Five on Friday--June 26
Hi friends! We made it to the end of June in this longest year of our lives—congratulations one and all! I don’t know where this little post finds you today—thrilled with summer being here, weary at having had kids home for so long, exhausted over the political climate in our country, worried about loved ones or job losses or grieving the cancellation of a planned event, but I hope you know you’re not alone in any of those things. The collective grief and mental exhaustion many of us are experiencing is overwhelming. Know that you are loved today. This week I reflect a little about fear and how easy it is to sometimes forget we’re not alone. I share some summer recipes in rotation over here, a way we’ve been creating a little structure in our days this summer without a full blown schedule, thoughts on how I like to read more than 1 book at a time, and a new podcast I cannot wait to have shared with the world. Welcome friends, and have a great week!
ONE
My kids are going through a stage right now where they are finding themselves super freaked out by many things, especially when it comes to the dark. One of them is convinced (because a friend told him so) that ghosts are real and might be haunting our house, and that has led to many conversations about how our eyes sometimes play tricks on us and how not everything our 2nd grade friends say is gospel truth. The other does whatever big brother does, so if big brother is scared, he is too. Today I was on the phone in my bedroom while they were eating lunch at the kitchen table watching an episode of the Berenstain Bears on Youtube. Apparently the episode they had picked was the Bears and the Haunted Lighthouse. While on hold on my phone call I hear absolutely panicked screaming, crying, chairs being pushed back from the table and then two little boys flew through my bedroom door, launched themselves at me simultaneously and screamed and sobbed into my arms. They were both shaking. My initial thought was that somehow this youtube episode was hacked and someone inserted something awful on the screen. I finally got them calm enough to tell me that the lighthouse “ghost” had appeared on the screen and it was terrifying. We spent the rest of the day with them occasionally bringing up how scared they’d been and how if they picture it in their minds they could still see the image of this ghost. At bedtime tonight they were both sufficiently freaked out and went to bed with every nightlight in the house lit in their room. Before they fall asleep I tell them a bible story every night, and so tonight I said I was picking Jesus calming the storm—a story of when the disciples were completely freaked out. They’d heard the story many times but listened as they each clung to one of my hands. As the storm raged around them, I reminded the boys that the disciples completely forgot the Son of God was in the boat with them. They were so focused on the scary wind and waves and rain they forgot about Jesus for awhile. When they remembered him and woke him up from where he was sleeping he immediately calms their fear and the storms around them.
As I was telling the kids this story tonight, I thought I was telling it to them for their benefit. I realized though, when I said the words “the disciples forgot about Jesus. They forgot he was in the boat with them.” that I was really speaking to myself. Today was hard. For so many reasons. And I found myself crying a lot simply because of stressful situations where I couldn’t control the outcomes. You know what else I realized I forgot during a day that felt really overwhelming? Yup. I forgot about Jesus. I forgot that he actually is still in the boat with me, that he actually does care about the things I’m terrified of, unsure of, disappointed about or wanting to control. The storms don’t always immediately disappear in our lives, but Jesus doesn’t ever abandon ship in the middle of them. I don’t know who else needs that reminder, but whatever the thing is that is keeping you up at night, you are not alone. The God of the universe is with you, He already knows the outcome of the storm you’re in, and he promises to either calm those storms or ride through them with you. I know I needed to remember that today, my kids needed to remember that today, and perhaps you do as well. He’s crazy about you, and he won’t abandon you in the midst of this crazy season.
