Cancelling the Parenting Magazine

August 15, 2014August 15, 20143 Comments

New Mom + Parenting Magazine Subscription = Monthly Mom Crisis.

When I was that fresh, idealistic young mom with that first chubby cheeked babe, I had big, big plans to get it all right.

Every month that magazine arrived. I scanned it for creative ideas, ripped out yummy recipes, and dog-eared pages with fun activities.

Then I grumped around the house for a day or two.

I cried occasionally.

Because, according to the magazine, good moms don’t ever serve their kids macaroni and cheese. If said mac and cheese happens to be from a box, good gracious, you are one of “THOSE” moms. You know—-the Bad Moms.

Also, Good Moms have Good Kids who always choose the steamed vegetables and rice pilaf when dining out. These perfect children never order the pizza and chicken fingers.

Limit screen time. Join play groups. Teach kids to share. Teach them to care.

Involve them in service projects and ideally live abroad so you can expand their vision of the world.

Teach them sign language and then a foreign language.

Make all your dinners a month in advance and freeze them.

Kids must have an allowance and a weekly chore chart or they will end up lazy, unemployed and bankrupt.

Discipline this way. Play with them that way.

Work outside the home.

Don’t work outside the home.

And never, ever, ever expect your kids to play on their own or entertain themselves with siblings or friends without your intense and continual involvement. You must play cars, dolls, and blocks with them for hours. Good moms never get bored building towers and are never too busy to color.

I finally asserted myself and cancelled the subscription. Who needs to pay for a monthly self-esteem destroyer?

The truth is, I do some of those Good Mom things, but no one can do all of them.

When we try to do everything, we won’t do anything well.

We end up weighed down by overwhelming expectations and impossible demands.

How much better to celebrate victories, to keep a balanced perspective, and to choose what’s most important right here and right now?

How much better to lean in close to God day after daily day and ask Him, “What do you have for me, Lord? Right here. Right now. Show me what’s next.”

The world is full of opinions about who we need to be and what we need to be doing. It’s a noisy place and everyone has something to say.

But in my 12-month journey of pursuing the presence of Christ, all this month I’m “Learning to Say No.”

That means saying no to good things, at times, in order to do the “right thing God has for me.”

It means saying no to being like everyone else, to trying to be perfect, to trying to do everything, to keeping up with every great idea on Pinterest, Facebook, and mommy blogs.

It means no longer being paralyzed by everything, so I can do the right things well.

King David placed a weighty task on the shoulders of his son, Solomon. He handed over the plans for the temple with instructions on dividing the labor among the Levites, how much gold to use for the lampstands and the cherubim, and the available supplies.

This was the right thing, the God-thing, that God had designed, purposed and planned for Solomon to do.

And it still could have felt like too much. How could Solomon even begin?

David told his son:

Be strong and do the work (1 Chronicles 28:10 NIV)

and again:

Then David continued, “Be strong and courageous, and do the work. Don’t be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. He will see to it that all the work related to the Temple of the Lord is finished correctly (1 Chronicles 28:20 NLT)

Be strong.

Don’t be afraid.

God is with you.

So, do the work.

Pick up right where you are and begin. One step at one time.

I don’t need to do everything.

I just need to begin with this one thing.

And God is with you. He will not fail or forsake you.

When we lean our weary and overwhelmed souls onto Him, He shoulders the load. He makes sure the work is done well.

Maybe that’s the lesson Solomon needed so that when God told him, “Ask me for anything….” Solomon knew what to say:

Give me the wisdom and knowledge to lead them properly, for who could possibly govern this great people of yours?” (2 Chronicles 1:10 NLT).

Help me do the work. That’s what Solomon said. Show me how to fulfill this calling.

And isn’t this my heart, too?

Lord, show me how to do this well.

To read more about this 12-month journey of pursuing the presence of Christ, you can follow the links below! Won’t you join me this month as I ‘Learn to Say, ‘No?’

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.

Epic Failures; Epic Grace

August 13, 2014August 13, 20142 Comments

Mom Failures.

I’ve had them, had some doozies actually.

Anyone else?

There was the year my oldest daughter had been pestering me all week with her chattery excitement about an upcoming birthday party for a friend. The day of the party, I told her it was time to go and double-checked the invitation on the way out the door. That’s when I found out that the party actually ended at 2:00, not began at 2:00. She had missed it completely. We drove anyway just to bring our present and apologize, but everyone was already gone.

