a little R & R

You know how sometimes you're just overwhelmed with the incredible lightness of life, and other times you're just overwhelmed with the incredible heaviness of life? Right now is one of those times in which I'm overwhelmed with both. It's weird.

I spent Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in close community and proximity with some incredible people (on a retreat), some of which I know well, and some I didn't know well to begin with—but do now. I realized some pretty interesting things in those three days with very little sleep and large quantities of coffee and breakfast pastries. Here's the top 10.

1. People are entirely beautiful things. I tend to put people in stereotypical boxes, unfortunately. Not racial or socio-economic stereotypes, but more along the lines of, "these are people I would usually associate with, and these are people I would not normally associate with." For example, one of my new friends used to play football for the Kansas City Chiefs. If not put into a room with him for three days straight, would I have befriended him? Sadly, I think the answer is no. Luckily I was put into a room with him for three days and now have a wonderful new friend named Brett with whom I can laugh endlessly while quoting Will Ferrell movies.

2. None of us are exempt from anything. Often we go about life with the false supposition that, "it will never happen to me." Indeed it might. We must be so careful of even the slightest deviation from life as it should be. Even the smallest change in course can put you farther and farther away from the path you have chosen if you continue down it long enough. But the beauty of this is that it happens, and that it's okay. God's strength is made perfect in our weakness, and that is beautiful.

3. I am a terrible manager of my time. I need to be intentional about this and set my priorities and write it all down. I am going to take a study leave. And I'm not going to feel guilty about it. And on study leave I'm going to take an ax to a lot of things in my life that could be better handled by someone else. Just because it needs to be done doesn't mean that I need to do it. Somehow I missed learning that lesson over the years.

4. The people that I love the most are the ones that are the most understanding. This realization has helped me to be more understanding as well. We could all use a little more grace and understanding from those around us. And we'd do well to realize how much grace and understanding God has for each of us.

5. When you poop within earshot and noseshot of each other for three days, all emotional masks come off. For some reason I feel like I could meet someone for coffee for an hour a week for an entire year and never know someone as well as I get to know someone when we're on a retreat together.

6. I met someone who is more addicted to coffee than I am.

7. True honesty is REALLY difficult. But it's really worth it too.

8. I'm pretty darn good at Guitar Hero.

9. I love washing dishes. I knew this before the retreat, but there was no dishwasher at the barn so I realized all over again how much I really love it. It's therapeutic.

10. I am so fortunate to have the job I have, to get paid to learn about God. To get paid to get to know people more intimately. To get paid to force rest and relaxation on myself. To get paid to take three days away from the world to bond with 10 brothers and sisters and create inside jokes that will last for the duration of MAP. To get paid to take the time to intentionally work on my relationship with Jesus. Again, I am SO fortunate.

So yeah, it was a good weekend.

well said

"I like how your iPod plays Jimmy Buffett so much when it's on shuffle. It's like it knows us really well." —Katie 80

at my expense...again

The other night my friends Bill and Marlene had a party for those of us who helped them build their deck. It was a fun party, complete with burgers and dogs and chips and dip and beer and wine and Diet Coke and two kinds of brownies. And lots of laughing. LOTS of laughing.

We were all standing around the table talking, and Marlene and Debbie were standing over near the sink talking quietly. All of a sudden Marlene steps back and says, "Nooooo!!!!" as if she JUST CANNOT BELIEVE what Debbie has just said. We all stop and silently stare at them as if to say, "Um, excuse me. Please share with the whole class."

Marlene informs us that OH MY WORD DEFFENBAUGH HAS RAISED THE PRICE OF TRASH PICK UP IN DEBBIE'S NEIGHBORHOOD. I mean, really. The nerve. But it gets us laughing again and now on the subject of trash and Deffenbaugh, the monopoly on trash pickup in the greater Kansas City area.

We were all saying how we didn't like Deffenbaugh, but Marlene says, "Well, I like them because they take just about anything I put on the curb. Oh, and they took my rabbits."

Everyone seems to understand. I'm flabbergasted. Jason is standing next to me and I look at him completely confused. He looks slightly confused as well, so I feel better. We sort of mumble something to each other indicating that ah—we must've misunderstood. Marlene must be talking about some form of inanimate rabbits, like wooden cutouts or metal sculptures, that she set out by the side of the road. I turn back to Marlene, who is saying something about peacocks and emus—which confuses me even more. What do peacocks and emus have to do with trash pickup? Then she says again that she was very glad that Deffenbaugh took her rabbits, because while they were cute as babies, she couldn't keep them as adults. Okay: inanimate theory now completely out the window. I look back at Jason for help, but he seems to be completely on board with her story now. Finally I say, "Are you talking about live rabbits? Or dead rabbits? You put real animals on the curb and Deffenbaugh took them away? Are you SERIOUS?"

Everyone looks at me in silence for a millisecond and then bursts out laughing. Apparently what I had missed (it was never actually SAID, clearly everyone who has grown up in the suburbs of Kansas City knows this already) is that the Deffenbaugh family—the family that owns the trash company—has a yard full of strange animals. Hence Marlene talking about the peacocks and emus. They took her live rabbits to live with them. Not in a trash truck, but in the backseat of their car.

Jason kindly put his hand on my shoulder as if to say, "It's okay. There's no way you could've known," except for the fact that he was laughing hysterically with the rest of the people in the room and looking at me like, "Oh, dear friend. If it weren't for you, at whom would we laugh?"

"Great," I said. "This is JUST LIKE the time I walked in on the middle of Tales From The Crypt and thought it was a documentary. I almost had a heart attack."

well said

Jeff: Why are you so dressed up today?

Me: I just felt like looking pretty.

Jeff: You look pretty all the time, but why are you dressed up?

Me: Wow, you are so married.

