The Hubers' New Groove

Just when you think you're about to find some routine and things are about to settle down a bit... our family goes and auditions for a musical lol. Thankfully their roles are all on the smaller side, but Dave, Sam, Micah, Annabelle AND Zosia were all cast to be a part of the ArtsView Children's Theatre production of Newsies!

And thankfully, my work schedule has been consolidated mostly to the weekends, so it'll help a bit with having to adjust to rehearsal schedules for everyone else and painting schedules for me.

I had a chance to get started on painting a couple things for the set last night (The stuff above will look nothing like what they look like now lol) and even though my arm and shoulder do not agree with my enthusiasm, I'm super excited to get some more painting done asap! And since I'll be painting for the next few shows, I have a chance to get the paint room organized mwahahaha! I am determined to use up ALL the old paint I possibly can!!!

In other news, I spent the last couple of weeks trying to work out a gardening plan for the front yard. I'm almost done with it. My brain likes things to be in order, but my heart wants something "Different" and "Creative" more "organic" in how it flows... so it's hard to agree with myself sometimes and make a final decision.

I'm pretty confident on where I want the compost bin to go, so I'll at least get started on constructing and placing that, hopefully this week. I don't plan on having anything planted for the fall; anything i can do over the next couple of months will just be preparing the ground with layers of cardboard, shredded paper, compost and mulch. I've learned its worth the wait to prep the ground properly, rather than waste time, money and frustration on stuff not growing well.

Thanks to our added comings and goings, I'm going to be riding my bike to work once a week. I'd love if it our south Longview streets were a little more conducive to bike riding, but it's only 2.5 miles, so it'll be just fine. I need the exercise anyways!!

And last but not least, I'll be participating in a latte art throwdown friday evening, so here's hoping my "painting" wrist will let my "pouring" wrist do it's thing when the time comes.

It's time.

It's time to lay it all out there.

I grew up going to church as often as I could. We didn't have a vehicle, so we usually had to depend on others for rides, but we did the best we could. I remember attending a spanish church for a bit. My fondest memory though is of a bible study that we had in our apartment when I, if I remember correctly, was about 6 years old. I'm still in contact with some of those folks to this day (that's 34 years) and I have wonderful memories of that time.

In highschool I had friends who would go out of their way to give me a ride each week and I was even able to be part of the youth worship team. Great memories again... that season definitely makes me smile.

Then my church attendance was sporadic during college. Late nights, floor devotions, class devotions and school wide chapel three times a week... ya know... made sleeping in sunday mornings so doable.

Every time I missed church though, whatever the season, I always felt guilty. I knew I was absolutely supposed to be there. That's what Christians do.

As married adults, we found an amazing church with amazing people and amazing hearts. Seriously! We happened to visit when a missionary was speaking, returned the next sunday for a regular service and immediately knew it was exactly where we needed to be. We were fully committed. We only missed church when we were sick. Together, we helped with nursery duty and other children's ministry classes. We attended life groups (cell group, community group, small group lol... whatever you like to call it). We attended men's and women's book studies. We taught sunday school, attended sunday school, leadership retreats, and women's retreats. Served on the financial team, the fellowship team, and sang, played, organized and led on the worship team. We made sure our kids were a part of everything new and old and in between. We set the example of good leaders like they asked us to. We said yes to everything we could, even to the stuff we didn't really want to do. Consequently (and ashamedly), I definitely looked down on people who skipped all the church related stuff for pretty much any reason. And I, like most people in my community, equated church attendance with following Christ.

Then about 10 years ago, the hubs and I were challenged with, and convicted about, some things and so we changed some things. I guess you could say we had a bit of a paradigm shift away from the nominal christianity we were living, it was the moment of "taking responsibility" of our faith. We started making different decisions about little things and big things and all the in between things: our finances, our house, our activities, our time in other contexts, etc... we were more purposeful about letting go of some cultural norms and chose to run after a Spirit-led picture of Christianity. For me it was like The Grey Havens lyric, "His grace cut through me like a sword and came out like a song". It was a life altering gift to my soul to be challenged by the way others were living their lives. A beautiful awakening of sorts. A bigger picture of the global Body of Christ and I wanted to be a part of it!

Fast forward another another 5 years... we started recognizing some unhealthy patterns in our church. Some that were pretty much there all along, others that were new. Not anything blatantly terrible, which of course made it hard to pinpoint; but the patterns were becoming more visible in the leadership, in the overall culture of the church and even in our own responses to these patterns. We had fallen into the pattern of just hoping things would eventually realign with scripture. So we began to examine and ask questions of ourselves, and naturally we began to examine and ask questions of where we were spending the bulk of our time... at church. At the time, I felt like I was reading about one Church and living in another. I was reading current stories and testimonies that actually looked like and lined up with the early Church! The Church of Acts wasn't just something of the past, I could see that it was very much still alive! I kept thinking, "Something's missing", and I would grieve each Sunday as I sat in my seat, sometimes through tears, sometimes through anger. There was this burning desire taking root in my heart for our church to answer the call to repentance, to a renewal of covenant, to a metamorphoses so to speak. But the general consensus in our part of Texas is that "no church is perfect cause it's full of imperfect people" and so, because of that mentality, many are content to live with the way things are, because that's just the way things are.

But that's a lie. It's complacent and it's a lie!

It's a lie that we have to keep the system going and don't have time to stop and examine and change things. It's a lie that things are the way they are because they are the way they are. They're the way they are because we shape them that way and allow them to stay that way and we strive to keep them that way at all cost. But we absolutely MUST stop and take a look and allow the Lord to open our eyes to see how we have allowed harmful things to continue within our churches, within our families, within ourselves.

Why is it that some of the most impenetrable forms of hierarchy, segregation, preference and position are still strongest in the very place that was called to be a beautiful picture of Unity?

"For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

We have each been clothed with Christ. We have each been empowered by the Holy Spirit. We should not exalt one person over another. We should not prefer one gender over another. We should not glorify one kind of personality over another. We should not utilize one gift over another. Why do we continue to disobey this beautiful and necessary part of the church? We are all given spiritual gifts to strengthen the body IN those gifts, not to be positioned for them. We are all to be teachers, evangelists, prophets, shepherds, and apostles... those who are gifted with each one are there to equip all the rest in those giftings, and likewise all are to grow in the gifts received from others...men, women, young, old and all people groups alike! And all of this beautiful, counter-cultural community is meant to burst forth from our very being and breathe. The living, breathing, growing Church is far greater than four walls can possible contain.

It's a complete misnomer to say that it's about perfection. It's about holiness. Holiness is not earthly perfection, it's a call to relationship. It's a call to purity. It's a call to love. It's a call to mercy and grace and compassion. It's a call to suffer. It's a call to obedience. It's a call to rest. It's a call to release and entrust. It's a call to unity. It's a call to give. It's a call to die. It's a call to live in Christ!

So... after some time, we saw two paths before us, one that was continuing in the way it had always been, and the other was moving towards what we saw as a progression of growth, the next level, the removal of certain things and the addition of others... essentially it was leading into the great unknown for us... because here in East Texas, no church = one of two options... either you're on an "understandable sabbatical and will start visiting churches soon" or "you've left the faith" and we were neither of those.

duhn, duhn, duuuuuuhnn.

It's been 2 years now. I've processed a ridiculous variety of things in that time. Like, ridiculous. It feels like forever and yet it feels like I've barely scratched the surface. It's been an interesting time for sure. I share all of this because I felt as if I had to hide it all before. I felt like I couldn't be honest about what I thought as I was thinking it, but I don't want to perpetuate the idea that asking questions and speaking up and wrestling with things out in the open is wrong or harmful or divisive or rebellious. It's not leaving the faith, it's not moving backwards, it simply is. People asking questions is a good thing.. it means they care enough to ask and not just give up and move on.

