Roasting Marshmallows, Fanning Flames, Finding Grace

September 20, 2013January 23, 20144 Comments

She holds the marshmallow too close to the blue flame and it ignites. Then she blows with one puff of her cheeks and giggles at the sight of her charred and blackened puff of sugar on a stick.

I tease her that she burns them on purpose and she confesses as much: “I like them crispy.”

We’ve huddled around the tiny Sterno burner set in the middle of our kitchen table with long forks poked through marshmallows to roast them and make S’mores, a favorite treat.

There are recipes for microwave S’mores, oven S’mores, toaster oven S’mores, but on a night when we have time, when we miraculously aren’t scarfing down dinner and rushing into the car for an evening of dance classes followed by church activities, we like to roast the marshmallows over the flame.

Not living on a campground, however, we use the Sterno instead–filled with fuel that burns blue and purple when lit by my match.

When we’ve each charred our marshmallow and smashed it down on the milk chocolate with the two graham crackers, I smother the flame with the lid, blocking the fire from the necessary oxygen for burning and thriving.

And it dies.

Just sputters right out, so simply, so quickly, so inevitably… suffocation through lack of breath.

How breathless I’ve been.

The running, the pace, the schedule.

The remembering: appointments, agenda books, reading logs, library books, dance schedules, Bible verses, lunches, emails, jackets, reaching out to friends, counseling my children.

Trying not to forget the Holy Spirit words stuck to my fridge, my bathroom mirror, my car: Love is patient.

Remembering that, too.

It’s beauty day in and day out, watching these children grow, loving on them, learning from them. This is the blessing that makes me pause and whisper thanks to God.

It’s beauty to minister, beauty to serve, beauty to love others with God’s love and to give generously to them just as He has given generous heaps of mercy and grace to me.

Beauty takes sacrifice, though, it takes giving and giving and giving and sometimes I forget.

I forget that running breathless too long suffocates, cutting off the oxygen we need to survive.

How often we do this, too: Fueling our flames with our own resources, running our own self-provided fuel.

Then we run dry.

The prophet Zechariah teaches me this truth. He has a vision—-“a solid gold lampstand with a bowl at the top and seven lamps on it, with seven channels to the lamps. Also there are two olive trees by it, one on the right of the bowl and the other on its left” (Zechariah 4:1-6).

I rush past the words in my Bible, treating them like just another mysterious prophetic vision, obscure, and disconnected from my life.

But even Zechariah didn’t understand at first, and the angel has to explain:

“This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty (Zechariah 4:6).

Those olive trees, that lampstand, the lamps all around, held a message for Zerubbabel….for me….for all of us who love and serve others every day.

In the Our Daily Bread Bible, I read:

“The prophet saw two olive trees that supplied oil to a bowl that fed seven lamps on a golden lampstand. As we think about the reality behind this symbolism, we can be encouraged. You and I are not the source of light that enlightens the world. We can only receive the oil of the Holy Spirit that fuels the living flame He produces. If we burn steadily through the long, dark hours, it is because we have learned to yield our lives to the Spirit’s unlimited supply of power and strength. This comes only through continual fellowship with Jesus our Savior (p. 1018).

I sang this as a kid, a little sing-songy Sunday school tune: “Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning…..”

It was catchy and cute then.

It’s breath in my lungs now.

Do you feel the grace here?

You and I don’t have to be enough, don’t have to keep ourselves going, keep up the pace, keep things together….we aren’t the source and the world doesn’t depend on us or rest all heavy and cumbersome on our wimpy shoulders.

We seek the oil of His Spirit poured into us and that is our Source, our Strength, our fuel that keeps on going and doesn’t run dry or sputter out or suffocate and die.

Not by my might (I’m so weak and helpless really).

Not by power (I tire easily and can’t keep all this together).

But by His Spirit.

Oh yes, Lord, fill us anew with Your Spirit.

Need some more grace in the midst of it all this morning? Christie over at So Beloved has a sweet encouragement for you. Click here to read her post this week!

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.

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

Packing, PreOrdering and Preparing for Book and Baby

September 13, 2013January 23, 20148 Comments

People keep asking me if I’m ready for my son to be born.

