As for Me and My House.

GOOD Book Alert:

I started reading “As for Me and My House” by Walt Wangerin.

If you have not read it, I suggest you buy it right now and read it.

It, over the last few weeks, has been extremely helpful in thinking through how to craft a marriage that is mutually beneficial and helps each person flourish. It is practical in that it gives clear prose on marriage and the bible, but also enjoyable in that it tracks the marriage of the author and his wife. 

Enjoy!

Lora

Sin, the Nastiest Weed.

We have a garden bed to the right of our house, if you’re looking at it from the street. It is over-grown with weeds. In particular, there is one weed that looks sort of like a small tree with black berries growing on it. Its stalk is fairly thick and pinkish.

At first glance, I thought it would be easy to take this sucker out. Elise tells me, you have to get the entire root, otherwise it will come back. So, I go over to the weed, in my yoga pants and pink and white sneakers, with a GIANT shovel mind you, and attempt to dig up this weed plant. After realizing that the weed was too giant to just start digging, I took some sheers and cut it down at the base. This left just me, a stump, and the root.

Now, this weed was in the middle of some bearded irises. As I was digging, I  began to realize that the weed had grown its giant root UNDER the bearded iris, almost as if to suggest that if I wanted to get rid of the weed, I’d have to also kill the flower. Meticulously I worked to avoid having to do this, chopping with a spade, and trying to find where the root began. I felt like I was doing surgery.

Finally, the root pulled up, and the poor bearded iris, though a bit mangled, lived.

I’m pretty sure I got it all, but it was a battle, and the root of this weed was twisted around, and nestled right up next to a very pretty plant I did not want to sacrifice.

This is my general feeling about anything – it takes forever.

Perhaps it is the generation from which I come  that desires instant gratification or at least instant, obvious change or perhaps it is because tempermentally I am not a patient person – either way, I feel like things take forever, and I am easily discouraged when I don’t see immediate results.

This means a couple things for me:

1. It gives me the illusion that I am further along than I actually am, and from this comes an even greater impatience with myself to be perfect already!
2. It allows me to put a lot of pressure on other people to get their shit together already – I mean seriously, you were told last week to work on your anger or selfishness or whatever – why aren’t you fixed yet?!

I’ve started gardening. Who knows how long it will last, but my aunt came to visit next week and taught me how to till the soil, flip it over, remove the weeds and break up the red clay. It’s hard work, and she said, “If you do this for twenty minutes a day, you won’t need pilates!” So there you go…

I say all of that, because all of the biblical references and comparisons to plants, trees, bearing fruit… is making so much more sense to me. And the passage in Hebrews 10:14 that says, “For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” helps me understand the duration of being sanctified.

The removal of sin, is like a giant twisting weed, nestled right up against the beauty of who we are – sometimes it is really hard to tell where it  originates or how to remove it without nicking other vital and beautiful parts of ourselves. AND weeding takes a LONG TIME. Twenty minutes a day – forever! You can’t stop weeding, other wise other things will begin to pop up – and the insane thing about weeds is – they suck all of the life out of the plants you actually want to grow.

I have the weed of co-dependence. This weed sucks the life out of my desire to be friends with other people, for fear it will be a co-dependent relationship.

Some people (probably me too) have the weed of anger, and this anger sucks the life out of all potentially joyous activities, because the anger is so large and over shadowing that something is always wrong. It is a theif of nutrients and water to the other plants you hope to cultivate.

This is how sin works.

If you want to understand this more – find a section of your yard, and begin to garden it. You will quickly find that the Lord’s work with us is VERY long term, and everyday…

Kelley Up-Date

Whew,

Feels like forever since I’ve written anything.

Just to up-date. We’ve been crazy with Para Renovations, hiring, managing and getting ready for the school year. If you read this, please keep us in your prayers as we know the beginning of Fall is always pretty hectic and stressful.

The Lord is reminding me that I need Him more and more and that I’m pretty lazy and ungrateful when I have nothing to do but watch/read trashy movies and books.

It is a strange thing to be so intent on following the Lord, only to lose sight of the truth in the midst of boredom and general lack of discipline. I am learning that the race is easily lost when I lean on my own understanding.

Hopefully more to come, but these next two week are to be really insane, so probably will be while before anything new pops up.

Lora

Sex: What I’ve Learned.

Probably it’s odd to have so many posts on sex – who knows. In an effort to drop-kick shame, however, I find it important to go ahead and talk about it/write about it.

Before Eric and I got married we asked a lot of questions about marriage – one question that was particularly insightful was this:

Eric: So – tell me one thing that you thought would be easy but has turned out to be more difficult?

