A Matter of Opinion: Breaking the Chains of People-Pleasing

August 28, 2013January 23, 201410 Comments

I looked ridiculous.

Standing on my deck in sopping wet clothes, barefoot with no makeup and my hair still not fully dry from my shower, I sprayed down a bunch of blankets and clothes with my garden hose.

Yes, I watered my laundry.

I had a reason of course.

It was cleaning day (so unlike I Love Lucy, I was not dressed in pearls and heels), and sometime during my normal routine, I realized that one load of laundry had been shushing around in the washer all morning….as in, it was just cycling round and round endlessly without ever draining the water and spinning the clothes.

So, I pulled every last piece of laundry out and hauled it all to the deck. Water pooled all over my floor, soaking my socks and shoes, and I stripped them off and plopped them by the back door. After I had yanked out every blanket and sock, I bailed out the washing machine by hand, first in buckets and eventually with a tiny plastic cup.

I was pretty proud of myself for successfully launching ‘Operation Rescue Clothing’ until I realized that everything I had just placed out in the sun to dry had been hauled out of soapy detergent water.

So, clearly I needed to rinse it before it dried.

With the hose.

Naturally.

What else to do . . . drag it all back in the house, flooding every room in the process, so that I could rinse everything out in the shower only to haul it all back outside?

So, I improvised.

After a minute or two of standing there with the hose spraying water on my laundry, I realized I looked (and felt) like a sponge that could have been wrung out.

And it occurred to me how embarrassing it would be if someone saw me out there, looking ragged and wet and watering my laundry instead of my veggies and flowers.

But I shrugged it off because it didn’t really matter what anyone thought of me. The fact was that I had done what needed to be done.

And isn’t that the important thing? .

Unfortunately, not to me, not all the time. It’s not so simple for me to shrug off the opinions of others.

Yes, I could be a charter member of People-Pleasers Anonymous, and this could be my own personal prison, the chains that keep me doing what is expected but not what God intends.

In the end, though, I know the truth that could set me free: God’s opinion about us is all that matters.

But it’s a realization that’s so hard to hold onto. I understand, I agree, I know it all in my head.

Yet, the truth doesn’t root itself deep enough in my heart to break those chains of people-pleasing and appeasement right off my hindered soul.

Here, though, I pause in my Bible reading to consider what God said about King Hezekiah:

“He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord…” (2 Kings 18:3 ESV).

The Message says it this way, “In God’s opinion he was a good king… (2 Kings 18:3 MSG).

In God’s eyes….in His opinion….

It’s God’s opinion that counts, that helps us put one foot solidly down on the ground after another, moving in the confident assurance that we are pleasing to Him.

In What Happens When Women Say Yes to God, Lysa TerKeurst writes:

God is the only one we should be living for, and we need His grace to handle the successes and the failures, the applause and the criticism, and everything in-between. Sometimes our efforts will be fruitful and other times fruitless, but as long as we please God, it’s all for good (p. 59).

John Bunyan wrote:

If my life is fruitless, it doesn’t matter who praises me, and if my life is fruitful, it doesn’t matter who criticizes me.

In Song of Solomon, the bride endured her brothers’ ridicule as they sent her out to labor in the fields. She begs the king, her beloved: “Do not gaze at me because I am dark” (Song of Solomon 1:6).

That’s what she’d been told, the insults and judgments about her worth and beauty that had tainted her heart and mind.

But the king declares with love:

“You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you” (Song of Solomon 4:7).

Others pointed out the flaws and others could have applauded her beauty. Either way, she could have spent her whole life captive to the accolades, the pats on the back, the criticism, the naysayers, the insults, and the apathy.

But the King saw through eyes of love and grace and set her free.

This is all that matters for me, too—the opinion of my God, who looks with eyes of grace on me.

Originally published as ‘A Matter of Opinion’, July 18, 2012

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader. Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness. Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in the Fall of 2013! To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

An Origami Failure Learns to Fold

August 26, 2013May 19, 20141 Comment

I am a failure at origami.

My oldest daughter, crafty soul that she is, begged me to help her with some origami projects. Knowing my handicap for all things artsy and craftsy that require following a pattern, I decided that our best option was to purchase an origami book for kids, complete with simple step-by-step instructions and special papers.

Surely if children can supposedly follow these directions and magically fold panda bears and peacocks, I (in all my grown-up wisdom) could also understand and succeed in folding a paper zoo. I can, after all, read, and that seemed to be the minimal requirement here.

I was wrong (of course).

Our origami sessions together typically go like this:

Open book, choose the simplest pattern we can find and then select an appropriate paper.

