The banner we stand under: "dearly loved"

Hello dear friends!  The holidays are over.  We celebrated well with family and friends and now we are getting settled back into the routine of school and life.  I realized as we celebrated that this is one of the first years for quite a while that we haven't spent at least some time in the little city where I grew up. In years past we have traveled up to spend Christmas with my parents, and now they are already here!  Yay!!!  But then I realized that I really missed all the little moments of seeing lots of other people from our church there.  I tasted just a little of what has been hard for my parents. We had a lovely Christmas but I think that we all tasted a little bit of the loss in the midst of the festivities.
We are all making new friends in our new environment.  We love our neighbors and we are thankful to be here.  But the richness of life that comes with 36 years of friendships isn't replaced in 8 months.

I have learned one of the key components to harmonious community living is being able to identify and respect the things that are important to each other.  Fortunately for us most of the areas of what could be tension have been easily remedied.  For example, we keep 2 different kinds of coffee in the house.  We also have a coffee pot AND a pour over system.   Everyone might have an opinion on the best way to do certain things and we all have preferences but we are all pretty flexible and it works out well most of the time.

Sometimes it doesn't.  I probably don't really need to elaborate more than that.  Sometimes it is hard to be flexible and sometimes we aren't considerate of what is really important to the other people.*  There are 7 people who live in this house and more than half of us are "First Born Children". We may or may not have really strong opinions about THE RIGHT way to do things and sometimes I have found myself being really stubborn about a ridiculously insignificant detail.

So with that as the back drop I will share with you my favorite Christmas gift.  I had a plain canvas and I painted it black.  Then I painted in white the words "dearly loved" on the canvas.  It wasn't perfect but I was pleased with the outcome and it seemed appropriate that my best wasn't perfect.  I am not perfect at loving people.  I gave my imperfect painting to my parents for Christmas. 

Scott Krippayne wrote a song called "What if". 
... Love will erase the fear...
What if you lived like you were loved? 
 What if you did all the things your heart's dreaming of?
What if you sang your song at the top of your lungs?
What if you lived like you were loved?

It's thought provoking.  Do I really live like I believe that I'm loved?  Can I walk forward in confidence, knowing that it's okay if I fall on my face because the love of the Only One who really matters is unshakable. 

This was my favorite Christmas gift.  The reminder that we are Dearly Loved.  This is the banner that we stand under.  Love is a gift.  A gift that God gave first.  We give love and we receive love because HE first loved us.  So freely.

We live in house where people have different "right" ways to brew coffee and we have different opinions about other things too that are still too sensitive to write about and might never be funny to some of us. We have different priorities and different ideas about what is important in the moment.*  But we stand under the banner of "DEARLY LOVED" and at the end of the day that is what matters. 



*In the midst of writing this I was able to assist in building a Star Wars Lego Star Ship with space for 2 bad guys. This was an important priority for someone who I love.  :)

The mess of God's story. A Christmas reflection

We had recently set out our Christmas decorations and the girls were playing "Nativity".  We have a couple sets that we let them play with and they walk their Little People through the Christmas story details that they know.  This particular day they also brought down their play food and incorporated that into the story as well.  I was in the kitchen working on dinner, and this is what I overheard in the living room:

"Hey Wise Guy!  Can you hand me an avocado?"
"I think we are out of avocados.  Do you want a.... (surveying play food) doughnut?"
"We aren't out of avocados!  There is one right by your other foot... wait! doughnut? Yes!  I want the doughnut."
"Wise Guy!  We better pack up the rest of this food for our trip."  Child wraps food into a tortilla to be loaded onto a camel.

 I find traveling snacks a very essential part of any journey and apparently I am passing this trait on to my children and they are helping their "Wise Guys" load up camels full of felt fajitas and hand-knit baked goods.  I'm not sure where my kids got the idea to call them "Wise Guys."  I am making a mental note to educate them in calling them "Wise Men."  It sounds more respectful.

