Tag Archives: connection

Book Signings and Other Things I Know Nothing About

Today I will bring a pen to my first ever book signing. What else should I bring with me? Books. Of course! Although, the late arrival of books (possibly tomorrow) from Amazon means I only need to bring the six I currently have. A pen and six books. I travel light.

Faith Expressions, the Christian gift store downtown in my hometown, has graciously carried my books and now graciously invited four authors, me included, to share an afternoon of book signing. Have you been to a book signing? There is usual a colorful tablecloth, candy, business cards, free promotional stuff, and a Square for an author to easily sell books to people with debit/credit cards. I own exactly one tablecloth. Perfect for the Christmas season, it is bright red and embroidered with poinsettias.

In addition to my pen and books, I’ll bring a placemat and a stand for one of the six books, because that seems like something a book signing would have. And chocolate. Chocolate makes up for all those other things!

Sometimes, the basics are enough.

It is enough to wake up and meet the new day. It is enough to look around your home and realize you already have everything you need. It is enough that God has given you the people in your life. And chocolate. That is enough.

Book Review: Fourteen Talks by Age Fourteen

One difference between parenting littles and teens is knowing what to say. Littles erupt with questions and deeply desire for their beloved grown-ups to answer them. Teens seem to deeply desire you are there when they need you, but mostly hope you stay quiet. During the teenage years, the eruption of questioning reverses from the young to the old, but the old quickly realize, unlike the young, that questions must be rationed. I find a reasonable average of questions to be 3-5, depending on when they last ate.

I am convinced every parent of teenagers only pretends to know what she or he is doing. When I hear a recommendation of a book for teenage parents, I want to hope to find just the right wisdom in that book, but most parenting books seem to me to be aspirational. Raising teenagers is freaking hard and no book has easy answers. Kids are humans and therefore too complicated to be reduced to a manual.

But this book! I cannot remember how I happened upon it, but it is the very best parenting book I’ve read. I borrowed the audio, read by the author, from our local library. In Fourteen Talks by Age Fourteen, Michelle Icard guides readers through talks that overwhelm parents like me. Tough stuff: friendship, sexuality, pornography, hygiene, money, how to dress, privilege, and behavior. She is funny and yet grounded, honest that the role of parents is never to protect kids from the world but to equip them to move around the world safely.

Her acronym is easy to implement into conversations with my teenagers and has been a helpful guide. Icard calls her framework for conversation the B.R.I.E.F. Model:

  • Begin peacefully.
  • Relate to your child.
  • Interview to collect data.
  • Echo what you hear.
  • Give Feedback.

If you have kids or grandkids who are teenagers or soon to be teenagers, this book will challenge you. What grown-ups like to do (when we are not at our best) is to apply our own teenage experience to the lives of teenagers today. This is an excellent method to raise defensiveness in teens and immediately stop a conversation.

A better way, provided by Icard, is to be intentional in deciding when to have a tough conversation. And to respect teenagers enough to give them a heads up. “Begin peacefully” is great advice for beginning any tough conversation, not only with a child, but with a spouse or co-worker. Be careful when you enter into a thorny conversation. Don’t do it when you are tired, hungry, or ticked off at someone, including your child.

Even though teenagers are quickly gaining independence, there is so much they are trying to figure out from moment to moment. In many ways, it has never been more challenging to be a teenager. They have access to every kind of yuck on their devices, and so they need a loving and forgiving guide to be there and begin those conversations peacefully, not out of anger or fear.

When I drop off my daughter at school (the only person I drop off anymore) I remind her “Jesus Loves You,” and she does the same for me. I cannot walk with her through the hallways or around the playground, but I can do my best to prepare her for situations she might encounter. And more importantly, we can remind one another that Jesus’ love does not expire, and it is not revocable. Jesus’ love cannot be undone. Teenagers, like all human beings, easily forget this promise. We make mistakes and then make the mistake of assuming our mistake undoes the promise of Jesus’ love.

Although I can attest to how hard it is to raise teenagers, I can also tell you it is much easier when I get to remind them (probably more than they prefer) that Jesus loves them, all the time.

Laundry is a Sacred Act

(Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash)

Welcome to the season of routine! <insert cheering from roaring crowds of mothers> I took a peek at my daughter’s new planner (because she is my mini-me) to discover both birthdays and days of room cleaning all assigned to their proper days. Ah, the power of rhythm and routine.

