Not Ashamed.

Like many parents that have come before us, we have entered the eye-roll phase.  Truthfully there are a lot of eye-roll phases in parenting.  

"You can't climb on the fence." (eye-roll)

"Eat your vegetables." (eye-roll)

"That shirt doesn't match those shorts." (stomp, eye-roll, stomp, stomp)

In later years there's actually kind of a role-reversal eye-roll phase where you, as an adult, hear something from your grown parents and roll your eyes.

"Your father and I read this article last week...." (eye-roll)

But I'm talking about the phase of eye-rolling that communicates a general dissatisfaction with the fact that you're related.  We've all been there.  Our parents say something and we know we'll get grounded if we say we wish we belonged to a different family so we just roll our eyes and wait for the moment to pass.  Your reward for having endured so many of these situations as a youth is that you get to do the same thing to your own kids when you get older.  Sometimes I have know idea that what I'm about to say will embarrass them.  Other times I've become tired of reminding them to hang up their towels and am just straight up looking for an opportunity.  In either case, it is a firm assurance that they will one day grow up, move out and become their own eye-roll worthy human beings.  In the dance of parental guidance and developing independence, if you aren't embarrassing your kids you aren't doing it right!

But in the dance of salvation and adoption in Jesus Christ it's a much different story.  

"Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family.  So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters."  Hebrews 2:11

Y'all this is huge!  Early followers of Christ gave up a lot to belong to a Christian community.  They were often shunned by their family and society, losing their ties to the economy and giving up the support of kinship.  The writer of Hebrews is writing to remind fellow believers that they are not cast aside and forgotten.  Quite the opposite!  Belonging to Christ meant finding a different kind of family where members supported each other and encouraged one another regardless of birth or social status.  In a world that sought then to divide and label and scrutinize (and still does) in Christ there is no shame.  Let me say that again for the people in the back....

In Christ There Is No Shame.

We endure the eye-rolls of our children because this is part of the tension we experience in parenting but in Christ there is nothing to endure.  There is simply acceptance.  We are called to embrace this, for ourselves and for those around us.  I know this is not always easy.  I struggle both accepting Jesus' love for me AND remembering the same unconditional love is there for others.  Yes, the Lord knows how many times you have completely lost your cool during this time of quarantine.  He loves you anyway.  Do you?  Repent and believe.  And yes, the Lord knows the guy with the all the tigers and husbands is not perfect.  He loves him anyway.  Do you?  Repent and believe.  

We're family, folks, in the purest and most everlasting way.  We have Jesus.  He calls us his own.  And He is not ashamed.  

XOXO....Kelly

(Speaking of endurance, I feel like I endure a fair amount of ridiculousness from the various eye-rollers in this house.  Just sayin'.)  

It's Palm Sunday and there are no stinkin' palm leaves.

I'm not good with tradition...just ask my very traditional father and my equally as traditional sister, both of whom I frustrate on an annual basis.  I don't put up the same Christmas decorations each year.  I never learned my alma mater's fight song.  And I think Thanksgiving without turkey is just fine.  But even I find myself feeling a little empty this morning, as we stare into the Holy Week ahead knowing the events we are used to won't be as we like to find them, beginning with Palm Sunday.

For the last several years I have served as a Director of Children's Ministry at our church.  Like most churches, we celebrate Palm Sunday by leading the children through the worship services, waving palm branches and shouting "Hosanna!" along the way.  It's actually a bit of a marathon because on our campus we have a total of 5 worship services on any given Sunday morning, 2 happening at once during one service hour and 3 happening at once during the other service hour.  And everything is a separate building.  It goes a little something like this....

At 9am children start arriving.  Our volunteers have become superstars at greeting, checking in and lining the children up all at once, all the while keeping their clothes clean and shoes on.  This is not as easy as it sounds (HA!) but the Lord goes before us....  We do this for about 10-15 minutes until we look up and suddenly realize we should be heading into the service.  We pass out palm branches--1 per child--answering questions like, "Why can't I have two branches?" and "Do you want to hear about my pet turtle?" and nearly jog to the sanctuary (yes, sometimes we run in church).

