He’s a Smooth Operator

Monday morning Luke and I were talking about our plans for the day and figured out both of us were headed to Chattanooga. He needed to make a hospital visit and I needed to have a manicure and go to the mall. As usual, his goals were much “higher” and “loftier” and more “spiritually significant” than mine. He would make me gag if he weren’t so darned cute.

We met in the home department of JcPenney where I was in the full throes of a bedding selection meltdown. The boys’ comforters are pitiful and they are overdue replacement.  Since JCP was having a great sale and I had a 20% off coupon to boot, I was trying my best to find something there even though I wasn’t totally in love with anything I was seeing. I’ve told y’all before that Luke is the one man on the planet who actually cares what I buy for the house and who also thinks you should be able to find that for $15 or less. His yard sale mentality + my inability to make decisions = drama in the pillow aisle.

We decided to run to Dillard’s and Belk just to be certain they didn’t have anything I liked better and I was able to arrive at the same conclusion I have numerous times in the past. It’s not that I can’t find things I love. I just can’t afford the things I love. And again the same strategy that I used in finding a pair of boots also worked with the bedding. I showed Luke the ridiculously expensive sets I adored and suddenly he was grateful to pay the JcPenney price for the ones I can live with.

Even though there was a point while we were shopping that I was thinking Luke really needed to find another hospital to visit via the ER, I was grateful I had him at checkout.  Mostly because he had the money but also because he is a hard core negotiator.  It turns out my coupon that expired that day was for online orders only.  When the clerk made me aware of this, I probably would have caved and paid the difference.  But Luke McKay who is an American Picker wannabe and finds his most prize possessions on roadsides?  Oh no.  That will not do.  He politely told the girl he just wasn’t willing to pay the extra 20% and would you like to know what she did?  She batted her eyelashes at him and gave him the discount!  For the first time in our married life I am considering taking him Black Friday shopping and using what his mother gave me to see what he can accomplish in those long lines of rabid women at The Walmart.  Of which I am one.

After we checked out, we carried the comforters to his truck and he drove me to my car on the other side of the mall.  Since his vehicle was full he said, “I can’t fit the kids in here so why don’t you run on home and get them while I look around a little bit longer.”  I was so grateful to have that experience behind us that it never even occurred to me until I was on the interstate that my husband had sent me home to get the kids so he could stay in the city and shop.  That same sweet face that had suckered the JCP clerk had just Jedi’d me.  Which is why I’m at home playing on the computer while he is still shopping.  In Chattanooga.  While I’m not.  Something is definitely wrong with this picture.

My consolation will come if I learn he used those powers of persuasion to find me an awesome Christmas present.

Since I danced on the subject, let me go ahead and ask…..  Who’s going Black Friday shopping??!

 

November 15, 2011 | Filed Under Shopping Victory | 5 Comments 

Such a Pain in the Neck

 

So it’s been a week.

It started out Tuesday night when a certain daughter whose name begins with “Syd” and ends with ”Ney” decided to crawl into bed with me and Luke and sleep with her elbows and knees firmly planted into all my internal organs.  After a long night of wrestling, instead of walking away with a limp I woke up with a crick in my neck and no blessing.

It was uncomfortable for the next couple of days but not incapacitating which was good because, hello, my name is Lisa and I do not have time for this. Fast forward to Thursday morning when the house is in full throttle.  Luke and I are rushing to get ourselves and the kids ready so we can drop them at school and drive to Huntsville for a pastor’s breakfast with David Jeremiah. (DAVID JEREMIAH!)  I jumped in the shower and while I was washing my hair I threw my head back and threw my neck out.  And when I say out I’m talking out-out.  As in take your breath away, can’t turn the head in any direction or lift your arms to rinse the shampoo out of your hair - out.  I always dreamed that if I were to suffer such an injury it would be while hiking the Himalayas or during a covert spy operation in which I am Sydney Bristow diving into a swimming pool from a ten-story balcony.  Not getting ready for a scrambled egg and bacon breakfast buffet.  Turning 40 is proving to be the lamest, most painful thing I’ve done to date.  I don’t recommend it.

So, somehow I got dressed and dried my hair without lifting my arms above shoulder level and I may have cried one or thirteen times in the process.  Luke tried to talk me into staying home but I don’t think it was so much my pain but his embarrassment at my robot moves and his having to carry my 37 lb. purse.  I was not to be deterred from listening to Dr. Jeremiah though.  Lucky for Dr. J I wasn’t feeling up to standing in the book-signing line to say hello to him or it could have been a repeat of the unfortunate Johnny Hunt incident.  Luke is not a wait-for-an hour-to-get-a-book-signed-and-have-your-picture-made-with-anyone type of guy so the only photo I have from the morning is from my seat and pathetic.  I’m certain Dr. J was disappointed we never got to make eye contact but I have a feeling it’s because he knew craning around the gigantic speaker could mean disaster for his neck.  Some things are just too risky.

