Domestic Bliss (or...something like that...)

Food and I, historically, have had a rocky relationship. We've been on-again/off-again for the last 15ish years. That is the first reason why I didn't learn to cook at the age when normal girls learn to cook (somewhere between ages 15 and 20, I think...).

The second reason is that my lifestyle since, oh...middle school, has not been too conducive to eating many meals at home. Especially now, because my job involves many obligations in the evenings and I live 15 miles out of town. So "running home" to cook and eat dinner for one before a 7:00pm meeting, when I'm already in town, just isn't very practical.

Lastly, my mother, who - for most girls - is the primary source of culinary mentoring in one's life, was the queen of casseroles. And I hate casseroles. Don't get me wrong. My mother is not a bad cook. She's a fine cook. But she had five kids and taught piano lessons in the living room everyday after school. So casseroles made lots of good sense. Cooking in our house was a necessity, not an art. My mom had neither the extra time or extra money (or appreciative audience) to make a hobby of gastronomy. So I grew up thinking that if you cooked your own food, you ate casseroles and sloppy joes (or taverns, if you're from east-river) and Hamburger Helper (not my faves). If you wanted to eat pasta, or ethnic food (my faves) you went out.

(There is a fourth reason too, which is that I'm quite content with a half-pound of raw almonds, a Granny Smith and cheese. I can eat this as a meal about six times in a week before I get sick of it...)

And hence, I didn't learn to cook. Well, at least not when I maybe should have. And I was okay with it, except on occasion when friends would want me to come over and cook with them, and then the embarrassing secret was out. I'd be standing around dumbly in their kitchen and they'd ask me to do something like "make the gravy", and I'd have to have them walk me through it step by step. Acceptable when you're 10. Less so when you're in your late twenties.

And then...something happened.

One day, about a year and a half ago, I was hungry for pad thai. (That's not the unusual part...I get hungry for pad thai every-other day...) So I considered calling up Saigon and putting in a takeout order, but the $14 tab was a deterrent. And then is when the unusual happened. It suddenly dawned on me that I could cook my own pad thai. Wha-?? So I googled a few recipes, found one that sounded doable, and headed for the grocery store. About three hours later I had a plateful of decent-for-my-first-foray-into-cooking pad thai. It was surprisingly good. Not as good as the Saigon, but still, good. This was a life-changing discovery. I could make something I loved to eat...ALL BY MYSELF! And it didn't cost me $14. It cost me $22. 'Cause I didn't have any staples in my cupboard to start with. But next time, it might only cost me the price of some beans sprouts and an egg. So, sooner or later, this whole cooking thing could turn out to be economical.

My second culinary revelation happened this last December. My friend Steph and I were going to hang out, and she suggested we spend the evening baking. End goal: cupcakes. This didn't sound like a truly enjoyable evening of leisure to me. Well, the cupcakes did...but not the baking part. I can rattle off a list of local dining establishments with brilliant desserts. Why not make someone else go to the trouble, and we could just enjoy the fruits of their labor? But I consented and I found myself a few hours later in my kitchen, with $40 worth of baking supplies, flipping through a Paula Dean cookbook and learning how to scrape seeds from a vanilla bean. At 2:30am we finally sat down in my dining room to eat what were, without questions, THE BEST CUPCAKES I HAVE HAD IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. No joke. They were incredible. Paula herself would have been proud. We made red velvet cupcakes with vanilla bean frosting and honey walnut cupcakes with goat cheese frosting, and I couldn't stop saying, "How is this possible!? We made them ourselves!" And that was the day that I discovered that I could derive joy from taking several hours to handcraft the perfect baked goods. Who knew?!?

And so, I've learned to cook. And learned to love it. Or at least learned what I love and what I don't. I don't love chicken, or beef, or pork. (I don't care if I never touch another raw chicken leg for the rest of my life.) I do love anything with sundried tomatoes, crimini mushrooms, and/or cream sauce. I've learned how to devein shrimp (thank God for youtube and an iPhone). And that couscous is the little black dress of the kitchen. And that my mini rice cooker is the best $15 dollar purchase I've made in years. And cream sauce...did I mention I love cream sauce?

So, I'd like to offer an open invitation. If you are reading this, you are invited to my house for dinner. I'm not kidding. Just give me a ring on the telly and we'll pick a day. I have a list a mile long of recipes I want to try. Consider yourself warned that whatever I feed you, it's most definitely the first time I've made it, so I don't make promises about any of it. And...I keep milk and granola on hand as a backup.

Resolutions, etc....

I'm one of those silly (read, "naively optimistic") people who makes New Years resolutions. Sometimes they last for a few weeks. Sometimes they last for months. I can't recall any that have made it to the following New Years. But whether you ace the follow-through or not, I still believe that there is value in the resolution-making process. The thorough and periodic evaluation of one's life and habits and priorities is essential to living intentionally.

In a perfect world, I would take a few days after Christmas and retreat alone to a cabin in the hills with a giant mug of tea and my Bible and journal. I would go in scattered and worn, and I would emerge three days later a new woman - restored and focused and ready to take on the coming year, with whatever challenges and blessings and craziness it might bring. But this world is not perfect...it is real. So I've spent the days since Christmas catching up with the relationships, the work and the general tasks of life that seemed to fall a bit behind during the holidays. I DID get to go to the mountains and sip hot cocoa by a fire, but it was in a ski lodge with 50 Young Life kids, so while the trip included lots of fun and bananagrams and knitting and snowboarding (okay...not so much snowboarding. More on that topic later...) and some bonding over a few cases of the 24-hour-flu, it offered very little along the lines of solitude and reflection. And so, I feel a bit like I've hit the 2012 ground running, without a real good chance to assess the situation.

