I’ve decided to keep a second blog, for any of you interested. It’ll house all the letters I’ve always wanted to write but have never sent and is (aptly) found at lettersiwishiwrote.wordpress.com. I’ll still be writing on here too (as often as I do now, at least) but it made sense in my head to separate the two. Plus, it won’t be linked to my twitter account, so you’d have to actively subscribe to it, should you want to read it.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
disciple shipping
i love my sister. she sent the following email to me, jason (her husband/kids pastor) and sarah (nursery coordinator). it was too fantastic not to repost.
enjoy!
Hey Sarah,
Kyla and Jason told me about the “Discipleship” idea, and it made me think of a *fantastic* suggestion. How about instead of a nautical theme, you could change the name slightly to make it… Discipleshipping? That way, it’s a verb, and it’s an amazing analogy.
Let me explain —
1) You know how in today’s world, people use shipping companies like fedex, ups, and dhl all the time? They also have kids. Shipping companies are everywhere. So are children.
2) Packages don’t get to their destinations by accident. Only through careful planning and strategy do they arrive at their destination. Same with kids. They don’t turn into Christians by going to church and sitting around with mediocre volunteers. They need strategic, team member leaders who are going to make it a priority to get these kiddos to the right destination — the kingdom of God on earth, and in heaven one day.
3) Do you want some lunatic throwing your ebay purchase into the back of their truck and driving down a pothole-covered road? No, of course not. So even though sometimes kids might act up and throw temper tantrums, we know that they are little and “fragile” and should be “handled with care.”
With these three reasons and the attached logo, I don’t see how you could refuse. I am looking forward to seeing the new nursery, complete with conveyor belts, mailing tape, styrofoam peanuts, and long lines at Christmas.
🙂
Katie
the healing power of popsicles
i spent the past week at my mom’s house in orlando, taking care of two of my adorable nephews. we’d gone down there because my sister and brother-in-law were taking a well-deserved cruise to mexico for the week. his parents volunteered to watch the baby and i volunteered to watch the other two kids. i don’t mind watching them up here but as the longest stretch i’ve spent watching the kids by myself is a little over a day, i decided to go back home for some support. i was very thankful that i made that decision daily, but especially on tuesday.
on tuesday, caleb complained about a stomachache. he’d been saying how much he missed his mommy and daddy and i knew he hadn’t really slept much so i wrote it off. at nap time, caleb will either fall asleep within the first 15 minutes or he won’t sleep at all. he’d been in his bed for an hour when i picked him up to take him with me on an adventure to starbucks. like i’ve talked about before, caleb and i used to go on little dates to starbucks and since elijah was sleeping, i figured it would be a good time to go, so we got into my car and started driving. on the way there, he told me it would’ve been better if he hadn’t gone and that maybe he should go home now. i explained that we were almost there (it’s a little over a mile away from my mom’s house) and that we could just drive through. he asked for chocolate milk and “maybe a little brownie” so i ordered those along with my coffee. we were driving back when it happened.
the night before, i had slept about 5 hours. as a single girl, i’m not used to being on “baby time” as my mom calls it, so staying up til 12:30 or 1:00 am doesn’t sound like it would be painful in the morning. but my nephews are small, so when they woke up at 6:00 am, i was unprepared for them. i wanted sleep or coffee or a time machine so i could go back and unmake my decision to go to bed so late. none of those options were readily available, so i did what any person responsible for the well-being of children would do: i sucked it up and did what i had to do. now, when i haven’t slept, not only do i get cranky but i get very nauseated and i run hot all day. i’m also typically paranoid, so once it all happened, i took my temperature and found out i was running a fever. none of this is particularly relevant to the story other than to help justify my status as “complete basket case,” which you will read about soon enough.
back to the car ride. we had just crossed over goldenrod when caleb tells me that he shouldn’tve come with me. the next noise i hear is a bit graphic, so suffice it to say that the child got sick all over himself and the back of my car. he’s like the rest of the cacciabeves; we hate throwing up. the poor little boy is sitting in the back, trying not to get sick again and all i can do is drive as safely as i can, instructing him to spit it out and get it all out. during the next two minutes it takes to get to my mom’s, he doesn’t say anything. he just sits there, stunned. i called my little sister and told her to either come outside and help me clean him and my car or to send our mom. and to bring towels.
we got everything cleaned up right around the time my mom had to leave for a class. as a teacher, you have to earn an arbitrary number of points to keep your credentials valid, and that’s where she was headed for the evening. my little sister had just had some tests run, so she was also feeling a bit under the weather which left me to take care of one sick nephew and one clueless toddler. and over the next 4 hours, caleb purged everything he had in his system. we still don’t really know what made him sick, as no one else got sick and we all had eaten the exact same food, just that he got sick and that he was miserable. and, just like every other person i’ve ever met, he wanted his mommy and daddy. and each time we got him to drink a little water, he would get sick 10 minutes later. it’s such a violent action, the purging, and his little body shook and all the blood rushed into his head. all i could do was sit there and hold him and clean him off. i cuddled him when he cried and i cried with him because the one thing he wanted, the one thing he needed, i could not give him. he looked at me with his big, sad eyes and said, “can i please be done now?” i made my voice as steady as i could when i replied, “if there was any way for me to take this from you, if there was anything i could do, anything at all, i absolutely would.” and i meant it.
