Beauty on the Backroads

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Redefining ‘happy endings’: Review of You Were Always Mine by Nicole Baart

Here’s what I know when I pick up a book by Nicole Baart:

  1. I’ll need to clear my calendar so I can read because her stories are hard to put down.
  2. It won’t be an “easy” read.
  3. The ending will make me feel a deep satisfaction, even if the resolution isn’t what I usually think of as “happily ever after.”

Her new book, You Were Always Mine, delivers on these three expectations.

The story centers on Jessica Chamberlain, who is newly separated from her husband and trying to hold the remaining pieces of her family together parenting her two sons. When she learns of an out-of-state tragedy that affects her family, she begins a search for answers to questions she didn’t know she had. And the questions start to point back to her 7-year-old adopted son.

I’d call this a light suspense. It’s not terrifying or impossible to read at night, but it keeps you turning the pages to figure out just what in the world is going on. (According to the publisher, if you like Liane Moriarty and Jodi Picoult, you’ll love this book!)

All I can tell you is I love everything I’ve ever read from Nicole Baart. (Her book Sleeping in Eden is on my top 10 list of favorite books of all time. If I had such a list!) Five stars, six stars, a million stars … none of them are enough praise for the way Baart wtites a story. She redefines what a happy ending means, giving her characters hopeful and redemptive endings that aren’t necessarily prettily tied up with a bow. That’s real life and she captures the tension between beautiful and broken so well.

Disclosure: I read an advance copy of the book courtesy of Atria Publishing. Review reflects my honest opinion.

The everyday power of friendship: Review of Once We Were Strangers by Shawn Smucker

Does friendship matter? Can it change the world? What does it mean to be a friend?

This new book about a Lancaster, Pa. native and a Syrian refugee who resettled to the area addresses these questions in an honest story of making time and room for people in our busy lives.

Once We Were Strangers: What Friendship with a Syrian Refugee Taught Me About Loving My Neighbor by Shawn Smucker isn’t overtly dramatic or adventurous and friendship between these two men might not seem like anything significant. But that’s exactly why it’s the perfect book for the times we live in. Shawn doesn’t set out to “save” his friend Mohammed from his circumstances, and the world doesn’t noticeably shift because of their relationship. But these two men are changed, and how their relationship developed is accessible to all of us. We can all befriend someone with whom we have nothing in common simply by showing up and listening. (And repeating that process often.)

Back to those questions I posed at the beginning of this post.

What does it mean to be a friend? Shawn talks honestly about this, how he doesn’t feel like a good friend to Mohammed, how on their first meeting, Mohammed considered them friends. I’ve experienced this firsthand with refugees in our area. They call us “friends” on first meeting, and it’s humbling. It challenges our western notions that friendship is earned. This book reminds us that friendship can be a gift we give each other, no strings attached.

Does friendship matter? Can it change the world? You could read this book and say, “No. It makes no difference in the world. Nothing fundamentally changed in the world.” We’re still divided in this country about whether people from other countries, especially those fleeing violence and persecution, are welcome in our country. We’re still afraid of people whose skin color is different, whose native language is different, whose practice of religion is different.

But I would say that friendship absolutely matters and it might not change the world in ways we can see immediately, but it has a forever impact on the people involved. Shawn’s and Mohammed’s lives will never be the same because they met and continued to meet over strong coffee, sometimes late at night. Their children will be changed by their friendship. Their communities will be better because they were willing to step across a divide that whispered “you can’t be friends with him.”

This is a story of slow change, steady presence, and continual showing up. It’s not necessarily exciting work, but it is the good and necessary work of a society that sees the other as enemy.

If you can’t imagine ever becoming friends with Syrian refugee, I encourage you to read this book. If you don’t understand why people flee their home countries, I encourage you to read this book. The chapters about Mohammed’s family’s exit from Syria are some of the hardest to read. If you fully support the resettlement of refugees in the United States, I encourage you to read this book.

Disclosure: I read an advance copy of the book courtesy of Bake Publishing Group. Review reflects my honest opinion.

Together

I have a guitar. It’s older than I am, but I’m not sure how much older. All I know is it belonged to my uncle. He died a few months before I was born. I don’t remember exactly how the guitar came to be in my possession except that I think I acquired it sometime after my grandfather died the year I graduated from college. I asked if I could have it. Someone said yes. I didn’t know how to play it when I asked for it but I had friends who could teach me. 

My guitar playing journey has been sporadic at best. I’m no musician, not really. I know how songs are supposed to sound, sometimes, but I can’t really read music and when the conversation turns to key changes and notes I start to panic a little. I’m forever afraid of being called an imposter at anything I try to do. I live with a ridiculous amount of insecurity inside my brain. Most days, I manage to set it aside and live in the confidence of who I am and who I was made to be and who I am becoming but some days the whispers of “not enough” and “who do you think you are?” are loud and debilitating. I nod in agreement. You’re right, I say to the voices in my head, I’m not the girl for this.

It holds me back from so many things.

Sometimes, though, I move ahead anyway. I ignore the voices (they never really go away) and take the next step and the next one until I’m solidly in new territory and scared out of my mind.

This is where I found myself on Sunday morning–with a guitar strapped to my body standing in front of my church’s assembled people playing songs of praise. It was a moment months in the making and the act of carrying it out had my knees knocking and palms sweating. My fingers shook either from the cold of the sanctuary or the anxiety of doing a new thing. Maybe both.

For months, I’ve been practicing and reacquainting myself with chords and strings and strumming. It’s been a half-hearted effort but something I’ve wanted to do as part of my after-40 plan for becoming the best version of myself. I practiced during the summer and finally in the fall sent our worship leader a list of songs I was comfortable playing. When she scheduled me for an actual date, the freaking out began, and I scrambled to watch YouTube videos and find out how to transpose chords to ones I could actually play. I practiced in the comfort of my home imagining how terrible this was all going to go down because I’m such an unaccomplished musician.

