Time

Time is linear. Sometimes I think about: what if time wasn't linear? Or what if it isn't always linear? What if when this world is over, we know what it's like to exist outside of time? I can't really understand what that would be like, so it makes my head hurt. Also, you probably know that I'm a little nerdy and I think about stuff like this a lot. I watched all the seasons of the new Battlestar Galactica, for example. And, then I found out I knew a bunch of people who also watched it. Which means either it's cooler than I thought or I have a lot of nerdy friends?

Ok, so here's what this post is about- thoughts on time and aging (and the closest I'll probably ever be to understanding the fluidity of time). Here's some random thoughts:

• I can say this because I'm only 31, but I think it's really a lovely thing that we come into this world dependent, and (if we're lucky enough to live a long life) we move closer and closer toward dependency again as we near death. From a faith perspective, I feel like so much of what faith is, is trusting and depending on God. It's our life's work to try to let go of our wills and control, and trust. So, I like that in the beginning and the end, we are sort of forced into dependency- that life begins still reminscent of purer dependency on our maker, and as we get closer to this life being over, we extra need to remember how to depend again.
• One of my very best friends died when I was in high school. He was 19 and I was 15. He was always a wise, big brother-mentor to me. But, now I'm a lot older than he was when he died. I passed him up 12 years ago now, but he has continued to age in my mind. He's still older than me. I don't know if that will always be true, but maybe? It's definitely be true for longer than I ever imagined.
• When I was in like 5th grade, 6th graders were OLD. And so so so cool. I would go from obnoxious and ridiculous and outgoing with my peers and turn silent and shy as soon as the cool, older kids showed up. And at some point, this changes. And then it changes a lot. Being in the church world, I regularly spend a lot of time with people older than me. Some of my most favorite people in my life have been a good 40, even 50 years older than me. And I think they're fun and I like spending time with them. 
• Kind of as an add on, different milestones in life also make people seem older. Like parenthood. Other moms who are several years younger than me, but have kids who are older than mine, somehow shift to older than me. They have wisdom that I don't have yet and I look up to them. 
• Looking at pictures and telling stories is like going back in time. I love watching home movies, looking at old pictures, and starting a million stories with, "hey, remember that one time when we..." It brings me back, and sometimes the memories are so vivid, I can feel exactly what I felt when I was there the first time.

Anyone else have any deep thoughts? Did anyone else watch Battlestar Galactica? 

(Some of the) reasons why I love my church.

I love my church. Here's a few reasons why:

1. Today, most of the congregation stayed after the service to put together Easter baskets for the food pantry. They do things like this pretty regularly, and almost everyone stays and helps.
2. They like trying things. They're often coming up with new ways for us to spend time together as a church. Here's a fun example: one time I said at a council meeting, "there are some churches that do something called 'beer and hymns' and they sing hymns in a bar, it's kind of fun." Their responses were: "That sounds fun, should we do that in October?" "Ya, what date works?" "I think I know of a bar we could go to" "If we go to this bar, we can get a free quarter barrel." "I can decorate some mugs and we can give them out." "I'll make some centerpieces." I just showed up, everyone planned everything else about it.
3. That last example is also an example of how so many people participate in things. It's a small church, so people know their presence matters, as well as their time/gifts/service/etc. Today we had someone who was sick and not able to come to be the reader or the person who does the powerpoint, and people just offered to fill their spots and everything went just fine.
4. They are warm. They really love their church and each other, and it shows. I met with one of our committees last week, and they genuinely want to reach out to the community and invite people to join us, because they want other people to get to have this kind of belonging.
5. They're faithful. The ways they approach their faith really vary, and it's kind of beautiful to see the different approaches and focuses.
6. They're direct. If they're frustrated, they say it. If they're glad, they say it. If they want me to know something, they say it. Especially after being confused by all the passive (aggressive) stuff for 8 years in Minnesota, I'm really glad to have people just say what they mean. That may be more of a product of Southern Wisconsin, than specifically Bethel, but still, I like it about them.
7. They like singing. 
8. They like praying.
9. They're just fun and funny and like hanging out after the service eating snacks.
10. They love our baby. Last Wednesday, Jesse was out of town, so I had one of our high school students watch Aaron during the Lent service. He was overtired and wanted to go to bed, and was in melt-down city. He heard me leading the service and started soooobbbbing and sobbing and sobbing. He was in the hallway right next to the sanctuary so everyone could hear him. Finally a lady told her to just bring him into the sanctuary with me, and I held him for a lot of the service, and/or he sat on the floor by me taking tissues out of the box and throwing them on the floor and stealing pencils from children and all of the pews. And still people wanted him to be by me and told me to bring him in anytime. Later this week someone pulled me aside and said, "Thank you for sharing Aaron with us. We really love him and we're really glad he's growing up with us." I can't really say how grateful I am that they love him.
11. They don't expect perfection. In fact, they expect we'll all mess up here and there, and they're happy about that.  
12. The last two council presidents have really wanted to be council president (I've only been there for these two), and are thoughtful and good leaders.
13. They're really good at announcement time and sneaking in thank yous and happy birthdays to people.
14. Lots of people serve in really humble and secret ways, probably lots of ways that I don't even know about or realize.
15. They "pass the peace" to everyone. They're the best at the peace.

