All posts by Jeff

The Road to Santa Barbara

No, don’t worry. This isn’t another 220-page story about our misfortunes in the state of California. This time, we’re just visiting. We’re flying to Sacramento to visit Jeff’s Dad, then driving down to Santa Barbara on Friday for a wedding on Saturday. So, this morning we packed up our two mammoth suitcases, car seat, stroller, and two carry-on bags and toted the Dutcher to the airport via the Bill Zyp shuttle. We marveled at the fact that if the two of us had been traveling alone, like we used to do, we would have needed ¼ of what we were currently taking. For such a small person, Dutch sure requires a lot of stuff!
Thankfully, airline personnel are used to people like us, and they smile knowingly as we lug our suitcases and push the stroller, still managing to feed Cheerios to a wide-eyed ten-month-old waving his hands in the air. They are wonderful to us. Even the security people were friendly, smiling and asking how our day was and poking Dutch’s cheeks. Jeff observed wisely, “People are nicer to us than they used to be.” It’s Dutch.
Dutch is the reason for a lot of things. He’s the reason my parents are really sad about us leaving for five days – that’s it, five days. Yeah, they are spoiled getting to have their grandson live with them. I don’t think they’ve ever been sad when Jeff and I have gone on vacation before . . . but they’re sad now. Dutch is also the reason why Grandpa Patterson is jumping out of his skin with excitement that we’re here. There’s an old keyboard on the floor, just for Dutch (who loves to type on keyboards; thanks Grandma Betsy!), there are containers of applesauce in the fridge. There are toys just waiting to be scattered across the floor. Yes, Grandpa Patterson is ready for Dutch.
I will say this: After we’d had the wonderful passage through cheerful security guards, and I’d gotten my Grande Decaf Caramel Macchiato, Dutch was swinging his feet cheerfully in the stroller and I was feeling good about the traveling thing. Yeah, we really had it all together. So, I told Jeff, “Before Dutch is two (when kids have to actually buy a ticket and have their own seas), we need to take a lot of trips—visit the Seifers, your brother and Brenda, and Kris and Nikki. It’s so great traveling with Dutch we need to take advantage of it before we have to pay for him.” How blissfully ignorant I was.
Thirty minutes later, we were stuffed into the impossibly tiny seats of Southwest Airlines, and it had to be one-hundred-and-twenty degrees. Dutch was sweating and as soon as we started to take off, he was wailing. Right across the aisle sat another little girl, Dutch’s age, sitting absolutely silently on her mommy’s lap, playing with her own fingers. I could not believe it. I could see her, as we ascended, slowly start to drift asleep, where she leaned into her mommy’s chest and nodded off without a peep. Ah! At the same time, Dutch had turned into a wild animal, and was thrashing around, arching his chest and wailing, hitting his head against the back of the seat in front of us.
So, I figured I’d try to nurse him, to keep him quiet. Imagine trying to modestly breast feed a tiger, tightly surrounded by businessmen and other complete strangers. Jeff reached into my diaper bag to get get my “hooter hider” (my indispensable fabric nursing cover), and started laughing when he saw that I’d actually brought a book in my carry-on. “I know. I know. What was I thinking?” He smiled, then tried to help me put on the nursing cover, pulling it over my face so all my hair fell over my eyes, then tried to get it over Dutch while he’s yanking it away. I’m sure half the plane saw much more than I care to think about, and every minute or so Dutch would pull off and cry, pulling off the cover and arching his back, thrashing around. This was ten minutes into the flight and I finally just closed my eyes and started pleading with God to help this child to settle down.
And, of course, he did. He never necessarily was calm, but at least he was happy. A steady stream of Cheerios kept him busy, then straw-fulls of diluted apple juice, then once we were at cruising altitude, he happily walked along the aisle, holding onto the arm rests, making new friends in every row. Thankfully, no one scowled at us, and everyone said he was cute, so apparently the whole scene in the beginning of the flight wasn’t as horrific as I’d felt it was.
As we disembarked in Sacramento, I felt like the flight lasted a week. The truth? It was only a 1-hour flight! As Jeff unfolded the stroller, I kissed my precious boy who was smiling and completely oblivious to my grief. Man, I love him. His smile, the way his little upper lip sticks out, the way he bats his hands and claps and sticks out his tongue—it was worth every second.
However, I amended my previous statement: “Honey, I take back what I said: Let’s wait until Dutch is two and we can strap him into his own seat . . . preferable at the opposite end of the plane from us.”

