Cheers

The end of the year is hard for us historical types. You free-spirited day-to-day types can just write it off as another day and an opportunity to stay up late and drink bubbly beverages. Not me. I have work to do. Journals have to be reviewed, thoughts have to be processed, growth has to be measured. And it all comes at a time when I’m already feeling a little glum from Christmas let-down. Oh to be a day-to-day, bubbly-beverage kind of girl.

It never fails that as I pull the stockings off the mantle and repack the ornaments, my mind wanders to, “What will life look like the next time I pull these out?” (Can you day-to-dayers just mindlessly toss them in a box?) For years my biggest curiosity was whether or not there would be one more stocking joining the others, with a newborn to go with it. My newborn days are over, so this year I’m wondering where our six stockings will hang next year. Will it be in the house we’ve already mentally moved into, the one with the monkey tree in the backyard and the mail that gets delivered through a slot right into the foyer? Will I hang the Christmas decorations in preparation for a huge children’s party I dream of having—for kids who may not know Jesus came just for them—or will they hang for just the six of us to enjoy? Will I have new friends who haven’t known me for ten years? Will I have friends who think and look much different from me? Will I be different? Will I just be overwhelmed with change?

And what if there is no change? What if I’m right here next year, hanging the stockings on the same mantle? How will I respond if God says “no” or “not yet”? “No” is so hard to hear, but I think it’s easier than “not yet,” at least for me. “Not yet” requires patience and contentment and sitting—not things I’m comfortable with. At least when you get a “no,” you have something definitive to work with. (Have I mentioned how much I value closure? A million times?) But it seems God is more interested in developing my character than catering to my preferences.

I know how I want to respond. Graciously. Hopefully. Full of hope that no matter what I’ve dreamed up for myself, His plan beats mine hands down every time. (And lucky me, I’m historical enough that I’ve got the journals to prove it.) Most of all, I want to respond willingly. I’m willing to move into a new neighborhood and live in a completely new way with completely new people. Or I’m willing to stay here and change my attitudes rather than my surroundings. Either way, sounds like a lot of processing and journaling await me between now and the next time I pull out the stockings. Makes my head hurt. Better go get myself a bubbly beverage. Happy New Year!

Eleven Books

This is my semi-lame “Best Books I’ve Read This Year” entry. It’s semi-lame because I only read eleven. Or at least that’s all I remember. Some I didn’t quite finish. If I wanted to write a “Best Of” entry that was not lame, it wouldn’t be very interesting. “Best New Ways to Use Hamburger” comes to mind, as does “Best Ways to Multitask While Giving the Appearance that Your Child Has Your Undivided Attention.” On the other hand, at least I did read 11 books this year—and skimmed several others to write book reviews. That’s a handful more than last year. And many left a powerful impression on me. So here’s my semi-lame list, offered to you because 1) it reflects my year’s spiritual/emotional/intellectual journey, and 2) it seems like a blogger thing to do.

Rock-My-World Favorites
The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands by Dr. Laura Schlessinger
Death by Suburb: How to Keep the Suburbs from Killing Your Soul by David L. Goetz

The first helped me understand Kevin; the second helped me understand myself. Dr. Laura’s book is a must-read for any woman who doesn’t get her husband. And if you’re lucky enough, like me, to get your husband to go through it first and highlight the parts that most apply to him, all the better. Suburb cemented a lot of the ponderings and stirrings I’ve had during the past two years. The author lives a parallel life to mine and apparently wrote this book just for me. Especially chapter six, which hits the nail on my suburban head. It’s all pretty offensive stuff, especially chapter six, but I devoured every word.

Revelations of a Single Woman: Loving the Life I Didn’t Expect by Connally Gilliam
After finishing the book, I e-mailed the author, an acquaintance, and called it, “Loving the book I didn’t expect.” Struggle is struggle, and Connally shares hers with the kind of transparency and authenticity I didn’t think existed anymore.

Expand-My-World Books
Beyond Charity: The Call to Christian Community Development by John M. Perkins
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter
Both reflect my growing interest in the poor and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Perkins has spent his life loving and caring for our country’s urban poor, and he makes me want to do the same. Carter’s book was a decent, straight-forward introduction to the history of the Middle East conflict. Both books made me think. Ouch.

Spiritual-Growth Books
Intercessors Arise: Personal Prayer that Changes the World by Debbie Przybylski
An Army of Ordinary People by Felicity Dale
When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box by John Ortberg

All three influenced, if only for a time, my thinking about God. I got more out of the quotes in Intercessors than the actual words of the writer. Dale’s stories are almost too incredible to believe, but the same could be said of God. John Ortberg could write 224 pages about cockroaches and have me riveted. Luckily, he chooses more interesting topics.

And Finally, Fiction
Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
The Shack by William P. Young

Engaging writing can do a lot for a sad story, which is about all I have to say about the first two. Chesil Beach was especially disheartening. (At least it was short.) I didn’t get caught up in the maelstrom that was The Shack; I actually just read it because I was paid to. Liked the story, loved the way-way-outside-the-box portrayal of God, but other parts made me want to beat my head against heavy objects. If my daughter had been abducted and was presumed dead, the last thing I’m going to want to talk to God about—should I get the chance to hang out with Him—is the relational dynamics of the trinity. The dialogue didn’t feel real to me, though I applaud the author for his creativity and chutzpah.

Books to Read in 2009
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (because I’m a sucker for a sad, engaging story?)
Redeeming Love (because I’ve gotta try Francine Rivers some time, and the book of Hosea intrigues me)
Un-Christian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity... and Why It Matters (curious)
365 Days by Charla Muller (intriguing, but hope my husband doesn’t get any ideas)
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (heard a lot about it)
The Confident Woman by Joyce Meyer (sent by a friend)
Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
by N. T. Wright (recommended by a friend)
Abandoned By Stanley Telchin (recommended by my sister-in-law; a Jewish perspective to balance out all I've learned from my Muslim-oriented friends)
More by John M. Perkins

Any other suggestions?

A Week with New Perspective

It happens every time. Just when I'm comfy wallowing in my own despair, something jars me unexpectedly out of my own little world. Last week’s thoughts on loneliness are replaced today with new thoughts on gratitude. Again. It doesn't make the loneliness go away (And for those who have responded with such heartfelt empathy, don't worry. It's a topic I'll return to.), but it does give perspective. 

I’ve recently been given the opportunity to write stories for Compassion International, whose mission is to “release children from poverty, in Jesus’ name.” My raw material comes from field reporters, local Compassion staff who interview the children and families involved in their programs. I’ve done about five so far, all heartwarming and inspirational. Today’s is just sobering.

Mateare is a Nicaraguan town of 31,622 people located 25 kilometers from Managua. The majority of this city’s adults worked at its eight factories, but since July, six have closed, leaving 80 percent of the population without a job or income. And the reason for this? Because of the U.S. economy. Because people like you and me have less money to spend. So Americans are importing less. So factories in Nicaragua close down. And a Nicaraguan family of seven goes from eating three meals a day to one. Just like that, the dominoes fall, and what happens in my backyard rocks someone a world away.

We think things are rough here. They are rough. People are spending less money on car repair (my husband’s business), and we feel the crunch. But it doesn’t mean our family eats less. (On the contrary, stress usually provokes us to eat more.) And I’m obviously not so consumed with finding my children’s next meal that I simply have no time to contemplate my more psychologically complex needs. I don't like to pit one kind of pain against another, but lonely versus hungry? Yeah, I’ll take lonely, thanks. And I’ll eat my weight in cookie dough while I work through it.

My point is that I have it so good, even when I’m not feeling it. And when I’m not feeling it, it never fails that a reminder—like these people trying to feed their five children on a daily ration of coffee, a slice of cheese, and a scoop of beans—drops in my lap. Along with it, these couple of sentences rained down on me today, too. “[God] picks up the poor from the dirt, rescues the wretched who’ve been thrown out with the trash. Seats them among the honored guests, a place of honor among the best and brightest.” (A paraphrase of Psalm 113.)

It's not lost on me—or probably any of you—that the ability to focus on things like purpose, loneliness, belonging, is a luxury. It's a luxury because my babies are fed, clothed, clean (for the most part). Knowing this doesn't fix everything or cure my hurts, but it makes me thankful for a multitasking God who sits with me in my loneliness while simultaneously picking the poor up out of the dirt. And it makes me dream of being the arms He uses to pick them up—which may likely be the prescription He writes for my loneliness. 

Thoughts on Loneliness

Here’s a cheery Christmas topic: loneliness. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot as I adjust to my new life (still new to me even though it’s been almost a year). It’s something I’m more aware of this month, and I know I’m not alone. Emotions of all kinds seem to be felt more acutely at Christmastime.

As I’ve processed the kind of “lonely” I am, it’s not so much the being alone kind. Lord knows I’m rarely alone. And the turbo-charged bundles of noise and energy that stir around me are pretty good company. Nor is my loneliness solely a product of my downsized social calendar. While not having a Christmas party to attend this year has caused me more angst than I care to admit, it’s not the leading contributor to my loneliness.

So while I’m a little lonely for people and activity, there’s something more there. I think it’s the longing to be known. I want people to know me—not for the things I say, or the way I look, or the committees I volunteer for, or the way my children behave—but for who I really am. As much as I want to hide my dirty insides from the world, I like the idea of some sort of x-ray vision that would allow people to zero in on my soul, on who I really am. No, I’m not really that woman who chatters too much because she can’t bear long conversational pauses. No, I’m not really that fool who repeatedly says things she regrets because she has no filter. Or that selfish hag who seems to care only about herself and no one else. And no, I’m not that mother who tears down her children with just one squinty-eyed look or her friend with one biting comment. I may appear to be those things, but anyone who knows me—knows me—knows that that’s not who I am. Not at my core.

