Author: Missi

The “Why Not?” Trip

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About a year ago we started lightly kicking around the idea of taking time off work to travel. Now it’s actually happening. We are leaving in July. We expect to spend around 3ish months road tripping.

Only one campsite reservation has been made for one night, so the trip is pretty wide open. But so far it’s looking like….Montana, Canadian Rockies, BC, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska.

When we first started testing this idea of travel out on unsuspecting friends and family- we wanted to hear how it sounded coming out- did we believe ourselves? Could we really give this a try?

One of the best responses we received was from a family friend who shared this story:

It’s from a commencement address attributed to Brian Dyson, who held several senior management positions with Coca-Cola during his long career. He told a class of Georgia Tech graduates, “Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling five balls in the air: work, family, health, friends and spirit. You’re keeping all of these in the air.

“You soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered. It will never be the same.”

We knew it was true.

And we realized this trip would be giving space for nurturing and growing our faith, relationships, and hopefully our health too.

If you live in or have connections in these areas and want to give us recommendations of places to see or people to stay with- we’d love to hear about it. Please share your tips in the comments!

It’s time to bounce that rubber ball! 

Doing the Right Thing- Taking a Sabbatical

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Photo by Andy in Badlands National Park

Andy and I have made the decision to travel for a few months. A whole bunch of prayer, conversation, and planning with calculators, library travel books, and maps have led to this choice.

We talk about this travel time in a bunch of different ways. There are a couple words we keep coming back to in an effort to describe it. We’re hitting the pause button on our day to day life, or maybe more of a “reset.” A time to try something different.

Taking a few months off is a risk, to be sure. And this trip is also full of potential to be restful, refreshing, and maybe even life changing? It’s been a tough few years in some key areas of our lives, and we’re looking at this time as a sabbatical of sorts.

The word sabbatical comes from the biblical word “sabbath” which reflects the human need to stop and rest. Shabbat in Hebrew literally means a “ceasing”. Other language describes a sabbatical as simply a break from work.

While we are on our road trip we will take time to reconnect with each other, and with family and friends we’ll visit along the way. When we’re not bumming a spot on someone’s couch or spare room, we’ll be camping and exploring National Parks. 

In some ways, this was a really easy choice to make and in some ways it was hard. But mostly it came down to the fact that we had talked about it so much- we knew if we didn’t give it a try, we’d always regret it. And we knew if we actually did it, we’d never regret it. The short question we asked ourselves was, “Why not?”

I saw a photo of a piece of paper on Instagram recently with the handwritten words, “I did the right thing for me.” The note was a reminder for when they’re making big decisions filled with risk and possibility to make decisions based out of love instead of fear. I really like that way of thinking, especially as it relates to our desire to take this sabbatical.

After all the prayer, conversation and planning, in this moment of time– this is a good thing for us.

Does Grief Have a Timeline?

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This morning as I was backing my car out of the driveway a song was just starting on the radio. It was a song that reminded me of Justin because he had said something about it once. “I almost stopped believin’ once, and I bet Journey was pissed!” So I smiled, laughed at the memory of how funny my brother was, and .02 seconds later I was full on ugly crying. I cried through the entire song, up the hill, through the stop lights and into a new town, until it ended. I hadn’t had a long cry like that over Justin in quite a while.

So I started thinking, it’s been over a year and the missing him waves can be just as strong as it was the moment he was no longer in this world.

A friend’s dad recently died and he describes the void in the world as a hole he lives with where his dad used to be. I saw an author say those feelings are the cost of loving deeply, and I think that’s true too. If there wasn’t such great love there, there wouldn’t be such great pain and grief without them.

Facebook memories reminded me this morning that a year ago, a friend posted a picture on my page of an hourglass that said, “There is no timeline with grief, take all the time you need.” I like that. I don’t know if I’ll ever be “done” grieving and I definitely don’t think grief is something to “get over” or “move on” from.

But I like the language about moving forward, in spite of the grief, continuing to live around this hole where our person used to be, acknowledging their life and the sadness of their absence for as long as we need to.

Even if it’s as long as we live.