Nonetheless, I still managed to get a few resolutions on the docket. Unoriginals that I just whipped up on the 8-hour drive back from Bozeman the other night.

For one, I'm nixing my diet coke habit. I don't think it's continuation would kill me real soon, but it's not exactly contributing to my health. Second, I'm going to try keep my hands and eyes off of my phone while operating a vehicle. If I keep it up, it will kill me, and probably someone else, real soon. So I'm kicking it to the curb. Lastly, I'm making a line item for travel in my monthly budget so that I can quit feeling like a victim of my own wanderlust.

So, those are my resolutions. They are specific and concrete, like any good "life-coach" worth his weight in consultation fees will tell you resolutions should be.

But those things are not the real things. The most important things. They are not about my heart. The real change I need this coming year is in my heart. And it is change that, in it's fullness, is well beyond my capabilities. Beyond resolutions, or better habits.

I need this year to be about loving people well. About knowing Christ more. About knowing how Christ loves me. About being changed by that love. About viewing my finances and my time and my other resources the way God views them. About Him redeeming my incessant need to compare myself with others, my twisted view of His mercy, my graceless criticisms of others.

These kinds of revisions are more than I can handle. I know this. I've tried. I've made checklists and reminders on post-its and many, many, well-intentioned "pinky-promise" prayers. But these issues are deeply rooted, and not easily or comfortably plucked from the landscape of one's soul.

Consequently, I am grateful for a savior whose affections are too fierce, too vast to leave me in the mess of myself. Who loves me here, but longs to bring me there. Who is more than capable of doing the heavy construction in my heart, that will, with time, produce fruit in my life.

So as we dive headlong into the new year, I pray for these things in my life, in my heart. I also pray for a day of solitude and tea...very soon.

Oh yes. And adventure. Always adventure.

Visionaries, chain-smoking and bad dreams.

I'm not one of those people who puts a lot of stock in my own dreams. That isn't to say that I can't take seriously the dreams of other people. When someone tells me that they had a dream and they derived some kind of lesson, or direction, or message from it I find myself a bit jealous. Whether or not it was God speaking, and whether or not they heard exactly what he wanted them to hear, I can't say...but I just really like the idea of learning great truths or receiving some kind of instruction or insight while sleeping. In my opinion, this is a SERIOUSLY good use of time.

I'm also not a person who has ever had recurring dreams. Unless you count the entirety of high school, during which I was chain smoking in every single one of my dreams. The smoking was never a central part of the dream plot...just this little habit I had on the side. Every single dream for four years. Smoking. (Including one that was set at an indoor water park...still smoking.) This is particularly fascinating since I haven't smoked a single cigarette in my entire life. I did have a few theories about that whole situation, but I'll save that for a different day, and apparently my dream-self decided to end my tobacco addiction when I started college. Since then, I haven't noticed any patterns in any of my dreams.

Until a few months ago.

Dream #1) Apparently I had agreed to cover a shift at Granite Sports, one of my very-part-time jobs. And apparently, on the day I was scheduled to work, I decided I had more important things to do so I completely blew off my obligation. About four hours past the time I was supposed to be at work I was overcome by guilt and I showed up at Granite to find my boss covering for me. The rest of my dream consisted of me apologizing all over myself and my boss saying, repeatedly, "This just isn't like you..." So I apologize more. And more. And then he - as kindly and sadly as you can imagine - fires me. And I leave...apologizing all the way out the door. And then I wake up...feeling like a terrible person.

Dream #2) Apparently my friend Chels had told me she could get me a job working a few spare shifts at Aeropostale and apparently, I had thought this was a genius idea and taken her up on the offer. (Let me pause the story right here to say...this is just ridiculous. First, I REALLY don't need another job. Second, I would have to be pretty desperate to work at Aeropostale. It's just not my thing.) So the dream begins with me showing up fifteen minutes late on my first day and the manager (played by a gay Stanley Tucci) really ripping me a new one about my irresponsibility and lack of integrity. Meanwhile I apologize and apologize and apologize, in between me telling him repeatedly that "This just isn't like me...", and Chelsey awkwardly standing nearby, really wishing she hadn't given me such a good recommendation. The dream ended with Mr. Tucci - not so kindly or sadly - firing me. On my first day. There was also a small bit in there somewhere involving Chelsey traversing a 3" wide ledge in stilettos due to a missing staircase. But that seemed to be somewhat irrelevant. So I leave...apologizing all the way out the door. And then I wake up feeling like a REALLY terrible person.

Dream #3) I remember almost nothing from this dream...not who was in it, not where I was...just the apologizing. Profusely. And then I woke up feeling like a terrible person.

And then, a few weeks later...

Dream #4) In this dream I am leading what is quickly becoming the worst Young Life club EVER. The entire twenty-minute scene is me standing in front of a room full of teenagers while I frantically shuffle through a huge pile of blank paper looking for my club plans. And of course...I'm apologizing.

Clearly...

I have issues.

I don't need to pay someone $75/hour to tell me that. But what DOES, in fact, puzzle me is why my dream-self has, as of late, become completely neurotic. Because my waking-self has always been just slightly neurotic (usually comically), with no mentionable episodes within the last, oh, eight years. So, why the recent flare-up of crazy?

