Why "Interrupted" made me cry

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My recent read through Jen Hatmaker's revised edition of "Interrupted" provoked a crazy need to underline.  I'm not normally an underliner.  It wasn't until my second semester of University that someone mentioned they highlight.  Oh.  My.  Goodness.  Marking a book?  You've got to be kidding me!  This has always been a no-no in my perfectionist little rule-following world.  However, I was transformed and went from reluctantly underlining in pencil to highlighting in with fluorescent highlighters that cannot be removed.  It changed my world.

When I read this recent version of "Interrupted" it was a digital copy....You can highlight and remove and re-highlight and change colours and whatever else you want to do.  And, you can pull up the list of highlights.  Hello world!  This is not what made me cry!!

This week I have been reflecting on the things I highlighted.  Trying to make sense of what it means to be broken by God and desperately wanting to be put back together.  To find a way forward.  To know what it is I need to do with what God is showing me.  Overwhelmingly, my highlights were focused on how we need to transform the way we walk our faith in ordinary life.  How Jesus' life showed a love-first, sold-out poured-out for others  way of life.  About the hope that we have and how just loving others completely, practically, in the places they are is the most effective way to show them who Jesus is and who He wants to be in their lives.

"Our only hope is to follow the example of 
Jesus and get back out there, 

winning people over with ridiculous 
love and a lifestyle that causes them to 

finally sit up and take notice"

                                     ~ Jen Hatmaker, "Interrupted"

I cried my way through this book because not only was there a line in there just for me ("Are you a teacher?  Your school is a mission field, plain and simple"), but the whole way through there is this thread that reminded me....As Christians we are called to just love others.  This is what Jesus lived.  Not just to offer 'church' with its programs, events, Bible studies and all its various ministries.  Although those things are not bad or wrong; in fact many of these things are quite good.  But just to love others authentically, in relationships, in lowly places, with real people.  To love "ridiculously".

I don't know what that looks like for me yet, besides that I called to teach.  I'm trying to be content with the process for now.  Jen says this part of the process took about six months, for her.  I need to just be patient (not really my thing!).  I know my season of preparation is nearly done and I don't know where I will be planted next year.  In the meantime I am contemplating, reading, reflecting and praying.  And crying.

I wonder if the tears will ever be done with?

In the meantime I can love on people where I am right now...I just feel so tied because of the things I need to be doing right now.  And my kids wonder why I insist on "payment in hugs"!

Books on my shelf...

I have been ordering up myself a little storm of books in the last month.  That ill-informed 'break my heart....' prayer was the catalyst.  I'm not normally a non-fiction reader, by choice, but I am about to change all that.  I suspect my heart will be broken even further, but I'm  hoping the first three books on my pile will bring hope and a way forward as well.

The Nesting Place is there because my house has always been 'functional', but not particularly 'beautiful'.  I'm hoping to gain some inspiration and some direction.  I feel an imminent shedding of 'stuff' and more deliberate choices are on the horizon.  A balance of nostalgic items and how to organise rooms to reflect our history and our current place in life.

And children's picture books because life is too short to be without them.  The Swap and Granny Grommet and Me are both shortlisted for Children's Book Week this year and they are just beautiful.  The Vegetable Ark is a slant on the Biblical story of Noah's Ark - a great book for teaching critical literacy, especially in a Christian school.  And whatever else they are, they are just lovely stories that simply had to join the collection on my bookshelf.

These Are the Rules of the World

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In the last week I have found myself saying "but these are the rules" quite often, so I thought I'd share the rules of the world, as I know them to be.

Rule #1: the rules of the world are that Australia has to win the Commonwealth Games.  Russia, China and the USA duke it out for the Olympics.  There's just so many people in those countries and apparently so many athletes to choose from, so we don't get much of a look-in.  But the Commonwealth Games are ours.  And it started off that way this time, but then England decided to go ahead and do its own thing.  I don't know England...what did you think you were doing there?  I don't even know why we have to have this conversation!  The Games weren't even in England, you know, because home-ground advantage seems to be the only thing that might be a reason for breaking the rules.  Clearly you forgot yourselves this time.  It's OK though, the Games are coming to the Gold Coast next time so I hope you realise that home-ground advantage and 'the rules' mean we're back on top.

Rule #2: the rules of the world are that children are the ones who make cups of tea for the adults in the house.  When I say 'children' you know I mean kids who are old enough to mess with boiling water and teabags and milk and balance two cups at once without spilling it on themselves and causing a third degree burn, right?  Well, Miss Sunshine seems to have misinterpreted the rules as well.  It seems to be the week. She asked Mr Busy to make her a cup of tea the other day.  I told her that's not the rules...kids make adults cups of tea, kids don't make kids cups of tea.  Other kids can't request a cup of tea and have another kid make it.  That's just not how it works.  Quick as a wink she pipes up "I am an adult".

