'Forces of Nature' (APU Commencement Speech)

On Saturday, I spoke at Azusa Pacific University's commencement. It was kind of surreal. And amazing. And really really fun. I'm so completely thankful to have been a part of it. The orchestra played "Pomp and Circumstance," the graduates were buzzing with life and love and energy. The sun set in the west and the super moon rose, orange and glowing, in the east. It was one of those nights, one of those moments when you feel grateful to have played a small part in something much bigger and much more beautiful. 

Big congratulations and much love to the APU Class of 2012. Thanks for letting me be a part of your day.

Forces of Nature

Thank you for having me. I am so incredibly honored to be with you today.  I know that I am a little bit of an unconventional choice for a commencement speaker, but I’m okay with it if you are.  I knew I was out of my natural habitat when I was asked if I would be bringing my own regalia. I did not bring my own regalia, first, because I didn’t know what it was, and second, because when I figured out what it was, I realized I certainly didn’t have any. 

I’m not a scholar, or an expert in anything at all, but I graduated from a Southern California college very much like this one, on a day very much like this one fourteen years ago. That makes me about half a generation older than you. In half a generation, some things are still the same.  The Dave Matthews Band, U2, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers are still touring. Traffic is still the major topic of conversation in LA, and they’re still making Mission Impossible and Men in Black movies.

But a few things are really different. In 1998, Gwen Stefani was just a girl, and No Doubt was an Orange County band. Now the No Doubt guys are dads, and Gwen Stefani pretty much runs the world. When I graduated from college, you could bring anything you wanted on an airplane—liquids, weapons, etcetera.  Also, when I graduated from college, many of you still had your baby teeth.

You all grew up with computers—that pesky half generation between us means that I remember a world without email, and you don’t. Also, when I was in college, no one was taking cell phone pictures of all the dumb things I did and posting them immediately on Facebook. For this I am very grateful.

One thing that has not changed at all is that we as a culture love to move on to the next thing, on to the next thing, on to the next thing. You’ve already experienced this, I’m sure. The second you started high school, people started talking to you about college. As soon as you arrived, people wanted to know your major and your plans after graduation. The bad news is that this never stops. After you go on two great dates with the same person, your aunts and grandmas want to go ring shopping, and the moment you are pronounced husband and wife, someone will ask you about a baby.

I am not kidding when I tell you that one of my family members came to meet our baby Mac in the hospital—he’s seven months old now—and while he was holding this brand new baby, that sweet family member asked when we were thinking of having another baby. I thanked him for asking and told him I’d be delighted to revisit that conversation just as soon as I could walk again.

We tend, as a culture, to be future-focused, on to the next thing, but let’s not be so quick to move past what’s happened here, in this place, in this season. There are some ways of living that you’ve experienced in this context that I believe are so helpful for the new season you’re entering, ways of living I’d like to encourage you to keep for the next leg of the journey.

First, as of today, you are no longer a college student. Congratulations! But my hope is that you will never, never, never stop being a student. Some of my favorite people in the world are people who possess an unquenchable curiosity about life, people who, no matter their age or accomplishments, are still learning, still asking questions, still willing to be wrong.

Your formal education has concluded, but I cannot encourage you enough to continue your own education. Travel, read, ask questions, challenge assumptions, ask for help. Listen to people’s stories, ask good follow-up questions. Never assume that you know all there is to know about a place, a person, or a situation. Commit to being a life long-learner, a person of relentless curiosity.

And become a student of your own developing self. Pay attention to what moves you, what you love, what makes you angry, what makes you exhausted.  There are no right answers to those kinds of questions, but if you don’t pay attention, you may find yourself several years down the road, living a life that looks good on paper, but doesn’t ring true to the deepest parts of you. That’s a terrible place to be. Become a student of what you love, because what you love flows out of the way God made you.

