Oh No She Didn’t

Deana6 Comments

I am an absolute failure at telling people I disagree with them.  I hate conflict and I hate making people feel badly.  Assuming people are going to feel badly about themselves because I have a different opinion than they do is an arrogant assumption I know. I’m working on it. It’s that angle or I don’t want them to feel badly about me… I get those two confused some times.

It really is all about me most days. I just hate debating issues. I’m not good at it and I rarely win. I can tell a person what I think and feel, but if I have to defend that in such a way that it feels like the other person wants me to convince them I’m right? That’s another story all together. Most times I chose not to say anything at all and that situation has me in hot water a lot these days.

I’m in hot water because now I have all this feeling behind the opinion. And I have opinions people aren’t used to hearing. I am getting better though.

One thing I need to work on this year — getting over the whole pastor phobia deal. No seriously, you know how some people have snake phobias? Well, I have pastor phobias… especially if they are wearing that black and white death suit of theirs.  Reminds me of Darth Vader… chills.

Imagine having a pastor phobia, being in a speech class under a pastor and you hear her say THIS… to another student, loudly enough that she is obviously engaging the class:

“Well you know that Martin Luther doesn’t believe in works, right? I mean EVERYONE knows he wanted the whole book of James removed from the Bible. Lutherans only believe in Grace.” —

It really seemed like one of the pastors adamantly agreed with her. And now I am faced with two pastors on one side and I felt like defenseless cheese. 

We’re talking feelings here and not necessarily facts.

I didn’t agree with her and I wanted to throw up.  Pastor phobia, remember? That and I was wracking my brain trying to remember the REAL story behind Martin Luther and the book of James.. 

What struck me though — after I sifted through the names I wanted to call her adn how I sat there and said nothing, but stewed for two days — is I had paid almost $2,000 to be in the particular class.  My instructor is erroneously bashing Martin Luther and as a result, I feel insulted to the point that I missed every thing else she said. She had my bio, she knew I was Lutheran. My anger at her comments had rendered me speechless.

I spent a long time being angry with myself for not speaking up and now I also realise that:

1. She was incorrect not only in her theological history but in her attitude as well.

2. Her actions were  unprofessional.

And I felt powerless to do anything about it.

I want to handle things differently next time. I’m not sure how I’ll go about it yet. But I’ll figure it out.

Have you ever been there? What would you have done? How would you have handled it?

Cooking with men

Deana1 Comment

“I really like hanging out with the O’Hara’s. They laugh all the time.” — my youngest son’s girlfriend.

Being snowed in for Christmas break was fun. I had all three of my guys home with me and we all pitched in to make Christmas, well, Christmas this year.  They helped bake cookies, cook meals and hang Christmas lights. They even hung an upside dummy off our porch to make it look like someone fell off the roof while hanging lights.  Sadly the ice storm did him in before I could photograph their feat.

I would have taken a picture before the storm but I was too busy screaming and catching my breath every time I walked outside because I kept forgetting it was there. Life with boys is always an adventure.

On one of our snowed in days I decided to make gingerbread men. I baked the men and they all decorated them. Honestly, I’m surprised that there are no serious mutations, or zombies in this batch. The worst one is the wet diaper dude. And that one was created by my husband. I won’t be taking thes to a church social or anything. It was a just for us kind of deal.

Of course my oldest son, who is home from college, decided to dedicate one of our gingerbread men to Comic Tim Hawkins.

Seems the “fire ants” (red sugar crystals) have eaten this poor guy’s leg down to the bone already. You have to see the Fire Ant song on his newest DVD to totally get this. I think it’s hilarious.

That’s what happens when you are the only female in a house full of men. You laugh at really crazy things, like potty jokes, “that’s what she said” stuff, and you laugh at mutilated gingerbread men. It just happens.

Knowing that other people see us as a family that loves to laugh is a nice thing. We are real people, we don’t laugh all of the time. But we laugh a lot and I like that.

How often do you laugh at home? Every day? Every week? Rarely?  Why not make a promise to yourself and to your family to find something silly to laugh about just for today and see what kind of difference it makes.

Finding My Story for 2010

Deana6 Comments

I was going to post a blog today about my new resolutions, until I read Donald Miller’s Post on Living a Good Story. (You have got to read it, seriously. Awesome piece) No one is asking me to endorse it, I just happened to catch the link on Twitter today and thought WOW, this is so it! And that post is why I am changing how I look at both 2009 and 2010.

“When you do tell your story, don’t sound like the victim. If you do, you’ll sound like you’re whining. Just be truthful in telling your story and aim to discover that slice of humanity that others can relate to.”  David Pierce, to me last summer, author of “Don’t Let Me Go.”

