Tag: giving good gifts

Weekend Rerun: Mom Guilt

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Originally posted on November 28, 2011

“If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”
(Matthew 7:11)

Mom Guilt.

That’s what had me standing in the Christmas lights aisle at Wal-Mart two days after Thanksgiving.  I squinted and stared at the options before me.  Icicle lights.  Blue, green, or red lights.  Sparkly, flashing lights with 12 different settings.  Heavy duty lights.  Mini lights.

Then there were clips and clasps of every variety to attach the perfect lights to your house.  Did I need these things?  Wasn’t there a way to hang lights sans gadgets and gizmos?

I grabbed plain white mini lights from the shelf, thinking my first attempt at decorating the outside of our home should be simple.  “Start small,” I thought.

For years, my oldest daughter had begged me to decorate the outside of our home for Christmas.  This year, her pleading had reached a new level of intensity.

She took one look at the homes with Christmas lights already gleaming in mid-November (insert looks of disgust here!!!) and whined from the back of our minivan, “Mom . . . . . . . .Everyone’s house is so beautiful for Christmas and ours is just DULL.”

I threw angry glances at the decorated houses as we sped by.  Even if they didn’t know I was mad at them, at least I felt better getting the feeling off my chest.

Still, I get it.  I remember being a kid and pestering my dad to hang Christmas lights on our home for years.  I remember taking the lights tour in the family van and oohing and aahing over the decorations and thinking it’d be great to add a little Christmas flare to the outside of our house.

So, there I was buying lights from Wal-Mart.  And there I was starting simple, stringing them up the steps to my home and around the door frame.  And there was my daughter exclaiming how beautiful it was.

She actually had asked for one of those giant blow-up Snow Globes for the front yard along with a massive Frosty the Snowman and maybe some lighted reindeer figurines.

But there are limits.  Mom guilt only gets you so far.

When I’m praying, I wonder how many of my requests to God make it to His throne room sounding like the high-pitched whine of pouring on “God guilt.”

“God, all my friends have their careers all set and know what they want to do with their lives, but I’m floundering around waiting for some direction here!”

“God, You thought everyone else deserved a husband to love them and tell them they’re beautiful.  What’s the deal with me still being single?”

“God, how come everybody else is financially secure and has a savings plan and we’re struggling paycheck to paycheck and never truly making it?”

God doesn’t bless us or rescue us out of guilt, though.  Not now.  Not in the past.  Not ever.  He’s not guilted into love and He wasn’t guilted into the cross.

Deep down, me stringing lights across the front steps of my house wasn’t truly about guilt either.  It was about love.

My daughter had made a request.  Not a ridiculous one, all motivated by greed or pride or selfishness.  It was the simple desire of a child’s heart.

And I love her.

So, I gave in.  I spent less than $10 for some lights and garland and took a tiny piece of my time and gave her the desire of her heart.

I can’t always give her everything she wants.  She can’t have every toy or outfit or trip her friends have.  She can’t do every activity she wants to do.  Nor would that be good for her anyway.

Still, I give her what I can when I can because I love this beautiful daughter of mine.  I love to see her react with joy, love to see her know she’s loved, love to show her that I listen to what she says.

God loves you.

He loves to see you react with joy.  He loves to see you when you know you’re loved.  He loves to show you that He listens to what you say.

God’s intention is always relational, though.  He isn’t just dishing out answers to prayer requests like some sort of holy vending machine.

The Psalmist tells us, “Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4).

Take delight in your relationship with Him.  Linger in His presence.  Make Him your first priority.  Allow Him to re-arrange the furniture of your heart and match your desires with His.

And when you begin to feel the frantic panic of need, remember that God tells you “do not worry about your life.”  Not about having food or drink.  Not about having clothes to wear.  He watches over the birds of the air and the flowers in the field and He values us so much more than them.  He surely can handle our every need.

So, keep your focus relational.  “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33).

Then when He pours out blessing on you, when He loads your arms full of good gifts, when He grants the simplest petitions of your heart—even the whimsical longings you are too embarrassed to actually ask for—accept it as a reminder of His love.  He wasn’t coerced or guilted into giving you amazing grace.

