No Fun

It has been a while since I’ve posted here. One of my goals for the new year is to get back into a rhythm of blogging.

So we begin with a new reflection on parenting. Since the last time I posted anything both of our kids had birthdays, and so we now have a 3-year old and a 1-year old. Which is crazy. Where did the time go.

Anytime I think about parenting I think about the title from Jennifer Senior’s excellent book.

Some people freak out about this title because it feels sacrilegious to question being a parent at any level. Others roll their eyes in a jaded, sort of, “tell-me-something-I-don’t-know” way.

I find most parents, especially of younger kids, tend to go to one of these extremes. Happy-to-be-doing-this roboticness, or totally unsubtle resentment that these little people have robbed them of their “old life.”

Is there a better way to hold the tension?

Parenting is certainly not “no fun.” I have so much fun with my kids. Especially now that they are able to do a lot more and play and jump and talk (well more so the older than the younger, but they are both very interactive in their own ways).

But it is hard.

Our youngest has had a much more difficult time with teething than the older and I’ve spent a few midnight moments in the kitchen trying to rock him to sleep with the help of the humming refrigerator. Precious moments in some ways, but not exactly fun.

Discipline: incredibly important, but not a hoot!

Parenting is also not “all joyful.” There are some painful moments of recognizing one’s own selfishness and broken patterns of behavior.

There are painful moments of seeing those patterns show up in your kids.

There are painful moments of seeing selfish and broken patterns show up in your kids that you know didn’t come from you. They’re just there.

There’s an incredible potential in these tiny humans to break our hearts and if you have any kind of imagination you can see that potential early on.

And yet, there is so much joy. Dessert Friday. Visiting Grammy and Papa and G. Going to the park. Playing catch. Jumping Jacks. Reading books. Dinner together. When the oldest disobeys and then says to you: “Daddy, I want to be in right relationship.”

Live with that paradox parents. The old life is gone, this is a new stage, a new season. And it’s messy and frustrating and thrilling and boring and good.

And it will be transformative, if you let it.

What I Get To Do

One of the weirder parts of our transition to California is that while we had at least three opportunities to share about what we were going to do in a public setting, we never got the chance to actually do it.*

So, I thought I’d take a post to share a little bit about what I/we get to do here in Oakland.

Broadly:

I get to help our new church build a culture of doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly in our neighborhood and city.
I get to pastor and shepherd and teach.
I get to learn and serve alongside a diverse group of people. I mean crazy diverse. In every possible way. Google employees and homeless folks, old and young, parents and kids and single folks, and on and it goes.

Specifically:

Amy and I are facilitating/teaching a class for 8 engaged/recently married couples and we are having a blast preparing for and interacting with this group.
I’ve been able to preach three times already.
I’m getting to build needed systems and structures.
I’m meeting with and coaching small group leaders.
I’m helping coach our Pais interns.
I get to have conversations with people who have serious questions about God.
I get to disciple.
I get to lead.

And:

I get to be home 5 or 6 times a week to help put our kids to bed.
I get to ride my bike to work every day.
I get a sabbath.
I get to live in the most diverse city in the country, wear shorts most of the time, and hug Buster Posey (ok, that last part is a lie, but IT COULD HAPPEN).

I don’t have words to express the gratitude I feel on a daily basis.

Thank you Jesus.

*I’ve written about some personal lesson I’ve learned about transitions, but I hope to write a post soon on the leadership lessons I learned during this season.

Thank You

I’m hoping to get back in a rhythm here at the ID, posting on a weekly basis. Let’s begin 2015 reflecting on gratitude and the wisdom gleaned from toddlers.

M is in a stage where she says thank you for things she’s received from others. For example:

When putting on shoes from a cousin: “Thank you, Nina.”
When playing with a toy from a friend: “Thank you, Bella.”
When putting on clothes from a grandmother: “Thank you, G,” or “Thank you, Grammy.”

(This is helpful because it reminds us to write thank you notes to people.)

She reminds me often to be grateful. And to be specifically grateful.

Gratitude is never truly practiced in generalities.
Gratitude must be specific.

There are too many people to thank, at least in this space, for all the help we’ve received over the past two months as we’ve transitioned from one coast to another.