I had one tearful extrovert of a 5-year-old that day.

And it was my fault. My own failure that had ruined her super-exciting day.

I apologized a million times and it still didn’t feel like enough. I took her to one of those play places with a million bouncy inflatables and she had the most fun jumping herself into exhaustion, but I still knew the truth—I had failed.

“Bad moments don’t make bad mamas!” That’s what Lysa TerKeurst says.

She’s right, of course. One missed birthday party doesn’t define me, doesn’t stuff me into a box of rejection or label me as a Failure-With-a-Capital-F.

But in that moment, it’s so hard to soak in any grace when your soul is rock-hard with shame.

And when you mess it all up, all those other mistakes come crashing right back down on your head from the places you’ve shelved them. Pretty soon, you’re covered in the trash of remembered failure.

You always….You never…..

We hear the absolute declarations that we simply are not good enough, our own voice of condemnation echoing in our own head and heart.

You always make a mess of things.

You never get it right.

You’re always so stupid, so flaky, so forgetful, so short-tempered….

You’ll never be as good as she is…

God can’t use you.

Chris Tiegreen writes:

We are apt to think that failure disqualifies us from serving God well. To the contrary, sometimes it is the only thing that does qualify us. It removes any pretense of self-reliance. Like a phoenix rising, we ascend from the ashes of our own undoing, testifying to the resurrecting power of God. From failure to forgiveness, weakness to strength, death to life—it’s God’s way. Remember that the next time you despair over your failures (365 Pocket Devotions).

We’re mess-ups, all of us. Somehow, some way, at some time, we’re going to fail.

That’s why we need grace, after all. That’s why we needed a Savior: because on our own, we’ll never be perfect, never good enough, never all right.

But there’s Jesus, not just ready to pour out forgiveness afterward; He prays for us in advance.

Jesus looked right at Simon Peter sitting at the Passover Meal, that Last Supper, and said:

“But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:32 NIV).

What grace is this?

Before Peter ever denied Christ, Jesus had been praying for him.

Before Peter’s sin, Jesus already assured him of restoration, promising not just that he would “turn back,” but that Peter could be the one to “strengthen your brothers.”

Jesus promised Peter, “After you’ve failed and you’ve returned to me, I can still use you. More than that, that’s WHEN I can use you.”

Sometimes our own failure makes us most useful to God.

When we receive grace, we learn to give grace.

When we are at our weakest, we learn to rely on His strength and not our own (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Maybe we don’t see the hope right away, not with the mess lying fresh all around us. It’s hard to see beauty in all those ashes. Hard to see grace in the hard and mercy in the difficult.

But the Psalmist wrote:

The Lord helps the fallen
and lifts those bent beneath their loads
(Psalm 145:114 NLT).

Have you tripped up? Have you fallen? Have you crashed headlong into that dark pit?

Do you feel weighed down by the load of shame and guilt and condemnation?

The Lord is there to help you and to hold you up.

Give what’s broken to Him and let Him bring you to something new, something beautiful, and something for your good.

This is the Word I Have to Write on a Flashcard to Learn

August 8, 2014August 4, 20141 Comment

I’ve said, “No” a lot this summer, not always, but more often than usual for me.

Maybe it’s this rambunctious explorer of a baby boy who is helping me learn this. “No, no,” I say as he reaches for the oven, the lightsocket, the cord, the speck on the carpet. Some days it feels like I’ve said it fifty-billion times by the time my husband comes home and then he joins in the chorus.

All this practice is helping me say “no” in other ways.

“No” to swimming lessons. “No” to three of the week-long day-camps my kids attended and enjoyed last year. “No” to summer dance classes. “No” to governor’s school. “No” to a host of other exciting, wonderful, and fulfilling lessons, camps, clubs, or groups.

I still mumble it when I say it, scared to offend or disappoint. It’s as if this word is unfamiliar, a foreign-sounding syllable that I’ve handwritten on a flashcard so I can practice making it part of my working vocabulary.

And it does take practice.

“Nnnnnnn….oooooooooo”

“N….o….”

Picture by Viktor Hanacek; picjumbo.com

“No.”

There. I said it.

It takes wisdom, too. Sometimes God wants me to say, ‘Yes.’ It’s yes to His plans for me, yes to obedience and loving others.

Sometimes, though, His best for me and my family is ‘no’ because we can’t actually do everything. We can’t even do every good thing.

God only equips us to do what He’s called us to do. Not more or less than that.