With age also comes the power of forgiveness when rhythm and routine are disrupted or adapted. Truly, few things are sacred in our lives. If you pause to ponder what is truly sacred in your life, what might that be? Family connections? Health and well-being? Friendship? Sharing? And Jesus, of course. Most questions a pastor asks you can be answered, “Jesus.”

For me, doing the laundry is sacred. The washing and folding and praying for the people who will wear the things you wash. (Disclaimer: I stopped doing my kids’ laundry when they were five because laundry pods are awesome. But I do on rare occasions move their laundry from here to there or wash the random items that are abandoned in the living room.) Tucking away the towels, hanging up the coats, the infrequent scrubbing of baseball caps and shoes. This is sacred work I try not to rush. I hope my prayers become lodged in the fabric, like chocolate stain that will remain there forever. I hope these woven in prayers will speak up, somehow, when my child of any age feels inadequate, overwhelmed, frustrated, pressured, or lost.

I’ve noticed it’s not so tough to encourage a younger kid in her or his faith. It’s the older variety that poses the challenge. How do you pray for the kid, who for the sake of maturity, needs to grow some distance between you? It might be the bigger the clothes you end up moving or washing, the more prayers that are needed to weave into all that fabric! “Big kids, big problems,” you have heard. We can also say, “Big kids, big prayers.” Or, “Big kids, big community,” by which I mean kids need extra love from the people around them.

It’s so easy to step back when kids need healthy distance from parents and guardians, but perhaps it just means we step closer to them in prayer. It is letting go of the influence we once had in their younger years, and trusting the woven-in prayers, and the accompaniment of our Lord to guide and guard them always.

Could daily prayer for kids, grandkids and neighbor kids be part of your new academic year rhythm and routine, if it isn’t already? If you are retired and you miss the feel of the new year, your new homework could simply be the sacred practice of prayer. Pray for families getting ready in the mornings, that their words are kind and their snacks healthy. Pray for kids who eat lunch alone, or who feel alone even though they are sitting with others. Pray for playground peace and collaborative classmates. Pray for supportive friendships and self-kindness.

Just as a parent of young kiddos will tell you there is always laundry to do (thank you, chocolate stains), there are always prayers to pray.

Time Capsule Trumpet

When a friend mentioned her daughter asked to play trumpet in 6th grade band, I was happy to offer my old Selmer. This is the trumpet I’ve packed up, left untouched and moved to four different homes in the last couple of decades. It’s the one I played most days of the week during the school year for roughly eight years.

Opening up the case before taking it to the professionals for a tune-up was like cracking open a time capsule. There was our school song, laminated and crumpled after years of basketball games. (“Sherwood High School, hats off to thee!”) There was the crepe paper, red poppy and American Legion label twisted around the brass for Memorial Day “Taps”. There was my 7th grade handwriting with my name, school and address in the event my trumpet and I were separated at a competition. (Was my mailing address actually Box 1? It’s true!)

Looking back, it seems my trumpet and I were rarely separated during that long stretch of time. Eight years is an extremely long stretch of time for a kid! My recollection of high school band (grades 7 – 12 seated across the gym stage, curtain closed) involves heaping sympathy for the music teachers who, let’s be honest, had little to work with. Yet every day he or she showed up, waving a small not-so-magic wand and hoping for a miracle. I also played for two years in college under the direction of the incredible Gordy Lindquist, a northcentral N.D. legend, made legendary by his ability to tickle the ivories while they were covered up by a sheet, or playing behind his back and in a variety of other contorted and hilarious moves including upside down. You couldn’t help but love being in the room with him, your classmates and your instrument which you played in the ordinary, boring way and not upside down.

Then I tucked the Selmer trumpet into its velvet outline, latched the black case and moved it to four homes until finally, finally a girl will play it. With the “Minnesota Rouser” and “Taps” tucked into the horn’s history, now it will learn new tunes. In the beginning, each note will come painstakingly slow until suddenly, a song will emerge, a new life lived.

Be Wary of Being Wary of Strangers

(Photo by Marco Bianchetti on Unsplash)

In the past few weeks, two strangers have given me hugs. (Notice your reaction.) Strangers and hugs do not always belong together, I realize. And at times, they do. Individuals have a responsibility to be aware of one another without becoming too wary of one another.

STRANGER #1

Church buildings are regularly visited by people looking for financial help. People who have lost jobs, lost a battle with addiction, lost hope might swing by a church to ask for help. In Western N.D., stories abound of the striking increase in these visits during the Bakken energy boom. Young men came in droves treasure hunting for hope. Nowadays, these visits are irregular.