Fold the paper in half. Then open it back up.

Fold it in half the other way. Then open it back up.

Crease here, flip the paper, crease there.

Smile in confidence at one another in the assurance that we have finally mastered this whole origami thing. Look at us! Our paper absolutely totally matches the diagram in the book.
We return to the instructions with renewed confidence.

Reverse internal fold, flip, crease, outside reverse fold, open up, fold to center, reverse, flip, spin around, repeat, pull out the flap, push in and squash, inflate, rotate, fold and unfold, mountain fold.

Wait, what?

Pretty soon I’m sputtering in frustration and my daughter is just randomly folding and flipping her paper. I’m talking to the book as if it could answer me, “What does that mean? How do you do that? How come you don’t show a picture of the step in between this and that? Is this what it is supposed to look like?”

I begin sighing those deep-shoulder heaving sighs that say, “Oh, I should never have bought her this origami book for Christmas.”

Then I declare with supreme Mom-wisdom that what we really need here is a YouTube video with step-by-step instructions. We Google search. We find a video. We pause it after each step and make our paper look like the paper on the computer screen.

We fold. We create. We conquer (sort of).

The fact is that I’m not adept at following picture patterns in books and matching my every move to the instructions given, not with origami, sewing, knitting or crafts of any kind.

I have too many questions that the pattern doesn’t answer and too many places where I can go wrong. I can’t visualize the finished product and the steps needed to get there.

What’s true for me in arts and crafts is sometimes true in life also. We all can choose the patterns for our lives and then we make continual choices, daily decisions, to yield, bend and fold . . . or not.

Paul tells us:

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will (Romans 12:2 NIV).

The pattern of the world isn’t meant for us. The world’s priorities, its pursuits, its dialogue and messages, and its destination all fold us into a crazy mess of disorder and frustration.

We can choose instead to “follow the pattern of the sound words . . .in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 1:3 ESV) and to “obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance” (Romans 6:17 ESV).

Yes, Scripture is our pattern to follow and Christ is our model: the picture in the book that tells us what we should look like in the end.

Yet, while we may choose which pattern to follow, the world or the Word, God Himself takes a hands-on approach to our lives. “We are God’s handiwork,” after all—the result of His efforts, the creation He forms and re-forms daily (Ephesians 2:10).

So, He is at work folding and unfolding—sometimes moving us forward and then back again.

He creases us now, teaching us and working on us in ways that we won’t understand until years later when He uses those grooves as part of His plans for us and our ministry.

He flips us around. He pushes us beyond what we thought were our limits. Sometimes He trims our edges.

Sometimes we complain and balk at the confusing pattern as it unfolds. We look at the folds He has made in us and think He must be getting it all wrong. Surely this can’t become that. It’s confusing and we don’t see and understand.

But He does. He knows what it takes to transform a piece of paper into a penguin or a peacock. He knows how to conform us “to the image of His Son” (Romans 8:29).

Originally published on August 6, 2012

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader. Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness. Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in November 2013! To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Turning Aside and Saying Yes to God

August 21, 2013January 23, 201417 Comments

I wasn’t ‘supposed’ to be there or so I thought.

Shopping off schedule, not on my normal day, shifting things around to accommodate other schedule shifts, cramming activity into the overstuffed container of life. And now here I was, shopping at a Wal-Mart in the middle of the afternoon instead of during my normal morning jaunt through the store with a shopping cart and a coupon book before the crowd arrived after lunch.

I pushed my way through the sale items at the front of the store with my focus on my mission—shop, gather the items on my list without distraction, save money, and leave.

But then I saw her, a friend at the pharmacy counter. Stopping for a quick ‘hello,’ the kind of cheerful greeting we small-town folks exchange in the Wal-Mart all the time, I pushed my cart to the side of the aisle hoping not to be in the way of other annoyed shoppers on mission.

This friend, though, didn’t need just a cheerful chat, but a sharing-the-heart kind of talk, a prayer right there in the middle of Band-Aids and Tylenol.

God sent her to the Wal-Mart at just that moment and then He rocked my world all crazy, turning my schedule upside down and sent me right on into that Wal-Mart at the exact same time she would be there.

I like to hold this white-knuckled control over my calendar and my agenda, fitting everything in just right and not being willing to bend, to flex, to rearrange and adjust, not without whining and complaining at least.

Yet, here is what happens when I release, open my palms and offer up the plans, saying ‘yes’ to God even in the daily.

A few days later, God over-turned my normal routine again with special school events and unexpected trips to the post office. There I was driving down the Main Street of town when I ‘shouldn’t’ have been and I was thinking of the to-do list items to cross off, the errands to run, the destination and the mission all over again.

But He opened my eyes to see ‘her,’ a woman I knew limping along the sidewalk painfully slowly.

I didn’t even debate over my plans. Instead, I zoomed into the nearest driveway and she climbed into the mini-van (after I shoved aside the napkins, papers, and other Mom mess) so I could drive her to work.

A little blessing for her.

A huge blessing for me, this reminder of God’s divine agenda, the appointments He sets for us and the way I can miss them so easily in my stubborn addiction to having my own way.

C.S. Lewis wrote:

“the great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant (or unexpected) things as interruptions in one’s own life, or real life. The truth is, of course, that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life.”

God’s involvement in my agenda isn’t always painful or unpleasant, but it does have this way of being unexpected. Like Proverbs 19:21 says:

“Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.”

Yes, I’m a ‘many plans’ kind of person who learns slowly to yield to this God with a perfect purpose.

God interrupts, intervenes, and now I must choose—whine and complain, reject and insist on my way, or submit and adjust and trust His plans, like Moses in the wilderness outside Mount Horeb as he tended his father-in-law’s sheep.

Moses wasn’t meandering along, aimless and purposeless. He had a plan to lead “the flock to the back of the desert, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God” (Exodus 3:1).

But God lit a fire within a bush and captured Moses’s attention.

What if Moses hadn’t stopped? What if he waited until later, choosing to finish his own plan and then return to check out the curiosity? Or if he’d ignored the interruption, adamantly determined to do things his way, in his own timing, and in his own strength?

Oh, how Moses would have missed out on God’s glory and God’s purposes for his life and his people!

Instead, Moses yielded. He said, “I will now turn aside and see this great sight” (Exodus 3:4).

This turning aside is what God teaches me in this walk of obedience, the willingness to be interrupted, the trusting Him with my agenda and not worrying and fretting over the unexpected and the out-of-control.

Turning aside when I see God at work, I join Him there and give Him praise.

You Think You’ll Remember

August 19, 2013January 23, 20142 Comments

I stopped three years ago.

They say you stop scrapbooking with your third baby just because you’re so busy or somehow you’re now over all that new-momma pride of first-time mothers or even second-time parents.

But that’s not what did it for me. It’s that I scrapbooked not because I’m crafty or creative, in love with paper and colors, a fan of stickers and shaping scissors, or content to spend a few hours (or days) cropping photos and writing in the margins with a gel pen.

I scrapbooked because that’s what moms do.

Good moms anyway.

But I found out it had become a dreaded chore, the dragging out of the massive Rubbermaid container, the aching back after hours of gluesticks and paper cutouts, the stressing over straight lines and paper scraps.

Mostly, though, it was the clean-up afterward that did me in. I may have time to make the albums (maybe?), but who has time to clean up from the project?

Perhaps if I had an entire room hidden away somewhere where mess could endure and not rattle my brain with annoyance and confusion, crafts and creativity would be fun. Play with the paper, leave the scraps out on the table. Arrange the pictures and leave them unfinished for another day.

Life’s not like that, though. Mess needs to be stashed away. It takes time to set up and time to clean up, so mostly I just leave the project alone before I begin.

For 3 years, it’s been stashed. More memories of my girls poured in, so I piled them into boxes and plastic buckets and pushed them under the bed or stacked them up in this closet and that one.

Sometimes I’d at least remember to label the photos I printed and left in boxes or the pictures they drew that came off the fridge and made it into the box for keeping.

Not always, though, and that was my mistake.

Because you think you’ll remember every detail of the who and when and what. You think you’ll remember the stories, the firsts, every reason behind the paper that sits stacked in a cardboard box in your closet.

But really, we forget.

I dragged boxes out from various corners and hidden places and sorted through the papers and photos. I didn’t find out how much I remember; I discovered how much I’d forgotten.

Who drew this, Mom? Who is this, Mom? What does this paper mean, Mom?

My children wanted to hear the details of the story and I struggled to remember which one of them had drawn that detailed picture of stick people with fingers sticking out of their arms like twigs or written me that note: I luv mom.

How forgetful I am. Life pushes me faster and faster, rushing through this day and the next, and even those moments you most expect to remember blur into the fog of it all.

Memory isn’t passive, not the way we expect it to be. No, remembrance is an active discipline, a choosing not to forget despite our humanness, our busyness, our moving on.

I glance through my notes from a women’s conference two days later. Right now, I still recall the mannerisms of the speaker on the stage, the intonation when she read this verse, the way she punctuated this lesson, the tiny details of the story she shared, and the way I laughed or cried or nodded my head from my blue cushioned seat across the arena.

