Accountability

Accountability.

When someone wants to hold me accountable how will I respond?

With excuses?
With lies?
With accusations?
With defensiveness?
With turning my back?

Proof that I need accountability.

Too bad my excuses cloud my vision.
Too bad lies build walls that destroy community.
Too bad accusations seem to take the light of truth off of me but leave me in shadows.
Too bad defensiveness makes me feel like I have the power.
Too bad turning my back means I will never have been held accountable.

Proof that I need accountability.

Without accountability I will never grow.
Without accountability I will never blossom.
Without accountability I will never have the chance to die;
the chance to die so that new life can come.

Oh, I'll die with or without accountability, but I will never have truly lived.

Proof that I need accountability.

When someone wants to hold me accountable how will I respond?

With graciousness.
With honesty.
With humility.
With hopefulness.
With an open hand.

Proof that I need accountability.

What is that sound?

So, my husband is out of town. When he leaves I have trouble sleeping. I have to leave the back patio light on, just in case. I wake up easily. I don't like it. Last night, the first night he was gone, I went to bed around 12:30 and was brave enough to shut the patio light off. I snuggled down in my lonely bed and went to sleep.

At around 1am I was awakened by a noise. Now, I'm not the only one that doesn't sleep well when Dustin is gone. My little boys have trouble too. In a groggy voice I say outloud to what I assumed was Andrew, my seven year old, "It's okay buddy, you can get in bed with me for a while." No answer. I dozed back off.

I heard the noise again and looked at my cell phone. 1:27am. I looked over the edge of the bed on both sides. No child laying there with pillow and blankie. I heard the noise again. My heart began to pound. I prayed the sound was coming from outside and I listened hard to be sure. Alas, not coming from outside. It was inside. What was it??? I turned on the lamp and looked in the direction of the rustling. Perched on the edge of child's shoe box was a palm sized frog. My eyes bulged in horror.

Now, I'm not afraid of frogs. I picked one up in the backyard not that long ago. But Dustin is gone, it is 1:29am by now, I'm all alone and there is a frog in my bedroom! This is not right. Heart pounding and ears ringing I got up to search for something to capture it in. Racing through my mind was, "Think like Dustin! Think like Dustin!" It didn't work. He would know what to do, he always does. I couldn't find anything that seemed like a good option.

What if I miss and scream and wake the children. What if it hops under the bed, I'll never sleep. What if it gets on me and pees or something. What then? I decided to throw a towel on it and strap it around the box and run out the back door and fling it into the lawn. Seems good enough, maybe my husband would approve. Maybe not.

I decided to open the backdoor so that I would be completely ready for this event. That is when I remembered Squeaky. I closed my eyes, my face grimacing, chills running up my spine. Squeaky. Squeaky was a giant five inch moth that someone in the church gave my two little boys earlier in the week. I hate moths that measure 2 centimeters, let alone five inches. When we turned out the lights Squeaky flapped his freakishly large mothy wings inside his Tupperware prison and I thought I might die of horror.

Why was I remembering Squeaky? Because he was humanely released back into the wild a few days ago. He sat on the pine tree for a day and a half and then disappeared. I am sure that he is lurking under the eaves of the house or in the garage waiting for the perfect moment to attack me. This would be the perfect moment. Frog in the bedroom, moth planning an ambush. It seems like anything could happen.

I opened the sliding glass door in spite of my concerns about Squeaky and went back into the bedroom. By this time the frog had moved into a higher position on the box and was perched like he was going to hop off and escape somewhere. I hollered out, "No!" like you would to a dog who was peeing on the side of the couch.

The frog didn't move but I did. As fast as I could I chucked a towel over that creepy creature and knocked it inside the box. With shivers racing up and down my spine I tucked the terry cloth under the cardboard. You would have thought the box had the plague or was on fire with the horror in which I touched it. The frog was leaping about under the towel giving me a breakdown! I ran for the door. Dropped the package carefully and pulled the towel back in horror, looking to the sky for any sign of Squeaky's attack, I was safe. The frog jauntily hopped into the grass and there was no moth madness. I got back into bed and couldn't sleep. Every noise worried me.

Maybe there is a colony of frogs under the bed... You never know!

Listen to me!

