Time for a Break

It's time to get out of New Orleans. After the incident on Sunday with the guy yelling at me for stopping where there was no stop sign, I was starting to feel the city close in on me. All week I've been honked at for driving too slow, too fast or not moving fast enough when the light turns green. Today as I was walking through the Quarter people were blaring on their horns right and left. I made my way back over to my secret parking spot (secret because it's free) and pulled out to leave. Because the street dead ends, you have to make a left onto a one way street. I did that and started to drive down it only to have the car in front of me fly into reverse and come at me very quickly. I laid on the horn thinking that I was seconds away from getting hit. Rather than going forward down the one way street, the car stopped until I backed up so they could go through and then the lady leaned out the window and started yelling at me for going the RIGHT way on a one way street.

I'm ready for a break - I'm ready to go to a place where people don't regularly yell at you for legally driving - I'm ready to not worry about potholes and crime for a few days. I'm lucky, I get to leave. As frustrated as I am with the crazy lady today, I can't help but wonder what her life has been like in the last 3 years. Did she lose everything? Has she fought back only to find her Road Home money fall through? Do her kids go to the terrible public schools? Does she live in a neighborhood where she fears being shot on a daily basis?

Some days it seems like the whole city is just pissed off, but I guess that people do have a lot to be pissed off about. I asked my friend David English for some advice on living in the middle of this craziness. Here's a little portion of the email he sent me:

There are things that cause us to be emotionally sad or feel something
like that. Sadness is an emotion we feel when there seems to be no
control we can exercise. It also happens when our expectations are not
fulfilled. Sadness can control us and sometimes for a lifetime. It can
be the predominant emotion that characterizes some people's lives.
Sadness is not bad. Jesus was referred to as "a man of many sorrows."

Here is a process to deal with sadness:

Low entitlement
High gratitude
Don't take failure personally
Rest

I see in this city (and in myself more often than not) a high sense of entitlement, a lack of gratitude, a feeling of personal failure and a lack of rest. No wonder we have such a hard time recovering - no wonder we're yelling at each other in our cars.

So, the challenge for those who claim to follow Christ is to deal with the sadness in a way that would honor the one we follow, not the way we see modeled around us all the time. I hope that we would be people that would live seeing Christ in the midst or our circumstances - taking a break from the city to rest when we need to, but having grateful hearts to live and serve here.

Oh and I think I'm going to take the Street Car next time I go to the Quarter - no need for anyone else to yell at me about my driving!

Training

I'm back in training for a race.....now I use those terms very loosely. I don't really consider myself any type of athlete, I really just do races to stay motivated as I see my waist line expand over the holiday/conference season. I hope to run in the Mardi Gras Half Marathon but we'll see if I actually make the goal. Regardless, I pulled out my little training chart last week and began to run again.

It's funny the lessons that I seem to learn in training and this time has been no exception. I ran 4 miles on Sunday and felt great - I could have gone at least one more. So today, when my little chart said 3.5 miles, I thought, "piece of cake". Well, not exactly. About a mile into my run I started getting a sharp pain in my side. This happens every time I start to train for something. Before I ran my first half marathon I would always quit when I got to that point and would never be able to significantly increase my mileage. What I learned when I trained for that race is that it may be painful and it may be ugly, but you have to push through the pain if you're going to make it for the long haul. Today when that pain started I was very tempted to quit but I kept going. After about another mile, it went away only to return in the last quarter mile.

As I was running down the street counting down the seconds until I hit the 3.5 mile mark, it struck me that life is a lot like that pain in the side. The challenges of life come and go and if we aren't able to push through the somewhat painful times, we won't have the training to make it on the long haul. There are some slightly painful things in my life right now and everything in me wants to avoid them or to even run from them, but who will I be in the end if I don't face them and continue down the path? Who will I be if I don't face what today holds so I can handle the things that come some day?

So, out the door I go - tying on my shoes and believing that the pain of today does matter - it is part of what gives me the endurance for the long haul.

