shelley pimentel

my pants don't fit

2010-12-23T07:12:00.000-08:00

I'm not fitting well into my clothes these days. Well let's be honest. It's mostly my pants. They're tighter in the bum than usual, they fit far too snugly around my thighs and some, including my most-loved, well-worn and go-to jeans, can hardly even zip. It has nothing to do with the late night nachos I've been nursing, I know. Or the homemade chex mix I've been chomping or the helpings of kuchen I've been having - faithfully - for the past several weeks (if you don't know what kuchen is, I'm really very sorry for you). No, as far as I'm concerned, my pants problem is entirely blamed on being 14 weeks pregnant because hey, I've got an actual person growing in here! But whatever the cause, I'm bugged. I'm really pretty annoyed. There's little like feeling your clothes don't fit and I find I'm wearing that feeling much more than I'd like.

It's a sense, it's a haunting, or maybe it's more like an aroma, that, like garlic after a really great italian dinner out, somehow bleeds into your pores, moves around with you and no matter how many times you brush your teeth, no matter how many sticks of Trident you chew, is simply now an unwelcomed and undetachable element of you. This aroma, this haunting, this sense that "My pants don't fit!" bleeds into how I'm feeling in any given moment. Because it's making me self-conscious. Way more self-conscious than, most of the time, I already am.

When I run into someone I know my first thought isn't how happy (or even unhappy) I am to see them. It's not "Wow, I get to ask them how they're doing!" or even "Great! We get to get caught up!" It's "Oh no. I really hope they don't notice my pants." Or how puffy my face has gotten. Or fill-in-the-blank with something to do with how I look.

It's insecurity, plain and simple. And it's shallow. It's not new to me, this insecurity. This obsession, really, with how I look. It certainly doesn't just accompany having a baby. But I like what came of a conversation my friend Megan and I were having the other day.

We were talking about this stuff, this preoccupation with appearance we far too often carry. And I can't remember how it came up but we hit on a truth that, when stopped on for even just a moment, kind of cancels out the appearance addiction we tend to get caught up in.

God cares about the heart.

He looks at, and cares about, our hearts.

Not what we're wearing today. Not whether our denims are donned as well as yesterday. He doesn't see bad hair days, expensive outfits or cars, well-placed accessories, well-put-together ensembles, he doesn't see rips or stains or less-than-stellar complexions. He doesn't see how funny, how popular or how successful (whatever "success" really means) we are either. At least these things are not his focus. Because he cares about our hearts. The condition of our hearts. And whether they are beating for, and becoming like, his.

When I let myself think on that and especially when I let myself believe on the truth of that, my pants (and so much else) pale in comparison. And suddenly I care, or care again, about what's actually worth giving my thoughts and care to. God. His heart. And where the condition of my heart falls.

I want a heart like his. I really, really do. A heart that, maybe best summed up (if God and his heart can even begin to be summed up), is about love. About loving people. I want a heart that loves... people. Most days I feel oh so very far from that. Galaxies away from even liking let alone loving the people I come in contact with every day.

But I really do want that. Because that's what God wants for me. And for you. It's how we are designed. We are most of who God authored us to be when our hearts are beating for, and becoming like, his. We're happiest and most content. We are freed from self-imposed shackles we put and keep locked on as we think about, care about and ultimately live about stuff that has little if not absolutely nothing to do with the heart. Plus, when all is said and done and our hearts are, at some point, required of us, it's not going to matter what size we wore or whether we accomplished particular appearances. God will be looking at, and caring about, our hearts.

Getting a heart like his will take a lifetime. It'll amount to an accumulation of moments and days during which I surrender my heart to him, ask him to change my heart, including into a heart that genuinely loves people as he himself loves people. It'll be about following him into that change as he leads. But as I start my day today, I'm starting with that simple truth: God cares about the heart. I'm choosing to stop on that truth today. To remember it. And I'm allowing everything else, including my pants, to pale in comparison.

the rock, p.s.

2010-06-29T19:32:00.000-07:00

I was singing "The Solid Rock" to my almost-two-year-old Emmy again at dinner tonight and for the first time she joined me and ended up singing every other word. So it went like this:

Emmy: On
Shelley: Christ
E: the
S: solid
E: Rock
S: I
E: stand
S: all
E: other
S: ground
E: is
S: sinking
E: sand
S: all
E: other
S: ground
E: is
S: sinking
E: sand

But here's the kicker: after we got done she looked at me and said "I love that." I don't know if she was talking about loving singing with me or loving the song. Or maybe the skirt steak soft taco on her plate. In any case, I cried.

(If none of this makes sense it's either my writing or you haven't read the post that precedes this "p.s." So check it out!)

the rock

2010-06-27T22:56:00.000-07:00

It was definitely one of our wildest weekends.

Scott wrote a documentary recently on the iconic '80's flick "The Goonies". It's the unauthorized story of the making of the cult classic, a project that a couple of Scott's friends started several years ago then solicited Scott's help on over the past year. It was a long-time coming but the movie, made in love by Scott and three others who, and I say this with love, didn't know everything there is to know about movie-making, finally premiered a couple of Fridays ago in the city where The Goonies was shot. The town was hosting a festival to celebrate the 25th anniversary of The Goonies and though we knew there'd be some people there, avid Goonies fans who, from all over the world, have been gathering online and waiting with bated breath for both this festival and for the documentary's debut, we could not predict the hoopla that would unfold.

Several thousand people poured into the coastal town of Astoria, Oregon which, for the weekend, about doubled the city's size. And the entire town it seemed, along with droves of die-hard Goonies gatherers, crowded in to line a luxurious red carpet as Scott, his friends and some of the cast made their way enveloped by security guards, camera shots and autograph requests into the little local theater for the documentary's big premiere.

It was a scaled-down Oscars scene, Scott said. And it was crazy. The Goonies was two decades ago and before now, I, along with Scott's friends' wives, were the only ones lining up to snap photos of our guys. What was going on?

In the hours to come, a major movie company expressed interest in buying the documentary. They said they might release it onto DVD this fall and to promote the new release send the four out on a "media blitz" (the movie peoples' words) that, also in their words, "will make your heads spin." The Washington Post flew out to cover the story, Yahoo put the details about the documentary on the website's main page and because the director of The Goonies gave the documentary two thumbs up, he flew from the set of X-Men III to give the guys some up-to-date and face-to-face "what's next for The Goonies" news.

