Ten on Tuesday: Photo Edition

This has not been a year of extensive photography. I noted on Facebook the other day that I need to get a photo of myself pregnant before I'm not pregnant anymore... to which a clever friend pondered, "How does one get a photo pregnant?" Har har. Fortunately it just so happened that we had a (lovely!) Memorial Day BBQ with an extremely talented photographer; unfortunately we didn't know that going in, so I was bereft of eyeliner (don't judge) and Ben had a bad case of hat hair. Oh well... at least we're keepin' it real. I can't wait to see the fruits of the photoshoot.

In the meantime, I have taken quite a few photos in the last few days. Here goes.

1. Ben and I spent the weekend in Chicago the week before last, thanks to the excellent childcare provided by my dear Mama. It was the first time we'd ever been away from Juliette at night, ever. And it went just fine. We had a great time in the city, though it was a lot of walking for a pregnant lady (we were car-free for the weekend). At one point we were taking a breather in the Member Lounge of the Art Institute, and I fell asleep for a little bit, as in: open-mouthed drooling public slumber. And when I woke up, obviously not fully awake, I said to Ben a little bit too loudly, "I'd like a cookie now." Because I'm, like, an adult.

But anyway, downtown Chicago is full of the most beautiful flower planters. These went on for nearly a whole block:
2. It never gets old. Never.
3. Oh, do I ever love our new kitchen, even if it does have funky lighting for food photography. You don't even want to know the unnatural tricks I played in iPhoto to make the spinach look remotely green.
4. I scandalized a lot of people on FB by gushing about my love of spinach in smoothies. A close up just for the apparent gross-out factor:Yum.

5. We set out for a walk around our new neighborhood after the big rain on Saturday. Ben is strategically placed in front of our embarrassingly decrepit front steps, and our aging roof is mercifully washed out. We're working on getting them fixed.
6. One of my great loves is the smell of the world after a good spring rain. And a girl who is so spunky she's even spunky from behind.
7. I meant to take a picture of Juliette with the pretty flowers behind her, but I couldn't help but lean in close for the full cuteness effect. What a cheese.
8. They really were pretty flowers. Does anyone know what this is?
9. We had a truly great Memorial Day. In addition to the aforementioned BBQ (which was, in fact, the eagerly-awaited follow-up to The Great Meat Pickup of 2011), we also attended the short but sweet Memorial Day Parade in Western Springs. I have to admit the best part was my relief that they didn't sound all the sirens when the police cars and fire trucks passed by. That, and the sight of Juliette and her friends delighting in every little thing. (Well, especially the candy.)
10. And then, last but not least, the best of the bunch. What more does a girl need than a pretty sundress, a pink ribbon, a basket of books, and the morning sun on her toes?

Congregational Resource Guide Podcast

This week I participated in a round table podcast conversation hosted by the Congregational Resource Guide. (I was super nervous? And you can tell by the way I ended a lot of my sentences with an unnecessary question mark inflection?)

Listen to internet radio with CR Radio on Blog Talk Radio

The White Elephant

There's this woman at church, Mary, whom everyone just adores. She's smart and funny and wise and generous. She's moving away at the end of next month, and we're all so sad about it.

Today she left us a housewarming gift on the doorknob of my church study: a white elephant. Literally. It's a little pitcher shaped like an elephant. The accompanying card explained that when her kids were little, she let them use it to pour their milk into their cereal.

We were so excited about it Juliette had to have granola for lunch.

Prayer Flags

The Christian Ventures committee at my church organized a lovely all-church project this spring: prayer flags. For several weeks during Lent, members were able to write and draw on brightly-colored squares of cloth, which the committee members sewed into six strands of prayers and hung up for Palm Sunday.

They are gorgeous.

This is how they looked on Palm Sunday, with the magnolias all in bloom.My office window is just behind that bench, and it's been wonderful to see the flags blow in the wind, and to watch people stop and marvel beneath them.A thunderstorm knocked one of the strands down earlier this week, which gave me a chance to take a few close-ups.One of the intercessions requests "slow squirrels for my dog." It's just about everybody's favorite flag.

I think there is something deeply blessed about playing in the dirt beneath the shadow of a hundred prayers.I thought I'd lost all my copies, digital and otherwise, of Prayer Flags, a poem I wrote in 2003. I found it tonight.

In Provincetown, the flags stay up
through the June rains: strung like laundry
across narrow roads. We walk underneath
the colors, point out the countries we recognize.

Maj says that all flags are prayer flags.
I usually believe what he says. I do want the wind
to lift prayers from these drenched banners,
but only if the wind is blind to their spangled loyalties.

