I've read a lot about prayer over the past two years. What I haven't heard, until now, is this:
"When it comes to the sacred, God commands us to proceed with caution.While others quickly judge God's actions and question His commands, we are to be careful even to speak His name. We don't carelessly question His actions or inaction.While others rush into prayer with opinions and demands, we cautiously approach His throne with reverence. Like the high priest entering the Holy of Holies, we are to treat prayer as sacred."
Leave it to Francis Chan, always one to rock my world with the truth, to remind me that prayer is a sacred thing. In the first chapter of his new book, Letters to the Church, he writes about how we are a culture of rushers. All of our lives are spent rushing because if we don't rush, we could get behind. Or worse, passed up. I totally get that. I am the poster child for rushing.
But approaching the throne of God is not to be a rushed affair. Why not? Well, for starters, there's this:
"Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong. Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few." (Ecclesiastes 5:1-3)
Where has this passage been all my life? I've been told repeatedly to spill my heart out to God, to tell him my every concern, to ask him my hardest questions, to beat down His door with my requests. There is biblical support for all of this, but now I know to place these things within the context of Ecclesiastes 5:1-2.
My prayer life has increased drastically in recent years. But what does that really mean? That I'm spending more time going through my long list of requests? It does sometimes feel like I'm reading off my shopping list. There's just so much. I take seriously God's call to intercede for the people in my life. I pray salvation for the lost and for those who have been deceived by false religion. I pray freedom for those held captive by fear, addiction, doubt, and a hundred other things. I pray for my leaders and for my nation, for forgiveness and healing. I pray for wisdom every day, for myself and for the people I care about. These are good prayers, all of them, but they're often hasty prayers, too. And never are my words few.
Since I started meditating on these verses from Ecclesiastes, I've tried to be more of a prayer listener and less of a prayer talker. Holy smokes is that hard! Especially for a mom who's just sent her first child to college and could easily spend two hours a day making requests to God for him. There's nothing that requires more focus and discipline than shutting down the chatter in my head to make space for listening. I think I may be up to about a minute now, after working on this for weeks.
It helps to picture an Old Testament priest approaching the Holy of Holies. He must feel this is the reason for his existence. He has prepared for it for an entire year. His whole body has been purified. He enters in slowly, cautiously, unsure if he'll even make it out. He never forgets this is holy ground. Sacred work. Certainly nothing to be rushed.
No high priest could have imagined that a soccer mom in Colorado, dressed in spandex, flanked by an unruly dog, and walking around a field full of weeds would some day have the same privilege. God, guard my steps as I approach your throne. Teach me to listen. Let my words not be the sacrifice of fools.
Sunday, September 16, 2018
Tuesday, August 28, 2018
A Long Goodbye
Alzheimer's Disease is known as the long goodbye, but sending a kid off to college could give it a run for its money. Mine left a week ago. I feel like we started preparing 18 years ago. The ramping up began in earnest four years ago in high school. Our college visits began the summer before junior year. Then came the PSAT, the ACT, the SAT, and the copious emails from the school counselor's office, all natural triggers for a mother's inborn goodbye reflex. The one she works feverishly to squash.
Senior year. Just one big farewell, capped off with a graduation week that seems to stretch on for all eternity, endless parties (posing as celebrations, but really goodbyes), and perhaps a goodbye family vacation. Summer? More goodbyes. Goodbye, grandmas and grandpas. Goodbye aunts, uncles, cousins, high school friends, and Fargo's Pizza. Last week as the departure date arrived, it was goodbye sisters, goodbye bed, goodbye home. I cried my eyes out in the driveway as my son and my husband started off on their long drive across the country. But oh no, that was not the last goodbye.
I flew out a few days later to meet up with the guys in Virginia. There we had the goodbye hotel night, the goodbye nice dinner, the goodbye Target run. Ninety-six hours of goodbyeing, until I was completely worn out. But then it was Sunday, the Big Goodbye Day. After goodbye church and goodbye Egg McMuffins, we were finally at the end.
