Waiting.

November 29, 2016 ~ miriamlein ~ Leave a comment

Last Advent, I gave myself a blog challenge. I attempted to find beauty in the everyday and share it all with you in pictures. It was a good practice for me. I find that being intentional about something in our daily lives encourages reflection, processing, and really just thinking. Things that get kind of lost in the busyness of everyday life.

With that in mind, I have been wondering how to approach this Advent season. I want to be intentional with my life and Advent seems like a good time to start working towards that, even if it is just in little ways.

My thoughts Sunday as we walked to church across our color-filled campus, enjoying the sunshine and breeze even despite the cold chill in the air, were on waiting. Not just waiting, but how to wait well. How do we wait in anticipation, rather than boredom? How do we welcome the holy into our everyday lives so that we live in the present while also working towards the future?

The homily Sunday echoed a lot of my thoughts, pointing out the importance of preparing ourselves for Jesus now, welcoming him into our lives now. We can’t just wait for some future time, the kingdom of God is here, now, present within and among us. That is what I want to focus on this Advent, the balance of living intentionally in the present while also looking towards the future.

I hope to share some of my processing and thoughts with you here in the blog. Please share your comments as well as you discover the holy in your every day, the beautiful in the commonplace, the tension in the waiting, or anything else that you find causes you to think this year.

“See me.” Lessons from a toddler.

September 20, 2016 ~ miriamlein ~ Leave a comment

seeme Even though Dietrich is not the most verbally adept 3 year old, he often surprises me with his correct usage of pronouns and plurals. But obviously he is 3, so some of his phrases, though logical, are not actually grammatically correct. One such phrase: “See me.”

That phrase has really stuck in my head lately. The correct phrase would be: “Look at me.” But how often do we look with our eyes, and fail to actually see. And it started me thinking. How do we see people, truly see them. Not just what they look like, the clothes they wear, the things they do, but really see the person.

Even in my closest relationships I tend to look at people through the lense of self-interest. For example, if John does something because he is stressed, my first mental response is to think about how his stress affects my day, instead of first recognizing his struggle, his needs, his sorrow, his passions, etc. When my children misbehave, I immediately think about how their actions reflect on my parenting abilities and what people around me must be thinking about me, instead of noticing why they are upset or confused or looking for attention, etc. I’m not saying I think we should all unselfishly try to meet everyone’s needs while ignoring our own. But I do think it would be good to get out of our own head enough to recognize the humanity in the person next to us.

If it is so hard to see those that we live near, those we share lives, history, and love with, is it actually impossible to “see” strangers for who they are? What would it look like to go about my day and actually see the people around me?

A few weeks ago I got off work and had time to kill before the bus came, so as I often do, I started walking down the street towards the metro, planning on catching the bus at a later stop. I had almost reached the end of my walk, when a man stumbled across the street in front of me and disappeared into the drive of a hotel. It was like a blip in the normal smooth traffic of people and cars. No one else seemed to notice even though this man walked as if he were falling.

As I passed the hotel drive, I glanced into the covered space, wondering if I would be able to see him still. He was there, but not walking. Instead he was lying on his back with his head on the curb, feet stuck out into the driveway. I kept walking, but then I stopped. This wasn’t normal. I wasn’t sure what was wrong, if he was just drunk, or if there was something else going on, but I couldn’t just leave him there. I turned around and entered the driveway and walked up to the man on the ground.

“Excuse me, sir,” I said. “Are you ok?” He groaned and sat up, but there was blood on his head. I repeated my question and the man assured me that he was fine, even though his confusion and his body language told me otherwise. “You don’t look ok,” I said. “Can I get you some help?” He said he had fallen down, and then asked me if he looked like he had hurt himself. I told him about the blood on his head and that I thought it would be best if we called an ambulance to make sure he was ok. Thankfully at that point a man who had been standing a little ways away in the designated smoking area came over and asked if he could go in and ask the hotel to call for help. I agreed and I stayed with the gentleman. The hotel called for help, the man who had stepped in stayed and waited with me. This man had actually seen the older gentleman enter the drive and stumble into one of the brick pillars, which is why his head was bleeding and how he ended up on the ground. While we talked, the injured man sat cross-legged on the ground between us and kept wiping blood away from his sweaty forehead. He repeated himself often, and didn’t seem terribly coherent, so I wasn’t sure what to say to him. Later I wondered if it had been really rude to talk about him as if he weren’t there.

