Thursday Night

Hey everyone! 2 things to let you know. 1st - this Thursday night, the 3rd of April, we will be hanging out at McAllister Recreation Center, just off 20th and Schuyler ave, Lafayette. We will be there from 645-800pm and as usual there will be wonderful free activities for youth and kids. 2nd - 2 wks from this Thursday night we will be having one of our super fun outreach nights. On these nights we serve someone in our community. On the 17th we will be helping an older lady clean up her yard in preparation for spring. All kids are welcome! So get out your work gloves and yard tools and keep watching for more info. We will still meet at McAllister, but instead of staying we will drive over to do the outreach. Hoping to see you all soon!

Buckets

It's funny how on work days at 8 am I cannot wait for 5 pm to come. Then at 5 pm I think oh let this next 15 minutes go super slow! Why you question. Well those 15 minutes on my drive home from work are the most peaceful moments of my day. Fifteen minutes of music and prayers. Fifteen minutes till the craziness begins. It is my recharge time. And as I arrive to pick up my much missed kiddos I almost have to say- Ready, set, GO! See having a 7, 6, and 2 year old means never a dull moment, no time to relax. It's Mommy I need this, Mommy can we do a project, Steppy is it time to eat yet, Mommy I need help, Mommy, Steppy, Mom, Mom, Mom! Just going from the car to the house drains me some days. Drew get your bag, Ella close the car door, quit arguing!!! And it's no calmer once in the door. I remind myself deep breaths Mom- remember you overslept this morning and the house was left a mess. The rush begins- pick up, start laundry, fix dinner, go over schoolwork, and entertain 3 wild monkeys at the same time. Ahh- when is Matt going to be home- how I love the days he is off work before me and picks up the kids. Well Tuesday Matt had choir practice so it was just me and the munchkins. I was rushing around gathering laundry from well- EVERYWHERE in my house and my sweet observant stepdaughter made my day. "Steppy I'm only 6, but I know better than Dad where my dirty clothes go!" Gee if she can see this then maybe she can teach miss Lucy who loves to take her clothes and diaper off at random times throwing them anywhere and everywhere as she runs thru the house yelling "I'm nakie!" I giggled and tried to explain Dad knows- but there is a difference in knowing and doing. And if he is helping me with laundry I better not complain where he puts the laundry. Then Ella said the oddest thing- dumbfounded me. "Well Steppy that is because I'm a bucket filler." Now I'm wondering is she talking about the laundry basket???? What does she mean???? Bucket filler??? I think the grin on my face made her giggle. I asked her what she meant and she proceeded to explain that she had learned it at school. It means that if you do something helpful or right you fill the bucket. And when you do the wrong thing or cause a problem you empty the bucket. Hmm- still was not sure what to make of this bucket thing- but I told Ella she was definitely a bucket filler. That little sweetheart is the BEST helper I could ask for. She is just so full of love and always wants to help. Well I couldn't get this bucket thing out of my mind. Made me question am I a bucket filler or emptier? And in what context? Marriage? Friendship? Parenting? Workplace? What about God's bucket? Do I fill it or empty it? Do I share his love or hoard it? Do I follow his direction or chose my own path? Do I trust him or doubt him? When things are bad do I run away or be embraced by God? I can almost hear Jason saying- What would it look like? How would you fill God's bucket? Then I remembered what I told Ella- there is a difference between knowing and doing. Knowing his love is not sharing his love. Knowing his grace is not extending his grace. Knowing his amazingness is not praising it. Wow- life lesson from my 6 year old. See Ella fills God's bucket. She treats everyone with love. She forgives. She praises God in her prayers and actions. She is as Jamie Grace sings " A God Girl- from the top of her head to the soles of her feet." She trusts God even when it is difficult. See when Ella is worried about something you can see it in her eyes but she does not hide from it- she prays. Ella notices God, notices people, notices love. That is how we fill God's bucket. We love. We forgive. We share. We trust. We praise. We notice. Come join us at More Than More. Notice with us. Fill a bucket. We will be meeting Thursday March 6th at 6:45-800 pm at McAllister Recreation Center, just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette. Amazing childcare for all ages is available. And one of the best bucket fillers I know will be encouraging the teens. Don't miss it!

tomorrow

Just a reminder that we will be hanging out tomorrow night, February 20th, 645-800 pm at McAllister Recreation Center, just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette. Hope to see you there.

