Sunday Drive

Today I left the church building

A morning of prayers, praise

Presence

We drove in our car

My husband, my children

Pieces of my heart

We drove through these Tennessee Mountains

Green Jungle

Misty peaks

Deep sheltered valleys, rivers running through 

From the backseat of my car my children sang

The worship service had left the building with them

And the praise continued on

In my car

We drove through these Tennessee Mountains

I found myself reaching out with my thoughts, my prayers

Reaching to the God who is everywhere

Yet so hard to see

My eyes wandered those mountain tops

Where does my help come from?

We drove through these Tennessee mountains

An impression

A tickle on the back of my neck

There, out of the corner of my eye

Did I hear something? 

For a moment I was sure

Sure that heaven was only a breath away

Perhaps on the other side of my window

Joy running alongside my car

As we drove through these Tennessee mountains

Feeling the Absence

Lately, I’ve been feeling the absence of something in my life. It has felt like a huge gaping hole in my personality and has actually made me pause and wonder a lot as I’ve tried to analzye what this hole was. And I think I’ve finally figured out what is missing. It’s fear. Anxiety. Stress. I am not feeling it. And it is strange and wonderful. LIke a part of me finally stopped pacing up and down and just sat down and rested. 

This absence feels so weird that it’s made me feel like I need to do an assessment of my life, inner and outer workings, make sure I’m not missing something. Surely there is something I should be stressed about? Surely I’ve messed up somewhere. Why am I feeling so relaxed and not guilty? 

I made a survey of how things are going with kids home for summer break. And I realized this is the first summer that I haven’t hyper-planned every moment of the day. And everyone is doing fine. Kids are playing well. Using their time well. 

I made a survey of our family as a whole. Have we lost our vision? Do we have goals we are actively accomplishing? And I came to the conclusion that we are on track. Over the years our goals have simplified down to wanting our kids to love Jesus and learn how to serve the people around them. And I feel like all our planned summer activities lend to promoting those things. 

I made a survey of myself. Am I being all that I can be? Probably not, but I’m pretty happy with what I’ve accomplished as a wife and a mother of ten so far. And I do have other interests I’m pursuing as well, like music and writing which makes me feel like my life is pretty balanced at the moment. 

It’s not like life has suddenly become perfect and amazing. I could easily summon up a long list of things that are not ideal, need changing, Prayer requests which I’m still waiting on answers. But that feeling of anxiousness seems to be gone. Like I can look at a problem, and say, yes, this is definitely a problem, and then I can pray about it and move on with my day. 

It’s kind of like getting an aching tooth pulled. You’re so glad the tooth is gone and is no longer hurting you, but your tongue keeps exploring this empty hole in your mouth because it’s weird and different. 

Anxiety has been a constant companion for all of my life. I can’t remember a time without it. I don’t know why God has chosen this time in my life to set me free from this. I can’t think of any momentous thing I’ve done to warrant it happening at this moment. But I am thankful. And feeling hopeful for the future. And trying not to feel too weird about this unexpected gaping hole. I wonder what positive thing I could replace it with? 

Freedom

I just finished the book “Dispossessed” by Ursula K. Le Guin. It’s one of those books that make you think. It takes place in some far distant future on some far distant planet that has been inhabited by humans for thousands of years. The planet has withstood all the typical human problems, mismanaging the planet, corruption, slavery, violence, changes of government. They are now settled into a system that sounds a lot like our current way of life, but with proper management of the planet and its resources. The rich rule, the poor survive. Class systems. A great focus on material possessions. In the story, about two hundred years before, a group of social dissidents gain enough power that the local government is afraid of their influence, and so they give them permission to leave the planet and settle on the moon, which is habitable, but barely. It has water and fish and some vegetation, but not a lot. It’s a very fragile system and in order to live there everyone has to be very careful with the resources. This group of dissidents call themselves the Odonians, after their leader, Odo, and they set out to create their own utopia. This utopia is centered around anarchism.

anarchism: a political theory holding all forms of governmental authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals and groups Merriam-Webster

Their means of accomplishing this is to banish all ownership. Everything is commonly owned. People work together because in helping their community, they are helping themselves. And that is supposed to be the driving motivation to do the right thing. Their culture also helps promote this by disdaining and calling out any behavior that reeks of “propertarianism” or being an “egoist”.

