Jen Russum

Yoga

Yoga

Yoga. My worst enemy. But it's sooooo good for you, they always say. What about it is so good for me? The falling over? The aching wrists? The weird sore muscles for days afterward? Maybe it's the humility that's good for me. Because every time I go I definitely make a fool of myself. However, I always get talked into going again. I don't know why. Every year(ish) a friend asks me to go to yoga, I take her up on the invite, I go, I hate my life, I take a year-long break from yoga until the next friend invites me. And so the cycle continues. Here is my history with yoga: Spring 2003. The brand new beautiful rec center opens at TCU. All the group classes are free for the first few months, so my friends and I try out the yoga and Pilates classes. I go to each class once and then I go find a treadmill as soon as I can. I never go back to yoga or Pilates for the rest of my TCU career. Some people think running on a treadmill is torture. I think downward dog is torture. To each his own... Spring 2008. I go to yoga at my hometown gym with one of my best friends from high school. She has birthed four children and still has a rockin' bod. She is my hero. I decide to go to yoga with her and learn her secrets. As I struggle and gasp my way through the session, I look over to see Noelle standing on her head with ease... Spring 2009. Now that my one year sabbatical from yoga is complete, I agree to go back to a session at the same gym with a different high school friend. I suffer through the session longing to be on one of the treadmills just outside the door. When we leave, Macara says, "We should do this again! I have an extra yoga mat in my car; do you want to borrow it for our next class?" I reluctantly take it. Macara moved to Germany last year. Her yoga mat is stuffed inside our coat closet to this day. Our next yoga class never happened. Last week. Okay, so I extended my sabbatical to two years this time. Our friends from church, Darren and Veronica, invited us to go to yoga with them. Since I had reached the point in my cycle it's time to fearfully and reluctantly attend a yoga class, I agreed. The funny twist this time is that Micah went with us and I got to watch him struggle through it as well, although he was still way better than me! Let's just put it this way... when the instructor told us to meditate on two things we were thankful for, this is what I thought: "I am thankful my best friend, Camille, was in town this week and I am thankful that this class is halfway over and I don't have do yoga again for at least another year." But that's the thing. In another year, I will go back. Someone will rope me in again. And I know if I would go often enough I would get better at it and probably enjoy it, but until I find the motivation to do that, I am sticking to the treadmill. That downward dog is a real killer. I always knew I didn't like pets... This is what I look like when I am about to attend a yoga class... These girls love yoga apparently. I'm sure it's really hard for them to do a plank with their eighty pound bodies... Hey, I think MK and I have matching yoga mats! Except I don't use mine... P.S. Noelle, Macara, and Veronica - please don't take any offense. It's not you; it's the yoga. Only people I absolutely adore could convince me to do such a despised activity willingly! ... Read more

On Crafting {proof that I made pillows}

On Crafting {proof that I made pillows}

I don't craft very much. I admire crafters. I think DIY is cool. I love etsy and lots of handmade goodness. But it's just not me. Mainly because I don't usually have the time or the patience and I don't like messes and projects sitting around my house {especially when my house is a 900 square foot apartment}. In my dream world, I will someday have a house with a craft/project room where I can indulge in DIY projects and my kids can work on book reports and Micah can have all his ish out for whatever he is working on at the moment and it can be our messy, happy, creative place. And we will shut the door when guests come over and pretend it isn't there. But until that dream room exists and I have a bajillion extra hours in my schedule, my crafting is condensed to the summer. I pick one or two creative little projects during the school year that I would like to accomplish and I wait until summer and then I attempt to conquer them. I am a moderately successful crafter for about two months out of the year. And that is that. The main project on my agenda this summer was PILLOWS. I found myself sick and tired of how much throw pillows cost. You know... like $20 for the pillow form itself and another $36 for the decorative case. Annoying. Even on sale, I rarely find decent pillows for less that $15 or $20 and that just seems like a lot to spend on a pillow that has no purpose other than adding a pop of color to a couch or bed. Somehow this complaint came up in front of my friend Anne and she convinced me I could sew my own pillows on her sewing machine.  Soon after this conversation, I found myself here... buying this kind of stuff (pun not originally planned, but now completely intentional)... These supplies sat in my closet all summer, but about a week ago I finally went over to Anne's and sewed my pillows. My sewing experience is VERY limited. As in the last time I sewed was in second grade when I made a tiny quilt for my American Girl Doll. My mom taught me to sew at that age, but my career was short-lived. After Kirstin's bed had a quilt, I was pretty much done sewing until... last week. I really didn't know if I would be able to do it, but Anne gave me a quick tutorial on how to use her sewing machine and I just started making pillows. All. Night. Long. {practicing} I planned to make five pillows, but when I got done I still had more fabric and filling, so I decided I would make two more. When I made two more, I figured I would make one more, because I didn't really foresee myself going through the process to get fabric and use Anne's machine in the near future. It was now or never. So I got into my car at 11pm with two bags full of throw pillows. Eight pillows total. {the pile at the end of the night} And I must say I am very happy with the result for being such an amateur. I mean I'm not giving you a tutorial or anything. You sew up the edges. You leave a fist-sized hole to add your stuffing. You fill it {most time consuming part}. You sew up the hole. You are done. Just don't inspect my work closely. It's not pretty. But from far away, it looks like this.... {sofa - i didn't make that back one... obvi?} {love seat} {guest bed - i made the black one to go with the gray one i already had} {our bed} I love the result! I encourage you all to MAKE SOME PILLOWS! We actually have another pillow on our bed now too, which was a really fun project and one I will give an actual tutorial for later this week. ... Read more

