Two World's Collide

Today was just like any other day.  I take myself from the land of the living into the land of the struggling.

I sat in my car arranging and warming myself before taking off for another day of visiting with children, parents, and their safe families.  I paused as I watched a somewhat large SUV pull up in front on my neighbor’s house.   A mother probably about my age hopped out of the vehicle and gently pulled her young son out of the back, carefully holding his hand as they walked over the ice.   Their world seemed so … together and appropriate.  The way it should be. 

This woman could have been me any day.  I love my kids with an unconditional love and I don’t want them to fall on the ice either. 

I finish situating myself and start my drive.  I text the young Mom I’m meeting, because I’ll be late… again. 

I try to play music from my ipod, but in the process I accidently find K-Love.  A song is playing,

“Give me your eyes for just one second.  Give me your eyes so I can see.  Everything that I keep missing, give me your love for humanity.  Give me your arms for the broken hearted.  Those that are far beyond my reach.  Give me your heart for the one’s forgotten, Give me your eyes so I can see.”

It makes me tear up as I’m trying to finish up my mascara before pulling into the young moms drive way. 

But I’m not sure where the tears come from.

Maybe because I know so many of us live in the land of safety and security never realizing the world of struggle happening right down the street.

Or maybe that’s not really it.  Maybe the picture of the mom holding her son’s hand as they walked carefully over the ice sat in stark contrast to the mom I was about to pick up.  She too held her son’s hand as he trudged through the snow.  One mom walks to her friend’s house; warm and full of life, for a play date perhaps.  Another mom walks out of her house that has no heat and puts her two year old in the back of my car with a heavy heart.   We’re going to meet the family that will keep her son for a month while she job hunts and tries to find daycare for her boys.

I ask about her family.  They don’t help her.  They won’t babysit for her boys.  The dad is out of the picture.  She can’t work without daycare or putting her boys in the hands of people she doesn’t trust.

Same ol’ story really.  But it’s a sad one.  Simply put:  she has no one.

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When we sign paperwork for placing children in Safe Families, the biological parent has to choose a person to release their child to in the event that something would happen to them during placement.  A close family member, a parent, an aunt, etc. 

Do you know how many blank looks I get when they come to this part?  They hover the pen above the line.  They look up and scratch their chin.  They put the pen down.  They say, “um, I’m gonna come back to that one.”

They don’t have anyone. 

I tell them they have to choose someone. 

They write down a neighbor.  An estranged relative.

It always breaks my heart.

Sometimes I try and talk myself through it.  I tell myself that maybe it’s their fault they don’t have anyone.  Maybe they’ve made bad choices and pushed people away, and maybe I don’t need to feel bad for them.

My next thought reminds me that maybe I’ve made bad choices and pushed people away.   I was a hard working selfish athlete in High School.  I took diet pills and punched my Mom in the arm one day.  I judged people who didn’t look presentable and stayed away from them.  I sometimes told lies to my parents and made bad choices and pushed people away.

But those people still love me, they still care for me, and they still help me when I need it.  

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There’s a dad who’s placed his kids’ with Safe Families, and I’ve grown particularly fond of him.  He’s changing the trajectory of his life and his kids’ lives, because he doesn’t want them to grow up the way he did.

 “My parent’s really didn’t seem to care about what I did.   If I would have had someone pointing me in the right direction, or telling me that I shouldn’t do certain things, I mean… I would have listened.”

I wondered if this was true but he went on.

“I ran cross country, and I was good.  I loved running and I’d run for miles.  My dad came to one meet.  One.  I was best in the county and he came to one meet.  I was a different person during cross-country season.  But then when it was over, I just went back to being, ya know, greasy or whatever.”

My heart sinks.  This is sad.  I picture him crossing a finish line and no one is there to see it.  I marvel to myself that not one person in his school or life outside took the opportunity to pour into him.  My head nods slightly, and I keep listening.

“Sometimes, even when it wasn’t season, I just used to take off running.  I’d run for miles and miles and miles, and I didn’t even know why.  And then when I’d stop, I’d just start crying.  Because nobody knew and nobody cared.”

In my head, I see a skinny kid in high school running like Forrest Gump.  As incomplete as that moment seems in my head, I think, someone did see him.  I think Someone saw him, and Someone remembered him.

