New Website

Taking my writing more seriously has been exciting and scary at the same time.  I've woke up with panics over words like platform and book proposal.  Yuck.

It's funny how similar those two emotions are, fear and excitement.  Because for every fearful climb of the roller coaster, there is also the exuberant slide down.

So here's something fun that has come of this writing adventure I'm on, I've got a website.
James gave me some input here and there, but for the most part, I designed it myself using SquareSpace.  If you need to build a website, I would highly recommend it.  I even found a coupon, because I'm a coupon loving home school mom.

Please check out my new website www.jenniferllane.com, and give me some feedback.  I'd love to know if there is something I could add to make it better.

Also do me an even bigger favor and subscribe to my blog, and you will receive an email whenever I post something new.

Thank you, friends!

This song would be funny if it weren't so true.  He nailed it.  If you haven't noticed yet, I have an intense love for artsy, weird music.  

Uncomfortable questions

Today is James's last full day in South Sudan.  I'm so happy, so ecstatic to know I will have him home soon.  Towards the end of his mission trips, I always begin counting it down, not in days, but in how many more nights do I have to sleep without him here.  Today I only have two more Jamesless nights left.

I have two things bouncing around in my head right and I feel like they are smushing my precious brain membranes.  One thing is Africa, the things James has told me about his trip and remembering details of my trip to Ethiopia last summer.  The other thing is an essay I am writing.

I've agreed to do something that is exciting and a little bit scary.  I've registered to attend a Christian writer's conference in April.  I have butterflies even as I admit to you that I am going.  When I registered for the conference, there was a little box that said "essay contest" and I checked yes.  So now I feel like a student again working on an important class project.  I get even more butterflies just thinking about my little document sitting on my desktop.  I want it to be good.  I'm terrified to let that list of respectable authors who are the judges read something I've written.  But also, since I'm a type A first born, I want to win the contest.  But I also want to wipe off my sweaty hands, slide that document into my virtual trash can icon and just not do it.

My essay is about church unity, because that's an easy nut to crack, right?

So I have these Africa stories and church unity crashing around my little noggin and it's terrifying.

I just thought I'd share.  The end.  Goodbye.

Not really.  I'll elaborate.

Yesterday James and I talked a little about an awful thing that is still happening in South Sudan.  It is the practice of men taking more than one wife.  He has regularly encountered men on his trip that profess to be Christian that have multiple wives.

It is more than disconcerning.  Because this is how I think, I immediately try to put myself mentally in the place of one of those wives.  Heartbreak.  I imagine physically straining work of caring for my children with a detached segment of a husband.  Just plan heartbreak.

James had called me while I was at the grocery store.  Yesterday I was standing in the middle of the can soup isle wondering if I could raise an old fashioned Frankenstein-style mob, check our pitchforks because those don't fit in our carry-ons, and fill an airplane to fly over there and do something.

I pulled myself back to reality and asked James questions that I knew he couldn't answer.  "What do we do about that?"  "How can we make them know that is wrong?"  "What do those men do to fix it because they can't just pick a family to keep?"  "How do we teach the children not to grow up and do that?"

He feeds me a lot of I-don't-knows and reassures me that the director of the orphanage and school is doing his best to teach the boys not to hope for multiple wives or plan to marry more than one woman.

My mental list of thank yous to God for being born in the time and country I was born in grows increasingly longer.

How do I open a document and write about church unity after hearing about these injustices?

God, please put an end to these chains of sin that bind your people and stop these generational sins that hurt your women.  Amen.

With James in Africa, I've been thinking about my week in Ethiopia.  While I was there, I felt like everyone was segmented into three groups of people, Muslims, Orthodox Christians, and Protestant Christians.  In America, we are just heathens and Christians.  Why was it different there?  I don't think I met anyone who was just a good old fashioned heathen while I was there.  It felt precarious.

I immediately joined team Protestant Christian in my head.  It's obvious the Muslims were not on my team, but what about those Orthodox Christians?  I've never encountered them before.  This was a new question to me.  Where they on my team?

I'm still wrestling with this one.  It's not where my flesh wants to go, but I feel like the Holy Spirit is pushing me to team unity.  At least these questions are slightly easier than that multiple wives question.

I like everything neat, organized, boxed up, and clear.  Jimmy crickets.  Why can't everything about God be neat, organized, boxed up, and clear?

While I was in Ethiopia I listened to a few sermons by Matt Chandler at the Village church.  During a sermon titled "Eccentric and Faithful," Matt said something that I connected so so deeply that I grabbed my journal and wrote down a quote.  Here it is.

"Surely you had to know that the Word of God was going to meet you some place that made you uncomfortable.  If it didn't, it's not the Bible and He's not God.  He's the god of your imagination, the one who makes everything like you feel comfortable.  It's just not the God of the Bible.  Is this messy and dangerous? --- Like life itself." - Matt Chandler

I'm wrestling with my God.  I don't want an imaginary god.  I want the real, I Am God.  I want Him even if His work is messy.  Even if His work is dangerous.  Especially when He makes me feel uncomfortable.

Change never comes out of a place of comfort.  And change always needed in this world and in me as I strive to be more like Him.  He is not messy.  He is unchanging.

As much as I would like to think that I have all my thoughts, feelings, and other parts of my self neatly wrapped up and contained in the right places and boxes, the truth is I don't.  God isn't the mess.  I am.

"Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. 

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. 

Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away. For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. 

Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am being tempted by God,' for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. 

Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures."     James 1:2-18 ESV

Thanks for sticking with me even though my thoughts are about as clear as this song and the singing of Alec Ounsworth.

It's been how many years?

Last night I resolved myself to get up and start this blog.  I have been blogging about our Ethiopia Adoption on heswithus.blogspot.com since the beginning of that journey two years ago.  I've written that blog to have a documentation our adoption for sentimental value, to encourage other adoptive families, and for fundraising reasons.  International adoptions are not cheep.  I've started this blog so I could have a place where I could share my heart about all of my crazy life, not just our adoption.

Rolling out of bed this morning, I had the thought that last time I took writing seriously was when I was on the high school newspaper.  I've written things here and there: our adoption blog, a few articles for the Citychurch newsletter, journal entries, some team blogs for missions.  Nothing has been something that I couldn't have backed out of or done half-heatedly.  It's been spotty.

Back in high school, I loved journalism.  I loved the nervousness of deadlines, those weird wax pencils that you use to write on photographs,my liberal UT Austin teacher who was also my neighbor who taught us to read upside down anything on the desks of someone you are interviewing.  There were perks to being on the school newspaper.  I had a pass to leave campus at lunch (which I only abused exactly one time.  I was a goody goody.)  I got to see the teacher's lounge once.  It was like seeing behind the Wizard's curtain.  We heard the juicy school gossip.  One year we got to go to Austin for a weekend journalism conference.  Another year we went to Dallas, and we go to see an early screening of Dumb and Dumber.  They had us fill out comment cards.  I was a new Christian and super offended by the majority of the movie.  I wish I had my comment card, but I'm pretty sure I wrote something about cutting the fire-fart scene.  These days my sense of humor is much better, some days I wonder if I have too much of a sense of humor.  Journalism and newspaper staff was fun.  Why wouldn't a 16 year old love being a part of it.

While searching for colleges, I had an interview with a scholarship committee.  They asked me what my major would be.  I had chose accounting, but I told them I was considering minoring in journalism.  The committee basically told me why that was a bad idea and to strongly consider giving up the minor.  I took their advice.  I guess it is not surprising that a group of business professors would give me very practical advice.  As soon as I walked away from that meeting, I filed my school newspaper days away in the "that was fun, but it's over now" category of my brain.  I was going to learn about tax law.  Doesn't that seem like more fun.  Ha!

It's January, so I'm not unique in evaluating my goals and priorities this time of year.  I've been reflecting on what has God brought me through in the last two years, in the last five years, in the last twenty years (that school newspaper was twenty years ago.  Can that be right?)

Looking back at just the last year, I can't help but think a lot about the mission trip to Ethiopia.  It was a big moment for me.  It was my first international mission trip and a chance to get to know the country where our little boy would come from.  It was an experience that grew me in many ways.  I worked with a team of other Christians that I didn't even know.  God moved and used us in ways that we couldn't even dream of.

When I look at the highs and lows of that trip, there are some obvious lows and some obvious highs.  Some biggies are the time hugging on babies, international church, the transition home, the food.  But one highlight I realized looking back, was my opportunities to serve God though writing.  Our team wrote a collective blog.  We each were assigned a day or our trip to write about.  I was assigned our last day.  I looked forward all week to my turn to write with excitement and dread.  Our last day turned out to be an amazing one.  I wrote my blog post on my iPhone, in the middle of the night, in line at the Ethiopia airport.  As the words flew out of my little fingers onto my little phone, I had that excitement of deadline that I had back in high school.  It was fun.  I was giddy.  And I love what I wrote.  I loved sharing it.

The second writing opportunity was writing about one of the children on the waiting children's list.  The waiting children's list is a group of children that have all their paperwork together to be adopted, but no family in the adoption agency has requested to adopt a child that matches that child.  Most of the children have special needs or are older.  Each of our team members were assigned a child off the waiting children's list to meet and write about.  The hope was that after our team told their story, became a storyteller for them, someone would be moved to adopt them.  I was assigned a teenage girl with special needs who had been living in the same orphanage for half of her life.  Putting myself in the role of storyteller for that young girl affected me.  It was heavy, it was emotionally draining.  She was such a beautiful, sweet, smart girl in such a dark and clinical living situation.  She was so real to me.  I struggled with urges to throw out God's plan and just adopt her myself.  Almost 4 months after our trip, she still had not been matched with a family.  Then one day I got a FaceBook message.  This lovely woman was telling me that they were adopting her.  I could hardly believe my eyes.  And it was clear to me that this was God's plan.  It was a better home than I could have provided because she would already have siblings that had also been adopted from Ethiopia.  She was going to have a family.  My prayers had been answered.  My storytelling wasn't the whole reason that happened, by any means, but a was a piece of the story.  I had invested my heart in praying for her.  I had convinced others to invest their heart and pray for her.  It was rewarding.

Looking back at my year, I am surprised that these moments of writing were such a big part of my year.  I've thought of myself as a numbers girl (remember my accounting degree) or a minister or a mother.  Writing hasn't been something I take serious or have been intentional about.  But now I have this blog as an outlet, I'm going to be intentional about writing here this week.  My hope is that putting my words and heart here will allow God to speak to me about where he wants my writing to be used.

So here we go.