Amy Julia Becker's Blog, page 108

Walk With Me Through Advent

Image courtesy of Getty Images Signature

The Christmas decorations took over our local CVS months ago, and our kids made their annual transition from constant conversation about Halloween costumes to constant conversation about Christmas gift lists in early November. 

All the Consumerism

They got excited. I got tired. Sending Christmas cards and buying presents and decorating and negotiating with family about who might go where and whether it is safe to be together . . . If I only think about these external trappings of our season of excess, I sink into worry and exhaustion.

I’m forgetting that I also love this time of year. I love the lights and bells and wreaths. I love the delight our children feel. I love music and stockings and cookies.

The Story Underneath It All

But more than anything else, I love the story underneath it all.

The story of an unwed mother hoping and believing that God will be faithful to her and to her people.

The story of a father deciding to be faithful amidst public shame and scorn.

The story of unexpected worshippers—magicians and shepherds—who are the only ones who recognize that a miraculous birth has occurred.

The story of a baby born to save us. 

Walk With Me Through Advent

If you’d like a way to remember the story underneath it all, I want to invite you to walk with me through Advent with my e-book, Prepare Him Room. Each day you’ll read (or listen to) a short passage from the Bible telling the story that leads up to Jesus’ birth followed by a short reflection about how this story connects to our lives here and now.

{Download the e-book here.}

And if you prefer to hold a book in your hands, you can purchase a paperback copy of Prepare Him Room here.

Continue reading with Amy Julia:

Coming Home to Love
Announcing Missing Out on Beautiful, Part Two (free e-book of essays about a child with Down syndrome growing up)
Announcing Head, Heart, Hands (free e-book about healing the wounds of privilege)

If you haven’t already, please  subscribe  to receive regular updates and news. You can also follow me on  Facebook ,  Instagram , and  Twitter,  and you can subscribe to my  Love is Stronger Than Fear  podcast on your favorite podcast platforms.

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Thankfulness or Toxic Positivity?

Race Brook Falls

Many of us are away from family and friends at a time of year when we usually gather together. I don’t want to be too relentlessly upbeat about this sad reality. Last spring a friend told me about the idea of “toxic positivity,” and there is plenty to mourn in this season. Still, as we have focused on Thanksgiving this week, I am looking for ways to give sincere thanks.

It struck me that, so often, traveling and cooking for dozens of people and dealing with Aunt Beatrice’s political comments and Grandpa Mike’s drinking and the dysfunctional dynamic with my brother and . . . (those are all fictional, of course!) these gatherings can be really stressful, even when they don’t involve contentious conversations.

There is also something beautiful about slowing down, keeping things simple, and wondering what gratitude can emerge out of silence and stillness. Last weekend, Peter and I hiked Mt Everett, a mountain in southern Massachusetts. It was cold, and the trees were bare, and I wasn’t intending on a four-hour hike when we left the parking lot. (Peter, on the other hand, would have kept going.)

If we had been heading south on vacation or to see relatives, if we had been planning on a feast, I’m sure we wouldn’t—and couldn’t—have taken that time. We were so grateful for the quiet woods, the abundant beauty of this spectacular waterfall, and the stark beauty of the view at the pinnacle. For time with my husband, for simple, quiet beauty, for local wonders—I give thanks.

To learn more with Amy Julia:

2019 Gratitude Series:

Gratitude and Grumpiness
Gratitude and Grief
Gratitude and Grace
Gratitude and Growth: How to Practice Gratitude

If you haven’t already, please  subscribe  to receive regular updates and news. You can also follow me on  Facebook ,  Instagram , and  Twitter,  and you can  subscribe to my Love is Stronger Than Fear podcast on your favorite podcast platforms.

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A Series on Gratitude

In 2019 I wrote a series of posts on gratitude.

Thanksgiving feels different this year, and I’m finding I need reminders of the truths I wrote in the gratitude series last November:⁠

“I am grateful for many things, like podcasts and music and friendships. But giving thanks in all circumstances does not mean denying the dark, hard, painful realities of human life. I still give thanks when I see a sunset. But I also engage more regularly in prayer and action related to the hardship in the world. Gratitude is a practice that can fortify us for the work of love, but it is not meant to be a practice that cuts us off from the needs of our fellow human beings.”⁠

– Gratitude and Grief⁠

⁠Maybe you, like me, need these reminders too.

2019 Gratitude Series:

Gratitude and Grumpiness
Gratitude and Grief
Gratitude and Grace
Gratitude and Growth: How to Practice Gratitude

To learn more with Amy Julia:

Privilege and Planning
When Your Enemy Is Yourself
Hardship Is Not a Competition

If you haven’t already, please  subscribe  to receive regular updates and news. You can also follow me on  Facebook ,  Instagram , and  Twitter,  and you can  subscribe to my Love is Stronger Than Fear podcast on your favorite podcast platforms.

