So you want to sell your house?

So you want to put your house on the market while you have an eight month old and a two year old at home?  First of all, let me congratulate you on reaching a new level of insanity.  Many are too afraid to put themselves out there and go for this brand of crazy, but not you.  Kudos. 

Might I make a suggestion right off the bat?  Hire a cleaning lady.  Before the house goes on the market you will need to do an extensive deep clean.  No one in their right mind can do that with a baby and a toddler.  Outsource.  She will spend the day scrubbing areas of your home you never even noticed were dirty but now that you see them clean you wonder how you ever lived in such a slovenly pigsty.  If (when) you are satisfied with her work ask her if she would consider becoming your sister wife.  At least until the house sells.

Now, once you’ve taken great pains to clear out your years of crap in an attempt to “de-clutter” and hired your future sister wife to make the place shine like the top of the Chrysler building it’s time to officially put the house on the market.  Are you wondering what to expect when this all goes down?  Well, expect to live with a low level of panic and anxiety twenty-four- seven.  Your home, at one time a safe and moderately tidy respite for you and your family, is now a battlefield.  Imagine you and your family moving into one of those historic home museums like Graceland.  Kept in the exact, pristine condition, as it was when Elvis roamed its halls, Graceland is no place for a two year old.  Your house is now Graceland and every time you leave the house you must leave it exactly the way Elvis did, because you never know when someone might want to drop by for a showing.  In my experience two year olds respond very well to requests to not touch anything. 

Maybe it’s just my monster, but he seemed to have a knack for getting into the most obscure, tucked away things on days we were trying to get out of the house for a showing.  Never before had he noticed the flags rolled up and tucked away in a corner behind the coat rack.  But today- as we are frantically trying to shove everything out of sight and race out the door before an 11:30 showing?  Today is the day he must discover how to unroll an American flag.

And your eight month old will repeatedly spit up on the duvet cover of your made bed moments before you need to leave the house.  The dried spit up on the brown cover will leave an unseemly stain that suggests a Bret Michaels sex party last used your bed.  And of course there is no time to wash the cover and flipping it is useless because the other side contains a similar looking stain from yesterday’s spit up.  So there’s that.

Inevitably there will be a day when you will bust your butt to drag two unreasonable kids out the door leaving the house immaculate in the process only to return home to find your porch door locked from the inside.  A porch door you had locked earlier that morning while your toddler was playing in his little tikes car on said porch.  A porch door you forgot to unlock when you left out the back door.  A porch door for which there is no key.  This may or may not cause you to drop some language bombs that are not for the faint of heart.  Because, hello, you just about killed yourself getting out the door and unless the realtor showing your house had the sense to enter through the back you just locked a potential buyer out of your home.  Mother Ef.

You will go through various stages of love/hate with your home as it stays on the market.  You will find yourself nostalgic, waxing on about all the memories this home contains.  You will hate every single thing about this house and hope and pray some poor schmuck will not notice all it’s flaws and take it off your hands.  You will find yourself deeply insecure that you could ever have bought and loved a house that no one seems to want.  You will be thankful you have a home at all.

And there will come a day when you become so disillusioned with the process and so sure that no one will ever want to look at your house again.  On that day you will leave for a long, far from home excursion with dishes in the sink, toys strewn about, beds unmade and underwear on the floor.

And of course on that day, hours from home you will get the call… “someone would like to see your house in an hour…”

On turning 30...

My friends are all turning 30 this year.  Big parties are being planned.  Barn dances, and champagne bars and murder mystery dinner parties.  A ladies trip to Nashville in an RV.  30 is a big deal.  Clearly. 

For the last 10 years, I’ve dreaded 30.  I’ve marched through my twenties with a slow sense of doom.  I like being the youngest.  I hated being 22 and the oldest one at college.  I loved being 23 and the sprite youngun’ in the workplace.  Each year I moved farther and farther away from that youngest position.  Now, I’m older than most of my sons’ teachers.  I’m older than a lot of the hip, hot celebrities.  I was a lot older than most of the Olympic athletes.  I am not, however, older than my husband. 

Recently though, I’ve started to enjoy the impending arrival of the thirties.  Thirty is bringing with it a sense of peace that everyone talked about accompanying the big three- O, but I never actually believed.  I’m feeling surer of myself than ever before.  I’m tired of waiting until I have the perfect body to wear certain kinds of clothes (example: shorts)…  so I’m wearing them now.  (The irony of course being that after 2 kids, my body is much further away from perfect than it was 7 years ago.  Why didn’t I just wear the shorts then??) (Additional side note- I do know where to draw the line in regards to my body type and certain styles of clothes.  Currently that line is a romper.) 