The competitive girl in me grits those teeth hard. I listen to the moms around me who did all of this and more. I feel like the only one.

I read the email in my inbox the night after I say “no,” the email that tells me my daughter really should do this….. because she really needs two classes, not just one.

I waver and question and doubt my decision. Maybe I should change my mind?

I worry and fret a bit. What if my girls fall behind? What if they forget over this summer hiatus? What if all their friends make all this progress and what if I’m robbing them of the lessons they need to reach their potential?

But I think of my daughter, this over-achieving, go-getter, organized, competitive, ambitious girl. She had huddled next to me in the middle of last year’s breathless rush and whispered to me right then, “Mom, I want to take the summer off.”

So, we made tough choices. Maybe we didn’t always get it right. Maybe we did. We narrowed things down. We inserted weeks off in between weeks of activity. We’ve left room to enjoy the last days before school starts.

We said, “no” so we could say “yes” to rest, family, breathing room, friends, flexibility, time together, free time, play time, and creative time.

This weekend, I finished up my school supply shopping. Fall nips at my heels even now; I feel it in the restless stirring of my soul and in the way I desperately cling to these final joys of summer because I know they will not last.

Once that school year begins, we’ll still need to say, ‘no’ at times. Yet, school is school; homework and projects aren’t my choice. Church activities are church activities. The job is the job. The schedule is the schedule, and with four young kids and activities of our own, my husband and I simply will be busy.

All this year, I’m pursuing the presence of Christ and this month that means I’m Learning to Say “No” so that I can carry some of that discipline and that wisdom into the school year. It’s balance that I’ll need, knowing what is “yes” and what is “no” when fall begins.

Because what my soul needs is Jesus. What my family needs is Jesus. Not competition or races or achievements or getting ahead.

We. Need. Him.

The Psalmist wrote:

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? (Psalm 42:2 NIV).

I could throw back glass after glass of activity, and of ‘going’ and ‘doing’ to try to quench this desperate thirst, but it’d be like chugging sea water. I’d still thirst for Him, for that Living Water that flows only in His presence.

Sometimes others won’t understand. Some will think I’m too busy. Others will think I’m not busy enough.

Yet, it’s God’s face I’m seeking and it’s His opinion of me that matters. It’s His voice I need to obey; His wisdom I need to seek; His footsteps I need to follow.

Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it” (Isaiah 30:21 NIV).

To read more about this 12-month journey of pursuing the presence of Christ, you can follow the links below! Won’t you join me this month as I ‘Learn to Say, ‘No?’

5 Prayers Before the School Year Begins

August 6, 2014August 7, 20142 Comments

I stood in the line of nervous parents and excited-though-apprehensive elementary school children at Open House last year. I was praying….a lot.

Sometimes I mess up and treat God like little more than a pagan idol–acting as if maybe if I cross my fingers, rub a rabbit’s foot, do a fancy jig and offer to sacrifice something, He’ll answer my prayers just because He sees how desperate I am. prayersbeforeschool “Oh Jesus, please give me daughter a great teacher this year…..please, please, please, pleeeeeeeeeeaaaaaasssssseeeee.”

Yet, while He loves the sincerity and passion I have for praying for my kids, He knows what they need without me trying to manipulate Him into giving me my way.

And while standing in line at Open House isn’t a bad place to pray, it’s not the only time to pray.

After all, when it was our turn, we stepped up to the table and the principal handed us an index card for each daughter with their room number and teacher’s name for the school year. The decision, however, had been made weeks before.

So, maybe that’s when to start praying?

Or maybe the answer really is that we never stop praying for our kids.

Not ever.

We move from need to need, praying today for today, but also for tomorrow and for five years from now and on into their adult years, their marriages, their careers and ministries.

So, here are five prayers I start praying before the school year begins, long before I step into that line on Open House night and certainly before I kiss my kids on the head, pray for them quickly and watch them step onto the bus on the first day of school.