I think of the mostly empty duffel bag sitting on my bedroom floor and realize perhaps I need to take this countdown to my due date more seriously.

With my first baby, of course, I had a typed up birth plan and a printed list of important phone numbers weeks in advance. We had faithfully attended childbirth classes and I packed my hospital bag neatly (with a checklist) at 36 weeks. I created a ‘baby playlist’ and burned CD’s with relaxing music to help me in the delivery room.

The crib was up, car seat installed, dresser stocked, and diapers ready long before she was due to arrive.

And of course, she was a week late.

I’m just about two-and-a-half weeks away now from holding my baby boy, my fourth baby, and so far I’ve packed some socks, an electric teapot, a mug and some teabags. Oh, and some slippers.

A girl has priorities.

The truth is that from that first positive pregnancy test and the week you sit all nervous on a doctor’s examination table waiting to see your baby pose for pictures for the first time, all fuzzy in black and white, wiggling limb buds with a heart beating so hard and so fast… you are in preparation.

You are waiting.

The life grows and sometimes it all rushes by so quickly. Other times (like in those early days of nausea, morning sickness, and awkward weight gain where you don’t look pregnant, but you do look bigger) time creeps on and you feel like this….surely…..will….last……forever.

But it won’t, of course.

There’s the season of waiting and preparation.

Surely, it may have felt like one interminable case of waiting, waiting, waiting on God for Sarah. But more than a decade after God’s initial promise to bless Abraham with a son, Sarah labored and delivered and then held her baby, Isaac, and she laughed with joy.

And a young teenage girl named Mary heard the news from angel—she’d bear a son, the Messiah, our Savior. No double lines on a pregnancy test to confirm God’s promises, no appointment at the doctor’s office to test her hormone levels or laying back and waiting for an image on the ultrasound screen.

No, it was the leaping of John the Baptist in his own mother’s womb, the Holy Spirit dancing of an unborn babe, that told Mary life was in her, God’s life, long before her clothes stopped fitting and her hands and feet swelled.

Her waiting didn’t last forever, though. A night in Bethlehem ended the anticipation and the expecting.

Birthing occurs.

All that God has been doing in the hidden places of the womb, the forming in the darkness, the creation we can’t see, pushes right out into the light.

Paul wrote in Galatians that “when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship (Galatians 4:4-5 NIV).

The writer of Hebrews tells us: But [that appointed time came] when Christ (the Messiah) appeared as a High Priest of the better things that have come and are to come (Hebrews 9:11 AMP).

God’s appointed time comes.

Until then, we prepare, we trust, we pray, we obey the tiny steps and trust God with the results. We marvel and praise Him for the signs that life is growing and maturing within us and it stirs up that hope, that expectancy that yes, God is at work here.

And while I’m packing that much-neglected hospital bag, I prepare in other ways for another kind of birth….

One I can share with you.

So many have asked, so many of you have faithfully prayed, and here is the first sign that my book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Lives to God’s Questions, will be here soon.

It’s been a summer of editing and proofreading, of working with the publicist, and approving the copy.

Now, the book is available for preorder with a release date in November!

You can follow these links to find the book at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and also at Christianbook.com.

You can click here to learn more about the book and what God has already done in the writing and preparing for publication.

You can click here to visit my Amazon Author Page.

An e-book version will be available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and the Apple store shortly after publication.

Thank you so much for praying, for encouraging, for blessing me in so many ways. I am so grateful to God for each of you.

~heather~

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 on November 1, 2013! To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

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.

Praying for Our Kids Through the Day

September 2, 2013January 23, 2014Leave a comment

It’s the Last Day of Summer here in my household. My kids will speed through the morning routine tomorrow and step on the school bus to kick off the busyness and craziness of the school year. So, today I’m sharing the reminder to pray with this post from May 2013—-pray for our kids, pray for their schools, pray for their teachers and other school staff.

Originally posted May 22, 2013

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

News reports and tears. How could they not go together at times?

I don’t think my momma’s heart can handle watching the live footage of Oklahoma after a tornado, not when it crushed a school with other women’s babies inside.

