You and Me and All of Us

Sunday morning Jud and I woke up early to put the finishing touches begin a lesson we were teaching to the high schoolers that morning. We’d been talking about the lesson for a few days but nothing was on paper yet. I’m very much into having it down on paper, especially when team teaching. There is something about standing in front of a room of people that almost automatically makes every amount of effort I’ve invested slip away into two bullet points. We cracked open our minds and a couple of books and wrote down notes on ‘An Overview of Theology.’

Our target audience was a room of overly tired teenagers who were most likely more concerned with lunch, their own appearance and video games than anything we could ever do in a classroom, including pyrotechnics. But we gave it our best shot. Of course, their responses to our instruction were muted and, I agree that we needed more talking animals and celebrity cameos.

Regardless of their reactions, I appreciated the part where we talked about folk theology the best. What is folk theology you might ask? Oh, let me tell you (and get ready for the fireworks).

Do you know what the word theology means? In it’s most basic form, theology is simply the rational expression of thoughts about God. Except for a very small number of people, frequently featured over on TMZ, pretty much everyone has thoughts about God, even if the sum of those thoughts is to say that the belief in the existence of God is irrational and to land in atheism. The atheist still ‘does theology’ to reach his/her conclusion and as such, everybody is then a theologian. The real question is about to what degree one will do theology. And that is where folk theology comes in.

Folk theology is bumper sticker theology. It is believing in what has always been handed down to you for no other reason than that it was repeated by a person you trusted. It is a theology based in emotion and in general is dismissive of any kind of formal, rational thought. Somehow folk theologians are the ones who seem to garner the greatest amount of attention when they apply the label ‘Christian’ to their terrible belief system. They say things like “God helps those who help themselves” and “God won’t give you anything you can’t handle” and all sorts of things that aren’t actually in the Bible. They talk about Jesus being their ‘co-pilot’ and how their dead loved ones are now ‘angels’. They tend to find these kinds of beliefs incredibly comforting and often cannot be swayed from the beliefs to which they cling.

Folk theology is the very thing I’ve been running from since I learned of it’s existence. It’s what makes Christians seem so patently uncool and so intellectually disingenuous. I can’t pinpoint a time when I have ever been ashamed of Jesus or of the Good News about Him, but I can’t say the same about people who are using His name. There are plenty that cause me to cringe and wish they would be quiet. I always sort of attributed that to being an unkind person, but from now on, I’m going to start laying my finger on what the issue really is; lazy theology.

Bust out the concordances, baby. We’re gonna kill off those bumper stickers one by one.

2011
06/13
CATEGORY
Theology
Leave a comment

Saturday Morning Video: Pink Swan

Can you imagine spending hours in a room with this going on? Yeah. Me neither. #ThankfulTheyGotDizzy

Pink Swan from JudandKim on Vimeo.

2011
06/11
CATEGORY
Video
2 comments

Thank You Thursday – Those Who Stay Behind

Between Memorial Day, my grandfather’s death and the anniversary of D-Day this week, I have been thinking quite a bit about all of the sacrifices that people have made over the years in the name of liberty.  It’s not just patriotism for patriotism’s sake.  I mean, I like this country quite a bit, but it isn’t the only place in the world where people are thriving.

We would all be very well served to commit ourselves to learning a little more about the rest of the countries on the planet [Do you know anything at all about Canada’s politics?  Could you name their top political parties?  Do you know where Malawi is located?  Can you point out Syria on a map? What is going on with Portugal’s budget? Over which country does President Saleh preside?  — You can probably do one of them.  Even two or three.  All of them?  Me neither.  We’re just unbelievably self-centered, which is especially a problem if you consider your citizenship less a matter of political prestige and more one of spiritual matters]. But, I digress.

I am the child of a retired USAF Chief Master-Sargent.  I grew up completely entrenched in the military way of life.  And in many, many ways, the military worldview is unique.  You think differently about politics and security and the future and Red Dawn.  I went to bed every night for about two years in early elementary school convinced that I needed a way to escape if the Cold War came knocking on my door and could only comfort myself with the idea that living within 12 miles of an Air Force base gave me plenty of hope that I wouldn’t survive the initial nuclear bomb strike. Probably not something you were doing if your dad wasn’t working on a satellite test team that was part of Reagan’s Star Wars program.  See?  Different worldview.

And then there was my mother. She rarely said anything about those many many days and nights when she was a single parent and when she did speak up, if it wasn’t to invoke the “When your father gets home, he will deal with this!”, it was positive. She just sucked it all up and barreled through those days;  the ones where my father was gone for a year when we were smaller than my two kids are now, the ones when we were in elementary school and she was checking our homework and keeping the house and budget together too, the ones where we were out on our own and she was all alone with Pogo. She didn’t complain. She didn’t undermine his work.  She never gave him a reason to worry so that he could focus on the very important tasks at hand.

