For the Transformation of the World

I work for our beloved church, at a place where “making disciples” is literally in the title. It’s a hard concept, to make a disciple. There’s that sticky word with it: evangelism. As I consider ministry as a vocation, I wrestle with evangelism and how to “make a disciple.” How do you make somebody come to church every week? Or is it better to make a church member, so that you have another number on your roster even if they come to church four times a year? What if they don’t show up on Sundays, but sign up for every mission opportunity? Are you truly a disciple if you don’t participate in a Covenant Discipleship group (It’s only 1 hour a week!)? What if you don’t like traditional worship? What if you only like traditional worship? What if you like traditional worship but sing along to Hillsong in the car? Pastors are tasked with “making disciples” and sometimes it feels like an impossible job. 

I was thinking about this last week in speaking with someone about “my call.” As a tangent, that’s another Christian-y word that I have a hard time with. You can’t decide to go into ministry, you must be called. It’s hard to say out loud that you’ve been called, because what if you’re hearing God wrong? Then you’ve lied about being called. It’s a whole thing. I’m still working on it.

I was speaking about my hopefully legitimate “call.” I spoke about how I found the Methodist church, how I become more and more involved with my local church. I forgot to mention when I went to go see Jen Hatmaker speak and her words lit such a fire in my heart that I came home and told my husband of 6 months that I wanted to be a missionary and that we should look into moving to Africa. We didn’t. But that fire never went out. It occurred to me that I had been made a disciple. I had been made a disciple, and I was out to transform the world! Just like the tag line of my workplace pronounces! I had wonderful pastors and churches that took me in, but it truly was the work of the Spirit that brought me from a between-churches-20something to a disciple exploring entering ministry. 

This was a heartening revelation, to realize that I have seen a transformation. Not in someone else, but in myself, and maybe that’s enough to start.   

At Home

I’ve been walking on air since Friday. Friday, our baby’s first birthday. We sang to him, which he loved and tried to make him eat cake, which he swatted onto the floor. It was not the Pinterest inspired party of my dreams, and I tried valiantly to let those expectations fall to the floor. Too much excitement in one evening makes for a very fussy 1 year old boy. His aunt and very favorite uncle were there, as were both sets of grandparents. 

On Saturday morning the excitement of moving to our house began. I’ve written before about my intense dislike for our apartment. I’m a bit disappointed in myself that I was never able to let that go in the months that we lived there. It was just too cramped, characterless, had too many bugs, not nearly enough light. I always felt like I should have been able to push past it, but that apartment was a damp rag on the home fires in my heart, so to speak. 

Walking into our house with the new carpet, carrying our belongings in, was a breath of fresh air. Light streams into our rooms and the eating area is like eating in a tree house. The nights before we got there I shrunk the rooms in my mind and I worried about fitting our furniture. I should not have worried. Everything fits more than comfortably. My kitchen has become a haven again. The large cabinets house our dishes and bowls, the baby’s plates and cups, my grandmother’s Pyrex collection. We have a junk drawer and an empty cupboard. An entire empty cupboard! The house overflows with the feeling of home, security, comfort, happiness, more than enough. 

One of the best parts is the flow- all the living space is on one floor. The basement is currently storage and entry to the garage. This means that Caleb has the ability to do laps around the kitchen, study, living room and back again. He is free to toddle from the living room into his bedroom (maybe 8 feet away), grab a book and toddle back out again. I never imagined I would like a ranch-style home, but his desire to constantly climb stairs when they’re available to him was a pain in the townhome style apartment. 

The house needs a little love. We have a punch list, like any other homeowners. But there’s nothing we have to do immediately. We can just enjoy living and take a little bit at a time. Finally, we're at home.

A Weekend with Family

I am positively tingling with excitement for the coming weekend. Yes, we’re moving in our new house, but more importantly we have friends and family coming to help us. I can’t wait to see my in-laws, brother and sister-in-law and our local cousins. My parents arrived for their winter stay in Nashville yesterday. I haven’t seen them since Thanksgiving and it was surreal to be out to lunch with them today, discussing my son’s birthday cake and ohhing over the thought of making it blueberry flavored. 

