Take My Picture!

October 14, 2013January 23, 2014Leave a comment

Originally published 1/12/2013

“Take my picture, Mommy! Take my picture!”

In the middle of Sunday morning chaos, pulling on stockings, buttoning dresses, clipping on bows and tying on ribbons, my three-year-old twirled in her dress and posed for a Kodak moment.

And I clicked the camera.

I don’t ever remember being this way, so eager to say, “Cheese.” I’ve always been the one declining photos, offering to hold the camera, tossing into the trash any pictures of me I don’t like.

But when I’m out and about with my daughters (or even just running around the house frantically trying to get four females ready for Sunday morning church service)… they want to stop and take pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. Not of the scenery. Of them.

It takes us three times as long to walk down the Main Street of our town and probably twice as much time on location on our family “field trips.” But I don’t mind.

I love that they feel beautiful enough to want to pose.

There was a day I stepped into the bathroom to put away a stray toothbrush, and I caught one of my girls watching herself in the mirror. She smoothed her hair and glanced up at her reflection, pleased with what she saw.

How beautiful is the girl who feels beautiful in her own skin.

This rare gift, how do you teach it? How do you help them keep it for life?

Somehow, most of us grow out of it. We glance in the mirror and critique the image or sigh in frustration. We step on the scale and slander ourselves with our thoughts. We pose for that picture and know we won’t be happy with it later, not with the smile or the hair or the wrinkles or the chin or ….

Even my husband, in the early days of falling in love, would sit across me from the table and I could feel him watching. I didn’t know where to look. I was uncomfortable in his gaze. What imperfections would he see in me if he looked too closely or watched too long?

Later today, I’ll take my seat at a piano and offer up the music for a wedding ceremony. There will be a moment at that wedding when the soloist will sing, “How Beautiful the radiant bride who waits for her Groom with His light in her eyes” (How Beautiful, Twila Paris).

The beauty of the bride isn’t so much the hairdresser and the hair spray, the makeup, the gown.

It’s that she walks down that aisle feeling loved. In a moment, she knows she is wanted, precious, and she radiates the joy.

And it’s beautiful how she loves him. So we, thinking of another, run out of time to be so self-analyzing, so self-criticizing, so self-condemning—so “self.”

It’s a verse for meditating on all week, with a reminder of how beauty is looking to God–our Groom–thinking of Him and less of me. Beauty is caring for others. Beauty isn’t feeling shame, but feeling redeemed, feeling precious, feeling loved.

“Those who look to him are radiant;
their faces are never covered with shame” (Psalm 34:5).

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.

What if God is in this place?

October 9, 2013January 23, 20143 Comments

What if God is in this place?

It may not always seem likely. Not when you’re elbow-deep in soapy dish water, or pulling out the third wipe from the tub while doing diaper duty.

Not perhaps while cradling a tiny babe at 2:00 in the morning so he can eat or zooming from school to ballet while quizzing children on homework questions at the same time.

And not when passing back sandwiches to little people in the car as you spend a night away from home moving from activity to activity.

Yet, this is the place I inhabit, the Mom World. It’s the life where my schedule is dictated by the schedules of other, tinier, needier people.

There was a time….there will be a time….when I can linger over tea, a Bible, a prayer journal.

For now, though, I’m scribbling Scriptures onto index cards and reading devotionals in a parked car while waiting in a line to pick up my kids here, there, and everywhere.

God has to be mobile for me. He has to be everywhere I go. He can’t be confined to one hour, one specific holy place, one quiet spiritual atmosphere.

No, He has to be God amidst the loud, the stressful, the busy, the on-the-go, the tired.

We talk about the discipline of a quiet time, the need to establish a routine and stick with it no matter what. Schedule your time with God….that’s the advice we give.

For most people, there’s wisdom there. Make a date with God. Write it down on the calendar. Protect the time. Do the habit until it becomes a habit. Persevere until it becomes second-nature.

Sometimes, though, in some special seasons and particular times, this advice leaves us defeated. My schedule is different each day of the week. A newborn baby can cry and change my plans in one unexpected instant.

If I’m inflexible, too rigid, only ‘doing devotions,’ only meeting with God in this one place at this one time, I will miss Him.

I’ll miss Him completely and utterly. My life would be devoid of heaven and communion with my Savior and I’d be one stressed out Mama ending every day emptier and emptier than the day before.

Yet, there’s Mary in Luke 1, a teenage girl busy with chores, doing common, everyday things on a common, average day. That’s when an angel appeared and announced she’d carry the Messiah.

God was at work. She couldn’t see Him…not when hauling water and baking bread. Still, God was in that place, active in her life, preparing the greatest plan of all plans to display His will and His presence in the world.

And then there’s Jacob, the runaway rogue, the trickster fleeing his home and family because he’d made his brother, Esau, mad enough to kill him.