~Stay tuned for more adventures from sunny California. . .

Take some time to check out the new pages to your left:  I’ve updated my bio (which may not interest you), but added a Word for Today page, a Food for Thought page, and a Honey for our Souls page.  Check them out, and if I haven’t ever mentioned this to you:  Thank you for reading.  I’m honored you’d take the time to be here with me. 

                                          ~Kari

So, for the past three months I’ve had itchy shoulders.  Jeff thinks it’s hilarious; I think it’s infuriating.  The strange thing is that I have no rash, no redness, no bumps, and it gets much more intense at night.  During the day I rarely notice it, and I thought perhaps that it was just psychological, but no, last night I was awake until 3am with burning, itching arms–ah!  So today I finally researched.  What did I find?  I have a rare, enigmatic condition called Brachioradial pruritus.  I thought that sounded like something affecting my lungs, but apparently it is a real thing that causes unrelenting bouts of itchy arms for prolonged periods of time.  It’s been linked to both sun exposure (probably my culprit) or arthritis in the neck which causes nerve damage in the upper arm and shoulder area.  Therefore the sufferer’s average age is considerably higher than 27.  However, everything I read, including online conversations, blogs, and posted questions, all point to this diagnosis.  It strikes in the late summer/or early fall, or after prolonged sun exposure such as a visit to a sunny climate.  Its intensity peaks and falls with no apparent predictability, and some people have it for a few months and several claimed to have had it (off and on) for over 25 years!  The sufferers wrote at length about being sleep-deprived because this ridiculous itchiness drives them absolutely mad all night.  Why is it worse at night?  Apparently the heat from blankets causes the condition to become worse.  Some people sleep with ice packs on their arms, others with wet towls wrapped around their biceps.  Fortunately for me, I discovered a decade-old bottle of anti-itch gel in the bathroom drawer and doused both arms.  It felt like a cool breeze blowing on my arms all night long. 

All day I’ve been trying to think of some really significant spiritual insight to gain from this ridiculous disorder.  I can think of none.  Of course we talked about the itch of self-regard.  And yes, I can wholeheartedly agree with CS Lewis and say that it is FAR better to not have any itch in the first place than to have an itch and scratch it.  Scratching it just makes it worse!  But, really, that’s a pretty lame application.  Or, perhaps the lesson is that we should obey our husbands when they tell us to wear a long-sleeved shirt in the summer to avoid too much sun exposure (experts say sunscreen doesn’t help prevent this condition).  Or, the lesson may be to keep a handy bottle of anti-itch gel handy just in case you are ever unexpectedly plagued with Brachioradial pruritus in the middle of the night.  Who knows.  If you have any insights or spiritual lessons for me, please, comment below.  I’ll just be sitting here, scratching my shoulders. 

This week I had the now-rare experience of being on my own.  Jeff is always gone Mondays and Tuesdays for class and teaching, and this week he was at a Spiritual Warfare retreat Wednesday through Friday, then Saturday he had a leadership mini-retreat for the day with Foothills.  Mom and Dad are in Montana on vacation for ten days.  So, for the better part of six days, the Dutcher and I were home alone.  Jeff made me promise that I would not waste my time doing practical things like cleaning the house and painstakingly organizing our life (which is my default mode), but to spend some time doing enjoyable things, like reading.  The week before, my sister-in-law Nikki gave me a year’s worth of my favorite magazine, Real Simple.  So, after Dutch was in bed, I’d curl up with my magazine and read.  Though certainly a secular magazine, one article rang true in my heart, the subject of which was that not everyone in the world will like you.  I know.  You must be thinking, “Wow, Kari, you’re just now figuring out that lots of people don’t like you?  I could have told you that!”  But really, we are just approval-addicts and people-pleasers, and the way this particular author worded her article, it really made sense to me. 

