Adage #18: An avocado a day keeps the doctor away.

I was standing in a line for some sort of Whitworth cafeteria lunch concoction when I felt a tap on my shoulder from a fellow Californian student. She excitedly told me that there were sliced avocados in the salad bar (for the first and last time while I lived on campus). It did not matter that I would now have to stand in line for even longer, I would get my hands on some avocado! I got out of my line, retrieved my avocado and moved to the sandwich line to have my turkey avocado masterpiece created. I looked around and noticed that the other students from California were doing the same thing and soon the sandwich line was full of us, all eager for this special treat.

This moment in college has stood out to me more than many others, a life long memory created by a vegetable (or maybe it's a fruit, I'm not actually sure, which is a little embarrassing). My Pinterest recipe board is 60% recipes containing avocado. At the top of my list of things to know about a potential boyfriend is 1. does he love Jesus? and 2. does he love avocado? When I am at a restaurant, I find my choice so much easier when I just rule out everything without avocado or guacamole on it.

Imagine my elation when I discovered that avocado is actually considered a super food! This delicious fruit/veggie I consider a treat, is actually good for me. How can this be possible! It's so tasty and it gives me vitamins and the good kind of fat - unheard of! Do these people realize they've just given me permission to eat this everyday; in fact, they have encouraged me to eat it everyday. 

Serving God should be like eating an avocado. Serving such an amazing God, getting to use your passions, your talents, and your gifts for him should be so enjoyable that you think, "how lucky am I to get to do this?" You should get to do things you already enjoy when you serve him. You must also know that there will be sacrifice. You will have to get out of the line and stand in an even longer sandwich line. You will be fulfilled in ways you didn't know you could be and you will be asked to give up things you didn't think you can live without. When you choose to follow Christ and give your talents to him you will have to make some sacrifices, but in the end you will find yourself thinking it couldn't get any better than this.

What are some of your gifts and talents? Are you using them?

(Here is one of my new favorite avocado recipes from Oh She Glows. She's got a ton of great recipes, so check it out if it's time to mix up your usual diet!)

Adage #17: Gimme a break (Part 3 of 3).

There have been some unintentional things come out of this time of rest above what I was expecting. I am about two thirds of the way through and here some of the things I wasn't planning on:

1. Spending time with my family.
My immediate family lives in California, but I am lucky enough to live in the same town as my grandparents and a set of aunt/uncle/cousins. I suddenly had free nights when I stepped away from ministry for three months. One of those nights happened to be when grandma, aunt and cousin would get together for a movie night. This has easily become my favorite night of the week and I have loved the extra time I have been able to spend with my family!

2. The emotional side of stepping away from my home church.
When I first choose to take a sabbatical, I knew that I would return to ministry, but I wasn't actually positive that it would be at Life Center North. My main purpose in visiting other churches was to go somewhere where I didn't feel I had to do ministry, to go to church to be refreshed. I was not intentionally "church shopping", but if God moved me somewhere else, I wasn't going to ignore it, either.

I found myself missing LCN when I was gone for two or three weeks at a time. It has been refreshing the weeks that I found myself back there, around the people I consider to be a part of my family. These were the weeks that I longed to be at LCN on Sunday and I longed to be involved again. When I stepped away for three weeks at a time, I began to feel a little lost and without a home.

 On the other hand, some weeks I found myself eager to go somewhere other then LCN. I wanted to do something out of the norm and to go somewhere new. My home church was the last place I wanted to be some Sundays.

All these feelings are pretty natural. What I think is important is to never leave a church with anger or resentment. In the end, God has asked me to keep LCN as my home church and I will be faithful to that. I will also probably visit other churches every month or so just to get out of the ordinary. 

3. Learning to say no without guilt.
I remember talking a lot about boundaries and knowing when to say no in my college classes about ministry. I have slowly been getting better at this over time, but taking a sabbatical meant three months of saying no to ministry and serving. I learned quickly to not feel guilty because I was doing exactly what God wanted me to do for this time. There was one time when I gave in and said yes. When I showed up to serve, there was nothing for me to do - draw your own conclusions from that.   

4. Learning from everything around me.
I found myself able to glean lessons from everything that was happening around me. Going to new churches jolted me out of my routine and it became so much easier to take important points away from every sermon I was hearing. Because I have been more intentional about seeking God out in my life, he started showing up everywhere.

