Make Use of the Meantime

I sat in the pastor's office, poised in pearls and pumps. 


Pouring my blueberry smoothie earlier that morning, I'd made note to check my teeth before waltzing up into the church office all smiley. I took the smoothie to go, happily sipping as I navigated the familiar roads. I parked the car and thought, "Hey, Sadie, don't forget to check those teeth." (You learn a few things working register at Tropical Smoothie and you learn them the. hard. way.) But I got all preoccupied with making sure I could quote the bible verse printed on my birth announcement, as it set a bit of an important precedent for my life. Also because it never hurts to brush up on your scripture and also (mostly) because nothing says "let me in yo' church" like pearls and pumps and perfectly prepared scripture-spouting.


So there I am looking for the right time to insert my extensive scripture memorization skillz (ELEVEN words, people. That's impressive, I promise. "He calls His own sheep by name and leads them out." -John 10:3) (and by "the right time" I mean "before I forget.") when I remembered, "SELF! I TOLTCHOO TO CHECK YO TEETH IN THAT MIIIRE."


And thus commenced my meeting-long attempt to covertly apply tongue-suction to my front teeth without coming across like a baseball player 'bout to hock a loogie. All the while wondering if I got it all. Sometime in there the pastor insisted I call him Allan because he likes to keep his relationship with church members casual and promote open communication. In the spirit of casual communication (Careful what you wish for, Allan.) I briefly considered asking him if I did, indeed, have berries in my teeth. Luckily I heard the cautionary words of my mother from some Hallows' Eve past: "You really could pass for Jacqueline Kennedy... if you kept your mouth shut." Noted.


(I've found Mom's words in my ear usually keep my foot from my mouth, and for that I'm so grateful).


I'm telling you this so you know what that Still Small Voice is up against up there on any given Thursday morning.


Between blueberries and bible verses, it's difficult to get a word in edgewise. 


I did not ever get around to the foreboding birth announcement verse and yes, there was a honkin' chunk of blueberry in my front teeth (I checked in my rearview mirror when I got to my car and thought to myself, "SELF this is why people have planners!" Right? I'm just saying, I can keep up with gymnastics and baseball practice and therapy schedules and Thursday morning meetings with the pastor, it's the tiny details like checking my teeth for lodged fruit particles that I've got to figure out how to keep together!) 


Turns out it didn't matter one bit because this-- life--was never about how I come across.


And if all Allan could think of during our meeting was how this over-zealous, loud-talking girl who could pass for Jacqueline Kennedy if she kept her mouth shut has blueberry ALL UP IN her teeth, then he did a great job of hiding it. (Clearly his Still Small Voice has conquered distractions--like chunks of fruit threatening to attack--in such a way that mine should really take notes.)


I'm also telling you this so you can know just how unlikely was a profound moment. (Oprah calls these "aha" moments, but that makes me feel like Brandi-rella Whitney Houston is following me around with a clarity-granting wand and then I get "Impossible" stuck in my head).


Yet there I sat in the pastor's office, poised in pearls and pumps, tinkering with my words.


If you feel like "tinker" is a bad verb choice there, evoking elementary emotions where I should probably be communicating with sagacious words that prompt great insight if I'm going to take up your valuable 20 minutes, I apologize. Perhaps, like me, you're envisioning kids with tinker toys and that feels like some cheap, overused analogy. But if I'm learning anything working with five kids fifty hours a week, it's this: most elemental things are the most enduring.


I'm a big picture gal. Which sounds nice. I'll not spend money at Target because there are starving kids in Africa. Aren't I so principled? But I'll spend the money shopping online three days later. I'll make small decisions with big picture perspective that don't necessarily add up to big picture impact. So I skipped the People magazine. Mouths weren't fed by that, I just got to feel good about myself for a few days. That's frustrating.


How to  make small decisions add up correctly? Because they'll without a doubt add up to something.


Tinker.

On Easter, Mom and I paraded around town, photobombing the doorsteps of some of our most beloved Little Rock friends until we found all those families congregated at one house. (Like the ships at Pearl Harbor being grouped together, unknowingly making themselves an easier target... an analogy that was probably only helpful for me and at-best mildly offensive to you. Sorry.) These are women who've spoken encouragement and affirmation in me for as long as I can remember. They gifted me with a camera for my high school graduation because they saw something about the way I saw the world and they told me so. They instructed me to feel their embrace while I collected images and even back then I thought to myself, don't waste this. 