There are all kinds of thoughts and ideas to dig into in this book, but one theme stood out to me, freedom. For the Odonians, freedom was being able to do whatever was best for yourself and the only way to achieve that freedom was to not be imprisoned by authorities or societal institutions directing your path or to be imprisoned by material possessions. There were no taboos for sex and no traditions supporting family units, though couples that wanted to stay together could, and parents that wanted to stay involved in their children’s lives, could, it was just not required. Work was seen as a fulfilling thing that everyone did, preferably in an area where you had obvious gifts and talents, but everyone also pitched in to help with nonglamorous jobs so that everything got done. And if someone chose to not work they could. But the people serving food could also choose to not feed those who didn’t work. And if a person behaved in a way that their peers found selfish or hurtful, the community could encourage them to move on to somewhere else. The underlying idea being that it’s our social structures and traditions and our material belongings that actually make humans not live in harmony with each other. And if you eliminate all those things, harmony will surely come.

Except, spoiler alert, we also learn that humankind is just bent to form bureaucracy and hierarchy and fall into power struggles, and it takes constant effort to remain in a “free” state.

I finished the book last night and then this morning I went to church and we sang a bunch of songs about being “free” . And that really grabbed my attention since I’d just been reading about this theme.

For a Christian, we understand that we have all been affected by the entry of sin into the world which happened in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. Sin came into the world and the end result of sin was moral decay, rot, and death. And no matter how many structures we put into place, religions, sacrifices, moralism, structured civilizations, strict laws, none of these things had the power to free us from sin and its end result of death.

Then Jesus, the Son of God, came to earth and was killed on a cross and he took the punishment for all our sins, for all mankind for all time. He abolished death. He fixed the problem and made it so we could be free from sin. But in order to enter into that freedom we have to accept the work he did on the cross, repent of our sins, and submit ourselves to his authority. We become slaves of Christ. His will be done, not ours.

Christianity is a paradox. In order to be free, we become slaves. We serve the Lord of the Universe, and that Lord, lay down all his power and sacrificed himself for us. And then Jesus said, if you want to be great in God’s kingdom, you must learn to be a servant. And then he proceeds to lead by example and serves us, his people. We live in a utopia of being loved and held by God, slowly being changed by him, but we also look forward to the true “utopia” of heaven where everything is finally made right and all sin and pain are abolished.

The difference between finding freedom in Christ and finding freedom in anarchy is that Christ actually takes care of the original sin problem that makes humans not live in harmony. Anarchy is at best a bandaid that offers a temporary solution, but it can never deal with the root problem, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

God’s Poem

 

I learned an amazing thing today at my women’s bible study. We were discussing

Ephesians 2:10:

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Did you know that the word that is translated into “workmanship” in this verse is the Greek word, poiema which is the same word that we get the word “poem” from? 

That really made me pause. I am God’s poem? That sounds so lovely. 

Back up a couple days ago and I was lying awake in bed, insomnia visiting me once again. Over the past year as God has been doing an overhaul on my thought life, I have started learning how to put my imagination to good use when I have insomnia. Instead of making up all kinds of complex stories in my head to entertain myself while I’m just lying there, I have started imagining heaven. Imagining the throne room of God, and imagining myself there. Just inside the door. Worshipping. And just basking in God’s presence. 

So, it had been a long week of sleeplessness hitting me in the middle of the night, and that night I was awake but tired and I just wanted to sleep. I went back to my imagination and I felt like a child who had gotten out of bed and wanted to go sit in their parents’ room because they couldn’t sleep. I imagined myself walking into the room where God was, and I asked, can I just sit here and watch you work until I can go back to sleep? 

And then I was really awake because I had never thought about watching God work. And while I was lying there I felt like God said yes, and then he started showing me all kinds of people that I know, and showed me how he had changed their lives. How he had taken them from broken, angry people to people who were whole and healed and loving. How he had taken families torn apart by generations of abuse and helped them to reach a place of forgiveness. He showed me how he had taken the timid and afraid and made them bold. He gave me a small glimpse of his workmanship. 