How long will that last?

I think surely I will remember this promise, of course I will remember that challenge. But maybe not. Maybe I’ll feel vaguely encouraged, but not recall the why and wherefore.

We think we’ll remember the miracles, too, the accounts of how God delivered us, the times He carried us right out of the pit, the stand-still encounters with God when it seemed like He cut through all the noise of this world and the cacophony of our own emotions and He spoke to us, God to person, one clear voice cutting through it all with a message we’ll never forget.

Yet, we forget it after all.

Amos the prophet says that we even forget the lessons God has taught us:

“‘My people have forgotten how to do right’ says the Lord” (Amos 3:10 NLT).

Not what was right… so much as how to actually do it.

Even our best intentions to bless others or to reach out remain meaningless until we actually remember to follow through.

So, I transfer my notes from the conference over, being intentional, taking the time to fill in the details.

I take that card written, addressed, and even stamped out of my car and actually place it in the mailbox.

Taking the time….making the time…to remember before I forget.

Heather King is a busy-but-blessed wife and mom, a Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader. Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness. Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in November 2013! To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Having Faith When I Don’t Get My Way

August 16, 2013January 23, 2014Leave a comment

My one girl gets grumpy.

I arrive to pick her up at the end of an activity and I find her huddled on the floor, back turned to the crowd, face hidden on her knees or maybe she’s hiding under a table or in the back of a bathroom stall.

She’s not screaming or crying, but she’s definitely pouting.

With arms crossed, with feet stomping, with loud harumphs for emphasis at the end of her sentences, she tells me the crisis: Others disagreed, someone else wanted the same thing, another person got to go first, that person got something better.

But this is the bottom line: She didn’t get her way.

And now, she’s grumpy.

I understand. I can be grumpy when I don’t get my way, too, wanting to sit out and let everybody know that I disagree with the decision and I’m sure not happy about it.

Another of my girls argues her case when she doesn’t get her way. She argues….and argues….and argues her point until you’re knocked over by the powerful wave of her emotions and opinions.

And I understand this. When I don’t get my way, I want to form protest marches and fight, fight, fight, too! Instantly I think of who I can rally to “my side” and how I can convince others that my way is the right way, the best way, the only way.

Maybe if I just give the best speech, argue the best (or loudest, or longest, or most convincingly), use the best evidence and form the largest coalition I’ll win the day after all.

And my youngest girl simply cries over disappointment, not a temperamental tantrum on the scale of the hurricane tantrums we’ve seen in this family. More like the desperately sad wail of a child who realizes the world doesn’t revolve around her…doesn’t always do what she wants or turn out the way she expects.

That’s a lesson that always stings painful and I’ve mourned myself with frustrated hurt that the world doesn’t bend to my whim or orbit around my convenience or comfort.

I don’t always get my way.

And, selfish creature that I am, I sometimes react all ugly.

Yet, while faith allows us to stand up for what is right and to speak truth in love, it demands something else.

Faith means trusting God even when things don’t go our way, when plans don’t work out, when others make decisions we disagree with, when life isn’t perfect or even when life is hard and obstacles loom large and hope doesn’t come easy.

Believing in God’s providential care isn’t faith until we’re blinded by circumstances and still trust.

Hebrews 11:1 tells us this:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Faith: That’s when we can’t see the end, can’t see how God could possibly work this out for our blessing and benefit, can’t imagine what God could possibly do to make this better much less make this the best.

But we trust Him anyway.

Faith means resting in the knowledge of God’s power over everything we face, even when our senses and circumstances tell us that people are in control, not God.

It seems like we rely on a boss, or a leader, or a committee chairman, or a judge, or someone in human resources ….but faith declares that it’s God, always God, only God who directs our lives.

In The Faith Dare, Debbie Alsdorf reminds me that God is my Good Shepherd, trustworthy, wise, caring, knowing, powerful. I read the familiar promises:

God, my Shepherd! I don’t need a thing.
You have bedded me down in lush meadows,
you find me quiet pools to drink from.
True to your word,
you let me catch my breath
and send me in the right direction.
Even when the way goes through Death Valley,
I’m not afraid
when you walk by my side (Psalm 23 MSG).

Yes, God my Shepherd leads me to places of rest and sustenance, providing what I need, sending me in the right direction, walking by my side even in the shadowy depths of the valley.

And my response can be fighting or pouting…but all my grumpiness, my protesting, my tears reveal where I’m not trusting God’s ability to control the tiniest detail of my life in His hands.