Now, if I was paying someone large sums of money to psychoanalyze this situation, they would probably find this fact to be pertinent: these dreams started a week after I came on full-time staff with Young Life. But then, what might throw them for a loop is the fact that I have been on part-time staff for the organization for the last four years. And my new job description varies only slightly from my old one. So, I'll ask again...why the recent flare-up of crazy?

My dream-self is an over-reactor. A drama queen, it seems. She stresses me out...and she needs a cup of tea on my porch.

But seriously...a tiny bit of introspection seemed to be warranted. So I poured myself that cup of tea and did some introspecting.

And here's what it seems to boil down to (when you disregard the discrepancy that dream-self seems to be collecting W-2's like they're Beanie Babies circa 1994, while real self just downsized from 4 jobs to 1.3 jobs): investment.

When I was a freshman in college I stumbled upon a job at podiatry clinic (read "foot doctor"). I had virtually no medical experience, and - though I enjoyed the job - it was no secret that I was not exactly seeking a career in...foot care. I just needed to pay for textbooks, right? In less than a year the doctor I worked for sent me on an all expenses paid trip to a medical conference in Chicago. At the time, I remember thinking he was making a terrible investment. I actually told him this, reminding him that I was only going to be there until I switched schools, or found a job more suited to my major (sociology) or moved to Africa. He told me to book my flight to Chicago. I ended up working for him for five years. He made a - risky, perhaps - investment, and it "paid off".

Four years ago, before coming on staff with YL I sought advice from Pam, our regional director. I told her that I felt like God was calling me to vocational ministry, and that I loved Young Life, but that I was wary of taking the job...I might only be there until I started grad school...or moved to Africa (that's my classic fear-of-commitment excuse...I'm sincere when I use it, but I fear I borderline abuse it.) I distinctly remember her telling me to "try it out for a year, and see if it's a good fit." Looking back this comment is hilarious to me, because anyone that works with an association or business or ministry, whether faith-based or not, knows that longevity is key. You don't put someone on your team and have them jump start the organization in a new community if you think they're going to bail after a year. Pam knew that. But she - and Corey - saw something in me I didn't (and often still don't). They made a - risky, perhaps - investment. I won't say it's "paid off"...that would be terribly presumptuous of me. But, for what it's worth, my one year trial period did turn into what is now going on it's fifth year.

For some reason - in my head - I'm a flight risk. But I have been greatly blessed. By people who are willing to put way more in my lap than I believe I should be trusted with. And by a Savior who, in his great grace, glues my feet to the floor when necessary.

I have much to learn from these (and many other) people who have seen me - not just for who I am, but for who I have the potential to be. I am mostly near-sighted. I tend to see the present reality, and not far past it. But vision is a incredibly valuable characteristic. It is a common quality among the best teachers and leaders and mentors and parents and friends that I have known.

God's pretty good at it too. He's well known for taking the long view, for seeing where people could be if they listen and obey. Moses. David. Peter.

I desire to have this kind of vision. To love people where they are at, but to be discontent to see them stay there. To have the wisdom to know when people are short-changing themselves. To invest more in people than they believe they are worth.

So, back to psycho-dream-self....

I'm a little nervous about the new job. Well, the old job...expanded. I'm a little nervous that I won't live up to people's expectations, that I won't be able to do it well enough, that I'll let folks down. But I am grateful for people who see more than what is already there...

I Whistle A Happy Tune

I know. You probably think that the 40 Days campaign without coffee killed me, and that's why I haven't updated this blog in nearly three months. This is not the case. I survived the campaign - quite swimmingly, actually - and I (along with several hundred other people) raised some good money to help build wells and install water purifications systems in several countries across Africa. (And don't worry...I'll hit you all up again next year.) So, that is not my excuse for my lack of writing. Rather, this spring has just been a little busy, and so many other things always seem to take precedence over sitting down for long enough to produce a cohesive stream of thought.

Since I last wrote here I have taken a trip to Omaha to hear Chap Clark speak about youth culture (a word to the wise in youth ministry...don't miss a good chance to hear Chap Clark speak), taken a trip to Fort Collins with the Hill City High School band, taught a few yoga classes at the Y, enjoyed a couple of Rent-a-Mom gigs, and worked a little here and there, among a few other things.

As I write this I am in Sioux Falls in the home of some new friends, surrounded by good friends (who are all watching The King and I...which is why this is poorly written...I'm easily distracted by Rodger's & Hammerstein). We came here for the wedding of some other friends, where I got to see some old friends. Quite the delightful weekend.

I wish I could say that things are slowing down, and that I'll have more time to write in the next few months (which I do for my own benefit far more than yours), but I'd be kidding myself. Next weekend I'll be in Parkston with my other best friends putting on a weekend for middle and high school girls (side note: the opportunity to do ministry with my very best friends - both through Young Life, and church - has been one of the greatest blessings of my life...more on that some other time). Then I get to spend 10 days in the middle of June at Young Life's Camp Malibu in British Colombia with several of the planet's coolest people (a.k.a. - my Hill City Young Life kids). In July my little sis and I are making what is sure to be an epic trip to Minneapolis to see the New Kids on the Block AND the Backstreet Boys in concert (seriously...how cool are we?), immediately followed by a week at the lovely Crystal Springs Baptist Camp in Medina, ND...serving in the position of rec director (i.e., "Captain of Fun"). So that's the first half of my summer - I think I've got some pretty awesome stuff going on the second half too, but my brain can only handle six weeks at a time.

Anyhow, this was more or less a worthless post, but Yul Brynner is now demanding my undivided attention, so I'm off. Peace out!

