More Than Just Adam's Rib

A Five Year Old's First Crush

2012-02-09T17:39:00.000-08:00

Since the nursery days of cribs, diapers, and shared spit on toys, my oldest has been enthralled with one girl. Their friendship wasn't much of a surprise, what with the two of them being the only constants in their age group at church. Three times a week, they played together, her gender and six month age advantage not making any difference. He submissively followed wherever she went.

But six months is a big difference when you're that young. And in our State, six months meant the difference in her starting kindergarten this year and my son staying in four-year-old preschool. Although I've been homeschooling him with the same kindergarten curriculum she has been learning, in her eyes, he's now a baby, one not worthy of her time.

The problem? Somewhere along the way, Wyatt decided he was in love with her. He wanted to marry her. He was going to marry her.

Husband just shook his head with big grin and chuckled at that revelation, muttering something about "not a chance with an older woman" as he walked away.

Since the fall of last year, their Sunday morning encounters have been painfully predictable to this mother/teacher.

Before class, Wyatt would be engrossed in playing with something--a puzzle, toy animals, the play kitchen. I could always tell when she arrived. Wyatt would instantly spring to his feet, a smile on his face. "Hey, ______! Do you want to come play with me?"

"Never."

Undeterred, he would keep hammering away. "Do you want to play chef? I'll cook for you"

"I said No."

Cold. But clear...if you're not in love, I guess. When he tried to go play with her or sit by her at the table (even moving a chair when one wasn't available), she would shriek, "Wyatt's by me!" Funny, I didn't realize cooties started in kindergarten.

Sometimes she wouldn't bother to acknowledge his presence. As the mother with not much tongue left to bite off over in the corner, I was almost thankful.

From the back of the van one Sunday, Wyatt finally asked, "Why doesn't ____ like me."

I avoided the "she's a girl and you're a boy" conversation and instead stumbled through what he was doing wrong. "Girls don't like to cook lizards or eat panda bears."

"But Amelia does," he shot back.

Sigh. Yes. She did.

The following week, he did try what I had suggested, but to no avail. This time, we weren't out of the parking lot before the therapy session began.

"___ wouldn't play with me! I did what you said and didn't serve her a tiger or throw a beetle at her, or..... But she still wouldn't play with me!"

He was obviously crushed, and so I made it simple--she does not love you. Why do you love her?

"Because she's beautiful," he replied in a matter-of-fact tone more fit for a teenager.

My eyes rolled heavenward. "Well, you need to find someone to love who is beautiful on the outside and the inside."

No. All he cared about was that she was beautiful on the outside. My sage advice was falling on deaf ears...lovestruck ears

That was a few months ago.

We've had a few impromptu discussions since then about what it means for us to be beautiful on the inside, but that's it. Her dismissive attitude must have worked, because he seems to have lost interest, some Sundays not even acknowledging her presence. She doesn't seem to miss his attention, either. In fact, when no one is there,when no one is watching, sometimes, they will even play together as friends for a few brief minutes.

It's good. They're much too young to even begin understanding what love means. But in a way, it's sad, too, how a first crush can come and go with so little notice.

This capacity to love comes from one source--our God who is love in its pure form.

Love cannot be something that can hold our complete attention for days, months, and years only to float away unnoticed like the feathers of a dandelion puff, near invisible in their airy flight.

If it's going to die, it needs to go out fighting, an asteroid burning a bright tear through the atmosphere before crashing to leave behind an eternal imprint in the desert to mark its death.

Image: Wyatt with a plastic ant from his birthday cake. (Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of the live grasshopper he brought in my kitchen last week or the huge bumblebee he "caught" in a peanut butter container on Monday but was too scared to set free "because he'll sting me!")

Learning to Bite My Tongue

2012-02-03T23:27:00.001-08:00

"Hey beautiful," husband says brightly as he answers the phone, his tone instantly communicating how happy he is to see my name on the iPhone screen. Fifteen years later, my face still warms at the greeting, creases in deep parentheses.

Husband almost never uses my real name. Perhaps it's unconscious, a genetic abnormality passed down from his mother who is compelled to nickname every person and pet in the family. Or perhaps it's the intimacy of being able to call me something others can't. I've never asked. It just has always been.

Because of the rarity of which I hear my name, the few times when husband has actually spoken it aloud to introduce me or to ask me a question in a larger group setting--it has always sounded wrong. It does, however, instantly get my attention.

In the never-ending soundtrack where familiar sounds of mommy, honey, and wifey act like mindless elevator music, the off-key syllables of "Jen-ni-fer" clank like a cowbell in a Beethoven lullaby, making my head snap towards the new sound.

"Beautiful" is the name he always comes back to. After fifteen years of responding to it, I could legitimately fill in the Nickname box on all those government forms with that one word. Beautiful.

When we were dating, I would have automatically dipped my head low at this adjective, felt my skin burn all the way to my roots before drawing eyebrows together and growling back, "I'm not beautiful. You're deluded."

It wasn't that I was coyly trying to get him to repeat himself. I simply, rationally knew better. Cellulite here...and there...and there...and.... I had never been the beautiful one. My extraordinarily short dating rap sheet was living proof of that. Plus, I did own a mirror.

I finally told him that if he wanted to love me forever, he might as well accept the truth, too, and not blind himself just to keep from hurting my feelings. I wasn't dumb.

But nothing I said stopped him. If anything, it only made him try harder to convince me, to make me see what he saw.

I never could. Most days, I still can't. But after all this time, he still comes up behind me and whispers those words, unprompted. To the exposed body stretched beyond recognition then scarred by incubating and birthing twins, he says "beautiful." To the crow's feet, wrinkles, and increasing frequency of gray slithering through my brunette locks, he says "beautiful."It has taken several years for me to learn to bite my tongue, to accept this phrase for what it truly is--an offering of love. But accept it I do, turn to kiss the mouth that presents this offering.

As we grow together, I repeatedly pray the same prayer: "Lord, make my desire only be for my husband and for his desire to only be for me."

May we always be this way.

To Make a Garden

2012-02-02T17:11:00.000-08:00

With my daughter, it's all about the flowers. Always has been. Even in the dead of winter.

The boys and I will be planting loblolly pines, scooping great mounds of dirt around anorexic tree trunks and stomping down the air bubbles. We'll be throwing a Frisbee across the field, looking at molded rabbit poop, tracing mud-encased deer tracks with our fingers, kicking over ant hills to find the winged ones within, or taking a nature walk through the Hundred Acre Woods.

And all the while, Amelia will be close by but oblivious in her search for flowers.

There are the little yellow strawberry-like petaled ones that trail across the ground on loose vines. The cream pointed clusters of three that leave my hands smelling of onion. Bundles of delicate purple ones lining lanky stems, limber as they sway in the breeze. White airy balls shooting straight up, stiff amongst lush clumps of green clover.

She finds them all.

Even in the culvert where the boys search for tadpoles, grasshoppers, snails and lizards, yes, even there, she manages to find a blossom or two.

The downside to all this single-mindedness is a difficulty in understanding the difference between "God's flowers" that are ok to pick and "Mommy flowers" that should be enjoyed on the plant.

One Sunday after church, she went behind Grand Mama's house for ten unsupervised minutes before bursting bright-eyed through the door, having picked every last narcissus in my mom's well-manicured flower beds. That glowing face and arm-extended gift to me were too much to chasten very harshly. Even "Mama" graciously accepted that full armload of aromatic wonder with a smile.

This afternoon, Amelia burst through my door again, eyes bright with the same excitement.

"Come look, mommy! I'm planting a garden!"Sure enough, in her daddy's sand pile by the new carport, Amelia had placed a hunk of concrete (a stepping stone, perhaps?), the much coveted plastic rabbit, and a flower pot. At her feet was "planted" a bundle of purple wild flowers "so they will grow."

The thing about creating a garden? To make one, first you must look past the store-bought Latin-named plants enclosed in rock-walled flower beds and see the garden around you.

You must learn to see God's beauty and holy handiwork in mere weeds.

The Difference Four Little Words Can Make

2012-01-30T18:50:00.000-08:00

It was turning into another one of those days when my eldest child found fault with everything I did.

Breakfast milk wasn't in his regular cup (because I hadn't got around to washing yesterday's dishes). I didn't leap off the treadmill and run downstairs quickly enough to fast forward through every second of the taboo commercials. I didn't pour enough dressing for his fresh spinach salad at lunch. I didn't read enough books. I forgot yesterday's promise to watch this VeggieTales movie instead of that VeggieTales movie after nap time.

For each perceived injustice, I apologized, but "I'm sorry" just wasn't cutting it. In fact, it was if I were saying nothing at all.

"But mooooommy..." he would say, continuing nonstop with the whiny complaint of the moment. "How would you feel if someone..."

I was already losing the war, and that was before he had a sudden revelation that I'd taken a particular art project off the fridge and (following the normal routine) replaced it with his newest creation. For some reason, this masterpiece that I threw away was more important than the other thousand I'd callously sent to the landfill.

It was the proverbial straw that sunk the camel to his knees. When I say buckets of tears were welling up in his eyes, I'm not exaggerating. A whopping thunder storm was about to hit over a single piece of paper decorated with markers and I felt powerless to stop it.

At the small kitchen table, I dropped to my own knees beside him.

"I'm so sorry, Wyatt. Mommy didn't know that one was special. She didn't mean to hurt your feelings." And then, without any well-conceived plan, I blurted out, "Can you forgive me?"

Eyes that had been riveted to the floor as the first raindrops fell suddenly flickered upward. A sheepish grin wiped like a rainbow across his once stormy face, him seemingly embarrassed at the requested forgiveness, a word we reserved for our conversations with God.

"Of course." he stammered. "I forgive you, mommy."

And that was that. He moved on as I knelt still in humble silence. Could it really be that easy?

****

Over the last month, I have made a concerted effort to follow up my apologies to my children with the words "can you forgive me?" The first few times I consciously chose to say the words, I felt like I was trying to cough up a hairball. There is nothing my spirit wanted more than to not say those words.

Requesting another's forgiveness is instantly humbling, a greater admission of one's flawed nature than a mere "I'm sorry" conveys. Such words put the heart out there, exposed in the open for someone to either throw down and stamp with his heel or cup tenderly with both hands, gently give back to you in one restored piece.

Weeks later, the words don't always stick quite so harshly in my throat. My children still duck their heads in shyness, drop their voice to a whisper as they grant me their forgiveness. It's as if they know what it means for me to ask for it...and for them to grant it. It's as if they realize mommy is admitting how flawed she is and that their heart is echoing back their love for a mother even with her flaws.

The hardest part, though? Was extending this practice to my husband, to bring the audible, spoken word "forgiveness" into our marriage.

Husband caught on to what I was doing before I had even talked with him about it, one night drawing me to him as he put his arms around my waist, right there in front of all three children surprising me with "I'm sorry. Can you forgive me?"

Just like my son, my head snapped upwards and I felt a flush of embarrassment as I experienced the intimacy of the moment--not the physical intimacy, the spiritual intimacy of forgiveness.

To those of you who drop by here, I would like to challenge you to do something for the month of February. For the next 29 days, commit to asking your spouse for his/her forgiveness when you would usually only say "I'm sorry." Commit to actually voicing the words aloud. As you interact with your children, start using that same phrase, too.

The best way to express love may be to offer up yourself in a simple request for a loved one's forgiveness.

No, You Can't Play Together

2012-01-26T22:42:00.000-08:00

I listen to them argue over a toy, cry crocodile tears over a sibling-bumped head, complain over a real or perceived injustice. I nod my head in mock seriousness, hand out hugs and kisses by the dozen to the injured party of the moment, remind them all of the "do unto others" verse, sing the "love, joy, peace and patience" ditty to remind of the fruit God wants to see in them.

Some days, the whining and bickering is so intense, I refuse to enter the fray, hold my hands out defensively and say I'm Switzerland. "Work it out yourselves or you can't play together."

They go away, offer apologies and forgiveness for the short-term. But they always come back with the next offense and the next...and the next, until I follow through with my warning.

"You can't play with Emerson anymore. Nope. No. Go away from him. If he's on the playground, you have to be somewhere else. And you--you can't play with Wyatt anymore either. Go play by yourself in another room."

Edict issued, I intentionally turn my back on them all, ignore their complaints, and return to whatever task kept being interrupted with battle cries, confident that there is no way my words will be obeyed.

It won't take long. A minute. Maybe five. If I peek out the window, listen down the hall, I can see them try valiantly not to play with each other, do their own thing. But it never fails.

Eyes watching over his shoulder to see if mommy is watching, one will sneak over to where the other ones are playing. The others don't turn him away but join in sneaking glances down the hall, at the side door, too. In minutes, all are happily unified in their play. Now, that they're doing what mommy has told them not to do, nobody can come tattletale. So, they share where they would usually snatch and grab. They comfort where they would usually annoy. And should mommy open that door or round the corner of the hall? They are prepared to instantly split three-ways, pretend to be doing individual tasks that they're not.Sibling rivalry turned into sibling unity. Although it's rooted in joint defiance (them versus me), the end result is cooperative working together, so many fun giggles reaching the treetops....such joy.

Was That God's Voice? Or Just the TV.

2012-01-24T19:25:00.000-08:00

I hadn't wanted to go to the meeting. Not really. Not at all. And so I decided a dozen times to stay home, only to find myself wrestling all day with the Spirit's voice within me. Go. Go.

Three hours before I had to leave, I finally sat down to prepare for my part in the program. Nothing had pricked my heart in the monthly literature. Then, I remembered my mother had shoved a small book in my hand earlier that morning. Her eyes alight, she told me it was life changing, worth my time to read.

With children watching their afternoon Veggie Tales above my head, I leaned back and read the first three chapters. Interesting. Not really life-changing, but I felt the heart-stir anyway.

The book spoke of how we don't pray the big prayers because we're so comfortable in asking for what doesn't require faith, for what we already know He can do...for what we know is possible. We shy away from the prayers that would involve moving mountains--the impossible.

Convicting stuff.

******

The group was smaller than normal. I knew all the ladies there, loved them all. But still, I wanted to be not there. I am ashamed of my attitude, but if I'm honest with myself, I know I went with no expectations of hearing God's voice speaking to me. My ears weren't even listening for Him. My body was just filling a seat, fulfilling what I considered to be a duty.

And there He was anyway, His message meant specifically for me in an off-hand comment about a group of 40+ persecuted Burmese Christians who had fled their homeland, who were living in Baton Rouge, and whose #1 need was learning how to speak English.

It was as if a firecracker had gone off in that little room. I instantly remembered back to my college days, when I strongly felt God telling me in my spirit that He would have me teach ESL classes, I believed, to China. A couple I loved dearly even became missionaries in that area.

One summer, a group from my childhood church flew to meet them and help teach such classes. Already committed to teaching summer school at my college, I was so frustrated that I couldn't go, too....even more frustrated when the couple moved back to the U.S. a few years later, eliminating what I thought was my way of achieving that ministry.

Then, my children were born, and that calling seemed to dim further in my memory, only every now and then growing bright as I wondered if I had really heard God's voice at all.

Later that night after I made it home, I looked up Burma and gasped when Google pulled up a map showing the little country touched China. It was as if God was saying since I couldn't go, He was bringing that part of the world to me.

I was excited, yet terrified. I have no experience teaching ESL. As I looked further into the country, I realized the Burmese alphabet didn't even look like English.

And then I remembered those chapters I'd read earlier in the day. In Be a Circle Maker: The Solution to 10,000 Problems, Mark Batterson writes, "If you've never had a God-sized dream that scared you half to death, then you haven't really come to life. If you've never been overwhelmed by the impossibility of your plans, then your God is too small. If your vision isn't perplexingly impossible, then you need to expand the radiuses of your prayer circles" (45-46).

He continues, "A big dream is simultaneously the best feeling and worst feeling in the world. It's exhilarating because it's beyond your ability; it's frightening for the same exact reason...In my experience, you'll never feel qualified. But God doesn't call the qualified; God qualifies the called" (46-7).

Awesome. Exhilirated and frightened--that was me. That is me.

Before I could let the fear overwhelm, I took the leap, contacted those involved, offered to teach, and contacted others who could help with materials. Everything was moving so rapidly, too quickly for this clueless servant. A date was set for the first meeting, transportation and a building secured. Full steam ahead.

And then, we came to a brick wall built right across the road. Another group had the training and experience I lacked. They were taking charge of the project. Yes, my church and I could still help teach, but we would wait on their lead.

Initially, I was relieved, hoping to learn from these teachers, my heart thinking maybe we could duplicate this ministry with the Hispanic community around our area. But two weeks later, we're still waiting on the word.

I have felt deflated, discouraged. Really, God?!? Did I not hear you right then and now? All last week, I kept shaking my head. This just couldn't be right. I knew I heard God...right?

But with each passing day, I doubted.

******

Friday found me in the stores, scouring the deep winter clearance sales I love. Knowing the Christmas cards were 90% off, I drove to LifeWay Christian Bookstore. And there, amongst the leftover candy canes and tree ornaments sat one lone book, stuck way out on the edge.

Bright cobalt blue amongst the Christmas red, gold, and green. I couldn't miss it if I had tried.

English Lessons.

It was the same exact book I'd been told to use, had been planning to use when I helped teach the ESL classes. I held it close and almost broke down in tears on my knees right there in the middle of the store.

My Father knew my doubting heart, and so He chose to speak again.

I'm still not sure if I will be ministering to the Burmese group now or in the future. There's a lot that is uncertain. But what's not uncertain is that God does desire my willingness to serve in this ministry--somewhere, somehow, with someone.

I just need to be open to go whenever He wills it.

Books are for Being Re-Discovered

2012-01-20T21:23:00.000-08:00

Last April, I pulled from the bookshelves all the baby books with their thick cardboard pages with chew marks and stacked them by my bedside. Even the twins had moved on to the more complex tales of Winnie the Pooh and Clifford. I intended to cull through them, save just a few to remember this phase of life...but there they sat for a couple months until I decided that no, I couldn't give them away.

The cribs, toddler beds, baby toys, burp cloths, tricycles, and oodles of clothing, I sent to needy homes with relative ease. But the books? I just couldn't do it. Is Your Mama a Llama and Goodnight Moon squeezed inside plastic grocery bags with Clifford's Peekaboo and The Little Lost Lamb before taking up residence inside my dressing closet. The plan was for husband to bring me a box so they could live in the attic until I wanted to bawl over them one day when the children are older.

Ten months later, I'm still tripping over those bags, that is, until the other night when my oldest, Wyatt, discovered them, intentionally unloading the entire lot across the closet floor, the typical household book situation described in Wednesday's post.

I found him in the closet, head hunched seriously over the book in his lap as he read softly. He didn't remember them, thought they were new books. And even better, they were new books with words he now knew.

Seeing me, Wyatt yelled, "Listen, mommy! I can read it!"

Even though I was supposed to be hurrying him on toward bedtime, I found myself sitting with him on the sofa, helping sound out he words he didn't know as he read, "Is your mama a llama I asked my friend...D-ay-vuh. No he is not....."

I smiled tight. Bittersweet.

Later, I sat down with a few books from my own childhood that my mother found this past week. I opened Come Play with Me, its imaginary watercolor images still fresh in mind thirty years later.

I listened as Wyatt easily read aloud the book about rainbows, the one I had forgotten until my mother read the blog post on parking lot rainbows and realized I didn't remember the book that first started my love of them.

I put to the side the book about the dog coming to dinner, its cover connected to the memory of a very young me sitting on my bedroom's purple carpet, my head crumpled in frustration as I struggled to read that particular book...before hiding it away from my mother.It is good, Wyatt and me both re-discovering these books.

You're going to be shocked, but the same is true of Jim Henderson's The Resignation of Eve, which I reviewed here two weeks ago. In my original read of the book, I disagreed with how he interpreted the data in the first and last few chapters, felt he began with a hypothesis and made the research fit his theory. I enjoyed the case studies of the women (as did my husband who found himself reading over my shoulder versus watching football), but I disagreed with his overall conclusion (and still do).

And then, Mr. Henderson showed up in my comment box...and he wasn't snooty, pretentious, or dismissive like some authors I've met in the secular realm. In the face of negative criticism, He was real, kind, humble, and demonstrating a sincere heart for Christian unity in the church, a true Christ-like attitude that blew me out of my seat.

Not only that, but he invited dialogue on our differences concerning women's place in the church. And when I spoke, He listened. He, I, and a couple women whose stories are in the book actually began a good discussion in the comment box that led to a couple emails worth of conversation. There were no rude thoughts, no anger at our disagreement....just honest, thoughtful dialogue. In the end, he said, "I think we only disagree in degrees not in substance," and I found myself agreeing.

Although we disagreed on the bottom line of "degrees" concerning when/how women should lead in the church, we were still unified in the underlying "substance" of creating a climate of unity and mutual respect in Christ's church where all feel welcome to worship and serve our God.

In one comment, Mr. Henderson said, "I'm tired of Christians 'breaking up' over simple disagreements and differences - Jesus told us to love one another not agree with one another." Although this "agree to disagree" attitude works between me and my husband, because my church broke in half two years ago in disagreement, I have not really experienced such an attitude in the body of Christ. And I have to tell you--it is refreshing.

This author's Christ-like attitude has made The Resignation of Eve a continued topic of conversation at my house for two weeks--not because of how I disagree with him but because I've been able to look past that disagreement to see the women depicted in the stories inside the pages.

Re-discovering this book--it has left me silent in humble contemplation of how much unity could really be found in the church if we all put ego aside and focused on what holds us together: love for Christ.

Books Aren't Just For Reading

2012-01-17T20:26:00.000-08:00

The princess in fluffy yellow Belle dress pulls up a stool and perches, almost regal as she sits tall to grasp a handful of books from the third shelf. Like always, she grabs too many, and a few instantly drop to the floor. I watch from the kitchen as she flips through one, chunks it, then goes through another, looking at the brightly illustrated characters and remembering the story line. The more engrossed she is, the faster the other thin stories in her lap slip down the net skirt to join the others already lying beneath her.

My sons sit cross-legged on the living room floor, both competing over who reads what book first from yesterday's library bag. Like his twin sister, Emerson flies through the pages, looking at pictures and sometimes retelling part of the story aloud to himself. But Wyatt takes longer with his book, annoying Emerson who just wants him to hurry up already and share.

Simply put, my house is a constant nightmare of pressed wood pulp and ink underfoot.You could visit my house any hour of the day or night and find a messy pile of books scattered everywhere. If by some miracle you didn't stumble over one lying on the entryway rug, you would surely find a tottering stack in the living room, on the upstairs sofa, under a chair at the kitchen table, or (if it's a favorite) hidden under a sleeping child's bed pillow.

I can never pick them all up...never. Believe me. I've tried. Dozens of times each day. Even at the Christmas party where our home was more similar to a Better Homes and Garden photo than it will likely ever be again. Even then, halfway through the evening, I peeked in the school room and saw a half dozen children's books discarded on the floor, one flopped open, interrupted in mid-read.

When I had but one child, I was foolish enough to organize the books on the shelf--all the Cliffords, then Winnie the Pooh, then Thomas... Now? I feel blessed if I can keep separate the 15 library books checked out each week. (And that doesn't take into account the ones the children "borrow" from Oma or Grandmama or Grandmother.)

Bookshelves full of neatly lined up books, all the spines facing outward, are as irresistible as an unwatched chocolate cake to my brood.

And me? I can't complain too much because I know it's my fault.

Ever since they were born, I have waved books under their noses like Godiva-filled cookies, taught them that a sure way to get some undivided mommy attention was to guilt her into reading another and another and another book.
I've taught them that books are for living, not for mere reading, that books' story lines are to be mixed up and retold in puppet shows at the dining room table. Or better yet, they're to be lived out in family parties like the now annual Berry Blossom or Autumn Harvest festivals.

Last week it was the book Mr. Gator's Gumbo. Couldn't I just make some of that alligator's gumbo? With a possum. An otter. A skunk. There was a "recipe" on the back. See?

Sure...but I couldn't find the otter, so I had to substitute. Would that be ok?

Before that, it was a request to make an Amelia Bedelia "sheet" cake (yes...another "recipe" in the book). A month ago, Wyatt asked for The Magic School Bus: Ants in Your Pants book be transformed into his birthday cake. Why not?
I fuss about books covering the table at breakfast, lunch, and dinner when all I'm trying to do is serve a meal. I growl when there is no miraculous parting of the books so I can walk a dry path down the hall.

And yet, I can't help but smile at the mess, knowing it is necessary to cultivating both knowledge and the imagination, that it needs to be a bit messy if one is to learn how to take the written word and shape it into something useful for the world outside the typed page.

In recent years, it's been those times when I've had my own mess of Bible commentaries scattered across the floor that I've learned the most, too.

Not to self: Ignore the mess. Read another five minutes.

When Human Hearing Doesn't Measure Up

2012-01-12T19:10:00.000-08:00

The lunch time crowd is tough today. The normal silliness and giggles are still there. But they don't want to talk of childish things like most days, only of the mysteries I still haven't nailed down with a certainty I'd be willing to die for.

What will we eat in heaven? Will there be cake? Will there be leaf piles? Cats? Bicycles?

Cats we've been over before. But bicycles? That's a new one.

We reach across the small square table to hold hands, say lunchtime prayers in thanks for the standard fare--a fold over peanut butter, grapes, carrots, and "mommy's salad" (fresh spinach) piled near the puddle of sun dried tomato vinaigrette.

As always, the prayer is loud. Too loud. It's like they're competing, each yelling over the others to make God hear their prayer most.

I sigh, think of Wyatt going to kindergarten in the fall, know it won't take long for some other kid to make him not want to pray so loudly...or pray at all.

"You know, you don't have to yell the prayer for God to hear you. He can hear you when you whisper. He can even hear you when you only think something."

Wyatt dips his carrot and turns my direction, then folds in on himself, head hunched over inches from his plate. "Even when I talk like this?" he asks, voice soft as a whisper.

I smile. It's a game to him, but it's still an acknowledgement that he's listening. "Yes, even then."

I swipe another glob of peanut butter on white bread and take a peek over my shoulder at his silence. His shoulders are hunched forward again, his hand cupped over his mouth, apparently whispering softer than my ears can register.

"What about that?"

"Even then. Mommy may not be able to hear you, but God always can."

I'm the one teaching the lesson here, but the Spirit within helps me hear these self-spoken words as if I were the student.

I don't hear everything, at least not anymore.

Two blue-winged baby monitors with matching halos have perched by my bed for five years, their green lights offering reassurance that even when I slept, my children were only inches away should they need me.