Boston friends and family.
Salinas friends and family.
Oakland friends and family.

A million thank yous. Specific thank yous. Thank yous for food and visits. For carrying heavy boxes and packing and unpacking trucks. Thank yous for hospitality. And for spending time with our kids. For filling our pantry and refrigerator. And for big checks. And for so much more.

Thank you.

We Are Moving To…

Oakland!

Here’s an excerpt of what I shared with our prayer team today:

“As you may know we celebrated the arrival of Cruz Isaac just over two weeks ago! He’s awesome and we are having a wonderful time learning about him, and what it means to be a family of 4.

The major transitions keep on coming, and so it with a sense of bitter sweetness that I share that this will be our last month on staff with Sojourn Collegiate Ministry.

Several months ago Amy and I began to talk and pray about our future. Those conversations led to a general feeling that it was time to head back to the West Coast. We had no clear idea what that meant, what we were going to do, or when it would happen. We only knew that it appeared God was starting to lead us back towards home.

Shortly after making that decision opportunities began to pop up, some of which seemed to make a lot of sense for our family.

Right before Thanksgiving we decided to accept an offer from Regeneration Church in Oakland, CA. Starting in January I will be their Associate Pastor (a new position for this church), helping lead the church’s efforts to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly as a community near downtown Oakland.

We are really excited to join this community and to start serving the city of Oakland. We feel like this is a strong fit for me, and for our family. I will get to use my gifts of leadership and teaching and still get to hang out with college students, but see my pastoral influence expand beyond generational ministry. There are also many opportunities for our family to lead a more integrated life, which is very exciting for us as our family grows.

We are so grateful for Sojourn and for the opportunity to serve and grow here.”

Stay tuned to the blog for more updates and stories about our transition. Thanks for reading, and for those of you who have donated money, who have prayed for us, or who have been part of our Sojourn chapter in any way, all we have is immense gratitude for helping us tell what we hope and pray has been a good story.

Happy Birthday!

Marina turns two today which, among other things, serves as the proverbial, cliched reminder that time does, indeed fly. Today I hit pause for a moment to reflect on two years of parenthood.

The first thing I would like say by way of observation is that nothing has been more disruptive to my life than becoming a parent. College was a time of transitioning and developing. Post-college brought new adulty realities into my life. Moving to Colorado to plant a church required a different level of growing up. And then marriage and moving to Boston accelerated the maturity process in all kinds of new ways.

But, nothing has been more disruptive than fatherhood.

The second thing I want to say is that this disruption has proven to be one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever received.

I say this because parenting has challenged me, has stretched me, has disrupted my selfishness and self-centeredness like nothing else. Nothing has revealed the dark parts of my soul quite as brightly as parenting.

I used to roll my eyes when my dad would say things to this effect. And certainly, I know many single people (or non-parents) who are incredibly mature and are light-years ahead of me in terms of character development.

I also want to say that I know many people who for whatever reasons are unable to have kids. Having experienced some challenges with fertility ourselves, I can also say that that challenge is every bit as forming as having kids. Maybe more so.

But, for me, and for many people I’ve talked to and pestered with questions, I understand like never before how important parenting is to becoming a mature adult with a character that has been tested and refined in the crucible of poop and fatigue and disciplining and trying to reason with a tiny, emotional human being.

God, I believe, gives us children to make us more like him.

Now, I know also know many people who had poor parental examples. I know and have heard so many stories of parenting done poorly. I know that simply reproducing doesn’t make you a better person.

But it does reveal what’s there unlike anything else. Some people look at what is revealed and choose to ignore it, run away from it, or deny it.

But if the revelation is embraced it can bring transformation. This I have also seen personally and in the lives of countless friends and family who have become incredibly beautiful people through embracing the challenges of parenting.

The last thing I would like to say, is that beyond life lessons and maturing, I am simply grateful for Marina. At two years old she is already a remarkable person, and we love discovering more about her all the time.

Happy Birthday, Kiddo! We love you!

Take A Vacation

We went camping this weekend. This was M’s first time in the woods over night. She did great.

