Unraveled Marriage

September 10, 2014September 10, 20142 Comments

that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in with deceitful desires and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.

Just two weeks ago I brought two different running shoes for my long morning run. It was a complete mistake and I had no idea I had grabbed my old left running shoe and my new right running shoe. When I arrived at the trail I laced up anyway and tried to run. 8 miles was the goal that day.

It didn’t feel right running with those two different shoes that morning. My left foot began to ache sooner than my right and as I tried to push through the aches just began to creep up my leg… my shin, my knee… I knew it wouldn’t be long before my hip would begin to twinge so around the two and a half mile mark I decided to turn around.

I walked back and for two and a half miles I thought about how ridiculous it is to try to run in two different shoes. Not only does it look funny it also feels strange and after awhile you begin to feel physical discomfort when you wear the old and the new at the same time.

On my long walk back I thought about Hebrews 12:1

let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

If you don’t get rid off all of the old… you can’t run. You can’t persevere.

I thought about 2 Corinthians 5:17

If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation. The old is gone and the new has come.

The old has to go away for you to walk in the new way God is calling you to.

It seems as silly as my mismatched shoes for me to think about hanging onto my old self as I walk in the new. But I still struggle with my old patterns and my old ways. I still have so much unraveling to do. There are so many layers to me and I feel like daily, as I read God’s Word, God is saying, “Hey you, put that off, that is the old way you used to think about that, use my Words and walk in them.”

When the old gets tangled up in the new it feels funny. I feel confused, sometimes isolated and off balance. Just like in my two different running shoes, if I try to walk with Christ with some old and some new after awhile it will begin to affect me emotionally, spiritually and physically.

Recently I have been thinking about an unraveled marriage. What would it look like for me to recognize and put off my old patterns and transform them with the Words and Power of the gospel? Could we run with more perseverance towards Christ? Could we feel more comfortable and in step? Would we feel less achy and less off balance?

I think yes. But I think we have some unraveling to do as husbands and wives.

When you come into marriage you bring so many unknown patterns with you. Learned patterns from your own family, learned patterns from your friends, learned patterns from your favorite books and movies.

When I am hurting, it is my natural tendency to stonewall or shut down, cold shoulder, give a cold but bitter “nothing” if my husband asks me what is wrong.

I live with the old pattern tangled up in what I know is true from the Word of God.

If someone sins against you, talk about it. (Matthew 18)

“Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. (Isaiah 1:18)

There is a burr in my side to be like the popular Disney Ice Princess and “Let It Go”. Let the old fall away from the new. And feel free, one with the wind and sky.

As a wife, I love my husband and I want to treat him the way God treats him. I don’t want to have old patterns I have brought from learned ways of the world and have them tangled up in the way God has designed marriage in the words of scripture. It looks as silly as those shoes and it feels uncomfortable and unsatisfying. You can’t run. You can’t persevere.

Unraveling is not as easy as switching out your shoes or singing a ballad on the top on an ice mountain. Unraveling hurts. It hurts our pride to say we are doing it wrong, it hurts and takes work to pray and hear and apply God’s designs for living.

Unraveling doesn’t happen once in a lifetime.

Unraveling doesn’t happen once a week after a convicting sermon on Sunday morning.

Unraveling doesn’t even happen once a day.

Unraveling happens on the long hard miles of everyday life with your husbands, wives, kids, neighbors and coworkers. I hope you remember to untangle the old from the new. I hope you remember both of your new shoes.

Why I Have Been Politely Declining Your Dinner Invitation

September 9, 20145 Comments

For the last five years I have been politely declining dinner invitations to your home.

I know you have fabulous hospitality gifts and I want to eat your delicious dinners and scrape my fork on your gorgeous wedding dishes. I can picture your centerpiece, smell the candles and hear the hipster music playing in the background.

Then a loud, old-school record scratch wakes me up from the daydream of what I might think it would be like to come have dinner in your home.

I remember one large very important detail.

I have small kids. Four small kids.

I love them to pieces. I love the dirt under their nails at the dinner table, their loud burps followed by their giggles and their ‘scuse mes, I love their spilled chocolate milks and the food that seems to end up mostly on the floor instead of in their sweet little baby mouths.

I love them to pieces.

However, I have politely been declining your dinner invitation for five years because of them.

Most nights collectively, my children spend ten minutes sitting at the table before asking to be excused and swirling off like tasmanian devils (cute and very loved tasmanian devils). We send them outside or in the basement just so my husband and I can hurry and shovel dinner in our own faces before some else needs us.