The whole process is obviously still ongoing. It's all been a strange mix of guilt, doubt, confidence, freedom, loneliness and community. It's the most paradoxical season ever, full of beautiful revelations and ugly truths and I wouldn't trade it for anything. It's afforded the opportunity to dig deep, to think, to lament, to forgive, to heal, to grow, to stop hiding behind church activities and duties... to come face to face with myself and with who God is.

So there's no nicely wrapped summary of everything, cause I ain't dead yet... but I will say this... It's time.

It's time to stop looking back. This is my closing paragraph on this particular chapter. This is me declaring that I no longer carry the burden of having to explain or defend or make excuses for our decision to leave a church building and not go to another right now, or ever. I release all of that. The chains of what I'm afraid other people might think or assume about me are broken and gone. The following encouragement was posted in a group this morning and it could NOT have been more timely.

September 9th 2019: Ok, let's look at a major deal breaker in our walk with Him this week....letting go of the past! Let's set something in stone at the beginning....IF YOU CAN'T LET GO OF THE PAST, THERE IS NO FULFILMENT OF YOUR FUTURE! We can be in the Kingdom absolutely, we can love God that's for sure, but we can't fulfil our true purpose in Him if we keep dragging ourselves and others back to things that have gone! We all have a past, it's full I am sure of beauty, ugliness, truth and nonsense, love and hate....the whole shebang! We cannot EVER change that! It is gone, it is what it is! The only thing we can do, is press the eject button, not keep pressing the play button! The past has to be deactivated from any emotional attachment to us, that is what drags us back into a mentality and memory that alters our present grasp of reality. There just comes a time when we have to get so fed up of just reliving the old life! It's like getting the home movies out every day and not living in the now! The truth is, keeping the past alive in our emotions is selfish! It has no value for others as it is locked inside of us, but the effects on others can be significant as we lose track of reality! Today, let's look at our relationship with the past, do we enjoy that play button for whatever reason, or are we able to press eject and live in the now? #weregardthepastnomore! #whatisyourreality?

Church gatherings, like marriage, careers, hobbies, spending, like every choice and aspect of a Christian's life has to absolutely be surrendered to the Lord first and foremost. That is literally what defines us. Not our nationality. Not our denomination. Not our gender. Not our personality. Not our gifts. Not a big church building. Not the bible translation we use. Not a political party. Not the form of worship we embrace. We put our faith in Christ and we entrust ourselves fully into where the Spirit leads in every part of our being. Everything gets filtered through the great I AM. Everything, everything. The Eternal God is the only constant through all the ups and downs and bumps and bruises of human history. Even the systems that have been established for the benefit of HIS creation are changeable and shapeable for HIS purposes... they absolutely cannot become more important than He is. HE is the priceless treasure. We are His temple. We are the Church.


*If any part of this resonated with you and you need a safe space to talk about it, I'm here and I'm willing to listen. Even if it's that you totally disagree. I want to hear your heart. Me "closing this chapter" doesn't mean I won't still learn from it or discuss it, it simply means it isn't going to be at the center of my daily thoughts like it has been the last two years. It isn't going to weigh me down from moving forward anymore.*

Thru to Thursday

Almost made it it through another week of school-school. Whew. It's starting to feel like everyone is finding they're groove.

Thursdays are pretty packed, but today was especially busy since Sam had to cook a couple of dishes for his world geography class. He pretty much did most of it himself and I just gave him pointers on cutting onions and peppers and little things like that. I guess I did man the pupusas on the griddle as well.

We pretty much stuck to the recipes we were given, (I never follow recipes, unless I'm baking). I would've done a couple things differently... For example, anytime I make masa for tamales, I use chicken broth to flavor it, the way my grandma showed me... so this dough tasted super bland to me. But I did discover that I like the taste of smoked paprika in black beans (which I basically never use smoked paprika 'cause... I dunno why). The only thing I couldn't talk myself into was using a seasoning packet that had food coloring in it. I wrestled back and forth and eventually just looked up a scratch recipe for it and mixed all the spices together myself; super easy and no food coloring required!

