Sometimes It Feels Terrible

November 9, 2014November 12, 20143 Comments

In a few weeks I will be turning the corner from two to three with my third child.

Sometimes it feels terrible. Like today as I walked my sweet child into church, my husband’s place of business, and he shouted ” I am not a child of the Lord.” Over and over.

Sometimes it feels terrible to have a two year old.

The lines between baby and big kid are blurred.

They want to be independent but still need help at the same time.

It feels terrible and my heart aches for my littles at this stage. If it feels terrible for me, as a somewhat mature adult, I can only image how terrible it feels for a child who is crying face down on the ground.

Yes, they may be crying because they did not get to go to church naked or maybe you buckled their seat belt instead of them.

Mine likes to carry on if his blankets are not smoothed down in a particular way or the seams of his socks are not perfectly straight.

To us it feels ridiculous but their tears are telling you it is a big deal to them.

To this little human child in a big world there are things that are a big deal to them. It feels terrible to us but it is important to them.

I have been trying to be patient because it is my third time in this place of feeling terrible. I tried to leave extra time for my third son to buckle his own seatbelt without me getting flustered because I am worried about being late.

I try to understand him when his socks don’t feel right and his blankets are not straightened and tucked. (I am a tad more compassionate here because I am a similar particular human being.)

Sometimes it feels terrible to have this child, in between baby and big kid, carrying on about things that seem ridiculous to mature adults. I know.

I have walked in this three times. I have rolled my eyes. Raised my voice. I have lost my temper.

Even though it feels terrible and I think I know better, I still think we can be better as parents for our two year olds and beyond.

It feels terrible in this frustrating stage of parenting, but I think and I believe God is calling me to be better.

I believe God is calling me to grow as a parent instead of using the parachute of a passed on cliche.

Sometimes, parenting a two year old feels terrible however, I will not let my child conform to a cookie cutter cliche. I know that to God, my two year old matters. I know that to God, my two year old is important and I know that to God, the things that are important to my two year old are important to Him too.

I wish I wouldn’t let the cliche overshadow who my child is to God.

I wish in the moments of feeling terrible I would remember that God cares for me when I am losing my temper and crying on the floor about things that may seem ridiculous to Him.

I wish I could remember that even though it feels terrible to parent a two year old sometimes, I have a Father in heaven who is patient with me who could feel terrible about my tantrums but choses to love me instead. Just where I am.

Yes, having a two year old feels terrible. But maybe God is using this terrible stage to teach us to love others. Maybe God is showing us how He loves us when we are throwing ridiculous tantrums about things He knows are going to work out just fine.

Maybe God is calling us as parents to something better in the year of two.

Those precious babes are important to Him. And so are you.

Please read: Why The Twos Aren’t Terrible

Unraveling Anxiety

November 5, 2014November 5, 20163 Comments

I dance with worry and anxiety too often. Sometimes I let anxiety lead the rhythm of my step. I find my feet walking to it’s beat.

Just like you when a child naps in the afternoon who usually does not I may begin to worry that he may be ill. I am walking in anxiousness waiting for that thermometer to read above 100.5.

Or other times when my husband is not home at the usual time and is also unreachable on his phone. My mind assumes that something is really wrong, most of the time assuming the worst and waiting for an officer to show up at my doorstep to tell me my husband has been in a terrible car accident. The rhythm of anxiety causes my mind to pace just to keep up with it’s steps.

Most of the time what I see in myself when I am dancing is really just the symptoms of anxiety. I see the dance of anxiety and I am beginning to recognize it’s luring rhythm. Racing mind, racing heart, outrageous thoughts, sweating plams, edgy tone, words that spew out of my mouth like an unredeemed child with an out of control God. Words like:

I fear…

I can’t…

It won’t…

I try to cover up the symptoms of anxiety with prayer and verses memorized from scripture or verses found in the Bible topic glossary under the bolded words: worry and anxiety. But the worries come back. I find myself back in the luring rhythms dancing with worry and anxiety because I am only seeing what is above the surface.

I forget to go down deep below the surface and take a good look at the giant glacier below me- where worry and anxiety are breeding a faulty foundation completely out of sight.

I am lured by worry and anxiety in my thought life because beneath the surface I have an unbelieving heart.

Beneath the surface I am drinking from the broken cistern of control. (Jeremiah 2:13 For my people have committed two sins. They have forsaken me the spring of living water and they have dug their own cisterns:broken cisterns that cannot hold water.)

Beneath the surface I am a beautiful jagged mess of pride and unbelief.

My pride desires to be in control. I want to know what is coming. I want to prepare my heart. My pride believes if I know what’s coming I can be more prepared. My pride tells me I am able to do all things. Like Eve, I want to taste the fruit so my eyes will be opened and I will then know like God knows.

