The Steadfast Heart

I have a feeling as I sit at my kitchen counter to write out my thoughts tonight that they are not going to come out super polished or pretty. As I’ve thought about writing what’s on my heart as of late, I’ve continued to push it off because all I have going on in my head is a legitimate whirlwind, squirrel moment-esque, giant potpourri bowl of thoughts.  And I’m not even sure they smell all that pleasant. 

I normally am able to find some sort of silver lining in whatever I’m going through as I write out my thoughts.  I fear that for some of these thoughts, I won’t arrive at any answers and I hope that isn’t a let down. No one wants a negative Natalie.  But I did kind of say a while ago that I’m learning to be okay with not being okay. 

Nevertheless, the external processor in me has mentally internalized long enough.  Maybe the New Year has me subconsciously reflecting on my 2017.  Maybe you can chalk it up to pregnancy hormones. Or, the weather might actually work towards valid reasoning here.  What I’m trying to say is, my perception may not be reality and I am highly aware of that.  But if you want, you are invited to join me in “whatever this is that I’m trying to say” feels like. 

It’s My Pleasure

Shall we talk about chicken? The restaurant that I work at was the first free-standing restaurant for our company in the state of Wisconsin. There are now 8 locations across the state that have come to be in the last three years, but even still, chicken for breakfast, lunch, and dinner is like a super new thing up here.  I hear “Chick-uh-fill-ahh” and “Can I try your Chipotle sauce?” on the regular.  So you could say that I am in the business of guest education in a state that is dominated by Culver’s and Canadian accents. 

It would take me quite a bit of time to fully explain what I do, because essentially the role that I fill was made up.  I literally came up with my job title, Executive Coordinator (which is legit if you google it.  Accurate, too.) and most of my responsibilities have been things I’ve accumulated along the way.  Most of what I do is stuff that you’d never know or never see as a guest because I assist people like our operational managers or our owner/operator, but I also help with serving food every day, too.

You know that game called Never Have I Ever?  If 23-year-old Natalie would have been asked a question about dreaming of a career in fast-food, I would have never-have-I-ever’ed that so hard.  But here’s what I’ve learned.  I thought doing hair was challenging.  Serving chicken can certainly hold its own candle to that.  Part of my job is to respond to guest complaints, not just in store when they happen. I’m the lucky one who gets to call the people that write to corporate with an incident or post nasty reviews to our Facebook page.  Remember, our little chicken chain is super new to Wisconsin.  So to the lady from the drive-thru calling back because she didn’t get her “Tahitian sauce” and had to put her own mayo on her “burger” and oh yes, was ticked that her fries were weirdly shaped like some sort of a net or grid—it’s okay.  You will figure us out eventually.  But sure, we’ll replace your entire meal for you and your family because you are convinced that the lemon seed you found in your hand-squeezed lemonade was in fact an intentional act from us to give you food poisoning.  Thank goodness you are now miraculously healed! 

So that wears over time. Thankfully I also have positive experiences with super pleasant guests who really did have a bad experience that we need to absolutely recover and that always helps balance the scales. But lately, as I drive thirty-five minutes back to my apartment I just find myself asking the question, “What am I doing?” 

For the record, I assist some really great people.  But off of the record, I struggle with being content with my job status and wanting recognition for the things I do that I feel like no one sees or finds value in and I definitely ask myself if what I do really matters.  And listen, I know that I could Esther the living daylights out my situation and “for such a time as this” myself into thinking otherwise. But for whatever reason I feel like I’m supposed to just sit in this mess for a while.  Find a way to not just see the silver lining, but believe it and own it and live it out. 

The raw truth is that I’m just not there yet.  I fully understand that my lackluster feelings is way more about how I’m tuning my heart to see God’s grace over my life and a whole lot less about what assignments land on my desk every morning.  So here is my first step to getting over myself: My name is Natalie and I sell chicken for a living.  I don’t have a high-end corporate job.  I receive hourly pay and clock in and out just like the high schoolers that I help hire onto our team.  I come home smelling like a poultry farm.  Hi.  Will this be for dine-in or carry-out? 

Motherhood.

