The Keurig

Originally published April 2010.

Last December I was flipping through a catalogue and said off-handedly to Dan,

“What do you think about asking for a Keurig for Christmas?”

His reaction was visceral.

“What?!?!?!  Are you serious?!!?!?  Owning a Keurig is as stupid as buying bottled water.”

I stared at him blankly. I like bottled water.

He  continued in disgust.

“Ugh! Kate! It is nothing but an evil marketing scheme to get you to pay $15 for a bunch of little plastic cups!  It is completely unnecessary; a Keurig is what you buy someone who already has everything.”

News to me.  I thought that was a fountain pen, or cufflinks.  Dan did not stop with big business, he was going to take down America, too.

“That is the problem with Americans these days, we want to spend our money on indulgences like Keurigs.  If someone buys me a Keurig, I’m returning it, buying a $15 coffee pot and spending the rest on that ice cream you always ask for!”

Chunky Monkey. Dan had not had this kind of reaction to anything since he found out that Panera’s PB&J costs four bucks.

(I should pause here to say: I’ve previously confessed to being the world’s worst gift giver.  I was, at that time, seriously considering getting a Keurig for Dan.  At this point I shrewdly discerned that I should move on to Christmas present plan B.)

On Christmas morning, as we were all sitting in our pajamas amidst piles of tissue paper, I reached out for my last present, a big box that read, “To: Kate.  Love, Sandra (my mother-in-law).”

I tore open the wrapping to reveal a little, red Keurig coffee brewer.  I gasped, clutched it to my breast, and shouted at Dan with a mixture of passion and desperation,

“You can’t take him from me, I love him too much!”

As if I were on a soap opera and Dan were my disapproving father threatening to separate me from my lover.

“Is there any coffee to go in it?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Well good for you!  You got a new toy.”

“Yes, and you’re not allowed to play with it.”

Dan rolled his eyes.

When we got home, I set it on the counter next to our old coffee pot. They looked stately sitting there together, like they were very important machines.  I arranged all my K-cups in their display and stepped back to admire my work.  It was beautiful – a little coffee shrine.

Every time Dan walked by the Keurig he scoffed:

“It doesn’t even keep your coffee warm for you.” “It doesn’t even make the house smell like coffee.” “What do you see in that thing anyway?”

“If you must know, I like pushing the little button.  It’s fun.”

“You know the regular coffee pot has a button too.”

“Shut up.”

Not two weeks after the Keurig’s inaugural brew, I was sitting in the living room enjoying a hot cup of joe when I heard a popping, sizzling noise in the kitchen.  I walked in to find Dan staring in horror at the old coffee pot, which was sitting in a large puddle of water on the counter, smoking.  The kitchen was covered in soggy coffee grounds (though to be fair, the grounds could have been courtesy of Dan’s very diligent scooping skills).  We opened the top, slowly.  We gently lifted the basket, and just as we peeked inside, a piece fell off.

It was like it just quit.  Coffee Pot saw Keurig, looked him in the eye and said,

"I can’t…go…on.  They drink…too…much….  Can’t…produce...  Tell the mugs…goodbye…"

and with his last dying breath, he passed the baton.

Dan looked at me.  We observed a moment of silence.  Then he said,

“Can I use your Keurig?”

Thank God for little indulgences.

(Source: Print designed by and available for purchase from fieldtrip on Etsy) 

When Celebrities Die

I cannot yet tear myself away from the Robin Williams clips, movies, and interviews this week. When celebrities die we collectively gasp, then mourn.  For a few days we honor their lives by sharing our favorite bits of their work, the ways our lives were shaped by their willingness to live in the public eye.

Death is always mourned by the people who knew the life, and the more intimately we knew the life, the more deeply we mourn it.  Death is the epicenter of a great earthquake, and the mourning goes out in ripples, through the layers of knowing.

The thing about artists is, by definition, they give of themselves intimately in order to do their jobs.  Actors and musicians and writers – they weep, sweat, and bleed their work.

Ernest Hemingway said, "There is nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."

