Invited Into the Junk Closet

This is the last pondering/ rambling about us being a house, I promise!

Part 1: You are a House is here.

Part 2: Discernment (alternate title -- I can see in  your windows!) is here.

However, this is what started this whole thought process. I had to find a way to put words/ imagery to this experience.

I mentioned that we all have a junk closet in our house. Okay -- Jennifer only has a junk drawer. And it probably has labeled dividers in it. Whatev. (I actually don't have a junk closet in my physical house because I have exactly 3 closets in my house -- one in each bedroom -- but my laundry room gets an honorary nod as a junk closet. And the bottom of my pantry. And my attic. You get the idea...).

I have a dear friend whose figurative junk closet contained not only stuff that she crammed in there, but a WHOLE load of pain and garbage that life and other people piled in. I'll call her Hoarder of Other People's Junk. Several years ago, partly due to her choosing, and partly because life threw her yet another wrench, HOPJ finally cried "mercy" and said, "ENOUGH!!"

She dusted off her scraped and bruised knees, stood on her shaky feet, and proceeded to clean out that junk closet.

Ever been through a box of painful memories? Yeah -- that's cleaning out the junk closet. One photograph and memento at a time. Remembering the pain and heartache and tossing them out. In cleaning out the figurative junk closet, you come across habits and behaviors that you have created as coping/ comforting mechanisms to deal with the pain -- and depending on how healthy or unhealthy THOSE are, you may have to get rid of something that has been very comfortable for you.

In short, it's a pain to clean out the junk closet. Literally. It's an ugly process.

HOPJ has spent years getting healthy, uncovering those coping mechanisms, tossing out the unhealthy, forging a better life for herself. She is no longer HOPJ -- now she is Standing on Her Own Two Feet.

Not too long ago, Standing invited me into her former junk closet. There is one last order of business that needs taking care of on her road to a complete closet re-do -- and she would like my help.

Realizing that this closet has held some of her deepest pain and biggest hurts, I had to confess my hesitation. Hesitation not only to simply be there, but to say anything once I came in:

"I'm... I'm not sure what I can say and can't say about this last pile of junk."

"You can say anything."

Very thoughtfully, she explained: "You have enough deposits in my love bank. I know that anything you say is out of love and wanting my closet to be clean. ThisOne can't say anything. I just got through shoveling fifty pounds of manure that ThisOne dumped in my junk closet, so ThisOne can't say a word without it upsetting me. It's just bringing the junk back into the closet. But you? You can say anything."

At that moment in time, I felt the urge to remove my shoes.

I realized that I was standing on Holy Ground.

To be invited into the deepest recesses of another's soul -- the place where the biggest hurts and fears, and even the biggest Dreams, live-- is a hallowed, sacred place.

I realized the level of trust it took for Standing to invite me in, lay bare her hurts and fears, and let us sit in the middle of her junk closet together and find a way to clean that sucker out.

I wondered how often someone has allowed me -- without me having full awareness -- a toe, a glimpse, a part of his/ her junk closet... and I treated it flippantly, casually, a wave of the hand, a smile, a half of an ear.

And when I didn't understand the gravity of that situation, not only did I pile more into the junk closet, but that person put one more nail in the door, vowing never to let anyone else peek inside again.

It is a beautiful, sacred experience when we offer pieces of our lives and selves to each other. When  trust is established and we know it is a safe place to be. It goes so far beyond fellowship, yet must start there.

And... truth be told. You have to go first. You have to be willing to trust someone first. And at some point someone will breech that trust and you'll get hurt (you can forgive, but you don't have to be an idiot and trust them twice...). That's what makes us all tick and connect. The ability to reach out and say: "I think you're worth taking a risk on. I like you. I trust you with my junk."

And? Follow Standing's example. Get your junk cleaned out. Get a professional junk cleaner if necessary. Find a friend/ spouse who will go through your junk with you. Because life is constantly piling on new junk. No need to keep dragging around the old junk.

A House?

You are a house.

Nope. Not as BIG AS a house.

You are a house.

Your being, your soul, the part that makes you you -- that is your house.

If you know me the least little bit, you know that I am prone to pick apart a thought and over think and WAY over talk it, and lately I’ve been pondering us as a house. So now I shall over talk/ write it.

I think of our selves -- our real, true selves -- as our houses.

