Best App Ever!

I'll write something real... real soon. I promise. But for now, can I just say that I have fallen in love with an iPhone app that I am quite convinced every iPhone user must absolutely have?!? It's called Camera+.  It's only .99 (cents, that is). Take a picture and then turn it into a work of art in less than a minute.  My favorite effects are under the retro section. I love hipster, toy camera, and lomographic. As far as the borders go, I am a sucker for viewfinder, dark grit, and vintage. The app also allows you to change scenes and lighting, adjust, crop, and offers a more enhanced lens than the one your iPhone camera actually came with.

And if those last two sentences sounded like a foreign language to you: fear not. I am (ashamedly and with no good reason) technologically challenged. But I bought this app hoping to spice up my photography love life and it did the trick. Incredible effects and easy for the- shall we say- feeble in technology (aka, those of us who are 50 light years behind the rest of the world).

Without further ado, new and improved pictures from my iPhone using the greatest app ever, Camera+.

Two Versions of the Story

The Enchanted Version...

I will only disclose a few details.

I drove down this dirt road.

I went through these doors.

I found this sunset on the back deck.

I sat in these chairs, with these blankets,  sipping this wine until the sky turned pink and grew dark.

I sat at this table early in the morning sipping coffee. There was a woodpecker with a little red nose on the tree outside the window. I watched him for an entire hour.

I wrote the outline for my book in this window sill. Themes. Stories. Ideas. They flooded in past midnight.

And then I celebrated with this bowl of heaven.  Half a pound of 43% Venezuelan chocolate with two huge tablespoons of peanut butter.

Melted.

And it was good.

The Real Version...

About half way through the drive from Dallas to this secluded lake house the thought occurred to me, "I wonder if I can make it on my own?" I'm sure this sounds silly to those of you who are single or younger or highly independent. But I've spent almost nine years married to a man who sort of runs the show (behind the scenes, that is). I just show up and exist. It's actually a very spoiled, charmed life he has created for me. Pathetic, I know.

Now drop me off at any airport and I can navigate myself through cabs, bus rides, subway systems, hotels, and any other big city conundrum the world can throw at me- all by myself, like a big girl, I can do it. But a cabin? Where I have to go outside and turn the water on? Cook my own food? Figure out how to flip breakers and get the heat to work and settle down to go to sleep by myself in the pitch black dark, in the middle of the woods? I started to slightly panic as I pulled off onto my third farm road.  This one without asphalt. Just gravel.

When I got to the lake house it was really cold inside. Really. Cold. I thought my lips were turning blue. I thought my fingernails were turning purple. I thought I would have to spend the night in my car (it was warmer outside than in the house by 20 degrees or so). I found a blue Snuggie and officially apologized for all the times I have belittled the Snuggie.  I went outside, found cell phone signal, and texted Ryan: my lips are turning blue.

He didn’t believe me.

I came back in and settled down on the couch. And that's when I heard a critter. A real live critter.

There was a critter upstairs. I am sure of it. I heard it eating and licking its paws and scampering around. I froze. I thought it was walking down the stairs. I looked for a weapon but I couldn't find anything in arm's length. I was about to be attacked by an animal who had been pent up in a meat locker. I made a run for it.

I ran outside, arm in the air, waving my phone around looking for a signal. I texted Ryan: there is a critter in the house.

He said to go back in scream and run around the house with a broom to scare it.

So I did. I ran in circles with a broom screaming at the top of my lungs.

Come er’ racooney cooney cooney. Here varmint varmint varmint. Here critter critter critter.

I screamed out loud. And ran around scared out of my mind swatting the broom in the air and hitting the staircase with it. for a solid five minutes.

Nothing.

The critter went into hiding. And I lived with the knowledge that I would be eaten in my sleep.

I talked out loud to myself all weekend. It was too quiet. So I simply made an agreement with myself early on: If I think it, I will speak it loud. “Are we ready to eat? YES!!! Let’s eat!!!” “Should we nap? YES WE CAN!” I found myself chanting Obama campaign slogans out loud and then doing the Arsenio Hall hoo-hoo-hoo around the house. Ok, confession, I also sang "I'm Proud to be An American" at least two... maybe... three times through at the top of my lungs while running around the house, doing a patriotic dance. You might think I'm making this up- but sadly- this is an entirely true story. I might be clinically insane (though delightfully happy).

I decided it was time for wine and book reading by the water while the sun was setting.