I almost backed out.

By the time I arrived to the rehearsal on Sunday morning, an hour before the service was to start, I was resigned to do my best and let it all happen as it would. I kept making excuses for my abilities and all I found in return was encouragement and acceptance. Those who had more talent and abilities were eager to share their knowledge and make room for me in the group.

And it turns out that playing songs together is more fun than playing them alone. But practicing alone helped me prepare for the time together.

The songs sound different when I’m playing alone, and they are richer and fuller when played with others.

Almost as if that’s how it was meant to be.

—

I can’t help but think that this is the way I’m to practice my faith as well.

To recognize my abilities and do what I can do with them, to practice living out what I believe during the days between assemblies, and to join with others in a collaborative practice and learn from those with more experience.

In the assembly, we are to welcome each other and the unique gifts each of us bring to the group. We are to accept each other where we are and help each other learn. We are to join our efforts in concert, celebrating how different our beliefs “sound” when practiced together.

We are richer, fuller, more vibrant when we are all of us doing the thing we were made to do. In the working together there will be stumbling and fumbling. There will be acknowledgement of weakness and areas of lack but also people to stand with us and beside us to fill the gaps we could not fill ourselves.

We are meant to work together for the common good. It is better this way.

I can’t say exactly what it looks like when it comes to spiritual practice, but I know it involves all of us. Some of us need to figure out what our strengths and gifts are. Some of us need to raise our hands and say, “I can do that.” Some of us need to take a trembling step in a new direction and be strengthened by those who’ve been that way before. Some of us need to extend our hands to the ones who feel like they have no business being there and say, “Welcome. You belong here.”

I don’t know what it will look like specifically, but I can imagine the beauty of it. I know how I feel right now at this moment having taken that terrifying step toward something new.

I am encouraged and inspired and confident and full of good thoughts and feelings. (I am looking forward to church again, which is not always something I can say.) Most of all, I am hopeful. That ordinary people who meet together regularly can influence each other in meaningful ways (and that in turn those people can change a little piece of the world around them.)

This is how the good news is showing itself to me today. This is what will carry me through a week that is sure to be full of reasons to doubt (myself and others). This is what will buoy me the next time I need to take a new step.

This is what is saving my life right now.

Abundance

I’ve been avoiding the garden.

It is overgrown and overwhelming and even though the red tomatoes have tempted me, I’ve continued to make the excuse, “Not today.”

The last time I was in the garden, something moved in the weeds, and I startled, afraid of a snake/gopher/opossum/rabid squirrel attacking me in my own garden. (When my husband identified rabbit droppings, my fears were somewhat calmed but then I imagined accidentally stepping on a bunny or worse, disturbing a nest of babies. I have since seen the bunny outside of the garden, still I will not go in it.)

Besides, it is October, even though it feels like June. Humid mornings that linger through the day just enough to make life uncomfortable. I always think October is optimistic to still be harvesting from the garden.

Aren’t gardens a summer thing? I ask myself every fall.

There is also the problem of time and energy. I tell the children that in the summer I can handle taking care of them and the garden/porch plants but when school starts, I have to exchange one of those things for the students at my job and since I would not neglect my children, it is the garden that suffers from my inattention.

But one day this week I stepped outside with a bowl and scissors, thinking I could just reach over the fence for whatever tomatoes might still be edible. I was not hopeful that there would be any harvest at all because, I thought, I deserve to come up empty-handed after letting so much of our garden rot on the vine.

Guilt over the abandoned abundance followed me to the garden and with each soft and rotten tomato I snipped off the vine, my spirits sagged as well. So much waste. How could I let so much of it go to waste?

I focused my attention on what could be salvaged from the safety of outside the garden perimeter. I did not feel like traipsing through the weeds or stepping on rotten veggies or finding a pile of rabbit droppings on the bottom of my shoes. I reached and tugged and snipped.

And this is what I took inside.

It is not a lot by summer standards, but it is more than I expected. The summer growing season was so weird this year that some weeks we pulled less than this out of the garden.

Apparently, we are not finished with the garden yet. Nor is it finished with us.

—

I have this same expectation in my approach to God.

He is always there, like the garden in my backyard, but my faith feels a little overgrown and overwhelming these days. It is a tangled mess of weeds and fruitful vines and picking my way through seems like an effort I can’t make right now. I glance that way from time to time, sometimes on Sundays, sometimes on other days, and I think about the good fruit that awaits.

Photo by Kevin Fitzgerald on Unsplash

Still, I often say, “Not today.”

And yet when I do venture in the vicinity of my spiritual life, what I find is as surprising as a bowl of ripe tomatoes: there is still fruit and it is abundant.

I used to believe that spirituality was transactional, an exchange, like a sale at a store or a deposit at the bank. What I put in is what I would get out of it and if I didn’t put anything in, I wouldn’t get anything out. Maybe this was based on a parable about talents or maybe it was just what I heard when faith was talked about. Deposit your time and tithe in spiritual things and you will harvest more than what you put in.

There is some truth to this as there is with the garden. If I had been picking the tomatoes for the last few weeks now I would have more usable ones than rotten ones. And it is true that the practice of my beliefs increases the richness of my spiritual life. But it is also true that we do not control the abundance merely by effort.

I do not believe that my soul withers and dies when I neglect the tending of it, that it suddenly rots and there is nothing usable left. If God can turn even a mustard seed into a gigantic tree then even the smallest measure of faith can still grow into something beautiful.

God draws me toward Him like ripe fruit dangling from the vine, and when I finally decide I cannot ignore it or Him anymore, I find myself overwhelmed by an abundance. Of grace. Of love. Of fruit I don’t think I deserve.