Back to my woman’s Bible study. We finished up our nine weeks study of the book of Ephesians and then we went out to eat together as a kind of celebration for finishing. While we ate our leader asked us to share how God had taken us from being dead in our sins to alive in Christ,

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—Ephesians 2:4-5

And as I listened to these beautiful women share how God had taken them from the place where their lives had been dark, broken and empty, to the place where they are now, joyful, living full lives of love, I found myself in awe as I realized I was in the presence of some of God’s poems. Beautiful, complex, nuanced, sometimes easy to understand, sometimes too complicated and mysterious for comprehension, everything a good poem should be. 

Listening to these women was just like my nighttime vision except I was seeing God’s work in the flesh. Beautiful walking poems showcasing God’s rich mercy and love and grace. And I love the idea that I too am one of God’s poem’s walking around the earth, a living testament, an in-the-flesh example of God at work. 

I am God’s poem. That makes me happy. 

Thoughts on Parenting

I’ve been thinking about parenting.  

This weekend I asked one of the kids to do a chore. They were in a really bad mood and feeling overwhelmed with things they needed to do and so they told me, bluntly, that they were not going to do the chore. I was shocked. My kids do not say no to me. Not because I’m a harsh disciplinarian, but simply because we established when they were little that if your parents ask you to do a task, you do it. I pointed out to them that if they did not do it, it meant that someone else in the family was going to have to pick up their work. They did not budge. I walked away. 

I was really angry. But also confused as this is a good kid who is always willing to do their part and usually doesn’t even grumble about their chores. 

Now, in the past, the way I dealt with this was more lecturing, arguing, and then taking away some kind of privilege, like a phone, device, or screen time. The end result being that the task still didn’t get done and now my kid was just as angry as I was. Or maybe they did the task while screaming and fussing the entire time and then we all stayed mad for several days. 

But this time I took myself away from the situation. Talked to my husband. We both agreed this was unusual behavior. And I acknowledged that I could understand why they were feeling overwhelmed with the other tasks they had to do as well.  In the end I did nothing. My husband did the chore and my younger daughter helped him. My child finally calmed down from their bad mood and entered into some conversation with me. 

Now, I am still miffed that they said no. I plan to have further conversations where I can explain that I am always willing to listen to them if they’re unable to do something I’ve asked them to do, but we need to have a conversation about it that stays respectful.  If they had stopped and said, Mom, I’ve got a school project that I’m really stressed about and I have all these things I have to do to get ready for Monday, can someone else do the chore? Then we could have had a conversation about it and that would be a respectful way to handle it. And for my part, I need to be willing to take things into consideration when my child respectfully asks for a reprieve.  

In the past I would have been very concerned about my child disrespecting me and not being obedient and I would have responded harshly.  Now, by God’s grace, I’m a lot more concerned with how my child is doing, as a person. If they are acting out in some way, I want to know why, and what can we do to fix it? Maybe they are being selfish. Maybe they are being disrespectful. Maybe they are tired or overwhelmed. If it’s selfishness, let’s try to help them see other people and their needs and not just themselves and their own needs. If they’re being disrespectful, let’s talk about respect for adults, parents, other humans, and set firm boundaries in these areas. If they are tired, let’s teach them how to recognize that in themselves and learn the habit of getting alone and resting, instead of sticking around to argue over every little thing. If they’re overwhelmed, let’s teach them how to recognize that for what it is, and then get some help from a parent or someone else who can help them get caught up or organize their time. 

I remember when I first started parenting, all the books and classes on parenting that were so popular. And they all hammered into you exactly what a good parent was supposed to do. And if your child did not sleep through the night at 2 months old, did not practice first time obedience, threw tantrums in public, etc, then that meant that you were a failure as a parent. And I really absorbed that. When my kids misbehaved, it meant that I was failing. And that put a lot of pressure on me which I then transferred to my kids. Not a great atmosphere.

