Five on Friday--July 26

Hi friends! I’m still on vacation this week, the kids and I fly home from Minneapolis tomorrow, but the “way up north” part of our trip is over and we’ve been at my folks house in the Twin Cities since last Sunday. It’s been a gorgeous week here of weather in the mid-upper 70s, sunshine and the green of the midwest that I never tire of. It’s my favorite summer tradition—coming up here for a couple weeks—it breaks up the monotony of long days at home, allows us to escape the heat a bit, and allows the boys to make so many memories here that I know they’ll cherish forever like I cherish all the memories my cousins and I made at our grandparents house as kids. Traveling with kiddos isn’t always easy, but for us it’s been 100% worth it. With that, here are this week’s 5 things….

ONE

When I’m on vacation I typically fly through numerous novels, but this year has been a bit different. I still haven’t finished the one novel I brought with me, which is fine, and maybe is a sign I’m liking it but not loving it? I tried to sleep a lot while I was up on Lake Superior because my kids weren’t sleeping the best, which meant I made myself go to bed when they did and that definitely cut into my kid free reading time. When we got back to my parents house on Sunday I started listening to a podcast where Annie Downs was interviewing Robin Jones Gunn. I saw her name in the title of the episode, squealed and had a mini-fan girl moment. For those who aren’t familiar with her, Robin has written almost a hundred novels published under the Focus on the Family publishing house, with her most famous character being Christy Miller—a series she’s actually still writing. Her first book about Christy was published in the mid 80s and I read every single one of the original 12 books about Christy’s high school years when I was in middle and early high school. I loved her. As Annie said in her podcast “Christy was one of my best friends in middle and high school, it was like she was a living person walking through those years with me!” and I absolutely resonated with those words. I loved these books. The sweet romance, the spiritual growth Christy experiences as she learns to walk with God through adolescence, the friendships, adventures they went on and family dynamics she struggled with—I felt like she was a girl I could absolutely relate to. Hearing Robin share about where Christy came from, and why she’s still writing books about her was so incredibly fun for me and I came home to my folks house and immediately went to the boxes in the basement where I knew all my books were. I found the series at once and for some reason I pulled out book 1 and started reading. These aren’t exactly long or hard books to get through—I read 2-3 in a day this week—and I have to say, as a 37 year old re-reading books my 15 year old self loved, well, the nostalgia was strong. I actually still loved these books. Even now. If I had a daughter I’d absolutely still introduce her to Christy and friends when she was in 8th/9th grade. So much has been written about wanting to move away from the “purity culture” of the 90s, and I really do understand why young adult Christians are saying they were so damanged and shamed by their communities of faith growing up, but I look around at the messages I see in so much of teen literature, movies, pop culture in general, and there’s this huge lack of content out there for kids who just want to do the right thing, who want to have friends and fit in and also stay out of trouble. Honestly, as cheesy as it sounds, Christy Miller did that in several ways for me. I loved her example of wrestling through questions of what to tell her parents, how to say no in situations where she was uncomfortable, how to be a good friend to others. Those were the things I remember wrestling with—I wasn’t looking for examples of people who went out and got wasted and slept around, I was hungry for stories of girls my age who wanted to do the right thing. Robin Jones Gunn gave us just such an example, and for that I’m so so grateful. Sweet, a little cheesy yet still tackling hard issues, honest, and always pointing readers back to the God who made them, loves them, has a plan for them and cares about their decisions, I’ve loved re-reading these short novels this week, a delightful, nostalgic walk down memory lane indeed!

TWO

Alright. I wasn’t going to write about this. But apparently I changed my mind. For the first time in a decade I’ve been watching this season of The Bachelorette. I know. I can’t believe I wrote that. If you hate the show or don’t watch, don’t just skip this section, I promise I connect this to faith! So here’s what happened. This past year I started financially supporting one of my very favorite podcasts, The Popcast with Knox and Jamie, through their Patreon community—a network of people who contribute a small amount every month to help them do what they do. Knox and Jamie are absolutely fantastic at what they do—talking about everything pop culture related with amazing senses of humor and a background of strong faith. I adore everything they do. Well one of the bonuses you get as a financial supporter is a weekly recap of the bachelor or bachelorette episodes that aired the night before. I didn’t think this was something I’d ever hit “play” on to listen to because I haven’t watched the show since I was in grad school. But one day I’d actually listened to everything else in my podcast feed and saw they dropped a pre-season episode a couple months ago where they profiled all of the 30 guys who would be competing for the heart of one miss Hannah Brown. I randomly hit play and found myself laughing so hard I literally spit out my coffee and choked. Which made me then want to watch the season premiere because I wanted to be able to listen to their next recap episode and know what they were talking about. Well as is true of most TV shows, they are designed to suck you in and make you want to know what happened next. So I’ve been watching. All season. And it is as awkward and cringe-worthy as I expected it to be, and also a delightful 2 hour mental escape once a week.

