Tag: devotions for women

Finding Home | The place where being you is being enough

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psalm 90

Both of my older girls worked hard.

During the busiest, craziest week we had so far this school year, both girls picked campaign slogans, drafted their speeches, typed them out, edited them and practiced until they were just right.

They both finished their homework quickly and then clocked over two hours a piece in between evening activities to design and create their campaign posters.

One of my daughters won the student government officer election at her school.

The other lost.

These kinds of unbalanced victories are tough for us.  With two overachievers so close in age, it’s never easy to cheer and console at the same time.

But we did it.

I watched them climb into the minivan and I knew it right away.  One girl had a bouncy step and smile.  One girl held herself together until she flopped down into her seat and started to cry.

It probably wouldn’t have been so bad, except a mean boy rubbed the loss in my younger daughter’s face and called her “dumb.”

Life can sure be disappointing sometimes.  People sure can be cruel, trodding all over you when you’re already down in the dust.

So, I whisked them right from school to Subway (their favorite meal) and then did one better: milkshakes for everyone.  Because we needed it.  Somedays, you just need a milkshake with whipped cream and a cherry on top.

And then we went home.

That’s where we hugged and we congratulated and we reassured.  We looked into big blue eyes and spoke words of courage: “I’m so proud of you no matter what. You did awesome.  You were amazing. Sometimes we don’t win, but we have to take pride in how hard we worked and how we did our very best and our best is always good enough.”

Home is where you can celebrate and everyone joins in and cheers for you because they’re all on your side.

Home is where you drag your disappointed heart with its hurt and sadness, and it’s safe here.  You are hugged.  You are loved without conditions and expectations.  These are your people, the ones who are for you.  The ones who won’t mock your tears or tell you to ‘buck up and just get over it.’

Home should be the safe place.  The united place.  The place where being you is being enough.

Of course, Home isn’t that way for everyone.  And that’s the great tragedy.  It must break God’s heart to see how Home sometimes hurt instead of heals.

But at least here in my space, in my life, for my family, I want Home to be the refuge God meant it to be.

I read in Psalm 90:1, how Moses prayed to God.  He said:

“Lord, through all the generations you have been our home” (NLT).

I’ve read this in other translations before.  The ESV says the Lord has been our “dwelling place” and the HCSB says the Lord has been our “refuge.”

But I let that word “home” echo a bit and think about what it means for God to be Home for me.

My safe place.

My refuge.

The place where I abide, live, dwell…where I relax and be myself, where I kick off my shoes and plod around in my white socks, where the masks are off and people see the real me, where I wash off my makeup, where I mess up sometimes and ask for forgiveness from those who love me still.

God is my Home.

He’s celebrating our victories.

And He’s wrapping us up in arms so big when we unload the disappointment, hurt and sadness we’ve been carrying on our shoulders.

In a world where we can feel judged and criticized, like people are always jumping in with suggestions of how we should be, where bullies and mean girls set themselves against us, God is our Home.

He loves you as you are.  He says you’re beautiful.  He says you have value and worth and He’s proud of you and He’s seen it–all of it—all your hard work and effort–and He says it’s good.

I wonder what it was like for Moses to write that God was his home?

Moses–the slave baby sent into the river on a basket, raised by an Egyptian princess in a palace where he didn’t quite fit in.

Moses–the murderer turned fugitive, who spent 40 years out in the wilderness tending sheep and living outside his community.

Moses–the leader of a nation that spent another 40 years wandering around the desert, pitching tents, moving on and never lingering in one place for long.

For the unwanted, for the outsider, for the broken, for the sinner, for the prodigal, for the wanderer, for the leader, God was Home.

God is Home.

Welcome Home.

P.S. Turns out that my daughter didn’t win the officer election, but still gets to be part of the SCA as a class representative!  A new day and a fresh perspective helped her feel much better.

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 book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, is available now!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2015 Heather King

This is why I need a Savior

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psalm 103.jpg

I was a freshman in college when an older friend took me for a walk and confronted me about the deathly sharpness of my tongue, how I could cut another student to pieces and leave them in shreds on the campus floor.

Since then, there has been grace.

The Holy Spirit dug out mounds of trash and began growing kindness, gentleness, and self-control in me.

I started to think that this new ‘me’ is the real me, the gracious and gentle me who loves others and keeps her tongue in check.  I thought I had learned the lesson:

There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts,
    but the tongue of the wise brings healing (Proverbs 12:18 ESV).

But it was pride, foolish pride.

Now, the Lord is breaking that self-righteousness right down. It stings and aches, and I’d just like Him to finish the construction project already so I can stop feeling so bruised and laid bare.

I’ve been losing my ‘cool,’ snapping back when I felt challenged, flashing to defend myself.

One time felt like a fluke, just a bad day. But then it happened again. And again.

Every time, I’d think, “What’s wrong with me?  That’s not who I am!”

