Awkward Teenagers and Making Disicples

Three years ago I became a co-leader of a group of middle-school girls through my church. They'd already been meeting together for three years.

I don't think I really knew what I was getting into. I was entering into a group of girls raised in the very culture that intimidated and felt foreign to me in my own teen years. There have been times when joining them in their parties felt like being given a second chance - I can join in and dance this time around instead of being a wallflower. Other times I've wondered if I'll ever be able to relate to them. It took a long time to really feel at ease with them.

It's a group of girls who started out in grade school together, but now they are all in different high schools. With that distance and growing up, they know each other less now than they did when they started. Some are less interested in all things religious. Over the years several girls have moved away or just drifted. Last year I wasn't even sure we'd still have a group this year. Hardly any of them come to the youth program at church anymore, but when we gather in their homes in our small group mid-week they still come, because they trust us.

I've seen dramatic things alongside the usual issues with grades, boys, prom dates, and parents.

I've kept going because I feel like I'm in a fight for their souls. They are being pulled on by the appearance and success-oriented culture of North Dallas. The teenage years with all their angst and impulsive tendencies put forward the possibilities of disastrous choices with drugs, guys, and self-abuse when they feel depressed. A middle-class to upper class life characterized by cultural Christianity filled with platitudes and little real depth or truth is the easy future most people expect of them. They ARE at-risk, perhaps just as much as the refugees I work with, just in a very different way.

So I do what I do to fight for something different.  I want them to have a place they can be honest, to have people they know who have chosen a different path and who value different things. I want them to know they are loved and valued and that we enjoy being with them. Even if they don't remember a thing we've studied together, if they know they'll always have us two older women that love them to come and talk to to process life and point them to God, we will have succeeded.

After three years of wondering if we were actually having any effect, I'm amazed by what I'm seeing this year. I love them, and we are comfortable together and have FUN.Conversations are real and amazing and they are growing up.  Recently one girl stopped another in middle of a story and asked if she could say something. She gave her friend a strong piece of advice, and the other girl listened and responded with, "Thank you SO much, really. Thank you for saying that."

You know how hard we've worked to try to get them to really speak into each other's lives and push each other to make good choices? To see it happen without us guiding it was awesome.

I've seen two girls take bold stands against injustice, and to do so they really had to go against the flow. *fist pump for their awesomeness*.  After years of talking about Scripture and trying to encourage them away from assumptions and into reading for themselves and owning their faith,  I think right now they really care and are choosing this of their own accord.

Yeah, they are still teenagers, and yeah, all the things most people find awkward about teenagers are still there. I don't care. I think they're great.  I just know that I have been commanded to "go and make disciples" and that discipleship is needed in their corner of wealthy Dallas.

In which I hate teething

What was I saying a couple weeks ago about delighting in my child? Yeah. I have loved this age.

Except now I have terror angry clingy Judah, and it's not so delightful.

He's teething, so there's a reason, which better mean that when he's done teething the clingy/demanding/angry child is gone, or else we have a major challenge on our hands!

It started over Thanksgiving, when I was overjoyed to bring Judah to a family gathering, the first since just after he was born. I had visions of my siblings and parents finally getting to play with him and experience his giggles and snuggles. Umm... not so much. Every now and then he was happy, but generally as soon as I set him down he'd turn around and fuss until I picked him back up. He didn't want to be held by anyone else and cried when I left the room. He woke up the first night and I chalked it up to the road trip and new place throwing him off his schedule, but he actually woke up every night... and every night since we got back.

I was relieved to discover a new top tooth midway through the vacation, which explained why he'd been so needy. The second top tooth is pushing through right now (almost there!). Monday was my birthday, and it was generally characterized by me feeling completely sick with a cold, Judah being absolutely screamy/miserable (seriously, he slept off and on the whole day and anytime he was up he was crying), and Isaac running on three hours of sleep after finishing his last paper of his seminary career. Fun fun?

Monday evening when I got home and Judah was wailing at my feet, I looked at him and thought about how that day marked the second day (the first was also teething) in his life that I've felt completely frustrated with him and at my wit's end. It's been a good reminder, though, because in those moments I realize that I will have other moments like these for the rest of his life. I don't care for him because he's fulfilling me, I care for him because I'm his mother and I love him. So I take a deep breath and pray for patience, I pick him up and intentionally speak gently and snuggle him despite his angry squirms and fussing. I try to calm him and know that this is what we do, we mothers, and fussiness is not an excuse to be an angry or impatient mama.