It didn’t take long before an ambulance pulled up and the paramedics entered the drive. The first one knelt down and addressed the injured man by name, asking him what had happened. The man said: “I fell down.” And the paramedic’s answer made it clear that this had happened before. The witness gave his report and we were allowed to leave. I walked away, but felt so uneasy. I actually turned back around after getting a few yards down the road, returned to the ambulance where they had already loaded up the man in the back and mentioned to one of the paramedics that I had seen this man before he hit his head and his behavior was not normal. “Yes,” he replied. “We pick him up all the time. My partner just picked him up yesterday actually.” There was nothing more I could do, but as I walked away I felt sad. Here is a man who is picked up by ambulance so often that the paramedics know him by name. Yet, nothing is changed for him. I “helped” him today by stopping and making sure he got help, but I didn’t truly change anything for him. It was all so incredibly sad.

I came home, my brain in a muddle, wondering if there was anything to do that could actually help someone like that. I talked it over with John, who has passionate views about the social systems in our country and who immediately began lamenting the fact that our systems are failing, and this is just one of many symptoms. And I agree. Work does need to be done to change big picture things. John’s good at thinking big picture. But his response didn’t totally satisfy me either. It is sometimes easy to help one person and satisfy our conscience enough that we can ignore the big issues that we should be contributing effort to solve. But if we completely focus on the big picture, we lose sight of what makes up the big picture — individual people. And that is just as wrong. Even though it felt like I was the only one who actually saw that man when he walked past me that day, I know I didn’t truly see him. I know nothing about him other than what I experienced during those few minutes with him. I don’t even remember his name. I didn’t touch him. I didn’t even stay truly present with him while I was there. But maybe I saw him just a little more clearly than I sometimes do. Our lives touched for just an instance and the disparity between them caught me off guard.

I really don’t know how to “see” people. But I think it requires listening and presence. Those are two gifts I have the ability to give to anyone. I may not have the means to change their circumstances, but I can offer them these two things. I’m not good at it. I often respond in selfishness instead of in the kindness of listening and presence. But I hope to practice this more, to continue to train myself to see.

“See me,” Dietrich says. Next time he says this to me, I will get down on my knees, look him in the eyes and say “Yes, I do see you.”

Finding Home.

June 14, 2016June 14, 2016 ~ miriamlein ~ Leave a comment

We’ve been in Alexandria now for 2 weeks. As John has mentioned a couple times, the next three years will mark the longest we’ve been in one house since we sold our house in Siloam about 6 years ago. Since then we’ve moved from house to house in NWA, then to Germany and back again, and now to Alexandria.If all goes as planned, we’ll be in Alexandria longer than we were in Germany, even longer than we attended Grace Episcopal Church in Siloam. It seems like such a long time in many ways, yet in others, very short.

Knowing this sense of a possible security of place for the next three years has meant that I have looked forward to settling in, making this place our home. It means buying furniture and decorating to our taste instead of living with whatever we happen to be given. But unfortunately, we still have at least 4 months before that happens. Right now we are house-sitting for fellow seminarians who are gone for the summer. We are so so thankful for the provision of their house. We love living here, but it does mean that most of our stuff sits in storage waiting for us to have our own space to put it. At the beginning of August we will move on campus. But because the family housing won’t be completed by then, we will be put in some sort of temporary housing until Fall break, when they hope the apartments will be done and everyone can move into their own place. So again, we will make do, live temporarily, get by without settling in.

We should be good at living this way by now, but I feel like what happens, what has been happening for the last several years, is that we never truly live life the way we want because it is too easy to say: “We’ll make those changes, live the way we want to once we are in our own place.” When living in constant transition, you end up putting off lots of important things because it is easier. Perhaps this unexpected change in plans is a chance for me to practice living the way I want no matter how stable I feel. After all, even the 3 years in seminary is still a transitionary phase. If I want to live intentionally this 3 years, why do I feel I have to wait until my house is semi-permanent? That may be helpful, but I think perhaps I’m just making excuses if I can’t start making some changes now.

At the same time though, I want to give myself and my family lots of grace. Not only are we living in a temporary physical home, we are learning a new balance of work and living. We have never before had a time when I was working as much as I am now. We have never before had to figure out how to balance running the household to the extent we are now. When I get frustrated about how it’s going, John reminds me that it has only been 2 weeks. “This will take time to figure out,” he says. And he’s right.