I’d spend days, weeks even after each incident rehearsing the scenes in my mind, wincing at my words, embarrassed and ashamed.

I resolved to try harder next time. Be calm. Stay in control. Take deep breaths.  Don’t talk when provoked.  Be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to get angry.

Not that I’m cursing or yelling, of course.  It’s just that temporary loss of control, speaking now and thinking later (with regret).

That’s not me.   I’m sweet and kind.  I’m patient and slow to speak.

That’s what I kept telling myself.

But the truth is even when I kept control of my tongue, the trash was in my heart–the criticism or judgments, the flashes of self-protective wit and anger.

Now God seems to be letting the trash of my heart come pouring out my mouth so I can’t hide it, not even from myself.

I keep entering the boxing ring and beating at myself with the same commentary.

I can’t believe I said that. 

That’s not me.  That’s not who I am. 

What’s wrong with me?

Why am I so easily provoked?

I am an idiot.

I’m so embarrassed.  

I review my day as a mom and realize I blew it here and I messed up there.  I hear how my tone of voices loses gentleness even with my own kids.

I’ve spent months carrying around a load of shame and embarrassment because I just can’t seem to shake my reactivity.

What’s wrong with me?

Then this weekend, I read Simply Tuesday by Emily P. Freeman and she pinned me to a display board when she said this:

Shock and shame are my most natural and immediate responses when I make a bad choice or have a bad reaction….If I feel shocked and ashamed when I snap…, maybe I’m assuming I can handle life on my own and I don’t really need redemption, not really. And so when my soul has a bad idea, I can’t believe it.

Shock and shame. That’s been me.

Why am I so shocked by my own sinfulness?  Every. Single. Time.

It’s because I’ve been leaning so heavily on my own self-righteousness that I’ve failed to collapse in the arms of grace.

It’s because I’ve been assuming I could be perfect and am angry when I’m not.

I have messages I tell my kids over and over, hoping they’ll ring true in the deepest parts of them.

I love you.

You’re beautiful. 

I believe in you.

And this:

No one is perfect. We all mess up.  We sin.  That’s why we need a Savior.  If we could be perfect on our own, we wouldn’t need Jesus.

Maybe in this season of humility and the breaking down, I find myself learning the lesson I’ve been preaching—

Accept the grace.  Be loved.

Stop being shocked and embarrassed because I need a Savior.

Be humbled and live in awe of the One who Saves.

I don’t receive mercy because I’m perfect; I receive it because I’m imperfect and relying on Christ.

Aren’t we all?

The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
    slow to anger, abounding in love.
9 He will not always accuse,
    nor will he harbor his anger forever;
10 he does not treat us as our sins deserve
    or repay us according to our iniquities.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
    so great is his love for those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west,
    so far has he removed our transgressions from us (Psalm 103:8-12 NIV).

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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 book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, is available now!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2015 Heather King

 

I Get It! You’re Not a Baby Anymore!

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Jeremiah 9

My sweet Andrew,

People like to tell me all the time how big you are.

They stop me in the hallways at church.

They shake their head in wonder when we pick your sisters up from school.

They post comments when I share your picture on Facebook.

Random strangers even chime in with a chorus of “what a big, handsome boy” when I’m waiting in the checkout line at Wal-Mart.

You are not a baby anymore, not by any means.

And, this probably makes you so proud and so ready to take on the world.

The other morning, in all of my sleepiness, I made the mistake of lifting you into your booster seat so you could eat your breakfast cereal.  You screamed at me for 5 minutes.andrew

You had to climb up in that booster seat yourself, grunting and working those muscles all the way.  And didn’t you flash me a look of “see, I told you I could do this all on my own” when you finally made it?

 

I get it.  Two years old is about finding a voice, learning what’s ‘mine,’ bumping against the rules so you know where they are, and striking out into the big wide world of “I can do it myself.”

 

Just know how much we love you, how we’re standing strong on the rules at times because we love you so, and how I’m praying for you as you grow.

Your sense of humor and joy are a strength and a treasure.  Never lose that. 

You have this deep, deep belly laugh that shows up in your eye
s, and the tiniest things will send you into fits of giggles.  You explore every possibility and love to play, initiating light saber duels, tickling sessions, peekaboo, and dance-a-thons with us.

This big world sure is a wonder.  Always look wide-eyed.  Don’t miss out on the joy.  And laugh: Laugh often and laugh hard.

It’s okay to know what you want, but make sure you want the right things. 

I’ve had go-with-the-flow babies and I’ve had know-their-own-mind babies.  You are the latter.  It’s a strength that I love about you.

Stand up for the right things even if no one else does.  Be honest.  Fight for justice.

But if you’re going to pursue what you really want in life, make sure what you want is good and true. 

Be passionate about God’s Word, about truth, about the Gospel, about compassion.

And know that the best things in this life aren’t just worth waiting for; they are worth working hard for.