Apparently this rule needs some careful clarification.

Miss Sunshine is not a 'grown-up' adult.  She's still a teenager.  She's still at school.  She still needs to get told to do her dishes jobs.  Clearly she is not a grown-up!  So I have explained to her that the people in the house who are the same generation are not cup-of-tea-slaves for one another.  Only the grown-up generation can request a cup of tea from the younger generation of the household and expect to have it made for them.  That is why we have children are all.  So we can rest our weary bones at the end of the day and have our children give us some cup-of-tea love.  Miss Sunshine hasn't wrestled the will of a child throughout her day so she has to make her own.

There you go people.  Those are the rules.



#IBOT

The Parenting Files: Failure and Mercy

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I've said, recently, that when pushed to make the gut-wrenching choice between justice and mercy, I'm a justice girl.  Mercy is something that I live under, yet have to work so hard to live out.  Justice, however, just makes so much sense to me.  I can do justice compassionately with the aim of restoration, but mercy is a whole other thing.

I read an absolutely beautiful article the other day about offering mercy when our children mess up.  I know with the very depths of my being that "good kids do dumb stuff".  I first read that in For Parents Only (Feldham & Rice) and it has been my mantra ever since.  Then that sentence visited my family and I had a very good kid do a very dumb thing.   So when I read this guest article the other day from Jen Hatmaker at "All Mom Does" it resonated so deeply for me.  There is no way I could say this better than Jen, so I would encourage you to read her article.  I would click you over there myself if I could.

In our experience with the good kid and the dumb thing, we required much from said kid once the 'dumb thing' was brought to our attention.  There were a lot of conversations and a lot of digging to get to the heart of the 'dumb thing'.  There were many excruciating steps to restoration.  I'm sure 'the kid' felt like a bug under a microscope.  But it was an opportunity for us to speak into this young life and offer words of life and restoration.  Words that called out the qualities we see in this precious child and a determination not to allow a behaviour to define the future.

"We mess up, we fess up, we own up, we make up.  

It's that simple" 

(Jen Hatmaker)

We call the dumb thing 'the blip' these days.  An affectionate term for a defining moment in this child's life in which we required much but left the 'dumb thing' where it belonged.  It was done.

World Day Against Trafficking in Persons

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Ever since I heard about the International Justice Mission I've been reading their Aussie Facebook page and trawling through both their International and Australian websites.  These people are truly heroes in the developing world.  They are feet-on-the-ground, supporting people who need justice and  support to recover and thrive.

As I was reading their Facebook page this week I discovered that today is "World Day Against Trafficking in Persons".  The statistics for this crime are heartbreaking:  68% of the victims of people trafficking in Africa and the Middle East are children.  Children!  Sixty percent of all victims of people trafficking are women.

These statistics are devastating and infuriating.  It is completely incomprehensible to me, in my very safe corner of the world, that people are experiencing this as their reality.  I just don't even have language or coherent thoughts about how to begin expressing how I feel when I imagine what a woman or a child might endure in such a situation.  And I have a completely uneducated brain on the subject.  I'm about to remedy that - I'm awaiting the arrival of "The Locust Effect" by Gary Haugen and Victor Boutros and "Half the Sky" by Nicholas Kristoff. 

So even though I know almost nothing I am again experiencing heartbreak.  That "break my heart for what breaks Yours" prayer is bursting to the top of my 'urgent' pile again, refusing to be assuaged by a "someone else will take care of it" approach, which would be so easy.

UNODC have some suggestions for people who don't know what to do in a brochure which you can find here.  You could also find ways to support the International Justice Mission who are doing the hard yards to rescue people, get justice for them and help them to recover.  They have suggestions on their website.

If you have social media accounts for Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr you could go here and join the ThunderClap campgain.  It looks easy enough...if you're a social media kind of person.  Not like me!

We can all take a step from where we are now towards rescuing those being trafficked.  How bizarre that all these years after William Wilberforce put a stop to slavery it seems that not a lot has changed.

Book Review: "Interrupted" by Jen Hatmaker

Interrupted: An Adventure in Relearning the Essentials of Faith
(revised and expanded)

By Jen Hatmaker

Publisher’s Synopsis:

Interrupted follows the author’s messy journey through life and church and into living on mission. Snatching Jen from the grip of her consumer life, God began asking her questions like, “What is really the point of My Church? What have I really asked of you?” She was far too busy doing church than being church, even as a pastor’s wife, an author of five Christian books, and a committed believer for 26 years. She discovered she had missed the point.

Christ brought Jen and her family to a place of living on mission by asking them tough questions, leading them through Scripture, and walking together with them on the path. Interrupted invites readers to take a similar journey.