I was home taking care of Emmy and hearing this happen from over the phone. And it was shocking. The documentary's worth seeing, even buying on DVD. But let's face it: the effort isn't Iron Man. And so the hype was surprising. But it was also a strange mix of other emotions, like the mix I felt in seventh grade when meeting DC Talk, my then-favorite Gospel rap group, backstage. (The early '90s was a long time ago.) I felt elated, a little scared and most notably, two feet taller like, because of what was happening to me (or in this case to me through Scott), my worth in the world magically widened and grew.

Just before our Goonies weekend I intentionally started to teach Emmy some new songs. We sing a lot at dinner which Miss Manners would detest. But one more time through Itsy Bitsy and the spider wouldn't have lived. So from my vault of childhood church tunes I pulled this classic:

"My hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus' blood and righteousness
I dare not trust the sweetest frame
but wholly lean on Jesus' name
On Christ the solid rock I stand
all other ground is sinking sand
All other ground is sinking sand"

It was around this time that a friend of mine told a story about the time she spent overseas during a major political conflict. I don't remember the details of where or when this conflict happened but she was talking about working with some of the people who were tragically caught in the center of the crisis, people who had left everything they knew and loved - family, home, food - and risked their lives to flee the war-torn land.

Part of their flight to freedom involved crossing a river - a big river, with fast and wild water, a river that many men and women, my friend said, didn't make it across. In talking with those who did defeat the river, my friend discovered that many of them had the same thing to thank for their survival. There was a good-sized rock ground securely into the bottom of a certain section of the river that if a person could somehow swim to and cling to their chances of crossing the rest of the river were probably one-hundred-percent. Those who'd experienced it said the rock was literally a life-saver, a place to stop, catch your breath and rest. It was ultimately all the hope for life and freedom they had.

This story, the song, and the saga from Astoria are washing around together in the spin cycle of what's sometimes called my mind. And I'm thinking that far too often, I find myself red carpeting my life. I suppose I've lived many days this way - operating my existence for the approval of those who are witnessing my existence then finding my worth in what the audience allows. When I'm in the spotlight for something, I've done something noteworthy, I'm admired, well-liked, even envied by those around me - I feel worth-full. And worth-less when the opposite is true.

Engaging in existence like that - measuring my value by people's applause - is sort of like attempting to cross that river while clinging only to the currents. They're unpredictable, tumultuous, they tangle up and tire my body, my mind, my soul. Because what happens when the lights get dimmed and the cameras stop snapping? What happens when people don't like me, when they don't admire me, what happens to my sense of value when others disapprove?

What I'm doing is letting my worth waffle. And I know better. I know that no matter where I try to mine my value, the Rock's my only hope. My only chance at freedom. Because God's love for me alone defines my worth. And his love and therefore my value cannot lessen, diminsh or move.

So I'm remembering these days that whether we're walking a red carpet or wrestling to find our way across one of life's inevitable rivers, in clinging to the Rock we can stop, catch our breath and rest. Our worth is found in nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.

Oh, as for the documentary, Spielberg's looking it over. And I couldn't be more proud of Scott. He may be new to movie-making but you'd never know it by his gift. His writing is witty, strong and unlike most around. More than that though I'm proud of who he is and on Who, through this wild, surreal experience and through the days of life in general, he chooses ever to cling.

the sign

2009-11-16T16:02:00.000-08:00

There's this sign along a highway close to my house. It's been there for as long as I can remember - a handmade sign, maybe the size of a 40-inch TV. It's wood, I think, weather-worn and painted white. I don't know who stuck the sign there, right there just five or ten feet from the road and I don't know why, for years now, the highway patrol or anyone else hasn't ripped it down. Especially given what's etched in the sign, what's written in big black capital letters with a sharpie or spray paint or somehow burned on:

JESUS LOVES YOU!

For a while the sign bugged me. And at first I tried to pass it off on the fact that it felt a little forward. It reminded me of the men and women we sometimes see on street corners with Bibles, signs and tracts in hand, exclaiming to the air and anyone else who happens to hear that Jesus is Lord and we'd better drop everything to believe that or else every last one of us at any unsuspecting moment now is going to hell.

And maybe that's true. And maybe those people are doing just what they're supposed to be doing. But these kinds of approaches to talking about Jesus or any other topic just isn't me, and the highway sign seemed similar.

But it hit me recently that maybe the sign didn't sit right because I don't believe it. Or don't entirely believe it like when you believe something so strongly that you've gathered it up and embraced it and let the truth of it seep soundly into the pores of your skin then all the way down into the marrow of your bones. And you can almost feel that something existing and expanding and making it's home within you like the lady grey tea I like to sip from my favorite mug on a stormy Saturday morning seems to do.

My whole life I've been told that Jesus loves me. I probably sang the song before age two and I remember reciting Scripture as a toddler that talked about God's love - his full and forgiving and irrevocable love for people and for me. And I believed it. As if no alternative existed, I trusted that God, that Jesus, loves me.

And I remember the freedom and joy that gave my spirit. There were times I'd twirl around our green shag family room floor, for example, with pj's, bed head and a partly toothless grin. I was disheveled and silly but confident. Confident because of my belief. And that uncontested assuredness, and the security and grounding that rode along with it, released me, both literally and figuratively, to dance and move and live and sing.

But somewhere along the way something changed. In fact, I first began to sense the change around age five. That's when I went to school for the first time and when, for the first perceivable time, I began to be exposed to all the stuff that school, and the world, can swing our way - like ridicule and rejection, for instance.

I had a birthmark on my nose. A pretty big one. I now know it's called an infantile haemangioma which is basically just a bunch of blood vessels clumped together and hanging around where they're not supposed to be like high school seniors playing hookie at the mall. But back then when all the other little girls in my class still had sweet and perfect baby skin, all I saw was a giant round red mark, like Rudolph, as I was soon repeatedly told, on, now that I was thinking about it, quite a flawed little me.

Because feeling bad about my nose led to feeling bad about my clothes. My hair was never right and wait, I'm actually a lot taller than the kids in my grade. I stick out and I see so clearly now that my toes look weird and my fingers are abnormally long. My weight was never what it should have been and over time, due to not only the hurt I had from school, but also from hurt that began to unfold in my home, I had problems with my legs, my arms, my place in the world in general and eventually most anything else that dared to call itself unique to who I am.