Leadership begins with serving others.

Our family attracts comments everywhere we go—-how you’ll be so spoiled by three older sisters.  How you “don’t stand a chance.”  How you’ll be “mothered to death.”

My son, you are the baby in this family with three big sisters to dote on you and treat you like the center of the universe.

Know how much you are loved, but don’t be fooled into thinking this world should serve you.  Instead, serve others.

Be humble.  Put other people first.

Christ didn’t lead by demanding attention or through selfishness and abuse.  He led with humble self-sacrifice and compassion.  “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3 ESV).

Know beauty when you see it. 

I’ve spent years teaching three daughters that “Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting” (Proverbs 31:30).  I tell them that true beauty is Jesus in you; it’s strength, gentleness, wisdom, discipline, honesty, kindness, and Christ-like love.

They need to know how to be truly beautiful.

You need to know how to see true beauty.

By the time you start building up real memories of me, I’ll be about 40 years old and have birthed four children.  But, dear son, may you still see beauty in me: the real kind, the kind that grows with time instead of fading.  The kind that sacrifices self to pour out for others.  The kind of beauty that isn’t defined by a number on a scale or the color or style of my hair, but that comes from wisdom and grace.

You’ll find tons of girls who know how to do their hair, put on their makeup and choose the perfect outfit.  Don’t be deceived.

Don’t look for someone whose beauty peaks at 22 years old, before kids, and depends on products, expensive clothes, and hours in front of the mirror.

Look for someone who will be beautiful at 40…at 60….at 80.

True beauty isn’t how you look at any given moment; it’s always about who you are becoming.

And know this….

I am so deeply thankful that God chose me to be your mama.  What an honor and a joy to have you as my son.

Love,

~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 book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, is available now!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2015 Heather King

 

Fire drills, tornado drills, lockdown drills, oh my!

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psalm 31-22

My daughter announced that she hates ‘drills.’

All kinds of drills, she says.

They were only about two weeks into the school year at the time.

They had fire drills.

They had a tornado drill.

My oldest daughter chimes in about ‘lock-down drills,’ and how her teacher is so funny but the one thing she is super serious about is anyone who dares to giggle, laugh or even squeak out a hint of noise during a lockdown drill.

“She’ll send you to the principal,” my daughter lowers her voice for added drama.

These older girls of mine try to reassure the youngest sister that drills are essential and there to help and not really a big deal.

But the baby girl is testing out fear here.  I can see it on her face and I hear it in the way she keeps bringing these drills up.  When she gets home from school.  Over dinner.  In the minivan.  As she climbs into my lap for bedtime prayers.

“The drills…the drills….the drills…”

Clearly, they are on her mind.  And we older and wiser ones keep jumping in with confidence that everything is fine and not to be afraid, but she’s just not convinced.

So, the fear is kind of leaking out of her heart and into our conversations.

Oh, I don’t blame the drills, of course.   I let her tell me about them all over again and then I look right into her two blue eyes and I even brush away her wild bangs so she can’t miss this reassurance:

Those drills are there to keep you safe.  So that if anything ever happens, you’re not too scared to do the right thing.  We drill now so we don’t have to be afraid later.

She nods knowingly, but I’m her mom and I know we’ll probably have this conversation again in a month when the alarm goes off at school and all the kids file outside for yet another fire drill. So we pray about it, every time it comes up, I pray peace for her.

It’d be nice, it’d be great, it’d be heaven really if we didn’t need drills, if we didn’t have to practice for fire or intruders or tornadoes or a world of harm and hurt.

But we live here, on a broken earth with sin and natural disasters and trouble.

And how we react in the crisis makes a difference.

I know this because haven’t I been alarmed and sent into a dizzying whirlpool of fear at the slightest provocation?

A phone call.

An email.

A Facebook post, for goodness’ sake.

Maybe you, too?  The doctor’s report, the bill in the mail, the late night call, the hurtful remark, the broken car (again), the sobbing friend?

Trouble storms into our lives and how we react in the crisis matters.

We’re tempted to freak out and run around like a wild woman with her hands flailing hysterically in the air.

We’re in crisis mode.  Making phone calls.  Feeling hopeless.  Crying desperately.  Feeling helpless.  Rallying the troops and sending out an SOS signal and doing anything possible to keep from drowning.

I’ll be honest, sometimes it doesn’t even take a crisis, it just takes one tiny bump into my plans for the day for me to settle into a funk of frantic activity and aggravated grumpiness.

The Psalmist said it just right:

In my alarm I said,
    “I am cut off from your sight!”
Yet you heard my cry for mercy
    when I called to you for help (Psalm 31:22 NIV).

In our alarm, when the bad news comes and we haven’t had time for faith to kick in, we snap to the judgment that God has abandoned us.

He can’t see us.

We’re cut off from Him, alone, dependent on our own strength to get us out of this mess.