The thing is, most of our relationships in life are front porch relationships. And not in the “sit on the front porch and rock” good kind of way. In the “I don’t really want you in my house, so let’s stand on the porch and talk about the weather, my landscaping, good movies, other people, and how awesome my kids are” kind of way.

Every once in a great little while we will have a true and honest friend -- and, hopefully our spouses-- that we invite into our houses. We don't mind if they help us "fix up" a little, even. What one might call "holding us accountable" to some public goal we have.

But there is generally the junk closet. C’mon you have one. You know you do.

In your house and in your soul there is a junk closet -- full of pain and mess and crup that you want to keep the door locked and sealed forever on... like Monica’s closet on Friends.

It’s the rare friend that we invite into our houses. Rarer still, the friend that we ask to help us clean out our junk closet.

It's a dangerous prospect, the cleaning of the junk closet. For one, you have to dig back out the pain you purposefully crammed in there. And if you have someone cleaning with you, there is always the possibility of being hurt further. Because, let's be honest, every relationship is the potential for hurt. However... I've found that the majority are worth the risk. Especially junk closet friends.

Praying that you have friends in your life that you would invite into your junk closet -- your literal and figurative junk closet.

One Year Ago...

One Year Ago...

May 14th marked one year that our family has had an address here in Suburbia, USA. I say it that way because after the big truck unloaded our furniture, the kids and I turned right around and went back to Small Town, USA to finish the school year. We lived in hotels and with friends and survived bronchitis and band concerts and living out of suitcases.

I think back to what the last year has brought and done for my family, and where our feet are pointed now.

There have been struggles and difficulties, as there always are in a relocation, particularly for teenagers. There have been victories and successes, as there always are when God is in it.

I still feel, to some degree, in that No Man's Land of between-ness.

There have been hard things that have pulled us back, physically, to Small Town to help grieve.

There have been hard things that have pulled us back, emotionally, to Small Town to wish we were there to help grieve and offer hugs.

There have been happy things that have pulled us back, physically, to Small Town to celebrate.

There have been happy things that have pulled us back, emotionally, to Small Town that we celebrate from afar, offering congratulations and enjoying photos.

Here, we are still tip-toeing toward acceptance and belonging. People are so very kind and gracious, but the reality is that true and real relationships take forging.

When my dear and wonderful Mark 2 friend leaned across a grimy table in the Taco Bueno in Small Town almost 10 years ago now, our children leap-frogging tables behind us, tears glistened in her eyes. "I am COMMITTED to your marriage making it!" she exclaimed. She had steel resolve where I did not as my marriage was barely able to be resuscitated.

"We'll get through this," said this woman I barely knew. "This is how friendships are made...."

She repeated the same thing less than a year later.

Another Mark 2 friend had found hard, hard news -- her son, her 6 year old with the bluest eyes any of us had ever seen, had a brain tumor. Get to BigCityHospital. Now.

We met at the airport to pray and see them off. Watching them walk out to the plane, Taco Bueno friend said it again:

"We're going to have to be there for her. But we will. This is how friendships are made..."

You know what I was thinking? "Can't we just meet together and play Monopoly? Have a Diet Coke?"

But the reality is no. She's right. Friendships are forged on the anvil of tears and tragedy, prayers and pain. Which is why she is still a dear friend today.

Here I have met and come to know people that I  know will be forever friends. I know that there are forever friends yet to meet.

But as hard things have unfolded around us -- and they have -- I have not been witness to the history, the back story, or the forging. My heart is sad for the hurt surrounding the hard thing, but I am on the periphery.

And as celebrations have occurred I have enjoyed watching people rejoice together and celebrate, but I am unaware of the struggle that took place to get the butterfly in flight. I am still a little bit on the outside.

God is, of course, at work in our time here. Every day that we are here we begin to be a little more clear about why we were called here -- why God needed this to be our mission field. I know that God did not bring us here to work alone, either.

He continues to reveal to us people who will journey beside us, champion our children, and do mission work with us. I know that there are still things to learn about our purpose, call, and mission.

And I know that there are friendships to be forged.

And through it all, He will be there, for He is faithful.

