What is your background? Raised a very conservative Southern Baptist, I sometimes feel like I am hanging by my fingernails on a very slippery slope. And even though some of my more conservative brothers and sisters would say that I have strayed from my upbringing, I would have to disagree. The most important parts of it stuck. I am in love with Jesus. I want to be like Him and I want to see others move into relationship with Him. And then, together, I want us to change the world.
My full time paid occupation is also my mission field. I am an administrator at a local middle school whose job description includes discipline, which is frightening for all involved. Really, I want to kids to walk away knowing that someone loved them, someone believed in them. Someone said that they COULD do it and showed them how.
Education?
- Bachelor – Elementary Education from Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, MO.
- Master – Educational Administration – Tarleton State University
Random Oddities?
- I have spent the night in jail.
- I posses my CDL and can drive a large school bus. (Also frightening for all involved.)
- I am a preacher’s kid – and I was not a wild child.
- I do have a tattoo which I got in the summer of 2004.
- REALLY! I AM WONDER WOMAN!
Family? The love of my life placed a ring on my finger in June of 1993. Mike knows me inside and out patiently encourages all of my frenetic and frenzied passions. I could never ask for a better, stronger partner in this world. Together we are raising three beautiful, teenage children: Benjamin, Christine, and Grace.
Favorite Movies?
- The Help
- The King’s Speech
- Lars and the Real Girl
- Juno
- Stranger than Fiction
Sometimes I love to watch those movies that make me want to be a part of the fight, that make me want to get in the game. So some days are “Fight Club,” “Braveheart,” and “Lord of the Rings” – I watch them again and again! But other days I just want to be moved by something – I want to feel something. On those days I watch “The Notebook,” “Dead Poet’s Society,” “Legends of the Fall,” and “Lady in the Water.” Some days I have to sing in which case I watch “Moulin Rouge” – and turn it to LOUD!
Favorite books?
Most Recently:
- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
- The Help by Kathryn Stockett (I am a sucker for stories about strong women beating the odds)
- The Fall of Giants – Ken Follett (The author of Pillars of the Earth which is also great!)
I have too many favorite to list. I read. I LOVE to read.
Books that have changed me? Books that I read again and again?
Poetry by Tennyson, Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
While going through a personally devastating time in my life, a friend recommended I read A Tale of Three Kings by Gene Edwards. While he is not a great writer, the subject matter of how we deal with our woundings has challenged me tremendously. So I added several of his books to my library.
Books I return to again and again?
- The Spirit of the Disciplines and The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard
- The Celebration of Discipline and Prayer by Richard Foster
- The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
EPIC AND AWESOME! If you have time, check out Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy, Liveship Trilogy and Tawny Man Trilogy – it all goes together and they wrecked me! Wonderful! Geoffrey actually NAGGED me into reading these, and I am so thankful. My favorite hero character ever is the Fool in this series.
Things I enjoy almost as much as spending time with my family? We play games together, my family and I. We love Settlers of Catan, BANG!, Carcassonne, Munchkin, and other weird and unknown games. I enjoy a good meal, a good bottle of wine, a good beer, or a good cup of coffee. I enjoy them even more when I share them with good friends. I scrapbook. It is an understatement.
My Purpose?
This is a mission statement I wrote about eight years ago. But it still speaks volumes about who I am, or who I believe I am supposed to be.
I stand as an advocate for the poor, the captive, and the oppressed.
I speak truth and encouragement out of love in order to give others a hope and a vision for who they are created to be.
I run, recklessly, in passionate pursuit of broken hearts, souls, and minds because people are worth the risk.
I teach, because I BELIEVE we can change the world, because no other “job” is as vital as this one, and because God called me to this urgent task.
I commit myself to you, to this cause, and to our community, even if it costs me my heart.
I fight. I fall. I fail. But I will never yield, except to the one who created me.
I will stand and fight again, no matter what the obstacles.
And though this task cannot be accomplished by one alone, I will reclaim our future; one day, one moment, one heart at a time.
But what do I do at Mosaic? Whatever needs to be done. I teach. I plan. I clean. I paint. I sing. This is not church as we once knew it. Church should not be a “Sunday experience.” Church is who we ARE. We cannot walk away from it. So this family, this holy mob, is my resting place, my clarion call, and my rallying point. I am here to help others find their place, to care for those around me, and to help people find Jesus.
Favorite Non-Scripture Words of Encouragement that could have come straight from God for me?
Come, my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
“Ulysses” by Tennyson
”maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.”
- Fight Club
The question, O me! so sad, recurring — What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer That YOU ARE HERE–that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and YOU may contribute a verse.
- Walt Whitman (from Dead Poet’s Society)
“Did you not say to Him that you agreed to allow into your life whatever He willed. . . that He could do anything in order to bring about your transformation? Remember that moment when you asked to be conformed to His image? Consider this: Transformation hinges on your becoming a living sacrifice. The only other road is self-protection.”
- Gene Edwards
“It is a time that feels like exile, in both our country and our Church. Cynicism comes easily, too easily. Cynicism takes no surrender, no trust, no love and no intelligence. It is no wonder so many of us hide there. It is too easy to dismiss whatever does not work for us and right now, especially if we think that our lives are about us.
Jesus has offered us a more spacious world, a world where I do not have to explain it, fix it or control it; a world where we can allow a larger Mystery to work itself out through us and in us; a world where relationship is the beginning, middle and the end.”
- Richard Rohr
Favorite words?
- Presence
- Purpose
- PASSION
Favorite Scriptures?
2 Corinthians 3:1-6
1 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? 2 You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. 3 You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. 4 Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. 5 Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. 6 He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant–not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
Luke 4:18-19
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
I Peter 1:6-9
6 In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that your faith–of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire–may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.