Except that we weren't, because there is no end. Goodbyes are an ongoing requirement of parenting. From the moment we leave that baby with grandma for the first time to eek out a two-hour meal between feedings until we're on our death beds, we say one goodbye after another to our children.
They may go against maternal instinct to gather our young and keep them close, but goodbyes don't have to be bad. Goodbyes are actually kind of exciting. (Not to mention a better option than a basement full of unemployed 30-somethings.) There are overwhelming life events like accidents and cancer, fires and floods, that are devastating. But there are overwhelming life events like births, marriages, and new jobs that are beautiful and hopeful. Sending your kid to college is one of these. It feels a little overwhelming to everyone involved, but it's the good kind of overwhelming. Something really hard but really, really good.
I find that if I stay focused on looking forward through the lens of Braden's future instead of backward through the lens of his time with me, I'm practically giddy about this overwhelming life event. (By the way, those words aren't mine. Thankfully there are very wise, eloquent people who have done this before and offer help for the rest of us.) If I discipline my mind to focus on joy and gratitude, there's not nearly so much room for the sadness. I picture it like a big, sludgy pot of emotions. There are about a hundred of them in there, but if I keep stirring, very intentionally, the joy rises to the top and the sadness settles at the bottom.
Yes, there are times when I open the pantry and realize the graham crackers are going to go stale because no one eats them but Braden. There are moments when I put the strawberry milk back in the grocery store cooler because Braden's not here to drink it. There are times when I have to walk into his remarkably clean room to deposit the last pair of straggling socks that didn't make it into the suitcase. That's when I have to stir the pot hard.
It's not that I feel the need to chase the tears away. Tears are a natural part of processing overwhelming life events, and they can be very therapeutic. But I want them to come from a place of joy, gratitude, and hopefulness, not a place of despair.
The past 15 months, and especially the past two weeks, have left me with goodbye fatigue. But they've also given me perspective on what it means to love a child so much that you want what's best for him, regardless of the cost to yourself. I can do this. I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. I can keep letting my children go, keep saying goodbye, keep stirring that pot.
Senior year. Just one big farewell, capped off with a graduation week that seems to stretch on for all eternity, endless parties (posing as celebrations, but really goodbyes), and perhaps a goodbye family vacation. Summer? More goodbyes. Goodbye, grandmas and grandpas. Goodbye aunts, uncles, cousins, high school friends, and Fargo's Pizza. Last week as the departure date arrived, it was goodbye sisters, goodbye bed, goodbye home. I cried my eyes out in the driveway as my son and my husband started off on their long drive across the country. But oh no, that was not the last goodbye.
I flew out a few days later to meet up with the guys in Virginia. There we had the goodbye hotel night, the goodbye nice dinner, the goodbye Target run. Ninety-six hours of goodbyeing, until I was completely worn out. But then it was Sunday, the Big Goodbye Day. After goodbye church and goodbye Egg McMuffins, we were finally at the end.
Except that we weren't, because there is no end. Goodbyes are an ongoing requirement of parenting. From the moment we leave that baby with grandma for the first time to eek out a two-hour meal between feedings until we're on our death beds, we say one goodbye after another to our children.
They may go against maternal instinct to gather our young and keep them close, but goodbyes don't have to be bad. Goodbyes are actually kind of exciting. (Not to mention a better option than a basement full of unemployed 30-somethings.) There are overwhelming life events like accidents and cancer, fires and floods, that are devastating. But there are overwhelming life events like births, marriages, and new jobs that are beautiful and hopeful. Sending your kid to college is one of these. It feels a little overwhelming to everyone involved, but it's the good kind of overwhelming. Something really hard but really, really good.
I find that if I stay focused on looking forward through the lens of Braden's future instead of backward through the lens of his time with me, I'm practically giddy about this overwhelming life event. (By the way, those words aren't mine. Thankfully there are very wise, eloquent people who have done this before and offer help for the rest of us.) If I discipline my mind to focus on joy and gratitude, there's not nearly so much room for the sadness. I picture it like a big, sludgy pot of emotions. There are about a hundred of them in there, but if I keep stirring, very intentionally, the joy rises to the top and the sadness settles at the bottom.