All Jacob did was fall asleep on a stone pillow and God was there, displaying a stairway up to heaven and bringing blessing and promise for Jacob’s future.

What could Jacob say, but:

“Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” (Genesis 28:16 NIV)?

That’s it exactly, what I’m thinking, what I’m praying for and hoping to accomplish even with four young kids and a husband and a ministry and a life…

To be aware.

I don’t want to walk in and out of this life unaware of God in this place—right here, right now, right in the middle of everything I’m doing and everywhere I have to be. I can wait for some future moment when an uninterrupted hour of quiet is an everyday commodity, but how much better to ask God to inhabit this busy, stressful, active, full life, the very life He’s given me?

After all, even when we set apart time and places for holy encounters, we can miss seeing His glory.

Zechariah the priest entered the holy place for a once-in-a-lifetime encounter with God….and yet when the angel appeared to him and announced that he’d be the father of the Messiah’s forerunner, Zechariah “was startled and was gripped with fear” (Luke 1:12 NIV).

What was God doing there in the temple? What was God doing there on this spiritual day?

Zechariah stood in a holy place at a holy time and didn’t expect to see the holy.

But I want to be expectant in the holy places and in the places that seem steeped in the mundane. God, please meet me here in the mini-van, here helping with homework, here making dinner, folding clothes, washing dishes, packing lunches, feeding a newborn.

May I remember that yes, God is in this place.

Dear Son: To Andrew

October 7, 2013January 23, 20147 Comments

Many, many thanks to you all for your prayers, comments, encouragement, blessings, and help as we welcomed our son, Andrew Christopher, into our family last week. God was with us. Everything went smoothly and we are home and settling into life with a newborn!

Our son is beautiful, healthy, and such a precious gift. Here’s my letter to him, the last of the letters to my children.

~heather~

********************************************************************************************************************************

Dear Andrew:

Your sister caught me crying over you last night. She feared for me, worried that I physically hurt, worried that I was sad or scared about you.

Maybe one day this eight-year-old girl will be a mom watching her own newborn sleep and she’ll understand the tears. I try to explain it to her now…how I’m crying because I’m happy.

But it’s so much more than that and she skips off to bed not really understanding, just content to know that mom is ‘okay.’

I blink these tears away or maybe they’ll slip down my cheek as I’m watching your baby facial expressions change, listening to you coo, stroking your tiny pink fingers and toes, running my hand softly over the outlines of your face or the fuzz (can’t really call it hair) on your tiny head, or watching your two deep-sea-blue eyes search the room and linger when you see my face.

I’m awestruck. That’s what I am. I’m overwhelmed at you, this tiny bundle of expectation, this incomparable gift of God given to your dad and me and to three wildly excited and proud big sisters.

How could God give me a gift so precious, so beautiful?

How could He trust me with the care of a son, a boy to teach about Godly manhood and character, courage, strength, passion for God and His Word and truth?

Already, you teach me with your days-old wisdom, and I’m learning a whole new world of diapering and outfits and caring for a baby boy. But the lessons, the deep ones that will change who I am as a mom and as a woman, will continue for a long time.

You remind me of this grace, so abundant and undeserved, that God heaps on us. It’s salvation plus…..the cross itself, the great miracle of mercy, plus a gift so valuable as you placed in the arms of imperfect me.

And isn’t God’s grace always this? The once-for-all rescue for sinners in Christ’s sacrifice and then daily mercies that He lovingly gives us day after day after day….

So I worship. All the time. Worship becomes a middle-of-the-night event, a whispered prayer of tear-filled thanks to a God so mighty and so good. You teach me how to breathe in and breathe out praise, how sometimes the most beautiful offerings of worship to God contain just three words: “Thank You, Lord.”

You teach me that I’m never on my own, and I’m so thankful for the reminder. Maybe if you’d been another girl, a fourth daughter for me, I’d be tempted to think, “I’ve got this. I can do this. I know this…..I…..I…..I.

Now I am humbled.

How can I be your mom?

Because God is with me.

How will I know how to train you and guide you?

Because God will give me wisdom, strength, all I need.

It’s a reminder I see even now, cradling your tiny feet in my hands and stroking your soft, pink baby toes. All these months of knowing I was having a boy, I worried and fretted—how do I connect with him? How do I relate to a boy? How do I love him best?

And now I see it in your toes, God’s answer right to me.

You have my feet.

The way two of my toes on each foot connect together a little differently than most. We’ve always called it “webbed” feet and none of your sisters inherited that from me.

But you did.

Maybe that’s a little message from God to this nervous mom’s heart, that you are mine, specially chosen to be my son, and I have the privilege, the honor, the blessing to be your God-picked, God-designed, exact right mom for you.

Your dad and I hold you now in excited wonder, wanting so much to see who God designed you to be and what gifts and talents He’s placed in you. We can’t wait to know you more and more.

And we are praying for you.

