I have a lot of meaningful things that I want to say about this past week of my life spent gathering with likeminded and hearted women from all over and also about my experience at the Idea Camp.  My friend Sarah Markley said those things well…so since my words are short now, read hers HERE.

I have pneumonia.  And as my wise friend Katie said the other day…”Ain’t nobody got time for that!”

Amen sister…Amen.

With the Allume Conference coming up in less than a month, and week that I pretty much took off last week to be present in my surroundings with the people in my face, I have stuff to do.  And ain’t nobody got time for pneumonia.

But I do have time for an ode…this will be my first ode ever, so if it’s awful…that is why.  Some things just deserve odes…like soup, and the friends who bring it when you’re sick.  It’s just something I have to do…this ode. And my pneumonia medicines make me feel a little loopy, so here goes.

Oh Soup
You really are for the soul.
With warmth and care and nourishment
You bring healing with each spoonful.
And friends who make soup…
You are balm
Your soup is expression of love made edible
Provision
Care
Sacrifice
Hospitality of the Biblical kind
I am overwhelmed by bowlfulls of love

August 28th is a big day for me this year.

I’m turning 35.

Yes….35!

Some of you are thinking, “oh…you’re still so young!”  And probably some of you are thinking, “oh, I hope I’m so fun when I’m 35!” (I’m actually just really hoping some of you are thinking that second one! LOL) And me….I’m thinking… “Wow…that happened fast!”

For real….that happened fast!

Because I distinctly remember taking this picture with my sister and Rebecca Kirkland when I was probably 12.  And just before my mom snapped it, I looked at my sister and said, “Do I look 16?”… with all the assurance in the world that I looked at least 17.

I would be the hottie on the far left in what appears to be a dress more likely on someone who is 71 than 17.  Rebecca was really rocking the Nefertiti looking gold collar, and my sister would be the Joker look alike in the green bridesmaids dress…at least she had the wherewithall to rock a red lip.

But somehow, I passed 16, and then went to college.  And I graduated and then had a few jobs while I tried to find myself I guess.  What I found was that I wasn’t sure what I wanted, and if I’m honest…even knew too much of who I was.

I heard something a few years back that said that women really begin to finally fit into our skin…to know who we are…and to walk in our callings round about mid-thirties.  And while it’s odd to find myself now solidly ensconced in the “mid” part of my 30’s, I’d have to say that for me, that’s pretty true.

Because 10 years ago, I was just getting married with all the hopes and dreams of a perfect family and the notion that the main difference from singleness was that my best friend would always be around, and I’d have sex everyday for the rest of my life.  And 8 years ago I was pregnant and obliviously happy with what I’d say was a pretty easy ride, and a life shaping up about like I’d expected.  And then about 6 years ago, I was slammed in the face with loss….and after that more loss…and then struggle, and more struggle.  And then another baby, and then a season of rest and growth. And suddenly out of nowhere, I entered a season of surprises from the Lord…and those surprises grew and grew and the doors kept opening and opening as I kept walking curiously through them.  Then more loss….the hard ugly kind, and lots of questions and lots of wrestling, but at the same time still…more blessing too.

And so it keeps going on…loss and blessing, struggle and rest….the seasons keep changing, the wrinkles they’re a coming, and somewhere in the midst of it all, I found God in ways I never have before.  And in finding Him like that, I actually found me.

I learned that the best things in this life, are the things I never could have guessed, the surprises I didn’t have the guts to dream, and the things I never knew that I could love the way that I do.

And I hope that the lesson that the Lord has been teaching me this year is the one that defines the rest of my life….

Just Love

Love, and live, and be thankful…to whoever I’m with, wherever I am.  To pour out more than I think that I can.  To breathe life and to enjoy it.

For my birthday this year, I just want the people.  I want the random drop-bys of friends who love me.  I want life to happen with people alongside me, in the midst of heaps of laundry.  I want to pour into community, and pour out blessing.  I want to redefine what it looks like to be authentically and biblically hospitable, and as a result love people like I never have before.  I want the people…the friendships…the relationships…the partnerships…I want the fullness that comes from loving well.

While I’m still pretty stoked about a little birthday money from my Nanny to do something for this tired mama, the stuff I really want….the stuff I really love…it just doesn’t have any pricetag and can’t be easily accomplished.  The stuff I’m loving most, is the stuff I’m learning, and the life I’m just living.

So, while 35 used to freak me out, I’m beginning to think that maybe I’m just finally figuring out how to get started.