Still I wake up this morning and the next and the next and I rush my children through the routine and watch the clock count down the minutes to the school bus’s arrival at the end of our driveway. I kiss blond heads and say the simple things: Have a good day. Behave. Learn lots. I love you.

The temptation is always there to snatch them up and try to hide them from a world out of control and full of so much evil and such pain.

But here is my daily choice: To parent in Fear or to parent in Faith.

It’s prayer that faith-parenting demands: this incessant and heart-all-in-it intercession for our kids because we just aren’t enough to protect them from everything and we can’t ever do it all right on our own.

Today, I’m choosing to pray around the clock for my kids:

7:00 a.m., before they wake–For Me:

Lord, please help me be the mom You want me to be today. I give this day to You right from the beginning. Forgive me for yesterday’ s mistakes and give me grace for a new day. I trust You for the wisdom, strength, grace, patience, and energy I need to do this most important job. Thank You for trusting me with the care of this family.

7:30 a.m., as they wake–Praise and Thanksgiving:

Thank You for these children, Lord. They are so unique. I see how this one hops out of bed with joy and how this girl drags her blanket and stumbles out to the sofa for a slow move into the day. Help me remember how they are each a precious treasure.

8:25, the school bus arrives–For Safety.

Lord, I trust them into Your hands today and ask for their safety. Please watch over them. Even when they are with me, I can’t get it all right and don’t know how to protect them from everything. Your hands are so much bigger than mine, Lord. Please hold them in Your hands today. Keep them safe from evil and those who want to hurt them. Protect them physically, spiritually, mentally and emotionally.

8:50, school begins– For their school (or work);

God, please help my children be seekers of truth. Grow in them the skills, the knowledge, the abilities they need to fulfill Your plans for them. I pray that You will choose the perfect teachers who will be an encouragement to my kids, will help them discover the joy in learning, and will know exactly how to guide, direct and care for them today. Thank You for these teachers, school staff and administrators. Please give them wisdom, strength, energy, and joy.

12:00, lunch time–For health and physical disciplines:

Lord, I pray that You will be the healer and protector for my children. Help them to make wise choices about eating, exercising, and their bodies. Show them how to say “no” and stand firm against addictions and harmful substances. Give them a healthy body image so they will care for the body You’ve given them, but they will not fall for the lies of this world about beauty. Remind them that they are beautiful the way You made them. Please protect them from any struggle with eating disorders.

1:00, recess—For friendships and relationships:

Father, Proverbs says: “Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm” (Prov. 13:20 NIV). Help my children make wise decisions about their friendships and relationships. Show them how to love others, be kind to all, reach out to the ignored, the ostracized, and the downtrodden. Give them compassionate hearts. But please help them choose close friends who will lead them to Jesus and not encourage or dare them to rebel and walk astray.

For their future dating relationships and marriages, I ask now for wisdom and purity. Let them be passionate about pursuing You above all and let a passion for You be what attracts them to others. Prepare them for their future as friends, wives, and moms and give them the relationship skills they need now to fulfill those roles later.

3:45, school ends and afternoon and evening activities begin—For their future:

Lord, You know the exact plans You have for each of my children. I ask that You will reveal their gifts and hone each of their talents so they can use them for Your glory. Give them hearts that are passionate for You and Your will and help them choose to walk in Your ways in all things. I ask that You will teach them discipline, faithfulness, and hard work so they don’t give up too soon, but instead always strive for excellence, giving their very best offerings as praise to You.

8:00, bedtime—For their salvation and their walk with God:

Above all, Lord, I ask that You draw the hearts of these children to You. Help them to know You as their Lord and Savior and let that be personal, real and life-changing. Stir up passion in them for Your Word, for worship, and for the things of God. I place them into Your hands again this night, trusting them to Your care. Please don’t let them be afraid, but to learn to trust You and turn to You for whatever help they ever need.

In Jesus’ name….Amen.

Interested in learning more ways to pray for your children? My favorite resource is Stormie Omartian’s The Power of a Praying® Parent. She also wrote a book specifically for parents of adults: The Power of Praying® for Your Adult Children.

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.

Broken Lenses and The Faith Dare

August 23, 2013August 23, 20132 Comments

When my daughters are excited, they jump.

Ice cream!
Jump, jump, jump.

Playdate!
Jump, jump, jump.

Trip to the aquarium!
More jumping.

You’d think after years of being a mom to these jumping beans, I’d have learned to announce good news from afar.

But I haven’t. My dentist can probably attest to how many times one of their heads has slammed into my jaw as I foolishly stood over them and made a thrilling announcement.

So, when I took the girls to a children’s museum for an exhibit on butterflies, I should have maintained a safe distance, walking behind them the whole way.

But I didn’t. Instead, I held my camera in my hand and walked next to my oldest daughter who took one look at the massive monarch caterpillar entryway and . . . .

Jumped . . .right into my hand, knocking my camera to the concrete sidewalk. From then on, the lens made this sickening grinding noise as it turned on or tried to focus for a shot.

My husband performed camera surgery and that helped for a while. Yet, eventually the lens stuck in place again. Now my camera clicks and grinds when you turn it on and then flashes red light onto the display before showing the message, “Lens error. Camera will shut down now.”

With my camera out of focus, I’ve been wondering how often we experience brokenness in similar ways. Something sends us hurtling to the ground—a hurt, a sickness, loss, sadness, fear, death, confusion, loneliness, conflict, fatigue—and suddenly our perspective is askew. We see everything through a lens that is stuck and out of focus.

Certainly we lose God’s perspective often enough.

This earthly life of ours will always be accompanied by a darkened view and limited line of sight. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:2, NASB).

It’s not until Glory that we’ll receive heavenly lenses and eternal scope.

Until then, we’ll probably still be asking: Why did that happen? How long will this take? What’s the point of this and the significance of that? Is there any hope? What is around the corner? What will my future hold?

But here and now, even the darkness can be enlightened at times.

We can remember …

….that God breathed life into dust.

The materials we give Him do not limit what God can create. Peter tells us,

“Therefore, those also who suffer according to the will of God shall entrust their souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right” (1 Peter 4:19).

In any situation, we can have full confidence in our faithful Creator, who makes beautiful things out of dust and even forms the dust itself.

…that God restores life when all seems dead.

In the book of Job, we read: “There is hope for a tree: If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail. Its roots may grow old in the ground and its stump die in the soil, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth shoots like a plant” (Job 14:7-9).

So if you are feeling the weight of broken branches and fallen leaves, when you feel fruitless, abandoned, cut down to the very stump and left for dead, allow hope to refocus your lens. Despite seeing fruitless death, we remember that God restores and redeems.

… that even rain is a blessing.

In the book of Joel, God promised Israel restoration and renewal if they would repent and return to Him. Following judgment and famine, they would see new growth, but it required rain to wash away the dry, crumpled weeds and to saturate the earth with life-giving water.

Joel tells the people to “rejoice in the Lord your God! For the rain He sends demonstrates His faithfulness” (Joel 2:23 NLT).

Even in the downpour, we can praise Him for bringing new life with His faithful love.

Oh, it’s not easy of course. Our lenses are still faulty. It’s the way we’re made. We’re finite. Limited. Created without the ability to see the long-term and the eternal.

We’re broken cameras, all of us.

In The Faith Dare, Debbie Alsdorf writes:

When we focus only on self and become consumed by the conflict, we begin to live under it rather than being an overcomer through faith in Christ (p.. 160).

Let it be our prayer, though, that He be our vision, that He provide our focus, and that He guide our perspective. It’s the only way to truly see.

Devotional adapted from A Broken Lens, originally published 10/14/2011

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.

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.

Heather C. King – Room to Breathe

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

Tag: devotions for moms

Roasting Marshmallows, Fanning Flames, Finding Grace

Filling Out the Form

Packing, PreOrdering and Preparing for Book and Baby

A Heart At Rest

She Was a Beautiful Woman

Praying for Our Kids Through the Day

An Origami Failure Learns to Fold

Broken Lenses and The Faith Dare

Turning Aside and Saying Yes to God

You Think You’ll Remember

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