getting half done in twice the time

Austin and I have a home in Illinois now. A home with creaky floors, neighbors we only could have dreamed up, and no garbage disposal. A home that fits us, suits us and gives off a sweet aroma of limitless potential. This home housed memories of a family before, and is now the inviting space that will weave and link our lives together as the backdrop to our combined story. Moving, as it sounds, produces a life in constant motion. Purging of the old, replacing with the new, taking apart, putting back together, arranging, re-arranging, lists that get together and seem to reproduce more lists, and endless trips to the store, all in an effort to stop the moving and eventually graduate into ‘moved.’ Motion and speed look so shiny and inviting in their emptied promises of productivity, but I’m learning and re-learning that there’s no room for God in a tornadoed life of movement.

I’ve been diving deeper into what it looks like to live, breathe and operate in a ‘with God’ way. Thanks in large part to Brother Lawrence and the man I lovingly refer to as my ‘old man crush’, John Ortberg, I have been experimenting with just how many moments during my day I can spend in awareness and surrender to God. I’ve taken note of the what steals my attention, I have embraced the sights, sounds and people that bring God beautifully back to the forefront of my mind, and I’ve been broken over how easily I replace the well-spring of my life with empty, meaningless folly. Nevertheless, victory has come in small steps, often in the form of acknowledging the culprits of the ‘with God’ life.

So as I experiment, I will share the schemes and devious ways of these offenders. I will line them up along the wall, measure them against the grandness of our God and squash them by the power of the resurrection. So here’s culprit number one: hurry. I have recognized that unless I make some major changes in my life, busyness may not be practical to fight or give up. I love being busy because usually that means I see and talk to a variety of different people. I learn boatloads about myself, my world and my God from the people I daily interact with, and if busyness means learning, I’m planning on staying busy. Hurry, on the other hand is the vicious and untapped force behind my busy life. It robs me of the joy in between meetings and turns a gathering into nothing more than quick, rehearsed interactions. Lifeless and ordinary as opposed to what they could be: fulfilling and divine. Hurry would make the moment I’m living right now a disengaged deadline, but take a look with me at what can happen when thirty seconds of hurried life stops to notice in a ‘with God’ way…

There’s nothing like a big desk to spread out on. I swear the bigger the desk, the bigger my thoughts become. I adore my Aunt Cheryl for giving me these heavenly French chocolate bowls from Anthropologie. She seems to embody generosity. There’s so much I can learn from her. I’ve never noticed that when strawberries are this fresh, they burst in my mouth. How great is our God to give us these hues of spring. A tree that buds in violet? Wow. Good one, God.

How deeply I long for the with God life. Want to know the perfect day to practice the slowed, ‘with God’ life? Sunday. This past Sunday, Austin and I went to church early and then went to the gym together. After I had finished my workout, I stretched in the corner and marveled at how badly I’d taken advantage of the Sabbath. In my own pride, I often think I’m exempt from this important spiritual practice. So, on my yoga mat, I made a commitment that for the next five minutes I’d do everything I was already planning to do, but at half the speed. I gave hurry the finger (in a Christ-like way) and intentionally operated in slow motion. I’m not kidding, this is super uncomfortable at first. I walked by strangers and put weights away at an elderly speed and battled the thoughts that tried to convince me of the sheer annoyance I was putting off to all those around me. How inconsiderate of me to move at a speed that invites and recognizes God to be the true Lord of a moment. Nice try, culprit.

Peace. Perfect, uninterrupted peace followed. Peace to know that I was on a schedule that was not my own. Peace to take in. Peace to give out. Peace, precious peace.

So I’m embracing my rebel side like never before and vowing to get half done in twice the amount of time. I chuckle to myself thinking of that last sentence on the cover of a magazine at the grocery store. I’m taking this vow because in the heavenly realms (true reality) I know that I’ll be getting twice as much done for eternity while quietly removing myself from the buzz and lure of the temporary. I’ll gladly take last place in the race of this world if my speed towards heaven is steadily increasing with each passing breath. So with the burst of a strawberry and time to spare, I invite you to walk alongside me. There’s room for us all in the ‘with God’ life.

bread over walls

Contrast might be a good word to describe the last few weeks. 

