Three Year Old Tantrums– Making Peace

Three year old tantrums are like tsunamis. You don’t know how big the cataclysm will be until it’s on top of you, and you can’t stop it once it has started. You just have to be prepared beforehand and get to higher ground. 

As my daughters have moved from the developmental stage identifying themselves with me to seeking individuality and choices, the transition has been rocky and full of temper tantrums. As much as I would like to point fingers and blame their tender youth, I myself am not always the example of maturity I wish to be. I try to let myself off the hook because I am not a yeller, but I’ll say it before someone else rats me out: Bull-headedness and snarling are patterns God convicts me about regularly. Oh God, you multi-tasker, you! Using me disciplining my kids to discipline me! 

So here we are with long, massive meltdowns in very public places, but that doesn’t even matter because I happen to know you can still hear that little voice shrieking inside the house from down the block. Thank God we don’t live in an apartment at this point!

As I said, there’s no stopping it: The element of surprise is impotent. Punitive action and reasoning are equally fruitless. It takes a good 20-30 min. before distraction is an option. Mostly tantrums just have to be forestalled before they start. 

Sure, I know that means eating real meals at regular intervals. Of course it means getting regular sleep. Gee, thanks, parenting sites. I'd never have thought of that on my own!

The key for me was realizing what my daughter was trying to accomplish with her tantrums. On the surface they seem whimsical –in a bad way– but for her it is all about feeling like her rights were trampled on and having no recourse. Her solution might not be the same as your child's solution because her reasons may be different than your kid's. But if you think it may help, read on! 

What has really helped is having a family peacemaking strategy. The work of making peace is not best done by the clear-headed outside observer. It has to start in the heart of the person who is angry and sees the wrong. We have found my daughter's temper escalates when she sees no recourse for due process and justice.

My idea and my children’s ideas of justice don’t often coincide at first, but having a calm, consistent road to travel together makes a difference.

Here are the tools I want to give them: A desire for justice, capacity for mercy, a chance to cool down, a template for respectful discourse, empathy, and experience with un-begrudging compromise. The terrible thing is that this list doesn’t describe my heart of hearts! My own desire and practice are far from perfect, so this is for me too. 

My efforts at cool down time and respectful discourse had so far been blown away in the blast of living fury that is my second-born, so I needed a new strategy. We tried a Peace Table ala Montessori, and it is working surprisingly well! The idea is to have a neutral place for conflict resolution and the promotion of peace. The genius of it is that it gives my kids an avenue for positive action, not just violent protest. 

Supplies: On the table we have a rose in a shallow bowl- not a long stemmed flower in a vase, because vases are easier to knock over, and long flowers can be turned into cart whips by furious children– and a battery operated candle. 

Step 1: If someone in the home is feeling upset or experiencing conflict they can present the involved person with the rose, and it is part of the social contract that they go to the table together to resolve their difficulty. 

Step 2: Whomever is holding the rose has the right to speak, and anyone else has the privilege of listening. 

Step 3: The rose is passed between them until they resolve the matter. 

Having physical tools to hold as protocol for the intellectual/emotional process of conflict resolution is grounding and reassuring for them. It keeps them on track. There is a Montessori book to introduce this activity, but role playing was enough, and in fact, quite revelatory for us!

The purpose of the battery candle is that it is an extra task and treat for the angry child to turn on, allowing for a few more split seconds of cool off/distracted time. Every instant counts! Also they are mesmerizing and cheap at the dollar store! Another advantage to having a dedicated space for this is that it is proactive. Choosing from a small selection of activities from the table is a self-directed action. I see cool down time-outs as preventing anyone or anything getting hurt, but the angry child sees it as punishment or banishment, which compounds the drama. I want them to grow up knowing that they don’t get positive or negative consequences for how they feel, but for what they do with the feelings they have. Mature people find activities that de-escalate themselves when they are angry, but sometimes we stop kids from de-escalating by mandating things that make them angry. Once again, anger is fine, being destructive and rude is not. They have to be dealt with separately. 