Some months later, Ben and I buy a quilt
patterned with flags. Their colors are inverted,
rendered unrecognizable. I dream well under the weight
of orange crescent moons, greens stripes, pink stars.

The wind doesn’t reach this quilt; its prayers go unnoticed.
Soon, I’ll wash it, hang it on the clothesline to dry,
wait for the wind to clutch and shake the dormant flags.
Their prayers will scatter: brilliant, haphazard, loving.

Amen.

Book Title!!!

I am so very excited to announce that the title of my book shall be:

Any Day a Beautiful Change:
A Story of Faith and Family

It only seems right to share the news here.

I picked that title for my blog back in July 2004. Just as the blog itself was a whim, so was the title. I'd been listening to Befriended by The Innocence Mission nonstop that summer and especially loved the song "Beautiful Change." I couldn't imagine at the time how much that phrase would come to mean to me. Receiving Karen Peris's blessing to borrow it for the book title just makes me overjoyed.

For the record, even though the book will have the same title as my blog, there isn't a whole lot from here that will be there. I think just two posts were extended into full chapters. That said, this archive was an invaluable extension of my memory.

So, just one more time for kicks:

Any Day a Beautiful Change: A Story of Faith and Family
(forthcoming from Chalice Press early 2012)

There is exciting news about the cover art, too, but I'm going to savor each bit separately. Thank you for reading, and for celebrating with me, and stay tuned...

Ten on Tuesday

1. I'm 32 weeks pregnant and have been so busy I'm only vaguely aware of that fact, mainly on account of the various third-trimester aches and pains. With Juliette, I was obsessed with being pregnant and becoming a mother. At some point between now and July, I hope I have a chance to do a little emotional and spiritual preparation for childbirth and welcoming a new baby into the family.

2. I certainly have the nesting thing down. No choice, really, as one must nest when one is moving into a new house. We have so much work to do yet - not the least of which, the less-than-fun stuff of getting a new roof and repairing the crumbling front steps. But we're getting there, little by little. So is the little bird who literally nested on our porch light all day Saturday. I'm fine with him living there as long as he doesn't try any funny business: no flying in my face when I open the door, buster.

3. The hanging pots and pans storage was one of the selling points of this house for me. I think it's that scene from The Princess Bride. I'm going to try an experiment tonight, and see what happens if I call Ben over and ask him to fetch the colander for me. "Farm Boy..."
4. Juliette and I walked to church from our new house today. I like that our route takes us through downtown Western Springs. Though really, it could be dangerous to walk past Kirschbaum's Bakery and Oberweiss Dairy as frequently as we will.

5. It's kind of hard to tell from this picture, but to get to the guest bedroom you walk up the stairs and then back down a short flight of stairs; it's a room on stilts that partially rests on the attached garage. The other two bedrooms and the one (1) bathroom are at the top of the rest of the stairs. It's a funky layout, but I love it.

6. Erica suggested we make this an annual picture. Someone may need to remind me next May...
7. I scored a pretty significant consumer victory the other day. To make a long and headache-inducing story short, I was so angered by a particular communications utility that I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. Within days, someone from the company's executive office contacted me, cut us an excellent deal on our phone and internet for the next twelve months, and best of all confirmed that the customer service/ sales rep had committed fraud. I've been irritated with companies before but this was the first time I can remember being flagrantly mislead and lied to. I don't revel in getting someone in trouble - and I'm fairly sure that rep is in Trouble - but I'm grateful that organizations like the BBB exist to keep companies on the straight and narrow.

8. Juliette "read" aloud from a Bible story book this morning while she waited in my office for preschool to start. I'd planned to knock a few items off my to-do list, but ended up taking dictation of her lovely narration of the pictures. My favorites: "If you're sick, you have to say: God, help me from heaven. Feel me better... Jesus tells all the people how to say God helps you." She also explained that Jesus had a lot of children.

9. I didn't have it in me to do a thorough cleaning of our rental house before we turned the keys over last weekend, so I obtained paid housecleaning services for the first time in my life. Oh my stars. I was practically in tears when I walked through afterward, and I don't even live there anymore. The cleaning service offers a big discount for your second cleaning, and I'm thinking I don't want to put it to waste, especially given how dirty the floors get during the move-in process. I must tread carefully, though, as one can't get too used to such a luxury.

10. And here's Juliette: sweet, feisty, independent, snuggly, surprisingly flexible, vegetable-loving Juliette.

Almost There

We're in the new house. Which is lovely. The problem is that we're still in the old house, too. I keep wondering how moving five blocks could be so much harder than moving 2021 miles. There is the possibility that the section of my mind that I lost during that move contained the memory of just how complicated and difficult it was. Or maybe I was just so distracted by the grief of leaving California and the excitement of arriving in Illinois.