Forty Days

Disclaimer: The following is a shameless plug for a fundraising campaign. You've been warned. :)

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As you are reading this, 884 million people are drinking water from unimproved (i.e. potentially dangerous) sources. One-third of those people live in sub-Saharan Africa. We can do something about it.

In 2005, Jars of Clay started a non-profit organization called Blood:Water Mission to personalize and raise awareness about and funding for the HIV/AIDS and water crises in sub-Saharan Africa. You can learn all about it here. Two years ago the fine folks at Blood:Water thought up a clever little annual campaign called "Forty Days of Water." You can read about it here.

Now, here's the part where I try to convince you to participate in the campaign:

"Forty Days of Water" works like this:

1. Starting on March 9 (following traditional lenten season) you give up all beverages, besides tap water, for 40 days.
2. During this time you save the money you would have spent on other beverages...coffee, orange juice, soda, coffee, wine, smoothies, coffee, tea, chocolate milk, Naked juice, kombucha, coffee...
3. At the end of the 40 days (April 23rd...which is actually 46 days - 40 fasting plus six sabbath) you take the money you saved and send it to Blood:Water Mission.
4. Blood:Water uses your money to build wells in Uganda, providing clean drinking water for many people who have never had any before.
5. Lives are saved.

Here is why you should participate in this campaign:

1. To help others. As my little bro put it, "Or, I could KEEP drinking my coffee, and still send them $50, and we're all happy." It's true. The money you will save by participating, and therefore contribute to the fundraising won't be a huge amount. Last year I only ended up sending in about $75. But the money is only part of the campaign. The other two parts are solidarity and awareness. By making water your only beverage for six weeks you are experiencing a tiny bit of what our friends in Africa experience everyday - limited choices concerning what they consume. And the more we have in common the more we care. The more we care the more we help. Also, giving up other beverages is conspicuous...in our culture, choices like this don't go unnoticed. So every time someone asks you why you're sitting in a coffee shop drinking hot water, you have a chance to engage them in conversation about an important issue they might not be aware of.
2. To help me. I know. It's terribly selfish. But this is my third year participating in the campaign, and I've learned that it's a lot easier to stick to it if you have comrades. I mean, I roast coffee for a living. If I could make a living drinking it, I would. So giving it up for six weeks requires a tiny bit of will power. And I am weak. So, so weak. So please...help a sister out and jump on my little water-drinking band wagon.
3. To help you. If you're like me, you probably consume to much sugar, aspartame, or caffeine. It won't kill you to cut it out for a month and a half. Just sayin', man. Just sayin'. Also, doing something to help other people is proven to lower your blood pressure.

So, there is my shameless plug. If you decide to participate, let me know so we can order water in coffee shops together.

Nothing of substance here, folks...

I've been sitting here at my computer for two hours now. Catching up on some reading, browsing pretty things I'll never buy on etsy.com, cleaning out my email inbox, perusing album reviews, and an assortment of other lazy-Sunday-afternoon-in-a-coffee-shop activities. And the whole time I've had this blog window open in the background, but nothing to put in the little blank box with the blinking...blinking...blinking...anticipating cursor.

Actually, that's a lie. I have plenty to write in here. In fact, I've started seven or eight different intro paragraphs and deleted every single one of them for one reason or another. Too cliche. Too whiny. Too shallow. Too self-centered. Too revealing. Too preachy. Too churchy sounding. Too trying-not-to-sound-too-churchy sounding. You'd think I was writing an article for the Times. Once upon a time, there was a period in my life when I could churn out 5-10 essays a week, either on my blog, or for school, or on a Perkins napkin. I could write 500 words at the drop of a hat...about the price of tea in the student union, or the history of my friend Matt's grandpa's hat, or even the mundane and/or trivial events of my day. But now I clearly take myself too seriously. This is a tragedy and something must be done. Not sure what, though. Probably should quit reading so much well written stuff....more tabloids. Then I could lower the bar, and be satisfied with my petty ramblings and excerpts from my running, inner monologue.

That being said...my inner monologue has sounded something like this lately: Am I doing my job well? Why am I so critical of people? What should I do with the change in my piggy bank when it's full? Do I like where my roommate put the couch? How can I love people better? Why do I continue drinking diet soda when I honestly believe it's terrible for me? How should I feel about health care reform and why? Who knew that your friends all becoming moms would change your life so much? Can wearing Chanel No. 5 automatically make you classy, even if you're wearing sweats and haven't washed your hair in two days? What does God think about my schedule? Am I a good friend? Did I forget to return Dinner for Schmucks to the redbox? Why did I waste two hours of my life on that movie? Should I keep doing yoga even though Mark Driscoll thinks it's demonic? What the heck is going on in the Middle East? How wrong is it that I find Justin Bieber strangely cute, even though he's, like, 12 years old? How much of what I do/read/eat/think/say/write/listen to/buy/wear is about projecting an image of who I want people to think I am? And very important...how late am I going to be to the movie I'm supposed to be at in 18 minutes, because I got carried away with this silly rambling?

You can eat bugs in America too...

I grew up in a subculture of Sunday school classes and VBS weeks and missions conferences that constantly begged the question, "Will you go?" In it's broadest sense the question was referring to the foreign mission field. But more specifically, at least in the mind of this eight-year-old girl, the call pertained to some undisclosed location in the Central African jungle, or perhaps the Amazon, where everyone ran around in loin clothes, no one spoke english, and the threat of Malaria was imminent. There were only two options for accommodations: a grass hut or a tree house, neither with running water. The job description mainly centered around sharing the Gospel with these people who had never heard Jesus' name - but accepted your words eagerly - and, secondarily, convincing your audience to quit eating each other. Oh, and there were spears involved. Definitely spears. The whole thing was vaguely reminiscent of the Jungle Cruise ride at Disney World. Or maybe not-so-vaguely.

