WordPress Issues

I have had issue after issue with wordpress lately. I am thinking of changing my blogging home. Any thoughts? As you can see, my blog ate my “Cussing and Praying” header. It just says I have used up my data uplaoding space. I have cleared out all old files and pics and I AM NOT buying more space. I did that last year and never even came close to using it all. WordPress, please get it together. You used to be so easy to use and all your changes have not been for the better!

Jesus is NOT my ‘homeboy’

April 16, 2009

I posted a status update on Facebook last night that said “Jesus is not my homeboy and I don’t want to be friends with him on Facebook ”.  I mean seriously, I keep getting pop up messages on my profile that say ‘GOD’ and ‘JESUS’ are people I might know and want to interact with in the realm of social media.  I am sure whomever started those groups had good intentions.  I mean we have fan pages for ourselves, our cities, our favorite shows and even restaurants…so why not God and Jesus?  But there is just something that rubs me the wrong way when we start “friending”  God on the web.  It seems to diminish even the idea of reverence.  I am quite aware that the process of devaluing God has been going on for much longer than Facebook.  And I admit that I have taken part in this process on many occasions, sometimes aware of it, sometimes not.  But it has always been in the back of my mind,  irritating me at a level I really didn’t fully understand.  I just did not know how to put it into thoughts and feelings.

Before I saw that I could become a fan of God on Facebook, I was already thinking on this subject a few weeks ago when a friend of mine from college posted a comment on my blog post, ‘bruises on my knees’.  One thing in particular that she said really struck a chord with me.  In speaking of finding a home in a liturgical church setting, she said, “After 30+ years with My Buddy Jesus (presented to me by the Jesus Movement of the 70s), I think my heart hungered for some way to approach God with reverence and loving respect.”  WOW!  I think she just summed up in one sentence why I have been writing this blog for the past year.  I have lost any and all forms of reverence for God, for Jesus, for the Church as a whole and quite frankly for Christianity.  There is such a desire to present Jesus as a friend to the world, that we have watered him down to nothing more than “the boy next door”.  You know the one you have friendship bracelets with and play ‘ring around the rosie’ with and dare I say, hide and go seek with.  We have (or at least, I have) become way too familiar with the God of the universe, thus making him all too human…all too powerless…all too much LIKE us!  I don’t need another buddy.  I have lots of those.  What I need is the ALMIGHTY, THE ROCK, THE REDEEMER, THE HEALER.  I realize the name Friend is ONE name used to describe God in the Bible (so you don’t all need to pepper me with verses where He is called friend), but it seems that particular name has become the favorite for us, because it makes us feel all warm and fuzzy.  It is rare that I pray to Him or think of Him in these other forms, because that is not what FEELS the best to me.  It feels better to just cozy up under my covers at night and cuddle up next to God and shoot the breeze with him, hoping that my conversational communication will lead to answered prayers for all the things that will make my life better. But how often do I get down on my knees on my cold, hard tile floors before I go to bed and bow my head in utter awe to the ONE who will not leave my heart alone?  Ummmmm…NEVER!  But it’s OK, I have bad knees, God will understand.

I am not saying that God expects us to be in pain for Him (i.e. cat ‘o nine tails) or even that I have the ticket on how to fix this gross familiarity I have formed.  But I do know that my own lack of reverence is a big reason that has led me to the Orthodox church.  I don’t always leave that church with a big smile across my face, nor in a puddle of tears.  But I leave there longing to know more about my Savior.  I leave there with a true sense that something much bigger than me is at work all around me and that I certainly don’t have to have it all figured out, but that I can come humbly with my questions before a Mighty God.  I am also learning that I can experience God without having to “conjure up” an emotional high by being constantly entertained or spoon fed in the process.

Long ago, I grew tired of bracelets and t-shirts and bumper stickers and yes, even music that summed Jesus up into a cute little phrase or a clever little abbreviation.  And though I didn’t know it at the time, with each little step towards “friending” Jesus, I became a little less impressed with Him- – notching him further and further down on my “friend list”, until He became eye level with me…until he became ME.  I don’t want Jesus to BE like me, LOOK like me or ACT like me.  I get enough of ME in every mirror I pass by.  And while, yes, Jesus did come down in humanity to identify with us, he was still miraculous and sinless. That’s what set him apart.  I don’t want to identify with His humanity so much anymore, as I want to identify with His holiness. I collide with humanity every second of every day, but holiness is not so frequent.  And in the end, it’s the holiness that will make me different, less like me and more like HIM.

