Friday Night Pizza

November 20, 2015November 20, 2015 Lindsey P. Brackett2 Comments

We make pizza on Friday nights.

And by “we”, I usually mean me. Last week I made the mistake of letting Gus make his own without the extra hands of a daddy (who was late coming home from work) and I nearly lost my mind.

Three year olds do not understand the moderation of mozzarella.

Letting them help–eight little hands with four different ideas–doesn’t always come easily to me. I do much better when I’m in charge and they’re occupied with something else. You know, like Netflix.

But Friday Night Pizza has become our family tradition, our tiny constant in a world of great upheaval, and letting them rock my sanity (and drop olives on my kitchen floor) is part of this sacred sharing of life.

I knead my dough and spread homemade sauce and arrange pepperoni with methodical measures that bring order to the chaos constantly surrounding my days and invading my mind. For half an hour on Friday nights, I block out everything but the ratio of cheese to meat to vegetables and my only concern is sliding the pizza from the board to the stone in one smooth move.

And I realize how perfectly executed is our world, the falling of the leaves and the changing of the tides and the pricking of the stars in the darkest nights. And I remember, even as I long to make my tiny creation perfect without the imprints of impatient little hands, that my great God lets me create with Him.

Children. Words. And even pizza.

Tell me what are your favorite family traditions? and favorite pizza toppings?

5b642-060 — Hmmm…I should take some new pictures since I have fancier equipment now. But it still tastes the same!

Our Favorite Pizza Recipe

One recipe Pioneer Woman’s Pizza Dough
1/2 cup Best Tomato Sauce Ever
1/2 cup (each) chopped black olives, diced peppers, chopped mushrooms
12-15 slices turkey pepperoni
1/2 cup browned Italian Sausage
1-1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese (tip: shred your own 8 oz block)

Make dough according to directions. Divide in half and roll out on a pizza board sprinkled liberally with cornmeal. Spread sauce on dough. Top with vegetables and sausage. Sprinkle cheese to desired preference. Top with pepperoni. Transfer to pizza stone in preheated oven. (Make sure there is plenty of cornmeal under the dough and it should slide right off your board or cookie sheet and onto the stone.) Bake at 500 degrees for 7 minutes until crust is lightly browned and cheese melted.

What Makes a Marriage

November 9, 2015November 9, 2015 Lindsey P. Brackett1 Comment

A few weekends ago, we gave away my nineteen year old sister.

12190798_10208274736611325_8693646819068934414_n — When you’re the youngest of seven children, it’s perfectly normal to have ten nieces and nephews participate in your big day.

Young, and as innocent as she is worldly, she’s known for a long time her heart belongs to a four-wheeling country boy I’ve hardly ever heard speak. So my daddy walked her down an aisle of grass amidst a backdrop of autumn, and gave her over to a young man who must have been shaking in his boots when he asked permission.

Because respecting your wife sometimes starts with respecting her daddy.

I declined the title bridesmaid; after all, there are six of us sisters and I wanted to choose my own dress. But when she asked me how I’d like to participate, I didn’t hesitate.

While the sun shone and the wind blew, with the sky for a cathedral, I spoke about the sacredness of promises made.

Love is patient. Love is kind. Even when Monday morning is running late, and one kid can’t find her shoes, and someone forgot to wash the socks.

Love is not jealous or boastful. Even when you’re right, and he’s wrong.

Love bears all things. Yes, young couple, remember that. Love puts up with temper tantrums and ugly fights that can’t always be undone. Love bears the load of worry and fear and panic when the gurney holds one of you—

Or one of your children.

Love believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. I told them they think today is the happiest day of their lives. Today they’re committing to a physical and spiritual intertwining, and they’re surrounded by family and friends, so today love is easy. Today hope is easy.

But a wedding is really just an ending of the lives they’ve known and the beginning of the one life they will create.

A wedding is not the happiest day.

Instead, that happiest day will come upon you in the most ordinary of moments. That’s the endurance of love. When you wake up and look around and realize you’re surrounded by little people and loads of laundry and life.

On that day you realize this is what a marriage is. It’s not fancy flowers and yards of lace. It’s not white chairs and first dances.

A marriage is not “I do”. A marriage is “I will.”

A marriage happens because you get up every day and promise that person you love (but sometimes dislike) that you will, all over again. You will when the bills are overdue, and the dishes stack high, and you can’t remember the last time he brought you flowers.

Love never fails.

Because love is an action, a conscious doing, not a state of being. Love requires work, sacrifice, the molding of yourself to another person. That is how you build a marriage. That is how you create a life. That is how you make your happily ever after.

But these three remain: faith, hope, and love. An endless circle, like those rings exchanged. Love begets faith, and faith begets hope.

And the greatest of these is love.

A version of this originally appeared in The Northeast Georgian, October 23, 2015.

Professional photography courtesy of Candice Holcomb Photography.

31 Days: Fear

Overcoming the Fear of Not Good Enough: 31 Days

October 22, 2015October 22, 2015 Lindsey P. BrackettLeave a comment

I have this problem. Maybe you have it too?

I sometimes say yes to things because I fear no one else will. And because everyone is looking at me. Sometimes I say yes because I want to direct that play or write that post or read that book, but I don’t consider if I’m really ready to handle that situation in my current life.

Then I realize–I’m in way over my head and I’m not equipped to do this thing. Whatever it may be.

