My 2008 could be summed up in one made-up word: upendedness.  So much of my little world was flipped over or tossed around or scratched out or started again.

I found myself jobless this year.  Sort of.  Outside-the-home jobless.  And it has been and is a breathtakingly wonderful, slowing-me-down gift.

I found myself planning my third trip to a third-world country.  Feeling this itch inside of me to not be constrained by the four walls of my little house in my little town in my little state in my little country.  To see how the other half lives.  (To see how the other 85% lives is a bit more accurate.)  To reach across the miles and the cultures and the languages and the hurt and the need and grab someone’s hand or give someone a hug or look someone in the eye and know that we have more in common than we have different.

I found myself on a mission to stop a disease that I do not have, a disease with no cure, a disease that is killing millions, a disease that I spent the last twenty years acting as if it didn’t exist.

I found myself writing and writing and writing…wanting desperately to get things down on paper, to tell my stories so others will feel liberated to tell their own…so others will know that they are not alone in this big, crazy world.
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Peace, as defined loosely in my mind, has something to do with not feeling all chaotic inside.  Something to do with thoughts coming at you one at a time as God intended.  Your heart beating at a regular pace.  No headaches.  No butterflies.  Breathing in and out slowly.  All being well with my soul and in my little world.

Webster’s third definition, the one that has to do with individuals, is a state of mutual harmony between people or groups, esp. in personal relations.

Oh my.  I’m already tripped up.  Mutual and harmony seem out of place to me in that sentence.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, that would be ideal.  But if I can only partake of peace when I’ve got myself some mutual harmony going on, I may never…none of us may ever…really get peace.

Because when I have needed peace the most, over say, the past fifteen years, it has been in a relationship where there isn’t a lot of mutuality going on and none too few pleasing chords are being struck.

Peace comes, for me, in bits and pieces.  That I have come to realize I actually have to fight for.  Wrestling it to the ground like Jacob wrestled with the angel…until his hip was displaced…until he got his blessing.  That’s how I’ve been fighting for peace lately, with a limp and a new name.

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“Jack, what should I write this month’s column about?”, I yelled to my Wii-playing ten-year-old in the next room. “What do you mean?”, he asked as he walked into my office, oblivious to the fact that I’ve been writing a column for about eight years. “Well, each month, I write something and send it to moms all over the country. So, what should I write about?” “Ummm…Jack’s math,” he said, and walked back out of my office. “I don’t think I can get a whole column out of your love for math, but thanks, bud.” Out of the mouths of babes.

I can say that again. Last week, my eleven-going-on-sixteen-year-old daughter and I were going around and around about something…the laundry she hadn’t folded yet, or the shower she hadn’t taken yet, or the next-day’s lunch she hadn’t made yet, something. Something that I was harping about. Something that she was totally capable of handling on her own. And I stopped myself mid-harp. “You know what…you can take care of this on your own,” I said, holding my hands up in the international sign of I’m letting go, I’m moving off this subject now. “Wait,” she said, “don’t just walk away. Either you’re controlling me or you’re ignoring me. There’s no middle.” O.U.C.H. Maybe that little girl is more like eleven-going-on-therapist.
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The Truth

I used to think that authors and speakers had their acts together.  Must have their acts together to go out and do what they do.  Surely their houses were clean before they left for the morning to come and speak.  After, of course, getting their well-behaved children on the bus and sending their husbands off with a kiss and a packed lunch.

But here’s the truth.  Writers and speakers, at least the ones I know, do not have their acts together.  In fact, there’s a chance we’re slightly more of a mess than you are.  I’m now speaking for myself here, but I figure out my life through writing and share what I come up with, and sometimes just the process without any answers, with you, the reader and event attender.

I sit in a neat house, but not a particularly clean one (according to my husband).
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My ten-year-old son asked me to read him something from the Bible before he went to bed last night.  I asked if he were looking for something with Jesus in it – a miracle, or story, a healing or his resurrection maybe.  He said, “No.  I want a battle”.  The book of Revelation might be a little too mind-blowing for him just yet, so we headed to the Old Testament.  I found a battle scene where King David wins, again, and then it talked about plunder for a few sentences.  I went on to give this impassioned speech, a sermon-ette really, about how plunder works these days, referencing a hard time my husband and I went through about three years ago and two specific, amazing gifts that came out of that time that I was claiming as plunder.  I went on to apply it to his life, as any good preacher would, saying that any kind of hard thing that God calls him to go through – bullies, classes he may struggle with in fifth grade, etc. – that there will always be something good in it for him.

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I am finding myself in the middle of a tricky situation with a person who wants to just move on, when in reality, I know that we need to do the hard work of moving through.  I want to move on, trust me.  I want this thing to no longer be the background music of my day to day life, but it is, and it will continue to be for quite a while.

Moving on would be so much easier.  Less painful.  Less sacrificial on my part.  On both our parts.  Less convicting.  Less controversial.  Less mess.  But I know better.  We need to move through this one.  Actually, I need to move through it even if the other person doesn’t want to.

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I want to tell you about my absolute favorite thing to do in the world.  As in, if I could, I would do this every day all day for the rest of my life.  But it’s a little embarrassing.  I think you’ll think I’m lazy.  And I would rather someone think that I’m just about anything other than lazy.  Well, I used to think that way.  I guess just the fact that I’m writing about it proves one of two things: either I don’t consider this favorite thing of mine to be a lazy practice or…or I really don’t care what people think about me anymore.  I think it might be a bit of both.

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