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.