"You reveal the path of life to me; in Your presence is abundant joy; in Your right hand are eternal pleasures." Psalm 16:11

From the Archives: Friends In Unlikely Places

(I am taking a bit of a bloggy break this week. I am posting some of my all-time top 5 posts throughout this week. Enjoy)

Nine years ago, my home was flooded, I wasn't living in my house, I had a husband whose job required him to travel, two small children, we were being sued (I haven't told that captivating story on the blog), and I was keeping a baby 2-3 days a week. In short, I was a wreck.

I ran myself over to what would have been the closest gym if we lived in our house and signed up. I decided that I deserved just a little bit of me time and that was going to be it. I had no idea the significance that decision would play in the next 9 years of my life.

Soon I was attending classes there and met Laura, who had also recently joined that gym. Laura is a local preacher's wife who likes to not fit the preacher's wife mold. My earliest memory of her at the gym -- NO idea what we were discussing, but Laura laughed and said, "Honey, we've been married almost 15 years. If I shave my legs, that's foreplay." Yeah, I was going to like Laura.

I think Amy was there all along. Amy is a little more like me. Seemingly quiet... until she has an opinion. I know when the gym moved to "the new place" (where it's been for 7 years now) that Amy was there and that's when Amy and Laura and I all started going to some of the same classes regularly.

Before too long I got a job -- stinkin' income! -- and had to quit that regular class and sorely missed my friends. I would catch them on every other Friday, but it wasn't the same (of course). In time, I quit that job (theoretically to write, but we all know it was so I could work out with my friends! :-)

The class that we went to most often together was a weights class -- Body Pump if you know it. I'll be honest. We would talk all the way through it. Oh, we were working out (want to feel my biceps?) but we were catching up on life and diverting our attention from the pain in the mean time.

For the record -- we were frequently in trouble in class for our talking. We got talked to by the teacher -- and would stop talking for a while. Then the people on the other side of the class would start talking, inspiring us to continue our conversations. Until we got ugly looks from the front row. Or chewed out by the angry exerciser. And the cycle would start again. Truly, we had long conversations (at Starbucks -- not in class) about this.

Through class or at Starbucks we discussed it all, big and little. We talked our way through children's illnesses and surgeries, sports victories, defeats, and struggles, we've wrestled, prayed, and cried through two husband's unemployments, struggled over parenting decisions and children's heartbreaks, frequently coming to tears right there at the weight rack.

Muscles and bodies grew stronger, and so did the friendship. I honestly had NO IDEA how much those girls -- my "gym buddies" as they became known around my house -- meant to me. Until I needed someone to be strong. Or consistent. Or both. And they were.

(My two closest gym buddies, Amy, far left, and Laura, in yellow then me, and Rebekah our body pump instructor, far right, my last day at Body Pump the day I moved)

Keep Me Laughing for My Birthday!

Okay, I am squeaking in with 69 minutes to spare! But today is MY BIRTHDAY!!

It was way fun and I will tell you all about it when I am not trying to get my weary, older body to bed after a day-o-fun.

Just want to share two of my favorite birthday greetings on Facebook.

The first was from Trina, who had a little trouble with her long fingernails and auto-correct, et. al:

Of course, that kept me and several others laughing quite a while.

Then Steve topped it off at the end of the day:

It's been a great birthday. There was Mexican food, hot air balloons, fireworks, Diet Coke and sleeping late! Now, in 6 hours from this minute I want to be leaving the house for a 4.2 mile run -- .1/mile for every year of life! If I do that, I have to go to bed NOW.

With that, I am off!

Friends When You Need Them

I am WAY overdue in telling you this story!

I told you MONTHS ago about some very close friendships I made in my former town -- when I signed up at they gym. I started telling you that because of something really cool that my gym buddies -- Amy and Laura -- did.

So... this was in July. It was hot. Stinkin' hot. Not that August or September has come to be any different. We were new in our town, hemorrhaging cash the way you do when you move, and it was too hot to do ANYTHING -- honestly too hot to go to the pool. So we sat in the little cave of our new house, watching the TV too loudly, or whatever. A little bit of a depressing existence.

I tried to at least keep the house picked up to help my mental state of being, but with two teenagers that didn't seem interested in picking up behind themselves (they have the classic philosophy about making their bed: "Why? You only get in it 12 hours later...") and a dog that was losing fistfuls of hair due to the summer heat, it was an uphill battle that my weary psyche rarely felt energized enough to fight.

