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

It was the Saturday before Easter....

It was the Saturday before Easter, 2004.  I drove up to my parents' end of town for the day to occupy myself while Kevin studied at our apartment.  My mom and I took a quick trip to Lowes where, in the parking lot, a family was selling a litter of puppies (you know, back in the day when people did that).  It was there that I met the wee furry dachshund angel that would become my very own Oscar Mayer Long.  

The story is legend in my family.  Almost all 4 boys can recite it, and do when we drive past that spot in the parking lot of our local Lowes store.  How I'd wanted a dachshund of my own for almost as long as I could remember.  How he nuzzled into my arms the minute I picked him up such that I never even looked at any of the others in the litter.  How I promised Kevin he could buy something electronic if I could only bring this puppy home.  It's almost the perfect story for this time of year.  Almost...

I can do you one better.

It's the story of a man.  A man wrongfully crucified.  A tomb wrongfully filled.  A day wrongfully dark.  But a morning...

Then came the morning that sealed the promise

Your buried body began to breathe

Out of the silence, the Roaring Lion

Declared the grave has no claim on me

Jesus yours is the victory!

….oh a morning full of Life!  A stone rolled away.  A tomb emptied.  A Savior Risen, risen indeed!  

That sweet puppy I brought home all those years ago would become a beloved family pet.  Not a perfect pet.  He barked at everyone, ate a hole in our couch, sometimes peed on things and snuck into our bed in the middle of the night to sleep under the blankets.  But he was ours.  And when he passed in September and I held him one last time and thought about everything good and everything hard in owning a pet, I knew if I had the chance to peer into that baby pool and pick him up again, I would do it.  I definitely would.  

It was the Saturday before Easter, in a garden long ago, and our God looked out onto His creation.  At the choices we'd made.  At the distance we'd wandered from His side.  At His children, not perfect, but His.  He handed His son over to death, and in death, gave way to victory.  And given the chance to watch His Son die at our hands, but rise again, He would do it.  He definitely would. 

It's the perfect story because it's the story that is lived over and over and over again.  Of a God who defeats the grave, who chooses you and me and everyone in between, no matter our state.  Whose Son died to build a bridge that we would not be swallowed up in death, but bound in life to Him eternally.  It's the story of love and hope, power and glory, salvation and life.  And we've got to tell it, friends. Tell it so that the whole world can recite it!  It's not just the stuff of legend, friends.  It is the stuff of life.  

Happy Easter

XOXO...Kelly   

Gus Long (aka "Not Max)

I don't believe I've written anything yet about our newest addition to the family, Gus Long.  

Gus joined the family in October when we adopted him from another family feeling a bit in over their heads with a growing lab puppy.  We apparently have no sense of where are heads are and welcomed him right in.  Gus spent the first few days with us afraid of the hardwood floors and being barked at my his dachshund sisters.  The girls still do not love him, but he's managed to cope with this by stealing the beds out of their kennel on a daily basis.  

Gus is, like many growing lab puppies, a hot mess.  He's a big oaf of a goober who doesn't know his own size or strength and often forgets that his tail is actually his own.  He starts everyday by whining until we let him out of his kennel.  Then he systematically grabs everything that isn't bolted down on his way to the back door....pillows, shoes, blankets, books, my purse, the jacket I've just put on.  When I walk him up to the school to pick up the boys he barks at the children and tries to take their backpacks.  Yesterday Kevin took him for a jeep ride and he jumped out the window of the moving jeep.  When Kevin finally caught up with him he was over at the school barking at a family playing ball.  They did not have backpacks.

Shortly after we were married, Kevin and I adopted a lab named Max.  She was a petite black lab who was gentle and patient, quick to please and excellent with training.  She did not chew.  Did not bark.  Some days Gus' nickname is "Not Max."  He doesn't know what we're talking about, of course, but the reference to our former pet reminds us that we are not entirely inept and we did manage to have one good dog before.  Perhaps there is hope for us again...

My biggest challenge with Gus are our walks.  He gets a walk usually every morning and every afternoon.  Pretty much everything on the sidewalk and bordering lawns are of great interest to him right now, and I am not much of a match for his super moose strength as his zig-zags back and forth, forward and back.  He sticks his nose in ant beds and eats wasps, whining he is stung and bit.  My favorite thing is when people drive by in their cars and light-heartedly holler out the windows, "Who's walking who?" as Gus takes off after a butterfly.  

To counter his erratic behavior I have started--upon the advice of our vet--walking with treats in my pocket.  When he wanders I call him back.  When he comes I give him a treat.  The exercise is meant to reinforce the idea that sticking close to me is better than chasing whatever squirrel/bird/cat/butterfly/piece of trash is moving past him on the sidewalk.  As we walked this morning I couldn't help but thinking of that dynamic in my own life....the things that pull my focus, that tempt me away from my own master.  

Proverbs 3:5-6 says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.  In all your ways submit to him and he will make your paths straight."

We have a hard time with the word "submit".  A culture of deviance, defiance and sin has made it into something negative, where submission is akin to weakness.  But the Greek root of the word as we see it used in scripture is closer to the idea of being in support of or identifying with its subject.   As one author puts it, to submit is to exercise "the Christian grace of voluntarily yielding one's preferences to another."  Individual rights don't have anything to do with it, in that submitting is not taking something away from you at all.  As we submit to the Lord we are not putting aside who we are or what makes us unique individuals.  We are not bowing in weakness or cowering in servitude.  Rather, we are accepting our identity in Christ and letting Him lead us.  Submitting to the Lord gives us the freedom to discern what is of God, that we may reflect the will of God and the grace of Jesus Christ in everything we do.  That others may come to know Him and that He may be glorified.

So two things to take away from all of this Gus-inspired submission talk....  