And she wasn’t alone. The world is strewn with scores of women who do and have done the same thing. The ones from WWII are leaving us so quickly now, these women who gave up silk dresses and stockings so that boys could jump out of planes.  The ones from the Vietnam era who suffered so much dealing with a war they might not have believed in while their husbands and fathers and brothers and sons fought because they’d taken an oath. The ones who watched their loved ones leave for places like Korea and Bosnia and Turkey and for places like submarines and carriers and out posts and front lines. The wars that continue to call your family away now are remembered and forgotten as their political advantage is needed.  Our every day lives here, though infinitely more informed than before, are cluttered with causes and attention can so quickly shift to floods and tornadoes and things that seem more imminent. I just wanted you to know that today, on this Thursday, I am stopping to remember you and to offer my thanks for all that you do.

I am so thankful for you.

2011
06/09
CATEGORY
Thank You Thursday
Leave a comment

Dirty Little Secrets

Not that long ago someone was over at our house and she noticed that my two food cabinets were a mess.  Not like that took any detective work or anything.  If I so much as peeked into there, I wouldn’t have been able to hide the jumbled contents of beans and pasta and Fiber One bars that had been haphazardly shoved inside.

It recently occurred to me that, the kind of behavior my children demonstrate when I ask them to put something in a drawer or closet or, ahem, cabinet, was terrible.  They were just shoving things and the holding them for long enough to get the door closed but not too long as to keep themselves from being able to shut said door.

And here is where Oprah continues to haunt us…the AHA Moment struck me like that frying pan.

I suppose I have just never ever out grown it. My mom never made an issue out of it. It was a blessing when I was a child. I could throw all of my earthly possessions into my dresser, under my bed and into my closet and proclaim the room “Good enough!” and she would agree. It was good enough. And I am constantly in the ‘good enough’ state right now.

The busyness of life has made me cut out real organization for pseudo-organized. Everything is mostly put away, in closets and bins and drawers. But behind those facades was chaos. Ordinarily I would continue to hide all of this, especially from you, sweet, sweet interweb. If I am going to tell you all that is going on and chronicle the ins and outs of things you don’t really care about, but still come here to find, then I am going to show you.

And with that, I give you….THE MASTER BATHROOM VANITY OF HORROR!

Drawer #1 Before

Aak! And Tsk! The cabinet!

Those pictures were taken before 4pm on Monday.  After 4pm on Monday….they looked like this!!!

Drawer #1 AFTER! Woohoo!

Cabinet After! (mostly) Organized!

Now, I won’t shade the truth (why would I? I am showing you the status of master bathroom cabinets.  We are obviously pretty far into this circle of trust).  Somewhere in the middle of this project, while the children were playing a game that involved nail polish in their paramedic bags and my bed was the ambulance, I sort of gave up on going through absolutely everything and throwing out what I was never going to use. I’ll leave that for next year when I get back around to this situation again. In the meantime, I give myself a month before I’m randomly shoving things into these spots again.

What about you?  Are you a shover?  Do you have a drawer or two that you’d prefer company not see? Or are your cabinets the very picture of awesome (be careful, I’ll be calling you for help, organizational geniuses!).

2011
06/08
CATEGORY
Uncategorized
4 comments

Inked

I’m sure I’ve told you before that a very wise woman once told me, ‘Before you get mad, take a picture.’

Best Mom advice EVER except that I am needing my camera all the time right now. So, I’m mostly counting to ten or walking away or being really, really quiet. That last one totally freaks them out.

BUT!

On Monday, I was hauling laundry up and down from the basement…dirty stuff goes down in the abyss, clean stuff comes up and hopefully finds a way into drawers and closets. It’s a long process that I pretty much always leave for Mondays because having all the laundry done on a Monday can make you feel amazing.

When I came back down with the last basket, I found this:

She was pretty happy with herself and, as you can see from his expression, he was pretty pleased too. I snapped the photos and then went off to make supper. She wore the ink until bath time. I let it go.

2011
06/07
CATEGORY
Mothering
1 comment

Restaurant Review: Ingredient Omaha (One Pacific Place)

Restaurant Location:
10317 Pacific St,
Omaha, NE 68114
402-932-2544
Visit their website.

