Are You Ready?

January 24, 2015January 24, 20151 Comment

But are YOU ready?

This very question has plagued me for the last four weeks as my husband has accepted the call to lead our church as the senior pastor. I’ve heard the question come in the form of love, several times, over and over.

I’ve also heard it maybe once or twice seasoned, only lightly seasoned, with doubt and skepticism. For the few doubters, know…I am with you. I am my biggest critic, my own worst enemy.

This question has maybe been lurking in the shadows for me for a long time.

For weeks I have panicked and prayed, prayed and panicked. Feeling consumed by the fear and doubt that I may not be ready enough.

In my prayers, I have panicked: God, am I ready? And I have pleaded: God, please make me ready.

In my unbelief it is so easy to panic and let the questions and the doubt lurking in the shadows consume me. I am humanly wired to let the voice of my sinful heart overshadow what God says is really true about me from his Word. But oh, The Lord is at work in this girl from total darkness and I’ve been battling my unbelief long enough to know that nothing quiets the doubt better than the Word of the Lord.

When I find myself turning to the Word and letting truth cover the questions lurking in the shadows I find rest. I have found that there is nothing more powerful than God’s Word to cover the worries, the fear and the doubt.

In the promises from scripture, I find silence from the voices and the Light makes those lurking shadows seem to disappear.

After a long time of laboring over my insecurities with prayer… It hit me like a ton of bricks one day while I was sweeping up the many crumbs from under our kitchen table.

I am not ready at all.

not ready.

I don’t have to be ready. God has called my husband and I to live this part of our story in this place and in this time and His calling is enough.

Isaiah 43:13

For I am the LORD your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you.

In the spaces where I am lacking readiness, God is giving me faith. Faith that God has called me to be worthy enough to be next to my husband in this next chapter. God is not calling me to perfection, He is calling me to depend on Him. Even in my unreadiness God is taking my hand, commanding me not to fear because He will help me. All that is required of me is simply dependence.

God does not require me to be ready. Ah, it sounds so nice to write that down. God only requires me to faithfully depend on him.

As a woman of faith, I can come before God bringing him nothing. God accepts me in my unreadiness. He clothes me, He loves me, He sets my feet on dry and stable ground.

I think of when Moses did not feel ready to go to Pharaoh and ask him to let the Israelites go back to the promised land. He even expressed his unreadiness to God.

But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” But God said, “But I will be with you.” (Exodus 3:11)

When I look back at my life I’ve never been completely ready for the things God has prepared for me: I’ve never been ready for anything else before.

I wasn’t ready to go to college. But God was with me and I grew. I cried hard tears. I learned. I fell. I made mistakes. But the whole time, God was with me, drawing me to Himself.

I wasn’t ready to be a teacher for the first time. I thought I was, I was credentialed enough but, looking back now, those at risk students in that city school taught me more than I ever could have taught them.

Even with all of the marriage counseling we had I was not fully ready for marriage. But God has covered our unreadiness with love and grace.

And Lord knows, I was never ready to be a parent four different times in five years. Most days I feel like I’m sinking, barely clinging on to the new mercies that come every morning.

God has been holding my hand, helping me, loving me and giving me what I needed all along the way.

I am not ready.

I am thankful that the church is one of the only places, that I can confidently yell from the rooftops, I am not ready for everything that may cross my path this week, this month or this year.

I am thankful for a God who calls the unready and the unable. I am glad he holds the hand and helps those who say like Moses, but who am I?

God has answered me in my pleading and my panicking. He has answered me by showing me I am not ready to do this by myself but I have the hand of a Great God helping me.

In my unbelief I have found truth, comfort and depending peace to cover the voices and the questions lurking in the dark shadows.

God is the One who does the calling, I will try to walk in belief that I know what He is up to.

“I believe. Help my unbelief.” (Mark 9:24)

The Thing About A Three Year Old

December 20, 2014December 20, 2014Leave a comment

Sometimes it is easier to see what is bad about the phase of a child. It is easier to scream and complain about the awful and the challenging. Some people write it down and when it is attached with cynicism others seem to applaud. Others gravitate toward the negative that is masked with cynicism. The challenging things go viral while the redeeming qualities of a phase stay in the background.