"Will you go?" they begged, over and over.

And every time they asked this question I cried, "Yes! Yes! I WILL go! Pick me! Send me! I'll go!" (I cried this silently, within my heart, because the mood was always very solemn on such occasions, and I was a very good little eight-year-old girl when I was at church.)

Thus began a twenty-year obsession with ethnic food and tree houses and Jane Goodall and pretty much anything having anything at all to do with anything even remotely related to Africa. (As a side note, I find it somewhat ironic that these Sunday school teachers seemed to be painting as bleak a picture as possible of the situation. And the more dangerous and savage it all sounded, the more I fantasized about it.)

And so, when I graduated from college, put in my one year notice (yes....one year...I don't rush into things) at my then-job, and notified the management (upper-upper-management...that being God) that I was now available to go to Africa and save the lost tribes of the Congo (and eat bugs and give up hot showers) I think I half-expected Him to thank me profusely and put me on the next flight to a grass hut.

But He did not do this.

While I was busy spending endless late-night hours googling third-world missions organizations and emailing contacts in Lesotho and Mauritania, God was busy making arrangements for the actual next chapter of my life...thirty miles from my hometown. I was exhausting myself trying to kung-fu-kick down closed doors and stacking milk crates to climb in high windows, oblivious to the fact that God had just blown off the entire south-facing wall. (I'd like to think that God wasn't really frustrated with me during this whole time that I was barking up the wrong tree. That instead, maybe he was happy to have me distracted and out of the way while he did all the prep work. I'd like to think that.)

So one morning - four months before my declared "last day" - I was working at the clinic. I had just returned (literally - I'd pulled into town just six hours earlier) from a missions trip to the Dominican Republic and upon clocking-in had told my boss that yes, I would be taking Jesus to a jungle...just as soon as He, you know, gave me a lead...of any kind...at all. The trip had been a sort-of "testing the waters" for me and after a week of hauling bricks and learning Spanish hymns and hugging little Dominican children I had decided that the water was perfect and I was ready to dive in. Right now. Any moment. Just say when. All systems go.

On my lunch break that day I checked my voice mail and had a message from Corey, the area director of Young Life, the youth ministry I had been volunteering with for the last five years. He wanted to hire me. To start Young Life in Hill City. Today.

So I did what any reasonable girl would do. I locked myself in a podiatry exam room and called my mom while having one of those low-grade, jetlag/"I'm-in-my-early-twenties-and-I-have-an-ill-defined-idea-of-God's-will-for-my-life" induced anxiety attacks. The conversation, in short: my mom pointed out that I loved working with Young Life. I loved the hills. They actually wanted to hire me. And that for the last two years every plan I had cooked up to do ministry overseas had fallen apart. (She may have also said something about not letting me ever live in a different zip code than herself - not over her dead body. But that part of our chat is a little fuzzy.)

She's a wise woman, that mother of mine.

Four months later I came on Young Life staff.

Shortly after accepting the job, while I was still feeling a little shaky about my decision to commit to being in America for an undetermined amount of time, I ran across the parable in the book of Matthew, where Jesus says that "he who is faithful with little will be entrusted with much". I told myself that that is what God was doing with me right then. Giving me little (Hill City) to see if I could handle much (a third-world country).

I was an idiot.

To think that the kids in Hill City (population 970) were somehow less significant to God, that he wanted me to go there to "practice" ministry and then when I had honed my skills he would turn me loose on something more glamorous and noticeably self-sacrificing...well, like I said, I was being really dumb about my whole philosophy of calling and God's will, and greatly misapplying Jesus' words.

As I began to get to know the kids in Hill City, to hear their stories and see their pain, to be invited into their lives, to love them, to laugh with them, I realized that I was being given so, SO much. I began to be filled with a sort-of overwhelming, divine sense of responsibility. My job here was no longer something to be taken lightly, to be seen as some sort of dues I needed to pay before I got what I really was aiming at.

I've been in Hill City three-and-half years. Getting to share Jesus with all these amazing, hilarious, wonderful high school students. I have been blessed and broken and stretched WAY further than I could ever have imagined.

I do have electricity. I do have running water. I don't have malaria. But I do have a tree-house in my yard that I can sleep in whenever I feel like it.

I still dream about Africa. I got to go there and love on beautiful Swazi people for a week in 2009, and it was amazing. I still feel this tug to share Christ with one of the hundreds of people groups in the planet who have no access to the gospel, and to help meet their physical needs for food and shelter and medical attention, and to seek social justice for them, and to learn their languages and customs. I still daydream about raising my own children someday in a country where a culture of entitlement and self-centeredness isn't pervasive. I still hope to live in a grass hut.

Maybe God is preparing me for that. Maybe God is preparing me for something I haven't even dreamed up yet. Maybe God is preparing me to stay in Hill City for a long time. Who knows? But as long as I'm here, I'm going to strive to be faithful with the so much I've been given.

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hund-....

2010 - I crunched a few numbers, and here is the last year in numerical review. Then I realized it sort of looks like a bad "Seasons of Love" cover. Ah well.

29,519 - Miles put on my car

11,278 - Miles negligently put on my car between oil changes

4,740 - Pounds of green coffee beans roasted

3,010 - Approximate ounces of coffee consumed

212 - Rounds of Dutch Blitz played

77 - Number of times we sang the Bumble Bee Tuna song at YL club, by request.

