I know, it’s still September, but I wanted to break the silence for just a bit and tell you about the fun we had at the STORY Conference in Chicago last week. I’m going to do it by showing you one of my favorite photos from the event.

This one was taken on the second morning of STORY. (I love the second morning for some reason.) I had talked Serenity into volunteering with me on the Greeters Team – a great gig which basically involves free t-shirts and lots of smiling. When asked why I volunteer at an event I paid to attend, I always answer in basically the same way, “I’m the type of person who needs to know where things are and how things work so I can help people when they need it. I might as well do it in an official capacity.” Seren was glad I made her do it, especially after one morning session when our team leader, Luke, called her over to stand beside him just in time for Sean Astin to brush past her elbow. Like I said, it’s a good gig.

Beside me in the photo is Sarah Cunningham. She is the girl in the know for all things STORY and she is a dream to work with. If you have interest in joining the team at all, drop her a line at sarah[at]storychicago[dot]com. This is one of the best parts of STORY: the relationships. Sometimes it seems like we look forward to the lunches with new friends (thanks John, Guy, and Joy!) or unexpected conversations in the hallways (can’t wait to talk more, Stephen!) as much as we do the speakers from the stage. We are the kind of people who get each other, and it helps to hang out in one place for a few days. Read Seren’s take on that here.

And speaking of the speakers. Wow. We started out with Ed Dobson (see previews of his short film series here) and ended with Ian Cron (see some video of him speaking here) and everything in between was pure brilliance. A highlight was, as we all expected, Sean Astin, especially because he came across as so genuine and made us feel like we’re only one good role or script or recording away from being in his shoes. He didn’t take himself too seriously, but he also recognized the privilege of being part of great storytelling. Sometimes the person whose name really draws people to an event turns out to be a bit of a dud. Not in this case. Astin delivered on every count. He was definitely the best part. Although Cron spoke an Episcopalian blessing over us to close the conference and that was pretty intense as well. And Kyle Cooper opened his talk with the entire prologue from Henry VIII . . .  So maybe picking a best part it too difficult.

Back to the photo. See the orange/burgundy strap of my new Nolan Bag? This is a handmade messenger-style tote that every attendee was given, and each one was an original. Nolan himself (well, I’m not sure that’s his name, but he’s a real 18 year-old guy with a big dream) was there in lobby (right behind where we’re standing, actually) on a sewing machine churning out new designs! This boutique feel is what you get at STORY. Famous author Ted Dekker spoke in the Art Gallery during one break and took questions from us as if we were sitting in his living room. Stuff like that happens at STORY.

Oh, and one more thing. There is no sign of it in the photo, but STORY announced a new and exciting project this year. Ben Arment and his team have a dream to make a feature length film about the story of David and Goliath. Their growing team includes the Dot&Cross group that produced Rob Bell’s popular Nooma video series. Quality work. One thing I can promise you from this team is a quality product. This film will be well executed; you won’t be embarrassed to show it to your friends. In fact, we’re banking on the fact that you WILL want to show it to your friends. STORY is pursuing a whole new approach to funding and asking the Church to help by pre-purchasing a premiere of the movie over the weekend of October 12-14, 2012. You can host in your own living room or host a huge screening at your church or other public venue. Check out the website and consider getting behind the dream. It isn’t conventional. It won’t be easy. But, as I recently read from Andy Crouch, “it is better to create something worth criticizing than to criticize and create nothing.”

If any of this appeals to you, check out the pre-registration page for next year. See you in Chicago in September 2012!

P. S. The coffee cup? That might have been actually been my favorite part. Dan makes a mad cup of french press coffee. Since he booked us in a condo for the weekend, we were able to share the space with 6 of our friends and family members for a much lower price than a hotel. It also had way more charm and meant we could make our own coffee each morning and well as decompress each evening in the quiet and style of a Chicago flat. My husband is awesome.

It’s going to be a busy one. But what month isn’t these days?

Still, I have a few specific things that I need to focus on this month so I probably won’t post here much.

Want to think of me and direct your thoughts as prayers?

• I’m taking the GRE (a standardized test for college graduates) this month for upcoming graduate school applications. I’ve heard you should study for this one.
• I’m attending STORY, as usual. I’m looking forward to the creative experience as well as some free time in Chicago.
• I’m watching my son play 5th/6th grade football. I love football. I love my son. I’m wondering how much I’m going to love my son loving football? Probably a lot.

I guess that should do it for now.

Feel free to fill the comments with your best study tips, but please refrain from leaving stories about how someone you know broke all his precious bones in a Pop Warner football game. Anything else is fine.

P.S. Also take a second to click on the World Vision button over there –>. There’s a famine going on in Africa, but there’s enough food in our world to go around. Consider sending some help.

We sang this one yesterday. Much like my Sandi Patty experience with “We Shall Behold Him,” this one reminds me of the reality we’re longing for.

I have unexplained cravings and longings in this life. Most of us do. When we’re single we think getting married will fulfill the longing. But then we think maybe a baby will do it. Then, maybe if we could just get these kids grown and out of the house! We’re always looking for more. It’s the feeling that what we’re experiencing is not all there is. There must be more.