Our natural reaction to an alarm is haste and hysteria, foolishness and fear.

It’s unnatural to choose peace under pressure.

Yet, the Holy Spirit offers us just such unnatural, supernatural peace.

When everything settled and the crisis passed, the Psalmist recognized the truth: “Yet you heard my cry….”

In the haste of the moment, he had rushed into fear.  But then he saw what was true, God had indeed heard His cry for help.

What about us?

Over time, after alarm and alarm and alarm have passed and the dust settles and we see Jesus right there with us, surely we’d know by now what to do in case of crisis:

Cry to God for help.

Trust Him to hear your call.

Rest in the assurance of His presence.

Choose peace.

Not flaky peace, vague peace, warm-and-fuzzy-feeling peace, or the peace of blindness to our circumstances.

The peace that is the confident assurance of Christ’s presence right where we are.

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 book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, is available now!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2015 Heather King

 

The Grandest Invitation Ever

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Revelation 19I’m guessing I was in middle school.

Really, there’s not much I remember about why I was there or when I was there or even who was with me.  I think it was probably a band field trip up to Pennsylvania for a music competition.

But here’s what I do remember, walking into a large open room surrounded by windows and seeing table after table covered in crisp, bleached white tablecloths, each one set with an elaborate place-setting that included multiple forks and spoons.

I’m just a teenage-ish girl away from home with a bunch of other middle schoolers about to eat at a place far nicer than our normal class trip stops at McDonald’s or Wendy’s.

Even now, I’m the kind of girl who eats at restaurants where kids can get their drinks in styrofoam cups with lids and straws.

(Okay, maybe I can get my drink in that styrofoam cup).

This place was an intimidating beast of a dining room with significant glassware and cloth napkins.

What was I doing there?

I grew up in a home where we learned table manners, so I knew how to put my napkin on my lap and not lean on the table with my elbows.

But, I’ll still never forget that initial feeling of walking into such a fancy place and thinking, “I get to eat here? There’s not some back room for middle school girls from the suburbs?”

Maybe you’ve never felt out of place or like a small and insignificant girl feeling a little overwhelmed and a lot like you don’t belong there.

But I sure have.

I’ve felt uncomfortable and unworthy.

I’ve felt humbled and speechless and afraid to make one wrong move because maybe they’ll figure out the truth: that I’m an imposter who doesn’t deserve to be here.

So, as I was studying the book of Ruth and reading Kelly Minter’s book, I just wished so desperately I could pour myself a cup of tea and this amazing author could pour herself a cup of coffee and we could chat because Kelly got ‘it.’

She got everything about how it feels to be an imposter welcomed to a table.

Ruth 2:14 says:

And at mealtime Boaz said to her, “Come here and eat some bread and dip your morsel in the wine.” So she sat beside the reapers, and he passed to her roasted grain. And she ate until she was satisfied, and she had some left over.

Up to this point in the book of Ruth, the author has made a huge, whopping, big deal about the fact that Ruth is a foreign woman. Even worse, she’s a Moabite foreign woman.

She didn’t even deserve to glean in the fields of Boaz and certainly wasn’t worthy of anyone’s notice, especially not someone as wealthy and powerful as Boaz.

Yet, after months of watching Ruth’s hard work and seeing her faithful care for her mother-in-law, Boaz invites her to the table with his employees and blesses her with abundance.

She eats everything she could eat and still had leftovers.

Immediately, I thought of how much this sounded like Mephibosheth, the crippled son of Jonathan whom King David invited to share the king’s table night after night.

(Kelly Minter thought the same thing.  I’m telling you, we were totally clicking that day!)

Mephibosheth was the grandson of King Saul.  When David became king, everyone expected him to kill anyone left alive in Saul’s family.

Instead, David seeks out Mephibosheth and longs to show him kindness.

And, crippled as he was, Jonathan’s son couldn’t even get to the king’s table on his own.

He would have to be carried.

Kelly Minter writes,

I believe we all deeply long to be invited ‘to the table.’ It represents all things that speak belonging, acceptance, and the honor of being chosen. It is a picture of intimacy, conversation, nourishment, and safety (Ruth, p. 76).

You and I, as unbelievable as it may seem, are invited to a table of abundance.

Revelation 19:9 says:

Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb (ESV).

How blessed indeed are we as believers to receive this invitation?  Christ Himself spreads out a feast and asks us to come to the table.

It’s an invitation we don’t deserve, not on our own merit or strength anyway.

We’re like Ruth—foreigners.  We’re the lowly and the poor.  We’re the outcasts and the outsiders.

Like Mephibosheth, we’re crippled and broken and we can’t even make it to the table all on our own.

We need Jesus.

He covers us with His righteousness.  He dresses us in the pure robes of His forgiveness.

And, He bids us come and eat.

“Let us rejoice and exult
    and give him the glory” (Revelation 19:7 ESV). 

