"If someone asked me if I loved my wife, I'd say of course I do. I love her so much I'd give my life for her without a second thought. But if we're on a road trip and she wants to eat at Subway and I want to eat at Taco Bell, I will fight her tooth and nail to get what I want."
Though not verbatim, my pastor shared this example about a year ago while teaching on love. Do you know that feeling when a speaker says something and time seems to stop? Everyone else in the room disappears, and it's like he called you out and began speaking specifically to you? That's what happened to me when he gave that example.
Months prior to hearing that message, my husband had asked me to go on a Mediterranean cruise with him. In the 20 years we've owned our business, he has earned several trips through one of his suppliers, and several times, he has asked me if I would be willing to go. Each time, I've said no. Without a thought. The reason is because the trips are always in early May, and we have four children. I don't want to do the work or miss the activity that being gone in May would require.
My sweet husband was not asking me to dig ditches, foster feral kittens, move back into the shop, or watch ten hours of motocross in the hot sun (that one he's asked before). He was asking me to take what other people might call the trip of a lifetime, with him. I had enough sense to reluctantly agree to the cruise because it seemed so important to him, but when he asked about adding on extra days at the end of the cruise, I snapped back that he would need to find someone else to take with him, because there was no way I was going to be gone "extra days" in May.
The only way this makes sense is if you're a mom who has lived through May before. Dumping four children on someone else for 12 days during the most insane time of the year feels like irresponsible parenting. Then sign one of those kids up for competitive soccer and the other for three sports in one season, add in three music lessons a week and four AP tests, Awana, youth group, birthday parties, and a dozen events that require 10 bucks and a dozen cupcakes, and it feels sickeningly indulgent and utterly undoable. If the trip had been in June, I would have kicked up my heels and bought a copy of Italy for Dummies. But May? All I did was grumble.
And then my pastor shared his little story. It was like a news-alert scroll was turned on inside my head. The message running loudly through my brain was this: "Want to know how to love your husband well? Do what he wants to do. And do it cheerfully."
It is humbling to realize that all it takes to bring out your ugly is for your husband to invite you on a cruise at the wrong time of year. But humbling is not a bad thing. In this case, a good dose of Holy Spirit humbling gave me a kick in the seat to start changing my attitude. It was slow going for a good, long while. I lived in absolute dread of having to plan schedules and line up rides for children whose lives we can barely manage ourselves. Sure enough, it has been a ton of work. My brain feels like it's been tossed into a blender. I have had to do battle with that guilty sense of indulgence that taunts me at every turn. I have had to remind myself often why I am doing this. I will have to make a conscious choice on Saturday morning at 10:58 a.m. to turn off the all-powerful carpool mom part of my brain and rediscover the fun wife part. But that's what I'm going to do.
Because what greater thing can a wife give her husband than the gift of her full attention? For 12 days? In May? How can she demonstrate more clearly that she loves him than doing what he wants to do? Cheerfully?
(And probably the Mediterranean won't be so bad either.)
Thursday, April 27, 2017
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Eleven Witnesses
I wonder if anyone has had their whole life come down to one minute? A minute in which all that they'd been taught, all they'd been hoping for, all that mattered in the world to them was fulfilled. A minute that knit together every day of their past and radically shaped every day of their future?
That's what happened to eleven men in Jerusalem. For three years, they had been following around this man named Jesus. They had seen him do many unexplainable things and heard him speak of mysteries beyond their understanding. He was strange, but he was also their friend. They trusted him. They trusted him enough to give up everything and follow him all around the countryside, doing whatever he said.
They were good Jewish boys. Their mamas and daddys had taught them well. They knew the Scripture; they followed the Law. They knew that Yahweh had promised them a Messiah, a rescuer who would save God's people and rule forever. Just about the time they began to think that Jesus might be the One they were waiting for, just about the time they were thinking he would stick it to the Roman leaders and set up Jewish rule once and for all, something crazy happened. He died. His body was put in a tomb. And that was that.
"What in the world was that about?" they must have wondered.
Could they eat? Sleep? I don't think so. All they could do was wonder, and weep, and stumble through what must have been the greatest disappointment of all time.
But then their moment came. THE moment. And it happened so simply.
One minute they were alone, and the next he was there with them. He appeared out of nowhere, very much alive. They were so startled they thought he was a ghost. He knew how jarring his appearance would be, so he let them examine his nail-scarred hands and feet. He ate with them. And then he did something that must have seemed to them even more amazing than raising from the dead. He put every second of every day of their entire lives in context.
He said something like this: Everything you've hoped for your entire lives, every lesson you ever learned, every law you ever followed, every scripture you ever memorized was all about me. This life? All about me. This world? All about me (and, by the way, I created it). The future? All about me.
"Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, 'This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things'" (Luke 24:45-47).
Grief and confusion and disappointment were immediately sucked out of the room. "Ah-ha" moments broke out. Connections were made. Lives, on the spot, were changed, never to be the same. The world was changed, never to be the same. And it all began with those eleven.
Sometimes I marvel over what it's like to be alive right now, in this moment in time. On my watch, the world changed at the hands of technology. The world I was born into looks nothing like the one I inhabit now. I think that's pretty amazing. I wonder how I got to be a witness to such things.
But it doesn't hold a candle to what those eleven in Jerusalem witnessed, when all of history and all of eternity converged in that one holy moment.
He is risen. And this crazy world make sense.
That's what happened to eleven men in Jerusalem. For three years, they had been following around this man named Jesus. They had seen him do many unexplainable things and heard him speak of mysteries beyond their understanding. He was strange, but he was also their friend. They trusted him. They trusted him enough to give up everything and follow him all around the countryside, doing whatever he said.
