Five on Friday--June 14
Hi friends! We’ve made it to the middle of June! Two weeks of summer vacation are behind us and we’ve settled into a pretty good rhythm here, although Aidan had a sports camp all day this week which meant it was just Asher & I hanging with friends. It was fun to have just one kiddo home but I missed big brother helping entertain little brother! I hope your summer is off to a great start and now, here are this week’s 5 things.
ONE
I am pretty sure I’m not alone in the fact that the question of “what’s for dinner” comes at me more than I often care to hear it. One of those questions that has to be answered 365 days a year…how are these people who live in this house going to be fed? In my own friendships, this is something that comes up often—how exhausting it can be since that question never goes away. I remember my own mom making her weekly menu/grocery list and asking us “Ugh! Girls! What should we have for dinner this week?? I can’t think of anything!” In fact a couple of weeks ago I posted a picture of a list of meals I keep in my day planner and got more comments on that post than I typically do on social media posts. So I know it’s something most of us think about! Now I love menu planning because I love the organization of it and I love having a plan in place. But coming up with WHAT to put on the menu—well some seasons I have all kinds of ideas. And other seasons nothing sounds appealing. My kids fluctuate back and forth between eating well and not liking anything I put in front of them (even if they liked it two weeks earlier), and that is just frustrating. I want to take the stress out of dinnertime this summer, not spending a lot of time thinking about what to serve or whether or not people will eat it. So this summer I’m going back to a menu planning hack I used when my boys were teeny tiny little ones and I was so tired I couldn’t think straight, and I’m sharing it here today. This may not appeal to you at all. But if you need a way to make meals simple in your house you are welcome to borrow it and try it for a season.
All I’ve done here is made a list of 4 weeks worth of meals (I plan for 5 meals a week, we usually have leftovers 1-2 times a week and if for some reason we’re out of leftovers and I’ve cooked all 5 meals we’ll grab something or make grilled cheese) and then we’re simply repeating them for June, July and August. These are all our grilling, crock pot, Instant Pot favorites so most don’t have to heat up the kitchen with the oven. In September I’ll make another 4 weeks worth of meals and rotate those September, October and November. Those meals will likely start to include some things like chili and cornbread, loaded nachos, football watching food :) When December rolls around and it actually really starts to cool off here I’ll make another 4 weeks of meals which will always include lots of soups because I usually only make soups through February here. You get the idea! What we want to eat varies throughout the year, so creating a seasonal menu rotation is gold—you can repeat it every year and almost never have to think about what’s for dinner again except to add in new recipes from time to time as you find ones you want to try! If you’re super sick of answering the “what’s for dinner question” try sitting down for 30 minutes, make a list of meals your family will eat (frozen pizza, Trader Joes Orange Chicken, Mac & Cheese, it all counts—add it to the list!) and then just start rotating them. I’ve made meal planning SO hard in the past, trying to add in all this variety and try ALL the recipes I find on Pinterest that look so good in the pictures and it leaves me frustrated when no one eats and I spend all this money on ingredients we waste. I’m going back to sticking to our tried and true crowd pleasers for this year because the decision fatigue around dinner time is a real thing! So in case you need ideas, here is my list of 4 weeks worth of summer meals. If it’s underlined you are welcome to click on it for the recipe if you want to try any of these.
Week 1:
Naan bread pizzas (we cook ours on the grill for a couple minutes each)
Crunchy Tacos
Grilled hot dogs with pasta salad and fruit
Pork Carnitas bowls (made in the Instant Pot but you could totally do this in a crock pot)
Week 2:
Low Country Boil (I make ours in the Instant Pot so I don’t have to heat up the kitchen)
Spaghetti w/ frozen meatballs
Meatball Subs (I can buy one bag of meatballs and use half for the spaghetti and some for the subs the next night—my kids never complain about meatballs)
Week 3:
Teriyaki burgers (the ONLY way to make burgers! They are SO good!)
Thai Turkey Lettuce Wraps (I call them lettuce tacos and my boys love them)
Week 4:
Cheesy, beefy shells in the Instant Pot (this is seriously an incredible meal if you have an Instant Pot!)