There’s a word I am in the process of embracing.  I have been pretty quiet from a social media front on this one.  Part of me never wants to be flashy about it, knowing that some friends haven’t been able to experience this, or they’ve experienced a miscarriage, or they’re not even married yet.  Maybe they’re just newlyweds and the thought of kids is so far removed from their mind, they can’t relate. 

But if I’m allowed to share, I am overwhelmed with all of the feelings.  The excitement, the nervousness of not knowing what we’re doing the first time around, the planning process, the fun in picking out clothes and things for the registry.  I am honestly grossed out about a lot of the stuff that comes with a baby like the whole breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and snacks in between thing that I will physically be responsible for, what happens to your body after you essentially push a bowling ball through a straw, the whole “try not to poop when you push” recommendation I keep hearing about and oh, be sure you stock up on like a lot of Depends for after birth—LIKE WHAT?!?! I need to get off of the internet like yesterday. 

But even with all of those “pack this, not that in your hospital bag” type blogs and pregnancy Pinterest posts I read when I can’t sleep at night that quite frankly freak me out, I am truly loving that this baby is a part of my life.  It’s also quite underwhelming with how few of people I feel like I can share that with at times.  Maybe that’s on me—I am of course, the over-thinker. 

Not to continue to be Johnny Raincloud tonight, but here’s the depressing truth.  Last New Year’s Eve, Hunter and I sat on on our couch, bored and sad that everyone but us was racking up a bazillion likes on their party posts.  And I remember in trying to find the positive, we said that next year would be the year that we too, would be out with friends.  We’d be the ones with Instagram stories and the glasses that said 2018 over the eyes.  But we weren’t.  We sat on the couch and essentially relived Groundhog Day from the year before. Except this time there were three of us. 

And while it’s easy to attend social events and be around people, it’s a lot harder to make friends. Real friends.  People you can do life with and share your heart with and double date with.  It’s even more challenging to find people that are going through the same life events as you are or that can at least try to put themselves in your shoes and share in the excitement.  I will sprinkle this with the fact we have no family remotely close.  So we can’t even be the cool kind of lame people that hang out with their parents or siblings to cover up their lack of other kinds of friends. In a lot of ways, in the last year and a half of living here, we have felt orphaned and we wonder if our old friends still remember us or miss us.  Social media has a way with leading us to believe that’s a solid no. 

With that being said, I am extra, extra thankful tonight that I married my best friend.  Most of the time, we have figured out a way to be content on Friday nights when we come home from work just to watch The Office and drink hot chocolate together.  I would still argue I’m living my best life being married to someone as intellectually deep, as ambitious, driven, and as side-stitching hilarious as Hunter Price.  So feel free to put your umbrellas away now.

Out of all of the moments and thoughts that have consumed me in the last few weeks as I’ve been reflecting on 2017, Christmas Eve has taken up most of my time.  As I sat shoulder to shoulder with family back home at the Cherry Hills service, I had such a moment with Jesus that I’m not sure I will ever be able to forget.  As Scripture was being read about Mary and the message that Gabriel gave to her, that she would give birth to a son and that he would be Emmanuel, God with us, I felt the silent kicks of my own son as I listened.  And for the first time in my entire life, I finally understood just how deep Mary treasured up God’s gift to her in her own heart.  

I’m not sure if I could ever sing Silent Night with the same kind of reverence that I had on that night. The candle that I held felt extra bright as I resonated with Mary and the gift that she beheld.  On Christmas Day, the 25th, as I turned 25 years old at 25 weeks pregnant, that’s what I spent time thinking about over everything else. That in part to Mary’s faithfulness, I have received this everlasting relationship with Jesus that carries on long after Christmas is over.  I have never been more grateful that he can completely make sense out of and identify with my potpourri of thoughts.  He totally gets what it’s like to be forgotten by friends.  Or to feel overlooked, unrecognized, and uninvited. 

I think the place that I’m trying to get myself to here is that I want to continue to tune my heart to what matters and most of all, to who matters.  I’m not super sure how to close out an open-ended thought, so here is my best effort:

There is a lot of life left to live in 2018 and I promise that if I ever get into Johnny Raincloud mode again, I’ll at least share the silver lining with you.  