Jesus is my Friend (on youtube)

the room upstairs

April 8, 2009

Well, today just feels like a day to write.  I have been so busy lately, that writing has not been a priority.  But I can always tell when it’s been too long.  It’s kind of like eating too much pasta- -feels like I have a rock in my belly.  

I have been hanging out at Red Tree Studios a lot lately.  We started recording a few songs recently and now it has grown into a true project.  The process has been amazing, but it has also dug it’s way deep inside of me and messed with many emotions that I would rather not face.

First of all, and most of all…FEAR!  Of course, because if we can’t get that out of the way then everything else is just layered in it, like old furniture being protected by a dusty sheet.  So that is where I have been lingering for a while now.  In the room at the top of the stairs, filled with old junk that I don’t want to see, but I just can’t seem to throw away.  The dust in there is unbelievable!  The door has been locked for a very long time.

It’s a strange thing to want to do something all of your life, go to college for it, do it with unbriddled passion for many years and then you get married and knocked up and BOOM you stop doing the thing altogether!!! Now I do not have any regrets about getting married or pregnant, but I do have regrets of not knowing how to allow several passions to exisit at one time.  I was so overwhelmed by taking on the roles of wife and mother, that I just could not fit anything else in at the time.  To everything a season, I suppose. And so here I stand, in my thirties, facing the scariest, but most beautiful giant of my life…MUSIC!

Over the years, I have done some songwriting for other musicians and even had a radio single called “Water”, for a CCM artist, Ana Laura.  And I have had the opportunity to write and collaborate with some incredibly talented people.  But at the end of the day, I missed seeing myself in the songs I was writing.  I would start a song that fully represented me or an experience I had been through, and then I would go to co-write, to make it fit another artist and POOF…all the Shellee seemed to dissapear.  And well, I just got tired of trying to make my songs “fit” into a category that allowed someone else’s dreams to be fulfilled.

I am not saying that I will never write for someone else again.  Infact, I love the co-writing experience. But I think I just needed to fully committ to starting and finishing something that was 100% ME.  Like I said, fear has been present throughout the entire process.  What if people don’t like my music…or rather ME?  (because that’s how musicians are, they take everything personally) What if I am too old?  What if I am too chubby?  What if they think I sound like…? What if… What if…What if…I think maybe that should be the name of the record. LOL

So the fear…it has been daunting, but it has also been refining.  It is what made me finally get up off my ass and do this.  It is what made me stand in front of a mirror and recognized that if I didn’t change some things, then nothing would EVER change. It is what moved me off the couch and into a recording studio.  It is what made me remember the overwhelming joy that creating music creates in me.  The fear that I would always be afraid is literally what prompted me to tackle my fear!  So maybe fear gets a bad rap.  Maybe we even kind of neeeeeeeeed it???

So even though I have been sneezing a lot while hanging around in that old dusty room, pulling out all the junk- – the fear,  in a way it has been cathardic.  I have opened up “the hatch” and surprisingly I feel a little less LOST!

Come visit me on Facebook or Myspace in a few weeks give “me” a listen.  I will be fearfully and wonderfully awaiting your response!

bruises on my knees

3/4/09

Sunday night we went  a service called Forgiveness Vespers at St. Cyril of Jeruseleum Orthodox Church.  That service will go down in my life as one of the most intriguing, awe-inspiring, humbling experiences of my life.

We have been attending St. Cyril’s for about 4 months now.  I have not written about it, because quite frankly, I have had no idea what to write about.  There are many reasons behind why we decided to take this curve in the journey, but mostly, I will tell you that it has been a slow and steady pull that I cannot put into words that has drawn us to this small Orthodox parish of believers in The Woodlands, Tx.

I go each week because I have to.  Because my body and my mind and my spirit tell me I HAVE TO.  But I do not experience the emotionalism I am use to experiencing in a church setting.  I do not feel all warm and fuzzy.  I do not get a “word” from God.  Quite the contrary!!!  I feel pain in my feet from standing for an hour and a half straight.  I feel strange and uncomfortable with the entire service being sung/chanted.  I feel dumbstruck that this place of conservative, ritual driven, historical Christianity is where I am finding peace.  Because as many of you know, just months ago, I would have all but claimed Agnosticism.

But each week that I have been amongst this small group of believers, though it has not been over emotional or grandiose, I have felt a beautifully strange sensation of one burden being lifted, as a new weight of conviction is flooding in to replace it.  And this week, as I stood in that Pre-Lenten service and listened to Father Basil speaking to us about expecting something of God during Lent, I truly felt for the first time, in a long time, that I could actually expect something of God.

And so during this Forgiveness Service, we had to make our way around the church and fall prostrate on our knees, head touching the ground,  before each member of the church and ask them to forgive us and in turn forgive them for any wrongdoings.  There were about 30-40 people present, so you can imagine the muscles that were used over and over again that don’t get worked that often. Needless to say, I was sore by the time we were leaving, and I was glad we didn’t attend the larger church in Houston.

When we got home and I was in the bath, I noticed my knees were already covered in the beginnings of little pink and purple bruises.  And by the time I got out of the bath, I could barely walk up the stairs.  And so for the past few days, I have been limping around, with the ever-present reminder that I am literally “aching” to expect something from God.  I have no idea what to expect from any of this…but I am most definitely EXPECTING!  And I hope by the time Lent is over, I will have bruises on more than just my knees.  I hope they will be all over my entire “body”….showing full proof that the wrestling match is still on!

Lord have mercy! Lord have mercy! Lord have mercy!

she misses me

1-27-09

She feels the weight of the heavy heart between us

She bears the burden of trying to understand the reasons why

She sheds the tears that fill a gap–where once there was a bridge, now just an open wound

She misses me…she misses me

I am different today, different from the girl she use to know

I am course and rough around the edges, as I have always been,

but the edges are more exposed and seem to be causing her bruises

She misses me…she misses me

When I look in the mirror I see a woman trying to shed the layers of childhood and other’s expectations

When she looks at me she sees a woman trying to run from the very thing

that defined my childhood–my life

She doesn’t recognize me, she doesn’t see that

She misses me…she misses me

She thinks our fabric is unraveling and ripping at the seams

I think it is being woven tighter and stronger, with layers of acceptance and

unconditional love

Either way, the fabric is weighted with the heaviness of pain and stained with dark and salty tears

She misses me…she misses me

My heart has been knitted to hers since the day we first met, my soul has been stitched into her fabric and cannot be undone

If only she would wash out the stains and see our fabric for the old, worn and tattered tapestry that it is…growing more and more beautiful with age!

She misses me…she misses me

I miss her!

wrestling match

December 31, 2008

As this year concludes, so does the first chapter of this blog.  I have officially been keeping this blog for a year now and have been desperately trying to come up with a way to close out these pages before I embark on a new year of this “journey”.  I have sat in front of the computer on numerous occasions and tried to write a summary of this year and yet, the page always turns up empty and lifeless. 

But then this morning, reading from a book that my dear friend Jeffery loaned me, The Gospel According to Moses: What my Jewish friends taught me about Jesus, I was caught unguarded by a paragraph of words so beautifully spun together that I knew instantly these words were a gift to me.  Words that not only resonated with me at my deepest core, giving closure to what has been a most difficult year(s).  But also gave way to lean into a new found freedom that I have been so desperately longing for.  Below is a small excerpt of the chapter that grabbed me so deeply.  In speaking of a medieval French rabbi and his many difficulties with the Bible, the author explains the differences between his own personal struggles in his faith as compared to the rabbi’s.

“I became convinced that the Bible was filled with mistakes and half-baked truisms.  I reacted to these difficulties by abandoning the faith of my childhood for a time…But although Rashi (the rabbi) also found these kinds of difficulties, his response and mine could not have been more different.  Rashi confronted his ‘questions’ with an open and inquiring mind.  The result was one of the most widely respected commentaries on the Hebrew Scriptures in existence…Why did Rashi and I respond  to the difficulties in such radicallly different ways? 

Rashi was trained to wrestle with God like Jacob at Bethel, to bargain with him like Abraham at the trees of Mamre, to argue with him like Moses at Mt. Sinai.  Rashi’s people have an ancient tradition of questioning God “face-to-face, as a man speaks with his friend”.  (exodus 33:11)  Conversely, I abandoned my faith because it seemed I had no right to question the difficulties, much less expect answers.  I had been taught to accept ready made dogma rather than to personally take my doubts to God.  (And) It is just possible that several years of painful isolation from the Lord might have been avoided had I learned at an early age this simple truth that most Reform Jews know:  God loves an honest question.”

And so as I reflect on all the spiritual frustrations of this year, the crying, the fist raising, the cussing and the praying, I now see that I have been doing exactly what this author is talking about; asking God my most honest questions.  I have been wrestling, bargaining and arguing with this God of mine, that I have so politely tiptoed around all my life.  And though I don’t feel that I am anywhere close to being done with this process, the difference today is that I feel I can do it in freedom, laying my head down at peace with the questions, if not with with God.  And this is a wonderful respite for me.

And even as I sit here writing this, it sounds funny to be admitting to findng peace in the midst of a wrestling match.  But that would certainly seem to be the case. 

I am still the same Shellee.  He is still the same God.  And we are ever engaged on the mat as 2009 leads us into the next round.

 

Excerpt from The Gospel according to Moses: What my Jewish friends taught me about Jesus            by Athol Dickson

Happy Birthday Quillen

12/9/2008

When we tucked you into bed last night you were nine years old, just a baby in our eyes. But when we awoke this morning, we found you to be entering into the world of double digits, a change that happened over the course of a handful of hours, and yet a change that will stick to you for the rest of your life. Never again will you have just one number on your birthday cake, but forever it will be two.

With each year you will add something new to your life , but with each year you will also shed something. A little of your childish innocence, your starry eyed wonder and your ability to take things for simple face value (which has always been a challenge for you). And yet you will be growing into a confident young man, with the ability to both lead and follow in integrity, to listen to and hear those that need to be heard, to uplift those that need to be lifted!

I see you now, even at this age, trying to work those qualities out. Wondering if you will ever “hurry up and grow up”. But you my little man have been grown up from the moment your soul entered this world. You have always had a maturity far beyond your years, that tangles you into thinking such thoughts and feeling such feelings that most your age don’t have to experience until much later in life.

This burden and gift has been and always will be a part of who you are. And though you often use your silly outer layer as a release from the heaviness of your heart, your depth and wisdom far out weigh you in years. This unwieldy beauty is yours to carry, but you are MINE to carry!  And carry you I shall!

From the lover of your soul and the keeper of your mind – the one who grasps the very heart of you~

Happy 10th Birthday,

Mamma

YOU were a cheerleader???????

November 20, 2008

We were going through some old pictures the other day with the kids, trying to find something specific. At one point, we came across one of my high school yearbooks and the kids just went nuts looking through it. They loved it!  Yesterday, Zealy found the yearbook again and came across a picture of me with a ponytail on top of my head (permed of course) and a big blue bow. She said, “Your hair looks big and funny Mommy!” Now assuming my hair would not have looked big and funny anyway, I proceeded to tell her that I was in the middle of cheerleading at a basketball game and I was doing a toe touch, so my hair was caught in mid-air looking all poofy on top of my head.

First she said with total disbelief, “YOU were a cheerleader????”  Then she asked me what a toe touch was and I told her, because showing her would have been to the demise of us both (Poor child would have been scarred for life).  I said, “Mommy use to do toe touches and gymnastics and I was on a dance team in Jr. High and I even I played volleyball and Tennis for a few semesters in High School.

So as I was reveling in sharing all of this past history with my daughter, she sat there staring at me in what was a look of total wonderment and then shrugged her shoulders and said, “Gosh, I’ve never even seen you run, Mom.  In fact, I’ve never even seen you jog.  I don’t know how in the world you did all that stuff with such a big pony tail on your head!”  And then she turned on her heel and was off…leaving me to ponder,  “How did I do all that stuff…period…especially packin’ 15 extra Lbs. of hair????”

Clearly she has not seen some of the earrings I wore.

green eyes

November 11, 2008

I woke up last Sunday morning feeling broken. I rolled over in the bed, trying to re-situate my brain waves…nothing. Just brokenness. We got up and proceeded to get ready for church. My back was hurting, my stomach was aching and my brain was behaving badly, to say the least. As I was putting on my eyeliner, listening to the kids fight over who was gonna hold the freaking soccer ball, I thought, “I hate this day, I hate my body, I ‘dislike’ the people of my household STRONGLY and I want to go back to bed!”

I have been facing some pretty tough health challenges lately, trying to clean up a whole host of past choices that have led to my current condition of “blah-ness”. And finally, I have found a doctor that is helping me to overcome some of these frustrating problems. The great part is that I am starting to have more good days than bad (almost). But on days when my body does not cooperate and I wake up feeling like crap, I feel cheated, teased and just plain pissed. So that was where I found myself, Sunday morning, mid make-up application.

