On Our Way To Crazy

In honor of the last day of National Poetry Month, which I really only know about because Kari is a good teacher, I wanted to post a couple of my favorites poems.

I’ve never been a great poetry reader… I like my poems to be easy and short and have a simple rhyme scheme. I’m super deep like that. But the ones I like, I like a lot. Here are two of my favorites:

i carry your heart with me by ee cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

I Am Vertical by Sylvia Plath

But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one’s longevity and the other’s daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them –
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

Hi! Would you guys like another post about how busy I am? Great! I’m pretty sure that’s all I have to talk about these days.

Tonight is the first night I’ve been home for the evening with no guests in eight days. Eight days! That is out of control. This past week was GMA (Gospel Music Association) Week, which basically means that everyone connected to Christian music is in town for a whirlwind of interviews, showcases, parties, meetings and general insanity. Both of Aaron’s bands were in town all week and we were all running around like chickens with our heads cut off.

FRIDAY
Aaron and I drove up to Clarksville to see the guys play at some kind of town festival thing. Good crowd, fun hang out time with a couple of other band and all the Airheads you could eat. Very nice.

SATURDAY
The band (and two wives and two kids) came down to Nashville to settle in for the week. I took the wives on a sweet tour of homes where we decided to just buy one big fancy house for all of us to live in.

SUNDAY
After having our first youth service in ten months (which, yay!), I hosted the families at our house while Aaron took the guys to an interview. Then we tried really really hard to go to a wine tasting party with Sheryl Crow, but alas, it was not meant to be.

MONDAY
Monday was showcase day! You may remember last year, when I declared Aaron’s showcase day one of the best I’ve had. And I stand by that. This year he did it again, this time showcasing Danyew as well. It was the first time I’ve seen him play live, and you guys, it was pretty freaking great. (Shameless plug: download the ep for $5! Totally worth it! ‘Close Your Eyes’ and ‘Turnstile’ are my favorites.)

Now, obviously I am biased. But I have seen the band play a bajillion times, and I’m pretty sure the show on Monday night was the best one I’ve seen. Part of it was definitely the (packed!) club atmosphere, but they were just on that night. Which was good, since the place was full of managers and bands and radio guys. We finished the evening with dinner and pint night at Flying Saucer, and to top it off the booking guy picked up the tab. Excellent.

TUESDAY
Tuesday I actually had to work, which was kind of a bummer as all I wanted to do was sleep all day. But! Since Tuesday was the only night the guys had off, we loaded up and went to the Nashville Film Festival to see Hands On a Hardbody. Do you know about Hands On a Hardbody? It’s a documentary set in east Texas about a contest where a dealership gives away a (hardbody) truck to the contestant who keeps their hand on it for the longest period of time. It is amazing, and you need to stop reading this blog, go find a copy, and watch it immediately. They showed it on the big screen at NaFF and it brought me so much joy. Here’s a clip of my favorite character.

WEDNESDAY
Wednesday was a crazy work day for me. It is already the busiest day of my week, and this Wednesday was extra special because one of my senior girls was with me all day for her Senior Shadow Day. It was super fun to have her around all day, and it was really cool to get to show her what I do all day. Regardless, I’m pretty sure she still thinks my job consists of leaving facebook comments and looking for new ways to embarrass teenagers. The guys had a label party that night, and afterwards we ended up, again, at Flying Saucer. I love that place.

THURSDAY
Thursday! Thursday was the big day. The band was nominated for three Dove awards – Best Rock Album, Best Video, and Best New Artist. By this point in the week all of the wives and girlfriends and children of the guys had made their way into Nashville, and I spent most of the day running us all around town looking for last minute performance shoes and lip gloss and double-sided tape. We got all dressed up and made it to the Grand Ole Opry just in time to sit there for the SIX HOUR duration of the Dove Award preshow and telecast. Holy pajamas.

They performed (I can’t find video, but here’s a pretty sweet picture) at the beginning of the show, and biased or not, they were great. Christian music is the land of bland midtempo blahness, and they brought some seriously needed energy to the room. They didn’t win anything, but just in the last twenty-four hours Aaron has gotten a ton of response to their show. So we are counting it as a win.

Overall it was a great, if crazy week. I am tired, and Aaron is about twelve times as tired as I am. But they did what they came to do, we all had a good time, and we looked great, if I do say so myself.

Phew, you guys. I am wiped the heck out. We built a church in four days, and I’m not gonna lie, that is some hard work.

Our church has spent its whole five and a half years in an elementary school cafeteria and gym, loading and unloading trailers full of folding chairs and sound equipment and craft supplies and makeshift walls. It is a lot of freaking work, y’all. Every Saturday morning we would meet at the school at 8:30 am to set everything up, and every Sunday afternoon we would tear it all down and pack it into trailers and pull it away so, you know, the kids could have lunch and recess the next day.