I feel settled with who I am and how God created me to be.  For example, I feel surer of where my gifts lie.  In my early twenties I could have never honestly and confidently answered the question “what are you good at?”  I would have given some self-deprecating joke answer while inwardly burning to name the gifts I dreamed to be worthy of but not trusting my own assessment of my strengths.  In my early twenties I let others tell me what my gifts were; if they didn’t recognize ability of mine, then it must not exist.  Nowadays, on the brink of thirty, I could tell you what gifts God gave me.  And, equally, I can tell you what gifts he didn’t bestow on me.  I’m at peace with both.  I can name proudly what I can and can’t do well without needing someone else’s validation that the former is true and the latter doesn’t matter in regards to their approval of me. 

I’m more at peace with my differences these days as well.  Recently I had a conversation with a friend that highlighted a way that we were inherently different.  In my early twenties that difference would have made me feel wrong.  I would have felt equal parts depressed that I was created so differently and pressured to change.  In my mid-twenties I would have felt defensive, deep down still believing that somehow the problem was mine, that I should start acting differently, but outwardly trying to cast blame on the other party for her supposed shortcoming.  Today, on the brink of 30 I just felt peace.  Peace with how God created me and how He created her.  I’m happy with how God created me and willing to accommodate the differences of others in whatever way brings about the most peace.

This self-assuredness has had another beautiful effect.  The insecurity of my twenties is washing away and leaving my heart and brain space to focus on others.  Which is a relief because truthfully, after 29 years, I’m starting to get sick of myself.  I no longer spend conversations inwardly worried about how others perceive me.  I don’t calculate how many cringe worthy statements I made at the party and replay them in my mind for days afterwards.  Blessedly, the security that thirty is bringing with it has allowed me to use all that mental space to think about others- a novel idea I know.  I can notice how others are behaving at a party.  I’m more in tune with the body language and emotions of others.      

(Of course, this lack of self-focus does have one unfortunate consequence.)

In my twenties I heard of this phenomenon.  I heard others talk about the confidence and sureness that comes with thirty.   The freedom that I am starting to experience.  It sounded amazing.  I desired it.  Hoped for it.  At times even strived for it.  But just like weight loss only seems to happen to me when I’m not trying, this kind of peace only comes with time.  It only comes with the turbulent changes and lessons learned in our twenties.  This peace has been hard earned with every awkward encounter, mistake made, and embarrassing failure of the past ten years.  It came with realizing my fears and discovering that life went on.  It’s not a cheap, fake peace.  It’s real and deep and true.  If thirty feels this good I can’t wait for forty…

on praying for money

My husband started a new job a year and a half ago.  He’s no stranger to new jobs; this is the fourth job he’s had in the eight years I’ve known him.  All of them have been in the same business/finance field (a sector I go cross-eyed trying to explain) and all left him mostly hating life.  Well, all but this one.  I’m pretty sure this is the career that’s going to stick for him.  On good workdays he comes home energized, happy, excited about life.  Even on the bad days he may be a little tired but it’s nothing like the soul sucking-ness of previous jobs.

This job is different in another way.  This job is…commission based (cue the crazy screaming lady).  Basically my husband doesn’t have a salary.  Our income changes from month to month depending on how much he sold.

It’s a little scary doing life this way.  It feels like a very delicate balancing act.  Some months we could make a lot more than our monthly expenses.  Some months we could make a lot less.

We’ve done a lot to help this balancing act.  We’ve cut out most of our monthly expenses.  No cable (I miss you most of all DVR), no car payments (hello used Nissan), with the exception of our mortgage, everything goes on our credit card (I can see you cringing Suze Orman- I’m sorry!).  Truly we’re doing fine.  We have so much. We’re not worried about losing our house or not being able to pay the bills.  We’re doing fine.  We just don’t have all that extra.

After college I considered a career in campus ministry for about a nanosecond.  It was not the right move for me for a number of reasons and I’m thankful I didn’t feel particularly called to pursue that road because the post-college adventure I did experience was more than I could possibly hoped for.  But.  But.  I’m also enormously thankful I didn’t feel called to pursue that road because that road required me to raise support- i.e. ask everyone I know and a lot of strangers to pay money each month so I can “do ministry” and also not be homeless while I do it.  I know, I know- there are TONS of blessings that come from having to raise support.  There is a reliance on God that can’t be beat, and a partnership in ministry that can be so life giving.  I know.  But.  But.  I knew in my heart at age 22 that I just couldn’t do that.  I wanted to work and not think about the money.  I wanted to know up front what I was going to make each month (the number wasn’t really all that important- hello, I taught in an inner city school), budget responsibly and then live my life.  I didn’t want to have to worry each month if I was going to make it.  If I can be truthfully truthful- I didn’t want to have to ask God for money each month.