5. Living in community.
My living situation is pretty crazy, in a good way. I live with an amazing family from church. A husband, wife and their two young girls. There are also two other roommates in our house, which is not large. There have definitely been times in the past year and half that I have missed having my own space and less people around. But overall, I think this will be one of my favorite experiences when I look back at my life. Since I have extra time while I take a break, I have actually had time to sit down with some of roommates and have actual conversations and meals with them instead of running out the door to my next event or task. I am so blessed to get to share my life with these people!

What are you learning in your life right now? Are you being a lifetime learner? Are you spending time with people who are important to you? Are there things you need to say no to? Or maybe there is something you need to yes to?

Adage #17: Gimme a break (Part 2 of 3).

When I started my sabbatical, I began by outlining some goals and things I wanted to do during this time. Here are those things as I outlined in my journal before I started this process:


1. Stay committed to a Bible study.
When I started, I had 2 small groups in mind and now I'm in a totally different one. My good friends, Buz and Jolen, invited me into their Life Group. Life Center North calls their small groups "Life Groups" because we are encouraged to do life together with the people in that group. Here are some small group truths I've been learning:

 - You have to invite people. I would never had joined this Life Group if my friends hadn't invited me!  But they did and I felt welcomed from the very beginning.  

- The "perfect" small group doesn't exist. You pretty much just have to get over yourself and commit to one. This is the first small group I've been in where everyone is not the same age and it's not a bunch of single girls. Everyone else is married and most of them have kids. I should have joined one of these a long time ago! I usually choose to be in small groups with other single people, but how are we supposed to grow if we're in a group of people exactly like us?

Should you be in a small group if you're not already in one? Is there someone you can invite to join you if you are in one?  

2. Read. 
I hope you've heard the phrase "be a lifetime learner." I wanted to take my extra time and really dig into some books, not just start 20 and never finish one of them. I've been reading some books about ministry, a fictional read and some others about spiritual growth. One of my favorites has been Praise Habit by David Crowder.

How are you growing spiritually and mentally?

3. Spend my extra time with the Lord.
I didn't want to just end up hanging out with my friends instead of leading at youth group. Part of this was an intentional time spent each day reading the Bible, journaling and praying. The other part was setting aside time each week to go to a coffee shop and sit down for a couple of hours to read and journal. An important habit to have during this time was to keep journaling what I was hearing from the Lord and what was going on in my head during my time of rest.

I also planned a couple of half day prayer retreats, a full day prayer retreat and took part in a women's one day retreat offered by our church.

How much time are spending with the Lord? Do you need to dial something back for a little while so you can spend that time with God?

4. Keep the Sabbath.
I thought this would be easy now that I have a job with weekends off, turns out its still hard to do! It's been fun to see how different this looks each week as I try to keep a whole day to rest. It wasn't long before I totally understood why the Jewish leaders in the Bible had so many rules about this day. I quickly started thinking, "Now wait, is this work?" or "Am I resting right now?" But Jesus has a more go with the flow kind of approach: "Jesus said to them, 'The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.'" (check out the whole context in Mark 2 and 3). So my Sabbath looks different every week. Sometimes cooking dinner is therapeutic and other times it's work, so I throw a frozen dinner in the microwave. Sometimes putting my laundry away is restful and sometimes I save it for Monday.

Another part of keeping the Sabbath meant that I needed to rest from the church where I did ministry and go to another church, somewhere where I didn't know the people up front and what was going on in the church body. I needed to go somewhere where I could worship and listen without doing any ministry, but I'll talk more about that in another post.

Are you getting enough rest on a weekly basis? Is there something you need to give up for a little while so you can be energized?


5. Pray about ministry.
I started my three month sabbatical with the intention of being involved in ministry again when it was over (I asked some close friends and my youth pastors to keep me accountable in this). I decided to take a break so I would be better prepared to minister when I came back. I left it pretty open, asking the Holy Spirit to lead me where I should serve and having no specific ministry that I committed to return to. This was the part I was most afraid of - what would happen if I didn't hear the Lord tell me anything specific before I returned to ministry? What if I just ended up in same patterns again? A third of the way through, God gave me an answer. He gave me a big picture vision and how I pursue that in the next year or so is more up to me and the church I serve in.