A million failures later, I think I’ve mostly learned to let go of that idea that I have to be a perfect parent and that my children’s behavior is a reflection of my worth. I am trying to see my kids as the little humans that they are, who are just as sinful and ornery as I am and need just as much grace and compassion as I do. And who need as much constant help, direction, and encouragement as I do. I still fail regularly, but I think my house is a lot more peaceful and my kids a lot less stressed than when I first started on this parenting journey.

.

Happy at Home

Today is a beautiful day in East Tennessee. The sun is shining brightly, there is a nice breeze, the temps are cool, but not too cold to sit outside. All the trees have grown their new leaves for the year and everything feels bright and fresh. 

I’ve been thinking about my future goals for the next several months. What I want to work towards, things I want to see happen, things I want to see my kids accomplish. 

Things like, start exercising regularly again, keep practicing piano, keep teaching. Help my husband with his business. Have people over to my house often. Keep being a mom and wife. Keep writing. Nothing big and mind blowing. Just a collection of little things that make up my life.

What is making me happy right now is the fact that I can live this simple life and it’s enough.

Romans 12:4-8 says, 

For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith;  if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach;  if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

I love that when you ask Jesus to forgive your sins and make a choice to follow him, you become part of a family. I love being in church and looking around at everyone and knowing that these are my brothers and sisters and together we are the body of Christ. What I also love is that we all have different roles to play. I love that I can be a stay-at-home mom and know that I am doing my part in the kingdom of God. 

Sometimes I look at my lfe and it feels like I must not be doing enough. Surely I should be striving towards more lofty goals. The world tells me that if I don’t have titles after my name, if I am not out in the thick of things, making money or saving the planet, I’m really not doing anything. I need to get myself out there and start making a difference! 

But the truth of the matter is, by having my life centered in my home, I am serving God. When I spend my day cooking and cleaning, I am serving the body of Christ. When I arrange my schedule so that I have time and energy to have people in my home, I am sharing the love of Christ.  When I putter around and think about things and then take time to write down what I’m thinking about and share it with others, I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing and fulfilling God’s purpose for me. 

I love that being part of the body does not mean I have to strive to become someone that the world would say is noteworthy. But instead I can just be myself, using the gifts and talents that God has given me in the circle of influence that he has placed me in. And it’s enough. 

Not everyone is called to be a stay at home mom, obviously. And we all play different roles in the family of God. I feel very strongly about social justice issues and sometimes wish that I could be out on the frontlines meeting the physical needs of the low and downtrodden.  And the Bible says that taking care of the widows and orphans is what true religion is about. But, I’ve learned over the years that I can help people from the position that I’ve been placed in, in my home. I can take in homeless people, foster kids, teenagers who need a couch to sleep on. I can feed the hungry who knock on my door. I can provide the safe place for latchkey kids to come and play. And I don’t even have to leave my neighborhood. I just have to get up every morning with my hands open, in a posture of willingness. And as my day meanders along, I know that God will use me however he sees fit for that day. 

As I have come to know myself better over the years and understand my passions and longings better, I have realized more and more that God put me in the exact perfect place where I could be myself and use my talents and gifts most fully. As a teenager I never even thought about being a stay-at-home mom. But my Creator who made me knew better and today I feel joyful and peaceful as I serve Him and the Body of Christ from the wonderful place of my home. 

LARGE PROBLEMS vs Living Hope

The past couple months my husband and I have run into several rather LARGE PROBLEMS. And they have all seemed to follow the same pattern. LARGE PROBLEM makes itself known. Stress. Panic. Prayer. And then a possible solution appears. The solution is humongous. It would take God for this to happen. But there’s actually a small chance that it could happen. Soon. In the near future. And so we wait. This time with some hope. Then here comes the next LARGE PROBLEM and we go into the same pattern. Possible solution shows up. It’s going to take God for that to actually happen. But it could. Hope shows up again. And we wait. Next LARGE PROBLEM…etc. Right now I am waiting for three miraculous things to happen. None of the problems are solved yet. But there’s hope. They could get solved soon, in the very near future. And I continue to pray, throughout the day as I think about it, please Lord, let these solutions happen. 

