This Joyful, Messy Life

Breath Out

2019 was not my favorite year. I was very excited thinking about 2020 coming up, and then I got laid off at the end of November. We’re now looking at the tightest budget our marriage has ever faced, with paying for daycare and making less at my new job. 2020 took on a grim hue.

Every year, I have my “one word” that I use to bring a level of intention and focus to the year. My husband started doing this before we met, and I love the habit. As I was trapped in the house today, in the 18*F temps and blowing snow, my two young kids being very sweet and very demanding, I happened to glance out the window and catch my neighbor snow-blowing his driveway. I didn’t actually see my neighbor, but I saw the high, white plume of snow shoot up above his hedges and catch the wind. The visual instantly reminded me of seeing Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park. I’ve had the privilege of visiting that park several times in my life.

This year, we won’t be taking any vacations. I don’t get any paid time off anymore, and my husband is self-employed without any paid time off to speak of either. With tightening up the shoestrings, it’s going to be a very home-bound year. As I was remembering past trips and beautiful places I’ve been (like Yellowstone), I realized that my word this year needs to be Content.

It’s simply not going to be a very exciting year. Lots of work, raising very small humans, and enjoying the simple things is going to be my jam. So I will strive to be content. I will savor the look of the sky-high flying snow and remember the joy of exploding geisers. I will go snow-shoeing up our local mountain in a few weeks and think of hiking along glaciers in Montana and Canada. I will get to our cousin’s lake cabin this summer and remember the beautiful beaches of Australia and Fiji that I’ve been so privileged to visit, and be content with both those memories and of the current view I’m still privied to see.

I am an adventure-seeker, a travel-lover, an adrenaline-junkie. Sitting tight and staying close to home is not my preferred mode of operation. So Content will be my intention and my goal. A friend was encouraging my husband and I recently, reminding us of past decisions we’ve made that allow us to feel safe even in these tighter conditions we’re currently experiencing. And I was reminded that there are always seasons to life. There are very normal seasons of joy, and of suffering. Of surplus, and of deficiency. Of blessings, and of want. Of striving, and of rest. Of energy, and of stillness. So I will plan to embrace this – undoubtedly temporary – season of stillness and frugalness, knowing that the tides are always turning.

Going into 2020, whatever your hopes and dreams, or desperate longings, are, I encourage you to look around and find beauty right in front of your eyes. Beauty, love, and joy are always there if we look for them. We are free to choose joy, even in moments of suffering. And truly, if there ever was a secret to happiness, it’s choosing to be content with what we have and to seek the glorious in the ordinary.

A Love Letter to Australia

My heart has been breaking for Australia this past week, as news of the worsening fires has taken over my feed. There are hundreds of bushfires going on throughout the country, killing so much stock and wildlife, killing people, destroying homes and communities. I saw a video last night of some firemen on the front lines as the wind shifted and brought the fire roaring towards them at a ferocious intensity, overtaking their truck, and I started bawling.

I lived in Australia for 5 months during my sophomore year in college, attending Monash University outside Melbourne. The whole experience was so life-changing for me that I got my one-and-only tattoo to commemorate it. I met people who became lifelong friends, I got to see much of the country and experience some of the unique beauty it has to offer, and I got to know the culture and the people in a way that endeared them to my heart forever.

I will never forget some of my first experiences within weeks of landing in Oz. I had traveled from Chicago via LAX, and commiserated with a fellow traveler while going through the intensely jerky security staff at LAX International. He ended up being an Australian on my flight, heading home after a gap year in America. The feeling of traveling as far across the planet as I possibly could have without starting back, knowing absolutely no one, and then landing and hearing my name called out at the baggage carousel in an Australian accent from a new friend was the most comforting, lovely feeling I’d ever had. He ended up being so nice, inviting me to visit to his family’s home, check out his suburb, and genuinely wanting to show me the Australian way of life.

In my first week on campus, I befriended the other study abroad students, as classes hadn’t started and the local Australians weren’t yet on campus. I ended up taking the train to downtown Melbourne with four new friends, all of us in Oz for the first time, and myself the only native English speaker. We had a great day exploring an outdoor art market and eating the most delicious Vietnamese food I’d ever tasted (maybe the first Vietnamese food I’d ever tasted?). When the time came to head back to campus, none of us could remember which train to take to get back. Unprompted, a local noticed us looking lost and offered to help us find our way. I found the Australians to be extremely hospitable and kind.

I was fortunate enough to travel during my semester there (blowing through my entire life savings from babysitting money and high school jobs…worth it!). I got to see the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, to go canoeing down the Murray River (for school! “Experiencing the Australian Landscapes” class! ha!), to go bushwalking and camping in the Grampians National Park, to learn how to surf in Byron Bay, to go on a sailing trip in the Whitsunday Islands, to snorkel and SCUBA the Great Barrier Reef, to walk over the Sydney Harbour Bridge and to see a show in the Sydney Opera house.

My bushwalking trip was a tad foolish, or I could say recklessly naive, looking back, as my new friend Monique and I (a fellow exchange student from Germany) had joined the campus hiking club which operated like a loosely organized message board. Two Australian guys wanted to go camping one weekend, and we wrote them to join. We got in the back of a car with two total strangers, let them drive us for hours out to the middle of nowhere to a spot along the Howqa River, and hiked out to camp overnight at a remote location far from anyone or anything. But they were total gentleman who probably thought we were nuts but treated us with nothing but respect and privacy.

