girls and chocolate chips. theory confirmed.

Don't get between a girl and her chocolate chips:

when you get full-on sick on a youth event and would rather die than lift a finger

This summer, I became terribly ill while on a youth servant event. The whole nine yards: Fever. Cough. Nose running at a sprinting pace. It was a glorious reenactment of every NyQuil commercial ever made.

My first instinct at the sight of the 100.2 degree fever (low, but still alarming in the HOLY GUACA I'M SICK kind of way) was HOLY GUACA I'M SICK. PANIC. This was absurd, you can't really panic appropriately when you feel like opening up your sinus system with a wrecking ball without anesthetics just so that you can feel something again.

I texted my trusty coworker a PANIC I'M SIIIIIICCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKK message. He reminded me that PANIC was stupid and idiotic in kinder, gentler words and that I'd already prepared for this.

I have? Oh yeah, I have.

About three years ago, my grandma had a stroke in the middle of a youth retreat and I was a wreck. I couldn't function because I was so distracted by wanting to be with my family. I left the retreat to be with my family. It was the right thing to do and I was able to do it because I had leaders there, equipped and ready to rumble at a moment's notice. Since that awful experience of leaving a retreat to be with my family, I have always prepared my leaders to be ready to lead should I fall ill--mentally, physically, or otherwise.

Here's how I prepare them:

1. Appoint a leader. In conversations with my leaders, I seek out someone to be the team leader if I become unable. This person has no special responsibilities in normal circumstances. They are the Vice President of the trip. I meet with them beforehand to go over all of the special contract, medical, transportation, blahdibbityblah information. The team knows that this person will make all final calls in my absence.
2. Organize your stuff. I have a box that has copies of everything: Med forms, contracts, bible study guides, pizzeria phone numbers. Everything is filed and marked. Bozo the Clown could find out how much pizza to order, what kind and at what time.
   
3. Teach your team. I meet with my leaders and tell them everything about the bible studies and campfire worships. They know what I am going to say and when. They hear it from me, they have my notes, my guide, my sidenotes. They know the heart of what we are studying and are equipped to lead it.
   
4. Be okay. Be okay with not being in charge. Be okay with the kids laughing about the bad guitar-playing at campfire. Be okay with not getting to canoe and clean up the lake. Be okay with knowing where you need to be (in bed or with your family). Be okay with letting your youth bring you tylenol and bottles of water. Be okay with yelling at them to wash their hands at a pipsqueak tone. Be okay with it. You can't change it and there's a lesson in giving up control in there somewhere.
   

Here endeth our youth ministry lesson of the day.

Tomorrow: back to nonsensical rambling!

rules by which all must abide. or the world just might collapse and it will be all your fault.

In bible study last night, we had a good laugh about the behavioral rules that we create to make sense of the world. These sorts of rules tend to become unspoken and ridiculously cumbersome expectations for the behavior of others. Frankly, there's a humorous amount of absurdity in the rules we create for others.

Here are a few that I have observed in myself or that friends have shared as theirs:

1. Don't cut me off on the highway. Or cruise in the left lane. Because that is dangerous. And I will ride up on your big booty bumper like a smooth criminal until you stop. Jerk.
2. Don't bounce around in front of me at a standing room only concert. How dare you enjoy music through movement.
3. Don't breathe loudly. No one wants to know that you are alive and breathing.
   
4. Don't behave irrationally. Don't think irrationally. Don't talk while feeling irrational. Don't ever be irrational around me. I don't care if it's irrational to expect it. Don't do it.
   
5. Don't make rules about what other people can or cannot do.
   

What would you add to the list?

the power of the ask

I am a terrible "asker."

I don't like to ask people to help. Especially out of the blue. Especially at church(work). Especially over the phone.

I hate it so much I will procrastinate to the point of tears. I have daymares about terrible phone calls.

Oddly, when I do finally ask, I've found lately that I am rarely turned down. People like to be asked to contribute to projects where meaning and significance is being created.

The point: I need to get over myself.

crumbling empires

We built our castles from plastic blocks and pegging board.
We'd hoped they'd last forever.

There's little hope of foreverdays,
crumbled blocks: they lay.

No stones
No patch work
No words

Don't tell me things will be okay.
They won't and then they won't
And then they never will.

Wreckage remains.

There isn't hope
unless you've learned
the empire doesn't matter.

wanting deeply

I want deeply to tell you about the things on my mind. My agony over what to do with my brain for a living. The burns of long-planted pain. The creeping suspicions I have about this and that.

But at the end of the day, I close my eyes. Those stories unwritten. The plans not made.

And that's mediocrity.

soup: from scratch

One thing on my life list is to learn how to make as many soups as possible from scratch.

I'm a decent cook, but I'm generally afraid of whole chickens, dried beans, and ingredients that I can't find easily in the store. (Did you know that pearled barley is on the top shelf in the SOUP SECTION? Because I thought it would be with the grains. Or the rice. Or the beans. Or the weird organicky bulk items.)

Anyway, I tackled homemade minestrone soup from scratch using dried beans yesterday using this recipe.

If you want to come over for soup, there's about two gallons of it at my house right now. Next time, halvsies. Also, more hot sauce. And tomato.

It was really cheap to make especially when you consider that I will be eating off of it for the next month.