AND... praise God for Steph, who babysat despite her own crazy schedule and let Isaac and I go watch a movie. It wasn't exactly the best birthday I've ever had, but I got to sit with Isaac and spent time just us. Win.

Midnight on the drive from Dallas to Amarillo

We stopped an hour outside of Dallas for dinner and let Judah toddle around the restaurant while we ate our pizza. The people seated next to us were a family of cowboys, complete with the hats and boots and everything. It’s moments like that when I think, “Wow, I really do live in Texas.”

We listened to Tina Fay’s Bossypants audiobook, an echo of our hours on the road on our honeymoon, listening to The Da Vinci Code and Into Thin Air. We pass other small towns and Isaac says we’re in Dillon (Friday Night Lights, anyone?). They’re the kind of places that have travel stops called “Jesus Christ is Lord”, the "It'll Do" motel (seriously) and signs for feed lots, bail bonds, and home cooking.

When the towns pass, we are left in the barren plains of West Texas that reveals a canopy of stars invisible until now. I press my face against the window and between the stars and the lull of the car I’m reminded of Sunday night drives as a child. We lived 30 minutes away from where our organization's weekly Sunday night meetings were held. As we drove away from those meetings we pulled out dinner, apple slices, crackers, and cheese. Except the cheese was the only kind of cheese available in Indonesian stores without refrigeration, a sort of shelf-stable Kraft cheese sold in a blue box that I was convinced was a petroleum byproduct.

After eating I would read, undeterred by warnings that my eyesight would fail early if I kept straining so much. I would hold my book up so that I could catch the beams of the headlights of oncoming cars, snatch a few sentences and wait for the next car.

Eventually I would press my face to the window and watch the sky of stars, hung with dippers and men with belts, uncontested by city lights. It was beautiful, especially with sleeping siblings and the love of a family filling the car while day dreams and prayers filled my head. Once in high school Alysa, Rachel and I happened on a family using a telescope to star gaze. Since then I’ve known to find Orion and track one corner down the horizon to a bright, twinkling blue star. I know that through a telescope it is a new star, the brilliant, breathtaking rainbow of color that Rachel and I saw that night.

It’s still there now, that star, in the West Texas sky as I watch through the window. I wonder that I am the mother in this car, with my baby sleeping in the back and my husband of years now listening to Matisyahu and driving. So much different, so much the same.

People I Love

I am so thankful.... for friends. Really. I treasure the people in my life, and recently there have been precious times with friends in and out of town. It makes me feel alive.


Terrible picture, but we never take pictures when we're together so here we go:

That's my community group here. They are our friends. They know us. We know them. Sometimes we yell at each other. Sometimes we laugh. The boys always talk for twice as long as the girls, which is weird. That we are still meeting is sort of a miracle. It's a beautiful thing, this group.

And... my sister got to come over for her Fall break last month. That meant she babysat while we got a date (Hallelujah!) Being able to be together and talk about life and watch her go through her college years is a privilege. We won't always live this close, and it's pretty funny that five hours away is "close".

Missy and Linda are only two hours away, and in the last month I think I've seen Missy three times and Linda twice. Amazing! We went out to a fall festival thing that was sort of underwhelming, but just talking and having the two boys play together is just great. Both Missy and Linda have boys due in the Spring, so it'll be quite a crowd when we all get together in a few years. Four boys just a couple of years apart.
 
And then, our friend Josh came down and stayed with us last week from Chicago. He was the best man in our wedding, and he and Isaac have one of those unique friendships where they barely stay in touch but they love the same things so they always reconnect immediately whenever they see each other. There's this dream out there that one day we will live and work in the same place. Who knows? In any case, it was SUCH a great thing to have him here, sleeping on our couch and talking for hours. Really. Amazing how just the presence of someone can be such a gift.

Thoughts on The Road Less Traveled - Part 1

This year I read The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck. When I started it I didn't know what it was about - I think I had it confused with The Road by Cormac McCarthy. However, I was captivated by the the first line and the first chapter.

Life is difficult...

Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly... about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy....

Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them or solve them? Do we want to teach our children to solve them? Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life's problems... Wise people learn not to dread but actually to welcome problems and actually to welcome the pain of problems. Most of us are not so wise. Fearing the pain involved, almost all of us, to a greater or lesser degree, attempt to avoid problems. This tendency to avoid problems and the emotional suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness.... In the succinctly elegant words of Carl Jung, "Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering."