So one Friday my kids are wandering around picking up. Weird? The man-child even swept up some. What in the world? I mean, they are washing dishes, putting things away, and "where does this box go?" "Why?" "Well... it's bugging me here..." "It's been sitting there all summer without bugging you. Why is it bugging you now?" Like... Twilight Zone kind of things.

So, we had our Friday night Domino's and were all settled in doing the boring things we do -- kids messing on computers, Troy and I watching some mindless TV, blah, blah. My cell phone rings. It's Amy. Not horribly odd. We've been texting all summer.

A: "So... what are you doing...?"

"Oh... the usual big Friday night... watching TV with the fam."

"Wanna go to Starbucks? You, me, Laura?"

Snort/ laugh..."Oh. Sure. That would be fun..."

"Well COME ON!! Your sprinklers are on or I would have knocked on your door! Let's go!!"

"WHAT???" So... yes... I throw open my front door. True, my sprinklers around my sidewalk were on. True, Amy and Laura were standing on the other side of them. True I ran THROUGH the sprinklers (soaking my rear) to go hug their beautiful necks. How fun are they?

Yes, my family had been in on this very fun surprise that my friends came to see me. Such a little/ huge thing. Oh, my stars -- to get two women out of town away from their families? Huge. And Amy's husband travels for his work. Turns out, she didn't see him before she left. He was driving in as they were driving out. That is a sacrifice!

So we went to Starbuck's. And caught up. And laughed and shook our head over some things. Like always.

They slept in one of the kids' rooms, we woke up the next morning and went for a walk. Like always.
It was hot -- like always.

Somewhere there was breakfast and showering, then we were OFF! None of us are much into shopping but there are some cute little (overpriced) shops in my town I haven't seen so we scoped those out -- for about 15 minutes. Then we hit the resale shops, which I have LOADS of and they are awesome!

We laughed and talked and scoped out cheap finds for ourselves and our kids. Above all... we just were. We were just there... next to each other. Which was SO much what my weary heart needed at that moment. To laugh over the hideous music at the teen resale shop and to shake our heads at the not-so-bargain hideous find at the more "grown up" resale shop.

Troy grilled us steaks and some chicken, baked us some potatoes for dinner, and eventually they had to leave. *sigh* But my heart was refreshed.

 You can't put into words or sentences what those kind of friends mean -- the ones who don't sit and wish that your heart was in a better place but will leap into action to make it so. I'm rarely that kind of friend to others, I openly admit. These beautiful ladies call me to do better and be better in so many ways.

Nine years ago I walked into a gym to get fit and lose a few inches. I gained two amazing friends and so many more rewards. Even from too many miles away, they're still my dear friends today. Like always.

Friends In Unlikely Places

Nine years ago, my home was flooded, I wasn't living in my house, I had a husband whose job required him to travel, two small children, we were being sued (I haven't told that captivating story on the blog), and I was keeping a baby 2-3 days a week. In short, I was a wreck.

I ran myself over to what would have been the closest gym if we lived in our house and signed up. I decided that I deserved just a little bit of me time and that was going to be it. I had no idea the significance that decision would play in the next 9 years of my life.

Soon I was attending classes there and met Laura, who had also recently joined that gym. Laura is a local preacher's wife who likes to not fit the preacher's wife mold. My earliest memory of her at the gym -- NO idea what we were discussing, but Laura laughed and said, "Honey, we've been married almost 15 years. If I shave my legs, that's foreplay." Yeah, I was going to like Laura.

I think Amy was there all along. Amy is a little more like me. Seemingly quiet... until she has an opinion. I know when the gym moved to "the new place" (where it's been for 7 years now) that Amy was there and that's when Amy and Laura and I all started going to some of the same classes regularly.

Before too long I got a job -- stinkin' income! -- and had to quit that regular class and sorely missed my friends. I would catch them on every other Friday, but it wasn't the same (of course). In time, I quit that job (theoretically to write, but we all know it was so I could work out with my friends! :-)

The class that we went to most often together was a weights class -- Body Pump if you know it. I'll be honest. We would talk all the way through it. Oh, we were working out (want to feel my biceps?) but we were catching up on life and diverting our attention from the pain in the mean time.