TWO
Ahh summer days. In some ways it is lovely to have so much time with nothing scheduled, nowhere to get up early to go, not a lot on the to do list. Yet on the other hand, it is so many hours long! Especially this year when we’ve already had our kids home full time since mid-March! It’s like the 6 month summer that may never end. After the first week or so with no school and nothing really scheduled I knew we had to do something, attitudes over here were dismal. It was too many unstructured hours. Free time and boredom is so good for kids. But my kids have already been home for so long that they are officially over all the things we normally save for long summer days. They were bored, asking to watch shows all day long, not really engaged too well in a lot of the things we usually do, and I was frustrated because I had stuff to do, like dinners to cook and grocery lists to make and house projects to finish. By the 2nd week of June I knew we’d be in trouble if we didn’t change something. I sat down one night and made a list of the things I wanted our kids to have time to do this summer—things like continue practicing their handwriting (because we worked SO hard this year to make progress and I am not interested in undoing all that work with a 2 month break!), time for reading, time spent helping around the house learning to do a few basic chores, and plenty of downtime for playing. I made each of them a list of things for them to do each day and told them that when the entire list was done they could basically have as much screen time as they wanted. Kind of. I knew this list of things would take quite a bit of time, they weren’t going to be done by noon, especially because we do quite a few outings in the mornings before it’s unbearably warm. My goal was to have the TV stay off until about 3:30 or 4 each day and I have to say, we’re a good 10 days into this new system and it’s been amazing—it’s given them a bit of a structure—a list of things to do, but total freedom to decide when to accomplish each task. If they get sucked into playing something really well I might remove a task or two later in the day and tell them they can skip that thing today, but if they come wandering around telling me they are bored or they start picking at each other I tell them to go check their lists and pick something to do.
Each day they have to do a good chunk of silent reading time, a couple of pages in their math workbooks from this past year, practice handwriting somehow (Aidan’s working on copying The Lord’s Prayer a little bit each day because I want him to learn it and Asher is writing in a handwriting practice book his preschool teachers sent home), be outside for awhile, do something creative (art, legos, sticker art), do read aloud time with me where I read to them, and then do a couple of chores—one is always a big afternoon pick up of everything we’ve gotten out that day. It’s been a game changer, they can play as much as they want, but if they’re bored they have a list to choose from and I don’t have to answer the question “can we watch a show?” 800 times in a day! I don’t know how things are going at your homes, but if you need a little structure without creating a hard and fast schedule, maybe try a list of a few things for them to do each day to give them some benchmarks for all their house of free time!
THREE
Food glorious food!! Oh gosh summer food is the best isn’t it?? I adore anything on the grill, fresh salads, ice cream, fresh produce, I love it all. I’ve shared about this in the past but one of the tools I use regularly when meal planning is a meal rotation, where I’ll make a menu for a month with recipes appropriate for that season and then will repeat that menu throughout the next couple months. For example, I’ll make a menu for the month of June full of summer foods and we will repeat that with a few minor tweaks for July & August as well. It makes me have to think about “what’s for dinner” about once every couple months because I made all the decisions in advance. I thought I’d share a few of the recipes that are on this summer’s meal plan because they are so good I had to share. This summer I’m actually dusting off some of my old favorite cookbooks, especially my copy of Dinner, a Love Story which I absolutely adore and cooking some meals I haven’t made in years.
Chipotle Chicken Kabobs with Avocado Cream Sauce
Salmon in various forms—we’ve done teriyaki salmon bowls where you cook the fish in a pan with a teriyaki glaze & serve over rice and broccoli, and we’ve done a salmon salad (from Dinner, a Love Story) with chopped salmon mixed with cubed potatoes, green beans, cucumbers, corn off the cob, tomatoes, and a vinaigrette over the top. It’s delicious!
Black Bean Burritos from Dinner a Love Story
Grilled hot dogs (is there anything that screams summer more than a Hebrew National fresh off the grill with some watermelon or pasta salad on the side? No I don’t believe there is.)
Kabobs of all kinds—teriyaki chicken, marinated shrimp, you stick some meat and veggies on a stick, toss it on a grill, and I’m a happy camper!
Turkey burgers topped with goat cheese, bacon and a strawberry jam—I know it sounds bizarre but these are delicious!
and our beloved grilled teriyaki Hawaiian bowls—these are the absolute best!
FOUR
One of the questions I get asked almost every time I post things about books is “how do you read more than one book at a time?” I am not one of those crazy people who are in the middle of something like 5 books at once, but I definitely always have more than one going at time because, just like in any area of life, I’ve just sort of found the rhythm that works best for me. This won’t work for everyone, but because I always read both on my kindle paper white and “real” books, I almost always have 2-3 going at once and have found a bit of a routine if you will about when I read each of them. I always have a non-fiction book in sort of the spiritual development or personal growth genre that I try and do about 15 minutes of reading in each morning after I read my scripture passages for the day. The kids are eating breakfast and playing independently as I drink coffee and do this reading time in my room. This is how I read through The Path Between Us about the enneagram and relationships this spring, Fierce, Free and Full of Fire by Jen Hatmaker in May, and am now reading a book called Co-Dependent No More. I don’t fly through these books, I usually read a chapter a day and find myself thinking about the content much more deeply throughout the day.