For the right teacher and classroom: God, you know my children best. Yes, you know them even better than I do. You know exactly what teacher is going to work with their strengths and weaknesses and what teacher will help them reach their potential and be excited about school and learning. Please give the teachers and administrators wisdom as they place our children into classrooms and help my children be matched with the perfect teacher and the classmates who will be good friends rather than bullies, mean girls, or distractions this year. Please bless the teacher’s summer, helping it be restful and fun so he or she can start the school year with enthusiasm, excitement and energy!
For safety: Lord, it’s hard for me to let my children go where I can’t see them or be with them all the time. I want so much to be there to protect them and guide them, intervene for them, and love them through the hard things. But, I know You are with them even when I can’t be. You can care for them better than I can. Please watch over them with Your providential care and protection.
For their choices: Father, my children will be making tons of decisions every day. Please help them to know they can always turn to You for help when they need it and please help them draw on the wisdom from Your Word that we’ve tried to teach them. Let Your Holy Spirit direct their steps and guide their hearts to do what is right. Help my children be a witness for You all day, on the playground, in the lunch room, in the classroom and more.
For us as parents: God, we need just as much help as our kids do for this school year. Help us make wise decisions and know how to mold their character, give advice, when to get involved and when to let our children handle things on their own, and how to train up this child in the way that he or she should go.
For their friendships: Lord, one of the biggest decisions my kids will make this year is about who to befriend. Please give them discernment and wisdom to know how to choose good friends, those who will lead them to you, those who will encourage success and help them do the right thing. When there are children being picked on or ignored, I ask that you will show my child how to give them compassion and to reach out to them in love. Give my children the strength to lead others to You rather than be led by others away from You. Please protect them from bullies, mean girls, and bad influences and help them know how to stand up for what is right when necessary.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Originally posted August 2, 2013

What My Monday Soul Needs to Know

August 4, 2014August 4, 20141 Comment

My resolution for Monday:

Photo by just2shutter; 123rf.com

To breathe in and breathe out, deep taking in of peace and pushing out of contentment. No catching my breath in anxiety, hyperventilating stress, and rushing to the point of breathless exhaustion.

Just breathe. Move through the day without giving into the push, push, push of “faster, more, do, accomplish, check off the list, get it done.” Walk as I vacuum, walk as I put away the clothes. Make that phone call without simultaneously folding underwear and t-shirts.

And spend time with Jesus for relationship not for task-completion.

The temptation is there, of course. It’s the curse of Monday. All of the spillover from last week, the messages to read through and answer after taking a Sabbath from all of that “connection” over the weekend, and the new tasks ahead clamor at me for attention.

What was that email I needed to send?
Wasn’t there someone I needed to call?
Was I behind on my reading, my commitments?
Didn’t I need to print this for the week and pack that for tonight and fill out that form and mail back that letter?

It’s a million tiny things nipping at the heels of my Jesus-focused life, yipping and yapping until I turn my attention from Him.

And then when I do sit down to rest at His feet, dear Father, oh my Father, I am so thankful to be in Your presence ….

Still I fail. Still I pop up every few minutes for the ding of the laundry and the starting of the meal, and the reminder of something else needing to be done.

My time with Him becomes stilted, becomes stale, becomes necessary without being the fresh oxygen in my soul I need for very survival and beyond that, the abundant life He promises. Necessary only because it’s an assignment, like homework for school.

It’s more like: Read the assigned Bible reading. Check. Read the passage in the study for this week’s group discussion. Check. Complete the other Bible study . . . while interrupted and racing against the clock:

Must…..finish…..so…..I…..can….check….this….off…..my…..list….and……do…..other…..things.

I wonder if He’d prefer if I just skipped it all rather than flop down at this kitchen table half-hearted and thinking about 50 things clearly more important than He is to me in that moment.

This isn’t relationship. This is business.

In his book, Prayer, Richard J. Foster wrote:

“Today the heart of God is an open wound of love. He aches over our distance and preoccupation. He mourns that we do not draw near to him. He grieves that we have forgotten him. He weeps over our obsession with muchness and manyness. He longs for our presence…

We do not need to be shy. He invites us into the living room of his heart, where we can put on old slippers and share freely. he invites us into the kitchen of his friendship, where chatter and batter mix in good fun. He invites us into the dining room of his strength, where we can feast to our heart’s delight….” (p. 1)

Maybe that’s my problem. I’ve been barely acknowledging His presence at times at my kitchen table. Perhaps I should take up His invitation to hang out in His kitchen. To eat in His presence and share in good company and the intimacy of friendship, not on my terms, but at His offering.

At the Last Supper, the apostle John leaned against Jesus, drew in close and rested against the Savior, even while realizing that Jesus was about to be betrayed (John 13:25).

Why be more like Peter, who in shame and frustration, perhaps even anger at the destruction of his plans and agenda, certainly in fear…”followed him (Jesus) at a distance” (Matthew 26:58) after Christ’s arrest.