All this to say that neglecting your spiritual life or abandoning it for a time does not disqualify you from receiving an abundance of good things. In a story Jesus told about a father and two sons, the son who left and took everything he was owed with him, the one who squandered it all and returned home penniless and ashamed, that same one was the guest of honor at an extravagant banquet. His father lavished him with love.

Our Father does the same.

 

When she writes, I pay attention: Review of The Ministry of Ordinary Places by Shannan Martin

Shannan Martin has a unique way of making you feel right at home with her words while also dropping some deep truths in the middle and changing everything you thought you knew.

When I read her first book Falling Free two years ago, I was scared about the impact it would have on my life. This time around, when I had the chance to read an advance copy of her second book, I was excited to apply whatever teaching she had to offer to my life.

I was drawn to The Ministry of Ordinary Places: Waking Up to God’s Goodness Around You because of its appeal to the everyday. I no longer believe “ministry” is something reserved for a special few and I wholeheartedly believe that some of the most ordinary things we do can be glimpses of the Kingdom. I underlined so many words in this book, but I don’t just want to collect quotes and share statements: I want to live them out. This is a book of right-where-you-are making a difference and I dare you to be uninspired by her stories.

I will share a few snippets, though, just to give you a sense of what this book is all about.

On what it means to live sacrificially:

“But I had seen enough to understand that growth often requires death, and sometimes death looks like losing that extra fifteen minutes of sleep. Sometimes it asks us to surrender our softest pajama pants and lace up our walking shoes for the greater good, even if we’re not quite sure why it matters.”

This stunning sentence: “The world would not feel so impossible if each of us committed to truly knowing five of our nearest neighbors.”

And this, a sort of benediction for the daily work:

“This is my prayer, that as we look around and locate pain, widening our scope when necessary, we’ll have the guts to take swift action. I pray that we’ll all go down together, arms linked, hoarse from shouting on behalf of those found at the short end of justice. I pray that down at street level, we’ll feel the tremor of God’s power and decide, once and for all, that our feet were made for low places and worthy battles. We’ll hang a scarlet cord from the window as our promise to keep meddling for the sake of the kingdom.”

I think this would be a good choice for a church or neighborhood book club. Lots of discussion potential and practical application.

Disclosure: I received an Advance Reader Copy from Harper Collins Christian Publishers.

These trying times

Last week felt like a heavy one where the burdens and needs were plenty. Weeks like that are overwhelming for me because I feel deeply the hurt and pain of others, when I don’t close myself off to it. I can easily bury my head in the sand and pretend all’s right with the world, but sometimes, it is harder to ignore.

As a hurricane approached the East Coast, we watched the news, a limited practice because all of us are affected emotionally by what we see and hear on the television. Sometimes we just need to turn it off. Watching the preparations, I could feel the fear mounting, but what brought tears to my eyes were the people preparing to help. A parking lot filled with emergency vehicles and the Cajun Navy headed to the area made my heart swell with hope. Trouble was on the way, but so was help. And along with the help, hope.

This is the thing that makes all trouble bearable, or at the very least endurable: the hope and the help. And I’m not talking about well wishes (although that can be hopeful) but the actual practical hope that shows up in bodies.

I have not given up on the goodness of people yet.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

I watched on television this week as firefighters gave every effort they had to save a family whose house was crushed by a tree, and I cried with them as they grieved when they could not bring the rescue they had hoped. My heart bent with compassion toward those who were stranded in their homes when the rain and flooding came. I may have once wanted to criticize their decision to stay, but I know better now. I know that evacuating comes at a financial cost and maybe there is no place to go. And I believe that no life is more valuable than another. We do not abandon people to a dismal fate because of their choices, whether made in ignorance or poverty.

Humanity shows up for each other. It is what keeps our hearts soft and makes us more human.

—

I can never decide if hospitals are extraordinary places or ordinary places. I feel like God is near when I’m there, but I know how easy it is to avoid them. Hospitals are crisis points, usually, and every patient a reminder of how frail are these bodies. How easily they break, how one day they’ll fail us in the most basic of ways.

At the veterans hospital where my husband receives care, these feelings are magnified as every patient has a common thread, a story that runs deeper than the surface. I’m aware of this and sensitive to it but not always prepared. When I’m there with my husband, we are often on the low end of the age range, although not as much anymore, and sometimes I think this means I should have more strength or availability for people, but last week my capacity was low.

My anxiety was simmering under the surface from the start, but within minutes, we saw two people we knew from our former years living in that area, and one was present for the duration of my waiting room stay. I had planned to spend the waiting time with books (I brought three because you never know!) and writing. Hurricane coverage blared from the television and I tried to find a quiet spot to refill my tank, but I was soon joined by two men who were waiting for one of them to be called back. I tried to subtly turn away but I am no good at rudeness. (Or boundaries with strangers. I hate conflict of any kind, so it is often my M.O. to squash my own needs when someone else’s presents. Please don’t use this against me.)

When the man with the appointment left, his companion started talking to me about what I was writing, and he asked me a billion questions and told me all about his life, and I saw my “me time” sliding away gradually. He needed to talk, I guess, and I am like a magnet for people who need to talk. There must be something about me that lets people know I will listen, and I am not really sorry that I’m this way, but I wasn’t prepared for it this day. I excused myself to get some coffee but went to talk to my friend at the desk. I asked her if I should move my car from the front of the building to the parking lot closer to where we were, and she encouraged me to leave and take my time.

The chatty fellow sitting next to me caught on, though, and he also needed to move his car, so he walked with me. I must have been giving off some vibes because he asked if he was being a pest. My heart squeezes tight at questions like this because I never want to make a person feel bad about themselves. I told him, as honestly as possible, that he was very talkative and I wasn’t prepared for that and my own worries were elevated which makes me less patient. Or something like that.