And it was all working out pretty well. But last summer, the school board made it pretty difficult for us to continue using the school building. It just couldn’t fit our needs anymore. So we kicked the building project into high gear. It has been crazy stressful and overwhelming and the youth building is not complete and that makes me tired and bummed out. But we made it happen! And it is great.

Due to last-minute issues with codes and inspections and sewer lines, we weren’t able to move into the building until the Thursday morning before our first Sunday. We hit that place running, and didn’t really stop until we made it through Easter services yesterday. We unwrapped chairs and build sound panels and decorated children’s classrooms and assembled coffee machines and filled the baptistry and vacuumed and vacuumed and vacuumed. I have never been so tired in all my life.

But to get to have church, and then just go have lunch without having to put the church back in it’s box? And to have a place that is totally ours, where we can clean on a Tuesday morning or have a meeting after church on Sunday? It’s pretty freaking awesome.

One of the hardest parts of my job is recruiting new adults to help out with the youth group. It’s a very rare, excessively wonderful occurrence when a new person comes to your church who worked the students at his old church and wants to get involved and has tons of experience. The process is generally much more along the lines of pulling teeth.

It takes a pretty special kind of person to get actively involved in the lives of junior high and high school kids. You have to screen pretty heavily. You have a much better chance getting recommendations and suggestions from pastors and care leaders than from just throwing out a wide net to the whole congregation and hoping to catch someone good. You could, potentially, spark the interest of someone who never considered youth work before but is a perfect match. More likely, however, you get a few weirdos who would be a disaster and you have to figure out how to tell them that you were just kidding, you don’t actually need help after all.

I try. I really do. But part of the problem with not having enough volunteers is that you also don’t have time to find new people because you are working so hard to cover everything that would be getting done if you had more volunteers.

But! This year! I have found help. Amazing, wonderful, experienced, excited help. I used all my resources, I dug deep deep deep, and I found some people. I am pumped.

We had our first meeting this week, and I spent a lot of time in advance researching and putting information together to help everyone get started. It was starting to come together, but I was missing a key piece that could really help them understand what they were getting into.

Then I found this video. If you have ever wondered what exactly it is that I do, or if you would do well in youth ministry, watch it. Your feelings will be made clear to yourself pretty quickly.

Mar 1 – We got a ton of work done on the youth house.
Mar 2 – A friend’s surgery went way better than anticipated.
Mar 3 – We got our heat fixed so I don’t have to walk the house in my Snuggie anymore.
Mar 4 – Our friends found out they are pregnant!
Mar 5 – Good meeting about the future of the church.
Mar 6 – First planning meeting about our new Saturday service.
Mar 7 – House shopping with Susan!
Mar 8 – Aaron and I totally busted our diet and ate a huge pizza, and it was absolutely worth it.
Mar 9 – Fun day with the band and delicious group dinner at Kalamata’s.
Mar 10 – I spent the evening exchanging Empire Records quotes with my sister over text message.
Mar 11 – Interesting conversation in our youth group meeting.
Mar 12 – I finally figured out how to get my work email pushed through to my blackberry, saving me a world of hassle. I love you, blackberry! Please don’t bail on me again!
Mar 13 – Fun outlet shopping.
Mar 14 – Good work day with some new people in the building.
Mar 15 – Really fun care group meeting.
Mar 16 – Had a good night with some friends and their new baby.
Mar 17 – I helped my friend make an audition video for a reality show and spent hours in a karaoke bar on St. Patty’s Day. So fun.
Mar 18 – Fun art project with the kids.
Mar 19 – Much needed night out of basketball, beer and burgers.
Mar 20 – IKEA! Without a trailer! Much more enjoyable.
Mar 21 – Started a sanding and painting project on an old table set.
Mar 22 – Visited a great church nearby to see what they do.
Mar 23 – Fun dinner out with some new youth volunteers.
Mar 24 – Great coffee with a new youth worker!
Mar 25 – Youth dinner that actually felt like old times.
Mar 26 – Aaron gave Miles a haircut in which he lost a whole dog’s worth of fur.
Mar 27 – We started watching the most addicting show ever, The Riches.
Mar 28 – Delicious, delicious enchiladas and guacamole.
Mar 29 – Our last Sunday morning in the school was sweet and sad.
Mar 30 – I should say that the good thing was my volunteer meeting. And it was. But the even better thing was the giant fresh pineapple I ate entirely by myself.
Mar 31 – Spent the whole evening with two of the funnest people at our church building acoustical panels for the new building.