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 book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, is available now!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

 

What to do when you don’t find money in the girls’ bathroom

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Psalm 20My daughter exited the girls’ bathroom at school looking disappointed.

We were there for an after school program and I was ready to rush on home, but I stopped the frantic backpack grabbing and asked her what was wrong.

“I was hoping I’d find some money in the bathroom.”

Now, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this.

Was there typically money in the girls’ bathroom at school?

Was this an income source I wasn’t aware of?

Did the child so desperately need money that she actually searched public restrooms for stray dollar bills or coins?

No, it turns out she wanted to win the Citizenship Award at school and this particular month’s award was on the character trait: Honesty.

So, this girl of mine thought the best way to win an award for Honesty was to find money in the school bathroom and hand it in.  This seemed like a sure-fire strategy.

Only, no one seemed to be losing their money in the bathroom that month.

Now, I totally applaud the singular focus of this child and the strategic way she was thinking about her actions and how they fit (or didn’t) the character trait of the month.

But at the same time, I feel like our character should be honest, respectful, or kind with or without an award.

If a teacher notices that, then great!  A button and certificate are a special honor.

Yet, Jesus is watching always.  No need to force this or manipulate it into happening.  No need to plan out possible award-winning scenarios or plot out the best avenue for success.

I’m taking this to heart really, because I feel nagged by my own ambition and the expectations of others to force my future.

Follow these 10 steps to build your blog….

Follow these 12 sure-fire strategies to a best-selling book….

Follow these 5 tips on how to get a million followers on social media…..

Yes, there is wisdom in working hard and working wise.

How often, though, am I trying to force God’s hand?

Am I working myself right out of dependence on His favor and His blessing and right into self-made me?

I have one definition of success: God’s pleasure.

I have one strategy for achieving that: Obedience.

In the Bible, Rebecca knew all along that her younger son (Jacob) would topple the natural order of things and receive his father’s blessing and birthright instead of the older son (Esau).

But she didn’t trust God to make it happen.

Instead, she tricked and lied and cheated her way into “success.”

Oh, Jacob is no innocent, of course.  He was old enough to stand up to his mom when she told him to put on goat hair and his brother’s clothes, take in a meal she had prepared and deceive his blind and aging father into blessing him as the firstborn.

Maybe he remembered what these deceptive tactics cost him.

After all, decades later, Jacob was the aging father blessing his own sons and grandsons when Joseph brought in his two boys, Ephraim and Manasseh (Genesis 48).

And old-man Jacob kept getting it ‘wrong.’

He treated the younger son like the older son and vice versa.  It was backwards and mixed up.

So, Joseph tried to correct his dad.  “No, dad, this is my oldest son and that one is the younger.”

Jacob wouldn’t budge, though.

See how God did that?

God spoke and it was.  The younger son received the older son’s blessing without props, costumes, a grand deception or Rebecca’s elaborate schemes.

God just did it because He wanted to do it.

Beth Moore says,

The significant point is that when God seems to be prompting something out of the ordinary, we don’t have to manipulate things to make it happen and cause people to accept it. (Believing God, p. 96).

What freedom is this?

If God has declared it, He will do it. We can be part of that plan, but the plan never depends on us to make it happen; it all depends on Him.

If God has called you, obey by taking the next step and stop worrying about the end destination.

Our job is simply obedience, the beautiful call to trust and obey.  We take those steps of faith, we give our every effort to answer His calling, but we leave the results in His hands.

If we see money in the bathroom, we hand it in.  But we don’t stress over it if the money isn’t there!

We write.  We work.  We minister.  We stay faithful.  But we don’t try to manipulate results or manufacture ‘success.’

We just live honest.  Live faithful.  Live disciplined.  Live holy.  Live with compassion and mercy.  Live humbly.

Live for Jesus.

And leave our lives and our future all in His quite-capable hands.

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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 book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, is available now!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2015 Heather King

 

The Early Riser Who Isn’t a Morning Person

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psalm 30-5My son is an early riser who really isn’t a morning person.

That means most days, he wakes up at the first hint of light and then grumps about it for the next hour.

Most of my kids have gone through this phase of waking mom up too early.  Over time and with training, most of them grew out of it.

Although, I do have one daughter who is simply a morning person.  She can bounce out of bed far too early and jump all over the house cheerfully with a running monologue about everything she wants to do that day—all while I’m laying back down on the couch to avoid fully waking up.

She’s always been like that.

Not my son.

The other day, it was the worst ever.  He woke up.  He woke me up.

Then, he yelled about everything he asked for.  Cereal.  Drink.  Blanket.  Curious George, Mickey Mouse or Thomas the Tank Engine.

He asked.  I gave.  He screamed.

Finally, I lifted that tiny bundle of morning-angst right up, set him into his crib and told him we needed a restart.  We’d try again in a few minutes.

Sure enough, about five minutes later, I once again greeted his sweet face with a “good morning” and a fresh start.