Don't worry, I kept my cool and totally cried upon seeing them at Easter. 

We sat around the Dodds's familiar table and shared stories of the meantime--who's done what since when? When Mom's turn rolled around, she spouted off the big stuff-- helping with her Mom in Mississippi, going to Vegas, interviewing at different hospitals with Emily, prepping for a new grandbaby, teaching a womens' group, hosting home group, throwing parties and loving on guests. 


And in between these things? Mom confessed, "I couldn't tell you what I've been doing, but it's been full time."


Such is the case with the tinkering.


I don't really have anything impressive to say about the past year of post-grad. No shrewd advice, no real accomplishment. The laundry is put away at the Owens house and when I left the Gastons on Friday, John was caught up with his worksheets. That's what I know.


I got honest in a note to Noelle (not to be confused with Notes *From* Noelle) a while back, admitting that in my prideful (and, some might add, realistic) moments I wonder why I went to college to do the same thing as the 17 year old who put "babysitting" as her hobby on the homecoming court announcement sheet (aka me, 5 years ago). This is what God had in mind? Tantrums over who gets to pitch first and the injustice of having to do schoolwork instead of play the Sims? I'm better than this.

Oh, whoa.


I bow my head as those words find their way into the space between myself and the throne. I can't even look Him in the eyes, because I know the error of my accusation. 


Like when Jack tells his dad that I sent him to his room for throwing strikes during his baseball game with Gabe--we all three know that's just not the truth. He was sent to his room for bad sportsmanship, for hitting his brother and for arguing with me when I said "enough baseball for the night." He desperately tries to convince his dad of the injustice of it all, but he looks away when Brian searches his eyes for the whole story because Jack knows he doesn't have a case.


Neither do I.


Better than this? Try again.

He graciously offers more space for more tinkering, because that last shape-- stacked with pride and vanity and selfish concern--looked nothing like the Model I'm trying to fashion with my words and attitude. 


So I'd say I've done nothing in the year it's been since my thesis won an award and I felt accomplished. But that's just not true. I can't tell you all I've done, but it's been full time and it's been worth it because the future, the calling is shaping up. The tinkering feels less unskilled and clumsy as before and that's progress and I know that for a fact because Pastor--er, Allan-- tells me he's encouraged by my blabbering even though I dropped the ball on my eleven-word-super-enlightening scripture passage and I had a whole blueberry trapped in my incisors.


Okay, it was a speck and was probably only visible when I smiled big, but still.


I know it's progress because I'm meeting with people to figure out where I can be of help and I'm learning to be passionate despite what others may think of me and God's cultivating that passion in me even in hilarious car rides on prom night. 


I believe God when He says He'll provide for those who earnestly seek His providence. These days I'm not asking Him to eradicate inconvenience or even to break my heart for what breaks his. 


Those prayers are my attempt to work things out for me.


It's inconveniencing that I haven't gotten a response from the IMB 10 weeks after a supposed 4-6 week period-- surely this is concerning to God and He must mean to provide a more rapid response to his own call.


It already breaks my heart that there are starving kids in Africa but I ask him to keep doing that as if I actually started out thinking, "starving kids in Africa... meh," and we've made steady, impressive progress on that issue. I'll put the magazine back at Target and offer up the solidarity fist in the general direction of Africa and call that "helping." 


Theoretically "break my heart for what breaks yours" is awesome, but it's so quick and generalized (at least in my own experience) that one second I'm guarding my debit card at the register and the next I'm typing out 16 numbers on Amazon. That prayer has stopped requiring thought and I only act on it when it's convenient. Essentially I'm asking Him to help me feel bad for poor people and in asking Him to do what He's already done I sneakily remove the work of hope and anticipation that comes between an earnest prayer and true deliverance. 


Only not so "sneakily" because the lack of crop yielded from lack of consistent prayer sewn is glaringly evident. 


Basically the prayers of mine read like this: "keep doing what you're doing, but more better." Charming.


No, what I want is to care about things only as much as He cares. It's not so much that I need to care more about heartbreaking things, it's that I need to care less about selfish things. And I can be earnest as all get out when I ask Him to press an issue harder on my heart but that's going to require that I care less about how I'm inconvenienced in the process and typically what pushes me to prayer more than anything is personal inconvenience, at which point I ask that He does whatever necessary to inconvenience me less and pretty soon I'm canceling out my own prayers without realizing it.


So I'm praying to care about stuff only as much as He cares about it and the hard reality of right now is that He cares very little about my stuff. And what does He care that I haven't earned a certificate for something awesome in nearly a year? What does He care that "nannying" doesn't sound cool and successful? He cares about space to tinker and room for learning the necessary elemental things. He cares about honesty and humility and community and doing what I can with what I have and where I am. He cares that I make use of the supposed meantime. 


"Supposed." Meaning, of course, that while I consider myself in a transition and I plan and work towards bigger things and I think in terms of what was and what will be and consider this the "meantime," the truth is that I'm not promised the next thing. I don't just get tomorrow and I don't just get what I want and I don't just get to tell Him I'm better than this when I'm tired of waiting. I get now and I get what I need and I get to tell Him I know He's better than this when I begin to notice that mostly I'm just paying lip service when what I really, deep down desire is greater opportunity to know and love people in a way that ushers in His kingdom. 


This week I began getting discouraged that there was not an e-mail from the IMB confirming my selection of references, allowing me to move forward with the application process. No new e-mail at 12:10 p.m. or 12:13 p.m. or 12:46 p.m. or 1:13 p.m. or 2:16 p.m. or so on and so forth. I began realizing that I will not be making the deadline once again and I felt lazy and useless and unworthy and embarrassed. 


But I'd made an appointment, so I put on the pearls and slipped on the pumps and sat with lips mostly pursed for fear of blueberry particles ruining my last semblance of put-together-adult-ness. 


But it wasn't at all about how I came across. It never is. 


In fact, Allan and I bonded over our mutual people-pleasingness and the need for black and white people to balance out our idealist selves and how I should seriously consider also printing out 2 Corinthians 5:9 and bolding "Him" ("So we make it our goal to please Him..."). The best news is that this verse is less than 10 words, so I have a chance of remembering it without having to take up teeth-checking time with studying.


Allan told me I'd encouraged him by coming in to talk, that God was using me to confirm some things he'd begun sensing during a much-needed sabbatical. I didn't ever find the appropriate words to convey the unlikelihood of being used given the distraction of the blueberries and the preoccupation with sounding scripturally insightful. 


I did collect the words to tell him how unlikely a source of encouragement I was not only because I've wrestled doubt and loneliness and apathy over the past year but also because I still have no idea where I'm headed. I got to say how much his church means to me already, how I've been craving a body of believers and accountability and service and how burdened I am by local things, which I put off involvement in because I'm not sure how much time I have before I'll be off rescuing starving African children. Catch the sarcasm.  


(not that I know which continent I'll be gracing next with all this babbling and tinkering). 


I finally said out loud that I realized I wouldn't be making *this* deadline, either. That's when the Still Small Voice won out over the blueberries and the 11 words I was intent on spewing out. 


Quit using the delay as an excuse. 
Make use of the meantime.


This afternoon after church I took "7" out on the front porch, swinging as the birds chirped along. I read the conclusion of this book that has set me to thinking about the two extra months I now have to either hang around and do whatever or to do something. 


At the very end of "7", Jen Hatmaker takes a stab at describing/addressing her readership: 


"I'm guessing you've cried over orphans or refugees or starvation or child prostitutes, heartbroken by the depravity of this world. It's not okay that your kids get school and birthday parties while Third World children get abandoned and trafficked, but you don't know how to fix that. You're wondering if your lifestyle is connected to these descrepancies, and you have a nagging suspicion that less is more but it's a muddy concept. Everyone has ideas. It's confusing and overwhelming. This creates a sort of war within, and it leaves you raw. Sometimes you're a full-blown mess over it." 


Well, yes. 


But I'm not alone. Which I now know not only because Jen Hatmaker said, "gentle reader (a title that makes me laugh every time), you are not alone" but also because when the concepts of her writing make it into everyday conversations with the real, beautiful people around me, I get head nods and hallelujahthankyoujesus's in return.


