Wednesday, February 20, 2019

It is All About Balance

1 Corinthians 3: 16

"Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in your midst?"

Our family recently started going to the gym. If you know us, you know that this is new and not the "norm" or has ever been the norm. Now, before Paul met me, he did exercise and was really fit from the police academy.. then we got married and we each settled into our new life as a married couple and exercise and keeping ourselves "fit" just didn't fit in there.

Then came these kids of ours. It turns out that a baby really changes your body, oh and turning 30. 


In last three years, it has become apparent that if I want to maintain the way I looked when I was younger, I was going to have to do something about it.


Really it just started to make more sense to me as I started to reflect on my own life, my own well being and what kind of example I want to set for my kids. I want them to see me fit, I want them to see exercise as something fun and I want us to be healthy for each other so we can live a long life of abundance as God wants us all too. 


We joined the gym in November and honestly haven't missed a work out since then. Once we started, we got hooked. Not only is it a great work out...BUT there is CHILDCARE. Like there is a place where you can drop off your kids and say "have fun" and they love it and they get worn out and you get to be ALONE and exercise. I don't know why this mom secret has been kept from me for so long. Or maybe I was told it but chose not to listen.


I am aware that changing your way of life, leaning into your messiness and brokenness is about balance and a want within yourself. 2 years ago, you couldn't have gotten me into the gym but something inside of me changed. I started to see myself as this temple that God gave me, a body that God gave me to take care of so that I can live my life of abundance and belovedness to the fullest. 



This past month, there has been a competition of sort at the gym called "melt". While I do not really care about the competition it created a space for myself and two good friends to work out together and to explore some of the different group classes. I have shied away from the classes out of fear of what others may think... here is the truth. No one care.

Absolutely no one cares

No one is watching you and if they are it is because you are doing so amazing that they want to copy you, so no one is watching me

And no one cares

The group classes have pushed me further than I knew possible and have really opened my eyes to the different muscle groups that I didn't even know needed to be stretched.

One of my favorite classes is called centergy. It is a combination of yoga and pilates and really helps to stretch out all of the work you have done in other classes. Now, I will say that it isn't just stretching. Oh no. There is this whole 5 minute plank series and you do not just plank. Oh no, you plant on your elbows, move your legs side to side, move up to your hands and do this about 1,000 times. It pushes you. The first few classes I couldn't do it and I didn't push myself because I wanted to ease into what my body could do.

Tonight. Tonight I did it. I did the whole class without any trouble. I finally found the rhythm and then the last 15 minutes is spent on restoration followed by 5 minutes of Savasana. You simply lie on your back and breathe, eyes closed, letting go of all the negativity and breathing in the beauty of the world and what you just accomplished.

I left tonight feeling full. Feel connected to God and feeling connected to my body and how it needs to be taken care of. 

And then I picked up the kids. I took a deep breath and we got in the car. The screaming started pretty quick and I started to think about dinner... my zen started to go. One kid only likes candy and cookies, the other sits and eats but it takes forever and you have to count bites while they complain. 

It is all about balance. The balance of finding your zen and how to maintain it. 

I maintained that zen, sure did. The kids are currently eating McDonalds and I am zenfully writing this blog without a care in the world.

God wants us all to take care of ourselves so that we can go out into the world and care for others and sometimes that means giving in to what you can not control and maintaining your zen by going through the drive-thru.

No matter where you are in your life, how active you are or aren't always know you are enough, you are valued and you are beloved.

-Pastor Ali 

Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Unconditional Love and Change

Over the past few weeks, I have been doing a sermon series on Love. While most likely thought this series was created for Valentine's Day, they are all learning that I had a different idea in mind.

Love. What does love mean to all of us? What does love mean to people that haven't experienced love? Does love look more like violence? Does love scare people? Does love prohibit us from fully experiencing our lives out of fear of what may happen?

The United Methodist Church will face a vote at a special General Conference that starts Feb. 23rd. Bishops, delegates (the people that get to vote), clergy and lay people will gather in St. Louis, MO from all over the world to vote on the issue of human sexuality and the church. This vote has been up for discussion since the 1980's when the world of psychiatric deemed homosexuality was not a mental health disorder. Since then, the church has gone back and forth on the issue. Should they allow gay clergy? Should people of the same-sex get to marry in the church?

I spoke last Sunday on how we become the church in a world that tries to shut the church out. In a world that views the church as negative and in a world that puts people in different boxes based on their race, socio-economic status, gender and who they love.

How do we be the church? The one the first Apostles built? The one that is about change, the love of God and the Good News that Christ brought?