I did have a little stress-out session yesterday when I realized I hadn't properly prepared my grocery budget for this extra cooking, which meant the chicken I had planned to last 2 dinners, would be used up for a lunch that we weren't going to get to eat. But it worked out. I had made more black beans than the recipe called for and there was one piece of chicken that came back from the class, so I mashed it all up and made more pupusas for dinner (and of course I used chicken broth in the masa lol). One chicken thigh, 1 cup of cooked black beans and a pound or two of masa fed all of us with leftovers lol. Oh and since there was so much sauce leftover from the chicken dish, I added a bit of cream cheese and cheddar cheese to make a thicker cheesy sauce to slather the pupusas with. Yum. Oh.



The girls' homeschool ballet class was today. Dave put together a couple of pvc ballet barres for the class, but we'll probably need to build one more, 6ft isn't as long as it sounds on paper lol.

In other news... We're still waiting on all the hospital bills to come through... the waiting is pretty torturous for me. So far we've gotten the 2 urgent care visits, x-rays, radiology and the ER. Its manageable so far, but I keep thinking about friends I have who are chronically ill or are dealing with major health problems out of nowhere. We may have a ridiculously high deductible, and some stress with that, but we at least have insurance to help soften the blow. That's more than most!

I worked the dinner shift tonight, which was pretty much dead and boring, but then I came home and enjoyed sitting outside on the porch for a good while, managing to escape with only ONE mosquito bite. ;)

Schedule 4.2.1

I had just printed out a new schedule, when zosie came in and pointed out something else that needed to change. hahaha. That's the way it goes. I've lost track of how many tweaks I've made, but I think we've got it managed well enough now for the rest of the school year. We'll just have to wait and see.

Here's the latest version of all four kiddos weekly school schedules.

It's a lot of work up front, but it sure saves us time in the long run. I'm super forgetful, so I pretty much can't live without something telling me what to do next, so I have my own version that tells me what to do when and with whom and all that good stuff.

Can I take a nap now?

Whirlwind Weekend

I feel like most of our weekends this summer have been anything but restful. I just keep crossing my fingers, hoping that the routine of school will help things settle down a bit.

Ha! Actually, I've basically realized I have to go back to the drawing board because I literally cannot clone myself and until that technological advance becomes readily available, there's just no way I can maintain my current work schedule and still get certain things done for the kids schooling; and working less isn't an option.

Then, Friday evening Micah comes home from dance excited to tell me that one of the other kiddos at the studio was going to be taking supplemental classes on the weekends at a studio that she herself had also been advised to take classes from. I had pretty much put the whole idea out of my mind since it's tight as it is to cover everything now, no way we could add MORE... and at a BIG CITY studio, who knows how much THAT would cost! Working more isn't an option either.

But there are moments when you look at the path your child is on and the only response is to do everything humanly possible to help her stay on it. Within minutes, everything fell into place and we were able to tag along early the next morning. Once we arrived, they got a little bit of info from us and simply let Micah join in on the class. It ended up that the director of that studio was actually the one teaching the class, so she was able to access what level she should be in. She then offered the payment option we were hoping for (but weren't sure how to ask for) and before we knew it, she was registered for the class.

It works out well that Micah is teaching some beginner ballet classes, so she can use that to pay for these classes, but of course it means the time it'll take to save for a vehicle gets further and further away. These classes will definitely be worth it though. She loved every minute of it and it really pushed her to work hard, and of course I think she looked just absolutely beautiful the whole time. I wish we could just hand her all the classes she could ever need, and of course it'd be wonderful if a car would just miraculously fall out of the sky, but that's not reality. The waiting and the working and the struggle will grow and reap good things in her.

In other news, since I hadn't originally planned to be traveling to and from Dallas most of Saturday, my timing got off on my sourdough starter. So instead of making a loaf of bread, I tried my hand at sourdough pizza crust. We had it for lunch today and everyone approves! :)