Christmas Adventures in the Quarter

My friend Emily and I had quite an adventure last night. We thought we'd join this sweet and reverent time of caroling in Jackson Square - a 50 year tradition in New Orleans. It was......different than I thought it would be.

First of all parking in the Quarter is a nightmare. I refuse to pay $12 to park for a free event. So we drove up and down the streets looking for that rare but valuable free street spot. As we were briefly stopped craning our necks at one intersection to see if a space was available to us, the guy behind us started blaring his horn. One street down he managed to get around us as I was trying to see if I would fit into a space. At the next stop sign he got out of his car and came back to yell at us for stopping where there was no stop sign - yelled! "Merry Christmas to you too" I thought as I pulled out my cell phone, dialed 9-1-1 and told him that I was making the call if he did not get back into his car. After a few more stressful blocks of looking for a space, we finally found a great one and headed down the caroling.

Again, I was thinking of some of the great musicians in the city - how incredible the singing would be and how great everything would sound. When we were greeted at the gate by a man and woman dressed in Victorian attire, I was sure my suspicions were right on. As we rounded the corner to the stage we heard "and now our mayor will lead us in Jingle Bells". C Ray singing Jingle Bells?!? We had to push to the front to see this but as we darted under a palm tree it caught on fire (I'm not kidding and it wasn't us, we didn't have candles). People were frantically batting at the tree with their Santa hats to out out the fire so Emily and I pushed to the front to find that yes, C Ray was indeed leading us in Jingle Bells! From there the music went from bad to worse. It was all the city leaders who were our song masters and let's just say they weren't good and they seemed to have enjoyed the eggnog a little too much that evening. It was one of the most comical things I'd ever seen. It was also beautiful....all of Jackson Square in front of the cathedral covered by people singing, laughing and holding candles.

In a city where there is often lots of violence, anger, blame shifting and fear, it was fun to come together for an evening and celebrate. As we were singing "O Holy Night", I couldn't help but think of that baby born over 2000 years ago. Somehow being PC didn't matter last night - we sang of the hope of Christ. When I look at this city, I think that really is our only hope. I long for more times that our city could gather like this - to celebrate the true hope.....but maybe with different singers next time.

Street Car!

Today I was getting out of my car at the New Orleans library nearest me on St. Charles I heard this clanging sound behind me. I turned to see the street car running! The St. Charles Street Car line is the longest running railway in the United States and for over two years it's sat dormant. The hurricane badly damaged the power lines and much work has been done to get the car up and running again. For the first two years I lived here, the street car line was used only for joggers....a convenient way to avoid the hazardous sidewalks, (I've tripped numerous times on the uneven pavement) but just over a month ago the St. Charles line opened all the way to Napoleon Ave. I had just read in the paper that it was suppose to open all down St. Charles by Dec. 23rd, so I was happily surprised to see it roar past me today.

Yes, I know that the opening of the street car is going to take away our nice turn lanes.....but there's something about seeing it lumber it's way down St. Charles that makes me incredibly happy. In a city where things are constantly being demolished, it's nice to see something so historical be restored.

Decorating

I have a love/hate relationship with Christmas decorations. On the one hand, I love to have my house decorated. I love the lights and the festive atmosphere it creates. On the other hand I hate to wrestle out the 8 ft fake tree, to put the lights on it and I especially hate the thought of coming home after holiday travel to take it down. This year I had almost convinced myself to not even decorate but when I invited my friend Melanie over for dinner got inspired....well kind of inspired. Instead of putting the massive fake tree up, I opted for the tiny (about 2 ft) tree that I bought the year the guys borrowed my tree for the student Christmas party but refused to give it back.

There's something sweet about pulling out your Christmas decorations every year. Each one of them holds a special memory. There are the wooden ornaments that represent my tree growing up - we always had the German ornaments on our tree (we also had real candles but that was put to a stop by the tree catching on fire one year). There's the white and silver snowdrop ornaments that I bought the my first year out of college. There used to be 6 of them - only 4 survived from the year my roommate tried to surprise me by "decorating" our tree - unfortunately she put it up crooked and it fell over in the middle of the night. There's the silver bells that I bought after the unfortunate tree falling incident - a little more sturdy than the glass balls. There is the silver Fleur de lis representing the first GNO team.