Another thing about college life that I would recommend you take with you is a commitment to living in community. The people that you’re sitting with right now are your tribe, the brotherhood and sisterhood of people who know you, who love you, and who will walk with you into an uncertain future. The relationships you’ve formed here are of great importance, and I urge you to continue to value and invest in these friendships and relationships.

Now may be the time to say goodbye to this town and this campus. But absolutely do not say goodbye to the people who have walked most closely with you during this season. This is just the beginning for many of your most significant experiences together. You have just barely laid the foundation—keep building, keep making memories, keep telling each other the truth, even when it’s hard. You cannot imagine how badly you’re going to need these friendships throughout your life. The people you’re sitting with today are your lifelines for the next passage—hold very tightly to them.

My best friend’s name is Annette, and we met the first week of our freshman year of college.  A few years later, I stood in her wedding and then she stood in mine. I visited her in the hospital when her son was born, and then five months later, she visited me when Henry was born. Still now, after years and moves and babies and long distance, she teaches me and challenges me, tells me the truth and makes me laugh, and if my college experience had given me nothing else, it would have been worth it for that friendship.

Another aspect of college living that I think you should hang on to for a few years at least pertains to your stuff. Most college students have almost no stuff. When Annette and I drove my car back to Chicago after graduation, the only thing that wouldn’t fit was a twin bed I’d bought for $99, so I left it in the house I was moving out of, because some guys from my college were moving in after we left.

College living generally means all your earthly possessions can be stacked up in four crates and a duffel bag. You run a nimble organization, with very low overhead. That’s good. Stay with that for a while. There’s no need for a mortgage and bedroom set and media center.  Decide, before you start accumulating things, what you want your life to be about, because you might find along the way that those things you thought you needed end up being the things that handcuff you to a lifestyle you don’t want. Stay nimble with low overhead, so that you can listen closely to the whisper of the spirit instead of the scream of financial obligations.

You may feel right now quite uncertain about the future, and you’re anticipating that one day, things will stop feeling so scary and foreign. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, especially on such a happy day, but that feeling will never come, not when you start your job or find your spouse or buy a home. That wiggly, sometimes scary feeling like anything could happen and you don’t totally know what’s next, that feeling is called life, and it would be best for you make friends with that feeling, because it will be with you for ever. It would be best as well for you to remind yourself that you’re not the only one feeling it. We tend to believe that everyone else has the answers to the most important questions, but I have it on good authority that everyone else is just as scared and uncertain as we are.

Dear graduates, this is the heart of what I want to tell you: God made you. He loves you, and he created you for a purpose.  I used to think that purpose was singular—like I was made to be one thing and one thing only. But the more life I live, and the more things I become and un-become as life progresses, the more I realize that he’s not calling me to be a certain thing, but rather that he’s calling me to live a certain way. He’s created me and calls me to address the world’s need with my gifts, with my heart and my mind, with my hands and my voice.

It’s very easy to wait around on the sidelines for your very specific, perfectly-fitted part to play. But in my experience, you might find yourself waiting around for a long time. In my experience, God uses willing hands, not spectacular ones. He uses passionate people, not extraordinarily-gifted ones. We all want to feel that sense of everything coming together, our gifts and our passions and our life experiences. We all want to have that “I was made for this” feeling. In my experience, the way to that feeling is to put on your boots and get to work.

Start where you can, when you can, with what you have. Start with your belief that God loves you, and that he made you on purpose and for a purpose. Not for a moment, but for an ongoing lifestyle of service and sacrifice and vision.  Don’t wait around and expect that amazing experience to come find you and tap you on the shoulder. Start making the world better every day, every day, every day, with your hands and your resources and your love and your willingness and your belief and along the way, you will find your place.

In the twentieth chapter of Acts, Paul wrote “I consider my life worth nothing to me, in order that I may testify solemnly to the goodness of the gospel of the grace of God.” That’s the heart of it all.  God made a deeply beautiful and multifaceted world, and along the way, that beautiful world became broken, still very beautiful, but now also very broken.

