Overshadowed

Overshadowed. It's not a positive word to most of us. It brings to mind someone who feels unseen, overlooked, and like they'll never measure up. The dictionary definition confirms that: "to cause someone or something to seem less important when compared to someone or something else." 

So I'm a little surprised to find myself meditating quite a bit on the word overshadow right now. Like many people, I'm doing advent reading right now, and twice in the past week this word from Luke 1:25 has come up. I don't remember really noticing it before. 

The context is Mary receiving word from the angel Gabriel that she would conceive a child who would be the Son of the Most High. The angel went on to say some other mind-boggling things to Mary, but she seemed to be stopped at the idea of conceiving a child. Whatever the extent of first-century Jewish sex education, young Mary knew enough to know that her being pregnant was impossible. 

And so despite being "greatly troubled" by the appearance and announcement of this angel, Mary bravely asked a completely reasonable question: "How will this be?"

This is where the "overshadow" thing comes in. The angel, showing no sign of frustration or impatience with her question, answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you." 

The devotional I was reading made this good point: "It is important to note that Gabriel does not tell Mary that God will respond to her incomprehension by explaining things, or making her happy, or easing her experience of that to which she is called. Instead, in answer to her confusion, Gabriel tells Mary that God's power will overshadow her."*

How often do I ask, "How can this be?" God's call can seem so high and so hard, even when He's not asking me to be an unwed teenager carrying the Son of God. 

He wants me to love my neighbor as myself? (Does that mean I actually have to meet my neighbor?) Teach the Bible to a room full of squirly kids who are only there for snacks? Parent four very unique kids with very unique needs? Honor my husband? Deny myself? Consider my trials as joy? Trust Him and live with peace in a world that feels completely out of control? How, Lord? How can it be that I can carry out what you ask of me? 

Mary was asking about the impossibility of a virgin being pregnant, but surely her question also included, "How will I ever be able to do what you ask of me?" 

"The Most High will overshadow you" was Gabriel's answer to Mary. As I am not a Bible scholar, I will not attempt to analyze exactly what that means in theological terms. But it's pretty simple to understand what it means for me and you. My translation:

"What concerns me today, when compared to the greatness and power of the Most High God, is of little importance. While patient with my questions, He completely overshadows my concerns. The stuff of life that seems so consuming to me today pales in comparison to the awesome and eternal Lord God Almighty." 

Suddenly, overshadow has gone from a distasteful word to my new favorite prayer word. Luke 1:35 gives me words to pray in times of stress and confusion and doubt: "Overshadow me, Lord!" 

*Alea Peister, November 30 entry of Biola University's Center for Christ, Culture, and the Arts Advent Project, which I highly recommend. 

The Paradox of Launching Kids

We are recently back from another one of those trips. The kind where after months of online research, I enthusiastically trek across the country with one of my kids to look at a college that she will surely fall in love with. It's a productive, satisfying kind of trip, but it always ends in the most bittersweet place. 

I'm preparing another kid to move a thousand miles away from me. (To be accurate, my kid in Texas is only 787 miles away, but the one in Virginia is 1,568 from home, and the third, if she lands in Tennessee like I think she will, will be 1,316 miles away, so let's call it an average of a thousand.)

Nothing is more exciting to me than seeing my kids bravely step out in faith and start finding their own way in this world. It's what we, their parents, have been working toward since the day they were born. Come on, you can do it, learn to fall asleep on your own. Stand up on those two feet and move on your own. Learn to speak for yourself. Make your own choices. Pick your own friends. Manage your own schedule. Own your own faith. And when the time is right, choose your own path, even if takes you a thousand miles from home. 

But in this case, tremendous joy, relief, and thankfulness coexist with gut-wrenching sadness. 

After reading something my friend Megan wrote about her Empty Nest-obia (such a great term), I sat down and immediately cranked out a lengthy response. She hit a nerve. Much of what I write below comes from that response to Megan, along with a few new thoughts and, if you make it to the end, some questions for those of you who are further down the line on this one than I am.

I grew up wanting to be a famous journalist and nothing else. Marriage and children were not really part of my formula. All I wanted was a big career. 