Couple A, D, F and so on: Sex.

Of course neither of us were expecting that answer. I figured it’d be something like – communication, or cleaning, or finding time to hang out or financial decisions… but the answer astoundingly was sex.

It seems to me that this says something about where we should be investing research, prayer, time and conversation – at least to some extent – should be about sex.

So, here are a few things I’ve learned on this new quest for knowledge, intimacy, enjoyment and worship:

1. Sex was created to be good – for both men and women.

2. God ordered sex at the very beginning. It is clearly important and creational.

3. We (that is the collective group of humanity) have a very screwed up perception of what sex should be.

4. Our screwed up perception causes all sorts of dysfunction within and without marriage.

5. Sex is primarily an act of love.

6. Love is defined in Corinthians 13 and ought to be within the context of how God loved us -which is unselfishly, giving of himself for our good.

7. Contrary to popular opinion, media, magazines and books – REAL SEX is made for marriage, and real sex can be defined only with in a covenant, exclusive, legal binding – for the sake of love, flourishing, sanctification and trust, and if God ordains – children.

8. Orgasm is not the primary goal of sex. The primary goal of good sex is to love each other, to get to know each other, to bask in the thrill of caring for the other person.

9.  The beauty, enjoyment and pleasure of a sexual relationship with your spouse is cultivated over time – getting to know each other’s needs – emotionally, mentally, and physically, cultivating a lens of compassion and care for the other person.

10. Cultivating a disposition of trust toward God and your spouse is crucial.

11. Speaking openly and honestly about your feelings, your fears, your reservations is utterly important.

12. Seeking wise counsel to help you sort through fears, frustrations, – be they mental or physiological – is necessary and important for perseverance and gaining wisdom and cultivating a glorious and selfless sexual life with your spouse.

13. Relationships are meant to be both private and corporate, that is shalom – the hebrew word for PEACE as in the redemption of all things – is a corporate act, and therefore as people we are meant to be in community working these things out over time with wisdom, discernment and care.

So, that’s all for now. I probably will post more stuff from time to time – but as a general thought, work at this, read about it, be concern with it, make it important to understand yourself and your spouse and your friends – as gendered creatures with particular sexual understandings that DO impact everything.

Redeeming Make-up.

I was a make-up artist for 3.5 years of my college experience. The end of my senior year I quit. This was for a few reasons, but mostly the general dissatisfaction people had with their bodies convicted me that perhaps rather than helping, I was making people feel more uncomfortable with themselves.

It’s taken me almost 2 years to feel comfortable doing make-up professionally. I’ve also taken up doing hair again. I can thank Eric solely for encouraging me and giving me a redeemed venue in which to create.

 

 

 

My aunt Klydell, whom I love, told me one time that if Esther and all of the women who went before the King took two years to prepare themselves to meet the King, it was acceptable for a Bride to prepare herself beautifully and purposefully for her husband. 

I have meditated on that for a long time, and I have come to agree – though I think that preparation of body should never overshadow preparation of the mind and the heart, but neither should the body be denigrated to a place that is less cared for than the soul.

So there ya go – my thoughts on make-up.

Lora

40 Day Challenge.

You will create a culture and you will set up habits that enforce that culture.

-Greg Thompson

 

When Eric and I first began pre-marriage counseling, Greg Thompson listed out a few areas we could go over as the wedding approached. One of this was the Spiritual aspect of marriage.

He said, “You will create a culture and you will set up habits that enforce that culture.”

Over time, as with all things, enforcers begin to become the culture of the house.

For example, you can have a culture of materialism:

I want, I want, I want – so first, the desire of wanting is the culture

and buying things enforces that culture.

Then overtime, buying things to satiate a desire becomes the culture. You have kids – they want, you buy. Voila.

Eventually, you begin to think that the problem is just buying things because that has become the culture and there are other things now that have cropped up to support buying things. But really the problem was the initial desire supported by the habit that created the culture in which material possessions take front and center.

For me, I wanted to create a culture of worship. ( I mean, it sounds ideal right?? Lets shoot for the ideal goal here!)

What I wanted was a sense that I was being shaped by how much I valued Christ – that he was WORTHY of SHAPING me. Worship.

Clearly this is easier said than done. I mean – we have so many enforcers of idols. And they are all so acceptable and dressed in holy clothing that it’s hard to tell the difference between legitimate needs and tyrannical masters.