Listening to the way that they play out the story makes me think.  In a funny sort of way, it makes the story come alive.  There are so many details that we don't know.  What kind of traveling snacks did the wise men eat?  What about Mary?  In her latter stages of pregnancy did she have cravings?  Did Joseph run out at the last minute and buy some kind of favorite dried fruit for their long trip to Bethlehem? How long did he plead for a room, and then a space... and then ANY kind of space....   I can just picture him saying, "Hey sir? Yes, I know that you are out of rooms, but I think that my wife is about to give birth on the street out there and it would be really awesome if we could just stay in your shed.  I'm not even kidding."

I wonder if along the way there were ever any times that Mary or Joseph second guessed God's plan.  "Oh wow, God?... remember how we are having this really important baby?  Are you sure you wanted him to be born here in this stable? I kind of had a different idea about how this might work out."

Can we all agree that the wise men made a very unfortunate stop to ask directions?  Oh oh, yes, I know that the consequences of that had been prophesied long before that... but the point I am trying to make is that when we look with just our physical eyes, the story of Jesus' birth is a loaded story of a couple of very difficult journeys. Journeys that take a few turns that certainly wouldn't have happened if we were the ones writing the story.

Sometimes I feel like there is a lie that has crept into our hearts...  that if there is something that God wants us to do then He is going to "open the doors" and if the "doors" don't open for you pretty easily, well then, it's probably not really what He wanted.

I am making an observation.  The best God stories are really messy, and not at all the way that we would expect or plan. Not many doors just open smoothly.  Sometimes God calls us to blaze a trail, and trailblazing is actually a lot of work.  It's often messy, sweaty, and not very beautiful at all to the naked eye.

But for people who know what to look for, we can see the beauty in the story.  This is story of a very young and very poor couple moving forward in a story that didn't really make sense.  They were walking into the unknown and closed doors, but it didn't matter because God was with them.  I think that when you are confident that God is with you, a lot of things don't matter anymore and you can do things that you might not have thought you could.  Giving birth to a baby in a barn, for example.

So friend, if you are living a journey that seems wrought with difficulty, take heart.  Emmanuel.  God is with us.  I pray this is the truth that grips your heart this season.  We celebrate because He came near.  I pray that you will be strengthened as you walk your hard road or you face another closed door or your path takes a twist that seems so far from what you would have planned.

He is with you.

Something you dread with someone you love... a thankfulness post

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!!  In honor of Thanksgiving want to share one of my favorite life lessons.  I'm thankful for life lessons.  :)

For a few weeks we have been talking about the overgrown blackberry bushes that run along the front of our property.  They were starting to over take the street in front of our house and then all the leaves blowing around in the street were settling at the base of all the bushes and it was a giant mess.

Last week we had a free morning, and it wasn't raining so my husband and I decided to tackle it together.  With, of course, the help of my 3 year old.  His job is primarily comic relief and responsibility for making sure that we don't get anything done too quickly.  We happen to have a smaller rake and he carried it around and talked about his special "brake".

So....   it was a nasty job.  Blackberry bushes are really a pain to deal with.  Literally.  When we were done we were both all scratched up. There was far more debris than could fit in our yard waste bin, and we ended up loading up the back of my husband's pick up truck with leaves and blackberry branches so that he could take it to the dump.  It was work.  But guess what?  We had fun.  We worked together and laughed at being tangled in the blackberries and helped each other.  We gave the 3 year old some places to use his "brake" and we had a good morning. 

You know what I'm thankful for?  Doing something I dread, with someone(s) that I love. 

I first had this realization when I was in high school.  I had an amazing youth pastor.  We had a really neat youth group with a strong sense of community.   We did all the usual crazy youth group activities together... funny scavenger hunts and weird youth group games. I was recently reminded of an unsponsored youth group escapade that involved switching the letters on our Dairy Queen sign from "We have pumpkin ice cream" to "We have nice rumps".  Good times.  We also did a lot of really meaningful things together too. Service projects that involved picking up trash, serving breakfast to homeless people, we went on several life-changing mission trips. I remember at one point realizing that my appreciation for these people was so deep that I would rather dig a ditch with the youth group than spend an afternoon at the mall. In high school. I really felt that way.

This, my friends, is how I learned that I was truly in love with my husband.  I realized that I would rather travel out to the middle of Nowhereville with him, than be anywhere else without him.

