About Shannon

Alaskan homeschooling mama of eight sweet kids. Loves Jesus, writing, coffee, Dickens, and snapping a kitchen towel at my husband when he's not looking.

pace car: the forced pause when leaders want to run

The day ahead was packed, and I was nervous.

The facility was secured, and after weeks of untangling the schedules of seventeen leaders to bring everything into alignment, the lineup was finally set: Seven chapters and twenty-one slots, over three days, to finally film the remaining portions of a book study we’d been working on all year.

pace car: the forced pause when leaders want to run

And it all started that night. But first, a completely unrelated meeting. No biggie.

Kavanagh is seven months old now and outgrew his ability to sleep through these meetings weeks ago. So halfway through, I checked to see if there was an urgent text from Vince summoning me home to feed him.

There were no texts of that nature, but I’d just missed a call from my dad. It was an odd time of day for him to call. And he’d also left a voicemail.

I stepped out of the meeting to listen to it, and immediately called him back.

He said Grandma was in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. She’d collapsed while she was on the phone with the neighbor; the neighbor called my dad, who rushed over, used his key to get in the house, and found her. Called the paramedics. Called my uncle. Called me.

I wanted to rush to the hospital, too. Instead, I left the meeting and went the other way; I came home and nursed the baby. Tried to read the Bible but stared at the page without seeing words. I wanted to see her. Wanted to be there. Wanted to know what was happening. Wanted to know if this was anything like last time or if this was going to be the last time.

But I sat on the couch with Kavanagh and waited for him to fall asleep.

Once I was finally out the door and on the highway, the first few lights were in my favor and I caught up to the train running parallel, blaring its horn at every crossing. I got ahead of it for a minute and then stopped at a red light as it passed. Caught up to it again when the light turned green, then it got ahead again, leapfrog style, as I stopped at another intersection. Cars pulled up behind me while we waited for the light to change.

The light turned green and I hit the gas, and the train and I were even. But a white pickup had pulled onto the highway just ahead and was cruising at a cool 35 miles an hour when I wanted to go twice that. And maybe I could’ve gotten away with it. But maybe not.

It is your pace car, the Spirit said. Sometimes I put things in front of you to slow you down on purpose.

Getting there earlier wouldn’t have mattered. My dad and uncles were in the waiting room when I got there and they’d been there for a while. Grandma was sedated, getting a temporary pacemaker, and then she would be medivaced to Anchorage. And it wasn’t like the last time. This time we couldn’t be in the room with her.

So we waited. My uncle finished reading the paper and I took it from him and found the crossword puzzle. I started working on it as people came to the intake desk and talked way too loudly about intimate health issues for everyone in the waiting room to hear.

A young woman came in, hysterical and in pain. I tried to ignore her but she didn’t want to be ignored, and years of parenting flagged my extremely sensitive BS-o-meter. That, or I’m a terrible person (could be) but she didn’t sound genuine to me. And maybe I was wrong…but maybe not.

She sobbed and asked for a wheelchair. Asked the nurse to slow down as she wheeled her in front of my family. And then parked a few feet away and kept crying…loudly.

And I kept trying to ignore her. Tried to avoid looking in her direction. Just filled in all those little crossword boxes and tried not to hear her.

But I heard the Lord, and He said, Go pray for her.

And I said, You have got to be kidding me.

In a beautiful demonstration of His ways are not our ways, He did not take my iPhone, revoke my internet privileges, or strike me with lightning, which is what many of us parents wish we could do when our children talk back to us.

But no, He didn’t do any of those things. He just repeated Himself. Go pray for her.

And I said, She doesn’t need prayed for. She’s faking.

He said, She still needs prayed for.

And in a beautiful demonstration of petulant-but-resigned reluctance, I said, Fine. My uncles and cousin were across from me. My dad was next to me, helping with the crossword puzzle. And I asked, Can’t I just pray for her from here?