I worked with people who knew me. No matter how bad a day I was having, no matter what foolish, ridiculous things came out of my mouth, no matter whether I succeeded or failed, I was known—and loved in spite of it. I was lucky to have that. Most people search their whole lives for this. I’m searching now, searching for a new place to fit, a new team to play on. I find that it causes me to spend way too much time thinking about things I don’t really care about—my ability to make engaging chitchat, delicious snacks, and beautiful children. It’s a lot of work. And it’s lonely work.

Ever the optimist, I have to find something good in loneliness. The obvious answer is that it makes me more compassionate. How many Christmases have I joyfully, obliviously flitted about, unaware of the silent sufferers around me? A lot. How often do I make quick judgments about people instead of getting to know them? All the time. (And when I do take the time to know someone better, I’m always surprised by how wrong my first impression was.)

My loneliness also teaches me about God. Could this longing to be truly known—and, even more, to be truly loved—be the deepest longing of the human heart? Is this what leads us from relationship to relationship, group to group? Is this what those beautiful young people on TV mean when they say they’re looking for a “connection”?

I think God probably ships us out of the factory with this pre-wired desire to be known. He does this so that we’ll realize, in time, that we are truly known. By Him and Him alone. And I think He does it so that we’ll desire to fully know—not just other people, but God, our creator. Paul said it this way in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “Now I know in part; then [when I join Him in heaven] I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” I can’t be fully known on earth. I can’t fully know other people, although I can certainly try a lot harder to know them better. But I can trust that there is one who knows me—my name, the number of hairs on my head, my loneliness, and the x-ray–vision condition of my soul—and yet loves me more than I can imagine. It's that I cling to when the loneliness comes. 

Happy Christmas Holidays? Or something?

It's finally December, and I can stop feeling ridiculous for listening to nonstop Christmas music. Despite the cold weather, it’s still my favorite time of the year. But there’s something that’s popped up in the past few Decembers that makes me scratch my head. It’s the uproar over “Happy Holidays.”

These are pretty benign, cheerful words on their own. The offense, apparently, is that they remove Christ from Christmas. That it’s another attempt to take God out of our culture. The American Family Association has launched a boycott of stores who use the “Happy Holidays” salutation in place of "Merry Christmas." My local Christian radio station proudly boasts: “It’s not Happy Holidays—it’s Merry Christmas!”

I wonder what Jesus thinks about all this. It’s hard for me to picture Him getting all worked up about it. I’m thinking Jesus is pretty secure in the fact that Christmas is all about Him. It also makes me wonder about the dual responsibilities of Christians to stand up for truth and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Without question, there is a time to rise up, at any cost, and speak out boldly in favor of biblical truth. Where would we be if the disciples and early Christians hadn’t done this? What would our world look like if people like William Wilberforce and Abraham Lincoln hadn’t taken an unpopular stand for truth? The examples are endless.

But is “Happy Holidays” an assault on truth—something we need to jump in the ring with? Or is it simply a convenient phrase for a multicultural society? Here’s what I learned on Wikipedia: “Though Christmas has been celebrated since the 4th century AD, the first known usage of any Christmastime greeting, ‘Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year’ was in an informal letter written by an English admiral in 1699. The same phrase appeared in the first Christmas card, produced in England in 1843, and in the popular secular carol We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”

For centuries, Christians presumably honored Jesus and celebrated His birth without any catch phrase at all. But today, it seems like “Merry Christmas” is as important to us as the virgin birth. So much so that people are willing to picket uncooperative businesses and lecture sales clerks who happen to utter the wrong greeting.

“Truly he taught us to love one another. His law is love and his gospel is peace.” I am beautifully convicted by these words from one of my favorite carols. I’m not saying we all need to hold hands, sing Kumbaya, and embrace whatever feels good to the masses. But I’m just wondering if this isn’t the time to focus more on His message of love—through generosity, kindness, humility, service—rather than demanding people use our pet phrase.

Does anyone think I’m completely missing it? If so, write me. I’d love to hear the other side.

Thankful List

I'm a huge fan of gratitude. So in honor of Thanksgiving, here’s a list of Things I’m Surprisingly Thankful For (after the obvious things like God’s grace, my family, my country, my bed, uninterrupted sleep, etc.)

E-mail, so adult conversation is only a click away

Online shopping, because dragging all my kids Christmas shopping is sometimes more adventure than I’m prepared to deal with

My husband, who grows with me instead of away from me

65-degree days in November

Family that lives close by (no really, I’m thankful for this)

Halloween candy that the kids have forgotten about

Books so meaningful that they seem to be written just for me

Braden’s unshakable sense of right and wrong

Addison’s sincere desire to care for her parents when we’re old

Brooklyn’s confidence and ability to roll with anything

Camryn's cheeks, because she’s all our other babies rolled into one, except balder and yet still somehow cuter

Naptime

Summertime

Reliable hot water

Struggle, because it refuses to leave me the same

Change, because as much as I hate it, I’d probably hate the alternative even more

My minivan, because it keeps me from ever thinking I’m cool

My age, because I’m a whole lot smarter at 38 than I was at 37

Hand sanitizer

Marshmallow cream

A Tale of Two Trips

Just 72 hours ago, my toes were livin’ it up in the Pacific Ocean. It’s been a good year for my toes. When I took my two older kids to the beach and Disneyland in May, I never dreamed I’d be back in Southern California—steps away from Disneyland but $200 from actually entering—just six months later.

My first trip was a year in the making. My friend Kim researched every detail and laid out the perfect itinerary for our two families. Every plan was expertly executed, right down to being the very first people through the Disneyland gate. The weather, the Disney Fast Passes, strangers, servers, and even the children cooperated beautifully. It was the perfect trip.

Flash forward to a few weeks ago, when I was asked to fly to Orange County to meet with a group of people I’m helping with a book. After a five-minute conversation, Kevin and I booked three tickets, deciding he and the two younger girls would go with me. We boarded the plane Thursday with a possible rental car reservation and a few Google maps of various beaches. (I cringe as I think of Kim reading this.)

People may think the biggest difference in airplane travel is first-class versus coach. That is not true. The biggest difference is the age of your traveling companions and whether or not your lap is occupied by another person. Flying with anyone older than six is the first-class of airplane travel. Under six? You might as well be dragged behind the plane by your ankles. In May, I dozed on the plane. In November, I worked up a sweat trying to keep my 19-month-old’s sucker out of the hair of the lovely lady in 8D.

In May, I experienced one of those rare fantasy moments that moms dream of, watching my children frolic on the beach, hair blowing in the wind and giggles oozing out of them. I left for my recent trip with similar expectations. What I did not envision was my four-year-old catching a stomach virus. Or Kevin saying, “The beach is a great place to throw up, Brooka. You’re either making bird food or fish food.” I didn’t plan on buying my daughter a $50 outfit at the Disney store when we became desperate for a change of clothes or frantically fishing for the sick bag on the airplane.

I had hoped to re-create a bit of the magic we experienced in May at the Rainforest Café in Downtown Disney. We caught a glimpse of it when we were seated at the exact table I’d dined at six months earlier with Braden and Addison. The magic began to fade when Brooka threw up at the hostess desk. It was completely extinguished when she hurled for the sixth time near the animatronic elephants. (How many times can you say, “I’m so sorry” to a table full of strangers?)

And then there was our sweet baby—terrified of sand, surf, seagulls, and especially the fake thunderstorm at the Rainforest Café. But at least she was cool with Brooka's vomit.

Still, it was a good trip. Both were good trips. One was good in a blissful, idyllic sort of way, the other in a chaotic, what-now sort of way. How often do I tell my children, “You get what you get”? I guess God thought I needed a reminder of my own. Sometimes you get paradise. Sometimes you get puke. But as long as your toes are in the Pacific, it’s all good.

One Week Later

The first election I remember was in 1980. I was in the fourth grade and paid more attention to the TV reporters than the multiplication tables I was supposed to be memorizing. That was a fateful night not only for Ronald Reagan, but also for me. That night, I began to dream of being a journalist. And though that dream has been modified over the years, my curiosity and zeal for watching election coverage remains strong.

Last Tuesday was no different. I sat down to watch with my usual sense of curiosity and competition. (It’s a lot like watching a horserace.) Over the next four hours, I experienced the gamut of emotions as it became more and more clear that Barack Obama would be our next president. But it was the feeling that came last—the one that lingers a week later—that surprised me most. It was this giddy, hopeful feeling. Sort of like the hopeful anticipation that comes when I walk my kindergartner in to her first day of school. Added to that was my great sense of pride—trite as it may sound—in democracy and America.

I watched black journalists barely contain themselves, casting all professionalism aside so they could celebrate this moment like everyone else. I was most moved by Pierre Thomas, an ABC reporter who always appears professional and poised, confident and composed. But not Tuesday. Tuesday, as he stood with a group of students at Morehouse College in Atlanta, this polished journalist became an actual person instead of just a TV personality. He got real and shared his story—how his father told his little boy that this day would never come, that a black man would never be elected president in a country such as this. Thomas sobbed as he told a national audience how much this moment meant to him. And the students behind him told their similar stories with their own tears. Their joy was contagious, and it cut across party lines, at least in my house.

Later, I read a quote from another black journalist. Months ago, he wrote that if Obama could become president of the United States, everything he believed about white people would be disproven. That statement plows me over like a freight train.

So though I was not, and am still not, Obamamanic, I am a very proud American. I’m a hopeful American. Today I asked a wise friend of mine, an expert on international events and the Middle East in particular (not to mention a Republican), what he thought of Obama. He responded, “In addition to our melting economy, he has the huge task of uniting the nation. I hope that we, the Christians, will set the pace rather than encourage the spirit of division.”

