Anniversaries

Last Thursday was an anniversary for my family, as is today. 6 years ago on August 19, 2004, my mom passed away. 6 years ago today on August 23, we buried her and celebrated her life.

I was not in the room when she passed away, but I came in immediately after. The family was crowded around her bed, and I was the last to walk in. My then 12-year-old cousin Dalton saw me and rushed over to me. He just latched onto me in this big bear hug and said, "Bree it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay." My 12-year-old cousin was the first to comfort my 20-year-old self. I still find that pretty remarkable, and I won't ever forget it. We were surrounded with so much family and so much love.
The next few days were such a blur. I remember my good friends Jennifer and Betsi went shopping and found me an outfit to wear to her funeral. It still hangs in my closet. I took my little brother to find some dress shoes to wear. I ended up finding a fabulous pair of hot pink stilettos. Pink was my mom's favorite color. So, I splurged.
I hate to call my mom's funeral a funeral, because it was unlike any memorial I have ever been to. Pastor Bo, who married Daniel and I as well as my Dad and Dawn, led the service. There were about 1200 people in attendance, and we celebrated her life. There was a full worship band, and we worshiped God together with songs of celebration. Two of Mom's close friends got up and spoke, and I will never forget when Beth said my mom was an oak of righteousness--she looked at me and my brother and said, "The acorn didn't fall far from the tree."
It was really beautiful, and my sweet momma was honored in the sweetest ways. Today and every day, I remember her.

She passed away on a Thursday, like it was this year, and we honored her on a Monday, like it is this year. 6 years later on August 19, 2010 I was at an outreach event where I was putting on a production I wrote that contains the gospel in song and dance. Today, on the 23, I went over to my Dad and Dawn's house and talked with Dawn for a few hours, got together with some friends, and worked on a song that we're getting ready to record in the studio. Life is so totally different now, and I imagine my momma knows what's going on down here--but she has a totally different perspective from heaven and probably isn't all that interested in what's going on down here because she's face-to-face with Jesus. But I still feel her presence so strongly in my life. She is part of me and I am part of her.
I am thankful for my life now and the way God has brought redemption to me and my family and has restored what was meant for harm. The Lord is my victory.

Proffitteer Road Trips

Every year, our preteen ministry takes the 6th graders on a road trip as part of the closing of their time in the ministry. Daniel and I got to go this year, so we loaded up in vans and took 45 6th graders to Dallas/Fort Worth

We arrived at the church at 6:15 Friday morning (yes, morning) wearing our swimsuits so we could head straight to Hurricane Harbor and not skip a beat in hitting the afternoon sun. I have never worn my swimsuit for so long as an adult. And now I remember why. It is miserable being in a swimsuit that long! In a van, for that matter!

I'd never been to Hurricane Harbor--my days were Wet N'Wild--so I couldn't remember what to expect. But it was so much fun!
Note to HH: please, on days when it is 102 degrees, do something to make your concrete not so hot that it burns our feet. Don't you know people don't be swimmin' in their shoes?

I do not particularly enjoy being in a swimsuit, nor do I particularly enjoy being wet. But for this trip, I sucked it up, smeared on my spf 90 (yes, 90) and had a great time!

At the end of the day the rides were closed early due to an approaching storm. Then the downpour hit--and everyone was freaking out because "we're getting wet!" Wait. You're at a WATER PARK. Water. Park. Get it? So we huddled underneath a picnic area for about 20 minutes, until one of the employees asked us to move to a building

Wait, asking is an understatement. She came running by our picnic area screaming "everyone get to a building! Now! Hurry!" So now you have 45 kids thinking there is a tornado or something fast-approaching, and chaos ensues. We corral our kids (finally), decide we've had enough and run to the vans in the pouring rain. A fun day at Hurricane Harbor!

Next day: Six Flags. We got there at 10. We left at 10. 12 hours at Six Flags, high again of 102, and about a million people. The thing that really floored me was that there were families there with tiny babies--a few who couldn't hold up their heads yet. In the 102 degree heat. Pushing strollers.
Some of the families with babes I saw didn't even appear to have kids of the ride-riding age. That did not sound like fun to me at all. And put some sunscreen on those babies! Somebody!

Daniel and I and a few other leaders ended up with 12 kids we hung out with most of the day. 5 of those kids were terrified of roller coasters. Enter Daniel, my fab hubs.

Terrified kid: I'm not gonna ride this one. I'll just sit it out and wait for you guys.
Fab hubs: I'll make you a deal. If you ride this ride, I won't try to get you to ride one more ride the whole time we're here.

Every kid took his offer. Every kid LOVED the roller coasters and was then sprinting to the next one. These kids were overcomers, and I was so proud!

