May Year's Resolutions and Goals

Wow. Two entries in the same year; I am on a roll! ;)

My last entry was written a few weeks ago, and it’s more or less (more) a reflective piece that practically wrote itself. It was begging to be written since I first heard it speak to me along the desert roads of Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas, as we made the drive home from California.

But God has also been speaking new goals. He rarely gives me New Year’s resolutions because He knows I operate on an academic calendar.  (Have I really been a student or an educator for almost 30 years?) I don’t typically set new goals or ask the Lord for fresh insight in January; instead, I take time at the end of each school year to ask Him what goals/resolutions/so forth I should set for the upcoming summer and school year.

Here are some of the things the Crenshaws have on their 2014-2015 school year agenda:

1.     Antioch’s Night Training School.

Can I just confess, when Craig brought up the Discipleship School, I cried. (Just like I cried the other 11 times he’s brought it up in 11 years.)

Can I also please recap my last three years? Move to San Diego; got evicted by a landlord who was in foreclosure; moved again and bought a house; bought said house while I was in the hospital delivering Christopher; (side note: I left said hospital with said baby without my husband because he was signing closing papers!); Oh, had a baby without any friends or family nearby; found a new church because the church we loved and had walked with for 10 years was just too far from the new house; was hired as an Assistant Professor at California Baptist University; commuted 140 miles round trip 2-3 (usually 3) days a week; loved my job/hated the weight of all my professional and personal responsibility; on my first baby’s first birthday, we found out we were having another baby; therefore, I didn’t resign my contract at CBU; I cried—about the loss of my job and about the surprise pregnancy, but I also sighed deeply with relief; had another baby—a miracle, no less; volunteered at A21 briefly, made friends at church, and finally got to enjoy motherhood; and then we sold our beautiful San Diego house and moved home.

To quote my friend Jonathan Lair, “When I think about the Crenshaws, it makes my head spin.” Yeah, mine, too.

So, why on earth would I consider doing a year-long, discipleship-intense training school? Because my head is still spinning, and I really do believe the school will help center it. I’ve come to the end of my bucket list (PhD? check. Babies? check. Teach full time at a university? check. Publish? check. Ride in a hot air balloon? Listen to Hillsong’s “Oceans” while walking along the beach? check, check.) So, I’m trusting the Lord will use the discipleship school to steady, re-center, and re-envision me.

It might very well be that this year is not my time to complete the program. The staff at Antioch might say something along the lines of, “Girl, you’re crazy.” I’m fully prepared for that.  If so, I can fully respect that, and we’ll revisit the thought again the following year.

http://antiochcc.com/

2.     Adoption.

Those who know our road to Christopher know it was fraught with medical intervention, miscarriage, broken prayers, and a hell of a lot of money. Corban was truly an unexpected miracle. But my dream to adopt never tapered. In fact, I’m more certain than ever it’s a God given dream because, in my fleshy hard mommy days when I want to put my own kids up for adoption, I still feel the tug to make room for one more. The thing is, when God speaks something, to do anything other than the very thing He spoke is disobedience. Now, it’s just a matter of timing.

Sometime in the 2014-2015 school year, we’re going to begin the adoption process… again. I’ve promised myself—and to anyone who has ever asked—I would not adopt until both Christopher and Corban are potty trained. So, Christopher is currently strapped to the poo-poo/pee-pee potty with a sippy cup 24 hours a day. Corban slumps nearby in a Bumbo taking potty training notes. (Kidding. No one call CPS).

We started our application here in 2010:

http://www.pregnancyoutreach.org/

This is also a great resource for international adoptions:

http://www.bethany.org/

3.     Baylor.

I’m teaching part time at Baylor, a graduate class this summer and one or two undergraduate classes this fall/spring. It would be an absolute dream if Baylor offered me a full time position in a year; if they offered it to me this year, it would be an absolute nightmare. I’m holding on very loosely. In the meantime, I’ll continue teaching, publishing, and writing.

4.     Jamberry.

The thing about the training school/family mission trip and adoption is that they both cost a lot. Like, a lot-a lot. About $10,000 and $30,000 respectively. Craig has pointed out on numerous occasions, like a lot-a lot of occasions, that $40K will chip away at our Dave Ramsey savings account.

We’ve brainstormed like crazy people different ways to earn funds without having to ask for funding. Please hear our hearts on this: there is nothing wrong with raising support. If you have sent us a support letter for mission trips, the church you’re planting, the children we’re sponsoring, the organizations we’re funding… please continue to do so!

But maybe it’s because we’ve cultivated a lifestyle of giving generously that it’s a little harder for us to ask? Maybe it’s because we spent the first 8 years of our marriage paying off six figures in student loans/tuition? So, we know if we work a little harder and save a little more, we can do it. We can come up with the funds.