Yes, there are times when I open the pantry and realize the graham crackers are going to go stale because no one eats them but Braden. There are moments when I put the strawberry milk back in the grocery store cooler because Braden's not here to drink it. There are times when I have to walk into his remarkably clean room to deposit the last pair of straggling socks that didn't make it into the suitcase. That's when I have to stir the pot hard.
It's not that I feel the need to chase the tears away. Tears are a natural part of processing overwhelming life events, and they can be very therapeutic. But I want them to come from a place of joy, gratitude, and hopefulness, not a place of despair.
The past 15 months, and especially the past two weeks, have left me with goodbye fatigue. But they've also given me perspective on what it means to love a child so much that you want what's best for him, regardless of the cost to yourself. I can do this. I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. I can keep letting my children go, keep saying goodbye, keep stirring that pot.
Friday, August 17, 2018
Ambassadors
It's been a rotten week for the church in America. At least the public image of the church. The country's most influential church appears to be falling apart at the seams, rocked by another leadership scandal. Pastors seem every bit as likely as politicians, Hollywood executives, and professional athletes to be called out for their poor behavior. And the state of Pennsylvania has just released the most scathing report ever on the history of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, with at least 300 priests and more than 1,000 victims identified.
Such a great paradox between what we read in the news and what we read in the Bible. We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. We are His ambassadors. God makes His appeal through us. The church is the body of Christ. We bear His very name! And yet we drag it through the mud.
What does it mean to be Christ's ambassadors? It means we represent His kingdom. We show others what it's like, what He's like. And yet we fail at this all the time. Where He is faithful, we are faithless. Where He is kind, we are nasty. Where He is holy, we are just like everyone else.
He's not surprised by any of this. He knew how we'd fail, and yet He still trusted us with the most important of assignments. He put His good news into our hands, and He told us to take it out to a hurting, needy world. It blows my mind. If He had asked me, I would have said, "Oh, no, God. This is a bad idea. These people can't even be trusted to show up to worship on time. They're easily distracted, self-absorbed, messy. They're dust, Lord. Redeemed yes, but still just dust. They'll make a mockery of your great name. Don't entrust this to them."
But I wasn't there. And He knows infinitely more than my little mind can ever hope to grasp. This was the way He chose to make Himself known on the earth--through messed up dust like us--and it is the way that is best. I have to trust Him on that. And I have to believe that whatever harm His people are bringing to His name, even more good is being done.
Such a great paradox between what we read in the news and what we read in the Bible. We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. We are His ambassadors. God makes His appeal through us. The church is the body of Christ. We bear His very name! And yet we drag it through the mud.
What does it mean to be Christ's ambassadors? It means we represent His kingdom. We show others what it's like, what He's like. And yet we fail at this all the time. Where He is faithful, we are faithless. Where He is kind, we are nasty. Where He is holy, we are just like everyone else.
He's not surprised by any of this. He knew how we'd fail, and yet He still trusted us with the most important of assignments. He put His good news into our hands, and He told us to take it out to a hurting, needy world. It blows my mind. If He had asked me, I would have said, "Oh, no, God. This is a bad idea. These people can't even be trusted to show up to worship on time. They're easily distracted, self-absorbed, messy. They're dust, Lord. Redeemed yes, but still just dust. They'll make a mockery of your great name. Don't entrust this to them."
But I wasn't there. And He knows infinitely more than my little mind can ever hope to grasp. This was the way He chose to make Himself known on the earth--through messed up dust like us--and it is the way that is best. I have to trust Him on that. And I have to believe that whatever harm His people are bringing to His name, even more good is being done.
In his book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam reported
that Christians are significantly more likely to give money to the homeless,
return excess money to a shop clerk, help a sick neighbor, spend time with
someone who's depressed, and help someone find a job. People who regularly
attend church give four times as much to charity as their secular neighbors.
They are twice as likely to volunteer with the poor, the sick, and the
elderly.