I befriended a lot of the local Australians from my dorm throughout the semester, and got to visit the home of one friend whose family was super kind and hospitable. Another friend invited me to join his family to watch some of the Commonwealth Games (like the Olympics for the British Commonwealth) as they had an extra ticket, and I was treated like a member of the family. Overall, I found the Australians to be extremely friendly, easygoing and likable, and always down for a good time. They take having fun and partying to an almost religious level. While I didn’t get quite as close on a soul-level with my Australian friends, as they were slower to really open up and kept things a bit more superficial, I sure had a lot of fun with them. The camaraderie and group dynamics made our dorm feel like a huge, raucous family.

I took an anthropology class over there on Australian culture, and learned a lot about their checkered past. They were no saintly nation (originally a penal colony and settled by convicts from the UK), taking land from the native inhabitants much like we did in America. The Stolen Generations describes the horrific time when the Australian government, acting as legal guardians for all aboriginal people, ripped children away from their families for decades, from 1905-1970 or so. The Prime Minister finally apologized in 2008, an example we could benefit from in our own country where we did something very similar to our native children, sending them to boarding schools far from their families and forbidding them to practice their culture or speak their language.

Australia is a big, beautiful, unique, nearly empty, dangerous, imperfect, glorious country. It is on fire right now, and it looks like that’s the new norm. With climate change and the rising temps, droughts and dry landscape, these current fires are expected to last for months more. Who knows what the damage will be, and if recovery is even possible. The ecologists estimate that over half a BILLION of the wild animals in one state (NSW) alone, the tourist-loved kangaroos and koalas among the others, have died. I wish I had a positive note to end this on, but I don’t know if there is one. We can pray for Australia, pray for rain, send money for supplies and rebuilding, but it appears that these tragedies are going to continue. Humans are resilient fighters, and will hopefully adapt to climate change with the least amount of causalities possible as it continues to affect our planet.

Looking for the Good

There was a time that my brain looked no further than 2010. I was the Class of 2010 for my physical therapy program, and having been in school for my whole life, the end of my formal schooling felt like a big END. My mind could get as far as graduation, and then a big, white blank spot appeared.

It has now been a full decade since the end of my school years. In 2010, I completed my last rotation for PT school in Phoenix, Arizona, hiking the desert and avoiding getting bitten by rattle snakes in my off time. I graduated with my Doctor of Physical Therapy degree from Marquette University. Quite randomly, I moved out to Spokane, Washington, with two friends from school. Later in 2010, I met my would-be husband. We married in 2012. After one year of newlywedness and several honeymoons, we had many different roommates for various periods of time. We had a roommate from Kenya who was interning at our church live with us for a summer. We met a new couple friend, also through our church, that we bonded with over boardgames and nerd-dom and semi-spontaneously ended up rooming with for a year, along with another friend of theirs who hopped into the Henn House for several months. Then my best friend and her husband moved in while house hunting, and we added another couple who was in between school/internships/stages for the infamous “Triple Double.”

In 2015, I had a pre-molar pregnancy, D&C, and dealt with the bitter disappointment of thinking that we had conceived when, really, we hadn’t. We assuaged some of the disappointment from that by planning a trip to Europe, which doubled as a babymoon since we were, thankfully!, able to conceive again relatively quickly. 2016 brought our sweet girl into the world, and the pattern of my life will not be the same for a long time. I went to down part time at work, and 2018 saw the birth of our son! 2019, as I’ve mentioned in this blog, was a rough one for many loved ones around us, and ourselves included with me losing my first and only professional job.

As a whole, the last decade has definitely felt like my entering adulthood years. Obviously, getting out of school, living completely on my own for the first time, and getting married and starting a family is pretty grown-up business. I’ve enjoyed getting into my 30s. I feel like I’ve earned a little maturity and wisdom, as only life, suffering and deep joys can bring. I’ve seen some truths come to light, such as realizing that there’s no such thing as black and white for anything. Politics, religion, relationships: everything is nuanced and context-dependent. To try to boil things down into simple opposites, right and wrong, good and evil, etc, is naive and limiting, and misses out on the deeper realities. I’ve embraced the gray-zones with wide arms more recently, and haven’t been put off by unanswerable questions or serious doubts. I’ve come to question A LOT of what I grew up believing. Two-decades-ago-me would think that today-me is a heretic, I am sure. And that’s ok. I was who I was then, doing the best with what I had and knew. And I’ve grown.

Looking ahead into the next decade feels predictable, maybe? Having kids now puts us on a certain trajectory as far as routine, starting school, the school-year schedule etc. At the end of the next decade, my kids will be 13 and 11. Teenagers! I’ve got a full decade to appreciate and soak up their cute, little kiddiness before they turn into hormonal narcissists. My husband and I plan to adopt some more kids into the family, likely when our first two are a bit older, but probably within this next decade. That’ll be an intimidating, exciting, scary bridge to cross when the time comes. Professionally, I’ll be starting a new job next week, and I’m looking forward to see where that takes me. I’ve become a bit specialized in a certain treatment area, so it’ll be fun to pursue that more going forward.

Spiritually, philosophically, emotionally, I am excited to keep learning and stretching and growing. I have SO MANY BOOKS to read! I can only hope that I will continue to expand my mind, to be exposed to new thoughts and ideas and keep processing them out loud with my friends and husband. I hope that I will continue to grow in love that knows no bounds, that keeps building the table longer and longer and keeps inviting everyone over for the party. I hope I will keep confronting my hidden judgments, stereotypes and blind spots that I can break open and confront. I hope I stay humble and never think that I’ve got it all figured out (I do struggle with pride, so that is a temptation of mine to think that I’ve gotten it Right). I hope to maintain our dearest friends and relationships, and possibly start some new ones, especially as our kids start bringing people into our fold on their own.

