Shawn

October 17, 2019October 17, 2019

Just to Name a Few: Five Things I’m Loving, Installment #2

First of all, a big announcement!

The podcast Maile and I are creating officially launches next Tuesday, October 22nd–it’s called The Stories Between Us. You will be able to download and subscribe through any major podcast player, but if you’re a podcast newbie and don’t know what to do, never fear! I’ll post an easy-to-follow link here at the blog so that you can simply click and play.

I am really enjoying the conversations we’ve been having as we record some of these podcast episodes. Maile is so honest–she takes me far out of my comfort zone. But I think it’s important, because there are so many topics surrounding writing, creativity, and trying to do those things while parenting or homemaking or having another job. We’re going to go straight into it. So stay tuned.

Thursday also seems like a good day to give a shout-out to a few of the things I’ve been enjoying lately, so here are five…just to name a few:

A Complicated Heart by Sarah Mae

I can’t wait to read this book, the latest by my friend Sarah Mae. Here is the blurb:

People often ask Sarah, “How did you forgive your alcoholic mother?”

How do you forgive someone who carelessly brushed aside your pain, who caused such destruction, and who doesn’t show remorse? How do you know when to stay and when to go?

In The Complicated Heart, you will travel through Sarah’s story with her, from age 14 and beyond, as she wrestles with these very questions. Prepare yourself: she holds nothing back.

Warheads

Yes, the ridiculously sour candy. My son bought some with his own money at CVS, let me have one, and now I keep sneaking into his room to have just. one. more. I’ve always been a bit of a sour candy nut.

The Habit Podcast with Jonathan Rogers

I have so enjoyed this podcast over the last few months, as Jonathan Rogers does a deep dive with each of his guests into the realm of writing and creativity. There’s even an episode with yours truly. Anyway, check it out.

Luca

When Maile and I needed a last-minute night out last week, we left the kids at home and walked a few blocks to one of the best restaurants in the area, Luca. We sat there and talked and had a wonderful evening. If you’re in Central PA, I highly recommend it–although you’ll need to make reservations ahead of time. We expected to be sitting at the bar, even though it was 9 p.m., but we got lucky and there was an available table.

Hearts and Minds Bookstore

Have you been there? It’s an incredible place, one of my favorite bookstores ever. I’ll be doing a reading there this Saturday night at 7 p.m. Join us!

* * * * *

Finally, have you heard the incredibly sad news about the passing of Elijah Cummings? What an incredible life he lived. Take a moment today to find out more about him and his work through the years.

October 16, 2019October 15, 2019

Our Life in Title 1 City Schools

Around 6:45 a.m. I unlock our front door so that when the neighborhood kids start arriving, they can just walk in. These days, it’s chilly in the mornings, and the golden hallway light spills out onto our porch. When I open the door to see just how cold it is, I glance at the cars parked on James Street, waiting for the light to change. It is busy at that time, on a Monday.

I make plenty of breakfast and go upstairs for something. Maile is looking at her phone.

“I don’t know what to do,” she says. She received a text, addressed, “Hi Abra’s Mom.” Abra’s friend, who usually comes to our house to walk with Abra to school, went on to say that her younger sibling didn’t have anyone to walk her to school, and the elementary school starts after the junior high school, and since she had to walk her sister to school, she wouldn’t be able to walk with Abra. She’d be late to school, too.

She’s eleven years old. She just wanted to let us know, so we wouldn’t worry, or wait for her.

* * * * *

I know for a fact that a lot of people who don’t have children in the School District of Lancaster (the district that serves nearly 11,000 kids in our small city) think of these kids in a particular way.

I know, because I used to be one of those people.

When our oldest son, back in 2018, told one of the moms at his home school co-op that he would be attending McCaskey High School in the city later that fall as a freshman, her first response wasn’t to encourage him or wish him the best but to go on a mini-tirade about the pregnancy rates in the school.

When Maile shared that our kids would be going to public school, she was met with a similar barrage of fear. “I don’t know how anyone could send their kids to city schools,” one mom said.

“Is it even safe, walking around there?” someone else asked.