A few weeks ago, one young man stopped by St. John looking for a help. After listening to his story in hopes of assuring him he is seen and cared for, a fellow human being, we provided a bus ticket for the following morning and a motel room for the night. He was overcome with gratitude, which seemed to me to be genuine. When I walked him to the door, with tears in his eyes this stranger carefully reached out his arms to give me a hug.
Hugs with strangers have a long history in the Christian tradition. The Old Testament is structured around one particular commandment that did not explicitly make it into the top ten. The command that drives the story of the Hebrew people is this: Welcome Strangers. The Christian Church only exists because of first century households who welcomed a stranger named Paul, whose sketchy story involved miracles and name changes.

STRANGER #2

Yesterday I had the honor of presiding at a funeral and remembering a beloved child of God who is held forever in Jesus’ arms. It was a sad day for the community gathered around this family I have known and loved a long time. I made it through the service but not out of the building before my face became a wet mess.

I was nearly to the doors, nearly to safety of my car when a woman I do not know saw me and reached out her arms. “Thank you,” I muttered, smearing her shirt with my tears.

The letter to the Hebrews features a famous verse instructing us to show hospitality to strangers. They might be angels in disguise, we learn, which sounds more like a line from a Disney movie than an epistle. Strangers may not look like angels, but they certainly look like human beings. And sometimes, that is reason enough for a hug.

Stepping Back to See the Map

(Photo by Nick Seagrave on Unsplash)

Listening to a podcast last week, I heard an inspiring story of a mom whose daughter is in college. Each morning, she texts her daughter a simple greeting to let her daughter know she is thinking of her. It is not a manipulative way of checking up on her daughter or a sneaky tactic to start a conversation. It is: “I am here, you are there, and I want you to know I care.”

This story has me wondering how I let my kids know I care without letting my day or my life be shaped by how (or whether) they respond. The most complicated wisdom of parenting is knowing where I start and stop, and where each kid starts and stops. For example, if each of us is a state on a map, there are recognizable boundaries that keep us from spilling over into each others’ lives. As long as I don’t get too stressed or tired, I can mostly see the boundaries and avoid these situations:

“I noticed he/she did not do the dishes. It’s her/his chore, but it would be much easier if I just do it myself and then I wouldn’t need to look at those dang dishes all day!”

“I need to make time for myself to rest, but everyone needs something from me and so I respond to their needs instead of my own.”

There are a million examples of how difficult it is to hang in there with our kids while also challenging them to grow. Parenting is always both at once. It is showing up and stepping back; watering the garden without overwatering. Parenting is so many hugs and also some tough words.

What would make life easier is if each kid required the same proportion of hugs and words, the same volume of water, the same amount of showing up and stepping back. It is God’s greatest joke on guardians and parents, that we get to reinvent much of our parenting style for each individual human we raise! Good one, God of the universe who raised an only child. Some of us are doomed to be lifetime reinventors.

If you look around your life today, can you recognize a spot on the map where you would like to clarify the boundaries? You might quickly see you need to let go of expecting the dishes to be washed every day, or you might disappoint someone who needs something but can actually wait until you are more rested. If you look closely at the map, but you will notice you are not the Rugby, that is, arguably the center of North America. God’s only child is the center, so you can just be you.

Six Words to Avoid

(Photo by Esperanza Doronila on Unsplash)

Last year, the book Embodied: Clergy Women and the Solidarity of a Mothering God got me wondering. Pastor Lee Ann Pomrenke invites readers to notice the unique lens through which women who are clergy understand their work. (For simplicity’s sake, I’ll use the word “pastors” to include both deacons and pastors.)

Pastoring and mothering kids share more in common than I’d realized in the early years of my vocation. Both involve caring for people in a way that surrenders the course of our lives to other people’s lives. Pastors and mothers may plan their days, weeks, or years, but the trail is blazed by the people whom we love. For mothers, careers are temporarily set aside to care for family. (Less often but sometimes, fathers do this work.) For pastors, family vacations are shifted when a funeral comes up. For both mothers and pastors, holidays are self-sacrificing and labor-intensive in order to create memories for others. You carry around your own examples, pastors and moms, of the way your life has been shaped by your generous love for others.