The fogs...and snows...of life

I had the pleasure this week of being in sunny Florida. Please don't start off your reaction to the post being too mad at me...I know the weather in Indiana has been massively wintery and everyone is sick of it, but I had the chance to go and I went. Try not to hold it against me. We met some friends of ours for dinner one night and ate and laughed late into the night. On our way to dinner, it was a beautiful evening so we were surprised when we got out onto the road for our drive home and found that it was majorly foggy. Like majorly! We were barely able to see the road in places. I drove, white-knuckled, for the 60 miles or so back to where we were staying while Melissa read the map to tell me where a turn was coming - that's how foggy it was(I hate to read the map was her most common saying for the trip...). Did I mention that we had rented a car that is roughly the equivalent of a matchbox car - a Mazda 2. Pretty sure it failed all crash testing they did with it, including the crash testing with Amish horse and buggies! We made it home in one piece and fell into bed. We woke the next morning, ready to get ready to head home to Indiana, with bright sunshine streaming in the windows. I walked out of the bedroom and looked out the windows and it was a clear as you could imagine. Not the slightest hint of fog anywhere! It was gorgeous. We scooted around, cleaning up and getting ready to go, and headed out for the airport - a little over an hour drive away. We were buzzing along in our speedy matchbox when we came to this place where the road goes across water for a couple miles - a super long bridge road - and out of the blue (literally) there was this giant fog bank over the road - we slowed down of course and crept our way across the bridge. One thing I noticed about this fog was that it was much easier to deal with than the fog the night before - because it was daylight and all around the fog, and above it, it was super bright. The fog was still thick, but it was much easier to navigate because of the sunshine. We actually had one more of these odd bridge fog-banks on our way to the airport and on the other side of the road there were multiple accidents we saw - people who had driven into the fog and been shocked by the slow moving car ahead of them... We were glad to make it to the airport after all this, needless to say. We caught our plane. Then connected in Atlanta. Then on to Indiana. Well, I have to tell you the day we landed in Indiana was yesterday, the 4th, at 520 pm. And yes, it was snowing, like crazy. The roads in Indianapolis were a snarl and so we took backroads to Lebanon and caught US52 home. It was terribly hard to see and we saw multiple wrecks and cars in the ditch - one being almost vertical! We crept our way along - the worst being next to and behind semi's - the amount of snow they kicked up was nasty and made it so hard to see I had no idea where I was sometimes! Eventually we did make it home, safe and sound - thankful once again this winter for a big 4x4 truck. So here's the point: Life is a lot like our past 24hrs. Sometimes we are just enjoying life, having fun with our friends, laughing and living and then all of a sudden, totally unexpectedly, we get slammed by some major fog. We can't tell where we are, where we are going, or what the deal is. We are freaking out and we fear for our safety. We hold on tightly to the wheel and try to survive. Our life fogs have names like broken trust, divorce, job loss, foreclosure, addiction, abandonment, abuse, cancer, heart disease, death of those we love - you know them - they mess with our ability to see life clearly - suddenly it is all foggy! Then, seems like we start to clear that mess and we wake up one day and all is clear and sunny and then without warning another massive patch of fog - and we see other people wrecked by it - and then snowstorms and ditches and accidents. We feel the instability and unpredictability of life so painfully! We want it to all be the fun nights with our friends, but it just doesn't work that way. I am sorry to say that at 43 years of age I have yet to find people who do not regularly encounter the fog and snowstorms of life. We all want to avoid them. None of us can. A few things to notice though: First - if we are going to go through the fog and snow anyway, it is much better to go through it with sunshine and a 4x4. What is the sunshine and 4x4? Well, I suppose there are a lot of things that might bring some help in the midst of fog-banks and snow storms, but to me the very best is a group of people who actually care about me and are going roughly the same direction in life as I am. We have this in Morethanmore. We are not fancy people. We are aged from infants to late 70's and represent all different jobs and lives. We do not claim to have all the answers. What we do is journey through life together. And when the fog comes, we do not run away - we are like the marines - we run toward each other. And what I have found in the midst of my fog-banks is that that makes the fog much easier to navigate - it does not make it go away, but it makes it better. Second - if we are going through the fog anyway, we want to become someone new out of it all. Somehow to grow and learn. Maybe even be in a place so that someday we can share some sunshine and 4x4's with someone else in the midst of their fog-banks. We also do this in Mtm. We want to continue to look for ways to become the best people we can be - to make a difference in our world - we are sick of the lip service to caring about other people that we see and hear all around us - we want to actually do it! Now i do not want to paint the wrong picture of what our Mtm times are like. They are light and fun and involve tons of laughter and very little that is serious. But then again meeting people who you might want to journey through fog and snow with is something that is likely to take some time. Mostly we just get together - and the rest happens mostly on its own. No pressure. Now, if are looking for some people to hang with and laugh, to be silly, to begin to look at life differently and maybe to find some people to journey into the fog and snow of life with, you should join us at Mtm. We will be hanging out next tomorrow night, February 6th, 6:45-8:00 PM, at McAllister Recreation Center - just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette. As always there will be fantastic, fun, free and responsible activities for kids and youth. We would love to have you join us!