Cue the ironic music.

Because while we may not be raising support in the same way ministry and missionaries are, we are still in that scary place I’ve tried avoiding my adult life.  We don’t know what we are making each month.  We can’t budget responsibly and then just live life.  Some months, we do find ourselves worrying.  And every month we have to ask God for money.

And I have a really hard time praying for that.  I can easily pray that my husband has a good day at work, that he feels encouraged, that he learns something.  I have no problem asking God to bring my husband closer to Him and give him satisfaction in his work.  But praying for God to allow my husband to have a good sales day?  Praying for money?  Uggg, I feel so wrong doing that for some reason.

And unlike ministry, the sky’s the limit in terms of my husband’s salary (realistically speaking).  There’s no salary cap.  So what do I pray for?  Just enough to cover our bills?  Enough to cover our bills and allow us to save?  Enough to be really generous?  If I’ve learned anything about money it’s that you could always use more.  Enough is never really enough.

And yet too much is decidedly too much.  I’ve seen extreme unhappiness when people have too much money.

So how do I pray for this?  How do I depend on God in this space?

Deep down I wonder if we’re even good stewards of the gifts God has given us.  We have SO much.  How can a dare ask for more?  But yet I know we aren’t saving as we should.  We aren’t giving as much as we could.   I buy too much crap on Amazon.com because their one click option makes it way. Too. Easy.  (And it doesn’t even seem like real money when it’s an online purchase right?)  But our kids college funds?  Radical giving? 

Why would God give us more when we’re mucking up what he’s already giving?

So I’m tempted to abandon prayer altogether when it comes to money and my husband’s job.  I feel too greedy.  And yet… And yet that doesn’t feel right either.  All good and perfect gifts come from the father above.  This is a divine gift of dependence on Him.  And an opportunity to do good things for Him.

So lately I’ve settled on this:  Give us this day our daily bread… and make us good stewards of the dough.

Give us what we need for today.  And show us what to do with it.

Abide

I love a new year.  I love the freshness of a new planner, the possibility of a new date on a calendar, the hope of real change a new year can bring.  I’ve made resolutions on and off in the past pretty much always with the same results.  I create a long, elaborate plan to accomplish each resolution, usually one that requires me to focus on a new goal each month or so.  I put visual reminders all over my planner so that each month I am smacked in the face with whatever resolution is supposed to change my life/faith/walk with God that month.  I journal and pray and decide that this is the year that I will finally become the person I was meant to be.  And every year by about May I’ve completely forgotten whatever goal is on the docket that month and by September I’ve trained my eyes to straight up not see the many visual reminders I set in place in January.  And come the following January… the cycle repeats itself.

If I don’t participate in that debacle then I completely ignore it all together and that year flies by with the same lack of intention the others have May-December.

I don’t want to live chained to a resolution.  I don’t want to bum myself out with my lack of discipline.  And I don’t want to live unmoored and unchained to the work God is doing in my life, in this season.  I want to pay attention.  I want to wonder at his work.  I want to find myself breathless at this good and perfect God who loves me so well.

This year I’m trying to keep it simple stupid.  I’m going with one word.  As I thought about my one word for 2013 the word abide kept coming to the surface.  And it feels as though this may be my word for the year.

Abide conjures up images of being tucked up against God, covered by his wing as a mama chicken gathers her chicks.  Abide has me at his feet like Mary, dreamy eyed with wonder at his teaching.  Abide has me pulling against my automatic response to be self-sufficient, self-promotive, and self-congratulatory.  It has me sometimes keeping my mouth shut and hands still when inside I am screaming to argue my point, fix their problem, change! the! world!  Abide feels like work and rest all at once.  Abide is what I need.

I need to abide in him in the crazy, stress filled moments of potty training and hungry pre-meal crying.  I need to abide when I open my mouth to unleash a snarky/mean/gossipy tidbit.  Or a defensive self-explanation.  Or a frustrated attack.  Or 75% -95% of the times I open my mouth, really.  I need to abide in him with carved out time for his word and spaces for prayer.   When the brokenness of the world threatens to overtake me and rob me of my hope, I need to abide in him. 

I need to abide this year because I sense that I am missing out on something.  I am missing out on the joy and wonder of what God is doing in my life because I am not aware of his presence.  I am missing the chance to partner with God to do something real and good in the world because I’ve run 10 step ahead of him with my own plan of action (and lost interest in the problem once he’s ready to use me).   Mostly though, I’m missing God.  And this word, this abide feels like the manna my soul needs.

And so I will abide.  I will seek out this word, pay attention when I hear it, place it around my home.  I will pray it and use it and teach it.  I will trust that it is from God and it is for me.  And I will live it. 

Abide.