I can’t say it any better than that. Let’s set the pace.

New Day, New Opportunity

Hallelujah! It’s over!

As I watched the returns roll in tonight, I basked in the beautiful silence. No phone calls from political volunteers, Super Bowl champions, or B-list TV actors telling me how to vote. No commercials full of melodramatic music and shameful propaganda. It got to the point where I cared more about the end—any end—than any particular candidate or issue. I’m sure I’m not alone.

I don’t know the rules about claiming Old Testament prophecy for modern-day America, but I’ve always loved 2 Chronicles 7:13-15: “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” The sermon I heard last weekend pointed out that it’s no accident this passage starts out with humbling ourselves. Pretty much everything good that comes from God starts with people humbling themselves. It’s humbling when your guy loses. It’s humbling to have to follow someone whose ideology is 180 degrees from your own. Yet God says that’s the first step in the healing of our land. Interesting.

I couldn’t vote for Barack Obama because he doesn’t represent my views, but I’m still hopeful that he’ll breathe fresh air into a weary nation. I’m willing to give the guy a chance. I’m also proud to live in a nation that elects its first African-American president just a handful of generations out from the horror of slavery.

Obama’s views offer those of us who don’t agree with him an opportunity—a kick in the butt is more like it—to exercise our personal responsibility and not just our patriotic responsibility. Take abortion, for example, an issue that’s dear to my heart. It’s clear we’re not going to make much political headway in the next four years on this issue, so let’s roll up our sleeves and take our passion to another front. Let’s start investing personally in the lives of the girls and women who are most at-risk for unexpected pregnancies. Let’s tangibly support the brave women who choose to carry their babies and give them up. (I can’t imagine anything harder.) Let’s come alongside the women who keep their babies. That may mean buying them clothes and baby food, or babysitting while they’re earning their GED. Let’s pour our money and time into Christian crisis pregnancy centers that tell women the truth—that human life is never an accident. If the government’s not going to do it for us, let’s make a difference ourselves. I’ve just gotta wonder if this isn’t what Jesus had in mind for us all along.

I’m so thankful that though a lot changed today, He did not. His rule and reign comes with no term limits. Can I hear an amen?

I Have a Dream, Too

Dreaming about the future doesn’t come natural for me. I’m not much of a dreamer. I’m also not much of a visionary, so any dream I do come up with doesn’t have much impact on the world or my country or even my neighborhood. But I’m starting to dream a big dream for my children—and at the same time realizing the intentionality that it will require from me.

Here’s my projection about the future: With a lot of hard work and by the grace of God, my children will grow up knowing the value of a full night’s sleep, eating at least occasionally from the four food groups, giving good effort, and respecting others. They will have good enough grades to get into good enough colleges and good enough social skills to have good enough friendships. They will have reasonably good manners, good credit, good personal boundaries, and a sense of personal responsibility. With even more of God’s grace, they will have marriages that last, careers that are steady (even fulfilling), and church attendance that is respectable.

These are good things. These are down-on-my-knees-grateful kinds of things. But they’re also cultural things. And the rub for me is that God transcends culture. I recently learned the phrase “cultural captivity.” It means being trapped by one’s culture into certain beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. So many of the things our culture describes as “good” are completely out of whack with what we know is important to God (at least if we believe the Bible). Even Christian culture has absorbed many of these beliefs, so that pastors now compete with each other over the size of their churches, and Christian moms become frantic—scary frantic—about how many Scriptures their kids can memorize or how many shoeboxes they can fill for Operation Christmas Child.

My big dream is that my kids will not be captives to our culture and its definition of "the good life." To some extent, I know it’s unavoidable, but in the big areas—how they define their life’s purpose and successes, even how they spend their time—I pray that culture would not be their guide. I pray that Christian culture would not be their guide. I pray that the Spirit of God and the examples He’s given us in Scripture would guide their way. That they’ll feed the hungry. That they’ll preach good news to the poor. That they’ll set the captives free. These are the things to which Jesus gave his 33 years of life on earth. And what do my kids see me giving my life to? Hmmmm.

The scariest part of my big dream is that it begins with a change in me.

Ark Building 101

Building our ark. That’s what getting our house ready for sale feels like. As far as we know from the story in Genesis and the movie with Steve Carell, Noah didn’t have to go out searching for two of every animal, force them to get along, or forklift them onto their new home. He just had to build the ark, and the animals came. They came because that was God’s plan, and what God wants happens.

I’m glad Kevin came up with this helpful mental picture of “building our ark"—in this case, preparing our house to the best of our ability. It’s not ever going to be perfect; it just has to “float” for the person who’s gonna buy it. I reminded myself of this for hours last week as I scrubbed every nook and cranny of my kitchen cupboards. I filled one Mr. Clean Magic Erase Sponge after another, astounded by the dirt that had previously gone unnoticed. (I don’t see dirt. Or dead people. It’s a gift.) It seemed like such trivial, meaningless work. Especially when some kid’s only hours away from spilling a cup of chocolate milk all over the good work Mr. Clean and I have done. I suppose it had to be done, but there were about 10,000 other things that seemed like more fun and fulfilling ways to use naptime.

Probably that’s how Noah felt too as he measured out all those cubits. And he had to deal with all the gawking and pointing from the neighbors. (Although he also had the benefit of grown children and thus more than one minute of clear, consistent thought. I gotta believe he wasn’t getting frequent interruptions from Shem, Ham, and Japheth crying out for assistance in the bathroom.) But think how he felt when the animals actually showed up. Think of his amazement when that first drop of rain fell. God brought it all about, just like He said He would, and Noah knew all that measuring and hammering had not been in vain.

I wouldn’t say our family’s calling to move to a new neighborhood is as strong as Noah’s to save all man- and animalkind, but we are pretty sure God is calling us to build this ark so he can take us to new land. He was faithful to Noah, and He’s faithful to us. The one who calls us is faithful. First Thessalonians 5:24. It’s become my mantra. It’s got a nice rhythm to it when you’re scrubbing cupboards.

Ready for the Wringer

One of the passages I’ve always found interesting in the Bible is 2 Timothy 4:6 “For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure.” This verse has been with me for a long time because it precedes the passage engraved on my dad’s headstone: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (verse 7).

As his days on earth were winding down, Paul chose to describe himself, his very life, as a drink offering. I’ve puzzled over that one. The Old Testament talks a lot about drink offerings, but like a lot of the Old Testament rituals, I’m a little fuzzy on the meaning.

A book I’m reading helped me focus on a different part of this verse—not so much on the “drink offering” part as the “poured out” part. The author was considering the all-American concept of “making one’s mark on the world.” Who doesn’t think about that from time to time? For some, it’s their highest goal. For a stay-at-home mom, it’s a yeah-right kind of goal. The only marks I see being made around here are those on my walls, thanks to a wanna-be ninja who forgot to take his shoes off.

Making a mark on the world is a man-made idea. God’s idea is for us to empty our mark into the world. To pour it out, like Paul did, so that nothing remains in the cup when the time for our departure comes.

When I picture my time at The Navigators, I see myself as a big, juicy sponge. I arrived flat and dry and spent 14 years soaking in all the love, goodness, spiritual maturity, and community I found there. The practical things I learned about God, the Bible, and the spiritual disciplines filled up my every pore. Though the leaving process did its best to drain the sponge, I am still nice and soggy from all I took with me.

We’re not supposed to live our lives in a state of permanent saturation. I’ve been sucking up all I can get, and God’s showing me that I’ve got to empty my sponge into those who are thirsty for its contents. Going through the wringer sounds a little scary, but I trust the One doing the wringing. I trust that He won’t wring me out and then cast me aside, but that He’ll continually fill me up again. My task is simply to empty my mark—my sponge—into the world, one dry and flattened person at a time.

I’ll admit it sounds a little daunting, especially when I’m already pretty pooped at the end of the day just from caring for my own family. But when this filling/emptying thing is done in His strength, not my own, I may find that I have more energy than ever before.

My Poor, Aching Memory

I got a lot of fun cards for my birthday this year, but the one from my mom made me cry. It wasn’t the factory-produced sappy sentiment that did it; it was the handwritten addition from my mom. Where the card showed a picture of a table set for a tea party, she wrote: “Taco Tico – Arkansas City, KS. You were 4. You looked like Brooka. Bought groceries and a taco lunch afterward. Just me and you. Outside if it was nice!”

I don’t remember Taco Tico or even liking tacos when I was a kid. I’ve never heard of Arkansas City, Kansas. (I imagine it was the “big city” where people from South Haven, where we lived at the time, went to shop at Alco.) I remember little about my early childhood, and what I do remember is not particularly pleasant (falling down the stairs, dogs getting hit by cars or bitten by snakes, my granddad dying, mean little girls, and dragging my stuffed animals out of the trash, when my dad wasn’t looking, every time we moved). Why is it that my young brain latched onto the negative memories but seemed to resist storing the good?

I hope this is unique to me. As a result of my mom’s card, I plan to ask her to write down more experiences like Taco Tico. Maybe that will help me remember. Or at least make me think I remember.

This has gotten me a bit discouraged about the fabulous childhood my own children are forgetting right before my eyes. I ran across Braden’s preschool class picture a few days ago, and when I showed it to him, he didn’t remember one kid. I had to point out Shaefer, Braden’s best buddy at the time. Granted, we haven’t seen these kids in five years, but he spent an entire year with them when he was four! And now it’s as if it never happened. Just like me and Taco Tico.