Just two weeks ago I ventured out to your home with my kids for a church picnic. In the hour and a half we were there one of my children kept peeing in their pants. He went through three changes of pants. Three. I was in the bathroom changing pee pee pants three times in the ninety minutes I was in your home. One time while exiting the bathroom I found another one of my children playing your piano with his chocolate covered hands. Just as my panic attack was beginning to my make neck tense up and my head shake someone spilled water on your arcade basketball game and maybe tried to ride your dog.

That’s right. It was time to go. I shuffled my children out the door, thank youed and apologized several times while bringing my three pairs of pee pee pants home in my purse.

Just two nights later another you invited us over for dinner. I accepted thinking we may be able to have a decent time. Your family also has four kids so I thought we may be able to make it through the evening without the pee pee pants or my tense neck and shaking head.

We almost made it until my two year old began stripping all his clothes off down to his nude birthday suit on your back deck. My infant was crying and exhausted so I tried nursing her upstairs in your master bedroom but my baby kept screaming. She wanted her swaddle and she wanted her bed.

And lastly. We didn’t have pee pee pants but one of my boys was too scared to ask to go to the bathroom with the big crowd so he just pooped in his underwear instead. This evening’s consellation was poopy pants in my purse. My child pooped his pants at your house.

We had a great time but the drama. Oh the drama my kids certainly like to save it for their mama.

Last night, I invited you to my house for dinner instead. I thought in my own house I could control the poop and the pee and the chocolate covered fingers and faces. I thought while my kids played with their own toys I could look you in the eye and chat about your marriage, your job and ask you what God is teaching you. I thought maybe we could joke and laugh around my table of mismatched silverware and a bottle of red wine.

I love my kids to pieces but they brought slugs and caterpillars in from outside to show you at the table. I love them to pieces but two of them pooped in their pants together outside while playing in on the swing set. And then my oldest child barfed. Right in the middle of the kitchen, coating the hardwoods with the soup I just served everyone and reeking up the house so badly you couldn’t even smell that Yankee Candle I lit for you anymore.

I apologized again and thank youed you for coming as my kids blew kisses and chased your car down the road. They said, “See you soon” as they chased you.

Phew I thought. I don’t think I can do this again for a long time let alone soon the tension in my neck started to come as I thought about it.

I love my kids to pieces. But this is why I have politely been declining your dinner invitation for so long. It’s not how I feel about you, it’s how I feel about pee pee pants in your house. Maybe in a few years once we are beyond the pee pee pants and the strip shows can we look you and your husband in the eye and chat over dinner.

For now it will just have to be the hubs and I, shoveling the food in our mouths and living these crazy years with littles laughing together. We love them to pieces but we’ll keep them and their pee pee pants to ourselves at dinner time.

They Can Hear You

July 24, 2014June 22, 201612 Comments

We have kids. A few of them. Four to be exact and we had them all right in a row. Our three sons came first within three years of one another and then our daughter is our youngest. Our oldest will begin kindergarten in a few weeks which means for the last few months I have had the opportunity to take all four of my small children out into the world with me wherever I go.

If you have young kids, or have encountered anyone with young children, or even if you’ve read my blog before, you will not be surprised to hear the comments I have received when I venture out into the big world with my small family.

You have your hands full.

Do you know what causes that to happen?

Wow. Are they all yours?

Three boys, bless your heart.

You got your girl. (This is a new one.)

And recently my favorite, Wow, you are either crazy or very unlucky.

Now, I am not saying all of these comments are said with ill will or evil intent. Sometimes my four small children hanging off the Kroger shopping cart is quite a miraculous thing to see. Not everyone is out and about with all their children and I understand that when you see us you don’t know what to say. So one of the above comes out… (hopefully not the last one.)

For the last year I have processed these phrases I hear when I am out only thinking about how the words made me feel. It wasn’t until today that this has changed.

A kind man passed us by in the parking lot and said one of the above phrases. He was kind. He was applauding all my efforts. He was not intending evil but my four year old commented, “I heard that.”

He heard it.

For all these years it has slipped my mind that my children are hearing these phrases with their functioning ears and active minds.

They can hear the comments, see the looks and interpret the phrases. This has completely changed the way I think about hearing “you’ve got your hands full” when I am out in the world with my young family.

They can hear you. My kids can hear you.

What broke my heart in that moment was the sadness in my little one’s voice, “I heard that” was said with sorrow. He wanted me to know he can hear the words too. He is standing right there.