Take care & take heart,

Natalie

Originally written January 2018

One of the things that has pressed heavy on my heart and mind has been to ask deeper and better questions on how to lead. In high school and college, I believed that I was merely practicing how to be a leader for the day I was put in charge of something.  I’ve realized more than ever this year that leadership in all of its complexities works its absolute best when I choose to lead myself first.  

Bill Hybels once said, “You are the most difficult person you will ever lead.”  For me, that’s one of those statements you hear and can’t move past until it is given the proper thought it demands.  His words have walked with me for years, but this year especially, they have served as an anthem for me as a learning leader.

Do you ever feel like you have voices stuck in your head?  I hear my parents’ voices in my head as an adult every single day—things that they would say to me again and again growing up.  Maybe it was because I was a difficult child to parent.  Maybe I needed to hear things multiple times.  Or maybe they knew that someday I’d be on my own and would need those little reminders to come across the ticker of my mind. Either way, the voices I heard growing up have never left my head ever after I moved out of their home.  And I’m so glad they’re still here.

Today was one of those challenging days as a leader.  It was one of those days where you just want to go to bed and sleep through your alarm in the morning.  I wish I could say I was an awesome leader today.  But today, most of all, I failed to lead myself.  I didn’t set the tone for the people around me.  In fact, I set gossip traps and tried to get as many people on board my train called Natalie’s Self Pity Party Express.  As I was driving home defeated from the day, I heard my dad’s voice come across my mind saying, “Natalie, you are a leader whether you believe it or not; whether you want to be one or you don’t.  You are a leader and it’s your job to steward that gift.” 

I think the most testing part about leadership is when I fail to lead myself first before trying to lead others.  Sometimes I thrive on using my authority flippantly because I like to be in the business of getting things done, instead of recognizing that holding authority requires discernment and humble stewardship.  In the movie Fireproof, Kirk Cameron’s character is told by his good friend and co-worker that he has to “lead his heart” and not be deceived by his emotions.  How true that is for a tender heart like mine.  I have a tendency to feel things so deeply and to believe things so strongly, that I have a challenging time not acting directly out of those two things. 

You may not be in charge of anyone.  You may have a lot of people in charge of you.  But regardless, you and I are the same.  We have to lead ourselves.  We have to make decisions for ourselves every day.  I find that my responses to leadership opportunities immediately reflect what my heart has been dwelling on, in, or around.  Sometimes my answer is Hallmark movies, especially this time of year. Other answers may include my Spotify playlist, the podcast I just finished, the book I’m currently reading. It could be the sermon from Sunday or just the opposite: my lack of spending time soaking in what Jesus has to say about leadership and treating others, all which can be found in the Bible next to my bed.  

What has your heart been dwelling on in this season of your life?  If you think really about it, do any of your responses to the people you lead (which may simply be yourself), reflect the current state of your heart? This may be shocking, but I have both of my hands straight up in the air right now! 

One of my favorite things about growing up in Cherry Hills family is the overall sense that we are in this together.  I cherish the fact that we are all learning how to love and be loved.  Often times the phrases we would say together at Cherry Hills are like voices in my head now that I live in Wisconsin.  The banner over my heart looks a lot like what you see hanging on the walls of the worship center: I am fighting my tendency to drift towards shallow Christianity.  I truly want to lead myself and others how Jesus led.  I love that he drew people in to him by living a life of equal grace and truth.  He led by humbly serving others (even his enemies) in a culture that pressured him to serve himself first.

More than ever, I want to stay in tune to leading my heart well.  If this was a sermon, this would be the “yes, but how?” section in my message notes.  And with my dad’s voice declaring this verse over me, here is what I would fill in the blanks with: Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.  In all your ways, acknowledge him and he will direct your paths (Proverbs 3:5-6).

One thing I’ve always seen proven true is when I acknowledge Jesus and lean on him for direction, is my leadership and communication with other people gets better.  It creates a “rising tide lifts all boats” mentality among the team that I’m apart of and best of all, I become a winsome person that my boss can enjoy working with.  

In the words of Louie Giglio, my footing of faith is directly proportional to the way that I care about people and execute my job in my organization.  On leading yourself, Louie says this, “You may not have control over every decision that gets made, but you do have 100% control of your attitude, your joy, and your effort.”  