And He said, No. You go put your hands on her, and let Me touch her.

And I had nothing to argue to that. But in my heart I thought, Well, crap.

I let out one of those huffy, frustrated, scoffing breaths through my nose. Bad, bad Christian.

“Here,” I told Dad, throwing the pen down and pushing the crossword puzzle over to him. “I’m gonna go pray for this girl.” God help her.

I walked across the room and – set your mind at ease – I was a nice person. Truly. As soon as I decided to obey, ministry-mode kicked in and the Spirit took over.

I asked her if I could pray for her. She said yes (people usually do). I told her my name, asked her what hers was, and then I prayed for her healing. For her comfort. For her protection and wisdom. I said amen, and she said thank you. I asked if she wanted some water, and she said no. I said, “Well, I do,” and I left and got some.

Somewhere in there I missed the helicopter taking off. When I came back with my water, my uncle told me it left, and we all waited for the nurse to come out and tell us what we needed to know.

Grandma would get a real pacemaker that night. They would reassess in the morning. And as long as she responded well, she would probably stay in the ICU for a day or two, then come home.

And home is where I needed to be, too. Vin texted that Kavanagh was up and needing me, and a bazillion things still had to be done before the first night of filming.

I drove back up the highway and approached the biggest intersection in our little town as the light turned yellow. There was no time to get through it before it turned red, so I stopped. But a white pickup – probably not the same one as earlier – was in the lane next to me and blew right through it.

Cars pulled up behind me while we waited. And I heard the Lord say, Sometimes you lead by being the one who stops when it’s the right thing to do.

So, it’s like I already told you. I might be a terrible, awful, mean, unfeeling person…but maybe not.

carrying fire: when obedience takes us outside the comfort zone

The Lord gave me this amazing idea, and I was so excited to follow through…until it was time to actually do it.

As responsible people do, I came up with a lot of excuses. I hadn’t showered the night before; my hair was a mess and in no condition for video. And, as writers do, I found the most productive ways to procrastinate. Suddenly, cleaning my desk was of utmost priority. I put away the tape and scissors, filed a few papers, and stacked the books. Considered sweeping the floor, or washing the windows. I mean, it was that bad.

Add all of this to the fact that I have the technical skills of a Chihuahua.

So when the Lord asked me to start praying online every week – which, as I type it, sounds like the easiest thing ever and nothing to be intimidated by – I had no idea what was the best way to go about it.

carrying fire: when obedience takes us outside the comfort zone

When I finally did do it, it was in two parts – first, in hands-free mode, until I ran out of space and had to add the rest in selfie mode after figuring out how to splice and trim the video (gah). Because, like a Chihuahua, I told you.

Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you. Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress.

– 1 Timothy 4:13-15, ESV

But the opportunity to pray with and for anyone who wanted to join me on a weekly basis was a no brainer. Until my brain kicked in and started making excuses for me, of course.

Isn’t that the way it is with going forward, though? He calls us outside the comfort zone, but somehow we’d rather put it off or just not bother because we don’t understand how much breakthrough is at stake in going there.

Too risky. Too scary. Too unfamiliar. Too unknown.

I’m confessing to you right off the bat so you know you’re not alone in this. I don’t usually think of myself as a risk taker but when I look back at my life I realize I am one – but little things like praying online can still make me pause and squirm. Sounds stupid, yes?

We ask Him for direction, to light our way, and often the way He does that is by lighting a fire under us. We often respond by extinguishing those fires in any number of ways instead of having the boldness to pick up the fire and carry it.

We are our very own wet blanket, smothering our own growth.

We pooh-pooh it, telling ourselves it was just a silly idea and not Him at all, when in reality these steps of obedience are the key to unlocking answers we’ve been searching for.

Or we put it off. And our delay, like most symptoms of laziness, makes us work harder and longer in the long run.