In each service we walk the children in, in one or two or six "lines", and try not to lose anyone.  The worship venues have the most magical power of silencing even the most boisterous child even when (ESPECIALLY WHEN) you want them to sing or say something out loud.  The Bible says that in Jesus' day the people cried out on Palm Sunday.  In our day we stare with wide eyes and sometimes run into the person in front of us because we're not paying attention.  And someone always falls over.  And breaks their palm branch.  And pokes their neighbor.  We do this five times so that by the end of the morning I feel like I have just run a circus.  I am exhausted, hungry, hoarse.  But also my heart is incredibly full.

Tradition can bind us together.  It links one year to the next, fills us with nostalgia and remembrance and helps us to make sense of time and space.  But watch what happens when I remove the last word of my sentence:  Tradition can bind us together.  To an activity.  To a ritual.  To sometimes missing the point.  In its absence we feel empty, like we are missing out.  We might even feel a little lost.

On this Palm Sunday I am missing all of my little friends.  I am missing the chaos and calamity and unspeakable joy.  I know that God sees me in my grief.  I know that He meets me in this absence.  He sees the emptiness, the gaps where I am missing something, the void where I'm floating a little lost....
...And He fills all of it.

We are missing our tradition today, but we are not missing our King.  And all the emptiness we feel when the world does not look the way we want it to is simply more space for our Savior to occupy.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.  Hosanna in the highest. 

XOXO...Kelly

 

   

         

Well, it's been a while.

Well, it’s been a while.  For those who are keeping track (or are now! 😊) I have answered a call to vocational ministry, become a local licensed pastor of the United Methodist Church appointed to the Foundry and started classes at Perkins Theological Seminary through their Houston-Galveston Extension Program.  That’s a whole lot of words to say that as God speaks, I am doing my best to obey.  All of this on top of life as a wife and mother has left very little room in my head to write here as I have so enjoyed doing in the past.  My words come out as either mush or a shopping list with very little in between.  (By the way, I'm out of milk.)  But this morning two things happened…  


1.  I realized what I haven’t been praying for. 


I started this phase of life 18 years removed from college.  That means I have slept A LOT since the last time I had to write a paper or read a textbook.  The old memory ain’t what she used to be, and I have been operating under the assumption that’s just how it’s going to have to be.  I will do school, check off the boxes and get on with it.  


But I have been wrong.


School is not easy and not just because of the brain power it takes to focus, learn and produce, but because of the ways God speaks to us when we are open to hearing him.  To put it frankly, in my own life driving carpool is far easier than tackling the issues of faith that sit on my heart, but this is not God’s will for me.  Yes, of course, I will drive the carpool but I cannot hide in it.  I believe that God has put issues on my heart because they reflect His heart.  I believe that God has gifted me to learn, search, discover, pray and preach because this reflects His heart for His people.  I believe that God knows how old and tired my brain is, but that won’t stop Him!   


Lord, you have given me a message, a path, a calling.  I may not see it all right now, but I can trust it.  You are not done yet.  Give me the courage to consider that I might be smart enough or capable enough to do this whole school thing in Your name and with Your strength.


2. Someone spoke truth to me.


About an hour after having this whole realization that I might actually be called for a reason I received a message from a friend encouraging me to write again.  (Seriously.  You can’t make this stuff up!)  She did not know that I have been praying for a long time to find my voice again.  She did not know that I had decided that maybe God had just decided He was done with that for me.    


Wrong again.


It is not my voice anyone needs to hear.  It’s God’s.  I don’t know how often and I don’t know how well I can manage it, but I believe in a God that won’t let my “I don’t know’s” stop Him!


Lord, I thank you for Pacquitta who spoke truth to me today in Your name.  You have given her a message, a path, a calling.  How grateful I am that she is on it. 


What are you not praying for today?  And who is God using to show you the way?  We are not alone in this, friends.  Brains—old and new!—are being stretched, hearts expanded and mountains moved EVERY. DAY. because our God is not done with us yet.  Not even close.  Praise God, indeed!  Praise Him for all of it.  


XOXO…Kelly