These are just the small
things. They don't include the Christians who provide loving homes for one
foster child after another, who feed, clothe, and welcome refugees, who bring
new life to addicts and prisoners. I've not seen many national news stories on
Christians who leave the comfort of their western homes to lay pipes for fresh
water in El Salvador, to love street children in India, to rescue
sex-trafficked girls in Thailand, to teach grown-up orphans in Russia how to be
good mothers. Yet these things happen every day.
We are Christ's ambassadors. We
represent His kingdom in our service, our love, our joy, our patience, our
perseverance, and our hope. I look at myself, nearly defeated by something as mundane as a couple weeks
of plumbing woes, and wonder at God's use of someone like me. He could have
chosen angels, and yet He chooses to use regular, flawed people like you and
me. His power is perfected in our weakness. His light shines through our
frailness. His name rises above the scandal of the week. In all this, He knows
what He's doing.
Monday, July 30, 2018
Hills and Valleys
Our family of six just returned from a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Hawaii. Eight days with no responsibilities, no projects, no deadlines or work. Hour upon hour of leisure time. Our only appointment was the nightly sunset, which we never missed. Our hardest decision: Should we spend the day snorkeling with exotic fish, swimming with giant sea turtles, or taking a nap? And the best part for a mother who's about to send her firstborn child across the country was that all six of us were together, soaking up every minute of familiness. Ah, the good life.
Then we came home. After making that brutal all-night flight where you're up for 26 straight hours, we arrived home to a plumbing crisis. The kids called the thing that happened in our basement a poo geyser. In order to maintain the dignity of this blog, I will refer to it as an eruption of raw sewage. (Really, though, their term is much more descriptive). Whatever you call it, it was nasty. And did I mention we'd been up for 26 hours and traveling for 12? The sewage was flowing; the clear thinking and effective communication were not.
Some days you get to swim with sea turtles. Some days you get to wade through raw sewage in your basement.* What a metaphor for life.
One day you're giving your kids a rich cultural experience and shaved ice, and the next your 11-year-old is going to the bathroom at 4:30 in the morning in the dog run because she's afraid to flush.
This week, I have a clear demonstration of the hills and valleys of life. Both are doing their good work in me. Trying to be thankful for both. Without the valleys, I'm not sure the hills would be so sweet.
*I personally did not have to wade through any sewage. The men in our family soldiered through it nobly, and with only minor gagging.
Then we came home. After making that brutal all-night flight where you're up for 26 straight hours, we arrived home to a plumbing crisis. The kids called the thing that happened in our basement a poo geyser. In order to maintain the dignity of this blog, I will refer to it as an eruption of raw sewage. (Really, though, their term is much more descriptive). Whatever you call it, it was nasty. And did I mention we'd been up for 26 hours and traveling for 12? The sewage was flowing; the clear thinking and effective communication were not.
Some days you get to swim with sea turtles. Some days you get to wade through raw sewage in your basement.* What a metaphor for life.
One day you're giving your kids a rich cultural experience and shaved ice, and the next your 11-year-old is going to the bathroom at 4:30 in the morning in the dog run because she's afraid to flush.
This week, I have a clear demonstration of the hills and valleys of life. Both are doing their good work in me. Trying to be thankful for both. Without the valleys, I'm not sure the hills would be so sweet.
*I personally did not have to wade through any sewage. The men in our family soldiered through it nobly, and with only minor gagging.
Monday, July 16, 2018
Loving the Weird
You wake up one day in the middle of your life, and everyone else starts to look weird. In the first place, they're all really young. Their skin is covered with what they call art but what looks to you like weird, indiscriminate lines and swirls that all look the same on everyone. Their hair is extreme, and a lot of them have purposefully put large holes in their ears and noses. Their clothes don't seem to be doing the job they were intended to do. Sometimes these people are filling their cars with inordinate amounts of smoke. Vaping? I still don't quite get it.
You see these people and you begin to wonder, What has become of us?
It's happened for generations. It's the reason why the words "generation gap" exist. It's just that now I find myself on the other side of the gap, and my natural instinct is to look down on those standing across that great chasm. The judgment comes so quickly. I barely notice it sneaking up on me. It seems to run roughshod over all the biblical truth I know at my core: Love one another. Be kind and compassionate. Do not judge lest you be judged.