Over the years, I've listened over the intercom to brother whispers after lights out, songs sung in lieu of counting sheep, cries of spiking fever or tummy aches, tears from bad dreams, and the inexplicable sound of someone needing a late night potty run.But with Wyatt now five, and the twins three, the monitors are no longer really necessary. My children are more than loud enough to hear without a monitor. The intercoms are more for my comfort than for them.

Two weeks ago, still unsure, I turned them off. But I left them there by the bedside "just in case." Lights off. Collecting dust.

It seems I need to hear my own teaching--God can hear my children. God is always watching over my children. Even when I cannot.

When God Calls Us to Help the Sparrows

2012-01-10T15:44:00.000-08:00

I wake to their chatter, the unmistakable conversation of south-flown robins filling the silence as soon as I crack open the door to do a jacket check. Overnight, hundreds of these red-breasted beings have chosen my back yard as a place of rest.

Scattered at even intervals across the green, road-weary wings tucked, they bask in early morning sun, warming themselves as a few almost casually seek their breakfast. As long as my feet stay firmly on the concrete, as long as the children use their inside voices, the birds stay.They watch us. We watch them, each a rapt audience, ever attentive to the other's every move.

Over by the "swamp," amidst the delicate parrot feather and frost bitten water hyacinths, water droplets spray a foot into the air as a few of the braver ones duck their heads beneath the water's surface, fluff their feathers wide for the cleaning before taking wing to safety in the tree branches overhead where they'll roost today.I realize I haven't even filled the feeder for the finches that arrived last week, not that these larger birds would stoop to choosing my store-bought seed over the meal the Lord provides beneath their feet, but at least I would feel as if I were helping sustain them.

How they cover so many miles each winter, how so many survive the trip when sustaining pit-stops of forest and field continue to shrink with urban sprawl. Each year, it amazes me.

Yet, I do know the how. Their arrival comes only days after I spoke the how to a class of four and five year old children in Sunday School, after I watched little sponges gobble up the words of Christ before taking crayons, glue, and sunflower seeds to create a reminder of answers to the very questions that just coursed through my mind. This is just another of those God-incidences where the Father pieces together circumstances in the everyday to show me Himself.

"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care.And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows" (Matt. 10:29-31).

The same God who protected each bird on its seemingly impossible flight here--he is the God who cares for all life. He is the God who does not need me to help feed the birds. No, He is quite capable on His own. Yet, He allows me to participate in ministering to His creation.

It's the physical and spiritual needs of the hurting, the hungry, the homeless that burden me. God calls me to do more. He demands that I do more to be Christ's hands and feet to those whom many would consider as worthless as a sparrow. This is the path I'm seeking, the ministry opportunity I'm listening for.

I'm linking here to a YouTube video with David Platt's interview of Katie Davis of Kisses from Katie and her newly published book by the same name.

Listening to Katie's burden for both the spiritual and physical needs of children in Uganda, my heart can't help but hear her burden echo within it. Maybe your heart will echo the same.

Joining in community each Wednesday with Jennifer Dukes @ Getting Down With Jesus.

Is The Christian Church Driving Women Away?

2012-01-05T18:24:00.000-08:00

Rarely do I read a book and feel from page one that the author started with a hypothesis, then worked his statistics and stories to make that hypothesis true. Yet, such seems to be the case with Jim Henderson's newest The Resignation of Eve: What if Adam's Rib is No Longer Willing to be the Church's Backbone?.

Henderson believes women are leaving the church in droves for one reason--inequality, because there is a glass ceiling in leadership which prohibits them from becoming pastors or elders in the church, because women feel they are undervalued and unappreciated.

In the preface, George Barna of the Barna Research Group says, "I don't know if I agree with all of Jim's conclusions..." That's a nice way of saying it. From the Author's Note at the start of the book, Henderson appears to twist statistics to suit his hypothesis, playing on the reader's fear that women--and only women--are leaving the church in droves, so we Christians should change our ways or there will be no one to serve in the future kingdom.

The problem is Henderson conveniently leaves out any statistics about men and their rising absence from the church pew. A quick search of Barna's website shows men and women both leaving the church. Granted, the 18% increase in "unchurched" women is much higher than men's 9% increase; yet, Henderson doesn't even mention males, as if their church attendance/participating is stable when women's are plummeting. He also cites a 2005 Gallup study showing 38% of women are unchurched but fails to mention that same study showed 49% of men were also unchurched.

Again, Henderson cites Steve Smith's "Study Tracks Church Attendance Trends" to bolster his claim that women have shifted away from the church over the past two decades; what he fails to mention is that Smith believes this shift is not caused by a power-struggle between the have's (men) and the have not's (women) but because of increase in women's level of education.

Henderson even commissioned Barna to do quantitative research of women; yet, when Barna's research finds that "few [women] seem frustrated about their opportunities to lead in the church," Henderson dismisses the study, implying that women are really frustrated but just don't know it because they're so culturally brainwashed by the male-driven church...or if they're not frustrated, it's only because they've already disengaged or moved to a more free church.

But Henderson doesn't like statistics. As he says "stories are the new statistics" (11). And so, the bulk of his book is composed of stories of women and their experiences.

In the first few chapters where Henderson chronicles the lives of women who don't feel there is a problem with women not leading in the church, have never really thought about it, or merely live with the inequalities for the sake of their husband/children/church unity. Henderson's disapproval of these women's attitudes literally oozes through the narrative, making him almost too condescending to read. Yet, in the later chapters detailing women who are in positions of church leadership or who have left the church for secular leadership roles of Christ-like service, Henderson actually gushes over them, calling one of the women a "hero" and throwing around words like "intelligence" and "wisdom" to describe them.

Of the two women he describes resigning from the church because of their disillusionment with the hierarchy, one of the women is bipolar; her story is sad but seems to have nothing to do with women being denied leadership more than it screams of Christian lack of understanding of the disease and compassion. The other woman who left the church was in therapy before determining somehow that the church was squashing her self and keeping her from true freedom--not really the leadership equality argument issue either. Neither demonstrates the average woman is leaving the church because of leadership inequality.

Henderson admits that this entire debate boils down to how a person interprets Scripture concerning a woman's role in the church, whether Paul's words were meant to be a literal or cultural recommendation. I've lived several years at the brunt end of one denomination's attempt to make women's opinions no more important than the dust they came from. I'm also currently living in a denomination that does not allow women to be ordained pastors or elders.

Yet, unlike Henderson's self-assured stance, I know only that although the footing around the cross is equal, I'm willing to say "I'm not sure" Christ automatically offers all offices equally to all. And even if He does offer universal freedom for the full equality Henderson desires, I'm concerned about something Henderson just dismisses in his mad thrust for women's equality in the church--women leaders being a stumbling block to men.

Just because we can do something freely in Christ doesn't mean we always should.

Henderson's concludes by looking in the secular world and seeing the same problem he sees in the church--women being denied the highest positions of authority, women being undervalued (underpaid), etc. Yet, of this comparison, he says, "When you see these same patterns in diverse systems, it makes one wonder if what we're dealing with isn't a gender issue at all. Maybe it's more primal than that. Maybe it's a power struggle. Those who have it (men) don't want to give it up to those who lack it (women)" (242).

I say maybe it's neither. Maybe, instead, it's God's design from the garden permeating all creation--secular and spiritual--thousands of years later...even after the feminist movements and legal mandates against gender discrimination.

Although several passages resonate with this overworked / undervalued woman, Henderson's attempt to blame all of women's problems with the church on leadership inequality is so blatantly influenced by his own family's experiences that he fails to note how this bias makes his argument horribly simplistic in that it ignores other societal causes behind the statistics and ignores men's comparable church drop offs.

Maybe the Barna statistics are really accurate and the problem isn't that the majority of women feel oppressed by the church. Instead, perhaps the drop in women's involvement in church is because more educated women have become too rational for faith. Or maybe it's that women have become primary or important secondary breadwinners like their spouses so that they don't have time for the church. This book surely doesn't consider these options.

*I am obviously not paid by Tyndale to provide a positive or negative review of its books. I am graciously provided with a complementary copy for review.

Naming the New Year

2012-01-04T19:19:00.000-08:00

"Take a picture of me hugging a tree!" he asks before wrapping arms around the biggest oak in our yard. I had brought out the camera to only capture images of happy children diving into big leaf oak leaves piled high for the crunching. But I drop right knee in the dust anyway and click the shutter twice.

I notice the pink flushed cheeks from afternoon play in the cold north wind, the shadow of brown earth under his fingernails, the uneven bangs growing out from his attempt to give his own hair cut .

And I notice his smile, not because I just spent the last half hour raking and re-raking leaves for their enjoyment but because I've taken a few seconds to listen to him, to take this shot.

Finished, he jumps towards the house for our afternoon reading time where our pattern is taking turns--I read a book, he reads a book. He listens. I listen.

I've been hitting my head against a brick wall since before Christmas with Wyatt not listening to me. He hears, can even usually repeat it back to me verbatim. But hearing is not listening.

And then this past Sunday night, Wyatt listened. Listened well.

For the past four months, I have explained to Wyatt why he cannot participate in communion with our church family, why he cannot break the wafer with the cross imprinted on it, why he cannot have the "juice" in tiny cups.

Yet, each time the deacons pass around the body and blood, I tuck my head towards his in whispers to explain anew. One day, when he chooses to give his heart forever to serve and love Jesus--then he can join mommy and daddy.

I thought perhaps he was just too young to understand or too upset over being denied what he perceives as treats to understand...or his usual hearing without listening.

As the service ended, our pastor offered an invitation, said "I want to ask you a question. Is there anyone here who has never become a Christian, a child of God?"

Instantly, my son's hand shot skyward. He was raising his hand to say yes, that described him. Face flushed with embarrassment, I quickly reached to yank his hand down, but even as I did, my heart felt the pang, knowing he was being truthful.

Even when he seems to not be listening, he is taking it all in, working the complexities of God out to understand his need for a Savior.

***

While I'm not one for a long list of annual resolutions, I do like to name the new year with one word, one that describes where I think God is leading me in the seasons ahead. Last year was a year of putting down roots. The year before, I felt the promise of God's restoration.

I entered 2012 with no notion of what God was speaking to me. In all honesty, I could hardly hear His whisper through my struggles at the tail end of 2011. Yet, through these and a few more God-incidences, God has been beating His own head against a wall, trying to get me to see that like my son, I also need to work on listening--to my children, my husband, my friends, and Him.

In 2012, I am opening my ears.

Listen.

What "Every Good and Perfect Gift" Includes

2011-12-29T20:36:00.000-08:00

This man with crisp white shirt and tie, the one who sits to the side, in the back of most every social event or party, his head tucked down in silent humility, realizing he doesn't know more than he knows and what he does know isn't as important as what he doesn't know.This man who spends an afternoon lifting our youngest son high over his head to do what Emerson would otherwise be unable to do--make that basket. Son grins, giggles, and runs after the ball before running back to his daddy who lifts him once again.
This man whose shirt bleeds red with sweat mingled clay as he chips through Louisiana concrete late into the night, trench only lit by lanterns as he works on an outside office so he can spend less time commuting and more time home with his wife and children.
This is the man God wrapped in a simple college desk and sent me fifteen years ago. Four years later, this is the man I swore before God and family to love and cherish.

Even now, after, in the midst of the everything of life, when I can't lift myself off my knees, can't even lift my eyes from the wood planks...it is then that I am in awe, once again, at the man my heavenly Father has given me to serve as my helpmate.

When I said "I do," my younger self really had no idea of what it meant for the man she loved to be created for her. I had no idea how he would step up where I lacked, how my flaws would be tempered by his strengths, how he would be what I needed without my even knowing there was a need...how something as silly as his love of my feet was just part of God's overall plan to help me, the woman whom the masseuse says holds tension in her feet.

Tonight I stand in awe of my Father who created this man for me, a Father who gives me every good and perfect gift.

Breaking Through: When Flesh and Spirit Battle

2011-12-27T20:09:00.000-08:00

The Friday before Christmas, that clay jar of sadness I'd stuck way back on the shelf somehow developed a crack, overnight seeped the dark bile into every unfilled soul recess so that Christmas Day found me just going through the motions for my children, my family.

Serve the leftover ham. Take the photos. Help assemble the Lego fortress. Smile.

To have a deep soul sadness at Christmas isn't something Christians own up to, much less think. We aren't supposed to feel this way. We are Easter people full of joy, hope, peace, and thankfulness over the babe in the manger, knowing He was born for one purpose--to die. For my worthlessness. My unrighteousness.

And yet, what I'm continuing to learn is that down here, flesh still clashes with spirit; vapors of the body's sadness can still pierce through the soul's everlasting peace and joy.

I had prepared my heart for Christmas. I made sure of it this year. Focus. Christ is coming. We lit the Advent candles, read the daily devotionals for the Jesse tree, spent less to give more of ourselves.

But in the midst of my preparedness came what I hadn't prepared for...or what I only thought I was prepared for. Family unexpectedly left to spend Christmas in heaven. Other family came for an early visit yet left mid-week to spend Christmas at their home up north.
In the fullness of the Christ child's birth, there was a still emptiness.

Perhaps it's that I thought if I prayed hard enough, if I focused on the Christ child hard enough, the flesh wouldn't matter at all, wouldn't hurt.

Not until the evening of Christmas Day when I began replacing reminders of His birth with reminders of His love could I whisper true thanks to Him for coming, feel the genuine gratitude well up through the sadness and lift higher than the ceiling.

This living in the flesh but not by the flesh is hard. Even in the promise of eternity, the long goodbyes of the present are hard. The continued absence is hard.

In this season, the only thing that makes it bearable is Him.

Nothing but my Father's loving presence is enough.

Photos: A few parting love moments with my brother and his wife last Thursday morning.

Bucking Stereotypes: The Not So Boring Christian

2011-12-23T18:47:00.001-08:00

The term Christian doesn't flood the mind with images of someone who would be first on a A-lister's party-of-the-year guest list.

For the most part, Christians tend to have a reputation for being stick in the muds, what with the list of "thou shalt not's" carved into rock first by Moses in the Old Testament and then onto our hearts by Christ in the New Testament's Sermon on the Mount.

No gossiping. No drunkenness. No gossiping. No adultery even in our daydreams. No murderous thoughts about that guy who just cut us off in traffic. Scripture might as well have said, "no fun....at least by the world's standards"

Definitely not the like the life of a party. Boring. Safe. Unadventurous.

But appearances are often deceiving, and this is one of those times.

I would love to transport you into my family's Christmas gatherings, a group of Christians having the kind of fun all in attendance will remember, laugh about for years to come.

After the fudge, cheese balls, shrimp dip, and dirty rice--our fun? It's found in an unusual place--a rollicking good game of Bible Trivia. My family rattles the windows with joy. Literally, as in we talk about how much fireproofing is in the walls between us and the next town house because our laughter is so loud and frequent.

It's been six years since we played last. Not since my Grandfather's passing months before my sister in law Liza's "I do" to my brother, not since my three children, and not since cousin's new boyfriend added to the head-count have we unfolded the rainbow board.

My face tightens and cracks as I write this and remember watching the boyfriend's surprise at how much fun a bunch of older Christians playing a boring old game about the oldest book on earth could actually be.Somehow, the game has always pitted the men against the women. An outsider would think that couldn't possibly be fair, what with the men having three seminary degrees amongst them and the women nothing but a personal dedication to ladies' Bible study.

Still, until this past Tuesday, the overall score over the years was women: 4 , men: 3. The women lost by one point, so now we're tied again. Love of the Word, luck of the draw, and a good memory are all that's required.

Taunting the opponent with good-natured ribbing is pretty much a given, as are a few running jokes (such as answering "Belshazzar" to every not-a-clue name of an obscure Bible character) or poking fun at the game's impossible questions by crafting our own like "What is the name of Methuselah's turtle?" (No, don't look; he didn't have one)Although he's too young now, my five-year-old, Wyatt, seems like a Trivia guru in the making. Just tonight, I doubled over with stifled giggles as I listened to him replay with the Little People a few of this afternoon's passages from the already-much-loved The Story for Children.

I laughed as I heard him recount "Wyatt's version" of the Bible stories where Abraham and Moses are contemporaries of King Herod. Husband and I knocked heads in laughter when we hear him rename King Herod (the one who killed all the baby boys in Bethlehem) "Herod the Cutter." Yep--I can see that being useful in a future round of Bible Trivia.

Side splitting wake-the-children laughter. Heart joy. The Word at the center of our gathering.

Now that's the best kind of fun Christmas party around. You don't know what you're missing unless you've been there, too.

Photos: All 21 of my family together for pre-Christmas fun (minus boyfriend taking the photo)
My cousin, Kimberly (who needs a Christian husband with something more than "the personality of paste.")

Christmas in Heaven

2011-12-20T23:00:00.000-08:00

The occasional burst of wind shook long tendrils of moss, as if the tree were bowing its head in sadness, its thick wavy mane lowering to hide its weeping.

It is Christmas, the season of birth, of joy. Perhaps that is why the gray skies and sadness that cover our farm seem to clash, jarring against the happiness found in the manger's babe with peaceful smile, God made flesh resting in the glow of tiny white lights along our stair rail.

Most mornings, I pass the family graveyard, not really noticing the simple gray-white tombstone jutting up out of the grass. Husband mows the "hill" all summer, bleaches the tombstone once or twice a year to push back the humidity-loving black mildew.

Other than that, the graveyard never occupies my thoughts. It is not spooky or creepy or nightmare inducing. It just is. My body will lie there one day, the body of my husband, too, maybe even my children.

But we are Easter people, children of the eternal King. Death is not where we dwell.

Still, it comes.

Saturday afternoon, God decided our Maw Maw needed to spend Christmas in heaven. She died while in prayer with her daughter, Jesus' name on her heart, mind, and lips.

And so on this early morning, I kneel down in the grass to capture just a few images for my children to remember when they forget. With each shutter click, the heavy dew soaks through. More dampness.

To escape this fleshly cocoon to find life...to find real life. In a way, I envy her escape. While I tend to struggle to daily learn in part through that dark glass, I believe Maw Maw has finally grasped the full meaning of the babe in the manger, has finally truly understood how precious and perfect was God's gift to mankind oh those two thousand years ago.

What a precious Christmas gift for her.

Eyes on the Father

2011-12-15T17:22:00.000-08:00

I can imagine Jesus as a baby. It's not that hard. Look at any department store, and there he is--cute little bundle, no tear streaked cheeks or mouth agape in screams as he lays serene and warm in a sterile bed of white rags and wood. He is the perfect baby--always cooing, always smiling, always napping on schedule and sleeping through the night from birth.

Mind you, I never had one of these perfect infants, but many a mom has testified they do still exist. And so, I imagine the perfection of a Holy Savior trickling down to a perfectly content disposition in the flesh like these other wonder-children (again, not mine).

The problem comes when I try to imagine Jesus as a little boy. Perhaps it's because I have two preschool boys born under the curse, boys who overtly disobey, throw the occasional tantrum, talk back, and walk with little feet as close as possible to every line I draw in the red Louisiana clay.

This afternoon, I caught a glimpse of my sons in Christ when I read the story of the child Jesus' worrying his poor earthly parents frazzled when he went missing from the caravan.

There is a long day of frantic searching, of traveling the long road back to Jerusalem. Then came a second long day of searching, checking in with relatives, moving throughout the city shops and homes.

I've only been in Mary's shoes for a few minutes when I couldn't find my child. In the first few seconds, every worst case scenario flashes through a parent's mind. Thirty seconds into the search, this mother was literally begging God to find her son. Honestly, I can't imagine two days, two nights.

Surely, Mary wept in prayerful anguish, tears choking out the words. Sleep must have been near impossible. What if she never saw her child again? What if the angel had misled them about Him being the Messiah? What if...?

Then came day three, and there he was. Sitting. Calm. In the temple. Teaching.

Mary's words may sound archaic, but the emotion of a distraught mother screams through the text: "Son, why have You treated us this way? Behold, Your father and I have been anxiously looking for You" (Lk. 2:48).

What were you thinking, Jesus? Do you know how many days we have been searching for you? We worried you may be dead. Kidnapped. Enslaved. And you're just sitting there calmly instead of leaping up in apology?

Jesus responded with the answer of a child: "Why is it that you were looking for Me? Did you not know that I had to be in My Father’s house?" (v. 49).

Such a literal matter of fact answer, a "well, of course I'm here. What did you expect me to be?" answer I've heard so often from my own children.

If I blink, I might miss it. But for an instant, here, I see the connection between this Holy Son and my sons.

And in that flash, it directs me to a connection I notice almost daily between the Christ child and my sons.

A love of their father.

The grown man Jesus was always slipping away to spend time with His heavenly Father. In my mind's eye, I can see Him doing the same thing with his earthly father...something my own sons do no matter how hot or cold it is outdoors. Where daddy is is where they want to be.

Perhaps the young Jesus went to the carpentry shop to sit at His earthly father's feet, watch the planer curl thin strips of wood into ribbons and fall to the pile of sawdusty shavings on the floor. Or maybe, as many scholars have suggested because of Israel's lack of lumber, a carpenter would have worked more with stone so that the child Jesus would have spent hot days outdoors watching Joseph with chisel and hammer, chip away slowly to mold stone.

Like my sons, Jesus would have stood to the side to watch, eyes glued on his father's every movement. Then, he would have gained enough courage to pick up a tool much too heavy for his small hands before wielding it clumsily in effort to mimic His earthly father. At times, maybe the young Jesus was like my sons, doing more harm than good, breaking that stone with too hard a tap or crushing one he only intended to smooth.

But I imagine his father looked on him with love, with patience that fathers seem to have more than mothers at times. And yes, even though Joseph's blood didn't run through the boy's veins, I am sure his heart swelled with pride as he watched that little boy Jesus mimic his movements...as he saw a little bit of himself in him.

Photos: Emerson and Wyatt helping their daddy dig / fill in a water line trench.

Changing of the Guard

2011-12-13T18:45:00.000-08:00

The cross came down this morning. It's a right of passage, I guess, when the long-proven veteran steps aside to make way for the new who come to try their mettle, be refined by the fires that will come.

Until I married, I lived almost twenty years in the shadow of my home church's steeple, its cross rising above the trees as a beacon for all to come to the cross. Playing badminton in the backyard, swimming in the above-ground pool each summer, fishing for crawfish in the cow pasture's "pond," finding a stunned bat beneath a fallen tree's bark--I lived life with a church for my neighbor. From my bedroom window each night, I could always look out and see its black triangle against the misty orange glow of security lights.

Although I didn't understand the significance of the image back then, no matter what I did at my home, I was always under the watchful eye of the cross. And like most young people, I took for granted that I could always turn north and see a white, cross-tipped spire piercing through the sky toward heaven.

God. Christ. The cross. It would always be there if and when I needed it.I didn't know today was the day she was coming down. My parents didn't even know until today.

But God knew.

And He knew I'd want to see her off, this friend of my childhood.

This morning, I drove to my parent's home for free babysitting while I hot glued my fingers together to make hair bows for my daughter. I've had the yards of ribbon for over a month, but just yesterday evening felt compelled that today was the day. Now I know why.

When I drove past the church, there sat the crane to hoist the new cross into place. Minutes later, I doubled back and parked the van so my children could see.

She lay on her side--paint-chipped, mildewed, covered in lichen, leaking droves of red wasps who had made her their summer home.

I walked around the already-loaded Gooseneck trailer. What do you do with a retired cross? It seems almost disrespectful, somehow wrong to just send her to the scrapyard.

Those who didn't drive past this church building today will likely never know of the changing of the guard that took place between sunup to sundown. The new steeple is the same size, same shape as the old one. Without a critical eye that would detect her missing scars and back lit by the same blue sky, the new steeple looks pretty much the same for us earthbound viewers.
As the afternoon wore on, I didn't stay to see the crane that lowered the old lift the new into place. It almost seems fitting, this cross changing with a new generation growing up.

Tomorrow, when I again drive to my parents' and look up, I'll see a new soldier in God's army, one to weather more of life's storms and one that will once again welcome another generation who seeks the cross.

A Season of Prayer

2011-12-09T20:03:00.000-08:00

We parents pray for our children, many times not knowing what to ask for more than protection, for God to work The miracle of salvation and transform broken jars of clay into lighthouses for His glory.

I must admit that I am a poor mother when it comes to praying for my own children. I do pray for them--for their hearts, their health, their future spouses...but never as much as I should, and never as much as I do when they are injured, sick, hurting, gone astray.

This second week of December has been one for praying instead of writing in this space, not praying for my own children but for others' precious gifts from God.

This past Wednesday, my friends' one year old daughter in North Carolina underwent surgery for craniosynostosis, a condition where the bones of her skull fuse together due to inadequate growth space in the womb. Little Ivi Grace's skull was surgically taken apart and reassembled, a path her music minister father never thought God would ask him to walk in faith.

On the same day, a ten year old daughter (Abbie) of an old high school friend underwent surgery to remove kidney stones caused by her struggle with continued medical issues. The doctors inserted stents in both kidneys in an attempt to alleviate blockages.

Wednesday night with reports of success coming back from both girls, one of my former students sent out a request for prayer. On November 15, his third child was born 2 1/2 months too soon. On Thursday of this week, baby Camden underwent surgery for excess fluid on the brain. Hydrocephalus. Big name for such a small boy.

Since Tuesday, my mind has been filled with no words for this blog. God has, instead, filled my mind with reminders to pray, pray, pray for the ones whom I promised to pray for.

And so I did, not knowing I would be the one next reaching out for others' prayers.

On Tuesday morning, Emerson fell off his bike, knocked his head hard against the concrete. By the time my mother came over to watch the children while I cleaned house, I was scared; it was the biggest goose egg I'd ever seen. I held an ice pack to his head for half an hour, then passed him off to his Grand Mama for some more TLC.

I watched him vigilantly through the night. I dusted and prayed. I folded clothes and prayed. I slept and prayed.

Tuesday and Wednesday came and went with no problems. Even his small "concrete burn" scabs were drying up. By Thursday afternoon, though, his face suddenly started swelling until his left eye was almond shaped like a little Asian child.A rushed trip to After Hours, a cool X ray sticker, and a grape sucker later, two doctors both agreed that his X rays showed what looked like a chip on his maxillary. "Not a nose bone. A bone in the sinuses." Un hunh.

That meant a drive into town to the E.R. for a C.T. scan--too many acronyms and words I didn't know (maxillary?) for a confused, scared "what do I do?" mother.

As Emerson and I sat in radiology while Grand daddy sat in the E.R. waiting room, I held my little boy tighter than I have since the last time I was scared of losing him--when he had pneumonia this past February. I held him tighter than the time before that when he tumbled off sister's bed, spilling a pool of blood from a head cut so deep that I could see the bone of his skull through the skin.

My parents and husband and his parents were already praying. I was praying. Still, I texted the only number I had in the phone for a church friend.

