The work of Summiting

I looked at the summit of the volcano in whose crater I now stood. Surely the end of the trail was on one of the lower areas of the semi-circle. It couldn’t be at the very highest point. Could it? But barely visible, a vague roof and building skeleton told me it probably was exactly in that spot. And I saw stairs. Lots of stairs.

I told my husband he could go on the hike and I’d stay at the bottom and watch birds. I could never make that trek. Between the Ehlers-Danlos that causes my ankles to turn at the hint of a pebble in the road and my knees to hurt five minutes into a hike, the accompanying dysautonomia that gives me shortness of breath on a simple flight of stairs, and recurring plantar fasciitis, I’m learning my limits. The top of Diamond Head was one of them. Hiking websites say it’s not hard. The websites don’t consider a lot of the population. (Besides, according to the park site, “The 0.8 mile hike from trailhead to the summit is steep and strenuous, gaining 560 feet as it ascends from the crater floor.” So there, hiking sites.)

He told me the entry fee was cheap and I could stop whenever I wanted to and come back down. So what was there to lose to walk a little way? Fine. It was our first day ever in Hawaii and a lovely morning. I’d hike a short way.

Hikers are the best sort of people. Sure, there are those on a mission. They only want to reach point B, and if you’re hindering that pursuit, they’ll run you off the road. They’re the minority, though. Every time we visit a new place, it’s the hikers who are the kindest people to meet. They make room for you on the path. They smile. They tell you you’re almost there (even if you’re not, which is not always helpful). 

The older ones give me confidence that I can still put one foot in front of the other. The younger ones both make way for a disabled hiker like me but also look at us with admiration. This always surprises me. I’ve rarely met a young hiker who appeared to believe I was in the way and out of shape, even when I clearly am. They seem to know the folks on trails are a community. All with the same goal, all doing the best we can, all needing encouragement and wisdom. 

You’ve probably guessed that I never quit and turned back. We took many breaks. I needed regular breathers after what seemed like only a few feet. It wasn’t until we hit the first set of stairs that I thought I might make it, and several times on the almost 200 stairs I revisited that idea. We made the top, and the view was as glorious as promised. Although I’d pay for that for the rest of the trip, I didn’t regret it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about church lately, specifically about how much I have left to give and how much I will need to make way for younger generations to take the reins. What can I give, and where do I make way and offer only mentoring and wisdom but not new contributions? With the corner of sixty ahead and loss of physical ability, the questions are crowding my thoughts. 

Diamond Head helped me figure some of them out.

I still have the capability to climb. I can still reach the vistas of new adventures and ideas. But it’s slower. Steadier. Far more careful and measured than when I leaped from rock to rock. I have what’s known as a “quick start” personality, and that’s not as possible anymore. That, Diamond Head taught me, is its own beauty. I see things in the slowness that others don’t see. They see things farther along and maybe catch a vision I can’t, because I’m watching my feet. 

As I’m looking down though, watching each small step, I’m seeing the little things that make up the big picture. Someone else views the treeline and the shoreline, but I notice the warblers and the damselflies. I find the others who are struggling. I see a little thing in the person approaching me that I can call out and compliment them on. It takes enforced slowness to do this. 

Most of all, I recognize the community of hikers and realize that this work of summiting is for all of us, not one.

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The best encouragement for continuing on was the ones who had been there. The hot shots might run up on their own, but for most of us, the journey is far easier, and pleasanter, with one another’s smiles. 

As I started down from the top, a man coming up took in my ankle braces, hiking poles, and heavy lean on the railing and said, “You are one determined person.” He will never have any idea how much those five words meant. He won’t know that I won’t forget them. Someone noticed a strength in another person, a strength she wasn’t at all certain she possessed in the moment, and he wasn’t afraid to call it out. 

The community needs us all. It’s less without its variation. If our strengths change over time, that’s right and good. Maybe when I was younger it was agility and speed. Now I’ll take determination. Now, I’ll make sure I notice and call out the gifts of others. Now, I’ll make sure we all reach the summit.

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.

The Big Questions

This is one of the things you do when you stop questioning everything. Yes, worth it.

I’m a questioner. I knew this without putting a label to it, but Gretchen Rubin, in her book The Four Tendencies, labeled it for me and offered me ratification to be what I was. Questioners are happy to do anything for anyone—but we must be assured it makes sense, first. We have to know we’re making the effort for a reason.

This annoys my obliger husband—who follows rules because the rules are there to follow.

Sometimes, though, questioners can ask too much, fear too much, make too many excuses for our hesitation. We lean, hard, toward perfectionism. If we can’t assure ourselves the next step won’t fail, we’re reluctant to take it. We always want to know if there might be a better choice.

Questioners suffer a lot from buyer’s remorse.

Read more about how I deal with buyer’s remorse (and other regrets of a questioner) at The Glorious Table now!

Ode To the Middle-Aged Mama

We meet her first when she sends a scathing letter to her son—what JK Rowling terms a “howler.” Ron Weasley’s embarrassment makes us roll our eyes at the overbearing mother who scolds her son for all the world to hear.