So we shut down Six Flags, and it was pretty awesome. I'm an avid roller coaster rider. One time Daniel and I took a marriage vision retreat....to Magic Mountain in LA. Too much fun. And pretty romantic as well!

The next day? Grapevine Mills Mall. Took it by storm. And it took all our cash in return. Afterwards we loaded up, headed home, arrived about midnight, and slept like wee babies in 102 degree heat at Six Flags.

6th Grade Road Trip, 2010. Whoop!

Cohabitation Shmabitation.

Last night I was watching the finale of The Bachelorette (gosh, I'm a sucker for that show), and I really was proud of Ali and the way she talked to Chris before the final rose ceremony and let him know she was in love with someone else before allowing him to go through all the pomp and circumstance of the last ceremony. I appreciated that for Chris, and I appreciated Chris's response.
I do think he would make a great husband, though I hope he's not the next Bachelor because, after this experience, he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would benefit from choosing between 25 women. I'm afraid his poor heart would get hurt again.

Anyways, I was happy that Ali picked Roberto, and was happy again when on "The Final Rose", Ali was still beaming, still wearing the ring, and still snuggling up to him during their interview. I really do hope it works out for them.

What bugs me is that Ali and Roberto talked about how they are moving into an apartment together in San Diego.
What bugs me even more is that this moving in together thing seems to be a growing practice amongst people of my generation (the 20 to 30 somethings).

My hubs Daniel and I were talking about this concept the other day. We come from the Bible Belt, where it's common for people to get married soon out of high school or around 20 or 21 and it's no big deal, and to start having babies right after that is no big deal either. However, when Daniel and I went to California, we were "too young to have kids...you're just so young"

We are 26 and 28. Too young to have kids?!

It's a growing trend in the world at large to wait to get married and to wait even longer to have kids. Honestly, I think that's fine. I am not ready to have kids yet, and there are a lot of people who genuinely are not ready to get married until later or do not meet their spouse until later or who are called to be single, and I think that is totally okay.

But I do think our culture promotes this idea of putting off marriage by putting a focus on "self" and a further acceptance of divorce. I hear terms such as "practice husband", and people having sex in order to "sample the goods before I make a commitment" and people moving in together to "see if it works out".

Well, how long to you "sample the goods" before you decide the "goods" aren't for you? And how long do you "see if it works out?" Until the first sign of unhappiness? Until something goes awry?

I call that Practicing Marriage. And I don't think it works. I understand that a lot of people are products and victims of divorce. And I completely understand how it would make someone hesitant to get married. I understand that. But I think practicing marriage further promotes our self-focused culture by giving people an easy way out. It's easy to get out of a relationship where you're living with one another because there's no real commitment there. There's no marriage covenant; you haven't signed any paperwork--easy. If you haven't signed any papers and there's no marriage covenant there, what's left to make you work on the relationship? What's left to make you work on yourself? I just think it's a set-up for a cop-out when the relationship hits a bump in the road.

All that from The Bachelorette...

Here's to Consistency

Gosh, the last time I blogged was in January. My blog today is like my journal several years ago--sporadically timed and quite random. The journal has ironed itself out into some sort of consistency, but the blog, not so much.

In my journal, whenever I'd miss a few days or weeks of writing, I'd spend the next entry apologizing profusely (to myself, to God, to whomever I was writing at that point) for skipping those days. Like I had really let someone down. Really who I let down was myself.

But, with this Proffitteer blog, I shall not do that. I shall write, and if I miss some days or weeks or months, I will not apologize--unless for some crazy reason tons of people start reading this blog and then get upset when I am not posting consistently.

This summer for we Proffitts has been kind of ridiculous, in the sense that busyness has been the name of the season! When you work at a church, like I do, and when you work in children's ministry, like I do, your summer is consumed with finding things for the kids to do while they're out of school.
So what do we do? Camp! Each year we take several hundred kiddos to two camps--one in June and the other in July. This year we took a group of 5th and 6th graders to Bonita Park, NM and our 1-4th graders to Plains Baptist Assembly in Floydada. It was fun, I was exhausted in the best way, and there was a different type of spiritual maturity in the kids this year.

Between the camps, Daniel and I took a trip to California (our stomping grounds as newlyweds). We arrived on a Tuesday and stayed with our good friends Nathan and Jill and their newest addition to their little family, Selah Lucca (age 5 weeks). We had such a good time with them. They live in an apartment in Scotts Valley, CA, but it's no ordinary apartment. It sits in the basement of a split level ranch house on the edge of town, and it's set on a beautiful hill. So when you sit on their front porch, you look across a small valley neighborhood with beautiful redwoods AND open spaces (a rare combo). Jill had planted a garden outside the house, and we sampled some button carrots (is that what they're called, Jill?) and some sugar snap peas that put any grocery peas to shame! They were sooooo good.

