Gindi Vincent

The Dish on Career, Fashion, Faith, and Family

Faith

The God of the In Between

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Storms speckled the radar map between Knoxville, where we sat in the airport, and Houston, where we hoped to safely arrive later that evening.

I watched the radar like a hawk. The control freak in me willing the storms to adjust themselves out of the way of our little plane. I kept watching even as they loaded us onto the plane in plenty of time to make our arrival time.

The flight attendant got on and said, the flight time will be an hour and 52 minutes once we take off. We will shut the doors in 5 minutes.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Surely the storms weren’t that bad. All was well. Until it wasn’t. Only moments later, a new announcement, same voice. As you may have seen, there are a number of storms. Flight control is determining a new route for the plane. And Houston is limiting the number of flights landing right now. We’ll let you know when we can push back. We expect the new route will be longer.

I called Bray. Told him not to bother picking us up – I had no idea when we’d land. I stayed upbeat and fun for little bit since we were on the way home from our mommy and me trip. But inside, my stomach churned and I worried. We’d already had a bumpy landing into Knoxville and we weren’t facing the storms ahead.

Have you ever had a bumpy landing? On a flight? In life? Has your new route ever been longer?

She and I looked at the radar and selected the route we would have drawn out if we were flying the plane. We only have to go up and around them, she announced with a smile. Look!, and her finger traced the route north of Knoxville, into Arkansas, and down to Texas.

We took off one hour later.

The ride was surprisingly smooth. They never did announce what route they selected. Or how long the flight would be. And then, just like that, we started to descend.

We looked out the window and saw this brilliant yellow light. Thin clouds above and storm clouds below. The piercing yellow and white beams lighting up the in between.

My breath caught. It’s like I could hear Him saying, I’m here in the in between. I’m God enough to light up this space between the storms.

And we landed. Wheels touching down 40 minutes after our scheduled arrival. I don’t have any idea how that happened.

But what stayed with me was the image. The reminder. That I serve a God of the in between.

I’ve been in a different kind of storm lately. And to be honest, I haven’t much wanted to find out how God wanted me to handle it or move through it. In fact, my Godly best friend gave me sage advice last week, and I gave her an honest reply. I hear you, and I know that’s probably what God would want me to do, but I’m just not at all interested in doing that right now.

This weekend, I was up a lot in the middle of the night. The baby spiked a huge fever and I was up with cold cloths and Tylenol and his inhaler. Now, right before school is going to start, I questioned in my sleep deprived thoughts.

But my mind went back to this image. The in between.

We sat in the urgent care yesterday. His feverish body curled up and dozing in my arms. Tests turned up nothing. Probably a virus, the doctor advised, and you just have to wait it out. The in between.

Driving to work in the still dark hours this morning, I stewed in my thoughts. On a lark, I changed the radio from NPR to KSBJ, our local Christian music station. Normally, if I’m not voxing friends on my commute, I catch up on the news or podcasts. But it wasn’t what I needed this morning.

A song came on:
I’m gonna sing, in the middle of the storm
Louder and louder, you’re going to hear my praises roar,
Up from the ashes, hope will arise
Death is defeated, the King is alive!
I raise a hallelujah, in the presence of my enemies
I raise a hallelujah, louder than the unbelief…
I raise a hallelujah, heaven comes to fight for me (Bethel Music)

The God of the in between.

Tears pricked my eyes as I turned the music up louder and sang as a fight song.

Those in between seasons are tricky. Sifting and uncertain. Maybe there will be bumps or maybe there won’t. Maybe there will be delays or maybe there won’t (although there probably will). Storms waging and breaking. Darkness seeping in and light pushing it back.

Those of us who struggle daily between faith and control wrestle with how to behave in those times. God knows what is going to happen but we still sit, with our little human radar, willing the storms to move a certain direction or trying to telepathically instruct the pilot on the best route to take through them.

The in between. The place between where you left and where you’re going. The place between the storm and the clearing. It’s in that place you can really find God, or you can leave Him.

I decided this morning I was going to find Him. And I would do this week differently than I did last week. And in the between, in the mystery and uncertainty, I’d let God pilot through this storm.

