Oh Jeff, this is what I needed to hear today as I sit in the messy mess of my first call with all of what I know and have yet to learn, all of who I already am and who I am in the process of becoming, of wanting to get it all right the first time and just being a normal human for whom that is unrealistic. Any call back to the mess of the middle has become a strange but sure comfort for me in the last year or two, and here it is again in my email inbox from you. Thank you.
To answer your question about Thanksgiving (my favorite holiday!), my family will be hosting our new Afghan refugee friends for their first Thanksgiving ever. I have secured a halal turkey -- a task not as straightforward as one might think -- and have been planning a variety of vegetarian side dishes. We usually host international students from Notre Dame, so dietary restrictions on Thanksgiving are not new to me and I can lean on some old favorites: rosemary-garlic mashed potatoes, roasted butternut squash and onions, pan-seared Brussels sprouts, to-die-for mushroom stuffing (that won't get stuffed), and chocolate-swirled pumpkin pie with a pecan crust. Most of the ingredients will come from our local farmer's market, and on Wednesday (which happens to be my birthday), I will get to spend the entire day in my kitchen preparing food from the land I inhabit for people I love. And a bottle of wine. I can't wait.
I love this so much and it is so beautifully stated. I'm behind on my newsletters but we all need to be reminded that we are messy and that is our normal human state. And as a parent, I sometimes need to be reminded that Jesus said to let the little children come to him, even though he knew that children also are full of all that makes us human (and when you have a teenager, that reminder helps 😉).
"So often we rush toward the black and white when reality is all different shades of gray. We glorify or catastrophize. We lust after the seeming simplicity of the poles, when the truth is, we live in the messy and beautiful in-between." Simple, plain truth, but so difficult to accept and live within the messy middle! A very timely word before our extended family Thanksgiving gathering, indeed.
Thank you, Jeff, for your honesty and encouragement. We all need to be more loving towards ourselves, each other, and especially "the other".
All the best to you and your hubby for a beautiful holiday season!
Loved this so much. I forget the simplicity of what my relationship with God can be-- a lap, a place of comfort, a place to find my footing. Thank you for this reminder.
Every Thanksgiving in recent memory but this one (because we are moving next week and I know my limits), I have made my great-grandmother's egg noodles, which we simmer in turkey broth, salt, and butter until they are tender and the broth is a thick gravy. We eat them poured over the turkey, mashed potatoes, and dressing. There is nothing like it. My grandmother, who died this year, taught me to make them when I was in high school (20 years ago already!) And now I am the appointed noodle maker for my family. They'll survive without us this year, and the noodles, as we are in Indianapolis and Thanksgiving will be in St. Louis this year. I guess they'll taste extra good next year!
Do you make egg noodles from scratch? I'm sure you do. Perhaps you've already written about it and I missed it, but do you have a good recipe for homemade lo mein? Even with store-bought noodles I can never get the sauce or consistency right, no matter what type of Asian noodle I am attempting....
If I am re-writing the Sermon on the Mount (nobody has asked me yet, thankfully) I might add these two lines.
Blessed are the messy, for they will be called Children of God;
Blessed are those willing to wade into this mess in love, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven
My son had his heart broken earlier this year and as he seeks out his life partner, I told him to look for someone willing to wade into his mess the way he was taught to do so. Happy Mess All.
A Martin/Smith famly dinner always includes corn pudding (corn baked in an eggy custard; no cornbread), cole slaw that includes crushed pineapple, and yeasty homemade rolls.
I needed this today. This reminder. I made a mistake at work yesterday and have really been beating myself up about it. Thank you.
We will be visiting family for Thanksgiving so I don't have say in the food for that and it will be fairly traditional fare. However I am hosting Christmas for my parents for the first time and I've decided I've had enough of the heavy meat based meals that are expected this time of year. So we are going Greek! Lemon Chickpea Orzo soup with my dad's crusty sourdough bread, blistered shishito peppers, mini potato bites, a feeka and roasted grape feta salad, crisp white wine, and then yes some roasted squash to round things out. And apple olive oil cake for desert! It's not the normal Christmas day feast but I'm excited for some lighter fare on that day.
