A Simple Life

I’m a Baby Boomer. I raised three Millennials. Not one person in our house is a Gen Xer, although my husband and my son-in-law both missed it by merely a year on either side.

We do not know what it’s like to be the overlooked middle child.

Both of our generations have been marketed to, catered to, had all our whims analyzed and fulfilled, as a giant generation would. Other than the job market after college for both, we’ve had it pretty good.

Poor Gen X

Gen X, on the other hand, gets ignored. I guess that can be OK. As the youngest child of seven, I found getting ignored pretty useful when I wished to fly under the radar. Still do.

The generation between let’s-begin-God’s-people-patriarch Abraham and had-way-too-many-kids-and-wives Jacob feels a lot like the Gen X of Genesis.

Isaac and Rebekah don’t get much press.

You’ll find the story in Genesis 24. Abraham wants his son to marry in his family and to a woman who worships his God, not one nearby. So his servant saddles up the camels and travels 500 miles to find Isaac a wife.

To be clear, this is the camel. Not the wife. Photo by Andre Iv on Unsplash

Enter Rebekah. TL;DR version: he meets her and her family, tells them she’s the one to marry Isaac, they all agree it seems right, and then he tosses a curveball—they all must decide this NOW because he’s leaving tomorrow.

Her mother objects. What mother wouldn’t? She knows she will never see her child again. How can she say a forever good-bye with less than 24-hours notice? Then they do something remarkable for the time—they ask Rebekah.

“We’ll call Rebekah and ask her what she thinks.” So they called Rebekah. “Are you willing to go with this man?” they asked her. And she replied, “Yes, I will go.”

Wife Material

Clearly, this is an adventurous, curious, faith-filled, daring young woman who has a streak of independence. Maybe they knew they would have to ask her or she wouldn’t have it. Maybe she’s been waiting for a chance like this. The text seems to indicate that perhaps she has stayed single for longer than usual, and since she’s beautiful and her family has money, this was surely her choice.

I already like Rebekah.

She gives up so much—her entire family—to travel a great distance to a strange place and a strange man. Is Isaac old? Ugly? Missing teeth and oozing something? Does he already have four wives? Does he (shudder) write “your” when he means “you’re”? She has no clue. The servant’s kind nature and honest, earnest appearance are all she has to go on.

Yet without hesitation, she answers. God is in it. Yes, I will go.

Photo by Jack Anstey on Unsplash

Short story—she goes. They marry. They love til death do them part. They have two sons, who create their whole ‘nother drama. But for the most part, Rebekah, after her giant leap unto the unknown (yes, you may sing a Frozen song here), lives a quiet, ordinary, unremarkable life.

• She isn’t sold into slavery in Egypt.
• She doesn’t bear a child at 90.
• She doesn’t mother the entire nation of Israel.
• She doesn’t build an ark.
• She doesn’t lead an army or slay a giant or save her nation from a despot king and his henchman.

She never even goes far from home (again).

She raises two kids and teaches one to cook.

They are the original Gen X.

Wasn’t this all anti-climatic?
Wasn’t Rebekah disappointed?

Did the giant leap fall flat?

Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash

Where was the grand adventure?

I think Rebekah would say—it was in obedience.

The leap of faith never promised great fame. It didn’t assure her sword fights and dizzying escapades. She wasn’t asked to do something amazing. She was asked to obey. So she did.

The adventure was not having a clue what was ahead and saying “yes” anyway. That takes more guts than a sword fight any day.

One of my favorite fictional characters is Eowyn, the maiden of Rohan who is certain she was born for adventure and renown (and she was) but who desperately fears she will never be allowed to reach her destiny because she is a woman. Women don’t gain valor. (Well, she has a point.)

Eowyn learns, by the end, what the hobbits always knew—it is no bad thing to celebrate an ordinary life. Sometimes, the most ordinary of people do the most extraordinary things—even if they’re living their normal lives.