Please. Pray. Tell our pastor. Don't come. Just pray.

Five hours from the time I ran out of the house without my coat, the CT scan came back negative. No brain swelling. No chip. No broken bones. Nothing.

Did the first two doctors make a mistake? Did God heal the chip? My mom thinks the first is more likely...but until I reach the other side, there will always be that lingering "maybe" for this woman who believes in God's continued miracles in the mundane.

Adrenaline rush now flushed from my system, all I wanted to do was cry and thank God. Hand in hand, my son and I exited the E.R. into the 36 degree weather. He was mine for a little longer.

Unlike my son, Abbie, Camden, and Ivi Grace have a long road of recovery ahead of them. Even though this may be your busiest time of the year, drop to your knees and say a prayer for each of these children. Bring their names to our Father in heaven, the Creator and Sustainer of all life.

You never know when that one extra prayer may overflow God's blessings down and change a life.

Photo: Emerson riding his bike on a better day. All three children have been banned from bike riding until Christmas brings them the dragon / kitty bicycle helmets hidden in my closet. (When Santa asked my son today what he wanted for Christmas, Emerson stated very clearly, "A helmet." Maybe he's learned his lesson.)

An Unlikely Adoption

2011-12-05T20:20:00.000-08:00

It's been a year since her funeral. Husband remembered, knowing I would forget, me the number challenged woman who can't mindlessly rattle off her wedding anniversary or her children's exact birth dates, weights, or time of birth.

I felt guilty anyway. I should have remembered the death of my first cat, Mia, the calico-Siamese mix who was my child through the years of infertility when husband and I couldn't have children.

This feline with the diesel engine purr was my companion during the lonely years when husband attended school by day and studied by night. Every night, she would come to the bath tub and drink the water I would intentionally let trickle down the sides. And every time I sat at the computer, she would sit at my feet until I picked her up for warm lap-time.
I thought she was irreplaceable. And what's more, when she died, I didn't want to replace her.

Yet, this week, I have realized the emptiness, that cavernous void I expected to follow me after her death has been filled. Why? It's no coincidence. Instead, it's one of those "God-Incidences" Jennifer @ Getting Down with Jesus has been talking about in community on her blog.

The God-incidence started this May, six months after Mia's death, when my father in law deposited a three week old grey kitten on my doorstep. Thrown away in a Wal-Mart bag, Micah needed to be fed with a syringe every two hours if he had a chance at survival. Eleven days we poured life into his too small body. It wasn't enough.

I was beyond crushed, told my husband to pass on the word to his father--no more strays. Period. As far as I was concerned, I wasn't doing this again.

My oldest son, Wyatt, had different ideas; he rejected the sadness and emptiness I wept into the sofa. By the following morning, he had decided we simply needed another kitten. Now. Faced with the persistence of a child on a mission, I began looking online at photos from local animal rescue shelters. By bedtime, I had fallen in love with an image of a tiny orange and white, long-haired fluffball named Hope.

Hope. Her name seemed to be God speaking.

The following morning, I called to make sure she was still available. Sure enough, she was and would be at PetsMart in an hour. The children and I hurriedly loaded up and drove forty minutes to the pet store. There she was in the cage with her two other siblings. We watched them play together. Precious. Perfect. Amelia said she loved her. It was a "yes."

When the worker finally greeted me, I nodded at the cage. "We want the long-haired one."

He frowned, then pointed to a lady and her husband sitting beside him. They were in the process of filling out the adoption papers for that very cat. We were literally ten minutes too late.

My heart fell in disappointment. There were no other kittens there that said "adopt me," but the worker suggested I drive down the street to PetCo where there were more waiting for a home. As I broke the bad news that "our" kitten had already been adopted, the children began to complain. I told the children God had said "no," but that we would look at this other store. No promises.

As soon as I walked through the door, I saw the calico. At ten weeks, she was older than the other kittens, composed and still while the other younger ones rolled and played. When I held her in my arms, her motor roared to life, not quite a diesel but pretty loud. It was like looking at a mirror image of Mia.

Taped to her cage was her history: "I went through baling equipment at a recycling center and then [was] discovered." Much like Abraham's wife who couldn't contain her laughter at Isaac's birth, mine erupted in audible joy as well. As a woman who lives on a farm that bales thousands of square hay bales each year, I knew only God could send me a cat who had been literally "baled" up.

This was God.

We decided to call her Hannah, a name that means grace.Six months later, I am constantly amazed at how similar Hannah is to her predecessor. Her ever-rumbling motor, her love for bath tub water, her insistence that my chest is the best place to sit each evening--she's a younger version of the cat God sent to comfort me in the early years of marriage, now here to comfort me during those trying days of raising young children.

To know that my God cares enough about me to supernaturally arrange the cosmos for something as simple and silly as a pet adoption--it's mind blowing.

But there's too many "if X didn't happen then Y" coincidences to believe differently. It's a God-incidence.

Photos: Mia and her brother, Ming, back in 2002.
Mia knocking her toys downstairs (her favorite game)
Hannah and her adoption papers

To Catch a Monster

2011-12-01T19:08:00.000-08:00

Monsters aren't easy to catch. Just ask Winnie the Pooh. Or my son. They'll tell you.

Heffalumps and Woozles lurk all around us, just waiting to steal any honey pots left unattended in the night. And so, you need to dig a hole, create a trap, prepare to catch one.

It's amazing how children have an innate sense that the world is composed of both good and evil, this almost intrinsic knowing that there are evil monsters among us, even if they are invisible, indescribable phantoms of the creative mind.

Before my oldest, Wyatt, could even talk, I knew I didn't want nights of him waking in tears over a monster under his bed or in his closet. So, I avoided anything with monsters--movies, books, music, toys. I even avoided using the word monster.

But somehow in the fifteen books a week from the library over the past five years and a few G rated movies meant to show the silliness of being afraid of the unknown, he was introduced to the concept anyway. When he finally heard the term "monster," he latched onto it, at last a word to put with the fully formed ideas already inside his head.

Perhaps it was one of a thousand books depicting knights, swords, and dragons. Perhaps it was his love of all things Pooh Bear and The Great Adventure movie. Or maybe it was How to Catch a Heffalump where the gang is afraid of the unknown adorable Lumpy character only to learn how silly their fear was.

But that's not how Wyatt perceived it. No, he'd never seen a monster in real life. No, Pooh Bear and Piglet hadn't seen one either. But logic was pointless. Wyatt was sure they existed. And so, he needed to set a trap.

For months, my counter tops have been filled with page after page of schematics for monster traps, intricate line drawings with our house, my in laws' house, and some elaborate contraption-of-the-day made of hay string, boards, nails, and sometimes tar (which he said I could just "get from Wal-mart).

Around the farm, every remnant of rope, crochet yarn, dental floss, or hay string were conscripted for monster trap duty...tricycles, trowels, Tonka trucks all tied together in a messy conglomeration.

Today was his best yet. Serious business. Brow-sweating labor of rolling large boulders of red clay up the newest dirt pile, stacking them on top of a long piece of string left over from pouring the garage's foundation a few months back.
And then there was the sign that he came bouncing in the house to ask for help with. Could I help him spell the words? Could I nail it on? Unable to hammer the stake into the ground, himself, he'd simply piled small dirt boulders around its base. Two staples later, he was in business--one gen-u-ine monster trap.
I'm not sure who the sign is for, maybe me? Supposedly, the monster will pull the string, and the clay boulders will fall on top of him. (Monsters are incredibly stupid, you know...obviously illiterate, too.)

When he wakes tomorrow, I know the first thing he'll do is run down the stairs and out the side door to see if something tripped the trap or (better still) is lying there tied up in the string.

With a little pinch of motherly magic, who knows what his imagination might find.

How to Avoid Being Enslaved by Gift Giving

2011-11-29T19:40:00.000-08:00

No matter how much we may romanticize about the simplicity of life in the past, for those first Americans moving westward across the plains, life out on the prairie was not at all an easy life to be coveted, especially in the winter.

Bone-chilling months spent in mud-chinked cabins stretching meager rations around a never warm enough wood stove? No snow plow to clear the roads for a horse ride through a blizzard to find help?

No. I'm not willing to transport myself back in time, leave behind the modern creature comforts of indoor plumbing, central heat, and food more plentiful than any generation before has seen.

But one thing I would like to keep from that by-gone era is their way of celebrating Christmas, the simplicity of it all compared to the mad sprint to New Year's that Americans seem to love and hate all at the same time.

The part of Laura Ingalls' Christmas I'd most like to transport into the twenty-first century is their concept of gifts. Ma and Pa didn't have much extra money, so most of the gifts were not store bought. In fact, the most treasured gifts came from the heart, from someone's investing time in another by hand crafting a gift.

I've often wondered what would happen if we just said no to the gift-giving madness at Christmas, the kind of madness where you make a list, check it twice, and then buy something, anything, just for the sake of not hurting someone's feelings.

My friend only tonight asked what I wanted for Christmas, but I don't want or need anything, not really. What I would love, though, is time with her, something we don't usually have because of raising two families a road hour apart.

Although I have yet to convince my entire family that a gift of time is what I really want to give and receive, I'm trying to break down their preconceived notions of Christmas by giving gifts that I invest myself in.

Last week, my children received part of their Christmas gift, simple crocheted hats that I made from a pattern by designer Elizabeth Alan who has adorable, easy patterns for sizes newborn through toddler (you'll be seeing more of her here!). Even if you're not a fantastic crocheter, her patterns are simple, include pictures for those "huh?" moments, and have helpful YouTube videos.While her pattern technically was intended to be this precious little holly leaf beanie for 3T and under, I have boys...dirt-pile, earth-mover, tree-climbing boys. Ribbons don't exactly fit the bill around here. After adding three stitches increase to make her pattern big enough for my five year old son, I created eyes and a beak, then called the braids "wings." Voila...birds.I thought I would add a flower on my daughter's hat, but no. Amelia wanted to be a bird, too. The mistake I made was in letting her wear the hat before I had added the eyes and beak. When she saw herself in the mirror, she had an absolute show-stopping meltdown in a public bathroom. When my mother could finally understand Amelia through the tears, her only words were, "Not a bird!!! Not a bird!!!"

Three precious little sparrows. (Or a bluebird, purple finch, and peacock if you ask them.)

Even if you don't know a crochet hook from a cake tester, maybe you could give the gift of your time in some other way. Perhaps it is offering to help with a project around the house that you've been ignoring, offering to spend the day with someone or maybe just do lunch. Or perhaps you could show your love by giving a homemade baked goodie, maybe these heart-shaped Christmas cakes like the ones Ma Ingalls put in stockings for her girls.

Whatever you choose. Choose to invest yourself in your friends, your family, your gifts this Christmas. Don't let gifts be a "just because" thing.

Let our heavenly Father be the example. For His Christmas gift to us, He invested Himself wholeheartedly, giving His only son, a Savior in a lowly manger.

(While there's something probably better out there, I'd be happy to send anyone my pattern for the eyes and beak if you're interested.)

Canceling Thanksgiving…Twice

2011-11-24T18:24:00.000-08:00

I had already said “no” to this trip.

Too soon after our last driving trip to D.C. Too close to the end of the semester. Too exhausting to live two full days in a metal box.

I hadn’t questioned my decision, not once. My only problem was feeling a bit sentimental over lost Thanksgiving traditions from years gone by. Still, I cured that by just cancelling the holiday. My children and I tucked autumn away in boxes and fast forwarded the house to Christmas with all its sparkly decorations and festive atmosphere.

Then everything changed. A week before my parents were to leave for Michigan, they asked to take my oldest son to visit Grandma Della. And at almost five, I knew Wyatt would do fine. It was Wyatt's mother I was worried about.

By Wednesday night, I still hadn’t made up my mind and asked my husband to decide. No pondering, no agonizing—just a simple “yes.” (Obviously, he lacks the maternal gene.) For some reason, he asked, “Have you thought about going?”

I prayed about it.

By Thursday afternoon, the big red suitcase was packed with enough clothes for three children and me, and we woke before sunrise on Saturday to drive northward to a Grandma who might just outlive us all.

My belief that God said “yes” to me going with my son was confirmed when Saturday night, Wyatt came down with a short-lived stomach flu. Miles away, my church family prayed, and he was almost instantly better, eating a full meal just a few hours later.

Three days, we enjoyed visiting with Grandma. My daddy loved his mother. Wyatt climbed the chestnut tree. Amelia was enamored with the cozy fireplace. And Emerson fell in love with the five ever-whistling, squawking birds in cages just like his favorite pet store.

At the end of day three before bedtime, the rest of us caught the stomach flu. Whether God just delayed the bug’s usual 48 hour incubation period or whether we caught it from somewhere else on the trip up, I’ll never know. But I truly believe when we prayed, God stopped that initial illness in its tracks only to allow us to catch it later so we could finish our 1100 mile drive.

Today, with everyone well but not really prepared to be stuffed with a weighty meal of turkey and dressing, my Thanksgiving was cancelled a second time. So, we said our goodbyes a day early and started for home.

This wasn’t the Thanksgiving I intended...not even the Thanksgiving I’d “not” not planned. But for a chance to see family, I am always thankful.

Photo: Seed-flown milkweed pods in Grandma's lower garden.

Tattered Wings for the Harvest

2011-11-17T20:09:00.000-08:00

This year's harvest was bountiful. Our freezer is stocked full of the blessings, others' freezers, too, enjoying the fruits of God's supply.

The tomato vines in the garden have long since been plowed under, black soil turned over to the light, making way for the lettuces, carrots, kale, and strawberry plants.

Though long ago gone to seed, this year's basil crop still greets me each time I open the door. The late summer heat sent my basil plants soaring until they looked more like small shrubs than dainty herbs for making a dish come alive. More the once, the plant's pungent aroma overpowered our senses, densely filling the kitchen as we gathered it in mounds on trays of plenty.

I have pulled up a few of the miniature trees that were crowding the rosemary and thyme, but even though they're not really lovely in their present flowering state, I just haven't brought myself to rid my herb bed of them all. Yes, the first freeze is coming, overnight death for this warm weather plant.

But until then? These few "has been" plants are grand central station for all flying six legged creatures, trying to store up just a little more nectar, make a little more honey to help them survive the barren days ahead.Time is precious as the crew competes for the remaining flowers. Each creature is in perpetual, exhausting motion, face and legs frantic burrowing amongst the petals or wings carrying bodies aflight to the next course.

Where did they all come from? The children and I have spent an entire summer and early fall out of doors, and at no time did we share the land with this many neighbors--the fritillary, painted lady, checkered skipper, and buckeye butterflies; black quarter-sized bumble bees; the slender honey bees; and another few varieties I can't quite identify (a hairstreak? a blue?).

Somehow they know the coming season.

I take a step to get a closer look at one of the larger buckeye butterflies. With my movement, the bushes take wing, air filling with dozens of frightened patterned stripes and spots who swirl and swoop before going back to their intense labor.It's not hard to notice that these butterflies don't share the perfect beauty of the ones who frequented my roses in early summer. They are road-weary, colors faded in places where microscopic-sized scales have been brushed away. Each's wings are tattered, war wounds from battles won against hungry birds.

It is a somber thought to think I am looking at the ones who have overcome. These are the survivors.

This. Just this. This is what I want to be.

I want to run my race well, fight the good fight. Get too many wrinkles and lines from smiling too broadly, laughing too much, crying in real hurt with a friend. I want to put my heart out there to love, love, love as Christ loves, even though I know that loving means someone's going to take a big bite out of it and leave me with an ugly, broken, tattered heart...but one my Savior only sees as beautiful.

I want to live like these creatures before me with kind of energized passion, an intensity for His harvest.

The seeding, planting, watering, and harvest are almost over. We must be diligent. Winter is coming soon.

"The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves" (Lk. 10:2-3).

"And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment" (Heb. 9:27).

Through the Looking Glass--a World with No Christ

2011-11-15T18:02:00.000-08:00

Is Christianity no longer relevant? New Atheist Christopher Hitchens thinks so. His and other new atheists' stance that religion is at the root of all the world's ills begs a very serious question--what would the world look like without "deluded" Christians who still believe in the person of Jesus? Who believe in the God of grace, mercy, and judgment?

This is the question historian and Christian apologist Larry Alex Taunton poses in The Grace Effect: How the Power of One Life Can Reverse the Corruption of Unbelief. In a friendly round table debate at a local diner among Taunton, Hitchens, and Oxford Math Professor John Lennox, Hitchens asks, "What does Christianity give us now?...Yes, it has given us science and universities. Yes, it has given us great art and literature. But that was a long time ago, and we can get along very well without it" (12).

It is here where the author initially wonders what society would look like without "common grace...the idea that when there is a significant Christian presence in a given society, it brings tangible benefits not just to the Christian, but to the society as a whole" (10-11).

The remainder of the novel takes the reader through the looking glass to the world of the former European Bloc where atheistic unbelief enforced on an entire society from the top down has resulted in, literally, a world without Christianity...a world without the concept of "hope" and "common grace."

A combination of autobiography and history of socialism/communism in that area of the globe, Taunton takes the reader through his family's personal quest to adopt a ten year old girl, Sasha, from a Ukranian orphanage. One critic has said this is a "must read for anyone pondering adoption from the former Eastern European Bloc." I'd say that is an fair statement, as Taunton details the frustrations that await those seeking to maneuver through the labyrinth of government corruption in a country seemingly devoid of Christian morals.

While I found myself skimming through the yawn-worthy history chapters of how socialism destroyed a society with its rejection of belief, Christian morality, and grace, the bulk of the book gripped me with the personal story of one little Ukranian orphan girl's first glimpse of Christian grace.

The struggles Taunton presents may make a reader ask why anyone would put themselves through the chaos of even trying to adopt from former Russia. Yet, the answer becomes obvious when reviewing the Russian Interior Ministry's own data, which show that "30 percent [of orphanage 'graduates'] will enter a life of crime, 40 percent will become addicted to drugs or alcohol, 60 percent of girls will become prostitutes, and 10 percent of these children will commit suicide." Of those who with severe disabilities who don't "graduate"? "In Ukraine, 30 percent...will be dead by the age of eighteen." (99-100).

Does Christianity make a difference? Definitely. As Taunton summarizes, "common grace does much more than negate the evil impulses of mankind; it is a positive force for good. As one experiences grace in his own life, he extends grace to others. Through the inward transformation of the individual, there is a corresponding outward transformation of society...the 'grace effect'" (22).

Christianity's common grace is strong enough to reach around the globe and provide the healing power of God's grace, one individual at a time.

The Guilt of Being An Inadequate Parent

2011-11-10T18:09:00.000-08:00

Some people spend their lives in knots of worry. Me? I feel guilty. All the time. And then I feel guilty about feeling guilty. It's a vicious cycle, an almost daily soul-wrestling for almost five years now.

It all started when I took on the title “mother” and a baby boy was given to this untried woman to raise (what was God thinking!?). Oldest son wasn't but a few weeks old when the guilt kicked in. Guilt when I screamed in his little face to STOP, STOP, STOP the hours of night time colic crying when I should have whispered calm words that didn’t work either but that would have been more motherly. Guilt when I learned part of his crying was because I had made him go hungry the first month of his life, all because no one told me my medical condition would likely make me not produce enough milk.

Somehow after all my screw-ups with the one, God gave me two more. Now as a stay at home mom of three toddlers, I still feel those pangs of guilt, only now triple-fold, for telling a little face "No, I can't do that right now" because…, for choosing cooking/cleaning/washing over playing/reading/rocking, for typing an email or taking a student's phone call.

Even when I drop everything and give the little ones my full attention, go on nature walks, push swings, sing nursery rhymes, dance in the kitchen, and read books to them, those feelings of guilt still well up like an underwater volcano. This time, it's because I didn't read them enough books. I didn't color long enough. I forgot to do the ABC puzzle with the twins. I didn't provide enough structured learning time for my oldest. I didn't go over the books of the Bible again today.

Last week, the sense of my worthlessness as a mother was so overwhelming, I called my husband and spilled over with liquid guilt that I wasn't preparing my children well enough to survive in kindergarten, that I was cocooning them too much in an unstructured environment of independent playful inquiry versus a rigid inside-the-box mentality necessary for survival in this world where learning is judged by how well you fill in a bubble, by whether your letters stay between the lines.

Then Saturday, Wyatt came to me, leaping, radiant with excitement. “Get the caterpillar book!” he screamed. And so we tromped out to the swamp to identify a plump hawk moth ready to cocoon for the winter. Later, I watched as he and Emerson built a wild animal “trap” with every yard object light enough to carry or drag to the playground.

This morning, I listened to Emerson mumble prayers along with me on our prayer walk. I overheard Wyatt sounding out words in a book I had read to him earlier in the week. I caught Amelia telling her kitty, “Shh. Shh. It’s okay. Mommy’s here.” This evening, I even strapped roller skates on my 34-year-old feet and gave my three a lesson in how not to fall down.

My children may not be the quietest or stillest. They may never be the best at taking tests, the fastest at learning a new concept. They may have difficulty using inside voices and learning to walk versus bounce. But their compassion for each other overflows even when mommy isn’t watching. Their creativity, imagination is wide and deep.

Besides, how can I expect them to fit the mold when I don't. To be social butterflies when I have to work hard at not being a recluse. To be normal when everything I am shouts different? To focus on the cares of this world when my passion for Jesus defines my every action and marginalizes me as a freak, a radical?

This living in the uber-competitive world but not of this world--it's tough. This "different" mother is not sure how to navigate my children through it, to seek my God's definition of success and not be at all concerned about the world's version, wondering if the two versions must necessarily go in opposite directions or if their paths can cross, even parallel.

It's a question that keeps me knocking on His door at all hours of the day and night.

Photo: Mommy letting Wyatt be Wyatt--pink wig, sword, and all.

Growing More Imperfect

2011-11-08T18:29:00.000-08:00

It's dusk when I finally leave the eye doctor's office, the children asleep before I exit the city limits and aim the van due north towards home.

Praise music plays in the background, a slight mist on my windshield to warn of blessed storms moving in for the night. This is the quietest moment I've had all day, but I don't really hear the words I know by heart. Instead, the words glorifying "Jesus" are overpowered by the scrawny young doctor's smile and his rapid-fire chair-side manner probably the result more of his tardiness than nervousness.

"So, have you noticed a change in your distance vision?"

Uh...not until you dilated my eyes so I can't even tell time on my watch if I wanted to. I'm the one who still stands across the room and reads the scrolling news at the bottom of the TV screen. Really? Me?

My confusion is evident.

"It's just two clicks," he reassures, pointing to the machine that looks more like some medieval torture device than something used for good, to perfect my no longer perfect vision. "I'm going to give you the prescription, but it's optional. Maybe for when you drive at night."

Then, he drives his positive message home: "You're just one step away from perfect."

I can't help but laughing out loud. If only he knew how many steps away from perfect I really am. It seems my vision might be finally starting to catch up with who I really am, the windows to my soul finally coming to grips with my sinfulness and taking a step back from the holy bar of perfection it knows it has no legal claim to.

I continue my path towards home, this twinge of my mortality weighing heavy in my running conversation with God. What else is there to do in traffic with sleeping children but pray?

My pupils the size of peanut M&Ms, every headlight looks like the star over Bethlehem with their icicle-like points radiating outward, each traffic signal aglow with red and green halos. "Why my distance vision, God? If anything, I'd expect my close up vision to deteriorate with age. Not this."

I remember husband's eyes improving over the past year; eyes are always changing shape. I haven't been to the eye doctor since I was ten. Perhaps this is just another one of those lurking post-twin-pregnancy changes like going up another shoe size.

The dialogue continues. I give voice to the fears this simple diagnosis reveals lurking in my heart. And He responds, reminding me that sight is not merely of the eyes. Although I have to look up the verses later to see them in their entirety, He speaks the Words of Jeremiah over me, saying, "Now hear this, O foolish and senseless people, Who have eyes but do not see" (v.21), the Words of Jesus saying of the masses that "while seeing they do not see" (Matt. 13:13).

There is peace in the reminder that sometimes the blind are the ones who see best, that physical sight imperfections such as this are easily remedied and temporal. It's the soul sight that is a miracle and of eternal value.

As I finally take off the sun glasses, I do smile at the irony in all this. Over the past seven years of in-depth Bible study, my soul's distance vision has only grown more perfect. With each passing season, I glean a less cloudy picture of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

The old hymn speaks wisdom here.

"Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace."

The important thing is not that my distance vision is no longer perfect, but that my soul's distance vision continues shifting its sight from this dim world that is fading fast to what awaits for me beyond.

When Hearing God's Voice is Foolishness

2011-11-03T18:17:00.000-07:00

The world can make you feel like a fool. It's not unexpected, what with Christ's economy turning everything on its head--the last becoming first, weakness becoming strength, slavery to Him becoming freedom, going down in submission becoming the way up.

It's the unexpected dismissals from other Christians that make me pull the covers up over my head in defeat, feel like the fool the world already tells me that I am.

Cluck your tongue in a what-did-she-expect tone; shake your head in disbelief. No, I still haven't learned.

I'm still foolish enough to believe one person can make a difference. Still foolish enough to believe if God reveals to me a vision that I can rally fellow soldiers to action, that others will be convicted as well if only I will offer up myself in sacrifice to do my part.

I'm still foolish enough to believe I was saved by grace not to warm a pew and merely enjoy the fruits of warm fellowship but to serve Him with my everything, even if that everything takes me into the ripe fields of labor and away from the comfort of fellowship.

Foolish. Me.

Sure, my rational mind tries to wave its hands to disperse the gloom, to say it's really not foolishness, that the only other option is to have a heart seared and unresponsive to God. But my hurt heart speaks otherwise.

* * *

This morning began with the trumpet blast of my alarm piercing through the lulling background rhythm of gentle rain dripping from the eaves. My heart fell in disappointment. There would be no prayer walking this morning.

Bleary eyed and yesterday evening's discouragement swallowing me again, I spoke aloud in sighs. "I'm thankful for the rain, Father. Please know I'm thankful. I just really needed this time with you today."

The cloudy darkness wasn't just outside. It quilted my head and shoulders, heavier than the fleece blanket I pulled back over my head. God had sent the rain at this exact time, knowing my prayers for others would have been out of obedience only and of a divided heart that was not focused solely on the salvation of my neighbors. He's wise like that and just took me out of the equation.

Here on this blog, I might have seemed a bit distant lately, but it's not because God and I have been having a long distance relationship. For the past several months, my heart has been heavy over three major decisions, the kind of agonizing choices that consume my thoughts from sunup to sundown, that lead me to seek His will in earnest because I want to do what He wants, not what I want.

I don't want to screw up when I only get one shot at this life.