Either way, we really want to raise support for adoption and the training school without draining our savings. (We’re pretty faithful to Dave Ramsey's principles.)

We calculated how many classes I would have to teach at Baylor to cover those costs. About 9 or 10 classes, which is about 5-7 more classes than I’m even allowed to teach in a given year. So, that’s a no go.

All roads lead to Jamberry…

For the last several weeks, I’ve been joining three of my dear friends and their kiddos on Friday morning play dates. Two of these friends have done very, very well with Jamberry. It’s not the sort of business venture in which I would normally be interested. Actually, I never really thought I’d be interested in any business. But here’s what I am interested in: foremost, working with like-minded friends I trust and respect; working with a company that sells products I can get behind (and like using); working a little more hours in the week to reach our adoption goals.

So, if you’d like to support our adoption/training school fund, check out Jamberry. Or you can just give us money. We’ll take that, too.  :)

http://christinacrenshaw.jamberrynails.net/

And some fun pictures from the last 6-8 months...

When you’ve changed too much to go home…

The question, “where are you from?” has always given me a little anxiety. 

Whenever I’m asked this question, without fail, my hands sweat, the hairs on my neck stiffen, and my mouth dries. Words stick to the roof of my mouth like cotton balls. What is a military kid to say? Do I launch into a defensive diatribe about how growing up, I never really lived in one place for more than three years? In junior high, in fact, I attended four different schools in three different cities.

Sure, I got to see the world as a kid. In fact, by the time I was twelve, I lived in Washington, Texas, Oklahoma, California, and Germany. Before I even stumbled my way through middle school, I had traveled my way through much of Europe. Living abroad enlarged my worldview, certainly. In some ways, I experienced more of the world in my childhood than many experience in a lifetime. And for that I am forever thankful.

But even after my dad retired from the Army (after serving in both Vietnam and Desert Storm), I was shuffled around by parents’ divorces and remarriages and promotions. And for that I am forever wistful.

I’m wistful of people like my husband who grew up in the same house, with the same set of parents, and with the same neighborhood, childhood friends (all of whom attended our wedding). When people ask him where he’s from, he can answer without hesitation and with full confidence. He has roots; he has a history. I, on the other hand, have more or less floated—or maybe fled—from city to city and country to country most of my life, piece-milling my experiences into a slovenly woven tapestry, one that doesn’t always make sense or connect. That my husband is a product of unwavering stability was arguably what most attracted me to him during our dating relationship. Thirteen years later, maybe it still is.

At 27, when I reached 3 years and 1 day of living in Waco, TX, it was the longest I had lived anywhere in my entire life. So when San Diego came calling, after 6 years of living in Waco, I was more devastated than I was anything else. But I didn’t want my need for a permanent home to overshadow my husband’s insatiable need to run unencumbered toward adventure, advancement, accomplishment…

Wandering through the desert in search of water—anything to quench my parched soul—is the best way I know to describe my 3 years in San Diego. The land was so foreign to me (in the most figurative an literal sense of the word foreign), and I reached out for anything that felt like “home.” There wasn’t much to grasp, and I really tried my best to nest alongside the ocean, amongst like-minded believers and fellow academics. I bore my two babies—three if you count the dissertation I finished just weeks after my second son’s birth. I taught full time as an Assistant Professor at a Christian University… until just weeks before the birth of my second. My soul was dry and my heart was weary.

But I was loved. A church family brought me refreshment when I had given up hope of finding any. When I pined for home and rejected solace in the land, they loved me still. And for that I am forever indebted.

And God was gracious; oh, how He was gracious.

I defied professional wisdom when I declined to renew my contract in order to be home with my two babies. But God saw my faithfulness, and he honored my obedience. He brought unique opportunities: I was able to assist an anti-human trafficking organization align curriculum and state standards; I presented my dissertation at two major conferences at Biola and Pepperdine; I published an article in a respectable scholarly journal, all while being my boys’ full time everything.

When God made a way back to Texas—to Waco, in fact—we took it. But the thing is, saying yes to coming home was not nearly as easy as I imagined it would be.

For three years, I was so busy laboring under the California sun—laboring babies and dissertations, over student papers and in conference presentations, laboring at building new friendships and exploring the lay of the land…

Only, somewhere in my toil and in my pain, my labor birthed a new love. I fell in love with the very thing that tore me to pieces, that nearly bled me to death, and placed in my arms a weight too heavy for me to hold. Somewhere at the end of the journey, when the bleeding subsided, and my heart cured, and the weight and I became mutually dependent, I stopped looking so far in. I looked up and out and around me for the first time in a long time, and I realized I had indeed fallen in love with this foreign land and its foreign people. In the most inexplicable way, the pain from of all that laboring birthed a love far deeper than “home” could have.