32 - Grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins at my niece's 2nd birthday party

21 - Bottles of Sprite exploded on stage at Young Life's Timberwolf Lake in August

19 - Pints of Ben and Jerry's ice cream eaten with my sister

18 - Pounds gained from eating Ben and Jerry's ice cream with my sister

11 - US States Visited

9 - Stitches received by YL kids, due to events occurring at YL club

3 - Babies born to best friends between October 19-November 5

2 - Rounds of Dutch Blitz won

1 - Stage light broken by exploding bottle of Sprite at Timberwolf Lake in August

Dear Verizon, thanks for taking so long to fix my phone...

So on Monday afternoon I was sitting in my neighborhood Verizon thinking about God's love. I know that's an unusual segue, but it was a lengthy train of thought that got me from from point A (600+ missing phone contacts) to point B (God's love) so I'll spare you the details of the first half of the story. Suffice it to say, it's not because I was being pious and heaven-centered in my thinking. Rather, I was being a little neurotic and impatient, and strayed upon the topic of God's love unintentionally. Either way, that's where I ended up.

Specifically, I was thinking about something I heard recently...that God's love is so different than any human love we can know for this reason: God knows us completely AND He loves us completely...and ultimately, that's what we all desire more than anything else in life. To be known AND loved. Because most of us have experienced being known by someone who didn't love us, and lots of us can say that we have been loved by someone who didn't really know us. But so often we feel that the people that love us would quit loving us if they really knew ALL of us. Deep, deep down though, we long for the whole package...enter Jesus.

So then I was sitting in Verizon thinking about Jesus. And I was thinking about how if we love Jesus, he asks us to love others the same way we are loved by him. So we are called to know others well and love them well. Which led me to wonder how well I am knowing and loving the people in my life...maybe not very well most of the time.

Sometimes when I consider who or what I want to be and I get to thinking of an department that could really use some improvement, I try to think of people in my life that emulate those traits more effectively I do.

Which is how I came to be sitting in Verizon thinking about my friend Mary.

Mary has a gift. Seriously. She, more than anyone else I've ever met, makes a person feel known. This is why I wanted to be her friend.

Mary and I haven't always been friends. I mean, we were never enemies or anything like that, but we were simply acquaintances for a long time, first. And then one day Mary called me and said she needed an accountability partner and that I might be the person for the job. I have no idea - besides the great and wonderful providence of the Creator of the universe - why she would think that. I didn't exactly have a reputation for being organized, or consistent, or "lovingly confrontational"...things that would be good to look for in an accountability partner. But nonetheless, that's how our friendship began. After about a month of me rescheduling and canceling and flat out forgetting our plans to meet - and Mary not giving up on me - we finally started meeting weekly for coffee. What I lack in organization skills Mary has in abundance. So our accountability took the form of bulleted lists of things for which we needed prayer and help and wisdom and follow up. I was pretty honest about my own crap from the get-go, because Mary and I weren't friends yet so I figured I didn't have much to lose. If she knew all about me and decided she didn't like me...oh well. Lucky for me, that's not how things worked out. The more of my junk I told her about, the more Mary showed me love. Which doesn't make any sense, really. But that just goes to show that she was loving me with Jesus' love, and not just the world's surface-y, fair-weather-friend kind of love.

Sometimes when you share a lot about yourself with someone and they continue to love you in spite of it all, you chalk it up to their own forgetfulness.

But I knew that couldn't be the case with Mary, because I quickly learned that she has a mind like a steel trap. When we would meet every week for coffee she didn't just ask me about the things on the bullet list...she would ask me about things I had mentioned off-hand, and things I barely remembered telling her, and things I didn't even articulate but that she had picked up on. Shortly into our weekly meetings, she made me feel known. Which, like I said, is why we I wanted to be Mary's friend.

That was five or six years ago. A week ago I found myself on the other side of the state, sitting in Mary's kitchen at four a.m., in all of my messy-haired, pj'd-out, four a.m. glory. Her and her husband, Luke, just had their second baby and I had come to meet this new little person and help out for a few days. This particular night was a rough one for both little boys, which is why everyone in the house was up at four in the morning. Mary was apologizing - I suppose at the moment she was thinking that we were knowing each other a little better than even we really should. But the truth is, I couldn't have cared less right then that I was up at four in the morning with two fussy kiddos. Really, I was instead thinking that the whole situation was a lot like what God designed his church and his followers to look like...being deeply known and deeply loved, all at the same time.

I'm blessed by Mary and her family. I'm also blessed by so many other people who know me and love me anyway, not because I'm a walk in the park, but because they've been loved by Jesus and are loving me, and others, out of the overflow. I have so many of these people in my life that it's kind of ridiculous. It's an embarrassment of riches, you could say. Which is just evidence of how much God loves us.

Which is how I ended in Verizon thinking about God's love...

Freedom is not all cupcakes...

I'm currently reading a nonfiction, faith-themed book that I can't recommend. (I'll refrain from naming the book or the author, because first, I'm about to rag on it, and second, I'll probably misquote him...) I was optimistic at the beginning (it had an intriguing subtitle). Then there were some red flags mixed in with some good ideas. And now, about 3/4 of the way in to it, I'm growing weary of wading through page after page of vague, possibly-heretical fluff to find a few morsels of wisdom. I'm going to finish reading it though, because I'm compulsive like that.

