To take a picture

Because it's March and I'm a little sad I have to go to work today. I thought I'd share some pictures from the last couple of weeks. The first one is what it looked like as I tried to go to work today. Not feeling it.

I walked into work and the janitor asked me if they had fixed the utility sink in the basement. I didn't tell him it was broken. Aparently he helped the owners clean it out when the owner passed awa

But that's not what you're here for! So many of you have asked I thought I'd post some pictures from the house I'm trying to buy!!!!

I mean, I'm a girl, I really like fun dresses, so a closet is important to me.

Here's a bedroom, with windows. After four years in basements, I really like windows.

Love these floors!

Yes, that the other closet in what, hopefully, will soon be my bedroom! Two closets!

Here's the bathtub.

Here's the epic swans. I think I should name them. Any suggestions? I mean, we have to name the swans. Right?

That toilet was made in 1955. They just don't make them like they used to.

Love these mirrors. If everything goes well this week and you want to come over and do yoga or ballet this summer, let me know. Ballet bar in the living room?

And then there is the kitchen. The appliances are my age, but work...

The floor in the kitchen has been recently updated, but the lines aren't quite (read hardly) strait.

But then there is the hardwood floors which are gorgeous.

Love the dining room!

Hey, they are iphone pictures, they can't all be perfect! But I'm still loving the light! Oh to see the sun again.

I'm getting that feeling that life is about to get very, very interesting.

To stay.

One of the saddest things I've heard as I've talked to a bunch of different people about buying a house was this. "You'll probably be the safest person on the block. You're white; everybody knows if they mess with you they are in real trouble."

Reminders of what living in a world gone bad is like. Why is my life more valuable? Why doesn't anyone care as much if one of my kids gets hurt, or robbed, or, God forbid, worse? Are they not still made in God's image?

I remember, a while ago, having an argument that racism was a thing of the past. That the American dream was attainable for all. But it's not. I mean, the clan has been ostracized, but the more subtle stuff is still around. Not that I have a fix. I mean, my kids probably have more money poured into their schools. The probably have more police on their streets. But trial is still by Jury and Media is still by revenue. So a 13 year black boy getting stabbed is still going to sell fewer papers than a 13 year old white girl getting stabbed. People are more shocked by the latter. It sells more papers.

I say all this without a proposed solution. People ask me all the time what the solution to failing urban schools is. If I knew that I would have quit teaching and went back to policy. But it's not the kind of solutions that are easy. It didn't take a year for things to get this way. It took generations of neglect. Whole generations of people who were failed by their schools who now have trouble honestly telling their kids that trying hard in school will get you somewhere in life. Our schools failed them.

So my solution is: to stay. I can do more good showing up every day and teaching my heart out. I can do more good genuinely caring about my kids. I can do more good making sure when my kids need a hug, me, or a giant stuffed lion, are available. When they really just need to punch something, the lion is available. (not so much me.)

I think too much of society has bought into the idea that there are easy solutions to all the ills of society. It's just not true. There are often very simple solutions, but never easy ones. The simple solution is often that people need to stop sinning. Urban youth need to lay aside the culture of violence that persecutes "snitches." Parents need to start raising their kids instead of letting the TV do it. Dads need to mentor their little boys. Teachers need to care more about educating children than their dental plan. Parents need to be invested in their kids futures. Jobs that earn a living wage need to be available to everyone. They are simple solutions. But they aren't easy.

To sleep.

Everything is uncertain right now. The inspection had a little more drama than I was going for. Now I'm back to waiting. Will the seller fix this? do I have enough money for that? All of this has led to a lot of stress, and a lot of temptation to worry.

I've been loosing sleep: lots of sleep. There have been several nights when I've woken up at 3 or 4 in the morning and been up. This mornings sermon was really helpful. It was over John 14. A passage I love to read over and over again when I'm feeling anxious.

³ "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am."

⁶ Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

¹² Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. ¹³ And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. ¹⁴ You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

¹⁸ I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

¹⁹ Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. ²⁰ On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. ²¹ Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”

It's a sweet passage as the master gently and lovingly prepares his disciples for what is to come. A fitting preface to Easter. 