Therefore let us inculcate in ourselves and in our children the means of achieving mental and spiritual health. By this I mean let us teach ourselves and our children the necessity for suffering and the value thereof, the need to face problems directly and experience the pain involved. I have stated that discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life's problems. It will become clear that these tools are the techniques of suffering, means by which we experience the pain problems in such a way as to work them through and solve them successfully, learning and growing in the process. When we teach ourselves and our children discipline.

That is a bit of what struck me and made me think a lot about parenting and discipline and the role of suffering in our children's lives (and mine). It is incredibly profound and so often missing from how we practice psychology - and indeed I realized that Peck is a psychologist, and that this book was a best-seller when it was published in the '70s. Much of the rest of the book is equally profound, and then at points I'd be completely disgusted. Peck is a fascinating guy who was one of the first who is willing to integrate the role of God and faith into emotional well-being. At the time of the writing of the book I believe he was still on a bit of a spiritual journey, and some of what he says is ridiculous spiritual mumbo jumbo. Really a funny mix of mumbo jumbo with profound truth. And, when I look at Peck's life, though he says he eventually became a Christian, he certainly seemed to settle into Orthodox Christianity, and it seems like he never applied the truth in his book to his own life. There is a lack of discipline, a lack of commitment, and quite a bit of sexual irresponsibility. And you know, it's interesting to talk to people about how this book affected them. Isaac was recently talking to a friend of his at seminary who moved from agnosticism to Christianity beginning with reading this book. On the other hand I've also heard of people on whom the book had the opposite effect. I suppose it depends on the presuppositions you come to it with, as it tends to blow your presuppositions. I'm going to do several posts on some of the things I encountered in The Road Less Traveled, because I want to remember what I've read.

I find myself longing for beauty

 

In reading books like Ann Voskamp's (which I recently read and discussed here) and blogs that flow out of other modern-day mystics, I recognize something familiar. It reminds me of back when I lived next to the mountain and the jungle and the lake and the ocean (my lake... pictured above).

I sought beauty. It seeped into me, the small things that others missed. I don't know if it was how much I loved that place, or perhaps the emotional highs and lows of a hormonal teenager, I only know that the world bled glory. It found me but I went looking for more anyways.

I used to go on walks before sunset in the four years I lived on "the hill" that was actually just a foothill of a mountain. I wonder, if I walked it now, would I notice and know it the way I did then, when I would stop where the trees dropped away and watch in awe at the clouds and sunset? The way I would breathe deep and wonder if the air really was sweet or if I was just infatuated with this place. The green grass, the flowers, the buzz of cicadas and calls of jungle birds, the way the badly made road dissolved into ditch and field. I walked and sang, sometimes aloud, sometimes just inside.

It wasn't just my walks, either. The rainy days filled me with joy for the cool and the beating on the tin roof. The drive home, from a hill into a valley, like a slow-motion roller coaster sweeping into the golden hour. The mornings in which I would lay quiet and read scripture, often feeling I could explode with joy.

It wasn't just the place. The place was beautiful, but I saw things. I saw the sunrises as I sat with a journal and Bible, and my heart caught in exultation. I could have just passed by all of that. I saw falling stars in a crowded night sky because I lay on the sand of the beach to see them. I saw clouds rolling and playing with sunlight because I would go and sit on the big concrete transformers to watch them.. I listened and drank in the sound of voices blended together. Night of hilarity with friends were beautiful, not just fun, because love is beautiful. I remember running a mile in the dark around a field, not because I loved running (I hated it) but because I wanted to breath in the night and when I ran into it I found I kept on running for the joy of being there.

Yes. That dreamy eye for beauty was me. It bled into time in Chicago, when I watched the birds fly circles around the intersection in the cold, and the snow swirl and silence the bustle into padded quiet. The wind on my face on the lakefront trail, the sun on the buildings, the energy of the city streets, the undiscovered corners and shops, even the light on the glasses and the rhythm of dance in the events I catered. I saw beauty in the city, too.

I wrestle in the daily grind, in a adulthood, in suburbia... to keep a heart that sees all of this. That is what I liked best about reading Ann Voskamp's book - she's reminded me to look and see what is all around me - beauty that causes my heart to sing and my soul to worship.

But the irony: Don't I often desperately want to wriggle free of the confines of a small life? Yet when I stand before immensity that heightens my smallness - I have never felt sadness. Only burgeoning wonder. Is it because within each frame of finite flesh lies the likeness of infinite God? In all things large and spectacular, we recognize glimpses of home and the call to our own deeper chemistry. Do we writhe to peel out of our smallness and into the big life because that fits our inborn God-image? 

