vacation... and stuff.

We took a much-appreciated vacation to Surfside beach a couple of weeks ago with family.  I heartily recommend doing this, people.  It's so close, was way more cost-effective than Galveston, and is a great getaway if you're not looking for a lot of scheduled activity-sightseeing (though Galveston and all is just up the coast about 30 minutes).

I think most of these photos need little captioning... it was tough to choose just these.  Enjoy.  :)

I rather enjoyed the look of this one blown out... we call it 'Grammy in a bucket':

day 3 - Schlitterbahn.  also highly recommended.

decompressing at the end of the day:

for kicks, some of you may recall a photo Melanie B. took of me at Galveston when we were sending off the Browns... she made it look all kinds of cool and old-fashioned.  we thought it would be fun to have a pregnant one (and if you need to know where to get this super-cute maternity swimsuit, here it is):

and lookie what craftiness I'm capable of!  you might remember that I made this mobile for Maggie... well, we had this birdcage hanging in the corner of Magz' room and in the new configuration it's now over the baby bed.  I decided to keep it and just turn it into a mobile for the new little one.  it's not quite done yet (if you look close you can see the pins) but it looks really cute in there and I wanted to share this burst of creativity, even if it was somewhat blurrily caught by my iphone.  :)

So, what else.  I'll be 35 weeks pregnant on Thursday.  I feel mostly okay - bending and picking things up is a royal pain in the hoo-ha and if I'm on my feet for longer than about an hour my left hip starts protesting, but Michael is letting me keep the thermostat down - even though it's freezing him out, I think, and may cause a minor shock when we receive the electric bill - and overall things are just fine.  We get to see the baby on sonogram later next week, and I'm really looking forward to that.  So much went on with Maggie - it seems like we saw her all the time, what with the specialist and my regular doc, but this go-'round has been different.  I'm starting to get excited about turning my attention to actually having a baby, as things slowly but surely get marked off my to-do list.  tiny clothes washed - check.  girls' closet (mostly) done - check.  laundry/play room (mostly) done - check.  Magz in her toddler bed - check.  the house (mostly) reorganized - check.  sci-fi trilogy audiobook recording - principal narration of book 3 completed this week, corrections completed by Tuesday of next.  VBS kickoff fish fry tomorrow night... I'm helping in the kitchen and with food, but likely phasing out after tomorrow until after baby is born, as my hip hates having to stand up that long and those are becoming rough nights for me.  Magz' birthday party a week from Saturday.  We're supposed to host dinner group this month, need to send that email after I hit publish...

I find myself prioritizing easily... things that can wait, will.  Things that aren't important, fall by the wayside.  It feels like a gift.

hubz home, so I should go. he's making dinner.  I'm blessed in most every way, really.... you have my permission to remind me of that when I don't act like it.

-m.y.

when conversations go well. also photos.

I got in last night from my last work trip until after the baby comes.  woo-hoo!  it was a good, fairly easy trip, and I feel both grateful for how cool everybody up there is and for the break from having to think about scheduling/traveling.  today's to-do list stretches ahead... short 9a session in west hou, 10a dr appointment, short 11:30 session in west hou, 12:30 session near IKEA, 1:30-4:30 reading audiobook not far from there.  then home and done and weekend!  until I have to read more audiobook tomorrow, so I can meet my deadlines so I can go to Surfside beach week after next without stressing.

I had a couple of conversations this work trip that I felt really good about - so much is going on in news/politics that there are lots of opportunities to engage others in trading opinions, to be sure.  I tend to err on the side of not getting into it, and then later wish I'd been able to express myself well as a Christian whose views are not necessarily reflected in those talking into microphones on tv/radio/etc.  One particular conversation I had in the studio with my engineer and director was so positive... I got to confess to them that I often avoid topics for fear of putting more 'Christians against Christians, infighting amongst ourselves' stuff out there... but in doing so, I may come across as either endorsing behavior and ideals put out by some vocal believers that I feel are wrong (or just wrongly expressed) or I totally avoid professing my faith/convictions at all, which makes me feel cowardly.  we ended up talking in particular about the importance of pursuing kindness and civility always, touched on the fundamental Christian belief of our brokenness and total dependence on Christ, even about evangelism and how one shares what they believe.  I know this is going to shock you:  non-Christians don't want our tracts, cold-calls, or impersonal 'have you accepted Jesus as your lord and savior?' mall ambushes... they want to see our faith in action in service and loving others.  they want to see us modeling Jesus, to see attractive evidence of the power of faith in our own lives.  they want conversations that stem naturally from relationship.  long term, boots on the ground kind of stuff.  at least, that's what we talked about, anyway.  it's those kinds of interactions I hope for, the moments when you can organically share who you are with those you know in a way that, you hope, reflects well on Jesus.

for your Friday viewing pleasure, I submit:

A Well-Behaved Child at 5th Sunday Singing night (before she started getting antsy/crazy because, hello, this is when we're usually eating dinner and taking a bath):

water sports

 

a family of Raggedy Anns:

bedtime with mama's big belly

and a cowgirl with a baby.

we're putting together her big-girl 2 year old bed this weekend.  smile and sigh.  and now I hear her, so it's time to get crackin'.

-m.y.

monday photopalooza

maggie's first zoo trip

feeding the babies 'apples' and 'juuuuu! (juice):

easter.  :) 

none of my flowers in this bed died out over the winter... a testament to how mild it was!  this was a couple of weeks ago - now everything is busting out like crazy:

I love love love this photo from my shower Saturday.

 

I'm determined to finish reading book one of a sci-fi trilogy this week (for work... it's an audiobook gig)...  wish me luck!  I've got to be strategic about work the next couple of months, to get everything wrapped up and accomplished both well and in the least-stressful manner possible.  did I mention how blessed we are?  because we are.

-m.y.

garage makeover... an update

just to refresh your memory, this was our garage:

SO.

one of the first things we did was purchase this outdoor storage unit to move a few outdoorsy things out of the garage.

our goal was to try to control the temperature in the garage without totally pulling out all of the sheetrock and insulating the walls and the whole shebang.  we opted to put about 14 inches of insulation up in the ceiling:

mr. micheletti was invaluable.  I cannot stress this enough.  there used to be a closet here beside the washer/dryer, fyi.

trying to position/tape/float new sheetrock after the insulation is in place.

another necessary reinforcement, mr. fuller.  heartfelt thanks also goes to ben and nicole (somehow I neglected to snag their photo but they both came over on Good Friday to help us out).

Reuben the electrician came and hooked us up with a few new outlets, a work light, a ceiling fan, and a dedicated circuit for the garage.  this is after the ceiling/walls have been painted, before the floor:

and this was at the end of the night.  eventually that raised area was painted, too, and mr. sandifer came over to help us saw out those metal things coming up out of the slab.  please note the water cooler in the corner - in the above photo, it looks super ugly.  we decided to pain the wooden stand the same color as the floor, and poof!  suddenly the whole thing sort of disappeared.  ahhh, the magic of paint.

to help with temperature control and lighten things up a bit, we decided to go with a new insulated garage door.  

this photo doesn't really do it justice... the decision to change this door has seriously changed the whole complexion of our house from the street.

magz, overseeing daddy positioning new Flor carpet tiles.

this was a dilapidated cabinet left behind by our renters.

I opened up some paint we already had, and voila (I'm still looking for some interesting hardware to jazz it up a little):

I'm still in the process of organizing.  Maggie approved of this purchase and was very affronted when I ultimately put a childproof lock on these doors.

this is probably the only time it will appear this uncluttered.  BUT, it's a really good start to a new, usable space, and it's made our 2 bedroom/1 bath abode even more rockin'.

when I get it all totally done, I'll take some decent photos in the daytime.

in other news, I'm very pregnant.

-m.y.

we're nothing if not trendy.

the title of this post came from something I read about how it's so trendy to be angsty about church life now.  cheers to feeling on the cutting edge and yet being incredibly common!  :)


To carry over a couple of slightly paraphrased thoughts from the last post about churches....


"I'm interested in dialoguing more about what we expect our churches to be, what we're allowed to expect from them, and where 'church' may not be required to meet us..."


and:


"How do churches of today navigate and plan for the mobile, fluid lives of today's people while simultaneously calling for community, help, and service?  How do the different sorts of lives church members lead today change what our churches do?  Or how they do them?"


One thing I took from the comments is the idea that maybe church isn't intended to revolve around a building, that church can focus on people and thus make itself more malleable for a membership who may be away from home 2-3 times a month for days at a time, or may have multiple communities they serve in and less time to devote primarily to their church (as traditional church volunteering may go).  I do think this idea appeals to many in our current generation, and is exemplified in the movement of many toward more house churches, church plants, internet faith communities and the like.  There's definitely a feeling sometimes that we focus too much on trying to get people to come to where we are - within our walls - than a push to get us to go out and just BE the church to the world wherever and however we interact with it.  


On the flipside, I think it's safe to say that the existence of our buildings, staff, etc. does introduce added elements of business and expectation... who runs the church?  How do we support it, and what do we want it to do?  If we have a building, shouldn't we be using it as much as possible and encouraging our people to come and gather as often as we can to, you know, worship and accomplish stuff together?  Since monies are corporately collected by the membership, shouldn't many great things for God spring out of and be mobilized by that central community?


I find myself somewhere in the middle, predictably.  I do feel that the local church affords us opportunities to organize ourselves and combine our talents and resources for good, and I'd like to be a part of doing a lot of good.  I believe that being involved in a local church - like any entity, really - offers tremendous room for personal growth, as working alongside others over the long haul is never an easy road, is it?  Beth Moore recently talked about our propensity to encounter conflict in our churches/communities and back off, tune out, disengage, go elsewhere... I love that she challenged us to consider that God has a call on the lives of people who rub us the wrong way, to bring out the parts of us He's trying to work on.  


I've also become a person who would like my church to meet needs I didn't consider before I had children, not just because I think it's a nice thing but because I want to feel that kind of support and consideration as a person who's chosen to commit time to our congregation, and that's the season I'm in.  I know a criticism of some churches is that they cater too much to families and kids, but we belong to a small congregation whose children's ministry has fluctuated a lot over the years and since I've had a little one (and one on the way) suddenly it's all quite personal.  I know many nearby churches offer all sorts of great programs for parents and their kids and I don't expect our church to be Super Church by any means, but I'd like the incentive for myself and my kids to be primarily woven into our own church community in whatever ways we can be.


A note of confession-- I sometimes emotionally struggle with creating the things I want for myself.  I am honestly happy to use my gifts to be able to help create space, services, events, etc that I think will help myself and other families to come together to worship and support each other and encounter the community around us, but in the past year I've sometimes felt resentful that it's not being done for me, or us, to an extent.  I know how selfish and ugly that sounds, but it's true.  I'm not an island by any means and there are other creator/initiator/servants around me that I'm constantly buoyed and inspired by, but I have (probably unrealistic) desires of having some of my needs intuited and met by my church without my having to expend my own energy to make them a reality around my job and my family.  This is but one area where I'm fuzzy with regard to what the church should and isn't required to do, and I waffle around trying to land on an answer.  And how would my answer and expectations change if we didn't meet in a big church building with dedicated ministries and staff and such??  Even as I write that, I also proclaim that it's not the staff of a church's job to do all the work of the church, and we members should all be prepared to take our positions as working parts in the body.  I will say this - the experience of having children has helped me understand why people with kids might choose to just stay home, though, or migrate to larger churches who have all sorts of opportunities and volunteers already in place.  I'd be interested to hear how these types of issues affect folks of varying life situations and seasons...


On the side of less church-centric church, I empathize with the plight of churches who're trying to operate traditional schedules and such with a membership that can't commit to being there every time.  I'm sure this is why many have streamlined by cutting Sunday evening services, emphasizing flexible small group involvement in lieu of extra corporate meetings outside of Sunday morning, adding services on Saturday nights, whatever might fit best into the lives of people.  I'm honestly not opposed to this - I'd rather a church choose it's offerings intentionally, pray for and expend energy on them, and strongly encourage participation at those times than have a lot of grandfathered-in activities that are sorta-kinda attended.  Of course, I'm sure a lot of these 'grandfathered-in' things are dearly loved by those who frequent them, so I'm not saying church leaders have an easy job... 


A parting thought strung together after a couple of conversations - we react against using guilt as a motivator for church service/involvement, and many might say this current generation has moved past guilt or obligation as previous generations might have known it.  Which is good, overall, right?  What happens if 'guilt' motivation isn't replaced with a compelling desire to participate (we might call this the Spirit in us, maybe?  or not?)?  What if we all take the opportunity to live in that freedom and minimize the priority of whatever our church is doing, thinking 'I'll be there when I can, if it works out around everything else'?  What's a church leader to do then?  I don't want to be emotionally manipulated, which I think guilt can tend toward, but I can also understand church leaders wanting to say something like, 'um, we need some more help.  could you show up a little more in some way, and not be mad at us for asking or think we're trying to put you out?'  Is this where members say, 'I get you, but this is all I can do right now... YOU need to change what YOU'RE doing'... do we meet somewhere in the middle?  I also wonder how these sorts of dynamics play out in less corporately 'organized' church life... what do house churches/church plants expect of 'church life'?  Is it less organized events during the week or month, and more community/daily/Bonhoeffer-esque living?


just a few more thoughts to continue the discussion... would love to hear your viewpoint.  also, when I touted that RHE blog post about leaving the church, there were only 300 or so comments... I think there might be over 800 now, and they rapidly fell into a bunch of reactive name-calling and the usual rude internet behavior.  which is too bad, but I think if you sort by first to last you might be able to see the sort of interesting dialogue and sharing of experience that I was referring to.


-m.y.