It’s kind of a weird place to be. But I realized as I was thinking about it recently, that those possible solutions that may or may not happen did something for me. They took me out of a place of despair and put me back in a place of hope. And now that hope has come back, I am able to realize that even if none of those solutions happen, God will still take care of us and help us find a different way. 

Our church is doing a sermon series on 1 Peter, and yesterday we tackled 1 Peter 1:1-12. The part that stood out to me was the part about hope. 

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 1 Peter 1: 3-5

As a Christian we live in a kind of waiting period. We have an inheritance that we will one day finally realize, but for now we wait. But at the same time, we are living out our inheritance here on earth. Ephesians 1:13b-14 says:

When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.

Not only do we have an inheritance that we will realize when we die or when Jesus returns, but here on earth we have the Holy Spirit inside of us, teaching us, comforting us, leading us on this journey that we are on. 

I am now forty-five years old. I have four children who are eighteen and older. I have to admit, I’ve been feeling a bit old. (Yes, it’s relative! Everyone older than me thinks I’m still a young’un. ) But, I’ve been feeling older. While our culture tells you that not being young is the worse thing that can happen to you, I am finding that I don’t agree. I’ve now had forty-five years to see the faithfulness of God. And the more miracles you see, the more confident you become. I can tell you with all assurance that I live a life full of hope in God. 

It’s a living hope. Not “good vibes”. Not karma. Not faith in humanity. Not luck. It’s acknowledging that there is a God and he sent his son Jesus to take the punishment for our sins so that we could be right with him and be in relationship with him. It’s knowing that the Holy Spirit, part of the Three-In-One God, lives inside of me. It’s knowing that any trials that come my way will work towards shaping me to become more like Jesus. It’s knowing that my past and future are in his hands and if God is for me, who can be against me? It’s knowing that if I die today, I will be with Jesus in heaven, and I know that he will take care of my loved ones, even if I am no longer there to do so. It’s knowing that the LARGE PROBLEMS that come my way will not change my standing with God and will not take away my peace. And when it seems like the only answer is going to have to come in the shape of a miracle, I can nod and say, Ok, I know God does miracles, so I will wait and see how he decides to work in this situation. 

I don’t like LARGE PROBLEMS. They are uncomfortable. But they do a really good job of reminding me about hope and who my hope is in. And so I wait, not knowing how this will all play out, but confident that God has his hand on me and any LARGE PROBLEM that comes my way. 

Ramen Noodles

It’s funny how certain foods are like portals to the past. As soon as you take a bite you are immediately back in an old memory. Ramen noodles do this for me. I don’t eat Ramen very much. I’m aware it’s not the healthiest option on the planet. But, occasionally, I will get Ramen for the kids (they rarely get it, and for some odd reason, have decided it’s a treat). I ate a packet for lunch today and as soon as I smelled the rich broth, I was floating back in time.

Fifth grade. Morehead, Kentucky. 

I think this was the first year our family stumbled on this amazing food. By this time my brother and I were latchkey kids. Our parents were working, and my mom was finishing up her last year of school to be a Physican’s Assistant. A save-a-lot had moved into town and my mom would stock up on freezer meals and fast foods that my brother and I could prepare for ourselves. 

Every day after school I would walk into the trailer, put the old copper kettle on. I’d pull out one of our orange bowls that had a white lining, bowls that had followed our family everywhere we lived,  and I would make myself a bowl of ramen noodles. 

I was always starving after school. Fifth grade was the year I stopped eating lunch at school. When we first moved to this school, I was in second grade and my brother was in fourth. My parents would send school lunch money with my brother and he would pay for both of us. We ate school lunches for about two years, but we didn’t really enjoy them. They served a lot of Southern American food that we just weren’t used to. Pinto beans and cornbread, corndogs (what was this thing?? I always pulled the corn breading off and ate the hotdog), really cheap hamburgers that had some kind of weird slime on them, mashed potatoes that were so runny it was almost more like a porridge. (There was one meal that I actually liked, beef vegetable soup and a bread roll.) 

