So, now I’ve had a little time to reflect on the TIME article. It was good.

That’s all.

But I’ve never been interviewed for a publication like TIME—or any publication for that matter—and I’d just like to say a few words about the experience.

You know how it is when you know exactly what you’re trying to say and you think you are really, really normal, but then you realize that in fact, you’re not normal at all? Yeah, it’s like that. Because let’s face it, I’m weird. Yes, weird. Oh, it’s not bad, it just is. See, I think I’m just like every other normal, 32-year-old female in America, but really, that’s just me thinking I am.

But what I really want to talk about is Lisa Cullen, the author of this article. I mean, how often do you take note of the writer of an article? I never do. But this time, there’s a person behind the name and it’s high time someone paid a little attention.

So, here are the top 5 things I appreciate about Lisa Cullen, staff writer for TIME magazine:

1. She listened to me. For over an hour. While I gabbed. Incessantly. She even made me feel like I was interesting.
2. Her daughter’s name is Mika. I like this name. Good names often come from good people.
3. She said nice things about my picture which totally boosted my ego. (For full disclosure’s sake, I suppose I should have told her that that picture is several years old, taken while I was still a twentysomething. And did I tell you I recently found a long, dark hair growing out of a mole on my face? Just like really old people. And another thing, upon close inspection, it’s clear that the hairs on my chin can no longer be described as “peach fuzz.” Oh how I long for just fuzz. And the thing I want to know is, why have I suddenly started sprouting? I bet Lisa doesn’t have facial hair.
4. Clearly, she’s intelligent. If you read her stuff, you’ll see that she uses big words. I like smart people. They’re interesting. Even if I can’t understand what they’re saying.
5. But by far the most endearing thing about Lisa Cullen, New York-based staff writer for TIME, is that she’s got issues. Stomach issues in her case. She talks freely about blood and guts and colons and stuff. Issues? Now that’s something I can relate to.

I blogged the other day about being interviewed by so-and-so from such-and-such magazine. Well, What God Joined Together, an article about pastors’ wives by Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, is in the most recent edition of TIME Magazine. (You can read the article online here.)

So, if you’re here as a result of the article, welcome. Look around. Stay a while. If you’re a PW, you’ll probably be especially interested in the Pastors’ Wives Forum.

At first glance, it seems to me Lisa has painted a pretty accurate picture of life as a PW.

I’m pretty sure I’ll have more thoughts on the subject.

I just have to figure them out first.

As usual.

But enough about me. What did you think of the article?

I’m a huge John Piper fan. I recently read his book Don’t Waste Your Life (scroll down to find the link; you can download a free copy). It’s a bit slow at the beginning, but it picks up fast and is so worth the read. He’s got some great quotes in there. This one whooped my booty:

Oh, how many lives are wasted by people who believe that the Christian life means simply avoiding badness and providing for the family. So there is no adultery, no stealing, no killing, no embezzlement, no fraud—just lots of hard work during the day, and lots of TV and PG-13 videos in the evening (during quality family time), and lots of fun stuff on the weekend—woven around church (mostly). This is life for millions of people. Wasted life. We were created for more, far more.

There is an old saying: “No man ever lamented on his dying bed, ‘I wish I had spent more time at the office.”

But that saying about spending less time at the office can be misleading. We need to add this: No one will ever want to say to the Lord of the universe five minutes after death, I spent every night playing games and watching clean TV with my family because I loved them so much. I think the Lord will say, “That did not make me look like a treasure in your town. You should have done something besides provide for yourself and your family. And TV, as you should have known, was not a good way to nurture your family or your own soul.”

I get so stuck in small thinking, content to do my own thing and hardly looking beyond the end of my own nose or outside the boundaries of my own comfy, suburban yard (or complaining endlessly on my blog). There is so much more to life. Now I just gotta figure out which useful, God thing(s) to pursue.

Yesterday my son went to the best kid birthday party ever.

The schedule:

10:00 am - meet at bowling alley
10:05 am - bowl
11:00 am - open presents
11:05 am - pass out goodie bags
11:10 am - party’s over

Advantages:

1. As you can imagine, bowling on a Monday at 10 in the morning…they practically had the whole place to themselves.

2. No cake, no mess, no clean up, no sugar-injected 5-year-olds running wild and no 3, 4 or 5-hour (or more) block of time in which everyone gets cranky and stressed out.

3. Very little prep time for the birthday mom.

4. And really, a little over an hour is quite sufficient for a group of 5-year-olds, don’t you think?

(And for any of you worried that the poor kid didn’t get his cake and eat it too, have no fear. They had a family party earlier in the month with, I assume, all the “appropriate” birthday booty.)

Let’s admit it, don’t we often throw huge parties for our kids in order to impress other parents or at least, to keep up with them? OK, maybe none of you do, but I’m guilty. Kids just want to play. They don’t care about checking everything off the activity list nor if everything matches and looks just so.