Rebekah seems to know this. She faithfully lives out her days, knowing her obedience brought her exactly where she was meant to be.

I could learn a few things from Rebekah.

• Maybe the life we’re living is our adventure.
• Maybe where we are right now is our calling.
• Maybe obedience is the greatest thing no matter where it leads us.
• Maybe we need to find gratitude and joy in ordinary life.
• Maybe it’s the next generation who will matter more than I, and that seemed OK to Rebekah.

Ordinary is its own definition—normal. Most of us are by definition.

Ordinary lives are the backbone of most of the world. The ark-builders and giant-slayers wouldn’t survive without the ordinary ones.

And here’s what I want to remember from Rebekah—

God celebrates ordinary lives of extraordinary obedience.

Seems right. Average people are what he made the most of. He must truly delight in it.

Learning from Cain we talked about competition and how unholy and unhelpful it can get. If we take a page from Rebekah, we see something else. Competing makes zero sense when God delights in our obedience, period. There’s no competition to obey. In fact, I’d say the field is pretty open. So a heart and mind concentrating on obeying hasn’t much space to look around at how others are doing and ramp up the resume.

I know. I’m lousy at this, too.

Some folks do make it a reason to sit out their life and allow their fear of failure to keep them out of their calling. That’s not what I’m suggesting. Radical obedience, though, will always lead us toward our calling. It simply might not be what we expected.

Rebekah is OK with that. Are we?

Drop. Push. Go.

One of my favorites from last summer.

 

It looked so easy when she did it.

The List

I’ve been working on my 60 Before 60 List this summer. Considering 60 is a LOT of things, and considering I front loaded that list with way more travel items than I can humanly manage without a TARDIS, I need to be working on it.

While at school in Santa Barbara in June (going to Cali was rough, but it was all in the name of education), I knocked off the “go sailing” item. That was #1. A few weeks later, our youngest and I went on a #motherdaughtertrip to Charlevoix, Michigan, a lovely little town snug between a giant lake and a large lake. It was glorious, and it was good. I completely forgot all responsibility, which is not normally a thing for me, so I suspect my brain needed a break.

On July 6th, we tackled another thing on my list. We rented a stand up paddleboard. Our daughter has done this once before. She also has ten years of gymnastics behind her. A girl who can do back flips on 4 inches of wood four feet in the air can balance on a paddle board, even in the wake of a number of pleasure cruisers going by.

She looked like Moana out there, hand raised over her eyes toward the open water, paddle at the ready. She was awesome.

What’ SUP?

I, on the other hand, am still recovering from a back injury, which leaves me with a still-weak right leg and, shall we say, not the mountain goat sense of balance I once had. I mourn that reality. It’s one of the things I’ve loved about my body—the ability to climb up boulders and straddle a teetering log like a gecko.

I learned it early, as the youngest of seven and growing to only 5’2”. I’m not strong, and my endurance level is like my old AMC Hornet that desperately needed a gas filter, but I’m fast and sure-footed. Except not anymore.

My daughter said it was easy, so we pulled up to the half a foot of sand a few feet away from the “No Tresspassing” sign and traded her SUP for my kayak.

It went well. My legs shook, and I am grateful for no vidoegraphic evidence of my ungraceful stance, but I paddled. Back and forth, a few times in that small channel between the giant lake and the big lake. I could do this.

Until I couldn’t.

Making one last pass to the end, I went farther than I had before and tried to steer the board back toward the channel. Away from the steel (iron?) pier that marked the end of the channel and also the coast guard station. I tried. Really tried. That board had no intention of turning.

I hit the pier. Hard. My daughter heard it from twenty feet away. I leaned forward to grasp the bar on the pier, and the board slid out from under me. There I was, legs flailing, dangling from the pier and about to become a contestant in a very wet clothing contest. So glad at that moment I had decided to ditch the leggings and just go in the long tunic.

I let go, splashed into the surprisingly warm water, and grabbed the board to swim it back to the rocks on shore. This, of course, is when she started taking pictures.