Bless his heart, that boy had started the day determined to be in a funk.  But a ‘restart’ button on the morning was what he really needed.

Maybe we do, too, sometimes.

Our emotions, they can overwhelm and overpower us.

And, while God created us with these feelings to be indicators of how we’re doing as we navigate the big wide world of life, He didn’t mean for those feelings to trample us underfoot.

Still, there are days that instead of bossing our feelings around, we feed those little monsters until they’re towering beasts.

We feel sadness, and we feed the sadness, giving into melancholy, reading sadness, listening to sadness, watching sadness, talking about sadness.

We feel anger, so we feed the anger.  We ‘vent’ and rage, we call our friends and get riled up all over again, we make speeches and post on Facebook.

In her book Wherever the River Runs, Kelly Minter writes:

“A high school student recently told me that she actually enjoys being sad, writing in her diary for hours about how she and her boyfriend continually break up and get back together.  She was like a melancholy teenage moth admitting her attraction to the sparkly light of drama.  I looked at her and as lovingly as possible said, ‘You’ll get over that’”

I remember those days.  Somehow when you’re a teenager, melancholy feels good because that’s when you know you write the best poetry.

But here we are all grown up and mature and I haven’t always truthfully gotten over that.

Some days, I let my feelings run crazy and pull me right along with them.

In the book of Ruth, we meet a woman named Naomi who endured great tragedy.  If anyone had the right to feel despair or sadness or deep grief, it’s her after losing her husband and two sons while living in a foreign land.

Yet, Naomi had a choice:  Give In or Find New Strength.

After she trekked back home to Bethlehem, she made a speech to her old friends:

“Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.21 I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?” (Ruth 1:20-21 ESV). 

Her sorrow engulfed her whole identity.  She couldn’t be Naomi any more.  Now, she was Mara–“bitter.”

She was giving in.

She spills out the intensity of how it feels like God has abandoned you—The Almighty…The Lord…has done this to me, has dealt bitterly with me, has brought me back empty, has testified against me, has brought calamity upon me.

Oh, how so many of us have felt this also, that somehow–even though we know it isn’t true–it feels as though God has abandoned us or, even worse, set Himself against us.

In her Bible study, Ruth, Kelly Minter writes:

“Although there will be weeping in this life, the direction in which we weep is what truly matters” and  “What we do while we’re weeping makes the difference” (p. 22 and p. 45).

She calls it “weeping forward.”

It’s not staying stuck.  It’s not allowing grief to subsume us.

It’s choosing to get up each new day and confess all that sorrow to God, not faking or pretending everything’s great, but choosing this:  Choosing to overcome.

Choosing fresh starts and new mercies.

Choosing to keep going.

Choosing, if we have to, to weep forward.

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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 book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, is available now!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2015 Heather King

The Post Where I Finally Cave and Drink the Pumpkin Spice Tea

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Psalm 68

I’ve finally caved.

I held off as long as I could, longer than I ever have before.

But I’ve done it.

I’ve taken down the summer wreath from my door, the one in nautical blue and white stripes with seashells and an anchor.

In its place, I slipped up the fall wreath, a sign to everyone who comes to my door that I’ve finally accepted the end of summer.

Mostly.

Usually, I’ve baked two or three batches of pumpkin bread, ginger spice cookies and pumpkin pie by now.  Maybe I’ve made baked apples in the Crock-Pot.

Not this year.  Not one pumpkiny, gingery, cinnamon-heavy, apple-based dish so far.

But I did finally pour the steaming hot water into my mug with a pumpkin spice tea bag as a treat before bed.

pumpkin spice

And, I’m stocking up on baking supplies and the chocolate, graham cracker, and marshmallows we’ll need for S’mores.

I stopped burning the honeysuckle and wildflower scents in my wax burner and pulled out ‘cashmere’ and ‘apple spice.’

Maybe I’ll even make this all official by unpacking my leaf-and-pumpkin decorations and dotting them around the house.

Fall is my favorite season.  I could be happy in sweater weather all year long.  The pumpkin patch is my happy place.  Baking season is heaven to me.

Walking among the crunching leaves, tucking away acorns and pine cones as treasures, smelling the scent of fireplaces carried by the wind, is deeply healing to my rushed soul.

But this year, unlike any year I ever remember, I’ve been holding onto summer with both hands, my feet firmly planted.  The calendar is all-out dragging me along and you can see the grooves in the dust where my feet refuse to move.

School is in session, but I’m pretending it isn’t. I’m going through the motions: homework, agendas, reading logs, packing lunches. But my brain is still thinking beach, daytrips, rest.

I can’t recall any time I’ve gripped so desperately to a passing season.

And there’s the thing, the essential truth in all of this: These seasons, they do pass.  It’s this inevitable moving on in life.

Usually, I’m a move-on kind of girl.

Sometimes, though, we are so trapped by looking back that we’re missing the beauty of now.