 

Recent Reads- When we were on fire

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This spring I started and finished Addie Zierman’s first book in two days, When We Were on Fire: A memoir of Consuming Faith, Tangled Love, and Starting over.

A friend recommended it to me based on her honesty in the book. My very favorite part was at the end during her Q & A. She was asked, “Where are you now in your spiritual life? What kind of church do you attend? What qualities attracted you to it?”

I would say that I’m still in the place of rebuilding and redefining what I believe. Our church journey was a long, difficult one. The church we ended up at in the final chapters of this book is not the one we attend now- though it was a safe place to land for a while. We connected with a few other couples and had a chance, for the first time, to share our story vocally and honestly. Our years there played a major role in my own journey of relearning to love “Church People” and in making peace with certain aspects of the evangelical world.

The church we’re at now is a small community church, and it’s really not all that different from any other church. But when we walked in, I could feel my heart expanding- and it was almost inexplicable to me, the suddenness of it. The pastor spoke, and he wasn’t saying anything new, but for the first time in years, I could hear it.

And I think in the end, you’re not really looking for “the right church.” You’re looking for yourself. Finding a church is about finding a place where your specific, beautiful heart can hear good news and take it all the way in. A place where they talk about God in a language you understand. A place where you can serve with your whole, broken heart and be healed in all that giving. 

I don’t really know. All I know is that we landed in this tiny church one Sunday morning and I felt entirely myself. And we’ve been there ever since.

This resonated so much with me because I’ve felt that heart expanding feeling before. When I got my driver’s license I visited a new church because it was the first time that I could choose to go somewhere on my own. They met in a large gym and we sat on wooden bleachers and I thought that was cool. I loved listening to the pastor and I remember walking up and challenging him on something he preached a few years later when I was in college. We disagreed, but he was kind. I wandered around a bit but kept coming back there for the next 10 years.

The next time I felt at home at a church was when I walked into a new (to us) church 8 years ago. We were there for five minutes when I turned to Andy and said, “Can we go here?” And we did, for 7 years. And so many wonderful things came out of that time. Deep friendships that feel like family. The opportunity for us each to serve in a bunch of different ways. Years of volunteering with teenagers who are simply amazing and many who have turned into incredible twenty-somethings that we still get to hang out with! There we learned the value of vulnerability by hearing others stories, told openly and honestly and in turn we were able to share our own.

In the last year I’ve felt that heart expanding-ness again at a new church (okay, technically it’s the same first church I found when I was sixteen but it’s changed and I’ve changed in the past 8 years). As I read Addie’s words, they rang so true. I can hear the good news and take it all the way in– in a language I understand and relate to. I look forward to the serving part. It’s been a year with very little volunteering and I think that’s okay. This season has required some extra space for healing.

Thanks Han, for suggesting that book. And thanks, Addie for writing true words.

Visiting Vegas

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My dad and I started taking trips together after I finished college. On one trip I woke up early in the morning to text this guy I liked. I squealed when he invited me to a movie with him once I got back in town. Dad looked over and asked, “This is the last trip we’ll take together isn’t it?” I said no, of course not. Dad said, “I’m going to stand up at the wedding reception and say ‘I knew it was real when I heard her go oooooeeeee!'” Wouldn’t dad know it, a year later I married that guy.

This rainy spring, my dad and I went to Vegas for some sunshine. I had never been there before. My entire idea of what Vegas is like is from watching movies like Oceans 11. And yes, we totally stood in front of the Bellagio fountains and yes, they were magical at night!

On the ride from the airport I stared out the window at all the lights. When we got to the hotel there was a casino just inside the door. The casino ceiling was painted like a blue sky with clouds and the lighting made everything look like daylight even though it was 10 pm. I touched my face to confirm that yes, my jaw really was hanging open.

The hotel room had the tv on when we entered the room which temporarily made me think I was in the wrong room (it’s happened before). But when I noticed it was left on intentionally I realized aloud that there isn’t such a thing as silence in Vegas.