Despite how nasty this last year felt, despite how ugly and divided things can seem in the US politically and socially, despite the very real ongoing racism and xenophobia and homophobia, despite the loathing I feel for our current Commander in Chief, I do look ahead hopefully. People have always thought things were getting worse and everything was going to explode at all times and eras. I’m reading a book right now on the Pilgrims, and they left England because they thought the country was so corrupt and evil and would be taken over by the dreaded Catholics, they literally had no hope left in their homeland. And yet here we all are. Life goes on. And however ugly things can and will be at times, there are always pockets of joy and happiness. We can choose joy, in fact, even in the bad times.

So I will expect and look for the Good going into the roaring 20s. It’s out there, waiting for us. Let’s look forward optimistically, expectantly, and excitedly, and will it into existence!

Birthing

The last Sunday of Advent focuses on birthing. There’s the literal sense of Mary birthing Jesus into the world, and the spiritual sense of the Divine entering into Life, joining with all of creation.

Richard Rohr talks about Jesus’ birth being the second incarnation, that Christ first entered the world through creation. The Bible says that Christ is in all. Jesus, more than simply the human man, is Christ, is God, and is the Word that was in the beginning, before anything else existed.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this, that Christ is in all. It sounds so “new agey” to me, and yet the Bible is full of passages that discuss this. “The kingdom of God is within you.” I’ve felt a bit like a faulty lighter recently, sparking and flickering and almost catching flame. I keep getting these tiny glimpses of connectedness.

Yesterday, I was doing yoga at a beautiful cathedral, staring up at the colorful glass that was glowing with the early sunset while I was in down dog. At the end, the instructor had everyone Om together three times. The first Om felt a bit forced, unnatural. But as I sank into the moment and went with it fully, in the second Om, I could feel my lungs vibrating on the same frequency as everyone in the room. The same frequency echoing through the universe from the big bang that started it all. Us all. A glimpse.

Christianity speaks about being “born again.” That phrase has gotten a bit used and abused, become a token prayer to get someone a ticket out of hell. It’s such a sad, limited and limiting short-sightedness to look at Jesus’ life that way. His birth as a messy, hungry little baby, coming into the world at an inopportune time, into a occupied land. His three decades on this Earth, living and loving and serving, totally upending the religious status quo of his culture, the political status quo, interpersonal status quos. And ultimately, his death, giving up his life out of deep, deep love for all creation, for all people. Not simply as a ticket out of hell, not because we are all so deprived and sinful and have pissed God off and need Jesus to step in between as savior. But “because God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only son.”

I get born again every time I read a good book. I got born again at yoga yesterday. I get born again after profound conversations with my friends and husband. I get born again when I live fully in the moment with my children, seeing the absolute love, trust, and awe in their eyes as they encounter the world by my side. I am constantly getting born again, constantly growing and changing and shedding my old flesh for new. It’s so gross to know that we literally shed our skin cells and are essentially a new person every 100 days. But seriously, life is constantly on the move.

Birth is messy, painful, inconvenient, dangerous, and hard. I pushed my daughter out for over two hours; it was fricken hard. I battle-cried my son out in three fell swoops, but then I hemorrhaged and needed emergency surgery and multiple blood transfusions. Physical birth may be easier than emotional, mental, and spiritual rebirth. It hurts to realize that you need to grow, that you are incomplete or not fully informed and need to radically adjust your worldview. Giving birth is tough work, but always worth the payoff.

I will keep pondering this idea of connectedness, of Christ in ALL, of the kingdom of God being within me. Within you. Within nature, within Muslims and Jews and Hindus. Within immigrants and politicians and stock brokers. Within environmental lobbyists and oil industry CEOs. Within Peace corps volunteers and NFL players. Within kind hearted nurses and insurance companies. My birth is continual, sometimes messy, sometimes painful, occasionally full of an otherworldly bliss that saturates it all.

Acceptance

Keeping up with the Advent theme using the Carmelite nun’s approach (that I heard about from Sarah Bessey), this week’s value is Acceptance.

I have never been a fan of the odd years, and 2019 was no exception. I felt surrounded by a lot of suffering this year, which partly drove me to start writing this blog. I needed a place to process everything going on, both in my personal life and in the world around me.

As I’ve witnessed the suffering of my family, friends, and community at large this year, I’ve wondered about the best way to handle it. How can we deal with suffering in a healthy way? Because it is here and it isn’t going anywhere. People like to think that “the world is going to Hell in a hand-basket” in every era. Every generation thinks the next generation is messed up and broken (how easy to point out the flaws of others), when realistically, the world has been messed up since day two. The world used to be a much more violent, tribal, cruel place than it is today. Supposedly, we are living in the safest time Earth has ever seen ( https://www.ijpr.org/post/world-actually-safer-ever-and-heres-data-prove#stream/0 ), but it certainly doesn’t feel like that when you watch the news and see the 385+ reports of mass shootings in America from this year alone.

Suffering is all around us, whether in society at large or within our own, personal lives. Poor health, broken relationships, loss of jobs, death of loved ones, chronic pain. So how do we deal with it?