In the beginning of March I was in Olympia, Washington, the State’s Capital and center of all dignified (or not) government activity.  We ate breakfast with the State Representatives and had lunch with the Senators.  We listened to Attorney General Rob McKenna and Governor Christine Gregoire.  We wore our business formal attire, I even put heels on.  We heard talk of unity, positive change, an improving economy, a different future for our generation.  And I swear, if I heard the phrase “reaching across the aisle” one more time…  But it was politics, with all the formality and hand-shakes and business card swapping one could expect.  Still, there is so much to learn from watching men and women— really not all that different from you and me— trying to govern people with quite literally thousands of perspectives, beliefs, and wants.  I have no desire to be in politics, and I so admire those of you who do—we need amazing leaders in the public sphere more than ever.

A mere ten days later, I was walking the sidewalks of Skid Row, Los Angeles- the largest concentrated area of homelessness in the United States.  No formality here.  Be as understated as you can, wear old tennis shoes, don’t stare.  No less than half of the men and women in Skid Row are battling some kind of mental disorder, like schizophrenia, and those that are not are more than likely bound tightly by the chains of addiction.  Alcohol, crack, marijuana.  The streets are loud, crowded, lewd, and to be candid: gross.  The smell of urine and trash is overwhelming, a lifetime of belongings for many people stacked against walls and park fences.  In some places it is hard to tell if there are human beings under the blankets or not.  One woman yelled at us in what sure sounded like anger as we walked through, “did you come here to look at us, or help?”  Good question.  I can’t help you; you need something I don’t have.  Did I come here to know, did I come just to look?  Does knowing more change anything?   I am broken in so many ways by the images.  The beautiful brown faced baby with big eyes held by a woman- probably his mother- with one of her hands and a cigarette, maybe a joint, in the other.  Two bodies moving under a blanket on the concrete, one coming out only to put her pants back on.  Just a block up the street is downtown Los Angeles— one of the most stunning dichotomies I have ever seen: sheer and utter hopelessness and squalor within eyesight of an animal-boutique.  The deepest human suffering and a dog manicure, to my left and to my right.  How do I even begin to process this?  This is not fair.  It should not be this way.  But it is.

And just 36 hours after that, I was in Westwood, California, on the outskirts of the UCLA campus, looking for a new warm scarf in the American Apparel store.  Irony personified.

And now I am home, in my comfortable little townhouse surrounded by great people and plenty of good things that make life pretty, and fun, and joyful for me.  My amazing job brings me to the feet of influential politicians and also to front lines of real social issues— and I get to do these things with bright, articulate, engaged, and much-smarter-than-me young men and women.  I am just so, so blessed. 

This tension—the one between meeting the change makers who promise so much, seeing the hugely important necessity for change, and then feeling so helpless to do anything about it that I merely put it all into words and then go back to life as usual—it is eating me up.  I see pain and poverty and injustice and I want so badly to do something about it, but I either don’t know what to do, or what I do know seems too hard or too crazy to actually live out.  As one of the students who shared this journey with me said, “We learn about things, but it seems like we build a wall to keep these people out and then just throw a loaf of bread over to feel better about ourselves.”  STOP.  Are you kidding me?!  Not only is that my most favorite metaphor ever, that’s it, that’s the tension: throwing bread over the wall is not enough anymore.  We’ve got to tear the walls down, walk right into the messiness and with dignity for every human being, give our love, our time, and some bread.

Y’all, I do not have this figured out, not even close.  But I know that my very basic and essential needs are no different than the woman in Skid Row—and the fear that comes when I feel like these needs won’t be met, that is the same fear the addicts, the homeless, the widows, the orphans feels.  Same needs, same fear.  And I know that Jesus didn’t build a wall and throw over the option of some legalistic pattern of life that would get us to him.  He actually broke down the walls we ourselves built, and he joined us in the madness of life in this world.  He brought us bread in the form of his perfect life.  He gave us everything we need, and he hugged and held us and said it’s ok, be still, I’ve overcome all this chaos. 

I don’t want my solution to injustice be to merely toss something I have at the issue so that I can move on with my life relatively guilt free.  I want to bring food to the community collection place and actually stay and meet the people it is passed out to.  I want to hold the babies wearing the diapers we donated.  I want to have lunch with the young woman who feels like she just cannot leave her pimp.  And I so desperately want the courage to respond with my life and not just my wallet.  I want to meet, talk, hold, hug, ask, listen, pray… go. 

