as i am simplifying my commitments, i thought i’d share some insights i am learning along the way…a weekly installment maybe?

to update to my previous post on all the crazy things i was allowing to dominate my schedule, many of those things have been eliminated. the action i’d like to talk about today is focus.

for me, earlier this year i had no focus. anything that would cross my path that seemed remotely interesting i’d say yes to and slowly but surely my schedule and sanity started getting eaten away. i was working full time, doing freelance web design, graphic design, writing movie reviews, doing a little bit of radio, consulting with a few churches about identity and branding, reviewing books, and prepping for the announcement of mad church disease. PHEW. i saw all these things as good, i mean, i was helping other churches, and even getting to write some. however, just because they fell in line with my passions (the church and writing) didn’t mean they were the right things for me.

so, these are the things i’ve decided to focus on personally:

*my husband – date night is a must

*my job – it’s both provision and where i can do ministry

*writing – not just anything, but working on mad church disease, exploring another book option, and select articles dealing with sexual and emotional purity. blogging too. i love you guys. :)

*speaking – to support the topics i am writing about and be able to interact with people who read my stuff

*freelance - i have limited it to three clients with whom i already work. no more, no less. boundaries and schedules with all three.

*people – with the writing and speaking and blogging comes opportunities to meet people, hang out, get coffee or lunch and chat about stuff. this is one of my favorite parts. we get to share what god is doing in our lives and learn!

so, if some opportunity comes along and doesn’t fit inside those categories, no will typically be the answer. and as time progresses, it is easier to say no. practice with me though, it’s also easier doing it together!

no.
no.
no.
no.
no.

tomorrow at 4:35 pm CDT i’ll be on the air with john & stephanie at 101.5 WORD fm in pittsburgh. we’ll be talking about forgiveness, based on my article “forgiving the unforgivable” (read it here at relevantmagazine.com).

so, all you pittsburghians (is that a word?) tune in!

after moving to dallas in 1996, i became quite fond of lake arlington. there is nothing beautiful about it – it’s small, off the beaten path, and overlooks some kind of factory which is always polluting the already hazy dallas atmosphere. following particularly rough days at school, boy problems, parent problems, or predictable teenage angst, the right bench next to the left dock was my bench, my place to go…to stare out at the lovely factory, watch the ducks fight with one another, or simply be still.

i continued this habit far into my early 20’s until i moved to kansas city. even then, on visits to my parents for the holidays, usually at some point i would make a trip out to the lake.

yesterday, i found myself on that side of the metroplex and decided it had been a while since i had paid tribute to my silent, but always available friend. my bench was free, so after clumsily walking over some big rocks wearing heels, i was able to sit and simply be still.

not very long after i took my place on the bench, a girl who was about ten came wheeling a bike over to the curb next to me, by the dock. she looked at me suspiciously, wondering if i could be trusted not to take her treasured bike. i suppose i passed the test as she wandered off to feed some of the ducks.

i looked at the bike. purple. tassles hanging out of the handlebars. little clip on stars on the spokes. and…training wheels?

the training wheels surprised me. i looked back over my shoulder, wondering if maybe i guessed her age wrong…or maybe she was a giant four year old, but no. easily ten.

training wheels? you’ve got to take them off sometime there, little lady.

after spending much of the previous week soul-searching, i have no doubt that this overly-worried ten year old and her training wheels were parked right in front of me on purpose.

there are areas in my life where i am still riding with my training wheels on. faith? check. trust in god’s plan? check. trust in others? check, check. worrying about the future? check.

i think i have a whole garage full of bicycles with training wheels on them.

the determined and stubborn part of me wants to go and rip them all off. quit taking my sleeping/anxiety/stress medicines which “keep me leveled out.” fight head-on the demons that invade my thoughts and debilitate my soul and my passion. i want to run through there like a crazy ninja-fighter and attack everything that stands in my way of fulfilling my purpose.

however, for whatever reason i can’t seem to fight. and i’m not really sure why. i know i’m tired of these training wheels, but i’m not sure if i’m ready for them to come off yet.

when my husband was on a mission trip in his high school years, the group of guys he was with had the luxury of a communal shower. i believe most high school boys would find this an awkward situation, trying to keep their insecurities hidden by staring very intently at the tile wall in front of them.