Apparently this phenomenon is not reserved only for the middle-aged. My kids struggle with it too. They've grown up in quite the homogeneous world, despite our two-year cross-cultural adventure living in our car repair shop. (In that part of town you see the truly weird, like a prostitute walking down the street with a pig on a leash; but alas, the kids may have been a bit young to be shaped by it.) For the majority of their lives, they've gone to school, church, band concerts, and soccer practice with people who pretty much look just like them.
And then this summer my oldest daughter got a job. She works at a hotel/adventure park staffed primarily by older teens and 20-somethings. Some of them look like her, but some do not. And even those who look like her didn't grow up much like she did. They swear. A lot. They take smoke breaks. They struggle with big issues that she hasn't had to deal with. They're unfamiliar with stability. And, here's the thing: They're really, really nice.
This discovery, that outside of high school you can appreciate and enjoy people who are completely different from you, has changed my girl. In just a month, I've seen her open up more. She's more comfortable with herself and with other people. She can make chitchat with people she has nothing in common with. And that age-old phrase we've all said a hundred times but rarely apply--"Don't judge a book by its cover--is becoming real to her.
Do you know how contagious this is? When I see it in her, I want it in me! So I've found myself at stop lights, in Walmart, at the gym looking at the "weird" people and saying to myself, "I love them." I'm not sure at this point how much I actually mean it, but making that my go-to internal dialogue is a step in the right direction.
I do love them in theory. I love that they are human beings created in the image of God, that they each have their own story, that they're all journeying through this hard life with enough strength to get up and buy cereal, work out, or take their kids to the movies. Loving them in theory is a big first step toward where I want to be, loving them in practice.
You see these people and you begin to wonder, What has become of us?
It's happened for generations. It's the reason why the words "generation gap" exist. It's just that now I find myself on the other side of the gap, and my natural instinct is to look down on those standing across that great chasm. The judgment comes so quickly. I barely notice it sneaking up on me. It seems to run roughshod over all the biblical truth I know at my core: Love one another. Be kind and compassionate. Do not judge lest you be judged.
Apparently this phenomenon is not reserved only for the middle-aged. My kids struggle with it too. They've grown up in quite the homogeneous world, despite our two-year cross-cultural adventure living in our car repair shop. (In that part of town you see the truly weird, like a prostitute walking down the street with a pig on a leash; but alas, the kids may have been a bit young to be shaped by it.) For the majority of their lives, they've gone to school, church, band concerts, and soccer practice with people who pretty much look just like them.
And then this summer my oldest daughter got a job. She works at a hotel/adventure park staffed primarily by older teens and 20-somethings. Some of them look like her, but some do not. And even those who look like her didn't grow up much like she did. They swear. A lot. They take smoke breaks. They struggle with big issues that she hasn't had to deal with. They're unfamiliar with stability. And, here's the thing: They're really, really nice.
This discovery, that outside of high school you can appreciate and enjoy people who are completely different from you, has changed my girl. In just a month, I've seen her open up more. She's more comfortable with herself and with other people. She can make chitchat with people she has nothing in common with. And that age-old phrase we've all said a hundred times but rarely apply--"Don't judge a book by its cover--is becoming real to her.
Do you know how contagious this is? When I see it in her, I want it in me! So I've found myself at stop lights, in Walmart, at the gym looking at the "weird" people and saying to myself, "I love them." I'm not sure at this point how much I actually mean it, but making that my go-to internal dialogue is a step in the right direction.
I do love them in theory. I love that they are human beings created in the image of God, that they each have their own story, that they're all journeying through this hard life with enough strength to get up and buy cereal, work out, or take their kids to the movies. Loving them in theory is a big first step toward where I want to be, loving them in practice.
Monday, June 25, 2018
The God Who Sees
El Roi. As much as it sounds like a type of dog food, it's actually one of my favorite names for God. It means the God who sees. In the book of Genesis, we find out that God revealed this name to a scared, rejected young woman named Hagar who had no place to go and no one to turn to. God came to her in her desperation and told her, "I see you," and gave her instructions for what to do next. He saw her and made a place for her, and her life was changed.