For the record -- we were frequently in trouble in class for our talking. We got talked to by the teacher -- and would stop talking for a while. Then the people on the other side of the class would start talking, inspiring us to continue our conversations. Until we got ugly looks from the front row. Or chewed out by the angry exerciser. And the cycle would start again. Truly, we had long conversations (at Starbucks -- not in class) about this.

Through class or at Starbucks we discussed it all, big and little. We talked our way through children's illnesses and surgeries, sports victories, defeats, and struggles, we've wrestled, prayed, and cried through two husband's unemployments, struggled over parenting decisions and children's heartbreaks, frequently coming to tears right there at the weight rack.

Muscles and bodies grew stronger, and so did the friendship. I honestly had NO IDEA how much those girls -- my "gym buddies" as they became known around my house -- meant to me. Until I needed someone to be strong. Or consistent. Or both. And they were.

(My two closest gym buddies, Amy, far left, and Laura, in yellow then me, and Rebekah our body pump instructor, far right, my last day at Body Pump the day I moved)

Friday... Thoughts

I have posted this video here before (like many that I have posted lately). Like others, it is worth watching again.

This speaks to the value of community, particularly women in community. Women in community have led me to do things I didn't think I could, go places I didn't think I would, and achieve things I dared not even consider without such support.

I love the way this woman (Kelly Corrigan) says it. Beautiful.

Communication is Very Fragile

This is a phrase I heard at least a bajillion times -- give or take a million -- as a senior in high school. I went to a Christian high school and had Bible every year as an academic class. My senior year the entire class was about marriage. We had many different topics and assignments, but this phrase stands out more than any other: "Communication is very fragile."

Think about it. The WAY you say something can change an entire meaning. "Thanks a lot!" said sincerely with a smile invokes warm fuzzies. "Thanks a lot!" with an eye roll and sneer shows you honestly didn't appreciate my input at that moment.

You may have heard me say I struggle with migraines. Obviously, in the middle of a horrible migraine, not only do I not think very clearly, I don't express myself well. I try not to make any big decisions or business decisions, but when migraines start piling up, sometimes life has to carry on no matter what.

Last night we had a laughable miscommunication. When you have one party with a migraine and the other party happens to be a 13 year old boy, chances are good that communication will break down at some point. I made myself some dinner then crawled back to my bed. Trying to tell Riley to put my leftovers in the refrigerator, he evidently heard "throw them away" (it's a long story, but something was to be thrown away, too... just not my dinner). Communication is very fragile.

Things like this happen so frequently in relationships: marriages and/ or friendships alike. I'm still grieving a friendship to someone who understood me to mean one thing at one point when I meant something entirely different -- and let it go almost a year before I finally asked what the problem in our relationship was. At that point, a few more things had built up, and the relationship is beyond repair at this point. Communication is very fragile.

Ask. Clarify. What I usually say to Riley, when I don't feel as if my head is about to roll off my shoulders is, "Tell me what you understand you are to do." Then he will repeat to me what he thinks his task is (throw my food away) and we can clear things up then. I am thankful when people believe that our relationship is worth the asking and clarifying.

Very early in our marriage, leaving the house on a Christmas morning, I was complaining that the only pictures one ever takes of me was on Christmas and my hair was stupid that day. The way I worded made it sound (to Troy) like I thought he was being an insensitive oaf at the moment. Communication is very fragile. And I was so thankful he said something!

Oh -- and texting and emailing: throws a whole level of potential snafoos into communication! Ask and clarify. Ask and clarify. Communication is very fragile.

Relationships that are worth investing in don't just happen along. If you have any in your life: friendships, family, or a marriage, don't let a miscommunication trash it. Ask and clarify.

No, I mean a REALLY Good Friend

On Friday, Roxanne sent me a link to an article that pertained to something that happened 19 years ago. The article had me going through old letters from Roxanne looking at things from around that time.

I haven't done a 'tribute to Roxanne' blog post (have I? I honestly don't remember), though she has somewhat done one about me. (or two) While I was chuckling over letters, my kids asked me where I met Roxanne. It kinda all started here: But really, how cute are we? That was our first grade picture and let me say that I, like most of the rest of first grade, didn't appreciate the wise soul that is Roxanne. She is someone that was born an 'old soul' which is great and wise, but not-so-fun in 1st or 2nd grade. She was also a little, um, how might one say, LOUD. Roxanne has presence. Still does. Needless to say, her friendship wasn't always appreciated in elementary school, but in my very tiny school where my enormous class of 17 or 18 was the biggest (and worst behaved according to every teacher we had) sometimes you would take what you could get. If nothing else, she was simply always there.