In 2017, I have gravitated towards leadership books because I know I have so much to learn and they’re one resource I have that can help me grow.  

Some of the books that I have read or listened to on Audible that have been incredibly helpful for me are:

• How to Lead When You’re Not in Charge by Clay Scroggins 
• Seven Practices of Effective Ministry by Andy Stanley
• The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John C. Maxwell
• The Hiding Place by Corie Ten Boom
• Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
• The Dream Manager by Matthew Kelly

A few podcasts I’ve found encouraging: 

• Don’t Waste Your Work by Louie Giglio from the Passion City Church Podcast (Posted on January 29, 2017)
• The Ken Coleman Show
• The Glorious in the Mundane Podcast with Christy Nockels (one of the best recommendations I’ve ever received—thank you, Jenny!!!) 

As I finish processing through my leadership immaturity from today, I want to take ownership of the fact that there was never not a time throughout my grumbling today that I was not in charge of my attitude, my joy, or my effort.  Tomorrow I am going to have to walk into my workplace and apologize to the people that had to Clorox wipe themselves off from all of my spew. I am always accountable for me. If you saw the movie “Wonder” you may recognize the precept, “Your deeds are your monuments.”  Yep–nailed it!  

So if you are anything like me or find living out Christianity in the workplace or even at home to be a struggle, know this: we are going to fail in front of people. The bigger failure is not choosing to let those failures develop character within us and we do that by owning up to the things we did wrong and the people we may have hurt.  I will be the first person to tell you that this is not fun and unfortunately (and also fortunately) I’ve had a lot of practice building character.  But you are a leader whether you believe it or not; whether you want to be one or you don’t.  You are a leader and it’s your job to steward that gift.

After I close this laptop tonight, I am going to dwell in Proverbs 3:5-6 and the absolute grace of tomorrow.  With all of our hearts, I hope we can both know tonight that we can trust Jesus with the things that bring us joy and the situations that bring us grief.  We can choose to acknowledge Him when things don’t go our way or when we don’t understand.  

And if we do, He says that He will be with us.  I love that. This Christmas season as I picture the manger scene, I find myself in tears each time I whisper to Jesus, “You came!” He came into my mess by choice and for that I can walk in the power of “with”—that Jesus is Emmanuel.  He’s withme. 

Take care & take heart,

Natalie 

Originally written December 17, 2017

Have you ever asked yourself the question, “What am I doing with my life?” After a season of doing life a certain way, have you ever been stopped by a pressing feeling that your life is calling for a change? Whether you’re aware of what that change might be or what it may mean for you, you can’t deny those small stirrings. Those small stirrings are what lead to the bigger questions. Those questions eventually find their answers and those answers are what produce the change. 

Eighteen months ago, the small stirrings in my heart were to take my career in a different direction. After seven years of life in the cosmetology industry, my dreams were halted by state licensure regulations. To transfer your license to the state of Wisconsin, you must have 1,800 hours of cosmetology school under your belt or five years of experience behind the chair. Most states, including Illinois where I completed my education only require 1,500 hours, which is what I had completed, combined with only six months of behind the chair experience. 

Hunter had been commuting an hour one way to his college campus in order to complete his final year of college during our first six months of marriage while I worked at the salon. For me to go back to cosmetology school for three months would have eliminated our income as well as the fact that we only had five weeks of turnaround time from when Hunter accepted the teaching position in Wisconsin, to when we moved across the state line. 

But I truly believe that God was working out His bigger plan for me in the months prior to our move that exceeded my small ambitions. In 2015, I completed the twelve-month cosmetology program in just over eight months, all while planning a wedding and working at the salon in my spare time. When I finally got behind the chair, I was exhausted.  The amount of pressure I had placed on myself to make a living, to be an all-star newlywed wife, and to have my adulthood all together at twenty-two was crushing. 