We parted ways in the main parking lot, and I sat in my car for a few minutes, taking deep breaths. I did not want to go back to the waiting room and listen to what felt to me like idle chatter, even though this man was a two-time cancer survivor who started a writing group for other survivors. (If you think me a horrible person while reading this, I will agree!) I circled the parking lot a few times and then pulled my car into a spot reserved for the department we were in. And I breathed a sigh of relief when I didn’t spot my new friend in the waiting area. I made myself a cup of coffee and sat down with a book, still shaking a bit from the stress of it all.

Later, after we were home, I messaged my actual friend who worked at the desk and thanked her for her effort. Having someone in my corner made it more bearable. And that was just the beginning of our weekend. Friends stepped in on all kinds of levels to help us through this minor trial. They showed up at our house early on a weekday to get the kids ready for school so we could make the drive to the hospital. They showed up on the weekend to take one or both kids so I could get some rest from all the caregiving. They showed up in texts and messages asking how we were doing.

And our story isn’t an exception. I’ve watched from afar as a friend’s family struggled with difficult news this week and how people have surrounded them. I’ve watched people in North Carolina take care of each other. And I’ve watched people on social media offer their help and experiences and homes to people in need.

These are not small things and they make the trying times better.

Photo by Matt Collamer on Unsplash

—

I am old enough now to know that we cannot escape the trying times. They will come, sometimes with warning, like a hurricane, and sometimes not. And for any of us to get through them, we will need other people.

I’ve been thinking about all the help we’ve received from people over the years, and I’ve concluded that we are so far in debt when it comes to kindness received that we can never pay it back. We will only ever pay it forward with no expectation of return.

Because there’s no predicting where the next trial will be, where the next needs will be. All we can do is vow to be the kind of people who show up when it’s our turn and do what we can, whether it’s something obviously heroic like rescuing people from flooded houses or subtly heroic like keeping someone’s kid for a couple of hours so they can rest.

We can all ease each other’s burdens, especially if we take turns. I cannot always shoulder someone else’s burden, but when I can, I will. And I will look around to see who can be there for me when I need it most.

This is how we go on when the world and its problems overwhelm.

The best-laid plans

One of summer’s most redeeming qualities is baseball. I realize this is a statement not everyone will agree with, and I’m only sorry for those of you who don’t recognize the beauty of baseball or haven’t enjoyed it as pleasurable leisure. (You might identify more with the girls who were sitting next to us at a local game recently. Two innings of play were on the scoreboard and one team had already notched two runs. “Did the game start?” one of them asked. I sigh and shake my head.)

Summer is our family’s best opportunity to see a baseball game live at a ballpark, and I always say there’s no bad day at a ballpark, even if the team we’re there to cheer loses. I love the entire atmosphere of a baseball game in a professional (or minor league) stadium. It’s as much home to me as the town where I was raised. I can’t explain it. My husband and I are both lovers of the game and we try to take our kids at least once a year to see our favorite team, the Cubs. Living 800 miles from the stadium they call home presents a challenge, but we find a way.

Earlier this summer, we caught the team in Pittsburgh and were able to attend the game with friends. It was a fun memory, especially since the score was lopsided in our team’s favor. Because my husband has a lifetime goal of visiting every MLB stadium, we thought we’d try to squeeze in a second game (and another new-to-us stadium) this year when the Cubs came to D.C. to play the Nationals.

It’s been on our calendar for months and last week I finally bought the tickets–cheap outfield seats. We planned our day around the game, hoping to wake up early enough to drive to a train station on the outskirts of the city, ride the train into the city and see some of the D.C. sights we haven’t seen with our kids yet.

This was all according to plan. And then the rain came. The whole weekend series was affected by rain, and the closer we got to Sunday morning, the more dread and despair we felt. Seeing a ball game was looking less and less likely.

But we had already planned to go into the city, so we woke up, took our time getting ready, and by 10:30 we were walking the water-soaked streets of D.C. in search of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. I mean, the museums are free once you get to the city, so what better way to spend time indoors than looking at collections of stuff and learning facts? (This is pretty much the only way, in my book.)

Our almost-nine-year-old had a one track mind: dinosaurs. He wanted to see all the dinosaurs. Fossils. Bones. If he could have crawled inside the mouth of a T-Rex, he probably would have done it. (He left with a souvenir brachiosaurus that clips to his backpack. The dino’s name is Broccoli.) After briefly exploring the ocean exhibits, we headed upstairs to where the dinosaurs were kept. After that, he turned his attention to mummies, and since our daughter was not at all interested in that, we split up and she and I headed to the rocks, gems and minerals. In fourth-grade, she started learning about this subject and they’re revisiting it in fifth-grade. She was awed by the diversity of specimens (so was I) and the colors were breathtaking. At one point, while reading about the Argyle Diamond Mine in Australia, an Australian man standing next to us said, “Fun fact” and then offered us a fun fact about the mine. It is the highlight of my interaction with humanity at the museum and he is the only person I would add to my “People I Would Want to Travel With” list.

As we wound our way through the exhibits, our destination was the Hope Diamond, where we’d agreed to meet the other half of our family. (“Meet me at the Hope Diamond” sounds like something Nicholas Cage would say or do. DC tourism idea: The Nic Cage Capital Experience. No stealing of The Declaration of Independence would actually take place.)

I’ve heard a lot about the Hope Diamond in my day. Probably from movies. It is brilliant and stunning and some people who were viewing it at the same time as us thought it was unimpressive. (I have another entire blog post to write on how we’ve lost our sense of awe and wonder. SMH.)

We covered most of the second floor when it was time to start thinking about lunch. In our original plan, we would have been at the ballpark by lunchtime, eating overpriced (but tasty!) food. But it was still raining and the game, we were certain, was not going to start on time. When we’re traveling, we like to try new places for meals or at the very least eat at a place we can’t eat at regularly where we live. My husband is the expert searcher of Google for restaurants, so he did that while I took my kids into the gems and minerals gift shop and told them “no” seven thousand times about buying a $10 bag of rocks to take home. (I realize I am not using the proper terminology at all, but please understand that our backyard and driveway are full of rocks. You can dig them up for free, kids!)

