Armor Bearer

I’ve heard the term.  I’ve seen it carried out.  I’ve read books on the subject.  Armor Bearer.  It’s a military term that’s become a church word.   Originally, the biblical term was translated from the Hebrew word nasa – to figuratively or literally lift up, support or help.  When leaders went into war, the armor bearer would go before them, carry their weapons, fight alongside to aid and protect.  Today, armor bearers are the topic of much debate.  Do pastors and other church leaders need someone to follow them around and carry a glass of water and a Bible?  Does speaking to a group of people require military-like protection, even if figurative?  I’ve debated both sides of the issue.  (One of the best results of my years spent in Speech & Debate; I can argue pretty much any side of any issue.)

But today, the concept took on new meaning for me.  God called me into battle not to fight on my own behalf but to protect His chosen leader.  I can almost see the metaphoric battle ground.  Think less Gladiator and more G.I. Jane…

The Commander chose a leader to empower troops and conquer ground.  He trained the leader, put her through boot camp, gave her all she’d need to win battles, nurtured her until the leader was strong enough to go.  And just as she was putting on her gear, a bullet came out of nowhere.  Not even on the battlefield, and the enemy took a cheap shot.  The blow was less painful and more distracting, but it did the trick.  The leader momentarily stopped moving forward to deal with the attack.  But what the enemy didn’t anticipate was that the Commander, knowing the other team plays dirty had prepared one to fight alongside the leader – not to take her place but shield future blows, carry extra weapons and wipe away the blood, sweat and tears when necessary.  The armor bearer, not understanding the importance of her job, was also caught off-guard by this first minor attack.  Rather than standing ready, she stopped to get the leader a Band-Aid.  And for a moment, the enemy didn’t need to fire another shot.  He didn’t need to wage an attack.  The leader wasn’t a threat if she wasn’t moving.  And the armor bearer was nothing to worry about if she wouldn’t fight back… 

…until she did.  And just as the Commander designed, once the armor bearer began to fight fire with fire, the leader was able to regroup, press on, rally the troops.  It didn’t mean the bullets stopped coming.  But it did mean the leader had someone in her corner, watching her back so she could begin to conquer ground as she had been trained to do.

Armor bearers weren’t much of an issue to me before today because I was never asked to be one.  I serve my pastor; I support and honor my leaders.  I’ve even fought on behalf of others or a cause. But I’ve never been asked to stand at the ready, in the heat of battle and fiercely defend someone else’s ability to obey.  Today, I got those marching orders.  God told me my job is not to bend down and get Band-Aids.  My job is to be ready for the next attack, be it a cheap shot or straightforward.  My job is not just to hold a glass of water and a Bible.  My job is to pray – hard – not for myself but to protect the calling of God’s chosen leader.

People argue about armor bearers because they say leaders are arrogant to allow someone to fill that role.  But it’s not about the leader.  It’s not about the armor bearer.  It’s about the ground she’s been sent to conquer and the glory the Commander will receive when she’s successful.

Home

I’ve learned a lot the past few years about roots.  I speak and write about it often.  If you try to keep one foot in the last place, you’ll never learn and grow in the new place.  You have to put down roots; plant yourself. 

When we first moved to DC, I worked hard not to repeat past mistakes.  I moved quickly to embrace my new home.  I didn’t drag my feet.  I got busy and got planted.  I led my family to do the same. You don’t hear me say that I miss “home;” I’m very careful with my words.  I was raised in Oklahoma.  I grew into the woman I am in Texas.  DC is my home.

But I learned a profound lesson about Home today.  Home is your happy place.  It’s the place where you can go and be totally yourself and that’s ok.  Home is where people love you not for anything you’ve done but just because you’re you.  Home is where you are nurtured.  Home is what fills you up when you’re empty.  Home is lotion on dry skin.  Home is where you laugh until it hurts.  Home is where you can be completely silent and be completely heard.

You can’t get so comfortable in one that you won’t embrace the other, but it’s ok for your heart to rest in more than one home.  You don’t have to love the home that grew you less to put down roots in the home that you’ve been called to build. 