One of the most interesting things to me was the chicken coop. Every morning the guys would go to the coop and get some eggs. I can honestly say that up until that point I had never had an egg so fresh, as in, straight out of the coop. I was thinking for some reason that an egg straight out of the coop would taste weird or different. It didn't. I tasted like a normal egg. How bout that?
Next to the coop was a place where some llamas were staying, and then there were the several neighborhood dogs that somehow made their way up to our house throughout the week.
It was so wonderful to just hang out, do whatever we wanted, and be.....just be. We went to the beach, we went to the farmers market (which does not compare to Texas Panhandle farmers markets. It just doesn't), we saw a movie, at some sushi at Mobo, the place for which our pup is named, and did a little bit o' shopping.

At the end of the week we went to Camp Hammer, where Daniel was going to spend a week as the camp speaker. I had to come back to Texas for our kids camp, so I left on Monday to fly back home as Daniel began his speaking week.

From Monday to the next Sunday, Daniel and I were unable to speak to each other--either he or I had no cell service for the rest of the week! It's one thing to be separated from your spouse by a few states, but it's another thing to not get to talk to each other! I was so thankful for his arrival home on Tuesday afternoon.

So now, we settle back home and get ready for school to start. We are working on our bathroom and the outside of our house.

Too many things have happened since January to recount them all, and this summer alone could cover 50 posts.

So for now, summer winds down a bit, and we Proffitts continue pioneering the Plains.

Here's to consistency!

To the roots

Daniel was just recently out of town for 10 days. 10 very l..o...n...g days, might I add.
He went to Michigan for a residency program required by his seminary (Spring Arbor University) and did some intense training for his masters in Spiritual Formation and Soul Care.

When I tell people around here what Daniel is studying, usually there's a nod and a "hmmmm", before I ask "Have you heard of it or know what it is?" to which the reply is almost always "Nope. Never heard of that. What on earth is it?" To which I then reply...

Spiritual Formation is kind of like Human Growth and Development, except from a spiritual standpoint. It takes a deep look at our lives--the way we grow up, the influences in our lives both good and bad (parents, teachers, friends, etc...) the things that happen to us along the way that then shape the way we view God and relate to Him, other people near and far, and ourselves.

Example: A person, say, whose parents were divorced and the father was completely absent in their childhood might transfer the absence of an earthly father onto the type of Heavenly Father God is, causing them to view Him as absent, unreachable, distant, and causing them to possibly be afraid to get too close to other people for fear that those people, like the father, will abandon them.

Make sense? Good.

So the things we experience growing up in this wonderful/awful life shape who we become as adults, the truths or untruths we believe about ourselves and God--and these things we end up believing about ourselves and God are so deeply rooted in our past experiences that we can't even decipher that a lot of our beliefs we've clung to for so long are, well....jacked up.

Take me for example--somewhere in my life journey I began to believe that I should not cling to good things or hope for good things in this life because I am not worthy to have anything good, or for my dreams to come true--everything is too good for me...it led to a lot of devastation, not wanting to get too close to people, and plain ole self-condemnation...until I sought the Lord on this particular issue and He revealed to me that the belief I'd been clinging to about not being worthy of good things is rooted in my mom's death. She was an amazingly wonderful, good thing in my life, and she was taken away from me. Subconsciously I believed I must have done something wrong to have her taken away from me, so I was not worthy to enjoy something good--and if something looked too good, it must not be for me. I cannot have good things.

See? What a cycle. The even crazier thing is that while I'm believing this terrible lie, I am in the midst of experiencing amazing things--meeting my husband, being offered a super cool job, being blessed with an amazing family and friends...but still I feel not worthy and am terrified that somehow I will mess up and everyone will leave me.

It is only in digging up the roots of our issues that we will be able to plant in their place something beautiful and alive.

Now I am so interested in not only digging to the root of my own issues, but helping others pick out the right shovel to dig out theirs as well. It's not something someone can do for you, but it is something you can be guided to and through.

Oh, and it's not fun. It kinda hurts. Actually, it hurts a lot. But then when your flowers start to bloom and you see a new you emerging, you will look up and smile.

Remember that cute dog?

In my last post, the dog had peed on the bathmat. That's okay--I can wash the bathmat, and it's not that great of a bathmat anyway.
This, I cannot excuse:

You are aware that winter (my favorite season) has descended upon us, and it is now really cold outside. Too cold for Mobo, our lovely pup, to stay outside. So she spends her days when mom and dad are at work, in her crate. We check on her at lunch, and she's super excited when we come home from work--it's really nice that the best part of the dog's day is when Daniel and I come home. Feels good, ya know?

