Five on Friday
Hi friends, Happy Friday! It’s been Vacation Bible School week here for us, which has kept our mornings busy, but it was a great week watching my boys serve and being a part of a VBS that was much more low key than our previous 10 years! Today’s 5 things include reflections on the one year anniversary of joining a new church, a book that will absolutely be a book of the year contender, a “decide once” decision I made early in the summer that is still serving me well, a recipe I tried last week that earned rave reviews from all 4 of us, and my summer approach to meal planning that’s made things so simple. Grab an iced coffee and dive in!
**ONE**
Father’s Day is the one year anniversary of the day we walked into what would become our new church community for the very first time, and I don’t know why this feels significant to me but I have been thinking about this “anniversary” all week. Maybe its because we talked about leaving our church for so many years before we actually did? Maybe it’s because the day itself was a holiday so it is easy to remember? But if I’m honest, I think one of the reasons this day has been on my mind this week is because of the incredible peace this change has brought to our lives and our marriage in the past year. We tried Community Pres on Father’s Day for the first time, and we haven’t worshiped anywhere else since then. We officially joined in the early fall and in some ways it definitely still feels like we are the new people and in other ways it feels like we’ve been there forever. When we left that first Sunday Chuck looked at me and said “this feels like a church who knows exactly who they are, they are comfortable with who they are, and they aren’t remotely interested in putting on a performance to impress anyone.” And that felt like exactly what we were looking for. After worshiping there for about two months he said to me on the way home one Sunday, “do you realize we haven’t left church angry or frustrated about anything all summer? That has to be a record!” Here we are a year later and we can honestly still say that.
The peace we have found is mind blowing to me. This is a community that knows and loves one another dearly and out of that love flows a truly astounding number of missions and service opportunities to the neighborhood around them. What’s amazing to me is that as new as we are compared to folks who literally grew up here, the people of this congregation have been nothing but welcoming, delighted to know us, and embraced us and our kids with open arms. I’ve also truly never seen a congregation this size more plugged in and involved in serving numerous organizations who help the homeless, elderly, hungry, homebound, and more. Even this week in VBS one of the stations the kids rotate through is a missions station where they have a small project every day that somehow serves these folks our church is committed to serving, teaching kids that even at VBS it’s not all about us, it’s about being the hands and feet of Jesus everywhere we go. Everything they do is focused on loving God, loving one another and loving the world around them and they don’t have to announce every week that this is the heartbeat of their church, they just LIVE it.
This past Sunday after the first service we needed to decorate for VBS, and I realized watching the people who stayed to help I was getting a bit teary. People of all ages stayed, they helped blow up balloons, assemble a puppet stage, move band equipment, hang posters and string snowflakes from the ceiling. It truly was a beautiful picture of an entire community coming together in a way that was just amazing to watch. Our director of christian Ed kept saying “it’s going to be great, we aren’t looking for perfection!” and there was something so refreshing about being reminded that how something looks isn’t ultimately what’s truly important about a Kid’s program.
We are so so grateful to be here. I am so thankful that my kids say the Lords Prayer with us every Sunday. I am so grateful that the first Sunday of the month when we take communion, Sunday School is not held so the kids can participate in all of worship with us—the Apostles Creed and receiving the sacrament alongside their families. I am so grateful that once a month we come together for a midweek dinner and every month we sit with folks of all ages and get to know one another. I’m grateful we get to participate in worship services to honor Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, and that for the first time my kids were able to see the whole of the Lenten/Holy Week season rather than just an Easter Sunday service. And I love more than anything how incredibly generous the church leadership has been welcoming me to participate in worship, preaching, children’s ministry and our women’s retreat even with only having been a part of this community for such a short time. This week at VBS I have had three different older women come up to me to tell me how grateful they are that our family chose this community to be a part of and how thankful they are to have all of us, and I don’t know that I had the right words to express that the feeling is one thousand percent mutual. We are just so so thankful for this place, these people, and this new season.