In general it is going well, my main frustrations focus around the grief of letting go. Despite the fact that there are lot of household care things that I don’t enjoy and gladly would share with John, there are others that I have grown accustomed to being in charge of and that I am struggling to let go. The biggest of those being cooking, grocery shopping, and planning meals. I still do some, but I’m not home for several meals each week, so we are trying to figure out how to work it out with two of us shopping, two of us making meals, and two of us trying to live within a single budget. And of course it is all complicated by trying to learn to shop in an area with a much higher cost of living than Siloam Springs. What it will come down to is lots of communication. And some of those conversations will be hard, because if John and I have one thing we tend to “fight” over, it is meal planning. I know, that comes as a surprise, doesn’t it? But it’s an emotional area for both of us and we have different ideas of how to approach things.

So, I have come to the conclusion that this time of temporary housing will be a time of exploring what I want home to look like. I will take the time I would have been using to set up my house to explore my new place in my family, to sort out the balance of house management, to think through what living intentionally looks like, and to process a few of the parenting and lifestyle things John and I have been working towards changing. In short, I will take this time to set up our real home, the home that moves with us no matter where we go.

Packing vs. Processing

May 12, 2016 ~ miriamlein ~ Leave a comment

The last couple of weeks have been spent doing little spurts of packing as we prepare to leave. Before that I had been doing a lot of internal processing. I’ve been going to counseling since the beginning of the year. My counselor mentioned to me the first time that she met with me that it was not just John who was going through discernment, but that I was also going through a period of self-discernment. John’s discernment was very intentional and included a committee of people that had chosen to walk alongside him, so it was easy for me to ignore the depth of the internal discovery that was happening in me. Even after she pointed out that self-discovery process, I still thought of it more in terms of external practicalities, like figuring out my passions and how that fit into how I spent my day, what kind of job I would get, what my long term goals were. It wasn’t until recently that I realized that it went much deeper than that.

It hit when I noticed the internal chaos raging in my brain. Without completely realizing it, the faith shift I was experiencing was digging deep into my inner self. Self-discovery suddenly meant rediscovering the true me, both how what I’ve always known about myself relates to my new worldview, but also digging into the depths of the hidden me, the me that I haven’t wanted to look at because it didn’t seem to fit into the conservative evangelical box I made for myself. As I opened locked doors, and tore down internal walls, things came tumbling out in a heap. My old coping mechanisms were set aside as I re-evaluated what lay behind them. I started dealing with obsessive thoughts that I’ve been mostly able to avoid the last few years. I started dealing with more grief related to Emma. I started questioning assumptions that I’ve lived with for as long as I can remember. And all this added up to a pretty messy me. It was good work, work that needed to be done, but it was scary and hard and so so much.

For awhile I did process some of it. It’s not going to be a quick thing, that’s for sure. But then there was a day about two weeks ago when as I sat in choir practice listening to the voices raised in song and contemplating that I was going to miss being a part of choir, some of the sadness of leaving hit. It’s been predominantly an emotion of excitement surrounding this move, so I haven’t really felt much sadness, even though I intellectually recognize that it is sad. I knew the emotion of sadness would start to filter in eventually and when it did, it brought with it a whole new level of stress. I suddenly inexplicably started mentally listing all the things that I still had to do before I left. As the stress started climbing, my ability to handle the internal processes I had started began to dwindle. I have intentionally put aside the internal unpacking and reorganization process in favor of the practical need to organize and pack the physical objects of my house.

Right now we are living with a fairly high level of stress and it is hard. At the beginning of this week I had a near panic attack, something that hasn’t happened in 3 1/2 years. It is uncomfortable to me, but I do see an end in sight, at least an end to some of the things that are adding to our stress. As some of them end, others will begin, and eventually the internal chaos will start to make itself known again. Perhaps as I physically unpack my belongings at the end of the summer I can return to the process of unpacking those closets of the mind and reconfiguring them in a way that is not so cluttered. But for now, I need to learn to live in the unknown and chaos of both my external and internal environment.

True Belief.

April 11, 2016April 11, 2016 ~ miriamlein ~ 1 Comment

Belief is a funny thing. There are many who would say that over the last few years my beliefs have changed. And I think they have. But what I’m beginning to realize is that it has been less about change and more about discovering what I truly believed all along.

I grew up feeling very strongly about what I believed. And there were things that I truly did believe. But there were many doubts that I could never fully shake my entire childhood. Even though my parents created a safe environment for asking questions and never told me to stop asking those questions, I always felt guilty about it. My assumption was that if I truly believed, then I would have no doubt.

