All You Need Is Love?

It's Valentine's Day.

And just like last year and the year before and well, pretty much every year that I can remember, I couldn't actually care less. That's not because I don't have an amazing husband and a lot of love in my life. It's just because I've come to believe that a lot of little, wonderful moments of doing life together goes a lot further for me than a fancy dinner and chocolates. Not that a fancy dinner and chocolates aren't welcome - but at this stage of life, we take dates when we can get them. And we've already got a fun one planned for Friday that has nothing to do with the holiday.

Valentine's Day is a day when we are meant to celebrate love by buying little trinkets and spiderman valentines and saying "I love you." (Which means that I, as a parent, spend time buying, filling out and making sure said little gifts get sent to the right places so my children can still participate in a holiday I don't care a whit about. I'm not yet so cruel as to force on them my own level of grumpiness about it.)

Like Christmas and Easter, we have learned to express love through gift-giving in our culture. And like with those holidays, sometimes the gifts are meaningful and other times they are just "stuff." Some people love the holiday and the exchanges and others would gladly skip it since it leaves them feeling empty or disappointed.

Some, like me, just don't care.

People like to toss around the phrase "all you need is love." I don't know if the phrase predates the famous song or if the song introduced the now-famous phrase. But I read it and hear it all the time.

It never sits well.

I've had a lot of love in my life. I grew up in a stable family. I married into a family that has made it clear they love me. I got married almost 14 years ago and love my husband more today than on the day we said "I do." I have three boys who express their love for me in countless ways. I have friends who speak truth and make me laugh.

Love is beautiful.

But, at least in earthly form, it's not everything.

In adoption circles, you hear about it a lot. "Those kids just need love and once they are in a "stable" family, they will be fine." Yes, they obviously need love just like every kid out there needs love. They are human. But they need a lot more. For my kids, they need me to be the kind of person who recognizes the importance of their culture, the reality of racism and the challenges of a multiracial family. Who takes research and listening and humility seriously and is willing to risk failure. They need me to care about their hair and learn how to do it correctly. They need me to speak well and often of their birthparents so that they feel the freedom to explore their own history when they are older. They need to be able to tell me they love their skin color and ask why mine is different without me panicking and shutting down the conversation. They need us to make choices so that they are in schools and churches and neighborhoods where they are not the only black children and so that there are authorities in their lives who look like them. They need us to recognize there is trauma in adoption - that even though we brought them home as infants, there is loss in their life, loss that love can seep into but not obliterate. That the identity questions with which they will struggle as black adopted children with white parents are no small thing.

I truly wish all we needed was "love". That I could fill up my heart with all the feelings and emotions and joys that are associated with it and be whole. But the way love is sold to us is so often lacking. It is shallow. It is impatient. It is all about what we get out of it and rarely about what we are meant to give in its name. God's love is the opposite. It is bigger and stronger and more sacrificial than anything we've ever seen. And it calls us to love in response. Not in small and frivolous ways, not just in words, but in action, in hope, in sacrifice.

So, yes, today my husband might come home with flowers because it is Valentine's Day. He will give me a kiss and ask how the day was and my little ones will giggle. He'll scoop them up and hold them close and kiss their curls and hug my oldest. He loves them and those actions are still powerful and good.

But I'm grateful that love is so much more than what we settle for so much of the time. That it is, in the immortal words of the old school DC Talk song, "a verb." It's action and sacrifice and challenge and choices, its sometimes choosing someone else's good over our own, all rolled into relationship and held together by God.

Let's celebrate that today. And tomorrow. And every day that we are fortunate enough to have people are in our lives. Let's do it in real and honest and challenging and beautiful ways.

Because if we could really see and live love in all its depth, poured out in service to those around us, the way it was taught to us by a sacrificial God who loves us more than we could ever ask or imagine, maybe the world really would be a better place.

Maybe that kind of love really would be all we need.

Fall Down Tree

Every Sunday morning our family unceremoniously and rather chaotically piles into our minivan to head to church. Snacks packed (because when you have kids with allergies and sensitivities, sunday school goldfish could derail your whole week), lunches packed (because, let's be honest, with three growing boys, it's a long time from breakfast through church and Sunday School and that fifteen minute ride home is much more peaceful with mouths chomping) and a sense of having accomplished the impossible, getting all five of us out the door by 8 am, permeates the atmosphere.

No matter how we enter that car, I know now that something is about to change for our family. We are about to encounter "Fall Down Tree."