There’s a reason he’s in my car.  There’s also a reason his kids landed in top-notch safe family homes.  The type that were willing to pay for his son’s optometrist appointment out of pocket if they had to.  The type that agree to continue to keep the kids when a 30 day placement becomes 3 months.  The type that picked him up on Christmas Day and made sure he had a chance to give presents to his kids, and they type that go out of their way to take him to church on Sunday.  

 The Almighty God saw him when he thought no one was looking, and now, through people, he’s receiving a selfless love from others that's every bit of divine.

But maybe God is parting the waters for him now because he’s done with his crooked life and because God is laying down a straight path from him to follow.  Maybe God is about redeeming and restoring people after all, and maybe he likes to use people to show His love.  

Maybe the song on K-Love made me tear up because…sometimes I get this odd sensation that I get to see things from a certain vantage point that others don’t, and maybe I’m supposed to share their stories, so we can all get to know each other a little better.  Since we’re neighbors living world’s apart.

These worlds.  They collide and they run straight into mine.  I feel, I should give others the opportunity to see what I see more often.

January 29, 2014

Christmas/New Years Letter 2013

 Welcome to the Johnson Family Christmas/New Years or sometime thereafter year-in-review!!!  Time seems to accelerate with each passing year.  Sigh.  I suppose it can’t be helped.  At least we spent the majority of the last year without a dull moment to record.

January was waaaay more action packed than normal!  First of all, we ended our four months of living with 2 extra kiddos AND we got to go to Vegas!!  Jeremy’s band bleedingkeys got the incredible opportunity to open for North Mississippi All-Stars at the Hard Rock Hotel.  For the night… we all pretended to be rock stars; and I a rock stars' wife. Ha!

Although I had a mini melt down about Vegas because I thought I’d definitely die before visiting that city, I had to admit it was a ton of fun and seeing my man perform so well was icing on the cake!

February was more notable than normal because Jeremy and I ended up taking on one of the toughest decisions yet.  In January (actually IN Vegas) he found out that the job he’s never wanted was being relocated to Denver.  We really didn’t have to scratch our heads too hard about NOT taking this “opportunity”.  So, after almost four slightly miserable years in a cubicle, Jeremy was done working at Arrow Electronics.  Hey, we can’t be too hard on that cubicle, without it songs like Bleedingkeys and Poison Gold would never had come into existence!

Throughout February and into March, we wrestled with what to do, and I blogged here and here as we pondered.  I was fully enjoying the chance to re-write our lives and actually THINK about what we wanted to do next instead of feeling like we had to do something we didn’t want to do.  We were both willing to shift things around so that Jeremy could pursue more avenues with music, but we weren’t sure how we’d be able to replace his income entirely.  Then came an option that God threw in totally unexpected…

Safe Families is the organization we stumbled upon last year when we found ourselves at the end of someone else’s rope.  I had no idea our story would pique the interest of the state’s executive director and I’d be offered a job with this organization—but that’s what happened.  The part-time job offer came on the tails of Jeremy’s lay-off, so we decided to give it a whirl.  This option also allowed Jeremy to continue to focus on music, which is what we both wanted but felt like it was impossible to be to do.  So between part-time work at Safe Families, side jobs, music, the YMCA and my Shaklee biz…. We’ve been able to scrape by. 

Heading up a chapter of Safe Families in Madison County has been exhausting but glorious work that is right up my ally.  Everything from working with the parents, to getting to know the kids, to recruiting the host families is work I’m incredibly passionate about.  God has done INCREDIBLE things in the lives of both parents and kids through this movement and I am continually in awe of God’s careful plan to bring me to this place. 

Along the way I’ve also been busy with a small gymnastics program at our local YMCA.  It’s been such a great fit for me, as I love teaching kids the sport of gymnastics and always have.  The YMCA allows us to bring in more kids at a lower cost and keeps things more laid back and fun.  The only challenge is keeping things in check with my increasingly wise and witty daughter, who has found herself in my class along with two of her best buds.  Addi is still tiny as ever and well fashioned for the sport of gymnastics…however she doesn’t seem to care about it too much! 

 Addi has continued to be our biggest challenge in life.  I’ve listened to two new books this year on strong willed children.   I know these kids are wired to be incredible people, however raising one is a challenge!  Quite frankly I’m not up for it every day of the week and frequently become exhausted of the mental energy it takes to stay on my game with her.  My prayer most days is that I don’t entirely screw her up.