Flowers Fade Friday: A Beautiful Inheritance

Flowers Fade Friday: A Beautiful Inheritance

One time at our Missional Community Group this past spring, we somehow stumbled upon discussing the idea of "reward" in heaven. One guy in our group asked "If I want to out-do people on earth, so I have more reward than them in heaven, is that wrong?" Yes, our pastor replied. Thank goodness. I don't think acting out of "selfish ambition" (Philippians 2 happened to be what were studying that night) - sinfully competing with your neighbor to earn God's blessing - is really going to get you any type of reward on earth OR in heaven. A girl in our group piped up and said that JESUS is our reward in heaven, which was considered the "John Piper" answer {ummm...I totally agreed with her, because I think John Piper is right...but moving on...}. And another guy asked, why use the term "reward" at all then, if reward just means salvation or eternal life with Christ? In his defense, he was kind of playing devil's advocate/thinking out loud and it was a super interesting discussion... For some reason, I felt really fired up about all this. Just salvation? How could anyone even compare our idea of earthly rewards (money, fame, material goods, comfort, praise and acknowledgement) to the glory and goodness of KNOWING God and living eternally with Him? First, I have to admit that a few years ago, I might have had some of the same questions about reward, but as I see more and more of God's grace and goodness in my own life, and reflect on the love He has for me that covers all my awful sin, the last thing in the world I am thinking about is what kind of "rewards" I will get in heaven. Are you kidding me? I get to go to heaven?!?! As humans, I think we have such a limited understanding of what ETERNAL life with God means...how much value there is in that alone...that we seek to compare salvation to the rewards of this earth. After all, Paul does say: "For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face" (I Cor. 13:12). I guess it makes sense that the idea of heavenly reward is confusing since we are not in heaven yet. So this question about reward led me back to the Bible to search out what God really says about reward. For some reason, over the past twenty years or so (or maybe it just seems like the last twenty years, because those are the years I have been alive to see), it seems like there has been this growing idea about reward in heaven, an obsession with being honored by God there, the whole idea that good deeds on earth will result in jewels in one's crown later on or gifts or prizes or something like that. But the Bible doesn't really talk about reward as jewels at all. Here are some examples: The Psalmist David writes in reference to God's commands: "Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward." (Psalm 19:11). What is the reward here? Well, first of all following God's Word prevents us from folly and hardship (it "warns" us about sin). But secondly, the reward of following God is to have assurance of salvation and ever-increasing growth of character. The reward is NOT trying to be more obedient so God will reward you. The reward is being a more holy, obedient child of God. Jesus says to his disciples "But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you." (Matthew 6:6). I don't know exactly what Jesus meant by this, but it seems to indicate some kind of earthly blessing. Intimacy with God perhaps. God's favor toward the prayer itself. Some kind of other blessing for obedience. It seems like a simple example of the way that God longs to reward and bless his obedient children during their earthly lives. Paul says: What then is my reward? That in my preaching I may present the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel. (I Corinthians 9:18). Here Paul is talking about his responsibility and calling to share the Gospel. His reward IS getting to share the Gospel. How I wish I could be more like Paul.... And now my two favorites... The writer of Hebrews, in the Hall of Faith, explains that Moses chose to forsake his comfortable Egyptian upbringing to live with his poor, enslaved Israelite poeple because "He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward" (Hebrews 11:26). Moses did not really know of Christ like we know of Him. He probably had some vague idea that God would send a Messiah, but even that was likely pretty hazy. Yet, he was willing to suffer as Christ did, because He knew that God was great and worth suffering for. His reward was in heaven. In this same passage, the writer talks about all those who died without seeing much, if any, earthly blessing for their faith. Abel was brutally murdered by his brother. Noah lived through the flood. Abraham wandered around and lived in tents in order to obey God. Yet these men "all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth... But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city." (Hebrews 11:13-16). The reward for their faith is to dwell with God in a heavenly city. And I'm pretty sure the ultimate reward is seeing the One who has prepared that city for us. And finally, I think Colossians 3 says it best: "Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward (Colossians 3:23-24). Our inheritance is life with God. To be counted as sons and daughters of the Lord God Almighty. To be the brothers and sisters of our Savior Jesus Christ. Everything else pales in comparison. Any other blessing or reward is "rubbish" compared to knowing Christ (Philippians 3:8). I'm not saying that blessings won't abound in heaven. I can't even imagine the goodness that awaits us there. The Bible doesn't say that much about it in detail, but Jesus promised he was returning to prepare a place for us there, and I know there is going to be an amazing feast when the bridegroom, Jesus, celebrates with His bride, the chuch. Other than that, I don't really know what heaven's rewards will look like... except that I know I will get to see the Father and the Son face to face, and there is NO better reward than that. ... Read more