When I said that role playing was revelatory, what I mean is that I discovered a reason my explosive child has a short fuse: Her fuse is not that short, it’s just that her sister is a pyro. As I found myself trying to negotiate a pretend argument for the rights to a toy I don’t even care about, I discovered that my oldest drives a really hard bargain, and she denies others acknowledgement that they have a real case. While she looks level headed and peaceable to authority figures, she looks like a tyrant when you are standing eye to eye. It raises the point that making peace is everyone’s job. No one is exempt. The burden of it can’t only fall on the people who burn for justice. Acknowledgement and sensitivity are really important. Without empathy the person who is wronged just comes off as a complaining troublemaker, and that is unjust too! As a mother it is tempting to focus my efforts on the child who is most publicly embarrassing, and who inconveniences me most, but my job is to help both the explosive child, AND the kid who casually plays with emotional matches. One is no less important than the other. 

 The spiritual component is something we are working on as well, but not in the tsunami moments. Jesus said that when you try to feed pearls to swine, they turn around and eat you. Raise your hand if that’s happened to you when your kids are angry! I find my relationship with God, my prayer life, and the help of Scripture invaluable, like pearls, but when my kids have a hunger for justice they don’t appreciate moralizing.   

Becoming peacemakers is a life-long, not week-long evolving process. Additionally, peacemaking is not just about resolving conflict, but about developing an eternal perspective, deepening one’s walk with God, developing love, practicing patience, and self-control. As my children master the peacemaking skills we started with, I expect to swap in other activities at the peace table. 

Here are my ideas: 

• Calm-down glitter jar,
• Music player with Scripture songs,
• Books about peacemaking... any suggestions? 
• Stones with applicable Bible verses on them,
• Tactile celtic knot tracing activity to introduce labyrinth prayer aides,
• Recorder for work on taking deep breaths, and 
• Puzzles for taking time to cool down.

The end of this story hasn't happened yet, but we have gone from 2 huge tantrums a day to 1 or 2 short ones a week. My daughter has been swallowing back the fearful rage and seeking healthy things like cuddling and talking about it since we have a plan. The rose is something she can present to parents too, and be certain her appeal is heard. The table also gives us a benchmark for the minimum of what is required to work something out. Often I would see my older daughter sulking about something her sister did. She always claimed to have tried to work it out, but I wasn't sure. Now I can tell them "If you haven't invited your sister to the peace table, you haven't tried to work it out. If you aren't willing to do that, you can sulk in your room, but not in our space." Very effective! 

About the troubling time when God was going to kill Moses

Do you remember ever hearing a lesson on the end of Exodus 4? I've wracked my brain. You would think that Moses was somehow miraculously transported from Mount Horeb to the banks of the Nile because there's this tricky un-churchy Exodus 4:18-31 passage in between.

     Moses asks Jethro for permission to go back to check on his family in Egypt. He packs up his wife and sons on a donkey (more on that in a moment), and then this: v.24 At a lodging place on the way, the Lord met Moses and was about to kill him. But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son's foreskin and touched Moses' feet with it. "Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me," she said. So the Lord let him alone. (At that time she said "bridegroom of blood," referring to circumcision.)

    And now back to your regularly scheduled programing.

    What-the-what? Where was this musical number in The Prince of Egypt? I find the stories people leave out at church really interesting. I started working on digesting this one months ago when I was lesson planning for junior church. We are studying theophanies and meetings with God looking at his character, and this episode is enigmatical and chilling, but I couldn't shake the feeling that it was important.

     Why was God going to kill Moses? Why was the solution the circumcision of his son? Why only one son, when it mentions that two sons got on the donkey? Why, I reiterate, was God going to kill Moses? What was that like?

    This is one of the stories that give people theological whiplash. How can a God of love just up and decide to kill his servant, who was on his way to do his bidding? When I shared this story with a group of kids they all erupted in "That's not fair!!!" No one quibbles when Zeus does this sort of thing, but then again no one is asking you to believe in Zeus today. Why the sphinx-like enigma? How can we reconcile this story to Jesus?

