My Conversion Story

July 30, 2015July 30, 20154 Comments

Years ago I was a Kappa Delta at Eastern Kentucky University and an Elementary Education Major. I loved school, I loved service and I loved my friends. I worked a little waiting on tables at Outback Steakhouse but my time was filled by the things I loved the most: school, service and friends.

When I look back on my years in college I am so pleased with all of the things I was able to accomplish and I am more than thankful for the lifelong friendships I made in the classrooms and on the sidewalks of The Campus Beautiful.

But I always felt like I was missing something. No matter what I was able to achieve or who I was able to meet I still felt empty. By the end of my years in college I began to realize all my accomplishments and accolades would eventually end up onto a piece of paper somewhere and I would be left having to make an entire life of finding the “somethings” to fill up my accomplishment cup.

My homecoming court picture taken by one of my college friends. (2004)

The girl in the picture above found most of her worth in making a difference and doing good things. She went to church because she thought it was something she should do, like a routine that would somehow end up on her list of accolades and accomplishments at the end of time. The girl in the picture above believed God would see her resume, laden with good things and look over the moments when she wasn’t devoting whole her heart to him.

The girl in the picture above had never opened a Bible. She just went through the motions of religion she had learned from watching the culture around her. She went to mass, followed along with the hymns, said her “Our Fathers” and went about the rest of her week like Sunday morning was completely separated from the way she spent her Sunday nights.

The girl in the picture above did not have a faith that was found in anything but herself. She put God in the boxes she made up all on her own.

And then, one day when she really wasn’t even seeking God He began to soften the walls of her neatly packed boxes and He changed her heart.

The gospel washed over me when I was twenty-one years old and I would never be the same again.

I remember feeling angry because I never knew about this kind of God before. The God that loves unloveable people. I spent so many years feeling shame about who I became in the wake of my grief after losing my mother. There were times when I was so unloveable and just trying to survive. I still shudder at those years.

I remember feeling angry that I didn’t know about a pursuing God. A God that pursues us even when we keep Him in our self-made boxes or when we are trying to hide behind our messes, our shame and our guilt.

I remember feeling insecure about sitting next to people in church who had known a God of grace for much longer than I had and I have recently cried in front of my peers about being an inadequate pastor’s wife because I don’t know every church song.

I remember feeling free from the idea that God was keeping a record of my achievements and accolades and measuring them up against the times when I followed my rebellious, God-box-making heart. God wasn’t keeping a record of my rights and my wrongs. When I found God in His Word I learned He does not work this way. When I first believed that Jesus died on the cross for me God exchanged all my rights and wrongs for the perfect righteousness of Christ.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:1-4)

I found God for who He really is in His Word. My boxes were broken and I began to live all of the nooks and crannies of my life like I loved a Great Savior.

When I first believed, I read John cover to cover, then I began at the beginning in Genesis. I memorized a stack of scripture notecards so thick it barely fit into the breast pocket of my Outback uniform. I shared my faith and I didn’t just go through the motions at church but I found myself worshipping The God who gave me the greatest gift of all: freedom, grace and unconditional love.

For the first time I began to see myself inside a Greater Story. I began to live for the kingdom of The Everlasting instead of a kingdom which wanted to build up my own resume.

And this is where the journey of following Christ began for me. An unlikely person who wasn’t seeking God being drawn into His family. And for some reason, greater than I can even comprehend now, God is using this tiny story for His purposes.

The more I share my story and the more I write about it, the more I find there are many unlikely converts just like me. And I am so thankful. God knows exactly what He is doing even when we can’t exactly figure it out.

And I sit in the front row at church! It seems wrong and unfathomable to me to be married to my pastor husband.

But I am learning little by little what it means to be Christian in the front row at church. And I am also learning that most church people are learning too.

I am so thankful to be thirty-two and secure in Christ and not twenty-one trying and endlessly spinning my good girl wheels.

God really is so good.

Even to me. An unlikely girl.

When The Days Are Long And The Years Are Short

July 16, 2015January 2, 20161 Comment

Gretchen Rubin says it best in her book, The Happiness Project.

“The days are long but the years are short.”

Now, I know for some of my friends that have grown children (you know) I do not and cannot even comprehend the weight of what this phrase encompasses and I am not pretending to.

But I feel the longness of the days and just this week I am beginning to see glimpses of the shortness of the years.

My oldest son is in fact one-third gone. Saying that aloud and writing it down does not make that statement anymore believable to me. My son is one-third of his way out my front door and off into the world.

In the last year he has had some adult teeth creep up into those youthful holes in his smile and his feet have crossed over from little kid sizes and into real man sizes. (He wears a 1 to my husband’s 10.5.)

It was on his sixth birthday last January that I began to think of the weight of the truth: my time with him and I in this home, when I can still hold the grown-up card is one-third gone.

I cannot speak to having all the thirds gone but I can tell you the one-third crept up on me the same as those adult teeth did growing into my son’s smile.

There are parts about the years being short that I love.

Now, I love my children and I am not wishing them away but today I can be totally honest with you when I say- I loved my four children playing independently in the basement all morning with my oldest two steering the cruise ship instead of me.