He is not a circus act. He is a person, a person created by the Most High God and perfectly placed in our young family at just the right time and that Most High God perfectly placed just the right amount of months…and days…and years in between all four of my young kids.

My children are not accessories in the stroller or shopping cart, they are people and they can hear you.

I began to imagine what it has been like for them to hear the uncomfortable phrases for all these years. Especially when someone calls me unlucky to have them or comments something implying that my boys were just unsuccessful attempts for my prize daughter. They probably have felt hurt, mistreated and unwanted when we are out in this big, big world.

I know my husband has his hands full with me but no one would say that aloud to him when I am standing right by his side. Any person would avoid saying, “is she yours?” It’s just bad manners.

Why in our culture have we deemed it acceptable to say things about children we would never say about adults?

My kids can hear what you are saying. I want you to know. You comment is ringing in their ears.

As a mom, I fight to teach my kids that they are important and loved by the Most High God. I fight to teach them they were brought into the world for a purpose, to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. I fight to teach them they are precious to me because they are precious to God. Their existence is not unimportant or invisible to God.

God sees my kids hanging off the cart. God always sees them and He knows my kids by their names. God sees them as important. God knows all four of my kids so intimately that He knows the numbers of hairs on each of their heads.

So if you know they can hear you and you know God does not think of them as a handful, or a curse, or an unsuccessful attempt to have a daughter does this change how you might respond to us when you see us in the aisles of your grocery store?

Knowing they can hear you changes the way I think about “this way we have learned to talk about children” in our culture that is just bad manners.

I would like to share some encouraging comments I have received in hopes that we can redress these awkward encounters with the truth about children. I hope we can fight to redress the awkward comments to reflect how God views having lots of young kids hanging off shopping carts.

Next time try one of these instead…

Look at all your beautiful children.

The Lord has truly blessed you.

I bet those boys love their little sister.

What nice boys and girls you have, I’m sure it’s not easy for them to tag along on errands with mom.

Pslam 127:3-5 Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

They can hear you. I hope this might help you think about how you are talking about them.

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One Simple Way To Survive Preschool

June 22, 2014June 22, 2014Leave a comment

It happened on our eight minute drive.

DJ Shuffle was playing in the car as we drove down that one road on our way to preschool. I was half awake and mostly consumed with getting back home to get the end of the year teacher gifts in order.

What wasn’t on my mind was this was my last morning drive to preschool.

It wasn’t until our first stop light when I realized the last moment I was actually experiencing. The last morning to transport my son to school in the safety of my own vehicle before he transitions to the school bus.

My heart broke a little.

Just five years ago I was working as a first grade teacher figuring out childcare for my new baby and counting down the days I could be at home with him and pour into him before he went off to kindergarten.

Two moves and three siblings later here we are wrapping up preschool and I’ve realized that time is gone. Everyone tells you it goes by quickly but you can never know just how fast “the blink of an eye” is until you’ve experienced one for yourself.

I’m not going to tell you how fast it goes by. You’ve heard that before. What I am going to tell you is a story of the most important thing you can do for your preschooler and it has nothing to do with play dates, alphabets, numbers or trendy pottery barn monogrammed backpacks.

On our last drive to preschool I turned DJ Shuffle down and I just did the one thing I can do for him as a mom on my way to school.

I asked him, how can I pray for you today?

This one phrase has gotten us through the last two years on that eight minute drive to preschool. Sometimes he is not sure how to respond so I ask if there is something he is worried about or something he is working really hard at learning.

Then, I pray in the car. Then and there.

We have prayed for his safety. We have prayed for his social relationships. We have prayed he would obey his teacher. We have prayed he would have self control over his body. We have prayed he would count his teen numbers correctly and learn to color his entire coloring page. We have even prayed he would remember not to color on other’s clothes with markers.

On our last drive to preschool he just replied, “Mom… Today, I’m just really nervous about kindergarten.”

(Sigh and small tear.)

Me too.

I told him we would have all summer to pray about that and for today we can just ask God to help us enjoy what he has for us this day.

So we did. We forgot about what lies ahead and focused on that last day. That last blink of an eye and we covered it with prayer.

The prayer is both for me and my preschooler.

That little prayer in my minivan on my eight minute drive to school helps me remember that I am not the one controlling his “blink of an eye”.

So whatever transitional stage you may be in as a parent, remember to pray. That blink of an eye should be covered in prayer. You all know and have heard before it goes by too fast.

Cover it in the simplest way. Cover those mornings and those “blink of an eyes” in prayer.