    Here is what we can see in the story: God's action was not capricious or secret, because obedience changed his course. At least Zipporah knew what was up, because her decisive action saved her husband's life.

     Over 400 years earlier God established the covenant of circumcision with Abraham in Genesis 17. As a sign of the covenant where God promised to be with Abraham's descendants and give them the land of Canaan, Abraham's family would circumcise every male in their households. Blood set them apart and joined them together. Every male who was uncircumcised in the flesh would be "cut off" from his people and God's promise. In that paradoxical way the Bible has, it was a wound that symbolically joined and healed a family into the body of God's people, while remaining in the natural physical state "cut" one from the promise and the people. The thing is that every generation decided for their children and gave them the heritage of faith. Moses had the heritage, but he had not prepared to pass it on to his sons.

    As a side note, there are a few possible explanations, but I believe only one of his sons was born at this point. Only one is named in Exodus 2:22, Gershom, or "an alien there," and only one is circumcised in the course of the story. Perhaps the other child was in utero. Poor Zipporah!

    The name Gershom highlights a major feature of Moses' life: His alienation. He did not live like one of his people, and at the same time he was not fully of the palace. He was not just an alien when he fled to Midian as a murderer, but practically from the moment he was born by virtue of his dual life as a slave child and royalty. Moses' guilty flight to Midian was but one escalation in an identity crisis that here reaches as much denouement as can be expected in non-fiction. Was he Hebrew, Egyptian, or Midianite? Who would his children be? Moses' indecision for his children exposed the state of his own heart– the part his own parents couldn't choose for him. He was reluctantly pursuing his commission to Egypt, but his non-decision for his children was a decision in itself. Moses was not "all in."

    If there is one thing God hasn't got patience for, it's making a lifestyle out of keeping your options open. Let me rephrase that and call it "lukewarm," and you will know exactly what I am about to quote next. Revelation 3:14-15,19-20 "...These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God's creation. I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm––Neither hot nor cold––I am about to spit you out of my mouth... Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me."
As pet owners can relate to, God is not willing to let us stand on the threshold forever. At some point he is going to shut the door.

    God's character in Exodus and his character in Revelation correlating is not so surprising. Both have a dark reputation. What about Jesus, though? The popular vision of Jesus is namby-pamby or mystical. That's where I would turn to Mark 11. The day after Jesus was welcomed into Jerusalem as a king, he was on his way back into Jerusalem to clear the temple, and he saw a fig tree in leaf. I am no expert in fig trees, but I am told that if there are leaves, there should be figs. So the tree was advertising fruit, but not bearing any, and Jesus cursed it. Whoa, there Jesus! Somebody needs their breakfast right? Talk about hangry! By the next morning the tree was dead, and it seems somewhat shocking! It's actually a picture Jesus used quite a bit in his teaching, it wasn't a new symbol for him, or for John the Baptist for that matter. It wasn't about breakfast. They both said that when someone makes a faith claim, check the fruit. In an arid climate there is no room, no time, no water for a tree that doesn't bear fruit, and good fruit at that. They both warned that a branch or tree that does not bear fruit will be cut down and thrown in the fire. Keep in mind that this story book-ends clearing the temple, where Jesus used a whip to chase vendors and money changers out of the temple courts. Their fruit wasn't living up to their claims! You can fool yourself into thinking that you are doing God's will, but God always knows when your fingers are crossed.

    Going back to Zipporah's story in Exodus, it was Moses who sinned, Moses who was going to die, and his wife Zipporah who dramatically saved him. I don't know how stepping out in faith for others works. It seems to generally be a difficult and/or messy business (Exodus 4:24-26, Matthew 17:14-23, Mark 2:1-12). We don't even know how Zipporah felt about this episode, because the statement "Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me," could really depend on the flash in the eye and tone of voice. Check me on this, but she doesn't sound enthused to me. But she did it. She fought for her husband, she viscerally overcame in faith and in action to save her family. What is so encouraging to me about this is not only that she succeeded, but that she is tired. There is unrealistic pressure on women in the church to be preternaturally cheerful about hard things sometimes. Christian radio makes things sound so chirpy. Who am I to say you can't do tough things with a smile on your face? It's just nice to have permission in the form of a Biblical example to be honest, to be grim even, if that's where you are at. For all of our sakes let's not stay there in that feeling, but acknowledge the weariness when it comes. Unless I can acknowledge that I am not enough to rescue my family with one hand tied behind my back, I cannot admit that I need Jesus for this.

