Five on Friday--Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween weekend my friends! I don’t know what your families do to celebrate but my little dragon and ninja are ready to wear their costumes to church Sunday morning and then trick or treat in our neighborhood that night! God bless all the teachers Monday, I still think November 1 needs to be a school holiday just for the sake of these poor teachers who will be dealing with exhausted and over sugared kids! It’s time for another 5 on Friday—5 things we’ve been doing/enjoying/thinking about lately.

ONE

In the past two weeks I’ve had three different friends in three separate conversations tell me something along the lines of “I feel like I am drowning under the details of life right now. I feel constantly behind, like I am missing things and forgetting important things and scrambling all the time when I remember something last minute and I’m EXHAUSTED.” Goodness I can relate to that feeling. I think we all can, especially this time of year, heading into the holiday season when things just get busy and there are more details to remember (especially if you have kids in elementary school—there are pajama days, crazy sock days, red ribbon week, and so much more). The one thing I told all three of these friends, that I have learned myself over time and also seen research on how important it is, is to have ONE place where you write down ALL the things. When we carry around all these little details in our brains all the time, it uses so much mental energy to keep them there, to not forget them and then to access them at the right time. Doing a once a week “brain dump” in one single place each week makes a HUGE difference. This doesn’t have to be in a fancy planner, it can be in a simple spiral notebook, but just the act of sitting down once a week (I do mine Sunday afternoons) and go through all the things I need to deal with in the upcoming 5 days makes things feel so much more manageable. What emails has the school sent this past week with important upcoming dates? Write them down. What do I need to do for our business? What practices or events do we have in the evenings this week? What errands need to be run or bills need to be paid? As the holidays get closer, what gifts do I want to try & purchase this week or do I need to schedule a photographer or design a holiday card? I write it all down. That way all these little details are not ping-ponging around in my head all week, I can see them clearly and when I have free time I can easily decide what needs to be tackled first.

This method of doing one big brain dump also helps with combining some tasks (the Lazy Genius calls this “batching.”) Instead of running out to Target four times in one week for various items as you remember them, look at your brain dump list and try and batch some tasks. Do you have crazy sock day on there plus a kid needs new underwear, you need a fall decoration for a teacher and you need stamps? Do one morning of errands and do them all at once. You’ll end up saving time overall instead of running out each day for some random item, but you can’t do this if you don’t see all your tasks in one spot! Do I get to everything on my list every week? Of course not. But I can at least see it all in one place and then am able to prioritize what is most important to tackle first. I promise, if you are feeling overwhelmed and mentally exhausted, grab a notebook, and get a list made, yes you still have to do the tasks but it won’t be taking up your precious brain space trying to remember that your youngest needs a pair of crazy socks or your oldest needs yet another new pair of headphones for class because his third pair this year just broke….oh wait, maybe that’s just my list for the week….

TWO

Two weeks ago Aidan got to attend a special night out for the 4th and 5th graders at church. They had us drop them off at Main Event, a place in Jacksonville kind of like a fancy Dave and Busters—with a restaurant, arcade, laser tag, bowling etc for 3 hours and my goodness they had a blast. On Sunday morning all the elementary school kids worship together with music and a story and silly games and then break off into their life groups which are by grade. These groups are led by high school, college, young adult folks and a few parent volunteers. Aidan’s life group has had two amazing young men leading them for a long time now and he adores this time with other 4th/5th graders and his leaders. The leaders were the ones chaperoning the event that night and to have a night out with no parents felt like such a treat to him and his friends. I had the realization that we really are less than 2 years away from him being in youth group and participating in all the student ministry events, and I love that the Beach Kids staff tries to create opportunities like this for them to practice some independence in a safe space. I love that they’re helping kids get used to this model of corporate worship and then gathering in smaller groups to share life with one another from such a young age. Chuck said the other night “man I look out on Sunday morning at that group of 4th grade boys and I get really excited that this is the crew Aidan will go through student ministry with and walk through these adolescent years with.” We’re doing what we can now to build relationships with these boys and their families, knowing how crucial that social network of like-minded parents is for families as they navigate these upcoming teenage years. This kid will be 10 in January, youth group camps and retreats and worship nights really aren’t that far away!

THREE

I don’t know if anyone has watched the Broadway musical Come From Away on Apple+ but Chuck and I watched it on 9/11 and it was incredible. They did what they did with Hamilton where they filmed a live performance with the original Broadway cast and then released it for the 20th anniversary of 9/11 on Apple TV. It may have been the catalyst for us to get Apple TV for a couple months…Ya’ll it’s SO good. I mentioned in a blog post earlier this year about how excellent the book The Day the World Came to Town was, the true story of what happened in Gander, Newfoundland on September 11th when 38 passenger jets coming across the Atlantic couldn’t land in America and had to be grounded in Gander for 5 days. This book inspired a Broadway musical and you can now see it on TV (it’s also coming to Jacksonville in December, we already have tickets!). It was excellent, the story of radical kindness, hospitality and care this small town showed to “the plane people,” the 7,000 passengers who were stranded for almost a week as American airspace remained closed. We both loved it and the creative way they told the story and would highly recommend it.

FOUR

If anyone needs an excellent podcast to deep dive, both Chuck and I are loving the Christianity Today podcast The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill with Mike Cosper. For those who aren’t familiar, Mars Hill church became a mega church with multiple sites and campuses in the Seattle area in the early 2000’s. Their pastor was the controversial figure Mark Driscoll and it experienced exponential growth in a very short period of time before Mark resigned amidst allegations of domineering, toxic, bullying leadership and within two months the entire church collapsed and campuses closed. The story resonates especially poignantly for me as I was living about a mile from the main Mars Hill campus as it was experiencing this meteoric rise in influence. About half of my close friends from college all attended, some even went on staff there, all were very committed to the church and Mark’s teaching and I attended every so often with them to see what this phenomenon was about. I know people who were extremely hurt by the things that went on in this particular leadership structure. Yet what Cosper is doing in this particular podcast isn’t just telling the story of one pastor and one particular church. He’s asking incredibly insightful questions ALL churches need to be asking. Who do we give leadership to and why? We are so drawn to charisma, often placing our trust in a charismatic preacher who is still very young and immature in life and faith and then are shocked with they can’t live up to the pedestal we’ve placed them on. It’s an incredibly well produced podcast with a few more episodes still scheduled to come out (he’s dropping one every two weeks or so). If you’re at all interested in church leadership, the role technology plays in a church, issues of spiritual authority and church planting, this is an exceptionally well done series.

FIVE

I finally feel like I am emerging from my reading rut that has been present for the past two months, and the trick this time was to get the next book in a mystery series I’ve been reading through this year. To have familiar characters, a familiar setting and a page turning story has me flying through the pages this week and that has felt SO good. If anyone needs an absolutely delightful series to get lost in, I can’t recommend Louise Penny’s series about the chief inspector of the Quebec homicide division, Armand Gamache. They have a television series on Amazon Prime being filmed now called Three Pines (the town all the novels are set) and they are just the absolute best books—layered characters, a delightful setting, mysteries in each novel and so much insight and truth about human nature in each book. The series starts with book 1, Still Life.

That’s it this week, happy Friday my friends and happy Halloween weekend!