my mom finally came home and was able to convince him to do something i had been trying for hours: she got him to take a few licks of a popsicle. when you’re tired and you’re stressed, you put your hope in strange things. i truly believed that if we could just get him to eat a popsicle or suck on some ice, he’d be ok. when i was 3, i got a bad case of the stomach flu and wound up hospitalized for dehydration. i don’t remember much of this, other than that they called the iv in my leg a “magic straw” and that i got to stay up “really late” [read: like 8:30] and watch the disney channel. we didn’t have the disney channel before then, but you better believe we had it after. now that i’m an adult, i can see things i couldn’t then. i can imagine how scary it would be to take such a small child to the hospital because she’s sick and you can’t fix it. and i didn’t want that for my nephew. so it was my firm belief that if we could just get him to keep something in his system, he’d be ok. and i thanked God for the healing powers i was convinced that that cherry popsicle had.
only about 10 minutes later, he threw it up. i realized that it was just a popsicle after all and not the answer to caleb being sick. my illusion was shattered and so was i. with no other alternatives, i got on my face and cried. i’d say that i cried out to God, and i did, but most of it was incomprehensible to people who speak english. i can’t remember ever being that broken and in so much pain for someone else. i begged, i pleaded and i even attempted to bribe God to heal my nephew and to protect my other nephew from getting sick. [during all of this, he played in his room and tried bringing every toy he had to his brother. he understood something was wrong, but ignored us when we told him to stay away from “bubish.”] and even though i think God already planned to do this, he listened patiently to my prattle and put up with my foolish bribery and healed my nephew.
looking back on it all, i can’t understand why i waited to get on my face and beg God for help. i’d been saying little prayers throughout the course or him being sick, but not like this. i hadn’t gotten to the point of pure desperation until that moment. i wonder if i’d been able to get over myself sooner if he could’ve gotten better more quickly. i honestly don’t want to know the answer to that question. and that’s what it all amounts to: i needed to get over myself and the thoughts that i could fix it and accept the reality that i could do nothing save trust that since i love God and caleb loves God, everything would be fine. and it was, and it was always going to be.
i could use the excuse that since i hadn’t slept, i didn’t think of this more quickly but that’s not true. whether or not i had slept, my first instinct isn’t to lie prostrate and make myself vulnerable. my first instinct is to figure out what i can do to solve whatever problem it is. and right now i can see that my instinct is never actually the right answer, even though i can justify it as “working” when i know in my heart that it actually doesn’t.
so my faith is not in popsicles. and thank God for that, because i need the stability of something that won’t melt when the temperature gets above 80.
the Jesus post
allow me to admit [without your laughter] that i belong to an office tv show fansite. just like with all sites, there’s forums and one of the topics of one thread is called “fellow christians?” i’ve never really clicked on it, simply because my goal of pleasing people stretches all the way into the internet, but tonight for some reason, i did. and i found a girl who was questioning what it means to “belong to God,” to “be saved” and many other fundamental questions people have when they discuss christianity. i’m not saying that i’m the right person to answer any of these perplexing and important questions, but i felt like i needed to respond. and so i did. what follows is what i’ve written to the girl, sarah, on the site.
“you raise excellent questions. they’re things i wonder daily. the bottom line is, like with any religion, there’s a balance of logic and faith. one should not blindly follow what one is simply told without research because honestly, that’s foolishness. and it’s important to look for answers to questions, but the “faith factor” is the ultimate test: do i believe in something that i cannot see with my eyes, cannot touch with my hands and cannot hear with my ears? faith isn’t something that any one person could force on another and i don’t think it should be. i think that’s how a lot of people have negative views of christians. they’ve been beat down with so much jargon that the words have lost all meaning.
for me, it’s like this: i’ve never been “bad,” but i definitely have my moments when i’m selfish, mean and ungrateful, to name only a few of many traits i’d rather not claim as my own. my sister was one of those people who shoved God down my throat once she went to college, and i was determined not to have anything to do with christianity as a whole. [i say “was” because not only do i now recognize the love behind what she was saying, but because like most people, she’s been blessed with more kindness in telling about God.] but the more i met the people my sister was around, the more i could see that they had joy. happiness is so fleeting, but joy is so beautiful at all times. so i read and i studied and i talked to people both within churches and outside of them and made the logical decision to be completely irrational and believe in something intangible.
i still screw up daily. i still have too many selfish moments, too many days where i don’t love people like i should, but i believe that i am a better person now than i was 5 years ago, just because i have faith in a relationship with the one who i believe made me exactly as i am. my faith is based way more on emotions than on logic, though i maintain that i am a fairly logical being.