Sure, I’m always following, I’m a faithful kind of girl, trailing after God always. But sometimes I’m just stepping into the imprint of His footsteps rather than walking by His side, following out of obedience only, mostly out of distracted busyness and duty.

This year, I’m pursuing the presence of Christ. In August, that means I’m learning to say, ‘no.’ I’m saying it today: “No” to the stress of do and do. “No” to hyperventilating heaviness of breathless rush.

Today I resolve to breathe in and breathe out, to linger here at the table with Jesus and lean into His presence. No rushing up from the meal to pursue my own agenda. No skimming through the page of Scripture to get to the end of the assigned reading.

Leaning into Jesus. Breathing in and breathing out. Then walking side by side with Him into my day, not tripping along behind: holding His hand and chatting along the journey.

Originally published October 15, 2012

To read more about this 12-month journey of pursuing the presence of Christ, you can follow the links below! Won’t you join me this month as I ‘Learn When to Say, ‘No?’

Stopping at the Krispy Kreme

August 1, 2014July 28, 20143 Comments

I didn’t even know exactly what to look for. We were driving back to the hotel after a morning at the beach on vacation and my husband said, “It looks like their sign is on.” KrispyKreme1

Sign? What sign? I leaned forward in the minivan passenger seat to see what this apparently well-known phenomenon looks like. The sign looked dim like normal to me, but he pointed to the circle underneath the words Krispy Kreme and I saw it: the red letters announcing newly baked treats.

He swung into the parking lot and three wet and sandy daughters piled out of the back of the minivan totally confused by our impromptu stop at the doughnut shop.

This was not part of the plan, not on the vacation agenda, not on the list of expected activities we reviewed that morning at breakfast.

They balked a little. They are tired, wet, sandy, and cold. Can they just go back to the hotel? Pleeeeeaaaaaase.

We assured them…you will like this. This will make you happy. Just trust us. We are your parents, full of the wisdom and insight that comes with age.

A few minutes later, they emerged wearing paper hats and carrying the box of hot doughnuts: fresh, deliciously soft and gooey, hot doughnuts.

Photo by Serge Bertasius; 123RF.com

We devoured them.

I’d heard all the hype and hadn’t believed it. How could hot doughnuts be that much better than the plain old ones I bought in a box from the grocery store?

But oh my, they just melted away in my mouth. Normally, one doughnut would be enough, but these evaporated when they hit your tongue.

I assured myself that calories don’t count when you’re on vacation.

But there it is in my soul, as I’m chomping down on hot Krispy Kreme doughnuts of all things, the realization that it wasn’t the ingredients that were different or the baking method that made them my new favorite treat. Those doughnuts in the boxes at the grocery store were baked the same way by the same company with the same recipe.

What made the difference was freshness. There was not one second of staleness as they moved from the oven right onto our tongues.

And I long for this now. I think how too often I let my time with God grow stale. I come a little too complacent to His Word, a little too rushed, a little too KrispyKreme2 distracted.

I’m too apt to treat my time with Him as what a good Christian girl does because that’s what good Christian girls do. We have our quiet times. We read the Bible through every year. We check the box and maintain righteousness and right standing.

As an elementary school girl, I used to feel flat-out guilty and sin-stained if I hadn’t read a whole chapter in the Bible before going to sleep at night. A few verses wouldn’t do. I was clearly selfish and in need of repenting for not hitting some magic holy quota.

I think of my hot, fresh doughnuts and I think of the fresh-baked bread the priests laid out in the Old Testament Tabernacle once a week.

God told them:

Put the bread of the Presence on this table to be before me at all times (Exodus 25:30 NIV).

They didn’t archive that bread and let it sit and grow moldy there before the Lord. They replaced it week after faithful week.

It needed to be fresh. It needed to be new.

Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him (Psalm 34:8 NIV).

That’s what the Psalmist assures me, that when I taste, I will discover the Lord’s goodness.

So, if I’m biting into what’s stale and moldy, crusted over and hard, then I’m missing out; I’m missing Him.

Help me, Lord, to stop being satisfied with yesterday’s bread and start craving the freshness of Your presence.

May I come into Your presence expectant instead of coming into Your presence complacent.

To read more about this 12-month journey of pursuing the presence of Christ, you can follow the links below! Won’t you join me this month as I ‘Learn When to Say, ‘No?’