We’ve been praying all along, of course. From the moment we knew you were coming, we held hands in a restaurant, celebrating our anniversary and praying over the news that you were coming.

We prayed about your name, wanting it to reflect God’s plan for you.

So you are Andrew Christopher….

Named for your dad, James Andrew, and named for the first disciple to follow Jesus. In Scripture, Andrew is a pursuer of truth, first following John the Baptist, then following Jesus, and then bringing others, including Peter, to Christ, as well.

And Christopher, or “Christ-bearer…” one who brings Christ to others.

May it be so. May your witness, your testimony for Him, your character, your love for God and His Word bring others to Christ and Christ to others.

We pray this verse of blessing over you:

This is what the Lord says:

Let not the wise boast of their wisdom
or the strong boast of their strength
or the rich boast of their riches,
but let the one who boasts boast about this:
that they have the understanding to know me,
that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness,
justice and righteousness on earth,
for in these I delight,”
declares the Lord
(Jeremiah 9:23-24 NIV).

These are our prayers for you, our son.

~mom~

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.

Dear Daughter: To Catherine

October 4, 2013January 23, 20142 Comments

Dear blog friends and followers,

I’m probably still in the hospital today, hopefully cradling our healthy baby boy, hopefully recovering quickly from a C-section, hopefully (miraculously) getting some sleep.

This week while I’m away, I’ve scheduled posts in advance–some letters to my children, one for each daughter and then one for my son. I hope they bless you, too.

Thank you so much for your prayers for me, for my baby, and for my family this week! I hope to be home, rested, and ready to start sharing with you updates, news, and devotionals again soon.

~heather~

*****************************************************************************************************************************

Dear Catherine,

I call you my “Joy-Bucket,” you’re just so full of excitement, enthusiasm, and sweet irrepressible joy. It spills right out of you and fills me up, too; it fills up everyone around you.

You’ve been our family cheerleader for years now, patiently sitting in the waiting room of the ballet studio, in the office or the car waiting to pick the girls up from school, in lobbies while your sisters finished camps and activities, and in the auditorium watching everyone else in the family rehearse and perform show after show.

And you never complained.

You happily tagged along and told us all what a great job we were doing. You’ve made the best audience member even when I took you to see your dad perform in Music Man when you were just four months old. The lights shown on that stage, the curtains opened and even then in all your baby sweetness, you were entranced by the show.

It’s thrilling to see you finally taking your turn now. Your turn to grab your backpack and skip out of the house so thrilled to spend a day at preschool. Your turn to play through your first piano song and cheerfully practice every…single….day….without me ever reminding you. Your turn to dance in your first ballet class and smile sheepishly as we hand you your first ballet flowers.

It thrills me to be your cheerleader now.

I’m supposed to be teaching you so much and yet every day…every….single….day….you teach me what it means to be beautiful and loving and kind.

Like how to put others first unselfishly and without complaint. How to be the first to tell someone else, “Great job!” and the first to clap your hands with enthusiastic applause.

You teach me how to be grateful. Months after you receive a gift, you’ll slip a hug around my neck and exclaim, “Thank you so much for this, Mom. It’s what I dreamed of….or what I always wanted….” and it’s the simplest thing ever but you act as if I’ve given you a treasure.

Even when I’m simply pulling boxes of hand-me-downs out of the garage, you still give wholehearted thanks. You’re the third of three daughters. Hand-me-downs are your reality. And instead of complaining, you twirl around the house in every “new-to-you” dress and thank me as if I’d walked you into a store and bought it new off the rack.

You teach me to pray first rather than resorting to prayer after trying every other method of saving myself. You bow your head all day, every day.

And you never start prayers asking, “God, please do this….” No, you always pray, “Thank you, God, for helping me. For making me feel better. For making this a good day. For keeping us safe…..” even when you’re still sick or the day is just beginning or we haven’t begun our journey.

You pray in faith. You thank God in advance for the blessing and gift.

I’ve walked this Christian walk for almost 30 years now. Three decades of faith in God, and I’m still learning about faith and prayer from my four-year-old daughter.

You have so much growing still to do, so much learning ahead of you, and I imagine the loveliness, the joyfully contagious beauty of you in the years to come. It’s breathtaking to consider.

I pray that your faith becomes ever-more-personal, that all your questions and chatter about God turn into your own decision to follow Jesus as your Savior.

I hope you devote yourself to prayer for life, praying for your own children, for your grandchildren and even beyond. It’s a gift God has given you, a calling even now, and there’s no stronger stance in this life than being on your knees before a holy and powerful God who loves you.

And He does love you, precious one.

So do we.

Before you were born, we prayed for you and prayed about the name God had chosen for you. Catherine Susanna. A woman of purity, authority and beauty. A woman devoted to the cause of Christ.

Yes, indeed.