One thing that has been helpful for me is a kind of acceptance. Instead of thinking “woe is me” and wondering why bad things happen to good people, it has been freeing for me to realize that suffering is simply here. It is woven into the fabric of the earth, and wishing it away won’t do any good. Bad things happen to good and bad people, as do good things. An attitude of acceptance at least gets me off the hook of wondering “why me” or trying to analyze what went wrong. Suffering simply is, and it’s here to stay.

This is not to say that I won’t try to improve my lot or work for the betterment of society. I am appalled at some of the very present evils I see. I won’t be the one to cure cancer or kill white supremacy once and for all, but I can do my small part. I can use my awareness of societal ills (racism, income inequality, misogyny, environmental threats etc ) and try to educate others, to speak up to my representatives, and vote my concerns into office. I can use my daily life to honor the dignity of each human life I meet, whether that’s my neighbors, my patients, or the homeless person on the street corner. I can raise my kids to be activists and allies and to stand up for the rights of others.

Acceptance can feel like a passive, weak reaction. To see a problem and sit down and take it. When really, I think acceptance is actually setting us up for a strong, healthy response and reaction. When we’re not distracted with our misery and wallowing in the “why me” suffering loop, when we’ve accepted that something tragic has happened to us simply because that is life, then we are free to move toward health. We are free to take a big picture approach and see our whole life as full of both joy and suffering. Acceptance lets us sit in our grief, acknowlege it in a healthy way, process it all the way through, and then move on again.

In the Advent story, Mary is held up to showcase this value of Acceptance, as she humbly accepted her calling to be the Mother of the Son of God. This was a bold, brave, radical act. She was knowingly taking on the derision of others, the vicious gossip (not even married but pregnant?), the scorn of her community, the unimaginable weight of being an actual mother to a human baby that is God incarnate?? Mary was likely around 13 years old when she was engaged to be married (the norm for that time and culture). I CANNOT EVEN fathom being mature enough to handle motherhood, let alone of this special variety, at that age. Yet she accepted her calling and rose to the occasion, and stood by her son until his death, probably the most difficult torture any parent could face. Mary accepted that her life was not going to be normal or easy, and she tackled it head on.

We can all take comfort from Mary’s words as she rejoiced in God joining humanity as one of us:

“His mercy flows in wave after wave on those who are in awe before him. He bared his arm and showed his strength, scattered the bluffing braggarts. He knocked tyrants off their high horses, pulled victims out of the mud. The starving poor sat down to a banquet; the callous rich were left out in the cold.”

God is on the side of the oppressed, the powerless, the hungry and the poor. God cares about people who are suffering. God cares about the victims of tyrants, about the girls in sex-trafficking, about the immigrants in cages at our border, about the victims of income inequality who are worried about their next meal. God cares about families affected by the Muslim ban, the transgender ban, the discriminated against, about cultural minority groups who are profiled and whose stories go unnoticed. God’s mercy flows in wave after wave, which is good news to us all.

Accept that suffering is very much here. It is a piece of this world as it is, this side of the Kingdom of God. And take comfort knowing that God came to be with us, and is working through us to bring God’s Kingdom, “where the last shall be first and the first last,” here to Earth.

Waiting on the Move

I subscribe to Sarah Bessey’s weekly emails (so worth it!), and right now she’s doing an Advent series as we approach Christmas. She just wrote a post on the theme of Waiting. The traditional Advent values to celebrate in the four Sundays leading up to Christmas are Hope, Peace, Joy and Love. Sarah found out that the Carmelite nuns have their own version, and focus on Waiting, Accepting, Journeying, and Birthing instead.

I like this approach to Advent a lot. It can be hard for me to not get cynical sometimes, and the values of hope, peace, joy and love are so crucial but also so seemingly missing from our world a lot of the time. It’s hard for me to feel hopeful when I am so acutely aware of all the suffering going on day to day at personal and global levels. It’s certainly hard to feel peace when there is still so much conflict in my own country and around the world. I feel fairly peaceful in my own, personal life, but I don’t believe that I’m made to live in a bubble. So the knowledge of suffering of others is enough to disrupt my peace.

I can really identify with the idea of Waiting. I believe in a good and holy Universe, one created with a divine purpose. I believe that we are all made in the image of God, are made with purpose, value, and love, and that everyone is capable of both good and evil. I believe that the Creator of the Universe desires each of us to be in union with all of creation, to live in harmony with each other and with nature. And while I do not feel at peace that any of that is happening currently, I feel the longing and waiting for how it should be.

Waiting can be healthy or unhealthy, like so many things. Healthy waiting to me seems active. I am waiting to find my next job, but I’m not simply sitting at home wishing for a job to call me. I’m sending out resumes and interviewing and actively seeking it out.

I’m waiting for a kinder world, where people realize that we are all nuanced, we all have a story, and we are mostly all trying our best. I’m waiting for a world in which people root each other on, believe the best in each other, and give each other a leg up where they can, as opposed to being so insecure and weak that they look to put down and humiliate anyone they can in order to feel better about themselves. My waiting is active, as I try to practice kindness myself. As I intentionally look for people to help, with my resources, money and/or time. As I support and cheer on someone else’s success without thinking it takes away from my own. As I strive to be understanding and considerate when someone disappoints or frustrates me, knowing that I do not know their whole story. As I wait, I hope to assist in bringing about the world I’m waiting for.

The hardest thing for me is to wait when I know that there is no guarantee of the outcome I want. I do not believe in a “prosperity gospel,” which got popular in the 1950s. I do not think that there is a certain number of prayers, or people praying, or days of fasting, or money given to the church, or any formula, to make God act like a genie. So, while I am really, really praying for better health for people in my family, I know that they may never get the outcome we want. That’s just life. While I’m praying to find a job that I will enjoy and that will support my family and the work/life balance I want, I know that just may not happen.