My unbelief is screaming I have giant patches of cold glacier where I fail to know the character of a loving God. In my unbelieving desire to control I forget that God is in control of all things for his redeemed children. In my unbelief I choose to dance with the enemy instead of the One who truly loves me and knows the plans He has for me. (Jeremiah 29:11)

I’ve always known I am prone to worry. When I sing the words from “Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing”

Prone to wander Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love- I think of my anxious adulterous dance. My constant pattern of leaving the God I love to wander over and let the rhythm of worry and anxiety control my steps.

It has just been recently that I have had the courage to look deep beneath the surface at the giant glacier of pride and unbelief breeding below me. Where the desire to control and the unbelief in my Great God are growing beneath the surface of my anxious symptoms.

Before I can examine what is tangled up beneath the surface I need to know how loved by God. I need His presence and His Spirit to be present with me.

So with courage and the armor of the Holy Spirit I have been willing to go down beneath the surface. When I see the beautiful jagged mess below. I am heartbroken. I didn’t even know about my broken cistern to be in control. But with the armor of the Holy Spirit I remember that God knew this about me anyway and He still sent Jesus to die on the cross for that icy jagged mess. I place my hand on my head to remember that no matter the mess my helmet of salvation is secure.

image via “practical pages”

With the armor of the Holy Spirit I can begin to unravel all the tangled up dances from wandering back and forth between belief and unbelief. With the armor of the Holy Spirit I know I have a Great Surgeon who helps me go to work, ever so gently to unravel the wandering mess I’ve made.

For now I am going down deep beneath the surface to fight the unbelief and pride of my heart. Not alone but with the armor of the Holy Spirit. With truth. With the gospel of peace. With the helmet of salvation secure.

I am called Sought Out. A city not forsaken. God remembers me and He cares for me SO MUCH that I am sought after. (Isaiah 62:12)

Why do I let the myths of anxiety lure me when I have a God like this?

I believe. Help my unbelief.

********

Where do you feel the lure of the dance of worry and anxiety?

Marriage?

Family?

Election?

Job Security?

Relationship Security?

Final Exams?

*********

Is God calling you to look beneath the surface at the glacier below you? Take your armor with you.

Let the Great Surgeon help you unravel.

And dance with the One who calls you Sought Out.

*********

The Biggest Surprise About Marriage

October 22, 2014October 22, 20141 Comment

I knew this information on an intellectual level but for some reason I chose to be in denial.

I was shocked the first time it happened; like I never saw it coming and then I cried and pretended like my marriage was over in response to the big surprise.

I cried. All balled up in the fetal position on my marital bed.

If you want to be married one day, if you are thinking about getting married one day, if you are engaged to the person of your dreams and are getting married on a certain-specific-pinterestified day or if maybe you are already doing this marriage thing: there is something that surprised me when I married my husband.

What I Discovered

I was surprised in those first few weeks of marriage when I discovered…

My husband is a sinner. (I say is and not was because he is in fact… still a sinner. I just checked. Really, he is a sinner.)

This truth seems simple enough. This truth is a basic foundation to the Christian life, we are all sinners. (Romans 3:23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.)

For those of you unfamiliar with the terminology of the Bible, (which was me just ten years ago so no judgement.. really, I just checked and still no judgement) to sin means to simply miss the mark; to go through life missing the mark in the middle of the bullseye of God’s perfect holiness.

It seemed like a simple truth. My husband is a sinner. My husband will not do life perfectly. My husband will miss the bullseye.

I am a sinner. (Again am and not was because I just checked and I currently am the worst of sinners.) I will not do life perfectly. I will miss the bullseye of God’s perfect holiness.

My husband being a sinner meant he would sin against me in those first few weeks of our new marriage.

Me being a sinner meant I would sin against him too.

Living together meant our sin would rub up against one another in that little apartment kitchen as we were putting away our new perfect dishes every morning, noon and night of those newlyweded days.

We would both miss the mark of that bullseye of God’s perfect holiness in that little kitchen as husband and wife and we would love each other imperfectly.

Why this basic Biblical truth about sinners was a surprise to me in my marriage still confuses me.

For some reason I believed “the gospel” would bless me, the worst of sinners, with a conflict free marriage. I really believed that Jesus would grant my husband and I, in a marriage of sinners, free from sin and conflict.

What I Was Missing

I would have spent a lot less time balled up in the fetal position on our marital bed if I had known I was missing what “the gospel” really had blessed two of the worst of sinners with in our covenantal marriage.

I was missing the piece that we are both forgiven sinners in our marriage together.

I was missing the piece that even though I fumed with anger about that water glass that sat there on the counter for days… there was abundant forgiveness for that forgotten glass and abundant forgiveness for my fuming anger.

I was missing the part of the gospel that says, “It is finished.” in John 19:30 It is finished for my husband and it is finished for me.