In the shortness of the years I don’t know when my older sons began making up the games or getting out the toys for the day, I just woke up one day this summer and my children started making memories all on their own.

I love in the shortness of the years how I have quickly embarked upon a feeding time when I feel like I can eat a meal and have a conversation with my family.

I love the shortness of the years bringing us to a place where my kids can pump their own legs on the swings and play ant tag while I watch them interact from the window without my refereeing and whistle blowing.

And I grieve the shortness of the years too.

I grieve the shortness of the years when I think about my son who is one-third gone going off to first grade in a few weeks. I grieve because I know he will not be present around my lunch table five days a week.

I grieve because I know getting into the busyness of the long days at school will make the years seem even more shortened than they already do.

But I love where we are in our long days and our short years. I am so thankful for this time with these babes no matter how short the years may seem. I fight to live them big because I know some mommas don’t get to live all the years they want to with their babies.

In the long days and the short years I have a choice between sadness over the one-third gone or I can just love where we are today.

Because no matter what is gone or what is to come, today is what I have with my kids.

I think this is part of the journey. Not reminiscing and missing the days one-third gone and not trying to live too much in the grief of the hard loss which lies two-thirds ahead.

We can appreciate where we have been and anticipate with great hope what is ahead but most of all I am coming to a place where I feel it is so important to enjoy the todays.

When you realize the days are long and the years are short, you don’t start counting them and measuring them, you wouldn’t start counting your days if your doctor told you you only had a short time to live. You would enjoy the long days you have, where you are: one-tenth, one-third or one-half gone because you know the moments of making memories are precious.

So I’m fighting to enjoy me one-third gones and adult teeth creeping ins. Not seeing what is gone or what is about to be gone but seeing the six year old in my lap.

This is where God has me as a mom.

These are the long days He has given me in the years that seem to be so short.

Dear Mom, Why Didn’t You Tell Me?

July 13, 2015July 13, 20155 Comments

My mother passed away after a seven year battle with breast cancer when I was fourteen. There is literally no way she could have told me all the things I needed to know about pregnancy and parenting but I had this idea to write like I was writing to her a few years ago so I’d thought I give it a try. There are so many times I find my kids sucking on the toilet cleaning brush or wondering what to do about splinters and I ask myself why I didn’t have a notebook in my back pocket observing my mother while I could have.

Dear Mom,

I love you and I miss you tremendously every day. Seriously. Young moms need their moms to have on the other end of the phone saying things like, you used to suck on the toilet brush too and you still have two eyes, ten fingers, ten toes and a twisted but very funny sense of humor.

I am now a mom and I get you. I get why you had to talk to yourself while you are driving the minivan or shopping in the grocery store. I used to think you were a little insane. I loved you but the aloud list making was just something I couldn’t understand. But I get it now. If you didn’t say it aloud your thoughts may have been lost in the screaming and the chaos of the unpredictable life of raising multiple kids.

And by the way, why didn’t you tell me it was unpredictable? I really believed my children would come into the world knowing how to listen to mommy’s voice. I have seen all these nice videos now-a-days on the Internet (the Internet has really taken off and is a good but horrible thing all at the same time) when children hear their mother’s voice from their womb and the mother’s voice is a beacon for them, it is comforting to them. Why didn’t you tell me that as babies grow the beacon isn’t as important for them anymore?

None of my children listen to mommy’s voice. There are times when I feel like they have turned my beacon/frequency down all together. If you would have told me this before I feel like I could have been a little more guns blazing about it. The listening patterns of my children are still a mystery to me.

Why didn’t you tell me there will be days when I feel like I am doing everything wrong but at the same time I am doing something right.

As a mom there are so many moments when the data seems to point to the undesirable outcome. There are just too many times when I feel like I am screwing up my kids and I wish you would have told me that it will all be okay.

I wish you would have said that even though you were at every class party, brownie troop meeting, dance competition and planned the most creative birthday parties I have ever seen before pinterest, (pinterest is a website where people can find all of your ideas for birthday parties on that thing I mentioned above called The Internet, it doesn’t even dial up anymore, it’s all about high speed access to your awesome birthday party ideas)

I wish you would have told me that I didn’t always listen and the data pointed to the undesirable for you too.

Why didn’t you tell me it would be so hard and that I would need you so much? Even what feels like so much more now than it felt like I needed you when I needed you when I was little.

When I was little I needed you to help me use a spoon but now I need you to help me feel un-crazy.

These toilet brush sucking moments make me freak out! I can’t even begin to let myself go down the road of germs and other possibilities. I really can’t even go there or I’d call 9-1-1.

Why didn’t you tell me?

Why wasn’t I listening?

Why aren’t you still here?

These are the moments when I miss you. When I want to pick up the phone and call someone who has been gone for seventeen years.

It’s a good thing I’ve totally accepted talking to myself as normal. That basically is what I blog is for me. So I’ll maybe keep bringing the questions to you here.

Maybe someone out there will remind me that toilet brush sucking has happened before and talking to yourself is not insane but it is survival.

Mom, I miss you all the time. The loss of you makes me understand the fact that this life is not the way it is supposed to be and makes my soul long for something better.

You were a treasure and I wish I would have followed you around with a notebook when I could have.