I wrote a post about her on her 8^th birthday this year that really only skims the surface of our life together.  Her mind is always one step ahead of mine, and always has been.  Just a few weeks ago Addi said to me, “Mom?  We aren’t supposed to be sad in heaven right?  We’re only supposed to be happy.”  Me: “Well..yeah”  Her:  “Well if I was in heaven and God came up to me and told me that one of my friends was in hell, wouldn’t I be sad about that?”

I feel like most days we live a version of a Katy Perry song, “Your wrong when it’s right, it’s black and it’s white, we fight we break up, we kiss we make up…”  It’s exhausting and sometimes tear jerking being her mother.  Some days my only goal in life is to NOT become a stumbling block to her being fully known by God.  My only consolation at times is that He’s ultimately the one who created her and gave her to us…and there’s got to be a reason for it all. 

The best story of the year when it comes to Addi has to do with baby skunks, a concerned officer from the correctional facility and a visit from the police.   I scarce have room to tell the tale, but I must.  The kids found genuine baby skunks in our backyard one afternoon, and my husband with his Oregonian upbringing wasted no time in handling them after they landed in the neighbors’ raccoon trap.  We thought them to be abandoned babies in need of care.  The neighbor rushed out for baby kitten bottles and milk and we spent the afternoon feeding and cuddling 2 baby skunks.

Addi could hardly bare to part with them and I had to all but pry her out of the neighbors house at the end of the day.  We had found a friend who was picking them up the next day and taking them to an animal rescue location.  Addi of course wanted to visit with them again before they left, and I promised we would.  The next day I woke up at 7:15am to a knock at my front door.  I opened it to find a correctional facility officer and my daughter in her nightgown…looking a little guilty I might add. 

Confused, I began to ask what had happened.

Turns out Addi woke up at 7:00 am and wanted to visit with the skunks again.  She thought she’d just walk on over to the neighbors, go in her back door (since it was so early and all) and just check on the baby skunks.  The back door—of course—was locked.  Addi thought that perhaps the house key for her Grandma’s house would open the door to our neighbors house.  So she took off down the street to Grandma’s house. 

Seeing a young girl running down the sidewalk barefoot in her nightgown at around 7:00 am looked a little funny to the correctional facility officer headed to work.  She stopped and asked if she was lost.  Addi of course said she wasn’t, but complied when she was prompted to be taken home.

Enter the knock on the door at 7:15.  Maybe my breath was worse than I thought because the officer that brought her home made a police report despite the fact that I actually thanked her for helping to teach my determined daughter that she can’t go wherever she wants whenever she wants.  Regardless, 20 minutes later I got another visit from the police to check on our well being.  I chuckled when I told them my position with Safe Families… they thought it was a little comical in the end too.   All in all I was glad Addi got to experience some real life consquences!

One of the most tragic things that happened this year was the loss of Addi’s sweet guinea pig Ferdie in late September.  The thought of this day still brings tears to my eyes.  Ferdie was definitely as close to Addi’s heart as any child to her parent, and the day we came home to find him suddenly expired was heartbreaking.  We all sat together and cried until we could cry no more, then we buried him in the back yard and wrote notes of our favorite memories.  Addi handled the stress of losing him fairly well, and found comfort in telling the story of his last day to those who knew him best.  She sent text messages and emails from my phone to family and friends.  To her art teacher she composed an email (from me of course) that simply stated, “Ferdie died.”  Her teacher was kind hearted enough to fully understand this, and made her a card sharing her condolences. 

Sam turned 6 this year and besides defending himself against the onslaught of verbal attacks from his sister, he has thoroughly enjoyed his 2^nd year of Kindergarten and become quite the sports star.   He routinely finds any reason he can to race himself and never tires of the “let’s-see-how-long-it-takes-you-to-go-get-your-jammies-on” routine.   In fact one day I realized Sam was opening the refrigerator door and running away.  I asked Addi what was up: “Oh, he’s trying to see if he can open the fridge, run in the living room, flip on the couch and come back before it closes.”

This year Jeremy and I finally put him in organized sports since his energy level has always hovered right at 9 out of 10.  He tried his hand at baseball in the Spring, soccer in the Fall and wrestling in the Winter.  He's proven to be pretty decent at all three sports, but seems to love wrestling the best.  It helps that he’s been practicing his craft since age 3 with his older cousin Blaine on the trampoline.  It’s incredible to see how boys’ tend to show their affection by kicking the crap out of each other.