There's more, but that's all for now.

My (Lottery) Dream Home

I watch a lot of HGTV. Mostly it's just a good channel to have on in the background and I like looking at houses and pretending I'm traveling by watching all the international episodes... and I want to be best friends with Joanna Gaines. So, I think a lot about what my dream house would be like if I could ever have my dream house. I am doubtful we'll ever be wealthy enough for all the pretty things I could ever want, but you know, if I like won the lottery or something (have you seen "My Lottery Dream Home"??? It's my fav. and it makes me hopeful), this is what it would be like:

• Ranch, 2-story traditional, or a craftsman. 
• Painted light gray/blue with white trim
• Depending on the house it could have brick on the outside, but only the bottom half for some contrast.
• Big yard with mature trees
• A pool and a hot tub, separately fenced from the rest of the yard so I wouldn't panic about Aaron and other possible future children falling in when I'm not looking
• Outdoor cooking area, like Stephanie's parents' house
• Big kitchen that opens up to the living room, light wood cabinets, big island, double oven, a wine fridge that I can put all of my $3.99 bottles of wine, and since it's my unattainable dream home, TWO dishwashers. But actually not two dishwashers, I'd feel too guilty about that.
• Giant windows in the living room and/or french doors and/or a bay window
• Laundry room, large enough that there could be a hanging up clothes section
• Attached (& heated if in a cold place) garage
• Mother-in-law suite above the garage
• White picket fence
• Master bedroom that's big enough to put all our furniture and a little reading nook (and/or a large enough space for Jesse and I to hide out in our room when our kids have loud friends sleeping over), with an on suite bathroom, a walk in closet, and maybe a nice big window or balcony or something.
• 5 bedrooms? That seems like a lot, but also me and Jesse would want one, one for Aaron, one for another possible future child one day, an office, and a guest room. Revision, 4 bedrooms, and the office has one of those secret folding beds. Revision again, back to 5 bedrooms, but the extra one is a craft room. Orrrrrr, back to 4 and I can permanentely have a section of the basement for crafts. I don't really do a lot of crafts, but I really feel like if I have a designated space for them, I really might!
• Bedrooms on another side of the house from the living room and kitchen.
• Finished basement that no one is ever allowed to call a man cave, ever, ever, ever.
• If in a cold place, a mud room
• I would love to live by some water- lake, ocean, river, I'm really not picky. 
• Also, the most humble version of all of these fancy things so that I can sleep at night.
• And I'd like to keep my fun neighborly neighbors.

2w3

If you've talked to me in the last 6 months, you probably know that I'm kind of obsessed with the Enneagram. Here's what The Road Back to You says the Enneagram is: "an ancient body of wisdom that identifies nine core personality types and how each sees and interacts with the world." (their website, because I didn't read the book). That was a better definition than I could have come up with. If you want to know more than that sentence, click here, or just google search "enneagram" and you'll find one million things you can click on.

I typed myself as a "2" with a "3" wing. 2s are usually called the "helper" and 3s are usually called the "achiever" or "entertainer." I'll sum up what it looks like for me with a few bullet points:

-I like people
-I like helping people
-It's my responsibility to help people
-Classic people-pleaser
-I want you to think I'm a considerate, giving, and good person. I want to be those things too, but I want you to think them even more.
-Sometimes, I like to be needed. Mostly. Until it gets overwhelming. Also, I know that I'm not supposed to like being needed, so I work on that.
-I want to be your friend.
-Sometimes I'm hurt/annoyed when people aren't as considerate as I want them to be.
-I HATE being left out.