    God was not going to kill Moses because of the state of his son's body, but because Moses was not circumcised in heart. Moses spoke to the people of Israel later about a new kind of circumcision in Deuteronomy 30:6 "The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live."

    In the words of a perceptive seven-year-old "Moses wasn't sure what team he was on" and that will always cost you your life whether God takes it or you fritter it away. Like Moses, though, we find ourselves unable to obey, unable to be "all in" of our own strength. We all need a Zipporah whose righteousness can stand in the gap, but you know and I know that we are not enough. We need someone bigger. Stronger. More righteous. We need Jesus, bridegroom to the church, whose blood truly is enough.  

     
      

Story, Sweet Perilous Story

When I started writing curriculum for my church’s Junior Church program last year it became clear that the kids kind of didn’t know what the Bible is, so we started there: What is the Bible? Who wrote it? Why is it arranged the way it is? What are in the different sections, and how do you find things fast? We memorized the books of the Bible together. We did worksheets. It was very satisfying, and we ended the summer with a happy glow and a hard-earned pizza party.  This semester we turned to the subject I really wanted to tackle: God's constant character, from creation to the end of the world. I want the kids to really know God’s character. 
We are doing a detective theme. 
It’s cute. 
It is not, however, nearly as fulfilling for any of us. Whereas cranking out a polished lesson every week was a joy in the first unit, this one is a real wrestling match. It gives me goosebumps, it’s a little fly-by-night, and the pace feels absolutely punishing. Some weeks the kids are not so enthusiastic either, to be honest: All of which got me thinking “Why?” 

   I think that the unit on the history and purpose of the Bible was so fun for all of us because it dealt with concrete facts: This is how many books there are. This is how you find the New Testament. Facts are fun because they are easy to impart, easy to memorize, easy to feel accomplished about, easy to test on, easy to check off your list. You can do really creative things with facts, and then in the end they are there, nice and solid like coming home. 

   The thing is, if God knew it would be best for us to connect with him in a quantifiable way, surely he would have given us such a way. Instead he gives us his presence via the Holy Spirit, Jesus, of course, and stories! Doctrine too, but the doctrine is like the bones beneath the flesh of the stories. I find that fascinating and terrifying. Stories, I mean, not bones! I love bones. And stories. But you knew that.

   Story is enmeshed in every culture. Whether you tell stories to drumbeats around a campfire or via Youtube, story is how we pass down meaning and cultural value. It’s how we explore, internalize, and make sense of the world. Your family stories confirm who you are and where you came from: The love, the ethics, the humor! Story has a potency of it's own, and serious staying power in the mind. Every time you approach a really good story you have a new thought. It touches your experience in a new way. Think, for instance, of how many times over we tell Red Ridinghood. We need to tell it again and again because Red Ridinghood is each of us, straying off the path, rationalizing, entranced by something just up ahead. Like us she is both innocent and willfully ignorant, or even a bit fascinated by gleaming incisors. Like life, it could be dark, comic, tragic, or reassuring depending on your angle. Red Ridinghood is also someone we love, whom we want to protect from wolves. Heck, Red Ridinghood might be the wolf! What then? We need this story because we are not sure to recognize a wolf when we see one, because the wolf might be misunderstood, because no matter how well you know your grandmother, you can’t know her all the way, because it isn’t certain whether we can wait for a woodcutter, or whether we need to be prepared to slay the wolves ourselves. Story helps us work these questions out. 

