If Trees Worried

Fall is my favorite season.  Besides the fact that I love pumpkin everything (and for the record, I loved pumpkin everything before it was trendy to love pumpkin everything), I love what happens with the trees in fall.  I love the brilliant reds, orange, and yellow of the leaves as they change color.  I love the way the fallen leaves fill my senses as I walk or bike along the tree lined paths- the crunching and rustling sounds as I move over the leaves, the musty, earthy smell of the leaves as they start to decay, the way the leaves fall from the trees and the way the wind makes them dance on the ground.

But for all the beauty in fall, there is also death.  Plants die, the grass and plants start to lose their green, and the trees shed their leaves leaving just the lifeless looking branches.

And here’s the thing: Donald Miller once wrote, “All the trees are losing their leaves, and not one of them is worried.”

I can’t say for sure that trees actually feel emotion, but if we can imagine for a few minutes that trees do indeed feel emotions we can learn something radical.

Leaves are the life source for trees.  Without leaves trees would have no way of gathering in the power of the sun in order to turn that sunlight into food to help the tree survive and grow.  So for a tree to lose its leaves means the loss of its ability to generate food and therefore is essentially a death sentence.  

I can imagine the first fall for a baby tree is pretty traumatic.

However, the trees don’t worry.  They put up no fight as their leaves gradually drop one by one to the ground.  The trees do not selfishly try to hold on to the leaves that are destined to break from the trees. 

Perhaps the trees know their worrying will do nothing to change the weather or the fact that their leaves are going to fall off.  Maybe they aren’t worried because they trust that spring will come again just like it has every other year.  The leaves fall and the leaves return.  It’s a cycle.  The leaves have to fall in order for them to grow in the spring and the leaves have to grow in the spring in order for them to fall. Even though it seems completely illogical and terrifying in the fall, the trees know the cycle and they trust. 

Here’s the real lesson though: trees do more than simply accept what could be viewed as a tragedy, they transform it into a spectacular display of color.

It is this stunning autumn spectacle that teaches me year after year that acceptance and trust are significant but it is through choosing to use our energy to bring about transformation that worry is truly defeated. 

Thank You

Congress has gotten a lot of criticism lately, and I'd like to get on that bandwagon even though I may be a little late.  What made them think that they could just close things down when they couldn’t get along, when they couldn’t figure out a solution, when they couldn’t act like adults and compromise?  Did they not realize that their actions had awful consequences for so many people in our country and around the world?  

Most of us don't have the option to do what Congress did.  Most of us can't just say, "Well, this is too hard.  We can't figure out an easy answer or compromise, so we'll just shut things down for a while and wait for the other guys to give in or figure out an answer."  Yes, I know this is a huge simplification of the whole situation, but the real point here isn't to dis congress, but rather it is to thank all those people who don't close things down when the going gets tough. 

The truth is we all have to deal with the tough stuff.  We have to do things that are extremely difficult, we have to engage with the pain and brokenness of this world, we have to live in an imperfect world where some days one thing after the other goes wrong. 

And it’s hard.  It’s really hard.

But you do it.  Day after day.  Some days you may question why we must keep going, why it must be so difficult, but if you keep going please know that you are doing something spectacular.

There are the teachers who patiently care for and teach their students even when they don't have the resources they need, their students and parents aren’t always the most cooperative, and the system doesn’t lean toward doing what is best for the students. 

There are the pastors who are on call 24/7, counsel people through grief and crises, preach the Truth, and care for their congregation in so many ways through much sacrifice.

There are the non-profit organization leaders who make the most of few resources to do incredible work to solve some of the world's biggest problems and who help people who many would consider to be beyond help.

There are the lawyers who fight for their clients and for justice in a system that isn't always on the side of justice.

There are the doctors who relentlessly search for the best treatment for their patients even after so treatments many have proven ineffective.

There are the parents who continue to love their children even when exhaustion sets in and who give second chances and show “tough love” to help their children become the people they are meant to be.

There are early mornings, long days, late nights, disappointment, tears, stress, pain, heartache, moments of panic, days of grief, fear, loss, injustice, anxiety, financial struggles, insecurity, disasters, horrific accidents, devastation, illness, and rejection.