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Pointe Shoes and Developing Perseverance

Penny got new pointe shoes last week. For a long time, I thought pointe—which requires strength in both the feet and ankles that I didn’t believe Penny would ever have—would be impossible for her. But for two years, with perseverance, she’s attended a pre-pointe class faithfully every week. It was time to move up to the next level.

Pointe Shoes and Perseverance

I think if I had been Penny, I would have given up long ago. If I wasn’t advancing through the ballet ranks at the same rate as other kids, if I didn’t see sufficient progress, I would have walked away. But Penny kept going. And her feet have gotten stronger. Her technique has been refined.

She has not been passively going through the motions but actively and patiently learning and growing. Unlike what I would have done, she persevered. 

Ironman and Perseverance

I read a story in the New York Times today about Chris Nikic, a young man with Down syndrome who also persevered. Chris rode a bike for the first time at age 15. And recently, he completed an Ironman triathlon. (That’s a 2.4-mile swim in open water, a 112-mile bike ride, followed by a full marathon with 26.2 miles of running.)

Fire ants bit him, and his legs swelled up. He crashed his bike. He almost didn’t make it. But he persevered.

Developing Perseverance

As an able-bodied American, I have never needed to develop perseverance. But I am looking to Penny, and to Chris Nikic, as models of perseverance in the midst of a global pandemic. Perseverance is patiently persisting. Continuing to learn and act and grow. Not giving up when obstacles derail the effort. Not giving up when change doesn’t come quickly.

In this season, I want to persevere. To keep reaching out to other people. To keep writing. To keep praying. To keep connecting with our children. To keep date night going, even when it means eating take-out in the living room.

Penny has shown me that I don’t need to move quickly and I don’t need to compare myself to others and I don’t need to achieve big goals. But if I keep going—slowly, patiently, one step at a time—I might find myself in a place of unexpected beauty and grace.

To learn more with Amy Julia:

Dreaming and Planning With Our Teenager With Down Syndrome
Embracing Our Common Humanity
S3 E16 | Normie: What is Normal Through the Lens of Down Syndrome with Annemarie Carrigan and Kurt Neale

If you haven’t already, please  subscribe  to receive regular updates and news. You can also follow me on  Facebook ,  Instagram , and  Twitter,  and you can  subscribe to my Love is Stronger Than Fear podcast on your favorite podcast platforms.

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Love Your Enemies

Images courtesy of Getty Images and Cristian Negroni

Imagine being a leader of a school or a church or a community with a staff that included a white man wearing a MAGA hat and a Black woman wearing a Black Lives Matter T-shirt. 

David Bailey recently pointed out that Jesus’ disciples included both tax collectors and zealots. Their modern-day equivalents would be as seemingly diametrically opposed as the two people I described above. The tax collectors were Jewish citizens working for the Roman government. They often extorted their own people. They were seen as betraying their nation. The zealots were, as their name suggests, zealous for their nation. They were Jewish nationalists, ready to fight to overthrow oppression and make Israel great again. 

Jesus intentionally called both of them to be his disciples. And as far as we know, he didn’t overtly correct their zealotry or their tax collecting. He did call them to be humble, to live and love sacrificially, and to care for others through prayer and healing and service. 

It leads me back to the question of what it means to love “our enemies.” What does it mean to love those who are ideologically, culturally, ethically, politically, or otherwise opposed to me? 

I think it’s simpler than I make it. Loving other people means looking out for their needs. Listening to them. Sharing my own cares and concerns. Being honest. 

“Love your enemies” does not mean “change your enemies’ political views.” It does not mean, “Convince your enemies that you see the world rightly and they don’t.” Love, whether it is towards myself or my neighbor or my enemy, is patient and kind. Like Jesus with his disciples. Like Jesus with me. 

(See my recommendations from yesterday for a few podcasts and articles related to this theme.)

To learn more with Amy Julia in thinking about politics, power, and loving our enemies, here are some additional podcast episodes and reflections:

S3 E19 | Loving Our Enemies in a Nation Divided with David Bailey
AJB Recommends: How to Love Across Divisions
Five First Steps toward Participating in Racial Healing

If you haven’t already, please  subscribe  to receive regular updates and news. You can also follow me on  Facebook ,  Instagram , and  Twitter,  and you can  subscribe to my Love is Stronger Than Fear podcast on your favorite podcast platforms.

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AJB Recommends: How to Love Across Divisions

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to love people across the various divisions we experience right now, and these podcasts and articles have been helpful to me:

On Being podcast

This podcast interview between Krista Tippett and Rabbi Jonathan Sacks gives an example of love across opposition. They talk a lot about religious difference, and at one point Sacks comments:

It’s when you can feel your opponent’s pain that you’re beginning the path that leads to reconciliation.