On our way out of the museum, we stopped at the main gift shop. We often bring home a jigsaw puzzle from our travels, so we’re always on the lookout. (Have I told you about this? I need to post a picture soon of the haul we brought in this summer.) Nothing caught our eye in the puzzle department, but the aforementioned dinosaur was a keeper as were the sparkly dolphin earrings.

Soon enough, we were back out in the rain, headed to a restaurant I can only describe as a global Panera. It’s called Cosi (accent on the “i” but I’m not fancy enough to figure out how to do that on my computer) and it was just what we needed to refuel and reset our plan for the rest of the day. We had soup and salad and more flatbread than we knew what to do with. It was wholesome nourishment, which is becoming more and more important to me. I can’t ingest much of the greasy, quick foods anymore. We rested and ate and watched people pass by in parkas and huddled under umbrellas. The city doesn’t stop for weather of any kind.

We monitored the baseball game situation and as it became less and less likely that the game was going to start soon, we decided to brave the elements for a short walk to the National Portrait Gallery. This was my museum choice for the day. I wanted to see the presidential portraits and even though I’m not a visual artist, there’s something about art that evokes feelings in me. I love it. And I don’t think I’ve been to many since the kids were born. It would be their first real visit to an art museum, too.

On the way, we passed Ford’s Theatre and that’s definitely on the list for next time. We hadn’t researched any national park sites to visit (I mean, ones that we haven’t already seen in D.C.) because we didn’t think we’d have much time in D.C. outside of the game. When we got to the gallery, we were directed to free lockers to stash our stuff, which is really the best way, if you can swing it because backpacks-plus-art=potential for disaster. I did not want to be the cause of a national incident involving artwork. (I will tell you that we did get scolded at one point because the kids touched a map trying to point out Lancaster and Dixon. I’m always so embarrassed when we have to be told to follow the rules. Thankfully, we were not asked to leave, but I am rethinking whether I can bring my kids to another art museum!)

My Instagram collage of our Illinois friends at the gallery

Everyone give it up for America’s favorite fighting Frenchman

I don’t know if I can describe to you what it was like to see portraits of all the presidents. It was educational and inspiring. But I can tell you that I was most moved by the first-floor exhibit “Unseen: Our Past in a New Light”  which was in some ways shocking (in a good way) and also moving. A collection of photographs of lynchings in which the victims had been removed nearly brought me to tears as I studied the groups of people remaining in the photos. My husband and I spent a lot of time on the way home talking about this exhibit and our own growing understanding of how deep is the racial divide in our country. 

Hours at the art gallery. So much to see. My eyes started to hurt and our backs were achy with all the walking and standing. Finally, we got the official word that the game had been postponed to a day later in the week, and the disappointment that had sort of been hovering all day, dropped onto me. I suddenly wanted to categorize our day as “terrible” when in fact it had been like a normal day trip–full of fun, adventure, some whining, but overall good memories.

The gift shop here didn’t offer any puzzle prospects that we liked, but we did see a puzzle we already owned, which made us wonder if the artwork from that puzzle was on display at the museum. Sure enough, it was. So, technically that counts, even though we bought it elsewhere.

We headed back to the lockers to retrieve our stuff, only to find one of the two lockers we were using wouldn’t open. Apparently it had been a problem earlier in the day, and it was no big deal to get our stuff back. We left the Portrait Gallery for the nearest train station and rode back to our car, where we made a plan for dinner. We ended up at a Potbelly for more soup and other warm comfort foods before heading home in more rain.

It’s the next day and we’re tired, and we’re probably going to lose the money we spent on the baseball tickets unless weather from Hurricane Florence cancels the game for certain. (I am not hoping for this or anything. Hurricanes are serious business.) But we spent a day in D.C. at two museums that were time well spent. There will always be more baseball.

I’m learning to be more flexible when things don’t go the way I plan. Because sometimes the adventure is waiting just outside the plan’s parameters. I’m vowing to make memories no matter what happens.

 

The secret life of an introvert

This week, I talked on the phone three times. On purpose.

Maybe this is no big deal to you, but it’s a very big deal for someone like me who could text, e-mail or message for hours but who can’t pick up the phone for an unknown number if her life depended on it. Sometimes, I have to give myself a pep talk or make a promise like “After you make this call, you can go lie down and read” before I dial a number. Sometimes I have to rehearse what I’m going to say, and if a question on the other end deviates from my script, well, then things get awkward.

So, let me tell you about these phone calls. The first one was about a book a friend and I are both reading and it started as a video call but because of technology it turned into a regular phone call. This friend and I are reconnecting over some shared struggles and beliefs and we talked for well over an hour at night after our kids were in bed. It was so fulfilling I had trouble winding down and going to sleep.

A few nights later, I called the most extroverted person I know and we talked for TWO HOURS, sometimes rehashing the same things we were talking about an hour earlier, but it was another conversation that flowed without ceasing and left me feeling full and satisfied. (The third phone call was because my computer was acting up. I don’t like to make calls to customer service centers, but for my computer, I’d do just about anything.)

By the end of the week, though, I needed a nap.

Photo by jurien huggins on Unsplash

This is one of the many mysteries of my introverted life.

It’s actually not so mysterious to other introverts. We sort of understand each other and the need to recharge after social interactions. In the past, I think I have misrepresented myself and other introverts by loudly declaring how much I don’t like people, but what I meant to say is I can only take so much “peopling” and then I need to crawl into my den of hibernation and come back out when I feel ready. This can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. (On rare occasions, it is a full day.)

