Leigh Kramer

Worshiping in Weakness

I have felt fragile for far too long.  My eyes sting. I inwardly threaten myself. My throat feels the way it always does when I am prepared to cry. I do not want to cry here.

Each week that I choose to attend church, it's more of the same.  Music lifts the veil and suddenly my heart is pierced.  The things I have wanted to pray, scream, beg of God roar to the surface as the lyrics splay across the screen.

But I do not want to cry here.

Yes, Lord, "heal my heart and make it clean. Open up my eyes to the things unseen. Show me how to love like You have loved me." 

But can we save this moment for another time?  I feel raw enough. I don't want to draw any attention and I don't need to cry here.

I marvel that, "no sky contains, no doubt restrains, all You are, the greatness of our God. I spend my life to know, and I'm far from close, to all you are the greatness of our God."  I am undone at His vastness and my smallness.

Then the message begins and I find myself turning to familiar passages and viewing them in a whole new light.  I am ashamed of my pride in believing I know the Bible so well before those moments. It is readily apparent that I have much to learn.  Humility, being humbled by these teachings and stunned by His grace, this too lifts the veil.

Song after song, week after week, worship leads me to confession.  This confession stretches me, not just in admitting to God who I am, where I've been, and how I want to be open to His hand.  It's more than that and I know why.

Some weeks I weigh whether or not I want to almost cry in church. This means that for every 2 or 3 weeks that I go, there's one or two weeks I stay home.  I'm not always ready to be that vulnerable.

Really, I'm not ready to show my weakness in the midst of my weakness.

No ribbon-wrapped present of the lesson I've learned but the messy business of doing life where there are no answers .There is no mask to wear unless I choose to put it on.  

Then, surprising myself, tears fall. Relief in this communion with Him. The people fade away. With kleenex in hand, I am made new.

 


This post was written for the Remarkable Faith link-up at Giving Up on Perfect, a series of memories and posts as we approach Lent.

Have you ever felt like crying in church?  What is your typical response to worship?

Dijon Mustard: A Litmus Test for Online Dating

Photo credit

My grade school friends and I loved quoting the Grey Poupon commercial to each other.  "Pardon me, sir. Do you have any Grey Poupon?" Always uttered in the most posh and sophisticated of voices.  Then the reply, "But of course."  As if there were any other type of mustard one would keep in the car!

I'm not sure that I ever tried Grey Poupon, or any dijon mustard for that matter, while I was a kid.  My house was more of a yellow mustard place and I would use it on just about anything.  I wouldn't come to understand the deliciousness of dijon until I was a grown-up.  I know this, however: that commercial was playground gold.

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I've tried on-line dating three times.  The first time was during graduate school, when I really didn't have time to meet anyone.  It should surprise no one that no dates resulted during that hectic season.  I tended to think of this as my non-experience with on-line dating and would actually answer no if anyone asked me if I'd tried it.  Why do people seem to believe on-line dating is the cure-all for singleness? (Answer to that question: it's not.) (Also, if you're married, do not ask a single person if they've tried on-line dating. We have. It didn't work. This conversation does not help.)

I decided to give on-line dating another try about 5 years ago. This attempt actually led to dates.  As I'm still single, you will correctly surmise that these dates did not work out that well.

Case in point.

I met Norman (not his real name) at one of my favorite brunch spots one snowy December day.  I had reservations but decided it wouldn't hurt to meet him and see.

 

He did not look like his pictures but I tried to keep in mind that we all tend to choose our most flattering options when putting ourselves out there.  He wasn't unattractive but he wasn't necessarily my type either. 

He was extremely nervous, which was cute.  I set to putting him at ease, falling back on my ability to have a conversation with just about anyone.  I asked questions and ended up directing the conversation.  Either he was that nervous or he didn't know how to ask me any questions about myself.  Ah, the lost art of conversation.  This didn't bode well for Norman.

  

At this point, still relatively early on in the date, I was pretty sure that we would not be a good match for a few reasons.  But a date is a date and so I soldiered on.

We perused the menu, commenting on how it would be difficult to choose.  Norman was debating two options and asked for my input.

He pointed at one of the sandwich descriptions.  "Do you know what Die-john is?"

DIE-JOHN.

My heart sank as I looked at the word in question.

 

"You mean, dijon?" I gently asked, trying to cover my shock, trying not to giggle at his expense.

"Dijon?"  He looked utterly baffled.  "What's that?"

Oh dear Lord.  He didn't know what dijon mustard was?  Did he live under a rock?  Did he not venture down the condiment aisle when grocery shopping? What did this say about his powers of observation?

"It's mustard. Like Grey Poupon," I ventured, hoping this would spark some understanding, hoping I could then reference that most excellent commercial.

Silence.  Deafening silence.

