graduation weekend in santa barbara

Two weekends ago we celebrated the most recent Westmont alumnus in my family.

Pride is an understatement when it comes to describing how I feel about Kelsey graduating. I love the mess out of that girl and for a zillion reasons that I don't know how to articulate. I've realized as I've gotten older how much I treasure my two younger sisters as friends as well as role models -- birth order not really seeming as indicative of who is the wisest/most knowledgeable about things. Kelsey has become like an older sister to me over the years and I am so proud of what she has done at Westmont: the friendships she has made, the people she has touched with her smile and laugh, and the positivity and kindness that guides the way she lives her life.

And I sat next to Libby, my youngest sister, as we watched Kelsey graduate. And I'm so proud of her too -- making it through her first year of college and the friends she made, the choir she joined, the dorm life she participated in, the major she has embraced and taken on as her own, and the ways she is becoming independent and more confident.

I came away from the weekend thankful for two of the biggest gifts in my life -- my sisters. Words don't do justice to what the two of them mean to me.

Congrats to you, Kbakes!

the small as the big

There isn't a chapel talk that captures what we do on Sundays, or Tuesdays for that matter. The beauty, the messiness, the complicatedness, the discussions about how to organize potluck dinners and what to do about kids running around dumping bubble solution all over the paddle balls and "carritos".

I find myself immersed in a culture obsessed with big-ness and success and grandiose plans to change the world, and sometimes that makes me feel so small and insignificant.

I want to change the world, too. Believe me, I do. I want immigration reform to happen so badly, I want to be the tough lawyer fighting for human rights in Los Angeles or the history teacher who helps her students learn about the huge failures of our history and where we went wrong and what we can do to make it right. I want to be in the college alumni magazine of "50 Inspiring College Graduates Who Are Making A Difference!!"

But I'm learning that the difference isn't always from the CEOs and the executive board of directors and presidents.

The difference is the woman who paid for a mariachi band to play a mexican happy birthday party song for me at the park two weeks ago.

The difference is playing the Ellen De Generes heads up game in the park with kids who don't know the Madonna songs but give themselves the points anyway and who will always guess your age as somewhere between 45 and 52.

The difference is homemade pozole, shared together. A red velvet cake that couldn't stay glued together because I put too much cream cheese frosting. A table filled with rice, and beans, and tortillas, and homemade guacamole.

If I were to give the chapel talk about what a difference all of these small and seemingly insignificant things make, I would say this: the mariachi band showed me love in a different language, the heads up game gave me the gift of laughter and connectedness, the food shared together is a taste of the Kingdom and proximity to Jesus....and to me, it's all profound.

So, I cling to that profound-ness. As counter-cultural as it may seem -- I proclaim it as profound and meaningful even if the stories aren't told in the newspapers or chapels or newsrooms. I claim this truth that there is much sacredness in my life right now, specifically in that place called the park on the westside, and it's nothing close to being small.