It makes me rethink the effort I put into birthday parties. Kind of depressing to think of the lengths I went to for Addison’s firestation birthday party three years ago that she now barely remembers. Yeah, she’ll have a few pages in her album and a huge banner that I splurged on from the Party Express catalog, but she’ll forget how passionately she wanted to be a “firegirl” and how thrilled she was to sit on that firetruck for the first time. And is it possible that Brooka’s all-encompassing love of tigers will be packed away some day just like Braden’s obsession with Blue’s Clues?

Of course I’m grateful for early memory loss when I let my babies “cry it out” in their cribs or when a little one waltzes into our bedroom at an inopportune time. But why can’t they automatically remember all the stuff I want them to?

Maybe it’s more about me remembering all the fun we’re having now so we can have wonderful times talking about it someday. So we can fall back on shared experiences during those awkward lulls in Thanksgiving conversation thirty years from now.

Time marches on. I can only hope my memory goes with it.

Looking for a Miracle

Anybody noticed that it’s a pretty lousy time to try to sell a house? A dozen or so of our neighbors have figured it out. Their for-sale signs weather and their asking prices drop before our very eyes. And that was before all of today’s incomprehensible talk of credit confidence and corporate bailouts.

So whatcha gonna do when God calls you to sell your nice suburban house and relocate to one of the poorer neighborhoods in town? Argue with Him about the market slump? Lecture Him on U.S. economic policy? Squawk about His bad timing? Moses tried these tactics, and look how far they got him. He still ended up completing God’s assignment, and I bet as he held back the raging waters of the Red Sea, he felt a little foolish for all his weaseling and hem-hawing.

Our miracle doesn’t need to be anything as fancy as the Parting of the Sea. We just need a buyer dropped on our porch—in the most unstable economy of our lifetime—who says, “Yeah, don’t worry about the stained carpet or the overgrown foliage or the garage that I can’t even see because of all your wonderful crap. I’m good with that. I’ll take it just the way it is.” We need him (or her, or them; we’re not picky) to walk past all the nicer, cleaner houses for sale on our block and instead be magnetically drawn to our vintage 1970’s yellow rancher. He’ll have to avoid the kids’ boards, nails, and hammers on the front porch (we wonder how our milkman escapes injury on those dark delivery mornings). He’ll need to appreciate the stinkbug–sweaty-socks–aging-dog-with-intestinal-issues aroma wafting from the basement. He’ll need to find it charming that the only décor in the house is children’s artwork and remind himself that, luckily, the ratty furniture moves on to the next house. He’ll need to be a lover of wildlife—bears in the front yard, coyotes (loud ones) in the back, and deer chewing up anything with chlorophyll. He’ll have to have vision for a spacious dining room that currently houses every children’s toy made since 1999 and a busy mom’s cluttery desk. Mostly, he’ll need to have a lot of faith that God gave him the correct address. And then, he—or she or them—will get to be part of the miracle.

Any takers?!

Despite what my eyes and the newspaper tell me, I believe God will bring us a buyer. I believe it in some indescribable, way-down-deep, all-is-right-with-the-world sort of way. Or, as I read in a book recently, I know it in my knower. The hard work—getting a family of flawed, harried, self-absorbed, fearful people to change the course of their lives and follow Him wherever He leads—has already been done. Compared to flesh and blood, a little brick and mortar are a piece of cake.

Some Cheery Thoughts on Death

I was sitting with a group of church women I don’t know well, talking about a lot of things, when the subject of death came up. One woman said, “I just don’t know how I’d respond if I found out I only had a few months to live. I don’t want to find out. I hope I just drop dead.”

I offered up to the group my hypothesis on facing death: that we become a more extreme version of who we already are. One who feels angry and hopeless will experience more extreme anger and hopelessness. One who feels grateful and hopeful will feel extra measures of those emotions. One who has spent a lifetime hungering for face-to-face fellowship with their Creator will be like a weary traveler pulling into a five-star hotel.

It puzzles me that so many followers of Christ are just as squeamish and fearful about death as those who don’t believe in an afterlife. If we really believe that heaven is our true home, why do we live in fear and dread of getting there? Is it the journey, which may be painful and humiliating, that we fear? Or the sadness of being separated from the people we love? It’s a lot of things, I’m sure, but it’s too bad those things take our eyes off the prize.

I remember that after my dad died, I would think of him all the time and try to imagine what he was doing. I knew even less about heaven then than I do now (which is not much), but I would get a little twinge of excitement just thinking about what it might be like. I still do. I’ve been trying for a couple years to get through Randy Alcorn’s book, Heaven. The editor in me wants to dive into it with a red pen (I think it should be half the length it is), but I do love his proposition that heaven is filled with culture—music, literature, drama, sports, architecture—far beyond what we find on earth. The picture he paints is much more compelling than the harp-playing, cloud-floating image many of us carry in our heads. 

Most of us will get a chance to test my hypothesis. The leading "killers," cancer and heart disease, don’t happen overnight. They allow their victims time to settle into the idea of death. Time to figure out who they’re going to be for the rest of their life. Unlike the lady I met last week, I hope I do get a chance to find out who I’ll be. I hope I’ll run the last leg of my life with genuine joy and anticipation. And I hope I get a lot of stretching time before that race begins!

Lucky 13

Kevin and I recently celebrated our 13th anniversary. We returned to the place we got engaged—our first time back to the Antlers Hotel since that gray day in January 1995. It was a Wednesday morning, I believe, when I walked out of my apartment to head to work; instead, I was met by a limo and a very peaked Kevin, my boyfriend of 10 months. Since limos were not a regular part of our dating life, I suspected that this was the Big Day. I wonder what we talked about as we weaved through the streets of Colorado Springs on our way to the Antlers? All I remember was being consumed with thoughts of my bad hair day and the ugly jacket I was wearing. (It took some of us longer to creep out of the ’80s than it did the rest of you.) Not exactly the Cinderella-look I had envisioned.

We ate Belgian waffles in the hotel restaurant before parking ourselves on a nicely-chilled bench in the courtyard. Neither Kevin nor I can remember the words he said prior to pulling out that blue velvet box. Really, if we’re being honest, for a girl it’s all about what’s inside the velvet box. Yeah, yeah, I complete you and all, but let’s see what’s in the box already. I loved the contents of the box, the man with the dreamy blue eyes who crouched before me, and the vision in my head of what married life would be. So I said sure. Just like that, seven months and a lot of credit-card debt later, we were hitched.

Looking out on the hotel courtyard during our recent stay, I tried to picture what those two crazy kids on that bench were thinking. At 24 and 26, awkward dating experiences, college degrees and first jobs behind us, we felt so ready to jump into the next stage of life. But how little we knew about each other. When you really think about it, though, is there any amount of time that can fully prepare you to live every remaining day of your life in intimate proximity with another person? I don’t think so. Nothing could have prepared us for the emotional adventures of having children together, struggling with a new business together, delivering a stillborn baby together.

It’s quite a gamble, actually. A gamble that requires huge commitment. These are the things I knew nothing of as I sat on that bench ogling my first-ever diamond. A bride-to-be thinks about fabric swatches and flatware and where to seat her grandfather’s flamboyant new girlfriend. She’s not thinking about the moments of tense words and hard decisions that unfold into a lifetime. Maybe that’s for the best. If we really knew how much work it was going to be, who would be so quick to say yes? I’m just thankful that though I was clueless, I was also very “lucky.” (Yeah, like I believe in luck.) The more I get to know the man behind the dreamy blue eyes, the more thankful I am to be the one he chose.

Seven Years Later

It took me, as I drove through my kids’ carpool line this morning, about 15 seconds to figure out why the American flag was at half-mast. Just seven years after 9/11, and all it takes is my usual morning of kid craziness to make me forget. My kids noticed the flag, too, and when I told them today is 9/11, the older two nodded with faint recognition. I gave them a weak account of the significance of today, thinking I would at least prepare them for their teachers’ mention of it, but that mention never occurred.

Later, when I picked them up and took Braden in for a haircut, I listened to a couple of employees talk about their first 9/11, or at least their first memorable one. The man buzzing the clippers around my son’s ear watched the events unfold that day on a TV in his high school. They all did. And the nine-year-old getting his hair cut? He was also glued to the TV that day seven years ago, except unlike everyone else on the planet, he was watching Blue’s Clues. He got to watch a lot of TV that day. Preschool shows played one after the other on our main TV while I sat alone in my bed, watching the horror play out on my little TV. I was nine months pregnant, and as my little Addison squirmed inside of me, for the first time I regretted my decision to bring another child into this world. I remember thinking of end-times biblical passages that describe how things will be extra hard for pregnant women. “That’s me,” I thought. “The world is ending and I can’t even get my shoes on.”

We’d been in our new home just about a week, and we had nothing in the house to eat. I finally pulled myself together enough to drive with Braden to the grocery store, and I remember the eerie silence there. No one said a word; we just kept our eyes glued to the several TVs that appeared out of nowhere to ensure the grocery-store patrons didn’t miss a single grim detail.

I remember the first anniversary. One of the TV news shows gathered all the 9/11 babies—those who lost their daddies (mostly) on that day—and told stories of now-single mothers delivering and raising their babies alone. Lisa Beamer was one of those; I read her book and tangibly felt her pain. I prayed regularly for her and her three fatherless kids. Now, seven years later, I had to google “Let’s Roll” to even remember her last name.

Time does heal. That’s not necessarily always a good thing. Sometimes it heals too well.

The Consequence of "Yes"

With apologies for being so unoriginal, I have to throw out my two cents on Sarah Palin. Maybe just one cent. The last thing the world needs is one more person spewing their political views all over the Internet or commenting on this candidate, in particular. I am not a political blogger and have zero aspirations to become one. I’m not politically savvy or inclined. But what I am is a woman and a mom who cares deeply about the lives of other women and other moms. Sarah Palin falls into both of these categories, and I have spent a lot of time trying to imagine what her life must be like right now.

Unless you’re Billy Rae Cyrus, I don’t think you can begin to imagine what that degree of scrutiny feels like for you and your family. I watched Palin’s young daughter slather her spit on her baby brother’s hair in front of an audience of 38 million and silently thanked God that my children’s only audience is the three people standing behind me at Walmart—and their kids are all doing something more questionable than mine. I try to imagine what it must be like for her husband—Did he sign up for this when he popped the question?—and for her daughter’s boyfriend, who must surely wince at his 15 minutes of fame (and even more so the 15 minutes that got him into all of this in the first place).

From the little I know, I like Sarah Palin as a political candidate. She seems to represent a lot of my views and articulates them enviably well. But if Sarah Palin were my friend, I’d have to ask her what she’s going to sacrifice to live out this dream. Is it worth it? It’s not so much a question of whether she can handle it. I get the feeling she could hunt down terrorists in Iraq with her older son while simultaneously nursing her younger one. But just because she can do it, just because it’s the biggest opportunity of her life that might not knock again, should she do it?

I’m not sure. I know how I would answer the question for me, as preposterous as it is to imagine myself in such circumstances. I know that I don’t have the energy to split my attention between two such monumental tasks. And though the opportunity to make history and serve as a role model for generations of girls to come is pretty heady stuff, if it kept me from being the role model to my three daughters that I so desperately want to be, I’d have to pass.

It’s not just Sarah Palin who has to answer these types of questions. On some scale, we all do. Any choice for something is a choice against something else, whether you admit that or not. Governor Palin’s meteoric rise has got people thinking and talking a lot. For me, at least this week, she's got me thinking through the consequences of all I say yes to, and asking, "Is it worth it?"

Time Warp

My two oldest kids have been back in school a week now, and that has brought with it a profound revelation. I am getting a second chance that a lot of people don’t get—the chance to pour my time and attention into two young children again. This epiphany came to me as I huffed and puffed behind 85 pounds of kid, plastic, rubber, and aluminum. Today, because I’m down to just two, we pulled the double stroller out of storage.

With Addison in school all day for the first time, I feel like I’ve traveled back in time six years to the last time I spent the majority of my time with a preschooler and toddler. Despite the differences in gender, personality, and a slightly larger age gap, it all feels strangely familiar. After a summer spent hauling around an eight-legged mass of children, I’m now back to looking for little-kid parks and hanging out with the 29-year-old moms I find there. I try, mostly unsuccessfully, to remember what it was like the first time around. I see these mothers with their fussy babies and rambunctious two-year-olds and think, “That looks like a lot of work.” Then I remember, “Oh, yeah. I used to do that work. And now I do it with four.” But it’s different now. I think I’m different now.

When my first two were the age my last two are now, I was 32. I was at the height of my career. I felt successful, efficient, invincible. I ran meetings and ran baths, shuffled my kids from place to place, signed them up for KinderMusik, and danced with them to the Wiggles. I warmed Braden’s milk until he was three, read parenting magazines at stop lights, and held onto Addison’s swimsuit while she splashed in our baby pool and I edited. I loved it all, but it felt like so much work, and I gleefully awaited the day when my children would . . . just . . . get . . . older.

And it’s all a blur. I know I did it, but I remember so little of it.

Now I find myself with a second chance. And the biggest difference—the intangible experience that you can’t buy or learn from a magazine or take someone else’s word for—is that now I know how fast it goes. Of course everyone from my mother-in-law to my dentist told me this, but now I know it for myself. As much as I love efficiency and long for time to myself, I am forcing myself to slow down, “unschedule,” and burn the images—the beautiful, fleeting images—into my brain.

This sounds more noble than it is. I can’t say I’m not envious when I see my neighbor—whose two kids are the ages of my older two—head out for a two-hour run or when I walk into her immaculate home. Not a crayon-colored wall or a stinky diaper in sight. But I also feel a little sorry for her, and I know my time will come. And maybe then, five years from now, after I’ve done it all the third and fourth times around, I’ll be ready to close the little-kid chapter of my life. But I sorta doubt it.

The Center of God's Heart

When I was in high school, every time I couldn’t find something my brother and I joked that mom probably gave it to the poor and the needy. She rifled through our closets for unworn clothes and gave away our furniture; our jokes barely covered our resentment. See, I thought we were the poor and the needy. We lived in a trailer house. My mom was a 40-year-old widow with a secretary’s salary. I drove my grandma’s smoke-infested, 1970-something beast of a car. Yet still my mom found people who could use my old track shoes.

Today, my mom can fit all her worldly possessions into one room and lives in a house with women who walked out of jail 24 hours earlier. Her example and her genes must run deep. This summer, I’ve been doing a Bible study on the poor, and it’s not hard to see that those who suffer poverty, oppression, and injustice are right in the center of God’s heart. So I’ve been asking what I’m supposed to do with what God's teaching me, because as much as I try to distract myself with kids’ playdates and freelance work and trips to WalMart and my cute blond highlights, there's a strong pull to be meaningfully involved with people a lot different from me.

One of the last projects I worked on for The Navigators was a book about Neighborhood Ministries in Phoenix. It changed me more than I’ll ever know. NM started when one woman saw a need and tried to meet it. It began with an inner-city kids’ camp one week out of the summer—now it's a broad, comprehensive ministry that occupies a city block. For 20 years, the people of Neighborhood Ministries have looked around, asked people what they need, and provided it. Food pantry, thrift store, tutoring, preschool, mentoring for teenagers in gangs and with babies, job opportunities, and on and on. (Their website is full of info and provides the verses to do your own study on the poor.)

Then, through laughable, only-God-could-do-it circumstances, Kate entered our lives. Kate is a recent college graduate, a suburban Florida girl, who did a summer internship at NM last year and never turned back. Except to fundraise. No one really pays you to do the kind of work Kate will be doing—hanging out with kids who have almost nothing, telling them how much God loves them, reading the Bible with them, being the kind of friend, safe and unconditional, they’ve never known. So Kate’s back in Florida, looking for supporters who will love the poor with their money the way Kate loves them with her kindness.

Three days after we met Kate and decided to support her, we went to Las Vegas for a timeshare presentation. God’s timing never ceases to amuse me. For about the same monthly amount we were planning to give Kate, we could have access to resort vacation condos all over the world. Our “host” even offered to throw in an all-inclusive trip to Hawaii for our entire family if we signed up! I’ll admit he started getting to me with that one, but Kevin stood firm. I hope we will get to take some of those vacations one day, but more than that, I hope we’ll get to make an all-inclusive trip to visit Kate at Neighborhood Ministries. 

For now, we pray for her and all God has in store for her. The kids have started a "Kate Can," and during our dinner prayer,  Brooka asks God to "help Kate get her money real good and find people who say 'Yes! Yes! Yes!' " And I cry in my creamed corn. Because Brooka gets it. She and the other kids seem to naturally care about the things that are important to God. I have so much to learn from them.

(If you’d like to know more about Kate or how to partner with her, please e-mail me! If God’s been talking to you about the poor, you need to talk to Kate!)

Procrastination by Prayer

I read something startling recently, and it just keeps gnawing at me. I haven’t yet decided if I think it's true or not, but it sure is making me think.

Prayer is often a wonderful tactic to delay obedience.

Wow, could that be true? The example the author gives is this: A family with five kids went to their son’s baseball game one day and ended up bringing one of his friends home. For four years. Turned out the kid’s mom was a drug addict, and she and her son were essentially homeless. When they finally tracked her down, they offered to let him stay a few weeks with them. Weeks turned into months, and pretty soon the boy had laid claim to a sock drawer and a bunk bed and settled in.

The father of this family said that if he and his wife had thought and prayed about this situation, they never would have taken the boy in. The legal ramifications—not to mention their struggles to support the five kids they already had—would have stopped them. Yet they know they did the right thing.

The author’s point is that it’s the little, day-to-day things that make up the kingdom of God. Jesus said, “The time has come. The kingdom of God is near” (Mark 1:15). So near, in fact, that it sometimes comes in the form of taking in a homeless little kid—without analyzing it, agonizing over it, asking other people’s advice about it, or, maybe even praying about it.

I guess the idea is that if we’re walking as closely with God as we’re designed to be, our actions will be automatically aligned with His will. No need to stew and wonder; just act. Boy, that’s news to someone who spends a lot of time stewing and wondering. I don’t think that prayer is ever a bad thing, but I’ll admit that I’ve used, “Well, I’ll pray about it,” as an excuse to avoid making a decision. In some situations, maybe I need to be more bold, stop stalling, and just act. Anyone else?

Acceptance Part II

I’ve had a lot of comments (personally) on what I wrote about acceptance, so I feel bold enough to write part two. Your self-talk—the tape you play in your head about yourself—is a good indication of how you’re doing at accepting yourself. I recently went to hear a dear friend of mine speak on the condemning heart, described in 1 John 3:19–20: “This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.”

When we’re already feeling low, own hearts aren’t afraid to pounce on us and finish us off with thoughts like, “You’re not as good as everyone else.” Or “The world would be better off without you.” We might hear, “You’re a failure as a mom/wife/employee/sister/friend.” (My friend contrasted this with legitimate conviction of the Holy Spirit, which addresses more specific issues: “Why did you lie to your friend? Why did you lose your temper with your daughter?”)

I don’t struggle a whole lot with negative self-talk. I’m usually the queen of the pep talk. But about two weeks ago, as I sat in the library minding my own business and trying to work, my condemning heart jumped me. I was feeling left out of things that were happening at my old job, and it stung. (Brief pause for a moment of self-disclosure: I hate feeling left out. I was the little girl who crawled out of bed in her nightgown to lay on the hallway floor when my parents had a party. It didn’t matter that no one knew I was there or if I feel asleep, as long as I wasn’t left out of the party.)

