A Light In the Shade

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind,

and your neighbor as yourself.
Luke 10:27 (ESV)

 

This is the story of how a fine Italian espresso machine brought me (without the use of caffeine) back to life…

But before I get there, we need to reeee-wind to March 13th 2014.  My inaugural week of writing.  I posted a simple blog : Stop Trying To Be A Bush Already.  Sometime later, this became the first of only a small handful of blogs I’ve ever re-shared.  When I think about “heatheryoderwrites”, the headline picture from that particular story is what I see.  Because, more than any other topic, what’s paramount is my desire to be authentic, even when it’s uncomfortable.

In that blog, from the safety of my sofa in Munich, Germany, I wrote about some of the off-the-wall desires of my heart which – in many cases, thankfully – didn’t play out as expected.  But I’d forgotten about this particular sentence:

“I planned to live in Pittsburgh and raise my 2 little girls, living somewhere just off of Walnut Street.”

For the record, I love my two little boys with the kind of fierce abandonment that would scare me if it weren’t so completely wonderful, but the comfy place from where I’m writing now, just 20 months later is HERE:

Once a small-minded, wide-eyed girl, I’ve now seen enough to know how massive the world truly is, and against all odds, I am EXACTLY “living somewhere just off of Walnut Street.” (mind blown)

Our new neighborhood is called “Shadyside”.  A perfectly lovely name, don’t you think?

The Google dictionary describes the word Shady this way:

• shad·y – situated in or full of shade. “they sprawled under a shady carob tree”

And that’s how I see it: Breezy trees, porch swings, boutiques and cafes.

Point in Case:  A month before we closed on our new house, we met a couple at a party one hour away from Pittsburgh.  We ladies hit it off instantly.  While getting to know one another, exchanging stories, as you do, I discovered, they’d also traveled an hour that day… from Shadyside.  Coincidence?  (wait for it)  They don’t just live near our new home.  We share a backyard fence.  We can wave to each other while cooking dinner.

That fast friendship led this beautiful woman to throw us a fabulous welcome-to-the-neighborhood party:

Shadyside, ahhhh.

But, not so fast…  There’s also the Urban Dictionary, and they have a slightly different spin on the term “Shady”:

• shad·y – Shifty, sly, supicious, dark, low, low-profile. “The shady looking man slipped into the bar.”

Point in Case:  Cue my other neighbors.  The house directly beside me has people who live in it.  Surely.  I’ve never actually seen them, let alone spoken to them (i.e. no exchange of fresh baked goods when we moved in 3 months ago).  But their other next door neighbors certainly have.  And so have the cops.  And probably the people who witnessed the signing of the restraining orders between the two.

They “share” this breezeway.  Clearly, there have been some issues with touching(?).

What on earth is going on?  Here I am, smack dab in the middle of God’s unexpected call for my life, where I keep hearing… “Be a light in the Shade.”  But–I’ll be honest–I don’t know how to do that.

That’s about the time when they drove up.

See, we have this new coffee grinder and espresso machine that should have people paying a latte tax to enter our home.  But we’ve been struggling to, ahem, unlock its full value.  It’s the kind of thing that requires a training course.  And, after a month of nearly dying from caffeine withdrawal, we called in reinforcements.  Thankfully, I have a perfectly wonderful friend who does many things well, and I knew coffee was a back-pocket speciality of his.  And he and his family gave up an afternoon to bring the science of a fine tuned coffee grinder and marshmallow-like mountains of frothed milk.  Lessons in survival.  It couldn’t have come at a better time.

As we sat around our table, sipping espresso crema that made my knees weak, while eating the most incredible snicker doodles of my (read: anyone’s) life, my sleepy soul began to stir.

The caffeine, however good it felt, wasn’t the key stimulant of the day, however.

This was: our friends asked if they could share some things the Lord had put on their heart for myself and Steve.  Apparently, dark roast wasn’t their only mission today.  While they spoke, words fell on plowed ground, settling in deep and taking quick root:

God is asking you in this season to ‘Be’.  Don’t try to ‘Do’.  Be who you naturally are and let Him do the rest.  He’s brought you here, to this place, because you’ve been in the trenches (over and over) and those seasons proved your hearts’ faithfulness.  Now is the time to Be what He formed in you through those hard-fought battles.  

There was more.  Much more.  The kinds of things that exposed the buried cares of my heart.  Proof our Father really does UNDERSTAND all of it.  I’m still smiling that it was delivered through the tender hearts of friends bearing barista know-how and cookies.  Only in Shadyside.

…I “happen” to live just off Walnut Street.  Here, some mark their territory with graffiti and others throw parties for near strangers.  Houses filled with everything from the cultured to the crotchety; broke college students to tenured Professors; authentic wine cellars to recovering alcoholics; couples surviving cancer to those struggling with adultery.

Too often, in an effort to allow others to fully be who they are, we suppress who we are.  But that isn’t working – not for you, not for them.  Time for a new approach.  

We’re the Yoder’s, and we’ve cooked up our own batch of crazy.  But we love God in that deep whole-hearted kind of way that just might burst light beams from the chimneys, if we let Him.

I plan to “BE” here.  Imperfectly, generously, wholeheartedly, just BE.  And, to be clear, it isn’t as easy as it sounds, but it’s a whole lot more straight forward than the other things I’ve been trying.

The question at hand?  Where do you “live” and what are you DOING there instead of BEING?  Try this:

Be honest.

Be bold.

Be gentle.

Be strong.

Be humble.

Be confident.

Be.

Whoever you are, right now, BE THAT for the Father.  I forgot how effective it is.  This weekend was a reminder I needed desperately.  I thought perhaps you might, too.  If only I, too, could deliver snicker doodles with it.  Well, that’s OK, you know where to find me… and, finally, a good latte.

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A dedication:

I’m thankful to you, Micah and Shannon, for being an example on how to “Be” well.  And for breathing some life back into my caffeine-deprived bones.  You can’t know what a change you’ve made.

And, you, Kelsi, thank you for walking me through a rather sketch weekend in Shady-ville, and making me laugh about the difference between the cool breezy shade and the kind from which you want to run far far away.  😉 I’m figuring it out.