Play Hurt

As I sit down in front of this little netbook tonight, I'm thinking about the phrase, "Play Hurt".

My son Isaac is near-legendary for playing his basketball through an injury. He twisted his ankle in a game last year, and played the whole game. He contracted mono last summer, lost about 15 pounds, and couldn't get his strength back. He kept coming down with flu after flu last winter, and still played his heart out, every game. He played a couple of games with a high fever.

Then, he sprained an ankle in a national tournament this past March...and...you guessed it. He played hurt. And won a game for his team. He recently sprained his other ankle (badly) and has gone back to work (roofing!) before it has had a chance to completely heal. He will be okay - it is good for him to, within reason, learn that life is about "Playing Hurt".

It is particularly true of church life...of life in Christ. Every great man or woman of God has to "play hurt". Church life, as my Preacher said this past Sunday, is not all warm fuzzies. People hurt you. Oh Lawdy-Lawd, do they ever hurt you.

David said, "Let the righteous smite me...it won't kill me." (My paraphrase).

People who whine about being hurt by the church have come to the wrong blog for sympathy. Join the club, my friend.

And play hurt.

You do not have to wait until you are all 'specially healed up and whole to serve God and love His people. You don't have to wait till you feel all better to obey God in the Next Thing, and tend your relationships. You don't have to wait for a feeling to go fix your relationships. You just drag that donkey-butt back to the church you last left, and you forgive and you forge ahead.

This life is war, friend. Spiritual war. The war is out there. I do not care how hurt you have been by your church experience, I am here to tell you, the worst day in His house is better than a thousand good days anywhere else. The devil is out to kill, steal, and destroy...the body of Christ is simply human and fallible.

Please, please lose the notion that the saints are out to get you. There are some mean people, some sorry saints, in every church...but by and large, you are not their first target, you won't be their last, and they don't fall asleep dreaming of ways they can harm you, because you are simply not that important to them, and that is part of the problem. If you were more important to them, they'd be hurting you differently, but they'd still hurt you from time to time.

Let them smite me. When it is all said and done, the proof is exactly this: they will be the ones to leave, and I will still be right here, shot through but still loving The Bride. Me? I play hurt, baby.

I can say this, just now, because I'm in my happy place. No one at all has hurt me lately. No one has left in a wrong way, in fact some have been added...and added back. Church life is good for me, these days.

To get to the good days...the precious stuff...you have to play through the pain.

Play Hurt. Your team is counting on you.

Dedicated to Matt and Kelly Bailey

"Five good children are an immense luxury, and to deny one's self other luxuries in order to raise them is not self-denial at all, but merely an intelligent choice of investment."