This is the verse your daddy picked out for you as a blessing before we even saw you for the first time:

The Lord delights in those who fear him,
who put their hope in his unfailing love.
(Psalm 147:11 NIV).

We do take such delight in your sweet spirit, your bravery, your strength, and your joy.

I know that God rejoices over you, too, delighting in who you are and all you will become.

Love,

~mom~

Dear Daughter: To Lauren

October 2, 2013January 23, 20146 Comments

Dear blog friends and followers,

Today’s the day we plan to meet our baby boy for the first time!

So, just a reminder that this week I’ll be posting some letters to my children here–one for each daughter and then one for my son–and I hope they bless you, too.

Don’t be too impressed that you’re seeing this post on my delivery day. I’m not live-blogging during a C-section. No, I’ve written all this in advance and scheduled it for the days I’ll be away. There, I’ve spilled the secret!

I’d love your prayers today and for the rest of this week!

~heather~

****************************************************************************************************************************

Dear Lauren,

You taught me that my heart could expand.

Just days before you were born, I panicked, wondering, “What if I can’t do this? What if I’m Mom enough for this one child, but not two daughters?”

And then you were born, this perfect little round-headed, bright-blue-eyed baby girl. You captivated my heart and I learned for the first time how God loves us all, not more, not better, but every one of us specially.

We had worried over you for months before we held you in that delivery room. The doctors and nurses thought you would be too small, maybe you weren’t growing, maybe you were under stress. We’d been heading to the office for extra tests and extra ultrasounds.

Yet, you were a surprising and unexpected mystery even then. Every guess and estimate about your size was wrong; you were so perfect, and we were so thankful.

We’d been praying for you all those months before you were born and even now we’re still clasping hands together and praying for you.

And, in many ways, you are still a bundle of mystery and surprise. No one has ever described you to me without using the word ‘unique.’

You surely are.

I remember the first time you toddled over to me, transferred “air” into my palm, and told me to eat the food you’d made. I’d never seen imagination at work that young before. You were pretending long before your older sister ever was.

She played with her farm animal toys by lining them all up, sorted and in categories. You, however, could spend hours on the floor with just a toy horse and a toy farmer, creating intricate scenarios, exchanges, interchanges, and relational situations. Even now, you can disappear into your room for an entire afternoon and create a story-line to rival the greatest novelists and playwrights.

We secretly watched you as a toddler, making funny faces in the mirror, and you’ve entertained us for years with your mimicry as you copy cartoon voices and foreign accents with ease. You and your dad can put on quite a show around our dinner table.

God gave you this astonishing mind that remembers everything, orders the world into patterns, soaks in all you see and hear even when we think you aren’t paying attention, and solves the most complicated puzzles without any effort. Still, you’re never really out to win awards, show off, brag, or gain attention. What you do is simply because you can, simply for the joy of it.

You teach me how to rest…how to lounge in pajamas or comfy clothes, snuggled into a blanket to enjoy a book or a movie and take time just to breathe, and you remind me of the power of a deep belly laugh, a funny story, or a silly joke.

You aren’t a fan of super-serious conversations, changing the subject if our discussion digs too deep and giggling when I’ve lingered too long on my Mom Soapbox.

But here’s the truth I need you to know…..

You are loved and treasured, you—uniquely you. Even when we’re instructing or disciplining, guiding or correcting, we love you fully, completely, and passionately just as God has made you. You don’t need to be the same as your sisters; you don’t need to achieve the same things or pursue the same activities. Lauren, you are loved as you.

You are the boss of your emotions. They shouldn’t hold you captive, shouldn’t dictate your behavior or your decisions. Fear especially will destroy your joy in this life; don’t give in to it. Overcome. Take charge. Push yourself to achieve and explore, not without fear, but in spite of fear.

Choose good friends and take the lead when it comes to doing what is right. Show compassion, generosity, grace, and love for every one you meet, but remember that the very best friends aren’t just fun or funny. They are the ones who encourage you to do your best, make wise decisions, and be more like Jesus. Choosing good friends….and one day choosing whom you date and choosing whom you marry….will determine so much of your future.

Discipline trumps talent. Every time. No exceptions. The reason we push and nudge you is because we see your potential. God has given you astounding gifts and talents, but they will remain useless and undeveloped without self-discipline and determination.

Don’t give up when the work is hard or takes time away from fun. The best things are worth working hard for; they are worth all the practice, studying, and sacrifice.

All of those prayers offered for you as two expectant parents worrying over their unborn child continue even now. As we ask God how to be your mom and dad, we marvel that we’ve been entrusted by Him with the gift of you. We so quickly bow our heads and pray…

Because we love you…

Because you amaze us….

Because you have so much potential….

Because we want God’s best for you.

Before you were born, your daddy chose these verses to pray as a blessing over you:

The Lord is righteous in all his ways
and faithful in all he does.
The Lord is near to all who call on him,
to all who call on him in truth.
He fulfills the desires of those who fear him;
he hears their cry and saves them
(Psalm 145:17-19 NIV).