I couldn’t open the wine bottle. It never occurred to me that I had never opened a wine  bottle by myself. It reminded me of the fact that it never occurred to me to learn how to light a match until my senior year of high school. Once I realized I couldn’t do it, my mom laughed at me and said she thought it was common knowledge- as if you just wake up one day and learn to light a match??? Yeah right mom. Then it was too late. I earnestly tried to learn, but I feared for my finger. I didn’t want to lose a finger. I hadn't even made it to college yet. If you’re going to lose a finger it’s got to happen way after college. I would strike the match on a matchbook and then drop it or throw it.

My dad thought I was going to burn the house down. He suggested I stick with those little stick thingies that light with the click of a finger.

Anyways, I learned to light a match later in life. And after fifteen minutes and two blisters on my hand, I learned to open a wine bottle too.

After an evening on the lake I went back to the meat locker. “I hate that no one ever believes me. I might die of hypothermia,” I said out loud.

I go to the bathroom for the first time. I open the lid to the toilet. There is a solid sheet of ice. I try to flush. In retrospect, trying to flush might not have been the best idea. I really needed to pee but I didn’t want it to bounce back up on me, or worse, re-freeze and make yellow ice. So I tried flushing and it didn't budge.

I went to the kitchen and got a fork. I went back to the toilet and started to pick at the ice. It was deeper than I thought it was. A fork alone would not do the trick. I went back to the kitchen and filled up glasses of hot water. I poured it in and took my ice pick out. Pretty soon, I got three flushes of slushy toilet water down. I finally had an open bowl. A landing strip. I could relieve myself.

At 2:00 a.m. I had had enough. I got the biggest flashlight I could find and I went on a hunt for the critter who was licking his paws and eating. It was all very Blair Witch Project. And then I found him. Whoever he was. He was running around inside the ceiling... and I went to bed peacefully dreaming of a little squirrel family, The Nelsons, who sang songs and worked their days away in the ceiling of a lovely lake house.

And that's it people. There's no proper way to end this story. I've thought about it. And there really is no ending. After getting over my fears and spastic tendencies, I spent the rest of the weekend eating fruit, cheese, and bread and writing my little heart out. And besides a big black poisonous spider that hung out in the shower and made it impossible for me to bathe... it was the perfect getaway from the world.

And I did it all by myself.

Even Dallas Can be Beautiful

I couldn't resist this sunset or the millions of tiny cotton ball clouds dotting the sky. Ryan was sweet enough to "DRIVE SLOWER!!!!" so I could catch these pics on my Iphone.

The Day the Snow Fell.

I recently visited my parents in Albuquerque and desperately needed some time away from civilization. Without going too deeply into my own demons can I just say that sometimes being a part of "Church" sucks? Every few years it seems someone else I love is fired from a church in such a demeaning and hurtful way that they and their families are terribly wounded; division between the people left over in the rubble is inevitable; and once again, being a part of a church feels like a cruel joke. I catch my self asking God, "Really? This was really what you had in mind? There's not a better way?"

Of course the answer is, "No, there is no better way." People are people; prone to make bad mistakes, prone to wound each other, prone to leave rubble in our wake. For better or worse, we grieve this fact, ask tough questions, require fairness and dignity from those who make such decisions in churches, and then we decide, "Do I take off and go no where at all? Do I go somewhere new and wait for the new people to fail. Or do I do the hard work of staying put and working through this with my current faith community?" At the end of the day I believe the answer for each person- in different seasons of their lives- is different.

One of my favorite memories from childhood is going to Six Flags on Easter Sunday morning. My mom had just been fired from her first church out of seminary. I was in fourth grade. I didn't really understand everything, but I knew mom and dad were hurt. And I knew, for a season, we weren't going to go to church. Instead, I remember dad telling us why Easter was important that morning and reading something from the Bible and then loading us up in our green Aerostar minivan and driving us to Six Flags. I have to admit, at first, I was slightly traumatized. I was sure there were secret, undercover, Baptist press writers that would show up and take pictures of us like religious papparazzi and we'd show up on the front page of our local Baptist paper, "Blasphemy: Southwestern Seminary Graduates take their daughters to Six Flags on Easter Sunday." I was sure they would never find jobs again and even more sure that I would be written up in a religious newspaper with a mugshot of me riding a batman roller coaster ride. I tried to be holy that day at Six Flags. Not too much smiling or joy in my turkey leg on the day that Jesus stopped being dead and started being a ghost that popped up all over the countryside. I was convinced that this sin might be unforgivable. But then, as the day went on, the park stayed nearly empty, and I rode some roller coasters two and three times without ever even getting out of my seat!  Between cotton candy and Batman and the ride that just drops you in a free-fall, I forgot about the sin and realized that going to Six Flags in the Bible Belt on Easter Sunday was one of the greatest ideas my parents had ever had in their whole entire lives.