“You mean during the day?” Maile asked, incredulous. The person nodded.

Yet our personal experience couldn’t be further from these fear-based narratives.

Yes, the young people here in the city are presented with challenges I never had to face in my rural upbringing. And yes, there are a small percentage that make negative decisions that will have huge implications for the rest of their lives.

But the overwhelming majority of kids I’ve crossed paths with since our children started attending the SDOL have been respectful, motivated, and kind. They’ve befriended our kids. They’ve shown themselves to be hard workers. They make a huge effort every morning JUST TO GET TO SCHOOL. Many of Abra’s junior high friends are responsible for picking up younger, elementary-aged siblings. Many of them walk well over a mile, no matter the weather, so that they can learn.

There’s too much garbage out there about the schools in the city, and I’m weary of hearing it, especially when it comes from people who don’t know a single child that lives or goes to school here.

* * * * *

Abra’s friend was able to work it out so that her younger sister could get to school with someone else. In the meantime, we told her to bring her sister to our house next time, and she can join us when we take Sam down to the elementary school.

Our house is quickly becoming a morning magnet of activity, and to be honest, we love it. We make extra pancakes. We invite kids in. We leave our door unlocked. As usual, we asked the kids if they wanted to pray with us, and they all crowd into the dining room.

Am I claiming nothing bad will ever happen to us? Am I saying our kids will make perfect choices their entire life?

No, but that’s not the point. These kids we’re meeting in the city are the point, and they’ve been a gift to us. I hope we can be the same to this wonderful district full of precious young people.

October 15, 2019

The Hard Thing that Happened Ten Years Ago

Ten years ago I was running a residential painting business, and I was in my van outside of a potential client’s house, writing up an estimate. The real estate bubble had burst the year before, but it took a while to filter down to little people like me. In any case, the summer had come and gone, business was much too slow, and as I sat in that van writing up the estimate, I was trying to figure out how to tell Maile that the worst-case scenario had arrived: I wasn’t making enough money. Our business was in a lot of debt. We needed to make a major change.

That second-half of 2009 lives in my mind like a long-ago series of unfortunate events.

I had co-written one book at that point and was deep in the writing of my second co-writing project.

After many sleepless nights, long conversations, the support of friends, and the overwhelming graciousness of our families, we decided it was time to hit reset. Start from scratch.

I remember how all of our friends came out to help us load the moving truck. I remember the long drive through the rain, 150 miles north to Lancaster. I remember how dark it was at my parents’ house, shuffling the kids down into the basement, getting them in bed, and then lying there, wondering how it had come to that. I was in my 30s, my family of six was living in my parents’ basement, and we were starting over.

Maile would later tell me how she was lying there, too, in the dark, when she felt God whisper, “Maile, this is a gift!”

And I remember her response to God, before rolling over and going back to sleep.

“Well, God, it’s a pretty shitty gift.”

* * * * *

Here we are, friends, ten years later. And it is good.

And it was a gift.

I can’t say the ensuing years were simply victory after victory, a constant upward trajectory. Nope. Nothing like that. And I’m not going to use our story to say that you should leave your job or chase your dreams so that you can live your best life now.

Nope.

Nothing like that.

But I will say this–if you’re living through a large shift in your life, and you’re more focused on learning from the journey than you are on any particular destination, then eventually you will see it for the gift that it is.

I know that’s a pretty sweeping statement, but I stand by it.

* * * * *

Last Saturday night, Maile and I were walking back from Luca, one of our favorite restaurants in the city. We had sat at our table and had a good-but-hard conversation about where we are, where Maile is, where we want to be, what we want to do with this “one wild and crazy life.” Maile was in tears at some point–I don’t think she’ll mind me saying. And I held her hand and listened. And the waiter was kind, even though it took us days before we were ready to order.

As we walked home, I said that to her, “Do you realize it’s been ten years since we left Virginia, since we moved here?”

We walked quietly in that realization, the late-night darkness all around us. The street lights seemed bright, and the air was cool. Fall had arrived. Someone had decked their front porch out for Halloween, and the scarecrow sitting in the lawn chair made me jump again, just as it had when we passed it earlier in the night.