And somewhere in the deepest parts of me, in the control rooms of my brain and soul, it became harder and harder to reconcile the hatred I felt from both others and eventually from myself and what I'd been told about God's love. About God loving me. And at some point along the way the belief that "I am unlovable", by God or anyone else, encircled then stuffed me in the way that custard should in a properly made filled maple bar.

And this is where I lived for a couple of decades. Stuck, in a sense, at five years old and out of confusion and fear and self-protection I refused to risk believing something else.

Until little by little I began to accept that sometimes something is true regardless of what I think or feel about it. That reality exists outside of my opinion.

My husband had a lot to do with this. It took me two and a half years of dating Scott then more than four years of being married to Scott to even begin to believe he loves me. To really believe it, and to believe that no matter how many times he sees me make-up-less he will continue to love me. I don't get why and to this day I rarely feel worthy. But over time I've come to accept it. His loyalty to me, his faithfulness to me, his integrity, authenticity and constancy (among other things) have proven it. And though I don't always understand why Scott chose me, why, out of all the girls he could have way-too-simply swept off their feet, as he did me, he picked me, I'm believing he did. Because he loves me.

And I guess I've arrived at something similar with God. More than Scott, God has proven himself over and over then over and over again. That he loves me. That he loves us. He hasn't had to. God is God, plus, he sacrificed, for us, the One most sacred to him and certainly the two should be enough.

But like a really great dad who's there for his daughter no matter what, he's stayed present. And in both big and smaller ways, he's countered that "I am unlovable" haunting with whispers of his own: "I love you. I love you. I love you. And no birthmark, wound or what anyone else, including yourself, has to think or say about you can ever in any way come close to touching, tainting or breaking that".

And I think I've grown tired of fighting against it, of mentally, emotionally and spiritually battling that truth. I've allowed my fortress of fear and self-protection and confusion to, brick by brick, begin to come down. And I do believe God loves me, that Jesus loves me. But that sign is a reminder that when it comes to really letting that reality root, when it comes to inviting that truth to exist and expand and make it's home within me, I've got some distance to go.

Because as much as I'd like to say "Look at me, what a wonderful example I am. Look at where I've come from and how, through hard work and courage, mostly of my own, I've grown and moved up and moved on. I totally believe now, even in the deepest depths of me, that God is absolutely, unabashedly in love with me.", I simply can't. There's a part of me that, on some level, still toys with the alternative. And part of what I'm wondering lately is how my inability, or maybe more accurately, my unwillingness, to fully embrace God's love is impacting my ability to love God back.

In Scripture, it says that "we love because he first loved us". We love because he first loved us. So if that's true, and our ability to love, both God and people, hinges on God loving us, what happens to our ability to love when we don't believe God loves us?

I see people around me with a love for God that I know I've not yet known. It's like the love I used to imagine between my Barbies and Kens, the love that, let's admit it, all of us, girls and boys alike, have at some point dreamed we'd one day call our own: big and grand and fierce and deep. Tender and untouchable, over-powering and undying, overwhelming, life-altering and obvious, all in the best possible ways. I see it on their faces, I see it in their choices. I see it when loving God is easy but also when it's not. And I want that.

I want to feel that. But more importantly, I want my love for God to be the foundation for everything I do whether I feel that love or not. I want to care about the looks I give the people around me like that woman I stared down who cut right in front of me in the grocery line today. I want to speak with softness to my 16-month old even when, in the last hour alone, she's tested me one-million-zillion times. I want to be honest, in both hard and easier ways - to my friends, to Scott. I want to give my thoughts and time and money to things that matter instead of staying stuck in cycles of material obsessions and spending my resources on stuff that, when it comes down to it, doesn't mean much and certainly doesn't last.

I want these things to be what's normal in my life instead of just exceptions. Decisions and behaviors that come naturally to me compared to pat-myself-on-the-back moments sprinkled sparingly, if I'm lucky, here and there throughout my week.

God wants it that way, I think. And I wonder how much more I'd become this person, and in doing so become more like Jesus, with a greater, stronger, deeper love for him. Or maybe the two, like Johnny and June Carter Cash, go hand in hand. Loving God and acting on that love, equally important in the pairing. One, on it's own, so much less powerful and unable to exist, or at least exist well.

That sign doesn't repel me anymore. In fact, I look forward to seeing it now. I sit up a little in my seat when I know I'm getting close and I've caught myself saying "thank you", even out loud, as well. Because that's how I feel - thankful, to the person who believed those words to begin with then went out of their way to remind the rest of us including the most hurt, fearful, confused and self-protected of us who perhaps need to know it most. And I'm thankful to God, and to Jesus, for doing the loving in the first place. May I believe you, and love you, more.

monkey business

2009-10-30T10:37:00.000-07:00

I'm a slow starter. One of those people, perhaps like you, who takes some time in the morning to pull myself together - to wake up, wipe the cobwebs off and, among other things, to bring myself to a somewhat sane place where speaking to those around me actually sounds a teensy bit cheerful instead of like a low and menacing growl.

Which is one reason that having a one-year old can be so tough. Emmy's up before seven most days, about three hours earlier than I'd like. Which means my mornings must look a lot different than they used to and than I would, if I had the choice, prefer. I smile before ten now. And in addition to some other morning ritual changes, I now revert back to my own toddler years and together with a myriad of moms and dads across the country with tiny tots in tow, turn on Curious George.

I actually like that little monkey. He's cute and carefree but causes just enough trouble to keep him interesting. And he's becoming a welcomed substitute, I'm finding, for the barrage of negativity found in some other morning shows I've been both a part of and accustomed to.

We don't sit and watch Curious George, in fact, he's more like background noise. But the show's narrator caught my ear the other day. I don't know what the story was about, but he said something to the effect of "...when you're curious, fun just seems to show up". And it's making me think: I like fun, I could use some fun. But am I at all curious?

My friend Becky is. In fact, more than anyone else I know, Becky wonders about things. She's not someone who has to figure life out, the kind of person who, like a runaway train going two-hundred-plus, is driven to mentally master the mysteries of the world. Rather, she seems to have an unusual ability to see the world and people around her. To really see them. And as if pausing before an original Picasso, she stands back and wonders, she's in awe of and curious about, what's at hand.