We ate bacon:

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We jumped off stumps:

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We tried hot chocolate for the first time:

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We practiced the spiritual discipline of looking at a body of water while pondering the deeper truths of life:

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At about 7 pm on Saturday evening, M was asleep, Amy and I were reading good books, all was peaceful in our campsite, and I was beginning to compose a post in my mind about the importance of sabbathing, of getting away, even just for a day, of decompressing. I was feeling it. Space, relaxation, the ability to breath deeply. All had been missing from recent weeks and months.

And then our neighbors came back. They were loud. They used “mother-effer” as a singular, jack-hammer adjective. They had extremely negative things to say about everything and everyone they had encountered during the day.

About an hour and a half later the fireworks started. This is not good writing as I lead into a description of an all-time-camping-neighbors-go-crazy-on-each-other-epic-throwdown fight. This was the 4th of July weekend and there were literal fireworks going off for over an hour. It sounded like war.

M slept through it. Her parents not so much.

And then the snoring. Snoring that could raise the dead. I have never heard anything like this before in my life.

M slept through it. Her parents not so much.

Sunday morning was glorious even though it started at about 5:30 am or whenever the sun rose. I guess this was our revenge. M fell off the table bench and started screaming. We were cooking bacon at 6:30 am. You’re welcome, everyone else in camp!

Sabbath’s are great (although, more difficult with small children), and I am all for them. In fact, I would guess somewhere around twenty percent of the posts on this blog have to do with rest.

But sometimes, you need a vacation.

I enjoyed our quick getaway. I regret that we don’t do this more often. But even twenty-four hours leaves a lot at the mercy of neighbors and weather (we lost one day of this trip to a tropical storm because Boston’s the weirdest) and fireworks.

Make sure you take a vacation.

Tired and Hopeful

Well, another semester, another year, is wrapping up, which means time to look back and to look forward (and to start blogging again).

I’m usually pretty tired at the end of a semester, which means I’m also a little more grumpy/cynical than normal. This is the natural outcome of another year watching people make the same mistakes over and over again (even though your advice and guidance is so golden). Of another meeting where someone is on their phone the whole time. Of another person late for the millionth time. Another cancel. Another flake.

That’s life. That’s ministry. And at the end of a semester it sure feels like it has added up into a huge mound of “why-can’t-people-get-their-stuff-together.”

But despite that I can’t remember a year ending and feeling this good about life.

Fundraising has gone well, with the usual unbelievable stories that go along with it.

I am so proud of our students. This year has been packed with great stories, life change, and a very clear front-row-seat to God moving.

I love our little community in Roslindale. Having multiple friends right down the street has been life-giving.

Our family is amazing. Amy is an incredible mother, and Marina is a joy to be around (those things are very strongly correlated).

And I have a lot of hope that there are some very cool things coming up just around the bend. The future is bright. Praise the Lord.

Loving Salinas

breadbox2 I knew this year’s spring break trip would be a different experience for me than past trips. I was the primary organizer and connection for this trip, and then there was the small fact that we were bringing students to our hometown.

I knew the responsibilities would look different, and certainly the texture of the trip would feel different as well.

However, I was not prepared for how all of this would affect me emotionally. Turns out the week was a profoundly moving experience.

I challenged our students at the beginning of the week to take up three postures: that of a learner, a servant, and a teammate. They more than rose to the occasion.

As learners they asked good questions, got to know many of the people doing great work in Salinas, and demonstrated a ton of respect to our partners.

As servants they did any and every task that was asked of them, always with a happy heart.

As teammates they looked out for each other and got to know each other better by participating in meaningful activity together.

Three things really moved me about the way this group took up these challenges. First, the Mexican culture permeates Salinas, especially on the east side where we did most of our work. Mexican heritage is part of Amy’s story, and now our story, and even for a gringo like me, there’s been a lot of wrestling over the years with the divisions in our home community.

I’ll never forget spending summers working in the fields with the county and watching people treat my partner, Teo, with an incredible amount of disrespect, until they found out he actually was my boss. The harsh truth is that Mexican-Americans, and Mexican immigrants, don’t always get much respect in Salinas, but our students treated everyone they encountered with a great deal of respect, which meant a lot to me (and to the people we worked alongside during the week).