Same needs… same fear.

This kind of life was modeled perfectly by the man I call the Messiah, the Hope of the world. 

Let’s go break down walls.      

why the name Norma rocks

There’s this woman. Her name is Norma. Yes, Norma. She’s in her seventies, her hair is the most uniquely blended red-orange color, and she grazes into the carpeted lecture room each week in a fur vest, trimmed with more flair than Elle Macpherson and more dignity than Grace Kelly. She is petite in statue, humble in speech, but ferociously fiery in spirit. Somehow she’s managed to age in wisdom without weathering from the harshness of life.  I’ve known Norma for a little over a month and I am already better.  She is the mother of four, and grandmother (some great) to nineteen and the encourager and servant to countless blessed passerbies along the way.

I spoke two weeks ago of a class I’m taking that covers the book of Judges. I sat by Norma at our table on the first day and can remember thinking how deeply I desired to be a grandmother one day with a ever-increasing thirst for my God and his word.  Later, she sat, almost pristine, in our small group and waited for the silence to grow long enough to lovingly clue in us in. We, spiritual youths, still and attentive to see what real trust, persevering prayer, and true gratitude look like, embodied.

Norma reminds me every Wednesday from eleven- noon that a life spent with God, surrounded by his promises and saturated in his spirit generates the most grace-giving well, which beautifully overflows into this world in a way that washes away fear and sorrow with the divine simplicity of the gospel.  Operating daily in the freeing truth and illuminating radiance of the good news of Christ is not only trickily simple, it’s profoundly possible.

Tonight,as my eyes bounce from photograph to photograph around my desk, melodies in the background lengthen each moment with enough vivid memories to make me feel like I’m in my own, personal, musical montage.  I stop to stare at the places and people that demand the simplest reactions out of me. Simple in the form of faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these, the simplest of these is love. This loving relationship with the living God has a tendency to get over-complicated. In all my intellectual rebellion, I am naïve to think that unpacking the complexities of God lead to the greatest spiritual discoveries. In reality, it is nights like tonight, accompanied by nothing more than a flickering candle, the instrumental station on Pandora, and the gentle buzz of my computer that tears the veil of complicated to reveal a simple truth. The covenant that God made available to me is more than enough.  It’s enough of a promise to fill up countless entries on a blog, and yet simple enough to tie every closing paragraph. Jesus came to rightly route all my wrongs. He counted me worthy, he beckoned me as his own, and to this day he’s crazy about me.  And that is a delightfully simple truth I will never grow weary of living out.

Less about me

Humbled.  A word I will use to describe what happens to my heart when God graciously shows how merciful and perfect He is in spite of how inconsistent and self-focused I am.  Humbled and sad.  Humbled and hopeful.  Humbled and all sorts of emotions in between.  But in this moment, humbled and really, really, grateful.   

In my life, righteousness has always meant being good- at least on the outside.  It meant keeping up appearances, focusing on my own sense of moral purity and personal piety.  If I was consistent in my quiet time, attending small group, saying the right things in prayer, reading all of the right books, and for the most part staying away from those big sins that less-good people committed, then I was righteous.  With more shame than I can say, righteousness as I thought of it tended to always accompany a sense of comparison, because if I did not actually feel better than someone else, in my mind, I wasn’t better.  I did not have to be perfect, that I knew, because God doesn’t expect that.  I just had to be better than others, because Jesus liked “better” people. 

It turns out He actually doesn’t.

This image of the good person I held securely in my hands is slowly being stripped away.  Because good always meant that someone else liked me, affirmed that I was gifted at something, or admired something I had said or done.  And let’s be honest, it is nice to feel good, affirmed, or even admired.  In some ways it is motivating and makes us carry our heads a bit higher if just for a few moments.  But what I think I have done is make Jesus the king of my personal self-improvement, the one who makes me good.  And in one sentence I can go from believing I am close to getting it to walking dangerously in the footsteps of the Pharisees, claiming a reliance on God when in all reality I’m only doing so because it is making me feel pretty dang elevated in front of everyone else. 