I raise a hallelujah, with everything inside of me
I raise a hallelujah, I will watch the darkness flee
I raise a hallelujah, in the middle of the mystery
I raise a hallelujah, fear you lost your hold on me!

You Got This!

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You got this!!!

You hear it shouted from the bleachers at kids games.

The words waft out of car windows during school drop off.

They echo as you walk through a roller rink, try outs, or gymnastics meet.

I hadn’t really paid that much attention to the words until recently. 

Not only have they become ubiquitous (much like I know, right?, to my chagrin), they also become the topic of conversation in my kitchen.

My husband, who doesn’t regularly offer his philosophical ponderings, lit into this phrase.  

Fresh off one of the kids games, he heard you got this over a dozen times. 

What if they don’t ‘got this,’ he asked me. 

And thus launched a vigorous discussion on modern parenting philosophies.

He and I will be the first to admit we get the parenting gig wrong all the time.  We try hard and sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. 

But on this point we see completely eye to eye, at times to our children’s dismay. 

While it is critically important to speak words of affirmation into your child’s life (and everyone’s for that matter), if affirmation is all they hear then they will never have a realistic perspective of their strengthens and weaknesses. 

They don’t always ‘got this.’

If they don’t study hard for the test, then they don’t ‘got this.’

When they fail to practice every day for their recital, then a peppy ‘you got this’ will not spare them embarrassment on stage.

If they don’t have a talent for singing, running, juggling (insert whatever “thing” here), then blindly encouraging them with a ‘you got this’ won’t help one bit. 

We’re coming off of baseball/softball season.  We absolutely congratulate the kids for hard fought victories and fantastic plays, but we also discuss areas for improvement around the table.  You’ve got to call the ball before trying to catch it.  You need to practice your pitching more and warm up before the game.  Don’t let the pressure of the last inning mess with your head. 

One of our kids in particular says, Why can’t you just be more like so-and-so’s parent?  (You know, the one who only says good things regardless of the effort put in or results achieved…)

I’m a words girl and an optimist, so I’m a huge believer in speaking life-giving messages into your kids.  But you can do that while also providing constructive criticism that makes them stronger and better and more committed to improvement. 

This is just tackling this sentiment on the parenting front. 

If you evaluate this on any deeper level, then you realize it’s also fundamentally theologically wrong. 

We, that is humans, don’t ‘got this.’

We muck it up all the time!

And we’ve mucked it up all the time since the beginning of time.

Wars and lies and greed and addiction and envy and arrogance and infidelity and hypocrisy and depravity.

You have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself because you do the same things. (Romans 2)

There is no one who does good, not even one. (Psalm 14)

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3)

The good news, on the parenting front as well as the theological one, is that God’s got this.

We got nothin’.

But God’s got everything.

You are the God in Heaven. You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. Power and might are in your hand and no one can withstand against you. (2 Chron. 20)

He is before all things and in him all things hold together. (Col. 2)

So my kids won’t hear their parents yelling you’ve got this from the stands. We’ll encourage them. And also challenge them when they aren’t putting in the effort. But hopefully most we’ll remind them that we put in the work and do our best, but God’s the one who’s ‘got this.’

Back to Where I Started

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I hadn’t paid much attention to where we were going when I signed up to volunteer. 

Every year, the company selects a charity for our team to support with man hours.  I’ve painted and sorted and hauled and cleaned and stocked and organized.  It’s been similar activity in assorted geographic areas across the Houston metropolitan area.  

Because I love this “Day of Caring,” I sign up when I get the email and then block my calendar accordingly.  After that, I don’t give it much thought. 

So Friday morning, I didn’t even look at the notes in the email, I just plugged the address into my phone.  Kuykendhal Road.  A road familiar to me. 

After my parents divorce, my mom moved my brother and I to Houston to move in with my grandparents.  We had nothing, our belongings had been thrown away, and we arrived without even a car.  Mom qualified for food stamps which we used to help support my grandparents feed us while my mom job hunted.  After a few months of odds and ends work, a church member donated a car to us and she got a teaching job far away.  We moved into a neighborhood in northwest Houston not far from this address now typed into my map app. 