Marilyn Meberg says this is actually our longing for God that won’t be fulfilled until we are with Him in eternity. And that can sound lame or too easy unless you’ve tasted a bit of it when someone sings a song or you read a verse in the Bible or a friend speaks just the right word of encouragement. Once in a while we feel satisfied. That’s a taste of Heaven. It goes away quickly, but you can’t forget how good it tasted even if it only lasted a moment.

I know this is true when I hear and sing songs like this one from Brooke Fraser. It reminds me of a good time I haven’t even had yet but one that will define me forever. I can’t explain it, of course, but it feels like relief. It feels like truth, and so I sing it strong and will it to memory. Because I never want to forget . . .

You’ve heard the one about the ugly duckling, right? Only he wasn’t an ugly duckling at all; he was a swan. It was just that no one knew that until he went through puberty and sprouted bright white feathers. Oh, and when he finally found other birds who looked like him. There’s a lot a person could learn from a story like that.

But when considering a follow-up to the you were Made To Do This post, I couldn’t help but think of a slightly different swan analogy.

This one I’ve seen for myself.

Everyday I drive by a lake that is home to more than one pair of mated-for-life swans. And they are beautiful. Even when they sleep, they gingerly toss their long slender necks onto the top of their fluffy backsides and turn themselves into a floating nap. I try to imagine their black webbed feet paddling furiously underneath the water, but on the surface the motion is calm and efficient. Smooth. Graceful.

A swan gliding across a lake is what you look like when you are doing what you were made to do. It looks effortless and natural.

But have you ever seen a swan walk on land?

It isn’t pretty or graceful. In fact, it is kind of awkward. Tiny feet and short legs compared to those substantial bodies and long necks? It just seems out of proportion.

But you don’t notice the awkward when the swan is in the water, doing what swans do best. You only notice it when the swan is on land, outside of her usual occupations.

This is why I think it’s important to spend time considering what you were made to do. When you do that thing (or things, depending on the seasons), then it looks right. It fits. You are covered with grace. When you step out of those waters, though, walking in a land that might be someone else’s gifiting, you are likely to look and feel a little out of place.

I don’t mean to imply that we don’t sometimes have to do things that are new to us or ocassionally fill positions that don’t seem to put us at our best. Those seasons happen also. But I think those seasons should be fewer and farther between as we mature and figure ourselves out a bit.

Afterall, everyone wants to see the swans swimming; few people care about seeing the swans walking.

You are a swan. Swim.

It is a gift when people identify your strengths for you. This happened to me last week when someone I admire described me as a “great communicator” to someone else. Perhaps it resonated so sweetly because it was something I had recently identified for myself. I enjoy singing, I like to write, but I LOVE speaking to groups of people. I especially love communicating truths intended to inspire hope, change, or action.

Tonight after returning from teaching my Monday night Bible college class, I realized I’ve been compiling a little list lately about this subject. So, here it is.

How Do You Know You Were Made For This?

1. Others recognize it, too. For me it wasn’t just that nice email from last week. It was also the comments I had been hearing more and more often. Not praise for my singing (which I do often) or accolades for my writing (another thing I work on), but friends and family members affirming that they especially enjoyed it when I spoke.

2. It makes you better. Even if you’re tired before, you’re energized afterwards. I usually go into my Monday night classes thinking something along the lines of WHY DO I TEACH ON MONDAY NIGHTS?! But it doesn’t take more than a few minutes for the life to start pumping back into my veins. By the time I finish 3 hours later, I’m so wound up I can’t go to bed.

3. It makes you stronger. Speaking makes me nervous in a useful kind of way. A professional once told me that being nervous was good because you could use it as fuel for a great performance. If you are made to do something, you’ll feel this kind of nervousness. It is almost more of an anticipation.

4. It just works. This is how Dan knows he was made to do live music. He enjoys writing and recording, but he is at his best when he’s playing live. It’s what separates him from other musicians. He’s at the top of his game during a live music set. Other people choke when the pressure is on to play live. Some can’t even imagine having the courage to try it. That’s how Dan knows it’s for him – because he isn’t frozen by those fears. He knows he can do it and do it well.

I don’t think figuring out what you were made to do solves all your identity problems. For example, it still might not pay the bills. But it can point you in the right direction. It can be a go-to in your arsenal of gifts to the world.

Have you identified something you were made to do? What would you add to my list of ways to know?

Jesse recently read Though My Eyes, the Tim Tebow memoir, for his first fifth grade book report. He drafted the report in his near-perfect left-handed penmanship onto notebook paper and then asked to type it up on the computer. He worked diligently for several days.

At one point in his editing, he told me he took out a sentence about Tebow playing baseball as a kid because it just “didn’t have the same idea” as the paragraph where he had put it that was about Tebow’s years playing Pop Warner football. Another time he came dashing up the stairs and lifted the lid of the computer, “I forgot about the John 3:16 story – I have to put that part in!”