Whoa, mama. take a step back.

She sends her youngest son and his best friend Christmas sweaters—enormous seeming wastes of yarn that swathe her children in embarrassment, again. (Let’s not even talk about the Yule robes.) We silently (or not so silently) laugh at the middle-aged woman who would create such things and believe they’re beautiful.

Then, we discover–we don’t know Molly Weasley at all.

Favorite Books and Favorite Heroes

Photo by Jaredd Craig on Unsplash

While discussing books that have meant something to me, I thought a post on one of my favorite heroines might be fun. Mrs. Weasley. The quintessential mother hen. The character we instantly stereotype—a caring but essentially nonessential woman. What many teenage boys think of their mothers, we suppose. But we agree with that teenage boy, Ron. She’s a good heart, wrapped in mom jeans and irrelevant conversation.

Shows what we know.

Many years after reading Harry Potter, and after a dozen or more movie viewings, I’ve learned why Harry and Hermione don’t, after all, end up together. I’ve come to understand what it is about the Weasleys that draws them both into the family orbit.

It all centers on Molly. It always did.

Molly’s sweaters and letters show us something, if we’re really looking. We see in them, and their creator, a fierce loyalty and love for family that doesn’t care about embarrassment or anything else on its quest for insuring her offspring are safe and good people. Her love and loyalty drive everything—and they know nothing on earth that will intimidate them.

Photo by Tamara Bellis on Unsplash

Harry is drawn to something he’s never known. Hermione Is drawn to what she intentionally gave up (in my vote for saddest scene in all eight movies). There’s something about fierce love and loyalty that cannot help but pull in whatever circles it. It’s a black hole of sorts, but in a positive way.

Love and Loyalty for the Win

“Mrs Weasley threw off her cloak as she ran, freeing her arms. Bellatrix spun on the spot, roaring with laughter at the sight of her new challenger.”

Bellatrix never imagined this middle-aged mama could bring her down. To be fair to Bellatrix, neither did anyone else. We deeply underestimated the lady. We simply never saw what drove her to knit. To bake. To open her home to anyone in need. To risk everything when those “bonus kids” she loved were in deep danger. To bolster her husband’s work in defying evil.

We didn’t see that it was a great work of its own in the fight against evil, those clacking knitting needles and that open guest policy. We didn’t realize that what she really knit together was a web so strong it held and protected so many of the “good guys” we lost count.

I’m pretty sure I whooped too loudly in the theater when she made her heroic stand to protect her daughter. I saw, in that moment, what I should have seen before it. Molly Weasley had been saying, “Not my loved one, bitch” to evil for a very, very long time. And her loved ones were many.

We simply hadn’t noticed.

Our Story, Too

Isn’t this the story of many middle-aged mamas? Isn’t this why we love her? We feel sometimes so mundane, so overlooked and pointless. Then we see someone who feels as we do about it all—and she doesn’t hold back.

She won’t be irrelevant, and maybe, in that moment, we recognize that we refuse to be as well. We realize we never were.

Women, we are knitting those webs, aren’t we? We’re holding the forces of evil at bay, too, but often in an unnoticed way, and the glory goes to the Harrys and not to the Mollys. It always does.

Yet we keep on knitting

Maybe not literally. I can’t knit to save my life. Yarn skills evade me. But without us, women, where would the fight be?

• What children would not have been raised who are now the good people we imagined and fought for?
• What injustices would still be occurring if we hadn’t written that letter or volunteered those hours?
• Who would still be in despair if we hadn’t opened our ears, our hearts, our homes?
• What life wouldn’t have been redirected if we hadn’t spoken those words, even in a howler, if the need decreed it?
• What need wouldn’t have been met without our constant watch at the city gates—bringing casseroles, knitting scarves, cleaning toilets, and yes, protesting on the street corners, telling the truth about sexual abuse, and loving the other?

We underestimated women have known this since Shifra and Puah, since Abigail and Ruth. Too often, we don’t believe in our own power, but God affirms it.

God credits them with the saving of lives, these middle-ages mamas of the Hebrew world. He writes boldly what others overlook. Fierce loyalty and love know no force they fear. They are the specialty of the middle-aged mama.

We’ve been saying, “not my loved one, bitch” to evil for a long time. And the older I get, the more loved ones I accumulate. They come in all colors and languages and creeds, nowadays. Maybe I can’t knit a stitch, but I can expand my reach to hold these new loved ones, too, in a fierce, protecting love. It’s our superpower, women.

God continues to affirm when we women use that superpower, that gift of grace, of love and loyalty to continue the quiet (and sometimes not so quiet) fight.

It all centers on the Molly Weasleys. It always has.

 

Who is one of your favorite heroes? I’d love to hear!

Workplace Bullying

Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash

This week, I’m taking a short break from the books theme because, well, Christmas. And being a pastor at Christmas. And . . . that.

But today, we’re fortunate to have some expert advice on a topic I’ve long championed. Bullying. (Meaning, I champion not bullying, not bullying. Just making sure that’s crystal.)