Memories seem to flood back whenever I decorate for Christmas - good and bad memories. I realized that I like being alone with those memories. They remind of the years - of the faithfulness of God over all the years. It causes me to remember people who are no longer part of my every day life and places that I've long left behind.

In the end, it's worth it to drag out all of the stuff - to clean up fake pine needles for weeks and to have to pack it all back up in January. It is a season that should be celebrated - not rushed, but savored for the sweet gift of that baby it brought us so long ago.

Staff Conference

I'm not typically a very sentimental person.....it may come from the hours and hours of going through my grandmother and great-grandmother's piles of "treasures" they saved when I was younger or it may come from the fact that I just like to be efficient - whatever the reason, I don't tend to dwell on the past too much. That is one of the reasons that the barrage of emotions I felt as we pulled up to Pinecove for our annual Red River staff conference surprised me.

Seven years - there's seems to be something significant about going to a place for the last seven years. As I was taking a walk through the woods on the last afternoon I had some time to reflect on the good and the hard memories those woods bring to mind. I remember the first time I walked into the meeting room, I hardly knew a soul and I was terrified. I remember the day my team sat in a room and cried together because something was wrong in our relationships and we couldn't seem to fix it. (We later skipped the meeting and went for Mexican food). I remember late nights eating dessert and playing games around a table full of friends. Many of those friends have moved on to other lives now. I remember meeting new friends for the first time - a couple who had come back from overseas to work in our region - little did I know that a few years later she would be my boss ( and a great one at that). I remember the night that I had to leave the room because the guy who had broken my heart was leading worship and I felt as though I could no longer breath. I remember the accident - after a weekend of laughter and fun discovering that our friends had almost died on the way home. I remember it being a place where God met me in my joy and in my pain.

I can't believe how many people have come and gone over the years....and often I can't believe that I'm still here. This year may have held one of my most precious memories. I walked in on Friday night and sat with a group of staff that I have known my entire staff career. They were freshmen in college when I first showed up on campus. It was amazing to see them sitting at that table....to see what God has done with their lives. I've been so privileged play a small role in their lives. They certainly weren't sitting at that table because of me. I got to walk a little way along the journey with them.....but I believe that the journey they have a far greater influence than mine has had. It was perhaps the sweetest moment I have ever experienced at Pinecove and I'm so grateful for each one of them.

Neighbors

I have this sweet neighbor named Tom. He calls me "darlin" and watches out for me. I feel like he's almost been an adopted grandfather to me. (My own grandfather died when I was 14 and the other lived far away, so I've really liked having some one like that in my life again). He and his wife have been married for sixty years and they've lived in the same little house on Laurel Street for their entire married lives. Tom is the heart of our neighborhood. He knows everyone's name. He has time to chat every day, and even those he has one of those annoying little yippy dogs, I always look forward to seeing him.

In the last few months he and his wife have been sitting on the porch every evening. They just sit together....you can tell that they've been together for a lifetime and just really love each other. She's not been in good health this past year. In the spring, she rushed to the hospital one morning at 3 am.

On Monday, I woke up at 4:30 to hear a car door slamming. I noticed that Tom's car was gone all the time this week and his kids and grandkids cars came and went. I've been so worried that something happened to his wife. I can't imagine Tom without her. I can't imagine what it would be like to spend a life time with some one you loved and then lose them. Happily, this morning I found out that she had gone into the hospital for knee replacement surgery and breezed through it.

A few minutes ago I was standing in my kitchen washing dishes when I heard the car door slam. I looked out the window to see Tom bring his bride home. His daughter was with him but he was the one who went to the door and helped her out. He was the one who helped her struggle up the stairs and held her in his arms as they walked through the door.

In a time where marriage vows seem to mean very little and where men often seem to have lost the sense of what it means to really take care of a woman, it deeply touched my heart to see this eighty-something year old man take tenderly care for his wife. That is a picture of lifetime friendship and love. I'm so glad to have them home (even the yippy dog).