With all this, it takes great courage to keep going.  It requires an enormous amount of endurance and patience to not give up.  Most of all it demands hope.  And for as long as you don’t give up somewhere inside of you are courage, endurance, patience, and hope.

Thank you to all of you who keep going.  Thank you to everyone who has the courage, the endurance, the patience, and ultimately the hope it takes to say, “Yes, this is really awful and I want to give up, but I will not let all that is difficult stop me from trying to bring about what is beautiful.”

You give me hope.  Thank you.

The Mess

I’m a pretty calm person.  People notice this about me.  I can control my emotions, I’m pretty level headed in difficult situations, I take things as they come, I can roll with the punches.

But lately on the inside I’ve been freaking out a little and sometimes more than a little because I’m struggling with Jesus’ teaching to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39) and to care for people in need because Jesus told us “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). 

I’ve stepped way out of my comfort zone and I’ve really tried to live these words out.  I have poured my heart, my soul, and my energy into it.

I’ve loved and tried to care for people who are difficult to love and care for.  I’ve gone deep- I’ve tried to get to the root of the problems rather than just dealing with the surface struggles.  As soon as I think I have made some progress in helping someone or making the world a better place, things just get so much more complicated and the severity of the issue seems to amplify.

And all I see is more and more complex issues.  More pain.  More brokenness.

I took steps of faith, and now all I find myself with is a mess that I have no idea what to do with.  It’s the mess of a broken world.  It’s the mess of that comes with a broken person trying to love broken people.

So what do I do with disappointment?  With heartbreak?  With exhaustion?  With the temptation to give up?  What are we to do when things are just so overwhelming and success or progress seem to be completely out of the picture? 

What does it mean that I am trying to live how Jesus said we should live and it feels like Jesus is farther away from me as I see more and more brokenness?  Did God really intend for me to be in situations where my lack of experience and knowledge leave me feeling completely inadequate and I have no idea how the reign of God will ever be present?

All these questions and concerns are going around and around in my mind and it leaves me feeling more and more anxious, overwhelmed, and unsure about what it means to live as a Christian.

I remember a time when I was younger when my mom sent me to clean my bedroom.  After some time my mom came to check on my progress, and what she saw completely horrified her.  My bedroom may have been a little messy before, but now the president might have declared it a disaster area.  Clothes taken out of my dresser and closet, papers and supplies taken out of my desk, toys taken out of their places, and books removed the book shelf- piles of stuff everywhere and I was in the middle of the mess.  My mom naturally questioned what on earth I was doing and firmly reminded me that I was supposed to be cleaning my room.  

What I then tried to explain to my mom was that in order to really clean my room it needed to get messier before it could get clean.  I was rearranging and reorganizing everything in order to make my room as clean and tidy as possible.  My mom was skeptical but the explanation pacified her.  It took me a long time to clean my room, but in the end it truly was clean.

I’m hoping the mess of life is like the mess of my bedroom.  We can see that the world is a mess on the surface.  We can bring in a dust rag and a vacuum and things might look better.  Or we can open the closet, pull out the desk and dresser drawers, empty out the storage baskets and really deal with the mess.  This may require being knee-deep or even deeper in the mess for a while, but eventually the world will be restored.  

In the meantime I sit here and try to make sense of the piles of mess around me, I try to figure out how the mess was created in the first place and what I can possibly do to fix the profound brokenness in the world.

I wish there was a simple checklist to loving our neighbor, eliminating injustice, and restoring wholeness.  But it’s not a neat and straightforward 5-step process.  It’s messy and I hate the mess.

Just Call Me Farmer Melissa

This week I became a farmer!

One of my dreams is to become a farmer (see my blog post from a couple of years ago: Dream #4) and while there are still many ways in which I can become more of a farmer, at the basic level I’m a farmer!

Here’s how I became a farmer:

I’ve been a pretty serious gardener for a few years now and I’ve learned a whole lot by reading and by trial and error in my own garden and in the community garden at my church. 

The community garden at my church was started three years ago- we started with 2500 square feet of garden.  The first year we grew about 900 pounds of produce that was donated to the local food pantries and last year we grew 1350 pounds of veggies for the food pantries.  This spring with the amazing help of a boy scout from my church, we expanded the gardening area to about 7000 square feet.  He added an awesome compost bin, put up some sturdy fences and gates, made a whole bunch of heavy duty tomato cages and put up trellises for beans, cucumbers and peas, and we planted some perennial plants- rhubarb, raspberries, and asparagus.

