Just Call Me Sarah "All Heart" Wells

Oh no.

That's what I thought to myself as the clock ticked closer to the cut-off point of a clip from Jerry Maguire, this morning's edition of the At The Movies series at our church, seconds closer to when I had set the video up to automatically shut off, right before Cuba Gooding, Jr. announces, "I'm all heart..." and then drops a giant M-Fer.  Oh no, I thought to myself, what if the DVD doesn't stop at that 40-second mark?  What if, even though I tested this--twice--to make sure it would shut off at just the right moment, what if it keeps playing?!  Oh no.

There were five clips from Jerry Maguire this morning, and our pastor had jotted down, to the second, when the clips should stop and start.  We rehearsed together the importance of the DVD times for each clip before service started.  ProPresenter makes it easy to do this.  All you do is set the time it is supposed to begin, and set the time that it is supposed to end.  Done.  No problem.

But.  What if this time the DVD keeps playing? That would be horrible!  The college students were back for the first Sunday since May.  The audience below was filled with regulars and lots of new visitors, "It's so great to see so many new faces today!" said one of the associate pastors during announcements, "Welcome to 5 Stones!"  What if the DVD keeps playing, and the whole church watches the end of this scene?  

And so I positioned the mouse arrow over the play/pause button and prepared myself to stop the DVD just in case we hit the 40-second mark and it kept playing.  We hit the 40-second mark.  I panicked.  I clicked the play/pause button.  It kept playing.  "No heart?!" Cuba Gooding, Jr. said. OH NO.

"No heart?!" Cuba Gooding, Jr., said, "I'm ALL HEART m*f*!"

EEEEEEEEEEEKK!  I shrieked, frantically clicking the play/pause button, the stop button, any button to make it stop, make it stop, JUST MAKE IT STOP!  And then it was over, the church collectively gasping and laughing, the pastor laughing and apologizing and asking for forgiveness and the congregation granting it, like they do because we have a rockin' merciful grace-filled congregation. From the balcony behind my computer screen I yelled down, I am so sorry. 

There are only a couple of times I can recall being utterly and completely mortified.  There was the time in middle school when I tripped over my own feet going up the stairs with two cheerleader/uber-popular girls behind me and let out a GEEZ! as if they had caused me to stumble, and they laughed and said, "What?! We didn't do anything!"  And at a high school dance camp, after rehearsing all week our team's routine and lecturing, as an officer, the whole group about the timing of the last sequence, I was the only one who shot out with a toe touch while everyone else stayed crouched down, and then I swore on the way off the stage--possibly costing us our showmanship trophy, or team spirit trophy, or some other acknowledgement of positive behavior.  

This is particularly amusing to me now because I am bad at swearing.  Meaning, I don't do it naturally.  I am not a good swearer.  I am funny when I even try, too formal, too stilted, awkward.  They just don't roll off my tongue the way they do for other people.  

So.  You can imagine my horror as a church with pews filled with people listened to Cuba Gooding, Jr., deliver a pronounced and passionate F-bomb.  The mother of all F-bombs, even.

Humiliation burned on my cheeks.  I really, really hate screwing up, privately or publicly, consciously or unconsciously.  My entire body hates it, and as our pastor graciously proceeded through the rest of the sermon (a really great one, mind you), my hands shook, adrenaline pumping, head shaking, tear ducts leaking impulsively.  omg.  That just happened.  omg.  Somehow I managed to queue up the other movie clips and slides for the sermon and shake it off.  Somehow.  And after it was over, thank God, over, our laid back church embraced me with laughter and grace.

It was and continues to be hard for me to receive grace.  I want the A, I want more than good, more than good enough, more than great; I want perfect.  I expect perfect from myself.  Not from others, no, I totally get that we're not perfect and everyone messes up and blah blah blah, yes, other people, but not me.  And so in high school when confronted with the concept of grace and forgiveness through Christ for the murderer and minor-vice-committer both, I said, No. I spat, No way.  I wanted condemnation for the sinner and crowns for me.  I've earned it.