I knew in that moment that we were not meant to be.

Now I know dijon mustard is small in the grand scheme of things.  And if Norman had been wonderful in every other way, I would have overlooked this gap in his culinary knowledge and happily taught him about the wonderful world of mustard and marketing at its finest.

  

However, nice as he was, Norman was not wonderful in every other way...for me.

Some women have champaigne wishes and caviar dreams.  Apparently I'm a mustard girl.

What's your opinion of on-line dating?  Any good stories to share?

Meeting a Meat and Three

Wednesday night I posted on Facebook that I was headed to my first Meat and Three, something I'd never heard of prior to moving here.  True to form, all my friends and family back home responded with "What the heck is a Meat and Three?"

A Meat and Three is pretty much just as it sounds. You have a choice of meat and 3 sides, ranging from mashed potatoes to lima beans, though sometimes it's 2 or 4 sides.  Wikipedia defines this as a staple of rural cuisine, with a prix fixe menu. 

For Dinner Club, the hostess has the option of cooking in her home or selecting a restaurant for our dining pleasure.  Rebecca suggested we head to Southern Bred, which is one such place.

Located in East Nashville, Southern Bred comes across as unassuming. The decor is simple and diners are seated at wooden family tables or booths. Drinks are served in glass canning jars, a nice touch.  And then they bring out the bread basket and you know you're in the right place.  The small biscuits and cornbread muffins were amazing!

The menu offers many options, from the traditional Meat and Three to salads.  I also hear they serve a mean brunch.  Since this was my first Meat and Three experience, I opted for that day's special: Poppyseed Chicken served over Saffron Rice, with a side of mashed potatoes and broccoli. 

My friends all ordered different things and seemed pleased with their choices.  Paige, Rebecca, and Elizabeth insisted I try the fried okra since I hadn't experienced that particular delicacy before.

Hello fried okra!

I loved it!  What's not to love about a fried vegetable? 

 

In short, I loved Southern Bred.  The only way it could improve would be if they added fried pickles to the menu.  (Hint, hint.)

I don't think that all Meat and Threes are as wonderful as Southern Bred. In fact, I live a few blocks from one that looks all kinds of sketchy. However, since I love to eat meat and I love most of these sides, I think Meat and Threes will remain a part of my Southern culinary experience.

Are you pro-Meat and Three? If you live in the Nashville area, what is your favorite Meat and Three?

What the History Books Left Out

Thoughts of the South might tend toward associations with the Civil War, slavery, and the Civil Rights Movement.  I wasn't sure what to expect when I moved to the Land of Dixie.  The South is so much more than its stereotypes and yet we cannot deny these associations or that racism still exists in this country.

While I haven't witnessed any overt racism since living here, institutional racism is sadly alive and well.  But this isn't limited to the South.  Stereotypes continue and at times foster a sort of paternalism that makes me cringe.  Look no further than the machinery behind Cabrini Green and sadly even gatherings in my hometown where racist jokes are lobbed without care.

We are all impacted by the history of slavery in the United States.  To believe otherwise is foolish.

Almost proving this point, I recently realized that I was never taught our nation's true history.  

"We cannot address the place we find ourselves because we will not acknowledge the road that brought us here.  Our failure to confront the historical truth about how African Americans finally won their freedom presents a major obstacle to genuine racial reconciliation...In the intervening years, the nation has comforted itself by sanitizing the civil rights movement, commemorating it as a civic celebration that no one ever opposed. The enemies of the struggle ascended to national power and sought to diminish its memory, often by grinding off its rough edges and blunting its enduring critique of a dehumanizing economic and political system. The self-congratulatory popular account insists that Dr. King called on the nation to fully accept its own creed, and the walls came a-tumbling down. This conventional narrative is soothing, moving, and politically acceptable, and has the only disadvantage of bearing no resemblance to what actually happened." -Timothy B. Tyson, p. 318-319, emphasis mine

I became interested in reading Blood Done Sign My Name when Mary Kathryn offhandedly mentioned a story in which she was standing in line at the theater to see her cousin's movie.  A movie that was based on his book about a black veteran killed in cold blood by three white men, in front of witnesses.  It was 1970 and though the murderers were eventually taken to trial, the all-white jury found them not guilty.

Tim Tyson grew up in the town where this occurred. His story is irrevocably bound with that of Henry Marrow, the black veteran, and the Teel men, the murderers.  His father was a Methodist minister who sought to reconcile his congregation with their bloody history and forge a new relationship between blacks and whites.  Tyson gives an overview of slavery and all that led up to the civil rights movement, as well as how little whites did to make it happen. Not only just how little some did but also how much others did to keep it from happening, even after the law was changed.  Worst of all, they twisted Christianity to fit their cause, as if God condoned their actions. Tyson's account is both mesmerizing and horrifying.