Just after we started coming to this church, we came across it. A huge tree, roots upended, laying right by the side of the road in someone's front yard. Somehow, this tree has become the focal point of our ride. It is cause for speculation, pontification and flat-out aesthetic awe.

How did it fall? Why don't the people who live there clean it up? How old might it be? Can we knock on their door and ask to play with it?

All these questions and more are answered in serious and silly fashion. (Maybe Joshie bonked it with his bike! Maybe Nate pushed it over with his strong arms! Maybe God blew on it and, poof, it fell over!)

But however it has happened, the conversation always ends with a chant. My youngest laughing and pumping his arms in the air as the middle and oldest chant "Fall down tree! Fall down tree! Fall down tree!" Dissolving in giggles at the end, we often enter church with lighter hearts and goofier outlooks.

Friends, this is a powerful thing.

You see, Sunday mornings have traditionally been calamitous. Screaming, crying, multiple changes of clothes, arguments. Usually this has culminated in two very exhausted parents who spend the greater part of the church service trying to remember why we even attempted to come to church in the first place. Too exhausted and defeated to even attempt to open our souls to what God may have for us that morning. Just grateful on some level that childcare is provided, we  would fight to stay awake during the sermon and then trudge back home again.

But now we have "Fall Down Tree." This strange and unexpected beacon of distraction and hope. No matter what mood everyone is in when we enter that car, as we turn that bend and "Fall Down Tree" comes into view, there is a shift in that minivan.

And entering church in its aftermath is a whole different world. Laughter has helped us shake off any early morning tomfoolery. Chanting has helped us loosen up our rigid need (ok, MY rigid need) to be early for church and the ensuing stress when someone has caused us to be late. Again. The camaraderie of three boys rejoicing together, united in spirit for even 5 minutes, gives everyone the chance to take a deep breath. To enter church with thanksgiving. To walk in with a posture that invites rest and redemption and joy.

Some day I am certain that that family will clean up the tree. We will turn the bend and as the chanting begins to rev up, the car will fall silent. There will be disappointment and mourning and the end to what is, at least for now, a tradition. Possibly we will pull some deep lesson out of its disappearance.

For now, though, I am relying on "Fall Down Tree." Because right now it is a tangible, beautiful reminder that any day can be reset. Any hard moment can suddenly turn into one of laughter and joy and lasting family memories. That giggles and silliness can be powerful preparation for inviting God to do His work of healing in our souls.

I know that one day, a long time from now when this tree is a distant memory, we will look back and tell the boys about it, about this tree that brought hope and life back into Sundays for our family.

Maybe God did blow it over for us, after all.

Keeping Pace

My feet pounded the same rhythm as hers did while the exhilarating background of 80's music pumped through my earbuds. There was some kind of power in that matching of strides, some kind of challenge that was more effective than any goal I could have set. Matched strides, eyes forward, strangers next to each other, moving in the same directionless direction.

Before I knew it, two miles down. Sweat pouring down my smiling face, breaths coming fast and deep. A body that had been benched for over a month due to injury and illness suddenly full of energy, moving fast, free of pain. Movement has always been a key part of how I do life. It's absence had caused no small amount of emotional chaos.

Minutes after finishing our run, we smile at each other, gulping water.

"I was about to stop running when you jumped on," she said, "and then suddenly there was something really helpful in your pace that kept me going."

"You really pushed me and I appreciate it. I haven't been able to run in a long time. I would have stopped sooner if you weren't still going." I replied. We shared brief stories of why we had been gone from the Y and why we were back. And thanked each other for the shared challenge of our morning run.

No competition, no needing to prove ourselves. Just 20 minutes in a day that reminded us both of why we need those pace-keepers in our lives. People with similar goals, moving in the same direction, helping us push past our own limits. In running, in parenting, in faith, in marriage, in all of life.

May we treasure our pace-keepers, both the temporary gifts and those who are more permanent fixtures in our lives, and keep on keeping on.

How Facebook Became God

Click. Read. Like. Scroll. Comment. Repeat.

Simple actions with great power. Power to encourage, power to wound, power given and power taken.

And power, when wielded loosely and unwittingly, can be a terrible thing.

Two weeks ago, I had a frank moment of revelation that life couldn't continue on as it was. I felt exhausted, angry, frustrated and powerless. And I felt it all the time.

I was addicted to clicking on my browser, to watching Facebook load, to seeing the number of notifications pop up in the right corner. To knowing there were things to read, videos to watch, photographs to see, stands to take.

Addicted to the god on my screen.