   Our culture is just as heavily dependent on story as any other, with a key difference from traditional society: Overall it seems like we are less commonly adept at telling stories ourselves. On average we are more consumers of story than purveyors. That may be a somewhat temporary problem as younger generations are finding new ways to convey stories with common technology. But here we are, a little bit in between, and if God saw fit to speak to us through story, and I am supposed to be passing that on to the little minds in my charge, the problem is this: Instead of teaching story the same academic way I'd teach fact, how do I celebrate the story and become a really great storyteller? How do I equip other teachers to become really great storytellers? I don’t know, I’ll have to keep pressing into that. That’s the fascinating part.

    I am a little distracted from the "How Question" by this scary observation: Story is really dangerous to consensus. Literature is perilous! If you sit 3 people down to talk about a story they may agree on a few facts, but they will disagree on the interpretation. You can get consensus amongst peers in many areas, but with literature you can’t always get everyone to agree on something as foundational as who the villain is. I don’t know if this is objectively true, but my observation is that the better the story is, the more nuanced and wide ranging the interpretations seem to be.  That’s so true with the Bible too, isn’t it? It helps us work our questions out, but we approach it with experiences and presuppositions, and we don’t always come up with the same answers. God has given us that leeway, even with the Holy Spirit. There are facts there, but He didn’t make his primary message to us a mathematical proof. He made it story. And that's where the skeleton of doctrine comes in, because it gives us facts, a place to start. Still, there's the Living Word humming with the bass line of truth that rattles us. 

    I think as we try to responsibly hand down the Christian faith in our western secular culture, it really is easier to retreat into dry fact mixed with personal opinion, memorization, ritual, truisms, common experience, politics, vitriol, warm fuzzies, crafts, moralism… anything but story. Story cannot be controlled and regulated the way these other things can. When it comes down to it, all we can do is deliver both the great story of the Bible, and our own stories accurately, vividly, daily. The Holy Spirit must do the rest. That’s the miracle isn’t it? That in each generation God does the heavy-lifting in spite of our toddler-like counterproductive help. 

A Mountain of Steel

  Jesus and his disciples were out in a boat crossing the Sea of Galilee when a furious storm came up with waves sweeping into the boat. Matthew 8 tells us that Jesus was sleeping through it all, and the disciples were understandably freaking out and woke him saying “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!” Before he gets up and fixes it he says “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?”

  In his excellent book Hearing God, Dallas Willard points out “Now the disciples obviously had great faith in Jesus. They called upon him, counting on him to save them. They had great faith in him, but they did not have his great faith in God. It was because they did not have his faith that he spoke of how little faith they had. 

  Some Christians too commonly demonstrate that the notions of ‘faith in Christ’ and ‘love for Christ’ leave Christ outside the personality of the believer.”

  The concept excited me and I knew it was deeply applicable right now, but it took many readings to let it sink in. To grow one’s faith has always seemed vague to me. How much faith are we supposed to have? How did the disciples get it in the long run? If “little faith” here refers to the quality and placement of the disciples’ faith rather than quantity, application was going to answer some of my questions.

  I know that I am to have the mind of Christ with which to make judgments (1 Cor. 2:16). I know that Christ is my life (Col. 3:4), that regeneration brings me back to square 1, but my redeemed life + his life in me is true life. I know that the peace of Christ is to rule in my heart (Col. 3:15), and the word of Christ– who is himself the Word (Jn. 1:1)– is to dwell in me richly (Col. 3:16). If Christ’s life is to literally, not figuratively be my life, then it makes sense that I need to ask for his faith as well. 

  Of course it was only a few hours before I once again desperately needed Christ’s faith. In addition to not feeling great at this time of year, God has directed me to get involved with something that is particularly spiritually embattled. At first Mondays were hectic, then Sundays, and it spread from there. For a month and a half every minute of rest has been a dark, dirty fight. 