In the past few months I’ve begun this downward slip of trading time that could be spend shaping my life by Christ shaping it with House, or Grey’s, or any sort of stuff on Hulu. Yesterday, after a particularly long and exhausting day – all I wanted to do was sit on my computer and find some really interesting mind-numbing show that would, for that particular hour or two, dissolve whatever frustrations I was experiencing.

While I did the fellows program, I never had time to watch TV. All I did all day everyday was drench my brain in conversation about questions like:

Who is Christ for culture?
What does being a Christian actually mean?
How are we set apart?

How ought we view sin in ourselves?
What does grace mean for sinners like us?
How do we extend grace to others?

etc etc 

These conversations proved to create in me a desire to learn more about Jesus, to strive after God’s face in hope of reflecting his glory.

S0, I am challenging myself to a lent time-period fast from television. But like all idols – you can only say “No” after saying “Yes” to something else.

So, I am laying it out this way – For every hour I am tempted to waste in-taking fake people’s fake lives, I’m going to spend an hour reading/praying/serving/doing something exceptionally nice for Eric/tending to the needs of friends…

Date Night.

I highly recommend acts of selflessness and more than anything a mentality that roots out your own selfishness and displaces it with acts and thoughts of love toward others – especially your spouse and family members.

This something I’m learning.

Tonight we had a date night – holla to Sarah Cramer who blessed us with a gift certificate to Continental Divide – home of the Red Hot Blues and the best margaritas ever (moderation implied).

Just a few happy photos.

 

Hello, Love.

I backed into a Porcupine Plant. Sad.

 

Mirror, Mirror.

 

There's no smiling in modeling!

All for tonight! So glad we were able to go out – this was really the first time in 3 months.

Lora

When God Honors Effort.

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.

Galatians 6:9

Really, this verse doesn’t relate entirely to the effort about which I am talking – but doing good can range from good works abroad, good works in the community and good works at home.

The first 50 days have been hard – to say we were operating at 100, or on a full tank, would not be the truth. The 6 months of engagement were probably some of the most trying times thus far for us – very little time to spend together, lots of weddings for Eric, a lot of investment in a coffee shop in a time of impending economic recession, withering community as the summer takes people on vacation etc, trying to discern where to go to church, living between homes, planning a wedding, and trying to learn about each other in such a way as to prepare for a lifetime together.

It’s not easy. Now, there are harder things; there are always harder things, but for us – this has been the hardest so far.

Our beginning was a whirlwind romance. Eric, of course, is the greatest of all friends – interested, caring and fiercely loyal. He also has compassion that puts me to shame. To say that I fell for him, would be an understatement – I fell and never quite hit the ground.

A hazy night, mid-october,  he invited me over to hang out. At first, I declined, hesitant to rush into any romantic situation, but his friendliness was so genuine and gentle, I quickly recanted and drove over to his apartment to watch the premiere of the office (yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting in tow). I dressed as heinous as I possibly could – xxl scrubs, a Patty griffin t-shirt, greasy hair and glassy – all to avoid kindling anything based on appearances.

He answered the door in sweat pants and a t-shirt, lead me in, and introduced me to his community of friends – all kind, all smiling, all glad to meet me (and eat cupcakes).

First thing, I noticed the photographs (I didn’t know he was a photographer, yet) – stunning, gripping, enchanting images of Africa, of people, of children laughing and playing – national geographicesque. “Who took these?” I asked. Greg answered, “Eric.” Hm, I thought to myself. We watched the Office; at 10, it was time to leave, the Fellows program required at least 12 hours of sleep to function, and I was already looking at 8. He walked me to my car. Mist clung to my hair, to his hair – and we talked about vision, about what God was calling him to do, about his passion for Nicaragua and Africa and America. He tossed out his recycling, and I leaned against the car, listening to the joy with which he explained his love for life and humanity.

Before, in emails, he had asked me about myself – I, anxious for help and hope, explained rather dramatically my life and need for Jesus; he listened patiently and said, “Well, we’re all broken; I, just as well as you, and everyone else.” Took the shame and smashed it with compassion.

He side-hugged me, opened the door to my car, and closed it, smiling. I drove home… pretty sure, if love was this giant feeling that sort of cometed into one’s stomach and exploded…that I, in fact, was in love.

He texted me every morning for a year and some change – every night, every day. Walked with me at lunch, ran errands with me, picked up Nicole and Jason’s recycling just to come see me, met my parents and loved them instantly; asked my dad if we could date, called them frequently to talk. We traded journals, reading Passion and Purity, learning the discipline of submitting a relationship to Christ. He hugged me a lot when I was frustrated; listened patiently to my complaints and aggrevation, never attempting to fix, but more attempting to challenge me. He talked with the Director of the Fellows program about dating me; met with my host dad; talked with one of the professors, and met with our pastor.