Waiting for something you know is going to happen can be hard enough. Waiting for an unknown, an uncertain outcome, that’s where faith really comes in. Not faith that I will ultimately get what I want or that things will work out the way I’m hoping, but faith that I will be ok, no matter what happens. Faith that God is present with me in my suffering and my success, and that my life can be joyful and fulfilling even if it doesn’t turn out as planned. Faith that I will be strong enough to withstand the worst outcome. Or faith that I will keep maturing and growing and maybe realize that what I was waiting for is unnecessary or off track.

There is a lot to wait for in this world. Waiting for the next phase of life, to meet your spouse, to get pregnant, for the kids to start sleeping through the night, for the next stage. Waiting for a promotion or a better job. Waiting to have enough money to afford that big trip, house, or to afford anything. Waiting to feel healthy, self-assured, mentally and physically strong. Waiting for that relationship to improve. Waiting to get brave enough to truly be yourself, out in the world. A lot of that waiting can be active. WE are our best bet at bringing about the fate we seek. And as for the rest, “give it to God.”

Full of Thanks

How wonderful to have a dedicated season to feeling grateful. Gratitude has the power to transform us. Science is showing more and more benefits to be reaped from intentional gratitude. So, cliche as it is the week of Thanksgiving, here’s a fraction of the things that I am grateful for:

This blog. It has been inspiring and exciting and invigorating for me to publish something and put it out in the world (most) weeks. I write this for me, but hearing from others how some of my rambling thoughts have helped them is a cherry on top.

My husband. I hit the jackpot and got so much more than I even knew to ask for. My husband is an egalitarian feminist, a supporter of human rights, a passionate champion of the little guy, an intellectual overthinker who keeps me on my toes. My parents have a traditional division of labor (Dad took care of the cars, yard, shoveling etc, Mom cooked and cleaned and kept the house running), so to watch my husband do it all is so amazing to me. We both try to do 100% of the work around the house, and to show each other appreciation for it. He makes me feel so loved that it gets annoying. He’s such a good father to our kids, getting up in the middle of the night, giving them their bottles, changing their diapers, dealing with potty training and temper tantrums, “flying” them around the house, building EPIC forts. I’m so reassured knowing that they are being raised by such a studly example of what a man/husband/father can be.

My children. We got lucky twice, to conceive easily and have healthy babies. Even luckier to get babies of sweet, happy dispositions who have made this all pretty easy. I joked to my friend that my son is my “sweet angelic cherub baby” and I’m not really kidding.

My parents. It’s been really fun to enter adulthood and become friends with my parents. I’m grateful for their parenting example, as they did much that my husband and I are seeking to repeat. I’m grateful for their unconditional love and support, for never putting me in a box, and for being such a solid bedrock for me to grow on. I’m grateful that they’ve allowed me to grow and find my own way, without reigning me in or resenting me for wandering from some of their schools of though. We are able to stay loving and close, even within religious and political differences.

My curiosity. I am always reading, always listening to podcasts, always learning and I’m so grateful for the ability to grow. I’m grateful to have a curious mind that is able to seek out, integrate and absorb new ideas, and to then try to improve my life with those concepts.

The Pacific Northwest. My chosen place to settle as an adult is so beautiful. I have started camping, hiking and snowshoeing my way around this beautiful country, and there is a lot more to see. I’m so excited spend the future taking my kids camping and exploring all over the region.

My job. Yes, the actual job that just last week gave notice they are laying me off. Despite that little hiccup, they have been a good place to work, to get my feet wet in my first job out of school, and to grow. I had access to more than enough funds to take continuing education, and was able to fly around and take some really interesting classes all over the West. I had coworkers I’ve truly enjoyed working with and learning from. I was left on my own to treat patients as I saw fit and never once felt pressured to bill more or do anything unethical. I’ve gotten better and better contracts each renewal, gotten more pay, more vacation time, separate sick time. I was supported in my maternity leaves and had support and no guilt to take time away from patients to pump for as long as I wanted (could). So yes, I am thankful for this job (may it rest in peace, lol).

My career. Wherever I work, I am so grateful to be a physical therapist. I get to meet thousands of people a year, to get to know them on a fairly intimate level, and to use my hands and my brain to improve their lives. I’ve had patients become friends, I’ve had patients open up some of the deepest parts of their lives to me, I’ve had patients that were sad to meet their goals and get discharged because they wanted to continue. I’ve had plenty of frustrating, boring and flat out rude patients too, but by and large they’ve been great. I’m so grateful to be able to meet and connect with so many people. I’m grateful to have an understanding of the human body that allows me to fix people’s pain, or to improve their function. I’m grateful to have a job that it interesting – always a new person to meet, a new problem to tackle, with pretty decent variety to keep things interesting.

My church. I am really beyond grateful for New Community, my local church. My faith journey has been a steady but curvy road with questions, doubts, and explorations. I am in a very different place, spiritually and religiously, than I was as a child, certainly, and even as a young adult. I’ve been learning a lot about God, the world, the Bible, humanity, etc etc, and I’m so grateful to have a church that encourages questions, encourages doubt, encourages digging deeper and taking another look at things we’ve grown up assuming, questioning “cultural Christianity” and asking instead, “What does it truly mean to love God, to follow God and to work for the Kingdom of Heaven?” I’m still on the journey, and I’m grateful to have a church that I trust to keep walking with me on that path.