the rule of the communal shower was “eyes, straight ahead.” during the course of one of his showers, he heard a noise – a thud. looking down toward his feet, he noticed a bar of soap slide on the floor, right behind his legs. within seconds, a hand – only from the wrist up – grabbed the escaped bar. as quickly as the soap had appeared, it had disappeared.

it doesn’t take a genius to figure out whoever this alleged soap-dropping-person was had to come into pretty close contact with my husband’s then sudsy derriere. now, chris was faced with a life-altering decision.

does he turn around and identify this brave (yet clumsy) person? or does he choose the safe route, eyes unmoving from the innocent tile wall?

he chose the wall.

yesterday while in kansas, i had a woman come up to me and introduce herself. she attends my old church and has been reading my blog. she was awesome and she thanked me for being transparent through this avenue of blogging.

i have to admit, this computer screen in some ways is like the wall at which my husband chose to stare. i am honored that you drop by in some way or another and read these mostly muddled thoughts i toss out into cyberland. but truth be told, it’s a LOT easier typing these things than it is physically talking about them with someone.

i got to spend some time today sharing about my struggles with stress and anxiety – things i have easily blogged about before (feel free to read through the “depression” category)…however, looking someone in the eye and saying, “yeah, this is where i really get hit” didn’t come out quite as elegant, witty, or as anonymous.

honestly, i think i was surprised about how uncomfortable it was talking about these issues in person with a small group of friends as compared to writing it for however many random strangers to read. and as therapeutic as blogging these things has been, and as much as other people have shared the “me too” connection through those posts, there is definitely a huge difference in the amount of difficulty sharing such messy things to real, live-in-front-of-you people as opposed to typing them out for the whole world to see.

all of this rambling to state the obvious: i don’t think blogging or an online community can take the place of real life interaction and sharing. can it compliment it? absolutely. i will talk until i’m blue in the face about the amazing things that can take place online.

but looking someone in the eye after they’ve been up and in your ugly parts is a completely different – and now i realize very essential – dimension.

this is my first official phone-to-blog post. I know I’m a little slow. and my phone automatically converts my lowercase “i” to uppercase. sigh.

anyway, I felt the need to pass on some essential information for both girls and guys regarding road trips and pit stops.

girls: hurry up. nobody at phillips 66 cares what you look like. neither does anyone you pass on the road. get in, get out. there’s a line of I-just-drank-a-lot-of-starbucks-two-hours-ago people waiting on you.

guys: flush. sometimes the sign on the door that says “men” really implies “men OR women who really hafta go and don’t want to wait behind three high school girls on a youth trip”…so some of us aren’t afraid to journey in the land of the splattered floor. please do the few of us brave girls a favor and flush your stuff so we can at least stomach being in there.

this concludes my soapbox. which I might add was also empty in the previously mentioned men’s room.

at lunch today, i was sitting alone at an awkwardly placed table inside an overland park, kansas panera. thinking the free wifi and yummy chicken salad (which is not so readily available in dallas) would be two wonderful lunch-time companions, i plugged in my dad’s laptop (i am laptopless at the moment) and got to email checking and book-writing things.

in my inbox, i have about 58 stories of ministry hurt people have chosen to share with me. i feel so humbled and grateful they are willing to open up such painful wounds. and if you are one of those people, i beg your patience…responding has been more difficult than i ever imagined.

after nibbling a while on my fruit, emailing a couple friends, and starting to chow down on the chicken salad, i felt particularly moved to read a specific email i had recently received. i read it once. twice. googled a few things. and read it a third time.

by the third time through, i could barely manage to swallow the bite that was in my mouth. not only was my heart breaking for the person and the journey he had been on, my stomach was twisted in a big knot because of what had happened within the leadership of this particular staff.

i have been a part of staff where a large moral failure has occured. twice. it is not pretty. however, i think we are often blinded to the fact that stuff like this happens all the time without going noticed. pastors who preach from the stage wisdom and purity are doing things i don’t feel comfortable writing about. and if you’ve been here a while, you know i’ll pretty much talk about anything.

my sin is no more or less pretty than the next guy. there are dark recesses in my mind, and in my heart. but as a christian, a wife, and in leadership at a church, i know these places are there and i do my darndest to not dwell on them, to talk about them with my husband and a couple of close friends. i certainly don’t play in the muck and call it fun.

more and more as i read these stories, i realize how many church leaders do think it’s all fun and games what they do behind closed doors. they become pastors because they want a power trip and abuse the freedom they have in their lives and in their churches. they bring other leaders down with them to those places.

they aren’t the ones taking the mad church disease surveys (or if they are, they aren’t being honest), but it is their coworkers who see it what is happening, or experience it directly then either leave because of it or stay and don’t say anything because of the ramifications of accountability.

there is a very dark underbelly to many churches – churches you know of and read about and probably even comment on the staff blogs – that are going through the motions while living in deep, real sin.

i shouldn’t be surprised, but today i literally felt ill about this. it is unspeakably sad, and the truth always comes to the light, so i feel badly for the congregations who will one day discover things they could never imagine happening within their church walls.

please pray for me as i continue to read these stories, especially the hard ones like this. please pray for the people who know things they wish they didn’t, and who are doing things they shouldn’t be doing.

i realized today more than ever that whatever mad church disease turns ends up being, it cannot simply be a trendy book with good principles and advice. there is so much more going on, and i pray that we have the courage to bring about change to the war which is happening literally each and every day.

for me, it was a bathroom stall tonight.

obviously, i won’t explain too much about that part, as a sentence like that needs no explanation.

after drinking far too much diet coke and raspberry tea, i journey off to the ladies’ room. as i am in the previously mentioned stall, i hear the door open, and slam…then the open, and slam…in the stall next to me.

i am thinking…either someone is really drunk, or someone is really upset. i depart my stall and start to wash my hands. my new neighboring stall friend comes out of hers, after blowing her nose. i do a discreet once-over in the mirror to see what we’re dealing with.

both drunk and upset. hmmm….i ponder if i should say anything.

the thinking didn’t last very long. she leans into the mirror, wiping her eyes and lets out a long and heavy sigh. i slowly ask her if she’s okay while i dry my hands. she stops, takes a look at me and says,

“i can’t believe how wasted i look! this is just so (deep breath) sad!”

she really didn’t look too bad, and i tell her.

“seriously? i mean look, look at my eyes and my make up. it’s %#@* everywhere!”

really. you look fine. cute shirt.

(sniffs, wipes nose on arm)

“i just can’t believe i got wasted at an applebee’s…*&^@!..but thank (hiccup) you.”

i hold the door open for her, smile. she smiles back.

hopefully something in that interaction was helpful. it’s funny who crosses your path sometimes.

i’ll be honest. it’s been really hard for me to think of our upcoming vacation as such. most years, we go to california. at least once. last year, we went on a long mission trip to scotland, which, although wasn’t a vacation, was one of the most incredible experiences of my life.

this year, we save money. this year, is the year of paying down debt.

today, we leave for… kansas city.

yes, we have friends in kc. yes, we have family in kc. but it seems like my travel bug is not satisfied by staying on I-35 all year ’round. and quite honestly as a place, i really don’t like kc very much. there’s not much to do.

then again, maybe that’s what i need.

however, i am also trying to change my thinking…at least we can afford to drive to kc. we’ll be seeing friends on the way in oklahoma. we have a place to stay for free. i have no commitments while i’m there except a really fun concert & after party where we will see other friends. chris’ mom is an excellent cook. she often makes cookies while we’re there. and i hope she reads this before we arrive so she will make such cookies…

it’s not LA. it’s not San Diego. it’s not Edinburgh. but we have both of our iPods charged & ready for the trip. i get to spend hours alone with my husband (and that never happens) just talking or reading or listening to music while enjoying the cows and the horseshoeing schools and the never-ending kansas turnpike.

so…i am thankful.

where’s your favorite place to vacation?

I’ll be on Power Talk Live tonight discussing burnout at 9:00 pm CDT on 89.7 PowerFm here in Dallas.

Power Talk Live is a weekly show which addresses tough issues. You can listen live from anywhere by going to 897powerfm.com or if you live in the DFW area or South Oklahoma, you can pick it up on 89.7 FM.

Usually they do a call in segment so if you want to call in, you can call 214 (or 817) 787-1897 or if you are out of the DFW area, 1-866-787-1897.

I’ll also post the mp3 as soon as I get it back from them. Hope you can tune in! If not, I’d love your prayers!

I guess H.I.P.A.A. doesn’t work on presidents. :)