He prayed with me, for me. He laughed with me, at me when I was silly; took long drives with me, and showed me around Charlottesville – took me to Dc to meet his best friend; asked my advice on a coffee shop, on God, on life – on everything, and took it a lot of them time. He respected me. He didn’t care that I rarely shaved my legs or that I could, at any time, get very angry about chauvinistic mentalities and generalize wildly about the idiotic nature of men in general and how all XY chromosomes must be tainted with stupidity. In fact, due to him in large part, I actually don’t think ALL men are stupid, and am attuned to the reality that women bear the same genetic tainting.

He put in a lot of effort, the most effort I’ve ever received from any guy – he loved me furiously.

He is a good man, one of the best men I’ve had the privilege of knowing – and the only man I would ever think of spending the rest of my days being sanctified and rejoicing with.

I didn’t like school when I was growing up. I loved kindergarten – recess, swings, friends, crafts, short days. But after that, I didn’t do my school work a lot of the time; I talked in class, fiddled with pencils, played with my jewelry and never organized my desk. One time, my mom had a parent teacher conference with my teacher about my “not liking school.” My mother told the teacher, “I am not trying to raise a good 3rd grader; I am trying to raise a good adult.”

Now, not taking for granted that in order to become an adult, you have to move through third grade. But her point was poignant to me – the goal is long-term, not short term. I loved College. The last 2 years I made the Dean’s list; I was top writing major. I kicked some education ass. It was the most fulfilling educational period of my life, and the most important.

I see marriage this way. The beginning is kindergarten – the middle is elementary/jr. high/high school. The rest is higher education – beautiful, constructive, elegant, enlightening. I am trying to get to higher education. While the comet exploding in my stomach was one of the most joyful moments of our relationship, – the endearing, enduring and exquisite moment of understanding each other amidst the frustration, realizing that you’re on each other’s team, drawing close in reconciliation, watching the scales and sin fall from our eyes – is the MOST beautiful and wondrous thing imaginable. But it does not happen without refining fire – and that is pain, that is hard – that means that 50 days might be really hard – but that a lifetime might be joyous, rich, brimming and filled with fruit of righteousness. That the love we have might reflect Corinthians 13 – everyday – forever. That we might learn selflessness and sacrifice; that we might represent fully, the relationship between Christ and the Church – that we might persevere into overwelming and abounding grace and love.

This is the honor of effort. This is the true and good hope.

There are moments, within the middle years, where the clouds part and a glimpse of the mountains is revealed – and the glory-self of the person is radiant and inspiring – we had one, Valentine’s Day was the best Valentine’s day I’ve ever had – probably our best day yet. Glorious, enjoyable, filled with love and friendship. There are those days – the honor of the effort, the reaping of a harvest planted with great toiling and sweat and sometimes tears – but all the more beautiful, all the more glorious – because it didn’t come easy, and because it is with great reliance on the Lord to move us into beauty.

This is why I write. This is why I pray; this is why things are difficult – because we look toward the hope of some ass-kicking marriage, hanging on the Lord’s provision and the Lord’s fire to burn away everything that keeps us from really knowing and loving each other and the world.

Lora

Side by Side.

That’s a Great Idea!

I spent the evening yesterday with my friend, Dorothy. She is a tremendous joy – direct, thoughtful, and encouraging.

She sent me an email that she re-enforced in person – “Let’s memorize scripture!”

I admit, rather than responding with a resounding jubilation – I affirmed the need for that, and then we changed subjects. But it got me to thinking… why do I have such a hard time acting on other people’s suggestions?

I feel this with Eric, my mother, peers, and mentors… they suggest, I shrug and contemplate, then like a cat – decide it was my idea and go ahead with it or discard it all together.

Memorizing scripture is a FABULOUS idea!

It refreshes the manna – it awakens the mind to things of God. It is the daily bread for which we are supposed to pray, for man lives not on formal bread alone, but on every word that come from God.

This problem is a ME-mentality, or a “my kingdom” mentality. Dethroning oneself is painful. It requires, as the bible says, thinking of others as BETTER than yourself. Not just equal, but better. ha! I barely consider equality.

Humility was a chief quality of the Savior. And it is his likeness to which we ought to fervently desire to be molded.

So, Fergs – that is a great idea.

Monday Night.

Hey friends,

Exciting news! I’m playing at Para on Monday night the 9th. Feels strange and wonderful – but more than anything I fear I won’t do well.

I guess, if you read this, pray for me – for life in general. Things are pretty hectic right now.

Lora