In only one area of the three did I feel He was providing a clear answer. Others came to me unprompted, reiterating concerns God had already lay on my heart. It got to where it seemed God had lined up an entire parade of gentle and not-so-gentle nudges, all just for me as a reminder I had heard His voice correctly and that He wasn't going to let this go until I made a move to obey.

I've prayed about it, waiting patiently, and seeking to put into practice what I've learned from the prophet Nehemiah who waited four months from the time God put a mission on his heart to when he first had the opportunity to share that mission with the king. When he arrived in Jerusalem, he waited some more, surveying the situation before speaking it aloud to enlist help.

The mission God gave him was miraculously fulfilled in 52 days because others believed in it, too, and literally put their necks on the line to fulfill it. Perhaps my discouragement is that I foolishly expected a smooth path, a quick path, for my vision to be as contagious as was Nehemiah's instead of it being stuck on the back burner for another nine months like in politics when something is sent to "committee" so it can wither and die there.

This is why Christians don't bother in the first place. This is why Christians church hop.

Both are wrong responses, I'm certain. But in this moment, I do understand these reactions. They're easier than silently sitting by in frustration when you can't just do it all yourself, when you know that you know that you know God spoke to you but aren't the Holy Spirit to convict others' souls towards action.

I can't give you a well-considered, insightful conclusion to leave you tapping your chin.

I just don't know the answer.

And so I sit, pray, and wait again.

I am afraid of Amerika...They will rape me

2011-11-01T12:22:00.000-07:00

I am reminded of the rather odd librarian I grew up with, the one who seemed to know about every book on the five foot tall shelves that divided the closet-sized room in half and lined the walls from floor to ceiling. With her prompting, I read more missionary biographies than I would have otherwise chosen--those about Adoniram Judson, Lottie Moon, Annie Armstrong, William Carey, David Livingstone.

These biographies, though, seemed to be more dead words on wood pulp than a real life captured in print. There was so much first person insight missing that I wanted to know, the little details that turned a two dimensional paper doll into a living, breathing human with flaws and failures. I wondered about the person's struggles with faith, with difficulty, with not making a huge difference within their lifetime. Sure, these names are set on pedestals now, but not back then when the person answered to it.

* * *

As you might imagine, I don't read many page turners. Most sentences that cross my desk are either written by green college freshmen struggling to communicate clearly in non-texting English or by serious, soul-searching PhDs that send me Scripture-scampering to contemplate theology in practical application.

And yet, I've spent the past week with two such page-turners on my night stand, their glossy covers tempting me to sacrifice sleep and devour their as of yet unknown wisdom.

Audra Grace Shelby's Behind the Veils of Yemen: How an American Woman Risked Her Life, Family and Faith to Bring Jesus to Muslim Women is an account of an average family who stuffed everything into a crate and moved to the conservative Islamic country of Yemen to be missionaries.

Shelby describes her family's struggle with health issues, with family who thought they were crazy, a foreign language, loneliness, Yemen men's treatment of females, and the inability to break through barriers the Islamic community keeps in place between foreign "infidels" and themselves. As she says of one woman she became guarded friends with, "She wanted my prayers, my strength and my hope, but she wanted to get them her way" (163).

Unlike some of the biographies of my childhood, Shelby's text gives the living breath of autobiography. She's a living testament who shares honestly, sincerely, those personal struggles with her own wavering faith in Christ, a concept I tend to forget when I hear the almost hallowed term "missionary."

Shelby shows the power of prayer, the difficulties of giving people to God when all you've done is planted seeds that seem to fall on hard earth, and most of all, how even being in the center of God's will does not exempt Christians from experiencing difficulties that try our faith.

More than anything, Shelby's book is a call for other Christians to pick up the gauntlet and search their own souls for whether God would have them serve in any way within oppressive Islamic countries like Yemen. She directly addresses the fear Western Christians have about working in such countries, describing a scene where she told her Yemeni friend she should visit America:

"'Oh no!' Amal's eyes grew wide. 'I am afraid of Amerika. They will rob me on the street or shoot me there!' Her voice trailed to a whisper. 'They will rape me...My friend tells me. She watches the news from Amrika on the television. Every day there are killings and robberies and raping of women!'"...
"I paused and cleared my throat. 'Amal, do you know that my friends are afraid to come to Yemen?'
She was astonished. 'But why?' she asked.
'They are afraid they will be killed by terrorists.'
"Oh! But we are not like that, Audra. Only a few!' she exclaimed.
I smiled. 'Aywa [Yes]. And Amrika is not like all the bad news you hear. Only a few.'" (213)

It makes me wonder what joy Satan gets from spreads the contagion of fear across the airways, fear that binds Christians, keeping them from sharing the gospel on hard soil that needs someone to help till it.

**For my review, I receive no compensation from Bethany House Publishers other than a complementary copy of the text.

When Wives are Submissive

2011-10-27T12:15:00.000-07:00

In 1998, the Southern Baptist Convention painted a bright red target on its back, becoming the focus of much public derision when it revised the Baptist Faith and Message to include the words "A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband..."

I remember it quite well. Newly empowered with a bachelor's degree, halfway through my master's and a blossoming career unfurling at my very touch, I was furious that a bunch of men found it necessary to pull out one verse in all of Scripture guaranteed to stir up a feminist and media firestorm.

Sure, the concept was Scriptural. Yes, Ephesians 5: 22-23 said the same thing. But that wasn't the point.

Overnight, my faith had become a very public joke. And as expected, the critics quoted only the part about submissive women, conveniently leaving out the rest that included the phrases "She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him" and "A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church."

But it wasn't just the covention's wording that bothered me. I knew the entire passage, of this mutual giving of self to the other, but still, God's Word telling me to submit seemed contrary to who I was. Why should I submit if I was right and my husband was wrong!?

Sub.miss.ion.

These three little syllables have always projected in my mind images of soft pastel, fuzzy Victorian women, images of weakness, lack of backbone, indecision, lack of intelligence.

Mousey women are submissive, and I am no mouse.

My childhood was directed by a mother who ran shovel, axe, band saw, electric drill, and hammer as well as the needle and thread, sewing machine, wooden spoon and mixer. Because she valued our family's time with my father, she never waited for him to do something she could possibly do.

I am my mother's daughter--too capable for my own good. Too resourceful to say "I can't," too creative to say "I don't have what I need." If I can, I do, even if it takes me three times as long as it would my husband to do the same task.

Because of who I am, the early days of marriage were a struggle with submission, especially since husband was still a student in law school and I was the primary breadwinner. Then in 2009, I read Thomas' Sacred Marriage and learned what God intended a marriage to be. Life changed in this household.

I have learned to ask husband's opinion even when I can make the decision myself. By now, I do it unconsciously I hardly notice it, and my marriage benefits in the closeness of these simple exchanges. Husband meets my submission with his love and respect of me as his equal, his wife.

This past Saturday, God sent me a gentle reminder of the importance of this submission. I had planned one meal for Sunday, but husband wanted pork steak instead. Yes, I completely disagreed but simply said he could do as he pleased...and he did, going out on the back porch to dig through the deep freezer for frozen meat.

A few minutes later, he came back in with "good news and bad news." The good news was that everything in the freezer was still frozen solid. The bad news was that it had somehow tripped the breaker and the freezer was off.

Had I exerted my will, I wouldn't have checked the freezer again until several days later and would have likely lost all the contents within. Spine tingling, this God of no accidents whom I serve.

Submission cannot be forced. It is not a sign of ignorance, indecision, or an invitation for one's husband to mistreat her. Likewise, submission is not weakness. Submission is a wife's choice, one that shows her love and obedience to God as well as her love for her husband.

Sometimes, it takes more inner strength and self control to submit to husband's will than to force my own. But when he and I both seek to fulfill the roles God gave us, a holy sense of harmony and loving unity results. Peace.

Image: The Back Pew comics.

In Shades of Grace

2011-10-25T12:33:00.000-07:00

Don't you wish it weren't so difficult to live life as a child? For there to be no need to make such an effort to see as they see, to do as they do because it still comes unconsciously? naturally?

I envy my three, their lives uncluttered with duties, calendars, and concerns.

A bucket of sidewalk chalk and any semi-smooth surface becomes an impromptu canvas for creating abstract art. A flower petal headband becomes a "pointy" waistband, good for becoming who you are not.Especially when I am crunched for time, when there is work to be done, it is more difficult for me to stretch my mind beyond the literal, the physical here and now.

During last week's trip, I was scurrying around the hotel room, hurriedly shoving PJs in the suitcase so it could be repacked in the van, dressing children one piece of clothing at a time, and painting on just enough make-up so as not to scare the gas station attendant. To make it to Johnathan's by supper time, we had to move. Now.

The children? "Hurry" was not in their vocabulary. The three of them crowded behind the room darkening curtain, looking out from their second story perch...at cows. A field of cows. Important stuff.

With me out of sight, they were suddenly in a world of their own, holding a somber conference about cows and hay.

And me? I am the one who interrupts their world, who drags them back from the majestic mountains of imagination to the unending plains of reality where running isn't allowed, all toys must be picked up because someone might get hurt (like mommy), and nap time is still required.

As I write this, the boys are laying a single line of track over my head from their bedroom door all the way across the foyer to my bedroom. Sounds of wooden track clanking together and murmured exchange of plans as to where to put this curve or that bridge drift downstairs.

I tiptoe up the first few steps, just enough to see over the ledge to the world I am not invited to be part of.

Amelia quietly sits, driving the train up and down a hill. The boys set up trees, a stop sign, and sword-wielding knights within "crashing" distance of the track.

I descend the steps, unwilling to interrupt this shadowy gray world of play where dragons still exist and must be seriously pursued and slayed with Nerf sword and shield, where carnivorous dinosaurs peacefully coexist with Strawberry Shortcake girls, where a paper girl's lunch time prayer over plastic corn and carrots is as important as giving thanks for real food...where it's difficult to tell fact from fiction.

Their world is wonderful, but it isn't easy to navigate, what with its rules being different from the one where I live, where black isn't always black and white isn't always white.

Wyatt's loud "smack" heavenward in church? Upon seeing my stern face, he leaned in and whispered too loudly, "I was blowing a kiss to God." That strong push Emerson just gave his brother? NO, he didn't push Wyatt--he pushed the monster.

Black is not so black.

But maybe motherhood is bending my definitions, too. This mother who always tells the truth? Just last week, I told Wyatt the green flakes in his soup were parsley, consciously choosing to leave out the part about some of the green actually being broccoli. White isn't so white for me either, it seems.

It's not just the children who have turned my two-toned world into one full of color variances. Time in God's Word has done the same. Just last Thursday during prayer walking, I presented my pastor with my most recent head scratcher from the book of Ezra. The Scripture just didn't jive with what I had learned this past summer in my study about God and how He regards covenants. Conveniently, none of the commentaries attacked that passage either.

Shades of gray.

Before children, before seriously beginning to examine the mysteries of God's Word and not just brush over what I didn't understand or add up, life used to be so black and white with everything being clear cut, good or evil, wrong or right.

The more I learn from my children, the more I study His Word, the more I learn how unclear so much really is, how I must choose to live not in the black in white, but in shades of grace...

Grace for my children. Grace for others. Grace for myself.

Wanted: One Sister Penguin

2011-10-21T20:10:00.000-07:00

My smallest shadow doesn't want to go outdoors. It's too cold. It's too hot. It's too windy and messes up her hair. She wants to be inside with me...folding laundry? Really?

And so Amelia feeds her dolls, fills Noah's Ark with Little People, makes her "paper girls" say their mealtime prayers, brings me tea, or simply follows me around chattering and singing. Other times, she sits in the school room and flips through book after book, looking at the pictures and sometimes reading aloud whatever words she's memorized.

Even when she brings me books to read, if she's not an audience of one, she still sits mostly to the side, quietly flipping through another book in the stack while I read aloud another to the boys.

Oh, and did I mention that her every little injury is worthy of a torrential flood of tears, not to be quenched by Boo Boo?On our trip last week, I watched her interact with four little girls. It was so different.

She sat on the floor in a ring of four sisters and just smiled as each gave her their dress shoes to try on. None of them said too much as they played together. And there was definitely no sword-wielding, dragon-chasing, monster-finding, dirt-throwing physical games like her brothers dream up. Just lots of whispering and grinning.

As I watched , my heart ached for her to have the near impossible--a sister of her own to share secrets with, to play with this way using her God-given maternal instincts versus having to be "one of the boys" when interacting with her rambunctious brothers.

But perhaps the ache I feel is not for her alone. Perhaps it is mine as well because I always wanted a sister, too. In high school, I had a friend who was as close as one, but somehow with marriage children, and a country between us, that sisterhood stretched too thin, leaving the gaping chamber empty.

One glance at Amelia's face and mine in the mirror is all it takes to see myself in a smaller vessel. I know how lonely it can be without that female sister-friend to call daily just to chat a few minutes, to share a laugh with. I find it so difficult to make friendships deep with other women who are just as busy raising a family as I am. I don't want that for her.

For now, though, perhaps forever, I will be her mother, her sister, her friend, helping to cultivate what she loves. Now, that's not too hard.

I let her wear my old childhood dresses as she plays barefoot around the house.Take her to fairy parties at the library so she can soar in knee-high covered coat hangers (uh..."wings") and eat icing-laden butterfly cookies.
Put on that $2 thrift store Princess Belle dress for the thousandth time. I know one day she'll be a teenager and will need someone besides me to confide in. But maybe God will somehow send a sister friend whose heart will knit with hers like a penguin--for life.

Absence Reminds the Heart

2011-10-19T19:46:00.000-07:00

My toothbrush sank into the porcelain bathroom cup, its base barely touching my husband's blue one. If objects could talk, those around would hear an audible sigh as both rested together, inhaling the comforting familiarity in the other's scent.

Absence can be a good thing.

Time apart from loved ones makes the heart grow more tender, even if that same person were making me roll my eyes in frustration when I last saw him. Eight days later, that same person greets me with freshly washed sheets, pork loin in the oven and broccoli cheddar soup on the stove. The time apart has reminded us of the others' best.

Yesterday, my parents, children and I returned home from 2200 mile round trip driving marathon from Louisiana to Washington D.C., four days' driving for a simple, four-day visit with my brother and his wife.

Honestly, it was much better than this Chicken Little mother expected. No roadside stops for children who couldn't wait for the next restroom. No incessant, "Are we there YET!?" No wailing fits about wanting to go home.

Before we left last Tuesday, I had told my brother and his wife a few things I wanted to see while in D.C.--like dinosaur bones at the National History Museum, bites of deliciousness at Georgetown Cupcake (yes, worth the hassle!), and Mount Vernon. They did all the rest...and it was unexpectedly pleasant.

Typically, when I plan a vacation, I'm borderline psychotic, spending weeks with papers spread across the living room floor, highlighting the Fodor's Guide, and reading online reviews and hours of operation/cost updates. Then, there's the infamous daily spreadsheets with every activity, sometimes down to the hours allotted per activity. And finally, I put numbers on a map of where we're headed, each number corresponding to an activity on the daily spreadsheet, corresponding public transportation stops labelled.

With me, the woman who doesn't want to miss seeing anything but who is terrified of getting lost, this is just my pattern. My husband would tell you our trips are not mere times of relaxation. A trip is a mission--to see a location or to see family.

This time? I planned nothing save how to fit eight days' worth of clothes for four people in one suitcase and how to arrive with three live, happy children and my sanity still intact. Each day, I followed the plan set out for me, ate where and what was on the menu, took the passenger seat versus the comfortable driver's role.I loved and laughed and enjoyed time with family whom I only get to see a couple times a year. Even with weekly Skype sessions, our physical absence from beloved Uncle and Aunt, son and daughter, brother and sister--it makes our hearts long for visits such as this one.

We still had one day left remaining in our trip when my oldest came up to me and said, "I'm going to miss Uncle Johnathan when we go home." The twins parroted the same refrain about Aunt Liza.

"That's a good thing," I said, trying not to choke on my own emotions. "If you didn't love them, you wouldn't miss them." Wyatt shook his head. Later, I heard him parroting those same words; even at almost five, he understands the connection between loving and heartache.Yes, we will miss them. We already do. But when the longing grows too great, we will all pile in the van again and drive cross country to where our heart lies...with our family.

When Did The Boy Become a Man?

2011-10-13T16:35:00.000-07:00

It's hard to think of my brother as an adult, with a wife, home, friends with children, and career of his own. I guess that's just the way it is, growing up with the boy, leaving home before the boy becomes a man.

Yet, when my family pulled in the drive of my brother and his wife's home yesterday evening, I only had to walk through the front door to be confronted with proof that he was no longer a boy playing house.

At the bottom of the stairs hung his coat with its two Lieutenant's bars on the shoulder and his white-topped hat, its metal Navy seal speaking maturity, importance. In the dining room on the hutch lay his white gloves, all part of the everyday uniform he wears as chaplain at Arlington Cemetery in Washington D.C. where he conducts over 400 memorial services each yearI guess it's a lot like watching my children grow; even though I see them each day, I never notice their growth until their pants are too short, shoes too tight.

With Johnathan, I went to his wedding. I Skype him every Sunday afternoon. I love on him in person each Christmas. I know the man who is.

But I also remember the boy who was small enough for me to sit on, who hid his broccoli behind the kitchen canisters, who loved creating complex layouts with Robin Hood Legos in the bedroom, who mastered video games when I failed to pass even the first level.

This same boy turned young man was the one who helped care for my husband when he sliced open his leg with a chainsaw in post hurricane cleanup, who built a greenhouse in the back of our old house.

And now? I look across the room and watch as my brother plays Candy Land with my brood, listen as he teaches my oldest son to follow instructions to create his first Lego structure. As he slowly explains each step, I wonder where he learned such patience.I wonder if he feels like a grown up, or if he's like me, wondering when I crossed over into the realm of "adult." Even with three children of my own, I still don't feel like I thought a grown up would feel, some days even still feel like I'm playing house with my own kids.

Perhaps this is just how God created us, with a soul so built for eternity that the body's decay seems almost incomprehensible, a soul that doesn't age and never feels old. Maybe I'll be eighty one day, look at the scars of time on my body and still wonder how I became this old when my heart still skips with the joy and laughter of a child.

Lions, and Tigers, and Toddlers--oh my!

2011-10-11T18:28:00.001-07:00

The Cowardly Lion in Dorothy’s Oz has nothing on me. The Great Oz behind the screen has no chance at making me brave, either. God, on the other hand, could grant me the gift of bravery, but no. He made me to be brave only through enough sustaining grace to make it through one day at a time, despite my fears that seem to always be knocking at my heart’s door.

When my brother rejoined the Navy as a chaplain, I knew that would mean traveling to see him. It’s just what family does. Ever since the twins turned two and were no longer able to ride in our laps on the plane, I’ve been dreading the requisite road trip to see the family. In the past year, I haven’t driven them anywhere over an hour’s drive away from home. I know…pathetic.

This week, though, I’m doing just that—driving from Louisiana to Washington D.C. with my parents and children to see my brother and his wife, our beloved Uncle Johnathan and Aunt Liza.

My cowardly side appeared again yesterday evening before our morning departure. “What are you thinking!?” Then, that nagging fear took hold, coming up with so many reasons why this was a bad idea. Wyatt has allergies or a cold, and if it’s the latter, it could get worse. In cramped quarters for two days, everybody is likely to catch it. Bad!!!

Then came the children who were so crazy excited, I had to send them to the grandparents’ house just so I could get everything ready. How could I survive two solid days in a van with three children I couldn’t stand for one hour before bedtime!? I sure didn’t’ know. But, I told God I was going to need a lot of help.

At breakfast this morning, Wyatt kept watching the digital clock atop the stove. “It’s 7:30,” he recounted, then with every minute Mama and Granddaddy were “late”, he continued, “It’s 7:31, 32, 34…”

It’s been a long day. I still think I’m crazy as a loon. And I can’t even think about tomorrow’s second day in the car or the return trip without feeling short of breath. As three very noisy eyes and mouths look at me while I finish typing this, all I can think is that Willie Nelson's lyrics "I Can't Wait to Be On the Road Again" show he obviously never traveled with three preschoolers...or he was in too altered a state to care. But so far, it really has been okay, albeit very tiring as always. Every bathroom break has been met with, “Is this Liza’s?” The kids have watched Mary Poppins, Veggie tales, and other vintage Disney movies they’ve never before been exposed to. Emerson has played with stickers. Amelia has played with my mother’s 1950s Besty McCall paper dolls. Wyatt has played with his dinosaurs.

And me? I’ve crocheted a little, read a little, written a little. But most of all? I’ve enjoyed the view of the Smoky Mountains I haven't seen in years. They've definitely lived up to their name today, misty rain and thick foggy clouds hovering just high enough to seem within reach if we had only brought a ladder with us.

To a flatlander like me, a dump truck load of dirt dumped in the back yard becomes a mountain, my children screaming “King of the Mountain” most every time they run up it’s two feet height. Real mountains jutting up out of the depths and stretching high above my head, the roads cut through solid rock so we can drive between them—it’s just beautiful, reminds me of how majestic is this God I serve who created both the depths of the Louisiana swamps and the heights of the Tennessee mountains.

When you pray, remember us this week—for traveling grace, lots of patience, an extra spoonful of kindness, good health, and restful sleep.

Photos: Our Librarian's "Barkley" (like Flat Stanley) playing paperdolls with Amelia while Wyatt watches "Milo & Otis," and Emerson rearranges stickers.

Faith, Love, and a Third Grade Education

2011-10-06T19:01:00.001-07:00

Great Grandma Maggie was born in what she referred to as "oh three"--1903, not 2003. Although she only had a third grade education, that didn't mean she was ignorant. She read her Bible and any other religious books the traveling salesmen brought to her door. When she didn't agree with an author, she would not only mark out the section but would also write in the margin what he should have said according to her knowledge of Scripture.

She was a rather severe-faced, big boned woman with thin strands of grey swirled around into a makeshift bun and loosely held in place by dozens of hair pins. Although there is a picture of her in a polyester navy church dress, white buttons straight up the front, I only remember her in thin checkered house dresses, two strong trunks sticking out beneath the hem.

Grandma's house was as wonderfully odd to me as she was, her front lawn hoed to dust inside the rough-cut cypress fence because she had no lawn mower. Outside the fence by the cast iron cattle troughs ever-brimming with water lived her yard chickens and roosters. Each visit, I collected and kept those iridescent feathers.

Inside, her house was always dark, even the sitting room lit by a single table lamp. On her dining room shelf was the big white Bible with the picture of Jesus on the front cover, the captivating paintings of hell, the Garden of Eden within. In her kitchen were tea cakes made from scratch and without a recipe, always tea cakes, whether she knew we were coming over or not.

It was this Grandma who filled my head with stories of a world beyond this one, stories of sitting up nights when people were ill unto death, of seeing the light of angels around the person's head when he breathed his last. After Grandpa Calvin died, she often recounted the story of when the mantle clock suddenly started playing music, then Grandpa coming through the front door and walking to get his pipe tobacco. When she spoke to him, he vanished. Grandma wasn't one for fabricating stories; she spoke only the unvarnished, blunt truth "as Maggie saw it," so I listened intently to stories I might have otherwise laughed at.

Saturday mornings often found her calling my daddy at 6:00 to come down because Lucky had trapped a possum or raccoon under her house. Sundays always found her at church, her personal faith leaving behind a spiritual legacy for my family.

Although she had little money, one time when I was sick, she cut the cover off an old card she'd kept and taped it over someone's well wishes to her, then added her own well wishes to me. Even at age nine, I knew her grammar wasn't right, but that didn't matter. The card was precious because it was from her.Towards the end of her life, she stayed a week or so on the fold out sofa bed in my home. At my mother's prompting, I would crawl up on the bed each day and "interview" her, recording on cassette stories from her childhood. The plan was to transcribe them and surprise the family with a book of her stories for Christmas.

But, the cancer was aggressive, and she didn't make it to Christmas. My mother couldn't bear to listen to that voice we all loved so dearly, and so the stories were tucked away in the safe.

It's been close to three decades since Grandma Maggie died of cancer and went to be with her Jesus. Since then, no one has been able to duplicate those tea cakes, not even my aunt who wrote down the ingredients as Grandma Maggie measured them. Since then, no one has listened to that voice again on tape either.

Perhaps it's time to remember the stories I have long ago forgotten from a woman I can never forget.

No Oprah Bashing Here

2011-10-04T15:10:00.000-07:00

I honestly don't remember a time when Oprah wasn't a household name. An elementary school child during most of the eighties, I wasn't allowed to watch her early-on outrageous talk show and its parade of dysfunction, but that didn't mean her personality, her ideas, her face didn't filter into my life anyway.

I didn't need to be a fan to see her image plastered across the grocery store checkout aisles, especially when her weight (and hair size) ballooned or shrank. Then, there was the oft-repeated image of Tom Cruise jumping on her couch and of shrieking audience women from her "favorite things" episodes. To this day, the catchy lyrics "It's 4:00, where's everybody gone?" still stick in my head.

Perhaps this background of Oprah is why the title of Stephen Mansfield's newest book intrigued me: Where Has Oprah Taken Us?: The Religious Influence of the World's Most Famous Woman.

The first two chapters gave a basic biography of Oprah's life, from childhood to present, all to form the groundwork for exploring where her present approach to religion and spirituality came from. While this part was less than thrilling to read for non-Oprah fans like myself, the whole book is not about Oprah, nor is it an attempt to bash Oprah.

Mansfield's biographical information is intended to provide an explanation for how a woman raised in a Christian church by a very religious extended family made the leap to the modern New Age spirituality she now claims. By understanding this, the reader can understand how Oprah's turning to spirituality versus established religion has affected American culture as a whole as well as how her choices reflect her entire generation in general.

It is this part of the book that is extraordinarily interesting, when Mansfield analyzes the historical events in America that led to the baby boomer generation separating itself from the confines of established religion to explore the New Age spirituality that began permeating America post World War II.

Most importantly, he shows how Oprah and post-WWII America have taken Eastern religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism and refashioned them for an American culture that revolves around the self and self fulfillment as being the focus of life itself, not a God.

The American notion of karma? of reincarnation? of maya? Mansfield explains how these ideas as we Westerners understand them look nothing like what they actually are in their native Eastern religion. Instead, these concepts have all have been "sanitized," secularized, and reinvented for Western culture, resulting in an entirely new religion that is, at best, a hodge podge of misunderstood pieces of Eastern religions and, at worst, contradictory trendy concepts falsely presented as ancient beliefs that cancel each other out into meaninglessness (p. 185).

In short, through the New Age movement of experimental spirituality, America has merely shaped a religion they want to be true.

My one criticism of the book is actually a big one, that Mansfield does not make the final leap to critique Christianity or any other established world religion in America, even though even the established world religions such as Judaism, Islam, or Christianity all have seemingly the same problems of ego-ism, of piecing together a modified gospel just as the New Age spirituality demonstrates.

