Tag: Faith

The Place Where You Don’t Want to Be

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One little dog was shaking, just trembling all over while her owner held her tight.

Another larger dog tugged and tugged on his leash back towards the exit. When the veterinary assistant came to walk the fella to the back, he shuffled backwards trying to escape.

Our own cat was settled in his carrier where he had tucked himself into a ball in the farthest back corner.

Every time I glanced inside the cat carrier, he darted his eyes around nervously and then mewed at me.

I think he was saying, “I don’t want to be here.”

Welcome to the crowd, buddy.  Nobody wanted to be there that day.

Of course, our vet’s office staff is wonderfully friendly and everyone there is gentle and considerate.  They patiently waited with animals and carried little trembling puppies back cooing at them all the way, “It’s all right, little guy.  This will be over in no time.”

And, of course, the vet is where these animals all needed to be that day.  It was for their own good and their own benefit.

Still, none of them came bounding into the waiting room all excited to hang out with the doctor.

The staff called my cat’s name and I toted him into the clinic and set him on the exam table.   The vet checked him all over and the whole time, my cat kept trying to climb back into the safety of the carrier.  He was persistent.  I’ve never seen him want to get in there before, but right at that moment, it’s the one place he wanted to be.

He wanted to feel safe.  He wanted the known.

I felt like saying, “I hear ya, buddy.”

Maybe we all know exactly what it’s like to be where we don’t want to be.

We can philosophize and speak truth to ourselves, knowing that God only sends us where He goes with us.

And He only takes us places that are for our own good.

That’s true, of course, but it’s nonetheless bewildering to end up where you don’t want to be and never intended to go.

When the apostle Paul boarded a ship headed for Rome in Acts 27, he knew the sailing would be difficult.

The timing was bad.  The crew had delayed too long.  The winds were against them.  The port was unfavorable for a winter stay, but continuing on their journey could be disastrous.

Paul tried to tell them not to sail ahead, but they didn’t listen to him.

So, where’d the ship end up?

Not in Rome. Not right away at least.

Instead, just as Paul predicted, they ended up shipwrecked on the island of Malta with the total loss of their vessel and cargo.

This wasn’t Paul’s destination or plan. He knew God wanted him in Rome.  He planned to head to Rome.

But here he was in Malta instead.

We’ve likely been to Malta before also.

Not the physical place, of course, but in Find Your Brave, author Holly Wagner describes Malta as the place you didn’t plan on being and that wasn’t on your map or itinerary or agenda.

It’s still being single long after you thought you’d be married or mourning a miscarriage after the joy of a positive pregnancy test.

It’s unexpected unemployment or a failed business or a rejection letter.

It’s a prodigal child or a broken marriage or a job you just hate instead of the one you wanted.

It’s cancer.

It’s that place of waiting, still waiting, always waiting even though you thought the promise would be fulfilled long ago.

For Paul, Malta was the place where people ended up because they didn’t listen to wise advice and made poor decisions.

Even there, though, when it was their own fault, God was at work, allowing Paul to perform miracles and be a witness to the natives and the ship’s crew.

God redeemed the disaster and restored the journey.

And ultimately, Paul still ended up in Rome, but his time in Malta wasn’t a waste.

That’s the key for me: When I find myself in Malta, I can engage right there.  I don’t need to fret about getting to Rome.  God can take me where He wants me to go in His perfect timing.

For now, I can be fully present in Malta.

WHEREVER GOD HAS BROUGHT YOU, YOU CAN BE ALL THERE.

God is never surprised by our location or unable to use our circumstances.

Even if we don’t know how we got here, God knows.
Even if we don’t want to be here, God can use it.
Even if we don’t know how to get out of here, God does.

And even if we feel abandoned in this place, God is always with us and always at work.

 

Originally published 06/10/2016

Ways to Have a Quiet Time without Quiet or Time

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“You dropped your head.”

That’s what he tells me as we leave church.  He points to a spot on the floor with this twinkle in his eye, just waiting for me to fall for the joke he’s played on me many times before.

He gets us all the time.  “Your shoes untied,” when you’re wearing ballet flats without laces.  “You dropped your head” and people look to see if their head actually is rolling around on the floor, abandoned.

But I don’t even move my eyes. I just lean right over to him, pat him on the arm, and say, “You know what, I probably did.  I probably did drop my head.”

Some days, you know?

Some days maybe you feel like you’ve been running around without any command center on top of your shoulders to help you hold it all together.