As for the breakfast, it was so very good.  Dr. J spoke on the Anatomy of a Vision and even though it was geared towards pastors, it was very relevant for some things going on in my life.  One of the most impactful things he said was that a true vision or call is not waylaid by naysayers.  I needed to be reminded of that because it only takes one person whose affirmation I seek telling me I stink or dismissing me altogether to make me want to quit.  Anyone else?

In case you have made it this far, my neck is getting much better and even though several people have insisted I visit a chiropractor I must admit I have a completely unfounded fear of them.  Plus I’m afraid I’ll get addicted to needing adjusted on a regular basis and if I were to set weekly cash aside it would definitely be for Home Health to come by and wash my hair thereby doing away with my need for the chiropractor.

I wish I had some witty wrap up but it is late and I’ve just realized that Sydney has fallen fast asleep beside me in bed.  And so has Luke.  Which means there’s no one to carry her big bohunkus to bed.  I certainly can’t because have I mentioned I hurt my neck?

All of this can only mean one thing….

Luke is just going to have to find somewhere else to sleep.

November 14, 2011 | Filed Under Uncategorized | 10 Comments 

The Overspecified Call

Happy Monday!

I hope you had a fabulous weekend.  Mine was full of laughs and tears, football and more football, excellent sermons, and friends.  Does it get any better?  I’ll have more to say on those things later but in the meantime I ‘ve been wanting to purge something that won’t leave my thoughts.  I’ve had calling on my mind as of late and a conversation with a dear sister reminded me once again of an utterly profound counsel that my husband gave me some time back.  Perhaps you are in the need for some profundity as well.  Or maybe you’ll just listen along while I talk to myself.

The counsel to which I am referring came one night as I was belly-aching about my teaching the youth and children at our church.  Put me in front of a group of women any day but being before a room full of glazed-over-sneaking-to-text-during-the-lesson teenagers or 40 rambunctious 2nd graders who must have eaten straight sugar for lunch will leave the most confident person (of which I am not) weak in the knees.  I was feeling particularly ineffective one week when I said to Luke, “It’s obvious these kids hate me and are getting nothing from me.  The problem is that I am operating outside the call.  I am supposed to be teaching women, not kids.”

In the way that only Luke can do and get away with it, he said, “That is the most ridiculously unbiblical thing I’ve ever heard.”  And then he asked a question, “What would you say is your gift and the thing you are called to do?”

Me:  “I guess teaching.”

Luke:  “Find me one place in scripture where it is specified that the one gifted to teach is given one age group in which to exercise that gift.”

Save for the Titus 2 reference of older women teaching the younger which is somewhat out of context for this conversation, I couldn’t think of a one.  Then Luke said, “Every single time you are given the opportunity to stand in front of a person and teach – irregardless of that person’s age – you are operating within the call.  Now stop your whining.”

Okay, he didn’t say that last part but he might as well have.

What he said is absolutely true and something that had never occurred to me until that moment. I am not at all saying there aren’t different groups to which we are drawn but what if the opportunity is not there to serve that singular segment of the population?  Even though I feel most drawn to teaching women, God has not given me my own church ladies but rather has opened the wide door of ministry in the direction of the kids.  It’s not what I would have chosen but I do my congregation a disservice to withhold my gift because I can’t use it in the precise manner I have determined.  (God has been gracious in still allowing me the opportunity to serve women outside my congregation but I personally do not believe He ever calls us to neglect our families of faith for the broader reach of ministry.)  If we aren’t careful, we can over-specify our call into oblivion and see our usefulness to the Body disappear right along with it.  Our gifts were never meant to be made irrelevant by our overly-sensitive inclinations.  And who knows, we may even discover we love the thing to which we previously only had an aversion.

I don’t know if this word means a thing to you but submitting to the truth of it has given me a fresh energy for being faithful in those opportunities to serve others whether or not the job matches my carefully defined parameters.  Don’t minimize a gaping hole of opportunity to a minuscule bulls-eye of preference and falsely assume the call is made void.

I pray this day finds you joyfully serving and realizing that as long as we are operating within the gift we are never operating outside the call.  The question is…are we operating at all?  Lord, when you return may you find faithfulness upon the earth and more specifically – in me.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the subject?

November 7, 2011 | Filed Under Calling, Church Life, Spiritual Gifts | 18 Comments 

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