She talked about our flavor.  What is my flavor? Am I chocolate milk or coca-cola or (more likely in my case) green tea?  Are we spicy or mild?  She explained that the only thing in the whole world that everybody likes is water, because it has no flavor.  But we are not like water, we have flavor, and it only follows that some people will naturally like our flavor and some naturally won’t.  That’s ok!  Now, don’t get me wrong, this is not a license to be offensive.  Certainly if people do not like us because we are proud or rude or arrogant or haughty or insensitive, then that is a problem–and we need to fix it.  But, I’d say I’m far more likely to err on the side or worrying about people liking me, rather than erring on being rude and mean to people.  (If I’m wrong in that and you think I’m really rude please email me rather than posting a comment in response!) 

Jeff has been a major catalyst in my journey with freedom in this area.  A few weeks ago, I was having a difficulty in a relationship.  He saw that I was agonizing over it, worrying about it, and obsessing over doing the right thing, saying the right thing, making everybody happy.  He pulled me into his arms and just began telling me all the things he loved about me, specifically.  I cried as I laid there, in his arms, showered with his words of affirmation.  He kept saying, “Just be you.  Just be you.”  I realized as I let the words sink in, that that was all I had to do.  I’d been clinging to the verse, “As much as depends on you, live at peace with all people,” but I think I’d misinterpreted the “as much as depends on you” to mean “as much as depends on you . . . and it all does!”  The truth is that it doesn’t.  I’m still going to do all that I can to live at peace with all people, to be accomodating and adaptive in order to bless those around me as best as I know how, but really, when I start to think that it’s my job to make everybody around me happy, I’ve bought into a lie that places far too much importance on one person–me. 

So, I’m learning.  I am a flavor only.  In this huge mix ingredients, I am but one.  God knits us all together and creates a delicious concoction using us all.  While we should all be able to fit together, it is not my job to do this.  He’s the one who makes the flavors blend. 

So what flavor are you?  The more I write, and the more I do character sketches, the more I want to learn about people.  People are fascinating!  One night this week, while Jeff was gone, one of my best friends came over and spent the whole evening with me.  We ate cookie dough (can that be my flavor?!) and sat on the counters and talked and played legos with Dutch.  It was a rare time because we were in no hurry.  Dutch went to bed, Jeff was gone, and it was just the two of us, with nowhere to go.  I confessed to her that I can spend hours online looking at house plans.  She admitted that she goes on Craigslist everyday and looks at Mazda 3s.  I learned more about her flavor.  And now, I value her and love her even more, because I know her just a little better.  That’s why, even though I despise forwards, I really love those little questionairre things that get sent around every few months.  Sure, some of the questions are corny, but that’s the point.  I love reading them because I learn about the person’s flavor, and usually, the more I understand a person, the more I can love and relate to them.  Sure, there’s risk in being us.  The risk is that we’ll expose our flavor and people will say, “Yuck!  You taste like Brussels sprouts!”  But, don’t give up.  Give it some time and keep exposing your flavor.  You might just be an acquired taste. 

This weekend at the Writer’s Conference I attended, one of the questions we were asked was, “Why do you write?”  They encouraged us to understand our mission statement, our purpose, in order to propel our work forward by a central driving vision.  So, I’ve been thinking about this.  And, you’d think I’d write down why I write, huh?  Well, eventually I will.  Right now, here are thoughts from John Piper on reading and writing (given to me by my ever-encouraging husband), to which I would give a hearty “Amen!”  I pray we all will ripple throughout this world!

— 

I’ve been thinking again about the importance of reading and writing. There

are several reasons I write. One of the most personally compelling is that I

read. I mean, my main spiritual sustenance comes by the Holy Spirit from

reading. Therefore reading is more important to me than eating. If I went

blind, I would pay to have someone read to me. I would try to learn Braille.