Finding Room to Breathe: A 12-month pursuit of the presence of Christ
January: Be Still and Know
February: Pray Simply
March: Unplug
April: Enjoy Beauty
May: Create Beauty
June: Invest in Friendship
July: Retreat and Refresh
August: Learn When to Say, ‘No’

How Many Seashells Did I Bring Home from Vacation?

July 30, 2014July 28, 2014Leave a comment

They busied themselves with buckets and shovels, patting sand into castle walls and adding shells and seaweed for decor.

I took this one moment, after my daughters had bounced in the waves and come out with their hair stringy and wet, and now here as they settled on a project. They exchanged ideas. What if we….? How about we….?

They assigned tasks. I’ll build here while you build there….

I left the three executive sand architects and walked there along the ocean, passing by families huddled under beach umbrellas. Even so, I felt the quiet of alone. Something about that ocean, that pounding out of the waves like the steadiness of a heartbeat, so dependable, so regular, so beyond our understanding.

I glanced out over that rolling water and then focused on the wet sand beneath my feet, on the seaweed and the shells carried to shore.

You can’t walk steady on a beach, not without effort. You walk and then pause for treasure. A curved shell, a whole shell, a tiny shell, a colorful shell. I palmed them as I strolled.

Treasure here. Treasure there.

Walk. Pause for shell. Walk. Pause for shell. Walk. Pause for shell.

It took discipline to force my eyes up. Stop looking at the ground. Stop scanning the sand for one more beach memento.

Don’t look so hard for treasure that you miss the grand display of God’s glory right there beside you.

I’m looking for tiny seashells and this ocean keeps hitting that shore with wave after wave. in this vast display of His power, this roaring declaration of praise:

Glory to God! Glory to God! He is great beyond words. He is powerful. He is faithful, steady and certain. He is beyond understanding.

The Psalmist wrote it:

Mightier than the thunder of the great waters,
mightier than the breakers of the sea—
the Lord on high is mighty (Psalm 93:4 NIV).

Maybe I’m a treasure-hunter every day. Head down. Eyes to the ground. I’m looking for the prize, the takeaway, the gift I can grip into my hands and the one that digs into the flesh of my palm.

Maybe that’s me.

Maybe I’m scanning and scanning for blessing and it’s an obsession really, perhaps even an addiction because I can dash off a glance at the ocean of glory beside me but it’s quick and I worry, “What am I missing?” So, I drop my head down again to look for results.

And maybe what I’m missing is seeing Him, seeing His glory, sensing the full weight of His presence and lingering there, not rushing away to do and do, or find and find, or receive and receive.

I had to slip away from the everyday life to discover this obsession of seeking God’s activity instead of His face, seeking His blessing instead of His presence, seeking His gifts instead of simply seeking Him.

Because there’s just something plain-out broken in a girl who would rather look for a tiny seashell covered in sand than looking across the ocean.

And here I am at home, and I’m feeling that pressure to pray for results, pray for answers, for help, deliverance, provision, direction, favor, blessing.

So, I discipline my needy heart.

Hush. Be still. Bring it to Jesus and trust Him.

And this:

Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need (Mathew 6:33 NLT).

So we must seek God’s face and not just His hand. We seek His presence, not just His gifts. We seek who He is, not just what He can do.

To read more about this 12-month journey of pursuing the presence of Christ, you can follow the links below! Won’t you join me this month as I ‘Retreat and Refresh?

12 Bible Verses for a Spiritual Retreat

July 28, 2014January 29, 201610 Comments

Psalm 23:1-6 NASB
The Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want.
²He makes me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside quiet waters.
³He restores my soul;
He guides me in the paths of righteousness
For His name’s sake.
⁴Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I fear no evil, for You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
⁵You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
You have anointed my head with oil;
My cup overflows.
⁶Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life,
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Psalm 42:1-2 NIV
As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, my God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
Psalm 62:5 NIV
Yes, my soul, find rest in God;
my hope comes from him.
Psalm 80:18-19 ESV
Then we shall not turn back from you;
give us life, and we will call upon your name!
Restore us, O Lord God of hosts
Let your face shine, that we may be saved!
Psalm 116:7 NIV
Return to your rest, my soul,
for the Lord has been good to you.
Proverbs 11:25 NIV
A generous person will prosper;
whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.
Song of Solomon 2:10 NKJV
My beloved spoke, and said to me:
“Rise up, my love, my fair one,
And come away.
Isaiah 28:12-13 NIV
to whom he said,
    “This is the resting place, let the weary rest”;
and, “This is the place of repose”—
    but they would not listen.
¹³So then, the word of the Lord to them will become:
    Do this, do that,
    a rule for this, a rule for that;
    a little here, a little there—
so that as they go they will fall backward;
    they will be injured and snared and captured.
Jeremiah 31:25 NASB
For I satisfy the weary ones and refresh everyone who languishes.
Hosea 2:14-16 ESV
“Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
    and bring her into the wilderness,
    and speak tenderly to her.
¹⁵And there I will give her her vineyards
    and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth,
    as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.
Matthew 11:28 NIV
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Mark 6:31 NIV
Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”