Ethan is three. He is getting very smart. He has a problem listening. The latest thing is when he gets in trouble and a punishment is given he says, "I'll listen now. I'm listening." He even said today, "When you get in trouble and then you listen you are a good boy." The problem is he hears. He doesn't listen. Two very different things. He hears but he doesn't act. He still kicks the wall. He still kicks his brother. He still kicks dirt. He still kicks the babysitter. And that is just kicking. He hears us say, "Don't kick!" but he doesn't listen.

Ethan is three. I'm thirty. I think I'm pretty smart. I have a problem listening. The latest thing is I hear the voice of God pulling at my heart and I don't do what that tugging is asking of me to do. I hear it, but I don't always act.

If I want my baby boy to do it, how much more does God want me to do it?

Investment

Why do we make investments? I mean I know what an investment does. I can see how they are valuable in the financial world. I understand that they can make life much easier down the road because you will have a nest egg, a cushion, something to rely on. I get that.

We are living in times when investments have gone south for countless people. The economy, the economy, the economy. It's all we hear about. It's bad. It's going down the toilet. It's a recession. Could it be a ghastly second Great Depression? I get that too.

I understand the value of investments but I also understand the risk.

The truth is I don't want to talk about money. I'm not interested in the stock market. Investments of those kinds aren't what is causing me angst tonight. It is personal investment, life investment, relational investment that confuses me. Not only confuses, but conflicts and confounds, irritates and hurts. It hurts. It really does.

Certainly a bad investment in the financial world can hurt me. But a bad investment in the relational world, how do you recover from that?

If my 401k tanks, I can work past retirement, take out a loan, start scrimping and saving all the more now so I can live better later. I can do those things.

But if a friendship tanks, what then? How do I recover? If I have given my life to someone, offered them the care they deserve, showed them the love of God, dedicated myself to their well being and then things don't go the way that I wish, my investment doesn't have a positive return so to speak, what now?

But I suppose the real issue is that these kinds of investments are radically different from one another. In fact, in my heart I know that I don't invest in the lives of others with the hopes to get some positive return. That is a bonus, but that isn't the motivation. I invest in others because I love them. I really love them.

I want certain outcomes. But there are no guarantees. Relational investing is really a bad investment when we look at it through the world's eyes. The likelihood that I will lose is way higher than that I will gain. And yet, I still want to give, to share life, to journey, to take the time with others on the slight chance that something radically new will take place in their lives. It has in mine.

To be honest, the return is much slower than I would like. In reality, the return is sometimes a statement that reads losses instead of gains.

I still think it is an investment worth making. I do. Countless investments have been made on my behalf. I'll still invest even if the relational market is tanking.

The Love of God

A new hospital is being built in our town. It is a much needed addition. Mercy is currently the worst hospital I have ever entered in the US. I have seen third world hospitals, and there is something about Mercy that feels third world. You go into a time warp. The shape of the elevators, the four bed rooms with people coughing and calling out all around feels like a foreign country, a foreign place, foreign.

When I walked into Susie’s room this morning she looked at me as if I was a foreigner. I could tell by the look in her swollen eyes that she didn’t recognize me. She spoke sweetly and knew she should know who I was but she couldn’t figure it out.

I sat down on the bed, took her hands in mine and said, “Hi Susie, it’s Pastor Olivia.” She immediately knew who I was then. She felt terrible that she couldn’t recognize me right off the bat. She was embarrassed. I wasn’t upset at all. After all, here she is in a foreign place—she’s used to being home. She has foreign substances coursing through her veins. She is under an unusual amount of stress because of the health problems she is facing. It didn’t bother me at all that I wasn’t recognized.

It wasn’t just me that wasn’t recognizable. As the conversation continued it was clear that her mind was not cooperating with her. She forgot names of family members. Tried to remember my husbands name and was frustrated that she could not. This was a different Susie than I know. Her behavior was foreign to me.

We visited for a while and I could tell that the pain medication was causing her to get drowsy so I figured I better wrap things up. I pulled out my purse Bible that I had marked to Romans 8. I unsnapped the worn leather cover and flipped through the delicate pages.

I read to Susie, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him who have been called according to His purpose…” She nodded her head and closed her eyes.

I kept on reading to the rise and fall of her breathing. “What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us.” She gripped my hand rhythmically as I read. Her heart may be failing but her hand pumped mine in time, like a firmly beating heart.