Mansfield's only mention of this concept is in passing with only the faintest of echoes of David Platt's Radical: "Christian churches have created a Christianity of therapeutic preaching, me-oriented worship, self-enchanting theology, and ministries desperate to meet every social need of their parishioners. This is a far cry from the kind of Christianity created by the Jesus Christ who commanded men to lay down their lives for God" (p. 188).

Oprah fan or mere cultural observer--this book is definitely an eye-opener concerning how a falsified version of Eastern religions has permeated American culture over the past fifty years and how it continues to infiltrate the American household and church even today.

When There's Nothing to Be Grateful For

2011-09-29T16:09:00.000-07:00

Children don't understand this strand of spider's silk we all walk between life and death, the thin veil that separates two co-existing worlds of spirit and flesh, visible and invisible.

Innocence allows them to accept the invisible, the world of spirit, as equally as they accept the world their fleshly senses touch, hear, taste each day. Everything just "is," nothing to be dwelt upon too long lest it take away from the joy of reading, playing Candy Land, or filling another load of laundry with dirt and rocks from the great outdoors.I envy their easy acceptance of the difficult, their ability to just live in the moment, their lack of concern over the "what if's," the unknown.

My mind has been far different from theirs this week, unable to catch their excitement except for a few fleeting moments each day, precious moments stolen from more serious contemplation of weighty matters where I am the daughter trying to help parents navigate through the storm without overstepping my bounds.

It started this past Saturday morning when husband's Maw Maw had another spell, one in a steady stream of short-lived episodes that have baffled every doctor she's met over the past few months. No one really knows what's happening to her body except the obvious--that it's dying, like we all are.

There are no surprises here. Husband, father-in-law, and I have talked of her physical condition, knowing it foreshadowed what was to come. Her time in assisted living would soon come to an end, if not by her death than by her needs exceeding what her care givers could provide.

We three knew the inevitable. Yet, my mother in law has not been ready or emotionally able to make the decision to put her mother in the home with all its negative connotations of abandonment, not even when I brought the packet of information to her and set it gently on the kitchen table. She thanked me, then simply put it away for later.

Saturday, Maw Maw's spell was her worst yet. This time, she hasn't recovered fully, her dementia suddenly worse, causing her memory to crackle on and off like a light bulb before it finally burns out. Sometimes, she doesn't even remember that the woman by her side is her own daughter, that her husband died a decade ago.

And yet, in the sadness, the concern, God has shown Himself gracious, once again. The doctor made the decision that my mother in law could not. Maw Maw could not return to her home. It was time to put her in the nursing home.

This is what Ann Voskamp speaks of in her poetry in prose book, One Thousand Gifts, the learning to give thanks even when it seems there is nothing to be thankful for, to see God's goodness even in the hard, the pain, and transform it into joy, to learn to "give thanks for all things at all times because He is all good."

She reminds me, "all is grace," and in this moment, I see it--grace in the hard decision being made by someone else so my mother in law didn't have to make it. This is grace, His grace.

I know what is to come will not be easy--it's not easy now and hasn't been for quite some time, each visit with Maw Maw leaving me draped in cloaks of heavy sadness. I miss the stories she used to tell repeatedly that now I cannot remember. This once feisty woman now just sits without speaking until spoken to, trapped behind a wall of medication and deteriorating neural connections. I do not know her.

And yet...and yet, I cling to this moment of recognition of what He has done. In my kitchen, I set the phone in its cradle and lift hands high, my head bowed against the chaos of children's laughter in the adjoining room as I whisper a quick thanks to Him.

Photos: BotheredbyBees on flickr.

To Spin Before the Lord

2011-09-27T18:27:00.000-07:00

My mother and I were shopping the clearance racks in J.C. Penney's, our first shopping trip to the mall in over a month, also our first shopping trip without strollers. With this first taste of freedom, the twins swirled around our legs like mini tornadoes as we adults stumbled like Oz's scarecrow's toward our destination, our hands being jerked left and right as children leaped, bounced, and hopped, all in an effort to make sure their feet touched all the brown squares that made up the floor's pattern.

To my dismay, since my last visit, the whole store had been reorganized. Three children, though, were delighted with the slippery new white tiles that shimmered like a runway reflecting bright fluorescent lights overhead.

As we moved to the store's front corner with the dressing room, we reached the more stylish section of clothing, which was lit up even brighter than the other areas. An upbeat tempo caught my ear as the speakers poured forth the bouncy lyrics "She's a brick house...".

In seconds, Emerson and Amelia deemed the white tiles a "dance floor" and began their own version of dancing--more bouncing and twirling than anything else. In a world where image is so important, I had to smile at their innocence and lack of concern over who saw them or what they thought of their lack of dancing skills.

As a Christian who is also a Southern Baptist, I was raised in an environment where dancing was frowned upon. To this day, my denomination still frowns on dancing.

Perhaps that is why it has been such a surprise to me, learning the joy of dancing with my children.

As a child, I don't remember dancing with my mother or daddy, and yet these three constantly tug at my shorts, begging, "Dance, mommy! Dance with us!"

I have tried so many times to capture that joy, but their dancing is so full of giggles and perpetual movement that they are but a blur on film.
To them, there is no shame in dancing. At three and five, they have no concept of dirty dancing, bumping, grinding, or any such nonsense--nothing impure. To them, dancing means merely to move against a backdrop of music, whether audible or in their head--to leap, to jump, to twirl, to laugh, to grin until their faces hurt...to express joy in movement, most of the time while singing between gasps of breath. When I see their joy at singing praise songs to the Lord and dancing for Him, it's then that I agree with the Psalmist--

"Praise the LORD! Sing to the LORD a new song, And His praise in the congregation of the godly ones.
Let Israel be glad in his Maker; Let the sons of Zion rejoice in their King.
Let them praise His name with dancing; Let them sing praises to Him with timbrel and lyre.
For the LORD takes pleasure in His people; He will beautify the afflicted ones with salvation" (Ps. 149: 1-4).

Lunch plates still on the table waiting to be cleaned up, I smile, grab two little hands in mine, and swirl around the kitchen floor. I spin before the Lord in thanksgiving, singing amidst the laughter of children before it is gone.

What Meekness Really Means

2011-09-24T20:08:00.000-07:00

The back cover's question peaked my interest: "What can you do when life doesn't turn out like you planned?" The cynical side of me chuckled and replied aloud, "Get over it," knowing deep down that those words were much easier said than lived.

Life certainly didn't turn out as I planned.

I didn't plan on giving birth to my first child when I was a mere nineteen days from turning 30. I didn't plan on enduring the shame of infertility, bearing the loss of two unborn children, wearing a very public scarlet letter proclaiming me the wife of a disbarred attorney. I didn't plan on working nights until three or four in the morning to help support our family.

The question struck a chord with my past. Then again, whose life doesn't this question resonate with? I don't know anyone whose life has gone perfectly according to plan.

Presently, one recent college graduate in our family is back at home living with his parents--unable to find any jobs he's qualified for, rejected because he's "over qualified" for other jobs available. Another family member is knocking on 30 yet has been unable to find a Christian mate to share her life with. And yet another suffers painful flareups from a lifelong, incurable disease.

This was not their plan either. So, what does a person do when The Plan doesn't happen? When people mistreat you? When you're simply disappointed with life in general?

Kay Arthur's As Silver Refined: Answers to Life's Disappointments answers these questions and more as she seeks to show how disappointment can lead to discouragement, dejection, despair, and demoralization, what she refers to as the "five Deadly D's."

The secret to victory in disappointments? Never allow the enemy to get his foot in the door and send our minds on that spiraling path downward. Christians must recognize that disappointments are really God's appointments, all part of His holy plan to sanctify each of us, making us all more like Christ.

When one feels disappointed, broken, she must decide whom to believe--to believe God is at work, causing everything to work for her good or to believe God is not in control anymore, is a liar when His Word says everything is sifted through His hands. Secondly, she must choose how to respond to the disappointment, brokenness. Arthur argues that meekness is how one must respond, that meekness involves lowering oneself in humility, "acting rather than reacting" (69).

Although meekness gets a pretty bad rap as mousiness, Arthur shows "to be meek is to be calmly strong. Meekness is supernatural. It's an inwrought grace of the soul." Several chapters are devoted to helping Christians properly understand true meekness as lived out by Jesus, Moses, and others throughout Scripture, how meekness affects not only our relationship with God but our relationship with others as well.

Although this text is not an easy beach-side read, it is not a high-brow read either, and it does not gloss over the brokenness people feel in such disappointments. On the contrary, her writing is littered with numerous true stories of others' living through their own disappointments. She shows the pain--physical and emotion--that permeate the lives of Christians to the point where they are in the pit of despair and just want to die, but she also shows how understanding the concept of "meekness" helps them look up to Christ and live in peace, in victory.

Although this book was first published years before Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are, I hear Voskamp echoing "all is grace" throughout Arthur's text. If God is Sovereign, if He reigns over and allows all things, the good and the bad, then the disappointments are grace.

Life is a battle. Its disappointments are constantly refining the Christian's soul for kingdom warfare.

It's easy to be flattened by life's disappointments. Yet to live in peace, in victory, to trust that God is Sovereign and only acts towards us in loving kindness--that kind of living is not for cowards. It is not for the mousy. But it is for the meek.

Running Backwards

2011-09-20T20:19:00.001-07:00

This is not Wonderland. The door frame didn't shrink suddenly once the white rabbit shut it in my face, nor did I grow too gargantuan heights after eating some confection labelled "Eat Me."

Silly me. Of course that's not what happened. Four hours of sleep only makes it seem like Lewis Carroll's words have turned real. And yet, with no changes in my house's layout or my physical size, I still started out the day by running smack into the door frame, the same one I've passed through daily without incident for over a year now. As I said--silly me, now black-and-blue me.

Grading student papers into the wee hours of this morning left me dozing much too late. My feet first touched the sheepskin rug beside the bed after many of you were on your third cup of coffee, hard at work in rectangular spaces. On any other day with three children still tired and recuperating from last week's illness, this tardiness wouldn't have been a bad thing.

But today was "get with the program" day when I would start actually rallying the troops and carting them to all destinations posted on the family calendar. No more marking CANCELLED atop each entry even though the "we're tired" excuse was more truth than fiction.

With the clock ticking, I began what I hate--rushing. It's always met with opposition. Had I told the children they were going to the zoo or the aquarium, all three would have been dressed, shod, full of milk and cheerios, and miraculously self-latched in car seats...all before I brushed my teeth.

Alas, I told them the truth--we were going to the nursing home where our church ministers once a month. While I and they both love visiting with many of the patients there, it's still not an event they consider worthy of rushing to see...even with mommy shouting to hurry because the music minister will start singing without her horrible-piano-playing accompaniment!

In the midst of dressing those who can truly dress themselves, pushing children shoeless out the door, and serving breakfast in the backseat of a van, I really had to wash my hair--it was pretty bad. Of course, only when my head was upside down, hand full of a healthy dollop of mousse ready to scrunch into damp curls, did the phone start ringing.

Head still upside down, fingers flying through hair to finish the job, I tried to run for it, through the door separating our bathroom and bedroom and downstairs to the kitchen where I knew I had left the phone.

Obviously, I didn't make it. Shoulder ricocheted, propelling me backwards, not forwards, and leaving an instant blue imprint of wooden board on my skin.

For the rest of today, each time something brushed up against that shoulder, I have felt foolish. Honestly. Who thinks she can run with her head facing the floor!?

I came up with a sobering answer.

Me. I do.

I try this running head-down bit all the time, refusing to lift my eyes to my Father and see His direction for my day, see the path He has laid out, the obstacles He can guide me around if I'll take His hand and look up, not down.

Especially when I'm in a rush, when I feel I don't have enough time to get done what I must, it's no wonder I keep running smack into the same ordinary problems and issues I have repeatedly asked the Lord to help me overcome.

This morning, we made it. We ministered to others, showing them Jesus' love. But I had failed to show that same love to my own children.

Thankfully, the Spirit spoke to me before we even arrived. At a red light, I turned and spoke to them. "Mommy's sorry for yelling this morning. I love you very much and shouldn't have yelled at you. Can you forgive me?"

From the backseat came three mumbled words of grace and a shy smile. "I forgive you."

This mother is far from perfect...and her children know it. But hopefully in the midst of my screw-ups, I'm teaching them the beauty of admitting when you're wrong, of speaking healing words of true repentance, and of both extending and receiving grace.

When We Don't Really Understand

2011-09-15T19:00:00.000-07:00

It was almost midnight when husband walked in the bedroom to deliver news he knew I wasn't going to like. After almost fifteen years with him, it's obvious when he's avoiding confrontation, either real or perceived. In truth, it's sometimes amusing, watching him dance around twenty minutes or longer as this man of few words transforms into a chatterbox, sharing what is usually held in for me to draw out, all in an attempt to force the unspoken past his lips.

With a sick boy's moans coming through the monitors and one of two extra washer loads whirring on the floor below, my forehead frowned, mouth clenched at husband's announcement. He had to go back to work, a written piece due by seven the following morning. Better to drive in now while still awake than risk it after a night's lost sleep. I shook my head in agreement.

Nights with just me and the children are difficult--too hard to sleep with half a bed cold and empty. Then, there's the fear of being a woman alone. When husband is gone, I try not to think about it, focus on my school work, my Bible study, and whatever I can find to pass the time until I fall asleep.

This night, there was plenty to keep me occupied until the wee hours of the morning. About thirty minutes after he left, I flicked on the stairwell lights and quickly tiptoed down to start the second load of laundry, my nightgown swirling as I moved quickly into the semi-dark beneath.

I never made it to the washroom. As soon as I turned the corner, all the security alarms went off...and they're anything but subtle. Had I been returning a glass to the kitchen, I would still be picking up the pieces.

My first thought was, "Oh no! It's going to wake up the children!" then "Oh no! Somebody is trying to break in and Doug isn't here!" Instinctively, I ran to silence the shrieking siren, my gut reaction of the first thought trumping the five millisecond pause caused by the latter idea that this could be a bad idea if it weren't a false alarm.

House now eerily silent and two cats looking up quizzically at my feet, I stood visibly shaking, fumbling with the phone in my hand, trying once, twice, but there was no dial tone. The line was dead. "Oh no! They've cut the wires to the house, too!!!"

I was frantic, mind racing as I listened for sounds of an intruder, walked towards the knife block, not knowing what to do now. Why wasn't the alarm company calling me to check in!?

Probably no more than a minute passed before I realized the phone was busy because the system was calling the alarm company. By this time, even though my hands both felt as if they were defrosting from being plunged into sub zero temperatures for a prolonged period, I had figured out what had happened.

Tired husband had accidentally pushed "Away" instead of "Stay" when he left, activating the motion detectors as well as the perimeter alarms. The only intruder was me. Finally, the phone rang.

"Is everything okay, ma'am?" the operator asked. I explained the mistake, and said in still-shaky voice, "He scared me to death! I'm gonna kill my husband."

Poor husband was deeply apologetic, and after a few minutes of hearing his voice, relaying the events (even down to exactly what I'd told the operator), my hands started to feel less like victims of acupuncture. With children somehow still sleeping on the floor above and no real damage done, what had been terrifying a few minutes before was now a little amusing.

As I started to hang up, I said, "Don't worry. I can't kill you now. They now have a recording of me saying I'm going to do just that. I'd surely get caught."

He laughed at the joke, one we've tossed back and forth since we were newlyweds when I told him "till death do us part" was literal--there would be no divorce, ever. I laughed along with him, the healing power of shared laughter closing the book on a tense situation that will surely be a much-used punchline for years to come.

Over the past two days since this scare, I've thought about the concept of fear, only to conclude that fear, true fear, is more a dictionary term than a reality for me and most Americans. We're tucked away beneath sturdy roofs; feel secure enough to walk across wide open spaces during the daylight, sometimes even after dark; have liberty to speak God's name without fear we'll suddenly disappear into the night.

Despite America's problems, God still protects our country from so much evil, so much fear that is rampant in other countries splashed across the news. And it's not just fear that He keeps at arm's length. It's persecution. Censorship. Religious persecution. Rampant illness. Poverty. Most of us don't really know what these concepts really mean.

U.S. Census Bureau recently reported that U.S. poverty rates are at highs this country hasn't seen since the 1950s. That's 42.6 million people, 2.6 million more than last year.

God still has His hand of protection on our country, even, I believe, on our entire world. But could He be removing His hand a little more each day to prepare for the end?

Could He be slowly moving away from us as He did in Jerusalem before He passed judgment? Going from the inner court to the threshhold to the outer courts, resting above the temple's east gate, and finally waiting on the Mount of Olives outside the city?

One commentator stated, "According to rabbinic tradition, the glory of God tarried on the Mount of Olives for three and a half years awaiting some sign of repentance and when there was none, ultimately departed"* Imagine God waiting three and a half years, hoping His people would notice His absence, grieve for His presence, and repent...yet they did not.

What if the same thing is happening once again, only with God withdrawing His hand of protection on this world versus withdrawing His presence from the temple. If He is, would we even notice?

Or would we be like the children of Israel who never even noticed when God's divine presence manifested in glowing cloud went out from among them?

"Now the cherubim were standing on the south side of the temple when the man went in, and a cloud filled the inner court. Then the glory of the LORD rose from above the cherubim and moved to the threshold of the temple....The glory of the LORD went up from within the city and stopped above the mountain east of it" (Ezekiel 10:3-4, 11:23).

*Lamar Eugene Cooper, Sr., Ezekiel, The New American Commentary, ed. E. Ray Clendenen (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1994), 145.

Image: Heart in a Cloud. The Freedom Traveler.

When Battles Begin at Nightfall

2011-09-13T18:38:00.000-07:00

After one dose of Tylenol slowly drained in tears, oldest son snuggles beneath the plush purple blanket, soft and soothing despite the random pattern of holes worn clean through. I lay beside him and draw his head close beneath my chin. Every few seconds, his eyes flutter open, glance my way. He says nothing, but I know he's making sure I haven't left yet.

At almost five, Wyatt doesn't let me love him like this often, me stroking his forehead, watching the rise and fall cadence of his chest until his breathing slows and sleep consumes. Even then, I lay there, not really wanting to leave this place where I feel most like a mother.

But--always the but--there is extra laundry now to be disinfected, school papers to give feedback on, and a younger son staring in interest at me from across the room, only his blue eyes shining out from beneath high-tucked blanket as he waits for this mommy to turn out the lamp so he can sleep as well.

Wyatt lay sleeping on sofa all afternoon, unusual stillness for this one so full of life, boundless energy. His stomach hurt and the thermometer showed a low fever, so I let him sleep while I played with twins on the upper floor. When he woke, he kept asking, "Is daddy home? When is daddy coming home?" and "My brain hurts."

When mommy wasn't good enough, I figured I was in for it. Even so, I still haven't figured out why illnesses break through a body's defenses to spike at the dividing line between night and day. Here I was again, 9:00 at night and a sudden resurgence of fever, blasting through the ranks to 104, enough to make Wyatt nauseous and my night endless.

I already know there won't be much sleep tonight, too many hours before me of unpaid heart labor. My only prayer is that this is a simply 24 hour bug, that no one else gets infected.

As I write this, the washer whirs in the silence of nighttime, its rhythm mesmerizing, enticing me to prop elbows on its glass lid and lean face inwards to watch its magic dance reminiscent of The Nutcracker's "Waltz of the Flowers."

This is not what I wanted to write this evening. Before, my thoughts were consumed by a book I've been reading, its concept of meekness. But now? The not knowing consumes my thoughts, sharpens my maternal radar to be alert for all symptoms. It's the not knowing what the illness is, how long it will last, what toll it will take on my loved ones, whether I should seek a doctor's care or let it run its course--so many unknowns to bring before the One who knows all.

It seems nightfall is the time for many of the battles I face. It's the time when life stops spinning long enough for worry to set in, anxiety to overwhelm, and fear to find the mental soil open to take root.

While days are too filled and busy with children to even consider not trusting God in those moments, after dark is sometimes when I must fight the hardest, take sword of truth to phantoms of insecurity and prayers to counter the enemy's lies.

All I can do is pray. It sounds silly--all I can do is pray. To make it through this illness and the next and the next, I must not just say it but believe it to be enough.

In the end, it's how I fight the battle as much as winning it that matters.

The Human Lite Brite

2011-09-08T18:27:00.000-07:00

My usually silent cell phone started playing its xylophone anthem before the children and I were back at the van, its chords bringing me back to reality of life outside this moment.

After over an hour of prayer walking through another neighborhood in our area, oldest son and I were caked in sweat . Even on such a radiantly cool, crisp hint-of-autumn day, the unusually vibrant blue palette overhead meant no clouds to hide still-hot sun.

Those walking and praying with me didn't seem to break a sweat, so maybe it was just me. Then again, I guess my workout was intensified by praying words continuously aloud while pushing a makeshift double stroller full of 70 pounds worth of twins. Bumpy asphalt buckled at the end of each driveway = resistance training.

This is only my third week of obedience to God's incessant nudging for me to get outside my comfort zone, do my part in sharing the gospel with my Judea, and show my children in practice that Jesus died for everyone, not just his family.

What I can't believe, even though I should have expected it? Although I've spent much time praying in mornings before the routine of the day starts, this is different. Starting each day out focused on the Great Commission, walking in the midst of His Creation, and voicing aloud no prayers for myself but only for others who I never have nor may ever meet? It's a day-changer.

Three times over as many weeks, the simple submission to get up, get out, and speak prayers over total strangers has transformed not only the moment but the entire day, something morning prayers in the comfort of my prayer closet don't always accomplish.

This sense of His presence lingering, His Spirit giving me peace throughout the day is something I haven't been able to replicate many times when I say the same exact prayers solely for others while sitting safe within my walls.

After rehydrating, I took the children to my mother's, her phone call saying she wanted to look in the attic for old clothes. Mid-morning found me wiping thick layers of dust from cardboard box lids and trying to decipher mother's coded labels on boxes stacked neatly around the attic's perimeter.

Then, I found it--one of my all-time favorite toys, the lite brite. There is no telling how many hours I spent sitting on my bedroom floor, making designs with simple white light and plastic pegs. Lying on eggplant purple carpet, I would decipher the color code of tiny white letters, push peg after peg through thin black construction paper, then turn off all the lights to enjoy the show.
With the light off, the design was nothing spectacular, almost ugly. But when I plugged the lite brite into the wall, illuminating clear plastic from behind black curtain? Magic.This afternoon, my oldest, Wyatt, learned the joy of the lite brite, he and I working together to create a picture of tropical fish while envious twins jockeyed for position at our feet.

Once finished, he asked to "swap" the pegs. After inserting blue peg into previously-white slot, he exclaimed, "Look! That one changed to blue!" I tried explaining that the light is white, unchanging, that the pegs hold the color, but I'm still not sure he understood.

When looking at the image, though, thinking of the unchanging nature of the white light behind the darkness, I started to understand. The change in me after prayer walking is caused by connecting a usually general prayer to someone specific as well as the repetition of the prayer.

Each spoken prayer is like a colored peg, piercing the darkness and sending forth His rainbow of light into the world. In my prayer closet, praying for the lost "in general" just doesn't have the same impact as seeing a house and connecting it to actual people...it's a prayer I utter and move forward.

Yet, when prayer walking, I continue to pray the same prayer repeatedly, specifically aimed. With each prayer for a specific household, I add colored peg after colored peg, the simple repetition piercing not just the world with prayer but also piercing my inner spirit so that more of His light shines through me and on me.

An hour or so later, there's enough prayers piercing heaven and my heart to where beauty has emerged, shining outward, lit from within. In a way, I feel like a human lite brite!

I wonder if the inwardly lit radiance has shown more on these past few Thursdays? If others have seen a difference? Or is it just me? No matter, God's economy proves consistent--submitting to His will and trying to be the blessing to others ends in my being the one most blessed.

Finding Joy in the Midst of the Storm

2011-09-06T15:29:00.000-07:00

Just a few days ago, Tropical Storm Lee clumsily knit together right outside our front door, winds grasping to learn the circular steps required to increase its intensity and propel itself northward, dancing through the water-wrung swamps along Louisiana's coast that begged winds to slow their path and rain down mercy into land's near-empty vessel.

The storm did just that, slowing to a crawl. Here in our little patch of earth where fields that generated 20,000 square bales last year might see 15,000 (if we're lucky), where saplings have struggled to their last breath before their staked flags were lowered--in drought, the thought of hurricane rain is electrifying, exciting, even anticipated.

Yet, as I checked Facebook statuses, glanced at the Weather Channel, and even gathered for worship on Sunday, the consensus was clear--what horrible weather! When will the rain stop?

Some areas were hit by tornadoes, flash floods, and storm surge coming up over the levees. But most of those complaining? They were sitting in well-insulated houses, safe from the waters streaming over streets and into lawns, a storm doing little more than to force them indoors into short-lived power outages. Me, traditionally the malcontent--I just couldn't understand. Surely I wasn't the only one who had been praying for rain..and this was rain!?

Our farm measured 12 1/2 inches over three days, sheets of liquid hypnotizing in their cobra-like sway both day and night over greening fields. Aside from the torrential rains that the ground has mostly opened her mouth to guzzle, attempting to quench her thirst, we had little damage--an already rotten tree downed in Sunday morning winds; a long, woody rose stalk separated from its source of life; rows of corn needing to be picked early for drying; and a tilted cedar needing to be staked until ground firms back up.

Even with two extra loads of laundry from soaking children splashing in the rain and puddles, husband and I found this to be the most relaxing weekend this year that we've spent as a family.In the midst of the storm's coolness, we ate together hearty soup and cornbread. Twins picked up wind-fallen acorns and already-turned leaves. And husband played at flying a kite in 30 mph gusts.
Once the rains were past, we opened windows to let in the first touches of fall's promise. And with that fresh crispness jogging our memories of autumns past, oldest son begged for hot cocoa.

Presently, a low sits just north of the Yucatan Peninsula, another of as yet unformed storm waiting on marching orders from on High. With each storm that forms and takes aim at our country, Katrina is still ever present at the front of most Louisianians' minds, especially in the wake of last week's Irene up the coast.

We know how bad it can be, how terrifying the high winds, the uprooted trees, how discouraging the lines of roofs covered in blue tarps even a year later, how frustrating the slow plod back to normalcy in the aftermath when even daily bread is missing from emergency-lighted store shelves and lines at gas pumps take us back to the hard times of the '70s.

For this storm we have just endured and for the possible one to come--we must make the decision now to choose joy. It's not an easy choice, not hardly, but is the only one that can bring peace in whatever comes.