Okay, maybe not hallelujahthankyoujesus's but Brandi does use the phrase often and I love it. 


Point is I'm not alone. I've officially joined a community of people who are with me in the tinkering, desperately trying to build something with words and actions and faith that Models the Kingdom. That's right, they let me in. And it had little to do with the pearls and pumps. 


I finished "7" and picked up the camera to gather evidence that this isn't just the meantime. I don't just have anything. 


I have everything. And more. 


Dave Barnes's "Your Love Will Never Change" plays on repeat and I walk around telling God what I see and how thankful I am and saying "yes" to what's next-- tomorrow, next month, next year, in the end. 

stability-- a worn out wreath on the front door means I've lived here long enough for something the wear out. Grungy front door decoration means I don't live with threat of displacement.  

security-- easy to put too much stock in it, easily breached by someone who puts their mind to it. Imperfect. Not my hope. But I get to shut and lock the door behind me and feel safe in my home and this is privilege. 

ownership-- well, renter-ship, technically, but it's the principle of the thing. I have a space to call my own and keys for claiming that space. 

education-- I can read these words and be challenged and respond with words and writing. That gives me an advantage I spend most of my days oblivious to.

parents-- here they are, showcased in this home, loving each other. They set their priorities together and committed to each other and they aren't perfect but they're mine and I trust them and that's apparently a rare thing but I got to grow up thinking it normal. 

growth-- on my dining room table sits a orchid from Brandi's birthday. It testifies that we're surrounded by the things necessary for sustaining life, never scorched or dehydrated.  

comfort-- it's the most comfortable futon ever and if you ever come visit my house I will volunteer to take the futon and you might think it's all self-sacrificing but really it's selfish because I love this futon. And really, the futon isn't second rate sleep location fodder. In the appropriate context, it's luxury.  


Also pictured are the socks without matches, but that would still work if my feet got chilly and I felt too lazy to trek on over to my sock drawer. And then there's my purse, gifted to me at Christmas by my loving sister who wanted me to have a bag "Celine wuh like" for Vegas. It has a wallet and hairspray and Big League Chew and a book and a pencil and some toothpaste and a notebook and a few pens. All I want is within reach.  

contact-- people care enough to write and maintain relationship. Like Jill sending a note to say thank you for letting her visit when surely she must know that I'm the endlessly grateful one. 


I remember that my mailbox holds my voter registration card and the privilege of that is not lost on me since not so long ago people in this country were dying for the right to that card. Peaceful voting is a privilege. 

My parents invested in piano lessons so I could have a productive hobby and a sense of accomplishment come recital time. 

She gets knocked down, but she gets up again. Evelyn's had her share of beatings over the years, but she gets me on the internet, provides me with a blank slate for writing and houses all of the pictures. 

Clothes I've yet to hang in my closet, a handmade Christmas gift from Holly, borrowed necklace from Emily, candles for savoring, Valentines love from Mom, and a giraffe for Griffin, who is here and healthy. 

Remnants of Truett spending time at his aunts house and resting peacefully, with full confidence that he'd wake to find love and instruction, needs tended  to and wants considered. 

The luxury of entertainment, represented here by the pillowcase Mom made for me (after rudely proposing that the "Ranger thing" was "just a phase").

Morning mess that I get to leave behind because I stays here and because I get to just assume I'll be back and have the opportunity to pick up after myself. 

Water. Everywhere, whenever I want it. 

And finally, laundry-- the spokesperson for "blessing in disguise." 

"They tell me
There's songs reserved for angels
Would you sing me one, a stranger
Just to prove your love

And You know they tell me
You've given poor men kingdoms
Handed guilty freedom
Taken on their stains
Your love will never change
Your love will never change

They tell me
You dwell with good and evil
In alleys and cathedrals
Shadows and in light

And You know they tell me
You hold the world together
Not from guilt but pleasure
You somehow know my name
Your love will never change
Your love will never change

So tell me
There's nothing that You can't do
Love me though I've hurt YouYou'll take all my blame
Your love will never change."

Dave Barnes, "Your Love Will Never Change"