This morning, Mark Dever, my pastor, went on a tangent about sleep. I've got notes from the rest of the sermon, but I was so tired, I didn't retain a ton. But he talked about how we should pray that God would be glorified in more of the things that we do. Then he used sleep as an example. Sleep is a humble thing. For the Christian, when we sleep, we are trusting that our God is still soverign and still working all the things out for my good and his glory. I can sleep with confidence that nothing will happen while I'm asleep that my God is not in control of. I can sleep without fear.

I believe the inverse of that might also be true for me this week. When I can't sleep, sometimes it's because of a lack of trust. I would like to believe that I can use my own logic in the wee hours of the morning to plan out my response to every potential contingency situation that might happen. I should think through the most likely contingencies for those big life decisions, but I don't need to spend hours and hours coming up with a plan every possible thing that I can imagine going wrong. In one sense I waste a lot of time and energy planning for things that will never happen. But my God is also far more creative than I am. As I look back, most of my life has been spent dealing with the things I never even thought to imagine. The hardest things, the things I wish I had been more prepared for, the best moments of my life so far, none of those are things I ever thought to imagine. I've spent so much time worrying about the things that would never come to pass that I don't spend time focusing on the things that will be important regardless of whether the seller of this house agrees to pay for this or that. Things like growing in the fruits of the spirit. Things like discipleship. Things like being kind toward the children that have been entrusted to me rather than rude and harsh because I haven't slept worried about the mortgage guy or galvanized steel pipes.

So tonight, I pray that God would be glorified in my sleep. I pray that he would give me strength to lay aside my desires to control everything and sleep. I pray that I would trust God's goodness more. Even if his plans are not my plans I pray the I will trust that his plans are indeed higher than my plans. I pray that I would be faithful to the work that I need to do this week. That I would be a good model of a loving authority that would point people to God's loving authority.

To sign a contract

Today I accepted the counter offer. I signed the contract. And, apart from anything crazy showing up during the inspection, I'll close on this house in early April. I got out to the car and immediately called my dad. He was super excited for me. (And if you've talked you my dad lately, you understand that excited is not really an emotion he gets to much.) My response...I think I'm gonna be sick. I was able to keep my lunch down, but all the stress is starting to get to me.

But I can be excited now! I've been in decorating brainstorming mode. Traditional? Retro? Chick? Urban? I don't know!

 I've been collecting paint cards.

And picking out pillows.

And Curtains.

Or maybe we'll recover some old furniture. Yellow flowers?

Pink Flowers?

 

  

One thing you will notice is that none of these pictures should be in the same room together. I think that maybe I should stop brainstorming and start focusing. My sister always said that she couldn't wait to see my house. I'm starting to think she might have had a point.

To hang a picture.

This was published originally in our family newsletter this winter, with some minor changes.

For any of you that have visited my grandparents house, it's something striking. Everyone in the family's face smiles back at you as soon as you walk in, because over the couch, on a subtle, but distinct, pastel Easter dress green wall, lives each and every member of the family, frozen in time and ever present in pictures. Some photos new, others are older than I am of faces I never got to see in person. 

I moved away for college. It was a great experience, but extremely difficult to walk away from my family. I love them very much. I wondered if the great-grand kids of the family would even know me when I came home for visits. They were so young. Granny Lovell would ask who that was when I walked in, and they'd say Jodi. I was shocked a child so young would remember. One day I caught her though. Granny was quizzing one of the kids on the pictures on the wall. Making sure they knew who their family was. I think it's part of what keeps the family so close. We know that we have to take care of the pictures on the wall, and each other.

 So for Christmas this year, through a series of Facebook messages, we decided to change the wall. As bold a move a it was, the old gold frames got replaced with black modern frames. (what grandparent doesn't want to get their living room redecorated with a "modern" touch for Christmas)  

So the wall lives on. It's an amazing testament to the family I love. The family that still goes camping together every year. The family that, even though it continues to grow, still manages to cram into Granny's house every month or two. Even though the great-grand kids never met my mother, they know her face and name because of that wall. And I like to think that one day, trusting Jesus for their salvation, they'll walk into heaven and bump into my mom, or great granny Westmoreland, and remember the wall, and praise God all the more for the genealogy of faith that they could trace on Granny's wall. 