Twenty-six years later, I've logged only two years of full-time employment, and that was at The Navigators, not a place where famous journalists are made. While I'm exceedingly thankful for the meaningful work I've been able to do over the years (and the countless babysitters who made that possible), I have found that instead of a successful career, the most soul-satisfying part of my life has been raising four kids. (And how in the world did I end up with four? For someone like me, four might as well be twenty. The only answer I have is that I liked the person I was becoming more and more each time I had another baby to haul around. Self-sacrifice was so, so good for me.)

I can't say I loved the baby stage of life. I more endured it but really began to hit my parenting stride right about the time they turned 4. With no vision for homeschooling and a great charter-school option, I was happy to let them go off to school and do their thing while I worked. But I kept my schedule free enough to attend all their events, volunteer in their classrooms, sit at home and play games with them on snow days, lead Bible studies for them and their friends, and do hours upon hours of AWANA with them. I couldn't imagine life being any better than that.

Then one day in about 2015, at the height of my bliss, I was standing in line at the post office and heard Pomp and Circumstance, which brought me to tears. Lots of them. In the post office. I spent the next three years dreading my oldest child's graduation. In 2018, when we dropped him off at college 1,568 miles from home, I cried for three days, including the day of my 23rd wedding anniversary. I wasn't crying just about him. I was more crying over my season of life, the sending-off season. I was crying over my youngest leaving home, and she was 11 at the time. I was crying at the thought of having to watch them leave one by one, knowing that they would take a piece of me with them every time and that I might not have anything left by the time the whole ordeal was over. 

Since then, God and I have done some deep work, and my perspective has shifted. My hands are less clenched, my focus is much less self-centered. I have vision and excitement for the good work He is doing in my kids. COVID helped. When my 2020 grad was actually able to go to college and wasn't stuck at home doing online homework in her bedroom, I was thrilled for her to go. 

Now I find myself with yet another senior (they just keep coming!), and my new focus will be seriously tested. This one, since she was 4, has been talking about living outside the U.S. She wants to love on little kids around the world and tell them about Jesus. Ugh. The nerve. 

Just kidding. 

There's nothing more I want for her than to follow God's will for her life, wherever that takes her. After all of her dreaming about being a missionary, I think I would be more sad if she spent her life living next door to me. But still. Seeing her once every couple of years? Ouch!

Next year we'll be down to just one. One who plays multiple sports, is in the school musical and student council, and finds many other ways to give us good practice at living with an empty nest. In God's providence, she is three years younger than her sister, so we'll get to keep her for what seems like an extra year. 

Even with nearly four years left, I  have to fight hard nearly every day to keep Empty Nest-obia from stealing my joy. It's the quiet house that terrifies me. I like quiet when I'm trying to read or write or work, but I also love the noise of a busy house. I also happen to be married to a very quiet person. What will it be like to live in this quiet house? What will we do on a Tuesday night if we're not eating pizza in the car on the way to a basketball game? What will we do with ourselves? Who will we be?

I have to surrender my phobia to God over and over and over again. My identity is not in being a mom to these four kids. We were raising adults all along. We want them out of our house, living their own lives. We did our job reasonably well, and we can let them go. God has new assignments and adventures for us in our next stage of life. These are my mantras. They are the truths that help me fight off my fear and dread for another day. 

If you've made it to the end of this and are a parent five, ten, or twenty years ahead of me, I'd love to hear from you. How did you transition to your empty nest life? How is it good? How is it hard? What advice do you have for those of us who are relutantly joining you? 

 

What Mere Mortals Can and Can't Do to Me

 It's an unfathomable dilemma for someone who's lived all 50 of her years in the United States, but I still try to imagine it. What would I do if I lived in a country facing imminent doom? Would I hunker down in my house, knowing that at any moment men could knock down my door and kill me? Or would I risk my life to try to make it to an airport and onto an unlikely last flight out, knowing that the airport could quite possibly serve as my final resting place in the likely event of another terrorist attack? I know myself. I never choose the scary, high-risk option. I would stay in my house and hide. 

As I've done so many times over the past two weeks, I was contemplating this scenario in my sleepless, pre-dawn hours today. Of course I was also wondering what I would make for dinner this week and how to help my 17-year-old boost her SAT score (legally), as well as a thousand other things, so I got out of bed and opened up J.I. Packer's Knowing God, which I've been reading this summer. The passage before me early this moring contained Scriptures like these:

"When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose words I praise; in God I trust and am not afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?" (Psalm 56:3-4)

"If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31)

These are great, necessary verses. I know them by heart. I can quote them to people at just the right time. But would I really believe them if someone was pointing a gun at me?