  Here’s what happened: Once again as I prepared to obey God’s request I was feeling sick and tired. There was a chemical halo of anxiety to it, and as I prayed about it, I got the sense that it was more spiritual than anything. I was prompted to remember what I had read about Christ’s faith, but I didn’t really know how to apply it. First I asked to be taught to pray. Then I asked for greater faith, for Christ’s faith in God. Without any awareness of when or how it happened, without any sensation at all, I was suddenly calmer. My immediate impression was that I had more backbone. I was suddenly praying with calm clarity addressing the darkness and anxiety: 

  “My life and times are in God’s hands. If he has asked me to go tonight, I will go, and you will not be able to stop me. His rule limits your power to harass me. You are clearly allowed to make me uncomfortable, but you are not allowed to actually stop me. I am the Lord’s servant. I will not be afraid.” 

That was it. No dazzling linguistic fireworks, just a rock solid statement of facts. It reminded me of how Jesus prays in Scriptures, but not how I pray. I try to pray with authority in Jesus’ name. There was a point in time when that seemed like enough. Maybe it was developmentally appropriate then, but I’m going to tattle on myself here. Lately it sounds kind of whiney and desperate: An urgent, peevish whinge “They are picking on me...Stop it! Jesus doesn’t want you to do that!” No one likes to listen to that, nor does it carry any authority. It isn’t effective at stopping an attack. As we all hopefully learn in grade school, singsonging “Hey! Mom told you to stop that” really only eggs on antagonists. 

By showtime I felt like a 30 lb weight I had been schlepping all month had melted away. I also slept restfully that night for the first time in a month. I have since had occasion to pray this way a shocking number of times. I’m having to fight just as hard for sleep and peace, but I am entering the combat with a power far beyond my own. 

  When I pray this way it feels like the tattered membrane of my faith is firmly backed by a mountain of solid steel, the force that invented nature. Aha! Is that why faith as small as a mustard seed can move a mountain? My own faith might be very flimsy, but Christ's isn't. 

  I can’t express why, but it also feels like instead of tugging on my brother’s sleeve to get him to beat up my bullies, I am stepping out from behind him and we are taking care of it together as a family. The verse that keeps coming to mind is 

Romans 8:29 “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” 

  

  This is a conformity unlike any I have experienced before, and I’ve never had a sense of Jesus as a brother before, but it is really awesome! It is a quality you can sense in the heroes of the faith: Not just an assurance that comes from years of walking with God, but that otherworldy sense of being tapped into the source of life, of Shalom. I am definitely not there yet myself, but I know God means for me to be. 

“For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority.” Colossians 2:9-10

On Making Art

Dear Friend,

Please make art.

How burdensome yet freeing it must have been as an artist’s apprentice in the Renaissance: To copy the works of masters while they were young, perfecting technique in the years before they were experienced enough with life to have much to say! How they must have chafed at being chained to the work of those who went before them, mastering the technique of their masters, mixing colors, ghost painting and getting no credit. So alright there were ups and downs. How ardently they probably wished for their own commissions! I speak from experience when I say that today we graduate from college with a degree, taste, talent, and all the freedom in the world, only to be disappointed since most of us aren’t exactly ready to be tastemakers yet, and no one is clamoring to pay us. As thinking Christians, bad art is all the more daunting. There is this added weight of desiring to make art that glorifies God and all of the questions we all have at first: “Am I supposed to be painting saints and florals here? What if cars are more my thing? Is Christian art figurative of necessity? Should I sign with an ichthus?”

So you talk and read and wrestle and you start realizing those questions are funny, and maybe even cute. Still, the weight of bringing glory to the Lord of Creation by the works of your hands is overwhelming. Anything else seems more appealing. That’s where most people stop. There is always something “practical” you could be doing instead of making.     

Don’t let your taste stifle your talent before you have experience. 

Make art anyway. Allow yourself to be an apprentice. Work on technique. Copy technique. Don’t make art in your brain, make it in your chest and arms. Make art with permission to throw it away. Draw directions out of a hat. Make art that is blatant plagiarism. Make art that isn’t planned so that you second-guess yourself out of it. Make art that lets God be in charge of his own glory, because that’s the reality anyway. Make art that you don’t burden with the task of telling you who you are. Make art that does not serve a purpose.  Make art without evaluating how it fits into your body of work or your life calling. Don’t worry about your body of work. Your calling is both art and people, just like every other artist’s calling is. They are inextricably intertwined. Love God, love people, make art. 