In order to be free to doubt, I had to face and let go of one of the strongest beliefs I held, and that was that my salvation depended on my faith. My tradition, my family, and my culture taught me that in order to be saved from hell, I had to believe. Even if it wasn’t always clear exactly what I was supposed to believe, the focus was always on this vague idea of belief. Perhaps my truest belief was this idea that my salvation depended on my faith. It is definitely what fueled all my internal angst. When I doubted I was truly afraid that I was in danger of losing my way. When my actions didn’t match what I said I believed, I was frustrated, because I recognized somewhere subconsciously that this didn’t make sense. Dallas Willard talks to this in his book The Divine Conspiracy:

“In a setting where a social premium has been placed upon believing certain things for the sake of group solidarity, we must face the fact that human beings can honestly profess to believe what they do not believe. They may do this for so long that even they no longer know that they do not believe what they profess. But their actions will, of course, be in terms of what they actually believe. This will be so even though they do not recognize it, and they will lose themselves in bewilderment about the weakness of their ‘faith.’”

Some people live in fear that others will see what they truly believe. I was afraid that I would see what I truly believed. I hid parts of myself from myself. It was too hard to open those doors to see what was truly there because it would mean admitting that I wasn’t who I said I was, who I wanted to be. I prayed and hoped that the desire would be enough.

But still, I lived in fear. Fear that my God would somehow be shaken by my doubts. Oddly I couldn’t think clearly about it enough to realize that if my God was weak enough to fall apart under my barrage of questions, than he wasn’t a God worth believing in. Of course, the truth was that my God was in danger of being shaken by my doubts, because my God was just a picture I had made of a larger truth that stood behind it. And if what I believed most in was a picture I had constructed, than it is good to release that, even if it means having to spend a life searching for the truth that stood behind it.

I am no longer living with the same level of fear that I dealt with before. I feel freedom to ask questions that were always too hard for me to ask before. I am now willing to take the risk of being wrong, because I hope in a God who is right, and because I no longer believe it depends on me. I am joyful to be on a pilgrimage searching for truth, rather than sitting still pretending I have found it.

*Art by Seth. A visual representation of fear.

Rice and Beans 2016. Week 3.

March 23, 2016 ~ miriamlein ~ Leave a comment

Here’s our roundup of recipes for week 3 this year:

Monday

Breakfast: Pumpkin Oatmeal. This was with steel cut oats, a can of pumpkin and pumpkin spices. Topped with coconut cream or milk.

Lunch: Leftover Tuna & White Bean Salad. I packed something else for Seth, but I don’t remember what it was.

Supper: Leftover Tuscan White Bean Soup. The kids all ate this, John and I were invited to supper at someone’s house where we had portobello mushrooms over kale, which was absolutely delicious and I will have to get the recipe for.

Tuesday

Breakfast: Pumpkin Quinoa Bake with sunflower seeds. This was not done in time for the kids, so I think they had oatmeal or rice. But I enjoyed it. This is a recipe I modified from an elimination diet recipe book. It’s basically quinoa, almond or coconut milk, spices, pumpkin, and a topping made of nuts and honey. I replaced the nuts with sunflower seeds today.

Lunch: Black Beans and Rice. We had more of the leftover black beans done brazilian style. This time I had it with wilted kale as well.

Supper: Greek Bean Soup. Assuming you can still call it Greek without the oregano or tomatoes. Actually only a few of us had this soup as it was a hectic afternoon full of soccer practice, gymnastics, and Bible Study. The people who had to eat on the go had apples, cheese, pretzels, and peanut butter.

Wednesday

Breakfast: Leftover pumpkin Quinoa Bake. I had to leave early for an appointment, so I put the leftover quinoa bake in the oven to warm and that is what they all had for breakfast.

Lunch: Apples, cheese, peanut butter, and pretzels. Since this meal was so popular from the day before, I think this is what I packed in everyone’s lunches, figuring they could use a break from beans and it was easy for me to do quick before I left.

Supper: Leftover soup. I think we all just had the Greek Bean Soup that was still left from the night before.

Thursday

Breakfast: Grits. For a change of pace I made grits that the kids ate with sugar and milk.

Lunch: Fried Rice. I made myself some fried rice with lots of veggies, but I can’t actually remember what I sent with the kids for lunch. Probably leftovers of one of these recipes.