Loving relationships are empowering.  Having someone by my side who loves me and wants to walk with me through the ups and downs... that gives me strength to do things that I didn't think that I could do.

So thankful for the people in my life who have said, "This is hard. Lets do it together."

Healing and Wholeness

So a few weeks ago it was suggested to us that maybe we should pray that my dad be healed.  In January my dad was diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia.  My dad is 75.  I hear about a disease with the word dementia and I think of that as being kind of an old person disease.  I'm not saying that 75 is old, (especially because my dad reads this blog) but it is three quarters of the way to being 100.  100 is kind of old.  Getting older happens to everyone. EVERY DAY.  We are all getting older.  And I have some thoughts about how we pray and what we hope for people who are getting older. 

A few weeks ago I was made aware of a friend of a friend who has a 6 year old who sustained a traumatic head injury.  I prayed for that family and for that little boy and I prayed that God would bring healing to his brain.  I listened to a suggestion that we pray for my dad and I realized that I felt almost guilty to ask God to heal my dad.  If God is going to heal someone, well, there are kids with cancer, or serious injuries or illnesses... and my dad is already 75.  Maybe we should just accept that as the gift that it's been and pray for the more "important" things.  As if God is limited in his power to heal.  Like we might use up something that could have been used for someone else.

I thought about it for quite a while.  We do want healing for my dad.  But more important than physical healing, we want spiritual healing. We want spiritual wholeness for all of us. And sometimes spiritual healing happens in the context of physical suffering.  I can tell you that, because I feel like that is something that we are experiencing already. 

But we do want for my dad to live in all the fullness that God has for him in all the days that he has.  And I really believe that God wants that too.  And I suddenly felt a conviction that we should pray for my dad. 

Last week, on October 29, we celebrated that 11 years ago, Timothy and I met.  We had our first meal together at Taco Bell.  We celebrated and Timothy made a really amazing Mexican feast that was really nothing like Taco Bell.  :)  Nobody complained.  Then after dinner we explained to the kids that we were going to pray for Grandpa.  We reminded them that Grandpa has a disease in his brain that makes his brain not work quite right.  I fumbled around in telling them that getting old and dying is a part of life, but that we want to pray for Grandpa and ask God to allow him to live in all the fullness of life that He has for Grandpa.

So we did.  We gathered around Grandpa and we prayed.  In their own way the kids prayed for Grandpa and for his brain, and thanked God for giving us Grandpa and that he is so kind and loving.  We all prayed and asked God to bring healing in whatever ways He wants, and that nothing, not even a disease would prevent Grandpa from being all that God wants for him to be in this season.

It was really a beautiful time for our family even just to pray our hopes for wholeness for Grandpa. It felt like a football team huddle, with a reminder that we are together in this and that together we know that we are on the same team, and our game plan is really to praise the Lord for His goodness to us, regardless of the outcome.

I think sometimes I hesitate to walk into something like that with my kiddos because I am afraid that they might get disappointed or confused.  I don't want to create a platform for my kids to be disappointed with God.  Especially if I have low expectations for anything to change.  But all of this really is revealing of my small faith.  And if we never walk with them into a situation where they might be disappointed, then I don't have the opportunity to navigate that with them. 

Tonight it has been one week since we prayed for Grandpa.  As far as we know he still has Lewy Body Dementia.  But since then, he hasn't suffered from the dizziness that had been so debilitating.  But more importantly, we have had some really good conversations as a family and with our kids about paying attention to what God is doing, because we know that He wants fullness of life for all of us.   

Can you fix this?

One of the beautiful things that we have been able to experience since living with Grandma and Grandpa, is that Grandma has a sewing machine and she knows how to use it!  She enjoys quilting, and she is willing to mend.  Even before we lived together my kids learned to save their favorite garments with little tears or ripped seams, because... "Grandma can SEW IT!!!"  Now that we share a house, everything with even the slightest tear is immediately delivered to her sewing corner.