Stories can capture the soul or bore you stupid, kind of like my blog some days.   I’m going through midlife puberty and my voice is changing. Some days I nail it, mostly I squeak. My “mom” days are coming to a close. It’s a scary season for me. I’m still needed, but not in the same way.

I do find it interesting , that my top two blog entries in 2009 were on Letting Go and Understanding our Identity in Christ, By: Cj Rapp. Both received hundreds of hits a piece and they were the most commonly searched topics.

I did not begin 2009 with a story in mind and yet looking back, those two pieces nail it. Letting Go of what holds me back and finding my identity in Christ is the story of 2009 at least for me.  Christ loves me, not because of what I do or don’t do, but because I breath in and out.  I can’t do a single thing to make Him love me less, or love me more than he does right now. WOW. 

That was God’s gift to me last year.  That knowing that I wanted so desperately in January. Remember my verse for the year? – Ephesians 3:17-19. “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

I “get” it today.

 My goals for 2009 were pretty vague – memorize 24 scripture verses, survive graduation and my son leaving for college, lose 60 lbs (didn’t happen) — I was also going to quit smoking, but I copped a resentment last summer and well, that didn’t happen either. — And yes, I am self destructive when I’m feeling resentful. Even so, stopping smoking is a requirement for the story I want to live in 2010.

 

I’m back at square one today. I’m throwing away my resoltions and I’m looking for the story of 2010. What story do I want to live? I’m not sure yet. That will take some thought.

I’m going to take the advice from a teacher again- my story for 2010won’t involve being a victim, no whining might take some work, and it will be truthful. Truthful to God, to my family, and to myself.

How about you? What story do you want to live in 2010? I’d love to hear from you.

EDITED TO ADD:  _– a neurotic note to say  How quickly I forget,  — Donald Miller wrote Blue Like Jazz, one of my favorite books of all time – no wonder his piece on stories not resolutions spoke to me so well. 

Read this guy.. I’m glad I found him again.. I feel a bookstore afternoon coming up.

Oh Dear Heavens, I’m Naked! 2009 In Review

Deana1 Comment

There is a near naked woman on my Christmas Cards and it’s me! I’m not totally naked, it’s just that my favorite blouse (the one I’m wearing in our Christmas Card photo) is see through and nobody told me. I want to shoot my family and my overly polite friends who simply thought — “She has to know.” NO I did not know! And I ordered over 50 cards with that photo thank you very much. They’ll tell me I have lipstick on my teeth – but a see through blouse goes unmentioned.

Nice.

I know I said I wanted to be more transparent in 2009 but that is not what I meant. Hence, no cards were mailed this year. 2009 is the year my life turned inside out and upside down. Shaking out the cobwebs, dust and loose change I am not just on the precipice of change but smack center of it all. What an exhilarating ride. My oldest left for college. My youngest is learning how to drive. My husband’s band released their first musical CD and I made a rather drastic career change. I also made new friends, new enemies, and a fool of myself more than once. Good news is, I didn’t die.

Having spent the past 20 years as Jeff’s wife, and Charlie and Dillon’s Mom I began 2009 with very little clue about who Deana really is. I decided that I wanted to know her better and follow God’s path more than my own or anyone else‘s for that matter. Instead of my annual Christmas letter, I thought I’d answer Michael Hyatt’s Seven Questions for Last Year. If you’d like to do that same — see his original post for more information.

　

If the last year were a movie of your life, what would the genre be? Drama, romance, adventure, comedy, tragedy, or a combination?

  • Comedy and Adventure —

What were the two or three major themes that kept recurring? These can be single words or phrases. For me, they were:

  • Giving my family wings
  • Learning to use my own wings
  • Learning to get along with less and enjoying it more

What did you accomplish this past year that you are the most proud of? These can be in any area of your life—spiritual, relational, vocational physical, etc. Be as specific as possible.

  • Going to the Professional Communicator’s Summit as well as DCW with my husband
  • Coming out of the fear closet if you will and admitting I want to do stand up comedy and trying not to worry what people think about that.
  • Performing live comedy in front of some of my greatest heroes at CCA. I was terrified, but did not die.
  • Opening for Dan McGowan
  • Resigning from the Ablaze Church Mission Board – — It was time to move on. Ablaze is now established as a satellite location of our home congregation Our Savior Lutheran Church. I’m very proud of what we accomplished. By next year they will be looking at opening a pre-school and calling a full time pastor. Knowing I played a part in God’s overall plan for that congregation thrills me and humbles me all at once. It was an awesome three years.

　What do you feel you should have been acknowledged for but weren’t?

Leaving this one blank here — but it’s a good question to ask and think about.

What disappointments or regrets did you experience this past year? As leaders, we naturally have high expectations of ourselves and others. Where did you let yourself down? Where did you let others down?