When actors step into character, they rely on deeply personal things, hidden in the recesses of their minds, the depths of their souls, to authentically portray that sadness you’re seeing on the screen.  They could not do their jobs well if they did not bleed into their art; it would be flat.  Artists voluntarily prick at their own nerves.

This means that when we watch breakthrough performances, we are seeing real tension, real conflict of conscience, real love, real anger, real everything.  Whatever emotion you saw that took your breath – that CONNECTED with you – it was real.

The words in books and poems are real.  The heartbeat in music is real.  Artists live open wide to the world; that’s what makes them artists.  Celebrity, then, adds yet another layer of vulnerability.  Not only do artists draw on intimate personal experiences to bleed into their work – they live in a spotlight.  It’s The Truman Show for real.  We see them grocery shopping and at the beach and at basketball games and breastfeeding their babies.  They live wide open voluntarily for their art, and then again whether they want to or not because of the paparazzi and TMZ and your and my obsession with pop culture.

We KNOW them.  And largely, they allow us to know them.  They give themselves to us.

That’s why celebrity deaths affect us in a way that is often confusing.   It doesn’t seem proportional, at first.  We think, “I didn’t know this person.  They were just an actor, far away, on a screen.  Why do I feel like I am moving through molasses?”

(That’s how I felt when I heard about Robin Williams.  Grief slowed everything down, like it does.  The face Robin Williams made when he threw back his head and laughed was taking up all of my thoughts, so they came slower, like adding an extra space between all the letters on a page.   My mind was filled with Robin, and everything went into slow-motion.)

For a second I thought, “I didn’t know him,” but then I thought – “That’s silly.  Of course I did.”

I saw real joy, real struggle, and real depression, because Robin Williams was an artist.  Something inside of him bled into Dead Poets Society and Good Will Hunting.  His one little spark of madness, as he called it, poured ALL UP OVER Happy Days and Mrs. Doubtfire, and Aladdin.  Did you know that Aladdin was reportedly disqualified for “Best Adapted Screenplay” because Robin improvised so much of the Genie’s character that they couldn’t even call it a “script?”  He bled his stream-of-consciousness thoughts all over that piece of work and we saw it.  We got to know that bit of him.

We didn’t know all of him, of course.

I love how the French language distinguishes the word “to know.”  There is “savoir,” which is the information-kind of know.  I  know how to ride a bike.  I know how to do algebra.  But they never use “savoir” to describe a person, because people are not facts to be known.  People cannot be read like books.  The French use “connaître,” a to-be-familiar-with kind of know.  I know of this person.  I am ever-growing-in-knowing this person.  But I don’t information-know them.  People are deep and nuanced and ever-changing, every-minute, affected from without and within, like rivers.  We can never know them, we can only keep getting to know them.

We didn’t “savoir” Robin Williams.  We didn’t know everything he struggled with, or loved, or believed, or experienced.  But we “connaître-ed” him.  With every single public appearance, he kept on bleeding self and art for us, and we had the honor to keep getting to know him.

Our collective mourning of celebrities doesn’t mean we disproportionately disvalue the lives of the other people dying around the globe.  We don’t devalue children, or the persecuted, or the cancer warriors, or the noble, heroic, self-sacrificing soldiers.  Those of them we know we mourn hard and long and deep, and those we do not know, we mourn as appropriately as we can - because they matter, and their lives matter.

But the reason we’re all mourning Robin this week is because we KNEW him.

He wept and laughed and bled into his art, and then fame shone a bright light on him so we could all see.

It was an honor to know Robin Williams, and I am so, so grateful that he allowed me to know him, by giving of himself so tirelessly.  He brought incredible joy to my childhood, and I miss him.

Look Up (Why I Hated Women's Ministry)

I was in high school when I started hating women's ministry.   Not hating - I should say "getting annoyed by." I never cared for girls nights, and teas sounded downright dreadful, like being made to sit at the grown-up table after you were finished eating to "listen to us talk."