Not only did I participate willingly in these phone calls, I also hosted a Labor Day get together with a couple of families from church. This is no small feat on the last day of a four-day weekend when I’ve been home with my children the WHOLE TIME. Exhibit A: On Sunday, day three of four-day weekend, I threw my phone down and yelled, “Why are there always people in every room I’m in?” or something equally disparaging. (I love my family. I do. But please find another room of the house to be in. Can I get an “amen” from some other introverts?)

More and more I’m finding a lot of joy in opening our home to people. It takes a lot of pre-work such as cleaning and making food, and sometimes it takes a lot of post-work, such as an early bedtime, but it’s always such fun, especially when I can make it as low-key as possible. I cannot be the center of attention, but I’m learning that I thrive at bringing people together and watching them make magic in their conversations and enjoyment of being together.

This is a new discovery for me–the idea that me, an introvert, someone who likes to fade into the background and virtually disappear can have an important role in life and society. The extroverts always get the attention, which sometimes is interpreted as them being more important. But I’d venture a guess that for all the extroverts out there getting attention, there are at least a dozen introverts making a quiet impact on the world around them.

We’re not flashy, but we can light the world up when we want to.

Confession: I don’t always want to. Mostly because I don’t want to leave my house. And I’m not saying it’s a requirement that to make a difference in the world I have to leave my house, but there is a lot of potential “out there” and the more I embrace my place in the world, the easier it is to leave what’s comfortable. For a time.

(I could also call this section of the post “yes, I’m an introvert who has a job outside my house and loves it.”)

I was a quiet kid in school so I’m drawn to the quiet kids. And that’s a good thing. I used to think I couldn’t work with kids of any age because I spent a couple of weeks over several summers being a camp counselor–a position that was highly extroverted that I never quite fit–and all I wanted to do was get to know kids one-on-one or sit on the sidelines with the ones who didn’t want to play the goofy games. I thought there was something wrong with me because I wasn’t interested in being a wacky personality for the week.

Turns out, the quiet introverted kids need leaders and role models like them. I sure did when I was their age. Now I know that it’s a unique role I can play in the world around me. Not everyone has to be loud and exciting all the time. I consider myself a calm and steady presence.

It’s no longer such a mystery to me why I am the way I am. I’m learning to love it and lean in to it and do what I need to be the best version of me. (I’m not ignoring your call or text, I’m recharging. #sorrynotsorry)

Sometimes us introverts are seen as moody or stuck-up or angry or I don’t know, other unfriendly terms. (I know I have a serious case of RBF–look it up if you don’t know–that makes me unapproachable sometimes.) Really, though, I’m just often looking for the most comfortable situation to be in, or I’m thinking about a conversation I had with someone 24 hours ago. Or a week ago. My face might not have anything to do with the present moment. (This is another mystery–a contradiction, really. Presence is one of my gifts but I can also be totally absent from what’s going on right in front of me because of what’s going on in my mind.)

Photo by Gary Bendig on Unsplash

I’m not sure I really have a neat and tidy point to this whole post. I’m not really in a season where I feel like I have any of those to offer anyway. I guess if I did it would be to love your introvert friends even when they seem like they’re avoiding you. And maybe don’t be afraid to be the one to draw them out of their comfortable shells.

We’re not as scary as we look.

There’s always room for …

I could finish this sentence a lot of different ways. So could you.

Here’s the complete sentence I intended for today:

There’s always room for ice cream.

That’s right. I’m writing about ice cream today. It’s been a week full of some hard emotional stuff and the world can feel like a rotten place to live, so right now, I just want to talk about ice cream.

Photo by Anna Ribes on Unsplash

Besides, school starts on Tuesday so summer is technically over even if we have a full month before the calendar says it’s time for fall.

Let me tell you a little bit about my relationship with ice cream. I can’t ever remember not having one. In my early childhood years, my grandparents managed the local Dairy Queen, and I spent more time than I can add up in the back room–reading, watching TV, working on homework, helping out with occasional DQ-related tasks that probably wouldn’t be allowed today. I smashed candy bars with a rubber mallet for blizzard mix-ins and filled the bottoms of paper cups with peanuts for what would eventually become Buster Bars. (This was all back in the day when each DQ made its own treats on site. I’m not sure that happens anymore.)

My grandparents had a rule for the girls (and yes, it was pretty much only girls who worked for them)–you can’t eat your own mistakes. So if an ice cream cone wasn’t the right number of ounces or didn’t have the iconic curly-cue on top, they’d often walk their “mistake” to the back room and hand it off to me or my brother. (Let’s not judge the amount of ice cream I consumed this way, shall we?)

Dairy Queen soft serve ice cream will always hold a special place in my heart. Even on our most recent trip back to my hometown, we had Dairy Queen ice cream cupcakes for a family get-together and I could not eat just one.

My ice cream tastes have broadened since then, and I won’t bore you with the details of every ice cream experience I’ve ever had. (I’m not sure I could recall them all anyway!) But I will bore you with a summary of our local ice cream adventures this summer.

Lancaster County, where we live, is rich in ice cream variety, and you’d have to go at least once a week all summer long to try every ice cream available in the county. Maybe more. We didn’t make it to an ice cream shop every week, but we tried most Wednesdays to make an ice cream run to an actual ice cream shop. If you’re ever in the area and looking for ice cream, feel free to start with this list. You can trust that I know what I’m talking about when it comes to ice cream. After all, it practically runs in my blood.

We made it to seven Lancaster County ice cream shops as a family and ranked each one out of five scoops (instead of stars, because you know, it’s ice cream.) Some places we had a coupon or a discount. I’ve included the total price, the kinds of ice cream we ate and our overall impressions of the atmosphere of the ice cream shop and quality of the ice cream. (None of the ice cream we ate is pictured because we were too busy eating ice cream to take pictures! Maybe next time …)

Photo by Michelle Tsang on Unsplash

If you are not local to Lancaster, I won’t be offended if you stop reading, but I would encourage you to find your own local ice cream shops and make your own list! (I should also mention that I am in no way being compensated for this blog post, although I’m open to offers if anyone needs an ice cream reviewer!)