No one applauds the praiseworthy traits because everyone huddles around the ugly ones.

I know children go through challenging phases. I have four young children and I have experienced most of the awful and all of the challenging. I could tell you all the stories. The poop stories, the tantrum stories, the flat out ridiculous embarrassing moments at Target and the times my children ran into a parking lot without the helping hand of a responsible adult.

I think the praiseworthy moments deserve an applause. There is a world out there reminding us of the awful and through the noise, sometimes it is hard to stay joyful in the dog-days of parenting young children.

The thing about a three year old is there is a loyal, independent, teachable child behind those stubborn eyes.

I do not think there is a day that goes by that my three year old does not stomp his foot down and tell me, “I want to do it by myself!” BUT there also is not a day when he does not take me by my hand and say, “Mommy, you are my best friend.”

There is not a day when he does not begin to cry if his blanket is just right, BUT there also is not a day when he doesn’t want to smooth my hair out of my face and tell me I am beautiful.

The thing about a three year old is they are your best friend beneath all the challenging yuck.

They are loyal to you, you are still their best friend because peers are still of little importance.

Three year olds can dress themselves.

Three year olds can use the toilet.

Three year olds can put on there own shoes.

Three year olds can play in the snow for longer than it took you to dress them in their snow gear.

Three year olds get birthdays. They get Christmas.

Three year olds truly love their siblings: they look up to the big ones and care for the little ones.

Three year olds can set the table and match socks.

There are so many praiseworthy things about a three year old. Don’t hear the bad and embrace cynicism. Embrace the praiseworthy. I promise when you search for the praiseworthy you will find the joy in the dog days.

There are so many lovely things about a three year old. Find them. Write them down. Hang them on the fridge.

The world wants you to see a three year old through the eyes of cynicism but God wants you to see them differently. As His children, the thing about a three year old is they significant and important to Him, no matter the challenging and the yuck.

Strive to see the praiseworthy. “Whatever is praiseworthy about a three year old, think on these things.” Philippians 4:8

If you like this you will also like:

Why The Twos Aren’t Terrible

They Can Hear You

Finding Shelley At Christmastime

December 17, 2014September 21, 20162 Comments

For years I have struggled to find her. For seventeen Christmases I have looked for her but I have been so overcome with grief that my eyes couldn’t see what was right in front of me.

Christmas is a hard time of year for anyone who has lost a family member.

As a fourteen year old girl I lost my mother and it has taken me almost two decades to recover.

For as long as I could remember I was waiting for others to bring her back. I put the expectations on others to do Christmas like she did and each year Christmas passed and my expectations were not met. I felt disappointment and loss in the belly of my soul and this made the cycle of grief start all over again.

Finally, this Christmas I have found hope. I have found the hope in honoring her, after sixteen other Christmases have passed. Sheesh, it feels like it took a lifetime. But today it was worth the wait.

Today, I found my mom in the simple words of a recipe for Christmas cookies. Just one taste of the uncooked batter brought me back to childhood in her kitchen years ago. I baked Christmas cookies with my kids today and I told stories about my mom at Christmas.

I found her in the handwriting of her recipe book. The large loops in her cursive and the perfection and consistency of each stroke.

While I iced the Christmas Tree shapes and added the red hots I told my sons this was something I looked forward to every Christmas as a child. I told them I would even sneak bites of the refrigerated batter and how my mom would catch me anyway.

There have been plenty of opportunities for me to choose bitterness and loss and grief at Christmastime. There are plenty of opportunities for me to stick in the cycle of grief and let the bitterness take root and grow.

If she was here it would be different. It would be better. I do miss her. My kids and my husband have never experienced her laughter. My kids have not been able to experience the blessing of involved maternal grandparents.

I could choose to celebrate Christmastime with emptiness each year.

But instead, I choose HOPE in the midst of loss and unmet expectations.

Hope falters the growth of bitterness. Choosing hope at Christmas is a choice.

I choose to find my mom in the traditions and the stories. This has not happened overnight. It has taken sixteen years of sadness and choosing grief and the plauging seed of bitterness over the fruitful seed of hope.