Chicken gyros (which uses the leftover tzatziki dip)
Taco Salad
TWO
One of the things I’ve always valued is a circle of close friends to share a season of life with, and since high school I’ve always been very blessed by incredible friends. I’m still in touch with friends from high school, college, and seminary and value the role these women have played in my life immensely. Moving to Florida almost 3 years ago came at a tough time. I had a 4.5 year old and a 1.5 year old and it’s just hard to start over, especially when trying to make friends for your kids too because they missed their buddies from home as much as I did. (Well Aidan did, Asher didn’t really notice at his age!). It was the first time I’d moved when I wasn’t moving into an established community like a school environment or a church job (when you move for a church job it’s pretty easy to start getting to know people because they ALL know who you are and most reach out pretty well to the new youth pastor to befriend you). I found people here to be so friendly, but I definitely had to work pretty hard to initiate relationships at first. I was the weirdo who asked for other mom’s phone numbers at the library and Chick fil A when I noticed their kids were the same age as mine and seemed to be playing well together. I invited total strangers and their kids over to our house for play dates and dinner and I pretty much stalked the coordinator of the local MOPS group until she gave me a spot for the fall ;).
About a year and a half ago a friend mentioned she was starting a small group at our church for moms and was I interested? Honestly I wasn’t so sure. I wavered for awhile but eventually felt a strong pull to say yes. And now, a year and a half later, I can honestly say that was the best yes I think I may have said to anything in the past ten years. The ladies in this group have been the absolute greatest gift from God to me in a season of life where I still felt like I was struggling a little to find a group of people to belong in here in Florida. I had individual friendships, but I was missing a group—a community. And this life group has given me that in amazing ways. Several of our husbands are in a men’s group together so the fact that our families can hang out and the guys already know and care for one another is an added gift. We see one another every Wednesday morning during the school year, but a few months ago I was feeling convicted that I never go out in the evening—I’m always the one home doing bedtime and never go out socially with friends outside of our scheduled small group meeting time. I heard this idea on one of my favorite podcasts as the hostesses were talking about female friendships and how they take intentionality. We often have great plans to get together but weeks will go by after a gathering before the conversation is usually started to find another date for the calendar. This gal was saying her group of girl friends have a standing monthly night out on the calendar and if you can make it, great, if not, you know that 4 weeks from now there will be another one. I loved that idea so I floated it with our group and of course they were all on board—a night away from the kids at bedtime? Yes please! So the 2nd Wednesday of every month we go out for wine, appetizers, dinner, whatever and spend a couple hours around a table chatting about anything and everything and the enneagram because lets be honest, that comes up in every conversation I have these days! (Thankfully they’re all interested and have been learning about their own types!). I can’t tell you how fantastic it’s been having a standing night out already scheduled and while folks have had to miss because of husbands traveling or work we know that hopefully the next month they will be available. If you have a few friends you wish you saw more often, maybe send out a text and just ask if they’d like to join you once a month for an evening out—even if your friends don’t all know one another, people are often hungry for community and connection and just might be up for making some new friends. And having it already on the calendar means it usually happens and that’s what friendships take—that intentional time set aside to invest in one another.
THREE
Speaking of friendship…:). I have a fantastic youtube channel for you to check out. One of my dear friends Sarah (she’s one of the leaders of the above-mentioned small group) started making videos with her best friend and over time they’ve started gaining a name for themselves and I think they’re delightful and wanted to share them with you all! Sarah & Erin created “Moms Who Try Stuff” and just started filming themselves trying different things around town. They’re incredibly funny individuals who play off one another so well and some of the things they’ve tried provided hilarious content! Goat Yoga, Cryotherapy, axe throwing, indoor sky diving—every month they post a new video of them trying something new and if you start following them on Facebook or Instagram I promise you won’t be disappointed!
