I grew up a pastor’s kid in a couple of Baptist churches. We attended Sunday morning and evening services, Sunday school, Wednesday night dinners and studies, youth group, Bible studies, care group and band practice and choir rehearsals in between. Some years it felt like we lived at the church, and honestly, I mostly loved it. I felt a sense of belonging in youth group, and serving at the church—in the nursery or on mission trips, at Vacation Bible School or singing on the stage—felt natural to me.

But when I became an adult—and particularly a parent— something shifted.  While I was pregnant with my first baby, a woman grabbed my arm in the hallway at church to recruit me for the nursery; “It’s customary for mothers to serve,” she said. She wanted me to commit to dates immediately. I remember saying, “I’m due on December 30th, so if you could not put me on the schedule for that day, that’d be great.” She told me most first-time mothers delivered late, so we could just find me a sub for that day if needed. When my daughter arrived (eight days early, thank you very much), I remember sitting drowsily on the floor with her or nursing her in a rocker, completely unable to pay attention to any of the other babies and missing the teaching, music and fellowship on the other side of the wall that I so desperately needed. I resented having been asked to serve.

As we searched for churches nearer to our urban home, I found myself drawn to something different. Fewer programs, but more fellowship. Community groups became a requirement for us. It’s not that I stopped serving in the nursery (I didn’t), but we started spending time with our church friends more outside the walls of the church, communing with and serving those around us together. My church friends became indistinguishable from my neighbors and family. My life integrated.

Growing up, I fidgeted through seminars on the Roman Road, on how to talk to people about Jesus. I've always been an introvert, but then I was painfully shy, and I remember cringing while on evangelism excursions, talking to strangers on the street about what would happen if they died that day. I felt deeply ashamed that it just wasn’t for me; it made me physically sick. I didn’t feel comfortable wearing my faith on my t-shirt—as if it were as grotesque as an Abercrombie label—I preferred to have it season my speech. People already knew I was different; I didn’t need to make myself an outcast on purpose. I started to believe I was doing it wrong; there must be something wrong with me; I failed at being a Christian.

So, as an adult, I struggled to find my place in the church. What was my ministry if I wasn’t chaperoning youth trips or holding babies or even singing on stage? As Daniel and I lamented being unsure of our gifts and how we should serve the church and others, one of our former pastors astonished me when he told us he saw the gift of hospitality in us. “Welcoming people in is your ministry," he said, "just keep doing that.”

So we adopted that as our family and individual mission statements, and we let it guide our decision making-- everything from the house we purchased to the way we schedule our weekends. It’s been a long, gradual progression for me to realize that checking a box on the bulletin at church, while helpful and sometimes necessary, is not where “ministry” ends. I can’t overstate the freedom I’ve felt from living a missional life. That old anxiety about sharing the love and message of Christ is virtually gone, because now I don’t draw lines. “Church people” and “neighbors” and “friends” and “parents at school” and “girls from MOPS” all mingle together in my crowded, messy house and life. 

I'm finding courage to be who I am—the same me—with all of them now. I’m not putting on a show for the ones on the outside, innocently trying to bait them into joining me at church. I’m not always on my best behavior for my church friends. Pretty frequently I say the wrong thing. I feel humbled that people compliment me on “authenticity” and “being real” but never “appearing to be perfect.” No one says the latter to me. My college roommate once said, “I knew it was possible for Jesus to love me, because he seemed to love you, and I knew first hand that you were a mess.” So, I’ve got that going for me.

​What if ministry actually accounted for our gifts and callings, our God-given strengths and personalities? What if simply living life alongside the people around us could be our ministry? What if listening when they talk, responding to their needs as we can, and just being a friend were our mission? What if sharing the love of Christ became a natural outgrowth of relationship and genuine love for those around us, even the ones that don't look like us? I haven’t used a tract or a scripted conversation or a ministry sign-up sheet in years; I’m not a Bible study leader. In fact, I’m taking an extended break from structured “Bible study” altogether, as books with homework and a night or morning away from my family just doesn’t fit in this stage of life for me. My ministry has both gotten more difficult and easier, but it is thriving.

I'm not suggesting that ministry within the church isn't valuable. We need people to rock babies in the nursery, and I’m incredibly grateful for the ones who have rocked mine. I will do it again. I still sign up to organize chili cook offs; I still bake casseroles; I still sing on the stage.  I will do my part to help the church function. But I’m grateful to be part of a church that recognizes that it does not exist solely to minister to the people who are already within its walls; we are meant to love indiscriminately, as an integral part of our community. Ministry doesn't have to be limited to the roles that fit inside the local church.

The day that woman cornered me into signing up for the nursery schedule, I could never have understood the freedom possible in “ministering.” Ministry, within your own gifts and callings, can look different—it doesn’t have to be unnatural and hard. And, for me, there has been tremendous liberty and purpose in living authentically and simply loving the ones I’m with.

I fidgeted in that cluttered office on a rainy day, unsure what to do with my hands. My first parent-teacher conference had me tied up in knots. I have always assumed “please come see me” or “we need to talk later” or “Christina, it’s time for your performance evaluation,” means I’m in trouble. This tendency might be worth delving into this at some point, because I have rarely gotten in much trouble and my performance evaluations have almost always been positive. Heaven help me the first time I get called to the principal’s office to collect a child. My time is definitely coming.

So as I sat, prepared to discuss my four-year-old, Mirabella, my bright but emotional, sensitive child, I worried. They told me about her school persona; mostly they talked about her strengths.

“When she meets a challenge,” I said, “she throws a fit.”

“We’ve seen a little of that too,” Clare, one of her teachers, said, “but the other side of that is that she is determined. She is persistent; we have not seen her give up until she gets it right. That will serve her so well later in life.” I paused. This had not occurred to me.

“We’re struggling at home,” I confided, “because she is volatile. We are working on reigning in her emotions, but she is very sensitive and loses control easily.”

“She is very sensitive,” Clare agreed, “and I can understand how that is challenging at home. But there is a positive side to that trait. Here at school, we might see it more than you do. She is incredibly empathetic. She notices when other children feel outside the circle, and she seeks them out. She relates their feelings to her own experience, and she works  to draw them back in. It might be difficult now, but it will be invaluable in her life; it’s the kind of thing we struggle to teach, and it comes naturally to her.”

I blinked back tears. Until that moment, I’m not sure it had  occurred to me that my children’s behavior was anything other than that: behavior to be guided, shaped, corrected. I had never considered that it was something more, that their behavior was a reflection of who they were. For the first time I realized I might often do better ruminating on the whole of their traits and their implications, then helping my children harness the power of their tendencies for good.

That sensitive four-year-old is now seven and three quarters. She worked all summer to perfect her splits for ballet this fall. She is trying to learn Danish phrases to reach out to the new student in her class who doesn’t speak any English. She cried while telling me she didn’t win Student Council representative for her class.  She is still sensitive and determined, bright and empathetic, and I’m already starting to see the benefits of acknowledging who she is and helping her learn to work with her traits rather than “correcting” them.

At 3:30 yesterday morning, I knew it would not be a great day. Intermittently, for the three hours prior, I had rocked and paced, cuddled and cajoled, retrieved milk from the kitchen (and then from the floor, where it had been launched); I comforted and coerced my irrational toddler son to just go back to sleep. So when he finally quieted down and I slid back under the covers, turning off my alarm previously set for 5:30, I knew.

When my five-year-old awoke me at 7:00, my disoriented head spinning, I sighed and rushed to make breakfast and pack backpacks and hurry everyone along in their morning tasks. Five hours later, we left the napping toddler with a babysitter while Daniel and I darted around town at lunchtime, trying to pick out floors to replace the ones that had recently been torn up as part of the remediation for a leaky faucet gone wild.

We returned home just in time for me to retrieve the girls from the bus stop, start homework and dinner, then race with Emerie to sign up for tae kwon do, her chosen extracurricular activity. We stayed long enough to watch little girls and boys with big voices break boards, I screeched through the Starbucks drive through for a cold-brewed pick me up, then ran into the house long enough to blend the soup on the stove, shout instructions to Daniel, and squeal into the school parking lot for kindergarten back to school night. I sat in the second to last chair available, beside my only friend in the room, and proceeded to try my darnedest not to fall asleep for the next hour. I had left the coffee in the car, and I regretted it deeply.

On our way out, we talked about the difficulty of getting used to our new schedules. “I’m not used to not knowing anything about his day,” my friend said. I nodded and empathized but had to answer my phone; Daniel was calling when he should have been dropping Mirabella off at dance.

“Are you almost here? You took the van and Mirabella can’t find her ballet shoes.” Daniel doesn't have car seats in his car.

SHOOT. I bumped, crookedly, into the driveway several minutes later, welcomed by a scene: The dog escaping down the front steps, Daniel holding a pajama-clad Deacon on the porch, and Mirabella, streaking across the yard, wailing and in tears. The beloved ballet shoes had been included in her “Me” bag that she shared with her second grade class. We hadn’t seen them since. I looked at the clock: 6:30 on the nose, her class would be starting now. “Do you want to skip it?” I offered.

“NO!” she wailed louder. So to dance class we went, breathing deeply along the way.

“Why were you late, Mommy? Why did you even go to that meeting if you were so tired? Why did you take the van? Why did you let me bring my dance shoes to school? I thought my teacher packed them. Now I have to dance in no shoes.”