Maybe that’s me.  Yesterday, it was 66 degrees outside for my morning walk.

Perfection.

Yet, what if I stubbornly refused to enjoy it, whining and complaining all the while about the lack of bathing suits, a water park, and the long summer nights?

Well, I’d miss this, of course.  I’d wake up one morning to temperatures below freezing, I’d be hurled into snow days, icy road conditions, and the layers and layers and layers of clothing I’d need to put on my children before sending them out to the school bus in the morning.

Maybe we hold onto seasons because we don’t like change.  Any change.

Maybe we just ‘know’ that what’s coming isn’t as beautiful as what’s been.

Maybe I woke up one morning after my oldest daughter’s ninth birthday 9 and realized I’m halfway to her leaving my home and heading off into independence and college and a world with less mom in it.

So, what mom wouldn’t want summer to last just a little bit longer when that same girl is now starting her last year in elementary school?

But I read this in the Psalms:

May the Lord be praised! Day after day He bears our burdens; God is our salvation. Selah (Psalm 68:19 HCSB).

Day after day, God is at work in me. Day after day, He is bearing burdens for me, lifting me up, helping me forward, walking alongside me.

This daily gift tells me that anywhere I go, any season I’m in, every time I leave something behind and begin anew, He is right there with me.

The blessed place isn’t where I’ve been; it’s anywhere He is.

I’ve been re-reading the story of Ruth lately, how she left her home in Moab and traveled to Bethlehem, to a foreign nation and a strange people with her mother-in-law after the death of her husband, her brother-in-law and father-in-law.

She could have stranded herself in mourning or imprisoned herself in the past.

She could have arrived there with Naomi and holed herself up in her room, crying from homesickness and wallowing in loneliness.

Instead, when she arrived in Bethelehem, she asked Naomi:

“Let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain…” (Ruth 2:2 ESV).

She fully engaged in the act of living in this place at this time in this very season.

She basically pulled out the pumpkin spice tea, nailed up the “bless this harvest” sign, and baked a loaf of pumpkin bread.

So, that’s what I’m doing, too.

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 book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, is available now!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2015 Heather King

Live Generously (Because our Kids are Watching How We Live)

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2 Corinthians 9

He said he learned generosity from his mom.

I read an article this week that said the founder of Chobani, Hamdi Ulukaya, watched his mother give to others.  Now he in turn will give, donating at least $700 million to Kurdish refugees and refugees around the world fleeing ISIS. This is what he said:

“Today, I dedicate my signing of the Giving Pledge to my mother and I am publicly committing the majority of my personal wealth—along with everything else I can do—to help refugees and help bring an end to this humanitarian crisis.”

I’ve watched the videos this week and seen the pictures of families crammed into every available space onto boats desperate to escape civil wars and persecution.

And I’ve cried over the children.

Maybe I can’t give $700 million, I think, but surely I can give something!

It would be easy to read an article like this and shrug it off, thinking, “well, if he gives so much, surely my small gift won’t matter.”

But that’s not it at all.

That’s missing the challenge to give as God compels us, give in obedience, give every little bit we can, give because maybe we are setting the example for our kids who will one day learn to give, as well.

I am reminded to Live Generously, not hoard and protect my own resources with stinginess and self-preservation.

This in turn reminds me that living a generous life is about so much more than money anyway.

Today, the librarian chats with me as she checks out my books.  She says I remind her of her niece…the way I look, my facial expressions, and how patient I am with my kids.

Oh, she was generous, so generous with her encouragement as I chase my two-year-old away from the automatic door openers and back to the checkout desk.

I think about the time this very same librarian watched as my kids (who are old enough to know better!!!!!) started playing with the poles that mark the check-out line and they absolutely would not leave them alone and I about shot a hole through the floor when I looked at them with my laser eyes.

Still, today, she chooses to live generously, to slip in the sweetest word of praise just when my Mom-heart needs it.

How many times have I been the one feeling defeated, feeling worn, feeling overlooked or undervalued, and someone slips me that word of courage?  You are doing a great job.  I see you.  Well done.

And this week I have struggled, oh I have struggled, in anger about someone’s hurtful words toward my kids.

I pray in the night and I tell God all my woes.

I hear it back, just the whispered reminder:

Extend generous grace.

This is what it means to live generously: To pour out to others without holding back, fully aware of how God has poured Himself out for you.

Generous with our money.

Generous with our talents.

Generous with our time and our attention.

Generous with encouragement.

Generous with grace.

Generous with forgiveness.

Generous with patience.

I consider Paul on those days when I want to stop answering the phone, stop reading emails, stop answering to the name, “Mom,” stop being responsible and doing things like making dinner and washing laundry.

Paul said,

I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls…. (2 Corinthians 12:15a ESV)

and

Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all (Philippians 2:17 ESV).

and

For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come (2 Timothy 4:6 ESV).