You feel a little famished, starving for time in the Word.

You feel a little parched, desperate for the Living Water of His presence.

You feel maybe like you really are missing that head of yours.

One missed quiet time turns into a week and then a month and more if we’re not careful.  Sometimes we think if we can’t pray for a solid hour on our knees in a prayer closet, or if we can’t finish a whole Beth Moore lesson in one uninterrupted sitting, or we miss a day or two in our devotional or our Bible reading plan, then maybe we just need to wait until we can get it perfect.

If you can’t do it right, why do it at all?

Why?   Because we’ll drop our heads, that’s why.  We have to be women of the Word and women of prayer even if it means we need to adapt and adjust for the busiest seasons of life.

Maybe it means we just hold on for dear life to the hem of Jesus’ robe until life finally brings us to a place where we can sit uninterrupted at His feet again.

Sometimes faith has to be on-the-go…..and the good news is that God’s presence can invade the minivan.

Here are 7 ways to have a quiet time when you don’t have quiet or time:

1. Make a Bible To-Go Bag:  Keep a bag in your car with anything you might need for an impromptu quiet time while you wait in the minivan to pick up your kids: a devotional you only use for those times, paper, pens, and an extra Bible or maybe just a Bible app on your smartphone.

2. Find Great Bible Apps:  Load your phone with apps that will let you read the Bible, listen to the audio Bible, tune into podcasts, read devotionals, memorize Scripture, and keep a prayer log.  I’ve listed my favorites below.  Here are some of my favorites:

  • Bible (by LifeChurch.tv)
  • BibleGateway
  • BibleMinded
  • PrayerNotes
  • Scripture Typer

3. Use Prayer Prompts:  Pray while cooking dinner, doing dishes, folding laundry, driving home from work.  Pick specific places or activities that will remind you to pray every time you do them.

4. Break it up:  I don’t have time to read a devotional, read the Bible, do a Bible study, write in my journal and pray all at once.  I need to do these things all day long, a little here, a little there, grabbing time when I can.  Try breaking up your quiet time into 10-minute activities you can spread throughout your day.

5. Do it with your kids:  If your kids have memory verses for their church activities, memorize the verses with them.  Read the book of Matthew together and choose a devotional to read as a family.

6. Exercise your faith:  People often jog to their favorite work-out music or hop on the exercise bike and watch TV.  Try replacing that with God-time.  If you’re on the exercise bike, you can read your Bible or devotionals or listen to podcasts of sermons.  If you’re walking or jogging, you can be listening to worship music, sermon podcasts, an audio Bible, or just praying.

7. Study online: I help to lead online Bible studies at The Womens Bible Cafe.  I love that I can spend one hour in accountability, fellowship and encouragement and I can do it while my baby is napping in the next room.   Many other ministries offer online studies also.

Most importantly, give yourself grace:  If you expect the perfect quiet time to happen, then you’ll likely give up completely and never take time for God.  And you’ll probably drop your head.  Take every opportunity to spend time with Jesus even if it’s short, messy, interrupted, and on-the-go.  If you fall behind, don’t get overwhelmed. Just start fresh where you are supposed to be and keep going.  And when the day is done, rest well and start fresh with new mercies for a new day.

How do you make time for God when you don’t have quiet or time?

 

Originally published 10/27/2014

Lessons from Living Among the Boxes

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We are living among boxes.

Just  days after our home inspection was done and everything was set to move ahead with selling our house,  I started packing little by little as strategically as possible.

But that strategy didn’t matter in the end, because our move was delayed about 2-1/2 weeks,  so all those things I put in those boxes didn’t necessarily stay there.

For one thing, I didn’t expect to still be in this house when my daughter went off  to camp.   So, I had packed all  the extra flashlights.  And the sleeping bag.  And the extra bug spray.

At first,  it was a bit funny.

I packed up the extra school supplies one day and threw into the box a pink plastic protractor that I last used when I took geometry, oh about 23 years ago.

No one in  this entire house has used this protractor in over two decades.

That very afternoon, though, my fifth grader came home from school, pulled out her math homework and asked, “Mom, do you have a protractor I can use?”

For real.

So,  I did what I have become  an expert at doing.  I found the box, opened it back up, slipped my hand in and pulled out what she needed.

Box fishing.

I’ve been “box fishing” for two months.

Most of the time, I can find an item in just one try.  Every once in a while,  I need to open two boxes to find the one I want.