(*Side Note* We did actually find one quiet corner of Vegas by accident while wandering back to the hotel after wandering through Caesar’s Palace. All of the sudden we were in a mini-park with a water fountain and trees that had branches hanging over a bench for a little shade. We sat for a bit and enjoyed being just off the strip. With the fountain so loud we couldn’t hear the noise from the nearby street- it was one of my favorite parts of the trip.)

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Dad and I enjoyed the sunshine, the pool, a field trip to Zappos (nerd alert), Container Park where we ate some ridiculously good tacos, and we saw a Cirque show, Zarkana that was absolutely amazing. It had been on my bucket list for a long time and I loved it. My childhood dream of being on the flying trapeze was reignited. We also read books, ate some really good food (Burgr that Justin would have loved), walked around the city, but my favorite part was our conversation. We talked for hours on just about every topic possible. I loved that time together with my dad.

Dad was almost right when he asked if we were on our last trip together back in 2005. But eleven years later, we took another one.

Next time we won’t wait so long.

Other People’s Loss

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It’s hard to know what someone needs when they’re grieving. Mostly because as  a general rule, we humans are pretty bad at mind reading.

The earliest memory I have of being with someone I loved, who was losing someone they loved, was when one of my best friend’s dad was dying. We were college students and I was driving her to the VA hospital to visit her dad. On our first visit he was alert and cracking jokes. On our second visit just a few days later, he had slipped into a coma and was non-responsive.

After one hospital visit we were driving home and just as a side note, I am horrible with directions. This is substantiated by the fact that I still manage to get lost in the town we live in and I’ve lived here for six years. Add in if I’m having a conversation with someone while driving, either in person or on the phone– and I’m toast.

Sure enough, we missed our exit out of the cities. My friend spotted some lights in the distance and I suggested we drive towards them and maybe we’d find our way home. Did you know that Mystic Lake Casino shines spotlights into the sky at night? Neither did we.

We found ourselves at the casino, both under lifestyle agreements we had signed at different local christian colleges that forbid gambling. But when your friend’s dad is dying and you find yourself led to a casino from lights in the sky, is there any other option? We hit the nickel slots. Hey, we were cheap college students. And when we hadn’t played long enough to lose it all, we walked away with plastic cups full of nickels.

My friend’s dad died a few days later, in between Christmas and New Years.

It’s been years and I don’t remember much about my friend’s grief. I just have a few memories poking through about that time.

The rest of our friends drove up to Winnipeg to celebrate New Years Eve and we stayed home together. I remember we watched an entire season of Real World on tv that night. We each had our own couch. We barely moved. We entertained ourselves with our own commentary on the train wreck we were witnessing. Tivo and dvr hadn’t been invented yet which means we also watched hours of commercials. We wondered aloud if it was possible to get bed sores from our high level of inactivity.

I have a few memories about the funeral. My friend’s dad served in Vietnam and it was the first military service I remember attending. I remember they fired the shots and played taps. I really appreciate this tradition and think it is one of the most beautiful and honoring things to witness. 

I also remember my friend and I, along with my brother, making jokes one night about her dad’s ashes being sealed in tupperware. Before this sounds callous let’s remember a couple things. First, we all had a sense of humor. Next, we didn’t know how to be sensitive about grief. So, being the age we were, we did our best Robin Williams impressions of the Genie from Aladdin saying, “Blurp, still good!” over and over again until my friend laughed so hard she nearly peed her pants.

When I was thinking back about this time in my friend’s life I wondered if I was supportive enough, or there for her enough. I hope so. It’s strange- because it would be ten more years before that co-worker would have to tell me it’s important to go to a funeral. But in my early twenties, I didn’t question it at all.

When my brother’s close friend died at 17, we all showed up. When my friend’s dad died, all of us were there. We went because these deaths affected the people we loved. It made me wonder what happened in the next ten years that I started to feel like attending a funeral was out of place, or in the way of family who was mourning. What changed?

Probably me.

Maybe there weren’t a lot of deaths around me during that time. Maybe the ones that did happen I was numb to. Or worse, maybe I didn’t notice them because I hadn’t lost someone that close to me yet. That last thought sickens me a bit, but it could very well be true. Maybe it’s like that thing where you get a car and suddenly you see your same car on the road everywhere. Your awareness for it has been heightened. It’s not that everyone suddenly went out and bought the same car as you, those cars were always there, you just couldn’t see them before.