Isaiah tells me,

In repentance and rest is your salvation
in quietness and trust is your strength… (Isaiah 30:15)

Enough of the ugly reactions, the crisis, the conflict. Better to seek my God—-what now, Lord? What is your will here in this place? What will you have me do and how would You have me respond?

I choose resting in Him.

I choose a quieted heart.

I choose trust.

I choose Faith.

Magic Tricks, The Family Calendar and Radical Obedience

August 14, 2013January 23, 20144 Comments

He made rabbits appear out of nowhere. He seemed to read minds. He pulled colorful bouncy balls out from behind children’s ears.

The magician at our local library amazed my kids, particularly my middle daughter who checked out four books on magic that day and altered her future career plans.

“I want to be a magician who tells jokes,” she declared.

Today, I am feeling a little like a magician without the recognition and the jokes. No fabulously mysterious cape, no collapsible magic wand hiding a bouquet of flowers, no long flowing sleeves to stash cards and colorful scarves, and no top hat from which bunnies appear. My Mom-attire is much less impressive.

And yet, every year at about this time, I perform a seemingly magical feat that defies all explanation, a trick that doesn’t necessarily astonish audiences, but probably should.

I set the family calendar for the new school year.

Astonished? Amazed? Flabbergasted? Speechless?

Maybe you should be.

Even those of you without kids or with grown children can easily find your calendar as overstuffed as ours.

Of course, there are things outside of my control, like the school schedule and when ballet classes are offered. So, I wait for official announcements and postings, hoping God performs the necessary miracle to make it all fit just right.

Then I sit down and scan the mess.

There are non-negotiable activities that instantly earn a place on the weekly agenda.

There are the things I believe God has asked me to do this year, which I choose to obey.

There are the “Oh please, mommy . . . .” activities like gymnastics, soccer, swimming lessons, 4H, Girl Scouts, fencing (yes, fencing), art and sewing classes. This we carefully narrow down.

Then there are the 50 other possibilities that are wonderful and good: The Bible studies, prayer meetings, committees, volunteering, and classes.

When we think we’ve made it all fit, unexpected birthday parties and get-togethers, after school activities, and events squeeze into the corners of Saturdays and evenings.

Of course, it’s all good. And maybe, just maybe, if I don’t let my kids take swim lessons every time they are offered my daughter won’t make it to the 2024 Olympics. That would obviously be the world’s loss.

But today, as I was reading in 1 Corinthians, I was reminded of the one thing that sometimes gets nudged out of our lives by the incessant activity we magically jam, cram, and squeeze into our calendars until they burst.

Paul wrote:

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:1-3 ESV).

Even if we invest our time in everything good and noble, we might be mis-managing our calendars.

Ultimately, speaking God’s language, knowing God’s Word, giving away to the poor, and sacrificing our very lives are all worthy, but even they are utterly meaningless if we don’t do them in love.

So then, what about committee meetings and weekly groups and gymnastics lessons?

Yes, meaningless without love.

Thus, I’ve been praying this year about leaving room for God’s love in our family calendar.

We’ll do what is necessary, what God has asked us to do, and we’ll love our children by allowing them to (within reason) develop gifts and talents God has given them.

And then I’ll refuse to feel guilty for declining to do every other good thing that comes my way.

Sometimes radical obedience is missions trips, quitting jobs, massive moves, full-time callings, speaking up, reaching out.

Sometimes what’s radical is obeying the smallest promptings of His Word, and this is how I determine to obey God, asking for His direction and choosing not to commit or promise or enroll until He confirms His will for our year.

May my agenda be His agenda. My plan, his plan. My schedule, His schedule.

I’m instantly challenged—an activity I planned on for the fall may not happen. I think of ten things I could do to replace that on my schedule.

I pray instead.

And I hear this prompting, “Embrace rest.”

That’s a radical call for a doer like me and it takes radical obedience to let it go and enjoy the breathing room over the suffocating schedule.

After all, in the end, Paul tells us that “the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13) and love doesn’t require magic, but it does require time.

Going Back to a Broken Heart: Inspired by Obedience

August 12, 2013January 23, 20145 Comments

She told us she didn’t think she could go back.

But there she stood on our church’s stage, holding the microphone in one hand and lifting up letters, prayer cards and gifts in the other to show us what happened when she returned.

The year before, she had traveled to Honduras with a group focused on blessing orphans and she’d shared her testimony then with questions:

How could these little children be so in need? Was there any hope for them at all? Where was God in this? She knew He was there, but it was hard to see.

That’s what she asked then and her heart had been so broken by what she saw there….could she endure the breaking again and return a year later?