“Mirabella,” I tried to soothe, “I can tell this hasn’t been your favorite day. It hasn’t been mine either. I’m going to be really grateful for those new mercies tomorrow, how about you?”

“Yes, but still, I hate this day. I hate that the house is torn up, Mommy. Everything feels. . .different!” she shouted.

I looked back at her red little face, all screwed up in frustration. I imagined her walking into her dance class late, still the new girl that no one knows, the one who is still playing catch up, and now she’s in stocking feet. I sighed.

“Everything is different, honey. We didn’t plan on any of this and, honestly, I kind of hate it too. It’s going to get weirder before it gets better. We’re just starting a new season that’s different for all of us. And I don’t feel like I’m doing a very good job. But we have to give each other grace while we’re learning. I’m so sorry you’re late to class and that you don’t have shoes. But you have to take a deep breath and go in there and do your best.”

I shuttled her into the door and apologized to the woman at the front desk. I unnecessarily explained what happened to her shoes. “We’ll get better at this,” I said, “we just need time.”

I took a picture of a sign like this one on a run earlier this summer, because things were going pretty well, but I knew roadblocks loomed ahead. I just didn’t know what they were yet.

Remember  all those changes we made at our house? New habits! Healthy choices! Yay for starting and continuing, for perseverance and determination!

All those things were true.

But more than a few friends this summer have said, “I don’t know how you do it,” and I can’t, in good conscience, allow them to believe that I have been consistent.

This summer flittered by, mostly, beautifully. We traveled to the Outer Banks, to Chicago and to Maryland; we welcomed visitors from Florida, Connecticut and Maryland; we swam and sunned ourselves; we hiked and explored; we built and dug and created and snuggled; we ate good food; we drank delicious, handmade cocktails; we grew and harvested and pruned; we fought and made up; we stayed up late and slept late—we soaked it all in.

This summer intended to be the writing season for my book, twelve chapters in thirteen weeks, wrapping up in August. I built in an extra week. Adorable, right?  Because, of course, that was all I’d need.  Well, the book plan grew to thirteen chapters, seven of which have been drafted as August fades in the rear view. The book isn’t done. It’s not near done. I need more material from my partner; I need more production out of me; I need better production out of me. It’s all still a long way off, and somewhere with all the fun and mothering and patience mustering this summer, I lost my mojo.

I had worked my way to running between five and ten miles per week. Hear me: I have IronMan friends, so I’m not impressed. But I hadn’t run two miles in the past ten years combined, so running consistently and actually enjoying it felt like major wins. I managed to run in Corolla on vacation, through most of the heat of the summer, but when the schedule got crazy and the husband got busy, when the nights got late and the children let me sleep, the running slowed. Maybe I’d run once per week. A couple weeks I didn’t run at all. I had also started going to yoga class at least once, sometimes twice per week; I marveled over the benefits I could see and feel. Now afternoon kindergarten and nap time threaten the practice.

Then the last month of the summer, our living room became a bedroom. My sister in law broke her leg, got a blood clot, had surgery, and needed help. This girl has helped us the last three times we’ve moved, and not just a little. She has taken off work, traveled to our new location (twice out of state) and helped me organize my kitchen cabinets. Selfless doesn’t begin to describe her. So, of course we offered our home and help. She stayed with us nearly four weeks, and I’m sure she wouldn’t describe her recuperation as “peaceful,” and I wouldn’t describe my caretaking skills as “graceful,” but I know we loved her the best we knew how. Still, once we added that to the summer, the structure kind of fell out the bottom of it.

Daniel had to travel, for work and to say farewell to his Pop Pop, who passed away, not unexpectedly, but sadly. He returned, and what had started as a minor leak in our kitchen faucet now requires insurance claims, remediation and repairs. As I write, men carry armloads of my kitchen floor down the driveway and out to a van; only the subfloor remains.  Above the drone of industrial fans and dehumidifiers that have hummed for the past week, I hear crashing through the wall that tells me the cabinets won’t be there long either.

Here’s why I’m telling you all of this: I think it’s all normal. It’s what happens when plans and discipline and intention intersect with real, uncontrollable life. I’ve spent the last couple days since school started feeling sorry for myself, feeling like all momentum is lost, feeling like I don’t know where to pick back up, so I probably just won’t. And that’s ridiculous. Roadblocks are inevitable, a fact, not a problem. Stops—in and of themselves—aren’t an issue. Accepting their existence and the changes they provoke seems far preferable to kicking and screaming, to piling guilt on myself for the way it has all turned, to wishing it were different. I stopped because life demanded it. I did what needed to be done. And now the time has come to find a way forward.