  • Booking a retreat for my husband and I without checking out the leader’s qualifications: Turns out he only works with A-List performers and I feel like we probably wasted his time and as a result, ours. I was wanting to do something “really great” for my husband and overshot the runway in the process.
  • Losing focus on my exercise regimen and having to keep re-starting it
  • Picking a fight with someone I admire on his own blog (not the first time I’ve done that, but I kinda called him an overstuffed pig who plays with puppets and can’t keep a day job.. NOT NICE and not me )– when in reality he isn’t who I was mad at. I made an idiot out of myself.
  • Not being as present in the moment with my family as they want and need.
  • Not being as excited about Jeff’s new CD as Jeff was — All I saw was time spent away from home and forgot to cherish and celebrate his hard work and accomplishment with him like he deserved.

What was missing from last year as you look back? Again, look at each major area of your life. Don’t focus now on having to do anything about it. For now, just list each item. Here is my list:

  • More time doing what I feel called to do and less time worrying about what other think.
  • More time reading great literature and not just junk food
  • Time to really unplug and not think about work
  • More time with my husband

What were the major life-lessons you learned this past year? Boil this down to a few short, pithy statements.

  • A life without something to dream and pursue creates bitterness. It is better to pursue a dream and fall short than to hide your heart and fall asleep.
  • I can make a fool out of myself and actually live to tell about it.
  • It’s okay if I don’t like everyone I meet and it’s okay if everyone I meet does not like me.
  • Don’t over-think the outcome; just do the next right thing.

　

“This year is over. I declare it complete!”

White Christmas..Slip Sliding Away..

Deana2 Comments

(Dear Readers: I do apologize for the subscription update with the bad link that all of you received this morning. I am experiencing techinical difficulties with that post — the internet ate it — I will be reposting that story after the first of the year. Thanks)

***************

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas…. and snow plows please. Tulsa has them, but apparently Broken Arrow does not. We’ve been snowed in for a few days. I don’t mind really. It’s Christmas and my family is home. My groceries are stocked, and we’re content to stay in our jammies, light up the fireplace and drink hot cocoa.

The gentle rain turned to hail, then snow on Christmas Eve leaving a blanket of a foot or more in our part of town. The drifts are much higher and City Hall seems to have taken on the belief that it will melt eventually therefore Broken Arrow didn’t really bother plowing. The roads they did try to plow, are plowed down to the ice. I did venture out to get Dillon’s prescription refilled and that is about as adventurous as I’m willing to be. I don’t like fishtailing on main roads.

Our Christmas Eve candlight services were cancelled, as was Ablaze Church on Saturday night.  We opened our house Saturday night and had an end of year pot luck for anyone on the team who could make it. Several people were able to make it and we enjoyed the fellowship of friends.

Our former Pastor, Dr Reed Lessing, was in town and was preaching on Sunday.  I didn’t care about the snow. Dr Lessing is my first real pastor and his family means the world to us.  Nothing short of the apocolypse was going to keep us away from seeing them. And so we did venture out for that.  Totally worth it.

I will be posting a year end review for Ablaze Church as well as our family ministry updates by Wednesday. Until then… I’ll share some Christmas Photos.  Have a blessed week ya’ll.

Christmas Eve in front of our house.
Christmas Morning
Our Neighborhood looks so peaceful.

The Liturgical Year: Joan Chittister

Deana10 Comments
Click on Cover to preview this book

Please note: If you landed here because you are looking for Reverend Mason Beecroft – you aren’t going to find him here. I’ve noticed a lot of y’all are searching for him. (At least that’s what my stats show) I wish I knew where he was, but I do not. He was a mentor of mine for a while and I too cared about him as many of you. He is a brilliant theologian. For now, he is under the radar. I trust when he wants to come back, he will. In the mean time, grant him his peace and respite from all that entangles.  — God’s blessings, Deana

The Liturgical Year: the spiraling adventure of the spiritual life

Written by: Joan Chittister

Book Description

A journey of the soul through the map of Christian time.

The liturgical year, beginning on the first Sunday of Advent and carrying through the following November, is the year that sets out to attune the life of the Christian to the life of Jesus, the Christ.

This book sets out to open what may at first seem to be simply an arbitrary arrangement of ancient holy days, or liturgical seasons, to their essential relationship to one another and their ongoing meaning to us today. It is an excursion into life from the Christian perspective, from the viewpoint of those who set out not only to follow Jesus but to live as Jesus lived and to think as Jesus thought.

It proposes, year after year, to immerse us over and over again into the sense and substance of the Christian life until, eventually, we become what we say we are-followers of Jesus all the way to the heart of God. It is an adventure in human growth; it is an exercise in spiritual ripening.