Perhaps she shouldn’t go. Perhaps it was too hard, just too heavy, too much, too sad, too overwhelming.

I understand the compelling lure of self-preservation, the way we can choose distance and the safety of objectivity, of statistics, of pictures someone else displays and the testimony that someone else gives without wading into mess ourselves.

I’m willing to engage this far….but no farther.

I am willing to give or serve or care until it hurts, until my heart cracks open and I’m clinging hard to faith when the world beats so hard with evil on the innocent.

I can sit in the balcony of a church sanctuary and tearfully listen as she describes the orphanage facilities, the care (or lack of) for the children, the danger and the hurt.

But she stands there with the microphone and I see the beauty of one who was called and equipped and one who went not once, but went again.

She holds up a tiny pink fuzzy toy, an elephant I think. A little girl with one leg from cancer in an orphanage had given that to her as a memento, “so you won’t ever forget me.” That’s what motivated the gift of her only toy.

And there are other gifts. Trinkets to keep at home on her dresser. Beaded bracelets dangling from both her arms. Notes and cards from children and teens.

They say it over and over in their messages, “Don’t forget me…..Always remember me….”

Children unloved, unnoticed, rejected, abandoned, betrayed, tossed out, sold, used and abused, and what they most want is for someone on this planet to remember they exist.

My own unborn baby kicks and rumbles and I lay my hand on my pregnant belly as I listen to her talk about the unwanted ones while responding to my own very wanted child.

She says the teen girls have one outfit of clothes that they wear every day and I think of the closet bulging already from gifts of baby blue sleepers and hats, blankets and bibs, outfits we oohed and aahed over together as we pulled them out of the bags sent home with us from church.

The beauty of her testimony, though, is that she put her heart on the altar and willingly went back to that place of brokenness, and this time she can say where God is at work, where there was hope and grace despite the pain.

Foster moms tell me it cuts deep wounds in them to love a child and then release him to biological family, but they choose to love anyway.

And I see a picture on my Twitter feed, a young boy about eight years old standing in a store posing for a picture while his adoptive mom clicks the camera. He’s showing off his new clothes and she’s thrilled. Orphaned at one years old, growing up on the streets of Africa and now he is home….chosen….loved, but it’s been a journey.

It’s not that God calls all of us to this same ministry, but He calls some to have hearts willing to be broken.

He told His prophet Hosea not just to marry a prostitute, but after she left him to pursue her lovers, to “Go again, love a woman who is loved by her husband, yet an adulteress” (Hosea 3:1 NASB).

God told Ezekiel not to mourn his wife’s death: “but you shall not mourn and you shall not weep, and your tears shall not come. Groan silently; make no mourning for the dead…” (Ezekiel 24:15-17 NASB).

Their hearts broke in obedience.

If that’s God’s calling, then we can trust Him with our own hearts, trust Him enough to obey even when it’s hard and our instinct is to snatch our hands back from the hot stove and cradle our hearts to protect them from pain. We can trust Him enough to go and to go again and enough to sing, “Break my heart for what breaks yours” and mean it (Hillsong United).

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader. Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness. Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in November 2013! To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Declaring Dependence and the Faith Dare

August 9, 2013January 23, 20142 Comments

Right now, he’s linked to me, soaking up nutrients and oxygen from my very blood, connected to me by a stranded cord that is his very grip onto life.

But there’s the delivery room and suddenly we’ll no longer be one tiny human and one mom adhered together into a cohesion of flesh and blood. He’ll be held by the doctor and I’ll grab for my glasses to see this separate person, this tiny creation who has been nudging at me all these months and growing inside of me all this time.

For nine months you can only imagine his face, imagine what gymnastic feats he’s performing as he knocks your pregnant belly from side to side.

Then I’ll see him. Then I’ll hold him. Then we are two.

Right there in that moment when the doctor holds up a baby and announces, “it’s a boy,” right then he is on a journey to independence and I’m the one who is supposed to train him for that.

I have time to cuddle, to pray, to advise and teach, to tussle blond hair and put the Band-Aids on the scraped knees, but only for so long.

Enjoy it. Don’t miss it by blinking too long, my older and wiser mom-friends tell me. Independence comes soon enough.

My eight-year-old daughter announces she wants to home school for college so she doesn’t have to leave home.

My four-year-old daughter declares that she’d just like to keep this family and not have one of her own.

But my seven-year-old daughter says it with this wild excitement, “I’m going to go live at college! I can make my own rules and do what I want to do.”

It began in the delivery room, the separation from me, the first breath of their very own lungs taking in that air all on their own and so it goes.

