1. Working is not the reason I don't cook. Being unable to make decisions is the reason I don't cook. There's no time to decide what everyone would like to eat. The kids are hungry at 4, and then at 6 and then at 8 (conveniently just as you're putting them into bed) and oh, John already ate and now the dog is scratching at the cabinet..."did anyone feed the fish?" The kids want macaroni and cheese, but not THAT kind of macaroni and cheese; and "Aunt Stephanie, my bread looks funny!"; and "Mom, I just want a snack." Translation: "mom, I want to eat something processed that probably causes cancer." Translation: they WANT me to lose my freakin' mind.... Ten days into my thirteen days off I found myself in the kitchen at 9 pm burning my mouth on a Chef Boyarde dinner...followed by standing like a person just out of prison over a Captain Crunch dessert. Deja vu from the nights I arrive home from church after a 12 hour day.
2. I can go to the Library every day without getting bored.
3. There are a lot of lonely people out there. On the computers in the Libraries, on park benches and local city trails, behind the counter at the local sandwich shop....we're plugged in but we're not connecting. The mission field is all around us if we can shut down our laptops and turn off our office lights. If the church is looking for its unique niche, its priceless product, let me offer up a suggestion: God provides a conduit of grace through which we can connect with one another.
4. "Connecting" is challenging when you're a pastor who looks like a high school girl. "What do you do?" is a question that I skillfully dance around. "I work at a church" has become my best bet to an easy escape. It's not a lie and it typically doesn't encourage further conversation. Unless, of course, they follow it with "What do you do at the church?" The response, "I'm a pastor," comes with a closed-eyes cringe and a desperate urge to sprint screaming with my hands over my ears. If you're judging me right now (I can feel it!) then let me give you a small yet representative sample of the typical response I have become accustomed to: "Well, if my pastor looked like you, I would come to church more often!" OR "Really?! Thank you, Thank you so much for being a pastor, I'm sure that's not easy for a woman." No matter the version of the above commentary, it never leads to deeper connection and always leaves me feeling like some objectified alien life form. So, yes, I give my husband the "shut up" eyes when he outs me in public and avoid situations where the conversation of career might come up. I'd like to just be me and all that gets super weird super quick when people gift me with their pastor projections. And so, I am a busy person who doesn't cook and who feels alone and therefore is pretty much just like most everyone else minus maybe people who are either lying or are currently running through a field in some new drug commercial. So, here's my stay-cation-because-I-am-paying-seminary-debt-for-the-rest-of-my-life-and-can't-fly-to-the-beach insight: if the pastor surrounded by other lonely people is unable to share the love of God because she doesn't want to feel the discomfort of the "you're a pastor?!?" reaction... I have to wonder if the decline in the participation of religious organizations in America has less to do with our inability to connect than with our own unwillingness to sacrifice our own comfort to do so.
5. There isn't enough time. Even on stay-cation there isn't enough time to cook, to keep a clean house, to take the dog for a walk, to call friends, to nap, to 'catch up', to pray, to write, to listen.... Our lives, my life, are the results of failing to understand that each moment is filled with inevitable, impossible choices: to sustain the institution or to serve God; to be a mom or to be pastor; to feed the dog or feed myself. We can't 'do it all' and we can't 'win'. It's overwhelmingly humbling to experience this chronic and inescapable limitedness only to pass out in exhaustion and awaken in the arms of Grace...this has been the essence of my stay-cation; an awakening to Grace. Deep Grace. Not the grace we call on when we feel we have failed to make the "right" choice or done a "bad thing" but the Grace we need because our limits determine that we have to make choices within which there are both elements of loss and gain. Deep Grace is the substance saturating the million momentary choices that we either encounter with despair or embrace with intentionally. In the ideal example, we strive to see these choices as opportunities in which God uses our lives to make Love visible. More often, our choices are occasions of learning; who God is, who we are...all the while bobbing in the deepness of these uncertain waters of our enlightened unknowing. Understood as this water which supports us, this Deep Grace offers us a calming Peace in the rhythm of the ticking clock. For it is in this return to constant awareness in which we are reminded of our purpose as limited creatures. Not to overcome these limits with some faith-based algorithm but by intentionally seeking out God in each moment. Here's the thing, we are created not as conquerors but as creatures and because of this we are not to become winners but to be faithful wanderers. Grace rounds us out and makes us whole when our very nature prevents this from being possible. Grace trumps our decisions without making the choices irrelevant because regardless of these ambiguously labeled roads we take, the side streets we drift off toward, the stop signs we run right through, our driving habits never define us. God defines us, always and everywhere, as Beloved Children. We live in a world swallowed up by impossible choices and invisible solutions but Grace, Grace, transforms the inevitable losses of time into our eternal promises in Life. And I am grateful for this ticking clock that has become the spotlight for the invisible Grace which makes me whole and awakens me to the possibilities of God in the realities of my limits.
