Category: Uncategorized (Page 9 of 188)

I needed tequila. It’s an ingredient in the sangria I’m serving tonight (hashtag, book club problems) and it’s a tad more than what I could borrow from a friend, though I tried. It became clear I would have to make a trip to the liquor store, which I hate. For some reason, such places heap shame on me, as if only dirty men wearing flannel would go there.

I carefully chose my outfit. I opted out of the yoga pants I really wanted for my more mature, functional adult looking jeans and t-shirt. Only the most decent for such an occasion. I briefly considered putting on office-y clothes, as if I were running an errand on my lunch break instead of buying alcohol mid-morning so I could immediately put it in the sangria, so the flavors could dance as long as possible.

The multi-tasker in me decided that I needed to rearrange the large pile of clothes to purge from the house and my ingenuity said, “hey! Just take them to the consignment shop uptown!” And so, I decided this must be completed ASAP. Because the store is right down the street from the liquor store, it just made sense. Both stores opened at 10am and it was well past 11.  Perfect. Stars aligned.

I carefully decided that I would get the tequila first. I told myself it was because I could park on the correct side of the street for both stores, which is a big deal because it was raining. Really, I think I just wanted to make sure that I wasn’t that mom who sold her children’s clothing and took the cash to buy booze.

We made the first stop. I had the toddler with me and he held it together pretty well for a room full of glass. He even scored a piece of candy from the friendly Alcohol Man. Then we headed to the consignment shop. Lo and behold, a handwritten sign on the door: Closed. Will open at 12:00 on Thursday. (Friendly reminder: this would be a great message to include on your up-to-date Facebook page. Just sayin’.) Noticing I didn’t have the preschooler with me, I confirmed: it’s Thursday. We had twenty minutes to kill.

So in midst of our wait, belly full of sugar, the toddler decided he needed a nap. This is not advantageous for afternoons. I would NOT have the dreaded 20 Minute Nap ruin my day. So I tried tickling. Teasing. Playing. Finally, I resorted to outright bribery. We walked across the street for a yummy treat.

We indulged in a few donut holes and things went south from there. He wanted more, or a cookie. And then he knocked his hand on the table and started screaming. The older women meeting at a nearby table switched their, “oh, how adorable” looks to the “get him out of here, I cannot hear a thing” looks. So we bailed. It was 12:02. And the consignment store still had its lights off.

I gave up and loaded him in the van. I tried to drown out his crying with a favorite song, to which he began screaming, “I hate this song!” Turn the radio!” By the time I reached our driveway he was full-on meltdown. Tired, sugared yet hungry, and – come to find out – with a splinter under his fingernail (ouch!). “Carry me in!” he wailed.

This, my friends, is why liquor stores should not be open during the day.

The end.

Laura’s Sangria Recipe

AKA: The reason you should keep tequila on hand

(*I had to quadruple this to use the full bottle of wine. Because, book club.)

• 8 oz. red wine
• 4 oz. orange juice
• 4 oz. pineapple juice
• 4 oz. tequila
• 2 oz. fresh lime juice

Chop apples, pineapples, oranges, and lemons and let them mingle in the mix. Chill and serve with a “splash of sprite and sugar.”

Dear World,

Please, be kind. She worked so very hard – and found such delight in creating this little masterpiece of valentine’s day collection. She thoughtfully considered the colors for the flower. She placed each sticker just so. She wanted to make something beautiful, and she gave a beautiful effort.

But, she’s five. And her five-year-old self cannot compare with the mommies and the daddies and the subdivision of Pixar that fabricate the official versions of the most recent character of choice. Hers won’t look like those.

And, I fear, she will begin to equate her process with those products. 

Please, world. Don’t let her confuse the two.

One exists for the purpose of making the world more beautiful; it engages the soul with the eyes and the hands and the heart. The process of creation is enough. 

Products are nice. They can win awards, make millions of dollars and even lighten the spirits of those who own them. But after you buy enough products, you will someday find that you can never have enough of them to fill the space that the process of creation can regularly sustain.

And so, I’m sending her off to school with her work of art. Her daddy helped to tape on the paper, and we offered the supplies, but the box she’s going to set on her desk is an original, from only her own hands. I’m both glad and miserable that I won’t be there when she begins to look around the room at the other creations.  I know she might be disappointed that hers doesn’t look like anyone else’s.