You see, we can make god a lot of things. It can be the thing we care about the most in our lives, like making money or our families or our belongings. It can be the ideas or opinions we hold dearest, like politics or religion or our philosophy of parenting. It can be what we spend all our time and energy working towards or thinking about, like money, career, even happiness. It can be what we depend on the most for affirmation and identity. And it can be to whom or what we relinquish all our power.

Facebook, my friends, can be a dangerous place. Because on Facebook, all of those possibilities, all of those things we look for in or assign to our god can be found.

And when we give it too much time, we give it exponentially more power. The power to make us feel (though elusively and vaguely) connected. To feel good, to feel right about something and surround ourselves with only people who agree. We give it the power to affirm our identity or to plummet us to a point of despair. We give it the power to control our emotions, our thoughts, even the direction our day might take. We give it the power to keep us mired in what's on screen instead of what surrounds us.

This affects the very core of who we are, who we were created to be.

As a Christian, I believe I am created in the image of God. Made beautiful in his sight, brought into relationship with Him through the life, death and resurrection of His son Jesus and invited into abundant life through His Spirit. A life that is submitted ultimately to the power of God but that lives in the power that He then gives me, power to deal with all that life has, fighting with joy, hope and the knowledge that I am never alone.

When Facebook is god, this all changes. I see the ugly in myself and others more acutely. I feel the pull and destruction of comparison, rather than the deep challenge and joy of honest encouragement in real relationships. I am blown here and there all day long by anger and frustration and petty humor and confusion and the need to be affirmed by "likes" and comments. And it doesn't end when I shut the screen. It translates into real life in quicker cynicism, deeper sadness, chronic distractedness, shorter attention spans and fewer true relationships.

That, my friends, is not abundant life. It is the life of someone who has paid homage to the wrong god.

I have been off of Facebook for a little over a week now. At that point of revelation I knew I had to stop. That all the rage and chaos I was feeling inside was a result of a bad decision I was making over and over and over again in the vain hope of feeling less lonely, more connected, more aware and informed. Every time I opened my computer I was looking for something I really could not possibly find there.

Purpose. Life. Joy. Friendship.

Those first few days I felt lost, almost adrift. Like something had died or been taken away from me. As a stay at home parent, sometimes Facebook was my only means of communicating with other human adults during the day and I missed it. I longed for that feeling of being with people, even though that feeling of connectedness was just an illusion.

Sometimes we are so used to the poor version of something that we will cling to it believing it is full of riches.

I knew, though, from truly worshiping my first love, the God of the Universe, that those were not really riches. So I waited.

And soon things changed. I knew this was a moment straight from God. A gift in the midst of a chaotic season of life to take stock. To pray. To make some decisions. To invite some close friends into prayer and dreaming and hoping for what life can be.

When there was a calm moment of a child playing independently, I cleaned up the kitchen or sat for a moment and prayed for him, instead of quickly trying to get online.

When there was a child waking up from a nap, I didn't feel annoyed or interrupted because I had to shut my computer in the middle of completing a thought on a political post.

When the house was quiet, I pulled out my guitar or my journal or a book. I walked outside and dug in the dirt. Or wrote a letter.

I smiled more.

I made it to the gym and didn't wonder the whole time if there were things I was "missing" in being offline.

I initiated more dance parties around the house.

I spent more time with actual adult human beings.

I said yes to some really, really good things, both in my personal daily rhythms and in my community.

I complained less.

I hoped more.

I began to long for time with Jesus in a way I hadn't in awhile.

And in all of it, I stood up straighter. I felt less burdened, less distracted, more tuned in to what was immediately around me.

Was life perfect? Of course not. It can't be. I had a stomach bug, a toddler was working on molars, life in all its noise and grit went on. But it went on with my head held a little higher. With my hope fastened more surely on God, not Facebook.

Getting off Facebook wasn't a cure-all. It was one step, one big step for me, in saying no to a major, destructive distraction so that I could say yes to the many more beautiful opportunities I was no longer seeing.

And let me make something clear. I don't think it is Facebook's fault. I chose to be on it all the time. I kept turning to it again and again even as I felt myself changing. I gave it the power it held over me.

Some of you are thinking it sounds crazy. That something so silly could not hold so much power.

But let's not kid ourselves...whether it is Facebook or career or romance or any number of things or ideas or people, we all have that innate tendency to look to something or someone to define us, to fulfill us. We search for it in small ways or in big ways, but we are always looking. And the way I see it, life is one long journey in figuring out how to keep my eyes fixed on God, not on the things of this world. One never-ending decision to wake up and choose peace, choose joy, choose hope and love.