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For the Life of the World podcast

I also really loved this interview between Miroslav Volf and Sacks. To hear these two men from different faiths talk together about love, joy, the Sabbath, and pursuing the common good gave me hope. 

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New York Times article

Read this article from the New York Times about a Black Professor from Smith College who is teaching students to challenge the “call-out culture” and instead “call in.” She is modeling how to love across ideological differences. 

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New York Times Opinion article

And finally, David Brooks’ piece about how to engage in conversation included this line:

“Every human being is a miracle, and your superior in some way.”

What would it be like if we assumed that every person we encountered who society deems “inferior”—the child with Down syndrome, the day laborer, the homeless man down the block—what if we assumed that they each were superior to us in some way, and what if we became curious about that idea? I have a feeling it would teach us something about love.

Continue learning with Amy Julia about love across divisions:

More AJB Recommends
S3 E19 | Loving Our Enemies in a Nation Divided with David Bailey
S3 E20 | When Love Is Our Home, Healing Begins
Guest Podcast with Niro Feliciano: How Do We Heal a Church Divided

If you haven’t already, please  subscribe  to receive regular updates and news. You can also follow me on  Facebook ,  Instagram , and  Twitter,  and you can  subscribe to my Love is Stronger Than Fear podcast on your favorite podcast platforms.

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Coming Home to Love

Christmas many years ago!⁠

In this season, can we say we are coming home to love? One of the commands in the New Testament is to “abide” in God’s love. Not to be good. Not to get things right. Not to work hard. Not even to bring glory to God. Just to abide in God’s love. ⁠

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To abide means to remain. “Stay put in God’s love” would be one way to translate this command. But the word “abide” also shares a root with abode, meaning home. “Stay at home in God’s love” gets at another aspect of this commandment.⁠

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As Covid-19 cases rise and we enter into a time of even more “staying at home” than we’ve already had in 2020, I’m thinking about what it would mean to stay at home in God’s love. ⁠Home is the place where I always return. Home is the most familiar place. Home is the place where I put on my pajamas and don’t worry what my hair looks like. Home is the place where other people know me best.⁠

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What if God’s love was my most familiar experience? What if God’s love was the place I returned, the place I rested, the place where I found comfort and peace at the beginning, middle, and end of every day? What if God’s love was my refuge, my safe place? And what if this season of staying at home is an invitation to understand and receive that love more and more each day?⁠

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We are moving towards the season of Advent and Christmas, the time of year when we celebrate the fact that God made his home with us in Jesus. As John’s Gospel puts it, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling place among us.” I want to remember that God also invites us to make our permanent dwelling place with Him, in the safety, comfort, abundance, and eternity of unfailing love.⁠

I have a FREE Advent e-book to share with you. Join me in these weeks leading up to Christmas in a time of waiting—a time of eager expectation and a time of mournful longing—for Jesus to come into the world. Request your copy of Prepare Him Room, plus you have a few more days to enter the giveaway for God’s Very Good Idea, a beautiful children’s book by Trillia Newbell (Christmas gift idea!).

Continue reading with Amy Julia:

Advent Reflections: Prepare Him Room (and a giveaway!)
What if You Don’t Need to Be Successful? (Or, Advent Reflections on Joy)
S3 E20 | When Love Is Our Home, Healing Begins

If you haven’t already, please  subscribe  to receive regular updates and news. You can also follow me on  Facebook ,  Instagram , and  Twitter,  and you can subscribe to my  Love is Stronger Than Fear  podcast on your favorite podcast platforms.

The post Coming Home to Love appeared first on Amy Julia Becker.

My High Schooler’s Independence

Photo by Meghan Morse Photography

I was recently reminded of my high schooler’s independence. Last week I left the girls home alone together while I went to the grocery store. Before I went, I suggested to Penny she might want to get a little exercise and take a walk. When I got home, I found this note: “11:01. I am walking be back in 15 Penny.”⁠

I love this note so much. First, because she took it upon herself to take a walk. Second, because she wrote a note—just like I do when I take a run in the morning before the kids wake up. Third, because it reminds me that she is growing in independence, responsibility, and care for herself.⁠⁠

There are so many days when worry about Penny’s future creeps in. She’s in ninth grade now. Will the boy she has a crush on break her heart? Will she be able to live in a big city with friends as she dreams about doing? Will she get married? Will she be happy?⁠

And then I get brought back to the present moment of a fourteen-year-old young woman who has decided to go for a walk on a drizzly day and leave a note for her mom. And that moment brings me great peace.⁠