Like whale skulls for instance. Becky and her two elementary age daughters happened upon one at the beach the other day. And whereas most of us would stop, tilt our heads and maybe poke around a bit before heading off to lunch and calling it a day, Becky hurried home, called the appropriate marine people and not only did she tell them about the washed up find. But like a kid in front of a pet store pleading with her parents to please, please let her bring home that cute little laboradore that she's already found a name and heart for, she begged to be a part of their recovering it from the shore.

She left a voicemail and an email and when the people didn't call or email or text back, she tried again. And again. Her curiosity - about what kind of skull this was, how long it might have been there, about what grand and sciencey steps they'd take to research the skull or put it somewhere proudly on display - her wonderment about all that, about this small, or in this case kind of large, piece of life around her, was not only evident. But catchy. I see her girls inhabit this same wonderment about the world and, together, the three are having a blast.

I want that. I think I need that. To broaden my often narrow world view, to awaken my senses to the everyday excitements around me, and to bring some levity, some fun, into my sometimes sagging spirit and step.

But Becky also brings this curiosity, this wonderment, to Scripture, which might be one of the best things about my friend. Because I don't know about you, but the Bible, to me, can far too often feel like laundry. It's always sort of sitting there, in the corner, waiting patiently to be picked up and, while it waits, has an inexplicable ability to emit subliminal guilt waves that somehow get into my soul, weigh me down, and the more I ignore it, force my insides to tuck it's tail between it's legs.

So I leave the laundry there for far longer than is sanitary. And when I do decide to do something with the laundry, with the Bible, I'm always glad I did. In both cases, some much-needed cleaning happens, and among many other healthy and important things, I gain a lighter load.

Becky gets this much better than I do. Not that reading and studying the Bible come completely naturally to her, but, like with whale skulls, she brings her sense of curiosity and wonderment to the Bible. And I think that changes things.

Because there's an expectation that tags along with curiosity. A hope. Of encountering something special, something out of the ordinary, something insanely strange, needed or beautiful. It's like untying the bow on a birthday gift and believing, just fingers-crossed believing, there's something spectacular inside. Like that flat screen taunting you from Costco. Or a Tiffany diamond ring. I'm just saying.

And I get the feeling that this is what Becky, and others I see with a similar sense of wonderment, brings to the Bible. The expectation, the hope, that when we throw off passivity and laziness and whatever else it is that's keeping us from getting into Scripture and go ahead and crack open that inspired ancient text, something amazing, Someone amazing, will appear.

I want that. I need that. Because even though I see the Bible for what it is - an historical book of real life stories, penned by people led by God's hand, a sacred book, a book that no one, in any way, has ever been able to prove wrong. Though I know it's a book that God has gifted us with and that through which, he invites us to know him, love him and be radically changed by him from our souls to our heads and our toes. Though I get that and though on many occasions across many years I've experienced that, reading and studying the Bible has, a lot of the time, continued to be a burden, an obligation. Another item on my mental "must get to" list that day after day, after day after day, haunts me and shames me and like a really good tie job on a heaping pile of junk in the back of a pick-up truck, keeps me continually internally locked down. And it just can't stay that way.

As I think about this, I think some of the reason I so often feel this way about the Bible is because I sometimes stifle expectation and hope. In life in general, but especially when it comes to God and experiencing God through Scripture. Yes, it's partly because of laziness and because of the guilt that buddies up next to it. But it's also because of fear. I suffocate hope and expectation for fear, not only of what that certain Someone, through my interaction with him in Scripture, might ask me to do - stuff I don't want to do, stuff I've been scared to do, stuff I try never to touch or address.

But I'm also afraid that as I come to God in Scripture, heart and spirit open, expecting and hoping to find God there, God won't show at all. At least not in the ways I both consciously and subconsciously think I need him to. And I guess I'm scared of what that might do - to my opinion of God, to my relationship with God, to the foundation of my overall faith.

Because I've been there. On countless occasions, I've come to Scripture with some semblance of hope and expectation, wanting and needing to experience God - to see him, to hear him, to feel him and sense him - sometimes desperately... and I haven't. God was seemingly nowhere to be found. And it's rattled me. More so than with my "I'm a strong and stable Christian" costume on I'd like to admit.

In fact, failing to experience God as I'd like to, especially when I've really, really needed to, has shoved me down a slippery slope. And if you're even an ounce like me in this area, you know the muddy muck I've felt stuck in at the bottom of this fall. The place of confusion and doubt and anger and apathy. The place where many of the thoughts and emotions I've hoped I'd never feel, or never again feel, about God get mixed together and then gain the power to gather me up in and around them and toss me around like Toto before Oz.

And it takes a while to walk back from such a spot. To do the often heavy work of pulling myself up and out of the mire and back to the place where civil people live and hints of perspective can be found. Where I'm reminded, maybe for the millionth time, that I'm not God, that God's not my slave and that no matter how often I continue to feel like I can, I simply cannot control what the God of existence does. Including how and when he decides to show up in mine.

So like I do with photo albums, old jeans and wrapping paper I can't find room for anywhere else in the house, it seems like less of a hassle to just sort of stuff hope and expectation beneath the bed. To approach the Bible, and God through the Bible, with some numbness and ho-hum-ness. And if God doesn't show up as I would like, I stay clean. In tact. Safe from the battering and bruising that can come with a tumble down the hill.

I see though, that one of the many problems with this is that I'm cutting myself off. Both from feeling, which is part of not just existing, but living. Really living. And from the experience with God that only daring to hope and expect might bring.

Which would be sad. Because even in my fear and in my worst times of apathy, when I let that laundry loom for record lengths of time, I do, in my gut of guts, want to experience God. To experience a real and moving and thriving relationship with him. I want to know God and love God like I never have before. And I both want and need to be changed by God, to reflect him, as he intends, more and more.

Knowing him, loving him, reflecting him, I believe it's why we're even here. The purpose of life on planet earth, so that through our knowing, loving and reflecting, others might somehow know, love and reflect God too. And engaging with Scripture, with God through Scripture, is, I've come to believe, a big piece of being in that process, of intentionally taking part in this great purpose for which you and I exist. And truly, I don't want a lack of curiosity, due to fear or something else, to cause me to miss out on everything God has in mind for me.

So like an Eagles song stuck in your head since you happen to hear it in the grocery store last month, that question of "am I at all curious?", and also, "what's keeping me from being curious?", continues to spin around inside me. And am I? Curious? In wonder? About the life, breathing and pulsing and waiting to be witnessed around me. About Scripture and about the experience with God, the connection with God, the relationship and life-change with God that I believe awaits us there.