Announcing a Winner and Redefining Gentleness

July 18, 2014Leave a comment

Last week, I announced that I’d be giving away a copy of Mary Ann Froehlich’s book, Courageous Gentleness, and today I’m announcing the winner! I used a random number generator to chose the winner from the comments you shared and the winner is: Lisa Preuett. Congratulations! I’ll get the book on out to you!

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“Mom, why do turtles have shells?”

My youngest daughter draped herself across the sofa, seemingly inert and bored, but truly thinking about the great mysteries of the world.

“The shell keeps their soft body safe and protected.”

“Oh. Okay, mom.”

So far, so good. Her questions simple, her mind and heart trusting and easily satisfied by easy answers.

My middle daughter was never so quick to accept and move on. A conversation with her could go something like this:

“Mom, why do turtles have shells?”
“To protect their soft bodies from harm.”
“Why are they in danger and need protection?”
“Other animals might try to catch and eat them, or they might be stepped on or run over…“
“Why do some animals like to eat turtles?
“Some animals are herbivores and eat only plants and some are carnivores and eat meat. Turtles are meat.”
“Why do animals eat other animals?”
“Because after the fall in the garden of Eden….”

Falling back on theology or “because God said so” became my frequent defensive position.

This curiosity about the world, I love. This exploring and questioning and wondering “what if” and “how come”–while it occasionally makes me explode and bluster out “because God made it that way” or “because I said”– ultimately I appreciate.

Ultimately I understand.

I’m a questioner, too. I want to know “why” and “how come” and “what about” and “why not?” I want to pester God with question after question like a three-year-old first discovering the world around her.

More than that, more than asking God true and honest questions, I nag and whine and push and nudge.

Oh, and it’s even more than that. I’ve been Jacob up all night wrestling the angel of the Lord. I’ve locked my grip with God’s and fought hard for what I thought constituted a blessing, for a victory, for triumph over circumstances and over the Enemy who’s been battering at the walls of my life.

Yes, I’ve pummeled the chest of Christ with my fists, fighting and demanding, manipulating even, making promises, issuing threats, and crying for mercy, help, deliverance—for rescue.

I’m being honest with Him, I tell myself, and honesty is something God treasures in us. He never asks us to fake it or play happy-faced Christian when life is a mess and this mask we wear becomes increasingly ill-fitting.

God desires truth. Job, Habakkuk, David, Asaph, Elijah, Jonah, Mary and Martha laid their complaints before God, plead their case, and He listened and answered with awe-inspiring mercy.

He didn’t strike them down with lightning. He let them empty out hearts filled with fear, hurt and anger and then He answered, not always in the way they expected or wanted, but still He met them in the place of pain and questioning and carried them on out.

Now, though, I’ve been studying the fruit of the Spirit and found I didn’t really get it before.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23, NIV).

Gentleness is on that list. All those years of sermons and Sunday school lessons and I thought this meant “being nice, not hurting others with our words, kindness and tact.”

The Message translation however, describes gentleness as: “not needing to force our way in life.”

Is this Gentleness?

In Living Beyond Yourself: Exploring the Fruit of the Spirit, Beth Moore defines the root word here “praotes” as “the complete surrender to God’s will and way in your life. The term basically means to stop fighting God” (p. 178).

Gentleness is submission to God, His will and His way, His plan and His timing and all He has determined for us.

It means dropping to our knees and pouring out the honest struggles of our heart, but deciding at last, “Not my will, but yours be done.”

It’s singing with true conviction, “Have Thine own way, Lord,” and “I surrender all.”

No more fighting God.

How then can I still be honest with Him? How can a prize-fighter like me lower the hands and open the fists, cease fighting and nagging and choose instead to trust?

There is my answer in the verse itself, “but the fruit of the Spirit is…” not the fruit of my own discipline or maturity, strength or ability.