I would buy “books on tape.” I would rather go without food than go

without books. Therefore, writing feels very lifegiving to me, since I get so

much of my own life from reading.

Combine this with what Paul says in Ephesians 3:3-4, “By revelation there

was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief. And by

referring to this, when you read you can understand my insight into the

mystery of Christ.” The early church was established by apostolic writing as

well as apostolic preaching. God chose to send his living Word into the

world for 30 years, and his written Word into the world for 2000+ years.

Think of the assumption behind this divine decision. People in each

generation would be dependent on those who read. Some people, if not all,

would have to learn to read—and read well, in order to be faithful to God.

So it has been for thousands of years. Generation after generation has read

the insights of its writers. This is why fresh statements of old truth are

always needed. Without them people will read error. Daniel Webster once

said,

If religious books are not widely circulated among the masses

in this country, I do not know what is going to become of us

as a nation. If truth be not diffused, error will be; if God and

His Word are not known and received, the devil and his works

will gain the ascendancy; if the evangelical volume does not

reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious

literature will.1

Millions of people are going to read. If they don’t read contemporary

Christian books, they are going to read contemporary secular books. They

will read. It is amazing to watch people in the airports. At any given

moment there must be hundreds of thousands of people reading just in

airports. One of the things we Christians need to be committed to, besides

reading, is giving away solid books to those who might read them, but

would never buy them.

The ripple effect is incalculable. Consider this illustration:

A book by Richard Sibbes, one of the choicest of the Puritan

writers, was read by Richard Baxter, who was greatly blessed

by it. Baxter then wrote his Call to the Unconverted which

deeply influenced Philip Doddridge, who in turn wrote The

Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul. This brought the

young William Wilberforce, subsequent English statesman and

foe of slavery, to serious thoughts of eternity. Wilberforce

wrote his Practical Book of Christianity which fired the soul of

Leigh Richmond. Richmond, in turn, wrote The Dairyman’s

Daughter, a book that brought thousands to the Lord, helping

Thomas Chalmers the great preacher, among others.2

It seems to me that in a literate culture like ours, where most of us know

how to read and where books are available, the Biblical mandate is: keep on

reading what will open the Holy Scriptures to you more and more. And

keep praying for Bible-saturated writers. There are many great old books to

read. But each new generation needs its own writers to make the message

fresh. Read and pray. And then obey.

Pastor John

Motherhood can be discouraging.  I just spent 1 1/2 hours rocking Dutch trying to get him to sleep and finally gave up and now he is just in his crib crying.  Jeff is gone at class from 7:45am this morning until 9:30pm tonight.  I am staring around me at the toys strewn around the living room that is not mine.  Mom and Dad are gone to Montana for a week.  It is a beautiful day and I want to go for a walk or a run or do something other than sit here out in the boonies listening to my son cry on the monitor. 

 But there is grace for today.  Many of you who know me know that I want to write a book entitled The Sacredness of the Mundane, essentially about glorifying God and finding meaning and purpose in every detail of life.  This is certainly not a new concept.  Brother Lawrence practiced the presence of God, AW Tozer disdained the sacred-secular duality, and John Piper celebrates drinking orange juice to the glory of God.  But I want to devote an entire book to it, from a woman’s perspective, with a fresh new twist for today.

 So what is sacred in my situation right now, as I sit, listening to the rustling of Dutch on the monitor as he’s finally settling himself down to sleep (or he’s just standing up in his crib playing quietly — at this point I don’t care which it is)?  Well, first of all, I can rejoice because I know that God is on the throne.  He is in control of my circumstances, and, because everything in my life has been God-filtered, it is for my good.  So, instead of feeling trapped by living out here at Mom & Dad’s house, I can thank God because He’s decided, in His infinite goodness, that somehow it is better for my sanctification (the process of being like Christ), that I be out here.  Besides, I look out the window at natural beauty–sunlight, blue sky, trees, orange and brown and yellow leaves, sparkles of water droplets on the still-green grass of fall. 

Jeff is gone all day, which makes me sad, but I can recognize this as an opportunity to spend extra time with the Lord and  writing, since I won’t be spending time making dinner.  I also praise God because Jeff is away studying God’s Word!  Praise God that I have a husband who loves and enjoys and knows God more than he loves and enjoys and knows anything else in life.  Praise God for that! 

Because I was desperate to get out of the house, I drove Dutch in the Molalla park, where we swung and toddled around on the grass.  While I was there, I ran into two girls from High School.  I didn’t know them well, as they were several years younger than me, but we recognized each other and shared the commonality of little ones, and were able to talk, as we are all believers, about the things God’s done in our lives the past 10 years.  I also exchanged phone numbers with one girl, so we can meet at the park more often.  That is huge!  If I didn’t live out here in the middle of nowhere, and if I hadn’t felt trapped and alone with Jeff gone, I never would have driven all the way into the park.  But I went, and they were there, and God was in that encounter. 

 . . . now it is much later in the day and Dutch has finally fallen asleep.  Thank You, God.  I recognize this blog entry isn’t very profound–just some thoughts throughout a somewhat taxing day.  But now, the house is quiet, Dutch is asleep, Jeff is still at school, and I am alone, sweetly, deliciously alone to enjoy some sacred moments . . .

Yesterday I had the joy of attending the Fall Oregon Christian Writers’ Conference all day.  Jeff made it possible, by first insisting that I go, and then by taking care of Dutch all day, even driving into Portland during my lunch break so I could nurse him.  What a husband!  It was so worth the time and expense of attending.  Randy Ingermanson was the key speaker, a physicist turned fiction writer.   During the afternoon I attended his workshop on Fiction: Writing Deep Characters.  One of the exercises he uses, in order to develop characters that are real, believable, and consistent throughout the story, is journaling from that character’s perspective.  He pointed out that we must get into our character’s minds, know their personalities, how they respond to other people, conflict, criticism, success.  We have to know them so well that we know exactlyhow that character will respond in any given situation.  He insisted that we even need to do this with our “villain” — if the story has such a character (which most stories do, we just wouldn’t be so bold as to name them that).  He explained that the villain does not think he is the villain!  He thinks he is the hero!  Of course he does–no one thinks they are the villains of anything.  So, in order to understand that character, and make them more than a two-dimensional meanie, we must write a page of a journal entry, as if we were that person, writing the story line from their perspective.  Even though this work isn’t something to include in the actual story, it gives us, the writer, the opportunity to see why the villain will do what he does.

 So, what’s the big deal, Kari?  Why include this on your blog? Because I think we all need to write our villain.  Of course we may not have an arch-nemesis, but there may be a person who hurts us or annoys us or just seems to be standing in our way.  Yes, this is really just a more labor-intensive way of saying “Well, I’m sure they must think . . . ” and forcing ourselves to see their perspective, but when we do that, we’re really just going through the motions, it’s rarely that we ever truly convince ourselves of someone else’s perspective.  So, by actually writing out a situation, from his or her point of view, as if they were writing it themselves, we may surprise ourselves, and wind up loving people and understanding people a whole lot more than we ever thought we could. 

Let’s write our villains.

Understanding is a fountain of life to those who have it . . . Prov. 16:22

Right now I’m reading John Piper’s book, Battling Unbelief.  He once again hits a home-run.  It’s an abbreviated version of his longer work, Future Grace, and since as a mommy my time to read is limited, I read this shorter version while I walk on the treadmill :-).  The book has categories of things that we battle, all of which have the same root–unbelief.  Today I read about battling Pride and battling Shame. 

Pride:  Two things struck me about battling pride.  First, we have gotten it all mixed up in our modern minds because we equate theological wishy-washiness (my word!) with humility.  It is not!  We are called to know what we believe, which is not pride.  As GK Chesterton, a British Catholic journalist who died in 1936 said, “What we suffer from . . . is humility in the wrong place.  Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition.  Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be.  A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.  Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert–himself.  The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt–the Divine Reason.”  Wow!  Joshua Harris calls this Humble Orthodoxy.  Well said.