Yesterday’s party was good for me. I’ve decided to just say no to those big birthday parties that mostly just make me want to scratch my eyeballs out.

Sometimes, a little distance is good. Like when you take a break from blogging and then you go back to your blog after not having looked at it for months and then you see, you really, really see just how sick you really are.

I’ve been reading through previous posts and I have to say, I think Carolin P. was really on to something. I sound bitter, really bitter in places. And I don’t think I just sound bitter, I am bitter. At least that’s what I get from some of my posts. Geez, I need some serious heart change.

As I’ve been reading, I’ve resisted the urge to rewrite, fix, change or DELETE in order to make myself look better. (I did change my About page a bit. Even I have limits.) The truth is, I’ve s t r u g g l e d through the last four years of my life and pastor’s wifedom. But thank God for His grace, His forgiveness and most amazingly, His redemption. Oh God, I’m so sorry, please refine me.

So here’s what happened.

I’ve been taking a break from blogging, mainly because I hate writing and because one blog post takes a ridiculously long time for me to complete because it just doesn’t flow outta me. And I was doing other stuff—stuff which, for me, takes considerably less brainpower.

Anyway, I was beginning to think that maybe I could get back into blogging if I could just not be so perfectionistic about it.

At just about the time I starting thinking I might resurrect this here blog, I get an email that went a little bit like this:

Hi Amy,

My name is [so-and-so] and I’m a writer from [such-and-such] magazine. I’m doing a story about pastors’ wives and found your blog. May I interview you?

Thought #1: Someone is messin’ with me. This is just like those emails that tease me, wanting me to “click here” for my $50 gift certificate to Cold Stone. And that’s just cruel and unusual.

So, I forwarded the email to my husband to get his opinion. I also did what I always do: googled so-and-so.

Hmmm…

Apparently, this is a real person. Perhaps this email is not spam.

Thought #2: But really, if she’s doing a story on pastors’ wives, she must be looking for someone who actually knows what they’re talking about. Does she not know how insecure I am? Has she not heard how inadequate I feel? I thought I’ve made it pretty clear that I don’t have a clue about this whole pastor’s wife thing.

So, I shoot her an email which says something like this: “Dear So-and-so, Sure, you can interview me. I’ll even try to sound like I know what I’m talking about.”

Well, we I ended up talking on the phone for over an hour. It’s definitely fair to say I blabbed the whole time. And I think I royally confused her because, frankly, I do not think logically and therefore I don’t do a good job of communicating my thoughts in a linear fashion. (Now you can see why blogging gives me stress. To blog is like someone throwing up in my brain and then I have to sit down, put all the pieces back together and package it nicely and coherently. Sorry for the graphic description…that’s just the way it is.)

But anyway, one thing that I got quite a chuckle out of (especially later as I thought more about it) was hearing her computer keys clicking like mad as her fingers tried to keep up with my mouth. I can only imagine what it was like to go back to her notes later and try to make heads or tails out of whatever it was that was there. I was making no sense, I knew it and I even told her so. (”I’m so sorry…I know I am making NO. SENSE.”) She didn’t argue my point, but was gracious and said something like, “That’s OK, I’m confident it will all pan out.” And that was just nice of her.

Where was I. Oh. I definitely repeated and repeated and repeated myself as I generally do. (Incidentally, this is precisely why I hate talking on the phone and why I spend an inordinate amount of time reliving conversations in my head in the hopes that maybe the next time I speak to a human being, I just might be able to say what I want to say ONE time and then SHUT. UP.)

Geez, I’m totally rabbit-trailing here. I have no idea what my point was.

Oh yeah. So, I got that email, had that interview and the article is slated to be published next week. (I’ll quit being so cryptic about the so-and-so and the such-and-such when it happens.)

Aaaaaaanyway, the bottom line is, there’s nothing that’ll make you get your blog in order faster than the knowledge that someone might actually read it. And then here’s what happens. I start fiddling with it and, poof!, it all goes away. Well, it wasn’t exactly “poof!” (because that gives the impression that it wasn’t my fault, and it was totally my fault) but the point is, the whole thing was gone and I didn’t know how to get it back.

So, yesterday I spent most of my day wrestling this monster called technology which we are all so grateful that we have because it makes our lives so much easier (there’s sarcasm there in case you didn’t catch it) and I don’t really know how God feels about technology (and my wrestling with it) but I’m inclined to think it was His intervention which helped me figure the whole thing out. And for that, I’m enormously thankful.

So, if so-and-so really is real, and if she really was able to make sense out of my nonsense, and if she really did write an article, and if the article really is going to be published next week, and if people really start reading this blog as a result, well then, I’m prepared. Because (for today at least), it appears that I’m back.