Refresh

Well, if you're a person who reads my blog regularly.... you might be confused, because things look a little different around here. I've been wanting to give my blog a refresh for a while now - mainly to remind myself to keep writing in it and give myself a little bit of direction. I've decided to rechristen it as well (you may have noticed).

"Urban/Suburban" is an expression of my life at the moment. I'm a city girl, born and raised, but I still love my cowboy boots and campfires. Our recent move has relocated the hubby and I to the suburbs, where I am having some minor urban withdrawals... by which I mean, trying to get down to the city whenever possible like the crazy person I am. As one does. I feel like my life is straddling two different worlds. I am an urban girl with a job and a 401k, but I'm also a suburban wife who cooks dinner and repaints furniture (post to come when the job is completely complete). I am both city and country, I can review spreadsheets and bake bread in the same day, and I want to celebrate it. I hope you're ready to come along for the ride!

I don't have any fun suburb living stories for you today (none with pictures), so instead, I will leave you with a list of what I'm loving right now:

1. Trader Joe's oatmeal cranberry dunkers (always, always).
2. The sound of cicadas. I'll hate it by August, but every time I step outside and hear them buzzing, it just reminds me how great it is to live in the South.
3. Circuit workouts
4. Temporary wallpaper - we just hung it up in our kitchen (a two day feat) and it makes such a huge difference. There are no words. Pictures to come.
5.  Evil eyes on jewelry. Don't know why. Just love it.
6. The idea of starting my own compost. Hmmm.... maybe soon.


Have a great weekend!

Home

       

Today I am composing a post from the air, having just returned from a reunion with some amazing friends in Portland. I learned that Oregon has great food, great wine, and lots of people in plaid and beanies.

As I travel, I always find myself pondering the concept of home. I know many people have one place they always define as 'home', whether or not they live there. Some people find themselves checking the weather in another part of the country even when they're gone, feeling like a trip to a certain airport is a flight home - even if its just a one hour layover. Home is deeply embedded in them, the one place that feels like a favorite sweatshirt, comfortable and familiar, a place where you can pick up right where you left off even if years go by in the interim between visits.

I think I relate to this on some level. Dallas is my hometown - where I live, where I was raised, a home base during the rootless years of college where everyone exists in constant flux. I am used to the highways, the summer heat. I know where the good restaurants are and how to find parking in the lot at North Park Mall. But I think for me, 'home' is a more complicated concept than one city. I find that pieces of certain places break off and embed themselves into my soul, that 'home' is not just Dallas but an amalgamation of a dozen places and times, a ball of longing in my heart. It's not always places I've lived, or visited for long. There are some places I feel are distinctly not home, where I don't belong. But others speak to me, they feel like something I've been missing and have now found.

Florence, of course, where I lived for an idyllic five months, is one. I know where the supermarket is, I know how to pick the right train and talk to the cashier at the caffe and where I can get the best food in the city, from the restaurant on the quiet back street with no name posted, just a sign with a joker dancing on it. Whenever I see photos from someone else's trip, my heart hurts with the longing to walk those streets and taste that wine and breathe the air that smells like garlic and history and life. Boston is another of these places. I haven't visited often, but my parents lived there after they first married. In a way, that makes it feel like I belong there on some level too. I love to walk to downtown, to take the train to Cambridge, to see the swan boats in the Boston Commons. The feeling of the city is so me, quiet and yet energized, like you're stepping into something sacred in the heart of where America was conceived. And Norman, of course, where I went to school for three years, a quiet college town with the best sushi I've ever had - no joke. A surprising underground hipster scene, an annual renaissance fair, the best football experience the NCAA has to offer (no, I am not accepting counter arguments).

There are others as well - Dublin, Paris, Beijing, Chattanooga, Austin - places where I have family, places I have heritage, places that sing to me, all a part of me. Each is home in its own way, a place where I belong. I hope that heaven is all of them in one and more, a brilliant mix of all the things I love, all the rightness, all the joy. Home is people I love, of course, but home is also where my heart feels right, content, at peace. I belong in more than one place. And my spirit can't wait to discover them all, traveling this world, fitting pieces of the puzzle together, building a picture of my heart out of tiny fragments of this beautiful world.

Prof

If you live in Dallas, you might have heard a loud growl and clap of thunder this morning around 5:30 am. You may have seen a bright flash of lightning accompanying the thunder. It was the only thunder anyone heard all morning, and you can think whatever you want about that. My family and I have already decided it was the sound of one of God's warriors going home at last. 

I haven't blogged in a while, and I'm not quite sure why - I think of ideas that I plan to write about, but I can never fully commit. Maybe my everyday life doesn't move me to eloquence - maybe it should, but it doesn't. But grief is a powerful motivator, and this time, I might actually hit the publish button. This morning (around 5:30 am, if you haven't guessed), my grandfather Howard "Prof" Hendricks left this world and met his Savior face to face. As my aunt said, "Heaven has expanded a little, but here, we are diminished by that much more."

My grandfather was a giant of a man, a theologian, who lived and loved to teach and to powerfully expound upon the glorious mysteries of the word of God. He was not in his element playing with young grandchildren, and my deepest sadness in this is that I enjoyed so little time with him during my adult years, when it would have been possible to sit at the feet of a scholar beloved by so many and discuss with him both the vital importance of God's word and the prospects of the Cowboys' season with [near] equal passion. In some ways, I feel like the students and alumni of Dallas Theological Seminary have a better frame of reference for Granddaddy and what his life was about than I.

But as I began to think about it, it occurred to me how many mentors and counselors and teachers I have been blessed with in my time. A middle school bible study leader, a host of college students at camp during my adolescence and then leaders, some of them wise theologians in their own right, while working at camp during college. Pastors and group leaders, in different stages of learning. And then it struck me. My middle school leader had gone to DTS, and taken Prof's classes. My pastors, my group leaders, many of them have benefited from the wisdom of Living by the Book or Teaching to Change Lives. My husband and I received premarital counseling from another of Prof's students and colleagues, sitting in his former office at DTS. And then there is Pine Cove, where I spent many hours of joy, pain, brokenness and healing, where I first claimed Jesus as my Lord. It was first conceived and prayed over in the 1960s by four men in a boat - one of whom was my grandfather. Despite having never entered one of his seminary classes at all, my life and faith has nonetheless been profoundly and utterly impacted by the work of my grandfather and his faithful service to the King.

I have heard that Granddaddy said that you will never understand what it means to live a fulfilled life until you have changed someone else's. Clearly, he changed the lives of many - including mine. He didn't come from privilege, or a loving home of faith - and yet God used him in ways that will echo for decades and centuries to come. I am struck by this, and I wonder: who will be impacted by my life in such a way? If anything, the life of Howard Hendricks - even as it ends - spurs me to act, to do things that matter and stop wasting time, as we have no time to waste. I do not want to look back and find that I have lived a life that mattered little. It is my prayer that we might all love Jesus as deeply as my granddad did, and because of that love, go forth and impact someone else's life.

Granddaddy, you were - and are - dearly loved, and you will be deeply missed. Thank you for the echoes you have left behind on so many hearts. Hallelujah, we will meet again.