 

One of my very dearest friends has had a very full few months.  And to top it off, she’s been pregnant…which of course is joyous, but also horomonal.  In the midst of the pregnancy, they sold their house…and were buying a new one.  But as buying and selling often go…things don’t happen according to plan.

And as having a family and babies go also… things often don’t go according to plan.

So when the un-plans landed our friends in a really insane week, my incredible friends and I realized that something had to be done.

Our friend’s oldest daughter started a new school Wednesday.  Thursday, our poor gal was scheduled for an earlier-than-planned delivery of their 4th child.  Friday, her husband had to leave the hospital to meet the movers at their house and then close on the house they were selling and turn around and close on the house they were buying.

My friend left her house for the hospital to never return to it again.  And when she was coming home Sunday (today), she was coming into a completely new house that she hadn’t been able to touch AT ALL!

OH MY…LANTA!

I don’t know about you other moms out there, but when I’ve had my kids and come home from the hospital, I’ve been an emotional basket case….and that was coming into a house I’d been able to nest in for months.  None of us could imagine coming into a house we’d never lived in with paint colors and wallpaper you hate and boxes piled to the ceiling.

And I say it again….OH MY…LANTA!

So naturally….we did something.  And her mom did something, and her mother in law, and her dad, and her father in law.  They all worked getting the kitchen, den, and kids rooms into some working order, and our friends and I decided to do something about the Master Bedroom.  At least if her own bedroom felt good, then maybe recovering from a csection with a new baby and 3 other kids around, might feel a bit better.

When I got to the house at 6:30 on Friday night, it looked like this….

Some awful colored yellow adorned the walls, and the window treatments had enough dust to create a full sized dust bunny on their own.  And let’s not forget the ginormous amount of boxes, containers, a queen sized bed, and who knows what else shoved into trash bags in the last minute efforts to finish packing all piled in the middle of the room!

Katie, Laura, and I painted right over those yellow walls with the prettiest beige (Sherwin Williams Balanced Beige to be exact) on Friday night.

Yes I did just post a late night silliness picture with not a stitch of makeup in the room. (Sorry Katie and Laura!)  We do look devious though don’t we?!

And Saturday, Lindsey, Lisa, and I came back to tackle the mess of stuff piled in the middle of the floor.  We unpacked closets, moved furniture, cleaned, sorted bathroom items, and decorated til about 1pm.  Poor Lisa even found a bathroom drawer that apparently the previous owner had clipped their fingernails into for what appeared to have been years. GROSS!!!!!  She cloroxed it immediately.

So when our lovely friend Jo came home today from the hospital, she didn’t see that mess in the floor…or a single packed up box waiting for her to do something about it anywhere in her entire room or bathroom.  What she came home to with that sweet new baby today was this….

Because you know what…sometimes love just needs to look like a finished room.

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?  Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. – 1 John 3:16-18

Last night I received an alarming email from one of our Allume partners (and now also one of my friends) Kristi Griem, with Freeset.   Here’s what it said….

Local Non-Profit Affected By UPS Cargo Plane Crash in Birmingham, AL

Freeset USA, a non-profit business, lost over 13,000 bags, with a retail value of $150,000, in this morning’s plane crash in Birmingham, AL. Freeset USA represents Freeset Bags & Apparel, a fair trade business offering employment to women trapped in Calcultta, India’s sex trade. The products were a complete loss and represented an entire fall inventory for online sales, fair trade stores, and conference events.

“Our prayers and thoughts are with the families of the pilots that passed away in this tragedy,” says Kristi Griem, President of Freeset USA. “We seek to honor them and their families in the face of this loss. We also are thinking about the women at Freeset, whose lives will be impacted from the loss of these bags, as it represents three months of work of our 200 staff and we have lost the bags sales that represent the wages we would have sent for them to be paid.”

Freeset is in business for freedom. Freedom from human trafficking. Freeset is a fair trade business and ministry that sells bags and t-shirts, made by women freed from human trafficking in Calcutta, India. The women are able to have a job with dignity, making products, instead of being the product. Every woman receives three times the wage they would receive in a regular job, learn to read and write, daycare for their children, have medical insurance and retirement benefits. Women were tricked, trapped, or traded and find themselves seemingly without a choice. Our goal is to change the economic scope of Sonagacchi, Calcutta’s largest red light district, to one of freedom, instead of the sex trade. Because Freeset is a fair trade business a simple ‘re order’ is not possible. The women are paid fair wages for their work and we are not a mass-producing, slave labor force.

And I’m thinking, but I’m just one person, so what can I do?!  Surely I can do SOMETHING?!