To choose God.

And any time I start to choose something else first, all of me suffers. I learned it 30 years ago as a young Christian and again a hundred times since.

Each time it sticks a little longer and grows a little deeper, by the grace of God.

So, I am taking it one sweet, slower, facebook-free, God-seeking moment at a time right now. And loving it.

Texting the Ridiculous

We all have them. Or we should.

Those friends to whom we can text something totally ridiculous out of the blue, right in the middle of our most chaotic moments, and know we are heard and understood.

For me, I know those friends are likely laughing at me or with me. They are writing something equally ridiculous right back. They are sending dumb pictures of stupid injuries or of a child drinking from a puddle in the street or of another failed meal prep. They are texting while they reheat their cup of coffee for the seventh time. Sometimes they are texting about how they just cried, too. Or about how they miss working outside the home. Or how, just for one minute, they'd love to pee without someone watching.

In it together.

Ideally, these friends would be right in the room and we could do this face-to-face. But that's not reality. Some of them live right around the corner, others across the country. Some I've known for decades and others for months.

But they are there. Here. In it.

I am not a techie person. But, in a way, during this season of being home, a choice I never thought I'd make and one with which I struggle daily, these texts have saved my life.

In the moments when I feel the most alone, the most likely to lose heart, I can say a prayer, press a few buttons and have a friend saying "God has got this, take a deep breath, laugh at yourself, order a pizza, tomorrow's a new day." I can take heart knowing that I am just one of so many mamas in the trenches.

And I cannot express how grateful I am.

Grateful that these are people in my life who get it. Grateful that they don't reply with cliches or tell me I'm complaining. (Unless they really SHOULD tell me I'm complaining and to suck it up for goodness sake. Because I need that sometimes, too.) Grateful for honest, simple interactions that ground me during a phase where my children's needs keep me isolated a lot of the day, especially during the winter with my cold-hating babies.

I know one day we probably won't text as often. And the texts won't include pictures of my infant attempting to drink from the toilet. Maybe we'll live closer and talk over a glass of wine while our kids are old enough to play without needing minute-to-minute intervention.

I don't know.

For now, I'm glad for the few, the crazy, the text-buddies. You know who you are. Love you.

The Harder Choice

I woke up this morning with a sinking feeling. It's here. The day many Americans have been dreading or fearing or attempting to ignore. The day many others have been waiting for with joyful anticipation. And the day many people truly don't know how to react to.

I wanted to post things. To say why I was angry. To say why I was sad. To weigh in on the cabinet choices. To, yet again, make clear that I did not, could not, vote for Trump. And that on this, the day of his inauguration, I was grieving.

But my distrust and dislike of him is no secret. So I held off.

I was up before the boys. In the dark, drinking coffee, listening to my heart thump rapidly and then begin to slow down in peace. And I was reminded.

I am first and foremost a Christian. A believer in Jesus. A follower of God-become-man who walked the earth during a time of tremendous oppression, division and racial strife. Who taught his followers to pray for their enemies, to show love to those who persecute them. And who also made it clear that talking the talk isn't enough. That justice will prevail. And that all people are made in the image of God. I'm not sure our now-current President understands those things. I truly hope he will come to.

So, before I chose to say anything, before I chose to do anything, I invited my son to pray with me. He balked at first.

Josh: "Why should we pray for him? He is so unkind, Mom. I'm worried about how he will treat people."
Me: "That is exactly WHY we need to pray for him. If we believe that God is good, that God is love, that God is powerful and loves ALL people...then we have to pray that a man that now has so much power, also has the ability to change and use that power for good."

In the end, my son didn't really have words and I don't believe in forcing my kids to pray. He asked me to do it. We prayed for Trump, we prayed for the Obamas. And I sent him on his way to school like I always do: "Find the good, be the good. I love you."

I spent the morning with friends drinking coffee and talking about life and dancing with Jayce. I didn't watch the inauguration live. I chose to watch it later, with my two little ones asleep.

And friends, I am not going to lie. It was hard to watch. It was painful to listen to all the nationalist rhetoric. It was frustrating to watch a billionaire with questionable business practices blame Washington for stealing all their wealth and sending all their jobs overseas. I, for one, am not teaching my children "Americans first." I am teaching them to love their neighbor as themselves. And as a Christian who loves Jesus and what he taught, I cringed when he said that God would protect America. Why? Why in the world are we so arrogant to believe we have the protection of God?