In the 17 months I've been walking Oakley around the prayer track in my backyard, I've addressed a lot of prayers to El Roi. I've asked God to see people who felt like they've fallen off His radar. We all know that "stuck" feeling, when it's like God is moving in everyone's life but our own. I've walked alongside several people in that situation, praying that El Roi would show up for them in a clear way. And one by one, I've seen their lives change, just like Hagar's. Jobs and opportunities have opened up out of the blue. We may think that God is slow to act, but when He does act, it's quick and definitive.
My friend Tracie waited on God for years. When I met her in 2011, I was instantly drawn to her story and her heart for overseas ministry. She grew up as a missionary kid in Indonesia, which immediately made my ears perk up. My daughter has been talking about Indonesia since she was 4, and since I know next to nothing about this far-away country, I was eager to learn more from Tracie. As our conversations continued and our friendship grew, I learned that no matter how much she loved her life in Colorado, a quiet longing lay just below the surface. She packed lunches, drove carpool, and cheered her kids on at track meets just like the rest of us, but I always had the sense she and her husband were made for a different place. It would be a long journey, filled with waiting and wondering, to get them there. Seasons of unemployment and long weeks of separation while her husband worked out of state stretched their faith. She introduced me to the words "fighting for hope" not just by saying them, but by practicing them. Job interview after job interview. Hopes up, hopes dashed. "God, El Roi, where are you?" I cried. "Do you see this family? Why won't you act?" And the months went on and on.
They weren't looking for anything extraordinary. Just a job and to be together under one roof. But the extraordinary found them. The God Who Sees had been knitting together the pieces of their story for 25 years, and He unfurled it before them all at once. Quickly and decisively. An invitation came out of the blue, could Jess and Tracie come to the Philippines and serve as house parents at a boarding school for missionary kids? The same school that Tracie had attended and graduated from more than 20 years ago? Could these parents of four boys live with and love a houseful of other boys whose parents are serving Jesus all across Asia?
The pieces began falling into place. All the waiting. All the closed doors. The years of longing. The thousands of prayers offered up. This couple who had come together because of their shared love of ministry, missions, and kids had received their call. In a whirlwind span of only a few months, they applied, were approved, found a sending agency, shared their vision, completed the daunting task of raising support, rented their house, and finished well their relationships and responsibilities in Colorado. Along the way, they modeled patience, faithfulness, and courageous obedience to their children and their friends. They gave people like me, so nicely settled in middle-aged comforts, the thrill of seeing what it looks like to radically follow Jesus wherever He leads.
More than anything else, I see through their story El Roi at work, doing one of the things He loves to do best. I think He loves to say to His children, "Of course I see you! I've never taken my eyes off of you. I've been with you every step of the way, orchestrating things you couldn't begin to imagine."
This bolsters my faith. I need to be reminded that El Roi not only sees, but that He cares. And He acts. When I see how much God loves Jess and Tracie and their boys, how much they matter to Him and how He has been working for their good through every rejection and trial, I can come before the throne of God with greater confidence. I can believe that He hears my prayers, that He sees all the other people I'm still praying for. People who think they're unseen and can't quite believe their lives matter to God. People who are fighting for hope and losing.
Keep fighting. Keep believing. God sees you, and He cares.
In the 17 months I've been walking Oakley around the prayer track in my backyard, I've addressed a lot of prayers to El Roi. I've asked God to see people who felt like they've fallen off His radar. We all know that "stuck" feeling, when it's like God is moving in everyone's life but our own. I've walked alongside several people in that situation, praying that El Roi would show up for them in a clear way. And one by one, I've seen their lives change, just like Hagar's. Jobs and opportunities have opened up out of the blue. We may think that God is slow to act, but when He does act, it's quick and definitive.
