Ministry

Ministry--in its various forms is a very vulnerable thing.  It is a personal offering of yourself and your talents.

A friend was telling me about how in ministry people are allowed to trample over you and hurt you, and in a way, you cannot have any friends, or love anyone because you are just opened up to pain and hurt. One never knows when the person you are ministering to will turn against you for something. Listening to my friend as she cried over the pain of ministry broke my heart.  And it made me angry.

Why is it that people feel they can bully others around to get what they want.  Or they can be willfully ignorant and no one else could possibly be correct except themselves.  As people give and minister to others (schools, teachers, churches, pastors, etc.) they are offering themselves to serve.  Often that service is crushed by the weight of the meanness of those who are being ministered to.

I had another conversation with someone else who was on a committee in a different state, and the things that were said to tear down the leadership were upsetting to many who attended.

As a teacher, I hate when I see bullying in the classroom.  But at least I can do something about it.  How do I change it in these situations?  I love my world-wide church.  But I do not like what I am seeing show up in the inner-workings of our schools and churches.  It is heartbreaking.

Are there any ideas on how to stop adult bullying in our schools and churches--especially for those in ministry?

I am tired, tired, tired of it.  For myself and others.





**Sorry for the unfinished post the other day.  It didn't save it as a draft like I had meant it to.

Warning: Before You Become a Christian

Matthew and I have been reading through a book my Aunt Shari gave us fro Christmas, have a little faith by Mitch Albom. We read together at night usually and last night there was this part in the story.

“As a general rule, Judaism does not seek converts. In fact, the tradition is to first discourage them, emphasizing the difficulties and suffering the religion has endured.”

I stopped Matthew and commented that I thought it was interesting that they did that. I said how that’s kind of what Jesus did when He would tell people “the Son of Man has no where to lay His head” when people asked if they could follow Him. We only paused for less than a minute but some thoughts had begun to germinate.

Then today I was reading from Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell and he mentioned this, “He [Jesus] is constantly trying to find out who really wants it. And so he keeps pushing and prodding and questioning and putting it out there until some leave and the diehards stay. We never find him chasing after someone, trying to convince them that he really wasn’t that serious, that it was just a figure of speech. He didn’t really mean sell your possessions and give to the poor.”

I have never felt that when I was young and being a Christian was talked about that something challenging but rather it was as if we were being begged to join.

There is something thrilling about Christianity, the call of Jesus, that would say, “Hey, this is amazing, and incredible, but it’s serious too. It’s going to break your heart and mold it stronger. It’s going to shatter your view of yourself, the world, and everything there is, and heal the depths of your soul. The call of Jesus to follow Him is not to be taken lightly, but it’s worth every second.”

That makes my heart beat a little faster and I want to stand with those who ready to follow Jesus, even though it will cost everything--because the risk is worth the reward.

“...we are reclaiming the simple fact that Jesus said the way is narrow...The call of Jesus goes the other direction: It’s about making our lives more difficult. It is going out of our way to be generous and disciplined and loving and free. It is refusing to escape and become numb to and check out of this broken fractured world.

And so we are embracing the high demands of Jesus’ call to be one of his disciples. We are honest about it. We want our friends to know up front that the costs are high, which is what is so appealing about Jesus--his vision for life take everything we have....

This is what we are all dying for--something that demands we step up and become better, more focused people. Something that calls out the greatness that we hope is somewhere inside of us.”

Rag Quilt

A quilt. Something I’ve always wanted to do but after my tablecloth semi-failure, I didn’t think I’d ever try. But then friends on mine on facebook said that they were going to try and make one. So I asked if I could join them, and graciously they said yes!

So they sent me links and I found a website and I went to buy fabric and batting.

First I cut it into 6” squares. This was after trying to figure out how to get the most squares for the amount of material I had by mathematical calculations. (You know, a yard is 36” and 6 x 6 is 36...so...)

Then I cut the batting

...but I miscalculated that and cut too much batting, but that was okay.

Then I put the batting in between the cloth.

And then I put it in a box because I felt that I had no idea how to do whatever came next.

Thankful, I have an awesome friend, Nicole, who does know what she is doing so I went over to her house. She showed me how to x my squares and I was able to finish all my green squares at her house. She also helped save my tablecloth! (Although I still need to finish what she showed me to do, it was at least a start!)