OK, back to the library. First I got billyclubbed with this one: “You’re insignificant now, without a job. Your worth has gone through the toilet.” Then came this blow: “No one outside your home needs you.” (I may be susceptible to lies, but I’ve got enough on-the-job evidence to know that I’m surely needed at home. Someone’s gotta cut all those apples and pour all that juice.)

I know enough to know that these are lies and the only way to combat lies is with truth. You can’t just say, “Shut up and go away!” to your condemning heart. It’s too loud to silence. Instead, you have to replace it with an even louder message, a message of truth. So I started in: “I have great worth. I am a child of God. I was created in His likeness. There is no one like me. Even if I were the only person on the planet, Jesus would have died for me and me alone. I have great worth—not because of what I do but because of who I was made by.”

Over and over, eyes closed, rocking back and forth in my chair. At the library. Fortunately there are a lot of homeless schizophrenics at the library looking to get out of the heat, so I sort of blended in. It was an all-day battle, but eventually truth won out and my mind was at peace. Then I had to apologize to Kevin, because when my condemning heart tells me no one needs me except my family, it’s an attack on him and my kids as much as it is on me. Darn right they need me, and there’s no greater needs I want to meet than those of my husband and kids!

God is greater than our condemning hearts. He knows us better than we know ourselves. And despite how well He knows us—because of how well He knows us—He accepts us.

Pregnant Men and Truth

OK, enough already with the “Pregnant Man.” Every time I turn on the TV or open my newest People magazine, I’m greeted by Thomas Beatie, a 34-year-old “transgendered man” (born female but now lives as a man, with the help of hormone injections) who recently delivered a baby girl. I have no stones to throw at this woman for the way she chooses to live. Sexual confusion is an understandable outcome to a tragic childhood—her mother committed suicide when she was 12. I feel bad for her and the struggles she’s surely had. I certainly understand her desire to live in a committed relationship and have children. And because her partner had a hysterectomy years ago, I suppose it was a logical next step for her to carry their baby.

What I don’t get is why anyone thinks this is a “pregnant man.” Has our society become so relativistic, has truth become so out of vogue, that something as obvious as the fact that men don’t have babies is now in question? Do we really live at a time in which you can ignore the “parts” you were born with and just decide to be something else and expect the world to accept that as truth? (At a time when “I reject your reality and create my own” has become a national mantra?) Call yourself whatever you want, but biology is stronger than words in this case. Men don’t have babies. That’s truth. Surely we can make room for truth as irrefutable as this.

And while I’m at it, I’ve got to wonder why our society is so desperate to blur gender lines that we’ll stop at nothing to sniff out anything that resembles a “pregnant man.” I enjoyed the old Arnold Schwarzenegger movie “Junior” as much as anyone else, but when it ceases to become a joke, I am concerned.

I finally broke down and sent an e-mail to People. Because I have a lousy track record of having my “letter to the editor” published, I include it here for my own small audience (and, let’s be honest, my own self-satisfaction):

Using the "equipment" I was given, like Thomas Beatie, I also gave birth to a beautiful baby. And another, and another, and another, and another. If America would like to see pictures of my babies, I'm happy to share them, although I'm curious to know why it's so newsworthy that a baby grew in a uterus and was pushed out of a vagina. It happens every day.

I almost added that I, too, have excess facial hair and a flat chest, but that doesn’t make me a man any more than it does Thomas Beatie.

And that’s the truth.

Can I Accept God's Acceptance?

My frustrations with myself are mounting up. My fragile ego, relational neediness, lack of self-discipline to keep my house, my desk, or anything else in order, my constant struggle with losing things—including time—all conspire to get me down and make me want to take a long vacation from myself. Anybody figured out how to do this? Without the use of narcotics, I mean?

I’ve found a small bit of relief in a little booklet I’m editing. It’s called Acceptance. It was written around the time I was born and the Scripture passages are all King James, but I still managed to get a lot out of it. Here are a couple paragraphs that I can’t get out of my mind:

“God accepts me the way I am. He doesn’t require that I be the way I’d like to be, or the way I feel He’d like me to be, but He accepts me just as I am. I, therefore, must accept myself the way I am.
If it’s hard for me to comprehend that God accepts me the way I am, then it is really hard for me to accept myself. I have a problem accepting myself because I know myself. I make myself sick. I find myself thinking some of the most horrible thoughts. But if God accepts me the way I am, I am forced to accept myself the way I am. How dare I set up a standard of acceptance that is higher than God’s? If God accepts me the way I am, then I have to accept myself the way I am.”

It gets even tougher. He goes on to say that since God accepts everyone the way they are, we’ve got to accept them that way, too. Of course he distinguishes between acceptance and condoning bad behavior (I certainly don’t have to condone the actions of a child molester, nor does God), but my critical, judgmental mind struggles to accept anyone. I want my kids to be more responsible, my friends to be more attentive, strangers to be less clueless. God wants things for these people, too, but He doesn’t make them conditions for His acceptance. He accepts them the way they are.

He accepts me, too, even though I piddle my day away and forget to have a quiet time, or hurt people with my careless words, or think bad thoughts about the guy at the post office who lets the door slam in my face while my hands are full of children. God doesn’t just accept me; He loves me enough to improve me. And I like to think I give him a lot of material to work with.

The Talk

I’m pretty sure it was the summer after first grade, though it could have been kindergarten. I remember exactly where I was sitting—on the picnic table at the city park in Akron, Colorado—and I can picture the scene in my head like I’m looking at a Polaroid. I was there with my older brother, a few of his friends, and our babysitter. For some unknown reason, this high-school babysitter chose this moment to fill me in on where babies came from. She didn’t spare any details. I was slightly nauseated yet grateful that the older boys were off playing on their own and not witnessing my horror. Surely she was wrong, I thought. I hoped. But how would I know unless I checked with someone else, and I wasn’t about to do that. Huh-uh. Ick. Instead, I just spent the next several years wondering, until people around me started talking about it—until eventually they stopped talking about much of anything else.

I have recalled this experience in recent days as Kevin and I have discussed having “The Talk” with our oldest. He’s almost 9, going into third grade—it’s probably time. We’re pretty sure it will be news to him (he goes to a pretty unusual school), and we want him to hear it from us, not from some hormone-impaired sixth-grader somewhere. We’ve talked about who will say what and when we’ll say it. It seems it will most naturally come up on the annual father-son camping trip this summer.

I attempted a preface to The Talk about 18 months ago when I was great with child and had a built-in prop. I sought out the most recommended book for kids ages 5 to 7 but discovered it was too graphic for even me to bare. I turned instead to the book for 3- to 5-year-olds and still found myself changing some of the words. We didn’t get into the nitty-gritty of it all, mostly because I only had about a five-minute attention span to work with.

Jokes have been written and television shows have been made about parents sweating out The Talk. But as it becomes a reality in my own life, I’ve realized that this topic is so important and will have such power in their young lives that it deserves far more than the obligatory one-time Talk. (Yeah, I know everyone else figured this out long ago, but it’s pretty revolutionary to someone who grew up like I did. My parents never said a single word.) I think it will be less of a Talk and more of a perpetual dialogue. As foreign as that is to Kevin and me, it’s something we’re going to have to get comfortable with. Because the only way it’s gonna happen is for us to be comfortable. And calm. And real.

With four kids—and three daughters, Lord have mercy!—we’ve got quite the journey ahead of us. Boy, I don’t want to mess this up. Part of our family mission statement is that our home will be a safe place where our kids can learn to be all that God designed them to be. That includes being physically safe, but it also means a place where you can ask questions, work through your problems, and share your failures as well as your successes. It’s an open, comfortable place. That means I need to be an open, comfortable mom. They will grow into their own convictions and make their own decisions and likely they will not always be ones I share. But our job as parents is to lay the foundations now that help them form those convictions, and I pray we do it well.

Tears

I have a friend with the ministry of tears. She once sent me a card that said, “If you need someone to cry with, I’m here. That’s what I do.” She’s in good company. Jesus had this ministry too. We all learned when we were kids that the shortest verse in the Bible is John 11:35: “Jesus wept.” Jesus wept because his friend Lazarus had died. Of course Jesus, being Jesus and all, had the advantage of knowing He Himself would raise Lazarus in a matter of minutes, but He still cried right alongside the other mourners because He had the ministry of tears.

I don’t so much have this ministry. I’ve been known to bring other people to tears (in love, of course), but I’m not much of a crier. When I do cry, I prefer to do it alone. God, however, wanted something different for me. He has tears for me to share, tears I didn’t discover until I lost Catherine. Losing a baby has given me the ministry of tears for other women who endure the same thing, particularly stillbirth. It may not be surprising that my stillbirth experience has had this effect on me, but I am always caught off guard by the intensity with which these emotions wallop me.

It happened again this week. It happens more often than I ever knew, though statistically speaking, stillbirths occur in only one in 200 pregnancies. But each “one” represented by that statistic is a lost first tooth, first step, first day of school, first date, to the parents who dared to dream such dreams for their child.

I was thinking of this as I drove around today, listening to my ABBA CD. Just then these words belted out of their Swedish mouths, from the song “The Winner Takes It All”:

“The gods will throw the dice,
their minds as cold as ice,
and someone way down here
loses something dear.”

How sad is that? If that’s really what I thought happened to Catherine—that some cold, uncaring, impersonal gods somewhere just threw the dice and struck her unlucky number, my unlucky number—if I thought that was what her life and death were all about, how could I go on? If I believed whoever’s running the show was really that capricious, who used us all like meaningless pieces in a board game, why would I want to go on? Where would my hope come from?