Yes. Thank you. It is messy and beautiful and hard all at the same time. I love that you are building into Mia that sense of being loved and lovable just as she is. We have a small kitchen table that bears the same marks and I can't bear to refinish it because it is the reminder of our life in tangible form.
Re Hong Kong - what an incredibly brave thing for them to do! I am not even remotely Asian, and I have been so sad about all this. I cant even imagine how you must feel. I'm so sorry.
Re Thanksgiving - we will be eating traditional things as we are spending the day (covid tests willing) with my husband's parents. This is a big deal. Trump and the pandemic and general evangelical shenanigans have permanently damaged our relationship with our families. We have managed to repair enough to have some (fragile) connection with his parents, but this is the first time we will share a holiday meal with them since the Insurrection. Basically his mom wanted to spend time with us so badly that she told his siblings that they couldn't come over this year. Things are frought. And they are Conservative Baptists so there's no wine! 😆 Given all this I think we will have our own feast the Saturday after so maybe we can experiment then.
To your point about grey areas, my husband Eric often says that most of us live in the middle 60% between 20% extremes, and yet we feel pulled to those extremes. It is good work to resist that pull and instead to recognize the complexities of people and nuances of situations.
Yes to all this! As we prepare for Thanksgiving, I am struggling with some family members who think only in black & white, all-good or all-bad… and right now I’m in the all-bad part of their swings. It’ll swing back; it always does. But I told my husband recently that I dearly wish they could get to greys: “I like these traits of Kim. These others aren’t my favorite.” … and skip the blocking & unblocking over normal-grade disagreements.
I wish for your niece family and friends who delight in her with nuance, so that she never feels she has to perform or hide parts of herself to be acceptable.
Same for us all.
Thanks for always putting your sincere heart into your writing (and Evolving Faith conferences)! I read it all, and it is a calm blessing I appreciate. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.
Oh Jeff, this is what I needed to hear today as I sit in the messy mess of my first call with all of what I know and have yet to learn, all of who I already am and who I am in the process of becoming, of wanting to get it all right the first time and just being a normal human for whom that is unrealistic. Any call back to the mess of the middle has become a strange but sure comfort for me in the last year or two, and here it is again in my email inbox from you. Thank you.
To answer your question about Thanksgiving (my favorite holiday!), my family will be hosting our new Afghan refugee friends for their first Thanksgiving ever. I have secured a halal turkey -- a task not as straightforward as one might think -- and have been planning a variety of vegetarian side dishes. We usually host international students from Notre Dame, so dietary restrictions on Thanksgiving are not new to me and I can lean on some old favorites: rosemary-garlic mashed potatoes, roasted butternut squash and onions, pan-seared Brussels sprouts, to-die-for mushroom stuffing (that won't get stuffed), and chocolate-swirled pumpkin pie with a pecan crust. Most of the ingredients will come from our local farmer's market, and on Wednesday (which happens to be my birthday), I will get to spend the entire day in my kitchen preparing food from the land I inhabit for people I love. And a bottle of wine. I can't wait.
"We live in the messy and beautiful in-between." Thank you for this post. These words are going to stick with me awhile.
Love, Bridget
I love this so much and it is so beautifully stated. I'm behind on my newsletters but we all need to be reminded that we are messy and that is our normal human state. And as a parent, I sometimes need to be reminded that Jesus said to let the little children come to him, even though he knew that children also are full of all that makes us human (and when you have a teenager, that reminder helps 😉).
"So often we rush toward the black and white when reality is all different shades of gray. We glorify or catastrophize. We lust after the seeming simplicity of the poles, when the truth is, we live in the messy and beautiful in-between." Simple, plain truth, but so difficult to accept and live within the messy middle! A very timely word before our extended family Thanksgiving gathering, indeed.
Thank you, Jeff, for your honesty and encouragement. We all need to be more loving towards ourselves, each other, and especially "the other".
All the best to you and your hubby for a beautiful holiday season!
Loved this so much. I forget the simplicity of what my relationship with God can be-- a lap, a place of comfort, a place to find my footing. Thank you for this reminder.