But one day, after being at peace through this whole process, my son wanted a particular toy from a box.  And I hunted.  And searched.  I opened box after box.

That’s what did me in.  That’s the day I cried.  That’s the day I told God, “This is hard and I’ve been beaten down.”

I  did finally find those micro-machine tanks and airplanes he was looking for,  but the emotional battle was a way bigger deal than any effort to  find the right box.

That was about the time I wondered if we’d have to open all these boxes back up and put everything back where it came from without moving at all.

But today we got the phone call saying it’s all  set.   Papers will be signed.  Money wired.  More papers signed.  Keys handed over.

This is it!

“Living among the boxes” is something I’ve done before just in different ways.

It’s about waiting rooms and transitions, about not knowing the outcome and not knowing the date on the calendar when a promise will be fulfilled.

It’s about leaving what you do know and stepping out into the unknown,  maybe stumbling along the way.

Living among the boxes is a daily lesson in needing Jesus.

How easily I can be toppled into a pit of worry from a place  of peace.

How easily discouragement and disappointment can wear a body right down.

But I think Jesus  knows that.  He knows how hard it is to hold  onto hope when everything looks hopeless.

He knows what it’s like when God asks us to travel  a road we’d rather not be on.

So when I cry for “mercy” and when I tell Him how another round of bad news has me reeling, I’m so thankful for His compassion.

He doesn’t always snap His fingers and fix everything perfectly in that second, but He does minister to my hurt with the encouragement I desperately need.

He did this for Jairus, too.  When Jairus asked Jesus to  please come and heal his daughter, Jesus followed him right away.  But there was a delay.

So, Jairus’s daughter died.

 While he was still speaking, there came from the ruler’s house some who said, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?”36 But overhearing] what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe. (Mark 5:35-36 ESV).

Jairus received the worst possible news, but Jesus’ words were what he needed  to  hold  onto hope even in the impossible:

Do not fear, only believe.

We all have hard days.  We have worn-out days and sad days and I-just-want-to-give-up-days.

Jesus told the disciples what to do on those days and it echoes with familiarity:

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me” (John 14:1 ESV).

Do not fear, only believe.

I don’t think Jesus meant this as a “buck up and just have some faith kind of speech.”

I think He knew what Jairus needed, what the disciples needed, and what we truly need: Comfort. Reassurance.  Hope.

Don’t be afraid. 

Yes, this is scary, but do not fear.

Just keep your eyes on me and believe.

Well friends, with the move finally here I’m signing off for  a bit until after we’re in our new place.  I’ll get back to posting in a week or two!  ~Heather~

My perfect future

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At least eight of them were going to live in big houses.

One of them wasn’t going to have a big house.  His house was going to be BIG.

They would compete in the Olympics, be world famous surgeons and vets and carpenters, play professional sports, write books, run businesses, and make a lot of money.

They would drive Jeeps or a Ford or a convertible.

They would all marry, have several children (whose names they already knew) and live incredibly happily ever after.

These were the futures my daughter and her fellow fifth graders described during their DARE graduation last year.

We parents in the crowd smiled and laughed and probably some of us cried.  What a wonderful, beautiful, sometimes humorous thing it is to hear eleven-year-olds dream.

My daughter jumped right in there, dreaming with the best of them about education, career, marriage, having kids, and making a difference in the lives of others.

Lovely thoughts, all of them.

But when they read her “My Future” paragraph at the graduation ceremony, I finally succumbed to the tears when I heard her concluding words: “My future is in God’s hands.”

Whatever happens…

Even when the plans don’t turn out the way she hoped or expected….

Even when life gets crazy or even just slightly uncertain…..

“MY FUTURE IS IN GOD’S HANDS.”

I take this to heart.  Shouldn’t we all?

My eleven-year-old self never planned or expected all that God has done and all that He has planned for me.  My life has twisted itself up into a thing of beauty that I never could have created on my own.

There were seasons I thought God was messing it all up.

He told me ‘no.’

He changed my direction.

He made me wait ‘forever.’

He carried me through valleys of darkness when I couldn’t see the next step right in front of my face.

Maybe now I already know the answers to the questions these kids were asking:  Where would I go to college? What would I study?  Who would I marry?  How many kids would I have?  Where would I live?  What would I do?

Yet, still there’s that constant compulsion to lay the future all out clean, perfect, organized, and bullet-pointed with measurable goals and a five-year-plan of how to make it all happen.