My hope comes from Jeremiah 29:11–13. “ ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me.’ ”

As much as it hurt to say goodbye to that baby and all my grand plans for her, I knew God’s plans for me, even without her, were far greater. His plans for Catherine were grander than any I could have dreamed for her. And I also knew that as I cried and cried for her, my loving God cried with me.

Writing for My Life

It seems like I should have something profoundly patriotic to write about today. I don’t, so instead, I’m observing a celebration of my own: six months of blogging. Who knew I had so much to say?! I doubt that anything I’ve written has made the world a better place, but it’s certainly made my brain a better place—and that’s a good thing since I spend a lot of time there.

I find that I don’t really know what I think until I write something down. All day long, random thoughts snake their way through my brain matter, occasionally connecting to other thoughts or something I’ve read or heard that’s still sitting there in my short-term memory, waiting for me to do something with it. It’s a tangled mess, kinda like my daughters’ hair when they wake up in the morning. Writing is my detangler. It’s how I work out the knots, find the strands that belong together, and yank out a few that have served their purpose but need to go. It’s how I tame my static and smooth out my kinks. I can’t imagine how I’d ever have a well-formed, decent idea without writing about it first.

It’s also my therapy. When I’m lonely, I write and find solace. When I’m weary, I write and I’m energized. When I’m stressed, I write and I’m calmed. When I’m purposeless, I write and find new vision. When I’m hungry, I eat. Junkfood, usually. Still working on that one.

Finally, writing is my history. I started journaling in junior high and have a written record of two-thirds of my life. It’s not necessarily pleasant to relive the pity party that was my high-school existence, but it’s all there should I feel like settling in for a day of anguish and torment—and occasionally I do. Much better than that, I love using my journals to track answered prayer, growth and maturity, and silly ideas that never went anywhere. I highly recommend journaling, even for the nonwriters of the world. Even just a sentence or two every night before bed can serve to clear your brain, counsel your soul, and record your history. Give it a try for a month and see what happens.

Happy Independence Day, and thanks for making the trek through my brain with me. I hope you come out unscathed.

Upping My Freak-Out Threshold

Freak-out threshold. Know what yours is?

Wednesday night our family set out for a concert in the park for some fun and relaxation. Our expectations went unmet when our four-year-old cracked her chin open on a cement caterpillar. (Gotta watch out for those cement caterpillars. They’ll get you every time.) After pawning off our two older kids, Kevin and I spent the next hour driving our bleeding Brooka and her hungry baby sister over the river and through the woods looking for an urgent-care center. At long last, we finally found a doctor who sewed four cobalt stitches into Brooka’s chin.

This is not an unusual experience for a parent. It was actually our first real emergency of any kind, which is the most unusual thing about it. The most memorable part is that Brooka never freaked out. At the moment of impact, Addison ran Paul Revere-style through the playground screaming, “Bloody Chin! Bloody Chin!” Brooka, though looking somewhat dazed and confused, didn’t cry once. Not even a tear through the whole three-hour ordeal—including when the doctor fired multiple shots into her messy open wound. Reclining on the hospital bed with her ankles crossed, she even sighed, “This is the life.”

That moment confirmed a fuzzy hunch I’ve had all along: Brooka has a very high freak-out threshold. Like the rest of us, she occasionally gets miffed when things don’t go her way, but we don’t ever see her thrown into full nuclear meltdown. One or two of my other children, whose identities I will protect, do not share this quality. One in particular requires a high level of order, structure, information, and familiarity. Anything out of the ordinary is questioned and viewed with reserve (at best) or panic (at worst). The freak-out threshold here is extremely low. Even a simple request to remove shoes in public could send this particular child into a two-year-old frenzy. Maturity and life experience have helped immensely, but the freak-out bar still hovers low to the ground.

I can’t just file away interesting kid moments. I have to study them and try to see what I can apply to my own adult life. So I did a quick check of my own freak-out threshold. It’s gotten a whole lot higher with each new baby. Surpassing the national average of children has taught me more about letting go of control and embracing chaos than anything else. But I can still get plenty upset—at least inside my head—when life feels like it’s spinning out of control. I think that’s why God gave me the picture of a four-year-old laying there getting her chin sewed up. She closed her eyes, gently squeezed my hand, and thought about her favorite thing, tigers. That got her through it calmly and patiently. Thinking about my favorite things, remembering how hugely blessed I am, and trusting that the God of the universe has His hand wrapped around mine is what I want to do the next time I feel my freak coming on. I just wanna be like Brooka.

What I Have in Common with a Single Girl

I’m reading another great book. At first glance it’s not real relevant to my life, because it’s called Revelations of a Single Woman. I’m pretty much everything that’s the opposite of single. But the subtitle, Loving the Life I Didn’t Expect, hits pretty close to home right now.

I had planned to work at The Navigators until they rolled me out of there in my wheelchair, laptop still glued to my wrists. I had planned to have insider information on our organization’s search for a new U.S. director and be deeply involved in making his (yeah, it’ll be a man) announcement public. I had planned to organize and celebrate 50th birthday parties for two beloved coworkers this fall. I had planned to be part of video shoots and morale-building fun days, important meetings and spontaneous heart-to-hearts over bagels in the common area.

Connally Gilliam, the author of the book I’m reading, had planned to marry the man of her dreams, grow into maternity clothes, and be the first-grade room mom by now. Still unmarried in her early 40s, she’s realizing that our plans don’t always turn out like we had hoped. Yet her unwavering trust in the One whose plans always turn out best is a powerful example to me.

She includes a chapter on letting go—specifically letting go of old friends as they marry off and transition into a different place in life. She writes with jarring transparency about feeling left behind, left out, left alone. How weird that I—a woman who married well at 24 and lives one of the most fulfilled lives imaginable—can relate to those feelings. But letting go is a part of life for all of us, the fulfilled and unfulfilled alike. And letting go, for me, is excruciating.

God has used Connally to teach me about letting go graciously. She believes that all the investing in and letting go of relationships has actually served to plow the field of her heart, making her more fertile to new relationships as they come along. (I'm not usually one for agricultural metaphors, but that one really works for me.)

That doesn’t mean you can’t weep on your bathroom floor when letting go is hard. It doesn’t mean you don’t occasionally indulge your feelings of left-outness. But it does mean you don’t get to push people out of your life just because being around them reminds you that they’ve moved on. It does mean you can’t cling so hard to the past that you miss what God’s doing with your present. Relationships will change and awkward moments when my friends are all talking about the hilarious thing that happened at work will surely arise, but through all that I get to trust that even though this isn’t the place I expected to be, it’s the place I’m supposed to be. 

Things I Learned from Braden's Week at Camp

• The human earlobe can hold a lot of dirt.
• There are some socks too foul to spare.
• The “sanitary” setting on my washing machine is a God-send.
• Absence indeed makes the heart grow fonder. I’ve never seen my kids love on each other the way they did when Braden came home.
• A homely stuffed squirrel wearing an Eagle Lake t-shirt is never as special as when it’s given to a four-year old girl by her eight-year-old brother.
• Being the oldest child is a big deal. Addison assumed the role with vision and zeal.
• Despite all evidence to the contrary, Braden deeply cares for his sisters.
• I love watching my kids do the things they’re good at. I’m even prouder when I watch them keep trying when things don't come easy .
• Just as important as the fun of camp is the hardship of camp.
• Little boys were made to shoot rifles, bows, and baskets.
• To a little boy, even a pine cone is a weapon.
• Eight-year-old boys can survive quite nicely without anything electronic.
• You can’t put a pricetag on watching your kid learn how to turn his attitude around.
• It’s worth the extra 50 bucks to send your kid to camp when it’s actually summer. In Colorado, that means the last week of July.
• Ziplines are fun for kids and frustrating for mothers who are bad with cameras.
• Eagle Lake is more personal and more professional than I ever knew. They also make the boys bus the girls’ trays. Enough said.
• College students have as much energy as toddlers and don’t drool as much.
• I would make a lousy camp counselor.
• I make my best parenting decisions when I’m using my common sense, not following my heart.
• People named Tiny are rarely tiny. Kids find this amusing.
• Being invited to join one game of Nuke-em can change a kid for days.
• Our job is not to rescue our kids from difficulty but to direct them to the only true Rescuer.
• Camp teaches parents just as much as it teaches kids.

Camper Boy

My son’s fearlessness is baffling me. He leaves today for camp, and from what I can tell, he’s not taking a single worry with him. No anxiety, no butterflies in the belly. Nothing but his wide-eyed, eight-year-old self.

Like camp mothers before me, I lovingly washed and labeled each piece of his clothing yesterday. While pondering the odd sensation of writing with a Sharpie on Superman underwear, I also thought of the two-year-old boy who howled and sobbed when we dropped him off at the church nursery for 90 minutes. We bribed him with everything imaginable, but when at last he thought to bring his Pooh Bear along—combined with just the right teacher who eagerly included Pooh in all the snacks and crafts—his screaming subsided and we were able to go to church peacefully.

I thought of the one-year-old little boy with a death grip around my neck at our “Mommy and Me” swim class. Now he’s counting the minutes until he can be launched off the blob, into an icy lake, by some portly 11-year-old. He smiles at the idea of riding the zipline—the longest in North America, I might add—over this same lake.

I also thought of the sequence of events in my own life that have brought us to this day. I visited Eagle Lake Camp for the first time in 1994. Many days in my 20s were spent writing stories about camp for The Navigators and interviewing parents about their children’s experiences. And with just a blink of an eye (and 31 hours of labor), I’ve now become one of those parents.