I will be forever, EVER grateful that I have parents with the willingness and means to travel to their daughters. They get out to see my sister in LA fairly often and this is their fourth trip to Nashville since we moved. They’re staying 6 weeks or so, in a furnished apartment close to us. My in-laws are the same way- they rearrange their schedules to get out to see us as often as we get to North Carolina. Brian’s career necessitates our location, unlike most of his families’, who live in their hometown. I’ve written about this before, that we don’t have option to pick up and move to Charlotte. This is common to all of our friends from Milwaukee. The friends that we have living in Virginia and California? Would probably prefer to be in the Midwest, closer to their families. But we’ve worked hard for these degrees and the jobs that follow. So again, I am so grateful that our families will come to us. Weekends like these are precious and I plan to soak up every second of family goodness. I can’t wait to see Caleb’s face when he sees his Nanas and Grandpa and Papaw and Aunts and Uncles. Priceless.

Happy New Year/Let's Catch Up On All The Things

I've been incredibly delinquent here, I know. I become aware that I need to write when blog posts begin in my head while I'm driving, in the shower, taking a walk. Then it's a matter of actually sitting and writing. Actually, that's not the hard part. The hard part is making sure I have some new cute pictures! Seriously. That's my hang up with writing. This blog is not really about food anymore, it's about life, and I feel that if anybody reads it's because they'd like an update on our life and really, they just want to see some cute pictures of Caleb. I don't blame them. I'll try harder, I promise. Sometimes though, I might just write without pictures. My dear friend in Virginia does that and I love reading her posts just as much. So I'm reminding myself of that now.

We had a wonderful Christmas, a really wonderful Christmas. This was the first Christmas day I've spent with in-laws and frankly, it was magical. I was slightly worried ahead of time: at 29 years old, this was going to be the first Christmas I spent without my parents. Would it feel like Christmas? Would I miss them and the snow and our traditions terribly? The answers came easy. Yes, it felt like Christmas. Yes, I missed them (a little) and I did miss the snow but it was Christmas. It was full of the people that I fell in love with (yes, I fell in love with all of you, not just your son/brother/cousin/nephew/grandchild) three years ago. These people played with my son, let us sleep in, let me leave early to accommodate naps, babysat so I could go shopping with my sister-in-law (my partner in crime in that family) showered us with gifts and generally made it one of the most wonderful holidays I've ever had. I was rested (taking the baby monitor made all the difference in the world!) and relaxed. My son was so taken with his extended family that he didn't ever noticed the lit up Christmas tree covered in tinsel. We were all happy and at peace, and Caleb slept like a rock at every nap and night from all the playing!

We came home from North Carolina on a mission to close on our house before the end of the year! At 1pm on December 31st we started signing our closing papers. I haven't mentioned the house on here, but this has been in the works since before Thanksgiving. We are so excited. The house is perfect for us, not too big, not too small, a large yard with a garden, garage for Brian's shop, etc. We move next weekend (more family! Caleb's first birthday!) and cannot wait.

Caleb turns 1 in a week and that deserves a post (with pictures!) all it's own. Suffice to say, the time has gone WAY too fast, but I can't say I'm especially sad. Caleb gets more fun to be around every day. He has become this 24 lb walking mass of happiness and love. I'm biased, but I'm not exaggerating. Yes, we've got moments with glimpses of the tantrums ahead, but in general he is a happy, loving kid. His new thing is hugs. For the people he knows well, his family, teachers and us, he walks from person to person giving hugs and kisses. In the ten minutes it took me to get him out the door at school the other day, I watched him give out 4 hugs- 2 to me, 1 to each of the caretakers. Who gives 4 hugs in 10 minutes? Wouldn't be amazing if adults did that?? Now when Brian and I do the welcome home hug & kiss, Caleb runs over to us, hugging our legs, like "let's make this a family hug, guys!" He has brought so much joy in our lives in the past year, it's a million times better than we ever imagined.

I'll stop here, we've got a busy weekend of us prepping for the move. We are not exactly fully packed...