My own daughter’s wisdom brings me back.

Do I need to know all that?

Or do I need to just know this:  ‘My future is in God’s hands’?

I think of Joseph, the perpetual Old-Testament dreamer.

God gave him so much more than a fifth-grade perfect-life wish-list.  God gave him prophetic visions of his parents and brothers bowing down to him in homage and respect.

Then he was trapped in a pit while his brothers plotted to murder him.  He was sold to slave traders and carried off to Egypt.  He was falsely accused and thrown into prison.  He was forgotten and left to rot in the jail while others were freed.

It might have looked like one great big hopeless mess.  How could Joseph ever make those God-given visions work out?

The truth is he couldn’t.

And he didn’t need to.

HE JUST NEEDED TO KEEP LIVING, DAY AFTER DAY, MOMENT BY MOMENT, OBEDIENT TO GOD, TRUSTING THAT GOD WAS IN CHARGE OF HIS LIFE STORY.

Louie Giglio writes in his book The Comeback:

Maybe your dream is to go to school or get a degree or accomplish a certain task or find a certain spouse or start a business or move to a certain place or create a movement or carry the gospel to people who’ve never heard it before. Those may be great dreams, but there’s a bigger dream that overrides everything else: it’s that your life counts for the glory of God.

THIS IS THE CONSTANT DREAM WE CAN CLING TO AT ALL TIMES AND IN ALL SITUATIONS:  MAY OUR LIVES BRING GLORY TO GOD.

Yes, in the prison.

Yes, in slavery.

Yes, even when all the dreams come true.

Ultimately, Joseph told his brothers:

And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life (Genesis 45:5 ESV).

Joseph knew nothing happened just for his own benefit, personal comfort or ultimate happiness.

Everything he endured was so God could ‘preserve life.’

HIS LIFE WAS TUCKED INTO THE GRANDER STORY, THE GOD-STORY, THE STORY OF SALVATION.

That’s true for us, as well.

We can dream, plan, plot and strategize, but ultimately we return to trust.

WE TRUST THAT OUR LIVES CAN GLORIFY HIM. WE TRUST THAT HE HAS A GRAND, GOD-STORY FOR SALVATION, AND WE HAVE A PLACE WITHIN IT.

WE TRUST THAT OUR FUTURE IS IN HIS HANDS.

 

Originally published 1/15/2016

Finding peace when it’s hard to see

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Here’s my primary job at the zoo as a mom.

Sure, I help break up fights over who will hold the map.

I plan our itinerary so we don’t bounce from the lions on the one end of the zoo, to the goats on the other end of the zoo, back to the giraffes way back where the lions are.  No, we take an orderly path.

I make sure no little hands slip into the fences and no children wander off in search of wild animals.

I decline to pay for every souvenir, snack, and photo booth that we see.

I take pictures of children giggling at the baby monkeys.

But mostly I do this—I point so that my youngest child at the time can actually find the animal in the tank or grass or exhibit or whatever.

I’ve been doing this for years for all four children at one time or another.

See the lizard? 

No.

See, right there.  Look where I’m pointing.  See?

No.

See that leaf?  The big one right there?  Look under that.  See the lizard?

No.

Every so often, we struggle to find the tiger or the bear, but mostly it’s these camouflaging reptiles and miniature frogs that have us standing at the cage for more than five minutes squinting our eyes, pointing our fingers, and eventually giving up.

But when I started taking my son to the zoo back when he was just learning to talk, I discovered he has super-sight.

He could spot a hidden reptile or amphibian the moment he walked up to the glass.

Snake. Lizard. Frog.  He pointed and said the name like this was the easiest exercise on the planet.

Hiding under foliage?  Didn’t matter.

Blending in with the pebbles?  Not a problem.

Hanging from a tree at the top of the cage?  Couldn’t fool him.

He sees what is hard to see and notices what is hard to notice.

I need vision like that.  I need spiritual super-sight.

Sometimes I’m searching through my circumstances and situations for the peace God promises.

Still, I can’t see it, not through the murky glass, not with my limited vision.

I need God to give me eyes that see His peace, even when it’s hidden, even when I don’t have answers, even when trouble looms, even when the waiting lingers and the uncertainty remains, even when I need the impossible.

Sheila Walsh writes:

In the last major conversation Jesus had with His closest friends, He spoke about peace–but not as we might have expected Him to (5 Minutes With Jesus).