Jeff: Yeah, after seventeen years, we learn the right things to say.

anticipating

Tomorrow weather-dot-com is predicting 104 degrees for Shawnee Mission, KS. Saturday, it's predicting 74 degrees. This happens every year and I just love it. I love that couple of cold days in July or August that are such a shock to the system that you end up frolicking about the streets because you think fall is just around the corner. I realize it's not, but in the moment you just can't convince me otherwise, and it's entirely wonderful.

So...here's to Saturday. It can't get here soon enough. In the meantime, lay very very still inside the air conditioning.

mentally obliterated by a fourteen-year-old

Tonight I was in the bathroom at Houlihan's, doing the normal thing that one does in the bathroom at a restaurant: peeing, washing hands, drying hands, and exiting the bathroom without touching any hardware with my clean hands.

Well, I was in the middle of drying my hands when the teenage girl who had been pooping loudly in the stall next to the one I'd used emerged to wash her hands. I was engrossed in trying to get the paper towels out of the dispenser without pulling out five hundred of them when I hear her say, "This place has really good chicken fingers."

I look around. No one else is in there except the two of us. I look at her, frozen in mid-hand drying, and say, "Really?"

"Yeah. I mean they're really good. Chicken is usually such a boring food, but not here. They do it really well. It's kinda like that fish. What's that fish? It starts with a T."

I'm still standing there holding three paper towels with my hands dripping, trying to figure out why in the world she's telling me this. "Tilapia?" I ask.

"Yeah, tilapia. It's pretty flavorless."

I think she's done talking, so I finish drying my hands and open the door to walk out.

She follows me. "You think tilapia is boring like chicken?"

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to walk back to my table or stand there and be polite. "Um, I guess. I mean, they're kind of alike." I have no idea what to say at this point.

She walks off toward her table, leaving me with this nugget of wisdom, "Yeah, but one's a fish. And one's a bird."

gutsiest move of the day on her part, complete oblivion on mine

Tuesday Melissa and Travis were following Katie and me up to the plaza for that low-key Fourth of July fun. Travis doesn't live in Kansas City so I was taking them the "scenic route" from 75th and Renner to the plaza...and it's a meandering mess of residential streets with pretty houses and fountains along the way. It was gorgeous outside and we were driving the 35 mph speed limit with the windows down and the music blaring.

Having just gone through my forty-seventh four-way-stop, I pulled up to the first traffic light we'd stopped at in awhile. After we turned left, Katie looked in the side mirror and started laughing. She said, "Melissa just turned left on red." I looked at her surprised, then looked in my rear view mirror to see the light still green. I asked completely innocently, "Did I?"

She looked at me like I hadn't been in the car ten seconds earlier and said, "Yeah."

Really. Honestly. I had no idea. I guess I thought it was a four-way-stop somewhere in my subconscious.

The funny thing was, when I asked Katie, "Why didn't you say something to stop me?" She said, "I wasn't really paying attention." And when I told Melissa I was sorry I made her run a red light, she said, "Oh, I thought you just looked and no one was coming, so you just went." Travis said, "Yeah, and the scary thing is she did it so easily."

Seriously guys. Thanks for all the accountability on driving.

a "celebration" in big, loud, redwhiteandblue quotation marks

As Katie and I planned our July Fourth holiday, we decided that we would visit a small town near KC called Weston, because according to their website, they were having a July Fourth "Celebration." We got very excited, invited other people (fortunately none came), and excitedly drove the forty-five minutes north to Weston.

Let me paint the picture of what we were expecting. For the last two years, I've been to Weston's Apple Festival in the fall, and it's a great time. Hay bales everywhere, vendors selling sausages and funnel cakes and ciders, all the shops open, roads blocked off, a bluegrass band playing, and people everywhere. This, my friends, is what we were expecting, only instead of celebrating apples, celebrating America's independence. Valid logical expectation.

Instead, we pulled into Weston and were surprised that they weren't redirecting parking to the fire station parking lot and running shuttle busses like they do in October. But, whatever, and we drove on into town. Um, everything was closed and there were no streets blocked off and no people out and about. There was no bluegrass band, no hay, and no funnel cakes. We were very confused.

Finally, on our second loop through town, we ran across two women standing having a conversation, and we asked them where the "celebration" was. They told us it was at the high school and how to get there. We thanked them and drove to the high school, thinking, "Everyone must be at the high school." Well, we got to the high school and we found about ten cars, the football stadium set up for fireworks, and some people in lawn chairs hanging out by the portajohns. There were large speakers set about the area blasting patriotic marching band music.

Yikes. So we drove home.

But not all was lost. We hooked up with Melissa and Travis for an unplanned, unexpected, and incredibly fun evening of food, drink, fresh air, cheesecake, and fabulously hilarious conversation. Personally, I think it turned out just perfectly. And the drive to Weston in the middle of the afternoon was just an added bonus.

The Fourth of July has proven once again to be, without fail, the most wonderful holiday of the year. Below, proof that we actually DID go to Weston, and our perfect, low-key celebration afterwards.

a techno-nerd, not a hit-man

Jenae was viewing a video that Julia had just taken of her (and Katie and me) on her camera. We were all messing with our cell phones and it was absolutely hilarious because everyone thought she was just taking pictures instead of taking video, so we all look like complete morons...posing for video...thinking that it wasn't recording what we were saying. She said, "I have a feeling I'm going to come across this on the internet somewhere."

Julia: "No. You're lucky I'm not that technically savvy."

Jenae: "I know how to get it off of here, but I'm not going to tell you how."

Julia: "Oh, that's fine. I know people."

Jenae looked up from the camera at her, surprised.

Julia: "Oh, I mean I know people that can get the video off the camera. Not someone that would come whack you."