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in the Fall of 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2012 Heather King

It’s A Dirty Job, But Somebody’s Got to Do it

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It was as exciting as Christmas morning.

Our girls had been asking us for a Wii since last summer.  So, when a friend from church said he was selling his used Wii system, we knew this was too good an opportunity to pass up.

We surprised our daughters with it as a way to celebrate the end to their school year and my husband explained to the girls how proud we were of their hard work and their many achievements.

The girls jumped around the living room squealing and hugging us.  My oldest announced, “I just can’t stop thanking you enough!”

Giving good gifts to our children brings me incredible joy—to see them so excited, so grateful, so delighted to have the desire of their little hearts placed into their hands.  Matthew 7:11 tells us, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

If giving the perfect gift excites me, I can only imagine those moments of divine anticipation as God prepares to bless us.  Does He laugh as we dance around the room, full of thanks and praise?  Does He hug us as we humbly bow, so aware that we don’t deserve His gracious blessings?  Does He wipe away the tears of overwhelming gratitude?

We enjoyed just a taste of that pleasure as our girls popped in the first game and began to play.

Then the whining began when they couldn’t make their guy jump high enough after just one try.  The frustration kicked in when they didn’t know how to move their hand to make their bowling ball slide just the right way down the electronic alley. There were angry grunts and declarations that, “it’s too hard.”

Even worse, when the girls played a game together, there was the inevitable struggle over winning and losing graciously.  Apparently, kids are not innately “good sports.”  At first the winner was kind and encouraging; the loser begrudging and complaining.  Then the winner gloated.  The loser started declaring, “it’s not fair.”  It was war.

Overall, the girls still love this gift and they are getting better at it all the time.  As parents, though, there were some moments when we weren’t so sure this was such a good idea.  Our gift seemed to be bringing out the worst in them.

But the reality of parenting is that it’s a messy job.  And I’m not talking about potty training, dirty diapers and sickness.

We could shuffle along on the outskirts of our kids’ character and life would be pretty easy.  If we closed our eyes to their weaknesses and ignored their mistakes, this would all be more “fun.”

We’d be failures, though.

Sometimes we have to put on the big muddy rubber boots and wade into the mess in order to pull out the gunk that is sin and human nature and weakness.

We have to buy one toy and insist our kids learn to share.  We have to play games and teach losers how to lose and winners how to win.  We have to look in the face of a defeated child and remind her that the best things in life are worth working hard for and that giving up simply ensures failure.

It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it—and that someone is us.

In the same way, the circumstances God gives us, the jobs He calls us to, the ministries He lays in our hand, the responsibilities He entrusts us with and the relationships He places in our lives often bring out the worst in us. They certainly do for me.  There are times that I am shocked and embarrassed when all my “uglies come out” (to quote Lysa TerKeurst).

God’s not surprised, though.  Our heavenly Father never shirks His parental job and uses these opportunities to deal with the sin that is bubbling to the surface of our hearts.

This is why “iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17).  God uses conflict to mature us.

This is why we should “count it all joy, my brothers,when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:2-3).  Trials mold our character and make us more like Christ.

Spoiled children that we often are, we might think God always needs to give us the gift we so desire, the blessing we’ve been longing for, and the success we see others enjoying.  Yet, we’d never grow, never mature, never get one tiny bit closer to Jesus in a life free of conflict and trouble.

Proverbs 30:12 says, “Don’t imagine yourself to be quite presentable when you haven’t had a bath in weeks” (MSG).

We might at times do just that, walking around without any awareness of our own mess.  Then something like a Wii brings out the worst in us.  We want to give up.  We fight with our brother or sister.  We whine about how hard it is and how unfair.

Sometimes that’s a good thing–as long as we’re willing to let God scrub at us for a while and deal with the sin that surfaces.  Then we can enjoy the gifts He’s given fully and completely and He can laugh with us in delight and bless us with His favor.  It’s a dirty job and He’s just the One to do it.

You can read more devotionals on this topic here:

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer for www.myfrienddebbie.com 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.  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2012 Heather King