The murder happened a mere 10 years before I was born and the struggle for integrated schooling, work opportunities, and more continued throughout the 1970s and beyond. I had never heard anything of this before.  This, all of this, was missing from my history books.

There was no "come to Jesus" moment after Martin Luther King Jr. shared his dream.  Towns didn't set aside their segregation laws after the Civil Rights Act was passed.  That was the only civil rights history I'd been taught, history books handing out one more slap in the face to those who fought for rights they never should have needed to fight for.

Blood Done Sign My Name makes me wonder what else in our nation's history has been watered down or glossed over. It's forced me to look at myself and my own history. It's tempting to think that Yankees are exempt from racial discourse but we're not. Lord help us if we ever believe that we are.

Mary Kathryn, Kim, and I are discussing the book offline.  We're talking about our own experiences with race, racism, and prejudice.

It is easy to hesitate when talking about these things.  We don't want to offend our loved ones that have perhaps pointed us in the wrong direction.  We don't want to speak ill of people we know who blatantly worked to stop integration, especially if their character seems so incongruous with such actions.  We don't want ourselves to be seen as racist or prejudiced- what if we say the wrong thing?

We say nothing and we wind up perpetuating the same messages.

What messages did I receive over the years?  My immediate family has always counted those of other races and backgrounds as friends.  I don't remember at what age I realized we had different skin color and even so, it never mattered to me.  (Though I now wonder: did it matter to them?)

On the other hand, I remember insinuations from people I loved and respected that it would be best not to date any African American guys. I wrote about my high school crush Doug last summer; I didn't mention that he is black. It had no bearing on why we never dated- that turned out to be more of a timing issue. But I know I'm not the only one who has been told that before, even though we live in an age where interracial relationships are more common.

I can't help but wonder if we are a product of our times and, if so, why we are content to remain there despite the disparity.  What do we say to the elderly who refer to African Americans as "colored" or dispense their prejudice and stereotypes as givens?  What do we say to our peers who speak racial jokes?  What do I say to myself about my friendships with those of other races?  Can I admit that I'm just a white girl who might unintentionally hurt the people of another race because of that very lens? What can I do about institutional racism?

Blood Done Sign My Name is undoubtedly one of the most important and eye-opening books I've ever read.  I cannot view our nation's history in the same way.  There are no tidy answers but I pray there is no more going backward either.

*Disclosure: Amazon Affiliate links included in this post.  If you click through, any purchase you make supports this site.  Thank you!

Quenching Thirst for the Water Revolution

Every morning before work, I fill my Nalgene with water from the tap.  I drink it throughout the day.  I don't think twice about where it came from or that I can refill it whenever I want.

I don't worry about what's in my water. If I'm thirsty, it's only because I didn't stop to take a drink.

It kills me that this is not the reality for everyone in the world.

Today is World Water Day.  And today, along with  more than 100 other bloggers, I'm asking you to take part in the Water Revolution.

The Adventure Project is now working on another initiative: Keep It Clean.  This time the focus is on bringing clean water to people in need in India.

Did you know that:

• 4,000 children die every day from lack of clean drinking water.
• Tragically, 1/3 of all wells drilled in the last 20 years are now broken.
• Often there are no tools, spare parts, or trained mechanics to fix them.

So, what's the solution?

WaterAid set up a Handpump Mechanic mechanics business about two years ago.  Now, when a handpump breaks down, villagers can call to request a mechanic.While fixing the well, the mechanic educates the villagers on hygiene and well maintenance in an effort to prevent disease and future breakdowns.  The mechanics also bring water samples to the lab to ensure that the water is safe to drink. Click here to read the awesome story of Ram Rati, one of the first female handpump mechanics, and see how this program is making a difference.

The Keep It Clean Campaign's goal is to help WaterAid increase well repairs so that 700 more people have access to clean water each month.

And here's where we come in!  4 bloggers have set the goal to raise $10,000 dollars today to support a well mechanics program in India. 

100 bloggers are challenging 10 of their readers to give $20.  Would you consider giving $20 today?  Your $20 would ensure clean water for 3 people!  Raising $10,000 means mechanics will be able to repair wells for years to come, turning water back on for 300 people per month.

And if $10,000 is raised today, the Prem Rawat Foundation has decided to match it, meaning we will have $20,000 to go toward providing clean water!

That is huge! 

Your donation is 100% tax-deductible, will be matched by the Prem Rawat Foundation, and will support The Adventure Project's Keep It Clean Campaign for India.  Click here to donate.

Don't miss out on the Water Revolution!  Please let me know if you decide to donate $20 toward this worthy cause.  And please spread the word by linking to this post on Facebook and Twitter!