Those are the 2 things. The 3 things for me are:
-I want to be good at things
-Being asked if I'd like to move up, do more, or getting offered this special position/leadership role/voluneer thing is suuuuper tempting to me. Even if I don't want to do it.
-I want to make you laugh, always.
-Sometimes I get swept up in acting like who I think you want me to be.
-I like to be a leader
-I loved bragging about my good grades when I was a kid.

There are more things, but I'm pretty sure if I write them, it will feel like oversharing (if it didn't already). The thing about the Enneagram is that if you get into it, it requires you to be pretty brutally honest with yourself. You get to be honest about the gifts and strengths of your number, but also the unique stuff/baggage of your number that you carefully try to manage.

So, here's what you should do. Figure out your number. Get a little obsessed too. Then we can talk about it for hours and we'll get each other and stuff.

Snapchat's going to stop being cool in April 2016.

In April of 2015, I was talking to some of my kids at church about Snapchat. I told them all how stupid it was and how I didn't want to get it, because it was probably going to go away soon. I told them to put it in their calendar, that by April 2016 no one would even use it. They did. And one year later they laughed at me because I was def. wrong. I think I even had downloaded it a month before or after that. I wish I were right, but I wasn't. Oh well, I'll keep it, because FOMO.

Wait, before I do that, let me check Facebook 600 times.

Well, that's what I do. If there's something I have to do, Facebook gets way more interesting. Sometimes I don't even realize I'm looking at it. I literally grabbed the computer JUST so I could write this post, and all of a sudden it's been 20 minutes and I just started this.

I used to have the Facebook app on my phone. It was convenient. I could be pretty much anywhere and I could click that little blue F and instantly I'd see random posts I could mindlessly scroll through. Pictures of cute babies and puppies, obnoxious political memes that subsequently inspire me to unfollow people, thoughtful articles about current events I don't understand but want to, quizzes about what Disney princess I might be and what I'm going to look like when I'm 80, inner thoughts of people I sort of knew in high school-- there is really just so much to see.

But it's a time suck. And addictive. I'd pull my phone out all the time and without even thinking about it, I'd be on Facebook for 5 minutes and I wouldn't even remember clicking on it.

And, it makes me kind of anxious sometimes. When I couldn't sleep in the middle of the night, I'd grab my phone and look at Facebook, hoping it would distract me from the zillion random unimportant thoughts I have if I wake up at 3am, but instead, I'd click on some article or read some post about politics and social issues and have one of the following reactions:
1. HOW DOES THAT PERSON THINK THAT? THEY ARE SMARTER AND KINDER THAN THAT.
2. I should probably mull over my imaginary response to that person and ask them WHY DO THEY THINK THAT TERRIBLY SIMPLISTIC AND UNTHOUGHTFUL AND HARMFUL THING and help them see something different.
3. Wait, if people knew what I thought about this current event/social issue, is there someone thinking HOW DOES SHE THINK SOMETHING LIKE THAT?
4. What do I know about this issue at all? What 18 ways are there to approach this conversation?
5. The world is FALLING APART and I don't have any basic skills to survive if all of our current infrastructure disintegrates. I don't know how to hunt. I can't keep plants alive. When should I start learning these things? 
6. Some kind of shame cycle about how I didn't speak up about the issue at hand, usually prompted at a friend posting a quote from MLK's Letter from Birmingham Jail.

Arguably, some of those reactions might be helpful to think about in the daytime, like, learning how to garden, and others too. But, really unhelpful at 3am. And weirdly, I still couldn't sleep after that.

So, like a month and a half ago, I deleted the FB app, and my life is so much better. I check FB 0-2 times a day (unless I'm trying to get work done and I have my computer out...then it's about 600 still). I probably sleep better too. Let me recommend deleting the FB app.

When best friends know exactly what you're thinking.

Sometimes all you have to do is wink or smile and your bestie knows exactly what you're thinking or what you're trying to say.

When I was in 9th grade my BFF Rachel and I decided that we could indeed read each others' minds. We were on a trip to Montana with church, and I remember we sat down by the tents and we stared into each other's eyes (not in a romantic kind of way, but in a very intense, mind-reading kind of way) until we could figure it out.

We guessed most of the things. Although, most of the things were just our inside jokes that we had just been talking about. And the ones that weren't, were mostly things that were near us that we could subtly look at after staring into the eyes, like, "were you just thinking about a tree?" or "you're thinking about our tent, aren't you?"