This is my job as a mom, to love them into independence, teach them how to do and what to do on their own.

But that’s not God’s desire for me as my Father, not His parental mission or responsibility. He’s doing the opposite, wooing my independent heart into trust and showing me the lesson of the vine:

Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me (John 15:4 NASB).

This abiding life, the never separating from God, never stepping out on my own and depending on my own strengths or abilities sounds so simple.

It’s not.

It takes effort to remain in Him.

Dependence after all can feel so uncomfortable, so helpless, so out of control, so uncertain.

In Faith Dare, The: 30 Days to Live Your Life to the Fullest, Debbie Alsdorf challenges readers to a “fasting of self.” She says,

for thirty days you will be placing your self and what you want to do aside, replacing them with the truths in each day’s dare, and concentrating on what God is saying to your heart that day (p 15).

Maybe it’s normally food (chocolate or soda for me!), or media, or social media that makes up our fast. Denying self means this sacrifice of what we want in order to pursue God’s heart, throwing down idols and strongholds and choosing Jesus, just Jesus, only Jesus.

But maybe for me “fasting of self” means a denying of self-reliance, self-assertion, self-direction. It requires that submissive gentleness, the willingness to follow God’s lead wherever, whenever, without worry or anxiety about the journey’s destination or timetable.

Control, worry, anxiety–remove the deceptive disguise and what lurks there?

Pride.

Peter surprises me when I read his words:

Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you (1 Peter 5:6-7 NASB).

Humble yourselves.

How?

By casting all your anxiety on Him.

John Piper writes:

One way to be humble is to cast all your anxieties on God. Which means that one hindrance to casting your anxieties on God is pride. Which means that undue worry is a form of pride (Future Grace p. 94-95).

It’s my stubborn independence borne from this ugly pride that stirs up worry, after all. I fret because I’m trying to make every detail fit together just right, every problem solved, every conflict resolved, every decision made just perfectly.

I’m trying to do it. I’m reasoning it out, planning in the night, charting possibilities on paper.

Me, me, me.

John Piper continues: “Faith admits the need for help. Pride won’t. Faith banks on God to give help. Pride won’t. Faith casts anxieties on God. Pride won’t.”

Daring faith is denying independence and choosing dependence, throwing over the pride that says, “this all relies on me” and purposefully resting in Him.

When Holy is Dishes, Laundry, and Homework

August 7, 2013October 27, 20149 Comments

Five puzzles, six books (or more), one game of Memory, word searches, and some tricycle training . . .

That’s what happens when we lose power or Internet at our house. Life slows down. When a daughter appears with board game in hand and a pleading look on her face, I have no excuse to give, no busyness to distract, nothing to prevent me from sitting . . . and playing . . . and resting with my kids

I complain and whine with the best of them about the loss of conveniences and comfort, and I’d prefer running water with temperature control and the ability to cook meals and refrigerate food any day of the week.

But a day without email and the telephone . . . well, that’s a welcome vacation sometimes.

Christ Himself called His disciples away from the crowds and busyness of their lives to spend time with him alone, like unplugging from ministry life with its hectic pace and demands.

Mark tells us:

“Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, ‘Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest’” (Mark 6:31).

In Jesus: The One and Only, Beth Moore notes that:

“the original word for rest in this verse is anapauo. Pauo means “to cease, give rest.” Guess what ana means? “Again!” We don’t need this kind of rest just once. We need it again and again” (p. 116).

And again . . . and again . . . and again.

Sometimes we need to go away–or unplug– to escape all that distracts us here so we can fix our attention on Him there. We anticipate seeing God in the specifically designated portions of our lives we call “Spiritual” and the times we have set aside as “Holy.”

But then the real work begins.

Then we must return to the daily life in all its mundane activity and we must carry into that everyday behavior all that we learned in the holy moments we had set aside.

I’m trying to see Jesus while my hands are elbow-deep in dish water and the laundry piles stack up.

Can mopping the floor be spiritual? Can folding clothes be a God-moment? Can doing dishes be part of my quiet time?

If we deny Him a place in the mundane day-to-day life, confining Him instead to a corner of our hearts designated “God stuff,” then we miss Him and what He’s doing in us and through us.

It’s what the prophet Jeremiah wrote: “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13). Not spiritual heart pieces and holy corners, but all that is in our heart searches after God.

In Scripture, Naaman almost missed finding God. He was a big-shot, who commanded the army of the king of Aram, a great man, a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy (2 Kings 5:1).