Hope is what would be honoring to my mom at Christmas anyway. She wouldn’t want it any other way. If she was here she would tell me to dry my tears and teach my children to find her at Christmas. Grandma Shelley is not here physically but she lives her in our traditions.

Finding Shelley in the traditions is a choice.

Finding hope in loss is a choice.

Finding Shelley at Christmas has taken me almost two decades but I am thankful I found her today. In the cookies. The simple cookies with the red hots.

And I hope to pass her on to my children. I hope to give them hope. And stories. I hope to teach them that God’s story is full of people who lost but these same people had their eyes fixed on something Greater.

Because A Mother Is Beautiful All By Herself

November 18, 2014November 18, 20141 Comment

There was a time not too long ago when I didn’t want to have my picture taken. Sometimes I was the one taking the pictures but other times I just didn’t want to see myself photographed. I was unhappy with the way I looked and I did not want my children to remember the time when mommy’s hips were more rounded and her face was a little fuller.

Specifically I remember being at a baseball game and I was gathering my boys close for a picture of them with their rally caps on. A young guy in the row in front of us sweetly turned around and offered to take the photo for us. He immediately looked puzzled when I quickly declined and told him I wasn’t planning on seeing myself in pictures for at least ten more years.

That was really true and there it was: Out of my mouth my heart spoke the words: I am not beautiful enough to be remembered for who I am, right now, just this way.

I have heard this story before. My mom rarely wanted to be photographed while she was battling cancer while I was a child. I hear my grandmother tell me, she did not want you all to remember her that way. I love my mother and that was her wish but now here I am left without her and I barely have any pictures with her and me in them. I cannot think of more than five photos I have of her and me together from the age of five until she passed away when I was fourteen.

To me she was beautiful.

As a child, I didn’t see a bald woman or a woman with only one breast. I saw my mother. And a mother is beautiful all by herself.

To my children, a mother is beautiful all by herself.

There will be a time when I am no longer here on this earth and my sweet children will be longing for memories of me. My children will not be concerned about my chin, my dark circles, or my roots that should have been touched up last week. My children will just want to see me. And them. They will want to hold something more tangible than a memory that puts me with them in that place at that time.

Our children don’t care how we look for the camera, because to them, a mother is beautiful all by herself.

You can see I have some unraveling to do when it comes to this whole idea of being beautiful. Just the way I am. Right now. In this time. In this place.

I will tell you I know what the Bible says about being beautiful. I will even tell you I have those verses memorized. But even though I know what the Bible teaches on a cognitive level about beauty – it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the attitude of my heart and my unwillingness to be photographed show a tangled up mess of belief and unbelief when it comes to my appearance. What I believe and what I actually do just don’t match up.

As God has been faithful to work on my unbelieving heart I can see the places where I have the “beliefs of the world” tangled up in what is true about beauty from the passages of Scripture.

I’ve realized that to the people who matter, a mother is beautiful all by herself.

God speaks to beauty in His words to us in the Bible and according to Him our beauty has nothing to do with the amounts of hairs on our head, the clothes that we wear or what the scale is saying about us on any given day.

“Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting but a woman who fears the Lord will be praised.” Proverbs 31:30

“Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.” (1 Peter 3:3)

“But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on appearance. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7)

“Behold, you are beautiful, my love; behold, you are beautiful.” Song of Solomon 1:15

God’s words in the Bible do not say the same things the world is screaming to us about beauty. It is challenging to unravel the untruth from the truth. Mostly because as a mom, I am constantly surrounded by a world telling me to be thinner, to wear the latest trendiest boots, to be a hot mommy, to make sure my thighs aren’t touching. I could go on for days. Days.

God is telling us from His word that beauty comes from the blatant opposite or what our world tells us is beautiful.

Beauty comes from giving up of yourself. And chasing after Good.

Beauty does from bravely enduring hardship. Like my mother. She is a heroine and I just won’t stop saying that.

Beauty is a mother. Giving up herself.