In college I started ministering to women, but I still didn't like women's ministry.  When I confessed that I didn't like it, as I sometimes did, I was met with confused or offended looks.  Wait, you're an RA for 70 girls at Liberty University and you don't like women's ministry?  Well, yeah.  I like hanging out and praying/teaching/learning.  I like organizing events, and writing curriculum, and discipling girls who really end up discipling me because that's how it works - but I don't like...teas.  Or doilies.  Or the book of Ruth, if we're being honest.

I didn't have words to express the rub.  Any time I attended a women's event, it wasn't BAD, it just wasn't...something.  Ten years later, I found some words.

This isn't a commentary on all women's ministries, or even the ones I was a part of growing up.   It's very likely that the problem was me.  But I know that I know that I know I'm not alone here.   So if you like Jesus but don't like church, or you like ministering to women, but you don't like women's ministry, maybe I can help put some words to the rub, maybe wipe the fog off of the glass so we can see what's really bugging us.

Here are the things that bored and irritated me about women's ministry:

• The book of Ruth (she was loyal and diligent and she got her prince!)
• Proverbs 31 (She got up early!  Taking care of a family and a home is hard and noble!  And look, she handled finances and worked outside of the home, too!  Equality!)
• Deborah (See?  God uses women, too!)
• Teas (Jesus loves you!  Pink!  Doilies!  Warm fuzzies!)
• Self-esteem seminars (You are beautiful just the way you are!  God loves you and that is all that matters!)

Here are the things I love about women's ministry:

• The book of Ruth (An allegory of Jesus Christ, who redeems us and comes for us who are abandoned and hopeless.)
• Proverbs 31 ("Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.")
• Deborah  (God calls us to radical courage, radical trust, radical purpose and obedience.  The battle, victory, and glory are His.)
• Teas (And by teas I mean barbeques.  This is a personal preference influenced by my distaste for cucumber sandwiches.  If you want to pamper me, do it with burgers.  Or smoothies.  I could get on board with a smoothie-tea.)
• Missions seminars  (There is a great love burning inside of us.  There is a great task at hand.  Let's get to work.)

When I take a step back and look, the problem is clear:

I don't like women's ministries that are about Christian womanhood. I like women's ministries that are about The Gospel.

And not The Gospel*

*for women.

Just The Gospel.

I was tired of looking at myself through a Jesus lens.  I just wanted to look at Jesus.

My freshman year of college (in a discussion with my Dad re: my new Bible Study book) I said, "I don't mind Esther, but... can we read ROMANS?"  I felt the tension way back then, I just couldn't articulate it.  I didn't have those words then, but I have them now.

I am tired of hearing about Christian womanhood.  I want to hear about God.

There are of course issues that are women's issues.  Womanhood is a sisterhood, and I don't need my femininity to be ignored; I need it to be seen and addressed and esteemed.  But women's issues are so, so secondary to gospel issues, because womanhood is so, so secondary to PERSONHOOD.  To child-of-God-hood.

To harp on my "women's issues" at the cost of ever having time to harp on the glory of God and the gospel of Jesus is to miss the whole darn thing.

So, if you think you don't like women's ministry, or church or whatever, maybe you're just tired of looking at yourself.

If you're OVER hearing how to be a better person and you wonder what's wrong with you because hearing that "you are a child of God" doesn't really move or impress you very much - you're not alone.  I was there too.   I suspect that we are all just starving for The Main Thing.

If that's you, be encouraged.  You're not missing it, you're getting it.   Just look up.   Find a community that looks, and talks, and points UP.

I love this, from Norman Douty (as quoted in The Complete Green Letters by Miles J. Stanford - a book that changed my life, given to me by a women's ministry leader that helped me look up)

"If I am to be like Him, then God in his grace must do it, and the sooner I come to recognize it the sooner I will be delivered from another form of bondage. Throw down every endeavor and say, I cannot do it, the more I try the farther I get from his likeness. What shall I do? Ah, the Holy Spirit says, you cannot do it; just withdraw; come out of it. You have been in the arena, you have been endeavoring, you are a failure, come out and sit down, and as you sit there behold Him, look at Him. Don't try to be like Him, just look at Him. Just be occupied with Him. Forget about trying to be like Him. Instead of letting that fill our mind and heart, let Him fill it. Just behold Him, look upon Him through the Word. Come to the Word for one purpose and that is to meet the Lord. Not to get your mind crammed full of things about the sacred Word, but come to it to meet the Lord. Make it to be a medium, not to Biblical scholarship, but of fellowship with Christ."

