggage, hangups, and the trajectory our life heads in is formed in this family.  We start a new family when we get married and have kids. I call that our “family of destination.”  Although it’s influenced by our experience in our family of origin, this is where we get to write our own script of what we believe family should look like for ourselves and our kids.  Jim and I are blessed with wonderful families of origin. And we’ve begun writing the script for our family of destination that I think Drew will grow up to be proud of.

But I believe there’s a third circle of family we experience in life.  Think of it as a “family of choice.”  These people are sometimes related to us by blood, but often are people we just choose to spend our lives with.  Their presence in our lives is more based on choice and conscious effort than convenience.  We choose them because there are things we love about them that we may not have found in our own families.  The time we spend with them over the years means we have a good chance of absorbing the traits that drew us to them in the first place. That’s a kind of heredity no one taught about in my genetics classes in college: we can choose to inherit the traits of those we love and admire without any DNA linkages causing us to do so.  

That’s what we’re doing here this weekend. Being with our family.  Exploring our inheritance.  This family helped make my husband who he is, and by doing so gave Drew and me a wonderful gift.  If someone asks me this weekend how we’re related I might just say: “In the most important way of all.” And leave it at that.

Do you have friends that you consider as close as family members? How did that relationship come about?

Photo courtesy of alexlc13 on flickr

I’m working on a new project that has me thinking a lot about change lately.  Can people really change over time?  I’ve seen marriages broken up because one person expected the other to change and it never happened. I’ve known people in the second half of life who look back with disappointment at their own habits, sins or character traits that have remained the same for decades even though they wish to be different. 

True, lasting change is hard. Even when we hope to change, work at change, pray for change in ourselves, sometimes we end up resigned to the idea that we are meant to stay the same forever.

I’d like to look back in 5, 10, 20 years and say that I’ve changed for the better.  What should I be doing now to get there?  I decided to wait on addressing the major character flaws and tackle a simple habit first.

My entire life I’ve had trouble with sleep. Well, it’s not that I have trouble. It’s that the world has trouble with my natural sleep habits. If left to my own devices I’d stay up until 2 or 3 AM each morning and sleep until 10 or 11 the middle of the next day.  Sounds reasonable to me.  What? That’s not how the rest of the world’s schedule works? My job, my husband and my baby have expectations and needs that happen before 11 AM? Sounds like their problem, not mine! 

Seriously, I’ve struggled for a couple of decades to adjust my sleep cycle.  I’ve tried to change because of early morning classes. I’ve tried to change because of jobs. Usually I’ve ended up keeping my same evening hours (sleep between 12-2:00 AM) and then force myself to get up for the rest of the world.  I’ve averaged between four and six hours of sleep a night for years. The results have been a lot of sleep deprivation, moodiness (no comments from the peanut gallery that knows me and lives with me, please), and a general hatred of the world in the morning and sleepiness in the afternoon. Not a lifestyle I want to continue.

One of my problems is that I’ve been trying to change for the wrong reasons.  

The true thing that motivates us to change is not resolutions or responsibilities, but relationships. 

Getting married (6 years ago) and becoming a mom (16 months ago) have motivated me to change in ways I’ve never experienced before.  I want to be able to be kind to my husband (not throw things at him when he attempts to wake me) before 10 AM.  I want to get up with my baby without resenting his cries bringing me out of a sleep I’ve only entered 2 hours before. I want to have energy and enthusiasm for those that I love the most, not come home exhausted at the end of the day.

The tipping point came for me a few weeks ago when Jim remarked that he had gotten up with Drew every morning that week, gotten him his milk and his breakfast, and started the day with him while I slept. My husband is a non-complainer, but having the sole responsibility of our toddler in the mornings had cramped his schedule and his desire to pray, read Scripture and work out.  It grieved me that my selfish patterns were affecting him.  I decided to change.

For the last week I’ve been using a website called LoopChange to commit to a 21 Day Mission to change.  (www.loopchange.com) I set a goal and have been posting each day to keep track of how I’m changing my sleep habits for the better. I haven’t succeeded every night, but I’ve bumped my average “lights out” time earlier and my “total sleep time” has increased.  I’m feeling better and getting up earlier and more enthusiastically.  

You can follow my progress at loopchange here. The site is free and is based on the philosophy that it takes at least 21 days to change a habit.  Other members of the site are following my progress and commenting with encouragement and advice on my mission. I can’t tell you what a difference that has made.  I’m also following their missions (which include things like exercise habits, eating healthily, breaking an email addiction, fasting from TV as a family and giving up Dr. Pepper) and posting encouragement and advice on their page. And I’m praying for them.

The principle at work here is one that I believe in with my whole heart: we can only truly change within the context of community.  We need gentle accountability and encouragement from others.  I also believe that God can effect true change in us through prayer and His power in ways that we cannot even attempt on our own.  

When I proofread items for worship at our church one of the most common misspellings is “alter” instead of “altar.”  As in “kneel at the Communion alter” or “come forward to the prayer alter.”  Besides stirring up my inner grammar/spelling Nazi, that mistake has always amused me.  When we truly place our lives on the altar before God, that’s where they are truly altered.  God is in the alteration business.

Change. It is possible. But it won’t happen on its own.

-We need a reason to kick us in the pants and push us forward. Relationships are the best and most lasting reason to want to change something about yourself.
-We need a community to encourage us and hold us accountable.
-We need a Savior. When we try to go it on our own we are doomed to fall back on our own loop of habits. When we ask for His help He lifts us out of the loop and places our feet on a new path. 

I’ll be posting once a week here to keep you updated on my 21 day mission. Today is day 9. Wish me luck. Pray for me. Start your own mission. I’ll pray for you.

In the meantime, I have to turn off my computer now. It’s time to go to sleep. 

What change do you long to see in yourself or what have you changed with success? Any tips on how you see real change  happening in people’s lives?