--Edward Sandford Martin, The Luxury of Children (1904)

~~~~~~~

Yeah. The Baileys are expecting! That would bring the Harvest Baby Total up to....

seven. Not even kidding you. Seven. I dance. I spin. I clap like a child. Children are a reward, and so Harvest and her families must be overflowing with divine favor. This grace-message is proving itself to be extremely pleasing to the Father.

I Want

I want...what do I want? It is important to know.

I want to dwell in possibility.

I want to inspire you. ("others" is too generic and remote for me. I want to inspire you.)

I want to be inspired.

I want to be able to use a Tan Towel without streaking myself.

I want to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire every single day in His temple.

I want to live in the reality of Christ in me, Christ as me.

And Oh. Mah. Weeeerd. I want a zoom lens.

I want to worry less and take joy more.

I want to let go of what is out of my control anyway. And that would be almost everything in life besides what I wear tomorrow.

I want to cling tightly to grace.

I want a different car. Didn't used to. Now I do. Now that my Preacher has his new truck, I'm smitten with the ardent desire to drive something decent. And for me, that would still be something older, but older on purpose...older for a reason...older by choice. Hmmmm. Kind of like me. I'm so stinking proud that I am finally a grandmother, and it is my choice to embrace it.

The very idea of a "hot car", with any woman over 40 at the wheel, just makes me smirk. My son's young girlfriend drives a Mustang, for crying out loud, and she looks adorable behind the wheel, and that car is perfect for her. She gains major cool-points for driving it. Me? I'm forty plus. I'd lose major cool points, by trying too hard. I can't do the "I-drive-this-because-I-can-and-I-need-for-you-to-think-I'm-still-hot" car. I'd rather eat dirt and die. But pay no attention to me. I don't know anything.

I heart the older Volvo station wagons!


Hear me out. Someday I'll find me one, all boxy-looking and in perfect shape, white or black, and she shall become mine. It's an "intellectual-but-cool-and-good-looking-in-an-elegant-40-something-way"chick thing. I love the idea that I drive the car I inherited from my grandmother. That's the vibe I'm going for. I'm weird like that. I do all my own psychoanalyzation, because to be analyzed by others gets tedious and boring. And the results are nearly always inaccurate.

It goes all the way back to the TV show "Judging Amy". Plus, I would still need the sort of vehicle that I can toss all my antique store finds in. Something besides a green mini van. Amen.

I want to be more like Jesus. And I know...after that rant about middle aged women and their image cars, you don't believe me. But I do. I really do.

I want to be a Barnabus Friend, a Paul Mentor of young Timothys, and to be Jesus' John the Beloved. To lay my head upon His breast.

I want dark chocolate.

I want to see even more souls saved.

I want to be out of debt, and for the Vols to win the SEC championship - both things this year, by some miracle, pleaseGod.

I want more of God's glory on full display in my life, and I want to laugh with a best girlfriend until my eyes pop out of my skull and my very life passes before my eyes, which will make me laugh even harder.

I want to grow old with my peeps - all my family, grandchildren present and grandchildren to be. All of Harvest Church present, all of Harvest Church to be. My vision encompasses the years and the generations like that.

I want crab legs. Right now.

I want Sarah Palin to be Chris Christie's Vice President.

I want either Peyton Manning or Tim Tebow to play for a Superbowl ring this year.

I want to shut up now, because you want me to shut up now.

Jeanne Oliver Designs

I am a huge fan of all things hand made. I have a strong desire, in this season of my life, to support home based designers and writers and artists.

So. I must tell you. I am so in love with Jeanne Oliver and her clothing and bag designs. I never thought I'd see my way clear to buy one of her tops (too short for me to wear as a dress)...until she ran a very brief (I think it was a one or two day only) deep discount awhile back.

Really big discount. Big enough for me to bite the bullet and order.

(this photo from Jeanne Oliver Designs)

I so love this little top. It is my favorite thing in my wardrobe right now, and I predict it will remain my favorite throughout the fall season. I've already worn it a couple of times, and it is one of those pieces that strangers will ask you where you bought it. (That has happened to me once, so far - but, as I said, I've only worn this top a couple of times).



Jeanne also does exquisite packaging. My dress/top arrived wrapped in a sheath of grey tissue paper, tied with a strip of torn-fabric string. The top comes with a pin...a cluster of grey linen flowers. But Jeanne included an extra ivory colored fabric flower, tucked in a tiny burlap draw string bag. All hand-made.







She also tucked in some of her photography. I was hugely blessed by the message...for me, in this season of my life, a prophetic whisper from heaven ~

This message both speaks to my life in recent years - letting go of legalism and any person, place, or thing that weighed my spirit down...and it speaks to my "now" - letting go of all that is out of my jurisdiction.

Oh, the letting go is the hardest thing. It is a free-fall into the grace-through-faith by which I'm saved.

Anyhoo. There was also a torn page from an antique French dictionary, all kinds of beautiful ephemera (which I heart, so so much) and a note from Jeanne herself...

Look at the loveliness ~



Her fall designs come out next week...and if she runs another "special", I doubt any force will be powerful enough to keep me from just one more Jeanne Oliver Design.

Preserving Basil - An Easy Tutorial

In the morning hours, before the heat of the day, cut some of your basil and wash it lightly. Let it dry briefly. You'll need coarse salt (Kosher salt is coarse salt) and an airtight container. The prettier the container, the better. Why have ugly if you can have pretty? Why have unsightly, when you can have cute?


I have, many times, said to my youngest son, "If you were ugly, I'd have spanked you more often, and you might be better behaved today."



He is the youngest, and you parents know how tired you are by then. And he is achingly cute (my oldest boy is terribly handsome, and my daughters are stinking gorgeous, and why all my adverbs are pejorative I will never know) and he does behave shockingly from time to time.


And I'm shallow like that. I err to all that visually appeals. Back to basil...