(1) Life is infinitely better when I am close to Christ.  It is not perfect.  It is not trouble-free.  But it is guarded, it is regarded, it is purposed when I am close to Christ.  On my own I am free to zig-zag back and forth, forward and back.  I can chase whatever squirrel I want to.  And, inevitably, I end up with my mouth full of wasp stings or my nose full of ants.  But, oh what Christ has to offer!  Grace!  Mercy!  A path not always clear, but always straight and sure.

And (2) Christ walks with me.  Not above me or beyond me.  Not without me.  With me.  That's the real idea of submission and identification, that we are not asked to serve someone who does not join us, who sits on a high and mighty throne somewhere and asks us to endure what He would not.  No, not at all!  Instead, Christ came to live among us.  He died for us.  He rose again, and through the power of His spirit, continues on in us and with us as very much alive as ever.  He sees our struggles as we see them, but with a power beyond our own understanding.  And in this power He works to make straight the paths this world threatens to undo every minute of every day.

We really do love Gus Long.  For all of his faults (can we really call them that?) he loves nothing more than to snuggle up next to you and put his head on your lap.  He is loyal and endearing and I do believe there is hope for him yet.  Hope for all of us, in fact.  Amen to that!

XOXO....Kelly

        

  

     

Girl, get that hand off your hip....

Do you remember the days before everyone had a camera on their phone?  When you took a photo and all you could do was hope because it would be a week or so before you got the film developed.  It was a time of unflattering angles, glowing red eyes and mid-sentence facial expressions.  It was not always pretty, but it was comfortingly human I think.

Nowadays everyone looks like a print ad for Abercrombie & Fitch all the time.  We've mastered the angles, the lighting.  We don't even need someone to take the shot for us.  Did you know that the average person will take around 25,000 selfies in their lifetime?  And don't even get me started on the hands on the hips.  You know what I'm talking about....the one where a bunch of women get together to line up for a picture and the people on the ends do that funny lean out thing with one hand on their hip.  Who stands like that?  Seriously, 1993 called and would like it's yearbook pose back....

Now I don't mean to pick on anyone.  The truth is I HATE unflattering pictures of myself.  When I see one something inside of me panics, as if that millisecond of time caught on camera is what I look like all the time.  I am the vainest of the vain when it comes to photos and (ironically) it's not pretty. 

But as much as we obsess about it, the Bible shares shockingly little concern for our outward appearance.  In fact, it's quite the opposite.  In the book of 1 Samuel, God has sent Samuel to anoint a new king over His people.  "I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem.  I have chosen one of his sons to be king" (16:1).  Jesse and his sons appear before Samuel.  These are young men of great stature, confident and chiseled, I imagine.  (They'd be great in an Abercrombie & Fitch ad.)  Surely one of these will do, Samuel thinks to himself.  But the Lord says to Samuel....

Do not consider his appearance or his height, for have rejected him.  The Lord does not look at the things people look at.  People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.  16:7

The rest of the story is that it's David Samuel has been sent to anoint, the youngest, smallest and slightest brother.  David who slays the giant no one else can take down.  David who will become king and make probably as many mistakes as he will victories.  David who is--above all else--God's.

Psalm 33:15 reminds us that He has formed the hearts of all.  Did He form the rest of you, too?  Oh, you bet.  That nose you think is crooked, torso you think is short and hips you think are wide.  God has created that, too, and calls it--get this--GOOD.  Do you know why?  Because all of that is simply a vessel to that which He has formed, filled and tucked away inside of you.  Your heart.  Your heart which is--above all else--God's.  

Will you challenge yourself to rest in that truth today?  Will you challenge yourself to scrutinize your image not on what the outside says about you, but what the inside says?  Will you drop that hand off your hip and be confident that He who has started a good work in you has much more in store for you than a winning Instagram photo?

You have been looked upon today, friends.  And you look GOOD.

XOXO....Kelly

    

Things Unseen

I realized something about myself this past Christmas season.  As I was participating in one of those white elephant style gift exchanges I realized that I never take an unopened gift.  I always steal.  I'd rather choose something I already see than open something unknown.  For years I've picked out my own presents....I don't even pretend to be surprised when I open them.  I've told myself it's because I have very specific taste, but really I'd rather just look forward to the thing I know I will like than be surprised by something else.  I know....not very heart-warming, is it?  Now who wants to get me a present??  If I was a groundhog I'd most definitely be peaking out to find out about the weather....

(Don't drive angry.)

Scripture talks about the unseen a lot.  At Hebrews 11:1, "Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see."

And at 1 Corinthians 13:12, "For now we see only a reflection as we see in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known."
 
The future is the unopened gift in the white elephant gift exchange.  It is unseen, a calculated guess at best.  It is the spring or winter coming for us, and really has nothing to do with the groundhog!  But it has everything to do with the Father.

For as much as we are asked to trust and walk and obey, we are not abandoned.  The assurance that makes all of this faith in the unseen possible is that we have a Father who loves us, knows us and desires far better for us than we can possibly ever imagine for ourselves.

"And why do you worry about clothes?  See how the flowers of the field grow?  They do not labor or spin.  Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.  If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you--you of little faith?" Matthew 6:28-30

We do our best to predict the future, lay plans that are good and smart and prosperous.  But the very best belongs to the Lord.  He who sees you sees the whole you, the whole picture of you, the world in which you live and the future on which you hope.  And His plan for your life has been rooted in His good and perfect will.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen, since what is seen is eternal, but what is unseen is eternal (2 Corinthians 4:17-18), and embrace that sometimes the unexpected can be the biggest blessing of all.  

Except for those unopened white elephant presents.  Definitely leave those to the groundhogs....

XOXO....Kelly