They were good Jewish boys. Their mamas and daddys had taught them well. They knew the Scripture; they followed the Law. They knew that Yahweh had promised them a Messiah, a rescuer who would save God's people and rule forever. Just about the time they began to think that Jesus might be the One they were waiting for, just about the time they were thinking he would stick it to the Roman leaders and set up Jewish rule once and for all, something crazy happened. He died. His body was put in a tomb. And that was that.
"What in the world was that about?" they must have wondered.
Could they eat? Sleep? I don't think so. All they could do was wonder, and weep, and stumble through what must have been the greatest disappointment of all time.
But then their moment came. THE moment. And it happened so simply.
One minute they were alone, and the next he was there with them. He appeared out of nowhere, very much alive. They were so startled they thought he was a ghost. He knew how jarring his appearance would be, so he let them examine his nail-scarred hands and feet. He ate with them. And then he did something that must have seemed to them even more amazing than raising from the dead. He put every second of every day of their entire lives in context.
He said something like this: Everything you've hoped for your entire lives, every lesson you ever learned, every law you ever followed, every scripture you ever memorized was all about me. This life? All about me. This world? All about me (and, by the way, I created it). The future? All about me.
"Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, 'This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things'" (Luke 24:45-47).
Grief and confusion and disappointment were immediately sucked out of the room. "Ah-ha" moments broke out. Connections were made. Lives, on the spot, were changed, never to be the same. The world was changed, never to be the same. And it all began with those eleven.
Sometimes I marvel over what it's like to be alive right now, in this moment in time. On my watch, the world changed at the hands of technology. The world I was born into looks nothing like the one I inhabit now. I think that's pretty amazing. I wonder how I got to be a witness to such things.
But it doesn't hold a candle to what those eleven in Jerusalem witnessed, when all of history and all of eternity converged in that one holy moment.
He is risen. And this crazy world make sense.
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
Snow Day!
It's April, and mothers everywhere are a hot mess. OK, maybe not all mothers; maybe it's just those of us who have kids in school. And maybe it's not everywhere, but it's certainly everywhere I'm looking.
April is the beginning of the end. We're rounding the corner of the home stretch. There's a light at the end of the school-year tunnel. It's faint and there are a hundred obstacles between here and there, but just knowing it's there encourages us onward. But the final stretch is almost always the hardest. We break out into a sweat as 3:00 arrives, knowing it's a dead sprint until bedtime. We live out of our cars and eat out of crockpots and drive-thru's. We shiver through soccer games, baseball games, and track meets. We fix hair and tune instruments and drive, drive, drive to rehearsals, concerts, and recitals. We pack sack lunches for field trips and clear our schedules to chaperone them. We throw birthday parties and buy presents for other people's kids. We take in treats to keep the teachers encouraged. We feed and urge on the older kids studying for SATs and AP exams.We try to remember that we are wives and have some interaction with our husbands beyond who's picking up whom and please don't forget the cupcakes. We attempt to keep all this up while maintaining our own friendships, work obligations, fitness regimens, and spiritual disciplines.
(Yes, spring break was just last week, but "break" is an oxymoron when you spend 41 hours in the car with your children. Our time visiting colleges was productive, but there was no "break" involved, and certainly no recharging for the month of April.)
Then we wake up to snow. Lots of it. And the messages start rolling in. School cancelled. Meeting at work cancelled. Soccer cancelled. Track cancelled. Piano lesson cancelled. Band concert cancelled. The children who were scheduled to within an inch of their lives now get to spend the day building snow men in the yard. Everyone stays in their jammies. A party breaks out over cocoa and board games. Life as we know it has come to a screeching halt, and we can all stop and breathe.
I don't begin to claim to know how God works. But I think for harried mothers in states with erratic weather, He sends snow in April, His little present to remind us to slow down, actually enjoy our children, and focus on the goodness of this life.
April is the beginning of the end. We're rounding the corner of the home stretch. There's a light at the end of the school-year tunnel. It's faint and there are a hundred obstacles between here and there, but just knowing it's there encourages us onward. But the final stretch is almost always the hardest. We break out into a sweat as 3:00 arrives, knowing it's a dead sprint until bedtime. We live out of our cars and eat out of crockpots and drive-thru's. We shiver through soccer games, baseball games, and track meets. We fix hair and tune instruments and drive, drive, drive to rehearsals, concerts, and recitals. We pack sack lunches for field trips and clear our schedules to chaperone them. We throw birthday parties and buy presents for other people's kids. We take in treats to keep the teachers encouraged. We feed and urge on the older kids studying for SATs and AP exams.We try to remember that we are wives and have some interaction with our husbands beyond who's picking up whom and please don't forget the cupcakes. We attempt to keep all this up while maintaining our own friendships, work obligations, fitness regimens, and spiritual disciplines.
(Yes, spring break was just last week, but "break" is an oxymoron when you spend 41 hours in the car with your children. Our time visiting colleges was productive, but there was no "break" involved, and certainly no recharging for the month of April.)
Then we wake up to snow. Lots of it. And the messages start rolling in. School cancelled. Meeting at work cancelled. Soccer cancelled. Track cancelled. Piano lesson cancelled. Band concert cancelled. The children who were scheduled to within an inch of their lives now get to spend the day building snow men in the yard. Everyone stays in their jammies. A party breaks out over cocoa and board games. Life as we know it has come to a screeching halt, and we can all stop and breathe.
I don't begin to claim to know how God works. But I think for harried mothers in states with erratic weather, He sends snow in April, His little present to remind us to slow down, actually enjoy our children, and focus on the goodness of this life.
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