Bullying happens to adults, too. In fact, adult are the ones who teach the kids, am I right? Adults do it better, and sneakier. But there are laws, and there are alternatives, and if you or someone you know is being bullied, please read on to see what your options are. Feel free to pass this information on–whether it’s on the playground, at the workplace, or in our national ethos, bullying is against everything we know about treating others as we would like to be treated.

(From Hogan Injury, with permission)

Bullying in the workplace –

which includes yelling, insulting and belittling comments, teasing, threatening, and name-calling – often goes unchecked and overlooked. The Workplace Bullying Institute defines workplace bullying as the repeated, health-harming mistreatment of one or more persons (the targets) by one or more perpetrators. It is abusive conduct that is threatening, humiliating, or intimidating, or work interference—sabotage—which prevents work from getting done, or verbal abuse.

What the law says

Bullying among schoolchildren and cyberbullying have been widely talked about; and legislation and programs that address the problem continue to be developed. To date, there is no federal law that would definitely make workplace bullying illegal. There are laws that protect employees from being mistreated based on gender, race, age, national origin, or disability; therefore, bullying becomes illegal when it violates federal or state laws that prohibit discrimination and harassment of those in protected status. However, there is still no law that protects an employee from mistreatment where the mistreatment is not based on a protected characteristic.

Despite the lack of a comprehensive federal legislation on bullying, many states have introduced anti-bullying bills that have similar and consistent themes. Members of state legislatures have sponsored versions of the Healthy Workplace Bill and at least three states have passed laws that regulate workplace bullying: Utah, Tennessee, and California. Utah and Tennessee laws are focused on public employers. The California law applies to companies with more than 50 employees, and it requires them to train managers on preventing abusive conduct at work, even if the harassment or abuse is not based on a protected status. Abusive conduct would include verbal abuse, threats, and efforts to sabotage or undermine someone’s work performance.

The Healthy Workplace Campaign, through the bill, pushes for strong legislation that prohibits workplace bullying and protection for employees who experience abuse at work on a basis other than a protected class. The bill does the following for workers: allow them to sue the bully as an individual, hold the employer accountable, provide an avenue for legal compensation in case of health-harming abuse at work, seek restoration for lost wages and benefits, and require employers to take corrective actions and prevent future instances.

Photo by Anh Nguyen on Unsplash

What to do if you’re bullied at work

Even if the bully is not breaking the law, it is in your employer’s best interest to address and stop bullying in the workplace. Workplace bullying has many detrimental effects such as decreased productivity, performance, and morale. Therefore, if you are being bullied at work, file a complaint with your company’s Human Resources department.

Keep tabs of all the instances of bullying. Take note of the dates, times, and those who may have witnessed the incidents. These information are necessary should there be an investigation. Keep records of how the bullying has affected you – stress, medical problems, missed workdays, etc.

In case your company does not take your complaints seriously, it is time to talk to an attorney. Contact us at Hogan Injury for expert legal advice.

 

 

Discipling Today’s Kids Like Yesterday’s Church

Because kids can sign a church charter. And mean it.

Third installment of discipleship articles published in Light and Life Communications.

Most Christian parents have one main goal—ensure their kids grow into mature believers. But we also know the scary statistics. About sixty percent of those raised in Christian homes walk away from their faith. Only four percent of Millennials attend church regularly. Discipling kids has never been so important or so challenging.

But what does that discipleship look like now? A lot like it looked in the beginning.

Community

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer….They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need….They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people” (Acts 2.42-46).

The number one reason youth stay in the church is they have seen a Christian lifestyle modeled with integrity–first in their parents and then between their parents and other church members. Their parents genuinely love God andhis people. They’ve grown up in a community—not a building.

An Acts-like community of believers doesn’t seem very normal in today’s disposable-relaytionship culture, does it? But if we could keep our kids in church, would it be worth it to start making some changes in our priorities, schedule, finances, or church programs to create that community? What would it look like for your family?

Relationships

“When Priscilla and Aquila heard him (Apollos teaching), they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately” (Acts 18.26).

Barnabas mentored Paul and John Mark. Paul mentored Silas and Timothy. Priscilla and Aquila mentored Apollos. It’s tough to find a place in the new church where relationships did nottake priority and disciples were not made as a result. Young people remain in churches where someone took individual time to listen, model, and mentor.

*If you have teens, who in your church could come alongside your child in this kind of relationship? How will you move forward on that?

Empowerment

“Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands” (1 Timothy 4.12, 2 Timothy 1.6).

Paul felt young people should be active in the ministry of the church, not fans watching the game. When young people feel valued, they are much more likely to find value in church. We need to stop calling youth the church of tomorrow and empower them to be the church today. They are not a threat to our power. They are our hope. Yes, they will make mistakes. So do we. Life is an imprecise science.

*What gifts do your children have from the Holy Spirit?

*How can you help them fan them into flames of ministry?

 *Where is there room for that in your church?

It’s not as difficult as we make it to disciple kids. Just–listen. And take time. Not much has really changed in that respect in 2000 years.