We’d expect perhaps to find peace in the moments of calm or peace in the seasons of blessing.

We have peace when we’re at rest or peace when our relationships are happy and healthy, no one’s mad at us, we’re financially stable and physically well.

Isn’t that when peace comes?

Yet, Jesus told the disciples,

I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace (John 16:33a ESV).

What things had He said to them?  Had He been talking about heaven, miracles, salvation, grace?

Not at all.

In John 15 and 16, Jesus tells his dearest friends about sorrow and His imminent death, about persecution and martyrdom, and how the world will hate them and harm them.

Then He gives them hope.

Then He promises them peace.

We seek peace in answered prayers, resolved situations, the end of conflicts or the arrival of provision.

We seek it in chocolate, bubble baths, getaways, and running away.

But peace isn’t found there.  Peace is found in Jesus Himself right where are in the middle of the pain, before the answers and the fixes and the resolution.

He told the disciples “in me you may have peace.”

PEACE ISN’T FOUND IN A POSITION OR A PROVISION; IT’S FOUND IN A PERSON.

Jesus is constant, unchanging.

He is faithful.

He is able.

He is compassionate and abundant in His love.

We can rest in Him, deeply rest.  We can entrust our lives to Him, every care and concern, every worry that keeps our thoughts churning at night as the clock ticks down hour after hour.

Jesus finished the promise to the disciples that night:

“In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33b ESV).

This is our courage.  Our reason to ‘take heart’ and have hope!  He has already overcome our every enemy and our every battle.

So, we look to Him and we ask for His vision right here when peace seems hidden and hope hard to see, when we’re staring at circumstances and not seeing the light for all the darkness.

Lord, help me see you!  Help me not lose sight of who you are.

Originally published March 11, 2016

Praying with a Penny Cup

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The penny plinked into the cup and I walked away.

It was such a simple thing.  The penny pressed into the palm of my hand and then a quick release, a letting go, and I was done.

Before my penny cup, I thought that I was just persevering in prayer like Jesus told His disciples to do in Luke 18.

There was the widow who came before the unfair judge day after day to demand justice, and finally he gave in because he was annoyed and tired of hearing her complain about it.

There was the neighbor awakened in the middle of the night by obnoxious and persistent knocking at his front door.  He finally opened up the door and stood there in his pajamas listening to his neighbor’s plight—an unexpected guest, no bread in the house, could he share?  Yes!  Take it!  Take anything as long as you stop that knocking, knocking, knocking so I can get some sleep already.

So, Jesus tells us, if an unrighteous judge and a sleep-deprived neighbor gave into requests just because of tenacity, wouldn’t God who loves us respond when we pray and pray and pray and don’t give up praying?

Don’t stop praying.  Even when you’re weary and exhausted and hopeless and think it doesn’t do a bit of good, keep pushing and pushing on in prayer.

But my idea of persevering in prayer wasn’t really prayer any more.  It was more like fretting in front of God’s throne and worrying about a problem before a divine audience.

All night long, I mentally paced in prayer: Lord, here’s my problem and here’s what I need You to do to fix it.  

I plead and argued and orated and then when I’d run out of things to say, I started all over again.

Hour after hour ticked by on my bedside clock and still I continued.

God loves when we pray. We can bring anything and everything to Him in prayer and He never tires of hearing us and never turns us away.

But I never released my need to Him.  I was talking at Him without ever letting go or pausing for even a second to listen or be still.

I was wallowing in anxiety and putting a holy ‘stamp of approval’ on it by calling it prayer.

John wrote:

 Now this is the confidence we have before Him: Whenever we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 15 And if we know that He hears whatever we ask, we know that we have what we have asked Him for (1 JOhn 5:14-15 HCSB).

I was praying as if He couldn’t hear me.

….as if my will mattered more than His will.

….as if only my solution to the problem was acceptable.

….as if He wasn’t sovereign or compassionate—wasn’t able or didn’t care to rescue me.

… as if He was against me instead of for me.1 john 5

It was a prayer of unbelief.

Then, I read the idea in a discipleship magazine: a penny cup.

It’s not the cup that mattered or even the penny.  Writing a prayer on a slip of paper and slipping it into a prayer box would do just as well.

What matters is a physical reminder to release my white-knuckled grip on my problem and give it over to the God who loves me so.