My friend Tracie waited on God for years. When I met her in 2011, I was instantly drawn to her story and her heart for overseas ministry. She grew up as a missionary kid in Indonesia, which immediately made my ears perk up. My daughter has been talking about Indonesia since she was 4, and since I know next to nothing about this far-away country, I was eager to learn more from Tracie. As our conversations continued and our friendship grew, I learned that no matter how much she loved her life in Colorado, a quiet longing lay just below the surface. She packed lunches, drove carpool, and cheered her kids on at track meets just like the rest of us, but I always had the sense she and her husband were made for a different place. It would be a long journey, filled with waiting and wondering, to get them there. Seasons of unemployment and long weeks of separation while her husband worked out of state stretched their faith. She introduced me to the words "fighting for hope" not just by saying them, but by practicing them. Job interview after job interview. Hopes up, hopes dashed. "God, El Roi, where are you?" I cried. "Do you see this family? Why won't you act?" And the months went on and on.
They weren't looking for anything extraordinary. Just a job and to be together under one roof. But the extraordinary found them. The God Who Sees had been knitting together the pieces of their story for 25 years, and He unfurled it before them all at once. Quickly and decisively. An invitation came out of the blue, could Jess and Tracie come to the Philippines and serve as house parents at a boarding school for missionary kids? The same school that Tracie had attended and graduated from more than 20 years ago? Could these parents of four boys live with and love a houseful of other boys whose parents are serving Jesus all across Asia?
The pieces began falling into place. All the waiting. All the closed doors. The years of longing. The thousands of prayers offered up. This couple who had come together because of their shared love of ministry, missions, and kids had received their call. In a whirlwind span of only a few months, they applied, were approved, found a sending agency, shared their vision, completed the daunting task of raising support, rented their house, and finished well their relationships and responsibilities in Colorado. Along the way, they modeled patience, faithfulness, and courageous obedience to their children and their friends. They gave people like me, so nicely settled in middle-aged comforts, the thrill of seeing what it looks like to radically follow Jesus wherever He leads.
More than anything else, I see through their story El Roi at work, doing one of the things He loves to do best. I think He loves to say to His children, "Of course I see you! I've never taken my eyes off of you. I've been with you every step of the way, orchestrating things you couldn't begin to imagine."
This bolsters my faith. I need to be reminded that El Roi not only sees, but that He cares. And He acts. When I see how much God loves Jess and Tracie and their boys, how much they matter to Him and how He has been working for their good through every rejection and trial, I can come before the throne of God with greater confidence. I can believe that He hears my prayers, that He sees all the other people I'm still praying for. People who think they're unseen and can't quite believe their lives matter to God. People who are fighting for hope and losing.
Keep fighting. Keep believing. God sees you, and He cares.
Sunday, June 10, 2018
A Parent's Best Friend
"Maturity is your best friend." If I've said it once to a mom or dad walking this parenting road a couple paces behind me, I've said it a thousand times.
When my son was about 18 months, we were visiting my mom when he started to fuss over not getting something he wanted. I'd read Love and Logic, so I knew how to handle this. I would let him know his fussing had consequences. I told him we would have to go home if he kept it up. That only riled him up more, until he was on the verge of a full-fledged meltdown. Still, I pressed on, trying to keep my controlled Love and Logic voice despite his wails: "Braden, by screaming, you're making a choice to leave Grandma's house. Is that what you want to do?" No response, just more melting. Then my mom, apparently more aware than I was that this child was 18 months old and probably didn't understand complex decision-making processes, stepped in with something he actually could have, a simple toy he could play with. He perked up, stopped crying, and we were all able to enjoy each other again.
My son was acting like a baby. Because he was a baby. Concerned that by not dealing with this willful episode head on I would create a rebellious teenage drug-addict degenerate, I tried to parent a baby in a way that wouldn't be effective for a couple more years. Most of the Big Parenting Issues I've encountered over the years were not handled by my brilliant, well researched parenting, but by maturity. My kids' maturity has been my dearest friend.
When I see a younger mom frantic that her son will never be generous with his toys, I try to encourage her that maturity is going to do its part to rectify that. When a little girl can't be separated from her mom for more than five minutes, I remind that mom that maturity will do its work. Just this weekend, I dropped off my big girl at a band camp two hours away without another soul that she knew, and I remembered that 16 years ago she would barely let me out of her sight to use the bathroom. Oh, how maturity has done its good work in her.