Well, last Wednesday Mobo had spent time in her crate all day, and was going to have to spend more time in there because Wednesday is our long day at church. Daniel went home to check on her after school before he came back up to the church. He couldn't bare to to put her back in her crate again, so he chew-proofed the bathroom, put her crate in there with some toys, and left her.

I was the first to arrive home after church that night, and so I was the first to let Mobo out of the bathroom. I was also the first to discover the fun she had while we were gone!

Because our bathroom did not come with storage space, we keep our bathroom essentials in a brown wicker chest that has 4 drawers. Mobo decided that because Daniel had chew-proofed the bathroom, and because the toys he left her weren't good enough, that she needed to claw through the 3rd drawer in our wicker chest (yes, all the way through), drag out our hair dryer, curling iron, and CHI flat iron, and destroy them. Like, chew through all the cords. So I walk in to wicker shards all over the floor, and my 3 hair essentials in sad little pieces alongside the wicker. I didn't pick up the mess because I wanted Daniel to see what our beloved pup had done, and he appreciated it all even less than I did!

The best part was that it was 10:00 at night, my hair was on its last day before it majorly needed to be washed, and I had to wear my hair curly (which I do with my flat iron) the next day for a video I was shooting. And I had to be at work early. All things add up to me being super happy and thrilled about shelling out the money to buy new hair essentials.

I dug through some old stuff and found a curling iron from elementary school that still worked. So my dirty hair made it another day, and was curly. The hair dryer came the next day, and I found a CHI for really cheap as far as CHI's are concerned. It arrived 2 days later. All in all, it wasn't too bad, but Mobo spent a few days as "the dog" instead of "our cute puppy"

Sigh.


This week has been a little nuts. We had our first party at our new house--the worship and drama teams from Trinity came over and we had our annual Christmas white elephant gift exchange. It was fun! I ended up with a Snuggie for dogs. Slightly ridiculous, but hey--Mobo likes it. Our house is going to be a good "have company over" house. I was kind of nervous about that, but it was a success! More to come, maybe? ;)

In other news, the other day someone asked me if I was expecting. I said no, I am not expecting. He said "oh! Well, you kind of look like it, so I thought I'd ask." Oh, you just thought you'd ask, huh? hmmmm.....

I'm hoping it was the empire-waist tunic I was wearing that day. ugh.

Tis the Season?

Yes, tis the season I believe. Today I got up at 6:15, went in the kitchen and got some oatmeal and some coffee, then talked with Daniel while he got ready for work (he has to leave at 6:45--the life of a basketball coach). After he left, I sat on our cozy couch with my cozy robe and cozy blanket, opened my Bible to 1 Corinthians 15, and promptly fell asleep. Until 8. I have to be at work at 8:45 on Tuesdays.

Mobo (the puppy) must have realized I needed to sleep, because she laid quietly in her bed until I woke up. That is not the norm.

When I bolted off the couch at 8, I debated taking a shower. I took one last night, but I didn't wash my hair. When did I wash it last? Can't remember. Could I just pull it back and it would look fine? No, not today--my bangs were on full stand-on-end alert.

Into the shower I go. I have no choice these days but to be a fast shower-er, because our water heater keeps us accountable by promptly running out of hot water when it thinks you've been in there long enough.

I get out of the shower to find that Mobo has peed on my bathmat, and she also needs to be fed before I put her back in her crate--it's too cold today for her to stay outside, and the garage is full of wonderful things she'd love to chew on and or/digest. I need to be out the door at 8:35. I got 10 minutes to feed and water the dog, take her outside to potty, dry my hair, find something to wear, and throw some makeup on.

I succeed. The dog chowed down and made it to the crate, my hair is a little flat, my makeup is most definitely thrown on, and my sweater is really old. And I don't even care. I have made it to work, and I have some hot coffee and a few Hersheys kisses.

Some day I'd like to think that I'll be able to get up and stay up, and sometimes I can...but boy, it's hard. My couch invites sleep. But I really really like sitting on that couch! Some day I'd like to think that putting my makeup on in the car on the way to work is a rare occasion instead of the norm. Plus it's not that safe.

Some day I'd like to think that I will have it all together and all my problems will be solved, but there is some comfort in knowing that will not happen in this life--it's an eternal process.


Well, off to work. Today's tasks include finding fun Christmas songs to do in service, practicing my guitar, sending gobs of emails, putting together set lists, and other fun things. It's a hard job, but somebody's gotta do it!