When God talks about righteousness, He almost always uses it in parallel language with justice.  Thirty-four times, actually.  Amos 5:24: I want to see a mighty flood of justice, and endless flowing of righteous living.  Job 37:23: The Almighty is beyond our reach and exalted in power.  In his justice and great righteousness, he does not oppress.  Psalm 103:6: The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.  Isaiah 5:16: The Lord Almighty will be exalted by his justice, and the holy God will show himself holy by his righteousness.  The righteousness of God is virtually synonymous with his justice.  Always right, always fair. 

In my life, I have made these things very, very separate.  Righteousness was how good I am, justice was some outward thing I do for brownie points.  Righteousness was my ticket to Heaven, justice was something only certain people are called to do.  But our God was known by his justice, and if I so deeply want to know Him, that is probably where I should start. 

Jesus was not afraid to get angry at people who, like me, had easily mistaken righteousness for something entirely about them.  He called them hypocrites, liars, and in disgust he compared them to snakes.  “You tithe mint and dill and cumin, but ignore the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness.  These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.”  So righteousness comes after I act justly, not instead of it.  Justice is a response to Jesus’s life and the example He left, righteousness is the result.  That changes so, so much.

What if my first thought upon waking up in the morning was not about me?  What if I stopped thinking so much about what I can do to look holy, and began simply living justly?  Would that not accomplish the same end?  What if living in harmony with my neighbor instead of being annoyed at how she parks her car actually meant as much as reading a few Proverbs for the day?  What if treating everyone the same really honored God as much as the money I give somewhat-sacrificially?  What if actually mending relationships meant as much to me as crafting the right sentences to describe them?  I can have all the knowledge necessary, but if I lack the same compassion Jesus had, I am empty of every meaningful thing in the world.  Unless I am compelled to act on behalf of another human being, my efforts at righteousness will end there, at the effort.  

I think we have a tendency to complicate the really simple command to “love your neighbor as you love yourself.”  Everyone is our neighbor. And loving is different than tolerating- it is fair, it is honoring.  Act with justice.  Live with righteousness.  Know Jesus.  And nothing makes more sense of the world than that.       

 “Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than courageously and actively doing God’s will.”  

-Dietrich Bonheoffer

a little extra

Sometimes I dance. Sometimes I am brutally honest with people. Sometimes I buy shoes with a slight heel. Sometimes I give up. Sometimes I fail miserably. And sometimes I start writing with absolutely no idea where it’s going.

Sometimes I fear. And when I do fear, the items previously mentioned creep steadily to the top of what makes me afraid.

Fears:  Debilitating. Tricky. And often undetected in their elusive nature.

It seems as though fear has been the common denominator in every book, every lesson, every casual conversation that I’ve taken part in as of late. Do you ever feel what people might actually mean by ‘the audible voice of God’ is really the same verse, the same sentence, the same concept being repeated so many times that it feels like God is shouting at you? He has to get our attention somehow right? But when *fear* is the topic of choice Tuesday afternoon while talking with my sister, Tuesday night at North Central College, Wednesday morning in class at Willow, covered solely in a conversation I had with a friend Wednesday around lunch, and the subject of discussion at Naperville North Wednesday night… something’s up.

Last night I was spending some time with some teachers I know. These three have become some of the funniest, witty people I’ve been around.  After laughing and joking about how to pronounce falafel and telling stories of what it’s really like being a high school dean these days, the high school counselor among us asked what we were afraid of. Naturally. In the space continuum of Kristin’s crash course on fear, yes, it’s perfectly normal to go from joyous laughter to deepest fear with little to no transition. After sharing some of losing loved ones and trying to articulate what it could be or would be like when we’re no longer alive here on earth, I glanced over at a female teacher among us, currently battling for her life, diagnosed and in treatment for breast cancer. I asked her if she was more afraid before or after she was diagnosed. Immediately she answered after, and then thought for a minute about it. She sat, delicate, but strong and said that she was definitely afraid after, but those weren’t the same kind of fears she had battled before. The little ones seemed so insignificant now with the enormus feat set before her.