As I watch one child of mine preparing for his freshman year in college and another preparing for her freshman year in high school, I see the work of maturity up close. One seems so ready to go, having outgrown what we can teach him here, while it's hard to imagine the younger one being in that spot four years from now, when today she can't even make toast. But maturity will do its work, I have no doubt.
It makes me wonder, then, why we resist getting older. Does maturity cease to be our friend after we turn 21? 30? 45? Do we really get to the point where we say, "Yes, this is it. I'm the best me I'm ever going to be, and I'd like to stop learning and growing right here"? Surely not, but that's sort of what we're doing when we grumble about aging.
It's true that age itself is not making us better. Science tells us that our bodies start declining before we're even old enough to rent a car. Age takes our muscle tone and flawless skin, our hair and our eyesight and our hearing. It takes our speed, which is going to be a hard one for me to swallow. But age doesn't just steal from us; it gives back. If we let it, it gives us maturity. And maturity gives us wisdom, understanding, depth, perspective, compassion, and contentment. It does makes us better--better husbands, wives, children, parents, and friends. Better human beings.
I may not welcome Age when it shows up at my door each October, but if it brings its friend Maturity with it, I will treat it as a welcome guest.
When my son was about 18 months, we were visiting my mom when he started to fuss over not getting something he wanted. I'd read Love and Logic, so I knew how to handle this. I would let him know his fussing had consequences. I told him we would have to go home if he kept it up. That only riled him up more, until he was on the verge of a full-fledged meltdown. Still, I pressed on, trying to keep my controlled Love and Logic voice despite his wails: "Braden, by screaming, you're making a choice to leave Grandma's house. Is that what you want to do?" No response, just more melting. Then my mom, apparently more aware than I was that this child was 18 months old and probably didn't understand complex decision-making processes, stepped in with something he actually could have, a simple toy he could play with. He perked up, stopped crying, and we were all able to enjoy each other again.
My son was acting like a baby. Because he was a baby. Concerned that by not dealing with this willful episode head on I would create a rebellious teenage drug-addict degenerate, I tried to parent a baby in a way that wouldn't be effective for a couple more years. Most of the Big Parenting Issues I've encountered over the years were not handled by my brilliant, well researched parenting, but by maturity. My kids' maturity has been my dearest friend.
When I see a younger mom frantic that her son will never be generous with his toys, I try to encourage her that maturity is going to do its part to rectify that. When a little girl can't be separated from her mom for more than five minutes, I remind that mom that maturity will do its work. Just this weekend, I dropped off my big girl at a band camp two hours away without another soul that she knew, and I remembered that 16 years ago she would barely let me out of her sight to use the bathroom. Oh, how maturity has done its good work in her.
As I watch one child of mine preparing for his freshman year in college and another preparing for her freshman year in high school, I see the work of maturity up close. One seems so ready to go, having outgrown what we can teach him here, while it's hard to imagine the younger one being in that spot four years from now, when today she can't even make toast. But maturity will do its work, I have no doubt.
It makes me wonder, then, why we resist getting older. Does maturity cease to be our friend after we turn 21? 30? 45? Do we really get to the point where we say, "Yes, this is it. I'm the best me I'm ever going to be, and I'd like to stop learning and growing right here"? Surely not, but that's sort of what we're doing when we grumble about aging.
It's true that age itself is not making us better. Science tells us that our bodies start declining before we're even old enough to rent a car. Age takes our muscle tone and flawless skin, our hair and our eyesight and our hearing. It takes our speed, which is going to be a hard one for me to swallow. But age doesn't just steal from us; it gives back. If we let it, it gives us maturity. And maturity gives us wisdom, understanding, depth, perspective, compassion, and contentment. It does makes us better--better husbands, wives, children, parents, and friends. Better human beings.
I may not welcome Age when it shows up at my door each October, but if it brings its friend Maturity with it, I will treat it as a welcome guest.
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