Love

Love

Love

I recently spoke to someone about the one-church plan that is going before the conference. This is the plan that the majority of the Bishops in the church are supporting. It is the plan that allows each local church to decide. It sounds simple enough- you decide what your church is going to do. Yet this plan still brings up questions for a lot of people. How does that work? What church am I suppose to go if I believe ___? Will churches leave? Will people leave our church?

Love

I just keep saying that word over and over again in my head. The church is at a crossroads and what the church does next will define the church for generations to come. Generations that will likely look at us and wonder why this mattered. I look back on giving the women the right to preach and wonder why it took so long- in awe that it took the church over 1950 years to finally make that possible when some of the most powerful people in scripture are...WOMEN! (getting side-tracked...)

So what do we do as a church? How do we keep going?

We love our way through it.

We love God, we love the church, we love our neighbors and we love all of God's people just as God tells us to through God's son, Jesus Christ.

Jesus came to this world to save us from ourselves, to show us what true love is and how to live that out in our everyday lives.

Jesus suffered and was killed at the hands of his own people yet even knowing this would happen he did the work of God. He healed the leper, he prayed with and taught women, he opposed the doings of the scribes and pharisees, he turned over the tables in the temple.

People fought against everything Jesus did and had to say but he stayed strong and went with one message.

Love.

Jesus is the church. Jesus is UNCONDITIONAL LOVE AND CHANGE. Jesus came to this world to change it so that we may all live a life of abundance and know our identity in God as God's beloved children.

Love. That really is the only way.

We continue to love and the church and all of us will get through this, all while knowing we are enough, we are worthy and we are beloved.

-Pastor Ali

Wednesday, February 6, 2019

Where Does the time Go?

I can remember as a child sitting in my room often wondering "when will I ever grow up?" I was likely in trouble when these thoughts were going through my mind and wanted more than anything to grow up, get out of my parents’ house and get to do WHATEVER I wanted. 

It is amazing how time works.

As a child it seems as though you will never grow up. You long for the days that you have freedom. To be 16, 18. To go off to college. 

Then you get to college and you simply want time to slow down. You want to soak up every moment of the life you are living, you want to be young and carefree in this time of your life yet it goes by so fast that you wonder "where did the time go?"

Then you get out of school and life really begins. The life you were longing for as a child is here and at times it is everything you ever dreamed of and then at times you just want to go back to being a child, where people took care of you and you did not have to worry about bills, taking care of your own kids or worrying about what is going to happen to the people you love. 
Time. It goes so fast when we don't want it to and slows down when we long for it to just speed up.



Yesterday, marked 5 years since the death of my Father. 

In many ways it seems like I haven't seen or talked to my dad in 10 years and in others it seems as though we were all just sitting around my parents kitchen table laughing and living our best life. 

5 years. I would give anything to go back to the month before my dad passed and to just have a little bit longer. To realize that this was happening and to spend as much time as possible with my dad. To say all the things, I long to say to him. But that isn't how time works or life. 

I sit and think now a lot about the times with my dad. About how I was so very loved by him and so many of my friends wished they had him as a dad. 

He was the most of most cool dads and still to this day his legacy lives on through all of us.

I see him in my nephew Ben, the way Ben laughs and is kind of sneaky when he is being silly. I see him Henry, in Henry's worry for the world and his family. I see him in Tannie, in Tannie's willingness to do just about anything. 

Even when people leave this world, they still live in each of us. It is as though a piece of them has been passed down to all the generations to continue living so that their best life can still go on.

5 years. 

In 5 years, our lives have changed drastically. I became a Pastor- WHAT?!?! Paige had Ben. I had Tannie. Henry is in school. Evan got married. Mom moved. We all changed our jobs. 

While all that has changed and we are all incredibly blessed and at peace with the loss of our dad, time still doesn't take away the pain. There is a saying "time heals all wounds" and while time does heal, it doesn't take away the wounds. 

Our wounds are a part of us, they help to make up the story of who we are and without them or when we "forget" about them, we are denying who we are. 

We are broken, we are messy, we live chaotic lives, but we are God's children; enough, beloved and worthy of this life we are living.

Time may not heal all wounds and we may always long to go back to different times in our lives but know that living in the present, welcoming the pain of what you have been through and believing that God is with you through it all will allow you to embrace the days ahead without fear. 

My dad, the rock of our family, will always live on in each of us and that is because he shaped who we are, taught us how to love and never gave up on us. Even in the afterlife, as he is sitting at the table with God, he with us-guiding each of us and loving us through all our sorrow and joy because it is through him that we learned to love this life we have been given. 

Embrace today, live today with courage and love knowing your worth, knowing you are enough and knowing you are beloved.

-Pastor Ali 


Dad and baby Henry