My friends! How did that not come up yet. I have been ridiculously blessed with amazing friends all my life. I still keep in touch with two friends that I’ve known since I was a baby, with my two best friends from the junior high and high school years, and with several friends from undergrad and my Physical Therapy program. I’ve made some pretty fantastic new, adult friends since moving to Spokane. My friends have supported me through so much in such tangible, loving ways. We all need a tribe, and I’ve got a great one.

My body. I’m thankful for this little 5′ 1 – 3/4″ body of mine. She’s been through 3 years of 23hrs/day back brace wearing (the worst!), two major spinal surgeries, three pregnancies – one molar and ending in an emergency D&C, and another ending in a healthy birth but hemorrhage situation also involving emergency surgery and blood transfusions. She’s brought two healthy babies into the world and supported them with breastmilk for 5 solid months. She’s hiked up the Continental Divide, walked across glaciers, white water rafted, kayaked down the Murray River, sky-dived in Fiji, ran the longest distance she will ever run (7.5miles) for Bloomsday, and SCUBA dived on the Great Barrier Reef. She continues to allow me to live my life as I desire.

For failure and suffering. Just as the short, dark days of winter make spring that much more exciting and summer that much sweeter, suffering makes our joys richer. Suffering has brought me clarity, maturity, growth and a deep, deep appreciate for life. It’s hard to truly “live every day as if it’s your last,” but suffering can highlight our priorities and show us how we really want to live.

I could go on. I’m grateful for laughter, grateful for books, for authors, for poets (I just signed up to get a poem a day in my inbox and it’s opening up a whole new world for me!). I’m grateful for cuddles, for strangers who smile back, for random acts of kindness (thank you whoever paid for my coffee at Dutch Bros!). I’m grateful for a sweet, supportive in-law family. I’m grateful for blue skies, for broody dark skies, for the colorful leaves of fall and the beauty of springtime. I’m grateful that my state is supposed to start staying in Daylight savings time soon (wahoo!). I’m grateful for wool socks, for sundresses, for wine, for craft beer (yes, I’m a beer snob), and for cheese (duh). I’m grateful for my daughter’s imagination, for comedians, and for do-gooders. I’m grateful for paid vacation time.

I’m so grateful, knowing full well that all of this is not the norm. At every level, none of this is guaranteed. The majority of humans, I believe, do not have it this well. That humbles me, and makes me want all of us to do better, and deepens my gratitude.

I am grateful for this joyful, messy life.

Oh-Blah-Dee

“Life goes on, brah / la-la how the life goes on.” The words to that Beatles song have been stuck in my head for days now. I got laid off from my job last week, unexpectedly and shockingly.

I had worked for over 9 years at that job. It was, in fact, my first job out of grad school. It was a great experience, and I really enjoyed what I did. I had nothing but GLOWING performance reviews and praise-filled patient satisfaction reports. So to get kicked to the curb was insulting, surprising and upsetting.

One of the most frustrating parts was that everyone involved got to pass the buck. It wasn’t my director’s fault since the decision was made over her head. It wasn’t even my CEO’s fault since they had brought in an outside consulting firm and that’s who made the decision (nevermind the concept of fighting for a dedicated, loyal, excellent employee and ignoring their suggestion). But you know what, sadly, I get it. It’s the way of the world. Businesses don’t seem to care about their actual human employees anymore, at least not at big corporations like the one I worked at. When the budget gets tight, employees are data and get punched into a formula to improve the bottom line. Nothing personal. (hmmph)

The whole process got me thinking more about suffering and grief. There’s such a tendency to want to offer condolences and empty platitudes to attempt to comfort the grieving. I do it myself when something bad happens to someone I care about. I start looking for the silver lining, saying things like “maybe it’s for the best;” “When a door closes, a window opens somewhere else;” “Trust in God and He will provide.”

However, I don’t remember there being a verse about job security in the Bible. Or even that everything will work out for the best if you simply trust in God. Yes, trusting God may bring peace and comfort, knowing that whatever happens, God is on your side. Yes, there are people in the Bible who got rewarded with success (at least, that’s how the authors interpreted the situation at the time). But there are also a lot of faithful Christians who get the shaft every day. Who get fired, who get sick, who lose a loved one. And it doesn’t work out. I might very well end up finding a new job with worse hours, certainly with less PTO, and worse pay (I had it pretty good where I had been).

I think the best comfort we can reasonably expect is that God is present in our suffering with us. That God has lived a full life on this earth, full of suffering in the person of Jesus, and so God really and truly knows our pain. Jesus was homeless, misjudged, misunderstood, abandoned by those he loved, and, um, brutally killed by the establishment for questioning the status quo. Jesus never got rewarded on this earth with a steady job, a big mansion or a powerful position. God doesn’t promise good endings, but God cares about us and loves us and will sit alongside us in our suffering.

And that is a great comfort. Knowing that the force behind the entire Universe cares about me, personally, and grieves with me in my grief, is beyond moving. Knowing that I am deeply loved and valued, with or without a secure job, with or without material success or even successful relationships, is the bedrock of my identity. And nothing circumstantial can change that. So, it will “all work out,” because no matter what, I am loved, I have value, and I am living a life abundant.

Second hand Joy

One of the top 20 joyous moments of my life was hearing Thrift Shop by Macklemore on the radio for the first time. I could hardly believe that someone was rapping about thrift stores, about the lie of materialism and celebrating its rejection. And it was oh-so-catchy!