Reflecting on the past couple of years, I am noticing something else pastors and mothers share in common. A less obvious commonality between pastoring and mothering can be found in the way we either empower or disempower the people whom we love. This is some of the hard, hard work of pastoring and mothering! If we peel back the layer of “It’s easier to do it myself”, we notice we are keeping other people from doing it themselves.

Time for an example! Preparing for a Sunday off this week made me realize I’m the one who turns on the sound system and sets up the Facebook Livestream even though there are ushers and techs who are perfectly capable and willing to do this quick and easy work. During the course of the pandemic, pastors did the majority of the volunteer work for a spell and I became accustomed to “it’s easier to do it myself.” But now, there are plenty of fingers to press the green button to turn on the sound and type in a welcome on the livestream.

At home, the more work I can teach my kids to do (laundry, cooking, cleaning), the easier my life is. But this is daily hard work! It’s finding a balance between encouraging and nagging, teaching and letting go, caring and not caring. Empowering others is messy, grinding work at the same time it is the most faithful work demanded of pastors and mothers.

I know the balance is off when I get crabby. When my kids don’t do their laundry or chores or the sound system doesn’t get turned on or something else gets missed. Crabby is like a warning light reminding us to step back and notice whom might we empower and rely upon. The truth is, it isn’t easier to do it myself again and again. It is easier if others know what to do and how to help.

I was sure by the time I’d been a pastor for 17 years and a mother for 15 that I would have a better grip on these things! But life is never like that. Humans aren’t wired to learn most things once and for all. We learn again and again and then once again. And in the learning, we learn (not once but again and again) to be gentle on ourselves, to loosen our grip on life, and to give thanks for the people whom we love who shape the course of our lives.

The Best Summer Job

(Photo by Tegan Mierle on Unsplash)

Seats around a campfire are sacred. Since the invention of fire, humans have encircled them to swap stories, learn from one another, and stay warm. I recently read Tish Harrison Warren describe their backyard firepit as the place her family has felt particularly connected since the beginning of the pandemic. Campfires illuminate the dark night with pops and crackles, often a soundtrack of belonging. Add an additional soundtrack of your favorite Bible Camp campfire tune and you have discovered the best summer job!

The denomination to which I belong, the ELCA, has a strong tradition of outdoor ministry. It is likely some of the most unique and creative pastors you know were once counselors at a Bible Camp. No job description for a camp counselor could capture all the job entails, but a simple phrase might suffice: “Be ready for anything, including exhaustion and elation in the very same minute!”

I had zero desire to be a Bible Camp counselor. My singular experience as a camper was the summer between 7th and 8th grade when I went to camp knowing almost no one and mistakenly hoping junior high girls would be kind and welcoming. You can imagine how that went!

But by the time I finished my second year of college, the sting had gone away. A beloved professor at my college was married to the Executive Director of Metigoshe Ministries. His need for additional counselors converged with my lack of summer employment, so off I went to camp, again knowing almost no one. This time, however, I would not leave camp sad, but changed.

Camp staff often explain their work by saying the days are long, and the weeks go quick. A day of camp is filled to the brim, making your daily life a constant pouring out of Jesus’ love. This work is not easy, but no work that truly matters ever is. Work you do that changes lives requires your whole life, not a few hours of it, not a little bit of your energy or time, but all of you. Your heart, your mind, the very self God has created is meant to be shared.

My own experience as a camper sharpened my vision for campers who felt left out. In fact, that very camp skill has followed me around, keeping an eye out for the forgotten ones. Much of the skills I acquired at camp, however, are not all directly transferable. I don’t get to give mud facials even though I wasn’t too bad at that. I don’t dress up in crazy outfits, chase children at night, shingle a roof, toss greasy watermelon, or help construct outhouses in my work as a pastor. Those remarkable skills have gone untapped.

So much of what I learned took place in the same type of circle in which people have been learning since the invention of fire:

  • One fire is enough for everyone, even better if you have to squeeze together.
  • Whether or not you can sing, music gets to you with the promise that you belong right where you are.
  • Life is not lived in your own seat but in a gathering of seats among people meant to be different from you.

The nightly campfire tradition of Bible Camps is perhaps what makes the transition from Bible Camp to whatever is next for camp staff profoundly difficult. Outside of camp, days rarely end around the sacred space of something equivalent to a campfire.

Right now, there is a young adult whom you know (or maybe are) who is waffling about summer plans. Tell that person there is a seat at a campfire just for them, as long as they desire to do work that matters. If money gets in the way of their decision, could you do what I know a camp staff dad often did, and subsidize that person’s income with a little of your own money? That’s an investment in the work of the Spirit, I assure you. Maybe you could get a mud facial in exchange! Maybe.