To plow.

It's been a wearisome week. It hasn't been particularly busy. But work has just been wearisome. I've felt like I was saying the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over again. The number of times I said, "We can't move on until we're quiet." this week is probably nearing 1000. It just hasn't seemed productive. The work I've put out has seemed to produced no noticeable result. But I was reading the girl talk blog a few weeks ago and came across this Spurgeon quote.

"Why do you tell your child a thing twenty times?” asked some one of a mother. “Because,” said she, “I find nineteen times is not enough.” Now, when a soul is to be ploughed, it may so happen that hundreds of furrows will not do it. What then? Why, plough all day till the work is done. Whether you are ministers, missionaries, teachers, or private soul-winners, never grow weary, for your work is noble, and the reward of it is infinite. The grace of God is seen in our being permitted to engage in such holy service; it is greatly magnified in sustaining us in it, and it will be pre-eminently conspicuous in enabling us to hold out till we can say, “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” ~Charles Haddon Spurgeon 

As any good "teaching reading through science teacher" would do, I started to wonder what the rest of the sermon was like. It's a sweet sermon on the work of plowing. The hard work of plowing, but the assurance that we must only plow through the hours the Christ has appointed. We must work, but we must only do the work appointed, no more. There is toil in our work outside of Eden. The work we put in is never going to equal what we get out in this fallen world. But work we must. In the same sermon Spurgeon said,

Brother worker, are you getting a little weary? Never mind, rouse yourself, and plough on for the love of Jesus, and dying men. Our day of work has in it only the appointed hours, and while they last let us fulfil our task. Ploughing is hard work; but as there will be no harvest without it, let us just put forth all our strength, and never flag till we have performed our Lord's will, and by his Holy Spirit wrought conviction in men's souls. Some soils are very stiff, and cling together, and the labour is heart-breaking; others are like the unreclaimed waste, full of roots and tangled bramble; they need a steam-plough, and we must pray the Lord to make us such, for we cannot leave them untilled, and therefore we must put forth more strength that the labour may be done.

I love Paul David Trip's book Broken Down House. It a book the compares life in a fallen world to life in house that is being renovated. (It's a really good book. You should go read it.) It seems like a good book to read now that I might (hopefully) soon be living in a house that needs a little work. The second chapter is called "Know Where You Are." He talks about how we tend to forget that we live in a fallen world. We expect things to work, and things don't work right in a fallen world. We get surprised when things don't work, or when work is toilsome with very little fruit, but really we should be more surprised when they do work. When God, in his grace, allows a little glimpse of Eden where everything just worked right. Where work and toil were not synonymous. He says,

"I think many of us live in a permanent state of location amnesia. We have forgotten where we live. Lose sight of the fact that this is a broken-down house where nothing works quite right, and it set you up for all kinds of trouble."

I realized this morning when I heard myself yelling, "Why can't anything ever work the first time here," at a locked computer lab door, that I had forgotten where I lived. I expected my work to not be frustrated. I expected systems to be just. I expected one of the three copiers in the building to be fully functioning. I expected the problems of poverty and urban crime to be solvable. I expected thirteen year old girls to miraculously stop wanting to punch each other. Those things are part of life in a fallen world. But my work will not always be frustrated.

O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothèd then in blood washed linen
How I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take my ransomed soul away;
Send thine angels now to carry
Me to realms of endless day.

-Come thou fount of every blessing.
by Robert Robinson

To raise an Ebeneezer.

All this talk about housing was starting to make me nervous. I was starting to worry if timing would work out. I was worried I might not have a place to live for a while. Then I looked down at my key chain. Sitting there, beside my car keys and work keys was a key that doesn't unlock anything anymore. That key is my Ebeneezer.

In 1 Samuel 7 the Lord has just protected Israel from an invasion of the Philistines. It was one of those battles Israel fought that they didn't actually have to bare arms in because the Lord sent thunder and the enemy was too confused to fight.

"12Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer,^b saying, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.”