Are your gifts and talents being used in your ministry? Are you stagnant or are you moving forward? Have you spent time praying for those in your ministry? 

6. The 80/20 rule.
 This last one was my youth pastor's thought and not mine, so I don't get to take credit on this one. He asked me as I stepped out of high school ministry for those three months to not completely check out. He asked me to stay in it for 20%. Ultimately ministry is not about me, it's about God using me to minster to others. I am honoring that committment I made to serve God by still allowing myself to be used during this time. This 20% has included grabbing coffee with some students every once in a while, talking with them when I see them at church, sending them a text or Facebook message, even playing Draw Something on my phone with them. I don't say, "I'm sorry, I can't help you with that, I'm on a break." In some cases, it means  keeping in contact with them, sitting down to talk with them and checking in to see how they are doing. In other cases, it means asking other leaders to jump in. In all cases, it means taking a minute to ask the Holy Spirit what to do next.

One of the most helpful things I did when planning out this time was that I put it all in my calendar. It forced me to make sure I wasn't hanging out with friends all week instead of neglecting the time I had put aside to spend with the Lord.

Can you take one of these steps to get energized?

Adage #17: Gimme a break (Part 1 of 3).

I was standing in a dark and cold kitchen at 2am exchanging stories with two other senior high leaders. I began to realize that something was off when they kept asking me who I was talking about. My stories centered around students and leaders who were no longer involved or who had graduated. I had no current stories to share with them. I was living in the past. A good friend of mine quoted her high school English teacher by saying: "if you're looking back to a part of your life and calling it the 'glory days', you are doing something wrong with your life now."

I started working in youth ministry when I was 17 years old and my youth pastor asked me if I would like to intern for her over the summer before I left for college. I didn't even have to think about it - I immediately said yes! I interned the following summer as well and when I returned for my sophomore year at Whitworth, I began as a volunteer youth leader at Life Center North. Since then I've been a volunteer, an intern, part-time staff member and a volunteer again. I've done junior high and high school, sometimes at the same time; worked with three different youth pastors; led small groups and small group leaders and even had a couple of brief stints in preschool and college ministry.

Nine years later, I found myself wondering where my passion for youth ministry had gone. It was frustrating beyond belief. I wanted so badly to feel that desire to serve the Lord again and I did the best I could to fix it. Our youth pastor did a great job of helping me and encouraging me to find where I best fit in the ministry. Even though I was using the gifts God had given me, I was still tired and lacked excitement while at youth group on Wednesday nights.

A friend suggested I take a sabbatical. "Sabbatical" seems like such a big scholarly word, but I think it's important to make a distinction between taking a "sabbatical" and taking a "break". Sabbatical isn't taking a breather and then maybe thinking about working again when it's over. It is an intentional time of rest. It is about energizing yourself so you can get back to doing God's work. I went into my sabbatical with some plans for how I would spend my time and with an ultimate goal of returning to ministry. 

Is there somewhere in your life that you need to take a break or an intentional sabbatical? Are you holding on to something just because you've always done it? Are you living in the "glory days" of the past?

I am about halfway through my 3 month sabbatical and I think it's important to share what I've been learning. I want to take the next two posts to tell you what I've been doing with my time in hopes that whether you're taking a break or not, you can evaluate how you are resting, getting energized and preparing yourself for the work ahead of you.    

Adage #16: It's a dog eat dog world.

I have friends with two Siberian Huskies, Ivan and Eena. A while ago, my friends brought their huskies to a family dinner where there were several other dogs. One of those dogs, much smaller than Ivan, is named Mrs. Mugglesworth. For some unknown reason, Ivan is terrified of her. I would have thought that her unintimdating name alone would insight lots of teasing from Ivan, but he is afraid to even make eye contact with her.

When Mrs. Mugglesworth walks into the room Ivan assumes the posture I do when there is an awkward public run in with someone I'm not sure I want to see, combined with a toddler who doesn't get how the game of peek-a-boo works yet: he looks the other direction, hopes that she won't notice him and figures if he can't see her, she can't see him.