Every Thanksgiving in recent memory but this one (because we are moving next week and I know my limits), I have made my great-grandmother's egg noodles, which we simmer in turkey broth, salt, and butter until they are tender and the broth is a thick gravy. We eat them poured over the turkey, mashed potatoes, and dressing. There is nothing like it. My grandmother, who died this year, taught me to make them when I was in high school (20 years ago already!) And now I am the appointed noodle maker for my family. They'll survive without us this year, and the noodles, as we are in Indianapolis and Thanksgiving will be in St. Louis this year. I guess they'll taste extra good next year!
Do you make egg noodles from scratch? I'm sure you do. Perhaps you've already written about it and I missed it, but do you have a good recipe for homemade lo mein? Even with store-bought noodles I can never get the sauce or consistency right, no matter what type of Asian noodle I am attempting....
If I am re-writing the Sermon on the Mount (nobody has asked me yet, thankfully) I might add these two lines.
Blessed are the messy, for they will be called Children of God;
Blessed are those willing to wade into this mess in love, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven
My son had his heart broken earlier this year and as he seeks out his life partner, I told him to look for someone willing to wade into his mess the way he was taught to do so. Happy Mess All.
A Martin/Smith famly dinner always includes corn pudding (corn baked in an eggy custard; no cornbread), cole slaw that includes crushed pineapple, and yeasty homemade rolls.
I needed this today. This reminder. I made a mistake at work yesterday and have really been beating myself up about it. Thank you.
We will be visiting family for Thanksgiving so I don't have say in the food for that and it will be fairly traditional fare. However I am hosting Christmas for my parents for the first time and I've decided I've had enough of the heavy meat based meals that are expected this time of year. So we are going Greek! Lemon Chickpea Orzo soup with my dad's crusty sourdough bread, blistered shishito peppers, mini potato bites, a feeka and roasted grape feta salad, crisp white wine, and then yes some roasted squash to round things out. And apple olive oil cake for desert! It's not the normal Christmas day feast but I'm excited for some lighter fare on that day.
Yes. Thank you. It is messy and beautiful and hard all at the same time. I love that you are building into Mia that sense of being loved and lovable just as she is. We have a small kitchen table that bears the same marks and I can't bear to refinish it because it is the reminder of our life in tangible form.
Re Hong Kong - what an incredibly brave thing for them to do! I am not even remotely Asian, and I have been so sad about all this. I cant even imagine how you must feel. I'm so sorry.
Re Thanksgiving - we will be eating traditional things as we are spending the day (covid tests willing) with my husband's parents. This is a big deal. Trump and the pandemic and general evangelical shenanigans have permanently damaged our relationship with our families. We have managed to repair enough to have some (fragile) connection with his parents, but this is the first time we will share a holiday meal with them since the Insurrection. Basically his mom wanted to spend time with us so badly that she told his siblings that they couldn't come over this year. Things are frought. And they are Conservative Baptists so there's no wine! 😆 Given all this I think we will have our own feast the Saturday after so maybe we can experiment then.
To your point about grey areas, my husband Eric often says that most of us live in the middle 60% between 20% extremes, and yet we feel pulled to those extremes. It is good work to resist that pull and instead to recognize the complexities of people and nuances of situations.
Here's an op-ed he wrote in our local paper almost 5 years ago. It speaks to our political climate, but the 60% idea can be applied in almost any area of life. https://www.southbendtribune.com/story/opinion/2018/01/27/iewpoint-a-new-way-to-respond-in-the-new-year/46352807/
Love your words😊 yes, I want to be loved with all my imperfections!
So appreciative of these words. Delighted at the adorably messy, imperfect, joy-bringing baby. :D
And I grieve with you for the hard situation in Hong Kong and the separation from a beloved, rooted place.
Yes to all this! As we prepare for Thanksgiving, I am struggling with some family members who think only in black & white, all-good or all-bad… and right now I’m in the all-bad part of their swings. It’ll swing back; it always does. But I told my husband recently that I dearly wish they could get to greys: “I like these traits of Kim. These others aren’t my favorite.” … and skip the blocking & unblocking over normal-grade disagreements.
I wish for your niece family and friends who delight in her with nuance, so that she never feels she has to perform or hide parts of herself to be acceptable.
Same for us all.
Thanks for always putting your sincere heart into your writing (and Evolving Faith conferences)! I read it all, and it is a calm blessing I appreciate. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.