I begged our salon management to allow me to take on three different roles in order to make rent and pay for gas, all while living for my giant dream of being a knockout hair stylist. But in the process, I lowered the quality of life for me and my new husband. I came home multiple nights after 8:30, missing the time to make dinner (not that I was good at it or even enjoyed botching yet another Pinterest recipe) or to have enough focus to hear about his day.  I was failing at the things I thought a wife was supposed to be able to execute flawlessly. As a result, I lived my life out of an intense stress and after months into this new routine, my soul began to crave something different.

The most excruciating part about walking away from life at the salon was the reality that my plans had failed. I feared I was using this move as a cop-out. I feared that when the rubber hit the road, I really didn’t have what it took to do hair. I spent years watching some of the best people in the business own their craft and I was tapping out after six short months. Sometimes I replied to the shocked question of, “You’re not going to do hair anymore?! You just finished all of that schooling!” with a prideful story about how I was burnt out (which was true) and how I thought a life in business was a better choice anyway.

I went from defending my decision to choose a life in cosmetology to practically disowning it. I tried winning back the respect all of the people I lost when I didn’t go into business after college.  The truth was, for the first time in my life, I was forced to build my identity around something other than a career. And as the music faded on my dreams and I began questioning my decisions and the God that allowed me to dream really big dreams, I realized that my plans weren’t bullet proof. My plans had just failed. 

And in the weeks leading up to our move, my plans continued to fail. I applied to thirty-one places in Wisconsin, some even as far as an hour commute out of absolute desperation. I tried submitting multiple resumes, job sites, and career paths. I applied for sales positions, secretary postings, and reached out to companies in fields I had never even heard of. I spent weeks grasping at straws and most times, I never received so much as a rejection letter. Just silence. 

I was sitting in a puddle of my own questions and doubts. Was it a mistake to go into hair after college? Was is a mistake not to network my way into a life in business in my hometown? If I would have gone into administration or management like the piece of paper I have framed says, would I have gotten a job quicker in Wisconsin? Why am I so ready to hang up my apron and move on from hair after I dreamed of this for so long? 

The pressure to land a job only increased after realizing upon moving in June, our rent would literally double, we would now be in charge of paying for our own insurance, cell phone plan, and all things adult-like our parents had waived while we were only living on my income, and the minor detail that Hunter’s first paycheck wouldn’t be wired into our checking account until after school started in September. This was just the tiny price we were going to have to pay for wanting to have time to get acclimated in our new town a few months before the school year began.

Days before we were to be packing up the Uhaul, I was at the salon after close packing up my bag of tools after another shift, when my phone buzzed a couple of times.  Chick-fil-A had just opened up a few months prior in our city and the Owner/Operator had quickly become a treasured favorite in our family.  I remember reading her text, crying, and then driving home trying to process what this might mean.

She told me that her former co-worker at Chick-fil-A when she worked in Raleigh was now an Operator in Wisconsin. I’d probably have a commute, but he was interested in interviewing me to come on his team once we had moved. 

“I might be a team member at Chick-fil-A,” I thought as I pictured life in a red polo and coming home smelling like poultry. The tears came from realizing that this was not a life I had ever planned, even when I was looking for jobs at sixteen. Then the tears continued to stream down my face on my drive home as I sighed in huge relief that finally, I had a lead on a job. There was hope, even if working at Chick-fil-A for a few months meant it’d buy me time to look elsewhere. 

Through thirty-one job applications, I had arrived at such a place of humility in a short amount of time. I don’t mean that in a good way. I mean that God literally had to run over my pride with a dump truck, back it up, and do it a couple more times before I arrived at Humble Village, and even then I sat at that table with my arms crossed. The reality was, I was refusing to eat the humble pie God was serving. I cried.  I played the victim.  I degraded myself and my prior career decisions that at one point in time I had believed were Jesus-led.  

But once I truly got over myself, I began to see the truth that a different story was being written for me. See, I had thought that maybe after the salon chapter in my life closed, God was just forgetting to turn the page on what was next for me.  But He wasn’t forgetting anything.  I was just reading the wrong book. 

I hope you’ll keep following His story for me in the blog posts to follow.  My hope is that you might identify somewhere between paragraphs with the truth that when your plans fall apart and my plans fail, we are being held safely in His grip–even when we may not believe it, feel it, or see it. 

Take care & take heart,

Natalie

Originally written November 2017