We got into the car and the kids were now fighting because one was poking too hard and the other was humming too loud, and I was literally about to lose my mind and my temper. And funny enough, here is where it became beautiful. One of my favorite songs came on in the ipod mix we were listening to, (I Love Eleanor by Wes Cunningham) and the tears that had been building up for hours, spilled over the edges of my eyes, I swear right to the rhythm of the lyric. Drip, drip, drip, they hit my hands in perfect sync. Kent reached over and grabbed my hand and said, “We don’t have to go to church, ya know?” And I said nothing. And he said nothing else. He just held my hand. And that was all I really needed. Because we are in the process of learning that we don’t always have to save each other. Sometimes we just need to be there in the pain, deep in the pain, with the person we love most in the world, and stay there with each other until the pain passes. And that is what he did.

After the tears stopped rolling and I started to emerge from the “moment”, I flipped open the mirror to dry my face off and fix my eyeliner. And I was stunned by what I saw looking back at me. My eyes were the brightest green I have ever seen them. Kent has always called me “Green Eyes”. And I know I have green eyes, I see them everyday in the mirror. I even remember as a kid being intrigued by how much greener my eyes became when I watched myself cry in the mirror (yes, it’s true, I did). But these days, I rarely ever take the time to really look at them, much less admire them. And so that’s what I did. I just stared at my green eyes in the mirror for a few minutes, relishing in the perspective that they were gracing me with in that moment.

Because looking there in that little 5 inch mirror, what I saw was a silent, but stunning beauty. And those are very tough words for me to say out loud. But I say them not in relation to external beauty, but the beauty that grows from years of hard work and then starts to finally look like something more than weeds..but more like fruit.

I saw a girl that was broken and in the midst of a lot of pain, but beautiful still. A girl that is learning to stay in the momentary bursts of ugly that come and go and not fight them away or wrestle them to the ground. A girl that is not so afraid of the pain these days. A girl that is learning to hang out with the pain, talk with it, ask it why it’s there, do some work with it and then just let it stay until it is ready to go. And that is somehow making me feel a little more beautiful, and a little less broken.

And so on that day and in that moment, I became very thankful for the windows to my soul and the brightness with which they gave me a glimpse. Because it made me ask myself the very hard question, “Is true beauty even possible without true pain?”

My green eyes seem to say, NO!

election connection

November 5, 2008

It seems like most of the time we all wander around so busy with our day to day tasks, that we miss the purpose behind it all. We flit about between reality and illusion, having no idea what each other really thinks or feels about life. I may know what part of town you live in, what church you go to, your kid’s names, even your dog’s name….but often times, we really don’t KNOW each other. We rarely, if ever really get to truly connect.

This election became a connection experience for me. Where most people were afraid to discuss their political views with one another, I openly fueled the fire on more than one occasion, in order to really know the people I was daily communing with. I wanted to know why they were voting for a certain candidate. I wanted to know what issues made them cringe, kept them awake at night or that they would defend to the death. I wanted to discuss with people who disagreed with me, because I was open to the fact that they may have the one thing to say that would make me take another look at that candidate or issue. I did this not because I was in the mood to debate/fight. But in retrospect, I think I did it because I was desperate to connect….to know….to feel.

It is true, politics use to be something that people did not discuss openly. But I feel that day has changed and that we owe it to each other to share our deepest fears, concerns and truths that matter most to us, so that we can begin to really understand each other. If not, then how will we ever truly love each other, know each other or live out our lives with one another?

Last night was a historical moment for this country however you choose to look at it. I was moved to tears not only from seeing the first African American family walk on stage as the “First Family”, but at the sheer eloquence of John McCain’s speech in his support for not only his country, but his new President. Those two men in those two moments were a picture to me of the connection I am talking about. The beauty of what can happen when you fight hard and long for what you believe in, and then you come together for the greater good.

I made a tough choice yesterday, as many of us did. But I do not feel that I made a choice for a president. I feel that I made a choice to be an adult (for the first time) and stand up with confidence for things that were important to me as an individual and what this individual thought was best for our country. I made a choice not based on fear or confusion or hype, but out of conviction and a lot of difficult self-examination. I had some of the hardest conversations of my life yesterday. Conversations that pushed buttons in me (and others) that lie beneath our deepest core. But in the end, when I woke up this morning, I knew I had experienced something that few people get to experience these days…connection. I got to listen and feel and think with people that I often miss out on in my daily routine. And if a political upset is what it takes to produce the hard conversations, then I say bring it on. I am glad to participate if it means going deeper with the people I love.

I was blown away by this quote from Obama’s speech last night. It represents the fabric of what true relational living is all about to me.

“We are not enemies but friends- though passion may have strained- it must not break our bonds of affection.” Abraham Lincoln