We sat in silence for a second, all trying to imagine her battle, her fears, her trust in something bigger than her diagnosed body.  In the next room, high school kids played a game of charades, acting out their biggest fear. Clowns, jack-in-the-box, and bees, were among the lethal bunch.  It made me wish I was fifteen again with nightmares of bees as the world’s worst pain.  And then it dawned on me that being fifteen might just be my greatest fear.  Wish revoked, immediately.

I’ve been studying the book of Judges in great depth.  And by great depth, I mean I read it once, hardly understand it and then, come Wednesday, I  ferociously write down every context clue and application nugget the teacher explains while in a class with my mom and sister. It reminds me of being in school with the teacher that buzzes through Powerpoint slides, novel-long, stopping only to ask, ‘are you getting this?’ Except this time, I am getting this. I’m processing in greater detail the reality of the ordinary mixed with the mystery of the divine.  I’m understanding how delighted God is to use very ‘normal’ people to accomplish impossibly abnormal tasks. I’m finding that being in a place that grips me with fear actually stirs up my soul enough to grip tighter to the hand of God.

I believe God leads us into situations that cause the rational fears in us to crave a supernatural, superrational courage.  Fear definitely causes me to run, but it’s my relationship with the living God that causes me to run directly into the fear instead of sprinting with all my own might in the opposite direction. So, at least for today, I’m gazing upon the scary in a whole new light, an everlasting light that makes the ordinary Kristin a little extra by the power of her extraordinary God.

roots

In keeping with this week of amor, I thought about doing a “things I love” post, but I can actually do that in one sentence: Jesus, Alex, family, friends, coffee chats, books, teaching, learning, writing, and the ocean.  Me in a list of ten.  So unoriginal.  I toyed with the idea of writing about marriage and how wonderful it is and how I think it is one of God’s greatest ideas—those are true statements, but I have been a bride for all of six months and I humbly admit that Alex and I need to put some miles on this covenant before I earn any credibility to speak wisely about it.

But this time of year, everyone’s mind is on it: love.  Whether you have it, are searching for it, have been broken by it, or are celebrating decades of it, I am willing to bet that you’re thinking about it.  I spent many a fourteenth of Februaries hanging out with my girlfriends, pretending that I did not really want to be on a date with someone special.   I was twenty-five when I met the one, twenty-six when I married him—by no means is that old or on the verge of being what I thought was too late to find him—but I happen to have a group of best friends who found their lifetime love years before I did, so I really felt that longing in the wait for the beautiful thing they had, and I made my fair share of mistakes in the meantime.

…in the meantime… it is amazing how much of our lives we spend in those words.  Until the next thing happens, I’ll just get by the best way I can.  Until I meet him, until I get pregnant, until I find a new job, until I lose the weight, until we can move, until our vacation, until I become that person… in the meantime I will just wait for life to start.  And while we stall and wonder and dream about what could be, what is just passes by untouched.  Too often we live for whatever is next, not for whatever is now.

I did this.  I still do it in many aspects of my life.  But I am learning in the deepest ways that while planning, dreaming, and hoping are so beautiful, those things we are planning and dreaming and hoping for should not disengage us from our lives today.  No, this ordinary Monday is so full of potential, as much potential as the skinnier you, the mommy you, the tanned and recently passport-stamped you, the in-love you has.  We were made to love God and people.  Not tomorrow, today.  Not when we are married or have a mini-van full of kiddos, today. 

The roots of my love for Jesus were put down in the thousands of moments I experienced it in simple, un-glamorous ways.  Phone calls, encouraging letters, prayers of genuine care, laugh until we cry moments, three hour coffee dates, weekend visits, a drive along Highway 1.  All of the right now moments I can easily let myself think are not enough, they really are the best things in life.

I don’t want to miss today and all the amazing possibilities it holds.  I want to let the roots grow right here, even if it takes time or more rainy days than I would have liked to sit through.  If God wants to use our lives today, which He does, He is not going to wait until next week or next year to give us what we need to do that work.  We have it, but so many of us don’t love what we have so we think that this is not really it, not the thing that will finally glue the puzzle pieces together.