“They be like “Oh that Gucci, that’s hella tight!”
I’m like “Yo, that’s fifty dollars for a t-shirt!”
Limited edition, let’s do some simple addition
Fifty dollars for a t-shirt, that’s just some ignorant b*!ch sh*t
I call that getting-swindled-and-pimped sh*t
I call that getting tricked by a business”

We have gotten tricked by business. Not only by the idea that a t-shirt made by Gucci or a purse by Coach is any better or more valuable by any other t-shirt or purse, but also by the idea that our possessions speak to our value as a person.

I have always been a bit of a rebel without a cause. I very purposely never crushed on the popular guys in high school (they had enough attention as it was). I purposely never wanted or valued popularity. From what I could see, the popular kids were all envious and jealous of each other, and just as neurotic and self-conscious as the rest of us. Why agonize over joining their ranks? I had a LOT of fun with my little band of weirdo friends, doing as we pleased. I remember having moments of self-consciousness, wondering if I should try to shop at Abercrombie & Fitch, worrying that most of my clothes came from Kohl’s. But even then, I saw through the thin veneer of selling popularity (and self-worth) by way of name brand clothing.

As I got older and more aware of the global impact of being an American, I learned about where most of our clothes came from and who was making them. It was very difficult to find a clothing store that didn’t get in trouble at some point for using sweat shop labor. So many big name clothing manufacturers had shipped their factories overseas, avoiding our American laws on child labor, paid leave, and general decency like 8 hr work days and safe working conditions in buildings that were built to code. I found it so challenging, in fact, to find a single store who didn’t use brands of clothing made via sweatshops, that the only way I could feel comfortably ethical buying clothes was to get them second hand. Sometime around 2015 or so, I vowed to only buy clothes without benefiting companies who had taken advantage of cheap labor and mistreated their employees, and to do so meant I only bought used clothes. At least then, even if the clothes were still made in a sweatshop, I was not profiting the company who made them. (I’m also quite frugal, and paying $3 for a perfectly good shirt felt way better than spending $15+ for the same shirt)

[In that time, I did discover that H&M made a commitment to ensuring all of their factories paid a living wage within a certain number of years (a time frame, I believe, that has happened by now). So I will shop there, knowing they are paying their clothing manufacturers a livable wage. I also will buy “new” at stores like TJ Maxx or Ross, since those clothes come from other manufacturers and I’m not profiting the people who originally had them made.]

I just saw today that Jane Fonda (love her!) committed to never buying a new piece of clothing for the rest of her life. She was inspired by Greta Thunberg and her ideas of consumerism (how cool is that, by the way, for an 81 y/o to let herself by inspired to change her life by a 16 y/o). Ethical manufacturing aside, there are environmental reasons to stop supporting the clothing industry.

The second part of the lie of materialism, even bigger than the lie that one brand of clothing (purse, shoe, watch etc) is really worth more than another because of its name recognition, is the idea that our material possessions give us value or worth.

Part of the American dream seems to have gotten defined by materialism, by “keeping up with the Jones’s.” Success = nice car, big house, nice clothes, fancy STUFF.

I reject that. I firmly reject the idea that a big, fancy house will make me a better person. I reject that owning a lot of name brand purses will make me cool. How about being cool because I am brave and bold enough to live out my individuality, doing whatever makes me happy and brings me joy? How about being cool by trying new things and ideas and activities and not caring what anyone thinks about it? How about measuring success by the amount of late nights up with friends, the volume of deep belly laughs, the number of hugs and kisses given by my children, the number of risks taken and adventures experienced?

Lastly, I find the whole deal to smack so strongly of first world Americanism, and being even remotely globally aware would make one question the amount of stuff we all tend to accumulate in our homes. I’ve traveled the world a bit, and seen families living in dirt floor huts in Fiji and Belize, hanging their few clothes from the rudimentary rafters, keeping their few “kitchen” supplies stacked by the fire, leaving their one pair of shoes by the door. Aside from perhaps lacking in basic education and health care, these people were by and large happy. Having more possessions does not make a person happier or more content – you can see that in one episode of Hoarders. Materialism is a misguided attempt to fill a need that things were never meant to fill – namely our value and worth as human beings. Or even our vanity, our boredom, our desire for influence.

Let’s adopt some of Macklemore’s swagger about rocking some used clothes, and stop looking to our stuff to define us. Life is about so much more than can be bought in a store: ie, relationships, adventures, discovery and love. Let’s go have some fun in our second-hand threads and leave consumerism in the past.

A Look Back

I celebrated my birthday this past weekend, a time which always makes me look back at the last year of my life thus far and get a bit introspective.

There were some big things that happened – the birth of my son, a scary experience after his birth with an emergency surgery and multiple blood transfusions for me. Friends had babies, my husband’s law practice continued to grow, my daughter started preschool.

My Christian faith has done a lot of growing and changing in the last year. I was raised with Christian parents, going to Sunday school, AWANAs and youth group since before I could remember. And I was always into it. I heard from the church that I was made by God, and loved by God, and I believed it. I felt loved and secure in that love which greatly shaped my identity. In my youth, my faith was very inwardly focused – with an emphasis on my daily devotional times, Bible reading and individual prayer life. I went to church and youth group where we worshipped and prayed together, but the real “meat and potatoes” of my faith was private. I was supposed to be witnessing to the lost, but always felt a bit awkward about that.

