Category Archives: faith

Escape

Photo by Marcos Miranda from Pexels

Last week I escaped. I got in my car early Wednesday morning before anyone but our puppy was awake and I drove until the afternoon. I drove away, which can be at the right time, an incredibly lovely thing to get to do. To drive out of my neighborhood, onto the interstate, a few hundred miles, then out of the state can be tiny gifts of freedom, one after another.

I had planned this escape for nearly a year and it landed at precisely the time I needed to escape. These months of pandemic, quarantine, racial honesty and tension, kids at home and needing to be here, there, and everywhere had worn me down.

What do you do when you know you need to escape? Out of the state or just out of the house? Away from the people whom you love so much so that you can renew your strength to love them even more.

In my experience, men tend to be a bit freer to make these escapes. Outdoor sports and weekends with the guys simply seem more acceptable, maybe even more encouraged than a woman’s escape. That is not true in every household, but it is true in many.

So as I tell you with renewed freedom and life that I escaped, I say this with awareness and a twinge of guilt that I had the chance to drive away. Away from people at home needing food, encouragement, refereeing, structure, and so many things from me at most minutes of the day. Away from work with its weird pandemic intensity. I escaped and I was free for four entire days.

I’m going to keep you in suspense about where I went in hopes that you will think about your own need to escape. Escaping does not make you a bad parent or spouse or pastor. It makes you a restored, renewed, whole, and more at peace child of God.

I could escape because I have family members who love me, a spouse who understands when I need to drive away, and co-workers who support me. And women, I know these are luxuries that do not abound. I escaped with gratitude and returned with gratitude, but mostly I returned more aware of who I am, beloved child of the generous God who shows up in the silence. The one who gives me the signal to escape that I often miss but this time did not.

Ordinary Times

Photo Credit: Jess Bailey on Pexels

As the days of summer come and go, I am still confused by what day it is. Even all these weeks after the daily and weekly confusion of the spring quarantine, each day I have to stop and think. “Is it Monday? Yep, I believe it is Monday. Unless it happens to Wednesday.”

Yesterday I sat down and planned the summer of 2020 for the second time, now halfway into the first month of summer. Originally, I was on sabbatical this summer. I was watching one of my sons play tons of baseball. I was listening to the legendary Danny Gladden tell me each play of my favorite team, the Minnesota Twins. My boys and I were taking a trip to Boston to watch the Red Sox beat the pants off the Yankees. My husband and I were excited to take a kid-less mini-vacation and I would not attend a single meeting.

But these are not “ordinary times,” as my colleague preached yesterday. In the church, we call these months of the season of Pentecost “Ordinary Times”, but these days feel far from “ordinary”.

Wondering whether to wear a mask, whether to eat in a restaurant, with whom and where my kids can play, whether we have enough hand sanitizer, and how easy it would be to let this not-so-ordinary summer slip away while I’m wondering through those questions.

Don’t you wonder how kids will look back and remember this not-so-ordinary time? What will they remember? What words will describe these days? What stories will stick with them? Will they read any of the books people will write about these extraordinary days? Or will they be determined never to remember them because of how restricted they were for so long?

As I planned the summer of 2020 for the second time, there are now ordinary plans penciled in, although they all feel tentative, maybe precarious. Bible Camp. Not as many baseball games, but still baseball games. Doctor appointments. Camping.

Whether these plans actually happen, or whether I sit down and plan the summer of 2020 for a third time, whether the days actually do feel ordinary or not-so-ordinary, maybe I will at least remember what day it is. And that is enough.

Boiling Point

For weeks I waited for the pieces to come together to launch this website and tell you stories. My intention has been to share tales that might encourage people, maybe a person like you, and add levity to the daily work of raising kids, sustaining marriage, and all that you may do as one day spills into another.

And then George Floyd was murdered. Recently before, in my own America were the murders of other black Americans: Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and Dreasjon (Sean) Reed. Boiling point.

The pot had been simmering. For years and years heated by angry words, unchecked bias, and inequality that Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered for in 1968. The simmering pot of racism in a country someone once called a melting pot is now a boiling pot.

For a couple of years I had fled the Facebook and Twitter scene to avoid this kind of simmering. Social media can be anxiety-producing and I figured there was enough of that in my life so goodbye Facebook and Twitter. I deleted the apps on my phone and said goodbye to my newsfeed.

And that was nice. It was nice not to know all the anxiety-producing news and go about my life. It was nice to narrow my gaze to my own work and get ready to launch a website. It was nice to ignore the simmering pot.

Now the pot boils and there is no ignoring. I need to see the words on Facebook and Twitter. Otherwise, how would I believe the ignorance from my very own president? There is no filter on his Twitter feed. (Except when his words are too violent and Twitter has to take them down. ) There is no news bias on his feed. No one else to blame. As much as his subordinates would love to take away his Twitter account, I hope they never do. It is through those words of his that we see the words that hold true for the people who adore him.

Yearning for a glorified America is to yearn for a colorblind America with no awareness of the tension among people that needs to be named. The famous Twitter feed suggests we let the white people in charge take charge with military force. He stood in front of a medic station on a church lawn where people had been providing water, holding the written word of a God who sets people free.