I thought of Dawson Trotman and Lorne Sanny—the first Navigator leaders who started Eagle Lake in 1957—and their passion for ministering to young boys. They knew this is where you reach a man’s heart—inside the body of a boy. I thought of the many men I’ve met through The Navigators over the years, men with such depth of character and sold-out commitment to God. These are qualities I pray for my son, and I know they take root early on. Kevin and I do all we can to nurture that process along, but the investment and influence of a 21-year-old godly dude on a zipline will go further than I’ll ever know.

The undies are labeled now, the clothes are packed, alongside Braden’s Bible and a little notebook he requested to use as a journal. I tried to throw in a comb, but was told, “If you pack that, I’m not gonna use it.” (This journey is as much about me letting go of control as it is about Braden, I think.) The only one around here who seems wrought with emotion is me, even though I know he’ll be fine. My friend Craig, who used to run the camp back when I was writing about it, used to come down the mountain every August and say, “Well, no one died and no one got pregnant. It was a good summer.” I’m fairly certain neither of those things will happen to my boy, either. Much more likely, he’ll come down the mountain with a new sense of adventure and confidence, a jumble of incredible memories, and a heart more sensitive to the God of the universe. Not bad for $350 and a little separation anxiety for mom.

Perspective: The Gift of Time

Last Thursday, May 29, marked the 20th anniversary of my dad’s death. I was finishing up my last week of finals during my junior year of high school when he succumbed to his two-year fight with cancer. "Surreal" is the only word to describe my whole junior year. When I look back on it now, I wonder how I maintained such a dual life—acting the part of a carefree teenager by day but coming home to a father whose body was so riddled with bed sores that his flesh was literally rotting off his body before our very eyes. The fact that my dad was also my high school’s football coach made our private pain all the more public and the duality of my existence harder to hide. That memorial day in 1988 brought a lot of relief with it—an end to the suffering, the wondering, the fear of the worst. The worst happened on that day as I stood in the dark hospital room with my mom and brother, holding my dad’s hand as he slipped away, but I now see how it was really for the best.

I’ve written an essay about my experience with my dad’s life and death, and I’ve told most of the people who know me well all about it. There’s no need to rehash it here, but suffice it to say that my 17 years with my dad shaped my views of grace, forgiveness, and family as much as anything in my life. My dad was a flawed human being whose flaws spilled out all over me. His determined search for success and significance made my childhood unstable and lonely. His struggles with rage and discontentment made me fearful and resentful. But that was when I was a child.

I now see him as an adult. I’m only seven years younger now than he was when he died (and I remember thinking, at 17, “Well, at least he lived a good long life and made it to 44!”), and I have been separated from him long enough to see him as a man instead of as my dad. I can see a lot more good, like that he was a lot of fun, he had good friends, and he did everything with passion. As a football coach, he was also a powerful influencer of the young men he coached and invested in. And in the end—the very end—he was even the kind, caring daddy that every little girl longs for.

Everyone wonders if it would be best to die suddenly or to battle a horrible disease yet have the time to say goodbye. In our case, the time to say goodbye was one of the biggest blessings of my life. Cancer is an evil monster. It smells and debilitates and destroys, but for my dad and me, it healed. I can see now, as an adult, that God used his sickness to transform his life, and to transform mine in the process. My 20-years-later perspective gives me firm footing on Romans 8:28 as I see how God truly is working for our good, even through our pain and unanswered questions.

I also mark this anniversary with a heavy awareness that my everyday words and actions are making a permanent impression on my children. I pray they will extend much grace to me as they look back on their childhood years. I am a flawed parent as well. My flaws are different from my dad’s, but they are stems from the same root—a struggle to find my way, get my way, and have others see things my way. Parenting, unfortunately, can bring out the worst in us all. When this happens in our house, I pray I’m not messing them up too much, ask for forgiveness, and trust that God will continue working for our good even when I'm at my worst. It’s also these times that fill me with more grace for my own flawed parent and make me most thankful for the merciful gift of time and perspective.

A Little Effort Goes a Long Way

I had to write my last post quickly, and it lost good examples as a result. But this example is too fun to leave unsaid.

My husband worked longer hours than usual the past week and a half. On top of that, he had to work at the front counter of his business, meaning his interaction with people was constant. This would be no sweat for some people, but since he's a big-time introvert, it's draining for him. Instead of throwing kids at him and hosing him down with details about our day—as I've done for years—one night we greeted him at the door with a thank-you worthy of his hard work. In just 15 minutes, we were able to shove the toys out of sight, clean off the always-buried table, set it with fancy glasses and place settings (Addison's specialty), throw a salad together, light some candles, and turn on music geared more for adults than preschoolers.

It took just another ten minutes for me to put on a dress (three of those minutes were spent searching the depths of my closet to see if I actually owned a dress), locate and affix jewelry, touch up hair and makeup and pray the perfume bottle I found hadn't fermented since its last use in 1993. The girls followed suit and dressed themselves up, too. Braden shook his head and asked repeatedly, "Why are we doing this again?"

Kevin stumbled through the door and stopped dead in his tracks. We were all standing in the kitchen, clean and smiling, hollering, "Welcome home, Daddy!" How do I know how much it meant to him? Because he couldn't make it through his blessing of the food without breaking down as He thanked God for all of us. And if I needed further affirmation, it came a couple nights later when he cleaned the refrigerator—that's right, ladies, every single crusty, stinky, nasty shelf AND the crisper!—while the kids and I were out. Completely unprompted.

My "welcome-home/thanks-for-your-hard-work" surprise took less than a half-hour. I served a frozen pizza for dinner! I'm not Martha Stewart and I didn't try to be. I just put on a dress and showed my husband some well-deserved appreciation.

I share this only to trigger your own imagination and plant the seed of suggestion. I'm the last person who's going to show anyone up in the domestic goddess department. I didn't even think of it on my own. My energy and creativity are as low as the rest of you; my point is that it took so little energy and creativity. And the result was more than I ever could have imagined. Husbands want to be appreciated. (Don't we all?) They want to feel like we care that they're home, and not just because the toilet won't flush or something needs killed or we need them to watch the kids. I thought Kevin always knew this instinctively. He didn't. He needed my actions and not just my words.

The truth about having it all

About five years ago, I attempted to write a novel about a woman trying to have it all. I got 100 pages into it and quit—mostly because it was excruciating work, but also because I couldn’t adequately articulate her struggle. The message she grew up with—the same one I grew up with—was that she could have it all and that to settle for anything less was an assault on modern womanhood. I wanted to show that it’s not possible, that “having it all” is a lie, but I didn’t have a good enough grasp myself on why it doesn’t work to continue trying to convince others. So I quit. An offense to modern womanhood, I’m sure.

Now I’m reading another book that’s helping me grasp what I didn’t five years ago. I’ve mentioned it before; it’s Dr. Laura’s book on the Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands. I can’t remember the last book that I found so eye-opening. I HIGHLY recommend it—in fact, I think it should be required reading for all vaguely dissatisfied, grumbly wives.

The ones getting the short end of the “You can have it all” message are the husbands. And when they get the short end, the whole family loses.

The biggest threat to marriage today is not gay unions, porn, or decreasing family values. It’s selfishness. I don’t know how to address selfishness with men, but reading this book is a good place for women to start. Most of us are blind to our own selfishness, choosing instead to see the speck in our husband’s eye instead of the plank in our own. But it’s there, trust me. I’ve spent the past few months getting well acquainted with my own selfishness, acknowledging its presence and destructive tendencies in my life, and asking God for forgiveness and change. I have miles to go in learning to be the kind of wife God designed me to be, but I think Kevin would say I’ve completed the first lap.

I don’t think women have any clue the position of power we hold in our families. We are the influencers. We set the tone. We are the agents of change. If a wife is desperate for change in her marriage, she’s got to start with herself. That takes a lot of humility and honest assessment. It’s hard work and it’s not much fun, but I’m seeing firsthand that the payoff is worth it. My marriage is the one area in which I'm holding out hope that I really can have it all.

No Mind Can Conceive

Our family has stumbled on an Australian recording artist who specializes in Scripture memory for kids. His name is Colin Buchanan, and his songs rival Veggie Tales in their “stuck-in-your-mind” effect. This is a good thing since his words are God’s words. If you see our green minivan rolling down I-25 at 7:55 in the morning, you can pretty much bet that we’re rockin’ with Colin.

We’ve become so familiar with the music that we speak of Colin like an old family friend, and the kids occasionally say “pawth” instead of “path.” Even 13-month-old Camryn is hooked. We’re pretty sure she’s shouting out, “God does!” at just the appropriate time in the appropriate song. (It’s either that or “gouda,” and we’re not really fancy-cheese people.)

I ended up paying about $20 to get two CDs shipped from Australia, but how can you squawk over twenty bucks when your kids have memorized dozens and dozens of verses within a month? (Dawson Trotman would be so proud!)

Kevin and I are learning them, too, because, well, it’s hard not to. Of course they are Scriptures I’ve heard repeatedly, but some of them have embedded themselves in my heart in a new way thanks to Colin. One of these is 1 Corinthians 2:9, which Colin sings as if he’s got a sinus infection. (He sings every song in a different style—patriotic, Negro spiritual, Beyoncé-esque—so they don’t all sound the same. Very helpful, if slightly weird.) “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind can conceive of what God has prepared for those who love him.”

I wrote last month that after losing a baby, my heart has become more heaven-oriented. In the months after Catherine died, I devoured books and articles on heaven. I think this is a fairly common course of action for those who lose a loved one. I tried to wrap my brain around heaven, tried to do just what 1 Corinthians 2:9 tells me I can’t—conceiving of what God has in store for us. It’s kind of fun to try, but it’s also futile. Our brains weren’t created to understand the fullness of heaven. We can’t conceive of it. All we can do is look forward to it.