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels or demons…” Her lips slowly moved, trying to follow along with me. “Neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, not anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us form the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

She opened her eyes, looked me squarely in the face, squeezed my hand and said, “Amen.”

In a place that seems so foreign, in situations that are uncomfortable and disquieting, in a locale that is filled with distractions the Word of God is familiar. Susie might not have ever recognized me but I know that she would have recognized the Word of God. When everything else was foreign around her, everything else was in shambles, when everything else was confusing, she knew, clearly, as plain as day that what I read to her was God’s Word. There is something comforting and comfortable about that. Right there in that hospital room, in our terrible facility, the Word of God was revealed as true. No pain medication, no circumstance, no illness could separate Susie from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, and she knew it.

No, I Do It Like Daddy

My son Ethan is two and a half and fantastically potty trained. I thought it was going to be a nightmare when we started but I was wrong. It went well. It didn't take long. He even gets up in the night to go potty. That is good boy behavior but not good sleeping for me.

On the day in question he was in the nursery at church and he had to go. We have this tiny little toilet in there, tiny little thing. No adult should use it. I know from experience. It is so low to the ground that you think you might fall into a black hole before you finally find your resting place on it. That is probably too much information but I want you to picture that cute little tiny commode. It is so tiny. It was time to go and the nursery attendant got him ready to sit right down on the kid sized potty. But that wouldn't do. Even though that is what he always does, he wouldn't do it. No sitting for this little boy. No sitting today. Instead he said to her, "No, I do it like daddy."

We had a good laugh over that. Probably once again, too much information, but it is in little moments like this that suddenly my heart is stretched. "No, I do it like daddy" is funny coming out of the mouth of a little boy who wants to be a big boy. It is also powerful. It demonstrates the vast amount of trust, respect and awe that a little boy has for daddy. It reminds me of Jesus and how he talked about how his actions show us the face of the father. Jesus lived the perfect life of "doing it like daddy." Now, Jesus and God are one so it might feel a little bit like a no brainer that Jesus would be able to pull that off. But Jesus was also fully man, right. Fully man and fully God. I am fully human. But I have this God glimmer in me, this imago Dei, this Divine Spark that calls out in the midst of my life: "I wanna do it like Daddy. I wanna be like Jesus."

I talked on Sunday about the Shema and how when the Jewish people used the word "hear" it didn't just mean, "Listen up!" it meant "listen and then act." The most powerful thing I can do as a Christian is to listen to the Words of Jesus and then do them. I don't want to sit on my hands anymore. I don't want to wrestle with sin anymore. I don't want to objectify others, categorize people, or make judgement calls that are none of my business. I want to be like Jesus. I want to do what Jesus did. I want my trust in Him to be so strong, so deep, so rich that no matter where I am or what I am doing I will say, "No, I'm gonna do it like Jesus."

I got all of that from a little boy who wanted to pee like his dad, isn't God funny!

Compact Fluore-Yucky Light Bulbs

I hate fluorescent light bulbs. I know that hate is a strong word and that is why I chose to use it here. I hate them. They cause my brain to buzz like their obnoxious humming ballasts. They cause my eyes to twitch along with their garish, pulsating light. They make me curl my lip up in disgust like their--sorry there is nothing they do that looks like that. I really do hate them.

When we moved into our house here in Atwater, the kitchen had one of those huge, elementary school classroom, fluorescent light fixtures. It had to go. Why would I want that hideous thing lighting up my kitchen. When it got left on and I was sitting in our living room it would shoot it's ugly light directly into my eyes. I would have to go shut it off or have a seizure--either from the light or my own issues with the light. Sadly, almost four years later, it remains. And even more sad than that, almost every light, lamp, and fixture in my home has a compact fluore-yucky light bulb in it.

I told you I wanted to be green. Getting those compact fluore-yucky bulbs is a great first step. They dramatically save on energy and they last for eons--sounds like a great green solution. They are even getting cheaper and cheaper, that's a bonus. And the truth is they are coming out with more and more options for people like me who hate that freakish blue-white light and that vicious humming. Follow this link to find out a little more of the science behind these bulbs. Get to changing your bulbs, it will make a difference!

http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=cfls.pr_cfls