people can give you answers to the questions you ask, but they’re just words until they resonate with you. faith is a feeling that lasts over time, like love. love is irrational. it cannot be seen, but we know what it feels like. and love, unlike lust, requires effort and sacrifice, but the rewards far outweigh the cost.”
there is so much more to say, but i abstained from writing an entire book. i don’t know if she’ll even read what i said or just look for loopholes in my words. i’m hoping she’ll see the love behind those words, those words that took me too long to write for fear of rejection.
i reserve the right to discuss this topic again and again, in many different ways, saying more words than i need to, just because i need to work out the answers within myself. and writing on here helps me process, and knowing that people read this keeps me accountable to try to be the person i see growing within me: someone who is rooted in love, faith and intentionality.
Protected: thanksgiving eve
finality
We buried my grandpa today. I’ve never seen a more sad room full of people in my life. And, as predicted by everyone who knows me, I cried. And I cried a lot. Partly because of those around me who were in pain and partly because I would always remember today as the day when we finally said good bye to my grandpa.
The other night when we stayed at my dad’s house, my dad cried. I’ve only ever seen him cry one other time that I can remember in the past 24 years. And as he sat there telling Katie and I stories about our grandpa and what a good man he was, I thought about why he was a good man. It was not just because he did good things. It was the reason why he did the good things that made him good. Namely, because he belonged to Jesus. And as that thought hit me over and over and I struggled with how to explain this to my dad without seeming insensitive to his obvious pain and sense of loss, my dad stopped himself. “Your grandfather wouldn’t want you to be sad. He would want you to be happy.”
Why should we not be sad? When dealing with loss, sadness is a healthy response. Gone are the days of having to be strong for others who are too weak not to cry. Great strength comes from the ability to love and to feel and to grieve.
Sadness in and of itself is not a bad thing. I think its about the choice you make during that time. Whether you sit and wallow in your pain and misery or you choose to stand up and do something to make the world better. With so many things, I allow myself to get sucked in. I dig in my heels and decide that soon it won’t be so sad. Soon it won’t hurt so much. Soon. Soon. Always soon. Never now. It’s never, “now it won’t be so sad. Now it is better.” It isn’t that I simply linger there too long; I live in the comfortable numbness. I’ve earned squatter’s rights in the suspension where I’ve set up camp. And I don’t leave to explore alternatives because I’m afraid they’ll be worse than where I am now.
But this is different. Knowing my grandfather, the man he was, I cannot simply sit and get stuck in the pain. To succumb to the sadness would be too wrong. So I am consciously making a different choice. I mourn the loss of my grandpa who, by everyone’s account, was truly a good man. I cried yesterday, today and I’m sure there will be times in the future where I’ll feel the pangs of sadness and I’ll cry again. But because I believe that I am a better person simply by knowing him, I am determined to do something to make the world better. Honestly, I have no idea what I’m going to do. My grandpa’s legacy is filled with small acts of love for individuals. I think I’ll start there.
Today we buried my grandpa, but he’s far from gone. As one of my friends told her little sister at their mother’s funeral, “she’s not in there anymore.” It is only his body in the ground, not his soul or actions or legacy. Those are things we, the people who love him, are determined to preserve.
emidio
My grandpa died today. I got a call from my dad around 11:00 tonight to tell me. Seeing his number on the caller ID alerted me early that something wasn’t right. By 11:00, he’s already been asleep for almost 4 hours. He told me that he was in California, that my uncle was in Italy and that my grandpa had been taken to the hospital tonight where he died. He explained that he’d be back tomorrow afternoon and that he didn’t know when my uncle would be able to come back. And that my grandma didn’t know yet and she was sleeping. He said he’d figure out how to tell her, when he needed to tell her. I imagine she’ll notice he’s not there when she wakes up. Hopefully my siblings back home will be there to tell her before someone else does.
His birthday is tomorrow. I realized this while I was on my way to Katie’s, to check on her and to be around family. My grandpa’s 91st birthday is tomorrow.
My grandpa was a man who served his country. He trained pilots to fight in WWII. He served his community as mayor of his city. He served people, as a respected mechanic. He’s a man I’ve been proud to know my entire life. The past few years have not been kind to him as we’ve watched him slip further into dementia. I remember him spending large portions of each day walking and being active while I was growing up. Seeing him over the last few years has been painful. The light in his eyes vanished, and though he physically died just a few hours ago, he’s been gone already for a long time.
Everything right now is jumbled. Writing about what’s going on is the only way I really understand how to begin to process things. I’m not really sure what happens next. I imagine there will be a funeral, but whether it’s in Orlando or Boonton, I’m not sure. And as I sat in my bathroom, unable to stand because I was crying so hard I heard God say, “see? I knew what I was doing when you only got scheduled for four hours next week.” Why he picked that moment to tell me, I’m not sure. I guess maybe so I would know that in the midst of what feels like stability and familiarity crashing, he’s in control. Selah.
Founded in Love 