What is Beautiful: Holy Conferencing

(written last Monday; two days after NC's Annual Conference ended)

This was my 4th Annual Conference.  Unlike others, I did not attend them until I had to.  And it was beautiful.  It was the Church being the Church.  It was not perfect.  There were a few problems with the opening communion service.  We went almost four hours the second day without a break and rescheduled the flash mob and rescheduled the picnic.  I struggled in the hotel room with my 9 month old.  I struggled with running into friends I hadn't seen in months while running an urgent errand and having to discern on the spot just how urgent it was.  As a body, we debated many things.  A couple votes were very close.  We listened to each other, to our elderly and to our youth.  We remembered the dead and sang "Hymn of Promise."  We honored the retirees and sang "Great is Thy Faithfulness."  Unlike previous years, the local pastors were licensed during the final worship service, combined with commissioning and ordination.  As a licensed local pastor not yet commissioned, I really appreciated it.  And as a young clergy person and someone still in the middle of that process, I felt as though Bishop Hope's words were directed at me, too.  "We're betting the farm on you!"  "You're good news!"  Earlier that morning with Bishop Goodpastor (of the Western NC Conference) and June Atkinson (State Superintendent of Public Instruction), I heard the best John Wesley quote ever: (paraphrased)

JW to some of the early Methodists: Go work among the children.
Some early Methodists: But we have no gift for this.
JW: Then you have no call to be Methodist. 

Two other fun notes related to my daughter at Annual Conference:

I was amused that she was in some of the pictures shown at the Hispanic/Latino Ministries Luncheon - and she's now in pictures of the luncheon! (http://nccumc.org/hispanic/)

I completely forgot to pack college paraphernalia for myself, much less Isabel, for the picnic celebrating higher education.  So, I borrowed a Duke shirt from my sister, who, unthinkingly, dressed Isabel in light blue.  We ran into many folks who commented on our two different shades of blue!  (For readers unfamiliar with NC universities, light blue is the color of Duke's biggest rival, UNC.)

"Go Be a Mom"

(written June 14, 2013 from my hotel room during Annual Conference after my child went to sleep for the night)

On Wednesday, the worship committee chair dismissed me from further duty that day by saying, "Go be a mom."  I cannot be a mom in isolation.  Not in the sense that I need a child to be a mom, but I cannot mother my child by myself.  It is not that a village raises a child as much as the village, the community, enables the parents to raise the child.  Enables, empowers, helps, resources.  I cannot be a mom by myself.  Not to discount my husband at all, simply that I spend more one-on-one time with our child and I have developed a sense of awe for single parents.  I don't know how they do it, unless they have a great support network of family and friends.  I cannot mother by myself, and I imagine neither can most others.  I need the support of my husband, my mother, my sisters, my best friends, the church, neighbors, and even strangers at a restaurant who will temporarily distract her from her fussiness when I'm struggling at it.  I need people I trust to allay my self-doubt and time and again reassure me that I'm a good parent, that I am doing what is best for her and for me.  I need a community in order to be a parent.  Not only has my appreciation of single parents grown, my understanding of another reason why extended families all used to live together - and still do in some cultures - has expanded.  When there are many adults, the burden is lighter, the responsibility is easier.  When aunts and uncles and grandparents and older cousins and siblings are around all the time, parenting is shared.  The week at the beach with my extended family was the easiest week of being a mom in 9 months, simply because it wasn't always me and it was rarely just me.  Being a mom is hard when it's just me.  Sometimes it feels downright impossible as I look at my child amid whatever mess we're in and don't know where to start cleaning it up.  I need the wisdom of others, even if they repeat back to me things I used to know.  I need the reassurance of others that I am making the best choices.  "Go be a mom" could not happen without many, many others.  If you are one of them, please accept my gratitude, from the bottom of my heart, and do not tire of enabling all of us parents to be parents.