I'm still sifting through all this. But thanks little monkey. And thank you, Becky, my beautiful, curious friend.

grandpa reiny

2009-10-22T16:09:00.000-07:00

My grandpa died this week. It's so strange to even type it. I just saw him this past weekend - I sat by his hospital bedside and held his swollen hands, I told him that I love him and asked, among other things, about his favorite memories, his favorite German phrases. In a soft, tiny voice, he sang for me, in German, his favorite song. And though I knew our time together, at least on planet earth, was slipping, though I was conscious of that, fully aware of that and though I was, as much as I was capable, trying to make the most of that, it's all beyond the ability of my brain, it seems, to comprehend where we are today.

How a person, a someone, a living, breathing soul, who had parents and siblings and friendships and children, a wife and jobs and hobbies and favorite game shows and jokes and sports teams, can be here one moment - hazel eyes open, hands warm from the blood and life pulsing through his body and veins. And then in the next moment, in an everyday moment when the rest of us are watching Conan or making a late-night snack or sleeping, be totally gone.

His funeral is tomorrow and my dad asked if I'd like to say something from up front. I've been up front my whole adult life, it seems. And whether reporting and anchoring or writing and speaking, I've usually come up with something to say. Not always helpful, I'm sure. But at least I had something. Actual words that formed actual sentences that actually made some sort of sense, at least to me.

But as tomorrow morning looms, I've got nothing. Which is weird, because of the multitudes of thoughts and feelings and questions and emotions swimming and shouting and refusing to be civilized and quiet inside my soul. And you'd think, to take part in at least some small way of honoring this great man, I could make some sense of some of them. Put, at minimum, a piece of what I'm thinking and feeling and walking through into words and, like I've done on many other kinds of occasions, let those words come out. But I feel a little, or maybe a lot, like the victims of Narnia's white witch. Frozen. Stoned. Paralyzed by the bigness and depth of death.

I guess the thought that's crystallized most in my head so far has to do with story. For more than 80 years, my grandpa got to tell a story. Day by day, minute by minute, circumstance by circumstance, my grandpa made choices. Over and over, life presented him with crossroads - some, visibly important, others, seemingly not. But each path my grandpa picked and every decision my grandpa made became the words and sentences and paragraphs and pages in his story. And then on Monday night, the last page, at least on this planet, turned. His story had been written. It has been told. And it's making me question, in a deeply somber and keen way, how my story will unfold, what it will include, and how and when my story will close.

I realize we can't control a lot of what happens in our stories, because, I believe, God is in control. But I believe he gives us will. Freedom, to go one way or another on both big and smaller things, and, like for my grandpa, our decisions not only come to form the pages of our stories, but shape who we are and who we will become along the way.

Like right now, Emmy, my 15-month old, is supposed to be taking a nap. But she's calling out from her crib to daddy and Elmo and anyone else within earshot to race down and rescue her from this horrible thing called sleep. And right now, I'm faced with a choice, a choice that's made an unwelcomed home in my mornings and afternoons since summer, 2008. Will I lose it? Become unraveled by this achingly-adorable little girl who so often bucks, with almost everything in her, drifting gently off to sleep, like all the other well-rested children in the world seem to do?

Because what it comes down to for me is frustration, often extreme frustration, over not being able to dictate what's happening. It's angst over the inability to conger up some desperately-needed and palpable peace and quiet. And I find myself mad, livid at times, that this itty-bitty person is punching holes in both my comfort zone and sense of okayness and control.

And it's what I do, what we do, with these seemingly small-in-the-scheme-of-things kinds of things that become big in shaping, not only our stories, but who we are and who we are becoming within them. Like the decisions we make, every day, about the tone we use when we talk to our moms. Or how we treat our spouses or roommates or the guy who just cut us off on the freeway at the end of a long and sometimes energy-zapping day.

I sometimes operate as if these smaller, more everydayish kinds of occasions, and the decisions that tag along with them, are, like chalk on a chalkboard, mostly erasable. That the choices I make within the minutes of my Monday through Sundays are sort of filler. And that it's how we respond to the bigger stuff in life that really counts. And it does. Count. The big things count. Like choosing to stay faithful - in marriage, to God, as my grandpa Reiny modeled. Like deciding to get honest or get help in some long-awaited way.

But the more I think about this, I think the small stuff may matter at least as much, if not more. Because instances add up. Without our seeing it or feeling it or knowing it, our choices, including if not especially our everyday-kinds-of-choices bleed together. And before we know it, they've told our story and who we are within.

I don't know about you, but when all is said and done and my soul is, at some point, required of me, I want my story to have mattered. I want the people in my life, and the people who may be watching my life, to be glad they existed on the page with me. To feel loved. Fully. Leaps and bounds above even the kind of love we pay boatloads of money to find on the big screen. I want people to feel invested in and cared for and known and like their stories matter, matter a lot, to me too. And I want people, through my story, to somehow see God. To see him moving and breathing and re-creating inside me. And to be drawn to experience the same.

We get one shot before the credits roll on Conan, before, on this planet, our last page turns. And maybe all I can say right now as I'm just starting to sort through and wrestle both the harsh and beautiful reality of all this, is that from the bottom of my belly, grandpa, I'm thankful to have been written into your story. I grieve. We grieve. And we celebrate you.

the fruit stand

2009-10-19T09:43:00.000-07:00

I went to visit my grandparents recently. Their health is failing and because they live about three hours from me we don't see each other as often as we'd like. That's my fault. Because we're well past the point now when that shift happens, when time tweaks the responsibilities in relationships and grandparents, for example, are no longer the ones doing the doting and traveling and investing. At least not in the ways that many of them once did. And it's up to us, the grandkids, to take a leading role. To create some space to call, to visit, to write letters. And to listen, carefully, as we ask about their childhoods, their marriages and how their health and hearts are faring.

Grandpa Reiny and Grandma Vi live in Lodi which you may know is a fairly small central California town surrounded by vineyards, both thriving and thirsty, inhabited by hard-work-kind-of-jobs like spending your days in a food factory as my grandpa used to do. And it's rooted by older generations, many of whom value family and faith like I like to imagine smaller, lesser-known towns across America do.

