I'm not in Kansas any more

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the Church of the Resurrection Leadership Institute in Leawood, Kansas.  The Church of the Resurrection is possibly the most famoust United Methodist Church by itself for its 18,000 members, but also for their phenomenal, well-known pastor and author, Adam Hamilton.

I went with five other ladies from my church.  We all attended our own workshops and took notes to report back.  My workshops centered around church communications. Besides reading books and blogs about church communications, this was my first time to attend an education class specific to the church.

One day I was gulping my coffee the group had to leave me behind while they went into the sanctuary for morning worship. I realized I was the only person in the booth area, so I decided to go ahead an peruse while the crowd was inside.  I went to the United Methodist Communications booth, which usually was surround by people.  There the representative opened with, "I have a heart for communications in the United Methodist Church. How do you feel?"  We became fast friends and shared stories. 

I learned so much and enjoyed my time away so much.  I am so grateful for the experience.  I am also extremely grateful to Adam, who took care of the kids without me for three days, and our friend Ashley who picked them up from school every day.

Special thanks to Adam who even had to take care of a sick kid and clean up illness.

Here's a photo of me and my new friend Neeley.  I'm so happy that my eyes aren't even open!

I am an avocado

I am an avocado and my life is an avocado slicer.
Depending on the day or season, my skin is either thick or thin.  I'm either bruised or healthy green on the inside.
By nature, I am a giver.  With two jobs and commitments all across North Texas, I often feel like a sliced avocado.

A slice of me volunteers at the kids' school.  A slice of me goes to church to work.  A slice of me goes to church to worship. A slice of me takes care of my grandfather. A slice of me serves on committees at church and at school.  A slice of me socializes. A slice of me tutors children at a different elementary school. A slice of me leads a Bible study. Another slice cooks, cleans, and folds laundry.

I have other slices that go to different places, but my pit remains intact.  My core and my faith are always there, no matter how many slices of myself I hand out.  The trick is to teach myself to transfer the pulp from the other half of the avocado to support my core.  I have to learn to refill myself after handing out all the slices.  Otherwise, I just become a bowl of guacamole.

The best frozen pizza ever

Yesterday I went to my grandfather's apartment to visit him and complete any Sarah/honey-do tasks he had for me.  This was the first time I've been without the children, and the atmosphere had changed because of it.  I was more relaxed, not worried about the kids being too loud or disturbing him and not worrying about needing to be a referee if the situation arose.
The first honey do I did was check his medicines to see what refills he needed.  Then I cleaned up his mail-order papers.  He had several empty envelopes around the house, so without speaking, I picked them up and threw them away.  One of them had some wetness on it, and I commented.  My grandfather was icing a swollen knee, so I understood the wetness to be from his ice pack.  I threw away the envelope anyway.  Five minutes later, when I was about to step out to go buy some tea, he asked where the wet envelope went to.  "It was on the floor," I explained, "So I went ahead and picked it up for you and put it in the trash."  Big mistake.  The next minute I was in the trashcan, digging it out.  Luckily the trash was clean.  I put that envelope right back on the ground following directions: "A little to the left.  Now up some.  Now flatten it out."  He was using the envelope to protect his carpet from the sweating ice pack.  I had forgotten that every single item, even something I consider trash, has importance in his world.
After I returned with his tea: "Make sure it's Nestea, because that bottle fits in my hand easier." he told me he had a pizza in the freezer that I could heat up for our lunch.  When the kids are around, I just drive through for all of us and the kids and I have a picnic on the floor while he eats in the tiny kitchen.  Today he wanted pizza, and I was happy to oblige.  It was a freezer-burned Totino's, which is by nature, absolutely disgusting, but who cares?  An old man wants a pizza, I'm happy to cook it for him.
I tried to preheat his oven, but I couldn't.  I didn't know if there was a safety button or latch that I needed to use.  He lives in a retirement apartment, so I thought it might be likely that the oven had some precautionary button on it.  All I could do was hit preheat and then the oven started beeping loudly and incessantly.  I got that to stop and tried again and again to no avail.  I told my grandfather, "You want pizza, so we're going to have pizza."  I went to the front desk and asked if they could tell me how to preheat the oven.  The ladies at the front desk assured me that they didn't know how to preheat the oven in their own kitchen, much less the one in my granddad's apartment.  They called the head of maintenance to come down.
Juan met me at the apartment.  I explained my problem and he looked at me confused.  He said, "All you do is press this and this" and then he started the incessant beeping.  The next thing I knew he called backup, was pulling the stove out of the wall, resetting it and eventually replacing the electronic panel.  After all that, we were able to preheat the oven.
The oven preheated and the pizza in, the next thing was to set the table.  My granddad has a tiny kitchen and no extra chairs.  He eats on a TV tray with wheels, but he arranged his walker and the TV tray so I could join him.  For my chair, I backed his electric scooter into the kitchen and swiveled the chair backward.  This took about 10 minutes to set up.
A broiler pan as an improvised pizza pan, a knife as an improvised pizza cutter, both of us hunched over a TV tray and some soggy, freezer burned pizza.  It was the best frozen pizza I've ever had.