We had a close call with our dear dog Tok this year too.  Tok has been with us for almost a decade now!!  It seems like just yesterday we bought him as a pup in Alaska and smuggled him into our “no pets allowed” apartment.  Much to no one’s surprise, Tok was hit by a car last spring.  Somehow he pulled off some kind of tuck-n-roll and managed to limp himself home where he laid down and didn’t get up again until we took him to the vet the next day. 

We feared internal injuries, but found that he acted much better for the vet who was handing out treats, and after limping around in her office, he was given pain meds and sent home.  Tok wasted no time in picking up right where he left off with chasing squirrels and annoying the neighbors.

Tok’s close call was hard on Sam.  He’s more of a feeler than his rational-minded sister.  Sam cried for hours over Tok the night of his accident.  In an effort to console him, Jeremy shared a story about his childhood pet that went missing one night and was found drown in a pond the next day.  I’m not quite sure how this was supposed to make him feel better, but nevertheless, Jeremy was identifying with his pain.  After Tok made a recovery, Sam was more bothered by the story about Jeremy’s childhood pet than Tok’s accident.

About a month later, I heard Sam sniffling in the back seat of the car.  He said (as he had many times before) “I just keep thinking about how Dad’s dog died!  It’s soooooo sad!!!”  Addi of course shot back quickly, “Sam… if Dad’s dog didn’t die then, he’d be dead now.  So either way, he’s dead!”

The highlight of our year was of course our drive and month long trip to Oregon.  Jeremy’s sister got married in June, so we decided to drive out for the wedding and stay for a while!  Jeremy was able to pick up work from his brother-in-law so we managed to have enough cash to fix our car and get ourselves back home again.  Spending almost 4 weeks in Oregon was fantastic, especially since Jeremy’s parents threw in a trip to Disneyland for all the grandkids.

These days both Jeremy and I feel like we are working in the areas of our God given gifts and talents.  As rewarding as this is… it is a constant struggle.  Not taking a career-type job as a 33 year old man definitely raises some eyebrows.  We have gone over our decision again and again…and again.  It still feels right.  So we’re gonna keep doing it.   Besides Vegas, bleedingkeys has had the opportunity to play sidestage at Maroon 5, and for a room full of cheering Klipsh employees upon occasion. 

Every now and then our vocations have overlapped (music + Safe Families) and become something beautiful.  Tying in our life with Jeremy's music and this organization is something that could only be orchestrated by the hand of God.  We have had a few opportunities to present in front of a church, or at a small group setting.  God has opened major doors in one way or another each time and we look forward to more opportunities to share our lives through stories and song.   

Keep following the blog for more updates as we press on and see what God has in store for the Johnson Family Adventure 2014!

Following the Eternal

At the end of the 2013, it seems appropriate to recount our Adventure, although I struggle to define exactly where we are.

The journey started last January when Jeremy lost his job and I encouraged him not to take another but to leave space for playing more music.  At the same time I was offered a part-time job from God.  We took the job from God (and the unemployment) and have been pursuing that which gives us life over that which gives us money ever since. 

I call it The Johnson Family Adventure… but I could rename it the Johnson Family in Wonderland.  More times than not I find myself catching glimpses of incredible things… beautiful, life-giving moments… and I think it all means something.  I chase the white rabbit for a spell before it inevitably evades me, and I go back to wondering around waiting for the next moment to come along. 

Despite the life-giving moments, there have been moments of struggle that have been so intense they have nearly derailed us entirely.  Doing what you love is great but barely scraping by wares on you.  Multiple times we have chided ourselves for not praying through our struggles and not trusting God enough.   We have fought hard to refuse the thinking that God is as boring and status quo as the rest of the world.  It's tempting to think that He too wants us to conform and spend our lives stuck in a lifeless routine for a meaningless paycheck that represents the promise of safety and security...but I know better.

The majority of the decisions I have made in my life have had nothing to do with a paycheck, but more with purpose in mind.  On the outside it looks like I could have made a few senseless choices here and there…traveling to Seattle for college at a private school (we’ll be making minimum payments on my loans for the next 20 years)…choosing to say yes to a business venture in Alaska (at least we broke even on this one!)…choosing to become a mom before I even graduated from college (thus we’ve always lived on a single income)…and here I am again, encouraging my husband to invest in his musical talents and to not worry about getting a full-time job at the moment. 