Every time I  found a wayward penny on a dresser or on the floor, I picked it up and prayed with a quick whisper, “Lord, please take care of this need.  I trust You to deliver me.” Then I released the prayer to Him as I dropped the coin into my penny cup.

I didn’t tell Him how to fix the problem.  I didn’t wrestle with Him for hours every night over the need.

I prayed day in and day out (you’d be surprised how many pennies you find when they become part of your prayer life), but always I gave the problem to Him instead of holding onto it myself.

When the penny cup filled to the brim, I poured out the coins and started again.  For years, I prayed about this one issue, giving it over to God one…..penny….. at….. a….. time.

For the first time, I really prayed.  I didn’t fret and argue and run endless circles of desperate pleading around God.

I persisted in prayer by expressing my need while leaving the solution in His hands.

And God rescued me.  Not in the way I expected.  Not in the timing I expected.  Not without hardship and hurting or obedience or faith in the hard places.  But the deliverance was miraculous and beautiful and perfect in the way only God’s deliverance can be.

Originally published 02/11/2015

Bible Verses About Home

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  • Deuteronomy 6:7 ESV
     You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.
  • 2 Samuel 7:10 ESV
    And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more. And violent men shall afflict them no more, as formerly
  • Psalm 90:1 ESV
    Lord, you have been our dwelling place[a]
        in all generations.
  • Psalm 127:1-2 ESV
    Unless the Lord builds the house,
        those who build it labor in vain.
    Unless the Lord watches over the city,
        the watchman stays awake in vain.
    2 It is in vain that you rise up early
        and go late to rest,
    eating the bread of anxious toil;
        for he gives to his beloved sleep.
  • Proverbs 3:23 ESV
    The Lord‘s curse is on the house of the wicked,
        but he blesses the dwelling of the righteous.
  • Proverbs 12:7 ESV
    The wicked are overthrown and are no more,
        but the house of the righteous will stand.
  • Proverbs 14:1 ESV
    The wisest of women builds her house,
        but folly with her own hands tears it down.
  • Proverbs 14:11 ESV
    The house of the wicked will be destroyed,
        but the tent of the upright will flourish.
  • Proverbs 24:3-4 ESV
    By wisdom a house is built,
        and by understanding it is established;
    4 by knowledge the rooms are filled
        with all precious and pleasant riches.
  • Isaiah 32:18 ESV
    My people will abide in a peaceful habitation,
        in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places.
  • Zephaniah 3:20 ESV
    At that time I will bring you in,
        at the time when I gather you together;
    for I will make you renowned and praised
        among all the peoples of the earth,
    when I restore your fortunes
        before your eyes,” says the Lord.
  • John 14:2 ESV
    In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?
  • John 14:23 ESV
    Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
  • 1 Corinthians 3:16 ESV
    Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?
  • 2 Corinthians 5:1 ESV
    For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

Seeing the world from God’s shoulders

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After having three girls, when I found out I was having a son, other moms chimed in with tons of wisdom.

They told me to be quick with the diaper changes or I’m bound to get peed on.  (I did.  At least twice.)

They told me to prepare for climbing, running, growling, and dirt (lots of it).

They told me no one would love me like a son, not ever.   “It’s different than with a girl,” they said.

One mom told me how her son would cradle her face in his tiny palms and say, “You’re bootiful, Mommy.”

And another mom told me her son announced he was going to marry Mommy when he grew up.   When she explained that Daddy had already married her, the little boy scowled and said “Dad is lucky.”

Mom after mom told me that no one treasured her as unconditionally or completely as her son had when he was little.

And then.

Then older moms started warning me.  They still occasionally offer forebodings of doom.

“When you have a daughter, you have a friend for life,” they say, “but a son ditches you as soon as he finds a wife.”

I get it.  “Leave and cleave.” I don’t want my son to be a stunted mama’s boy.  I don’t want to break up his marriage by pitting myself against his wife or refusing to let go.

But I wouldn’t mind if he chooses a wife I could get along with or if he calls me once in a while.  I wouldn’t mind a visit here and there and I’d hate it if he only hung out with ‘her’ family instead of sitting around our holiday table sometimes, too.

I’ve been enjoying this season with my son, loving and loving it.

I love train shirts and train toys and train books and conversations about trains.

I love airplanes and bulldozers and how we have to point out the fire trucks every time we walk past the fire station on Main Street.

I love making faces at him in the mirror and growling out funny voices.

I love toting along a few trucks everywhere we go.

I love superheroes.