Here they are, starting with our medium favorites and building up to our most favorites. (And let’s be honest, even a mediocre ice cream experience is better than no ice cream at all!)

7. Our final stop on the summer ice cream tour was Meisse Candies and Ice Cream Parlor in downtown Lancaster. I was excited to try this because the ice cream parlor is new AND they serve Penn State Creamery ice cream, which is not readily available in our area. We used to stop at the Penn State Creamery on the college campus while driving through State College on our way west to visit friends, and it was always so good. So, maybe my expectations were high. Only 8-10 flavors were offered, and I know that’s still a lot of choices, but at the creamery, there are dozens. We paid $14.85 for three smalls and one medium (three cones, one dish, no extra charges). Our flavors were chocolate chip cookie dough, death by chocolate, peachy Paterno and butter pecan. Don’t get me wrong, it was good ice cream, but we were there an hour before closing and the customer service was only okay, and I didn’t really feel like lingering. But the ice cream parlor itself is unique and we enjoyed looking at all the chocolates available in the candy shop. 3.5/5.

6. Our first stop of the summer was The Pretzel Hut, which is technically still in Lancaster County, but not by much. It’s north on 501, almost to Lebanon County and this was a place we liked when we lived there. Even though it’s on a busy highway, it sits back from the road surrounded by a wooded area. It’s a beautiful and peaceful spot for rest if you’re driving that road. They serve Turkey Hill ice cream. We paid $12.15 for four cake cones (three small, one medium) in the following flavors: chocolate marshmallow, cherry vanilla, toffee caramel crunch and peanut butter pie. It was rainy, so we didn’t sit outside, but that’s an option and I take it every chance I get. 3.5/5.

5. We had a buy-one-get-one coupon for the Bird-in-Hand Bakery & Cafe that we had to use in May or June, so not long after school got our, we went there. It’s a busy place on the edge of the Amish tourist corridor. Once you cross into BIH, I feel like you are fully immersed in Amish tourism. Even with the coupon, we still paid over $14 but that’s partly because our daughter wanted a unicorn milkshake and when they handed it to her, her eyes lit up like it was the best day ever. The rest of us had single dip waffle cones: whoopie pie fudge swirl, blackberry cobbler and death by chocolate. The scoops are generous here and on this particular day the waffle cones were a little chewy towards the bottom. But we sat outside on the porch, which has ample seating and is a pleasant way to pass the time. Be prepared for crowds depending on the time of day and year you go because it seems like a popular spot for tourists. 4/5.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

4. By the middle of summer, we wanted to try out some places we’d never been before, so we checked out this place in Lititz called Greco’s Italian Ices and Homemade Ice Cream. Lititz, if you don’t know, a few years ago was voted Coolest Small Town in America, and it is pretty neat. We haven’t explored there as much as I would like but what we have seen is fun and unique. The first thing you need to know about Greco’s is it’s a cash-only place, so if you’re like us and never have cash on you, make sure you get some before you go. They also don’t have a website, and I’m telling you, the place was PACKED when we went. It was a Wednesday night in July and even though the line was almost out the door, we were served pretty quickly. We paid $17.35 for three single dips (two with waffle cones) and one Italian ice (Granny Smith Apple flavor). For ice cream we had brownie batter, cherry cheesecake and A Taste of Lititz (vanilla ice cream with Sturgis pretzel pieces, Wilbur dark chocolate chips, bittersweet chocolate fudge and Greco’s own peanut butter topping). The ice cream was creamy (not all of them are) and the portions were generous. The waffle cones came from a package but were still good. There’s both indoor and outdoor seating. We ended up on a bench because like I said, it was a popular place that night. 4.5/5.

3. Oregon Dairy is a supermarket, farm, ice cream shop, and I don’t know what else all rolled into one. It’s a fun summer destination because of the outdoor playground and the animals you can enjoy in a mini-zoo format (goats, a pig, deer–none are roaming wild). We had two coupons for this stop so we paid $6 for four calf dips of ice cream (regular price would have been around $12). Our flavor choices were oranges and cream, rainbow sherbet, coffee and cashew raspberry. It’s Oregon Dairy ice cream, fresh from the farm, and one of our favorite things about this place is the unique flavor options. Also, the sunsets are beautiful from the deck, and the kids can immediately run off their sugar high on the playground. 5/5

2. Our favorite downtown Lancaster ice cream stop is the Lancaster Sweet Shoppe. They serve Pine View Dairy ice cream (which is its own ice cream stop in the southern-ish part of the country). The kids had coupons for free single scoops from their summer reading program, so we paid $7.45 for a single scoop in a dish and a double scoop in a waffle cone. We chose: banana peanut butter, chocolate chip cookie dough, espresso oreo caramel, german chocolate cake. The outdoor seating here is magical. It’s a patio out the back door of the shop, walled in with strings of lights overhead. It’s a lovely outdoor city location. Even though we didn’t get it this time around, I recommend the chai stroopie flavor. The shop is known for its Dutch stroopies, a waffle-like cookie with a layer of caramel inside. Adding it to ice cream is a local flavor experience. The company also supports refugees in our community by offering jobs and ESL training, so you know that has my heart. 5/5

1. It’s no surprise that Good Life Ice Cream and Treats was our summer favorite. It’s our overall favorite always because of the oddball flavors and the high-quality and value of the products. We go here enough that we had a $5 off coupon from their rewards club, so we paid $7.80 for four single-dip waffle cones. A note about waffle cones: here, they are included in the price, no extra charge unless you want a dipped waffle cone. I love waffle cones but don’t always want to pay extra. Plus, they are homemade, so they are totally delicious. Did I mention you get a topping mix-in also included in the price? Hold on to your seats when you read these flavor choices: Old Bay Fries with mini-marshmallows mixed in; goofy grape with white chocolate chips; meadow tea with chocolate chips; buttered popcorn with Twix. Guys, in season, they have sweet corn ice cream, and it is tasty. If you’re up for a flavor adventure, I can’t recommend this place enough. We gave it 5+/5.