A mother is beautiful all by herself. A mother doesn’t need to hit that weight loss goal, make her hair the right color or wear the trendiest clothes. To God, your husband, you children, none of that matters. They want you in those photos. I know. And I am telling you.

“Behold, you are beautiful, my love; behold, you are beautiful.” Song of Solomon 1:15

Go and be photographed. Hang those photos on the wall and post them to Facebook. Because a mother is beautiful all by herself.

The Ugly Moments Of Parenting

November 12, 2014April 6, 2016Leave a comment

I am not above ugly moments.

I do not believe any of us are.

I get angry. I even yell. I sometimes blame my kids for the times when I lose my temper.

There are ugly moments in parenting. There is yelling in parenting. Boundaries are pushed in parenting. It happens to everyone.

It is not the yelling that is the problem.

The world will tell you that. The world will tell you to live in peace in harmony. The world will tell you to shove your angry feelings aside and “understand your children” in a calm and patient way.

The problem isn’t anger or the yelling in parenting. The problem is us. As human beings we are wired to mess up. We are wired as humans to lose our cool. If you yell at your children you are in fact only human. Just like the rest of us.

The solution is what happens after the anger and the yelling.

Just yesterday I was talking to my sweet kindergarten boy about girls and what girls are like. He told me, with his big brown, compassionate eyes, “girls like to tell us boys what to do.”

I mean. This is deep truth from my kindergarten boy. As a girl telling boys what to do all the time I know his words are true.

He went on to tell me about the times I tell him to pick up his toys and how I say if they are not picked up, whatever is left on the ground is being thrown in the trash. These are my ugly moments. The moments when I tell my children I will throw their toys in the trash, Toy Story’s worst nightmare coming alive in my own home, on my watch.

There is also a time when I told my sweet Asher boy that I would pop his balloon if he cried about it one more time. And I did. I popped it. With scissors. Right in front of his big beautiful blue eyes. I am not proud of this moment. This is another one of my ugly moments in parenting.

The dagger really went deep into my heart when that night, during our prayers to Jesus, he called me out during the confession time, “mom, aren’t you sorry for popping my balloon?” Right there in front of Jesus. Ugly, ugly moments.

Popping balloons and threatening to throw toys into the garbage. These are my ugly moments.

I believe as parents the power comes not from preventing the yelling or the threatening. I believe the power is in what we do after the ugliness has already happened.

Some people will tell us just never to yell in the first place. But you know, I believe it shows our children much more character when we make a mistake, or show emotion, and then appropriately be responsible for our crap rather than to act comatose and all Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood about things.

Are we brave enough to show our kids we make mistakes?

Are we brave enough to show our kids the moments when we need forgiveness before the Lord?

Are we brave enough to say I’m sorry? Or I was wrong?

Are we brave enough to live out a life of I’m sorrys and faith before them, right before their eyes, so they can experience first hand this so called power of the gospel we’ve been reading to them about from their Storybook Bibles?

Yes. I have ugly places.

Yes. I pop balloons like Gru from Despicable Me.

Yes. I threaten to put toys in trash bags and send them to the dump just like the ugly moments that haunt the very worst nightmares of Pixar’s Woody and Buzz.

But…

The thing about the ugly moments of parenting is always that there is a much more significant moment to show your children the gospel.

A much more beautiful moment follows the ugly one if you are brave enough to embrace it.

We are beautifully created people that find ourselves in ugly moments and we need a Savior to rescue us when we are angry, popping balloons like a villain and out of control.

I believe that in gospel believing homes, it is more powerful to our kids when we yell and repent than to never have yelled in the first place.

There is power in the ugly moments of parenting when you tell your children, “Mommy was wrong and mommy needs Jesus just like you.”

Yes. I have ugly moments. I have ugly moments because I need a Savior.

I want to show my children my need in my ugly moments so later in life when they themselves are without me in this big world and they find that they themselves are in an ugly moment, they will remember a great Savior. A great Savior who wants to rescue them in their ugly moments.

Ugly moments are an opportunity to show our children great character because of a great Savior.

Show them how to respond in the ugly moments.

Be brave.

You are always LOVED, ACCEPTED and BEAUTIFUL to God. Even in those ugly moments.