This is my great joy.

But when other moms tell me to enjoy it now because I might as well kiss my son goodbye in a few years, I get more than a little sentimental and emotional.

 

Fearful even.

And then I read Jacob’s blessing for his son, Benjamin:

‘Let the beloved of the Lord rest secure in Him, for he shields him all day long, and the one the Lord loves rests between His shoulders.”  Deut. 33:12 NIV

I don’t know what may have your heart turning somersaults of fear instead of clinging to hope this week, but worries over my kids’ future surely does that to me.

But this verse offers me security and peace.

This isn’t the season for me of farewells or parenting adult children and worrying over their not-so-adult decisions at times.

This is my season of early morning snuggles on the sofa before everyone else awakes and making pancakes in the shape of Mickey Mouse.

It’s my season of listening to all of their news about their day at school, laughing at funny lunch escapades and wiping away tears when another girl gets mean.

It’s my season of bedtime hugs and bedtime stories.

And it’s my season of lifting children up….up into my arms, snuggled into my chest….up onto my shoulders, high so they can see, high so they can be carried and so they can rest.

That’s what God does for His beloved.

He lifts us right up out of the mess and the weariness and sets us between His shoulders and tells us to ‘rest.’

Don’t strive.  Don’t fight.  Don’t wear yourself out trying to keep moving forward on your own.

Let Him carry you.

High up there on the shoulders of our God, our perspective shifts.

STOP FRETTING ABOUT THE FUTURE.

LIFE DOESN’T DEPEND ON US TO FIX IT AND MAKE IT HAPPEN; OUR FUTURE DEPENDS ONLY ON HIM AND HE IS SO DEPENDABLE.

When we’re on God’s shoulders, we are safe from danger.

We can cease striving.

We see the big picture.  All that trouble we were in below looks so small when He is lifting us up high.

So I choose to rest here with the Lord, enjoying safety, enjoying this season, enjoying His presence, enjoying being His beloved–handing over fear and holding on to hope.

Originally published October 28, 2015

The Legend of the Missing Pizza Slice

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It was a few summers ago when the legend of the missing pizza slice began.

On one of those summer nights when we arrived home late from an all-day activity, my husband stopped for pizza and brought it home for us.

But when he opened up the pizza box, he gasped in mock-horror and surprise.

“Hey,” he said, “there’s a missing slice!”

My girls jumped right in with theories and finally settled on this:  Someone at the Papa John’s had eaten a slice of our pizza.

We played along.  My husband said maybe they were just testing it to see how it tasted or maybe we should get our pizza elsewhere.

The girls all nodded as we happily ate the remaining pizza slices.

So then, we just kept up the tradition and the joke.  Every time my husband brought pizza home that summer, he ate one slice in the car before he brought it to us for  dinner.

And the girls marveled that every single time there was this missing  piece.

What was wrong with the people making our pizzas?

After a year or so of this, my husband really pushed the limits.  Instead of Papa John’s, we got Pizza Hut…..and he ate a slice before bringing it home to see what our kids would say.

One of my kids announced that maybe the Papa John’s worker had quit and gone over to Pizza Hut and was now sampling our pizzas there, too!!!

It’s my youngest daughter who eyed her dad suspiciously and then started interrogating him to see if maybe, just maybe, he was the culprit.

Really, I think she knows the truth.  She knows that her dad has been secretly eating one slice out of each of our pizzas before bringing them home for at least two years now.

But she doesn’t want to let the joke go.  Or maybe she doesn’t want to accuse her dad of pizza slice-sneaking.  So she pushes right up to the point where she almost announces the truth and then backs off and lets everyone keep the mystery going.

She dismisses what’s true because she’s distracted by the noise around her.

And that can be me. That can be us.

 

I’ve been feeling this longing lately, this deep desire to believe, really and truly believe God and His love for me, to grip hard onto this truth.

But then I get distracted.  I get worn down.  I get forgetful.  I get weary.   Life is noisy, after all.

And then I let go, slipping right down into the waters of unbelief and nigh-on drowning in all the stress I carry around when I don’t trust God to care for me instead of doing everything on my own.

I don’t  want to wrestle with my puny faith or trample down my nagging worries all the time.

When Jesus says, “I Am,” I want to rest in that.

When He says, “I Will,” I want to trust Him.

Instead, even though He’s always been faithful, I foolishly fret that  maybe this one time, maybe in this one situation, maybe in this one seemingly impossible instance, He’ll fail me.