1 Samual 7:12

I've been encouraged to remember the ways that God has been faithful in the past when I'm tempted to worry. This key used to go to the door of a dear friend's house. She was 42 and had befriended a socially awkward college student, me, to help teach me what it meant to grow into a woman of God. 

Then two weeks before graduation when I was jobless and had nowhere to live in DC. She invited me to live in their basement for the summer. Then, by God's kindness he provided two more short term housing situations with friends from church before I finally found  a job eight months later. 

Four years later, many things have changed. That friend is now with her savior and not with us anymore. I have a job that I love. The credit cards are paid off, and I'm looking to buy a couch for a house instead of couch surf. But, even though my circumstances have changed, my God is still the same. The same God who delivered Samuel from the hands of the Philistines, is the same God who provided a place for me to live after college, and he's the same God that is carefully and lovingly executing the next steps of his good and perfect plan. I can rest knowing that God will provide for me. I can wait with confidence that God will be glorified.  

To Wait.

Waiting. I put the offer in on the house I love. Now I'm just waiting. I feel like I spend so much of my life waiting. Waiting to graduate. Waiting to find a job. Now I'm waiting to buy a house. Waiting for Mr. Right to come along. Waiting for kids. Waiting Waiting. I'm part of Generation ME. We don't wait well. We were told that if things are moving fast enough, force the matter.  We are the masters of distraction to avoid the hard work of really waiting. We come from a childhood raised by a TV, and an adolescence and young adulthood playing with our ipods, watching TV, and texting 17 people at once. We don't know how to just wait. It, like everything else, takes practice to learn to wait well. I don't wait for a friend when they are running late. I text then repeatedly until they tell me where they are and exactly when they will be there. Then I play temple run or pin things. I don't wait in traffic, I listen to Pandora and sometimes...text my friend to tell them where I am when I'm the one running late.  Maybe that's why it's so hard to understand what it means to wait on God's judgment, to wait on Christ's return. Patience is not something that is valued anymore by the world. It's up there with self-control on the list of fruits of the spirit I'd rather ignore. My grandmother always told me not to pray for patience because you might just get some practice in waiting.

So here I am, trying to wait. Waiting to hear back from this offer, but hoping this waiting will teach me how to better wait for Christ to return and finally end this waiting. I've been scouring The Gospel Coalition blog to read articles on waiting. I've linked some of them below.

"Waiting, therefore, is not a sign that your world is out of control. Rather, it is a sign that your world is under the wise and infinitely attentive control of a God of fathomless wisdom and boundless love. This means you can rest as you wait, not because you like to wait, but because you trust the One who is calling you to wait."
This gem is from Paul Trip's Article.
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2011/10/24/5-reasons-why-god-calls-us-to-wait/

“To wait is not merely to remain impassive. It is to expect–to look for with patience, and also with submission. It is to long for, but not impatiently; to look for, but not to fret at the delay; to watch for, but not restlessly; to feel that if he does not come, we will acquiesce, and yet to refuse to let the mind acquiesce in the feeling that he will not come.” – Dr. A.B. Davidson, Waiting on God (quoted in The Hidden Life of Prayer by David McIntyre)

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/thabitianyabwile/2010/12/28/waiting-on-god/

To make an offer.

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Dear seller,

It was a pleasure to run into you the other day. It sounds like your mother was a kind woman. The neighbor had nothing but nice things to say. I can only imagine the stories those two could have told about nearly 50 years next door to each other. 

I remember a day about a year into teaching when I realized that I’d fallen in love with the neighborhood and wanted to spend my life there. I think that’s when my job became much more than a job. I loved the kids I taught. I loved the sense of community that is so strong in the neighborhood. That’s the moment when I realized I wanted to plant my life in Ward 7. I started looking at apartments and nothing seemed right, so I started saving for a down payment on a house.

I want this home to be a place where I can invite friends and neighbors over for dinners and cook-outs: a place where friends are families are comfortable popping in for dinner.  I can only pray that God would be so kind as to allow me to marry and raise kids for fifty years like your parents did in this house. I’m moved by the legacy of stability that this home seems to radiate. I ask that you would consider the offer attached.

Thank you,