And sometimes we give up before we start because it won’t be perfect, and we can’t control how people will respond to us. So we sacrifice our breakthrough on the altar of perfectionism and control – which is really just a monument to ourselves and our pride. If that altar were made into an idol, it would look like us.

But we usually need to accelerate our pain to accelerate our progress, so we might as well jump in and start doing it, whatever it is.

Starting that business. Filling out the adoption paperwork. Making that phone call. Researching that ministry opportunity. Writing that book.

Going on that mission. Taking that leap.

Saying yes.

Once the words leave your lips, they no longer belong to you. We have a monopoly only on our own thoughts. The act of speaking is not a conquest, but a surrender. When we open our mouths, we are sharing with the world – and the world inevitably interprets, indeed sometimes shifts and distorts, our original meaning.

– Frank Luntz, Words That Work

We wrestle with the feeling of exposure and tension after being vulnerable and laying it all out there, in teaching, writing, speaking, mentoring, moving — however you are leading others as they watch you follow Jesus.

But it turns out, the best way to go about anything is usually forward.

Going. Doing. Obeying. As opposed to stalling, fretting, and backsliding. Because life has a current to it, and every moment we are either moving further up and further in, or drifting back downstream. There is no neutral.

What answer can human intelligence make to God’s love for the world? What answer, for that matter, can it make to our own love for the world? If a person loved the world – really loved it and forgave its wrongs and so might have his own wrongs forgiven – what would be next?

And so how was a human to pray? I didn’t know, and yet I prayed. I prayed the terrible prayer: “Thy will be done.” Having so prayed, I prayed for strength.

– Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow

There is a cost to disobedience, and it is much higher than just going outside our comfort zone.

He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

– Genesis 3:24, ESV

When we move in obedience, we go in freedom – bringing light, making progress, carrying His Presence as fire. But when we are forced to move by our own disobedience, we are pushed out in slavery.

The truth is, we move outside the comfort zone either way.

When we say yes, facing our fears and excuses, we’re no longer afraid of what the fire will do to us. We are invincible to burning when we learn to carry it.

____________

This is an excerpt from ABIDE volume 5: Obedience to Move Forward, available here.

plowing through: finding grace and balance in seasons of crazy

The weekend is here but the house is a disaster, so let me introduce you to our normal method of tackling it: The Quick Boogie.

For those unfamiliar with the concept of a Quick Boogie, it is when everyone launches into a five-minute clean-up – a few people pick up the floor and put stuff away, someone throws dishes in the dishwasher, someone wipes down counters, and we all take turns bossing Finnegan, who, as the resident toddler, made most of the mess in the first place.

plowing through: finding grace and balance in seasons of crazy

Usually five minutes is enough. At the very least, it enables us to sit on the couch without getting gouged by a pick-up stick.

But this weekend, to indicate how much (or how little) sleep I’ve had over the last few weeks with a teething baby, I announced it like this:

“We need to do a quick boogie, real quick.”

And then – don’t try this at home, husbands – Vince announced, “Watch out, kids. She’s using redundancies.”

I gave him a Look and told him to watch out himself, or I’d start using adverbs, too. (In a marriage of writers, this is how fights start.)

“In that case,” he said, “I’ll quickly leave the couch.”

“You’d better, or I will violently kick you off it.”

The night before, Kavanagh woke up right as I was going to bed, and he stayed awake until 3 am, all kicky and restless. The next day was a filming day, and it was hard. I couldn’t remember simple pieces that I knew perfectly the night before while rehearsing, sentences and phrases wouldn’t come out clearly (hence the new “vabucolary” I invented, mentioned in the last newsletter), and we just sorta plowed through it.

Toward the end of the day I was utterly unmotivated to do anything. I didn’t want to be productive, and I didn’t want to think.

I wanted to veg on the couch. I wanted to clock out hours early and be done. I wanted to take a bath and read, but I was so exhausted that would’ve been dangerous, at least for the books. (I’ve only ever dropped one book in the tub, but that was Gulliver’s Travels, and it deserved it.)