I’m home now. And it feels exactly like I thought it would: familiar, safe, comforting-- the same as when I left.  Everything is the same— everything except for me. Everything is the same except for my heart and all those people and dreams and accomplishments and babies for which I labored so hard. Those places in my heart are wholly and perhaps even holy different.

And if I’ve learned anything from my last three years it is this: it’s not where you live but how you live that matters.

I’m thankful to be home. I’m thankful to be changed. I’m thankful a piece of my heart is here, but that a piece of my heart is still there. If home is where the heart is, then I want my heart to be large enough to reside in many places with the great many people it loves.

When the Lord asks us to be vulnerable for the sake of others...

I have never been one to shy away from bold posts. When Osama Bin Laden was captured and killed, for instance, I was one of the first of my friends to post how much better off the world is without him and how much Heaven celebrated to finally discard of him. My assertion was met with some praise and quite a bit of opposition (to my astonishment, actually). When Roe v Wade recently celebrated a forty-year anniversary, I shamelessly reposted every anti-abortion, pro-life John Piper-ish article I came across. And when Canada threatens its pastors with legal action if they speak against same sex relationships, I’ve got a few thoughts on the trajectory America’s speech and religious freedoms.

I don’t mind being bold, especially when my confidence is rooted in biblical truths. But being bold and being vulnerable are entirely different entities.

Being bold feels a lot like climbing a mountain, reaching the top, and declaring, “Ah-ha! I see it all very clearly from here.” Being vulnerable feels more like picking an old scab until it bleeds ever so steadily and then asking others, “Here. Would you like to take a look?” Being bold is a statement. Being vulnerable is a question.

I have a hard time being vulnerable.

So, when someone asks me to share my road to conception, that feels… vulnerable. To share openly and publicly that my husband and I first began “trying” for children in 2007 and continued trying and trying and trying for years leaves me feeling somewhat exposed.

How, then, could I possibly share about all the tests, and surgeries, and unanswered questions? How do I share about the needles, and pills, and special diets? And what about the tens of thousands of dollars spent trying to create life— pleading for the Lord to partner with us on the journey— and then the miscarriage that resulted?

After my miscarriage in the fall of 2010, I was broken, to say the least. Statistically speaking, losing a baby sometime within the first 8 weeks is not uncommon. But knowing this does not make the loss any less painful. Rarely do women talk about their loss. Perhaps because it feels too much like scratching a scab for the world to see. And certainly, no one ever shares what you’re suppose to do with your loss after he or she is gone. And I mean that in the most literal sense. What was I suppose to do at 2am? What was I suppose to do for the next 2 days, months, years?

To say that my son’s conception, healthy pregnancy, and birth are all miracles is no exaggeration. My son was conceived through years, tears, prayers, and a lot of money and medicine. That we live in a day and age when this sort of treatment is even an option is in and of itself a miracle.

What is also a miracle about our journey is the way the Lord used community to carry us. At the time, we lived in Waco, TX, which is a small and unique community. It’s the sort of place where all of your spheres of life—work, church, the gym, even—are all interwoven. Over the years, friends began to inquire. Their inquiries became prayers. And their prayers became pleas to the Lord on our behalf. Before long, we had a network of people in all spheres of life carrying us when we didn’t have the strength to walk. Many of our friends’ lives overlapped, too, which made us feel especially covered but also very… vulnerable.

To this day, the kindest act any friend has ever done for me was to write and record a song in which she sang of my grief. In her song, she implored “why?” with a heartbreak as deep as my own. “Why does it have to be so hard? Lord, we don’t understand.” She delivered her sweet words to my house with flowers, and the song was balm to my wound. (Thank you, Sherri.) This, for me, was the culminating moment of just how carried and loved my husband and I were by community. (Thank you, Jesus.)

But when doctors told us we had less than a 1% chance of ever conceiving naturally, I believed them. And there was no room in my heart to believe otherwise. To pray for a natural conception felt much like praying to win a large sum of money in a Vegas slot machine. Truth be told, all of that medical treatment left me feeling a little like my uterus had become a Vegas slot machine.

Thankfully, I am married to a man who believes statistics are merely an opportunity for the Lord to laugh in Medicine’s face. My husband faithfully prayed for six years that one day the Lord would grant us a baby— naturally.

And the Lord did just that.

This baby is a miracle, too!

But I think the biggest miracle of it all is what the Lord has done in my heart these last six years.

I have learned to count it all as loss for the glory of God (Philippians 3:8). I have experienced what it means to pour myself out as a drink offering, even when I had little to offer (2 Timothy 4:6–8). I have watched the Lord restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish me in the process (1 Peter 5:10).

My road to conception was battered and broken and… beautiful. But most importantly, it was transformative because, when it hurt the most, I pressed in to the Lord rather than pushed away.