Paul chose to be spent, to be totally poured out for the sake of the church.

Oswald Chambers writes,

Are you willing to give and be poured out until you are used up and exhausted–not seeking to be ministered to, but to minister?

Some days not so much.

And, while I understand the health of caring enough about ourselves as women and as moms so that we are healthy enough to care for others, I recognize this:

The calling to a generous life is a calling to pour out, to empty yourself in service, to love sacrificially and selflessly, not for our own purposes and not just for the benefit of those we love–but as an offering to the Lord.

I myself become the offering, poured out at the feet of Jesus, pleasing and acceptable to Him when I live with generosity and He, in turn, enriches me so that I can be generous on every occasion (2 Corinthians 9:11).

“No one has ever become poor by giving” ~Anne Frank

Please visit Samaritan’s Purse to see how they are serving refugees and how you can support that effort.

Please visit Ann Voskamp’s page to find 5 Ways to Stand Up, Be the Church in the World’s Worst Refugee Crisis Since World War II, including organizations to support and ways to give.  She also gives you a list of items they desperately need and where to send them.

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 book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, is available now!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

 

What astronauts put on first (and other lessons from outer space)

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psalm 104

In one corner of the exhibit, a crowd gathered around the volunteer standing next to the space toilet and explaining how astronauts go to the bathroom in zero gravity.

A few steps away, an older volunteer stood next to a space suit holding up pieces of astronaut gear.  Every time a new group walked over to him, he started into his speech: “Here is the one thing astronauts put on first” as he holds up a diaper.

Kids wrinkled up their noses and giggled with embarrassment.

The museum guides at the National Air & Space Museum sure know how to attract a crowd.  Of course, once they have your attention, they explain more than bathroom mechanics in outer space.

My youngest daughter, as she puts it, “Loves space. I loves everything about space.”

So, for her sixth birthday, we made the trip to the museum to celebrate.

We wandered through exhibits about planets, peered through telescopes and watched videos of shuttle launches.

It’s a humbling experience to stand in front of an exhibit that plots our point on planet earth and then earth in the solar system in the galaxy in the universe.

A week before, I had read an online article about an upcoming meteor shower, how if you stayed up until about midnight on one particular night, you could see shooting stars all across the night sky.

I’ve never seen a shooting star in my life.

So, I dared to stay awake and then dragged a fleece blanket and a small pillow out to my deck and watched.

And waited…..

I saw at least five airplanes, one shooting star and one other maybe-shooting star out of the corner of my eye.

You can’t sit still in the quiet of midnight watching the night sky and not be struck by the vastness of it all and the smallness of you.

In a world of social media that too often feels so noisy and all about us, how powerful to see it’s really all about Him.

Then there’s clicking through the images that New Horizons sent back of Pluto.  It took nine years for this spacecraft to make it out there and the first images of the flyby made it to us in July 2015.

I sat at my kitchen table and yelled for my kids to come over to see this incredible outline of a heart on Pluto’s surface.

“Come check this out!” I told them.

I felt incredibly vindicated when I saw that astronomers themselves are indeed calling it Pluto’s “heart” (so I’m not just crazy and making things up).

Seeing the impression of a heart so beautifully etched on the side of a distant dwarf planet expands your vision a bit.

What a great, grand universe.

What a great, marvelous God.

How detailed He is.  How artistic.  How creative and powerful.

How He must have chuckled when the first images of Pluto’s heart spot finally made it back to little ol’ us.

He engraved these details and all this beauty on the most distant reaches of the world and the universe.

Then, like an excited parent, He waited as we hunted for the treasure, made the discovery and finally tore off the wrapping paper of this long-planned gift.

And to think that this God of greatness is mindful of us, loves us, listens to us and tends to us.

No wonder the Psalmist wrote:

Oh, magnify the Lord with me,
    and let us exalt his name together!
(Psalm 34:3 ESV).

Magnify Him.

My thoughts default to the microscope at the museum, how it magnifies the tiniest specks of detail so that we can see the microscopic with our limited human eyes.

I think of the magnifying glass my kids use to blow up our faces to huge distorted proportions and how they laugh at our nose and eyes out of proportion.

We usually magnify to make the small bigger.

But that’s not what magnify means in this Psalm.  We don’t take a small God and make Him bigger.

As Louie Giglio says in Passion:

There’s telescopic magnification and microscope magnification, and it’s blasphemy to magnify God like a microscope…But a telescope puts its lens on unimaginable expanses of greatness and tries simply to help them look more like what they are. That’s what a telescope is for.

Shining our telescope of faith on God doesn’t make Him bigger than He is, it helps us see how big He really is.

Half an hour staring into a night sky, a day walking the exhibit of a space museum, a few minutes clicking through images of a distant dwarf planet, and I’m saying like the Psalmist:

Oh, magnify the Lord with me!

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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 book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, is available now!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2015 Heather King