This is where it gets exciting. You can make it better. You can testify to the goodness of the gospel of the grace of God.  You can bring the garden back to life. You can stand in the way of injustice, or isolation, or abuse. You can sing or dance or teach or write stories that call us back to our better selves. You can be architects and speech therapists and scientists and athletes and pastors who give themselves, in daily, unglamorous ways to making the actual world better, to beating back the darkness and bringing light and life and motion and healing to the corner of the world that you’ve been called to.

In the words of George Bernard Shaw "This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. 
I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no "brief candle" for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."  

Dear graduates: the life you’ve been waiting for is happening all around you. This is it. This is life in all its glory, swirling and unfolding around us, disguised as pedantic, pedestrian non-events. But pull off the mask, and you will find your life, waiting to be made, chosen, woven, crafted.

Your life, right now, is exploding with energy and power and detail and dimension, better than the best movie you have ever seen. You and your family and your friends and your house and your dinner table and your garage have all the makings of a life of epic proportions, a story for the ages, because they all are. Every life is.

You have stories worth telling, memories worth remembering, dreams worth working toward, a body worth feeding, a soul worth tending, and beyond that, as though that was not enough, the God of the Universe dwells within you, the true culmination of super and natural.

You are more than dust and bones.

You are spirit and power and image of God.

And you have been given today.

(Photo Courtesy of APU)

Winner of the 'Nice Girls' Giveaway

And the winner is...Monika!

Here's her comment: "I'm a college aged student going into education and have a small group every summer with high school aged and middle school aged girls. I would LOVE to use this book as our study book for the summer, so many girls need to hear about this!"

Monika, send an email with your mailing address, and we'll get you your case of books. :) Congratulations! 

A Giveaway: 'Nice Girls Don’t Change the World'

I’m so excited about today’s giveaway. One of my favorite things to do is give away books—not just here, but in real life. I’ve been known to get whole cases of books I love so that I can give copies out to every friend who comes over for coffee or dinner or a playdate.

I gave away a case of Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. I’ve given away loads of copies of Wendy Mogel’s Blessing of a Skinned Knee, and I might be on my fifth case of the Jesus Storybook Bible. Love. Love. Love.

And today’s your chance to give away A WHOLE CASE of one of my favorite books. My mom wrote Nice Girls Don’t Change the World several years ago, and I’ve definitely given away cases of this one. Women come up to me all the time and tell me that this book changed everything for them, and I totally get it.

In so many circles, little girls are raised to be nice above all else. And then as we grow up, we realize that “nice” often means co-dependent, or less than honest, or more concerned with other peoples’ opinions of us than our own dreams and passions.

Sometimes my mom says that I’m not “nice”—she means it as a compliment, and I take it as one.  She learned the hard way how destructive “nice” can be, and she made it a priority to raise a daughter who is passionate and intense, but not always “nice.” I’m so thankful for the difficult journey she undertook—both for the ways it healed her and for the legacy it has given me—permission to be more than just “nice.”

It’s a long story that you can read about here, but the short version is that my mom’s publisher is selling cases of 52 books for $50, including shipping. That’s insane, of course, and you should absolutely order a case right now, and give copies of this amazing book to every woman in your life.

If, however, you’re feeling like a gambler this fine spring morning, leave a comment, and one winner will be chosen at random to win a whole case—52 books!

If I had a whole case (and come to think of it, I just might do this…) I’d get some pretty ribbon and a stack of notecards, and I’d write a short, sweet note to every woman in my life, and then tuck each card into a book. I’d tie a big bow around it—maybe yellow striped ribbon, because it would be so pretty against the blue and white book, and I’d mail them all out the week before Mother’s Day, a way of saying thank you to all the women in my life that I learn so much from, a way to say “together let’s be so much more than just nice.”

One comment per person, and the winner will be chosen at random on Monday, April 30^th at noon, CST.  