So Broken I Need Jesus

Really, Iowa? What the heck, Kentucky! I’m getting my butt absolutely kicked in the family March Madness competition. I didn’t really need that $20 anyway, right?

Oh well. The truth is, I am one of those annoying fans who jumps into men’s college basketball at the very end. Only after the players have sweated through an entire season do I even sort of begin to care. The losses that broke their hearts, the injuries they recovered from, the victories along the way. I know none of it. I do know my bracket is completely broken and I am currently in 18th place of the 18 people in our group!

Nonetheless, I have come to terms with my brokenness over the years. A broken bracket, like broken me, is not the end of things. I have come to terms with life as it waffles between easy and hard, joyful and sorrowful, hopeful and disheartening. Tomorrow will come and I will mess it up/get something right all over again. I am so broken, I need Jesus, and there he is.

Preachers of mainline congregations tend to wonder how much that particular truth resonates with people who gather with us for worship. Do they come to worship (online or in-person) for the familiar tunes or for the tunes that find the crack in our hearts and seep in? Do they come for words to comfort them or to comfort the poor and forgotten? Do they come for a deep drink of the Spirit of life or to become vessels for others to take their own deep drinks?

Maybe they come because they are in 18th place and lost their $20 and are processing the shock of their brokenness. How did it come to this? I thought Iowa would see me through, but none of us are immune to disappointment. And yet, the one who has come to put our broken selves together does not join us only in the end, like I do in this tournament. The one who cares most deeply for your brokenness is there through every broken heart, injury, and victory. Now. Later. Always.

When the Bucket Dropped (John 4:1-42)

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(John 4:7, 10-15, 28, NRSV) 7A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 10Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” 15The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” [v. 16-27] 28Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city…

http://www.bible.oremus.org

These verses are tucked into the Samaritan woman at the well story that occupies most of chapter four. If it is not familiar, I encourage you to read John 4:1-42. The story begins when the woman went to the well to fill her bucket with water and it ends when the woman leaves the well with no water and no bucket. She does not, however, leave the scene emptyhanded. Between the beginning and the end, the woman has a conversation with Jesus.

What does a conversation with Jesus amount to? Enough to fill an empty bucket?

I recently remembered the month of January tends to be busy for me. Somehow, I’d forgotten! It is annual meeting season, nomination time, Lent planning, and this year, associate pastor call process. There have been many conversations with myself in my head. “Did I remember to…?” “When will I…?” “How would I like my coffee today?”

What conversations take place in your head when the days get busy? How do you sort through the questions? How do you listen for answers? The woman at the well, taking part in an actual conversation and not one confined to her busy mind, was deeply listening to Jesus. Jesus had something to offer, something she did not know she was looking for, something that required her to listen and let go.

Our minds are empty buckets we fill with so much conversation. “What will they think of me?” “What if I fail?” “Will they like me?” “Do they think I’m smart?” “Will I fit in?” These conversations unfold mostly in our heads. When we listen for the answers to these empty questions, we stop listening to Jesus. We hold tight to our genuine need to belong and be seen in the world, meanwhile Jesus’ part of the conversation goes unheard.

What does a conversation with Jesus amount to? Enough to convince you to unfurl your fingers and let go. Enough to loosen your grip on the empty questions and notice you are already tightly held in the grip of Christ’s love. When Jesus is finally heard in the conversations in your own head, there is at least a single moment when everything else falls away, your empty questions like her empty bucket. Do you belong? Are you seen? Yes and yes, answers Jesus.

I find the woman in this story to be an extraordinary teacher. She managed to listen to the words that mattered and to set aside the ones that did not. The odds were against her, if you pull back the curtain on the cultural norms of her day. She had every reason to hear only her side of the conversation, informed by a lifetime of bad experiences. Her circumstances had convinced her she belonged nowhere and was seen by nobody.

Was it that she listened so intently or that Jesus’ words were so piercing? Or both? What would it take for you to listen today for Jesus’ contribution to the busy conversation in your head? Perhaps I will give it a try.

I would love your thoughts on this story to shape the Prayers of the People this weekend. What empty questions and conversations fill your mind? Do you find it hard to hear Jesus’ part of the conversation? What do you hear when you do let him get a word in edgewise? You can post a comment on Facebook or email me at lewtonwriter@gmail.com to share your thoughts!