Echo calls to echo, deep to deep. 

Thoughts on Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts

I finally finished Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts, approximately one month after I was supposed to have it read for a book group. Total fail, I know.

It was interesting. She has the mind and heart of a modern day mystic. She dwells on the small things, the beauty around her. She's a farmer's wife and the mother of five (?) children, and her writing just oozes the picturesque homeliness of rural life. Hard work, raw honesty, family, home-grown faith. The hints of her life story are gritty and raw, and I do love that she's so obviously worked hard to study the scripture and wrap all of her theology and belief in it. It's a contrast to many homemakers who leave personal study to others.

Ann has a really unique writing style. I really still don't know if it drove me crazy or I loved it. It is filled with metaphor and incomplete sentences, but she is consistent and intentional in her style. For instance:

A soap bubble, skin of light and water and space suspended in sphere. Who has time for that?...

 The wonder right in the middle of the sink. Looking for it like this. I lay the palm under water and I raise my hand with the membrane of a life span of moments. In the light, the sheerness of bubble shimmers. Bands of garnet, cobalt, flowing luminous....

 The bubble in my hand quavers, a rainbow at fringes. 


And blind eyes see: it's this sleuthing for the glory that slows a life gloriously. It's plain, bubble straight through: Giving thanks for one thousand things is ultimately an invitation to slow time down with weight of full attention. In this space of time and sphere, I am attentive, aware, accepting the whole of the moment, weighting it down with me all here

The book is sort of a life theology built around gratitude/thankfulness/praise, which she encompasses in the word eucharisteo.  It is all a stream of consciousness, beginning with a vivid description of the life and beauty around her as she works, then melding into her thoughts and pondering. In that, it appeals to women like me. Daily life and beauty mixed with theology makes it come alive. She wrestles with the reality of suffering, with the daily grind of life, and how it all relates to grace and love.

I love her passion for beauty, for raw spirituality, for love and truth implemented into the quiet ministry to her family, kids, community. I loved the reminder to worship. I love Ann's heart - it's evident in her blog and in the way other bloggers she encounters are changed and refreshed by her quiet love.

I was skeptical (what? me? skeptical?) at a number of points at the suggestion that the problem with the world and humanity can be summed up in ungratefulness and can be solved with thankfulness. It got deeper than that, and some of what she has to say is quite profound. Still, I think that some of what Voskamp wrestles with throughout the book may not be the same things that others are wrestling with, and so the disciplines that are her solutions really may not hit home with others who struggle in other ways. Personally where I really resonated with her the most was in her wrestling with the reality of suffering and evil in the world.

All in all, interesting book, gorgeous writing, and a stunning heart. I also wrote of my more emotional response to the book here, specifically how her writing reminds me to look and long for beauty.

11 months - almost a year!

It's official. He's a toddler, not a baby.

Exhibit A.


He's so.... delightful. I mean, you see it all over my posts, the delight I take in him. It's so fun to watch him be delighted as well. He's discovering constantly, and is so proud of his new discoveries. Last week he learned to clap and he clapped with such excitement. This week he started dancing for the first time, as exhibited towards the end of this video. SUCH a white boy, I tell you. Pretty stiff moves there.
.



And he's got two teeth that came in at the beginning of the month, one right after another. Brutal. He doesn't scream when he's teething, he's just generally a fussy mess. As soon as they popped out my cheery Judah was back.

He's also recently learned to give kisses, but he gives them out sparingly when he's calm and affectionate. Which means... I'm lucky to get two a week! They're so sweet - a wide mouth gentle kiss planted on whatever part of my face is closest to him. 

First Halloween - actually we didn't go out at all, I couldn't be bothered. We did put him in his outfit a few times to chuckle at it, but it made him cry because he couldn't crawl or walk right in it.
Another first - his first cold this week. He's been sneezy and feverish and extra snugly, but I think it's passing.

The worst first? first bloody lip. And then his second bloody lip. Both times were soft falls but it seems he's smashing his face down something and tearing that little piece of skin that helps connect the upper lip to the gums. Lots of blood but he's fine after a few minutes. Took daddy a while to get over the heart attack of finding blood streaming out of his son's mouth.

This is not new, but a continuance of the last few months. He's still into EVERYTHING.
Most of all he's not supposed to tap on our laptops, and since it is forbidden he is desperate to get to them. He waits until we're distracted and toddles over as fast as he can go. *shakes head*... He's in awe of other kids. I love this picture, because it's often what he does around older kids - sit and stare in a sort of skeptical awe.