Unraveled Identity

May 24, 2014May 29, 20148 Comments

When my husband first told me he wanted to go to seminary I threw up in my mouth a little bit. This was a calling he was sure of for himself but a calling for which I did not yet feel prepared.

I did not grow up in a family that attended church every Sunday or attended VBS in the summers nor did we have family devotions around our dinner table and the only way I knew how to pray was “now I lay me down to sleep.”

I have struggled with a difficult past marked with depression, unhealthy relationships with men, partying and I have experienced great loss through the passing of my mother from cancer as a young teenager.

Back then at twenty-three, in a little four door Camry on my way to St Louis, I did not believe that God could use me in His church.

Back then I did not see myself, this girl with an imperfect past, being able to ever connect with faithful church attenders on Sunday morning serving a perfect God.

This calling felt too big.

I followed my husband to seminary anyway like a faithful solider not quite ready for battle but on the inside I struggled against the inner voices from my past that whispered I just wasn’t good enough.

It wasn’t like I believed it to be from 2 Corinthians 5:17: if you are in Christ you are a new creation, the old has gone and the new has come.

The new had come, I did have a changed life, but it was also so interwoven with many past experiences and voices. Somehow the old would have to begin to unravel from the new.

Walking through this story has been quite a journey. A journey against myself. A journey so challenging it would fail if God was not in it with me.

I have had some unraveling to do especially when it comes to my identity.

I was being called to the beginning of a journey against myself where I would constantly be required to put off the old and use the new to redefine the woman God was making to be in Christ.

It wasn’t long before the inner voice became coupled with the outer voices from others who were surrounding me.

I will never forget one of my first interactions with another seminary wife, “Wow, I’ve never met anyone like you… someone from total darkness.”

In that moment, whether that woman was joking or not, I stopped putting on what was true about me from the promises of scripture and I put on the scarlet letter of “the girl from total darkness” and I never wanted to step foot on the seminary campus again.

Just-not-good-enough-girl-from-total-darkness became the anthem of my season in seminary. I let that moment mark me and this just-not-good-enough-girl-from-total-darkness let the inner voices win.

I spent three years trying to distance myself as far away from seminary as possible. I didn’t want anyone else to know the real me. I chose to mark myself with that just-not-good-enough-girl-from-total-darkness scarlet letter.

What happened to me while we lived in St. Louis was painful. I was crippled by my anthem. I wept. I was sick to my stomach almost every day. While my husband was thriving I was dying, carrying this heavy scarlet letter around my neck.

I still appeared to be a good solider on the exterior. But on the inside I was barely breathing.

It wasn’t until one morning on my couch when the words from Matthew 11 appeared on the page of my hot pink Bible in technicolor. “Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

I thought about how long I had been carrying the weight of this interwoven old and new. How long I had walked with this just-not-good-enough-girl-from-total-darkness scarlet letter around my neck breathless and searching for air?

How long had I carried this burden alone and not shared the yoke with my Risen Lord?

He makes the burden light when I share it with Him.

Matthew 11 helped to let the unraveling of my identity begin.

The thread started to pull and I felt like I could breathe.

This moment happened in our last weeks in seminary. It took me too long to realize I was not bearing the just-not-good-enough-girl-from-total-darkness identity alone. The one sharing the yoke with me was Jesus. The One Who had overcome death itself.

If He could overcome death He could help me overcome the voices.

So the unraveling of my identity in Christ began as I started to put off the old patterns and ways of viewing myself and I began to put on the new.

I started to challenge the just-not-good-enough-girl-from-total-darkness label with the label of the deeply-loved-completely-accepted-image-bearer-of-The-Risen-Lord-girl-from-total-darkness.

(I mean, I need to stay true to my roots, right?)

You can’t appreciate where you are if you forget where you came from- so the girl from total darkness stays…for now.

I know this journey of the unraveling of my identity is Christ is not over. I know the thread is just beginning to unravel.

I can’t say I feel completely equipped even now to serve alongside my husband but I can say the idea now longer causes nausea. This
deeply-loved-completely-accepted-image-bearer-of-The-Risen-Lord-girl-from-total-darkness knows God calls unlikely people in His Great Story Of Redemption.

No matter what the past, the inner voices, or the audible voices might be whispering I can hush them with truth because Christ, the One who ultimately has called me, is walking alongside me sharing this burden.

In Him I am…

Deeply Loved.
Completely Accepted.
Image bearer of the Risen Lord
Girl From Total Darkness

What is your identity? Are you letting the new unravel from the old?