I was out of gas. But when I realized that, it felt less defeating than failure. It wasn’t failure, it was exhaustion. When cars run out of gas, we don’t scrap them – we refill their tank. And we learn to pay better attention to the gauge before we run on empty (some of us, at least).

It’s hard to be clever and helpful and hopeful when you’re exhausted. It’s hard to think clearly or to know what to do next when we are too tired to even trust our judgment on simple things, like our ability to pair socks.

I know people like to say “Sleep when the baby sleeps” but that only applies to newborns around here. If we followed that advice to its logical extension, such as “Fold laundry when the baby folds laundry” or “Write when the baby writes,” this place would be a wrecking zone, like a Fisher Price tornado ripped through a library after loading up at a taco truck.

So when Kav is napping, it is our chance to work with two hands – exhausted or not. There’s no guarantee how long a six-month-old will nap, or how long his three-year-old brother will let him. We do other important things when he’s awake, like answer email, package books, and swear at the internet for being too slow.

As a result, most of my journal entries begin with “Kav is napping,” and, also as a result, are very short. Sometimes they look like this, broken into several efforts throughout the day:

Kav is napping so we are working. The next three sentences are about children playing too loudly and our need to reestablish quiet naptime rules to prevent me from turning into Raging Dragon Mommy. But it’s too late for now because Kav is already awake…

The next attempt yields seventeen lines of family events and work stuff; coffee is mentioned twice. That entry ends with, But Kavanagh is awake again, fifteen minutes later.

And then, one more try:

Aaaand he’s back to sleep, now that it’s time to clock out for the day. But Vin took the kids to youth group so maybe I can squeeze in a few more minutes.

[Nine lines here, in which I gripe about a podcast I got sucked into that turned out to be a condescending sales pitch. Boo, and also, hiss.]

And Kav is awake again. See? It was just a few more minutes.

Don’t misunderstand me; I love these tiny days. I love his wakefulness and don’t want to miss it and his blue-eyed smiles. But every new season brings new structures and routines, and learning to steward our time best in that adjustment takes some trial and error. So when he sleeps, we plow through.

Today, it’s warm and he’s just wearing a onesie; he falls asleep as I nurse him at the desk, and I pull my flannel off the back of the chair and wrap him up in it. At six months old, he’s still small enough that it makes a perfect blanket.

We had thunderstorms all last week, and I was in the bathroom when the loudest clap of thunder I’ve ever heard shook our house. It must’ve been right on top of us; the lights flickered, and the subsequent rumbling made me wonder if we were having another huge earthquake.

My first instinct was to look at the battery on my phone and immediately turn it off. My phone was woefully undercharged the last two times we had a major outage, including when the earthquake hit.

My next move was to down the glass of water I was holding, and refill it. Then use the toilet, and flush. These are the things we regret not doing as soon as the power is out and we wish we still could.

So I did all those things and went downstairs, and the lights were still on and everything was fine. It was just thunder. But every so often it isn’t, and we’re caught off guard – unprepared, slacking off, or just undercharged and dehydrated. There’s a balance to be had in plowing through. And there’s no shame for seasons of craziness when you can’t help it, but there’s also no harm (and much good) in getting in the habit of keeping things refilled, and charged, and flushed, and ready. Like ourselves.

So I preach to myself:

Rest when you can. Work when the baby sleeps. Drink the glass of water.

Write the sentences when they are fresh and flowing. Keep short accounts, and forgive the person who hurt you.

Don’t overschedule, so you have room to be impulsive for the right opportunities. Do that thing you keep putting off. Or, if it’s not really not worth doing, take it off your to-do list.

Hug the kids when they pass you in the kitchen. Teach the toddler over and over and over, to the point of redundancy, how to clean up after himself.

Show grace to yourself and others, as we all plow through — even if we have to use adverbs.