Though we have always struggled to get our heads above water and be able to provide for more than just the bare minimum, we have found such adventure in our lives.  Managing the only gas station in a largely red-neck town in Alaska is chock-full of stories.  Choosing to have children in the midst of this business venture was an interesting choice and one that I later had to admit was bad timing.  God turned this business venture into a catalyst that would wreck us as people and threaten to end our marriage.  Our four years in Alaska were like a pressure cooker where all of our impurities were painfully brought to the surface.  God didn’t hide our eyes from them and in fact seemed to force us to look at them.  It’s so much easier to see the flaws in your spouse than it is to see the flaws in yourself.  God can be quite relentless in his desire to refine his children.  After four years and two kids in Alaska, we entered what I call our “recovery mode” in Indiana.  For over 2 years God whittled away at our souls by means of an incredible church with counseling and programs.  We were both being torn apart as people and it was such a painful process…but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.  God used every shred of our pain and discomfort to change us at the core.  He was absolutely relentless with us… and the ends certainly justified the means. 

Out of that phase came music…songs that still make me flinch when I hear them, like Growing Old at Home because they are so laced with the emotions of that time.   Jeremy began writing Loves Like Holding Guns and The Only Cure, and then left them undone for months.  He was literally painting the picture of our current life, and there was no conclusion for a while.  I was just hoping the songs wouldn’t end proclaiming our ultimate defeat. 

I learned through our struggles and personal train wreck that God is so much more out-of-the-box that I ever thought.  There is much more grace and freedom within Him than rules and expectations.  I realized that it was me who was the one always putting expectations on others and myself… God didn’t ask me to act fake on the outside while I was dying on the inside.  I was the one who put myself up to that insurmountable task. 

The past year as we have explored the “The Johnson Family Adventure” it’s been a challenge to embrace the plow we have put our hand to.  It looks kind of unstable from the outside…me working between 20 and 40 hours a week for a non-profit, my homebased business and the YMCA, and Jeremy making ends meet though side jobs and music. 

As unstable as it may seem, there’s a large amount of ripe fruit that ebb and flow in between Safe Families and music.  Some days I play the roles of social worker by day, groupie by night.   There is nothing like being unraveled by the complexities others face in their daily life.   I am always recognizing the fact that we as people have all been dealt a bad hand in life in one way or another, and that God…regardless of where we have been and what we might be facing, always gives us a path out of our mess if we want it.  I love that Jeremy’s music reflects our own struggles with life and sends a message that matters.  I am one that feels rich when I get to live these moments that hold something eternal in them.  

My hope is that we will continue to catch a glimpse of our white rabbit and find moments where life fully exists and eternal matters are at hand….and that we might allow ourselves to be fully seen and refined by the One who knows us better than ourselves…and that we might have the courage to follow the Eternal, wherever it may find us.  

May the Adventure continue in 2014!

The Boy That Changed Our Lives

Posted by: wearehome in We Are Madison County: Community & Family June 13, 2013 0 371 Views

Has your heart ever been torn to shreds after reading a tragic news story about a child who suffered because there weren’t enough people who cared? Have you ever wished there was something you could do about it?

Here at We Are Madison County, we’re all about stories. I’m going to tell you a story about how a tragic story broke our hearts in such a way that it would change our actions.

Quite a few years back, when my husband still had a desk job, he managed to pass the hours by keeping up on current news stories. My husband has a bit of a bleeding heart, and many times he would come home and share a particularly difficult story that would cause us both to lower our eyes in despair because there was simply nothing to say. There was one story in particular about a boy named Robert that left a mark on both of our hearts.

The story was tragic. Robert, 7, had been court mandated to have visitation with his mother, although his father had fought hard for full custody. On one of his mandatory weekend visits, he was so severely beaten by his mother’s boyfriend that Robert died. My husband read about his kind disposition and how he was known to be a sweet child who always gave his teachers lots of hugs. His little face even reminded him of our own son.

This story broke my husband in a way I hadn’t seen before; it was the icing on the cake for him. We had struggled through quite a few other tragedies in our life, but for some reason this little boy did him in. I could see the depression sink in as he struggled to reconcile the tragic reality of our world with his faith.