Putting Facebook in the Corner

My normal routine is to get up at 5 and suck down coffee while reading email, Facebook, and my Bible study lesson, and then write or workout, depending on the day.  Then all the family wakes up and we all start rolling together.
On Tuesday this week, I was checking Facebook and before I knew it, I was feeling grouchy and realized I had just spent 40 precious minutes reading superficial accounts of my friends' lives.  I counted backward and tried to remember a time when Facebook had brightened my day, and it had been a long while.  It was time for a change.
I do see the value of Facebook.  I can keep all my friends and family near and far updated on our lives.  I can offer some love through electronic means to a friend who is depressed or overwhelmed.  I do use it for that, but when I allow anything to take up nearly half of my alone time and I don't feel better afterward?  It's time for a change.
I decided on a Facebook fast. So the rest of the day Tuesday and carrying on to Friday morning, I stayed off of Facebook. I had to have a few exceptions. Social media is my job at work, so without looking at the news feed, I updated our status.  I received an alert that my sister wrote me and I logged on to reply. A friend of mine invited me to her book club, and I needed to RSVP.  Other than that, I stayed away.
This morning I broke the fast and logged on. I decided that since I hadn't been on in several days, I would allot 15 minutes to reading the news feed.  After 7 minutes, I was done.  Of course there were updates that I missed, but I'm okay with that.
Adam and I choose not to have smart phones, so the allure of checking Facebook at a restaurant when real people surround you is lost to us.  However, we have WiFi in the house, and lately, I've found myself updating my news feed while I was cooking dinner.
I categorize and prioritize my activities into levels of life-giving and life-draining.  Making dinner in my beautiful kitchen with music playing and kids dancing is life-giving.  Stopping this to check Facebook is life-draining.
This week, I put social media back in the corner where it belongs.  It has some value in my life.  It has some life-giving aspects, but after stepping away, I realized that I had inflated the value.  Now it's back to a small corner of my life and I can spend more time on activities that fill me up rather than drain me.  I think I'll go read a book.

My Magnolia Tree and Faith

I have always loved Magnolia trees.  I love their scent, I love their flowers, I love the strength of their leaves. 

 To me, a tree is always a metaphor.  A tree with a strong trunk represents inner strength.  A tree that has survived a drought represents perseverance.  A tree's roots grow deeper as the tree ages, similar to my own discovery of my spiritual depths.  Depending on the season of my life, I feel like a sapling or a California Redwood.  I can be blown over with a gust of wind or withstand anything thrown at me.

Last Thanksgiving we went to Adam's godparents' house in Texarkana to celebrate the holiday.  Kaa and I spent an afternoon gathering pine cones and magnolia cones to create a beautiful wreath for our front door.  The kids and I asked what would happen if we planted one of the magnolia cones.  She supposed it would grow into a tree but wasn't sure.  As an experiment, I saved one and planted it in my kitchen window.  

Last December the pot was just a pot of dirt with something inside.  I faithfully watered it and watched little green sprouts come up.  I was ecstatic until I realized that the little green sprouts were actually weeds.  I yanked the weeds up but held onto my faith and waited for a tree.

Close to a year later, we have one.  It's a tiny, three inch tall magnolia tree.  It reminds me of faith every time I look at it.  Right now it's still small, but it took 10 months to get this big.  I can't wait to watch it grow and develop into a tree with deep roots and beauty.  Faith or trees don't grow overnight, but it seems that the longer it takes, the more beautiful it is.

Our School Year Thus Far

I have always been a proponent of moving New Year's Eve to the week before school starts.  I haven't contacted the international calendaring committee but to me, this just makes sense.  January is in the middle of the school year.  That's not the time to start anything. The time to start routines and healthy habits is the first day of school.
It's the second week of school and we're settling into our new routines.  Paul has now realized that kindergarten won't be all fun and games and he'll actually have to do some level of work.  He's disappointed in this and yesterday started sniffling as we approached the school.  He told me he didn't want to go to school because he didn't feel like working that day.  He would rather go home and play all day.  I assured him I would also be working and to let me know if his teacher bit him.  "You tell me if Mrs. Alvarez bites you and I'll come up and take care of it."  That made him giggle and away he went.
Claire's enjoying second grade.  She has a good teacher as well and is having fun.  Her biggest disappointment so far is that she had to write so much she got writer's cramp.
Each day the kids come home with competing voices, trying to tell me details of the day.  Claire's daily report involves EVERY detail of her classroom life from the fullness of the soap dispenser in the bathroom to the reason so and so got into trouble.  Paul's reports cover his perceived injustices (he still didn't get a particular sticker he hoped for) and quotes from his teachers.
When Claire entered Kindergarten, I started the practice of sitting down with her daily to talk about all the events in her day.  I wrote up her answers in a blog.  Not only is it funny and honest, but it helped develop our relationship and teach her to communicate better.  She started out the same as Paul, not sure which details should be conveyed and spewing out a jumble of randomness.  Now she can have a more coherent conversation and with open communication lines, I am able to hear about everything that goes on in the classroom, good and bad.  This is reassuring to me because the complaints I'm hearing are minor.  Without being in her classroom I know her teacher is competent and that she has creative a positive learning environment.
Paul is still working on learning to tell me about his day.  I am writing down all he says as well but it's often one or two word answers.  He has the same kindergarten teacher as Claire did and our family loves her so much we consider her family.  Last year she asked us for a tree stump and so Adam got her one, putting the giant 100+ lb trunk on a two wheeler and rolling it a mile to our house.  We love Mrs. Alvarez.  Her mixture of left and right-brained activities help make her learning environment productive for all children.
Adam is glad for us to be back in school because it helps him get up earlier and get off to work easier.  All four of us walk to school together each morning.  Then he leaves for work and I have a miniature break where I can take a breath before I head into the office or school.
Typical of me, I set my self-expectations too high.  For my new year resolution, I planned to write on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and workout on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.  I still think it's a good plan, but I also am so thankful that I can give myself some grace when I don't live up to my own expectations.
Last week I had Friday off and was getting bogged down with all the chores I had assigned myself.  Instead, I threw caution to the wind, had coffee with a friend, went to lunch with Adam, and spent some quiet time by myself.  I bought groceries later and cleaned house the next day.  This was much more fulfilling than checking off my to-do list.
So we're all learning. We've all got our new year's resolutions and we've all got hope that we can carry them through to June.  In any case, we all have a sense of humor.