I couldn’t see our future ten years ago: the two additional babies we would have, the 20 books I’d co-write, the novels I’d see published. All the words. All the new friends. The ways Maile and I would change, and grow, together.

I couldn’t see that incredibly hard thing for what it was: a gift.

“Ten years,” she said quietly. That was all. We each knew what the other was thinking.

October 11, 2019

On Boundaries, Losses, and Saying Yes or No

Another Friday, another letter from Jen Michel Pollack in our ongoing series on creativity, writing, and family life! Check out a preview below:

* * * * *

“Dear Shawn,

. . . I so enjoyed your thoughts on “vocational holiness” in your last letter, how it calls us to set things apart, even set ourselves apart. I used to imagine a stark division between all that matters to God and all that doesn’t, but I’ve come to see that the messy, ordinary whole of life is his—though as you reminded me, there’s a certain focus that’s required for drawing a circle around what we’ve been given by God to do and to tend. We have to admit what falls inside that circle and admit what falls outside. In fact, there is no circle without the line, no shape to the whole without the definitive boundary of in and out.

I have to confess that I hate boundaries; I want capacities that are endless, energy and time that is infinite. No doubt there’s a lot of pathology in this (not to mention sin). But as I also realized in a recent session with my spiritual director, I think it’s also difficult for me to draw that circle because I feel everything that remains outside of it to represent a kind of loss. Worse, in facing the losses of the things I must leave undone, I can start convincing myself that I’m doing the wrong thing. Because if I were doing God’s will, surely there would be no losses, right?”

Click HERE to keep reading.

* * * * *

What began as a Twitter conversation between two writers on creative work and family life has become an exchange of letters. Here is a list of our prior letters for Postmarked:

Postmarked: Dear Shawn (1)

Postmarked: Dear Jen (2)

Postmarked: Dear Shawn (3)

Postmarked: Dear Jen (4)

Postmarked: Dear Shawn (5)

Postmarked: Dear Jen (6)

Postmarked: Dear Shawn (7)

Postmarked: Dear Jen (8)

Postmarked: Dear Shawn (9)

Postmarked: Dear Jen (10)

Postmarked: Dear Jen (11)

October 10, 2019October 9, 2019

Just to Name a Few: Five Things I’m Loving

Thursday seems like a good day to give a shout-out to a few of the things I’ve been enjoying lately, so here are five…just to name a few:

In the Midst of Winter by Isabelle Alende (book)

This is such a poignant book, telling a compelling, modern-day story while also going into the backstories of the immigrants involved. In a day and age when we need all the empathy we can get, this book is the medicine. Alende’s writing is so beautifully simple and poetic. Check it out.

10 Things to Tell You by Laura Tremaine (podcast)

Full disclosure–Laura is a friend I met many years ago on a trip to Sri Lanka. Random, right? Well, it turns out she has a wonderful podcast called 10 Things to Tell You, and the last few episodes have been a roller coaster of seriousness and laughter. Check out the one about the break in, or her most recent episode with Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey (of The Office fame).

Love Letters to Writers by Andi Cumbo-Floyd (book)

This is a really touching book written by Andi to writers everywhere. Super encouraging, plus she’s writing a follow-up, so now’s the time to buy and read this first volume.

Podcasting with Maile

Okay, this isn’t exactly a thing you can get or listen to or read…at least not yet. But I have been loving this podcast that Maile and I are working on. I love the conversations we’re having about creativity, writing, and publishing. I love how honest she is–actually, it’s a little scary for me, how honest she is. It’s called The Stories Between Us, and as soon as it’s all set up, I’ll give you the link to subscribe.

Sleep

Folks, I am loving sleep right now. I’m not getting it consistently–our five year old and three year old have been getting up in the night and our oldest works two nights a week until 10:30 p.m., and since he doesn’t have his license yet I have to go pick him up. But sleep, when I get it. Wow. I love sleep.

What about you? What are you loving these days?

