I just saw a meme that said “How did we go from June 1st to June 27th in just 3 days?”
This sums things up rather accurately in my little world. We’ve simultaneously been out of school long enough for name-brand boredom to set in—the kind that harkens back to the days when my sister and I would watch MTV’s TRL countdown and scrounge together enough quarters to order a cheese pizza for delivery. We’re also happily in that middle space of Summer, donning crispy pink cheeks and anticipating a long vacation with everyone else in the travel toiletry section of Target.
Life has been simple and sweet over here, perhaps more than normal because our to-do list shrank dramatically this month and frankly it needed to. As I sat down a few days ago to begin drafting this remembering essay, the ordinary-ness of my life felt palpable. What do I even have to write about? Has anything happened of significance?
To what shouldn’t be my surprise, a few minutes of review is all it took—opening the app I use to capture things, some silence, and an iced latte—suddenly the good stuff came into view, the beauty in these ordinary days. Perhaps you’ve heard of Tish Harrison Warren’s book, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life. This work delighted me from the first time I heard the title. In it she reflects on the utterly formational process of being a real person with a real life—one who ultimately has to do the dishes at the end of the day.
Who among us doesn’t need to be reminded that our ordinary days can be formational ones, still led by the Spirit, lived out in sync with the God who made us and invites us to participate in His kingdom?
I certainly did this month…This is June and here are the things I don’t want to forget.
“The new life into which we are baptized is lived out in days, hours, and minutes. God is forming us into a new people. And the place of that formation is in the small moments of today.” - Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary
#1…on the floor where real work is done.
I have a client who owes me quite a bit of money.
I haven’t sent her an invoice because I know she can’t pay and because she lives with me right now. She’s also my daughter so in the therapy world we have what the professionals call a very serious dual relationship. I kid, obviously.
The day my husband arrived home to a scene of two out of three children tucked away in their respective rooms doing who-knows-what because I had been with the other one for an hour talking about our big feelings, I jokingly said “she owes me $350.” As if that was ever my hourly rate…
The truth is I had reached the bottom of the well in terms of my ability to pull out creative, non-yelling, approaches to our girl who is quite fierce and often times relentless. Any parent knows what I mean by this. You’ve read books, pray hopefully, talk about it with your spouse in the quiet of the evening so you can be ready for the next day, and go to sleep feeling a little less defeated because tomorrow you’ll be equipped. Then first thing in the morning your cute plan collides with the reality that is a human being and you wonder how much time will pass before they grow into the next stage of development. Tomorrow? Will it be tomorrow?
On my desk lay the resources I printed out—feelings charts, matching games made up of helpful thoughts and unhelpful thoughts, the old guard of cognitive behavioral therapy. I entered into the therapy world so adorably green and had zero concept of just how basic some techniques have to get before the client can sync up with you. In the beginning, I wondered if teaching about the difference between happy and sad was a waste of a graduate degree. Don’t we all know this? Yet the more kids I sat on the floor with in my therapist office, the more I realized we certainly do not all know this. Some of us are born with an intuitive sense of emotions in our body, others of us need to go sloooooow with the feelings talk because too much at once is like picking a scab.
At our house we have all kinds and I’ve found myself on the floor, so to speak, with the ones I love more-than-my-luggage several times. Much to my chagrin, it seems that the way forward in parenting is always going lower so they can go higher and thus I find myself on the floor more days than not.
The trickiest part of being a therapist and employing techniques with clients is that you never really get to see how it plays out at home. You don’t get to see them use the things you’ve hopefully equipped them with it—you just debrief things after the fact. But in these most recent instances, I’m happy to report from first person observation that the client I assumed would be a rather contrary one has turned out to be a most engaged one and it’s filled my heart with the perfect blend of surprise and delight. We’re making progress. We can label our feelings. We can move from a 6 in anger to a 3 without wailing on our brother. I’ll take it.
Putting all of this words has left me wondering if this might be similar to how God feels toward us when we embrace a wisdom that’s been whispered in our ear by the Spirit. Is he surprised? I suppose not. Does he delight in our choices even in full omniscience? I’d like to think so even though I don’t understand it. What I do know is that he knows how to get on the floor with us—to go utterly low so that we can climb on his back out of the pit we put ourselves in. Any grounding, any tiniest inkling of wisdom I possess, has been gained on the shoulders of the one who loves me enough to sit down and coach me through it.
I document it this month because it’s good to hear (and say and write) these days of parenting young children. We’re living and breathing a Kingdom metaphor—may I remember that every time I see a feelings chart and take a belly breath.
#2…a Tuesday.
From the top of my second story bedroom I can see red solo cups lining the stairs. I walk forward until the curve of the stairs reveals tousled blonde hair and a sweet little girl making the red cups—there must be at least 45 of them—talk to each other with voices. Her sweet fingers place individual stickers on their tops.