 Secondly, CS Lewis says this about Pride:  “The pleasure of pride is like the pleasure of scratching.  If there is an itch one does want . . . (hold on, Dutch just woke up, I’ll be back in a few hours . . . ok I’m back).  If there is an itch one does want to scratch; but it is much nicer to have neither the itch nor the scratch.  As long as we have the itch of self-regard we shall want the pleasure of self-approval; but the happiest moments are those when we forget our precious selves and have neither but have everything else (God, our fellow humans, animals, the garden and sky) instead.” 

 Lastly, consider this about two forms of pride, boasting and self-pity: “Both are manifestations of pride.  Boasting is the response of pride to success.  Self-pity is the response of pride to suffering.  Boasting says, “I deserve admiration because I have achieved so much.” Self-pity says, “I deserve admiration because I have sacrificed so much.”  Boasting is the voice of pride in the heart of the strong.  Self-pity is the voice of pride in the heart of the weak.  Boasting sounds self-sufficient.  Self-pity sounds self-sacrificing.  The reason self-pity does not look like pride is that it appears to be needy.  But the need arises from a wounded ego and the desire of the self-pitying is not really for others to see them as helpless, but heroes.  The need self-pity feels does not come from a sense of unworthiness, but from a sense of unrecognized worthiness.  It is the response of unapplauded pride.” 

 Boom.  That hits me between the eyes.  Have I done that?  Do I want people to know the things I’ve “suffered” so that somehow that will exalt me?  I hope not!  I think of how that relates even to things that I write, things that I say, things that I share with people.  Even in my writing of the Santa Clara story–I wanted to write it to remember the marvelous things God has done, and yet I’m afraid I will enjoy it if people somehow thing I’ve “endured” a hard thing, as if it had anything to do with us.  It does not.  All too often, I have “the itch”.  In a way, this revelation makes me scared to share with anyone about the hard things that I may be going through, because I don’t want to be seeking their admiration or applause, but on the other hand I also want to be an authentic person.  The difference?  My heart.  Only God can know my motivation.  He and I both know when I have the itch of self-regard.  I do know that I wrote the Santa Clara story with a pure motive and purpose, what I have to fight daily is the desire to have other people somehow applaud me somehow for my faith–which has nothing to do with me anyway.  God, please purify my heart, my motives, my speech, that I would lose the itch of self-regard and lose myself in You.

Shame:

Piper talks about two kinds of shame–appropriate shame, the type we feel when we’ve wronged God, and misplaced shame, which we ought not to have.  The key difference?  We shouldn’t feel shame for the things that dishonor us, but only the things that we’ve done that dishonor God.  However, most of us spend our time feeling shame for things that either are not our fault or that aren’t shameful because they don’t dishonor God.

This past weekend Jeff and I went to Bend.  While we were there we attended a art unveiling with Jeff’s mom.  At the unveiling, we met the painter’s wife and two daughters.  One daughter, a freshman in high school, has some birth defect which has misshapen one side of her face.  However, when I met her, she just beamed, welcoming me and oohing and ahing over Dutch, teasing that she wanted to be the president of his fan club, and wondering if she could marry him when he grew up.  She stood tall and looked me in the eye, a glowing, beautiful, utterly confident girl.  She obviously knew this principle.  There was truly no appropriate reason for her to feel shame, and so she did not.  But how many times I feel shame, not over the things I should (!) but over things that dishonor me rather than God.  I’m thankful that I met this girl who was an example to me of this correct understanding of shame. 

STAY POSTED, because I’m currently working on my next piece, Eva, which is based on a true story:

Eva Marie Van Zandt, named “Ey Ve” after the prize fighting boxer Joey Velez, was born in 1946 to Lois and William Van Zandt.  At eighteen she married her thirty-year-old lover, only to be abandoned with three small children.  Left penniless and alone, she determines to give her sons the best life possible.  Follow Eva’s journey as she battles poverty, cancer, and unbelief, and watch as the faithfulness of God breathes hope into her soul.