I still struggle.  It's so easy to forget.  This is a reminder to myself and to my own bored, distracted, divided heart.  Look up.  Stop looking at yourself and your life and your habits through Jesus-lens - and just look at glorious, radical King Jesus.

Sam

My Sam turns 3 today.  I still love him this much.  Happy Birthday, Sam-man. Originally published December 2012

Sam

I’ve never written out a love letter to Sam, not in the way I’ve done for Madeline in the past.

The reason is, I was afraid that it would seem like he is my favorite.  I was afraid that if I was honest about how much I love him, it would make everyone question the love I have for my husband, for Madeline, for Jesus.

The thing is, when I think about how much I love Sam, the only words I can access are “favorite,” and “best.” If there were better words, words that could somehow simultaneously express how much I love Jesus and Dan and Madeline, I would use those words.  But I can’t think of any.

And today I decided that it would be an absolute shame, a failure in parenting, if I never articulated how much I love my son just because it would sound too outlandish.  The love I have for him IS outlandish, and he should know that.  When I die, whenever that may be, I want him to have a written record, along with a giant box full of pictures, to remind him of just how madly and crazily in love with him I was.

So this is my love letter to my second child, my first son, Sam.

Sam, you are my best.

I tell you a hundred times every day, “You are it for me.  You have ruined me.  I am done.”

Sam, you changed everything.

You changed how I feel about having boys.  I wasn’t sure about boys.  I’d heard rumors about how much they love their mothers, how they are easier.  But I also know boys.  I know wild, rough and tumble, off-the-wall, uncontainable, uncontrollable boys that make babysitters call parents who are out on dates and say, “YOU HAVE TO COME GET THIS BOY.”   And, to be honest, I was nervous about changing diapers and circumcision and everything happening down there.

But you changed everything.  You ruined me.  Now I want only boys, boys forever.  But that’s not even true – I want only Sams, Sams forever.  I’ve wanted to freeze you at every stage of life, so that I could keep infant Sam, 4-month-Sam, 7-month, 10-month, and 14-month Sams.  You have always been perfect, and I cannot let you go.

You are the dangerous kind of baby, the kind of baby that makes me think that I could have a dozen more babies without batting an eyelash.  But it’s a gamble, because the next one might not be so easy.  Exhibit A: Your Sister.  She is also my favorite person and makes me crazy with love, but she is the most spirited creature I’ve ever been in contact with.  Wild mustangs are a distant second.  Gamble is not the right word, because if we have another Madeline, we win – but in the event that your little brother also inherits that spirited gene, I’m going to need more coffee.

The precious thing is, she loves you will all of that spirit.  She cheers for you, loudly, every day.  “SAM LEARNED HOW TO SAY BYEEEEE!!!!! YAAAAAYYYYY SAMMMM!!!!”  She laughs at you and disobeys me constantly to do dangerous and unmannerly things that make you laugh.  She, too, is addicted to your giggle.  She, too, would do anything for it.  Anything for you.  She kisses you every night and tells you that she loves you.  Last night you leaned out of my arms into a very impressive back-bend and giggled as she kissed you all over your face and head.  You laughed and laughed together; she told how how cute you were, and you leaned further and further back for more kisses.

You changed how I feel about staying at home.  I want to be around you all the time; I have to tear myself away from you.  You are my best buddy.  Not my “buddy” as a term of endearment, but my buddy as in the person I want to be around the most.  We understand each other.  There is a knowing between us – a secret language.  We laugh together, like friends. I think that you have an old soul, and that our souls have been friends who love each other for a long time.

You are so affectionate it slays me.  You toddle up to me and lay your head on my knee, wrap your arms around my thigh, and pat me – a little Sam-hug.  You do this a couple times an hour, like you notice me sitting there and want to remind me every 20 minutes that you love me and that you’re my best.  You climb up into my lap a lot, because you’d prefer to be there than anywhere else.  I know that this will change, I’ve heard it does, as you become more adventurous, and that’s why I want to freeze you.  Because I might actually die inside the day you stop climbing into my lap for no reason.