This place – Texas, Fellowship Church, the comfort of my friends who know me better than family – this is Home.

The place where I’m rooted – DC, with David and Brynna, where God called me to be His light –is also Home.

I thought that loving one meant letting go of the other.  I learned that loving both means no matter where I am…I’m home.

Confession: I Milk It

When I was pregnant, I had a theory.  I figured you only have 10 months to literally eat what you want.  There is a short window of time that you can make random requests to friends, family and complete strangers and actually have them accomplished.  You only have so long before people will again expect you to carry not only your own bag but now the 75 lb. diaper bag belonging to the 30 lb. baby carrier you are also lugging around.  So my theory?  Milk it.  For everything it’s worth.  For as long as you can.

Unfortunately, my protégé has adopted my philosophy as her own.  Now Brynna Grace Johnston will not stop playing after falling head-first from the ottoman onto a toy train.  She will not pause even after 35 unsuccessful attempts to jump from the chair to the coffee table to the sofa.  She won’t even admit defeat after cracking her head on the pavement trying to play soccer with the big boys across the street.  But let her Daddy be out of town (which has been more often lately than not) and all bets are off.  She will milk a sad face until even she laughs at herself.  My strong, independent little girl suddenly can’t walk down the stairs without being carried or put her shoes on without help.  She must be rocked to sleep and sometimes even then, somehow ends up in our bed.  She makes the divas of Real Housewives look like amateurs!

Every now and then, there is a perfect storm.  Sadly for my wonderful, kind, unsuspecting husband, he finds himself in the midst of chaos.  This weekend was one such event.  Thursday morning and again in the evening, I walked into the kitchen to find Brynna eating bran out of a bag with a spoon.  Yes, I said bran.  Straight, plain, granulated BRAN.  I had to bribe her with pudding just to remove it, and even then, it required some effort.  I was pretty sure it wouldn’t hurt her, but I didn’t want to be present when all that fiber started taking affect.  (And since I was the only one home, there was no escaping that inevitability.)  All was calm and quiet in the Johnston house until just before midnight Thursday night.  At that point, BG woke up severely vomiting, proving the old adage - "too much of a good thing isn't good."  It would seem that when you eat that much bran, it doesn’t even act as normal fiber.  Your body just wants it out – immediately.  I’ll spare you the details but for the next 6 hours, we nodded off, woke up, cleaned up, changed clothes and repeated the cycle.  While I have never done so before, it was so bad, I joined her out of sympathy a couple of times.  (Or maybe that was smell, not sympathy.  Either way, it wasn’t pretty.)  

Poor David came home from his business trip and spent the weekend doting on people.  Call me immature, but I milked it.  I took him up on his offer to finish the laundry and bed remaking.  I let him take us out to dinner and take BG to the park Sunday so I could nap.  Unfortunately, not to be outdone, Brynna pulled out all the stops on her “I Missed My Daddy Because I Love Him So Much” show.  Audiences in the DC metro area are still discussing her performances at eating and shopping establishments. 

So...Will I say I love my husband yet again?  Yes.  Will I say I won’t milk it again next time I have the chance?  I can’t make promises I can’t keep…

Growth Track

I read something the other day that stuck with me.  An author of best-selling relationship books was giving the secrets to sex and marriage.  “The myth in marriage is that two people become one,” she said. “Couples who allow each other to grow separately, I believe, have a better shot at growing together over the long haul.”  Now I’m not going to base an opinion about a person or her entire philosophy on one isolated quote.  I agree that we are better for each other when we are two whole, healthy individuals as opposed to a co-dependent or otherwise unbalanced relationship.  My agreement pretty much ends there, though.

People misunderstand “oneness.”  It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have your own thoughts and opinions.  It doesn’t mean you can’t have your own iTunes account or belong to a different gym than your spouse.  It doesn’t even mean you have to agree on everything.  It does mean that in order to truly grow, you are going to have to give up a little of yourself, take on a little of your partner and both of you leave some things behind. 