October 9, 2019October 9, 2019

The Question Everyone Asks Us About Living in the City

Soon after we moved into the city, someone asked Maile, “Do you feel safe walking around the city?”

Maile wasn’t sure what the person meant. “Do you mean at night?”

“No,” the person pressed. “Just during the day. Anytime. Don’t you feel scared?”

* * * * *

It’s late at night and through our bedroom window I can hear the occasional car pass by on James Street. When we first moved into our small city five years ago, the passing traffic kept us awake. It took me at least a week before the sounds of cars and people walking the sidewalk and the occasional ambulance didn’t keep me awake long into the night.

We love it here in Lancaster. Our kids love it. Our older two walk downtown to meet friends or sit in coffee shops. Mai walks the younger kids to parks and occasionally museums. Three of our oldest four walk to school, and Sammy, the only one who still has one of us accompanying him, begs to walk by himself.

Our neighbors take our packages into their house for safekeeping when we’re away on vacation (even when we forget to ask them to), or water our plants when we’re not around, or shovel the snow off our front sidewalk if I haven’t yet gotten around to it. We look out for each other.

So, it’s strange to me when the first thing nearly everyone asks when they find out we live in the city of Lancaster, population 60,000, isn’t, “What’s your favorite restaurant?” (Luca or Himalayan) or “Where do you volunteer?” (we’re a little lost with that right now) or “Can you see the fireworks from your house?” (Yes), but whether or not we feel safe.

“Do you walk around town by yourself?”

“Are you okay letting your kids walk a mile to school?”

“What about crime—do you ever feel that you’re in danger?”

* * * * *

“…we are tempted constantly to grab a little bit of power that the world around us offers…But as we dare to be baptized in powerlessness, always moving toward the poor who do not have such power, we are plunged right into the heart of God’s endless mercy.”

Henri Nouwen

* * * * *

Normally, I quickly try to assuage people’s concern over the safety of living in the city, and for the most part I believe my own lines.

For every questionable interaction we’ve had, there have been a thousand positive ones, I say.

People look out for each other, I say.

People are, generally, good to each other, I say.

But I wonder sometimes if I am candy-coating things. After all, last year someone shot a gun at someone else just behind our house and across the alley. This probably wouldn’t have happened if we lived in the suburbs. And we routinely see police arresting people or bringing them out of their homes—a few weeks ago, the SWAT team was tracking someone down about eight houses away from us. At one point, an unstable man across the street insisted to me that my house was his house.

So maybe the city is more dangerous.

Maybe, when people ask us why we live here…aren’t we worried…am I nervous raising children here…I shouldn’t shy away from the fact that there are inherent risks with living in the city. But the thing is, we don’t live here because it’s safer.

We’ve tried to move away from making big life decisions based on fear.

We live here because we love city life.

We live here because our kids love their city schools, their city friends, and their city school teachers.

We live here because it’s a wonderful place that offers community to us in ways we haven’t experienced before.

And, as Henri Nouwen writes, “as we dare to be baptized in powerlessness, always moving toward the poor who do not have such power, we are plunged right into the heart of God’s endless mercy.”

Living in the city and having our kids attend city schools is, in some ways, being baptized in powerlessness. Things are not always “fair.” People are not always “nice.” Most places we go, whether it be PTO meetings or the Y, we are in the minority.

We find ourselves often unable to curate our (and our kids’) experiences.

But we’ve found, in this powerlessness, that we have been plunged directly into the heart of God’s endless mercy. What a feeling! What a way to live.

* * * * *

This is not a post arguing that everyone should move into the city.

This is not a post arguing that you should send your children to public school.

This is a post about not letting fear keep you from moving into a greater sense of God’s mercy.

Make decisions that work for your family, yes, but don’t make these decisions out of fear! I have so much more to say about that, but this post is already long enough. Maybe I’ll talk about that in more depth some other time.

Do you dare to be “baptized in powerlessness”? Do you dare to join the poor who do not have power, come alongside them in some tangible way, choosing to share in their poverty?

Maybe consider answering those questions the same way you might answer this one: Would you like to experience more of God’s endless mercy?