Whether He allows a storm to condense and move or disperse, all is mercy, all is worthy of thankfulness.

Choosing to Soar: How to Escape the Bonds of Fear

2011-09-01T18:33:00.000-07:00

She dances through open sky to seek breakfast in my yard, single row of water-hose nurtured roses miraculously blooming even in deep drought, an oasis in a two hundred acre desert of horse hay devoid of sweet smelling nectar and the velvety curl of flower petals.

Where she has come from, I do not know. Her wings are perfect, not a scale out of place, edges not yet frayed from wind, water, or near escapes. Perhaps she is newly hatched, taking her inaugural flight, parched from a week or more in sun-baked chrysalis.

Woody grass clippings stick to my feet as I pursue her, the withered, inwardly turned blades' dewy coolness refreshing against bare skin. Even when I stand motionless, trying to only catch her in pixels, she takes drunken, wobbly steps around me, the only dance she has ever known, one hard wired in her small insect brain to help evade being snatched midair by hawks ever-gliding overhead on invisible perches of wind or by our dreamsicle cat Jonah's pounce.

I struggle to tear myself away from simply watching her move, move on with what I'm supposed to be accomplishing. This moment is so fleeting, will most likely be our only crossing of paths since the peak of her beauty before me only comes when her journey is nearly complete. In the wild, it's likely she has a week to ten days.

It's been a month or more of 100+ degree afternoons that have imprisoned the children and me indoors except for brave early-morning forays into the already sweltering sauna and even briefer late evening romps down the porch until pelted by hoards of bloodthirsty mosquitoes.

This morning's butterfly is the first in quite sometime that I have felt God near me in the ordinary everydayness. This past winter and spring's commune with God throughout the routine activities of living close to His creation was lost, a perfectly solid connection suddenly gone dead. In the laundry, cooking, cleaning, and home schooling my three preschoolers, He has been ever so silent.

I told husband just the other day that God was speaking volumes to me about my soul, transforming knowledge into action through ministry opportunities I needed to be involved in to fulfill His word, dictation at lightening speed as I studied His word. Late nights spent devouring the manna were full of excitement, exhilaration, and revelation with Him willing to unlock treasure after treasure..but that was it.

In the daylight and into the night, I've sought answers to questions, all of which are still pending. Instead, the answers He's given are to questions I have not asked.

In the midst of this difficult season, last week presented me with the results of a few blood tests, all of which were fine but that showed me in the upper end of normal in two areas where I know genetics is already at play. At only thirty-four years old, I'm already looking at what could kill me. Even with my doing cardio five times a week and carefully monitoring everything that enters my mouth, that black and white computer printout speaks of potential health issues barely held in check during this supposed peak in my life.

I'm the one always onto husband for the impurities (Dr. Pepper) he funnels into his organs, his lack of daily heart-pumping activity, and here I am the one seeing my days numbered on paper. Although I know the one who numbers my days, it's sobering, not feeling invincible even before my forties.

But even in this, God has reminded me of a quote He lay before me when I first started teaching: "The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough." (Rabindranth Tagore).

Although He may not give me the answers I seek, although genetics and statistics seem stacked against me, I'm not going home until my journey, my purpose in this life is complete. Yes, I have been fighting against fear that His purpose for me will be fulfilled all too soon, not for my sake but for those whom I love and want to spend a lifetime loving.

And so I keep praying, intentionally choosing each moment to rest in Him and His peace, knowing that if I don't, I will never enjoy the flower since I will be earthbound, doomed to never fly with open wings, dance in open sky.

Passing the Torch

2011-08-30T19:42:00.000-07:00

Back before local Wal-marts, before the quick run to the convenience store on every corner, there was the once a week trek from country to city where girl would trade the daily monotony of grass and trees for the fascinating concrete jungle found in the parking lots of places like K-mart, TG&Y, and Hancocks.

Every time I would open the back door of mother's cerulean blue Delta 88 with its matching plush blue interior, my eyes would move to the concrete. It's a wonder someone didn't flatten my short figure as I walked head down, scanning the ground for lost change or (even better) rainbows caused by an engine's oil leak spread wide by an afternoon shower.

Those were the best trips, the ones where I actually found stripes of iridescent blues and purples shimmering together with yellows and greens, each rainbow unique. I can still hear myself beckoning to mother to "Look! A rainbow!" Never did she fail to look. She may not have stopped, but she turned her head and commented, thereby verifying my quest to find rainbows as important, worthwhile. There were even times when she pointed the rainbows out to me that I had missed.

Perhaps it's because of her that to this day, my heart still seeks out rainbows--in parking lots, against the darkness of sun-lit clouds after a rain shower, in chandelier-hung prisms. Just as Jennifer Lee Dukes @ Getting Down with Jesus sees the letter Y everywhere in creation, reminding her of Yahweh, I see rainbows at every turn, making me pause in continued wonder, and reminding me that I serve a covenant God who will not leave me nor forsake me.

A couple Fridays ago, I stood under broad gas station awning while husband refueled my van in the midst of a thunderstorm. As the rain poured too fast for slatted grates to keep up with, I watched an oil slick rainbow expand and contract as deep water pooled atop it, colors moving amoeba-like beneath and atop rushing waters. Eco-unfriendly? Yes. Beautiful? Oh yes.

Each afternoon, my three children have been enjoying the rainbows that decorate our stairwell, Creator God's diffused light hitting prisms at just the right angle to form temporary splashes of multi-colored light on white canvas. They don't yet connect the rainbow to the new covenant in Christ as God's ultimate fulfillment of promise, although they do connect the symbol to God, Himself.

But now? They're seeing rainbows where I miss them, their child-like view of the world making it easier to step outside the box which says "rainbow" means "ROYGBIV," and in that order.

Yesterday morning as I made another poor attempt at watering the fast-fading loblolly pines in the backyard, Emerson looked back toward the house, field between us back lit by the rising sun.

"Look!" he suddenly screamed. "Rainbows!"

I looked up. "Uh...no. Those are stripes, son. Daddy cut the grass, and it made stripes."

"Yes!" he answered, still excited. "Daddy made rainbows!"

This morning was the same. Dropping PJ's to the floor, I pulled grey-blue and orange shirt over Emerson's head and began to button it. As I finished, he looked down and patted the shirt with both hands. "Rainbows!" Again, I argued, "Stripes" only to be shot down. "Rainbows."
I just smiled and let it go. Why must creation only speak of God in a rainbow colored with ordered hues of red, orange, yellow, and green always followed by blue, indigo, and violet? Who am I to say stripes isn't an abstract rainbow sent by God to speak to us, direct our thoughts heavenward?

Sadly, like me, they'll change their minds soon enough and look only for Webster's definition of rainbow. Or maybe, just maybe, I can learn to open my mind and see the world as they do, God's rainbow awash in unexpected places--the disordered, the incomplete, the wild.

What to Do When Your Church Isn't Perfect

2011-08-26T19:32:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, I don't like my church.

In fact, if I think about it, I've never felt like a doe-eyed newlywed who sees her beloved church as completely perfect, not ever. Even as a child, I knew churches weren't perfect--not the buildings with their sidewalk cracks, the people worshiping inside the walls.

It's not that I don't love my present church, my childhood church, or the ones in between. No, I love my church family as much as I love those whose double helix mirrors mine, with a heart that is fiercely loyal and achingly longs to be in the other's presence. With family of blood or spirit is that same sense of being home, at peace, comforted, loved.

Even so, every person who composes my church is like me--a flawed, imperfect vessel saved by grace. Stitching dozens of imperfect people together with the common thread of Christ's salvation might make up a church, but still, it will be a tapestry full of flaws for no other reason than because of the broken-but-God-mended people who make it up.

One of the lessons my parents taught me well is how a church family is much like a blood-related family. When I was yet a little girl, my mother was always upset over something at my childhood church. There were times when she would disagree with the way something was being done or not done and others when she was outright hurt by someone's actions in the fellowship. At home, she would cry out her hurt and disappointment while I took it all in.

And then? No, she and my father didn't yank our family up and plant us in another fellowship. We didn't just leave because we were hurt, disillusioned, or in disagreement over what Beth Moore calls a "rib issue." Although sometimes it would take awhile for the human emotion to go from boiling to simmering, we would always go back for the next service and the next, worshiping with our church family.

One time in particular, there was no one to teach the teenage girls' mission group. Instead of complaining about it (or in truth, in addition to complaining about it), she because our class' teacher. When the Wednesday night schedule would change without considering how it would effect our group, she would adapt, moving the group's meeting time, and we would keep growing in grace and knowledge...as well as unity, forgiveness, and love.

In my later years at home, my mother also showed me that listening to a pastor preach three times a week, even joining in the programs and classes with other church members--all of that would never satisfy my soul's longing for Jesus...only daily study of the Scriptures could do that. Once starting in-depth Bible study on my own and later joining her small ladies' morning class during the week, I learned just how big a hole I had been expecting the church to fill, a hole that only God could fill to perfection.

Perhaps her examples are why lately, my dissatisfaction with certain areas of my church haven't sent me running for the yellow pages but, instead, to my knees, asking God if my feelings of frustration are from Him or from my flesh, which selfishly desires to have my needs met over others' needs, to have things my way. And in response to those answers, I've asked Him what He's asking me to do.

This past Tuesday, a few of my church family started a new evangelism ministry, prayer walking in our community. After most people had gone to work, my sister in Christ and I walked on opposing sides of a neighborhood street, the two of us outnumbered by our combined seven young children who walked (or rolled) with us. For an hour, the children hung a tract on each house's door as she and I prayed aloud for each household.

It was the start of something new, something old. My prayer is that a fire for reaching the lost right at our doorstep sweeps through my church family.

But for that fire to be started, someone must strike the flint. Complaints won't ignite anything. Leaving for greener pastures won't either. But praying about it and acting on the belief that "the change must begin with me"--it just might start a fire large enough to sweep across an entire city...an entire world.

And if the fire remains small, grows only to dwindle again, or goes out completely? I, you, we must continue to ask--"Lord, what would you have me to do?"

For Everything There is a Time

2011-08-23T19:44:00.000-07:00

With the twins snoozing in the dark coolness of their rooms and Wyatt lying on the living room couch, quietly hiding with "his" cat beneath autumn-colored afghan, I lay down myself for a 15-minute breather.

Even routine weeks just need those times of quiet, to be still. With its new beginnings, this week has needed more than most.

One moment, I had a full 20 minutes of silence before me. The next, the clock's red numbers glared at me, showing I had forty-five minutes to convince three preschoolers that a break from the ordinary late afternoon routine was okay. Yes, they would survive not watching Miss Frizzle after nap time. Yes, their tummies were empty enough to hold peanut butter sandwiches even though it wasn't yet 6:30 pm supper time. And yes, a wardrobe change was mandatory.

Maybe newness could just start next week...

This past Monday marked a fresh semester at two of the colleges where I teach, while today found me back in an early morning classroom as a student with my Bible study ladies, all of us coming back together to dive as one into the books of Ezra and Haggai after going our summer's separate ways .

These changes are routine, though, expected, easier to manage because of their repetitiveness. It's the out of the ordinary changes, those into uncharted territory, those that require a letting go--these are the difficult ones.

Our family's biggest new beginning would take place tonight--if only I could get us there.

Although he does not meet our state's September 30 cut-off to start Kindergarten this year, my oldest son's "almost five" age meant he was finally big enough to attend "big boy " classes on Wednesday nights at our church.

Last week, Wyatt held my hand as I walked him to children's choir, his anxiety at the newness invisible except for the rare small hand willingly fitting into mine. Since he has been unexposed to daycare or preschool outside our home, I was concerned that he would be picked on in a group of older children...and that he couldn't sit still.

My fears aside, it was time. He was ready.

Our shoes moved from the familiar concrete sidewalk to the soft cushioned grass as I took Wyatt across the field to a mass of children playing kickball with our music minister. There, our pastor's youngest daughter and her friend called my son's name and took over, mothering this little boy who needed someone to take him by the hand and lead him, soothing this mother's heart. An hour later when I came to pick him up, she was there again, just like a teacher, giving me a rundown of how they had taught him the game, how he had done well singing.

And Wyatt? His face beamed, his step was airy, and his hand flew free.

Tonight was his first night in both big boy classes, one to study Scripture and the other to sing praises to God. (Yes, we made it.) Unlike last week, there was no hand-holding. Wyatt leaped before me down the covered walkway, opened the door, and flew upstairs. Once I was sure he had found the right place, the twins and I turned and went back downstairs, but for him? There was no turning back.Ice cream and chocolate marshmallow cookies have time with mama beat any day. Still, I pray he will continue to reach that hand out every now and then, even when mine cups small in his instead of his in mine.

Photos: The boy that used to be little.

In the Front Yard

2011-08-18T18:53:00.000-07:00

The two summers before this one, we lived in Maw Maw's house with its exterior walls so thin and devoid of insulation that the sound of husband walking on sun-parched grass outside our bedroom awakened me from many a Sunday afternoon nap. You wouldn't think the sound of sneakered feet crunching, swishing through growing blades could travel through wood, but you'd be wrong.

My then two-year-old son learned to hear the steady hum of the tractors vibrating through cracks in plank walls. In self defense, I learned the sound, too, the first hum finding me either collecting shoes to go outdoors or rushing to turn on a window unit to keep my son from hearing it, too, and begging to see the tractor.

Although I didn't realize it at the time, those two years were serving as a transition, molding this high heels, crepe blouse, and black pencil skirt college professor into a farmer's wife. It was in that old white house--a quarter mile's walk down an overgrown, all-too-narrow, country road--that I began to learn the sights, sounds, and smells of life on a hay farm.

I learned to catch the tell-tale whiff of freshly cut hay on the occasional breeze, to name the different pieces of equipment that attached to the back of the tractors, and to watch the radar for the rain's abundance or for its lack.

But there, life on a hay farm took place in my back yard, far beyond the carport, the pear tree at the yard's far corner, the ever-soggy slash of wetlands' tall swamp grass, and the single tombstone where Paw Paw was buried beneath the live oak tree.

From my front window, my yard looked ever-similar to the one I'd had when living on the outskirts of the city, a wall of always-green azaleas walling out the wilderness. I could pretend nothing had changed.

Only when I looked out back (and only if I looked really hard) could I see in the distance a blob of the classic John Deere green amidst a billowing cloud of dust. I had to look even harder to make out the raised bumps where square hay bales sat on an otherwise brown field, waiting to be picked up .This is the first summer with hay season taking place out my front door.

The hum is now a steady, unconcealable roar, the blurry image much more crisp so that I can count a line of single bales evenly spaced to the horizon, can see the sweat on husband's shirt as he drives past. Eyes closed, I now hear the difference between sounds of the rake, baler, and stack wagon.

It's been an adjustment, what with the clouds of hay dust creeping past the front flower bed barrier and quilting every leaf, chair, vehicle, window in their path.

This past week with husband windrowing as I clicked camera into falling sun, I realized it no longer feels awkward to be this farmer's wife by day, college professor by night. It all seems to fit.

The next day when I woke up to thunder, my thoughts instantly flipped to not my own yard's sun-singed plants with drought-curled leaves but to a field of hay on the ground. With each rumble that jostled me from sleep, I said a prayer for the rain to go past.

Prayer. It shows the state of the heart, reveals where the heart's interests, concerns, longings, allegiances lie.

Only God could make my heart large enough to love a farm filled with what I'm most allergic to, to love another set of parents I once could not have imagined living an evening's walk away from.

I've heard that prayer changes a person, and I know this is true.

But prayer also can show a changed person.

A Well-Trained Husband

2011-08-16T19:36:00.000-07:00

I read it in His Word, red-lettered lines Spirit-etched on my soul. I hear it in praise music that streams through my van's speakers, pulsates from the CD player by kitchen sink, and comes out the mouths of my three babes. I even see it in the images posted on Katie's blog depicting a life in Uganda that makes mine seem all but worthless and trivial in comparison.

This life is about love, showing Christ's love, being a servant as He was a servant, acting in humble submission to one another in that love, willing our flesh to die as we wash another's feet.

Yet, it's not just the willingness to show His love that makes the difference; it's the willingness demonstrated in action--the getting on our knees, stretching forth our hands to bathe fevered brow, feeding the hungry, wiping away tears in comfort, bandaging blood-soaked knee, gently cupping wrinkled hand or clasping shoulder of one who simply needs human touch...love.

I'm not in Uganda. I'm here in the United States. It is here that I live as a stay at home mother to serve my family in His name. While my money, my prayers may circle the globe, it doesn't seem like much when I read, listen, see the greatness of others' servanthood.

Then, I get sick (again), laid low by a summer cold that won't let me go, one that my children catch and release in haste, like late-afternoon Popsicle on the back porch. These times are some of the hardest, my inability to be a servant even to husband and children. What's worse is the waiting on husband to wait on me, stepping out of comfortable servant's robes into ones fit for a queen.

I've never been a good queen, the one who has to wait for something to happen when she could just easily fling off the covers, march downstairs and go do it herself. It's hard letting husband be a servant to me, especially when I watch a 15 minute task turn into 45 just because he's in the household driver's seat where I have the experience to be most efficient.

But his being a servant is just as important as my being a servant. To take charge, refuse to allow husband to fulfill His Godly role is sinful. And so, I bite my tongue, try to ignore the ticking clock, and whisper thanks for husband who is a floor beneath me, caring for louder-than-mommy-lets-them-be-indoors children while I am surrounded by pillows and the cooling darkness to help me recover.

Earlier in the week, a good friend of ours laughingly balked at my statement that I had a "well-trained husband." I countered that I consider myself to be a well-trained wife as well, and I really do.

The training, though? It didn't come from each other. It came from The Servant of all servants, Himself, Our Savior. When we tried to train each other in our early marriage, we failed. Yet, in submitting to Christ, husband and I have learned what it means to be a servant. It's an education unto death, one we'll never master, and one where being a servant is many times easier than being served.

This may not be the magnitude of servanthood that makes people shake their heads in amazement, read a book about me, and say, "Wow, I wish I could love Christ by doing that!" Then again, in this present moment, this is where I am called to be--a servant of Christ in raising three children to love Him, in keeping my covenant relationship with my husband, and in not impeding my husband's service of God when He bows the knee to Christ in loving me.

Photo: Husband cooking chicken and mac-n-cheese, comfort food for a worn and weary wife.

Mile Marker 139

2011-08-11T18:24:00.000-07:00

As air conditioner repairman stands in my kitchen with yellow ticket in hand, I push aside the makings of peanut butter sandwiches and absentmindedly write "Jul" in big swirling cursive before stopping mid-word.

"It's August, isn't it." The thought voiced was more head-shaking at my mistake rather than question, but he answers anyway. "Eight eleven."

The date resonates. But with children gathered 'round the lunch table waiting on me, I simply write August atop the former letters rather than scratch out and try again. He raises an eyebrow at this written messiness as I turn back to cutting late-summer tomatoes with tough, mottled skins caused by drought and excessive heat.

Later, I flip the upstairs calendar backwards just to check my flawed memory. August 11. Yes, four months to the day exactly from when I chose to make a change for me. It's nothing huge, but it is a milestone for me, one of persistence, of not throwing in the towel even when I had to take a break for illnesses.

Since that day in April, I've traveled 139 miles to nowhere. No, that's not a typo. One hundred and thirty-nine miles. I've counted. For most of it, my feet have clipped along at a meager pace of four miles an hour, again, nothing to write home about, and yet, here I am doing just that.

I've read so many magazines filled with these super-women who start back with their exercise routine the week after giving birth. But since the day we brought home two babies instead of one, taking care of three little ones nonstop during the day and teaching late into the night have left me unable to find even a half hour to carve out for myself. A hot bath uninterrupted was and still is something big!

Once the twins started crawling and pulling up, I did try to start walking again, only to feel like a pathetic failure. Once the machine's whirring started, three sets of little fingers made a bee-line straight to the tantalizing danger of a moving treadmill. I tried yelling, threatening, putting up a barrier, and begging. My words, they ignored. The barrier, they pulled down, figured out a way around , or turned over onto themselves so that I had to stop and soothe the crying. Nothing worked. So, after a week, the treadmill started collecting dust again.

In 2010, I gave a half-hearted attempt, but it wasn't long before I couldn't reach the treadmill for all the boxes packed up for the move to our new home. Since the move, I have blazed a trail outdoors, working to tame the wilderness and create a yard, no small feat but still, inconsistent.

In April, I felt the call once again to sweat, walk, run--move! This time, I didn't tell anyone, not even my husband. I just started walking, jogging, running. And it felt good.

As the weeks turned into one month, then two, I still kept silent, waiting for something to kick me off the wagon. As you might expect, my backside is covered with boot-prints, but there's also evidence that I've been dusting myself off a lot, too.

Maybe it's just that I've reached a phase of my life where I can realize that one defeat does not make the task a lost cause. Honestly? I think it's more than that.

If there has been one thread woven throughout the tapestry of the past few years, it's one of grace. The more I study God's Word, the more I understand about His grace towards me. How great and vast it is, how unending.

I have so many minutes, hours, days where I beat myself up for failing as a mother, failing as a wife, failing as God's messenger.

I fail so much, I often wonder how He could even want me to get back up and try again! But He does, and so I'm learning to stumble onward, to be grateful for this daily grace as it is a gift of the greatest kindness for those of us who fail to measure up to any semblance of perfection.

This life is not a sprint.

It is a learning how to walk consistently with my eyes fixed on the prize, to extend and receive grace, to focus on the whole and not just the part.

Going to Hell in a Handbasket? Not So Fast.

2011-08-09T19:08:00.000-07:00

I remember the first dot matrix printer that my daddy hooked up to our pre-Windows computer. Twenty years ago, this was huge! Unlike today, though, there was no way to sneak through a late-night print job without waking the whole house, the back and forth rhythmic screech unending as it ate reams of mile-long paper folded in the yellow square bucket it sat upon.

Back then, each 8 1/2 x 11 sheet was connected to the next by a perforated line. Attached to the sides of this unending ribbon of paper were half inch strips marked by evenly spaced holes that helped the printer feed the paper through. This kind of paper saved a lot of taping together of sheets, especially when I was called upon to make a time line for my high school science class.

Assigned by a coach who was great on the ball field but less than enthusiastic about the classroom, the final project had to be hand drawn, hand colored, and thirty feet in length, depicting life from Precambrian single cell organisms through present-day life on earth. Paleozoic. Mesozoic. Cenozoic. Definitely not rocket science but incredibly time intensive.

I recently thought about what a time line of my life would look like if I spread it out like this on paper that reached across my living room and down the hall. Thirty-four years instead of billions. My mind immediately listed the births, marriages, and graduations, then shifted to family vacations, the famous first's, and finally to bullet after bullet composed of mostly losses.

I have watched cancer ravage my beloved great-grandmother's body until it withered to eternity; crumbled over the the poison wrought by one woman's life-altering lies; and fallen on my face over the loss of two never-born babies. I have felt the extreme emotional highs and lows of years of infertility treatments; endured the abandonment of all but one hand's breadth of our "friends"; and lived through the loss of my husband's livelihood.

It is so easy to get caught up in the loss, the bad, the "worst" the life has to offer. But to do so is to spin a lie of one's life, to cultivate a heart of ungratefulness for all our heavenly Father has given us.

Life isn't all bad. It's not always getting worse. Yet, this tendency towards seeing the world as spiraling towards imminent destruction seems to describe America's vision of itself and our world as a whole.

In sociologist Bradley Wright's new book, UPSIDE: Surprising Good News About the State of Our World, he explores America's tendency toward pessimism when it comes to just about everything in life.

In the very first chapter, Wright explains that while individuals may believe their lives are going well, they automatically assume others are doing worse than they are, a trend forty-five years in the making. As Wright states about this "optimism gap," "we tend to think that the grass is browner, not greener, in other people's yards...'It is as though there are two different countries, the one people know personally, which they are happy with, and the one they see on television and read about in the newspapers, which they think is in bad shape'" (20,22).

The reason we're pessimistic? Advocates who support a particular cause and the news media, which puts forth stories sure to make a big splash. Positive stories? Not so splashy.

Wright's text tracks statistical changes over time, breaking his analysis up into several distinct topics: finances, intelligence/education, health, stress/happiness, crime/war/freedom/faith, marriage/family, and the environment. In the end, he presents an overview chart comparing life in the United States today versus 30 and 60 years ago, although many of his statistics reach farther back to 1900, showing a century's worth of change.

Overall, except for a few categories (such as obesity and divorce/single-parent families), the book's data shows we should be counting our blessings to be living now versus sixty years ago. Since his book was presented as more for a secular audience, he did not discuss the fallacy of Christians divorcing at the same rate as non-Christians, but his blog gave those statistics.

While the book is less than a fun read, it is approachable and a worthwhile read to get a good picture of what is really happening in our world versus what the news media is depicting. If I have one criticism, it is that in a dry book of statistical charts and paragraphs analyzing the data, I would have liked to have seen more of Wright's humor that, when it came through, was really quite entertaining.

We as Christians are guilty of latching on to every last pessimistic story or statistic around because such ideas fit in with our theology of the world coming to an end with Christ's return. But before you start spewing a doom and gloom gospel on every street corner, read this book first.

*I receive a complementary copy of the book from the publisher but am in no way paid for my good or bad review.

Take Time to Look...

2011-08-06T18:40:00.000-07:00

The earth's full tilt toward late-summer sun causes radiant heat and light to shimmer through front arch window, a brightness diffused only by energy efficient glass covered by a thin sheer of gathered lace. This is the time of year when I know what will come with the sun's lowering across early evening sky.

Children's noisy chatter filled with wonder and excitement strike louder than any grandfather clock. Six o'clock, and six growing feet pound rapidly down the stairs towards me standing before supper on kitchen stove. My very own herd of cattle.

Longest legs arrive first, arms fluttering wide round my own legs and encircling me with their sense of what is important. All three beckon me to come, come where they are, where they've seen the miracle worth seeing over and over, a place in the stairwell where chopping blocks, simmering taco soup, and dirty measuring cups hold no power.

"Rainbows? Yes, I know!" I say, seeking to dissuade fresh smiles that reach their eyes. "I've already seen them. Aren't they wonderful!?"

Such logic doesn't work, though. "Come see them again!" cries little girl. "Make them dance" yells her younger by three minutes brother.

I could say no, be like T.S. Eliot's Prufrock, saying, "And indeed, there will be time." But fall, winter will both be here at the turning of the page. Short men will grow tall.

So, I step away from my labors, turn towards the waiting throng.

There is no locking hands, no dragging this woman forward like wedding picture we call "Doug dragging his new wife back down the aisle." Instead, these three leave me behind and race ahead, again the pounding, but this time upwards as I plod more slowly behind.