I have close friends who have tried it both ways.  They functioned according to the standard this well-meaning author proposes, and they found themselves married, yet not growing. We sat down across a table one weekend and I asked them this question: “When you think about your marriage and the future, do you see yourselves as walking side-by-side on parallel tracks?  Or do you see yourselves, hand-in-hand, walking together.”  The husband asked for clarification.  He didn’t see the difference in the two scenarios.  I explained that walking on parallel tracks doesn’t require much growth.  There’s no major sacrifice or life change.  You decide to marry someone, and as long as his track runs parallel to yours, all is well.  But being on separate tracks means one very big thing: you aren’t tethered to each other.  If, at some point, one track begins to veer away from the other, that’s just “part of growing apart.”  I would argue, though…that’s not growing.  That’s changing, yes.  But it doesn’t take much growth to do what you want to do.  The second of the two scenarios left my friend silent for a very long time.  He pondered, thought and contemplated what it would mean to be on the same track.  It wasn’t such an easy picture, and it took him time to wrap his mind around that.  Walking hand-in-hand with someone means that at some point, she’s going to want to go right, you’re going to want to go left and a decision will have to be made.  One track means you can’t veer off.  You are connected.  Good, bad, scary or fun…you are going in the same direction. 

After spending a little time on separate tracks, my friends have learned the penetrating peace of becoming one.  She’s still very much the strong, independent woman she’s always been.  He’s still the fun but quiet strength we all love about him.  But she’s sacrificed a little independence to allow him room to lead.  He’s learned that giving voice to his thoughts means he doesn’t have to navigate them alone.

Walking the same track – becoming one – takes growth.  You can’t be selfish and walk the same track for long.  It takes sacrifice.  It takes compromise.  It takes grace and mercy, love and forgiveness.  Those are not traits that come natural.  You have to grow into them.  And that’s why so many marriages end in divorce.  That’s why we spend millions of dollars a year on books that make us feel good about walking on separate tracks. 

Growth hurts.  It’s sometimes hard.  And like most difficult things…it’s worth it.

A Beautiful Child's Mind

I see the world in a whole new way when I look at it as Brynna does.  Kids make sense of the things we struggle with.  Children find simple what we complicate.  Oh, the lessons we could learn if we stop talking and just listen to their minds work...

• Make sacrifices for others - Brynna is potty-trained but still wears a pull-up for nap and bedtime. She got home from school the other day and went to use the bathroom.  When she called desperately for me to come help, I found her struggling to get her pants down.  She was still wearing the pull-up from nap time and had panties on UNDER the pull-up.  I asked what she was doing; she knows better than that.  She said, "Mom, I just needed my panties on like this.  Minnie Mouse wanted to be close to me."
• You can never be too cautious - Brynna had her doll with us recently and we had to stop for a potty break.  I explained that Baby Doll wasn't big enough use the toilet but could sit on my lap while she waited.  Brynna looked at me with all seriousness and said, "Mommy, do you even know how to be careful with a baby?"
• Lend a helping hand -   After the above-mentioned trip to the restroom, Brynna picked up her baby and said, "Oh, it's ok.  I know.  I'm here."  (Apparently in those 37 seconds, I had done severe damage for which she needed to compensate.)  Then she turned to me and said, "Ok, Mommy, it's your turn.  Now, let me help you.  It's for big kids, so I'll have to put you on the potty."
• Think outside the box - I picked Brynna up from school the other day and Ms. Pat informed me that she'd been discussing my work with her friend Kate.  Brynna told them that her mommy sells houses.  Kate responded, "That's silly.  You can't sell houses.  They don't make boxes big enough to put them in."  When I asked Kate about it, she said, "I guess I could help you.  If you get me a box big enough, I'll decorate it so you can put the house in."

And from a generation a bit older than my little lady...

• Love your spouse.  Be a parent.  Because it matters. - Ed and Lisa Young, our pastors at Fellowship Church, recently did a "Bed-in" where they promoted their new book, Sexperiment, and reached millions of people by spending 24 hours on the roof of the church doing interviews and talking about the importance of having sex God's way.  At one point in the live broadcast, their 4 kids joined them to share their thoughts.  EJ, Laurie, Landra and LeeBeth talked about what it feels like to have their parents so publicly talk about a somewhat embarrassing topic. Rather than being embarrassed, though, 3 of the 4 kids (all young adults) said that seeing their parents work at their marriage makes them feel secure.  It gives them peace to know that they don't have to worry if they'll have a place to come home to.