Since my brother died, I swear I see others loss in extreme 3D. I cry when my friends lose someone they love. It’s entirely possible that I feel too much. Maybe that’s part of what got broken when my brother died.

I’ve heard that when someone you love has died, your heart gets ripped open and it’s raw and bleeding. And slowly it gets stitched back together, a little different than before. And that sounds about right to me. Maybe I have a little piece flapping around that isn’t stitched back yet, and it leaves me a bit more sensitive.

I don’t know what’s best for people when they’re grieving because every person grieves differently. But I still think it’s important to see them and show up.

Even if it’s just to lay around on the couch together and watch mtv.

I asked God for a baby

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I tried to calm my nerves as I sat in the hard plastic chair at the OB/GYN office. The doctor returned with my chart and started talking. From the moment she said the word infertility, I wanted her to take it back. It was the word I was dreading to hear and she had just said it, all matter of fact. The doctor kept talking, but I couldn’t hear her anymore. My brain had tuned her out. I was crushed. I felt alone. I was in a new club that I never wanted to join.

I found myself crying in all sorts of places in the days that followed. It’s weird how a small shift in awareness can cause us to see everything just a little bit differently. I cried as I walked past the infant clothes in Target, while watching a commercial with a mom bathing her newborn, and when my period arrived abruptly to mark another month that we were not pregnant.

I asked God for a baby. Others asked God to give us a baby too.

But no baby came.

My husband and I had been trying to get pregnant for 18 months when we received the infertility diagnosis. We had been attending a new church for about the same length of time. We were leading a small group for young married couples without kids, just like us. That community became our safe space. We learned how to be real and vulnerable with these friends. It was the first place we would share our story of infertility.  

I looked at this time of waiting as a season that would eventually end, so I thought I would find something to do in the meantime. One night at a party, a friend asked me to volunteer with the teens at our church. I told him I already helped with the babies in the nursery. My friend joked, “Sometimes the teens act like babies.” We laughed and I shrugged it off. Teenagers intimidated me in high school, and my irrational fear hadn’t gone away in my twenties.

A couple months later, another friend asked me to seriously consider joining the youth team. I told her I didn’t know why she was asking me. She said there were kids that were shy and quiet like me and she terrified them because she’s loud and outgoing. She told me I had the unique opportunity to connect with those kids. That stuck. I considered it and soon I was a youth leader, and my husband joined the team, too.

We worked with the teens together, but separately. He did the loud, wild and crazy Wednesday nights leading small groups with the guys. I helped lead the slower Sunday mornings where we asked real questions and allowed each other to struggle for answers. We were making connections with the same students in different ways, and I loved it.

Somewhere along the line, one of the guys made a joke about my husband being old (to a teen anything near 30 is ancient) and the student began to jokingly call him “Dad.” My husband didn’t miss a beat and he called the teen “Son.” Somehow it stuck and this went on for more than two years.

I’ve been on mission trips and weekend retreats with these students. I’ve watched them grow in height, confidence, and maturity. We’ve had girls nights where we’ve baked, played spoons for hours, and laughed until our cheeks hurt. I’ve been able to cheer on teens at their band concerts, musicals, one-act plays, dance performances, and cheer-leading competitions. We’ve paddled around in canoes talking about life, sang Disney songs at the top of our lungs, and hugged and cried in public restrooms when necessary.

My life didn’t turn out the way I imagined. We still don’t have kids of our own running around. But there are over 100 teens that I was given the privilege to get to know, and they all have a special place in my heart. They wiggled their way right in. I think I was ready. I was open. And I had some extra love to give.  

One Mother’s Day I woke up to a text from the teen who called my husband “Dad.” It simply said, “Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.” And my heart burst wide open.

No one had ever called me that before.

I asked God for a baby, and He gave me teenagers.

 

**This post was originally written for and entered in a writer’s contest here. Voting is over now, but your votes bumped me up to the number 18 spot out of 115 submissions- thank you!