Packer's words are helpful: "The translation 'who can be against us' is wrong and misses Paul's point: what he asks for is a realistic review of the opposition, human and demonic, not a romantic pretense that it does not exist. ... Such unrealism is no requirement of Christian discipleship, but is rather a mark of failure in it." 

OK, so I'm not supposed to say, "Enemy? What enemy? I deny that I even have an enemy!" The enemy standing before me is very real, whether it's ISIS or the Taliban or a mugger on my street or a virus in my community. We're not supposed to hide our heads in the sand and tell ourselves there's no threat because God would never let that happen. Sometimes, for reasons we usually don't understand, He does let those things happen.

So what do these verses tell me?

First, that God is "for" me. Packer tells me that this is the language of covenant relationship, the same kind of promise that God made to Abraham and that I have inherited as a follower of Christ: "What is being proclaimed here is God's undertaking to uphold and protect us when people and circumstances are threatening, to provide for us as long as our earthly pilgrimage lasts, and to lead us finally into the full enjoyment of himself. ... The simple statement 'God is for us' is in truth one of the richest and weightiest utterances that the Bible contains." 

So God is for me, and that's very good news. But what about the gun that's pointed at me? Or the grim medical diagnosis? Or my general aversion to anything that could hurt me?

Here Packer reminded me of a great truth. It's something I know deep down, but every day it gets muted by all the screaming evidence to the contrary. The most true, most real, most substantive part of my life is not my beating heart or my sentient mind. It's not my relationship with my family and friends or what I do for a living. It's not the experiences I've had in the past or the concerns I have for today or the hopes I have for the future. It's certainly not the schedule of events telling me what I need to get done today.

My real, true life is invisible. It's spiritual. It's eternal.

Mere mortals can kill me. They can stop my heart and put my body in a grave. So can viruses, cancer, brain aneurysms, poisonous snakes, mountain lions, crashing planes, and carbon monoxide. God doesn't promise that they won't. But nothing can kill my real life, "neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate [me] from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39). 

If you are a follower of Jesus, nothing can take away your life. To live is Christ and to die is gain. I pray that will be the last thought of those in far-away countries who are martyred for their faith in Christ. I pray it will bring peace and courage to the Christian servicemen and women whose lives are at great risk as they help people evacuate today. And I pray it will keep the rest of us from being so afraid of the things that haunt us in the night.  

Burdens

Remember three weeks ago when all the country was talking about was whether Simone Biles was a wimp or a hero? Yeah, I know, COVID was in the news like it is every day, but Simone Biles was a really big deal. And now, as it so often does, the world has turned on a dime. We're watching dumbstruck as unbelievable events happen in Afghanistan. And Haiti. For a second, we could distract ourselves with the Olympics and debates over masks in schools, but the loud, ugly, horrible things in this world will not be ignored for long. 

My heart aches. My soul groans. "Enough!" I want to shout. "We can't carry any more burdens!"

Then, of course, I remember Jesus talking about burdens. You may know what He said, too, but it's worth writing out and reading again:

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:28-30). 

This morning as I was praying, I just had to ask: "Jesus, how can your burden possibly be light? I know only the tiniest fraction of what's going on in the world, and my load is so heavy that I'm about to collapse under it. You know it all. Every bit of it. And yet your yoke is easy and your burden is light?"

I'm not ever going to understand it. I just have to trust it and take Him up on His offer. He is so much greater, unfathomably greater, than I am that He can bear the heartbreaks of the entire world, across all generations, and still have plenty of capacity to bear mine. 

The God Who Is

"I just can't worship a God like that." 

It's the watchword of our day. (Watchword: a word or phrase expressing a person or group's core belief.)

Who is the group expressing this core belief? All of those who think they can go through the Diety Salad Bar and pick and choose their own god. The onions are not for me, but can I get more of those croutons? 

I'll take a heaping portion of the "love of God," but that "wrath of God" is not my thing. I just don't like it. A God who's judgmental, who tells me what I can and can't do? That leaves a bad taste in my mouth. A jealous God who says things like, "The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies" (Nahum 1:2-6)? No thanks. And who's Nahum anyway? I don't like him either. Why do I need to listen to him? (Nevermind that the phrase "wrath of God" appears dozens of times in both the Old and New Testaments.) No, I can't stomach the thought of a God who makes that big a deal about sin. Or who calls people "sinners" when God's supposed to be about love and acceptance. That's a God on the wrong side of history. I just can't worship a God like that. 