At any rate, even though we didn't have to meticulously ensconce all our breakables in bubble wrap or figure out how to ship our vehicle: Lord, have mercy. The dribble of stuff from there to here is crazymaking enough, and when you combine it with busy work schedules and third trimester pregnancy and a three-year-old who decided that her first bath in the new house would be an emergency, must-break-the-104-degree-fever bath, again I say: Lord, have mercy.

Nevertheless, we're hanging in there. And it is delightful to be actively transforming this house into our home. As I wander around, figuring out where things go and such, I am reminded again and again of my grandmother's house in Massillon, Ohio. It doesn't look like it; it feels like it. I think it has something to do with the street it's on (even though there is not a People's Drug Store or a candy shop at the end of the road). And the height of the trees in the neighborhood. And something that I can't articulate yet pulls at my heartstrings like you wouldn't believe. All I know is that this house is unexpectedly and powerfully blessed by my Grandma Watson, and I can't think of a better confirmation that we're in the right place.

Public Transit

Five years ago I wrote A Little Essay About Freeways, Which Also Functions as a Metaphor for Pastoral Ministry. I never explicitly mentioned ministry itself, and can't really recall what I thought the connection was. I think I mostly just wanted to brag about having finally figured out how to drive in Los Angeles, after several years of hyperventilating at the sight of fourteen lanes of traffic.

Today I took the Metra and L into into downtown Chicago and back, by myself. Last summer I traveled by Metra a couple times with Ben as guide and companion, but I hadn't ventured to the city alone. I had a meeting on Michigan Avenue in the middle of the day, and happily seized the opportunity to bring a book (two, in fact: Grace Based Parenting and Pollyanna) and take an adventure. I was a little nervous about the transfers, and admit that I called Ben in an addlepated panic because I didn't know which direction to take the Pink line. If you know Chicago you know this is funny because the lines only go in one direction.

I adore Chicago. I only know it in brief and broad strokes at this point, given that I spend most of my days tucked away in our little village suburb. But it just resonates with me. We're compatible (except for WXRT's insistence on playing far too many Counting Crows songs). And I'm downright enchanted by the public transportation system.

It's funny: I was convinced that my little essay about driving around the freeways of LA was really about ministry. But driving around in a car alone? That isn't really an accurate depiction of life in the church. Except for one dimension: life in the church as a solo pastor, on the lonely days.

I wasn't driving today. I didn't have any control over the schedule, and couldn't do anything about it when my inbound train was running late. But what you give up in autonomy you gain in freedom, when it comes to trains, and perhaps also associate ministry. The burden of responsibility is not solely on my shoulders; otherwise I could never have read Pollyanna while hurtling toward Union Station. Still, I got there. And I wasn't alone, but with a congregation of travelers all going the same direction, their heads bobbing in unison over their newspapers and novels.

(And now I have Mr. Jones and Me in my head.)

My Brilliant Friends

I've had writing friends for nearly as long as I've been writing. My friend Lara was a crucial collaborator in the creation of No Way Out, the mystery novella I penned in the fourth grade. My writing circle really exploded in the eighth grade, when I made it onto my school's Power of the Pen team. By the time college came around I understood the writing community to be every bit as important to the writing process as writing itself. I still treasure my Kent writer friends: Maj, David, Carly, Amanda, Dan, Bryan, Paul, DM, and of course the red-headed one I married. The wisdom I gleaned from their writing and our friendships is invaluable to me.

Lately I've been especially bowled away by my friends' writerly brilliance. Amanda founded an incredible food literary journal, From Plate to Palate. I was not at all surprised at the news of another friend's acceptance to a fantastic MFA program; I read her portfolio, and it rocked. Erica's letter to her children and Heidi's piece on Fidelia's about the news of Osama Bin Laden's death impressed and moved me to no end. I'd barely scanned the headlines before they turned out remarkably thoughtful and faithful responses. I can't wait for Lee's contribution to Day1 to air, because I'll finally get to hear the words of her beautiful sermon embodied. Meanwhile Bromleigh published yet another thoughtful and practical piece, this one about biblical literacy (and illiteracy, as the case often is). MaryAnn manages to run a great blog even while under contract for what will undoubtedly be a must-read book about Sabbath. And my friend Suzie just contributed her first guest post to [in]courage; I hope many more will follow.

That isn't an exhaustive list.

Your friendship is a gift. Your words are a gift. Thank you.