A few weeks ago we were driving down the road we saw a car (At least I think it had been a car) by the side of the road that was obviously totaled.  My youngest looked at the car and offered, "Maybe Grandma can fix that."  One of his siblings immediately responded by saying, "Um, NO. Even Grandma can't SEW cars!!!" 
Right.  We were looking at something that would make a skilled body shop mechanic cringe, much less Grandma equipped with her ever-handy sewing machine.  I wonder if when Jesus talked about "the faith of a child" if He was thinking of the faith of a 3 year old child.  Boy howdy, that kid has faith!  (Smashed up car? No problem! My grandma has a sewing machine...)

It is very endearing when a child with pleading eyes and complete faith comes and offers up something precious, yet broken and says, "Can you fix this?"  Has this ever happened to you?  An irresistible request to work at a nearly impossible task... and for the sheer love of the child, you agree to try to find a way... (even if it means a late-night search on Amazon or ebay in hopes of finding a suitable replacement that is almost as good as mending?)

When I was growing up, my dad had a reputation for being a "good fixer."  (He actually still does, but he may or may not actually want that information in print, so don't tell anybody.) When we were younger we would take him our broken toys, but as we got older it was our computers and our college student vehicles making funny noises.  My dad has the ability to keep half dead vehicles alive for a really long time.  He joked that it was his love language.  Even though he joked about it, I realized later it did make me feel loved.  Driving a car that was well-cared for made me feel well cared for. 

I look at my kiddos and the little mended places of their favorite clothing items and it makes me smile.  Those little places of mending represent the fact that someone stepped in and cared for the things that were special to them.

I have another Father who is a really good fixer.  You can't always see it, but there are little mended places in my heart that remind me of His touch.  Some people would call them scars, and they would be right, but the truth is that scars are places of healing.  Someone who loves me took the time to sit down and mend something that was broken, and now when I look at these mended places, it reminds me that I'm loved.  And when I take time to remember all that He has done, I am all the more eager to gather up my emotional mending pile and offer it to Him.  He's a really good fixer.

The things we can not see

Yesterday as I was walking a kiddo in to preschool, I looked at his clothing selection for the day.  He was wearing a Christmas robot shirt, (in October) with some camouflage pants which he was wearing backwards so the two back pockets were in the front and the drawstring was in the back, hanging down like a little tail.  He was wearing shoes and they happened to be on the right feet.
For some reason I felt compelled to offer an explanation to his teachers that I do not usually select the clothing my children choose to wear, and they dress themselves.  I don't know if I was concerned that they might think that I didn't really know which way pants are supposed to go, or if they thought that I might not be aware that the Christmas robot shirt doesn't really "match" the camouflage pants.  Either way, they kindly affirmed my resolve to allow my people independence in this area of their lives.
To be honest, my decision to encourage my kids to do anything they can on their own has more to do with my value of efficiency and getting things done than it does with my philosophical belief that they should learn and grow in self-sufficiency and independence.  But that made me think about how easy it is to focus on the things that we can see... and neglect the things we can not see.

Last week one of my children did poorly on a test.  She was aware that there were things that she didn't understand and she was concerned about her performance and her ability to do better the next time.  We talked a little bit about it.  Then on Sunday afternoon we sat down to read through some of her reading homework together.  She looked at me and said, "Can I pray before we read?"  Then she prayed and it went something like this, "God, today in church we talked about how you can help us with anything we need help with, and I really need help with my reading.  I really want to learn and grow and get better and I really need your help.  Please help me to learn and do better. Help my line to grow."  (They have a line graph that shows their score on the reading test) "In Jesus Name, Amen."

I looked at my sweet kiddo.  I looked at the worry in her eyes and I gave her hug.  Then I said, "You know what?  The tests that you take are a measure of how well you are reading.  And you are actually a good reader and you are getting better every day.  But there are other things that you are learning that aren't measured by that line."  I took a piece of paper and I started making my own line."  You are kind.  You look for people who are discouraged and you show kindness.  You are sensitive and you naturally offer comfort and encouragement to people who are weary and hurting.  You are THE MOST generous kiddo I know.  You give freely and you bless the people around you."  (all the while I was drawing my own line graph.)  Then I added, "You aren't even very old, and you have already learned a lot about all of these things.  Many people who are much older than you haven't learned this much." (Like me, for example.)  "And you know what?  School doesn't have a line graph for that.  But God sees it. And these kinds of things are heart learning things and that is much more important to God than any of the things that you are learning at school."   Then I cut out a big "dot" and I pretended to be measuring out her "heart learning" line graph and I pinned the dot to the ceiling in her room.

