When so much emphasis is placed on what we do, it can be easy to repeat our learned pattern of thinking without giving it a second thought. We often describe ourselves by what we do for work, or if we are a SAHM, by our role of not working a traditional job. Yet what we do outwardly is an overflow of what is going on inside us; it does not define us, it merely describes what’s visible. When we begin inching our way into missional living, we find we must answer this question: what motive lies beneath what we do? To ensure it’s a pure motive that prompts us to live on mission, let’s pause our doing and reflect together on a few questions.

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More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

The moment we step in the front door, especially of a home we have never entered before, all our feelers are on high alert. Our brain rapid-fires questions like Do I take my shoes off? Where do I put them? How long do I stay in the entry? What do I need to avoid touching? If we have young kids with us, we are also hyper-aware of where they are and what they could potentially break. Very quickly we gauge our level of comfortability and that first impression is often sticky. So how can we, as missional people, make our neighbors feel right at home when they visit?

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More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

Link mentioned: How to Clean for Unexpected Guests

Learning to posture ourselves as open—open to loving our neighbors well, welcoming them into our home, and doing life with them—shifts our mindset. Instead of avoiding, we begin to expect unexpected guests. While we talk often about slowly embracing a missional lifestyle, taking baby steps and trusting that God is growing something rich and beautiful in us—today I’d like to dive into a very practical component of our response to mission: how to clean your house for unexpected guests.

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More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

Do you have a friend, the soul-quenching, real kind? Or do you feel the longing, but are hesitant to linger long enough for the friendship to flourish? Perhaps you feel like you are on the outside looking in, always. Or maybe you want to push through the uncomfortable feelings of vulnerability but you just don’t exactly know how to. If missional living in our neighborhood means that we are slowly developing deeper friendships, let’s talk about how we practically get there.

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More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

We live most of our moments in the messy, sticky, actual life realm. Life happens. Fallen pickle jars shatter against the concrete of the garage floor. Feelings get bent out of whack in the midst of neighborhood play. Conflict thuds with heavy feet on the airy moments. We juggle the important work of parenting with other demands, still present, still with their own importance. If being missional includes sharing the life-on-life stuff, it must be possible to move ever towards mission while we live our messy, actual lives. Perhaps the messiest moments are actually the greatest opportunities to engage in organic discipleship in our neighborhoods.

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More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

God is near, no matter what tomorrow looks like. God is with me, even if normal will be forever re-defined. God is present, even when I don’t see it or feel it.

Perhaps it’s time to stop asking the question, “When will life go back to normal?” and ask instead, “What will my normal be?” What rhythms will flavor my life? Who will I be even when this is the only question I have power to answer?

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More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

Links mentioned:

Free Printable of The Uncommon Normal Manifesto

“Courage doesn’t always roar; sometimes courage is the tiny voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.” How true are these words about courage from Mary Anne Radmacher! A mistruth about missional living that once deterred me from getting to know my neighbors is that it was a life available only to extreme extroverts or insanely courageous people. I am neither. I’d choose peaceful harmony over adventure most days and still feel that twinge of hesitation at the beginning of so many conversations. Yet I know that doing life with my neighbors put together so many puzzle pieces I’d carried around for years. If you, too, feel less than courageous, like you are stuck between wanting to adopt a missional lifestyle and feeling horribly inadequate, there is hope. I know it’s possible to have courage even when we are afraid because I’ve experienced it.

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More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

Much of life exists in paradox. The sun is shining as kids play with friends in the front yard and ride bikes around the neighborhood, and I answer a group Facetime call so my siblings and I can talk to our grandpa, many miles away, and encourage him to hold onto life so his daughters can make it in time to say goodbye. Pain and heartache juxtapose with joy and life, and we live in the tension. To be human is to experience both, and often as parallels. Today we will hold the tension of both/and while we talk about how to make a splash with our summer—because a missional life doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

To make a splash, we must get wet—and in terms of missional living, that looks like sitting with our neighbors sometimes through the messy and hard parts of life as well as those that abound with joy. It means we don’t shy away from or minimize the seasons of life that are hard to navigate. It means we invite God into all the pieces because only He can piece together beauty when brokenness is all we see. It means we embrace the both/and.

Listen in, or if you prefer to read, head on over to the blog.

More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

Links mentioned:

Morning Routine Your Summer 2020

Cultivating a Life Worth Imitating

We could use a little more togetherness, a little less dividing us. As the sun beats down on the world slowly reopening around us, we can see more clearly the walls in places that never should have gone up. We live in a fractured world—fractured through a separation, a division, between God and humans. It was not supposed to be this way. Where love was meant to grow, it’s stunted and impeded. But there are places the light pushes through, and these are life-lines connecting the world of broken to the Creator who will one day restore. Today I get the honor of sharing a few of these stories with you.

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More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

Stories contributed by:

Carolyn Pereira *also the originator of the idea to collect and share stories

Sherry Rotan Harvie

Sally Johnson *no link available

Angela Olinghouse

Casey Hilty

Rachel Schelb

So why talk about morning routine now, rather than the myriad of other ways we can lean into missional living when we are neighborhood-bound for the summer?

Here’s why. Summer is prime time for connecting with neighbors. It’s easier to spend time outdoors, and that visibility makes it simpler to get to know neighbors better. We will dive into conversation about how we can be intentional this summer with inviting our neighbors into our lives, but it’s equally important to let what we do overflow from who we are.

Listen in, or if you prefer to read, head on over to the blog.

More content is available at TheUncommonNormal.com. I would also love to connect with you on social media. You may find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

Links mentioned:

Emily P. Freeman: podcast episodes 90 and 76 on The Next Right Thing