Take this to heart, my Lauren, my daughter. God is with you always, perpetually near to you, ever faithful and unceasingly gracious. Remember to turn to Him.

Love,

~Mom~

Dear Daughter: To Victoria

September 30, 2013January 23, 20146 Comments

Dear blog friends and followers,

We’re on the final countdown to our baby boy’s arrival here and I’m taking the time to finish up those last-minute preparations—like double-checking the hospital bag, stocking up on everything at the grocery store so I won’t have to shop the day I come home from the hospital, and vacuuming the floor one last time so no one thinks my house really ever gets as messy as it really gets.

In the meantime, I’ll be posting some letters to my children here–one for each daughter and then one for my son–and I hope they bless you, too.

You’ll see posts from me while I’m really still in the hospital, even perhaps when I’m actually delivering a baby! Don’t be too impressed. I’m not live-blogging during a C-section or writing elaborate prose from my hospital bed despite grogginess, hormones, and people coming to take blood samples at 4 in the morning (why can’t they do that during the day when you’re in the hospital?)

No, I’ve written all this in advance and scheduled it for the days I’ll be away. There, I’ve spilled the secret!

I’d love your prayers this week. We should be meeting our baby on Wednesday (October 2nd).

Many blessings to you while I’m away,

~heather~

*********************************************************************************************************

Dear Victoria,

You made me a mom. God specially chose you for that purpose and what an honor and joy it has been from that first moment I held you in my arms after you screamed and a nurse toweled you off and handed you over to me, a brand-new, uncertain, clumsy, scared-out-of-her-mind, totally-in-awe new mommy.

But then, I’d been amazed at you all along. You taught me about morning sickness (and how you can have it all day, every day), about OB visits, about birth plans, about prenatal nutrition, and how there simply isn’t anything quite so miraculous as feeling a tiny life moving within your very own body.

I’ve been learning from you ever since. As you like to put it, you “trained me” to be a mom and all that it requires, not just the walking the floor at night with an inconsolable infant, or the diapering and bathing.

No, more than that.

You taught me how to care about another person enough to murder my own selfishness on a daily basis. You humbled me, showed me all I didn’t know, revealed all the ways I wasn’t perfect and didn’t have it all together.

Nothing in this world has taught me how to pray like being a mom, nothing drops me to my knees faster or more often than my children. That started with you.

You still teach me now.

How to be a good friend. How to make people a priority. How to give generously, unselfishly, and with extravagant joy to others.

How to always give your best effort. Many people may look at you and be jealous of your accomplishments, your God-given gifts and opportunities at church, at school, in music, dance and theater. Maybe they’d even foolishly call you “lucky.”

I know the truth.

I see the time you spend practicing, studying, memorizing, rehearsing, performing, and working when others rush through necessary tasks to enjoy fun and relaxation. I know it’s never me pushing at you, reminding you, nudging you, or pressuring you.

It’s the way you set goals for yourself–like jumping rope five times in a row, then 10, then 15, then 20…..until you can whip that rope over your head and leap over it 50 times without stopping, all because you decided you would, you made a plan, you worked hard, and you didn’t give up no matter how many times you tripped and had to start over.

But the awards that sit on a shelf or hang from the wall in your room aren’t what matter. They never are. It’s about who you are, so much strength of character and the willingness to stand up for what’s right against all that is wrong. It’s your deep tenderness, the way you sob at sad movies and books and have a heart so compassionately moved by the hurting, the needy, the outcasts, the orphaned.

These lessons that I’ve been teaching you, my Victoria, are ones I’ve been stumbling my own messy way through for too long. When I speak these words to you, I’m giving sermons to myself reflected in you.

This is what I need you to know:

You are loved, deeply and truly loved. You don’t ever need to be perfect to earn that from us or from God. Your value is never about what you do; it’s who you are, and who you are is amazing.

We all need grace. You’re going to mess up. You’ll forget sometimes, make mistakes, choose the wrong answer, say the wrong thing, lose control, make a mess, and not be the best at everything. That’s what grace is for, and when you’ve received that kind of mercy, be sure to give it to others gladly, humbly, and without stinginess.

Don’t allow worry, anxiety, and fretting to steal your joy. You can trust our God. He really can care for you and every detail of whatever you face.

Before you were born, your dad and I prayed for you, about choosing your name, and how to be your parents. We prayed that God would give us a Scripture as a blessing for you, and I remember the night your dad opened the Bible next to me and read these words:

But let all who take refuge in you be glad;
let them ever sing for joy.
Spread your protection over them,
that those who love your name may rejoice in you.
Surely, Lord, you bless the righteous;
you surround them with your favor as with a shield (Psalm 5:11-12 NIV).

We do pray this for you, for God’s favor, His protection, His blessing, and that He will fill you with gladness and a song of joy.

