lake chelan

Here are some pictures from our camping trip to Lake Chelan last weekend. We went with a group of about 160 people from our church and community.


Nate w/ his buddies Gabriel & Isaac






s'more education


s'more elation




Bedtime: they stayed like this for about 5 seconds before bounding out of their sleeping bags and bouncing off the walls of the tent. it looked pretty funny from the outside. thank goodness they tuckered out quick, especially after we put them in separate tents.


I was promised that it would be the easiest camping trip ever and I was not disappointed! We had a great time and will definitely do it again next year. If you live in the NW, come join us!

night commute

In the hustle and congestion,
traffic signals
blink
directions, overlapping
arcs of streetlamps
reflect
on hubcaps and trashcan lids,

movement passes for light.

If
we keep moving
toward the quieter ways,
the outskirts
and edges of suburbs,
into deeper
(often darker)
spaces, speed limits slow and we
come to see:

Our headlights have been off this whole time and we didn't even notice.

why our kids don't come first

Last night I watched what just might have been the most depressing hour of television I have ever seen. For those of you who have not stood in line at the grocery store lately, Jon and Kate Gosselin, high-profile parents of twins and sextuplets, are getting a divorce. The announcement came during last night's episode of their reality TV show, Jon and Kate Plus 8, bizarrely sandwiched between clips of the kids' new playhouses and their Mother's Day brunch.

Ever since the beginning of their marital troubles, both Jon and Kate keep repeating the same inane mantra to anyone who will listen: Our kids come first. All we care about is our kids. We'll do anything for our kids. Kids, kids, kids, blah, blah, blah. And this, dear friends, is exactly why they are in their present situation: because they put their kids first. Above their relationships with God. Above their marriage. They made their bed, and now they have to sleep in it... separately, of course.

Let's listen carefully to Jon and Kate. What do we really want to give our kids? What are the most important things we have to offer them? New playhouses? Seriously?! How about lives that model the grace and love of Jesus lived out in healthy relationships? You don't have to be a child psychologist to know which one has a more lasting impact on a child's well-being. Here's praying these two well-intentioned but misdirected yahoos pull their heads out of the sand and take a good hard look at where "putting their kids first" has gotten their family.

hurry up and wait

The Ballast family... so far.

After what has seemed like ages and ages of prayer, procrastination, and finally a burst of productivity... Jon and I completed and mailed in our application to become adoptive parents. We chose a local agency called Adoption Ministry of YWAM (Youth With A Mission) because of their focus on caring for both the birth mothers and the adoptive families throughout the entire process, and because their staff are incredible giants in the faith. They absolutely love their work, because they are doing exactly what God created them to do -- forming and growing families by the grace of God and under the direction of the Holy Spirit.

Jon and I have been talking about adopting since our first few weeks of marriage. While looking for a church in our new neighborhood, we heard a sermon on James 1:27 and both experienced the prompting of the Holy Spirit to make adoption part of our family story. Part of our desire to adopt comes from our understanding of our own status as adopted children in the family of God. God had his own perfectly good biological child, and yet he chose to adopt us. He knew the risks. He knew that we would bring our baggage, our history, our bloodline tracing back to Adam. But he extended his love and grace to us anyway, even going so far as to sacrifice the life of his own Son in order to seal our adoption, salvation, and eternal life with him. Therefore, we love (and adopt) because he first loved and adopted us.

We also believe that every life is valuable, from the very moment of conception. Women who are unable to parent need to have good, healthy options for themselves and their babies. Because we stand against abortion, we feel both an obligation and a desire to give women a better alternative. If people like us, who have been so richly blessed with resources, jobs, physical health, supportive families, a strong marriage, and good friendships, do not adopt... who will? And finally, we believe that the family of God should be first in line when it comes to taking care of those who cannot take care of themselves. Ultimately the responsibility to care for 'the least of these' does not rest on the government or social services -- it rests on the Church.

So... here we go! We know this adventure will be difficult, even risky. We don't enter into that lightly. But we also know the much greater risk and danger of living outside the call of God for our lives. This is where God is leading us, so no matter what we encounter on the way, it will be within the cover of his protection and care. We are hoping to complete our home study by the end of 2009 and (Lord willing) most likely welcome our new child sometime in 2010. Please pray for us!

no mommy! crib!

...is what Dexter shouted at me when I tried to get him up from a nap earlier this week. The boy loves his bed. No arguments here, I'll just take some pictures of your cute grumpy face.

literally

Dear Life, by Carol Aust

I am something of a literalist. And a semantiphile. OK, I made that one up, but if it was a real word it would mean "one who loves meaning, specifically with respect to linguistic meaning, to the point of obsession." This makes me a rather annoying person to have a conversation with (God bless my friends and family), because I can get very nit-picky about word choice and word meaning. Nothing bugs me more than when people use words in the wrong context, or say one thing when they really mean something completely different.

The one that got me all worked up this week was people who ask for others to "send good thoughts" their way when they are having medical tests, or trying to sell a house, or taking the SATs or whatever. I don't have a problem with the sentiment behind it, which I interpret to be, at its base, a request for care. The person is simply asking for others to care for them and for what is happening in their life. I'm all for that -- we need the care and support of others, especially in difficult times. What gets my knickers all in a knot is the semantics: You don't actually want people to send you positive thoughts. In fact, most logical people don't even believe that it is possible to literally send thoughts to someone. Seriously folks, let's just say what we mean!

If you want prayer, ask.
If you want someone to call you after it's over to see how it went, ask.
If you want a pep talk, or a back rub, or someone to pick up your kids at preschool so you can get a iced coffee and have a moment of peace... ask.

Why are we so afraid to ask for what we need? Here's a good song reminding us that we don't need to be. (Lyrics here.)

[OK, one more pet peeve while we're on the subject of semantics: people who use the word "literally" to mean the exact opposite, as in "I could literally eat a whole cow right now." No. No you could not literally do that. Figuratively speaking (figuratively being the opposite of literally, mind you), you could eat a cow. Not literally. Grrr. By the way, I totally do this and Jon catches me. We are so made for each other.]

the long defeat

I like laundry. I like gathering all the cast-off T-shirts and towels and socks from each room of the house, sorting them into piles, and tossing them in the washer. I like dumping a pile of clean clothes on the bed and turning it into a half-dozen neatly folded stacks. Doing laundry brings order out of chaos, and I like that.

The thing about laundry is that it never ends. No matter how much I do today, there will be more tomorrow. You can never do it 'once and for all.' In that sense, laundry helps me temper the part of my personality that is overly task-oriented, the part of me that just wants to check everything off the list and get it all done. Laundry defies my best attempts at being finished.

And I need to be defied like that every day. I need to be reminded that I am not finished -- and I am not called to live my life frantically attempting to fix that. Every day, every day, I need to do the daily work of letting God bring order out of my chaos. Will the chaos be back tomorrow? Yep. Does that make today's work any less significant? Not at all.

In Sara Groves' song, The Long Defeat, she sings: I have joined the long defeat / that falling set in motion / and all my strength and energy / are raindrops in the ocean. At first this might sound depressing or bleak, but there is an undercurrent of passion and faithfulness. There is a sense of admitting our frailty, admitting that we won't fix everything, admitting that, in this age, we won't win once-and-for-all our battle against brokenness. And yet we refuse to be paralyzed by that reality.

Tomorrow there will be more dirty clothes, but today we can throw the whites in the washer, fold the sheets, put away the dish towels, and fight our daily fight.

[For a brilliant comparison between laundry and liturgy, check out The Quotidian Mysteries, by Kathleen Norris.]