This little boy left a spot on our souls. His story left us with the feeling that living this life for the pursuit of the almighty dollar or even for just ourselves wasn’t enough. Something in us changed.

A few years passed by. Last summer I offered to let my neighbor’s daughter come over to hang with us while her dad worked. She liked our house so I let my neighbor know she was always welcome. Eventually the little girl started coming over with her cousin. I could tell things weren’t very stable with the little girl’s cousin and she would say things like, “I think my house is a hotel…” I didn’t ask many questions, but let my neighbor know the girls were welcome anytime for as long as they needed to stay.

The girls would spend the night and even stay for 2 or 3 days at a time. My husband—remarkably—was ok with this. He was patient with these girls, loving and kind. We happened to be in the middle of a huge bathroom tear-out and when the cousin became curious, following him around the house as he worked hard on completing our bathroom project, I was blown away by his patience and willingness to even allow her to help him. He didn’t know what her life was like at home, why she was living in a hotel, or if she had a daddy or not. But he showed kindness to the young strangers in our home that summer.

Little did we know that allowing a few neighbor girls to spend time with us was laying the foundation for something bigger to happen. We were being prepared for the moment when the mother of our neighbor’s cousin would call us because she was at the end of her rope and thought perhaps we could be of some help. We were being prepared for becoming a Safe Family so that we could provide a temporary home for the little girl (and her younger brother), who had been living in a hotel while their mother worked hard to get back on her feet. It was our opportunity to act, to do something about all those tragic news stories.

Right now, in Madison County, there are kids who are on the brink of abuse and neglect because their parents are in crisis. Maybe their parents can’t find work. Maybe they were evicted. Maybe there is no one they can depend on.

Safe Families for Children helps families that are in crisis. This incredibly unique program actually allows the parents to voluntarily place their children in the home of a “safe family” while they work to get back on their feet without falling into the hands of the system.

Here in Madison County we have a handful of incredible host families. They are some of the most gracious and kind people I have ever met… and we need more. Many of our placements are short term but life changing. Additionally, we will receive funding from the Department of Child Services for each family processed in June. If there has been a knock on the door of you heart, please consider stepping up to assist a child in need.

You never know how your life might be changed when we choose to open our hearts and our homes to a child who is in need.

For more information go to INsafefamilies.org or email Emma at ejohnson@safe-families.org

A Day in the Life at Safe Families...

It always seems as though my entries are a long time coming.

I procrastinate intentionally.

I usually know what I want to say.  I just don't know how I'm going to say it.

I have taken a new job.  It's not really a job though, I don't look at it that way.

Miracles happen here, miracles of self discovery and new found love.  So it's hard to define it as just a job.

Calls are made, emails and text messages are sent, voicemails are left.  It all seems so... jobby.  But it's not.  At the end of those emails and text messages are meetings that look like every day events.  One mom meets another in a parking lot.  One takes a child out of the car and hands him off to the next.  They talk about diapers and nap times and such.  It all seems so normal.  But really it's a miracle that these two mothers are joining forces to take care of another mothers child.  A mother who desperately loves her child but whose mind is not well.  A mother who desperately needed a break and had no one to turn to.

Her child is given rest, another pair of arms to love him, until his own mother's are ready for him.

Another woman is homeless.  There are such severe connotations with that word: homeless.  All it means is she had a squabble with her roommate.  One has to leave and it is her.  But she has no where else to go.  No where that she and her kids can live.  So she calls Safe Families.  She requests a placement and says good bye to her children until she finds a home.

Some people have major issues with helping "these" people.  The type that need help.  Their stories are always messy.  They make babies with men who don't stick around.  They buy too much pop with their food stamps or brand names for their children although they have no roof to stand under.

They are easy to judge.  They are easy to separate ourselves from because they look nothing like us.  We would never feed that to our kids or neglect our bills for brand names.  We can't understand being homeless.  We would call a sibling, or a parent, or a friend.  Because we don't understand it, we judge and we separate ourselves from them.

It's much easier.

Judging these people makes my job more like a real job.  It allows me to close a case at the end of the day and go home.  It allows me keep myself separate, declaring the splinter in their eye before acknowledging the log in my own.

But maybe there is something else to see.

Maybe we aren't so different after all.

Sure I pay close attention to what I feed my children, and I pay my bills on time and do most of my shopping at garage sales.