What I’m asking, world, is that you remind her: it’s not supposed to. The work that we offer out into the world is as original as our own fingerprints. That’s the point. To give our own perspective, in a new form.

So, please, world. Celebrate. Celebrate her efforts.  Celebrate her five-year-old success. Celebrate your own creations, not because they look like something you once saw but because it’s an expression of yourself, it is your work. Show her the way to a creative life is to keep creating, not comparing.

Thank you, world. We can do this. Together.

Love,

Mom

One day, after skinny jeans made it clear they were here to stay, I went to one of those trendy stores at the mall to invest in a “nice” pair. I tried on several, and after each pair, the sales girl told me, “nope, one size smaller.” (I know! Not where you thought I was going to go with that one, huh?) She kept squeezing me and squeezing me, trying to convince me that these pants would “stretch out” and become comfortable with time.

What she didn’t consider, however, was my need to move around while wearing the pants as they “stretched out.” I needed to be able to actually put them on in the first place, and based on my first experience with the zipper, it simply wasn’t going to happen. Even if she convinced me to buy them and take them home and perhaps remove the tags, the chances of me getting out of the house with them on my person were slim to nil. She didn’t understand that, for a person who had lived in yoga pants for 3 years, the idea of discomfort in the name of fashion was laughable. She could tell me all the wonderful things about these pants, but the fact remained: the pants didn’t fit.

My believing friends, I think when we talk to younger generations about God, we’re trying to sell them an ill-fitting pair of pants.

The more I interact with people who live with belief systems unlike my own – or, very similar to my own but with distinctly different vocabulary and starting points – I realize how we’re missing the point. We have begun to equate our view of the world with another person’s belief in God. 

For instance, dualism, or the three-level existence of the world. (I know, Rob Bell is scary to many people. He’s honest and poetic, issuing warnings around What Ought Not Be and thus banished by the higher-ups who control mainstream Christiandom.  In my understanding, this is the definition of a prophet.) (Boom! Half my audience… gone. Now we can talk without tiptoeing.)

Most Christians ascribe to this three-tiered worldview because it’s the worldview in which our scriptures were written. This is fine. Go ahead. (Honestly. I’m not being judgey here.) I often operate from here, at least as a starting point. Let’s call this seeing the world red. We look out, and everything has a red tint to it. It’s simply the color of our world.

Yet, this is not the way many younger generations see and experience the world. They live in a different reality. They see blue. Often, then, the starting point at discussing such things like God, Jesus, the Bible or religion comes down to a red person trying to convince a blue person that the world is actually red.  “The world is red!” we say. “And in this redness, you find Jesus here, God there, and it all fits together like this!”

And our confused and slightly worried audience says, “buuuuuut… the world is blue. I don’t see any red. Those are blue trees and blue clouds. Blue.”

Option 1, the most common response, is usually: “Well, actually those are red. But you’ll come to understand it and see it that  way once you believe it.”

I’d like to propose Option 2: “Tell me about God in your blue world.”

Because we talk about the Bigness of God, the Everywhereness of God, the Transcendence of God (if you like those big, theological words). We believe in these things, yes? That God is so very in control, mightier-than and Above All else?

So why are we scared of what God is like in a blue world? Can God not live there? Why do we believe God only exists, as we know Him, in a red world? When did we begin to confuse the way in which we experience the world and what we know to be true about God? Those two things have a symbiotic relationship, for sure. But they are not equals.  I believe the God can exist beyond my own understanding.

Truth be known, the blue generation will someday come up against another trend, the youngsters living in an understanding of yellow. We cannot fathom it, because our understanding is so limited to the here and now. But the world is too big and spectacular for me to believe that we have arrived, that All the Things are known, check please. I have higher hopes for my children and their children and the generations beyond the here and now. And I have faith that God will keep showing up, no matter how the world sees itself.

Next on my reading shelf is Diana Butler Bass’ Grounded: Finding God in the World – A Spiritual Revolution. If you’d like to read along with me, I would LOVE to hear your thoughts. We’ll set up a little FB group for discussion! Let me know you’re interested.