My Review

How do you solve a problem like liturgy?

How do you explain to someone in the modern world the value of living a liturgical life without sounding pious?

Meet Sister Joan Chittister, OSB, Benedictine nun, international speaker, author of “The Liturgical Year: The Spiraling Adventure of the Spiritual Life.” and you answer both of those questions. Joan is well educated and everything but pious. She is humble and very transparent. She is able to answer those questions because she asked them herself and lived to talk about. Joan writes from the heart.

I have to admit that once I started reading The Liturgical Year, my own inadequate knowledge of real liturgy hit me square between the eyes. That was shocking to me because Missouri Synod Lutherans ARE Liturgical.

I’m not Catholic, I’m Lutheran. I’m part of a church plant and I prefer Praise and Worship to Liturgy.  This book and the author’s gentle and pursuasive argument for the spiritual adventures found within the full liturgical year, brought me back again and again to the same question:

Am I missing something in my worship?

Being a member of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, there are parts of her book that I do not understand or agree with. However, I’m giving this book 5 stars. Why? It made me hungry for more. This book resonates within my own spirit therefor, my husband and I are making the personal sacrifice of getting up earlier on Sunday and attending a High Liturgy LCMS Congregation for early service for one full Liturgical year, (we started the first weekend in Advent) so that we can learn more.  My husband, the praise and worship leader at the mission start, wants to learn more as well.  This extra worship service is on top of our regular church services across town. We will attend both churches for one full year.

Let the adventure begin.

I am a member of Thomas Nelson’s Book Review Blogger program. If you would like more information on this program see http://brb.thomasnelson.com/

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My First Hate Letter

Deana8 Comments

It was bound to happen sooner or later.

Someone, somewhere was going to tell me that because I’m a Christian and a Comic I shouldn’t tell jokes about X.

It doesn’t really matter what the X is because it is different for everyone. This person was offended because I was telling Tiger Woods jokes. I think because he’s an international celebrity, he is fair game. She thinks because I’m a Christian I should know better. She chose to be offended, and I chose to allow her to feel that way, and she has now unfriended me on facebook. I’m okay with that. Why?

1. I am a professional comic. I can call myself that because I do actually get paid to perform now. Paycheck = the right to call yourself professional in my opinion. If I want to keep getting a paycheck, I need to write and tell jokes. That’s how it works.

2. Yes, I am a Christian. And I do keep that in mind in my set. Meaning I don’t swear or tell dirty jokes. I keep my humor clean. I do not intentionally set out to offend people, but it is going to happen from time to time. I can’t control that.

3. Just because I’m a Christian who happens to be a comic does not make me a “Christian Comic.”  That’s just a marketing term that was coined a few years back. It doesn’t mean anything really.

4. We live in an overly sensitive politically correct society and it’s got to stop. Sooner or later, I will offend you. I spent the first 40 years of my life trying to please people, being crushed over anytime I offended someone in the slightest and have a hefty mental health bill to show for it — translation, my people pleasing drove me to a nervous breakdown five years ago. I don’t want to go back here.

So there you have it in a nutshell. As my friend Joie put it to me this afternoon, “I’m sorry if I haven’t offended you yet. Please give me some time and I’m sure I will.”

Peace Out Ya’ll

I See Dead People

Deana3 Comments

A pastor has three big sermons to write. He has a funeral on Friday, a wedding on Saturday and his regular Sunday Sermon.  Friday morning arrives and he hands his receptionist what he believes is his funeral message and tells her to put it in the pulpit for him. 

While she is walking toward the sanctuary, she realizes he’s given her the wrong sermon. The opening line is a qoute from the movie Sixth Sense, “I see dead people.”

Question.

Does she tell the pastor he made a mistake? Or does she do what she is told?

Home for Thanksgiving

Deana2 Comments
Dillon and Charlie

I tend to over do the holidays. I over cook, over decorate and over stress.  We live too far away from family to be able to celebrate with them and I feel guilty about that sometimes.  I work myself into a tizzy making sure they enjoy the day and don’t miss anything.

This year, all I wanted for Thanksgiving was my son home from school and someone else to cook the turkey.

I got my wish. Charlie was able to drive in for the day and Jeff bought a deep fryer and made the turkey.

 

 

Our Turkey -- Jeff did a great job.

I still cooked way too much food and that is okay. We had a wonderful day together.

How was your Thanksgiving? Did you do anything special?

Thomas Merton on Gratitude

Deana6 Comments

Gratitude is more than a mental exercise, more than a formula of words. We cannot be satisfied to make a mental note of things which God has done for us and then perfunctorily thank Him for favors received.

To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything He has given us — and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is grace, for it brings with us immense graces from Him. Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder, and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference… Gratitude is therefore the heart of the Christian life.