But could I truly stand blameless before these people and legitimately shake my finger at them?  If someone was looking over my shoulder the same way I'm looking over theirs... what would be found?  Would my file be squeaking clean?  Or would I find a few smudges?  Would I find some wasted dollars here and there?... or some bad decisions made during my younger years?  Would I really be spotless and justified to point that finger?

Many times we are put into the position of being that all-seeing eye in someone's life.  We see all that they do, we look at it carefully, and judge it according to our own standard.  But don't we have an all-seeing eye peering into our own life?  Does not the God of the heavens and earth see each and every one of us?  If we were to stop and consider this...what might be seen?

I'm speaking from experience here.  I came out of High School and went into College making harsh judgments about other people's lives compared to my own.  At one point during my Freshman year I believe, I remember seeing a girl whose right side of her face had become completely paralyzed because of stress.  I remember looking at her while she tried to talk to me with only half of her mouth and thinking, "Really?  What could be so stressful about college that her face would become paralyzed?  I have to take full-time classes AND a 4 hour gymnastics practice every day.  Give me a break."

My next mission was to apply the same shallow view to my brand new marriage.  I judged and weighed Jeremy's actions against my own often enough to drive him away from me.  Our suffering started off almost immediately and it took 5 years of hacking it out until I finally began to submit myself to the idea that perhaps my slate wasn't so clean after all.  Maybe, just maybe I had a few smudges on my own record too.  I soon felt the sting of acknowledging my own guilty conscience.  I knew I hadn't been squeaky clean, although Jeremy was aware of that far before I was.

I'm thankful that God was kind toward me when I finally came around and saw my own shortcomings. He didn't shame me or say, "I told you so."  I felt like a fool and he would tell me that it's ok.  God's love began to feel real to me in these places.

I began the long process of removing the log from my our own eye, and I can see a little better now.  I can see these people who need help and resist judgement.  In their own world, yes, they have made mistakes... but so have I.

Jesus comes as the great Equalizer, placing us all under his feet.  I might be looking into their life, but I know I have someone looking into mine as well.

And besides.... if we listen closely to these people from another world, we might be blown away.  We might find that they are prophets and truth seekers.

One woman tells me about her son named from the Bible because she asked God to give her a name for her son and he did.  She goes onto explain that his middle name comes from an older cousin who acted as an angel in her life, taking her in under his wing and protecting her from the abuse happening in her home as a young girl.

Another woman sits in my kitchen.  She tells me about the drama at work, and how people are becoming more and more heartless and crazy these days.  At the end of it all she decides the whole world just needs Jesus and that's about it.

The true hands and feet of Jesus in this whole Safe Families gig are our host families.  Have you ever tried loving a child that is not your own?  It can be difficult.  Taking in a child that is not your own with no financial reimburesment is not easy.  You may be wiping a bottom that doesn't even belong to you, wondering what in the world his mom is doing.

It is very difficult to love others with the same love we have been given...with no strings attached.

This is where the rubber meets the road, where we get to put our faith into action, extending the grace and love we have been given to another who may not even understand it.

But just as they may not understand our love and our sacrifice, we who claim the Name are still called to it.  Think of the sacrifice that Jesus made and how many of us walk the earth this very day not understanding it.

This isn't a job.  This is loving others as I have been loved.  This is measuring others with the same measure used against myself.

It isn't easy.  But it's our call from above.  Working for Safe Families, or volunteering to open up your home, or loving someone so different from yourself...it's living out the thickest part of the New Testament.  It's reaching a clean hand into another's messy life and trusting the God who sees all of us to create a straight path out of the mud and the mire.

Maybe in the end we will all be changed.

"Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did." 1 John 2:6

Ode to Addi Grace

I always knew one day I would write about her.  It's just that I have blocked out so much.  The majority  of our relationship has been comprised of constant turmoil with brief periods of unexpected grace.

She is my daughter.  Addison Grace, whom today turned 8 years old.  The dimple on her over sized cheek when she grins her incredible grin is a total misnomer.  Her middle name is yet to describe her disposition.  She is tiny for her age and seems harmless, but she is small and mighty.  Very small and very mighty.

Her birth rocked my world.  I remembering seeing other mothers with their babies who seamlessly transitioned into motherhood without a glitch.  Mine was full of glitches.  She screamed at me for everything and during her first year she would only fall asleep at night because she had exhausted herself from all the crying.