FOUR
This past year I participated in the international bible study program Bible Study Fellowship for the second year. We studied a section of the Old Testament from Joshua through the reign of Solomon and one of the things we learned that I don’t remember ever having heard before was from a section of scripture found in 1 Chronicles 21. I’ll be honest this wasn’t a portion of scripture I knew much about—the kings of Israel and the various kingdoms had always felt confusing to me and I don’t feel like I left seminary with a solid understanding of this section of the Bible—other parts, yes, but not the kings and chronicles of Israel for some reason. This story comes at the end of King David’s life. We are told Satan rose up against Israel and compelled King David to take a census of the people of Israel. His servant Joab tried to raise the question “umm is this really such a good idea? Why do you need to know this number?” But David prevailed and in order to satisfy some prideful part of himself David wanted to know how great and mighty his nation was. But months later when the census report came in David immediately knew he had sinned and he says to God “I have been so foolish, take away my guilt.” You see, DAVID didn’t build up the nation of Israel into a great and mighty nation. God did. It wasn’t David’s place to be prideful of his kingdom, God gave David everything he had. Of course God forgives David for this, but there was still a consequence. God says to David “okay you have 1 of 3 choices for this punishment and you get to pick—either choose 3 years of famine for your land, 3 months of devastation by your enemies who will overtake you, or 3 days of the sword of the Lord—the angel of the Lord will bring a plague on the land.” Goodness gracious what an awful choice to have to make! Honestly, I have no idea what I would say in this situation. But David had an answer almost immediately. He says “Please let me fall into the Lord’s hands because God’s mercies are very great, but please don’t let me fall into human hands.” David knew God. He knew God’s terrible power and holiness and knew God would bring about destruction in the land because of David’s prideful sin, and indeed that’s what happened. But David also knew God’s incredible love and mercy. He’d experienced God’s forgiveness and blessing over and over in his years so when the choice came to fall prey to human hands or the hand of God Almighty, David knew he was safer with the Lord.
I’ve been thinking about this story a lot. It’s an awful, stark story about the severe consequence of pride. But it is also so striking to me to think about how intimately David knew his God. How often do we approach reading our bible or a “quiet time” as one more thing we are “supposed” to do before we run about our busy day? How often do we approach the bible as if it’s a text book and we’re simply trying to learn the facts? I know I’ve been so guilty of this over and over in seasons of life. But as I’ve reflected on the life of David this whole year I have felt a strong stirring in my soul. I want to KNOW God like David knew God. I want to find myself in a place where if faced with the choice to trust humans or the hand of God I’d choose the hand of God without hesitation because I know so well the depth of His mercy and love even in the midst of discipline and consequence. I’ve come to believe the key, the cornerstone of this kind of intimacy with our Father is only to be found in His word. We can know God’s character by knowing His word. It’s the primary way God’s chosen to reveal Godself to us in 2019—through God’s word. And when we let it sit idle on our bookshelf for weeks on end we will never experience what I do believe God longs to show each one of us. God’s heart. It’s there. It’s all over the pages of this book, we only need to open it for ourselves.
Time in scripture, especially during the summer when kids are home full time, can be so tricky, but I’m coming to learn that even a few verses a day being input into our minds and hearts is so much better than nothing at all. May this be a summer we press deeper into God’s heart, may we begin coming to know God the way David did, personally, intimately, and with deep trust.
FIVE
This past week Jen Hatmaker celebrated her 100th podcast episode of her For the Love Podcast. There aren’t too many podcasts I’ve listened to from the very beginning, but this is one of them. There aren’t many of these 100 episodes that I haven’t heard. I’ll admit, sometimes she drives me a little batty, I don’t know that she’s always the best interviewer, BUT the quality and caliber of her guests have been incredible. I’ve been challenged in SO many ways and learned so much through the various series she’s done and as I listened to her recap of the past two years of shows I was reminded of some of my very favorite conversations I got to eavesdrop into by listening to her show. A lot of shows go on hiatus for the summer or take lengthy breaks, so if you’re traveling, road tripping or just trying to spend extra hours on the treadmill because your gym has free childcare this summer and you need something to listen to, here are a handful of my very favorite episodes and what I learned from each.