Here’s what’s been so fascinating watching this season. One of the final 4 contestants was a young man named Luke. He’s 24 from Gainsville, GA, and is a born again, conservative, staunch Christian who believes sex should be saved for marriage, the man is the head of a household and the spiritual leader of a woman, and women should aspire to be the Proverbs 31 woman. Hannah, the 24 year old Bachelorette also professes a strong faith, yet is a very strong woman, who will not be led or controlled, who fully believes in the love and grace of Christ to cover any sins and believes legalism is shaming. Watching these 2 young people try & navigate this issue of faith and how they live out their faith in their lives has been so interesting to me. Luke was Hannah’s immediate front runner. He got the coveted first impression rose, they connected instantly on their shared faith, and had a LOT of physical chemistry. But as the season went on, we watched them get stuck in cycle after cycle of conflict. We watched Luke tell Hannah things about other contestants that were bold faced lies, we watched him cause tremendous conflict in the house with the other guys, and when it seemed as if the other contestants genuinely enjoyed being together, hanging out and developing friendship, no one seemed to like Luke. Guys would tell Hannah “hey we don’t think he’s as good of a guy as you seem to, you need to be careful,” but she just couldn’t see it because of course she wasn’t seeing some of the things the cameras were catching when she wasn’t around, and if he’s a Christian how could he possibly be as bad as the guys were telling her?

The night of the “fantasy suite” date (when a contestant is giving the chance to spend a night alone with the Bachelorette without cameras—sometimes for sex but often for longer conversation with the cameras not rolling) Luke tells Hannah that if she’d had sex with any of the other contestants he would remove himself from the competition and go home. Well, she had. So she tells him “well you’d better go home then because you don’t get to tell me what to do with my body, you aren’t my husband, I don’t owe you explanations of what’s happened with the other guys, you knew this show was based on the premise that I’m in serious relationships with multiple guys at once and you don’t get to judge me or my relationships with any of these other men.” He didn’t handle that so well. He was still convinced the Lord told him Hannah was his future wife and he was going to stay and fight for her. It got ugly but eventually Luke leaves.

At the end of the season they always do a “men tell all” episode that’s filmed in front of a live audience and the host Chris Harrison walks people through further conversation about what happened on the season. Of course this week was mostly focused on Luke and the drama he caused. Chris made an incredibly insightful observation that I actually think we can all learn something from. He said to Luke “your shared faith was what caused the immediate attraction and connection with you and Hannah, but how you two have chosen to live out your faith and put it in practice is what ultimately caused irreparable damage to the relationship.” I know we’re not on reality TV shows, but how often have we seen this happen? Those of us who profess to follow Christ all have a different understanding of what that looks like practically when it’s lived out. I know Christians who firmly believe if someone would ever vote for a democratic candidate they couldn’t possibly be a”real” Christian. I know Christian who believe if someone were to ever vote for a Republican candidate they couldn’t possibly be a “real” Christian. I know Christians who believe so strongly that homosexuality is sinful, that they believe picketing churches or funerals of folks that are gay or open to the LGBTQ community is an appropriate way to live out their faith. I know people who love Jesus with all their heart and still believe there is more than one way to God and I know people who love Jesus who say that He is the only way to the Father. In our very polarized world, how do we as people of faith hold strongly to convictions we have and yet not allow those convictions to ruin relationships? Luke and Hannah couldn’t do it. They were so hurt by how the other chose to live out their faith that ultimately they landed in a place where they clearly can’t stand one another based on how we’ve seen them interact on social media. How do we keep that from happening in our daily lives? One of the things I observed watching the interactions of Luke and Hannah, is that neither of them listened all that well. They’re incredibly young, so I don’t fault them for that, but I think if they were able to listen better to one another they might have realized they weren’t that compatible to begin with, or been able to let one another go with more grace and less animosity. Beyond listening well, I’m curious—what have you found to be helpful when it comes to loving people who live out their faith in VERY different ways than you choose to? How do you maintain relationships with those whose walk with Jesus looks very differently? I never imagined an episode of The Bachelorette would lead me to these particular questions, but I’m grateful for the chance to ponder them.