He loves playing with his daddy. In fact, Isaac was kidding around and asked Judah, "Judah, who's your favorite Mommy?" And Judah babbled in perfect timing, "Dad."

Truth is, he loves Daddy for playing and when he's sad he always wants mommy. And he cries when I leave in the morning, which just breaks my heart.

Can I just say - I think these little jeans are the cutest ever.

This photo is terribly blurry but I love it. Pure joy? Or... in Isaac's words, "Ritalin, somebody, quick!"

Dear Sir in the coffee shop 8 years ago

I sat at a little table in the corner of Seattle's Best in one of those cute old buildings on Chicago Avenue. The view out of the big window in front of me showed off the clouds and the sun shining off of the skyscrapers, hiding the chill that swept the streets and caused me to take refuge with a latte. I sat with my textbooks and my Bible and read and pondered, the way I always did.

The middle aged Caucasian man across from me quietly observed, his curiosity evident.

"Do you really believe all that?"

I stopped and took in his sweeping question that encompassed the scripture in front of me and my evident devotion to it.

I told him I did, and as much as this earnest introverted college student could, told him why, and told him how real it all was to me.

He sighed, his own story obscure to me but obviously weighing on his mind as he responded.

"Yes, but you're young. We'll see. We'll see if you still believe it in a few years."

He didn't say it to be insulting. He was intrigued that I, an educated and intelligent person, would believe. My youth discredited me. I'm sure he thought, "When she is older, when she knows more and has experienced life, she will change. It will fade, this passion." He wasn't skeptical, though. It was evident that he was sad.

If memory serves, it's been eight years from the day I talked to that man in Seattles' Best.

I understand a little more where he's coming from, a man in a city where unbelief is the accepted norm. He's right that I see things differently as an adult, and I am no longer that naive college kid.

But Sir, if I could meet you again in those easy chairs under the Chicago skyline, I would tell you that I still believe. Today I remembered you and I prayed for you, that you with your wistful response would be chased by the Hound of Heaven until you know it too.

7 Quick Takes - 7 Favorites Right Now

** Link up with other 7 Quick Takes at Conversion Diary

1. Blue Bell Pumpkin Pie ice cream.
Tastes like pumpkin pie with whipped cream! It has chunks of roasted sugared pecans in it and our friend Josh who stayed with us last week gasped when he tried it and said it was probably the best ice cream he'd ever had.




2. Oat Revolution
Walmart has recently been featuring these packets of five instant oatmeals for $1. I like them - they have flax seeds in them and they're set up so the packet itself has a measuring line in it so you know how much water to put in. Perfect for this working mom who is often grabbing breakfast in the office kitchen on my way to my desk in the morning! 


3. Ghirardelli Sea Salt Soiree
Dang.  I like dark chocolate. Really dark. And this is the best I've had in America. Smooth and dark and flavored with sea salt and bits of almond. YUM.






4. Green Onions
So, Pinterest told me to stick the white bottoms of green onions in water and they would regrow. Worth a try, right? Within hours of putting the bases in water I could see growth, and in a few days I have an entirely new bunch of green onions. Weird but cool and ... awesomely cost saving.





5. Fall Candles
I love the chill in the air and I want to enjoy the season. Fall scented candles are burning all the time in our apartment right now.






6. Pan Am
I don't have a show that is "my show" right now, but I'm trying out Pam Am. It's okay. I'm not a HUGE fan, but it's interesting.





7. Most of all... seeing my brother become a daddy. I've got a new little niece that just came home today. I got all emotional seeing the photos of my brother and the baby, and I cannot wait to meet her and see my brother and sister in law! Bring on Thanksgiving!

Stanley Hauerwas and I on marriage and divorce

Her.meneutics had an article with thoughts on the Kardashians today. I'm less interested in the Kardashians and more interested in a quote in the article by Stanley Hauerwas on marriage that was quoted in the article.

“The church rightly understands that we no more know the person we marry than we know ourselves. However, that we lack such knowledge in no way renders marriage problematic, at least not marriage between Christians; for to be married as Christians is possible because we understand that we are members of a community more determinative than marriage.

That the church is a more determinative community than a marriage is evidenced by the fact that it requires Christian marriage vows to be made with the church as witness. This is a reminder that we as a church rightfully will hold you to promises you made when you did not and could not fully comprehend what you were promising. How could anyone know what it means to promise life-long monogamous fidelity? From the church’s perspective the question is not whether you know what you are promising; rather, the question is whether you are the kind of person who can be held to a promise you made when you did not know what you were promising. We believe, of course, that baptism creates the condition that makes possible the presumption that we might just be such a people.”