I look back at our first 3 years together and feel dizzy with memories of tantrums, door slamming and baby profanity (as I call it).  I'll never forget when the lightbulb went on in my head when she was about 3 1/2, and I realized that I was dealing with a strong willed child.  So strong, in fact, that at different points in her first 3 years of life, my mother-in-law would call her temper "the worst she's ever seen," and my own mother would throw her hands up in the air and say, "I don't know Emma, your on your own!!"

I had been so sure that her temper had been just a "phase" and that loving her the right way would melt her determined will and kindly call her into submission to her all-knowing, all-wise mother.  This was not to be, I would have to learn another way.

When she was two she got a baby brother that she was mostly happy about, but not entirely.

When she was only three she declared that she couldn't wait to "move out" where there are "no mean mommy's and mean daddy's and she could live by herself."  This fierce independence was no joke.  During the year of three, Addi, Sam and I all flew to Oregon by ourselves.  I had to change Sam's diaper and I required that Addi come with us to the bathroom.  She begged to stay in her seat.  I considered it for a moment, not really wanting to cram 3 of us into the airplane's bathroom, but decided she'd better come with me.  She looked at me, read my mind like she always does and said, "Mommy, I promise, if anyone tries to take me... I'll kill them!"  These were her exact words.

When she was four she started trying to be smarter than me: "Addi it's time for a bath."  "No it's not.  It's time to play with play dough.  Simon didn't say to take a bath.  I'm Simon and Simon says to play with play dough."

When she was five she declared she knew who she wanted to marry.  I said "that's great!  We'll just have to wait and see what God has in store for you two!"  She said, "What?  I don't care what God thinks, I'm marrying Jaxen when I'm 18!"

When she was six she lost her first tooth, grew her hair to her rear end, started calling her Grandma by her first name (Pam), and tried to dress her guinea pig up like a rat for Halloween.  At this age she actually did become smarter than me every now and then.  Once I gave her a Rubik's cube to try and figure out while in the back seat of the car.  After about 5 minutes she said, "Mom I got one side completely matched!"  I was surprised, but assumed it was possible.  Five more minutes passed and she exclaimed, "Mom I got another side all matched!"  Now I was really surprised, and praised her for figuring it out!  I told her to tell her dad as soon as we got home.  When she did, I asked, "What did Dad say about the Rubik's cube?"  She looked down and said, "Oh, he figured it out....I just switched the stickers around...."

When she was seven she started drinking her beverages out of a martini glass.... and she still called her Grandma by her first name.  She also started showing signs of such bravery, never shedding a tear when taking a hard fall off her bike, and responding to emergency situations with a calm, cool and collected head.  Like when Tok got a bone lodged vertically in his mouth, forcing it in the open position (it was this way for at least an hour before I noticed...)  Addi calmly held his jaw and we forced it out, while Sam ran through the house wailing.


Her guinea pig is her saving grace.  She's had him since she was 6; she adores this thing, treats it like her own baby and she his mama.  When she cries she runs to him and he (no lie) licks the tears off her face.  He crawled into my lap the other day while she and I were sitting side by side.  Addi seeing him says, "Ferdie doesn't like you.  He told me.  He doesn't like his Grandma."

Sometimes I respond to her in ways she can understand, like in terms of guinea pigs.  I say to her, "Addi, what if you got a grumpy guinea pig?  What if he ran from you every time you tried to hold him?  What if he growled in your face when you tried to kiss his cheek?"

She gets it.  Totally gets it, and yells, "I"M NOT A GRUMPY GUINEA PIG!!!!"

In the past eight years, this girl has made me question myself, made me cry when I find myself at my wits end acting in ways I never imagined, and even has made me want to give up on being her mom (for at least a day!)  She challenges me practically every day we are together, constantly calling my methods into question and refusing to comply to my ways... but at the end of the day, she forces me into self reflection in a way a compliant child would not.  She's an incredible force to be reckoned with, but in the end she has probably made me a better parent because of it all.  It helps that she has an awesome Dad who is more patient with her than me.  She has always adored her Daddy, and he has always made a better effort than me at seeing life from her perspective.

She is something else, God gave her to us and I love her dearly.  Happy 8th Birthday to my incredible daughter, Addi Grace.