From my church culture, I absorbed a very exclusive Christianity. It was black and white on who was in and who was out. I honestly didn’t even think Catholics were “real Christians,” (which is hilarious, since the Catholic church preceded my Protestant denomination by… a bit). Going to a Catholic University and meeting friends and getting involved in the University Ministry department there blew the lid off that line of thinking. Also in college, I met my first (openly) gay friend, learned about worldwide events and tragedies like Darfur, and had my eyes opened to economic and racial inequalities. I started to see that my little daily quiet times reading the Bible were not where my faith was solely supposed to be focused.

Since then, my faith has shifted and changed a lot. It feels like a lot of that has solidified over this past year, but truly most it has been a long time coming. Since watching a documentary called “For the Bible Tells Me So,” while in college, my views on homosexuality have 180’d. I went from thinking that being gay was a sin and a forbidden lifestyle, to fully embracing LGBTQ people as wonderfully made Children of God, deserving of all dignity and freedom in life, love and marriage. I’ve come to learn about the plight of LGBTQ people in our country – the higher rates of suicide and murder, bullying, homelessness, and discrimination in the workplace. It’s heartbreaking to me, especially, to see the Church be known, more often than not, as a place of judgment and closed doors to this group of people.

My attitude toward the Bible has changed greatly over the years, but most especially this last year as I’ve read several books on the topic. Rob Bell’s “What Is the Bible?,” Pete Enns’s “How the Bible Actually Works,” and Rachel Held Evans’s “Inspired,” were eye-opening to me. Growing up, I used to think the Bible was to be taken literally, I believed in a 7-day Creation story (which meant a young earth, not billions of years old), that a worldwide flood truly happened with 2 of every animal on the planet shoved into one boat, etc etc. I plan to write a whole post on this topic, since I’ve learned so much and want to synthesize and process that more here, but suffice it to say that my views have changed.

I no longer believe that the Bible was ever intending to be a science book, or even an accurate history book. The Bible is a collection of 66 books with over 30 authors, some books completely full of poems, or apocalyptic literature (which is highly symbolic). The various writers of the Bible were all limited-brained human beings, like myself, who were having spiritual encounters with God and trying to make sense of God. You can see, plainly, within the Bible itself, that they are figuring it out, and stories change over time. There are stories told repeatedly in the Old Testament of the same event, with details changed, showing a progression of thought and ideas into the true character of God. The original telling was later believed to be wrong, to have come up short, and over the generations a clearer picture of God emerged (however blurry it continues to be).

So I don’t take the Bible literally, but I take it seriously. A lot of Christians make the Bible an idol, and questioning it will get you cut out of the prayer circle faster than you can say “God bless you.” I read it without putting pressure on it to be a “How to be a Christian Guidebook,” or a science book or perfectly told history book. I look at the bigger themes, the stuff that comes up often and repeatedly, like God’s heart for the poor, the foreigner, the downtrodden. I look at it as a collection of people experiencing God and trying to figure out the great mysteries of life and spirituality, but not landing on solid answers. Then I don’t find myself awkwardly defending God’s supposed orders to kill people all the time in the Old Testament, like wayward sons, people who worked on the Sabbath, and full blown genocides of entire people groups who were unfortunate to be in the Israelities’ way. I don’t see it as picking as choosing what to look at or believe, so much as I see it as interpreting what I’m reading through a new lens. I believe that we are tasked with reading the Bible using our discernment and with wisdom, engaging with and challenging the text.

More than anything, my faith perspective over the last year has shifted to be much more outwardly focused. My parents had our family volunteer at soup kitchens now and then, out of our Christian beliefs, and I volunteered in college for various non-profits. But the major focus of my faith was always still on myself and my personal, independent relationship with God. Over this last year especially, I’ve come to believe that my faith is not about me much at all. Of course I still have personal things to deal with, and I try to invite God into those situations with meditation and prayer. However, I’ve come to see God’s great big, wide open heart for all of humanity, and I’ve realized that I need to be concerned for all of humanity as well.

The Bible talks often of reconciling ALL of creation to God, of restoring all the nations, even the cosmos, to God’s original plan for creation, with everyone living in harmony with each other and with the natural world. So I need to care about global warming, pollution and problems like deforestation (like we’re seeing so tragically done in the Amazon currently). I need to care about people outside of my groups – outside of my economic group (caring both about the super rich and what they’re doing and about those in poverty), outside of my ethnic group (caring about Hispanic immigrants, Black and brown lives and ongoing racial injustice), outside of my country, outside of my sexual and gender identity’s group, outside of my religious group. I care about everyone and everything in the world, just like God. Because I am moved by God’s particular, personal and individual love for me, and God’s shocking mercy and grace which I don’t deserve, I am driven to seek out God’s will and God’s heart for all creation.

And yes, that’s exhausting, and yes, I won’t come close to solving a single one of those issues. But I work at it in whatever small ways I can, knowing that God is at work in this world through God’s people. The Christian faith is meant to have legs, and to be constantly on the lookout for ways to spread the Good News of Jesus: that all of humanity is incredibly loved by God from the moment of our creation, before we ever open our mouths, and that God is quick to mercy and forgiveness and longs to bring us into wholeness and a fuller life.

I am solidly in my mid-30s now, and by no means have figured out this whole thing called life. But I’ve learned to hold onto things loosely. Both my material possessions, remaining unattached to things so I’m never too upset if something gets stolen/lost/broken, and my intellectual and spiritual beliefs, so I’m not so rigidly stuck to an idea that new information coming along cannot be processed and considered. Thank God for growth, for counseling, for more educated people than myself who write books, for my church and friends who push and challenge me.

Here’s to the next year!