I cannot keep my hands off of you.  I can’t stop combing your hair, squishing your arms, grabbing your fingers.  I can’t stop stroking your cheek and your back.  I can’t stop munching your toes and nibbling your ear lobes.  I can’t stop tickling you or hugging you or kissing you.  You are the softest, sweetest, most beautiful boy that has ever been. I cannot have you falling in love with another woman.  I absolutely cannot have it.  I am going to have to pray really hard about this for a lot of years in order to make peace with it.  But not yet.  I can’t even pray about it yet.  Maybe next year, but probably not then either.

I have dozens and dozens of pictures of the two of us with our faces smashed up against each other.  None of them are particularly flattering, because I take them with my phone, but it’s the closest thing I have to freezing you.  I’m very serious about this freezing thing.

I can’t remember ever having loved ANYTHING this much, ever.  I know I must have, because I love Jesus more than anything, and I love your Daddy so much it’s made me do more than a few crazy things in my life, and your sister – your sister made me a mommy and I have letter after letter about how desperately I love her.  But when I’m around you, I can’t love anything more than I love you.  You are a heart-stealer.

You are my buddy.  My darling.  My best.

You are it for me.  My favorite person.

I am so, so, so, so, so thankful that I had a boy. I am so, so, so, so, so thankful that I had a Sam.

I love you with my whole heart, forever.  I will never stop loving you. Mom

_______________________

The Survivor Series giveaway is still live!  Share a #survivorseries post for a chance to win $150+ in coffee, music, books, and other survival essentials.  Click here for details.

You guys, I wrote some books!  They’re really good and if you buy them and read them I will bake you cookies.*  You can get it on Amazon, from Barnes & Noble, and in your favorite book store!  

*and eat them myself because you live too far away.

RELEASE DAY!

It's the official release day for "Enough" and "10 Things for Teen Girls." Here is what's going on:

1.  I was leaving for release day work/celebration when Madeline's school called to tell me she was sick.  I picked her up.

2. I swung by Barnes & Noble to see the book and post a release day status.  The internet was down.

3. I switched locations, tried to post again, Facebook went down.

4. I find myself swindled by a not-so-sick daughter, sitting criss-cross-applesauce on the floor of the children's section of my second Barnes & Noble of the day, half-working, half-reading Tinkerbell and Princess Sofia books.  THE GLAMOUR.  This is me and my book in the 100 Acre Woods:

5. We were going to grill out tonight with our neighbors, but it is pouring rain.

6. I plan to spend my evening with my family, eating at home and snuggling the delicious, addictive, angel-cheeks of my babies.  Then, post-bedtime, I plan on sitting under a knit blanket, watching Netflix, and eating Werther's hard candies into the night.  Because I am 85.

Billy Collins wrote this perfect poem that I wanted to show you.  This is what I'm whispering to my books today.  (But not literally, because that would be weird.)

Envoy

Go, little book, out of this house and into the world,

carriage made of paper rolling toward town bearing a single passenger beyond the reach of this jitter pen, far from the desk and the nosy gooseneck lamp.

It is time to decamp, put on a jacket and venture outside, time to be regarded by other eyes, bound to be held in foreign hands.

So, off you go, infants of the brain, with a wave and some bits of fatherly advice:

stay out a late as you like, don’t bother to call or write and talk to as many strangers as you can.

by Billy Collins, from Ballistics, 2008

Talk to as many strangers as you can.

Thanks for reading, friends.  So thankful for each of you. Every single last one.  I mean that.  All of you.

Love, Kate

The Survivor Series giveaway is still live!  Share a #survivorseries post for a chance to win $150+ in coffee, music, books, and other survival essentials.  Click here for details.

You guys, I wrote some books!  They’re really good and if you buy them and read them I will bake you cookies.*  You can get it on Amazon, from Barnes & Noble, and in bookstores August 1.  

*and eat them myself because you live too far away.