It is then that I lift my head to see the needlework piece from my childhood that I pinned just last Saturday to the wall at the stair's landing. Growing up, I always thought it was beautiful--sequins hand-stitched by my own mother, three-dimensional butterflies. But the message? Totally lost on the child me. Who doesn't take time to look at rainbows? How ridiculous to even have to tell people that.

Only twenty years later do I understand. It's a choice to take time that is not automatically there to take, time that is always filled with something else I may not want or need to step away from...but that I can choose to carve out if I reorder my list of what is important.

Dinner will be late...again.

With children laughing and jumping, I reach up, take monofilament between my thumb and forefinger, and spin each prism. Unmoving rainbows suddenly take flight around the room like dozens of butterflies disturbed in a field or a carousel set into action.

Downstairs, the side door opens. Husband is home from work. I need not worry--he knows where to find me (not in the kitchen).

Emerson hears him, too, and shrieks with delight, "They're dancin'! They're dancin', daddy!!! Come see!"

And much like me, he too comes to see the miracle of promise, the bow set on our wall, reminding us to pause, give thanks for these happy times, and laugh along with our children as they each try to catch the impossible and hold beams of colored light.

Stretching Wings Wide

2011-08-03T19:31:00.000-07:00

We warned him this would happen, both me and his Grand-mama. But what did we know, we crazy Chicken Little women who warn of dangers like lightening traveling from sky to green earth, the train-like sound of tornadoes, chicken-thieving coyotes lurking in dark woods...all things that he has never witnessed with his own senses.

To a four year old, seeing is believing. Anything else is met with, "Oh mommy. You worry too much." But last Thursday, truth became sight on our front porch, and the tears began to fall in revelation that mommy had been right all along.

The problem is Wyatt is a lot like his mother. I've always been apprehensive of trying new things for fear I would fail, because it's easier to do what I know than what I don't. Wyatt is the same way.

Since his third birthday when Oma and Opa got him a "real" bicycle (with training wheels, of course), everyone has encouraged Wyatt to learn to ride it, warning that if he didn't, Emerson would. Earlier this year, with much, much, much prompting and practice, Wyatt did finally learn, but still, he has virtually refused to ride it, instead choosing to steal away one of the twins' tricycles since they are easier to ride with pedals that go forwards or backwards.

Like any other day of outside play, I was tired of telling eldest son to "give back" to younger son what was his. So, I told Emerson to try and ride Wyatt's bicycle, not believing that he could but that he would simply try, giving me a few more minutes to enjoy squabble-free playtime.

Just as I expected, Emerson concluded my idea was worth delaying a tantrum. Although two years younger than Wyatt, Emerson is only a year behind him in terms of growth, on track to be a towering tree like his father and Opa. What he lacks in age and maturity, he makes up for in tenacity and sheer strength.With that strong body and patient disposition, he slowly raised his leg over the back wheel, reached forward to grab the handle bars, and pulled himself up onto the black seat. Then, with both feet on the pedals, he pushed, but as I had expected, the pedals moved backwards and locked.

Instead of giving up or getting frustrated like Wyatt did when he was younger, Emerson got off, pushed the bike forward a few feet, and remounted--once, twice, each time rocking the bike and pushing with his feet as he obviously remembered Wyatt doing when he learned how to ride several months ago.

And then, it happened--the pedals rotated clockwise, bare feet pumping slowly, methodically with effort as he made his way down the porch.Instantly, his face cracked with a grin. I cheered, whooped, and clapped at his triumph, encouraging him to keep going. Only then did Wyatt realize what was happening. Still sitting on the red tricycle, he leapt to his feet, yelling that he wanted to ride "his" bicycle, and then crying when I refused to make Emerson get off.

Back and forth that little boy rode across the porch, dismounting at each end to turn the bicycle around. All the while, Wyatt howled and moaned until he had to go inside for some alone-time reflection on the naughty bench.

When I finally made Emerson stop for the afternoon, his whole head was wet with sweat, his brow firm from concentrating so hard. Last week, he did a 25 piece puzzle all by himself. Two weeks ago, he mastered the concept of "filling in" an image he is coloring versus "scribbling." And now he could ride a bicycle. Wings spread in independence, he was radiant.

Earlier in the week after getting in trouble for some mischief, Wyatt told me, "I just have so many ideas in my brain," his wingspread sparked by expanding mind.

It's been a month for growth, especially with my two boys. Sometimes, I believe I have pteranodons instead of human children, their increasing wingspan stretching wide enough to carry them across imaginary oceans, aloft on the highest of currents.

These growth spurts and testing of limits in their quest for independence--they are exciting, wonderful, and frustrating all at the same time. In the same breath, I give thanks and grumble.

When the lights go down for the evening and I sneak back in to pull tossed-off covers over little chests rising and falling in sleep, to inhale sweet scent of freshly bathed child...in those stolen moments of quiet stillness, I find the strength to say "fly!" and whisper a prayer that God will always show them the way back home.

Daily Sufficient Grace

2011-07-29T21:16:00.000-07:00

We're down to the end of the month I dreaded thirty days before flipping the calendar over. Even though the page was thick and opaque, I knew what lay beneath, that the minor league structured chaos of June was only a warm up for the major leagues of July.

To anyone but me, the tiny boxes engraved with cryptic notations appeared innocent enough. Yet, the simple shorthand was deceptive, a "BR-A#1DB" requiring two hours of my time while a SL-A#2 would mean at least four hours labor.

To have a job where I can stay home with my young children is a glorious blessing...but overwhelming at times. The sun sees me teaching oldest son to do crossword puzzles, mazes, and to read; helping toddler twins learn to paint, play board games, sit still for more than one book at a time, and put together puzzles. The moon sees me camped in front of a computer, many times working 7-hour shifts that only begin at 8 pm.

As I said--overwhelming.

Several years ago when I worked with at-risk students, I learned how short-term goal-setting has a considerable psychological effect on the way people feel about their progress. Merely visualizing the end goal wasn't as important as seeing the baby steps along the way.

With the month's turning, I felt a sense of panic, much like my students, as I looked at a sea of letters and numbers scrunched in little boxes. So, at each day's end, I placed an X atop those activities. It wasn't long before there were more squares with X's than without.

Today marked the end of the summer semester, all grades tallied and submitted. As I leaned back in the office chair, I glanced at the wall and realized in the intensity of completing end-of-the-semester paperwork last night, I had forgotten to put my X.

Searching always-cluttered office desk for red marker, my mind had already slowed its incessant chattering of lists and things to be done. And in that stillness of mind, I caught that glimpse of God--I saw.

How could I have been blind, so deaf? He has been literally yelling the past week, through my own children, but I have been both mute and dumb.

The past two days, Wyatt and Emerson have been adamant about bringing me a board-book Bible to read. I read the story of Moses, Pharaoh, and the Passover twice just this morning. Even last night, listening to the Word and Song Bible, Wyatt said, "Listen, mommy. This is the same story of the Israelites! You're going to miss it!"

I did almost miss it. Before me on the wall, I see not X's but red crosses covering each day's work.

I bow low. Yes, yes. The blood of that Passover lamb--His grace has covered each day, has given me strength sufficient to do what I could not do on my own, has sustained me each moment.

I give thanks to Him who is the true author, perfector and finisher of all my labors.

The Death of Civility

2011-07-26T21:36:00.000-07:00

Husband and I have a long list of topics we don't agree upon--some political, but most concerning Scripture. In the early years of our marriage, we hashed them all out, bringing to the metaphorical table our best arguments. Those were the days when we would sit in front of the computer to more rapidly find our evidence as the debate proceeded, the flipping of Bible-thin pages much too slow in finding the verses our minds knew in part but not in whole or context.

There was no name calling, but sometimes, the debates were heated, blood pressure spiking and cheeks flushing with heat; other times, tense frustration reigned when the other couldn't seem to even consider a different stance. Yet, in the end? I'm not sure he changed his mind on much of anything...or that I did, either.

Most every debate ended with heart rates back to normal, an acknowledgement that we could each see the other's sub-points, agreeing that there was no way to know for sure who was correct yet disagreeing about which side of the argument we fell. More importantly, we agreed that these were rib issues, not make-or-break spine issues.

But, this isn't the normal reaction I see around me.

Over the past decade, I've noticed a shift toward anger, hatred, hostility directed at any idea, group, or person who thinks differently than ourselves. In mainstream America, it seems everything is a spine issue. Any disagreement and you'll find yourself de-friended on Facebook, labelled a cult, a hater, stupid, racist, narrow-minded, homophobe.

A few years ago, our church even split over disagreements concerning some of these rib issues husband and I live quite contentedly in disagreement with each day. The breaking--it's something I'm still not over. But the breaking wasn't as bad as the after, a year later having my Grandmother draw me in close to whisper in my ear, telling me her Sunday School class had been told my church was actually a cult.

When did we lose the ability to agree to disagree? When did intellectual debate become uncivilized, focusing more on emotion, inflammatory language and slander than on the issues?

Allister McGrath's newest book, Why God Won't Go Away: Is the New Atheism Running on Empty, shows one group in a long line that is taking this path of hostility. His text seeks to define who the major players in New Atheism are; what they believe; how those beliefs stack up in the face of reason, science, and Christianity; and why this movement has, at best, stagnated.

McGrath presents New Atheism as a radical off-shoot of the culturally respectful atheism of indifference. Unlike their predecessors, New Atheists seem to rely on shock value in their emotional outbursts of hatred against religion more so than on serious, intellectual argument that would contribute to the debate.

According to McGrath's concise summary of three major New Atheist texts, this sect's primary tenet conflates religion and belief in God, claiming both are irrational and necessarily evil. In short, New Atheists believe that since religion cannot prove itself with reason, it seeks to impose its beliefs on others, is oppressive, and serves as the root of all violence. The solution to all evil, oppression and violence in the world? Eradicate religion and belief in God.

McGrath offers rebuttal to each line of thought, concluding at one point that "Maybe it's not that religion corrupts humanity but that a corrupt humanity creates a look-alike religion" (92).

Where I grew interested were in his critiques of these New Atheists. In one part, he says, "Believing that the rest of humanity is deluded does, I fear, generate a certain unpleasant smugness on the part of these 'true believers'" (97). In another, he explored how followers of New Atheists like Richard Dawkins don't know much about what their hallowed leader believes.

I know I was reading a text about New Atheism, but I could just as easily have been reading a book about Christians or Mormons or Muslims who demonstrate the same smugness, believing they have God all nailed-down, who demonstrate the same ignorance when it comes to knowing what their religion really believes and why. Not much difference here.

What surprised me most was how accessible the book was. With the words "historian, theologian, and scholar" before his name, I anticipated a tough, high-brow read. Instead, I found McGrath to give serious, intellectual argument in an easy-to-follow and understand style, quite unusual and refreshing in a sea of theological texts that talk above the heads of most readers.

It should be easy to see how the New Atheist line of thinking is dangerous and regressive in terms of human tolerance. But, I'd go further and say that society's thinking in general is regressing. Differences untolerated are just holocausts waiting to happen.

*I receive no compensation for my review other than a complementary copy of the book from Thomas Nelson.

Mischief Managed

2011-07-21T19:01:00.000-07:00

Amelia met me at the door with her baby blanket, the one she carries around like the Peanuts' character Linus, except this one is patterned with girlish pastel hearts and was made by her Grand Mama when infant girl refused to sleep if not tightly swaddled.

With both hands, she held the crumpled blob of cloth out to me. "Wyatt put my blanket in the fish tank. Can you wash it?"

The fish tank!?

Eyes struggling to adjust to inside light, I saw the blanket wasn't just a little wet. Tiny rivulets of water streamed onto the tile beneath, a puddle growing between us with my every passing second of indecision.

Beyond her lay a path of similar puddles that dripped straight across the full length of the house to the thirty gallon fish tank in the living room.

Emerson and I had only been outside fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, weeding a rose bed, getting eaten by ants, and chopping dead limbs off a tree that fell in last month's wind storm. It was like I had an 18-month old again with the creative intellect of a 4-year-old, unable to be left alone for a second because of what he might dream up to do.

"Wyatt!!!!!" I screamed, grabbing towels and hurriedly starting the cleanup before the water damaged the floor. "Where are you!?"

Silence. Then, guilty little boy peeked his head out of the sun room, his down-cast face a mixture of pleased-with-himself mischief and penitence over the mess, too much the former for this mother already on soaked towel number three.

"What happened? What in the world were you thinking, son!?"

He squirmed, twisting around the door frame. "I was trying to catch a fish."

!!!!!!!

Speechless. What does a mother say in the face of such a statement? I surely didn't know. So, I sent him to his room.

As I cleaned on hands and knees, sounds of the twins murmuring came from the sun room. Every few mumbled words, I'd catch the word "Wyatt." Then, each came towards me with chubby fingers carrying apples, red delicious still cold from their home in the bottom refrigerator drawer.

One apple, two, three...they grinned at the gift-giving and Wyatt-tattling, bringing me two at a time until there were twelve sitting amidst the crayons scattered on the dining room table. Only one had two bites taken out of its side.

First deep sea fishing and now hoarding apples?

Once upstairs, I sat cross-legged on Emerson's bed and looked across at boy hiding under John Deere blanket, eyes peeking out at me as he waited to see how mommy would react to finding an ocean on her floor.

As the story unfolded, it was obvious he thought his actions quite logical. After all, mommy never said he couldn't catch a fish. I listened, biting my lip at times to keep from grinning at the crazy logic that resulted in such a mess.

Apparently, Wyatt put the apples in the sun room so he would have food to eat during rest time. Amelia caught him in the act and said she was hungry.

So....he did what any good brother would do, said no.

He was pretty earnest in defending the fishing expedition. "But she was hungry. So, I was trying to catch her a fish."

A goldfish. With a baby blanket net.

I'm still shaking my head. And laughing.

Last week, Amelia sneaked into my bathroom to shave her legs like she has seen mommy do. It's obviously not as easy as it looks. Hopefully, she won't have a scar. My daddy suggested writing in her baby book, "Age 2: Started shaving."

Children. They can make us parents feel like we are losing our minds! There's no way I can predict what the children will do next. But the creativity of the mischief astounds me, shows me they're spreading their wings in a kind of exploring, a satisfying of curiosity, an application of critical thinking skills, which is something I've taught them to do.

Perhaps they've taken to heart all too well their favorite Miss Frizzle and her mantra: "Take chances. Make mistakes. Get messy." Perhaps we need to put away the VeggieTales Jonah movie for awhile.

Rudeness, defiance, impatience, disrespect--it can drive me crazy. But this? It just makes me shake my head and laugh.

Tuesday was crazy.

Today was laughter. Such a good way to end a week.

Photo: Late afternoon running to get out some of that pent-up energy.

Insufficient for the Battle

2011-07-19T16:50:00.001-07:00

I hear his sobs over my head, that unmistakable sound of grief echoing down the open stairwell to where I sit, intentionally sitting cross-armed far away. He has no idea how my chest seizes with his, measured rising and falling in anguish as held-back tears beg for release in the same pool.

In his red-rimmed eyes, saying sorry, so sorry, should make everything better, stitch together rifts seamlessly so they are mended invisible. Isn't that what this forgiveness I strive to teach all about? Casting our sins into a pool of forgetfulness and remembering them no more?

Were it that simple.

After words pierce and actions destroy, the nature of the human heart exposed, the damage doesn't magically disappear . God's forgiveness, my forgiveness--it doesn't mean no consequences. It never has, not for me anyway.

This is the pain of motherhood, disciplining to show love and affection. This is hard, sending this child born of miracle and overflowing prayers to a few hours of solitude when all I want to do is hold him tightly to me, read a few books together, and listen to him spin stories laced with heavy questions.

I move to the unlit hall, shadows falling heavier with the setting sun as adrenaline plummets. My head rests against the wall. Where did I go wrong?

I look up, weary, to husband ushering twins out doors. "I've never seem him like this before. He's never seen anyone act like this either. Where did this come from?" Husband's answer is simple and matter of fact, no finger pointing here. This is every man and woman's willful heart unrestrained, no teaching required.

I silently hope he's getting sick, that maybe this evening's uncharacteristic tantrum is the result of his feeling poorly and not a reflection of his heart, the one I've been striving with my everything to mold from birth to seek after the One who can transform that heart to love, patience, kindness, and compassion.

Knees pressed against prayer closet's red leather kneeler helps lift some of the burden. But Wyatt is only four and a half. This isn't going to get any easier.

By now, he's not crying anymore, sounds of tinkling Legos and footsteps drifting downstairs to tell me he's building, constructing another zoo or too-tall tower in his solitude. Calm.

Were these mere battles of words or flesh, it would be so much easier. Yet, all are really of the spirit.

In these moments, I see just how insufficient I am to mother this soul loaned to me for the training. What was God thinking? I can do only one thing well, and sometimes not even this: seek the One who is and pray.

Choosing a Different Role

2011-07-15T17:51:00.000-07:00

Husband moved out the first part of last week. Toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, hair gel, PJs, and next day's clothing all relocated to the guest room for nine days, him choosing to be a guest in his own house.

At the tail end of two weeks worth of sleepless, fevered days and nights, husband finally succumbed to the cold all three children and I were conquering. He knew I needed restorative mending, the kind only found in sleep. He also knew sleep was not something his wakes-at-the-slightest-noise wife could have with him beside her, upper respiratory infection making his sleep fitful at best, constant tossing interrupted by congested coughing fits.

And so, he left our marriage bed, choosing the much-less comfortable twin daybed on the floor beneath. The first night, I slipped down the stairs and peeked in at him, continuing my servant's role just as I had been doing the two weeks prior with children, now checking husband's fever and making sure he had taken his medicine.

At over 6 feet tall and of German ancestry, he looked more like a large grizzly bear folded accordion style in a too-small cave. Beneath him lay a stack of four crocheted afghans and a couple fleece blankets, his attempt to make the mattress more comfortable. Instead, the tableau emphasized how uncomfortable he truly was, seeming to depict some post-modern adaptation of "The Princess and the Pea."

I protested, assured husband this act of kindness wasn't necessary, to please just come upstairs. Stubborn in glassy-eyed sickness, he refused and hunkered shoulder down more tightly between the bed's ends to hibernate.

Even in the early years of our marriage when we two struggled to become one, not even then did we sleep in separate beds. There were certainly nights when we slept teetering on our respective edges, but the same quilt still covered us both. No matter how unresolved the issue, how heated the argument had risen. No matter how far apart our day had taken us... at night, we were still we.

This time, though, I returned upstairs alone. Funny thing about ten years of sharing restricted bed space with one's mate--it makes the absence all the more absent. In half-emptiness, I slept, cold pillows from head to foot where warm husband should be. With every night-time waking, I missed his presence, but my tired body did get rest.

We choose these roles, the ones that show greatest love in self-sacrifice--to be the guest in one's own house, to be the servant to one's own family. Being the hands and feet of Christ to one's own family is sometimes more difficult than showing the same love and respect to strangers. But especially between a husband and wife, these daily acts of demoting self knit the two pieces together all the more strongly, perhaps even more so because the actions are chosen versus required.

This past Tuesday, hands full of toiletries, a much better husband stopped me mid-cleaning in the guest room, that mischievous twinkle I know so well making me smile.

"Well, I guess I'm moving back in," he grinned.

Hours later in bed's fullness, I listened to the cadence of his still-congested breathing, moved my pillow a little closer to his side until my knees rested against him, and pulled the queen-sized quilt up over us both.

Photo: Husband's souvenir for me from his recent business trip to California. I had to laugh; he knows me so well.

Thanks for Enough Time

2011-07-12T18:00:00.000-07:00

The house is filled with sounds of the dryer whirring, washer churning a few late-night loads of laundry that I haven't yet done. In truth, I haven't really tried, intentionally choosing during the daylight hours to ignore the thick mantle of dust quilting table tops, the tiny blue-chalked crime scene footprints leading in from the door. In the office down the hall, there are paper-grading deadlines penciled in all seven squares of this week, these less-ignorable tasks to be done.

The second hand moves round all too quickly, half a week gone with the turning. This Martha-type personality must decide to sit, choose the better part. Then, there will be time enough.

I pull cleaned yet unfolded clothes from the basket to dress little ones, giving thanks for the cleanness while choosing to brush away guilt and shift eyes away from the wrinkles. Oldest son and I cook a couple hours together on Monday, homemade casserole and dessert to last for a whole week's suppers. And it is good.

For now, my recuperating children need a mother not splintered by a dozen or more tasks, one focused enough to prod them kicking and screaming back into the comfortable routines of kindness, respect, and patience necessary for peace to exist in family living. It's always hard, sanity-grinding, this pursuit to restore those pleasantries that are lost and need relearning after an it's-all-about-me lengthy illness.

Amidst the whines, tears, and moments of contemplation on the naughty bench, we've squealed giggles over pulling the equivalent to an old maid card in "Win By a Whisker," put together that extra puzzle, read the new princess book for the thousandth time, gathered round the dining room table to color yet another picture for the fridge.

Poet Theodore Roethke said, "I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow." After two weeks of sickness, the children and I have done just that this week, all of us too easily tired from the simple acts of living, from mere waking.

But even in this sheltered quasi-paradise of slowness, busyness still lurks, impatiently waiting its turn as soon as the lights click off, white noise makers filling the air. Still sick husband sleeps fitfully on the sunroom day bed while I work deep into the night grading papers.

As I work, our two kittens leap at windows lit by outdoor flood lights shining through lace-curtained windows, an ever-present reminder to rotate sprinklers from back to front yard. In silky flowered PJ's and clean bare feet, I walk into the evening's cool amidst mosquito-seeking frogs plastered to window glass and crickets that skitter before me down the porch.

Outside, the moon and I whisper friendship, our faces nodding silently each night, co-conspirators in living while others slumber.

Though dust bunnies presently outnumber people in my house, toy/book-cluttered floor spaces more the norm than clean-walking ones, this chaos is a choice. My weekly Bible study goals were met, and I finished two prayer shawls, twenty hours of the better part to send Christ's love cross-country to hurting sister and nephew of my friend.

I give thanks. There has been time enough for what's important.

When it Seems God Has Removed the Hedge From Around You

2011-07-07T21:38:00.000-07:00

"Can we go dig it up?" he asked, literally bouncing at the thought as only a four year old can.

Cheerios still lay uneaten in three breakfast bowls, and my thoughts were already racing far ahead to washing bedclothes, watering drought-stressed plants, and cleaning out the spoiled food in the fridge from this family's two week fast due to illness. Last night's excitement? Not even on my radar.

But for oldest son, this was worth remembering first. Mommy had promised to dig it up tomorrow, and promises meant "yes" even if she had to be reminded.

"Sure," I replied. "You have to find me a shovel first."

Late yesterday afternoon with just a trace of misty rain falling like heavy dew, I sent my children outdoors. I'm sure my grandmother would not have approved. She probably would have told me another story of one of my aunts playing in the rain and then getting quite ill, the kind of story where you just smile and say "yes ma'am" because it's no use arguing by repeating discoveries of modern science she won't remember tomorrow and doesn't need to know anyway.

Besides, all three children had already been running fevers for well over a week anyway. So, I sent them out...actually, I forced them out of this house holding in a week of sweaty sickness, no choice for little girl who constantly complained she was getting wet.

Five minutes of drizzle, maybe ten, enough to leave that post-storm scent in the air, to make my shirt damp enough to send back through the clothes dryer another five minutes. While boys spent their time crying over who should have the shovel and throwing dirt in each other's hair, Amelia "helped" me weed the front flower bed, both of us casually pulling three foot long runners of trespassing grass from around still-blooming roses and clumps of dead-headed verbena.

"Is this a weed?" Amelia asked as she gripped another trailing verbena stem. I crossed back and forth across the long bed that stretches the length of our home, just passing time, needing to be out versus in. When I reached the bed's end, I walked around versus cutting across between the roses as I had been doing. No real reason.

As as I turned the corner, a yellow jacket flew past and disappeared less than a foot from where I stood. Then came another. As Amelia and I cautiously took a few steps back and stooped down, we watched twenty or more yellow jackets return home for the night, one after another almost evenly spaced in time like they were on some invisible conveyor belt.

It was another nest, tucked invisibly under a mound of grass clippings, a slight indentation in the mulch's straight edge the only evidence of a hole going straight down to a five-story high rise complex for housing and raising more yellow jackets.

After dark when the nest was full again of its inhabitants, husband poured it full of gasoline.

And this morning? I dug it up. With an excited audience of three and a small trowel, I tried to not make the same mistake I did last fall after finding another nest, slicing straight through it and destroying most of the evidence.It might have been an inch beneath the red clay's surface, a work of serious labor in a 12" x 10" hole. While most of its swirled outer paper shell fell apart as I cupped the nest with gloved hands, all five tiers remained together as one unit. At the bottom of the now empty hole lay at least a full measuring cup's worth of dead yellow jackets.

When I turned the nest over, it was an instant pushing/shoving match to see what we had just read about a few weeks ago in a book about bees--cells with tiny white pin-head-sized eggs laid by the queen, cells with fully-exposed larva that would have been fed regularly by the "nurse bees,"and then those white-capped cells where others were undergoing the final metamorphosis into black and yellow striped flight.Our Magic School Bus book turned real before my children's very eyes...and it was all I could do to keep them from touching. It was one of those light bulb amazing moments where pictures on paper become real, an indescribable light sparking in their eyes.

My daddy is the one who taught me how to dig and discover. But even he says he's never seen one this big.

Two weekends ago, I re-mulched this very bed, arranging grass clippings right on top. Several times a week throughout the summer, I've mindlessly pulled weeds there as I watered. These yellow jackets have been there all along, silently building, so close to the surface, I would have crushed the nest had I simply put my weight on it with one foot, unleashing its fury.

Only God knows how many times He's protected me from an angry swarm.

As I held it, excited myself at the find, I also was and am chastened, humbled. In all my whining and moaning about the sickness that has descended on my house this year, so much so that we've met our yearly insurance deductible and half a year isn't even over...I sometimes get so caught up in the struggles God allows to come into my life that I'm blind to the ones He keeps away.

I forget there is a hedge He has around me.

I don't see what lies beneath the surface that is ready to consume me, yet He keeps away. I don't see the possible car accident avoided because of a five minute frustrated delay with children not being able to find their shoes. I don't see the possible illness avoided because I'm stuck at home with another, less serious illness.

My vision is so limited. This, He knows well. Why else would He stick a five-tier nest in my front yard, His creation to live and die without incident?

For an instant, I catch a flash of that hedge...and I feel His protection.

When You Feel Like the Trial is Too Much

2011-07-05T19:46:00.000-07:00

I don't do this well...

this hustling back and forth an hour away to town so I can lift one child after another atop the blue exam table for a doctor to shine lights in little ears and throats, put stethoscope to rising and falling chests. All the while, I rattle off every blurry textbook detail of the past five days since we last saw him.