I always have a novel I’m reading, and these are the books I tend to fly through. I love a good story and I get sucked in easily, tearing through them in less than a week—if they’re really good it will be a weekend—staying up way too late to find out what happens. I love it when I find these books that keep me from going to bed at a decent time, there’s something so wonderful about getting lost in the pages of someone else’s life and finding out how it all plays out. These are often real books, on actual pages that I carry around with me and read throughout the day—waiting at swim lessons, on the beach while the kid are fishing with my husband, at night when Charles is watching something on the TV I don’t necessarily want to get sucked into, or in bed at night.
The third book I’m usually always in the middle of is something on my kindle. My kids like us to sit in with them as they fall asleep at night and since they share a room this isn’t a hard task, it’s about 20 minutes a night of being in their room keeping them from waking the other up as they settle their bodies. Because my kindle is a paper white which has a gentle backlight I can easily read in there every evening without the glaring light from my phone screen bothering them. Which means that’s another good 20 minutes a day of forced reading time. If I’m in the middle of a quick novel in hard copy, I might pick a slower paced novel for my kindle book but often it’s usually a non-fiction title. Or if I’m reading a non-fiction book as my main hard-copy book I’ll jump into a quick-paced novel on my kindle. I don’t get them mixed up in my mind because I choose things that are pretty different from one another. For instance, this week on my kindle I am reading the new memoir by Sophie Hudson called “Stand All the Way Up: Stories of Staying in it When You Want to Burn it All Down.” It’s absolutely everything I hoped it would be—she’s one of my very favorite authors—it’s hilarious, thoughtful and spiritual all at the same time. Which means in my daytime reading life I’m reading a hardback novel from the library that is fiction. When I finish both of these I’ll look at what’s on my shelf and what’s on my kindle—what’s on my library hold list and what’s come in for me or might be due at the library soon and decide which book to pick up next. It’s a funny system, I admit, but by having a few books going at a time I am always making progress in at least one of them. I do find myself in seasons sometimes when I’ve picked up too many at once, I’ve maybe started a few and am not actually making progress in any of them. That’s a huge sign for me that my life feels chaotic and I can’t focus, that something in my bigger picture life needs a course correction. Isn’t it funny how those external things signal something inside isn’t right? I know for a lot of friends they’ll say they notice their life might feel out of control when their eating spirals out of control or they find themselves numbing in front of more and more TV episodes, but for me I’ve actually found it’s my reading that gets all chaotic and I never get anywhere in any one book. When that happens I know I’ve got some work to do in some other area of life, but in general, most of the year, it’s a system that has worked well for me for a number of years.
FIVE
I’ve mentioned on this blog several times before about my time at the Evolving Faith conference two years ago and how much that weekend has shaped me and challenged me still to this day. I watched the live stream of last year’s event and was equally as challenged by the speakers in that particular weekend. I’ve had a few friends say they wish they could have joined me there, and there is amazing news! Now you kind of can! Sarah Bessey & Jeff Chu (the leaders of this particular conference) have launched the Evolving Faith podcast where they will be airing the audio of the main speakers from all the main sessions! I cannot tell you how excited I am for this, some of these speakers were incredibly transformative to me as I think about many things in relationship to faith, so the chance to relisten to these talks is amazing. Today the first episode was released, it was actually the opening session given by the late Rachel Held Evans. It was her and Sarah’s vision to hold a weekend event like this and they made it happen. She spoke that day on how faith that doesn’t ever evolve can’t survive the waves and storms of life. Next week they are airing Austin Channing Brown’s sermon she gave when she almost literally preached the roof off the place—dang that woman is amazing! I am excited to be challenged all over again, as I know there is so much I still want to think about and learn and I am grateful to this community for the way they continue to push me to think a little differently.