July 11, 2017 with Shauna Niequist—part of the For the Love of Friendship series. Shauna speaks so eloquently about inviting friends into our home, cultivating life of intimacy around the table, and how to show up for someone going through incredibly difficult times. Any time it’s Shauna being interviewed anywhere, I guarantee you I’ll love it, she’s just my favorite.
December 26, 2017 with Emily Ley—Emily is the creator of the company Simplified and everything she shares about simplified routines, rhythms, decluttering, and clearing away the chaos in our calendar and homes to embrace the best stuff of life is just gold. I have implemented most of her concepts and can tell you she’s truly changed how I run our home. In this conversation, Emily shares super practical life hacks to free up time and space in our homes, talks about the power of learning to say no gracefully, and how to stop making decisions to please other people instead of asking ourselves what we really want for our life.
April 10, 2018 with Sara Cunningham—Sara’s son came to her when he was 21 and told her he was gay. Her family were devout Christians, very conservative, had raised their kids in the church and she found herself completely rocked by this news. When she started learning more about the Christian community and the response to kids who came out, she was devastated as she came face to face with the reality that many many families flat out rejected their children, cutting them off, removing them from their lives and communities when they came out. She started an organization called Free Mom Hugs and has created a huge network of moms—moms of LGBT folks, moms of straight kids, moms of little ones, moms who are empty nesters, who simply show up at pride events and offer free “mom” hugs, knowing that there is nothing quite like the loving embrace of a mom to heal many many wounds. The number of young people who cry in their arms saying “my own mom hasn’t hugged me in years” is staggering and shows us we have a long way to go to really understand how to love people well. Regardless of where you stand on this difficult issue, Sara’s conversation challenged me to think much deeper about what it means to love well.
April 24, 2018—Unequally Saved: The Church’s Role in Racism with Lisa Sharon Harper—Y’all this conversation will open some eyes. It did to me. Lisa’s ancestors were slaves, only a couple generations ago, and here she helps walk us (especially those of us who come from the white, majority, evangelical culture) through the history of racism and segregation in American churches. She drops some incredible wisdom, fascinating and heartbreaking pieces of information and reminders that God’s Kingdom is for ALL. She is so dang intelligent, full of passion and her story will bring difficult questions to the front of your mind.
January 8, 2019—Undoing the Shame of our Body Image Struggles with Hillary McBride—Hillary is an incredible voice in the world of therapy, counseling and issues surrounding theology of the body. This conversation was so full of grace, gentleness and amazing reminders of how to talk to our bodies, treat our bodies, and feed our bodies without getting sucked into the diet culture and life of restrictions. If you are a mom of a girl of any age PLEASE listen to this episode—her book Mothers, Daughters and Body Image would be an incredible resource because she is AMAZING!
And if I had to pick a very favorite episode from all 100, it would be this one. April 2, 2019—Actually Believing God Loves You Changes Everything with Jeff Chu—I was introduced to Jeff and his work through the Evolving Faith Conference back in October and I immediately fell in love with this man’s heart, mind, and pastoral presence. Hearing Jeff speak is like an absolute balm for the soul. He is an incredibly gifted storyteller, writer and pastor, seeing God in the world around him in such a beautiful way. He realized late in high school that he was gay and realized this was a big problem seeing as how his faith and his conservative Baptist upbringing were the most important things in his life. He spent years praying for God to change him. Eventually he used his journalism training to travel the country asking the question “Does Jesus love gay people?” to everyone he could find. He spent time with folks from Westboro Baptist Church, leaders of therapy programs that claimed to be able to change people’s sexual orientation, leaders of liberal churches, little old church ladies, families of kids who have come out, you name the group of people, Jeff talked to them. His book Does Jesus Really Love Me? is the synthesis of his year of traveling and interviewing and I loved it. He’s now happily married to his husband, Tristan, navigating complicated family relationships with a dad who still won’t accept his marriage, serving as an elder in a church that isn’t 100% affirming of his sexuality, and is a seminarian at Princeton.
That’s it for this week! Happy Father’s Day to all you dads out there & we’ll see you next Friday!