To enter, just leave a comment with the name of one person that you'll give a book to if you win. XO

Sweet-Crowded-Everything Season

We’re leaving tonight for Orange County to stay with my best friend Annette and her family, and I’m so excited that we finally get to meet her baby Tori and introduce them to Mac. Because Tori was premature, all our plans to meet/visit/introduce the babies have been on hold, but she has just crossed the all-important six month mark, strong and healthy and miraculous, and I can’t wait to snuggle her.

We’re going to a wedding tomorrow night, and you know I love weddings—I love holding hands with Aaron during the vows, remembering our own promises. I love champagne and parties and dancing and dresses and cake. I love seeing a new family getting made, and I love all the tiny moments of nerves and excitement and energy and love.

Aaron’s finishing Liturgy #3 this week, so there are recording sessions and edits to be made and designs to be approved. Like every musician, when he finishes a section, he listens to it first in the studio, then in the car, then on his iPod, trying to get a sense of the sounds from all different speakers.  When we’re trying to fall asleep, I can feel his feel tapping out a rhythm, and when he’s sitting at his computer, I can see his lips moving just a little, keeping time, deep in musicland.

I spoke at my high school last week and at a college in Nashville on Monday night, and one of the things I told both of those groups is that it only gets better. College is better than high school, and post-college is better than college. Your thirties are better than your twenties, and each year of marriage and parenting are sweeter and smoother, richer and deeper than the last.

As much as this time of year tends to dip us into nostalgia—graduations, the end of another school year, showers & weddings—I’m as thankful as ever to be in this phase, this season. Thirty-five is the best yet, in my opinion—more settled, less fearful. Clearer, more able.

Speaking of passages, it seems that time has sped up to a blur with our boys. Yesterday, I took Henry to visit the kindergarten he’ll attend in the fall.  He dressed himself, as he always does, and he wanted to look like a big kid, he said. Jacket and tie, collared shirt. Oh, my heart. For a split second, when the teachers came to pick up the kids, he looked at me with alarm. He rushed over to me for a kiss and an extra tight hug, and then I saw the little kid in him recede and the big kid rearrange his expression. And then he marched away in his clip-on electric guitar tie.

And Mac is a crawling machine, completely mobile, and still so smiley we think sometimes that he must not know what smiling means. How could he possibly be so happy all the time? In the middle of the night, or just waking up from a nap or mid-scream after a bump on the forehead, there’s that smile. It’s uncanny, and it’s wonderful.

My writing time is a bit of a blur as well these days—preparing for commencement at APU and then Mother’s Day at Willow, getting ready to turn in Bread & Wine. Last week I hit a serious wall—panicky and uncertain, sure that the manuscript so far is garbage and that there’s no time to redeem it. But I’m learning, and first I talked it through with Aaron, and then with my editors and agent. And this is basically what they said: “Oh, fear not, little crazy-brain. You feel scared and unsure, like the book will be horrible and you can’t write a decent sentence to save your life? Well, you’re in good company with every other author in the history of the world two months before a deadline.”  You can set a clock by that freak-out, apparently, the famed two-month freak-out.

As with most things, the only way out is through, and today is my day to get some writing done, to prove to my fearful and faithless heart that writing still can happen if you sit there long enough, if you show up and tell the truth and get off Twitter and stop caring so much what everyone else is doing and write your own story, on the page and otherwise.

So I’m firmly in my chair, looking out at the springtime in Chicago—new life at every turn. Not lost on me these days. I’m listening to super-old Counting Crows, lulled by familiarity, feet bare and fingers working, trying to make my own rhythm with the keys. Inhale, exhale, repeat as needed.

It’s kind of an everything season—sometimes I’m writing but not traveling, or I’m mostly with the kids & not doing a lot of writing, but this season is sort of a lovely, crazy mash-up of all of it: a baby and a big kid, lots of flights and packing of bags, pages and words and drafts and essays bouncing around my brain, weddings and graduations, time with friends and long days and short nights, so many good things it sometimes feels like drinking from a firehose or riding the crest of a wave, ever-so-slightly out of control, but largely very, very good. 