As my friends were seated at the dining table during one of these family dinners - it's one of those higher tables with the tall stools, Mrs. Muggelsworth waltzed into the room and Ivan responded by doing what any small child who is afraid of someone would do. He tried to climb up into my friends lap to get away from the much smaller "scary" dog. Below is a picture of Ivan and his owner, the one who's lap he was trying to climb on: not an easy task for him.

I could hear this story from my friends 100 times and I still laugh so hard I cry, but it also started me thinking. Ivan doesn't even realize he could snap Mrs. Mugglesworth in half if the need arised. God has created each of us in specific ways, what happens when we aren't even aware of who He has created us to be? Genesis 1:17 says, "So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." We are created in the image of God, let that sink in for a minute.

Ivan is afraid because he doesn't know who he is or what he is capable of. But we do, we were created in God's image, the most powerful, wonderful, awe-inspiring being in existence. We find our definition not in what we do or what we like, but in the One who created us to be like Him.

Are you like Ivan? Are there parts of you that you are unaware of? Are there gifts and talents God has given you that you are not using or don't even know you have yet? I encourage you to ask God to use you in the most unexpected ways and see what happens!

Adage #15: If the shoe fits, wear it.

I love shoes, I'm convinced they can fix emotional problems (while simultaneously creating physical ones due to bad foot support). When I'm at the store and every pair of pants I try on don't fit, I can always count on shoes. I read in a Relevant magazine article a while ago that suggested one thing you should be able to do by the time you are 25 was to learn how to walk in heels. I took this information to heart and began my journey to better looking fashion and more uncomfortable shoes. If you are a female and are not already able to walk in a pair of heels without looking like a drunken monkey, here are a few reasons I think you should learn this life skill:

1. If you have a low pain tolerance, this is a great way to work on building that up. Wear your heels on your next trip to Disneyland or do laps around your neighborhood and soon you will be able to tolerate any sort of pain. You could probably win on Fear Factor after that kind of training.

2. Apparently, wearing heels makes you look more "professional", so if you are interviewing for a job, I would highly recommend you wear those heels instead of your running shoes.

3. Celebrities are people, too. And celebrities are always wearing heels - I'm pretty sure they wear them when they are asleep. When we wear heels it allows us to get into their world a little bit, feel what they feel and all that. We can either sympathize with how tough their life is (being followed by the paparazzi, hours of boring awards ceremonies, no privacy, etc.) or we can feel glamorous just like them by wearing our expensive Jimmy Choos (read: wearing the heels I bought at Target on clearance).

4. Maybe you need to come to terms that you are short and this is the best solution you have besides surrounding yourself with only short people. Not that this is a terrible idea, but I feel like there are a lot of great tall people in the world and it would be sad to miss out on those friendships just because you feel short when you stand next to them.

I hope I have convinced you. Or maybe really I'm just trying to psych myself into taking off these flats and putting on my super cute Jessica Simpson nude wedges.Happy shoe shopping!

Winter Adventures in Spokane: Spokane Public Market

When I tell people that I live in Spokane, WA they usually conjure up images of rain and hipsters. Then I have to gently let them down by informing them that I live in eastern Washington, where they are more likely to have a run in with rednecks and snow. But I think Spokane is getting cooler every year.

A couple of weekends ago, a friend and I went to the Spokane Public Market on 2nd Ave (it's inside so you can go anytime). We learned about and tasted every possible way to prepare a cherry, listened to a guy play his accordion, bought some delicious homemade jalapeno cheese bread and learned about all the different kinds of eggs you can buy straight from the farm. They also had fresh produce - I bought delicious zucchini for 99 cents! There are a ton of different friendly vendors selling everything from mini cheesecakes to fish to stairs for your dog.

After wandering around the market for a while, we ventured into Sun People Dry Goods which is in the same building. It's a local business that sells all sorts of eclectic Eco-friendly goods. I bought some note cards, some bath accessories and a bunch of awesome stuff for a friend having a baby soon. It is definitely worth checking out!

We ended our outing by stopping by the Main Market Co-op on Main Street. You could just shop here and Trader Joe's and be set to go! Since it's a co-op, its owned and managed by it's members and it is not-for-profit, but you do not have to be a member to shop there. They have tons of stuff that is hard to find in normal grocery stores and a delicious deli! 

So when you wish you were in Portland or Seattle, but don't have money for a road trip, check out these three places (it's even better if you go on a rainy weekend)!