Second, when I was teaching in the Salinas school district (2002-2006) I grew to love the kids growing up on the east side. To watch our students love on and care for this next generation of Salinas youth brought me to tears on a daily basis.

Third, our students also loved our families really well. It was kind of surreal to sit in my mother-in-law’s backyard, and in my parent’s garage, with 20 people from Boston. Talk about world’s colliding. But, it was also beautiful to allow our family to extend hospitality to the student’s we’ve been investing in for the past couple years and then to see our students reciprocate with more great questions, and conversations, and thank you’s, and smiles.

So, thank you Boston friends for loving Salinas well, and for all that means for me and my family.

Be Awesome

1780167_10202444553689725_2052193352_o I plan to post several reflections on our past two weeks in California, but I’m going to work my way backwards. Mostly because our return home was pretty traumatic.

We got up at 5 am, west coast time, said tearful goodbyes and drove to SFO (where we said more tearful goodbyes). A small blessing happened at the airport when we were able to get Marina her own seat (although that did mean I had to sit a row ahead of the rest of the fam).

Everything kind of went downhill from there. Overall, M did fine on the plane, but she’s done better (she only slept 20 minutes). I came down with a head cold the day before and wasn’t feeling so hot during most of the flight.

When we finally landed in Boston (6 pm east coast time), feeling sick and tired, Stacey picked us up, we ate some dinner, and finally got home just before 8 pm. And then things got crazy.

We got everything up stairs and turned on our heat (a sad fact, in and of itself, after being in California for two weeks), and less than a minute later our house was full of smoke and the smell of smoke. Turns out there was some kind of water leak down stairs while were gone, and we’re still not sure what exactly happened but there was no way we were all sleeping in our house in that condition (today we are home, but we are still trying to fix all of this).

So, we gathered everything up again and headed to Stacey’s house (thank you for being so close and for house sitting this week). As we were hurriedly trying to get everyone and everything in the car the back gate of the Jeep falls on me and pops out my shoulder. This shoulder has been troublesome for a long time, but this episode was particularly gruesome and given the circumstances I did not handle it well.

We finally got everyone in bed sometime around 9:30. What a day.

My immediate reaction to all this? Let’s go back!

Which leads me to some thoughts I jotted down on the plane: during the week students were around, we got to hear from several great people we are connected to about how they are radically living out the ways of Jesus. Everyone who shared did a great job and challenged our group to think and act more like Jesus.

I most enjoyed listening to Ben, the lead pastor of Cypress (the church that housed our group for the week). I thought Ben shared a number of things that were extremely applicable to our students, but one significant idea stood out to me.

Ben talked about his process of growth as a person, and as a leader, and he stressed the importance of faithfulness in the small things. He said that when he tried really hard to be good at the small things, at whatever was right in front of him, then the next thing, the future, seemed to naturally make itself clear. When he stressed about the next thing, and neglected the present, everything seemed more muddled.

So Ben’s advice to our students: just be awesome at whatever you are doing right now, and then when the next thing comes, be awesome at that (which sounds very cool in an Australian accent).

A lot of our students are facing transitions: graduation, starting a new phase of their program, marriage, internships, new jobs, moving from the first half of college to the second half, all kinds of transitions.

It’s common for students to be looking ahead. As a result it is difficult to be present, and it is difficult to see the value in whatever they are involved in right now.

And it’s common for me to do the same thing: to look ahead, but also to want to run back.

Ben gave us a good word: just be awesome at school, awesome at work, awesome at being a college student, and when the next phase starts be awesome at being a PT student, or a seminary student, or a new spouse, or a new employee.

And when the next phase starts with all of its new challenges and difficulties: don’t turn around and run backwards. Last night I did not feel like I was awesome in any way, and it’s actually in those moments that our faithfulness is most tested.

Be awesome at the little things, and big things will come!

SpringBreak2014

We are back in the homeland preparing for the arrival of 17 students and 3 more staff (plus the 4 of us who are already here). I always love and look forward to Spring Break trips (for more on why, click here). But, this year is very special, because bringing students to Salinas, Monterey, and San Francisco is personal, and strangely intimate. But, I can’t wait to share the goodness with them. And there are a lot of people here who are stoked to meet them and bless them in so many ways. 3 more days!

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