What to Notice?

Yesterday was a dark day in our community. We gathered around our screens. Large screens and small screens. We texted and waited. We talked to God and listened to reports. Then we were shocked - hurt - afraid - uncertain. We did not look at Purdue quite the same. We did not look at our homes quite the same. We did not even look at ourselves the same way. The questions swirl. The most simple but included in almost all? Why? Times like this make us all question. We are jolted out of our every day existence and we see life differently. We see the people we love differently. Someone I love very much was only feet away from this tragedy. I was tied in knots thinking about her...life without her. I wanted to hug my wife and kids more last night. I wanted to make sure they saw me and I saw them. I wanted to not allow work to be the most important thing. I wanted to tell the people I love that I love them. We see the things we do in our days with different significance. We feel the fragility of our lives with poignancy. In fact, life's fragility slaps us across the face like the coldness of this day does our cheeks when we step outside. If this was my last day. If this was my wife's last day? It is only a moment away...all the time. What must that 21 year old have been thinking when he walked into that building? Before he died? What did he spend his time doing? If he had known that yesterday was going to be his last day, would he have lived the day differently? If today is my last day at the end of it, would I regret the way I have lived it? We see our money differently. Our spending. Our diets. Our activities. In these changes to our view, good things happen - we may notice the things in life that really matter. We may make changes that make our life look more like our values. After all, we want our lives to be consistent with what we believe. Otherwise, do we really believe it? What do we believe in? What do our lives look like? Where do we spend our time? Where do we spend our money? If you are asking these kinds of questions, we would love for you to join us tomorrow night at McAllister Recreation Center, just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette, from 645-800pm. But, there's another side to this tragedy in many of us. We see things differently. Now we see people and we wonder who is likely to hurt us next. Sometimes now we look around in fear and wonder how we will ever make it. We remember the pains of our lives and we read the news and we want to hide. We do not want to feel the pain anymore. We ask ourselves, "What if?" so much that we begin to doubt there is goodness in this world at all. Now we see the world with distrust and pain. We shake our heads and moan over the pitifulness of the world. We simply despair the society we are in. We feel more hopeless. We decide that we want to hide. We want to run. We take this as another evidence that life is filled with loss and risk is not worth it. Many times when we feel like this, we don't really want to believe this is true, but it is all we can see! Let me tell you something if this is your response. If you just feel buried by days like yesterday...let me tell you that there really is goodness in the world. There is a chance in the midst of the pain and the hurt to have life and joy and peace. there is healing for hurt and brokenness. There is love. there is laughter. The path of pain of this culture we live in is not the only way! I know. I used to live in despair. So did many of us at Morethanmore. But we will not live that way anymore. We have found a better way. We will live life differently. We will shed the usual American life and forge a new path. We will laugh. We will care. We will support each other through the hard times. We will give to our community and make a difference in our world. We will live what we believe. Plus, we would love for you to join us! We have great times every other Thursday night just hanging out - light and fun - we celebrate a different way of life every time we are together. It is so amazing to hang out with some people who actually care about you for who you are rather than for what you can provide to them. To laugh and not have to fake it. To have no agenda and no axe to grind. We have activities for kids - and for youth. Both led by people who really want to help the kids become all they can be - not people who were voluntold they had to fill a spot. Responsible and good people you can trust. We would love to see you! Like i said earlier, we hang out at McAllister Recreation Center, just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette, from 645-800pm every other Thursday night - next being tomorrow night the 23rd of January.

Morethanmore for Thursday January 9th is canceled.

Hello everyone. Because of the crazy bad weather in the Lafayette area, we will be canceling Mtm this Thursday the 9th. We will miss hanging out with you all, but with the roads so slick, we do not want you to risk your safety to come to Mtm. We will be hanging out again on the 23rd of January - 6:45-8:00. Hope you all can join us then. Extra info about that next time together on the 23rd: We will be restarting our youth time. Kale Fisher is going to be leading and he has some cool new plans for our young people. As usual, the kids will be hanging with Mrs. Abbott, our wonderful preschool teacher/kids leader. see you soon - stay safe, keep warm, and don't forget to notice!

