Picture Day

Here’s a definition of maturity that I heard recently: Being in distress and remaining your best self. I don’t know anyone who’s mastered that, but I can say for sure one of the times I am my least mature, worst self—school picture day.

Whose idea was it, exactly, to send our children off for a seven-hour day of school—a day which will include a soccer game in PE, a spill-fest in the cafeteria, and a few hundred twirls around the monkey bars—and have their picture taken? For the yearbook? Had to be a man. A man with sons. And why did God think I could be my best self with three daughters, anyway? Some days I wonder, and picture day is my most wondering day of all.

Was I my best self when my littlest girl wanted to wear a dress three inches too short or have her hair “all curly”? (I really stink at hair.) No, I wasn’t. What about when my middle daughter pulled out the most bizarre combination of clothes imaginable and called it dressing up? (Every year I send Brooka to school on picture day and wait for the call: “Mrs. Jones, you know it was a dress-up day, right? Not a costume day?”) Or when she plastered her bangs to her head with a water bottle, setting off a chain of events that led to her little sister toppling into the trash can and spilling dirty Kleenexes all over the floor? Um, no, not my best self. I also didn’t redeem myself when my oldest daughter—wearing her school uniform because I’ve learned not even to go there with her—needed to handle the chickens as we walked out the door—on picture day!

Was I my best self when the younger two wrestled on the floor over toothpaste, on picture day? (That’s freshly-curled hair in the line of toothpaste fire, you know!) No. Or when one of the girls couldn’t find her picture order form, the one I so carefully filled out the night before? No again. How about when we pulled up to school? My best self would say, “I love you, girls!” or “Be kind!” or “Love others well today!” My picture-day self hollered, “Be sure you pull your hair forward for the picture!” My best self, the one who cares about character and kindness far more than hair, just refused to show up. The sad thing is, I wasn’t even in distress. I was merely being stretched beyond my normal early-morning capacity.    

Slightly defeated, I returned home with two assurances. First, the grace of God covers a multitude of my failures. I'm so thankful. And second, I’ll have the opportunity to practice maturity all over again on next year’s picture day. (Although surely I can find a more attainable definition of maturity by then.)

(Dedicated to my friend Rebecca, who lives my parallel life about a mile down the road and whose daughters have even more hair than mine.)

Breaking the Addiction

My name is Leura, and I’m a chaos addict.

I got my first taste of it as a full-time college student working two jobs. By the time I became a working mom, I was hooked. My identity was sealed, and I loved it as much as I hated it: I was the Queen Juggler. The woman who hauled her breast pump into the office, her babies to out-of-town conferences, and her coworkers to ad-hoc meetings in the McDonald’s play area. The woman who squeezed in one last important interview 12 hours before her C-Section. The woman who edited the better part of a book with a pen in one hand and the other hand secured to the swimming suit straps of her one-year-old who toddled around the inflatable backyard pool.

Today there is no more job, there are no more toddlers, and the juggling balls have come to rest, at least to some extent. As activities director for a family of six, the juggling act is still alive and well. It’s just that my shift has changed, and now I find myself with seven chaos-free hours a day. Unnerving! I kept those balls in the air for so long—thrived on them, even as I cursed them—that I’m not exactly sure how to live life without them.

I’ve entered this still-and-quiet sort of phase, a place that’s foreign and awkward for a chaos junkie. Every part of me wants to keep up the juggling act, to just swap my old balls for new ones. That’s what a lot of chaos addicts do. But it’s not how God is leading me. While I’ve got lots of good ways to fill my time—Bible study, freelance work, volunteering, helping people in need—I believe God is telling me that I also need to embrace the quiet and to discover Him in it. The monks were probably onto something with their silence, solitude, and contemplation, and while those things scare the bejeebers out of me, if they are of God, how can I ignore them? 

It’s becoming more and more clear to me that busyness is an idol, and I have been one of its chief worshipers. Even worse, I’ve been proud of it. I’ve worn my busyness like a badge of honor. Busyness makes people think I’m important. It makes me think I’m important. My ego takes a serious blow every time I realize that no one’s expecting me anywhere, no one needs me anywhere. Busyness keeps me from true intimacy with God and other people. For years, I’ve been the last to arrive and the first to leave—because I was busy! Lingering just wasn’t something I did, yet lingering is often the gateway to true fellowship with others. More significantly, it’s often the door that leads to deeper intimacy with God, if only we will linger with Him and silence the voices that beckon us on to other things.

“Be still and know that I am God.” Ironic that this chaos addict has always loved that verse. The time has come to stop merely reciting it and start practicing it. Off I go. To be still. 

Your View of You

Ready for your deep thought of the day?

Your view of you is the greatest commentary on your view of God.

I wish that was original with me, but I’m not nearly that brainy. It’s from the book The Cure, written by the Truefaced guys, Lynch, McNicol, and Thrall. I could write for several hours on how The Cure rocked my world and nailed truth to my forehead, but I’ll stick with this quote for now.

I sometimes view myself as a slacker. And not just any slacker, but the worst kind of slacker. A spiritual slacker. I hear about people rescuing young girls from sex trafficking, adopting special-needs kids, finding jobs for homeless people, going on family missions trips, and I wonder what I should be doing to please God more. I’ve never doubted God’s love for me, but I’ve wondered if I was truly pleasing to Him. Sometimes I picture Him looking at me like a dad whose daughter ended up at community college when the dad hoped she’d be off to Harvard. Am I living the spiritual equivalent of a community college life when He intended Harvard for me? The Cure’s fictional character has had those kinds of thoughts, too. He puts it this way: “He’s disappointed in me. But He loves me enough to keep holding on. I know He won’t leave me.  . . . I just didn’t turn out like He hoped.”

But if that quote is true, if my greatest commentary on God is my view of myself, what do my slacker feelings say about God? And what do they say about Jesus’ own words, recorded in John 6:28–29:

“What exactly does God want us to do?” the people asked. Jesus answered, “God wants you to have faith in the one he sent.”

Do I not believe Jesus? Why do I—and so many other people—think I have to strive so hard to please God when faith is all He asks for? If I believe I can’t be fully acceptable to God until I’ve earned enough gold stars to please Him, then I don’t believe His Word. If I don’t believe I’m a saint, just the way I am today, regardless of whether I spend the day preaching the gospel to the poor or lying in bed watching movies, then I don’t believe Christ’s death was enough to purchase my righteousness. I’ve made God into a liar and Jesus’ death on the cross a sad, futile waste.

But when I believe that I am redeemed, that I am righteous, that I am a saint who is fully, wholly, totally pleasing to God and that there’s nothing in the world I could do to make Him love me more—then and only then am I rightly seeing God. 

Your view of you is the greatest commentary on your view of God.

So how’s your view of you today?