The chapter I read yesterday was the one that really made me scratch my head. The author talks about what he calls his "freedom filter." The chapter is on the topic of truth, and the author states that truth can be hard to discern in this world (true). He says that a lot of people will try to tell you their own idea of truth is the final word on a particular matter (true). He says that people with more education, such as professors or pastors, do not have a corner on the truth market (true.) He says that as Christians we have the Holy Spirit, who discerns truth (true). He also says that because of that, all you need is a "freedom filter" - like his own - to discern absolute truth (what?) Ah, yes. the "freedom filter". Paul talks about it in the book of Ro...phil...inthians.

The "freedom filter" works like this:

1. You are presented with/think up a new concept, statement, idea, etc., called a "truth claim".
2. You say to yourself, "Jesus died so I could experience freedom. Does this truth claim make me feel A) more free, or does it make me feel B) sad, guilty or condemned?"
3. If A: you, my friend, have found yourself some real, genuine truth. Celebrate by making a batch of cupcakes. With pink frosting. Share them with a friend. If B: reject the truth claim. Cannot possibly be truth. Eat some cupcakes. You'll feel better. If C: you shouldn't have followed Jimmy into the cave. There are snakes and your candle has blown out. Turn to page 18 to turn back and leave Jimmy in the dark.

(Okay, so I added the part about the cupcakes. And Jimmy. But the rest of it* is pretty much what he was saying.)

I get the freedom thing. I dig it. I mean, the whole concept was Jesus' idea. His brainchild. His MO. He explicitly stated that he came to "proclaim freedom to prisoners". That we shall know the truth, and the truth shall set us free. That whoever he sets free shall be free. Indeed. I get it, and I love it. I do.

But the part in this guy's (the author who shall not be named) thinking that I feel gets a little sketch is the part where he says that Truth (being the very thing that sets us free, according to Jesus) only brings feelings and emotions associated with freedom - and never the opposite, such as feelings of bondage, slavery, guilt and condemnation. The author even gives a specific example of hearing a sermon in which the preacher leads you to believe that you are a sinner...because you sin. And believing you are a sinner does not lead to freedom. So that can't be truth. I beg to differ. And here is why.

I struggle with sin. (Yes way.) There is one sin in particular that I have struggled with for a long while - sometimes less, sometimes more - but it's been hanging around in my life, bringing death to my spirit, and I have been a willing slave to it for quite some time. The last few weeks, I've been thinking an extra lot about how sinful that sin is, and every time I think about that, and every time I give in to that sin, I feel sick. Like a rock in the pit of my stomach. This morning, I went to church and the pastor read from Matthew, where Jesus directly addresses that sin. And that rock in my stomach felt even bigger. Then I came here, to Dunn Bros Coffee, and was reading an article on the Relevant website (if you're not familiar, you should be...www.relevantmagazine.com) that directly referred to the aforementioned sin as...yeah...sin. Go figure. And the rock grew, and I felt even more sick. That rock has a name. It's called "conviction". Interestingly enough, that too is a function of the Holy Spirit. (John 16:8)

The funny thing about conviction is that it feels a lot like guilt. It's not the same thing, but as long as we're talking about feelings, guilt and conviction bear an uncanny resemblance on the emotion radar. And let me tell you...conviction, in it's earliest stages, does not feel like freedom. It feels like bondage. It feels like a rock in the pit of my stomach. It feels like I should have taken a dramamine before I went to church this morning. Conviction feels this way not because it is bondage, but because it reveals bondage.

So the other funny thing about conviction is that while it feels like bondage, it leads straight to freedom. When we decide that we don't want to walk around with this rock in our stomach any longer we can repent and seek Jesus' forgiveness. He will give it without reservation, and we are restored to freedom. Case in point, if the Holy Spirit had not convicted me of my sin, I might be still comfortably wading around in it for who knows how long, while it slowly sucks the life out of my heart. But instead this nagging cloud of "condemnation" that has been hanging over my head the last few weeks is the very thing that brought me back into right relationship with my creator - a place of extraordinary freedom.

I do, in part, understand where the author is coming from, and I don't mean to throw the baby out with the bath water. (On a side note: I used this idiom in the company of high school kids the other day and not a single one of them knew what I meant. They thought I was actually talking about throwing babies.) Paul warns us about being taken captive by empty and deceptive philosophies, namely legalism...and the author quotes that and other related scripture in "freedom filter" chapter. And I'll be the first to admit that I used to really get my kicks from being legalistic and just feeling guilty all the time. But I find that in our post-modern culture, so many of us want to freeze the pendulum on the opposite, feel-good upswing....because it doesn't make us squirmy and it looks more attractive to the world.

The thing I find though, when I try to look at the big picture of the real freedom God offers, is that the more I earnestly grieve my sin (something that makes me quite "squirmy" to say the least), the better I understand the price my freedom cost Christ, then the more deeply I can breathe when my chains are gone...and the deeper my love for Jesus.

*I don't have the book in front of me while I'm writing this, and I can't remember if the author used the word "feel" or not, when referring to the operation of his freedom filter. But for all practical purposes, I believe it was inferred that feelings were the primary gauge he was tuning in to - the chapter subtitle was, after all, "Can We Trust Our Gut?" - his conclusion is yes, we can.)

Coffee Beans, Karl Marx, and a Cookie Recipe...

I spent some twenty-thousand dollars and learned some twenty-thousand theories to obtain my college degree. Four years after graduating I remember only three of these theories: Cooley’s Looking-glass Theory, Sutherland’s Theory of Differential Association, and Marx’s Theory of Alienation

I remember the first one because Dr. Goss made us recite it verbatim for my Soc 100 final. I memorized the second one because just using the words “differential” and “association” in the same sentence makes any person sound smart, so I always keep that in my back pocket, just in case my high school kids are questioning my intelligence. And I didn’t even know that I remembered the third theory until one day a few months ago when I was pondering how it was possible I could derive so much joy from my job with Dry Creek Coffee.