When I was in fourth grade, we moved away for one year while my mom did an intensive year of study at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, then we moved back to Morehead. I was now alone at my school, my brother had moved on to middle school, and I had no idea how to navigate school lunches. Who did you pay? When did you pay? How much? It just seemed like an overwhelming problem, overwhelming because everyone else already knew what to do, and here I was, in 5th grade, clueless. 

Just an aside. This has long been a problem for me. My mother is British and grew up overseas, my father is American but he grew up overseas. I did not move back to the states till I was almost seven. And we moved to Eastern Kentucky that has its own unique culture going on. I spent a lot of my childhood not knowing what everyone else already knew. I would try to be very observant, see what everyone else was doing and copy them. Or just retreat. Or pretend like that was just not something I wanted to do, cause I had no idea how to go about doing it. Sometimes I would brave being made fun of and just ask, but other times, it seemed like too much energy to try and figure things out. And for school lunches, It was just easier to not buy any. 

So, I told my mom I would take a lunch. And then, I just didn’t. I didn’t like packing lunches. In fourth grade I got teased quite a bit because I would pack a lunch and bring food that was not “normal” like a whole tomato that I would eat like an apple, or a piece of bologna, and piece of bread, packed separately, cause that’s how I liked them. Somewhere along the way I just decided school lunches were not worth the hassle. So, I would sit at a table and wait a couple minutes until I could just line up with the other kids and wait to leave the cafeteria. I always had a book to read, so I wasn’t bored. 

Then I would get home, starving and eat Ramen noodles. And cereal. And whatever else was laying around the house. 

I’m not sure what kind of memory that is. But, I’m thankful for those hot hearty noodles that made me feel full and satisfied after a long day at school. 

Forgiven

I’ve had a bit of a rough week. Finding myself frozen in place where I can’t seem to do anything. This happens to me occasionally, and the hardest part is trying to figure out why am I acting like this? It feels like character failure. I’m being lazy. And then I get worried, am I slipping into a depression without even realizing it? I mentally explore all the sensitive areas in my brain, no everything feels pretty normal. Why can’t I get moving? 

And then I slowly start putting the pieces together. I realize that the old nighttime terror has returned, where I walk into my dark bedroom and I feel fear to the point of being nauseated. And I’im so used to dealing with this feeling that I just keep moving, get back into bed or turn on a light which then makes it go away. Then I find myself flooded with old memories that my brain keeps trying to process. Maybe if we just remember this one more time, it will make sense and it will go away. So I pull out my computer and write the memories down in an attempt to remove them from my head and place them into the safety of a computer program. 

And once I finally realize what is going on, I feel better. Ok. This is just that old thing that I have to go through occasionally. It will pass. 

This morning I sat eating my breakfast, thinking about all of this, and thinking about sin. Someone’s sin against me and then my reaction that led me to my own spiral of sins. And I just felt a rush of relief. Thank you God for Easter. Tomorrow we remember Jesus’ death on the cross. We mourn over the pain he had to suffer and we feel the deepest gratitude that he was willing to do this for us. It was the only action that could fix our sin problem. And then Sunday we will rejoice as we celebrate that Jesus came back to life and that death has been conquered and that we can look forward to an eternity with Him. 

What Jesus did was the only thing that can fix me. The only thing that was able to take me off a path of self-destruction and put me on a path of life. His forgiveness of my sins was the only thing that made it possible for me to forgive others when they sinned against me. And broke off the chains of bitterness. The Holy Spirit entering my life is the only thing that renews me, helps me to heal and grow and continues to show me the way of life. 

And I find myself singing, “Worthy is the lamb, Jesus son of God…” 

Luke 7: 36-50 tells a story about a woman who comes and washes Jesus’ feet with her tears and her hair and anoints his feet with perfume. The pharisee whose house they are in, thinks to himself, if Jesus was a prophet, he’d know this woman was a sinner. Then Jesus tells him a story about a banker with two men who owe him money, one a lot, the other not as much. The banker forgives both debts. Jesus then asks, which man is going to love the banker more? And the pharisee answers, the one who owed him more. Then Jesus says in verse 47 “I tell you that her many sins are forgiven, so she showed great love. But the person who is forgiven only a little will love only a little.”