Well I’ll tell you what I can do…and what you can do too!

First off, I stopped and prayed for the lives lost.  Then I emailed Kristi back and prayed over her and over Freeset in the email. And then I sat here for about 5 minutes and thought, well….let’s just rally the troops.

And who are the troops you might ask?

Everyone I know.  And everyone you know.  And everyone they know too.  And then probably those other people they know as well.

So, I emailed my friend Mike at Pure Charity, shot a few emails back and forth with Kristi, and we’ve devised a plan to restore what has been lost.  But we need your help.  Because for real….I’m just 1 person, and even plus Mike and Kristi, we still only make 3.

We have set up a Pure Charity account on behalf of Freeset so that we can “buy back” all of the lost bags.  The total loss in sales is $150,000.  And it’s not about bags lost, it’s about the 200 lives of people offered hope and freedom through Freeset who invested over 3 months to make them, it’s people who’s lives have been changed from making these bags.  It’s for rescue, and new life, and promise and hope. It’s a really big deal, and a big number to try and hit….but God is so much bigger.  And He cares about life and livlihood and companies like Freeset who rescue and offer new life!

Freeset has a bag amongst their awesome collection called the Hope Bag.

So we’re gonna call this campaign, “Give Hope” to Freeset!

But instead of popping over to actually buy a bag that will be sent to you in the mail, we’re gonna buy back the bags that were lost in the plane crash in Birmingham and ensure that the 200 workers’ families in India won’t feel the loss. Ever.

The Hope Bag retails for $25, so while the truth is that any donation is awesome, it’d be super swell if you’d really “buy a bag” (a whole bag instead of just say, a handle of a bag)  and donate a full $25 to replace a lost bag.  Or buy lots of lost bags in $25 increments.  Or buy a lost bag, and then hop over to Freeset’s site and buy a bag that will actually be sent to you in the mail too.

Really, I just think that we can use our voices for good…and when we all shout for Freedom and Justice and Hope at once…people hear, and I think they’ll even hear us shouting on their behalf all the way in India.

So join us? Let’s make a difference?  Let’s be abundance where there could be loss?!  Let’s show the world that the people of Jesus are full of love and full of world-changers.

Buy back a lost bag from Freeset, and give hope to families in India!

Can’t see the link? Hop over HERE to Pure Charity’s Give Hope site.

And um…let’s not dilly dally?  Beecause you know as well as I do when you walk away from this screen, you’re not gonna do it.  It’s a non-profit people….a non-profit giving life to those who didn’t have one before!

And please continue to pray for the families who lost loved ones, the pilots of the UPS cargo plane carrying the bags that crashed.  We can’t bring them back, but we can lift them up before Heaven and make a difference for the people still living who are affected by this tragedy.

We spent the past 2 weekends in the mountains.  And aside from the discovery of bedbug bites upon returning from the cabin (which is a horribly gross and mortifying discovery …one which will be certainly remedied before we head back in a couple weeks with my dear friend Sarah Mae and her family), we had a fantastic time.

I don’t get cell service there.

Or internet.

Which is, for a person hosting a blogging and social media conference, a really wonderful thing.

I’m realizing that sometimes to mentally unplug, I have to literally unplug.

There is something about a steaming mug of coffee in the morning, or a glass of wine in the evening, looking out at this….

And even when we go out for a drive and service might pop in and out, sometimes…sometimes, we might just need to employ “airplane mode.”

So we can stop and notice things like 2 crosses naturally formed by the presence of quartz in a waterfall rock.

And if we really pause long enough to help our kids fashion spears from old arrowheads and cut down sapling trees, we might notice that the bark peels off and becomes pretty pliable.  Rope-like almost…

And when one child says, “maybe we could make baskets from the bark…”

You  might just stop and take the time to actually do it…because you took a basket-weaving class in summer camp when you were 14.

Because you’ve taken the time to stop, and to notice the things around you, you remember seeing a whole bunch of blackberries on the side of the road when you went hiking with your friends the weekend before.

So you go back with your kids and pick them… and put them in the basket you all just made together on the porch.

It’s so so pure… That life in the country that sometimes my heart longs to dive into headfirst.  It’s the curiosity of Laura Ingles Wilder, and the tenacity of Anne Shirley both meeting, and exploring, and discovering the world around me.  I bring my kids along for the ride, and open up those parts of them too.

So we go back, and make cobbler, and take some to the lonely neighbor next door.

And everything feels right in the world….the world unplugged and natural.