Maybe it’s the way my car smells after carting 30 lbs of ground Nicaraguan into Rapid? Or the solitude (and bonus view of Harney Peak) my roasting shed provides in the midst of an otherwise chaotic schedule? Perhaps it’s the rich culture surrounding the whole coffee industry? Those are all gratifying, but they didn’t seem to account for all of said joy.

Then I had this vague recollection of learning something…in some class…once…about the proletariat being incurably miserable because they are so disconnected from the finished product of their over-specialized labor. Merely cogs in a machine. Pieces of a system. Oh yes…alienated. That’s it! Dry Creek is the anti-alienation.

Note exhibit A:

A farmer in, let’s say Guatemala, plants, harvests, and dries his coffee beans. He then ships them to a charming little company in Minneapolis called Café Imports. I call Café Imports (where I get to actually speak to one of the handful of employees whose bios are posted on the company website) and order my beans. UPS drops the beans off at my roasting shed three days later. I roast the beans, bag them and deliver them to the customer, who then calls me the following morning to report that they just had what was possibly the best cup of coffee they’ve ever had the pleasure of drinking. (That’s how it works…every time…more or less. Ha ha.)

Voila! Joy accounted for. Karl wasn’t all wrong. There is something intensely satisfying about being involved in nearly the entire process of providing a commodity, even if it is something as (I hate to even say it) trivial as coffee, especially when you receive direct positive feedback from the consumer.

So there you have it. Applied social theory. Applied undergrad degree…ha ha. Dr. Goss would be proud.

P.S. The following is a recipe for chocolate chip cookies, because, well, I love chocolate chip cookies. In full disclosure, I have never used the following recipe...I flat out stole it from bettycrocker.com, so I can't speak to the quality of resulting cookies. However, if anyone wanted to make the cookies, I would be plenty willing to participate in quality control taste-tests. Enjoy.

3/4	cup granulated sugar
3/4	cup packed brown sugar
1	cup butter or margarine, softened
1	egg
2 1/4	cups Gold Medal® all-purpose flour
1	teaspoon baking soda
1/2	teaspoon salt
1	cup coarsely chopped nuts
1	package (12 ounces) semisweet chocolatechips (2 cups)

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1. Heat oven to 375ºF.
2. Mix sugars, butter and egg in large bowl. Stir in flour, baking soda and salt (dough will be stiff). Stir in nuts and chocolate chips.
3. Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls about 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheet.
4. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until light brown (centers will be soft). Cool slightly; remove from cookie sheet. Cool on wire rack.

Livin' It Up, Choppin' It Down, Keepin' It Real...

Last Sunday I returned from three weeks at Young Life camp. Ahhh...long live the lore of summer camp. As a kid, the camps I attended (choir camp, church camp, horse camp) held their own special sort of...nostalgia. A certain charm of place. And I remember that when the week ended and it was time to pack my bags and head home, it was always kind of a bittersweet situation. Now that I'm an adult...well...not that much has changed.

My job puts me in the small percentage of lucky grown-ups who still get to go to camp every year. Even luckier (read blessed) is the fact that it's not just any camp I get to go to, it's Young Life camp, which is pretty much one of the best ideas any one ever had.

So every year - for the last nine summers - I get to take a crowd of my high school kids to a fantastic property for the best week of their life, where they will laugh hard and play hard and meet Jesus. It's not a bad gig, really. In addition, since coming on YL staff, I occasionally get to spend a month or so working at one of those properties. This year God and the Midwest Division powers-that-be ordained that I would be on the program team (in non-YL terms that pretty much translates directly to "fun squad") at Timber Wolf Lake, a YL camp in northern Michigan. It was a crazy, hilarious and sacred three weeks. We saw more than 1,200 middleschoolers and their leaders come through the camp, exploded eighteen 2-liter bottles of Sprite on stage, and snapped some 2,500 glow sticks. We also saw God plant countless seeds of love and change...which volunteer leaders will get to help nurture in their kids back home. Like I said...not a bad gig.

Three weeks is a while to be away from home and a job and my family and my bed and my own YL kids, so when the session was over I was mostly ready to get on back to the good old SD. But like I said, it's always a little bittersweet. Life at YL camp is, in many ways, a good snapshot of what I believe God intended life and his kingdom and his church to look like. So this week I've spent my coffee-roasting time thinking a bit about why that is, and how to recreate that environment, in part, at home. (Roasting coffee is perhaps one of the best spiritual disciplines I have encountered in this life. More on that some other time.) Below is a very short list of some of the key principles I feel I should carry over from camp to "real life" (I hesitate to use the term "real life" in this context because ultimately, God's Kingdom is more real than the broken world we live in on a daily basis...but for all intensive purposes...):

1. Every task, whether it be scrubbing a toilet, or doing the "Go Bananas" dance, or verbally proclaiming the gospel, can have something to do with glorifying God and advancing his Kingdom.
2. Living in community is a good thing.
3. Servant-hood is the most effective kind of economy.
   
4. Praying daily with other people who have a common purpose and heart and passion is another good thing.
5. Facebook, cell-phones and email are non-essentials and are no substitute for face-to-face conversation.
   
6. Shoes are optional.

A short list, but a good place to start, no? Next blog entry...principles you simply cannot or should not carry over from camp to real life. Ha ha. :)