I drove north, then east, and began driving down FM 1960, right past my old neighborhood and school and shopping mall.  The area had aged poorly.  When I pulled into the address on my phone, the location had definitely seen shinier days. 

Then I blinked and looked at the sign again. 

I knew that name. 

You see, we had been here before. 

Rewind to the late 1980s and that difficult period after the divorce happened.  When we had a car that got five miles to the gallon and we got notices our electricity would be shut off and I wore my mom’s friends (generous) hand-me-downs to class. 

My mom would come here and this very agency provided us assistance.  Bags of food when things got too tight. 

I walked upstairs to the group orientation.  The group being the world’s largest oil company’s law department.  Where I worked. 

The CEO came in to thank us for our support. 

As he left, I slipped out and followed him. 

Excuse me, I reached out to tap his arm, I just wanted to share my story.  You see, back in the late 1980s, this very place helped our family.  It helped my mom get back on her feet after a particularly painful and poverty-inducing divorce. 

I had no intention of crying, but the tears leaked out anyways. 

So it’s particularly meaningful for me to be here today, to help, however I can. He was gracious and thanked me for sharing my experience. 

I went to work in the clothing donation center.  I sorted and hung hundreds and hundreds of items of clothing with a colleague.  After seeing the donations, I won’t ever donate my own items the same way.  Never donate something so worn you wouldn’t wear it.  But also don’t donate items with school or company names, they can’t use it for safety reason.  Nothing with stains.  Or smoke odor.  A few items I put aside to take home and wash and re-donate because they were nice items which just needed to be cleaned. 

I was reminded of what it was like to wear the hand-me-downs.  And the amazing team at the charity reminded us their job is to make sure everyone leaves with dignity and respect.  From shopping for clothes and food, to receiving financial and job assistance, this team wanted people to believe in their worth and value. 

Sounds a lot like Jesus. 

That 8th grader who was oh so embarrassed her mom needed help wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told her that she’d be a lawyer for a global energy company, married with three kids, and ready to head off to China for work.  She couldn’t have imagined coming back as a volunteer thirty years later.  I can tell you now, I would not have been able to see any of it. 

But that was my story.  And everyone’s story looks different.  No one’s is a happily ever after tied with a pretty bow.  But there are verses of redemption and restoration and reinvestment. 

I’m glad I didn’t know where I was going.  Friday morning or in 1987.  I’m glad God’s taking me, and has taken me, where He did and how He did.  Friday morning and in 2019. 

Verse for 2019

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Last month, I was teaching the story of Noah at my work bible study. I’ve heard the children’s tale since I was a toddler. But in preparing to teach, I really dug in.

Noah had never seen rain. He was far from an ocean. Then God came to him and told him to build a boat bigger than any football stadium you’ve seen, gather two of every single kind of animal, and watch the unthinkable happen. He worked on this unlikely God command for a hundred years. It made no sense and people thought this “one righteous” man had lost his mind.

Do you know, after Genesis, Noah is mentioned over and over? Ezekiel writes of his (and Daniel’s and Job’s) righteousness. 2 Peter talks about how he was a preacher of righteousness. But my in favorite, Hebrews 11, he is named in the faith hall of fame. It begins:

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

And goes on: By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family.

I was thinking about this faith as I saw friends’ “word of the year” pop up in my feed. I’m not really a word of the year girl. But as 2018 kicked my butt (along with so many of my friends and family), I wanted to spend some time in consideration over what I hope 2019 will bring.

Fewer challenges? Less whiplash? Certainty?

No. That wasn’t it.

What then?

In addition to other struggles that I and those close to me have faced this year, the last half has been littered with personal health challenges. I’m a healthy person. Low blood pressure, great cholesterol, no big risk factors, etc. Things started acting up in August. I thought it was a respiratory infection and doctors treated it accordingly.

By October, there were lots of unrelated symptoms. Searing shoulder pain. Headaches. Abdominal pain. Trouble breathing. Leg cramping and feet tingling. Chest pressure. First I was diagnosed with pneumonia and pleurisy. After serious medications but limited improvement, I started seeing specialists.