Hearing about Elisha the prophet, Naaman sought healing from the man of God, but Elisha didn’t even come out of his house to meet with him. Instead, Elisha sent out a messenger with some simple instructions: “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed” (2 Kings 5:10).

This was so . . . .basic.

So unimpressive.

So nonspiritual.

And Naaman was annoyed, angry even.

Naaman wanted a magic show with special effects rather than an order to take seven baths in the Jordan. But, his servants challenged him: “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed!’” (2 Kings 5:13).

A few dips in the Jordan later, Naaman’s leprosy was totally healed. All because he obeyed God in something simple and unimpressive.

If we have our eyes set only on the spectacular, we will miss God’s healing and cleansing work in the mundane and the everyday.

Will I manage to keep this perspective over time? Probably not. I will likely grow weary and burdened with the stresses of daily busyness. I’ll need to retreat again, stepping away from it all to focus solely on God.

But then I’ll come back home where dishes and laundry and homework is what happens here and in that, yes even in that dailyness and routine, I can seek God’s presence, His input, His fellowship.

5 Prayers for our Schools

August 5, 2013January 23, 20148 Comments

It was one of those statements in a sermon that sticks with you forever.

About nine years ago, one of our pastors said, “If when you pray for me all you ask is, ‘God, please bless my pastor,’ then don’t worry about praying for me.”

Not pray for him? Who, after all, would reject a blessing prayer?

But really, he didn’t mean to reject prayers, just to emphasize the importance of specific prayers for others.

It’s true for husbands, for children, for pastors and other ministry leaders, and for our schools. If my idea of praying for them is, “God please bless these people today,” then I’m really not requesting much, not petitioning God much on their behalf.

I want to be specific, be particular, praying in faith that God knows best, but laying my requests all out there before His throne. Not just a “pray-and-run” kind of petition, shooting out a list of people or places to bless in one minute and then rushing on with my day.

I want to get knee-deep involved in intercession like the Levites who prayed for the refugees returning home to Israel to rebuild the Jerusalem walls in the book of Nehemiah (Nehemiah 9).

How to pray then? What to ask God for? You might have ideas, too, but here’s a prayer tool to get us started as we begin this school year:

5 Prayers for our Schools

Mondays: Safety and presence of God: God, we pray for Your presence in our schools, public, private and home-school settings. We ask for peace to reign in the hallways, the classrooms, and playgrounds. Please protect our children and school staff and prevent evil from infiltrating the school grounds.

Tuesday: School administrators and office staff: Lord, we thank You for the administrators and office staff who keep our schools running smoothly and who are responsible for making decisions both about our children’s education and their safety. We ask that You give them strength and wisdom and help them establish a positive learning environment. Help them balance the pressures of standardized testing with the goal of encouraging a love of learning. We pray that they can foster an atmosphere of creativity, passion, and joy among all the educational staff.

Wednesday: Teachers and assistants: Lord, we pray for the teachers and assistants who are putting long hours in during the early days in the school year. There is so much to get set up, students to assess, routines to establish. Please give them the energy they need and strength for each new day. Help them to know You are with them. Give them wisdom as they get to know each student—reveal strengths and needs, highlight situations that need intervention, show teachers where students deserve encouragement and praise!

Thursday: School nurses and counselors: Lord, we ask that you bless the school nurses as they run their clinics and the counselors working with our kids. Our nurses not only manage the intricate schedule of medications for our students, but they are also a source of compassion and love every day. Our counselors need to rightly discern students who need help and intervention and fight against bullying and other problems in our schools. Give them wisdom, gentleness, and compassion. Fill them up daily with Your love as they pour so much of themselves out for others.

Friday: Staff (Cafeteria, janitorial, bus drivers and more): God, there are so many men and women who work in our schools, providing food, transportation and more for our kids. They are often the ones responsible for keeping our schools healthy and our children safe. Please give them joy in their work, bless their hands as they serve each day. Help them know how much we appreciate their efforts on behalf of our kids.

How do you pray for our schools and their staff?

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader. Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness. Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in November 2013! To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Heather C. King – Room to Breathe

"He's solid rock under my feet, breathing room for my soul" Psalm 62:1-2 (MSG).

Category: Devotions

A Matter of Opinion: Breaking the Chains of People-Pleasing

An Origami Failure Learns to Fold

Turning Aside and Saying Yes to God

You Think You’ll Remember

Having Faith When I Don’t Get My Way

Magic Tricks, The Family Calendar and Radical Obedience

Going Back to a Broken Heart: Inspired by Obedience

Declaring Dependence and the Faith Dare

When Holy is Dishes, Laundry, and Homework

5 Prayers for our Schools

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