What we've become is a people who want to make God in our own image. 

It doesn't work that way. 

God is the Creator of the universe, the all-powerful, all-knowing Ruler of heaven and earth. His name is "I AM WHO I AM" (Exodus 3:14), not "I am who you want me to be." 

We don't get to pick and choose who God is. We only get to choose how we will respond to the God Who Is. He's told us everything we need to know to make that decision. He has revealed who He is through the Scriptures and through the Son He sent to earth. It's up to us to learn who He says He is and then decide, "Will I follow Him or not?" That's the only "choosing" we get to do. 

I spend my days writing Bible studies, and I sometimes wish I could be God's PR agent. "Can we tone it down here a bit, God? Don't you think this sounds a little harsh?" "Couldn't we finesse this, you know, make you come across more loveable and less fierce?" "Let's find a way to make this a little more palatable; after all, we're trying to reach people, here." 

God doesn't need my attempts at good PR. God is who He is. His Word is His Word. He's not trying to win a popularity contest. He's about saving our souls. And so He tells us the truth, and that truth can be uncomfortable. 

True discipleship is getting to the point where we can say, "OK, God, I'm yours no matter what. I'm yours when the text is hard and I don't like it.  I'm yours when what you say roars against the cultural sentiments of my day. I'm yours when you call out my sin and tell me to stop. I choose your way over my own way."

This is surrender. This is what it means to call Jesus "Lord." 

I relate to Peter and the other disciples in John 6. Jesus was doing some amazing things, like feeding the 5,000. But He was also saying some pretty freaky things. Confusing stuff about eating His flesh and drinking His blood. This makes sense to us now as a preview of the Lord's Supper, but to the crowds listening to Him in real time, it just sounded weird. Many of the people who had been following Him said, "This is hard teaching. Who can accept it?" (John 6:60), and they walked away. Some of them probably walked away forever. 

Then Jesus asked the 12 disciples if they wanted to leave, too. Peter answered for the group: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God" (John 6:68). 

From the day I met Him 40 years ago, Jesus has captivated me. From the time I got serious about following Him 10 years after that, I've been all in. I believe He is the Son of God. I believe He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and the only way I can be reconciled to God the Father. I believe that He lived a perfect life, was crucified for my sin, and through His resurrection has given me the hope of eternal life. He gets to tell me how to live, and I will do all I can to obey. 

But do I still struggle with the "hard teaching" in the Bible? Do I have a hard time wrapping my head around a God of love who's also a God of wrath? Yes. And yet like Peter I say, "Where else will I go? You alone, Lord, have the words of eternal life. I have come to believe." 

There is only one God. He is eternal and unchanging. He is who He is. Follow Him or don't, but don't ever think that you can cast Him in your own image. 

The Great In-Between

There's a pizza place in Colorado Springs that's as much local historical site as it is restaurant. It's been open since 1973. It seats 500 people. The staff wear costumes ("Victorian Western") from the 1800s. The player piano provides background music like "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain"--until Christmas, when the music changes to carols and synchronizes with the lights on the Christmas tree. My husband has been a regular at this place since he was a little boy. It was the first restaurant each of my four babies ever visited. Our kids practically grew up there, enjoying hundreds of flaky-crusted pizzas with extra small pepperonis and spending hundreds of their Grandpa's quarters in the game room. There was a good long season of our lives where we never left the place without a couple sticky whips and a handful of hard Tootsie Rolls from the vending machine. 

As it did with so many businesses, the pandemic took its toll on our pizza place. It stumbled through 2020 on takeout orders before closing indefinitely in December. 

And then the beginning of this month, it reopened, just in time for us to celebrate a family birthday last weekend. 

The building looks the same. The busy red carpet with all its stains and the dingy lace curtains were the same. The staff uniforms were mostly the same. But all the life was gone. The room was dark and the player piano was quiet. The pizza tasted weird. The service was terrible. It was all sort of the same but very different. 

It's a metaphor for all of life right now. 

We're sort of on the other side of COVID. Except people are still getting sick and dying, and the word "surge" is not going away. We're sort of free to roam about the country, except that gas is outrageously expensive and hotel rooms are hard to come by. Don't even think about trying to rent a car. 