This is what the Spirit at work and alive within me does—the impossible, the new, the Christ-like—As I yield and grow in the Spirit, so slowly I trust more, believe more, fall in love with Jesus more and understand how much He loves me more.

And I stop fighting Him.

I drop the knee, I bow the head, I cry the tear, I confess the pain, I trust my God and the Spirit works out Gentleness in me.

How to Take a Spiritual Retreat When You Can’t Get Away

July 16, 2014July 16, 20145 Comments

I’ve always needed to retreat spiritually, to run away for an afternoon or spend a weekend away in quiet.

I’m an introvert and a workaholic. I’ll fill up every available space in my day with to-do list items and then crash from the emotional overload from the noise.

I must get away in order to be healthy: spiritually, emotionally, physically. My sanity and spiritual well-being pretty much depend on my escaping periodically to drink deep of quiet and solitude.

That was true before I had kids.

Now I have four little people who don’t fully understand the sacredness of “Mommy Time Out” at the kitchen table with my tea and my Bible.

When I sit down, alarms go off all over my house that only children can hear. It’s a secret alert system that lets them know, “Mom is about to sit down. Quick, find something to ask her for!!”

Just when I need to retreat the most in life is when it’s hardest to get away.

My husband sweetly holds down the fort so I can go for a walk. But I sneak in the door sheepishly and guiltily after an hour because he has paced the house with the fussy baby and played referee in a sibling squabble. After just one hour without mom, my house has turned into a wrestling arena.

When I was in college, I read a book that still sits dog-eared, highlighted, underlined, and Post-it note-covered on my shelf called Quiet Places: A Woman’s Guide to Personal Retreat by Jane Rubeitta.

This month, I’m learning to Retreat and Refresh in order to pursue the presence of God, so I’ve pulled my worn copy of her book down off its treasured place on my bookshelf and am reading it through slow again. songofsolomon2, photo from PicJumbo.com

But this time I’m reading her book as a mom with 4 kids, not a single college girl who could “retreat” simply by trekking from the campus parking lot to my first class of the day.

How exactly do you take a retreat when you can barely slip away for 60 minutes after dinner?

Let’s be honest. There’s no easy answer here. I’m not going to pretend and push a heavy burden of “you must get away even when it’s hard” down on your shoulders.

Some of you are single moms or homeschooling moms and I feel so whiny complaining about how hard it is for me when I think of what it costs you to retreat for a few short minutes.

Yet, time away with God is what we crave, what our souls need so that we don’t suffocate and die from spiritual dehydration.

The truth is some of these ideas will work for you and some won’t. Some you can fit in when school is in session if you don’t home-school. Some of them require effort and help from a spouse or a friend.

Here are some ways to take a spiritual retreat without breaking the bank or staying away overnight:

Spend some time in your garden.
Take a walk alone.
Exercise without watching TV.
Take an afternoon field trip: Visit the library, a museum, botanical garden, the beach, or a bookstore for an afternoon, but go by yourself. Sit and read. Walk a little. Journal some, read some, rest a lot.
Slow down with some fast food: Meet up with God for a date, just the two of you. Treat yourself to an ice cream sundae or a cup of coffee. Sit in the corner booth by yourself with your Bible. The only words you say to another human that day might be, “I’ll have one scoop of chocolate, please.”
Take a bubble bath—just be sure to lock the bathroom door so little ones can’t continue to pester you long after they are supposed to be in bed
Early morning cuppa: I’m not one to wake early before my kids. I’m a young mom and sometimes snagging a few more minutes of sleep in the morning is the most spiritual, holy thing I can do. But every so often, an early rise for a quiet time on your back deck before the little ones emerge from their beds is worth it.
Mommy time out: When you simply cannot get away, a Mommy Time Out is worth a try. Set the timer in the kitchen and announce that mommy is unavailable for 15 minutes unless there’s an emergency. This takes training! Everything seems like an emergency to a four-year-old. Keep on trying, redirecting and training until your children understand the sacredness of the Mommy Time Out and then treat them to a game of Candy Land or a special snack when they’ve given you the time you need.

How do you “retreat and refresh?” Do you have any ideas for how to take a spiritual retreat without going away overnight?

To read more about this 12-month journey of pursuing the presence of Christ, you can follow the links below! Won’t you join me this month as I ‘Retreat and Refresh?

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 women

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How to Take a Spiritual Retreat When You Can’t Get Away

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