I felt really great about those beautiful green squares and was determined to do the yellow ones on my machine at home.

My sewing machine was my Great-Grandma Curtis’ and probably from the 1940 or 1950s. I am not a seamstress and it just confuses me. However, I had made the tablecloth so I knew sort of how to work it. So I sat down to do it! The thread tension was off. I tried to read the manual. I called my dad and figured out some of the problems (yes, the foot has to be put down to sew). I called my mom and she said to ask for help from someone in the area who could come over. So I did. I seriously thank God for friends. I sent Nicole a message and she said she had time to drop by and help me. So she did. She battled my machine and helped me to understand it.

And so I was off to do they yellow squares!

I was happy to actually, sort of, understand my sewing machine and make it work! I can sew a straight line and in a zig-zag pattern.

Bear-Lee and my finished squares!

Next I put the squares down to figure out how big, and what shape to make it. I did a simple pattern because I didn't want to overwhelm myself with the first quilt.

Then I stacked each row so I could sew the rows.

I started to sew the rows but then I ran out of thread.

After I bought more thread I finished my rows. I wanted to take a picture of them, and saw Mei Mei (one of my basset hounds) shivering near by and decided to let her be decorated with them.

She didn't seem too upset but I wanted to begin piecing them together.

The hardest part was just moving it through the machine once it got longer and bigger. My squares didn't match up perfectly, but I was okay because this was for fun, not stress.

And...tada! The sewing part is done! This is is the front where the rag/frayed part will be.

This is the back/smooth side. Again, the squares are perfectly all the same size and right by each other, but it's close enough!

Then came the clipping. This caused my right hand pain. I didn't have the right scissors so I used what I had and learned that next time I will be buying better scissors. Either way, I finally finished clipping all the pieces.

Since Mei Mei had a picture taken with the quilt, I thought Nani should have a photo with it.

Now it was time to wash it. So (after being told to put it in a pillow case to protect my washer) I washed it.

Then I shook it out to get rid of the little pieces of string and got it all over my fleece pants. It was brilliant, I know, to wear fleece and shake out the quilt...

Finally I dried it and it was finished!! I didn't want Hana to feel left out so I included her in the final product picture.

So here is my first quilt and I am so excited and happy about it that I'm about ready to try another one!

When I'm all grown up...

The day Matthew and I went to the airport to fly away on our honeymoon I felt distinctly that I was running away from home. I felt childlike clutching my travel bag. It was just the two of us and I knew that in a few months it would just be the two of us all the way around the world. I didn’t feel like an adult. I felt like teenager running away.

In Korea, I felt as I did in college. I could be silly and ridiculous because I was a foreginer and since they thought I was strange anyways I might as well be free to have fun. I remember laughing loudly with the other foreign teachers as we walked down the street on a way to a restaurant. The locals looked and eyes and quietly moved passed and there was freedom and youth as we moved on.

Coming back to America felt, unreal. Matthew had a real job. We adopted a cat, bought a house, and then adopted two basset hounds. Life was busy! We painted the house, fixed up little projects, but still I felt a longing for my college friends. Everyone in out new town had children (many of whom Matthew was teaching) and they had their own group of friends and what did I have, that they had, that was in common? I was lonely that first year. Not a child but certainly not an adult. I was “so young” to everyone and I felt young. But when I would visit my college I felt out of place too, it was a weird limbo.

Last year I became the K-2 teacher and I remember when a parent asked me for advice on how to help their child in a particular area I thought to myself, “What? I don’t know! I wasn’t taught that!!” I still didn’t feel like I was an adult. Sure I drove a car, paid bills, and taught children but I felt like a child in my own eyes and other peoples. And when I got those letters...and saw how I was viewed as a professional and teacher...and person I felt even less like an adult as I wept at home.



This year there have been a few times where I have thought, “Wow. I feel like an adult now. And I think I like it.” The times I have thought it is when I am on my way to be with friends or when I am with friends, here in this new town that I think is finally beginning to be a little bit of a home. I don’t know what a real adult is or looks like exactly but I feel like I’ve been accepted into being an adult. I want to step into this..whatever this is, with God’s grace and help.



Most days I feel like me, and I’m not sure who that is yet, but sometimes I feel like I’m an adult now. Sort of.

Running the Wrong Race

I

I heard a sermon at the end of last year that talked about how this woman had been training for a half-marathon and she was ready for the race but somehow the day of she didn’t stop when it was the half but did the whole marathon. At the end of it, she was totally beaten and worn out. She had run the wrong race.

I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to be running the wrong race when that’s not where God wants me to be. Even if God places us somewhere, when do we know when it is time to continue there or to leave? I find that I am eager to rush, as if movement is progress, and I when I am not, I wonder if I am being still or stagnant.

My life is b.u.s.y. And they are not all bad things that it is filled up with. Good things, bad things, indifferent things, and the I-don’t-know-how-to-classify-it things.

Recently I have been reading Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell. I was enjoying the book and then he began a chapter that I was not at all prepared for. I know that if I type word for word people probably won’t read this, so I will summarize.

Rob Bell started a church and a few months into its miraculous beginning and growth he finds himself in between services ready to run away, uncertain if he is even still a Christian.

He realizes that he needs to take step back and talks to a therapist. The first time he goes he is spilling out all his stuff, “I was making lists of all the people I was working to keep happy.” The therapist stops him and says that his problem is sin and that, “Your job is the relentless pursuit of who God has made you to be. And anything else you do is sin and you need to repent of it.”

Rob Bell goes on to say, ”I started identifying how much of my life was about making sure the right people were pleased with me. And as this became more and more clear, I realized how less and less pleased I was with myself. What happens is our lives become so heavily oriented around the expectations of others that we become more and more like them and less and less like ourselves. We become split.”

When I read that I felt as if for a moment the world stopped turning. I was split. So split I wasn’t even sure I recognized where I was split.

Then he goes on to explain how he had this idea of a superpastor--someone who was always there for everyone, gave powerful sermons, always is available to be called, enjoys meetings, puts his family first, etc, etc.

And I have an idea of what a superteacher/Christian/wife/daughter/neighbor/relative/church member should be.

The last part of the section says, “I meet so many people who have superwhatever rattling around in their head. They have this person they are convinced they are supposed to be, and their superwhatever is killing them. They have this image they picked up over the years of how they are supposed to look and act and work and play and talk and it’s like a voice that never stops shouting in their ear.

And the only way to not be killed by it is to shoot first. Yes, that is what I meant to write. You have to kill your superwhatever. And you have to do it right now.

Because your superwhatever will rob you of today and tomorrow and the next day until you take it out back and end its life. Go do it. The book will be here when you get back.”

I haven’t read any more in the book since I finished that section. Because I haven’t done it. I haven’t killed the “superwhatever” because I don’t know how.

And because it isn’t that easy. Some expectations will always be there. Some “have” to be there. I can’t just get up in front of whoever and say, “I can’t do _____ anymore because it’s killing who God intended for me to be.” And that’s another thing, how do I know what God intended for me to be? What if this is the fire and I’m being refined? What if I just need an attitude adjustment? I am tentative to mess up, no petrified, because I’ve already reaped some of those consequences and they were crushing. I feel trapped in this mental cycle where I know that I need to break out but I don’t know how to without destroying what I’ve worked so hard to build.

But, I don’t want to run the wrong race.

I don’t want to be burning out and trapped inside a shell.

And so I cry out to God, for freedom--to live as He intended me to. And vision to see it.

Surprised by Love

There are years you are glad to leave behind.

And yet, as excited as I was about this year I was a bit apprehensive, to say the least. I just wanted to share how God has lifted my heart this week. Each day is its own but God has reminded me this week that He is with me.

At lunch time the students do this thing that I don’t have a name for but it goes like this.

Student A: “Who has applesauce?”
And all the students who do raise their hand or the applesauce.

Student A: “Who has ever almost drowned?”
Again, all the students who do raise their hand and/or add commentary on how they are part of this category.

Well this week they were doing their question/hand raising thing when I heard, “Who loves our teacher?” I couldn’t help but look up and see all the hands raised. What was really touching is that it was a student that I had been having some difficulty with since school started that had asked and initiated the question.

The past two weeks I have been introducing a theory/practice that the conference is letting some school pilot. The program is called the Peace Rug. The rug is a place where students can invited someone they are having habitual problems with and work things out. The students practice not blaming the other person but taking responsibility for their actions and how they will change them. It’s a good was to begin young with conflict/resolution.

I had taught this to my class and at recess two of my students were arguing with two of the students from the other class. I mediated and then after some conversation said they could go play. One of my students asked the two students from Matthew’s class to wait. I saw that student lean over and whisper to the other student from my class, “Do you want to invite them to the Peace Rug?” After a small deliberation they asked the two from Matthew’s room if they wanted to go to the Peace Rug. I briefly told them what it was and the four of them, plus me went to the Peace Rug. They didn’t use the five steps perfectly but it was really amazing to see them use it and have them work out a little solution for their problem.

Sometimes when I am sure they haven’t learned anything I’ve tried to teach them for the last hour God reminds me that I am wrong.

Today I had to take my dog, Nani, to the vet to have her gums reattached to her teeth. She was a rescue dog and had bad teeth and this will prevent respiratory issues. So I took my car to the vet and Matthew went to school. I filled out the paper work and hug Nani and then the lady slipped a collar around Nani’s head and I had to take her collar and leash off. (If you are not a dog/pet person this won’t make sense to you). She looked at me like I was abandoning her. I was leaving her in a strange place with a strange person and I was taking the stuff that proved she was mine. I stood to leave and she just watched and waited and I walked away. If you’ve never seen a Nani look you won’t understand this either. It broke my heart. She is an older dog and older dogs have trouble with anesthesia sometimes. So all this is whirling through my head and by the time I pulled out of the vet’s parking lot I was crying. I prayed outloud, “God please take care of my Nani.” Seconds after that I got a text message from my neighbor, Marilyn. She said, “Did I just see you on 10th Street?” I texted back to explain the situation and she told me she would be praying for Nani.

It was an immediate response from God. I prayed and God told me, “I have you. I am surrounding you with love and prayer for the things that your heart needs.”

Nani didn’t end up having the teeth work done today because of a mix-up at the vet but Marilyn called me the evening to see how I was doing and wanting to know about Nani. I am blessed to have a God who cares about my heart-needs.

Today is Friday and we do something in my class called Sabbath Celebration. We celebrate what God created on each day of the week and part of it is that we say what we are thankful for. Today three of the students said they were thankful for me! This is a record because even though I know they care about me, it’s usually other things that come first to their mind. And what was really, really touching was that it was the three students I had to work with the most these two weeks.

There are many moments I struggle as a teacher, wondering if my students see how much I love them, even if I am correcting them more than I wish I had to. To me, it was God telling me that He is with me each day that I ask Him to be.

The last highlight of my week, and maybe the sweetest one wasn’t even spoken with words. As the students were gathering on our round rug for Sabbath Celebration one little students said, “Miss. Beth-Anne!” I looked over as I came to sit with them and saw this little student put their hand in the sign of “I love you.” They smiled as I smiled and signed back, “I love you.”

Duplicity

I feel like a prism with thousands of facets and each one reflects itself leaving me uncertain.

I love to backpack,
but coming back I always want to shower, dress up, and do something feminine.

An empty, quiet sanctuary is one of the most holy places to me,
but I have been immensely blessed by participating in large group praise music, hands raised in joyous praise.

I value honesty in myself and others,
but I am afraid to unveil my heart. Even if I want to say something personal it takes me a long time to warm up to it and if the moment isn’t right it gets stuck inside of me.

I love the country. The beauty of the dawn and dusk as it relaxes the soul.
But the city calls to me sometimes. Like when I see “New York City 115 miles”.

I want to look fashionable (and slightly envy those who always look put-to-gether),
but often just want to wear jeans and a tee-shirt.

I miss my friends,
but have a hard time picking up the phone.

I want friends,
but wonder if it’s worth all the effort just to find out the friendships aren’t real.

And if I had taken different road I would be...

a ballet dancer
a neonatologist
an astronomer
a social worker
a pastor

or...something I could never imagine

living in the city
living abroad

speaking foreign languages with easy and fluency.


Sometimes I wonder about what I would be if I wasn’t so mixed up and just took one way or the other.

If I was fashionable, living in New York as a ballet dancer.

Or if I was a backpacking social worker living in India working to help the children.

When Matthew and I are driving I look out at the passing scenery and wonder at who I am and where I am and wondering if this is who/where I am supposed to be or if it is somewhere else.