I don't like noise.

It might come to surprise you that I, having been blessed with 4 wonderful boys, don't handle noise well.  Truly.  I turn the radio off when we get in the car.  I don't like loud restaurants or clubs.  I think surround-sound speakers were made by the devil.  God has given me the heart and patience to miraculously ignore the constant pounding, banging and shouting that often comes from our upstairs game room (they are, after all, making memories up there....) but that's about it.

And I'm not much good with the other type of noise in life either.  The kind of noise that comes from monogrammed YMCA team shirts (you all know how I feel about that), birthday parties for adults, most smart phone apps, preschool graduation ceremonies, 5th grade graduation ceremonies, professional football players (excluding, obviously, JJ Watt who is rumored to be taking over Lakewood Church from Joel Osteen), gender reveal parties, competitive cheerleading and wedding reception party favors.

On a daily basis I struggle with walking the ever-thinning line of living--in the example of Christ--in this world but not of it.  How do you do it...cut out or stand against the things that don't matter, that you don't believe in, without being a total social pariah??  And I'm not even talking about BIG things here.  Martin Luther King Jr. stood against segregation.  I'm only talking about cupcakes on the last day of school and yet it is so difficult!

One thing I've found in the wake of the mess Harvey left behind is that it's becoming a lot easier to say no to what doesn't matter.  I don't believe God intends bad things for his people, but I do believe He uses tragedy to refine us in ways that abundance can not.  Sometimes the most desperate times for a community are the times of most clarity.  We see need in a different way, give no second thought to filling it, and walk closer to God in the way we love others.

I want recovery for those affected by these storms.  I want it so badly.  But I am not eager to return to life complicated by the things that do not matter.  I don't want schedules that are so over-booked that the thought of dropping things to help a neighbor goes unentertained.  I don't want pressure to spend money on what will be dust and ashes instead of life-giving bread for others.  I don't want the WHAT to be more important that the WHO in our lives.  I want a new normal, as our pastor puts it.

I want the Kingdom of Christ.  At any cost.

Lord Jesus, heal our wounds and repair the brokenness in our lives.  Restore our homes and our community, but not to the way things used to be.  Use this time of hardship to bring us closer to you, God, and to the kind of world you'd have us live in.  Let us cling to the lessons you are teaching us right now, the goodness you are making of this mess.  And let it change from the inside out.  Amen.

XOXO...Kelly