I’ve never loved Tim Tebow more. His book has encouraged Jesse’s faith and given him an understanding of the perseverance and hard work required to see dreams come true. It’s been a great book for him to read as his first grown-up selection.

A week or so ago over lunch, my Uncle Rees asked Jesse a great question, “What was your favorite story from the book?” This forced Jess to be specific about what he had read. His answer surprised me.

The stories he had been mentioning to me were exciting. Tebow’s mother had been encouraged to abort him because it appeared that he would have severe birth defects. She wouldn’t do it. (“I think an abortion is when someone kills the baby before it’s born. Why would a mom do that?”) As a high schooler, Tebow, now an NFL quarterback, played defense for two of his four years. During a bowl game in his college career, Tebow painted “John 3:16″ on his eye black. 92 million people googled it afterwards.

But when faced with the question, “What was your favorite story?”, Jesse answered his Uncle Rees like this:

One time Tebow had a bad game and his mom came to him after the game and cheered him up. She always gave him pep talks and encouraged him. His dad taught him how to play the games and how to be tough, but his mom always made him feel better.

That was his favorite story? Be still my beating mother’s heart!

And yet it makes me wonder: Is this the role I take on in his sporting career? I know a lot about football. I love sports in general. I can be that mom shouting out plays and technical advice. But maybe I should be something else. Maybe I should just cheer him on. Just smile and clap and remind him that there is more to life than sports. Maybe with his heart-felt answer, he’s asking me to be something different than what he sees me becoming. (I can get a little intense.)

If you’ve been to a kids’ sporting event lately, you know what I’m talking about.

I’m thankful someone else asked him what his favorite story was from the book and that I was there to hear his answer. It has me re-evaluating my role in his life. In our culture, women are expected to do it all, but maybe that’s not really what our kids want.

Now I’m off to draft my next pep talk. I want to make sure all the sentences fit.

So – to catch you up – I have chosen my sponsor child; I’ve basked in Patsy Clairmont’s sensibility and Andy Andrews’ wisdom; I’ve shouted with Mandisa; What more could I possibly ask for from this Women of Faith event in Omaha, Nebraska?

How about a complete emotional outburst? Yeah, that ought to do it.

It happened when Sandi Patty sang. But let me catch you up.

When I was 8 or 9 years old my parents took me and my sister to a Sandi Patty concert for my birthday. The concert was held in a big auditorium (very likely not as large in reality as it is in my memory). At some point in the concert, Sandi Patty invited all the children in the room to come to the stage and sing with her. Now, this should have been a dream come true. Instead, it was a nightmare realized. I wanted more than anything to go, and yet everything inside of me was glued to my chair. My little sister Serenity pulled at my arms and my parents pushed at my back and somehow I made it down the concrete steps toward the stage. I cried all the way.

Once on stage, I was fine. I have no idea what we sang, but at some point my skin was brushed with the royal blue satin of Sandi Patty’s dress. I was almost touched by Sandi Patty. Life would probably never be the same.

With this memory only growing within our family’s folklore over the years – in fact, my brother swears he was there, which isn’t true at all; he’s just heard the story a million times – imagine my thrill when I saw Sandi Patty on the list of Women of Faith personalities at the Omaha event.

And she was everything I had hoped for: full of life, joyful, and as talented as ever.

She sang several songs at the event, but when the opening bars of “We Shall Behold Him” played through the giant speakers, you could almost feel the air settle into the seats for a better view. I didn’t remember the words, so it was kind of like hearing a hall-of-fame song for the first time – only coming from one of my childhood idols. The combination was potent.

I couldn’t be sure how others were responding, so I tried to hold it together. A few tears. I knew I shouldn’t make eye contact with anyone; that would be the end. Unfortunately at about the same time she sang about the resurrection of the dead, she also invited the section of hearing impaired guests to stand and join her in signing. It was too much. What happened to me was not the pretty tears-streaming-hands-lifted-gracefully-to-the-heavens kind of response. Nope. All I could do was sit and cry and let it all sink in: This is real – this faith we’re practicing – and someday it is all going to make sense. We SHALL behold Him. It’s real.

More crying. Tissue dabbing. Sandi Patty’s notes are soaring. The end is coming and by now I just sort of want to lay down on the floor and sob. I realize I’m not alone. We’re all teary-eyed, probably for various reasons. But this information does not calm me down; it only makes me want to cry more.

I tweeted: “Well, it happened. The ugly cry moment. @SandiPattyP singing “We Shall Behold Him” – No words. #WomenofFaith #wofott”

And the really fun part was that later in the afternoon the event staff read that tweet (among a few others) to the whole room and the cameras panned to Sandi Patty’s face. I watched her smile and nod and laugh in response to the tweet and it was like blue satin all over again. Only grown-up.

Booksneeze bloggers at Women of Faith (Omaha)

Thanks, Booksneeze for the great opportunity. Thanks, Women of Faith for the valuable experience.

Now, who among you can tell me how to pronounce Silindokuhle?

Because he’s still my favorite part. : )