THREE

One of the little “traditions” I have this time of year, usually something I do at my parent’s house each July because I have a little more space in my schedule, is to make time to “move into” my new day planner. I always use an academic year calendar that runs from August 1 through July 31 the following year because our life really is dictated by the school calendar and once those school year calendars come home I like to have one planner to put ALL those dates in without my calendar stopping in December. I’ve mentioned before that for the past 3 years now I’ve used the Simplified Planner by Emily Ley. I think her products are gorgeous, high quality, and well….simple. I love the idea of a planner that lets you track ALL the things like water intake and quiet times and prayers and exercise routines, but the reality is I fail at those things more often than I get to check off the box that I did them, which means my planner becomes a place of guilt that I no longer want to use. The Simplified Planner is perfect for me. And no I’m not a paid sales person :). Every July I go through and put in everyone’s birthdays, whatever school holidays I know about, early release days, any dates I know ahead of time. But the other thing I have started doing, thanks to Emily & her team giving space for this at the beginning of the planner—is some reflection on the year gone by and thinking through the coming year. There are pages in the front of her planners that give you space to ask the questions of “what worked this year?” “What didn’t work this year?” “What new healthy habits do I want to put in place this year?” “What are my weekly routines that help give my week it’s shape?” (Do you do groceries on a particular day? Laundry on a particular day? A task at work every Wednesday or a family tradition every Friday night? Emily spends a lot of time talking about how routines give us a structure to our day or week that help us get things done so we are actually more free and available for the spontaneous things life throws at us and I’ve come to see how absolutely right she is.). Taking the time to do this kind of reflection has helped me make decisions about what to say yes or no to this coming year (one of the things I wrote down last summer that had not worked the previous year was cramming our weeks off school with activities and adventures. That led me to be exhausted and depleted. So this reflection time changed how I approached this summer in significant ways.). Do some of your regular weekly routines need to be changed because life has changed and they no longer work? That has happened for me this year. I used to always try and do all of our laundry in one day—Monday was laundry day. And for two years that totally worked. It stopped working this year and I got behind and laundry was everywhere and for this coming year I’m now moving back to one person’s laundry each day, so 4 loads for people and one load for sheets/towels each week instead of trying to do it all in one day. Aidan wears uniforms to school which means he has 5 shirts and 5 pants—which means I can’t get behind on his laundry! Having those routines in place gives me freedom to not stress about a mountain of laundry or someone running out of underwear one morning or the question of what is for dinner—because meal planning is also part of my weekly routine. For those who feel overwhelmed by logistics and life, maybe sit down before school starts and see what routines you can put in place that eventually will become automatic—like packing lunches the night before or making sure everyone’s laundry and house hold chores are done by the end of the day on Saturday so you can rest and play Sunday. I am so grateful for this guided reflection Emily’s given me in her planner, but you certainly don’t need a fancy day planner to think through some of these things!

FOUR

Did you all see this trailer for A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood? It’s a film that comes out at Thanksgiving about Mr. Rogers, starring Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers. It’s based on the true story of a cynical young man who was assigned to profile Mr. Rogers for Esquire magazine back in the day and how his perspective on life was totally changed because of his interactions with the famous children’s television host. I’ve mentioned it on social media before, but Mr. Rogers is just one of my favorite people in history. I’ve read a lot about him over the years and read as many interviews with him as I’ve found, and I never get tired of hearing him remind us over and over again of the goodness in each of us, the sacredness of a human being, the importance of honoring our feelings—even the mad and sad ones. I love that he was an ordained Presbyterian minister, given the special assignment of ministering to children through the medium of television. I love that he went into television because he was so disgusted by what he saw on the TV. I love his unwavering commitment to take every conversation seriously and look people in the eye, to never be too much in a hurry to see the person in front of you as one of God’s beloveds. I want to be more like that, and reading his work and watching him on the screen is always such a good reminder of how I want to be living my life. I made the mistake of not bringing kleenex when I saw Won’t You Be My Neighbor, a documentary of his life a year ago, I will be bringing a box this time!

FIVE

This past 6 months Aidan and I have been reading the first couple Harry Potter books aloud and my brother in law has been reading to my 7 year old niece Brooke. When we got together this last week we realized we were only a couple chapters apart in the 3rd book, so this past week my 9 year old niece Lily (who has read the whole series with her dad) has been reading aloud to Aidan and Brooke and together they read half of book 3 in the week and a half they’ve been together. It has been an absolute joy watching the 3 of them fall in love with this series, share this story, and connect over something all their parents absolutely love. The littler kids had done puzzles, legos and art as they’ve listened for hours and two days ago they finished book 3. Yesterday they got to watch the 3rd movie together (we all have a rule in our families—you gotta read the book before you see the films!). Hearing them talk about their favorite parts, wonder what might happen to this character or that, and see how the actors chose to portray the characters on screen has been a delight. Also, having older kids who can engage in things like Harry Potter and read to one another while the parents do other things? Priceless.