Love,

~Mom~

Heather, Meet Sheep: Part II

September 25, 2013January 23, 20143 Comments

She stared at me and I stared back at her.

One woman named Heather…..one sheep named Heather….looking across a farmyard of other creatures and people at one another.

She was probably thinking about lunch, about the quality of the grass, or the warmth of the day.

You know, sheep things.

I was thinking how appropriate it was to find this woolen sheep named “Heather” at the pumpkin patch.

I needed the reminder, with worries and unknowns, impossibilities, needs, and concerns. I needed the message that I’m simply a sheep and I need a shepherd.

No, I have a Shepherd, a Good One, One who promises to care for me, to lead me, to bring me to rest, to provide for me, to protect me and even defend me from the attacks of the enemy and my own foolishness.

So, I can be still. I can stop fretting over what to do and how to do it and just enjoy the grass, the day, the weather, choosing instead to rest and relax and follow along after Jesus.

Seeing our Savior this way, as our Shepherd, promises us so much….

Provision….Rest….Salvation….Deliverance…..Protection…..Love…..Belonging…..Guidance…..

I consider, though, the responsibility. I’m not only His sheep…I’m a Mama Sheep. I’ve been entrusted with the care of His lambs, three daughters, one soon-to-be-born son, all looking to this Mama Sheep as she tags along after the Shepherd.

Just like Peter, sitting across a crackling fire on the beach talking with Jesus, I receive this charge: “Feed my lambs” (John 21:15).

Not just ship them off to church once a week, maybe even twice a week, and hope someone else teaches them the basics about faith, God, and the Bible. No, that’s my job, and the church is there to partner with me and help me, but never to absolve me of this joy and this responsibility to build into my children’s faith.

In his classic book, Spiritual Parenting, C.H. Spurgeon, teaches me:

First before teaching, you must be fed yourself: The Lord gave him [Peter] a breakfast before giving him a commission. You cannot feed lambs, or sheep either, unless you are fed yourself.

So I start with my own walk, my own growing in the Word, my own prayers, my own time with the Shepherd.

Spurgeon challenges me again:

1. It is careful work. Lambs cannot be fed on anything you please, especially Christ’s lambs. You can soon almost poison your believers with bad teaching. Christ’s lambs are all too apt to eat herbs that are poisonous….Care must be taken in the work of feeding each lamb separately, and the teaching of each child individually the truth that he is able to receive.

2. It is laborious work. With all who teach: they cannot do good without spending themselves… There must be labor if the food is to be wisely placed before the lambs so that they can receive it

3. It is continuous work. Feed my lambs is not for a season, but for all times. Lambs could not live if they were fed once a week. I reckon they will die between Sunday and Sunday. The shepherding of the lambs is daily, hourly work. When is a shepherd’s work over? How many hours a day does he labor? He will tell you that in lambing time, he is never done. He sleeps between times when he can, taking much less than forty winks, then rousing himself for action. It is so with those who feed Christ’s lambs.

It begins to feel so heavy, so overwhelming.

What if I mess up? Say the wrong thing? Miss an opportunity? Sin? Set a bad example? Fail to address a character issue? Fail to point my children to Christ?

Yet, just as my Good Shepherd promises me love, protection, guidance, and care for my needs, He also promises me this:

“He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young” (Isaiah 40:11)

This unties that one last heavy burden of anxiety and worry off my fluffy sheep shoulders.

God doesn’t just care for me; He cares for my family also.

God leads me, and He does it gently, as I tend to my lambs, the tiny ones He’s entrusted to my care. Not just that, He scoops up my precious children and holds them close to His very own heart….closer than they can even be to my own beating life-muscle.

They can listen into the heart of the Shepherd, snuggled in close to His chest, kept safe, carried, beloved.

And I can rest knowing that He’ll help me, He’ll teach me, and He’ll show me how to feed these lambs…

Filling Out the Form

September 16, 2013January 23, 2014Leave a comment

“I’m your servant—help me understand what that means, the inner meaning of your instruction” (Psalm 119:125 MSG).

“What do you want to see your child learn during this school year?”

I tapped the eraser end of my pencil on the table.

It’s not a new question. I’ve been answering it for years. The first time I registered my oldest daughter for preschool, I sat in a child-sized chair and hunched over a child-sized table and completed the “Help Me Get to Know Your Child” form.

Some questions were easy. What does she like? What are her strengths? I scribbled away for a while, trying to sum up my precious daughter in a few sentences on blank lines.

But when it came to that one question—What do you want her to learn?—-tap, tap, tap went the top of the pen on the preschool table.

Tap, tap, tap goes my pencil after Open House for second grade. Some things never change.

What am I supposed to put on this form? Multiplication? Cursive? Powerful writing skills?

Truly, I want her to know in a deep-down, unquestioning way that God loves her.