And then I started to pay attention to my daily behavior.  Every time I tried not to fall short, it happened.  Oh no.  I was not perfect.  And it happened every single day!  Oh NO.  I fell short all of the time.  This was really disturbing to me.  How could I be good enough for God?  I failed again and again, I would always fail, now that I've failed there's no HOPE of ever being perfect.  And then, in my freshman year of college, I thought I might be pregnant.  I might have been pregnant, for all I know, and maybe miscarried, given my record of miscarriages now.  I don't know.  

Laughter and grace.  Christ is all about grace, and I suspect he also laughs. The opposite of grace and laughter is condemnation.  Frowny face.  When I felt like I was surely condemned, life ruined, career trajectory altered forever because of what I had done as a freshman in college, what I received instead was love. Mercy. Grace.

But still.  "No heart?! I'm all heart!"  God, help me.  In some churches, you might expect lightning bolts.  In mine, laughter and grace.  I serve a great, big, amused Lord of the universe, and my church is his joyful, caring, graceful and sometimes embarrassing bride, but wow, she's just beautiful, isn't she?

Family Vacations, Then and Now

This weekend marked the first family vacation with my side of the family since the Great Myrtle Beach Thanksgiving Vacation Disaster of 2007. None of us said anything to reference it, but as we set up our campers at the state park on Friday night, cold wind whipping across the lake and blowing in heavy bursts of rain, I'm sure we were all thinking of it.

Back in 2007, my husband and my mom set out around 8 p.m. on the weekend before Thanksgiving with the hopes that our potty training 18-month-old daughter and 3-month-old son would drift off to sleep shortly after leaving, and they could drive through the night, arriving in the sunny Carolinas around breakfast, a bright November sun burning off the fog in the foothills, and two well-rested children slowly stirring in the back seat.

Instead, the two kids took turns keeping the other one awake, Lydia crying every time they drove under a row of streetlights or caught the headlights of oncoming drivers heading back the way they came.  Brandon and my mom took turns trying to pin clothes to the window to block the lights, played music, didn't play music, sung, gave bottles over the back seat, anything, anything to get them to sleep.

Meanwhile, I was at home, sleeping soundly in my empty house and bed after spending most of the night painting the living room red.  I stayed behind because I had just started my job at the University that fall and for some reason I decided that my five vacation days that year would be best used some other time.  I would work the first two days of the week and then just fly down on Wednesday.  No big deal.

The family van rolled into Myrtle Beach on Sunday, alive.  I flew down to Wilmington from Columbus and arrived at the airport, ready to see my happy family at the beach for a long weekend.  Utopian dreams of previous vacations drifted in my brain, full weeks spent wandering the beach and strolling about with both my side of the family and his, smiling, sunset gazing, sandcastle building, everyone jolly and hugging and wishing it would never end. 

My phone rang as I got off the plane.  It was Brandon.  A deer ran out in front of the van on his way to the airport and the van was undriveable.  A tow truck was on its way.  You'll have to rent a van, he said, we'll get this one repaired and pick it up on our way back out of town. 

Only no mechanics work the week of Thanksgiving.  We'd have to come back for it.

The two of us rolled in to the condo and slipped as quiet as possible into the bedroom, under the blankets, the bed creaking just enough to wake up Lydia.  Mommy?  And then four hours of children awake.

Thus began our Thanksgiving vacation at the beach.  Dad and the boys arrived about the same time as I did on Wednesday and we ate our Thanksgiving dinner together in the condo.  We wrapped up the weekend with a family blow-out and a one-way rental back to Ohio. 

And now.  We huddled around the campfire started with lighter fluid between the two campers, hoods up over our ears to block the wind gusts, and grumbled about the weather with my brother and his wife and my parents while the kids slept in the camper.  Lydia is now six, Elvis almost five and Henry just over a year old. 

In the morning, we cooked eggs and bacon over the fire, still battling the chilly wind.  This figures! I muttered.  Can't plan anything.  We took the kids to the playground, wobbled over the limestone boulders down to the lake side so the kids could throw in sticks, and at lunch we moved the campers to another less windy part of the park.  And then, then it was like the old days - the really old days - of fishing and cooking and roasting marshmallows and cooking hobo pie and riding bikes and making fast friends from the campsite across the way (hello, Lisa).

Only this time, it was me and my family giving it to the kids, my brother teaching them to fish, my husband playing catch with the older two and chasing Henry across the grass, all of us cooking and singing and drinking and eating, and me, grinning like I just caught my first bluegill by the water.