And whenever anyone asks my advice on this topic or pain in general, that is exactly what I lead the conversation with: lean into the Lord. Inevitably, life will fail you; it will hurt you. The Lord is the only one who can heal you. He does it in His timing, in His own way.

And submitted, transformed hearts find His process more beautiful than their own.

11.2 weeks pregnant (3-10-13)

 A special TOMS order for our family of 4!


Please pray for a healthy, full term pregnancy.

Drop Box

Today, three different Facebook friends and The Gospel Coalition posted a video in their news feeds about a Korean preacher who takes in orphans. The preacher created what's now known as "the drop box." It's a large mail-like slot in a wall adjoined to his house, and it's just large enough for a mother to place an unwanted newborn. Most of these newborns have physical disabilities. This preacher takes them in, feeds them, clothes them, loves on them. In Jesus' name.

I watched the video four times. I cried like a baby all. four. times.

Becoming a mother changes a woman, no doubt. I, for one, sleep less, exercise never, and seriously cannot recall the last time I went in a store to shop for clothes, unless Target counts-- which is where I purchase my groceries, feminine products, and clothing. But I have become more than just sleep deprived, flabby, and thrifty.

I have become acutely aware of my sinfulness in light of His holiness.

There is something about motherhood that makes me realize how big His grace is, even amidst the world's brokeness.  I am more sensitive to His patience with my tantrums. I have a much lower threshold for injustice. And I realize more than ever how much His heart breaks when His children are in pain.

There's a particular verse in the Bible that troubled me before I was a mother, particularly when I was walking through four agonizing years of infertility. 

1 Timothy 2:15 reads "Women will be saved through childbearing--if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety."

What is that suppose to mean? Surely this can't be a salvation verse; that would contradict the rest of scripture. And what about women who can't birth children?

I’ve read a few hermeneutical articles, listened to a few exegetical sermons. And I’ve come to this conclusion: Motherhood is hard. Like, really, really, really hard. But it is also refining. Like, really, really, really refining. 

Motherhood has saved me from myself. It has and continues to undress my selfishness, pride, entitlement, idols,... In it's place the Lord cleanses those old wounds and makes beauty from ashes. 

Why? 

Because He said He would. I press in with faith, love, and holiness, and He in turn makes all things new and beautiful. I get the blessing. He gets the glory.

The Lord has also revealed another truth about this verse to me: You don't have to be a mother to be saved through childbearing. I don't think it's the least bit blasphemous to think the word "childbearing" is synonymous with terms like child rearing or child caring. 

This man is the first "mother" I hope to meet when I walk through Heaven's gates.

The Drop Box

"The Drop Box" - Documentary PROMO from Brian Ivie on Vimeo.

TGC

Christopher Update

Not long ago, I resuscitated this blog (after it spent 4 years on life support) so my Texas family and friends could keep up with Christopher. But it turns out, Instagram, Facebook, and FaceTime keep loved ones pretty well abreast with the little guy's development. What pictures don't communicate, however, are all the ways Christopher is learning to communicate; so, I thought it prudent to document the little man's growing vocabulary. Here's a list of the words Christopher attempts and ways he's using them:

"tank ew" Thank you. He uses this any time you hand him something; he hands you something; he takes something from you. It's pretty cute.

"GaGa!" Gatsby. Or Lady Gaga?

"Dada." Daddy. It's used interchangeably with Craig and me.

"Ah mama." Momma. He says it rarely and only when he really wants something, like out of his crib.

"Eee I Eee I Ooo!" The chorus to Old McDonald. He sings and claps to it, and it's pretty darn precious.

"Banannna!!!" He yells this word whenever he sees the fruit.

"Baba" Bubba? We think. We call him Bubba, Bubba Tophs, Bubbers. Maybe he thinks it's his name?

"Baff." Bath. Man, does this kids love his bath. We bathe him every night, and we have our little routine. I shudder to think the meltdown that might occur if we skipped it.

There may be a few other words, but this is the gist of them. It's amazing to me how much the little guy understands. Christopher responds to complex requests like, "Bring me your shoes" and "give mommy kisses." But, of course, he can't say these things yet.

At this stage in his life, the thing I love most about Christopher is his little personality. He has all of Craig's charm and all of my stubbornness. This little guy really enjoys making others laugh, and there is nothing he likes more than for you to make him laugh. Christopher has the deepest, most contagious belly laugh. He wants to be chased, tickled, found, and so on. I also love my little man's stubborn will. He will stand his ground and shake his head "No!" to healthy foods, diaper changes, and the car seat. He'll look me straight in the eyes as if to say, "I'm serious, Mom." But then he lets out a deep laugh and all is forgotten. I'm fairly obsessed with his little persona. :)