In time, Roxanne and I did land in the same circle of friends, then we formed a ridiculously close friendship during play practice, on chorus trips, and out of town football games. Our friendship thrived on written communication. If you think I am a lover of words... wow. You just need to hear all of Roxanne's. After Roxanne teaches 8 sections of Language Arts and talks to her husband and children all day, she is about half-way through using her words for the day. So she calls me.

Roxanne has written me notes and letters and cards and emails and all manner of communication. Besides letters from my grandparents, parents, and Troy, I have VERY few letters that I saved from college other than the ones Roxanne wrote to me.

Reading back over those letters of 19 years ago made me laugh at the pie-in-the-sky (and always trying to lose weight) two of us. It made me wish I could gather both of us together sit us down and say, "Listen up, girls..." But I wouldn't have dared to do that, because I know we wouldn't have listened. We had plans, we had dreams, we had hopes, and we had 5 more pounds to lose. (Um, Roxanne, why is it that YOU were going to marry the cowboy and now it is I that lives in the desert, married to a cowboy, with a deer blind needing a home sitting in my back yard?)

My friendship with Roxanne -- just like my relationship with anyone else on this earth, I guess -- has gone through seasons. I wouldn't ever say a really bad one, but there have been many times it's been a blessing that she lived 350 miles away from me. Sometimes I had plenty (as my mother would say) "to say grace over" in my own life, I didn't have the strength or capacity to carry anyone else's burden, nor did I ask her to carry any of mine.

I have confessed to her more than once that were it not for her consistent "callin' to check on ya" to me that I would have let our friendship fall by the wayside in our twenties -- in that season of young adulthood when everyone feels the need to shed 'childish' ways and relationships, even those that may be of infinite value.

We are in a very comfortable season of frienship right now. I think it came about with the myriad of changes in Roxanne's life in the last 12-18 months and the one major one in mine (quitting work), it was easy and comfortable to turn to someone that didn't require much explanation or pretense. Through the sloughing off of externals that signify major change for each of us, we see that we still have each other.

As the event of last week brought out those letters, and I re-read them, I thought again of this friendship I have. This crazy, amazingly blessed friendship. The letters I was reading were from the summer of 1990 -- months before I even met my husband, who I am soon to celebrate 17 years of marriage with! That is a LONG friendship!

Roxanne has presence, as I've said. She also doesn't hold back: words, love, emotions. I vividly remember Poppa Max chuckling and saying, "You know, when you've been hugged by Roxanne, you've really been hugged!" As a teenager I confess a limited patience with such ooshy-gooshy emotion. It was too much for me, who put a LOT of effort into trying to always appear to be completely collected and even-keel.

So I read her proclamations of her friendship love for me -- that sounded similar to scripture you read about Jonathan and David. I have confessed not-too-long ago that their friendship just makes me uncomfortable. What I know now, my 2009 self, with same-sex attraction swirling everywhere, is uncomfortable with the love professed between Jonathan and David. I had to re-think those words as I read what my 1990 self would have read from a dear friend: the same type of profession of friendship love, a gratitude of a friendship that understands and that is unmoving.

And above all, I am grateful. Few people can claim such a friend ever in their lifetime. I have been able to claim such a friend FOR a lifetime.

Coffee Group Defined

I am a blessed woman on SO many levels. One is the abundant riches I have in friendships. I have friends far and near that time has forged into sisters for me. One of those beautiful friends sent me a video this week that just "got it". Then another beautiful friend sent me the same video. I posted it on Coffee Group website because it really defines who we are and what we mean to each other in Coffee Group. I encourage you to take a few minutes, grab a Kleenex, and go check it out.

Monday Morning

From Beth Moore's blog:

Sometimes if you want to go face to face with Jesus, you've got to go face to face with the carpet.

That's my 42 Days of Faith thought for today!

I need you to meet my friend, Amy. Amy and her husband, Justin were dear friends in Temple while Justin was in medical school. Read about the year she's having here. Then, if you're in Fort Worth on Saturday, grab a blue and white bandana and go cheer on the Indianettes as they play in the State Tournament! Go, Indianettes!