Date I Dined: May 21, 2011
Meal: Supper
Diners: Me, Jud and Allison

Decor: Located in the old California Pizza Kitchen bay of One Pacific Place, Ingredient, is open and spacious. Windows and natural light keep it from seeming dark, but the tint kept it cozy too. There was a heavy use of plexi-panneling with bamboo and dried flowers and swirls and such to add privacy and visual interest. This is an order at the counter diner trying to feel like it’s upscale, except that they plastered the place with televisions. You can watch sports! And look at wheat encased in plexi-glass! I don’t know, either.

The menu is large, and I don’t just mean that there is a lot to order. The actual menus that hang on the wall are gigantic with writing so far up the wall that I literally had to crane my neck to read them. Granted, I’m 5’2″, so this is mostly bothering me, the little people and children. Still. Proportions matter.

Ordering: The young woman behind the counter seemed tired and a little overwhelmed, with a deep line of people coming her way, I couldn’t blame her. We asked about the ‘draft of the day’ which is $3/glass she stated it was Coors.

Can you see why that seemed slightly ridiculous?

Yeah, it should’ve been obvious that things here weren’t going to go well. If only, we’d gone straight to Red Mango at this point.

But we didn’t. We ordered the following:

Crispy Asian Salad – ALLISON
thai-chili glazed steak, napa cabbage, bok choy, glass noodles, edamame, crisp red peppers, snow peas, carrots, and spicy cashews with sesame ginger dressing, topped with crispy wonton strips 9.95

Thai Pie Pizza – THE JUD
curry chicken, grilled broccoli, red onions, julienne carrots, thai peanut sauce, fresh cilantro, and chopped peanuts 9.95

Meat Lovers Pizza – ME
Italian sausage, pepperoni, apple wood bacon, capicola ham, with rustic tomato sauce and our three-cheese Italian blend 10.95

AND, unfortunately, Allison and I decided to share a carafe of margaritas.

It seemed like a good idea. But it wasn’t. It really, really wasn’t.

First, it was a TINY carafe. Now, I know, in their defense, it says right there in giant numbers that this is a 1/2 liter. I, of course, am spatially stunted, so that means nothing to me. I expected one thing and got another.

When the young woman brought it to our table, she seemed apologetic. Probably because the carafe was full of ice. It was mostly ice. And I have never really hoped to pay $15 for a carafe full of ice, unless maybe I was taking the carafe with me at the end of the meal. Even then….

There were so many harbingers of the horror to come! If we had only been paying attention and not trying to catch up with each other and enjoy our birthday celebration. Be ye not so unwise, dear readers!

And then the food came.

And it was not pretty. I should say that the pizzas were not pretty. In fact, they looked barely baked, save for some char on the crust rim. The cheese was just to the other side of melted. You could still see the outlines of the shredding in some spots. Not gooey. Not bubbly. The salad was bright and had some nice pops of color. Jud and I were both immediately jealous of Allison (as if we weren’t already! Have you seen her stuff?).

And then we started eating. I know this guy, doesn’t agree, but it was awful. I believe my exact words were “I wish I was eating a Totino’s Party Pizza. I would be $9 richer and it would taste better.” The meat wasn’t high quality. The cheese was nothing of note. And the crust was bland, rubbery and flaccid. Jud’s pizza was no better. The thai peanut sauce tasted exactly like Kraft’s Asian Sesame Ginger sauce (which is pretty awesome on a salad at home, but less so on a pizza). The vegetables weren’t especially cooked. They clearly needed to spend more time in a ridiculously hot oven. The cheese and crust were just like mine.

Meanwhile, over in awesome land, Allison was not too unhappy with her salad. She munched. We all talked. Jud and I choked down our pizzas because we were STARVING. And then, IT HAPPENED. There was a terrible noise, like grinding and enamel and rocks. Why? Oh, because THERE WAS A ROCK IN ALLISON’S SALAD. Not like a little pebble or something. A rock. A rock that had been hiding in some lettuce and that she bit into multiple pieces. How large? Here you go. We photographed it.

Salad Rock - Post-Bite

After she had a moment to catch her breath and pick the rock shards from her mouth, Allison went to the restroom to inspect the damage. We asked to see a manager. When he came over, we explained what happened and he said “Well, lettuce grows in the ground so these things happen.” And then, as Jud as my witness, the dude Kanye shrugged. As if to say “Whatev!” “Not my problem!” “Lettuce can be rocky!”. And then he was all “do you want another salad?”

Let’s see? Another salad that you most likely have also poorly washed? NOPE! We’re good, sir!

Jud said “You know, water comes from the faucet and you should wash your produce.”

Another Shrug. “Do you want your money back,” asked Shruggy McShruggerton.