Along the way, assorted things popped up. They found a new lump in my breast. Panic. Turned out to be another innocuous cyst. Relief. An endless female cycle. Panic. They found minimal ovarian growths. Relief. Cardiologist. Panic. All clear. Relief. Gastroenterologist needed to explore with an endoscopy. Panic. Just a case of gastritis. Relief.

Then I saw the neurologist. The headaches were bad, and I don’t historically have them. She thought it might be vitamin deficiency (which it is as well) but she ran a brain MRI to rule things out. Then she called. Could you please come in tomorrow? We’ve found a cyst pressing on your brain stem.

Panic.

So Bray and I sat there two weeks ago, looking at a big black mass in my head. Cyst not tumor. Maybe pushing my brain stem. MRI with contrast made it look less dangerous. And our meeting with the neurosurgeon last week informed us it was an arachnoid cyst that might not need to be operated on if it wasn’t growing. Another scan next month to figure it out.

Relief.

And unknown.

Would I need brain surgery in February? It’s a straightforward procedure but as the surgeon said, still it’s brain surgery. If not, then what of all these symptoms? Am I back to square one?

Uncertainty. Whiplash.

Which brings me back to Noah. And faith.

Confidence in what we hope for.

Assurance about what we do not see.

When he was warned about things not seen, he acted in holy fear. Anyways. Despite the things that he could see. Which clearly contradicted the not seen things he was being told.

I don’t think I will select a word this year. But I am going to select a verse for 2019. Plus I would really love to memorize Hebrews 11 this year. Go give it a read. If that’s not a wake up call for all of us in working out our own faith, then I don’t know what is.

So 2019, I offer you Hebrews 11:1:

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

The Christmas Card

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I love Christmas cards.

It is a great delight to design our card each year.  I plan a photo shoot in advance, coordinating outfits and trying to create variety from year to year.

I also love receiving Christmas cards.  This year brought a bushel. Families from down the street or from cities decades in my past. Young and old. Big and small.

I know we used to send those Christmas cards and letters with nary a photo to be had, but I love the pictures. I think three of my 100+ cards this year came without a photo. New babies, graduations, weddings, and even the families missing a member this year, this is how see the milestones from the families from across my lifetime.

We hang them around the family room door frame, inside and out, until we run out of room, and then we put them in a sleigh on the kitchen counter.

Then, it comes time to clean up the Christmas décor. I never know what to do with all these beautiful cards. But, aside from immediate family, they typically go in the trash can. And no more smiling faces until after Thanksgiving the next year.

I wondered how to do it differently this year. How could we remember these families all year round?

This is what I landed on: Keep the cards and pray for the families.

One small way to remember those in our life and also to teach the kids how to truly pray for others.

So, beginning tomorrow, we’ll begin this experiment. I will be the first to admit my New Year’s ideas sometimes lose steam as we move into the year. Like eating. Or doing family projects. Etc.

However, my work out project that started in January of 2018 is still going strong thanks to my neighbor and dear friend who I work out with.

More on my spending project tomorrow that my best friend and I are tackling.

Here’s how I’m going to try and make this work.

We collected all our Christmas cards and put them in a big bag. That bag will hang from our art/game shelf next to the kitchen table. Every Sunday night (except this week as it starts on a Tuesday), we will select three families. With well over 100 cards, it’s the only way we’ll get through everyone this year.

Three seemed to be a good number because each triplet will have primary responsibility for one of the families.

Every night, we’ll pray for each family member by name in our bedtime prayers. And that week, each triplet will select one family and write them a note to let them know they are in our prayers for the week. Something short, so that it’s sustainable: We wanted to drop you a note this week to let you know that your family is in our prayers all week long. We’ve been looking at your Christmas card and praying for each of you. We hope you have a wonderful week!

Whatever the kids decide to say is what it will ultimately look like, but one of them still needs a little help with spelling so we’ll use some type of format.

Of course, as family members and friends have needs, they always go into our prayers. But this will help us focus on those who we might not remember to pray for during the year. Plus, if my life is any indication, those prayers can often come at an indispensable time because God is just like that.

If you ended up with an extra Christmas card, and didn’t happen to send us one this year, you can still drop it in the mail and we’ll add your family to our bag.

I have high hopes for my various goals for 2019, but this one is at the top.

Praying your 2019 is more than you could have asked or imagined.