Well, if you made it this far, you’re either as mad about ice cream as I am; a dedicated Lancastrian; or bored enough to read a long blog post about ice cream.

Tell me: What do you look for in an ice cream shop? Do you have a local favorite place? If you were going to recommend one place to get ice cream to someone visiting your town, where would you send them?

 

In search of the good

Years ago, my brother and I started playing this game while traveling (separately) mostly in airports called People You Meet While Traveling. Mostly it was a way to cope with the (usually) annoying humans we encountered in security lines or at the gate or while boarding. We would message/text/tweet each other about the person, to whom we gave an unflattering name like: “Those who think they’re too good for TSA PreCheck like standing in lines makes you a better person.” (That one’s my brother’s candidate.) Or this one I’m not proud of: The Assholes. “Oh I’m sorry. Did the four of you and your suitcases want to ride the elevator with the two of us and our bags? Too bad. We’re going to mean mug you while the door closes and not even acknowledge that you’re standing there.”

Photo by Yolanda Sun on Unsplash

I’ll be honest: it was a mean game because we thought we were funny and were laughing amongst ourselves at someone else’s expense.

We picked up this game again this summer in Florida. It started while my brother was flying to meet us there and continued in person on one of our family vacation adventures. It was bringing us down in a way I didn’t notice, and that’s when my brother suggested that we change our game. Instead of looking for the people who were annoying and had the potential to ruin our experiences, he said maybe we should look for the people we would want to be traveling with.

Let’s be honest: there are WAY more candidates for the first category than the latter.

But I won’t say this often: My brother was right.

—

I cannot explain how easy it is for me to see what’s wrong. With a situation, about an experience, in a person, in a written correspondence. It’s like my brain automatically shifts to look for the mistake or the failing, and I’m not even trying to be negative (at least not all the time). I think, at the heart of it, I want to make things right and good. Pointing out the negative is believing there’s potential for improvement. (If only I were this good at pointing it out in myself!)

But it’s a total drag on my mood and emotions. Finding what’s wrong is the easiest thing ever. Looking for good is hard work.

When my brother suggested we change our game, I felt a little bit of shame at the way I’d latched on to the previous idea, how eager I was to make fun of all the people who I thought were behaving badly. I took his words to heart and the next day I made a list of the people we’d encountered up to that point in Florida.

The list included a retired Boeing engineer who was telling stories of his work at NASA to visitors of the Kennedy Space Center, an uber-friendly waitress at a restaurant we picked on a whim in St. Augustine, and our bus driver at NASA who stopped to point out crocodiles and other wildlife and seemed to truly enjoy his job.

You know what surprised me about this list? How good I felt making it. Each of these people brought a smile to my face and even now, months later, I can picture every single one of them. Do you know how many people on the other list I remember? I’m going to have to go with “zero.”

I tried this experiment again while traveling with the kids and it was hard. I’d much rather make a snarky comment about the guy sitting in the exit row taking every last minute available to him on a phone call while the flight attendant is trying to talk to him about his ability to perform the role of helper in an emergency situation.

It’s harder to remember the two ladies who quietly gave up their seats so a mother and son could sit together.

—

Maybe there’s some psychological or physiological reason it’s easier to remember and notice the negative stuff than the positive stuff. (It’s easier to frown than smile, right?)

But the negativity is killing me (and it might be killing you, too), maybe not literally but something withers in my soul when I spend too much time on what’s wrong with people.

I do want to be clear that I’m not talking about drawing attention to actual injustice. Focusing on the wrong in situations of any kind of discrimination is absolutely necessary. In a way, calling attention to the wrong is setting things right.

I’m talking more about the minor grievances I have with people who don’t behave like I think they should. I’m talking about the little annoyances I have at the grocery store or the gas station or while driving. These are not injustices, at least not usually. These things are easy to spot, maybe because there are so many of them happening or they just have a way of drawing attention. I don’t know.

All I really know is that it takes effort to look for the good–in people, in circumstances, in the world around us. Watch the news and it’s mostly bad, but occasionally there’s a story of people helping other people or doing something they didn’t have to do. Those things make the news because they are unusual and extraordinary in our day, which makes me sad.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

And determined.

—

I want to seek out the good in the world around me and when I can’t find enough of it, to be the good in the world around me.

This applies to my faith experience as well. I believe with all that I am that Jesus is the Good News embodied and that our mission as His people is to embody Good News as well. We can write it and speak it, and we must live it out. If we’re ever going to change the world, or even just ourselves, it’s going to have to start with Good News.

News like we’re loved, period, and that hope is not a futile feeling. News that not everyone or everything is horrible. We have to tell the stories of the good we’ve seen. We have to elevate the beauty, not in place of the disaster but in the midst of them.

At an outdoor concert this summer, a folk group that has become a new favorite of our family, sang a song called “American Flowers.” Take a listen/watch.

It’s a ballad that pushes back the darkness a bit. The chorus goes like this:

I have seen American flowers all across this land
From the banks of the Shenandoah, along the Rio Grande
Do not fear the winter blowing in the hearts of men
I have seen American flowers they will bloom again

This is the kind of Good News we need. Hope and beauty and truth. It is not ignorant of the bad (winter) but hopeful that the season will change and testifies to the spring that is on the way. (Think also of Narnia and Aslan on the move.)

—

When did we stop telling stories of the good we’d seen? When did we shift our focus to the complaints? Maybe it’s always been that way.

It won’t be easy to look for the good but it’s restorative work that starts with the soul of the one who is paying attention.

Are you paying attention? Am I?