Growing up, we went to Lodi a lot. And one of my favorite things about going to see my grandparents was the food. My grandma made authentic and unusual German dinners that, when we were there, we'd get to eat for any meal. But my grandparents also had a garden from which, among other delicacies, we'd glean bright, juicy hand-picked strawberries that, once cut up in my grandparent's aged and cracking soup bowls, we'd smother in spoonfuls of powdered sugar. Yum.

My grandparents also dried fruit - figs and apples and grapes. And it was dried fruit that, on my recent visit, stopped me in my mental and emotional tracks. Because as my husband Scott and our daughter Emmy and I walked up their driveway, I spotted the same dried fruit equipment that I'd seen over and over as a child. The same wobbly card table, the same age-yellowed dish towels and the same battered cover screens used to guard the drying fruit. It'd been a while since I'd seen that sight but instantly, it was a step back in time. As well as a lesson that I'm still trying to sort out and learn.

I've been caught up lately in Pottery Barn. And in Restoration Hardware and remodeling and home shows and the newest must-haves for every room in the house. Perhaps like you, I've seen a lot of people sucked into this cycle, this whirlwind of wanting and striving and buying, sometimes especially in the newly-married or new baby seasons. Some call it nesting. But for me, I'm starting to confess, albeit slightly and until now only to my secret, secret self, that it's obsessing. About stuff. Inanimate objects. About what's shiny, what's new and what's always seemingly not quite but maybe, just maybe within my reach. Like that espresso leather arm chair I drool over or the black Crate and Barrel china cabinet I crave. Or like the car my friend has, like the shoes a different friend just got. Like new clothes, better couches, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, blah, blah, blah.

But seeing that old fruit stand, still being used despite decades of weather and wear. It did, and is doing, something to my insides. There's something about the fact that my grandma still uses those same materials after all these years, like she does with most of what she owns. She could have bought some new stuff. The latest must-haves for fruit drying. Stuff her friends may have had - a table and towels and a screen that would certainly have shined more and may have worked better too. But though I didn't ask her, I think she simply didn't, and doesn't, need to.

And that makes me wonder, why do I? Why have I in some ways gone past appreciating things and wanting things and moved into having to have certain things? And not only certain inanimate objects like chairs and cars and shoes. But like someone else's life stage, their job, their hair. Why am I so often obsessed with what I do not have? What's behind that? It's as if obtaining what I don't yet have, including what I perceive as desirable and sought after in the world, will somehow make something right. As if getting that new chair will make my house presentable, acceptable. Or maybe it's as if getting that new chair, those new clothes, that new career will make me presentable. Acceptable. Complete.

I also wonder what I'm giving up by so often refusing to be satisfied with what I currently have. Contentment, certainly. Which is big. Because as I think about this, contentment is what frees us up to think about things, to care about things, to be about things that are so much more important than inanimate stuff. I can't obsess about design and wonder how my family is doing, how my friends are doing, how I'm doing, at the same time. I can't be concerned about how to get my hands on fill-in-the-blank and be in the moment that I'm in. The moment with a stranger. The moment with a friend. The moment that is important. In part, because there's meaning, often more-than-meets-the-eye great and purposeful meaning, in a moment. And it'll never come again.

Stuck in dissatisfaction, I think I'm also waving some beauty away. The beauty of using what I've been given, perhaps over and over again. The beauty in choosing to love what I've been given, or at least love on it, so much so that like my grandma's fruit stand, it's obviously well-worn. And as a result, it's evidence of a girl who is grateful for what she has and proof of a life, of everyday moments, being embraced.

And that has potential, I think, to leave a powerful mark. Specifically on people who are watching and perhaps wrestling with a similar kind of insatiable soul. Or on my daughter. What are my obsessions teaching her? To be caught up in what the world screams we need? Or to be decidedly engaged in things that matter. That matter for today and for eternty.

I got a wake-up call with Emmy earlier this week. Scott and I like to let her finish our sentences sometimes because she's at the age when she's grasping words and places and things and, like a jigsaw being brillantly put into place, she's beginning to understand how they all fit together. So when we're walking out the door for example, we'll say "Let's go to the _______!" She gets to choose the place - park, beach, etc. - her best guess at where we're going, likely based on what we might have mentioned or on where we tend to head the most.

So strapping her into her car seat, I enthusiastically said "Emmy! Let's go to the _______!" And without missing a beat, she blurts out "mall!". Ugh. Wrong. But have we been there so often that the mall is the first place she assumes we're going? It scared, and scares, me.

I've decided we've got to do better with our time. So since then, I've been intentionally listing some places to go and things to do that aren't so blatantly self-centered and consumeristic. I'm brainstorming ways to more creatively, and hopefully more givingly, spend our afternoons. Like later this week, we're going shopping, but this time what we'll buy is for someone else. We'll gather toothbrushes and toothpaste and socks, then drop them off at our church building where our social justice team is putting together care packs for homeless men and women downtown.

Even though Emmy's only fifteen months old, I plan to tell her what we're doing as we do it and I hope to begin to erase some of the obsessions I've so far modeled. Or at least begin to live something different to somehow be a part of pointing her molding heart and mind toward the things that matter so much more than leather arm chairs and the like.

I'm still thinking on all this. Letting this lesson I think God is allowing me to simmer and roll around my mind. It's part of how he's shaping me this season, I think. Changing me to look - no, more than look - to become more like him.

soulgarage

2009-10-19T09:34:00.000-07:00

Something happened recently in my garage. Which is weird, because I don't usually give my garage much thought, at least not like a certain person sharing this garage with me does. He's actually strangely tied to our garage, obsessing about it's cleanliness, dreaming about it's orderliness and always imagining how stunning it would be as a shiny, mancave space with proper dry wall and, at minimum, a respectable amount of tools sorted and postured neatly like prized possessions should be around a sacred room's walls.

Unlike my husband Scott, I'm just happy when the rat smell staves off. But though I don't take pride in my garage like Scott does, I have to admit that never has it been as dirty and disheveled as it has been in the last couple of years. Arguably the most intense couple of years of my life. The couple of years when we remodeled.

Perhaps like your garage, there's always a certain degree of life paraphernalia scattered, stored and stuffed in my garage - old trophies, childhood Cabbage Patch dolls, broken but maybe still usable but probably not but I'll save them just in case frames and furniture and mirrors. But you should have seen the place when we far too ambituously decided to gut and restore our house ourselves.