I am the woman. Life is dark. We are sinned against from a young age and we sin against others from a young age. But Jesus came. He made a way so that we can be forgiven and healed. My many sins have been forgiven. And I pray that I may be like that woman, that I would respond with great love to Jesus. May my praise be an extravagant show of gratitude. May my actions be an anointing perfume that brings pleasure to my Lord. 

We’re All Growing Up

My little kids are growing up. It’s been happening slowly, inching along. And then suddenly I lifted my head up, glanced around and realized everything was different. 

I was at the library this week with my kids and they all went off on their own to find their books. They each had their own library card so I wasn’t needed for any part of the process. Even my youngest child knows how to go to the librarian and ask about particular books they are looking for and place holds for books they want that aren’t available. In the past, I would walk through all the read-a-loud shelves and choose a big pile of fun looking stories that I would take home. And then I would sit on the couch for an hour, surrounded by kids while I read and read and read. My fingers still itch to grab those shiny covers off the shelf. But I no longer do. After bringing home books several times that nobody wanted to listen to because they were too busy reading their own long chapter books, I finally gave up. And that makes me really sad. I loved reading those books. 

I saw a meme today about a parent getting really frustrated at their young children not putting their shoes on in a timely manner. And I laughed. I remember those days. 

Where are your shoes???? Shrug. When did you last see your shoes??? Shrug. Where have you looked so far for your shoes???Shrug. AAACCKK!!! 

But now, we have shoe boxes by the door, and somehow everyone has managed to get trained enough that they leave their shoes at least somewhere in a 10 foot radius of the shoe boxes. And sometimes, actually in the shoe boxes. I tell everyone to get their shoes on, and five minutes later, it’s done. Who knew this was possible. Gone are the days of looking in cars, under beds, by the trampoline, behind the bathroom door, under a pile of dirty laundry. And I can say, that I don’t miss those days at all. 

My older teens occasionally tell some story from when they were little and I am often surprised at how I am portrayed in their memory. I find myself apologizing. I’m sorry sweetie. I was a different mom then. I was a baby mom. And I’ve grown up a lot since then. 

And this is something I’ve never given much thought to. We have kids, and we look forward to watching them grow up. We celebrate every milestone. We have books that tell us what new thing our child should do soon, and we look for hints and clues that our babies are on their way to mastering this newest level of development. We document everything with photos. And then they grow up and we think it’s done. Everyone’s bodies are fully developed. End of story. But it’s not. Our entire lifetime is spent growing up. 

Looking back I can think of some milestones I passed. When I learned to stop throwing a temper tantrum when my toddlers created chaos and wreaked havoc. When I learned to stop yelling so much. When I learned to not explode when my child spilled something or broke something. When I learned how to take myself away and calm down before dealing with something volatile. When I learned that my young teen saying they hate me or some other mean thing, was really just another developmental stage for them, and I didn’t have to feel like a complete failure as a parent. 

Growing up happens in other walks of life too. Last night we attended a marriage class at our church and in our small group discussions, I realized just how far my husband and I have come from our early days of marriage. How we’ve learned to love each other so much better than when we first started. Growth. Growing up. 

In Ephesians 3:14-19 Paul has a prayer for the church. And I’m going to loosely paraphrase it for you. Paul prays that we would be strengthened by the Holy Spirit so that through faith, Christ can live in our hearts, and we can be able to comprehend just how wide, high, long and deep is Christ’s love for us. That we would know his love, and through that be filled with the fullness of God. 

It was a prayer. A looking forward. You don’t have this yet, but I pray that you will. A prayer for growth. 

I believe that it is growth in this area, learning just how much Jesus loves us, that promotes growth in all the other areas of our adult lives. I learn to love my children better and parent them better as I learn more about Jesus’ patience and compassion. I learn to love my spouse better as I learn more about Jesus’ self-sacrifice and long suffering. And I learn how to love the people around me as I learn more how Jesus values me and lavishes unearned favor on me. 

May we all never stop growing up.