That happened when I took the position as MOPS coordinator for our local chapter three years ago. I had a new baby, had been staying home a year, had served already on the leadership team, was the only member of the sponsor church left on the team…of course I would lead this group because I needed it so badly in my own life.

It’s really hard to serve when you want to be served yourself. Just so you know. And I kept being told that God equips the called, rather than calling the equipped. While I do believe that, I also believe that sometimes God is shaking his head when I’m nodding mine.

I can look back on those two years of leadership now and see God’s hand. That he let me be a bridge leader that helped the group transition to the amazing ministry it is now–and not that it wasn’t great then. But He let me lead during a crisis time when everything felt unsettled and He let me see that even when I know I’m not equipped, He is. So he gave me people on my team who buoyed me up, met my soul-hungry needs for spiritual support, and helped me find where my gift truly lies.

It’s not leadership.

And I can be okay with “not being good enough” at that because I’ve found where my spirit truly quickens.

I am a writer.

Saying those words took a lot of over coming that big not-good-enough lie too.

I haven’t published enough.

I don’t have enough followers.

I can’t understand all the lingo.

No one’s really paying me to do this.

But I’m doing it. I’m saying it. I’m claiming it.

I’m believing that I am good enough for whatever I may be called to do with this gift. And I’m learning everyday that I can do more than I ever imagined.

I’d encourage you to ask yourself–is it that you feel “not good enough”? Or is the true wrestle in your soul coming from the feeling that you’re not where you’re supposed to be?

Because when we let ourselves be planted where our roots can grow deepest, that’s when we become strong and spread ourselves wide–

and are always good enough.

31 Days: Fear

Sticks and Stones and Fearing People: 31 Days

October 13, 2015October 13, 2015 Lindsey P. Brackett1 Comment

Fear of man will prove to be a snare,

but whoever trust in the Lord will be kept safe.

Proverbs 29:25

We hurled angry words at one another across that small bedroom of a rented house in the mountains. Feelings we’d kept pushed down until we cast them at one another like sticks and stones.

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.

What a lie.

Sometimes we have to break; we have to bruise and bleed and burn before we heal. Holding back resentment and jealousy and pride only keeps us trapped inside our fear.

I can’t tell my sister (or my friend or my spouse or my co-worker or my child) how I really feel because what if she gets mad at me? Fear of confrontation has locked me so deep inside myself I can’t see beyond my own hurt to the heart of the matter.

Ensnared by my own fear.

Not her words, her actions, her fear–but mine. My own worry that peace is better than pain.

Maybe sometimes peace is worth the keeping quiet. But when peace comes at the cost of anxiety, depression, and retreat, when keeping peace means not keeping those you love and value and cherish–

the time has come to fight free from the trap. Say the words and release the snare. Face the fear of confrontation and maybe, just maybe, you’ll find yourself speaking truth for the very first time.

And rekindling a relationship that had nearly been lost.

This post is part of my 31 Days series: When Fear is Crippling. You can read all the pieces here. And in the comments below, you can tell me I’m not the only one who gave herself a stomach ulcer when faced with confrontation.

31 Days: Fear

No Fear in Love: 31 Days

October 6, 2015October 6, 2015 Lindsey P. Brackett2 Comments

Sometimes, like Scout and Jem at the beginning of To Kill A Mockingbird, I get in an argument with myself about where this story begins.

Everything started last October. When we came home from Denver and the little ones were sick. That’s when I became afraid (with the silly fear of mothers) that life would never be the same again. I’d spend the rest of my days cleaning up from the relentless stomach virus. After all, that lasted until Thanksgiving and the real nightmare began.

Then I think past that and I remember my husband’s heart scare. I remember the difficulties of the year before when our youngest and only son was born. The year I stepped out of my classroom role and into full-time mom and thought my world had ended.

Then, then, I think long past that. Back to earlier days when our most pressing concern was choosing between the cafeteria and the cafe before play rehearsal, when we could stay up way past midnight eating hash browns at Waffle House and studying for my Spanish exam, when my first inklings of fear were doused by the words I ran across one night after we’d been dating several months and people began asking just where this might be going.

We sat in my car outside his dorm. Dark night. Cloudy probably, because I don’t remember the stars and Berry College is known for beautiful skies. He’d told me he loved me months before. We didn’t talk about the future as senior year scuttled forward and Christmas loomed on the horizon. My plans to teach somewhere, maybe even as far off as New York where my friends told me I’d be eaten alive by the public school system, no longer seemed my own.

The terror of making a decision not knowing what he was thinking, not knowing if he wanted to be a part of that, twisted deep in my gut. And then–

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

1 John 4:18

Love drives out fear. A verse I’d stumbled across during church that morning when I was listening for the Lord instead of the sermon.

We sat in my car and he held my hand and ran his thumb over mine in what would become so familiar and trademark gesture that later, I would use that move when writing a love story. Because I knew then, this man loved me with no fear for what may come.

The tighter he held my hand, the more I could trust this unknown future.

Love casts out fear.

A promise I have clung to through thirteen years of marriage, four boisterous kids, and more than one terrifying experience.

This is the beginning of my story.

This post is part of the 31 Days challenge. Read all my posts here or subscribe to this blog (there’s a button under my picture over there). I’m writing 31 days on one topic, but don’t expect 31 posts. Because did you see the line about four kids? And how I write over here too?