People are starting to return to their office buildings, but it's not the same. Now you can work from home a couple days a week if you want to. Meetings that used to happen in conference rooms now happen over Zoom, even when participants are in the same building. 

At a basketball tournament in Dallas last week, we were crammed elbow-to-elbow in a gym, but permanent lettering on the doors say that masks are required. A few people here and there wear them, but most don't. Some wear them around their chins, which seems like an interesting choice. 

It feels like we're pretending to be "back to normal" when nothing really is. 

Will hotel housekeeping ever come make up the beds and deliver clean towels again?

Will the "free hot breakfast" offered at so many hotels ever be more than individually-packaged muffins and granola bars stuffed in a brown bag?

Will I ever sit inside a Chic-fil-A again?

Will I go back to getting out and helping the guy who brings me my online grocery order as he loads up my car?

Will restaurants and businesses ever have enough employees again?

Will the government ever stop sending us random checks in the mail?

Will we ever again be able to sneeze in public without getting uncomfortable looks?

Will there come a day when the answer to every "why" question is something besides, "Because of COVID"?

Will my kids go back to school with no fear of quarantine? Will they be able to handle going to five days of school a week, in person? 

Will we put disagreements over masks and vaccines behind us and try to get along? And then will we just find something else to fight about?

None of our new normal is a surprise to God. And He built adaptability into our DNA (some of you got more than others of us), so we get used to new things pretty quickly. This great in-between world in which we find ourselves is weird and we have no idea what tomorrow holds, but it's still true that we know who holds tomorrow. Because of that, I can endure the weirdness and keep adapting. But could my pizza just go back to normal? 

How, then, shall we live?

This past week, we honored my father-in-law with a celebration of life. We didn't have Father's Day in mind as we planned it, but it feels appropriate to have thoughts of that service lingering in my mind as we honor fathers today. In addition to being a great father himself, he also raised a couple boys who grew up to be great fathers, too. 

A few thoughts from this week of celebrating his life:

1. We've all heard that no one, at the end of their life, says, "I wish I would have worked more." More recently, in light of our culture today, I've heard it said, "No one says, 'I wish I had been more entertained.'" The list could go on and on. I wish I'd done more heavy drinking. I wish I'd fooled around on my spouse more. I wish I'd told more lies, criticized more people, bought more stuff I didn't need. No one says these things. 

I'm thinking about what I will say at the end of my life. What will have mattered most, and is that reflected in how I spent my time today? 

2. I'm probably not going to invent some technology that changes the world. I'm not going to cure cancer. When I die, the only pillar of my existence that I'll leave behind will be the impact I've made on other people. Will the people who are expected to speak at my funeral do so willingly and eagerly? Will they be able to say what they really thought of me, or will they have to be careful with their words to avoid "speaking ill of the dead"? We didn't have to censor our words about Grandpa J. We were proud to talk about him just as he was, and we were honored to get to share our stories of him. My youngest daughter said of her grandpa, "I didn't see my grandpa out sharing the gospel, but I saw it in the way he lived his life and how he treated the people around him." If I'm lucky enough to have grandkids someday, may they see the gospel that clearly in me. 

3. We know so little about people, even those closest to us. I knew my father-in-law for 27 years. I saw him once or twice a week during those years. But I didn't really get to know him until he passed away two months ago and I began writing his story. I learned that in third grade, he and his twin brother decided to stop dressing alike. That he was the captain of his high school basketball and football teams for two years. That he met his wife by asking her to do the cha-cha. He was baptized in the South China Sea and spent a year apart from his wife and baby girl when he was stationed in Thailand. He fell asleep with his glasses on and his open Bible on his chest. 

Why don't we ask more questions? Why don't we get to know more about the people we love while they're still with us? Why do we watch six years of a TV series and become completely involved in the lives of fictional strangers, and yet we know so little about our own loved ones? 

And finally, this. If people are going to have a celebration of life for me someday--if they're going to take off work, buy a new dress, wear a tie, and sit in a hot church on a summer day (oh, please, Lord, take me home in the summer and not in the winter)--I want to have lived a life truly worth celebrating. A life that makes my children proud. A life that demonstrates the saving grace of God. 

Grandpa J/Larry/Dad, you were a man who was always finding something to give to others, and I thank you for giving me this final gift: a clear picture of what it looks like to live well, finish well, and be remembered well. Enjoy your first Father's Day with your Eternal Father. I love imagining what that must be like.