We are to be color-amazed, as Bishop Eaton has preached. We are to be amazed at the uniqueness of people, the value of each breath, and the strength in each voice. This is not a time of this or that, them or me, us or you. No person is perfect in this boiling pot. We have all sinned. We have leaned on political allegiance instead of the freedom of Jesus Christ that is for each person.

There is a story our nation needs to tell. We can delete the apps and ignore it, but the simmering pot now boils. So pray. Pray all day long as you hear the news and realize we have so much to learn about this boiling pot. Pray, because only prayer (not the news) changes our perspective. Pray and realize the story of rage and racism is indeed your story and mine.

Teaching “How Come” Not “I Know”

Let’s be honest. The country in which we live is quite…what? Unsettled? Angry? Confused? Thank goodness we all seem to have enough toilet paper! That’s one worry that no longer grips us.

What is going on? A pandemic not everyone believes is a pandemic. A vicious murder not everyone believes was a vicious murder. A president who teargassed peaceful protesters in order to hold up a Bible in front of a church for the camera.

What?

How do I explain to my kids what is going on when I’m not even sure? I am overwhelmed by the hatred, violence and anger, along with the certainty that only by leaning one way or the other, all the way, can someone be right.

And so I offer one response: curiosity.

Perhaps I don’t need to teach my kids in this moment as much as I need them to teach me. No one is better at curiosity than children. In the earliest years, a child’s world can only be understood through “how come” questions. “How come it is bedtime?” “How come birds fly and I don’t?” “How come vegetables don’t taste like cookies?” It is only when we have a few more candles on our birthday cake that we extinguish “how come” and replace it with the dark and lonely words: “I know”.

Nothing stops progress faster than an unequivocal “I know”. When “I know” a thing, curiosity withers away and there is no reason to wonder why poverty settles in every crack of particular neighborhoods. Or why girls who are brown-skinned more often grow up without a father. Or why moms of white boys don’t have to worry when our sons go for a run. “How come?” because “I don’t know.”

How come it is easier to teach our kids “I know” this or that instead of joining them in the land of curiosity. I want to live there forever. Then, maybe my kids will, too.

How Do I Explain #GeorgeFloyd to an 8-Year Old?

Photo Credit: @Joshhild

“What are you watching?” asked my daughter, as I stood in our kitchen staring at my phone.

In a moment, I had to decide how to explain racism and riots to an 8-year old. Or, I could turn off my phone and let the moment go. Isn’t that so much easier? To believe whatever is happening on a screen is far away and someone else has to live with it?

I was watching Pastor Ingrid C. A. Rasumussen on Facebook walk through the neighborhood of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in South Minneapolis. Touring littered streets, she explained the true identity of the damaged buildings that exposed generations of anger. Like vapor, smoke rose up here and there, like injustice that rises up here and there and here and there.

“I am watching a pastor show us a neighborhood where there was a riot.”

“Did they wreck things?” she demanded to know. “Someone is going to owe a lot of money! Why did they do that?”

“His name,” I slowly began, “was George Floyd. And he was murdered by a police officer, and many people are angry about it.”

With my husband, we tried to explain there are police whose job is to keep people safe, and there are people who are black and there is an ugly history we can’t seem to shake off.

In the end, dear daughter, this world is not yet as it should be. People who happen to be black are not as safe as people who happen to be white. Last week was one of many moments the vapor of injustice rose up in a city we know well and love very much.

There is no perfect dialogue to explain George Floyd’s murder to an 8-year old. It would be perfectly easy to believe his story need not be tied up with our story. But I want my kids to know some hurts in the world are not easy to explain, and those hurts are our hurts, too.

The First Tale of This Mom, Wife, and Pastor

Why in the world are you reading this?

You will not find answers to any questions about how to remove a stain, cook the perfect pork chop, preach a high-level conversion sermon, or prepare your home for your husband. The tales you will find here are not those kind of tales, I assure you. 

In fact, these might be the opposite kinds of tales. The tales you will find here reject stainless homes and perfection of any kind. Through the years, I’ve come to find peace in my own imperfection. Instead of yearning to be a better mom and wife, I am simply the mom and wife I am. 

I am also an imperfect pastor in a Christian denomination called the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Like my home, I will not tell you my church is perfect, although I still love it. The church, like me, is a work in progress utterly dependent upon Jesus’ mercy. 

I follow Jesus, bake chocolate chip cookies, and preach hope. 

My husband is a middle school principal and some of the students in that school are also confirmation students at the church I serve. Of course, we never swap stories about these lovely and always cooperative children of God. And by never, I mean only when we cannot help it because the material is just so good. For nearly 20 years, Marcus and I have made a way through the wilderness of marriage and found comfort in our church community and in friends and family who have loved us no matter what. 

We have been parents for nearly 15 years. In other words, I have been humbled privately and also publicly for a decade and a half. The only thing easy about parenting is admitting how freaking hard it is. Every. Single. Day. 

And I love baking (and devouring) chocolate chip cookies like my mama still makes them: crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Whenever the cookie jar is empty, it’s time to fill it up. Because one thing my kids should be able to depend on is cookies. It is perhaps my only perfect offering. 

I hope these tales inspire you to embrace your own life, let go of perfection and find at least a little joy in each day God gives.