“This isn’t about the money,” I said. And it isn’t. It still isn’t. It’s about proper food preparation. It’s about public trust. It’s about taking responsibility and owning the fact that someone was INJURED eating the salad for which your name should be vouching.

Then he picked up the largest piece of rock and walked away.

Allison returned. We walked out and over to Red Mango where all of our hopes and dreams for humanity were restored.

Verdict: Eat at your own risk, Dan. I bet the rest of you are with me. Any place that wants to pride themselves on what goes into their food (hence the name ‘Ingredient’ I suppose) ought to start off with something great, make sure it is prepared properly and serve it with class. They missed the mark on every level and we will be using our own ingredients from here on out.

2011
06/06
CATEGORY
Food
Product Reviews
Rant
4 comments

Can’t Stop Thinking About This

The other day Jud and I ran across this video. Neither of us have stopped thinking about it.

Balance Beam from Discussion CHS on Vimeo.

Right now our church family has embarked on something terribly difficult. Our current vision is to plant another church in our metro area with about 200. We have over 700 people who would call our church theirs, but due to illness, travel and probably laziness too, we have about 450 people that attend each Sunday morning. If you do the math (and even I can do this one, so I am sure you did too), the plant will take almost half of the people who attend. That sounds kind of crazy, right? It sounds like it puts the existing church into peril. It sounds dangerous, even.

And I have never been so certain that this is the right thing, not just a good thing even, but the best thing. It is going to stretch everyone, from the people who are going to the ones who are staying, everybody will have to change. And the biggest area of growth when you do something hard is almost always in trust. It is growing my faith even now. When questions come up in my mind I have thoughts like “Am I going to like the people who go? Would I rather stay right where I am? Will I have a lot more to do after the plant? Will it change how our family is operating?” And the like.

The answers to those questions can all be boiled down into Francis Chan’s idea. Do I want to live a life of challenge and risk falling off but gain Kingdom rewards? It sounds like a pretty good trade – my life for His.

[And you know I couldn’t put up that link without a caveat. I am the queen of caveats! While I really, really appreciate Francis Chan and most of what he has to say, I am not where he is on salvation. He maintains that believers cannot continue in egregious sin because they have the Holy Spirit. I am positive that you can because 1) if we believers couldn’t sin egregiously, then there would be no need for the epistles because we would just be able to know the right thing to do from the Spirit 2) my own personal anecdotal evidence proves otherwise 3) remember all those Old Testament saints who didn’t persevere to the end? Yeah. Those guys. You can disagree and we can still be friends and all. I might even post a video of you up on my blog.]

2011
06/03
CATEGORY
Theology
2 comments

Thank you Thursday: Last Week Was Brutal

It’s Thursday, which means another installment of gratitude.  It’s an attitude!

Last week, I flew to Maryland all by myself. That is not an easy thing to do when you have two children that depend on you to be there every moment of every day and night.  It is a wonderful, sometimes rewarding, sometimes infuriating full time job. And I had to find people who would not only watch the kids while I was away and Jud was at work, but people that I trusted.  When you are given something that is fantastically fragile, highly impressionable and incredibly vulnerable, you have to put it in the right places at the right times to keep it healthy and safe. Which is why I called Jan, Lydia and Sarah.

Jan took the morning duty and dragged her very pregnant self out of bed earlier than she would have had to without my imposition and came over before Jud left for work. She took them to the park.  She gave them breakfasts and snacks and played lots and lots of Legos.  Then she packed them up and took them to Lydia’s.

If I pretend like it was just Lydia helping out, you would know that wasn’t the case immediately. She has all of these fantastic children there to help and I am sure that they did quite a bit of work to keep my kids entertained.  They helped Piper nap.  They gave them snacks. They played outside and inside and once again spent tons of time engrossed in Lego creations. They’d been busy all morning completing and administering standardized tests and then they gave up their afternoons to make sure my trip could happen. It was technically a vacation week there, but they sacrificed for our family and shouldered our burden when they didn’t have to.

And as if dog sitting my parents hounds wasn’t enough, or being at her parents’ house to help with my kids in the early afternoon didn’t go out of her way enough, Sarah came over and watched the kids in the evening so that Jud could make his committee meeting too.

Where is the end to the giving?  What would these mothers and sisters and young women not do to help their friends?  Outside of the realm of legality and spirituality, I have no idea.  They love me so well.  I hope that they know how much they have blessed me, the kids and Jud as they sacrificed their time, energy and sleep to make our week happen with ease.  I couldn’t be more grateful. Thank you.  Your loving kindness to our family so clearly reflects the Savior and we are filled with joy.