**TWO**
Earlier this spring I found out that Kathryn Stockett, the author of the book The Help, which came out almost 20 years ago, had a new novel being published. She hadn’t released anything since The Help, so I was eager to put my name on the library wait list for her new title, The Calamity Club. A kindle version of the book was available to me much sooner than I expected and I dove in (it’s over 600 pages, this book is a long one!). Oh my word. I loved this book so much. I finished weeks ago and am still thinking about these characters. Even after 600 pages, when the book ended I literally said out loud “wait that’s it?? I want more!” Set in Mississippi during the Great Depression, this book follows the lives of a few different women whose stories converge and the lengths they are willing to go to in order to save their homes and families during an economic disaster of a decade. It was absolutely laugh out loud funny at points, and will tug at your heartstrings in other moments. Stockett has created some women I would absolutely love to continue reading about, including one of the most memorable 11 year old girls I’ve ever read. This book will undoubtedly be one of my very favorites of the year.
**THREE**
I don’t know who else has ever been sold clothes on Instagram, but for ages now I’d been seeing ads for shorts from a company called Halara. They looked so comfortable, and I’ve been kind of in a fight lately with my other pairs of shorts that just are not fun to wear when everything feels so sweaty and sticky. I decided to order a pair of their shorts and one of their activewear tank tops just to try them out. Ya’ll, they are the most comfortable pair of shorts I have ever worn. And the tank tops are the most lightweight and comfortable fabric when the Florida heat is in full force. I ordered several more pairs of each in various colors and this is one hundred percent my “decide once” summer uniform for a majority of the things I need to participate in. What was funny was I texted my sister and said she needed to try them and she responded with “I’m wearing a pair right now, they are amazing!” So are my clothing choices kinda boring this summer? Maybe, but gosh it makes getting dressed easy especially when I know it’s going to be a hot and sweaty kind of day!
**FOUR**
I mentioned last week that I had my kids go through my recipe binder and select a handful of items they wanted me to make this summer. One of the recipes I’d had in there forever but hadn’t ever tried was for homemade crunchwrap supremes. Aidan really wanted me to try it, so last Friday I gave it a shot. I used Bri McCoy’s recipe from her cookbook The Cook’s Book (a fantastic cookbook if you need a new one!) and oh. my. word. We all took a bite and could not believe how good all these layers were together. It was a bit labor intensive. She has you make your own simple queso, and then layer everything with beans, meat, lettuce, tomatoes, queso, a tostada shell and sour cream, and then grill them on each side until crispy. It is a recipe that used like 4 different pots/pans but it was so worth it. If you want to delight your family and take taco night to another level, this is the recipe I used and we were in heaven!
**FIVE**
Does the question of “what’s for dinner?” make you want to poke yourself in the eye sometimes? I know I get tired of it. My kids are often asking during breakfast what I’m making for dinner, and there is something about this decision fatigue that really gets to me, especially in the summer months. I think when the kids are in school our schedule is definitely busier but because they are gone during the day I have more mental bandwidth. In the summer I am answering what feels like a bajillion questions a day and each question requires a decision. So kind of like I shared above with the summer uniform idea, I sat down earlier in June and also “decided once” what our meals for this summer would be. I didn’t make a meal plan for the whole summer. But I did go through all my recipes and wrote down the ones that all felt like “summer meals” I wanted to make. Kendra Adachi, The Lazy Genius, talks about making a “dinner cue” for each season, which makes decision making a bit easier because you aren’t trying to choose from every recipe in your repertoire each week, you’ve curated a list to pick from instead. So each week when I make our weekly meal plan and grocery list I’m choosing from these meals, and I try and hit one per category each week just to make things easy and interesting—who doesn’t want a pasta night, a Mexican food night, a grill night and an amazing sandwich each week?? I don’t know if something like this would help you eliminate some of your decisions but I can tell you it has felt like a game changer here this past month!
Thanks for reading along this week, and we will see you back here next Friday!