I love this and it resonates right now, when this year for the first time our lives we've experienced close friends going through a divorce. One thing I've learned is that it deeply affects not only the couple themselves but those around them who are friends of the marriage. Though I have grieved and wrestled my way through this process, it's not directly my story to tell so I haven't blogged about it. It has all brought home the reality reflected in the quote above - that no amount of care, wisdom, and advice guarantees the actions of the person you marry. Just as much as you yourself can change, your spouse can change. What you get when you promise "life-long monogamous fidelity" is as unpredictable as the future itself, which is exactly why we have marriage vows that reference for better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness and health. The promise is made to the person in front of you, but it encompasses whoever they might become, which is an immense risk.

I think we do not even begin to take seriously enough the need to recognize that marriage, like communion and baptism, is meant to be done in front of and with the church, our community. In light of this Isaac and I have become intentional in a lot of the way we approach marriage now. It's less of an attitude of "keep your problems private and resolve them behind closed doors" and more honesty with our community about what we're going through and conflicts we're having so that they can encourage us and hold us accountable. I've also taken much more seriously being invited to and being in peoples' weddings. This past summer I was a witness as Rachel's wedding, this upcoming summer I'll be in my sister Jana's wedding. In those roles I am a witness to the promise AND a tool to help make possible that life-long fidelity.

On the presence of old friends

An old friend is staying with us this week, in fact, he was Isaac's best man. We don't get to see each other often these days, and Isaac keeps up with friends just like the stereotypical male, hardly at all but picking up right where they left off.

And I find that every night we're staying up till the early morning hours with conversations that range from new bands to the greek word for something or some theological position or how becoming adults means finding out how painfully broken the church and people are, and to being stretched thin by life. Strong-bad voices and old insults are being thrown around. I find us shifting from listening to the Civil Wars to Isaac and Josh singing along to Flight of the Conchords while I shake my head in despair. It is beautiful, this communion.

It is strange to do it all again now, when a baby wakes up and cries in the middle of it and we're off to work in the morning. This blending of college friendships with adulthood is strange, but oh how thankful I am for friendships, for people who know us and have known us, for men whose interests are the same and can sit and push each others' brains around for a while and thoroughly enjoy it. For being a witness to each others' lives from those early days of tentative adulthood on into marriage, pain and beauty, and still laughing through it all.

And I am thankful that it is chilly outside and that I am burning fall candles in the evening and that I have brand new breathtakingly precious new niece, and that my son's cheeks are soft, and that everything on my to do list is in the end not really THAT important.

I am not thankful that Judah is teething and cranky again. Just sayin.

Saturday Morning Escapades

The Asian markets are my favorite place in all of Dallas.

This morning Isaac and our friend Josh that's staying with us this week were still asleep when Judah got me up at 8:30. We quietly got ready in the bathroom and then slipped outside. I thought we could go on an outing while the boys slept in.

But... where to go? Hmm...

A park? Great idea. Except that the stroller is in Isaac's car and I can't find his keys.

The mall? I sometimes like the mall and I definitely like the mall play place for Judah, but I hate the effort it takes to get in and out of those monstrosities, and they're so.... I don't know. It's like materialism embodied, which is really fun sometimes and depressing other times (like say when you have no money).

A coffee shop? Indeed, if you're going to go on a Saturday morning outing, you may as well get a find cup o' Joe while you're out. Except, the decent coffee shops are all across the city and Starbucks is like coffee flavored sugar drinks.

Umm...

The cemetery?  Yes, this was a real thought of mine, because there's this massive cemetery just down the road from us that is just like a park because of the great walking path and beautiful setting. But, same problem as the park option. No stroller.

*lightbulb*

Just around the block from the cemetery is the Vietnamese section of town, and I LOVE Vietnamese coffee, and I haven't been to the Vietnamese grocery store in ages, and I need bean sprouts and peanuts for soto ayam (Indonesian chicken soup).

So off we went to the same place featured in one of my first posts on here, Egg-rolls and Pigs Heads - Exploring Dallas.

I tell you what... I walk inside that place and my body relaxes and I meander the aisles just smiling. Particularly the Vietnamese store is JUST like being in Indonesia. The men wandering around in sarongs, the super mie (ramen) aisle, the snacks I grew up with... I love it.

So we shopped and I got my iced coffee, and then we came home... only to find the boys STILL sleeping.