Oh, the lessons we could learn if we stop talking and just listen to their minds work...

my prince

There are some decisions in life that you make and regret. There are choices made for you and choices you made so independently that even when you wish you could blame someone else, you're left holding the bag.  There are minor, day-to-day, what-shoes-will-I-wear decisions and major, life-altering, who-will-I-wake-up-to-every-morning decisions.  Your choices determine the direction your life will take.  Your decisions shape you.

Our first date (yes, we were babies...)

When I was young, I made a bad decision.  I chose to please another person to my own detriment.  And I paid a high price.  It left me broken, sad and very, very angry.  Months after meeting David for the first time, he told me that he was terrified of me.  "I was pretty sure you hated men," he said.  I did.  As much as I tried to hate him and put him in the category of person who had so hurt me, I realized something was vastly different about David.  He rarely said what he wanted without first learning my opinion.  Even when it was painful, difficult, costly or inconvenient, my needs always came first.  From what I wanted to eat to the ring he eventually put on my finger...I, and everyone around me, knew that I came first.  That's not to say he is a pushover.  He is strong and confident and unshakingly stable.  But he is patient.  And he's never attempted to rush or push me to get his own way.  After we'd been dating awhile and I tried to force him to leave, he said, "Tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, I'll be right here.  You aren't getting rid of me 'til I'm six feet under and unable to follow you."

He was right.  He didn't leave when I got so sick with headaches I couldn't get out of bed.  He didn't leave when I took out my anger on him although he had never been the cause of my pain.  He didn't leave when the wounds inflicted by others threatened to break our marriage.  He stood still.  He waited.  He rubbed my head and sang silly songs he made up.  He held my hand.  He let me lead; he led.

Shortly after we started dating, David started calling me "princess."  It became such a common name that at times, friends and members of our families have accidentally or jokingly referred to me by my nickname.  It began to sum up everything about us.  I'm not a diva and he's not a wimp.  But he fills my plate before his own, and he drives an old Tahoe so I can drive a brand new car.  He honors me.  He sacrifices for me.  He treats me like a princess not because I've earned it or it will benefit him but because he believes I'm worth it.  And in doing so, he's showing our daughters what it means for a man to love a woman.  He's being an example of the kind of love they deserve.

I didn't know it 32 years ago, but today would change my life.  It was the day God gave the world my prince.  And it's a day I celebrate with gratitude.

What Laryngitis Helps Me Hear

Every time I get sick, it becomes laryngitis.  A sinus infection, the flu or a sprained ankle...somehow, after a matter of days, I have no voice.  Well, I have bits and pieces of a voice - put together they sound something like a cigar lounge singer after a bad night.  It's not pretty.  I have learned after years of dealing with this evil infliction that there is literally only one thing that will speed up the healing process - silence.

Now, while silence may be readily achieved by some - hunters, fishermen, mimes - I'm not one of those people.  Asking me not to talk is like telling me to hold my breath for days on end.  I'm either going to fail miserably or pass out.  But I try because as much as I hate not talking, I hate the sexy smoker voice more, and I'm currently on Day 4 of it.  The one benefit of not being able to talk, though, is that all you can do is listen.  One day when I'm older and grayer, I won't remember (or care about) the words I wanted to say this week, but I pray I remember what I heard...

Water splashing in the bathtub
Uncontrollable laughter because the splashes got Daddy wet
Dumdum Deday (I have no idea what that means, but it's Brynna's new favorite sound and she mixes it into every conversation)
A spoon used as a drumstick on the kitchen table
Princess slippers clopping on the hardwood floor
Giggles from under the covers of my bed because someone's playing in "her tent"
Blocks banging on my bathroom floor - I've been told my tile is the best place to build a tower
The squeal that can only mean one thing - the garage door opened and Daddy's home from work
Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star in silly voices
Soft breathing from the ball of blonde hair snuggled under my chin

It's ok not to talk when it helps you really listen...