Her eyes sparkled with her huge smile, and she breathed kind of a sigh of relief.  Then she said, "Thanks Mama.  Can we still work on my reading?"

Deep Sigh for me.  Sometimes in the middle of a teaching moment with a kiddo, I feel a sort of heart tug and I realize there is a lesson in this for me too. I'm pretty competent in my reading skills and most days I'm able to get my pants on straight, but there are lots of days when I start to feel weary and discouraged by a measure that God doesn't hold me to.  When I sit back and start telling Him my own frustrations and failures, He quietly whispers to my heart, "Oh yes, I saw all of that, and none of those things are important to Me.  Will you listen to My voice?  Draw close to my heart, and rest in My love."

So we will work together on reading, but together we will also remember to pay attention to the "heart-learning" things that are infinitely more important even if they can't be measured.

"When I am big, and you are little..."

In the early stages of our talks about joining households, there were several times that the subject of "being a burden" came up.  I have been thinking about this concept quite a bit since then.  This is what I've come up with so far.

1. Nobody really wants to be a burden.
2. Everybody needs people in their lives who care for them.
3. It is a blessing to take care of the people whom we love.
4. I was kind of a pain in the patootie when I was in jr. high/high school.  I was probably kind of a big fat burden if I really think of it.
5. Let's not think of people as burdens.  Let's think of them as people who need care.
6. Everyone needs care to one degree or another and there are some seasons that require more care than others.
7. One of the people I care for the most does really interesting things.  For example, just yesterday he made himself a scarf.  He made it out of toilet paper.  He didn't knit it or anything like that.  He just wrapped it around his neck and ran like a crazy person all over the house.  For some of that time one end of his scarf was rapidly unrolling off the end of the toilet paper roll.
8. Sometimes people that we love and care for make gigantic messes and toilet paper never looks quite the same when you re-roll it back on to the roll. 

Now, let's go back to point #3.  It really is a blessing to take care of the people that we love, but that doesn't make it easy.  (Please refer to #8) There are people who have been called to really really hard kinds of caring.  I have watched weary parents of children with high needs who aren't progressing in the ways that most children do... and I wonder how they do it, day after day.

I don't want to be overly simplistic in my views about this... but I'm pretty sure this is why God gave us families.  When I have one kid running around like a crazy person with toilet paper around his neck, it's a really good thing that there is a 50% chance that his dad might deal with this.
In all seriousness I know that I'm really blessed in caring for people who are really easy to care for, and there are a lot of caregivers out there that have a really hard job. But even then, that's why we need families.  Maybe you are in a situation where you need a few more people to come around and help you to care for the people in your life who require care. 

Today on my way home from doing some errands, a small person in the back seat said to me, "Mama.  When I am big and you are little, I will carry you."  Oh. My. Word.  Melts my heart.  In a very sweet way, it was a reminder to me that in the course of life there are times we give and times we take.

I was thinking about the paralytic from Luke.  He had 4 friends who carried him to Jesus.  Four friends helping one guy.  My guess is that 2 guys could have gotten him most of the way to Jesus.  But 4? Well, they got the job done.  How about this for a biblical life lesson? If you are caring for someone who wants to see Jesus, and getting there might require disassembling a roof, take a couple extra people. Or maybe we could just say that there are seasons when you need a TEAM of people to do what God is asking you to do.

That's okay.  It's okay to care.  And it's okay to need help.  And it's okay if when you are done all the toilet paper rolled back on the roll doesn't look awesome.

And I just want to finish by acknowledging that I'm really completely unqualified to discuss this topic, but I am thinking and learning and growing, and I want to continue think and learn and grow in caring for people and bringing them to Jesus.  I'm sure I will come back to this in the future.