I do not know what the next four years hold. I prayed for Obama. I will pray for Trump. It doesn't mean I have to like him or sit idly by when I don't agree with him. It doesn't mean I have to support dangerous cabinet picks. I don't and I won't.

Praying for him today was the harder choice. It would have been much easier to mock him, much easier to be angry or to wallow in fear for what's coming for us and the world.

So, each morning I am going to have to ask God to help me make the harder choice. To pray first. Because I so badly want to act first. I so badly want to say exactly what I am thinking but if there is one thing I know right now it's that my emotions cannot be trusted. And, more than that, I know my kids are watching and listening. I don't want my legacy to them to be rash action and angry words. I want them to learn what it means to love God, pray first and then act boldly and justly and with mercy, whatever the situation.

So today and tomorrow and next week, I will pray for him.

For our divided nation.

For my friends who are hurting and afraid and angry.

For my friends who are rejoicing.

For much of the world that is fearful of what this all means on the global stage.

For all of us; humans created in the image of God. Not just Americans. All of us.

And I will continue to speak up in love. And to act. And to hope.

May God give me the grace to do so. And forgiveness when I fail.

Angels

Just a few weeks ago, my middle child pulled out a book that had been in storage since last Christmas. Last year, he wasn't quite ready for it. It had a lot of words that required the art of sitting still for more than roughly 4 seconds at a time. Not his jive just yet.

This year he can, just occasionally, enjoy a good book. And as we read through it for the first time, his eyes got big. He pointed and asked questions. And every day he asks to read it again.

The book?

An Angel Just Like Me by Mary Hoffman

It's the story of a young black boy during Advent who wonders why all the angels he sees are blonde girls. Who wonders if it's possible that an angel could look any differently. Who goes looking in store after store to find an angel just like him.

Ultimately, he can't find one. And a family friend, an artist, comes to the rescue and makes him one. He opens it Christmas Day in wonder...and then asks if his artist friend can make more for all his other friends that wonder if there are angels just like them.

It's a beautiful story. My son's very favorite.

And when we get to the end, my son always points to the black boy angel and says "Just like Nate?"

Yes, buddy. He looks just like you.

Maybe the concept of angels not all being white is new to you. Maybe the concept that people in heaven will not be some weird pale ghostly representation of humans is surprising. But God makes it clear in the scriptures that he has made us all in his image. And that when we share that heavenly feast some day we will not actually look all that different from how we do now. Because how we look now is beautiful and purposeful and good.

My son has noticed his skin is brown from before he could really articulate it. He would point to black characters in books and then to his own skin. He would run to black men on the playground and yell "Daddy!" (Yes, that was painful for most involved.) He thinks he is handsome with his dark skin and black curls and brown eyes. And he's right. He's pretty dang handsome.

But a lot of what he sees around him, in stores, on billboards, in the toys at school or the nursery? A lot of those things are white. White people playing. White people speaking. White characters in books.

And because he has white parents and a brother, he sees a lot of white at home, too.

And friends, it's ok. White isn't bad. God made me this way. And my husband. And my firstborn.

But if white is all he ever sees, he can unconsciously believe it's better. That it's more desirable. That it's somehow more important.

And that is the last thing we want him to believe about us or himself.

So when we read a book like that? And he relates to the character?

Well, Mama starts combing the stores. Where can I find an angel just like him? And one that he can touch and hold (read, not breakable) and doesn't cost more than I can afford?

Well, almost nowhere, to be honest.

I had just put on my list for this week to get to a craft store, buy an angel and paint it black. Because I wanted him to have that angel he so desperately wanted. And when you can't find what you need, you make it, right?

This morning, I posted a picture on my facebook page of a Santa canvas that I had painted for him a year ago. Well, really, I painted it for all my boys. I don't want my white son to grow up in a white-washed world any more than I want that for my black sons or for me. Culture and differences are rich. I want us to bask in them around here.

I posted that Santa picture and shared a story about how much it meant to him to have a black santa in our house.

And just a few hours later, I was out walking my youngest. A neighbor of ours, one I am just getting to know, ran out of her house with a gift for us. She smiled, walked up to me and handed me a black angel. A black boy angel. That happened to look a LOT like my boys.

I was almost speechless. I assumed she had seen my post this morning and was so grateful.

But no. She had seen me coming down the street. She had owned this angel for years and she just knew, in that moment, that it was for my sons.

Ya'll.

I picked up my son from preschool, brought him home and handed him that angel.

Pure. Joy.

"It's me?? It's me!!! I'm an angel!"

Yes, baby. You are.