The garage was our staging area, the epicenter for all the many changes mostly haphazardly happening. It's where we mixed the paint and cut the wood. It's where unused nails and screws and other unrecognizable-to-me metal things, along with various materials of all textures and sizes and forgettable names, quite comfortably made their home. We stashed the trash in our garage, we spilled chemicals in our garage and it was there, and then, among the chaos, grime and grit, that I began to understand my soul. And get why I'm alive.

And I've needed to know. Because for far too long, I haven't known. Why I'm here. Why you're here. What, bottom line, is the reason we're alive. I'm talking about purpose. The purpose of life. And I don't know about you, but that almost comically elusive, million dollar question - "What on earth are we really here for?" - has, for far too long, bellowed in both sad and irate tones from the depths of my core.

My whole life, it seems, the purpose question has bothered me. No, it's more than bothered me. It has haunted me. Like the melancholy melody of who I am, the question of why we're here and what, more than anything else, we're supposed to be doing with our days, has made it's way back and forth, back and forth throughout my body and mind, like an aroma ebbing and flowing through my bones and soul.

It's never been enough for me to move through my days doing whatever it is I'm currently doing, life's routines with work and family and friends and school, and not know what it's all for. Why, for example, do we wake up each morning, grab some breakfast, do work or school or whatever it is we do during the day, find some dinner, watch TV, get on Facebook, talk with family, then do it all again, sometimes in a maddeningly similar way the next day? What's the point? We put out a lot of energy. We sure give a ton of time. A lifetime. But why? What's the essence behind it all?

It's not just the often-mundaness of life that causes me to beg this question, but it's the pain of life as well. We're all familiar with it, the stuff that's happened on our journeys that, like getting the wind knocked out of you during a fifth grade dodgeball game, leaves us mentally, emotionally and spiritually knocked over, lifeless almost, breathless and, at the very least, ego-bruised on the floor.

Like when a husband leaves, a mom gets cancer, like when the inexplicable and horrifying happens not only in our homes, but all around the world - to children, to the undeserving, to people, like you and me, with pulses and plans and family and jobs and dreams. And it's been in these seasons especially when the volume of my "What in the world is all this for?" melody has spiked.

And sure, I've read books on purpose, I've sat through sermons on purpose, I've heard Oprah's latest take on why we're here as well. But though some truth can be found in others' suggestions, none have wholly seemed to fit. And when it comes to this universal and universally giant question, I've found I wasn't the only one confused.

I asked a group of friends recently, men and women I study the Bible with on occasion, what they think is the purpose of life. First there was some silence and awkward glances around the ground. Then, tentatively, someone said "We exist to worship God". Another chimed in "We exist to love God with all our hearts, minds and souls." Still another thought "We exist to spread the Gospel and to love our neighbors as ourselves." But when it came down to it, no one was quite sure.

And if I'd widened my survey, posing the question to some people on the streets, I'm thinking some answers may have gone something like this: "We exist to make the world a better place", "Life is about being as happy as possible". And though only a handful of us might admit it, we tend to live as though the acquisition of stuff - money, power, acceptance and love - is the goal.

So what's the point? Is life simply a series of day-to-day events, playing out in some kind of random order in the way tracks do on an IPOD shuffle? Some of them painful, others painfully mundane and when we're lucky, some unexpectedly infusing, stunning and beautiful, like happening upon some sea glass along the ocean shore? Or, is there something more? Intentionality to our existence. Something other than randomness... and purposelessness. Is there one big explanation for the reason you and I are here?

I sensed the answer was out there. One big and definitive and profound. An answer that, if I somehow happened upon it, if I happen to unearth it or if, miraculously, I got to open it like one of Willy Wonka's golden tickets, my soul would sit up and, after years of wrestling the "Why, why, why?" question, begin to settle into place.

Then we started to remodel, and I started reading Paul. It's not like I'd never read his letters. But like seeing a feature on a familiar face in a fresh and surprising way, the apostle's thoughts to the infant Christian Church began to stand out to me like they never had before. Thoughts like...

"And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness"

"You were taught...to put off your old self...and to put on the new self, created to be like God"

"Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day"

And there were more...

"You have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed...in the image of its Creator"

"We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us...that in him we might become the righteousness of God"

And certain words jumped out. "Old", "new", "renewed".

"Into his likeness", "image of its Creator" and "created to be like God".

Words that have a theme, words that speak of process and words that hint at story. A story that started long ago, a story in which we are embedded, a story that, I have found, helps define why we're alive.

So I went back to the beginning, to the bud of God's great plot. When "old" was nonexistent and everything but God was "new".

In the beginning, Genesis records, God created. He birthed the heavens and the earth, he authored us, the human race, and when we were authored, we were authored to be like him. And we were. Like him. We were imagined in God's likeness, sewn in his image, and in the mostly unfathomable fabric that is God, we, human beings, existed.

We existed in relationship with God as well. We walked with God in gardens, got naked before God and felt no shame. But you may know the story. Evil entered the picture and like a machete through a masterpiece, sin severed the unadulterated scene. No longer did we perfectly reflect our Maker. No longer could we, without walls, connect. Instead, we got broken. Our relationship to God got broken. And little of God's original design was the same.

But it's not like God was caught off guard. In the mystery that is him, God knew that this was coming, and for reasons not known to us on this side of eternity, God not only permitted the presence of sin, but had a plan for sin's defeat. He promised, in fact, a Savior. Jesus. Who'd crush the power of evil and by his body, blood and breath, restore us back to God's original design. To people who know God. To people who love God. And who once again exist as expressions of him.

And like a puzzle sliding together in slow motion, some pieces came together as I explored the story. To that question, "Why do we exist? What's the point of it all? What's the purpose of my life?" something deep inside me clicked as I realized that, like my house, we too are getting changed.

Whether we know it or not, whether we sense it or not, we, as followers of Jesus, are becoming something other. We are not the same today as we were yesterday nor will we be the same tomorrow. There's a process underway in the deepest parts of who we are. The epicenter, like my garage, is our souls with the power to infiltrate every aspect of our being. And this changing, this total transformation of everything we are, is, I've discovered, the golden ticket. The best explanation, that I have found, for why you and I are alive.

We exist to engage with God in a gritty, beautiful process of transformation - a process to know and love God and to become a reflection of him. And not just because. But so others may somehow see him and come to know, love and reflect God too.