This was Paul’s prayer for the church in Ephesus:

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:17-19

I’m not talking about being able to rattle off John 3:16 or sing Jesus Loves Me.

In her book A Sudden Glory, Sharon Jaynes notes that the first word for know here is gnosis or ginosko: “This word is not simply a head knowledge but an intimate heart knowledge,” like the “relationship between a husband and a wife.” (p. 173).

Yes! I want her to love God with that passion and to be filled up with all that God has for her because she trusts and fully knows His love.

And I want her to understand that growing in Christ takes time, a lifetime of time. There are no shortcuts to faith.

Rick Warren wrote:

Becoming like Christ is a long, slow process of growth. Spiritual maturity is neither instant nor automatic; it is a gradual, progressive development that will take the rest of your life.

I don’t want her to settle for a safe amount of faith, a reasonable amount of Bible knowledge, a decent prayer life, an appropriate amount of service to God. I don’t want her to declare, “I’m finished. This much is enough. No need for more of God.”

After all, He always leads us forward, perpetually changing us, incessantly maturing us. His passion is transformation.

It takes hard work. It takes discipline. It takes yielding. It takes willingness to be taught and to change. As it says in Romans:

… fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you (Romans 12:2)

This is my prayer for her.

Not head knowledge or wisdom gained through book study and our teacher in these matters has to be more than human. Paul assures us that, “these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God” (vs.10).

The deep things of God. Is that what I’m asking?

Or as Paul puts it later, “We have the mind of Christ.“

He says it with such confidence. Not we want to have, we will have, someday we’ll have, or if we work hard enough we’ll have. God has given us His Spirit and with that, “we have the mind of Christ” (vs. 16).

This is what I want my daughters to learn. This is what I want to learn. I want every day to know Him more, to be filled by His Spirit, responsive to His promptings, and for my mind not to be filled with self and with world, but with Christ.

I look at the form from her teacher. How to answer this question? I decide that being vague is the way to go. “I want her to fulfill her potential, growing in her strengths even more and improving any weaknesses.”

That’s what I write. But I pray for so much more.

I pray for the deep things of God. I pray for the mind of Christ.

Originally posted on September 5, 2012

A Heart At Rest

September 11, 2013January 23, 20142 Comments

Too often it’s the insignificant things.

Like the dishes I had to leave unwashed as I unexpectedly rushed out the door…or the items on the to-do list, there because they need to be done, but truly tomorrow might do just as well as today.

It’s the project that sits unfinished, the playroom with evidence of an abandoned toy sorting marathon on display, and the increasingly evident need for a vacuuming.

Too often this is what overwhelms me, the ultimately unimportant and insignificant trifles and I’m tempted for just one selfish moment to say, ‘no.’

‘No, I can’t. No, I’m too busy. Not today, not tomorrow, not later or in an hour. No I can’t give this; it’s mine and I need it. No, you’ll just have to ask someone else.’

While others are needing the hands and feet of Christ right now in this place where they find themselves ….and while God has told this perpetual Martha to abandon the mess in the kitchen and just sit down restfully at His feet or perhaps head out the door to serve another….still I glance incessantly over my shoulder at the kitchen, thinking of what I need to do.

How can my priorities be so awry?

I know it when I’m there… with a friend, on the phone, lingering at church, sharing the cup of tea, holding a crying daughter, baking cookies for another daughter to share with her class, surprising yet another girl in the lunchroom at school and sitting in a noisy cafeteria while she nibbles on her sandwich.

I know this is what matters. This is what is important.

People are always more important than productivity.

The dishes will be done. I’ll stand on the kitchen mat soon enough with my hands soaking into the suds, rinsing cereal bowls and cups. This, too, will be service and love for others, for my family.

Yet, right now what matters is being with God and loving others as He does, not fretting over the remnants of breakfast in my sink.

God challenges my perspective, shifting my viewpoint that is ever so stubbornly focused on my own needs.

He did this for Peter, too, as Jesus explained that He would die and be raised again.

Peter argued with the Savior: No way, Lord. That’ll never happen to you!

“Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Get away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s” (Matthew 16:23 NLT).

That’s my problem, isn’t it? My blindness to God’s perspective and the way that selfishness tunnels my vision until all I can see are my needs, my rights, my worries, my struggles, my life with my priorities.

I’m seeing things from a human point of view and never lifting my head high enough to see from God’s eyes.

This, then, is the deeply penetrating truth that challenges me: If I’m being obedient to God and loving others as He has told me to, then I needn’t worry about the peripheral, the secondary and the insignificant.

He will give me the time. He will help me. He will take care of what I need.

I can trust Him with it all, with every bit of my worry, my cares, my needs, my agenda. When I’m serving God in obedience, my stressed out, frazzled, distracted soul can rest in His presence.

That’s what it says in 1 John:

“Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence” (1 John 3:18-19).