start with a layer of coarse salt, and lay your basil leaves on it. Try not to let them touch, but you don't have to be obsessive about that. It is okay if they touch a little bit, sometimes. You just can't stack 'em, one on top of the other.

Cover your layer of basil leaves with a layer of coarse salt.

Continue until you have something like this. Your basil will keep this way, at near-full-aromatic-state, for about six months!

Keep it in a cool, dark place....like a pantry. Don't keep it on your windowsill. Do as I say, don't do as I do. I am erring to the visually appealing, here, and also obnoxiously showing off my rosemary infused olive oil, in the used-to-be lemonade bottle.

Speaking of cute, of achingly adorable, of over-the-top sweetie-pie-ness, it is time to slip in yet another braggadocious Grandson Photo:

Poppy and I are preparing Little Britches for his first football season. He'll be a Volunteer, through and through, for yeay verily, he hath a goodly heritage.

Yeay, verily. Verily, yeay.

The Exquisite Writing of Hal Borland

"Summer is misted dawns and searing afternoons, hot days, warm nights, thunderstorms cracking their writhing whips. Summer is shirt sleeves, sunburn, bathing suits, tall cold drinks, dazzling beaches and shimmering lakes. Summer is the green countryside, the cool fragrance of mountain pines.

Summer is the house wren bubbling over with morning song. It is the long afternoon aquiver with the sibilance of the cicada. It is slow dusk freckled with fireflies - and prickly with mosquitoes. Summer is a meadowful of daisies, a field of corn reaching for the sun, a straw hat, a hoe and a garden.

Summer is the fresh garden pea, new lettuce crisp in the salad bowl, snap beans, sun-ripe raspberries on the bush and chilled strawberries in a bowl of cream. Summer is the weed, the gnawing insect, the foraging woodchuck, the nibbling rabbit. Summer is sweat.

Summer is April and May grown into June and July, the green world working almost eighteen hours a day. It is a lazy river and a languishing brook. It is a vacation dreamed of, realized, too soon over and done, too soon a memory.

Summer is a promissory note signed in June, its long days spent and gone before you know it, and due to be repaid next January."

~Excerpt from Sundial of the Seasons, by Hal Borland - I absolutely recommend it.

Generational Work

Today, I am so aware of the Gospel being a Generational Work. On many levels, I see this as clearly as the August sky.

"One generation shall praise His works to another, and declare His mighty deeds..."

Firstly, I see the need for young men in the church - men in their early to mid twenties - to mentor teenage men. Mine is not the only church, by far, experiencing the dearth of young men with the leadership skills, talents, compassion, and charisma necessary to make loving Jesus seem desireable to their younger counterparts.

Men in their twenties aren't being taught that the Gospel is a generational work. They don't feel responsible. They aren't being taught how to stick and stay and not run away. They aren't being challenged to see their church as an extension of their family, and to accept the mantle of responsibility to mentor the young guys in their home church. ("Home church? What's that?")

This is partly because the parents, those middle aged men and women, aren't taking responsibility either. They, too, float from church to church, easily offended, not sinking roots into the relational soil, weathering the seasons, reaping the harvest. ("Harvest" means so much more than seeing souls saved. Harvest is fruit matured to the picking-point, in any and every good and happy area of life!)

I remember a conversation the Preacher and I had, a couple years back, with an old salt of a saint who'd pastored churches, and does pastor even now. We were talking of those we've seen come and go in our churches, and how sad it was, this loss of potential and momentum and fruit, when roots are ripped up and transplanted, over and over, to no real avail. We were lamenting the limitation that comes when people of any age do not respect authority, nor do they value continuity of years in relationships.

He said, "I will tell you this: 100% of the drifters and the relationally challenged have issues with their own parents. You cannot devalue or disrespect that most basic relationship and expect to somehow understand how healthy relationships in the family of God function."

Ah, wisdom is justified by her children.

It cuts both ways, I have recently discovered. Parents have to model respect by respecting their grown children, honoring their unique destiny, and asking forgiveness when necessary. No parent, by virtue of their position, has the right to manipulate the lives of grown children, or tear down the choices, spouse, or profession of their son or daughter. If you try that, you will live with the consequences, and they are indeed bitter. Far better to humble yourself, even as The Parent, and sincerely make things right...on your child's terms, not yours.

Otherwise, they will forgive you. But they will reserve the right to forgive you from a distance. Is that really what you want?

Wisdom is proven in the generations. This is why I am so thrilled to see many three-generation-strong families in Harvest Church, my own being one of them. (We are actually four generations strong!) Serving God with my parents and my children, while holding my grandson is what the Gospel is about. I can say that, because I know what it has taken to get to this place....a whole lot of obedience and applying my theology to my biography.

And a whole, whole lot of forgivin'.

And we are SO not a trophy family. We've had to apply the Gospel in ways that have humbled us all into the dirt, laid bare and vulnerable before one another. If you have followed this blog for any length of time, you know. And it ain't over yet. This Gospel that the Preacher and I have joyfully and painfully lived out in the secret places of our home relationships, is a Generational Work.

You can't manufacture it. It isn't assembly-line. It is artisanal work, done by heart and hand. This sort of work isn't nurtured well in an impersonal, business model church environment, with all due respect.

Yes, one generation shall praise His works to another! I need to wrap this up. I hear my grandson waking up...I can hear him "declaring the Lord's mighty deeds"...well. He's declaring something...loudly.

"The Father forgave the prodigal before he confessed (Luke 15:20) and God provided my forgiveness before I asked, and isn’t this the Kingdom I’m orienting to, the compassion before the confession?

I am a daughter failed and I am a parent failing and I know it in ways now I never knew: if I rip apart the bridge of forgiveness for my own parents with my own hands, I destroy the only way my own children can come to me."

~from the beautiful blog "A Holy Experience" by Ann Voskamp