There is no greater purpose, I believe, for our being. Because we don't live in God's original design - when we knew God, loved God and reflected God unhindered. And we don't live in eternity either - when all things, the Bible tells us, will be totally restored and we who choose to follow God will once again know, love and reflect God in full. Instead, in this season of God's great story, we live and breathe in the severed scene. And yet Jesus did defeat evil and, in doing so, made it possible for us to be in process. The process, like my house, of old becoming new. The process to, as God first designed, know, love and reflect him more and more.

And maybe you don't agree, or maybe you are, like I'd been, uncertain about your purpose. Maybe you've never thought about purpose much at all. But for me, I can't tell you how huge this realization has been. For the first time, ever, my soul is sitting up and settling in as I stay aware of where we are in this grand story. Remembering that life isn't a series of random events - mundane, cruel or otherwise. But that like the twists and turns that unfold in the best kinds of book plots, the brillance of which you can often only see as the last page turns, it's all part of the process. And each day I'm given on this planet, and you're given on this planet, is a chance to engage in that process, of knowing and loving God and becoming a reflection of him. So that others may somehow see him and come to know, love and reflect God too.

It's defining. Centering. And though, like a traveler just barely getting started on a big and thrilling trip, I'm still just starting to set foot in what this process means, still exploring what this process involves and what engaging in it looks like on me and in my everydays, I'm glad to be underway. To at least, at long last, have a glimpse of why I'm on this journey to begin with. And though engaging will at times get gritty, as it does in renovations of most kinds, I believe what comes of the process, even the process itself, can be beautiful. Purpose-full. More so than I've yet to imagine or know.

the "about me"

2009-10-19T09:21:00.000-07:00

I've avoided a blog for forever. I don't know why exactly. Maybe because like reclining in front of a fire with nothing to do but nurse a glass of red wine, the time it takes to write one feels like a luxury that, lately, like many of us, I don't seem to have. Blogging takes energy too. Energy, that with a newly-walking one-year old feels, most days, like a friend I used to know. Or maybe I've been scared. Afraid to admit that maybe, when it comes down to it, I have very little to say.

But here I am, testing my toes in the water, and so far I'm finding it isn't as cold and big and overwhelming as I've feared. Except for the set-up of a blog. Specifically the section where, in the profile beneath my photo, I'm supposed to write something "about me".

I don't know about you, but describing myself in several sentences has never been easy for me to do. I could list a couple of interests - writing, piano, my husband (in no certain order). And how I spend my time - right now, keeping up with that little person, feeding her, laughing with her and clawing around to create the space to write, play the piano and get close to my best friend. But even if my list was long and I had a host of activities to describe me, would that really encompass who I am?

The question of "who is Shelley?" has gnawed at me a lot lately. Because not only did I just have Emmy fifteen months ago, but I'm fairly newly married and recently left a decade-long career in TV. Change has headlined my story lately. And in that change, like in most change, I imagine, I'm having to remind myself of who I am. Or perhaps more accurately, find myself and re-define myself again and again.

Because before, I could tell you that I'm a broadcast journalist, that I anchor the morning news and produce and anchor a noon show too. Not that my job totally defined me, but over time I got familiar with the role and felt as at home in it as I do my favorite pair of jeans. But in this new role - of partner, of parent, of writer - I feel like I'm five years old again, on the Delta River and learning to ski for the very first time. It's exhilarating, but shaky. In part, because it's foriegn. I'm trying to find my sea legs and straining to see how the changes this season is spelling are changing, and not changing, the core and extremities of me.

And what I'm finding is that I need people. Which is about as painless for me as was getting my wisdom teeth pulled. Because admittedly, I'm an arms-lengther. It may not seem so on the surface - I give hugs, I open up, I thrive on deep and candid conversations.

But I found recently that like keeping your distance from that kid in the check-out line with red cheeks, a runny nose and a cough that sounds like it's coming from an 80-year old man, I've operated for a while now on only letting people come so close. I've built some barriers over time and the walls, formed by hurt and unforgiveness and self-protection, have done a fairly good job at not only keeping people out - out of certain secret and sensitive places. But out of the pieces of my journey where, perhaps in this season especially, the people on my journey are needed most.

Because when I'm lost in this newness and feeling around, sometimes furiously, for some sense of my familiar self, I need those who know me to tell me who they see. The person that, over time, they've witnessed, they've walked with, they've been mad at and buoyed up by. The person they're watching me move into. And like Mrs. Dutcher, my third grade teacher, to a younger, continuously-math-challenged me, I need them to sometimes-painstakingly-slowly and more-than-they'd-probably-like-repeatedly help me understand how those seemingly separate selves are being woven together. How who I was and who I'm changing into are forming the fabric of who I am today.

And though at times I fight against it, their perspective, I'm discovering, is profound. It's paramount in my defining and re-defining who I am. In my being okay with who I am. No, more than okay. In my embracing, even celebrating the me the changes are ushering in.

I used to think that who we are could be summed up fairly easily. That to the question of "who is Shelley?", or "who is (your name)", "I am a child of God" would and should suffice - period, that's all, the end. In fact, I've felt guilty at times when, like the air inside a balloon, that answer didn't seem to fully fill my identity.

But I think we're more complex, composed of a myriad of interests and characteristics and passions and roles and gifts and decisions and truths. They all make up our make-up, and many are in flux. Like when a baby is born, a career is changed or a friendship buds or ends. Or like when school winds down, a parent dies or even the times we're tried, helped or in awe in some fresh way. Something of our insides, a piece of who we are, gets tweaked. Sometimes slightly, sometimes powerfully. But we, I'm finding, are in flow. Caught up in a sometimes stretching but beautiful shaping and sharpening of the soul.

So from time to time, with help along the way, I'm learning to ask myself "who is Shelley now?" Take an honest look at the habits, hurts and grudges that need to go. Work on that, on dismantling that wall one sometimes seemingly-immovable brick at a time. But work on embracing who I am, whatever the season, as well. Celebrate it, use it. Then ask the question over and over again. Because in this piece of God's great story, I've found that change is inherently, and purposefully, part of our path.

So thanks to the people on mine - for your perspective, for your patience, for your presence. More and more, may I be changing into someone who offers the same. And at some point, in a rare and sparkling moment of courage and clarity, maybe I'll attempt the "about me".