The story of redemption we are living in is alive and active.  It is so life-giving to discover the places that God is using people to heal, to fix what is broken, to make things new.  But if we stay in our positions of privilege and entitlement, waiting for the better-than-what-I-have-now object of our affection, we keep ourselves out of the places and relationships that do heal, the ones that are evidence of a living Savior and redeeming God.  Jesus gave us love in abundance, in a measure we cannot even take in because it is so much more than we could ask or imagine.  And this love doesn’t start when we finally get what we have been waiting for, it hangs thickly in the air wherever we go, waiting for us to breathe it in and live it out.

Put your roots down here, in the place you are in.  The seasons of life have a way of producing something beautiful out of something willing to grow.  

tossed upside-down

I studied history in college. Beyond the obvious appeal of the professors- whom all seemed to be pushing eighty, hard of hearing and resembling that of Santa Claus, I loved history because it examined people. Choices, responses, tactics, and feelings of some of the most interesting men and women to have walked this earth, each of whom were my constant muse of study. People like me, only with fewer gadgets, more structured dress and unquestionably longer walks. History is fascinating to the sad few of us that find the past something to draw from, ponder about and even, dare I say, learn from? 

I don’t read nearly as much as I read in college of these figures from our humanity’s past, but I do make it a regular routine to learn from one man who walked the earth in utter brilliance. Jesus. The main character of a book found in practically every hotel room and translated in more tongues than Gene Simmons has kissed.  Brutal graphic, I know. I must admit that I read the Bible some, not ever enough and often without the reverence of what it is, what it’s worth and what it’s ultimately capable of.  It was time for me to approach these written words with the knowledge and proof that they actually happened. It was time for me feel the confusion Mary faced when approached with the impossible task in front of her, it was time to process what my first thought would be when my friend, born blind, could see- though blurry- through tears of joy because an unknown thirty-something man had healed him with his spit-covered hands, it was time for me feel the crunch of the sand at the bottom of the Red Sea, damp and cool from the massive amounts of water that towered above me. It was time for me to think of Jesus as someone more than the main character of the greatest story ever told. It was time for me to study him in what he said and picture walking with him long enough to see if my response matched that of the confused disciples, or even worse, the condemning Pharisees. It was time to validate this book as a gift, wrapped up in ancient history and tied together by the unexplainable, unimaginable breath of God. 

The study of this man, and the unthinkable things he said has tossed me upside down as of late. If you’re a common visitor of this blog (bless you, by the way), you might have picked up on a common thread in my tapestry of entries in the recent months. If that thread had a name it would be called ‘the world’ and if that thread had a color, it would most likely be black. I have been struck and churning over the wicked this world can put off. And until recently, I was perfectly fine blaming the unanswered questions, the negative news reports, and the slime-ball type people on the brutality of this world.

Here’s the tossed upside down part: When I study Jesus, he teaches me things. The same words that I’ve had memorized since the early ages of adolescence pop off the page with a punch that makes my head spin. And here’s what Jesus taught me last week…

I’m the problem. It’s not the world, the bad guys, the dark corners, the government, or even the Chicago White Sox, Kristin Stockfisch is the problem. And in the most tender way, the words of Jesus captured my heart in the form of Mark 7 and convicted me as the ring-leader of the blame game. I’ve been tirelessly blaming this world around me for the pride, selfishness, slander, deceit and wicked ways, when really, the root of every malicious issue takes birth and resides in me. And in you. Instead of viewing myself in this world as a basically good creature brought down by dirtier, self-glorifying men and women, I am an active participant in the problem. Because “it’s what comes out of person that defiles them. It is from within, out of person’s heart… (Mark 7:20)” Words like theft, malice, greed, and arrogance are at rest within us. And that’s what makes this world so crazy. It’s not the stadium that’s rotten, it’s the players of the game.

And that realization on a slow-patterned Saturday morning at the start of February on my L-shaped couch made the sweet taste of grace all the more delectable. Jesus continues to save my battered heart day in and day out. His selflessness and humility makes new of my selfish, pride-plastered heart. I am thankful today and in such rest that his one act of love covered the countless ways I regrettably love myself.

So at the launch of twenty twelve I invested in two things. A new Bible and 12 sharpened, colored pencils. I’m studying this book of history. Gleaning insight from this fascinating man, and marking up the pages in a frenzy of thought. Study this book. Be a student of this man named Jesus, and I promise as you’re tossed upside down, the very words will leave you right where you need to be.