He is a solemn one, this doctor...good poker face as he looks, listens, and nods about wet coughs, fevers above 105, and oldest son talking dazed gibberish when heat makes brain synapses misfire. When all three have had their turn, he writes another script for medicine, but not because he knows much more than I do about this mystery illness that has survived round one of antibiotics. Words "drug resistant" resonate as we set out for home, me fighting traffic while two in the back slump in exhaustion from their battles.

I don't do this well...

these nights spent with alarm clock set every four hours, a reminder for this also sick mother who would otherwise sleep soundly until well past the early lights of dawn, even while her children sweated feverishly a few feet away in their rooms, making wide puddles on bedsheets.

I sleep on hall couch, a sentinel with two kittens curled atop my toes, night guard against fever-wandering children who have lost their way.

At best, I wake with the four-hour siren for a soft shaking of little shoulders to wake just long enough to suck down a dose of Ibuprofen, my pen recording temperatures that this mommy's fogged brain will soon forget, just like I once did with feeding schedules for newborn twins.

At worst, fevers spike early, oldest gags on the medicine so that last night's supper coats PJ's and bedclothes. Midnight sees me giving a second cooling bath and the washer whirring rhythmically.

I don't do this well.

My mother in law tells me she used to almost enjoy when my husband was sick, because that was the one time she was sure to get in all the close in-her-arms lovings he was usually too busy to give. I shake my head in agreement, all the while feeling like a lousy mother because the busyness of three children sick at once just doesn't allow for getting a love-bank full of long cuddles I'd love to receive.

What's worse, I remember earlier in the day, Emerson asking me to rock him (again) but I didn't get around to it this last time, what with the checking fevers; shoving tissues under pouring, snotty, sneezy noses and saying "blow;" putting cleaned sheets on the beds; praying sentence prayers aloud; administering unwanted medicine; and encouraging each to drink more or eat something!

And then I slow to read about storms and symbols of hope, of mercy in a trial. Matthew Henry's Complete Commentary says, "The rainbow appears when the clouds are most disposed to wet, and returns after the rain; when we have most reason to fear the rain prevailing, then God shows this seal of the promise that it shall not prevail. Thus God obviates our fears with such encouragements as are both suitable and seasonable. The thicker the cloud the brighter the bow in the cloud. Thus, as threatening afflictions abound, encouraging consolations much more abound."

The thicker the cloud, the brighter the bow. No matter how well I'm not walking through this thick cloud, He is here with me. His encouragement abounds in rainbows of consolation...if I can only remember to look up.

Photo: One sick boy perches atop couch while another temporarily fever-free boy looks in surprise that mommy has brought out the camera again.

Working in The Harvest

2011-06-29T19:42:00.000-07:00

This week has brought summer's bountiful harvest indoors.

"What's that smell," my daughter asked. This child who picks her fruit straight from the garden vine, who prefers her tomatoes be eaten like apples and who turns up her nose at them when sliced for civilized folk...even she was overwhelmed by the sweet, pungent aroma of a kitchen filled with four five-gallon buckets brimming tomatoes so ripe, they burst like water balloons when dropped.

My knife pierced the paper-thin skins, finding little resistance as I sliced through juicy pulp, quartering them for the hand-turned press. Then came several labor-intensive hours, arm muscles aching, sweat dripping, even inside air conditioned house.With so much ripe fruit at once, my daddy and I took turns cranking. Our left arms repetitively pressed wooden plunger against the fruit while the other cranked the handle round and round, pulling the quarters through, straining out peelings and seeds while squeezing lycopene-rich pulp and juice down the chute.Once poured into jars, lidded, and ringed, we took them outside to arrange double-decker inside the big pot that sees more boiled crawfish than tomatoes. Daddy fired up the propane burner, and we sunk in the shade forty-five minutes until the first batch was done. With his elbow-length "fire" gloves, he used specially-shaped tongs to gently remove them from their hot bath, careful not to tilt them lest they not seal.

The late-afternoon sun shone golden through the clear Ball Mason jars, red pulp separating from the liquid and hiding out at the top. We started boiling the second batch of 21 quarts while listening for the "pop" from those already finished, an indicator that the jars had sealed in the fruit, sealed out everything else.

Monday evening, I could look back on the fruits of my labors--42 quarts of tomato juice, all after my morning of baking and freezing four and a half dozen bran breakfast muffins.

Tonight, I went out and harvested first crop of basil. My feverish (yes...again) children and I stripped the leaves from their stems, the breaking releasing a spicy aroma that still lingers hours later. Husband washed and spread the leaves out to dry so tomorrow, I can make a dozen or more small jars of pesto to freeze for the upcoming year. When all was finished, we had twelve tightly-packed cups worth--with the severe drought we've had this summer, I was amazed, overjoyed at the abundance.
Canning tomatoes with local fruit found right on our farm, making my own pesto--this more "organic" closeness with our food is all the rage right now. I read just last week of some city couple converting their front lawn into a raised-garden, square boards surrounding their three beds of vegetables.

But around here? This is just ordinary life.

It's the way I remember all the summers of my youth--my daddy in his wide-brimmed straw hat as he worked in the garden full of row after row of snap beans, sweet corn, field peas, dinner plate tomatoes, yellow squash--all constantly needing to be picked, washed, eaten, or brought to my mother to be blanched, frozen, or canned.

Nobody ever wrote a newspaper article about him, computer salesman by day, vegetable gardener on evenings and weekends. Now, as his daughter, nobody will write a newspaper article about me either, college professor by night, farm woman by day.

And that's ok.

Eating what we grow, what we harvest, what we store for those months when the land is barren--it's not a trend. It is life, working with the land, seeing God give the increase, and thanking Him for the harvest, however plentiful it might be.

The Second Time Around

2011-06-21T18:43:00.000-07:00

I sit in worship service, enraptured, not by the sermon that I'm trying so diligently to focus on, but on the couple two rows ahead. Their body language illuminates the newness of "we", this Sabbath day marking eight in their life together as one instead of two.

It's not his shining face that captures my attention, although the glow is apparent even in his shy silence. It's not his arm wrapped tightly around her, pulling her close in physical oneness.

It's his left hand.

Unconsciously, he removes the platinum band his bride slipped on fourth finger in forever promise. It is mesmerizing, watching him continuously slip it off and on, off and on, sometimes twirling it 'round his fingers, other times trying it on another to see if it fits better there.

With each movement, the ring's newness catches the lights overhead, flashing out in Morse code that this circle of cold metal against warm human flesh just doesn't feel right.

I remember this.

The band. The union. It's still unfamiliar, comfortable ruts from years of togetherness not yet worn deep enough to make him feel naked without this symbol of eternity.

Watching them took me far away from the sermon, not to my wedding when I shyly slipped a circle of gold and joyfully spoke loving vows of for better or for worse, but to another day five years later when in the deepest pit of despair, I placed that band on his hand a second time.

There I was, sitting at my office desk, trying valiantly to grade student portfolios as I waited for the phone call from an attorney whose name I didn't even know a few weeks ago.

I had received my instructions--wait. Don't come. It could take hours. Just. Wait.

And so, I waited. At one point, I walked next door to my colleague's office, shut the door, and the solid woman she knew turned liquid as I spoke of horrors that had been unfolding in obscurity over the past few days.

My husband, a man whose constant faith is lived out in deed rather than in word only, whose heart knowledge of quiet grace has shamed me at times for my lack, who has not received so much as a traffic ticket since he was a teenager--this man was now accused of fraud after submitting falsified medical records that a client had dropped on his desk a few weeks before.

The law demanded that someone had to pay the price. With the client denying any knowledge of any wrongdoing to save herself from prison time, my husband was the only one left to blame. In a society that believes all lawyers are crooked anyway, it wasn't much of a leap.

He was led like a lamb to the slaughter. And there was nothing I could do but wait.

With our attorney by his side, my husband turned himself in at the State Police's headquarters. In a scene unimaginable to me still, his hands were cuffed behind his back before the officer placed him into the back of a police cruiser, husband's arms and hands numb by the time they reached the parish prison for "processing."

All the while, I waited for the call to come. Come for the other part of myself.

When it finally did, I found the interstate completely shut down due to a wreck. A thirty minute drive turned into an hour, then two.

Now, he waited for me...in the eyes of the law, a worthless, numbered criminal in orange jumpsuit to be housed in a single cell with other criminals behind ignorant bars of steel.

Once there, it was too much to process, too incomprehensible that this level of injustice was possible, to terrifying, this being on the wrong side of the razor wire. How could I be here?

Filling out the paperwork, signing whatever our attorney told me to sign, sitting on the well-worn wooden bench against the far wall, I tried not to make eye contact with the tattoos, the rough attire, the bad language flowing freely around me. I didn't belong here, me stupidly dressed for work in burgundy organza blouse, black pencil skirt, and heels while stories of being picked up for illicit drugs spun around me.

Our attorney acted more like a father figure than a paid lawyer, quietly telling me he wouldn't let me "back there" to see my husband, saying I didn't need to see him like that. I could have told him it didn't matter--the image is still stamped in my mind five years later. I would swear I did see even though I know I didn't.

The man who walked out of the prison that day was not the same man who had risen from my bed that morning. With a bag of his personal effects in hand, he opened the passenger door, a broken man who was just starting on this path that would break him again and again until he withered from a 42 to a 34 inch waist.

There were no words for this moment. In that gravel parking lot, engine running, we leaned across the center console, foreheads together, clinging to each other as one clings to a tree in the windy spirals of a hurricane, simply breathing in and out the ragged breaths of emotions that could find no expression through human words.

It was then that he pulled open the paper bag and removed his wallet and wedding ring. He just held it there, halting words speaking of being stripped of this part of himself.

As I had five years earlier before God and family, I took it once again, felt the gold's coolness in my palm. This time, though, the ring was less shiny, marked by time and life's battles.

For better, for worse. Once more, I placed on his hand the symbol of our covenant. This trial would break and bend us, but it would not divide what God had put together.

(A couple months ago, I asked husband permission to share this part of our life's story. He asked that I wait until after the event's "anniversary" in April. While we live in victory through Christ, each Spring brings its own sadness in reminders of these ever-present wounds, all we have lost...and all we have gained.)

I'm No Theologian, But...

2011-06-16T20:13:00.000-07:00

I had just finished an overview study of Revelation, one book that, quite frankly, I've avoided over the years because it seems to cause more diversity than unity. Like most Christians, I had read it, and yes, I had my own theories, but unlike the foundations of my faith like the holy trinity or Christ as the only way to salvation, my opinions on John's Revelation weren't worth dying for.

But Scripture it still is, so I dove in headfirst with my ladies' group this past spring to learn theologians' major interpretations of the various symbols, images, etc. locked within its pages.

Eleven weeks later, I still don't know too much about what's exactly coming our way, but I at least now understand where the different camps derive their interpretations from.

With the coming apocalypse fresh in my mind, I read about Leonard Sweet and Lori Wagner's newest science fiction novel, The Seraph Seal, and I immediately wanted to read it. And now? I'm disturbed by what I perceive to be another example of universalism taking root in modern day Christianity.

The year is 2048, and the world is on the brink of destruction. Two main characters--Angela and Paul--work to decipher an ancient manuscript, uncovering clues a la Divinci Code to learn the role they must play at the end of days. At the same time but unbeknownst to the pair, evil US president Matthew Serafino also seeks to maneuver into position so that when the earth is destroyed, he can lead humanity into his version of a new age.

Sound neat, right? Yes and no. (Spoiler alert--do not read further if you like surprises).

Sweet and Wagner develop an intriguing idea that the four horsemen of the apocalypse mentioned in Revelation are not angels but humans. In the authors' idea of balance and unity, there are four "good" horsemen and four "bad" horsemen, and whichever group of four unifies in the end at the proper location will determine what new age is brought to the earth. Even if you disagree with mankind having any impact on the coming judgment, this idea was interesting and well-developed.

The novel is also quickly paced and a page turner in its description of a world literally falling apart in correlation to the bowls the four horsemen are supposed to pour upon the earth ( all marine life dying, waters becoming poisoned, sun blowing up, radiation poisoning, etc.).

The first flaw that makes the novel less than it could have been is that it just doesn't quite measure in terms of the chase. The clueless main characters--Angela and Paul--keep happening upon clues, but instead of revealing more of the puzzle along the way, almost all the clues point to the same thing--the place they must be at the end, Bashan. The reader is literally beat over the head with this place's name. We get it! Day of the Lord. Bashan.

The second flaw is the ending. Evil, maniacal, can-be-wherever-he-wants-at-a-second's-notice-because-of-holographic-technology President Matthew Serafino doesn't get his hands on the manuscript (although I'm not sure why because if his hologram could teleport inside the building where it was located, it could surely teleport inside the vault ten feet away where the manuscript lay). He has worldwide power, access to all information, manipulates people and places with unlimited resources...but without the manuscript, he concludes incorrectly about the place where the "rapture" into the new age will take place. Really!?

Concluding the book is a 70-page dictionary, detailing all the different organization, names, etc. the authors created for the future? Really!? For a work of fiction? It was interesting, but if I weren't writing this review, would I have read it? NO.

That's the problem with the literary text. But what I find more disturbing is the problem with Sweet and Wagner's Christianity which seems anti-Biblical and to support Universalism instead.

While the novel bases itself on the four horsemen of the apocalypse and all of God's ensuing wrath, that is it as far as parallels to any version of a Christian end times. There is no Jesus returning in the clouds. There is no judgment day. Instead, those who have "faith" that they're supposed to be in Bashan when the earth explodes (not faith in Jesus, mind you, but faith in a place as a portal to the new age) are raptured to another dimension or alternate reality (not sure which). Selling this as science fiction would be fine. Selling this as a Christian apocalypse? No.

One quote from the book really emphasizes the universalism theme. The main character says, "Many of them wouldn't even know who the Lamb in the center is, who the Christ is, who has been the saving mediary of all humankind for centuries. many of them have never heard of him. They're coming, most of them, because they have nothing else to believe in. But, they're coming. And that is the beginning step of faith" (p. 355).

All those at the portal are swept into a New Age--a new earth. There is no Jesus in this new earth. There are tears. And the main character Paul (who was a believer) doesn't make it through the portal into the new age because he is not in the exact location when time expires. Again, really!? Like our God is bound by the space of a circle around a portal!?

Instead, Paul shoots back in time 150 years, as he says, "the Lord's way of always providing new chances to begin again, perhaps." What happens to the evil men, the unbelievers? Are they, too, given another chance at life, another chance to change the world? The reader doesn't learn. But just the fact that one character not in the portal gets another chance implies as much...so much for God's judgment being final and for all.

I have never said this before, but if you are a Bible believing Christian, don't raise your blood pressure reading this book. It touts universalism and is a slap in the face to the eternal finality of God's judgment of this world.

*Thomas Nelson provides me with a complementary copy of the book, and I receive no compensation for my review, positive or negative.

Every Little Hurricane

2011-06-14T18:50:00.000-07:00

They never begin as anything noteworthy. A white puff set against aquamarine. Without an audience, the cumulus accumulate, stacking wider and higher over warm ocean depths. Winds hover, sucking up warm moisture as earth's Creator dips His finger in them, swirling the invisible round to add more white to this study in blue.

The warmth of this open-air, boundless womb continues to give life, an invisible cord connecting water and sky, providing nurturing energy to a formless shape not yet named. As it grows, it hovers, always circling, forming bone, adding moist sinew and flesh until more white than blue fills a camera's lens.

With each heartbeat, its winds grow stronger, pulling more sea into the sky. By now, the satellites note its existence, sending blurry sonogram images to weather doctors who measure its shape and size, their computers predicting its chances of making it to term, searching its growing environment for clues to predict its path in life.

The naming is ever-clinical to make the discarding ever easier. "Tropical Depression #1."

It is, yet is not.

Some never make it, dying at sea and buried in unmarked watery graves, sighs of relief accompanying the deaths of these unwanted children of the earth.

Then, there are those who rush forth across charted waters, as yet unborn but rotating ever faster in labor pains as powerful as its churning winds. Over land, the center will not hold. But over sea, this life gathers strength, is born through agony of wind's tearing, howling.

Finally, it is named. Katrina. Gustav. Andrew. Betsy. Those who await their first and last meeting with this child born of water and of sky hope and pray they will be able to forget its name.

With a life cycle of days and weeks rather than years, it consumes like the locust all the warmth and moisture in its path. Gaining in height, breadth, and strength, its solid cloud bank carries with it a wall of water and winds that make mankind's strongest structures appear as mere Tinker toys.

All the while, it hurtles headlong towards land, without emotion or will, mindless of the damage it is about to wreak on those who have watched its birth and growth.

None will mourn its passing.
While June 1 came and went without notice, it marked the start of hurricane season. Those of us on the Gulf Coast who have lived through the likes of a Hurricane Katrina in 2005 or a Hurricane Gustav in 2008--we have a healthy respect and fear of tropical activity. This season is predicted to be more active than usual: the birth of 15 named tropical storms, 8 of which will mature into hurricanes, and 4 of which will become major hurricanes.

My prayer is that you join with me over the next six months, praying to the Creator of the storm to show undeserved mercy...and if not mercy, then the grace to stand firm in the storm's wake.

In Drought and In Rain Storm

2011-06-09T19:19:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday, I pulled out the hoses once again, trudging across several football fields worth of ground to complete a task I've undertaken since February, one that is monotonous, strenuous, and frustrating when death still comes overnight to the plants and trees I've tried to maintain.

This time, though, my task was different. The usual 5:00 blazing red sun was missing overhead. During the children's nap time, the ceiling had been painted a marbled gray while a burst of cooler air had moved in to replace the heavy heat we had endured just that morning.

To the west, dark clouds were gathering. More were forming to the north and east, loud claps of thunder surrounding me. Surely today it would rain. Surely today, our prayers would be answered.

To stack up my prayers, my children's prayers for rain would be no small task. In a drought the likes of which our State has not seen in over 120 years, this prayer has consumed my family, words passing through our lips repeatedly, sometimes unconsciously, from the breakfast table to the bedside, every day.
By last week, husband and I were looking at the forecast, both of us saying it was just a matter of time before God responded with a "yes." We even joked (if joking can be serious) that with all those prayers for rain piling up before the throne, when God finally answered and poured them back on us, it might just be a bigger response than we expected, like in the form of a tropical depression or a hurricane.

With the premature darkness encroaching, the thunder increasing in strength and frequency as it sounded in every direction around our house, I thought this was the big one we had spoken of. But still, I stood, watering the sod, the trees.

I wanted to be standing out in the middle with no roof overhead when the water started coming down from heaven. I wanted to raise my face to breathe in the aroma of life-giving drops from the Life-giver, to feel the touch of His blessings wash over me, to experience with all my senses the answer to my prayers.

With ears plugged full of praise music, hands and flowing water occasionally lifting to the sky as I felt in my spirit the words, I sang praises to the one enthroned on high.

A few drops fell on my skin, and I gave thanks, asking for more but telling Him I would praise Him even if He didn't send the rain today. As if in response, the winds picked up speed, whipping through my curls and bending the tree tops, littering the dry earth with verdant leaves.

The two dozen purple martins roosting at my mother-in-law's house soared stiff-winged on the strong currents over the barns. A circle of the birds spiraled upwards in a column surrounding an invisible center. Others crossed overhead, swooping, gliding, jubilant.

And then the rushing winds began to subside. The individual drops stopped falling. The hammering crash of cymbals turned into the far away rumble of a bass drum.

While I stood in the cleft of the rock, God had passed me by.

We watered the grass and trees again on Thursday, then Saturday. Sunday night, then Monday, the storms rushed through again, rain falling in sheets upon our neighbors. My mother called to say an inch fell at her house, fifteen minutes away. Even the highway less than two minutes away from us was soaked.

But here? The drought continued. No. Rain.

Then came Tuesday. And Wednesday. And today.

Three straight days of cooling, precious rain. Life-giving water to us who are so thirsty.

There are so many other ways that God is working in my life this week, but how can I not write of this?

How can I not stop and praise my God who has blessed us with a drought so severe that it has saved much of our State from the flood waters that came down the Mississippi only to be swallowed by the waiting, parched ground? How can I not stop and praise the One who has blessed us now with long-awaited rain?

He is the God of drought and rain. In famine and in harvest--He listens, He speaks, He shows His love.

Photos: Husband roofs the red barn after the rain against a backdrop of fleeting gray skies.
Oldest son tries to "save" tadpoles from an almost dried-out mud hole.

To See the World a Bit Differently

2011-06-09T18:30:00.000-07:00

It wasn't something I intended to photograph. I didn't even know where I had left the camera.

But when I bent at the waist to weed a flower bed, I felt like an hour glass that had been turned over. Flowing water hose in one hand and tight fist-full of trespassing alicia bermuda in the other, I just stood there. Had I really never seen the world like this before?

Could I have done a headstand to take in the same view, I would have looked much less odd, but crazy woman I was with my feet planted shoulder width apart and head now intentionally hanging close to the ground as I looked upwards at the sky through the trunks of my legs.

Sure, I've seen the sky before. I regularly tilt head upwards and gaze at its broad expanse. Yet for flatlanders like me, when standing upright with face sun exposed, one's entire vision is filled with sky--not mountainous earth and sky--just wide open sky. With only openness, vibrating sun, a few birds, and treetops in the frame, the heavens lose their vastness because there is nothing in the mind's viewfinder to instantly compare its size with.

Even when I look across the field from my normal perspective standing on dry earth, the wide open sky overhead seems quite small when compared to the broad expanse of hay field, close enough to touch as it stretches around my feet and far out before me.

Proximity gives the appearance of great size...and of importance.

But here, with world turned upside down as I stood on my head, sky filled the bulk of my vision while still keeping in view the grassy earth, what looked like a thin green and brown pancake from which hung the rest of the world.

It was then that the vastness of the heavens really shook me.

What is daily close enough for me to touch, smell, hear--it seems so big, so overwhelming at times. But, it is nothing. We are just grains of sand in the largeness of God's broad expanse, our problems so, so, so meaningless and small in relation to Him...even if they are big to us in that moment of time carved out of eternity.

This change in perspective determines how I react to life itself.

Reacting to the big and small unexpected unwelcome matters that make up my days--this is where God has been working in my heart. It's so easy for something small to occur and bury me in overwhelming feelings of frustration, anger, or hopelessness.

I don't like having to dig myself out from that self-made grave. It is exhausting. It harms my relationships with my loved ones, not to mention my relationship with God. Lately, I've been intentionally short-circuiting the cycle, consciously stopping and asking "Why?" Why would God allow this? What does He know that I don't?

Somehow in the speaking, in the naming of the trial as one that is God-ordained, as one that is a blessing from God, the sparking emotions are diffused, and faith increases. It's one thing to say you believe God controls all, that He works all for your good. It's quite another to apply this theology to every trial that crosses your hearth.

Most recently, I tried this approach when, on the first day of summer classes, I realized one of my classes wouldn't launch. Uh oh--problems...what else was new. Later that day, I discovered whoever typed the class information into the registration computer typed in a "7" instead of a "6" for the class start date, July instead of June. The powers that be ruled the error would stand.

One single digit, one slip of a finger on a keyboard turned an 8-week class into a 4-week class. It's not what I signed up to teach. It's not what my boss expected me to teach. But it is what God wanted me to teach.

When I called husband, I told him this was no coincidence, that I was actually a bit afraid of what God knew was coming down the pipe, something that would consume enough time that I would appreciate less work now versus later.

I didn't have to wait long--a confirmed case of mono for my daughter and an identical checklist of symptoms for me, something we just started to overcome last Friday. Then came the unexpected out of town trip for husband...including an extra 24-hour delay due to airline troubles.

God knew. My acceptance of this fact in the beginning didn't change God in the slightest. But it did change me.

Now if I could only learn to adopt this attitude with each and every part of my life....perhaps I should learn to do that headstand to remind me.

When Doing Without is a Blessing

2011-06-07T19:35:00.000-07:00

The bloodless battle begins each evening around 5:30 when black wingtips walk through the door, wide heels tapping loudly against shiny hardwood planks before pausing at the thermostat, then continuing to their resting place on bottom tier of husband's childhood bookshelf.

Around midnight, we wordlessly call a truce until moon and sun rise and fall once more to begin another few hours of battle, progressing through this weekday cycle until the weekend when the back and forth volleys are continuous.

Each time husband comes in out of the Louisiana heat, he walks a ruler-straight line to the digital thermostat and presses the down arrow until the number 75 appears. After re-hydrating, stopping the sweaty hemorrhaging of water from the body, he goes back outside, air conditioner still compressing the air to refrigerated temperatures best used for hanging meat.

Minutes later, I am feeling the need to pull out my winter jacket or, at a minimum, take refuge in heavy jeans and a long sleeve shirt. My feet follow in husband's footsteps to check if it's just me (it rarely is).

Back up to 80 it goes.

Unlike some battles where angry words are like poisoned darts, aimed precisely to do the most damage possible, then regretted in the damaged aftermath, our battle over the thermostat is filled with more humor than anything.

Most Saturdays, we wordlessly pass the box on the wall. He presses the down; I press the up --back and forth, up and down, an endless tennis match with little emotion and even less thought.

Sometimes by the end of a day's match, husband will speak of it, eyes twinkling as he exclaims it's sweltering in here, then smilingly claim there must be a ghost in our house. Other times, I will refer to our house as the arctic and bundle up in a blanket for great effect.

This past weekend, husband and I worked together past the noon hour when it is prudent to go indoors. As we two mulched trees and flower beds to protect tender roots underground, the fiery sun finally got to the point where it seemed to be aimed like a stage light inches from my skin.

I asked him how he could stand it, this heat, when he was constantly turning our thermostat to frigid. His response came easily. "I was raised in the hayfield. And I promised myself that if I ever had a house of my own one day, I wouldn't have to sweat in it."

His insistence on a cold house--I finally understood...and I could relate.

For six years of marriage before this past year, husband and I sweated in houses that lacked any shred of insulation, where window units were only turned on when rare company came over or at night for sleeping.

I remember coming home from work to a mercury reading of 90 degrees, when it was hotter inside than out in the yard. I know what it's like to wake up to a 38 degree house where I can see my breath in frost as I rock and feed my babies, me shivering in layers before the living room's undersized propane heater.

This being uncomfortable, though--it's been such a blessing. I am shaking my head, knowing that only through the lack have husband and I both come to appreciate what many take for granted.

I honestly feared I would forget, grow complacent once we moved here into our sealed, climate-controlled home. But, that hasn't happened.

One year later, I still remember. And I am still thankful.

Photo: Saturday afternoon worn-out husband enjoying central air while loving our newest addition, Hannah.