Put love-based-on-truth into action and there I find that heart of rest simply because I’m where God is, doing what He’s called me to do, being obedient to His direction and timing.

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

I must confess I have moments where my heart is at rest in His presence, but they are broken up by pitfalls and pity parties. Sometimes I just simply want to be selfish. But when I choose selfishness, I may be happy for the moment, but I’m miserable in the long run (p. 98).

Yes, I have moments when serving comes easy and I feel the peace in obedience. But I have those other moments when selfishness tempts me to hide away and to hoard my time or resources.

Ironically, it’s only when I’m pouring out to others that God can fill me up with His presence.

It’s only when I cease striving for myself so that I can serve someone else that God meets all my needs, for provision, for rest, for peace, for wisdom, and for time.

She Was a Beautiful Woman

September 6, 2013January 23, 20145 Comments

“For the last twenty years of her life, she refused to have a mirror in her house…”

That’s what John Piper tells me in his book, Future Grace.

He writes about Evelyn Harris Brand, the mother of a famous hand surgeon and leprosy specialist, who served as a missionary to India with her husband. When he died, she returned to India, spending one decade after another caring for the malnourished and starving, the neediest among them, the least of these.

What could a mirror matter to her?

Would pearls or fashion help her give?

Would hair-dos and makeup allow her to love?

At 67, she broke her hip, one injury in a long history of sacrificing her body for others. There was the time she broke her arm, the vertebrae in her back that had cracked, the recurrent malaria. Her son begged her to retire and return home for some rest and relaxation.

She refused.

When she died at 95, still on the mission-field, still getting up each morning, preparing for the day, and heading right on out the door without primping and preening in front of the glass, her son said:

with wrinkles as deep and extensive as any I have ever seen on a human face…she was a beautiful woman (quoted in Future Grace, p. 295).

What is this beauty, I wonder?

I need to know for my daughters, how all the hair brushing and braiding, the outfit matching and shoe styles don’t create this radiance.

All that outward show can temporarily hide soul disfigurement. It can fool strangers from afar and win superficial praise.

But when others step in too close, lean in enough to see what’s beyond all the external costuming, they’ll see the ugly underneath.

And God, after all, sees the motives, the selfishness, the sin, the blemishes of vanity and pride that concealer and foundations can’t cover over no matter how thickly applied.

I need to know for my unborn son, so I can teach him to be a man who sees when beauty is real and when it isn’t.

And I need to know this for myself.

One month of pregnancy left to go….thinking now about the days post-delivery when my eyes ring purple and are rubbed red with fatigue….when none of my clothes fit just right and I’m feeling like a stranger in my very own body…. when physically I have others needing me, needing me all the time…

When giving my body for others becomes a moment-by-moment reality.

And this is the message I hear: Motherhood is beautiful.

Well, Motherhood is hard.

It’s the down-and-dirty of self-sacrifice, when you’re not just giving because it’s convenient or you have a little extra to spare for another.

Even my kids laugh now, how before I’ve even eased myself all the way into the dining room chair, someone else needs more, needs another, needs different…..and I hop up to grab a napkin, or stir the milk, or dish out the seconds.

That’s what they can see.

But how much more they don’t even know yet. How for nine months your heart expands all the while you’re throwing up and not sleeping and carrying more weight than you’ve ever borne on your frame before.

You can hope you aren’t left with stretchmarks after you’ve delivered, but you can’t really tell because your skin is so stretched over this human being. Of course, they are there in the end, permanent markings that you’ve carried the life of another.

And, it’d be nice if the weight was ALL baby, but of course it isn’t, not all of it.

Yet, you’ve traded in physical vanities for this reality: You gave of yourself, your very own body, for the sake of someone else.

And who needs a mirror to see the beauty in that?

Physical motherhood, spiritual mentoring, missions, service: Any time we stop staring at our own reflection critically, vainly, selfishly, obsessively, and start looking out to see the need of those around us and then we stoop down and give—not because it’s easy, but because Christ is in us—that’s when beauty shines.

His beauty.

Nothing compares to the radiant beauty of Christ shining in us, not the flashiest of fashions or the most glamorous hair styles.

This is a mystery.

Paul called it a:

“mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints….which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:26-27 NASB).

Christ in us, the hope of glory, transforms and radiates in a way undefinable, inexplicable, and we can’t comprehend how He could fill us up and shine on out of our too-frail, too-broken, too-imperfect lives.

Yet, He does.

And no mirror accurately reflects the beauty of a woman who lives and loves sacrificially, who lives and loves Jesus.

Heather C. King – Room to Breathe

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

Category: Parenting

Take My Picture!

What if God is in this place?

Dear Son: To Andrew

Dear Daughter: To Catherine

Dear Daughter: To Lauren

Dear Daughter: To Victoria

Heather, Meet Sheep: Part II

Filling Out the Form

A Heart At Rest

She Was a Beautiful Woman

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today: