accentuate the positive

In perusing Facebook and blogs, parents seem to fall into one of two camps when speaking about their children:  glowing, beaming, can-do-no-wrong assessments of their kids or negative, disappointed, what's-wrong-with-my-offspring lamentations.  Of course we know that no child is all bad or all good.  Some are more exhausting and challenging than others.  And so much of it has simply to do with the parent's perspective! 

For instance, if you struggled with infertility, finally got pregnant after years, had a scary pregnancy full of issues and specialists, and then finally had a baby who cried all the time and turned into a rambunctious toddler - you would probably still just be thanking God Almighty that you had the chance to bring this crazy person into the world.  It's all about your context and the life experience you bring to the table.

I have made no secret that I kind of fall into both camps.  Naturally, I think my child is special and unique and brilliant.  But she is also stubborn, can become fixated, frequently does naughty things just for attention, and already tries to boss me around.



She's starting her own small business and needed to make some contacts.

Here is a mental game I play with myself when I seem to be having an extra-challenging day on the toddler front.  It really hearkens back to a special kind of interpersonal management training that I received in working at a camp as a college student.  (Old-school MTOPpers, you will feel me on this!)  It's called the Strengths Deployment Inventory, or SDI.  It's a bit complicated, but the premise is this:  any strength can become overdone, in which case we call it a weakness.  For example, persistence can easily bleed into stubbornness.  Being direct can become domineering in a heartbeat.  And so on and so forth.

With Vicki, I do a special version of this schema where I think, How will this overdone strength benefit her as an adult?

For example:  she is unbearably persistent.  "No" does not mean "no" in her world.  "No" just means keep asking or trying until you can do what you want.  Someday, if I don't "break" her of this habit, she will be able to bore through any brick wall put in front of her relationally or professionally.

Thought her choice of a mule was so apropos! 
She is stubborn as one.

Regardless of whether I act warmly or icily toward her, because of the various happenings of the day, she consistently seeks out relationship.  She wants to be near me.  She wants to sit on my lap.  She wants to sit on my lap while I'm on the toilet.  You get the point.  Someday, she will seek intimacy and relationship with people over and over again, even when people reject her because of their own insecurities or issues (as I sometimes do).  That is beautiful to me. 

Isn't this fun??  It just makes me want to have a kaleidoscope I can peer into and see the future - just a glimpse.  When you have a "special" day with your toddler, try it out! 

How do you re-frame your expectations of toddler behavior?  How do you refocus when the day isn't going how you'd like?

the time jeff proposed on christmas day

By the time my now-husband proposed to me, I was pretty sure I knew when it was going to happen.  I had given him my mother's wedding band (resized for my chubby fingers because hers were so slender), we had discussed when and where we might like to be married, and I felt confident that I would know when it was coming.  And yet, he still managed to surprise me!

On Christmas morning of 2007, we showed up at his maternal grandparents' home in Tullahoma, Tennessee. My mother-in-law's family is large and rambunctious, and Christmas celebrations there are of the everyone-tear-open-your-packages-at-the-same-time-and-throw-the-paper-everywhere variety (he thought we were crazy when he did Christmas with my family one year.  We sort the presents and open them one at a time, rotating based on age from youngest to oldest.  My mother also used to make us carefully open the wrapping paper without tearing so we could reuse it).

Aunt Carol, my mother-in-law's older sister, also had a tradition of providing anyone who desired an alcoholic drink disguised in a coffee cup.  (Jeff's Pawpaw, an old-time retired United Methodist minister, did not like drinking in the home.)  Usually it was just a little Bailey's mixed in with the morning coffee, so I accepted graciously when she offered.

Upon taking the first sip, I discovered that she had left the coffee out that morning.  It was pure Bailey's Irish Creme - at least eight or ten ounces.  I was so busy with my drink that I neglected to eat any breakfast.  We opened presents, laughed and talked, and everyone seemed to - for once - be getting along fabulously. 

However, I was starting to feel a little ill.  Too much Bailey's, too little food, and I knew we had a couple hours' drive ahead of us.  I asked Jeff if we could leave, and he acquiesced.  I noticed he looked a little nervous, but I didn't think much of it.  I climbed in the passenger seat, closed my eyes, and drifted into a light slumber.  When I opened them about thirty minutes later, I realized we were not on the interstate.  Rather, we were headed in the opposite direction.  We were going away from Nashville and toward the rolling foothills of the Cumberland Mountains.  I began to ask him where we were going (for a split second I actually thought he had forgotten the way back to Nashville!), but then I thought better of it and shut my mouth.

I was feeling quite carsick at this point.  Anyone who has driven Highway 108 up the mountain knows that it gets pretty twisty.  I get motion sickness easily anyway, plus the overindulgence, and I was toast.  But I knew exactly where we were headed.  When we turned left at the intersection of Highways 108 and 56, I knew we were in the homestretch of the haul toward the Beersheba Springs Assembly.  The Assembly is an old Civil War-era hotel that served as a hot springs and sanitorium.  It is now the main campground of the Tennessee Conference of the United Methodist Church.  Jeff and I had been to the Assembly countless times for retreats, camp weeks, parties, meals, and more.  The view from the main verandah is breathtaking:

We got out of the truck and walked to the overlook.  Jeff kneeled and asked if I would join him in marriage.  I laughed and cried and mostly just said yes. 

We realized we needed a picture of the moment, but no one was around!  Suddenly, a local police officer rolled up.  I think he was going to tell us that the property was closed and that we needed to exit.  However, we quickly told him our happy news and he celebrated with us, volunteering to take the photo:

And the rest, as they say, is history.  Pawpaw is gone now, and we have added two more babies to the family.  Aunt Carol still provides her "coffee" on Christmas morning, but now I make sure to eat breakfast too. 

sister shubert's

Mountain Tennessee Outreach Project, where I spent so many happy and exhausted hours, has a special Friday night worship service each camp week.  It's an emotional and spiritual high.  We celebrate communion together and look back over a week that brought a bunch of strangers together and saw them become friends.

One of the duties of the staff is to procure communion elements sometime on Thursday or Friday of a camp week.  Typically, King's Hawaiian or something from the Dutch Maid constitutes the bread.  One particular Friday night, about five years ago, I was working as a Summer Intern, which meant I was kind of like an extension of the full-time staff and worked to help supervise the summer staff who were really running the camps.  My job on Friday night was to kind of lurk in the background and try to be helpful in whatever way. 

This staff had done a great job and had everything ready for Friday night worship and communion.  The worship space was dazzling, the music was cued and ready, the worship packets were neatly set out on the benches with a small rock placed on top of each one in case a breeze should come up.  They even had the forethought to place the communion elements out on the altar, covered neatly with a cloth.

We ate supper together: poppy seed chicken, green beans, and rolls.  The rolls are one of the most beloved items on the oft-adored Mountain TOP weekly menu.  Most folks think they are homemade.  No sir.  They are Sister Shubert's. 

Of course, once the kitchen staff takes them out of the freezer and gets ready for supper, they daub them twice with a liberal brush of melted butter.  That's what makes the out of this world.  So much butter.  Yum.

So anyway, we ate supper together and then moved into some times of group sharing before we came together for worship.  As the sun was setting, the cicadas began that rhythmic strummimg of their wings, and the atmosphere was perfect.  I breathed it all in.  Then I saw the Program Manager running toward me out of the corner of my eye.  She was frantic. 

"The bread!  Something came and got it!" 

I followed her down to the worship center and saw what she meant.  A small animal - I'm guessing a raccoon? - had jumped up on the altar, dragged the bread down onto the ground, and proceeded to gnaw some bites off before being scared away.  The bread was a total loss.  What to do?!  The nearest grocery store was thirty minutes roundtrip.  We had no backup loaf.  I ran to the kitchen to see what we did have.

Since it was the end of the week, we had no sandwich bread or loaves.  What did we have?  Leftover Sister Shubert's.  We couldn't just take a basket of dinner rolls out there, though.  We had to disguise them.  So we tore them up into bite-sized pieces.  A conundrum, though:  the pastor needs a full, unbroken loaf while celebrating communion.  All we had to offer was an unbroken dinner roll.

As I sat in the back at that worship service, I quietly snickered when the pastor raised a tiny dinner roll above his head, blessed it and broke it.  It was truly comical.  No one else seemed to notice anything awry.  Communion and worship went fine, and I was helping clean up afterward when I looked into the cup.  There was a thick grease slick resting on top of the grape juice.  It had to have been from all that butter.  I felt so bad for whoever was last in line at communion.  I'm sure they essentially dipped their roll bit in butter, put it in their mouth in the darkness, and wondered what the hell kind of rotten grape juice we had purchased!  I don't think Jesus lived long enough to develop arterial placque or elevated triglycerides. 

now jeff at the bar is a friend of mine . . .

He gets me my drinks for free.  I thought it was time you learned a little bit about the bartender in this pastor and bartender pair.  When Jeff and I first met in 2003 (can it have been eight years ago?), I was drawn to the same things that still attract me to him.  He is warm, friendly, and gregarious.  He has a knack for making each person he talks to feel special.  He makes new best friends everywhere he goes, including an Australian guy on a plane ride and many citizens of the town of Salisbury on our honeymoon.

In short, he possesses many of the gifts that God didn't give me.  I'm that person next to you on the plane with her ipod on, a book open, and a look that says "please don't converse with me."  I detest small talk - a special punishment for a pastor who is required to do it constantly.  While our opposites-attract arrangement produces harmony and balance for the most part, it does also create some sticky situations.

Jeff and I met while we were working for the summer at the Mountain Tennessee Outreach Project.  It's a rural, not-for-profit Christian agency, affiliated with the Tennessee Conference of the United Methodist Church, in the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee.  It is dedicated to social service programming through a philosophy of partnership in a faith-in-action classroom.  (Any old-school staffers feel me on still having the Statement of Values memorized!?  I think I hit all seven points.)  This is a place that would be incredibly special and meaningful for both of us as we continued to work here, on and off, for the next five years.  We were even married down the road at the Beersheba Springs Assembly by the Executive Director of the organization!

Jeff is a risk-taker, and he trusts people easily.  He is optimistic to a fault.  He loves to make people happy.  For all of these reasons, he loves his job, but his dream is to open his own restaurant.  This proposal presents a number of issues for me:  I'm financially conservative and am terrified at the high failure rate of new restaurants; I already feel like we operate on opposite schedules; and I'm called to an itinerant ministry, which stands in opposition to the stability and longevity needed in a community to create good restaurant traffic.

As much as the thought of opening a restaurant together terrifies me, I also think everyone deserves a chance to go for their dream.  I have had lots of opportunities to fulfill my aspirations, and my life feels a lot richer because of it.  So, everyone reading now - you have to promise to give us your business when the time comes!