It's hard to know if we really had best friend mind reading or not. That same trip we were rafting on the river, and during a lull in the middle of the day, our camp counselor suggested we play, "trust fall." You were supposed to link the ends of your paddles, and then both lean back at the same time. I leaned back, and then she pushed me in the frigid water. I didn't see that coming.

Medium Large

When it comes to politics and social issues, I usually describe myself as a liberal. Or a moderate. Or a moderate liberal? Or perhaps a liberal moderate? I'm not really sure. Like if 1 was very conservative and 10 was very liberal, then maybe I'd be a 7.2, or some range of 4-9 on various issues.

You know how sometimes you can buy clothes that are two sizes at the same time? Like shoes that are a 5/6 or shirts that are S/M (which now I'm wondering if they really are "SM" and that's probably just an abbreviation for "small"?... well, just go with it). I'm probably like that. So, with politics, I guess I'm a M/L?

So far, in every election I've been old enough to vote in, I've voted Democrat. Well, that's not totally true. I didn't vote in the first election I was old enough to vote in (2004). I decided to research the issues and candidates the day of the election and got overwhelmed and just didn't do it. I regret it now, but also I was a new freshmen in college and turned 18 not even a month before. (Yes, I started college when I was 17. Side note, when I turned 18, my roommates took me to Borderline, because you had to be at least 18 to get in. Some kids called it "the club" and that's funny because it's definitely a country bar and grill with occassional hip hop on the weekends. Anyways.). For several years I was registered as "declined to state." I'm pretty sure now I'm registered as a Democrat, but I'm definitely not going to be more faithful to a party than my values, logic, kindness, decency, etc. I'll vote for who and what I think is best.    

Maybe it's more like this: I tend to lean left, but I also try live in the middle. I think our country probably needs more middle. Or at the very least, that we'd occassionally meet each other in the middle, so we could have clarity, understanding, perhaps even agreement on things. The whole picking sides and imagining the other side as _________ (fill in the blank with whatever unhelpful word you feel like you want to call the side you don't think you're on), really isn't helpful. Also, and we could use more listening and learning, instead of yelling and spouting.  

  

  

Feel stuff, it's a lot better than not feeling stuff.

I have a weird passion: I really want people to acknowledge the things that make them sad. I don't mean that they should just unload all of their feelings on random strangers (we've all met people like that and it is UNCOMFORTABLE), I mean just being honest with yourself when things are tough.

I'm a positive person. According to Strengths Finders, my number two strength is positivity. I usually see the brightside of most situations and like to say things like, "well, the good new is... (+ hopefully something that gets a small chuckle or eye roll)," or "at least (+ some horrible thing that didn't happen or something to be grateful for)". Sometimes being positive is really helpful. Sometimes it's really helpful to me. And sometimes it really ignores struggle that will be best healed by being honest about it.

I know how tempting it is to want to just move on from pain and move on to cheer, gratitude, happiness, positivity. I know the pressure to not feel sad. I know all that in me, and so I find that I notice when other people are doing it too. Sometimes I have to consciously resist the temptation to be positive, because I can tell that someone needs the complex feelings to be noticed and not brightside-ed away, whether or not they want it to be.

It's not that there's no room for positivity, it's just that acknowledging something is sad alongside it is important to me.

5 Hour Energy

I started writing this post last night but then I kept falling asleep, so I just finished it up!

I haven't written a post in a few days because it's been a busy week, and also because I'm an insomniac right now. I probably could have used that no sleeping time wisely, like not mull over all the things or play the design home game I have on my phone, but I did those things instead.  

So, here's a short post on 5 Hour Energy:

Overall, here's what I can tell you about it: it's really gross.  I tried it like 7 years ago and it made me feel kind of queasy and still really tired. The commercials for 5 Hour Energy make it seem like it's just a tiny coffee in a bottle. Respectable people in suits having a little pick me up in the afternoon. Moms and Dads holding a 5 Hour Energy bottle in their hands like it's a lemonade. We all know that the people who actually drink 5 Hour Energy are probably young college students with headaches on Tuesday mornings. College students' caffeine consumption threshold is much higher than that of a regular person. I remember one of my college BFFs would come to class every Tuesday and Thursday with a Diet Coke, a Rockstar, Sun Chips, while also needing to take Sudafed for all the allergies. And she was pretty much fine. In conclusion, had 5 Hour Energy existed when I was in college, I probably would have known a lot of people who drank it regularly. But, it didn't, and so, I didn't and I don't.