Recent Reads- From Vacation

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This past winter Andy and I went on our first warm weather trip when it was cold at home. My Dad and his wife had been inviting us to Mexico with them for years and this was the year we finally went with them. From the moment we arrived to sunshine and warm air, we wondered why we had waited so long.

We swam in the ocean, ate great food, took in as much vitamin d from the sun as we could handle. We shared stories over meals together, laughed and sang along with the mariachi band. It was a restful and peaceful time. And I read during our downtime, which was most of the time.

“Jesus Feminist” was the first book I read on this trip, and I really enjoyed it. It was refreshing to read something that was so different from what I had learned in church when I was younger. I even hesitate to use the word “learned” because I don’t know that I was explicitly taught that women should be quiet and submissive and that husbands should be the spiritual head of the household. But somehow that’s what I grew up understanding.

Sarah Bessey explains a bit more about the culture going on when Paul was writing about women being quiet in church. Women hadn’t been allowed in church before so they were excited and asking questions which was interrupting the teaching. But Paul never said that women shouldn’t be in leadership, though many churches still practice that if not explicitly say it outright. In fact, he suggested the opposite, speaking highly of women that were leaders in the church.

And best of all? Jesus was a feminist (for the sake of argument I’m breaking down feminist to its most basic definition that women and men should have equal rights). He said in Christ there was no longer male or female, slave or free, jew or greek. I really enjoyed reading this- it rang so true and sounded so much better than things I had believed for so long. Sarah talked about her own marriage and how she and her husband take turns leading or calling out the next steps for their family- but only after pressing in and taking a next step based on following Jesus. I shared this with Andy and we both resonated with this. We were able to look back and point out different times where we’ve taken turns leading in our marriage.

Okay that was a long recap, another book I read on this trip  was, “When Breath Turns to Air” by Paul Kalanithi. I’ve been on a bit of a death/grieving kick this past year (go figure) but each book I’ve read has been so interesting. This is written by a neurosurgeon who discovers he has brain cancer and he starts writing this book just before he dies. It is well written and captivating.

“Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert was up next, for something a little lighter. I liked how she talked about having a commitment to her art (for her, writing) from when she was young. She made a promise to write every day and to not put the pressure on her art to be her source of income. And she kept that promise for a long time, until her fourth book became super popular and it didn’t make sense for her to keep her day job anymore.

The last book I started on this trip was “A Man Called Ove” by Fredrik Backman. Finally, a little fiction. This was my second fiction book this year- I know- I’m weird. What can I say? I love a true story! This book is about a cute old curmudgeon and the people in his life. The relationships were well developed, a good read.

Has anyone read any of these, or have anything else you’d recommend?

Being Mortal and Living Soft

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WILLOW TREE BENCH

I’m reading the book Being Mortal by Atul Gawande and it’s fascinating. It’s about growing older, allowing people to maintain independence and dignity as they age, while giving opportunities to continue to live.

He’s done a crap ton of research and the stories he shares are captivating. My favorite so far is from a woman who had a near death experience at age 21. Before the car accident she had spent her time thinking about finding the right person to spend her life with and what she was going to do next in life. After the accident, her perspective changed to not caring about those things at all, she just wanted to spend more time with loved ones because she was so grateful to be alive.

She wondered if how we choose to spend our time depends on how much time we think we have left in life. So she did studies.

Her theory was that “When horizons are measured in decades, which might as well be infinity to human beings, you most desire all that stuff at the top of Maslow’s pyramid- achievement, creativity…. But as your horizons contract- when you see the future ahead of you as finite and uncertain- your focus shifts to the here and now, to everyday pleasures and the people closest to you.”

I watched this happen to my brother. My dad described him as “soft” the closer he came to the end of his life. And I think that is the best word for it. Little things that used to get him riled up, he barely flinched at, in fact, he took a couple opportunities to chastise my mom when we would get worked up over things. He waved his hand and told us, “It doesn’t matter” and “you need to let that go.”

On the anniversary of his death this year, I was laying in bed staring at the ceiling and talking out loud. It was part prayer, part thoughts. I was trying to determine what Justin had taught me that was the most valuable. And I realized it was this- this softness that my dad talked about. How could I learn to live like that?