I realize now that it was a season. For a season- my parents needed to be away from church. For a season, sometimes that's the best answer. Turkey legs and roller coaster rides.

Ultimately though, whether you hide, run, or stay put in the wake of being hurt by a church I think it's important to remember what makes us rather human is that we are rather human together. Eventually the goal is to get back in the game, get back in community with people, get back into the painfully-beautiful mess of doing spiritual life with others. To experience church is to experience the community that Jesus himself modeled. It's the heartbeat of being human.

Still, I will be the first to go there kicking and screaming. Because the truth is, sometimes the ugliness of the church sucks. And it sucks the life out of us. And just a few weeks ago I was ready to quit church all over again. There is much to be said about the under belly of the church, the hurt souls it has left in its wake, and the responsibility of sane, integritous Christians to step up and stop this cycle of spiritual violence from happening. Perhaps that will be my second book. (My first book has way too many references to cupcakes and road trips gone bad to really qualify as a road map for a call to integrity in our churches). So for now, I just want to say that my friend Lauri said something that helped me a lot. She said, "Sometimes we need to mourn a person in the church. The loss of a relationship or the likes." Like a leader who embezzles money or has a slew of affairs, or some other tragic event. "Sometimes we need to mourn the loss of a specific church."  The childhood church. The one where you first heard Jesus whisper to you as an adult. The one you have to let go of.

And sometimes, she said, "We just got to mourn the whole d*mn thing."

I went to Albuquerque to mourn the whole darn thing. Past, present, future. All the pain it has caused my family and so many others. All the pain it has caused in the past and all the pain the church will cause in the future. That is not to say the church is all bad. It isn't. I would also be the first to say that my communities of faith- both now and in the past have been life-giving, beautiful expressions of Christ in this world.  Still, every few years I find myself slightly over whelmed with the current religious state of the union. I feel the desire to quit it all and go work at a surf shop and raise my daughter in a tiny cottage near the ocean somewhere and spend the rest of my days retreating by the water.

I have vowed not to quit church. Not a particular church. But church church. The idea of existing with others in love and unity. Drawing close to Jesus Christ and living for something beyond myself and family. Quitting is easy. Staying in is hard. And sometimes... mourning the whole darn thing is the only thing to do.

So I went to Albuquerque. Snuck away to Santa Fe. Checked into a hotel room. And began to write about the climate of the church and the things I have experienced this year in churches across the country that make me want to pluck my eyeballs out and then I wrote about my friends who were just hurt by the church and then I started thinking about my family and our own painful experiences, the negative comments I get from Christians on a regular basis as they judge and sum me up on stage, and by the time I was done I had worked back to the Salem Witch trials and the crusades and I mourned the whole darn thing. I needed to. I needed to grieve what I have seen these past years traveling from church to church.  I needed to grieve the people that have been hurt. I needed to grieve my own hurts. I literally just went to Santa Fe to grieve what I have seen while being in the trenches.  I cried for hours. Uncontrollable streams of tears.

I fell asleep in a puddle of tears...

and I woke up the next morning to an earth covered in a beautiful, thick, white blanket of snow.

I hadn't done a lot of listening to God the night before. But I think He had. He listened to me. And the next morning he answered. Sometimes our tears cover the earth and then God covers the tears with snow. He lays them to rest under something beautiful and cleansing and pure and new.

I laid in that hotel bed. Opened up the two little doors. Cranked the heater up. Turned on Sufjan's Christmas album. Brewed coffee. And sat on the bed, under a pile of blankets, watching snow fall to the ground for three straight hours.

I caught myself smiling at the beauty of it all. At the impeccable timing. That snow covers a multitude of ugly things and gives us a new reason to esteem them is a miracle.

A miracle I needed.

I headed out later that day and drove up and down little roads to explore.

These are a few of my favorite pictures from the day the snow fell.

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Jenny's Blog Has Been Hijacked!

Thats right, I have hijacked Jenny's blog!  This is Ryan- Jenny's loving and extremely handsome husband.  :)  I thought today would be a perfect opportunity to take over the blog because- JENNY TURNS 30 TODAY!!!  And what better way to show Jenny how much we love her than by posting embarrassing pictures of her!  So enjoy the pictures and wish Jenny a big Happy Birthday! Love, Ryan