On the Rocks

It was while I sat on the rocks trying to figure out how to get back on the board that another woman came alone, going the same direction. Either she realized that she also could not avoid the pier or, clearly experienced, she intentionally chose to use it as her bouncing off point to redirect her down the narrow side stream. Whichever, as she approached the pier, she dropped to her knees, struck the pier, and pushed off with her right hand in the direction she wanted to go.

“Wham!” She yelled it as she slapped that metal surface. It sounded like a cry of triumph. I knew she knew what she was doing. It felt like maybe she even did it to show me how it was done. Not in a “look at me and how great I am at this thing you totally failed at” sort of way. It felt more like “I’ve done what you just did and I want to help you get past it.” Don’t we love women like that?

I watched as she took a quick hop back to her feet, one smooth motion. She knew that was my next question, and she looked at me as she did it. I think she nodded in encouragement. As she went on her way down the stream, I got back on that board.

Obstacles Can Sink You

There are so many obstacles in the way of our dreams and goals. So many iron piers loom ahead, and we desperately try to steer away from them. We think that hitting them will be the end. We believe that we will never survive that roadblock.

Maybe we should take a lesson from that anonymous paddleboarder. Maybe, avoiding the obstacles isn’t the goal. If we can’t avoid it, maybe we ought to be thinking about using it.

She dropped to her knees.

She knew the impact would send her flying off the board if she tried to take it standing up. Dropping down, lowering her center of gravity, working with the impact instead of against it—those things kept her on the board.

It’s not a bad idea to drop to our knees, too, when we see the obstacles coming. The impact could be destabilizing. But it won’t be if we’re on our knees, in prayer to our Daddy who holds us in the palm of his hand, so that we will not be shaken. Dropping to my knees could have kept me on the board. Dropping to our knees before God will keep us facing our goals and dreams and making certain that they are still aligned with his purpose for us. It will keep us centered, balanced, and sure.

She used that problem to redirect.

She didn’t let it redirect her—she used it to change course in the way she wanted to go. I had allowed it to redirect me right into the water. I saw that pier only as a huge obstacle, a scary problem, a thing I did not want to run into or deal with.

She saw it as a chance to point her board where she wanted it to go. When she yelled “Wham!” she shoved off the pier into a hard left turn, allowing the impact to turn her course.

Do we do that with roadblocks in our path? Can we use them as course correctors, things that make us look more clearly at the place we want to go? Do we push off of our problems, rather than let them envelop and sink us? Take in their force and use it to send us further and faster?

I learned more than how to stand up on a paddleboard that morning. The dunking was worth the education.

How fast can I get back to my feet after hitting the pier? It doesn’t matter. If we need some time to sit on the rocks and refocus, that’s time well spent. But I want to learn from paddleboard wonder woman.

Drop to knees. Push off. Pop up, Go.

Growing With–a Book You Must Know About

As a pastor, I am “in a relationship” with the Fuller Youth Institute. I’m not even shy about it. In a culture that makes it challenging for our kids’ faith to thrive, I have found abundant resources for both parents and church leaders in their publications. I’m even using a number of them for my thesis project.

That’s why, when my email magically notified me they were looking for a book launch team for their next resource–– Growing With––that was one of the few emails I didn’t scroll past or trash with abandon. I applied immediately.

I mean, my tagline you can read above is” Reframed: Picturing faith with the next generation.” It’s kind of important to me.

Growing With’s subtitle– –Every Parent’s Guide To Helping Teenagers and Young Adults Thrive in Their Faith, Family, and Future––captures the thing well. The authors, Kara Powell and Steven Argue,  use three verbs to help parents during the three stages of their children’s growth.

Withing

• Withing––how do we relearn to actually be with our children, not simply around them?

Faithing

• Faithing—how do we help our kids navigate the changes in their faith with patience and optimism, realizing that our faith, too, is or should be ever-changing?