The hallway ahead is littered with books and stuffed animals tossed in such a haphazard way they must have been interfering with some kind of hurried pursuit. Following the breadcrumbs around the corner, another child draws quietly on the floor with a focus only to be interrupted by a tap on the shoulder. My voice will not suffice to get her attention because audiobooks are her constant companion these days.
In the bathroom no drawers are closed. Scrunchies, so many scrunchies, and a suspicious bag of food coloring (yes, food coloring in an upstairs bathroom) tell a story I don’t want to hear right now so I press on downstairs, quelling the voice in my head that wants to turn back to the mini-scientist with the audiobook.
The blanket-covered couch conceals a giant teenager—the once little boy who used to wake us up annoyingly early when he spent the night to play beyblades on the kitchen table of our old house. The one who previews ages and stages for us—he’s currently in his still-needs-a-nap era with a side of actually-quite-helpful. He’ll never know the space he takes up in my head and heart.
Onward I go into the living room where large pieces of furniture are shoved together to form a fort with blankets. Claw clips that I pray won’t snap in two are used to stabilize them. A half turn into the kitchen reveals an open dishwasher, cabinet, pantry, and laundry room door. What’s with all the open things?
Through the window into the backyard I spy my son painting while bellowing out some muffled music on the speaker he’s carried outside. Twenty bucks says it’s either Forrest Frank or the soundtrack to Finding Nemo. The dog pants happily along, her full body shoved up next to the back door so there’s zero chance of her missing an opportunity to slip inside.
It was a Tuesday—the ordinary kind that I referenced at the beginning. It certainly wasn’t a perfect day. I still counted the minutes until my husband got home and enjoyed not one minute of cooking dinner. I didn’t finish the laundry and I thought about work many times without having any time to do said work.
But what I did do well was look up and I think that’s because I’ve been practicing remembering as a spiritual discipline now for over a year, breathing prayers during the midday that I would see God at work and documenting it in some way for future reflection. That random Tuesday, I saw the scene unfolding beyond the shallow narrative of my messy, chaotic house. Instead of zero alone time and unfinished chores, I saw creativity, beauty, safety, togetherness, and the absolute gift that is healthy children around my table.
May I always have eyes to see it (and a phone nearby to capture it so I can write about it later like I did for this essay).
#3…a love letter to Beth Moore.
I bought her memoir as soon as I heard about it, but I didn’t read it right away. Actually, it has been collecting dust on my shelf until just last week when I finally devoured it on a road trip. I spent an entire weekend juggling between written copy and audiobook and Kindle version in what turned out to be one long, glorious hit of Beth Moore. It was a wild weekend, you guys.
Initially, I would not have claimed to be hesitant to start it, just rather too busy. Now I feel certain that what caused my procrastination in reading the memoir of someone who I admire so greatly was simply that I didn’t want to grieve its ending. Starting would mean finishing and finishing would mean it’d be over.
Beth Moore is a hero of mine and her memoir washed over me at a time when I’m discerning God’s call on my life as a woman who longs to teach and lead. This feels such a vulnerable thing to say publicly even though I supposed this platform makes that rather obvious. All those years ago when I was a young college girl tucked away in the study hall of my sorority house with my copy of Breaking Free, I had little idea of what God might be nurturing in me—and I certainly didn’t know there might be those who would be opposed to it.
Alas, I stand before you a super-fan. Both of Beth Moore and of women in leadership in ministry. I’ve done my homework with humility and with invaluable guidance from academic experts in the science of Biblical hermeneutics—Gordon Fee, NT Wright, Lucy Peppiatt, and Sandra Richter to name a few. But no one person has influenced me more than Beth Moore because she taught me to love the Scriptures and the Scriptures taught me that God loves me.
Finishing her memoir while driving through Kansas on a scorching June day, my eyes brimming over with tears, I pondered Dustin’s simple question: how was it? My only response in the moment was to shake my head. I can hardly talk about it yet, but you know that feeling—goodness, I hope you do—when it seems like your insides are burning and you’re not sure whether to cry or start singing or laugh? That’s how it was. A thin place for me that I’ll always remember.
Note to self (and Dustin): Don’t let Emily drive when she’s hearing from God, listening to Beth Moore talk about her move to the Anglican church, and craving a grande iced caramel macchiato.
Friends, a quick reminder that I’ll be on vacation for the month of July (save the SIWF series). Each week you’ll be receiving some greatest hits content, which basically means things that best capture what happens at We Have This Hope. I hope they’ll be refreshingly new to you or you’ll consider them again with a fresh perspective. Either way, I’m so grateful for your readership and consider it a total joy that you’re here.