Supper: Leftover Taco Salad. The two middle boys were gone for supper, so I figured it was pretty safe to have the extra spicy leftover taco salad again. Plus I had made it to Whole Foods and bought myself some more tortilla chips that were safe for me to eat. Elise and I also enjoyed some treats, chocolate for her, coconut ice cream for me.

Friday

Breakfast: Coconut Mango Oatmeal. They had mangos on sale at Whole Foods, so I bought one that we used to top our oatmeal.

Lunch: Dal with Rice. This was from my international slow cooker cookbook. The lentils were garlicky and very good, though a little dry, I think I need more liquid next time. We topped it with coconut cream flavored with lime juice and cilantro.

Supper: Pizza! I had leftover dal. Everyone else had pizza at the Miller family night that happens weekly.

Saturday

Breakfast: Rice with milk and sugar.

Lunch: Black Bean Veggie Soup. I used up the rest of the black beans in a soup with frozen veggies and chicken broth and coconut milk.

Supper: Brats and Potatoes. This is a meal we do often on Saturday nights as we watch a movie together as a family. It’s potatoes, sliced brats, and saurkraut.

Sunday

Breakfast: Oatmeal. I discovered that my flax seed oil that I just started taking as a supplement compliments the flavor of oatmeal well. So I have now been eating my oatmeal with maple syrup, flax oil, and coconut cream. Yum!

Lunch & Supper: Misc. The kids snacked at church and then we went to my parents’ house to play games, so they got other things there even though we had missed the official lunch there. Mid-afternoon I made Pad Thai, which is what I had for a late lunch/early supper. For dessert, I made myself a gluten free dairy free mug brownie topped with coconut whipped cream. The kids had hot chocolate and cereal after having a bit of pad thai.

Coming out of the shadow.

March 16, 2016March 16, 2016 ~ miriamlein ~ Leave a comment

I wanted to write a bit of a follow up post to the recently posted one on transition. It was really good for me to find that post and see where I was a year ago. It is odd that we forget sometimes how far we’ve come because as we change we forget exactly who we were before. So this was an interesting peek at the me that existed a year ago and a reminder that I should strive to continue to write, either publicly or privately, so that I can get more glimpses into my past as I grow and change.

One of the things that struck me when I read back through that post was how clear it was that I was following my husband into a new church tradition. I wasn’t being dragged, but I was definitely following. And while I will always be somewhat of a follower, I am definitely shifting towards an attitude of walking together rather than walking behind. That shift began for me in Germany, and I actually did write a blog post about it shortly after our return to the US. And it has continued to evolve from that point as well, and I’m not finished yet. But what I want to add specifically to the transition blog post is that I would feel much more comfortable now listing the things I love and admire about the Episcopal church without necessarily having to mention John’s reasons. I may have begun attending because of him, but I go now because of me.

Actually from my very first visit with our rector, it was obvious that the expectations of me were completely different than what I was used to. I am an individual, in partnership with my husband, but completely separate and worthwhile and valuable all on my own. I have felt much more free to be me even while being surrounded by many people who were not like me. In fact, perhaps it is partly because I am surrounded by many people who are not like me that I am able to feel the freedom to stand out, be separate from the crowd and find who I truly am.

And the freedom that has been offered me to be an individual is one thing that gives me peace in the possibility of becoming a priest’s wife, should we continue down the path towards John’s ordination. I don’t have to worry about whether or not I agree with him on every topic of theology or opinion on ministry. In this tradition I feel free to stand beside him and disagree if needed. And though I do hope we continue to mostly agree on things, it is very valuable to know that I don’t have to.

In some ways this new approach to our marriage as a partnership is hard. It has been made easier by the fact that my husband has always valued me for who I am and invited me to come out from the shadow behind him and join him. But, it has still taken lots of discussion and navigating as we explore what that means for us. And it means that the decisions we make can be harder because we both need to buy into them. It also means that when we decide to do something that will take sacrifice on my part, I am more keenly aware of that sacrifice because now I choose it willingly with both eyes wide open. Seminary was that type of decision for us. I walk forward with excitement, but also bracing myself for the work ahead for both of us. Through our decision making surrounding the seminary decision, I knew very clearly, that I could say no, and John would have listened. The piece I carried in this decision held just as much weight as his. And that is both wonderful and hard. It is often harder to do something when you know that you could legitimately choose not to do it. And yet, it makes the thing that you choose to do much more meaningful.

Art by Will, used by permission. I chose this picture because I feel like the person pictured definitely has discovered who they are and has no problem living that out.