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Where’s Terri?

August 11, 2015 / Michele Minehart

Terri saved me more than once already. We’ve been in our new/old town for just over a month, but the number of times I’ve left her office full of gratitude is greater than the number of times I’ve went to Walmart. (I think both Terri and I can all consider this an all-around success.)

The most recent occasion for my visit to Terri’s corner office was my upcoming mortgage payment. These new houses – well, they need paid for. Which required me knowing the amount of my monthly payment, along with finding a way to get money into and out of the checking account that would pay it. And if we could make all this happen in a way that repeated itself without so much effort, double word score. So I slumped into Terri’s office to admit I had indeed lost the passwords to make my online banking come alive AND I couldn’t find the payment books the bank had just sent. (Banking is hard. And so is moving.)

And then, she fixed it. Zim, zam, zoom, everything worked. I signed my name. She picked up the phone. Magically, all things banking-related worked again. How do real people do this? I wondered aloud.

How do real adults keep passwords and mortgages and school registrations and apply to see new doctors and salvage hearing aids left in the rain and read aloud to their children and potty train? And some of them – they even WORK. ALL YEAR ‘ROUND. How do they do this and not loose their ever-loving minds?

It turns out that not just banking is hard. Or moving. Adulting, my friends, is terrible. Terrible! I’m not sure why this is a thing. Who decided we all needed to “become responsible” and “take care of ourselves” and “become productive members of society”? I’d like to talk to that person. I’d like to hire them to keep my calendar straight. And also, potty train the baby. This is going terribly as well.

Sometimes I look around and try to find the Terri’s of the rest of my life. Who around here is going to make this easier for me? People like Terri have spoiled me. Now I’m put off by people who aren’t trying to make my life easier. Like the woman at our former doctor’s office who wouldn’t let me email a form to the office but instead insisted I mail the hard copy with a stamp. (Add “buying stamps” to the list of hard things adults do. This task derails me every time.) And don’t tell me the office “doesn’t use email.” They do all their doctoring on ipads and laptops.

And where is The Terri at the school? If I suddenly go missing – after checking the laundry room – it would be best to look under the pile of 37 pink and green forms that the school requires. Per child. I could be buried alive. One person was so kind to point out that this is going to be my August activity for the next 14 years of my life. Times four. Can we please get a Terri in this office who will make things work electronically, so that all 62 people who need my cell phone number “in case of emergency” can simply pull it off the database?

I need a Terri everywhere. Someone who makes the day work just an eensy bit better. People who love their job, no matter what it is, enough – or so much – that it makes life better for others: these are my people. Like last week: I drove through Starbucks. The barista cheered for me when I made my selection. This. This needs to happen more. Cheers and helpfulness. Not forms and stamps.

Go, my friends. Be a Terri. Make some magic happen for someone. Make life a little better. Cheer, help and encourage.

(And just so you know that I practice what I preach, I just woke up my husband so HE could go be an adult. I didn’t even wake him with loud noises or a smack on the leg. We can do this, friends! We can be helpful to one another! And kind! It’s not as hard as we might think!)

Spread the jam

August 5, 2015 / Michele Minehart

Yesterday was pancake morning in our home. We offer a variety of ways to top your ‘cake around here – with or without almond butter, with or without blueberries, and with either jam or syrup. (We have dunking cups for the syrup – no dousers allowed.) With such a smorgasboard, kids have to do a little of the pancake-topping work.

I noticed one particular pancake with a large glob of jam and its owner getting ready to scoop more. I warned her to stop and she protested, “but there’s none on the edges!” I explained, we don’t need more. We just have to put it in the right places.

That’ll preach.

Moving, buying a house, leaving the work in which I had been engaged, allowing our primary salary to land on a scale considerably less than our former potential… all of this adds up to a bit of money stress. Of course, we willingly took it on, we weren’t blinded. And we’re no different than any other family. No matter the income level, my friends are typically trying to stretch their dollars.

Then one day, I stumbled into a little passage in Deuteronomy 29. “I have led you forty years in the wilderness; your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandal has not worn out on your foot.”

In the Christian circles, “God will provide” is common language. And he does. I love the stories of the groceries arriving on the doorstep on the exact day or the check appearing in the exact amount. These things happen. The ways in which God is faithful to provide can often be found when we’re stretched to the point of need, rather than want.

This passage, however, tells us of another way that “God provides.” He simply takes away the need. God, being the Creator of the Universe, could have created Shoe Valley, in which the Israelites stumbled into a land of Nikes. (But probably not, because they’re not fair trade, and we know God is not into child labor.) This take on provision would’ve made a killer climax in the Exodus story. People would remember a land full of shoes.

But he didn’t. He simply made last what the people already had. They didn’t get new shoes because he made it possible to not need new shoes.

I have to wonder, especially in our current context, if the long-lasting shoe version of provision might be more applicable than the miraculous appearance provision we often anticipate. God could, indeed, drop a check in my lap. Or an opportunity to make more money. Or a really great sale on back-to-school supplies.

Or I could find that he has allowed our dollars to [miraculously] stretch. We could see God as the source of a smaller income that still pays all the same bills. We might discover the blessing of needing less.

There are times when the jam doesn’t reach the edge of the pancake. Right now, I’m making sure the jam might not need spread out a bit.

Balloon Heart

July 26, 2015 / Michele Minehart

The past two nights I’ve retired to bed with my heart singing with joy. We enjoyed days at the lake with our friends who used to live down the street from us. We played on the boat and went to the beach and enjoyed delicious meals and swam and played cards and drank beer and laughed and told stories. Our biggest worry was if the toddler was too close to the water or if one of the girls had taken the other’s preferred life jacket. Life was easy and good.

Perhaps it’s age, or perhaps it’s my yoga practice, but I remained fully present to this joy the entire time we were together. I noticed in my mind I would say, “this is an amazing weekend” and “I think this will go down on my list of top favorite lake trips.” I was aware of the joy expanding my heart.

And then the dreaded time comes, as it does any time we go to the lake, that we all must go home. I could barely stand the goodbyes. I watched them hug my children and we made promises to see one another soon (and confirmed the date). But as they pulled away it felt like someone had taken my heart and stomped on it, leaving it completely deflated. The sadness I feel is even much greater than when we pulled away in the moving truck.

This probably has a lot to do with our friends being completely fantastic, for sure. And it also is likely related to missing the comforts of our old life amid the transition into a new community. And, it’s Sunday and I get weepy on Sunday.

I’m inclined to believe, however, that it has much more to do with the elasticity of the human heart. Only when it expands does it know how it feels to be empty. And, as it does when pumping blood throughout the body, as it does this more often and with more power, it actually grows stronger. Perhaps we get better at loving people by loving people. The more we do it, the better we get.

The downside to an ever-expanding heart is the process of deflation – the missing people, the sadness, the ache. By not filling your heart, you never realize the weight of its emptiness. Like a real balloon, our hearts become lighter as they expand.

In many ways it would be easier to deal with the rest of this day – the tired toddlers, the cleaning, the return home – if that dull ache of loving people could subside. I can be so much more operational when I’m not feeling all of the feels. But today I have a bit of gratitude for my current deflated state. I’m taking it as a sign that I’m loving well. I’m going to choose not to numb the sad because I want to be able to experience the sense of joy that precedes it.

May we love well. May we feel the sad as and indicator of the joy that led the way.

Michele Minehart

Page 40 of 312

Where’s Terri?

Spread the jam

Balloon Heart

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