Just part of the garden...

Back when we only had the 20 x 125 foot garden we struggled to get enough volunteers from the congregation to care for the garden.  Caring for the garden is very labor intensive- planting, weeding, picking hundreds of pounds of tomatoes and other veggies, watering for hours, etc.  We wanted to be able to grow more fresh veggies to donate to the local food pantries, but without more volunteers we just couldn’t do it.  As we were thinking about this my church was becoming more aware of the needs of people who are homeless in our community.  One of the greatest needs is for employment.  Many people who are homeless do have a job (they might have only a part-time position or aren’t making enough to make ends meets), but many people who are homeless face many barriers when trying to get a job.  

So, then we thought why not hire people who are homeless to work in the community garden?!?  We could provide jobs for people who are homeless AND we could provide more fresh veggies to the food pantries!   But then there was the whole obstacle of “So, how will we get money to actually pay people to work in the garden?”  This is where the wonderful folks at Wheat Ridge Ministries came in.  I applied for a Burst Grant for to be able to hire the homeless and they gave us a grant!

This spring we accepted applications, interviewed people, and hired two people who are homeless to work in the garden.  They have been working part-time in the garden since May.  They have planted, weeded, watered, and harvested.  The garden workers along with volunteers from the congregation and community have done a phenomenal job of caring for the garden.  It is a gorgeous garden and it is producing so much!  The vegetables are amazing, but the most beautiful part of this has been the blessings that the garden workers have experienced and been a part of.  I hope to share more soon about the positive impact and transformation I have seen in garden worker’s lives.

Now back to becoming a farmer….

The thing that separates a gardener from a farmer is a farmer sells what he or she grows.  Last week we set up a little farm stand at my church and sold some of the produce that we grew in the garden!  We’re farmers!

The money we make from the farm stand will allow us to take a step toward the garden becoming a self-sustaining ministry.  The grant money will run out, so if we want to continue to provide employment for the homeless and fresh produce for the food pantries we will need to raise money.  We are piloting the farm stand idea this summer to see if it’s a viable way to raise the funds we need.  We had quite a few people stop by the stand last week, hopefully more people will come this week!

Stop by if you’re in the area (my church is at 1244 W Army Trail Road in Carol Stream, right now we will have our farm stand on Wednesdays 5:00-7:00 pm)!

Corn, Rumbles, and Hills: Biking Across Iowa

I spent the past week biking across the state of Iowa.  All the way across from west to east, from the Missouri River to the Mississippi River.  And it was fantastic.  I’m ready to do it again.  Right now.

the Mississippi River!

The Missouri River

We rode for 7 days- each day we rode between 49 and 108 miles, most of the days were around 50 miles.   We stayed in houses a few nights and camped a few nights.  We went through 40 towns (mostly little towns), traveled about 430 miles, ate lots of food, and saw things I never would have guessed I would see.

Riding a bike across Iowa is not a logical thing to do, it really is a strange activity- it’s something you don’t really understand until you do it, but even now it's hard to explain why people come back again and again to do this bike ride.

There are a lot of reasons why people do RAGBRAI:

• Some do it to hang out with friends and family
• Some do it to cross something off their bucket list
• Some people do it for the adult beverages
• Some do it for the food (all sorts of fried things, a variety of meats on a stick, ice cream and pie and sweets galore…)
• Some do it because they really like biking
• Some people do it because the people of Iowa are so friendly and hospitable
• Some do it because there is just something special about thousands of people riding together

Why did I do RAGBRAI?  I decided to do RAGBRAI because I love Iowa, because I love biking, and because I’d eventually like to ride my bike across the US (I thought I would start with just Iowa and see how that went before setting off across the whole country).

What did I love most about RAGBRAI?  Just riding my bike across some beautiful landscapes... the fluffy white clouds dotting the bright blue sky, the warm sun, the green corn and soy fields stretching for miles, the gently rolling hills, the refreshing breeze.  My love for Iowa increased and I can't wait to get back on my bike.