Perspectives

The other day i was at a performance. The performer was fantastic. Entertaining and funny, he still challenged us to see life differently because of his unique form of art. But i have to admit that i just did not get into it nearly as much as i should have. Why? Well, there was this lady sitting in front of me. She was not that tall and had short hair. I know her actually and like her ok, a nice lady i would say. But, i sat right behind her at this particular event. What was strange was that i had never noticed before how much she moves. Side to side, rhythmically responding to some internal beat that only she can hear. It was as if she was rehearsing for a dance act in her head and it was driving her body to sway side to side. So, as i'm sure you can imagine, with each side to side movement she would obscure the performer for just a second and then back the other way, obscure him again. I began to feel very distracted by her movements. After a while all i could see was her and was . missing this awesome performance going on right on the other side of her, up on stage. I tried moving with her, but that only made me feel weird (and no doubt look kind weird too). Then i tried using only 1 eye at a time, shifting eyes just when she moved to the other side - but the problem with this is that my eyelids got tired and frankly all the winking was starting to get my wife concerned (just kidding). The alternate winking became more distracting that the original swaying after a while and so was no use. Before long i could have told you the color hair she had, the style, the clothes she was wearing, maybe even her ear rings. I got so that i was so focused on the nice swaying lady in front of me that i was totally missing an amazing event! The thing is, it was really hard to tear my attention away from the sway (did you get that rhyme? Away from the Sway, haha) All this has coincided with some stuff going on in my neighborhood. You see, we have a homeowners association and a board. Apparently they periodically send out a newsletter (although i have lived her for about 8 years or so and do not recall seeing them regularly). Well, we received one of these "creekside newsletters" the other day and that is what goes along with swaying lady. They started off their newsletter with a few words about the responsibilities of the board and then they plunged into what would take up about 80-90% of the newsletter...complaints. You see, they said, the board has a responsibility to report the complaints people have. So, as i read i learned about people's complaints about tools and dogs and rv's and guns and fences and a lot of other things i frankly can't remember tonight. Then at the end there was a short note about how great it is to live in our neighborhood! So, by now i wonder if you are a bit unsure as to what the swaying lady and the newsletter have to do with each other. Well, let me help you. I could not see the awesomeness of the performance because of my distraction. The swaying lady was totally encompassing my perspective. It did not mean that the performance itself was not good - i am sure it was phenomenal It simply means that i missed it. I could not get my perspective right - i could not get myself to focus on the important things - instead i was focusing on the distraction - and the longer the distraction continued, it seemed the more i focused on it!! The same is true of the people who are complaining in my neighborhood - the swaying people are the dogs and the tools and the rv's and the fences, among other things. The performance is the wonderful people that live in the houses with the dogs and the fences and the rv's, etc. And some of my neighbors (and subsequently the board) were seeing the swaying lady more and more and more, losing their perspective a ton (and their joy!). Now, I wish that it was only me at the performance and the complainy people in my neighborhood where I see this terminal messed up perspective. The truth is that I see this same thing in me every day. I get focused on my schedule (swaying lady) instead of caring about the person in front of me (the performance). I get focused on money (sway) instead of the relationships around me (performance). I focus on what I can achieve (sway) rather than the things in life that matter. I focus on the hurt and disappointment I feel (sway) rather than on the potential I have for growth or the other joys in my life. I focus on short term happiness (sway) instead of long term becoming. And I see it in my culture too. Why else are we as a country so in debt (short term sway, instead of long term responsibility). Why the lack of trust in government? Self-serving leadership (sway) instead of leaders who operate in the best interest of those the serve. On and on and on it goes... So what can we do about these major issues with perspective? It is clearly so easy to get pulled into the swaying of the perspective stealers and before you know it you have your list of complaints long enough to fill a newsletter. Well, first, we have to notice the fact that we losing our perspective - that the less important things are getting our attention instead of the more important things - my wife has this little sign up in our house that says: "Pay Attention to the little things in life because some day you will realize that they are the big things," and we need to see when we are not doing this if we are get our perspectives straight. I am making an attempt to help you notice by this writing, highlighting the tendency in us to sway away. Once we notice the perspective issues we have, we need to begin to look for ways to get our focus back on what is most important. Sometimes we need to move away from the swaying ladies and sometimes we need to introduce ourselves to the wonderful neighbors and have them over for dinner (and then write a newsletter all about how wonderful our neighbors are). One of the best ways to begin a perspective shift is to be with people who are also trying to shift their perspectives. If that sounds like something that you might be interested, you just might love More than more. You see, at Mtm we are all about noticing and shifting our perspectives and healthier, more joyful, more true lives. We would love to have you come and hang out with us - we will be at McAllister Recreation Center, just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette, from 6:45-8:00 pm this Thursday night, the 12th of December. As always we will be having free, wonderful child care. Also, for those of you who might be interested, we will be restarting our young people (middle school and high school)group in January! We have so much fun whenever we are all together and everyone is accepted - we truly hope you can make it!