Adulting

• Adulting– –what tools do our kids in need to thrive in their own new life, and what is our role in supplying and them?

I won’t lie ––Growing With can be a tough read if your kids are already in their 20s, as mine are. You can’t help but notice the many things you could have done better. Yet Powell and Argue lace Growing With with grace. They are parents, too. They have made their own mistakes and are not afraid to let the readers know it. The message comes through––

We’re all imperfect humans raising imperfect humans.

We all need some help. Both generations need grace to understand that the other is still growing, learning, and making mistakes. That understanding alone it is worth the price of admission for this book.

The authors talk about the cultural changes that have made growing up in this generation far different than the world their parents knew at their age. They lay down some of the stark facts that might depress us about our children’s faith, but they also debunk some of the myths about the Millennial generation and iGen that keep parents awake at night in fear.

The clear, well-informed, and fact checked understanding of the next generations’ hopes, worries, and beliefs is invaluable to parents, grandparents, and church leaders who wants to understand what is going on in the heads and hearts of these generations.

Teachers, Guides, Resourcers

I love how the authors explain the different roles parents need to take on as their children change. Parents need to evolve from teachers to guides to resources. We can’t hope to parent a 25 -year-old the same way we did a 14-year-old. At least, we can’t hope to do it and retain a good relationship. And genuine relationships are what it’s all about for the next generation.

We need to be, as one story puts it, ”A wall they can swim back to”—a firm and sturdy place that will always support them after their forays toward and into adulthood. The writers don’t just leave us with that pithy picture, however. They give readers wonderful ways to be that wall. 

The important words are verbs

I love that the writers, like our scripture writers, know that the important words are verbs. Parents don’t simply ”be with” their kids. They are withing, together. It’s a verb because it is active. We need to intentionally practice withing.

Likewise, faith isn’t a static thing we can hand off to our kids when we think they’re ready. It’s a verb we practice more than we preach. It can’t be given––it can only be lived together. This flows perfectly with the biblical view of faith. Faith is never a thing in scripture––it is always an active, living way of life.

If you’re intrigued, or if you know someone who could benefit from “every parent’s guide to helping teenagers and young adults thrive,” check out Growing With––and preorder yours now (before March 5th) to receive some very special extras as well. I know I’m going to.

let’s go bravado something

On Thursdays in January, you were hearing a lot from me about RiskRejection, the group of fearful, quivering women who joined forces and said, “Eh, not so much. Quivering is overrated. Let’s do this risk thing!” And we did. In ways major and minor, we planned, risked (not always in that order), and bravadoed (yes, that is a word. As of now) our way through risk and fear. These women inspired me. I am excited to have a seat in the arena to watch their futures.

Soooo–move here? Would someone PLEASE suggest this?

But as the month ended, I figured, why does a good thing have to end? Why not keep it up? Why not keep finding a risk to take every week ad write about it? 

Problem being–I am not an endless fount of risk-taking ideas. I will run dry. I will start to resort to things like, “quit my job and move to Vancouver Island” because I lack creativity. And because I would really love to move to Vancouver Island.

So, I am enrolling you as my official risk-taking suggestion box. (Though you are not a box. Nor do you resemble one. That would just be . . . odd.) What risks would you suggest I take in coming weeks? What risks do YOU want to take but haven’t been able to make yourself engage in? I would really, really love to hear what dreams you have and what your fears are about them. We can encourage one another here.

But right now, offer suggestions, with these caveats:

• I won’t risk my life and limb, nor those of anyone else, even on the days it is tempting. This rules out skydiving and snake handling.
• I won’t do anything outside of my moral boundaries. (I fully believe it is immoral to embarrass myself. I’m sure I can find it in the Bible. Or . . . not.) 
• I will operate under the exercise of free will. So there will be no accusations of chickening out if I don’t use your suggestion. Even if they may or may not be true.

The point is to continue to take risks with a purpose. I would love to invite you on that journey–as a risk suggester or a fellow risk taker. Join in.