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Also, just a reminder that I’ve put together a FREE e-book that describes our family’s experiences while Penny was in middle school, and you’ll hear from me but also from Penny and from her siblings about the challenges and gifts of our life together. Request your free copy of Missing Out on Beautiful, Part Two here.⁠

To learn more with Amy Julia:

Dreaming and Planning With Our Teenager With Down Syndrome
5 Things I Wish I Had Known when Our Daughter Was Diagnosed with Down Syndrome
S3 E16 | Normie: What is Normal Through the Lens of Down Syndrome with Annemarie Carrigan and Kurt Neale

If you haven’t already, please  subscribe  to receive regular updates and news. You can also follow me on  Facebook ,  Instagram , and  Twitter,  and you can  subscribe to my Love is Stronger Than Fear podcast on your favorite podcast platforms.

The post My High Schooler’s Independence appeared first on Amy Julia Becker.

S3 E20 | When Love Is Our Home, Healing Begins

Do we want to get well? Within the reality of the harm of privilege and ongoing division, Amy Julia concludes this season of the podcast by examining how healing begins when love is our home. She provides solutions of hope and reconciliation that begin and end with, and flow from, the abundant love of God. (Plus a sneak peek into Season 4 of Love is Stronger Than Fear!)

TRANSCRIPT

SHOW NOTES:

“If we just tackle these problems [of division] with policies, if we just tackle them with to-do steps and practices, we’re going to scratch the surface. But if we get down to that spiritual level, if we call upon God—the God of love, the God of judgment, the God who names evil but also gives us a way to deal with evil, the God who gives us a way to love, to hope, to heal—we can find healing.”

“Any spiritual solution, any work of reconciliation and healing, any repentance, any confession, any loving of our enemies, it begins and it ends, and it is in the middle, motivated by love.”

“When we turn away from ourselves—away from the allure of tribalism, away from the temptation of self-justification—and turn toward Love, we begin to construct a vision of the future formed and shaped by hope, by the possibilities of unexpected connections, of mutual blessing, of a world made right. Do we want to get well?”  –White Picket Fences

On the Podcast:

Request your copy of my Advent e-book: Prepare Him Room: Reflections on What Happens When God Shows Up
White Picket Fences
George Floyd’s death
Previous episodes of Season 3 of this podcast
The Atlantic article by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Guest podcast with Niro Feliciano: “How Do We Heal a Church Divided”
Reconciling All Things by Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rise
White Picket Fences companion resources

Thank you to Breaking Ground, the co-host for this podcast.

White Picket Fences, Season 3 of Love is Stronger Than Fear, is based on my book White Picket Fences, and today I’m talking about chapter 14. Check out free RESOURCES—action guide, discussion guides—that are designed to help you respond. Learn more about my writing and speaking at amyjuliabecker.com.

To learn further with Amy Julia about how healing begins when love is our home, keep reading and listening!

Love is Stronger Than Fear | Season 3—White Picket Fences
White Picket Fences companion resources
Amy Julia on Racial Healing

If you haven’t already, please  subscribe  to receive regular updates and news. You can also follow me on  Facebook ,  Instagram , and  Twitter,  and you can  subscribe to my Love is Stronger Than Fear podcast on your favorite podcast platforms.

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Am I God’s Puppet?

Image courtesy of Getty Images

Am I God’s puppet? What about free will? I was reading a book about prayer the other day where the writer told a cool story about how she was praying for her daughter to have a Christian friend and another mom was praying for her daughter to find a Christian friend. The two moms didn’t know each other, but their daughters eventually met and became best friends. God was answering two prayers simultaneously. The writer talked with delight about how God was like a “puppeteer.”⁠

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I loved the story, and I love it when I can peek behind the scenes and see God’s loving hand at work in human lives, but the idea of God as a puppeteer struck me as problematic. It’s a mechanical view of God and humans. It doesn’t leave room for free will, for mystery. It doesn’t make space for love’s invitation to go forth and for us to choose to receive it and respond.⁠

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I mentioned this to Peter, and he said, “What if you thought instead about God being a conductor of an orchestra?” We played out the image together—God is the one overseeing it all. God is the one making sure that practices happen, that music gets played. But each of us has a part to play. There’s a dynamic, relational, invitational action involved between the players and the conductor in contrast to seeing myself as God’s puppet.

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I think I miss my cues a lot of the time. But I am grateful for the invitation to participate in this grand offering of what I believe will become beautiful music.

Read more with Amy Julia:

Uncertainty, Control, and the Election
Faith Is Trusting in the End of the Story
Entrusting vs. Letting Go

If you haven’t already, please  subscribe  to receive regular updates and news. You can also follow me on  Facebook ,  Instagram , and  Twitter,  and you can  subscribe to my Love is Stronger Than Fear podcast on your favorite podcast platforms.

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