Maybe He provides for others, but not for me.

Maybe He came through in the past, but not this time.

So I’ve been praying the same thing as the father in Mark 9:24

Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!”

The moment that worry creeps in, the moment I hear that first nagging cynicism, the moment I start running through possible scenarios in my mind and I feel the crushing weight of “what if,” I go back to Jesus.

Help me believe.

This week, I once again read in Romans what it says about Abraham:

No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, 21 fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised (Romans 4:20-21 ESV).

No unbelief?  No wavering?  He was fully convinced that God was able.

Not only that he grew strong in his faith.

Waiting wears me down.  I grow doubtful over time.  But Abraham grew stronger instead.

So, what’s the secret?

Maybe it’s that he was giving glory to God (verse 20).  Maybe if I just keep  returning to praise, I’ll become less forgetful, less prone to wander, question, and doubt.

This is where the faith-building happens, with our hands raised in worship, with our mouths singing His praise, giving Him glory for who He is and all that He’s done, tuning our hearts to trust Him with our future and believe He is able to care for us through it all.

You can click here to listen to Audrey Assad sing, “Help My Unbelief.”  This is a song I’ve been singing often lately.

I am for you and not against you

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“I am for you.”

That’s what I tell my 12-year-old daughter after a long day and after we’ve flopped down onto the overstuffed blue couches to pray and to  chat  before bed.

It’s probably what I’ll be saying often for the next few years as she steps into the teen years.

Maybe it seems like some days I’m against her.

I tell her what she can’t have or what she can’t do.  She carries home yet another flyer advertising yet another activity and I remind her that her calendar is already dripping with ink from her doing so much.

She talks about movies, books, songs, apps, and sometimes she’s the one left out.  She doesn’t know that band.  She hasn’t read that book.  Maybe we won’t let her see that movie.

This is hard.  This is her coming to grips with what it means not to fit in, what it means to miss out, what it means to let things go even when others around her indulge like it’s no big deal.

Of course, she’s a good girl.  She’s not asking to attend wild parties or drink or do drugs or even watch a PG-13 movie.  That’s not her.

Still I explain it that night to her as we relax on the sofa in a moment of quiet, and I hope what I say sinks deeply down to the needy parts of her heart:

I am not against you.  Even when it feels like I’m against you because I’m not giving you what you want or what even feels reasonable or what other people get.  I’m never your enemy and I’m never out to hurt you or deprive you of what is good. 

No.  I am for you.  Always.  Because I love you.  And it’s because I want the very best for you that sometimes I have to keep you from the second-best, or even what seems “good,” or perhaps what we both know isn’t right or true.

She nods her head in understanding for  now.

I hope the understanding lasts.  It probably won’t, not all the time.  I’m sure I’ll be echoing these words again and again, if not to her, then to her siblings.

It makes me marvel at God really, because He knows how I feel.  He knows what it’s like to be the parent having the hard conversations, building the unpopular boundaries, saying the “no” that a child doesn’t want to hear.

In Romans it says:

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?  (Romans 8:31 ESV)

And the Psalmist wrote:

Then my enemies will turn back
    in the day when I call.
    This I know, that God is for me (Psalm 56:9 ESV).

God isn’t for me because He gives me everything I want.

 

To says God is for me means  His heart, His passion, His desire is for my ultimate blessing and my ultimate good.  He wants the best for me, even if it feels uncomfortable at the time because it’s not what I wanted or what seemed easy or appealing.

He knows what’s truly good and what I truly need, and that’s what He’s going to be doing in my life, directing, guiding, pausing, saying “no,” and saying “yes.”

So, as my daughter shuffles off to her room for bed, I sit for a moment with God. It’s as if He nudges me with His elbow to say, “See?  See what I’ve been trying to tell you?”

God isn’t against me when I don’t like His timing.

God isn’t against me when I long for the blessing He doesn’t choose to give (or when He gives it to someone else and not to me).  Even if we feel sometimes like everyone else His favorite because He so readily gives to them the things He withholds from us (and what’s that all about, anyway?).

God isn’t against me when my plans go awry or His plans don’t seem to make sense.

God isn’t against me when I experience injustice or hurtfulness.

God is for me.

He is for you.

It’s a matter of trusting His love for us, trusting Him enough to love us well and love us completely and to believe it when we read, “no good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly”  (Psalm 84:11 ESV).