Mother's Day Shopping Guide

As you may have gathered by now, our family—both my family of origin and our little family—tend not to be traditionalists about holidays. Some of this is because we’re at church on most holidays, so we end up doing our celebrating at totally odd times.

Exhibit A: we did an Easter egg hunt on Friday afternoon, and on Easter afternoon, we were at the lake.  We bundled up and dragged out the Adirondack chairs for the first time this season. We looked out over the water and watched Henry run around the woods, and then later that night, when we were thoroughly chilled, we had cassoulet and carrot cake—no ham, no china, no cake shaped like a lamb.

Mother’s Day, then, as you may have predicted, is less-than-traditional, too. This year I’ll be speaking at our church’s Mother’s Day services, so I definitely won’t be entertaining.  We are trying to make one tradition: last year the Cooking Club invited our moms to a Mother’s Day brunch the weekend after the holiday, and we’re doing it again this year. I’m thinking of making these baked egg boats—yum, right?

Mother’s Day shopping is one of my favorites—I feel like it’s the perfect time for slightly decadent gifts. Mother’s Day is an invitation to spoil a mama, definitely not the time for practical gifts. It’s the opportunity to let the moms in your life be a little whimsical, luxurious, to be pampered or indulged just a tiny bit.

If I could buy Mother’s Day presents for all the amazing moms in my life—my friends, my neighbors, the women from church that I look up to—these are the things that I’d give them:

EmersonMade Gold Coin Necklace

I adore EmersonMade/Emerson Fry—I pretty much want one of everything from this season. I’d been wanting one of the gold coin necklaces for ages, and then I met a friend named Leah—we knew each other a little bit from FB & emails & mutual friends, but when we met in person, the first thing I noticed was her darling EmersonMade gold coin. That was the last straw. When a friend’s birthday came, I ordered one for her…and while I was at it, one for me, too. I got my friend the Lion, and I got myself the Dragonfly—the inscription is Latin for “I shall either find a way or make a way.” A meaningful sentiment for this season, for all sorts of reasons.

Kelle Hampton’s Bloom

I’ve read Kelle Hampton’s blog, Enjoying the Small Things, for a long time, and on Saturday morning, while Mac slept on and off in my arms, I read her beautiful book—her photography is extraordinary, and I loved the book.  

The book is a perfect gift book—pretty and inspiring, one that begs to be read with a glass of wine after the kids are in bed. And I read everything on my iPad these days, but because of the photography, it's worth getting the hardcover of this one. 

Falksalt 

Oh, I love this. My friend Kristi brought me this salt from Sweden, and then several months later we both saw it in InStyle, which made us feel so cool, and also assured me that I could get more of this lovely salt without shipping from Europe. It’s my favorite thing, really.

Kristi gave me the rosemary one, and we’re putting in on everything from popcorn to soup to roasted chicken. It’s one of those fancy, fun things that I wouldn’t have bought for myself but was thrilled to receive and happily use every day.

Lavender Felted Soap

My friend Jessica gave me some of this lavender felted soap when she came to visit the baby, and I have fallen in love with it. She knew, of course, that lavender is my all-time favorite fragrance, and I love how the soap oozes out of the felt in just the right amount, and how the felt acts as an exfoliator.

JCrew Monogrammed Nightshirt

I always intend to wear pajamas like this—classy and cute, a wink at menswear, and monogrammable—love that. What I really wear to bed most nights is a complete embarrassment, along the lines of college sweatshirt, leggings, & Aaron’s gym socks, but I like to pretend that if someone bought me this darling monogrammed nightshirt, I would abandon my ugly jams and become one of those women who doesn’t look like a mentally ill shut-in as soon as the sun goes down. One can hope.

What are your favorite Mother’s Day gift ideas? What do you have your eye on, and what are you getting for the special moms in your life?

(Just so we’re clear, I don’t get paid for any recommendations, ever. I don’t have advertisers, and I don’t do sponsored posts. When I recommend something, it’s because I love it. That’s all.)