I saw the shift in my uncle TJ too, as he realized the days he had were a gift, not a guarantee. Almost nothing ruffled him. It was the littlest things that made him the happiest. Spending time with people he loved was his favorite, and my brother’s too.

I feel like I get the spending time with people I love part, but I am terrible at the not letting little things (that truly don’t matter) irritate me part.

In the studies this woman did, she saw this shift in perspective based on people’s age. The younger ones valued time with people they thought could teach them something new and they valued building new relationships. The older ones valued time with people they were emotionally close to. And when they studied people who were sick with a terminal disease, whether they were young or old, they all responded the way of the older people. And to further verify her findings, when the older people in the study were told that a new development would allow them to live 20 extra years, they all shifted their responses to value the things of the younger people.

Then, they studied people in different cultures just after a big event occurred where lots of people died. For the US, it was following 9/11. “In each case the results were consistent. When, as researchers put it, “life’s fragility is primed,” people’s goals and motives in their everyday lives shift completely. It’s perspective, not age, that matters most.”

Death can have that effect on us as humans. For me, my brother’s death was a total wake up call and a shift in perspective. I realized that if he could die, anyone could. And yes, I realize how stupid this sounds because in reality- we will all die at some point. Side note: My uncle used to tell the story of the doctor telling him he was dying. He quickly quipped, “So are you!”

One thing my brother’s death did was normalize conversations about death. Andy asked me just a few weeks after my brother died, what I would do if he died. I told him I’d sell the house, I’d take a break from work to grieve and I’d probably travel. When I asked him the same question he had the same answers, plus he specified he’d visit my friends and ask them to tell him stories about me. I told him his idea was sweeter than mine and now I’d want to do that too, for him.

Once we acknowledged how easily one of us could die, it caused us to narrow in on some of our dreams and figure out what do we want to do before we die. But even more so, how do we want to live?

If I want to be a softer person who lets things go, doesn’t read into stuff, and learns not to fill in the blanks for things that may or may not be true– how do I practically start to do that now?

It’s a great question- and one I’ve been asking myself. I’ve been applying a “practice things until they become a habit” idea to a couple different areas of my life and I’m giving it a whirl in this one too. I remind myself it’s okay to be a work in progress. When I start to feel stress, anger, or frustration, there are things I can practice to help things bug me less, or (ideally) not at all!

Taking a minute to take a few deep breaths to focus on that instead of the issue is a good place to start. Resisting the urge to jump to conclusions (I can’t say this without thinking of Office Space) and read other people’s minds is a good place to start. Repeating “not my monkeys, not my circus” to remind myself that other people’s stuff is not my stuff- is a good place to start. Going on a walk outside in the fresh air to process while moving is a good place to start.

I don’t want to wait until I’m staring death in the face to be a softer person. It’s just going to take some practice.

Just making sure of you

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“Pooh?” whispered Piglet. “Yes, Piglet” said Pooh. “Oh, nothing” said Piglet. “I was just making sure of you.”

The morning after my brother died, a friend gave me a card with this conversation on it. She also brought over a homemade meal, made our bed and stayed to fold the laundry. The words are such a sweet sentiment. My friend was making sure I was still there, that I would be alright. She was gently checking in.

This past week of the first year anniversary of my brother’s death several people have checked in. Many via text, phone calls or facebook and I appreciate each one. One friend asked if she could bring a meal over. So last week we ate broccoli cheddar soup, muffins and salad on a rainy night.

Another friend sent me a picture of a box addressed to me and said, “I know this must be a a bit of a tough week for you, so I wanted to attempt to “brighten” it up for you. I managed to put a care package together and tried to mail it to you so you would receive “a box of sunshine” on Friday. However, the USPS denied it (cause who knew you couldn’t send baby bottles of alcohol in the mail? Not me.). ”

I laughed and then promptly cried at her thoughtfulness. It is a really good feeling to be thought of, to be remembered. It’s pretty hard to feel alone when others are remembering with you.

Community is one of God’s best ideas.

Thanks friends, I feel loved.