What I thought: 

Are you a Christ-follower who feels tired and dry?  Who wonders if there is more to living a life of faith than attending a church that meets your needs?  Yes?  Then Interrupted is the book for you.  Oozing with her unique down-to-earth style, humour and wit Jen will guide you through the dry spell towards a love-first way to live your faith.  This book is about Jen’s journey through the dry, the questions, the heart change and a way to doing life the way Jesus modelled for us.  Our stories will look different, but Jen is the friend who will offer you wise counsel, Biblical principles and a way forward to radical faith.

 

This revised and expanded edition of Interrupted brings the book from being about one woman’s journey and story to ensuring the message will remain the timeless encouragement it needs to be.  Rather than being organised in the seasons in which this story occurred it is now organised into the phases of the journey.  This edition also begins with an introduction to the new-look version and Jen’s encouragement for those of us beginning our own season of wrestling: “don’t you dare identify with the message but feel alone”.  Even if you’ve already read Interrupted, the introduction to this edition, alone, is worth buying the book again.

Jen Hatmaker is a woman of integrity and one of this generation's faith heroes who will challenge and inspire you to life a different version of Christianity.  As you read Interrupted you will feel like you're hanging out with your best friend whilst being challenged to the very heart of everything you thought you knew about church.  She will give voice and language to your questions and gently guide you, with Biblical authority, through the journey to living a life committed to being poured out for the people outside the walls of the church:  the unsaved, the hopeless, the last, the least and the poor.

Interrupted is not an ‘easy’ book to read.  I cried my way through the entire thing this second time through!  It touched the very nerve of how I was feeling and showed me a different way to live my faith.  I have underlined half the book!  This may well be the most significant, game-changer you will ever lay your hands on!

With thanks to Tyndale Publishing for my review copy.
This review is my own opinion.  I have not received payment, nor been coerced to provide a particular view of this book. 

Three Things You Should Never Say to God (there are probably more!)

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Have you ever had an experience where you said something to God and He did the exact opposite?  Or He took you seriously?  Or He listened to what you said and not what you meant?

Yeah.  It's something no one warns you about.

So here are some things you should never say to God:

1. I never want to live in [insert name of place].
   We ended up living in all of the places a certain adult in my family named (I was a child.  It wasn't me).  It turned out pretty well in the end but....well...you should never say those things if you actually don't want to go somewhere.  I stupidly repeated this error myself, as an adult, and here I live in the very town I didn't want to move to.  And like my parents, we've ended up loving being here.  OK, so maybe this is a prayer worth praying.  The results are surprisingly good.  It won't seem like it at the time though.
2. I never want to marry [insert name].
   Can't tell you how many people I know who said they would never marry a certain person and then ended up marrying that exact person.  Sense of humour anyone?  Mr Busy assures me he will never marry the girl I adore in his class.  He's doomed.
3. Break my heart for what breaks Yours.
   Never, never say this out loud to God if what you mean is "give me a special thing to do that is meaningful to me.  And You".

Over the summer I read Jen Hatmaker's "7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess" and "Interrupted".  That began a bit of a ... I don't know what to call it.  A shift?  A crack?  A dislodging of something quite deep?  I don't know.  But something.  After some really hard work in the past few months and busting through a ridiculously stubborn wall, spiritually, I got to the point where I wanted God to put a passion for something in my heart.  But that's not what I said.  What I said was "break my heart for what breaks Yours".  So, so not smart.  It's not pretty.  It's not easy.  And it hurts when your heart breaks.  Why on earth did I pray that prayer?

Over the past two weeks I've been reading blog posts from a group of women (including Jen Hatmaker) who have just been on a trip to Rwanda, called "Style for Justice" (click on the link for links to each of the stories).  This group of women told heartbreaking stories from Rwanda.  The injustices.  The challenges.  The unspeakable atrocities endured by these people who have lost so much.  And they told stories of hope.  Strength.  Determination.  Faith.

I cried an ocean for the week. 

Then I began reading "Dear Mr Knightly" by Katherine Reay.  More heartbreak as I read about a young woman trying to overcome her coping mechanisms and insecurities developed through years in the foster care system.

More heartbroken oceans of tears.

At one point I just had to put the book down and walk away to have a chat with God.  "What do I do with all this  now that You've broken my heart?  I don't have a 'thing' I'm  passionate about.  I can't even buy Noonday jewellery because they won't ship to Australia...and now I feel guilty because I'm meant to do something about and for the poor, the homeless, the widowed, the orphaned and the oppressed.  What do I do?" I asked.

"I want you to teach", blew quietly across my heart.

Oh.  That's right.  I am passionate about that!

I'm too scared to ask what that will look like.  My heart is for Christian education...I don't think I want to know if that's not my path!!!  Maybe I'll just focus on finishing my degree. Eleven and a half weeks to go.

Just so you know - word your prayers carefully.