2011
06/02
CATEGORY
Thank You Thursday
Leave a comment

Mani Pedi

Fingernails on toddlers need attention almost daily, but a good trim is necessary every single week.  Yesterday marked one week  since they’d been cut and so we embarked on the ritual.  Piper tends to freak out about the entire process every time, usually by pulling away or screaming or yelling about how it tickles her, unless my father is the one with the clippers. Then she is perfectly calm and fine.  He has some kind of magical power over her.  If he would sell it to me, I would pay through the nose for it.

When you are just starting out in the parenting business you make all of these grandiose statements about how you will never ever do this or do that.  You won’t be like all those other shmuck adults who do stuff like bribe their children. Bribery?  Forget that! They’ll just do as I say! As soon as I say it! Every time!

And then you meet your child and discover that they are a human being and not a robot and that sometimes their idea of what should be happening is very very different than yours and no matter what grade you received on those persuasive speeches you gave in college, you will not be able to convince them to come over to your side. You’ll be Darth Vader. They’ll be Luke.  And you’ll eventually have to cut off their hands.

Er.

So, fingernail polish is a wonderful bribe motivator for Piper.  ‘Do you want your nails to be pink?  Okay, then you have to sit still while I cut them and then we can paint them too!’  She suddenly turns into Kim Cattrall circa 1987. I start clipping.  And then one of those tiny little devils flips right into my eye.  I thought it popped out.  Didn’t have any trouble at all with it.  Got her toes done too. Broke out the polish. The pretty pink I like the most.  And we painted:

She showed my mom their loveliness over Skype. She showed Jud their pretty pink at supper.  And then she went to bed.  Happy about her day playing outside and having pink nails sticking out of her sandals.

And then, eventually, I went to bed too and closed my eye.  And nearly screamed. It was IN THERE. STILL.  I had Jud turn on the light and hold my eye open the way he does when one of his contacts flips in on itself and then rolls up into his eyelid. He could see the tiny fingernail but he couldn’t get it.  My eye watered.  It was moving around, scratching the fire out of my eye. Jud grabbed his contact solution and started irrigating my eye. Down came the little nail.  He could fish it out easily then, a little crescent moon of awful. I’ll be filing my workman’s comp claim any minute now.

2011
06/02
CATEGORY
Mothering
4 comments

Product Review – Conditioner is better, I make the hair silky and smooth. Oh yeah?!

I am still formulating a restaurant review post, so in the meantime, I give you a product review. You will be so happy that I did (if you’ve ever been inside of Trader Joe’s and been out of conditioner and thought “why not?”).

Kim’s Review of: Trader Joe’s Refresh Citrus Conditioner with Vitamin C

It’s own description:
Unique Aroma-Therapeutic Blend of Orange Blossoms and Grapefruit
Created with Vitamin C and B-5 and Soothing Chamomile
Cruelty Free – Never Tested on Animals; No Animal Products in Ingredients
16 Fl Oz (473 mL) Bottle
100% Biodegradable

My take on it:
Okay, so it smells delicious. It’s biodegradable but not edible, so I haven’t tasted it or anything, but I could. Almost. It is fresh and lovely and everything you would want your head to smell like, especially after you have been outside for a while and you get that awful funk. I wish that summer smelled like this conditioner instead of sweaty children and sunscreen, but alas. It’s not to be.

And the bottle is cute. Look! Cute!

(Disclaimer: I didn’t try out the shampoo, although it is pictured here).

It is also ridiculously cheap. We’re talking under four dollars for all of that conditioner. It could be so awesome.

But the love stops right before I put it on my hair. It is so hard to get out of my hair, almost as if I slathered some Aveeno Oatmeal Lotion on my head. That kind of hard. And in spite of the fact that I take socially irresponsible showers (people everywhere don’t have water and I act like standing under the shower head is some kind of right), I still have conditioner in my hair when I comb it out afterwards. What is that? Why? Wax? All the lotion they mixed in? I’m not sure.

And my hair does not look better for it. It kind of looks like the hair I imagine people who listen to NPR have on their heads (What? Well, yes, I do happen to listen to Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and Click and Clack and Morning Edition and, oh, I get it).

Of course, Trader Joe’s has the awesomeness to take back anything you buy from them if you aren’t satisfied and I could return this to them and they would be super cool about it, but it would probably cost me more in gas to drive over there than to just keep using it and marveling at the left overs in mah hairs. And that is what I am going to do. Keep using it until it is all gone. And then I’ll buy some Bumble and Bumble.

2011
06/01
CATEGORY
Product Reviews
TAGS


1 comment

Recent entry

Archive

Category