If you are unfamiliar with the words and the redemption story from scripture, I will tell you that from the beginning, in Genesis, the redemption story of God and His people is about God saying, “It is finished” for the worst of sinners. God is rescuing us from the truths we know at an intellectual level but fail to apply to our hearts. The truths we fail to apply to our husbands. The truths we fail to apply to ourselves.

Because of the gospel, none of us are ever granted a marriage free from sin or free from hurting. However, In Christ, we are all granted marriages full of abundant forgiveness for sinners.

“It is finished” for my husband the sinner. And that is where I have found freedom from the fetal position and the tears on my martial bed.

May “it is finished” be a theme for your marriage. May the gospel give you a marriage full of forgiveness instead of the surprises of sin in your first apartment putting away those perfect new dishes in that tiny apartment.

In Christ I am a sinner. My husband is a sinner.

It is finished for him and it is just the same finished for me.

What I Remember

October 5, 2014September 19, 20166 Comments

I remember coming home from school right before Easter and my mother sitting me down along with my two younger siblings in our formal living room.

“Mommy is sick.” Were the words I remember being said.

That was about all I can remember of that moment. Those words, that room and the blurry shape of my mother. I was seven when she told me she was sick for the first time.

I began to notice some small changes. My grandma would come to stay with us often and my mother would go for treatment about every three weeks to University of Cincinnati hospital.

I remember the meals.

I remember the hospital room.

I remember being allowed to spend the night with my mom at the hospital and we would play rummy until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.

I can remember when she lost her hair. I was eight then and she had a pixie cut right before she lost it all. My mom was a frequent volunteer in all my elementary classes and one week she came with her pixie cut and the next she came with her shoulder length wig. I remember not thinking anything of it until someone asked me how her hair grew so fast. I remember getting upset with her because at eight I didn’t really understand what “mommy is sick” really meant.

At eight you think mommy is sick will end with “mommy will get better.” When I was sick as a child there seemed to always be a way to heal me. At eight I thought mommy would heal.

I remember the sick going away and coming back again.

I remember never feeling like she was sick. Visibly she was sick. Her hair was gone, one of her breasts had been removed and I remember her wincing at the visible and painful canker sores in her mouth from chemo.

But I remember she never missed a beat for us. She was not lying around when I got home from school even if she could barely peel herself off the couch as the bus came up Thistledown Road. She never bought a halloween costume from the store, she was present in our schools, in our scout troops and I’m pretty sure she took on being the cheerleading coach one year.

image via indulgy.com

I remember feeling angry when I wasn’t eight anymore and the reality of “mommy is sick” was able to sink in deep into the corners of my heart.

I remember coming home from a sleepover one weekend to find her upstairs in her bed after the sick had spread to her brain. There were scrambled eggs all over her from where she had tried to feed herself but her brain could not help her move the fork from her hand to her mouth.

I remember sitting there with her in the four-poster king-sized bed after the eggs were cleaned up and I tried to help her clip coupons. I remember crying when she couldn’t tell me which one to clip so then she tried to point but because her hand eye coordination was so impaired it made it difficult for her to communicate and she wasn’t being understood.

I remember her being frustrated and I remember trying to be patient. I remember I felt so guilty for going to that sleepover. I should have stayed home and soaked up every last minute I had sitting with her in that four-poster bed.

I remember the day my sister and I got off that bus that came up Thistledown Road and my mother wasn’t there waiting for us. I remember running frantically from door to door and window to window with my sister. We both knew.

I remember my dad telling me she wasn’t going to make it. I was fourteen and I looked out the passenger window of our Chrysler minivan and said, “I know.” I remember trying to hold myself together because I felt the need to be strong for everybody else.

I remember sitting by her bedside in ICU and talking to her while she was in a coma. I remember trying to tell her about my dance competition without crying. I remember telling her I loved her and that was the last time I saw her.

I was at home when my dad told me my mom had exhaled her last breath. It was a school night, right before Easter, seven years after I sat on that couch and heard, “mommy was sick.” I remember leaving my house that night to spend the night with friends and I remember going to school the next day like nothing had happened at all.

These are pieces of what I can remember from my childhood with a mother battling breast cancer. These are just pieces of a story that I hope my children cannot grow up to tell of their own childhood thirty years from now. We have come a long way in breast cancer research since 1991 but there isn’t a cure for breast cancer yet. So for now I can only hope, pray for a cure, and share the pieces of my story to raise awareness.

Breast cancer not only takes our mothers, our sisters, our wives and our daughters but it leaves us here with broken stories. As I sit here typing my memories I hear those deep down corners of my heart screaming, “this is not the way it’s supposed to be!”

It’s not supposed to be this way – and hopefully it’s not for someone else in their story.

Lord, bring a cure quickly. For our mothers, our sisters, our wives and our daughters.

Raise Awareness. #october

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.