A day will come when you will need every technique you mastered in the course of making bad art– and bad some of it will be! Someday you will need technique to make good art and you will not have time to learn from scratch while the passion burns you. You must not wait to create until you have something profound to do and know just how to do it. If you wait, that time will never come. We must all create against the day when the alchemy of time and experience turns our dabblings and ramblings into gold that will glorify God. 

School builds taste and maybe technique. It gives you a lexicon, but the missing ingredient is time. Depending on how you calculate it you need 10,000 hours or 7 years to master anything. Unfortunately, for the majority of us no one is going to sit us in a little room with our supplies and catered meals until it gets done. We have to do it ourselves. You make good art the same way you make good friends: By showing up all the time, even when it does not suit you. Prioritizing.  

So do it. It’s hard, but let's make art, friend. 

Note: There are 4 links to other articles and talks hidden in this post! Consider them further reading. 

Why Vitamin D Reminds Me of Redemption

 This morning I woke from vivid and dark dreams into pain and... gratitude.
This is my brain. This is my brain without Vitamin D. Deprived of D I am not able to process calcium which allows me to think clearly or maintain bone and muscle integrity. Something I don't understand happens to my iron and my heart races. No amount of water quenches my thirst. I feel panicked. My skin is too sensitive. I feel like I am wearing a lead body suit. Every move wearies me.

I am so thankful.

It wasn't long ago that I thought this was normal, that everyone lived this way and I was just not as good at coping as everyone else.
I am thankful that now approximately 95% of the year I don't have to struggle with this because there are supplements I can take to stay balanced, except for around the winter solstice. I have learned many lessons from this experience and I am thankful for most of them. The others I am still working on!

Most of all I am thankful for such a graphic picture of sin and redemption.
I was born into this mess, and I didn't know the truth. People assured me I was perfectly normal, or suggested self-help techniques to elevate my mood, but the truth is that in and of myself there was nothing I could do. I didn't even know that there was a real problem because I was right in the middle of it all and I had experienced nothing else.
That's the way sin is too. I was born into it, suffering from it, but unconscious of the source of my need and the answer to it. Miraculous rescue had to come from outside of myself when all I had earned was death and destruction. Praise be to my Savior!

Since Vitamin D is a tiny little example of the grace of the incarnation to me, maybe being weak during the advent season is not such a bad thing after all.

There and Back Again: My Journey to the Other Side of Functional Deism Part II

In the last post I shared that when I came to believe lies about God’s presence with me I unwittingly became a practicing deist. 

I began to wonder “What makes me so sure it is God I am hearing?” I began to think 

“God only speaks through the Bible– which I cannot fully understand,” and finally “I am alone, and I use an imagined voice of God to get what I want.” 

Part of what’s so tricky is that it is plausible that any one of us might misunderstand the Bible or dearly want to believe that wishful thinking is a special word from God. 

So how do you know if it’s actually God speaking to you and not your subconscious? 

We know God lives in us by the fruit of obedience and by his Spirit in us. 

I John 3:24 The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us. 

We know that God does not lie. He will not contradict himself. Scripture and God’s individual words to us will agree. Numbers 23:19 God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?

We know that God will help us understand when we ask. James 1:5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 

We know that the consequences of acting upon God’s words to us will be in keeping with Scripture: Not to say that the consequences will always be easy, but that they will be good and not evil. 

James 1:13-15 When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. 

Those are the hallmarks, but to really recognize the Shepherd’s voice you have to spend a lot of time with him. 

Unfortunately I was not using reason, I was listening to lies. The delivery methods for some of these destructive messages were very painful, and the pain covered up the growth of loneliness in my heart until it was tough and strong. It has been years, but the seed was planted and watered and the fruit of deism in my life is worry. Worry was what really got my attention.

Worry Wart 

There was a time, even as an adult and a parent, when people talked about the burden of worry and  I could sympathize, but not relate. I did experience anxiety at times, but for the most part my anxiety felt primarily chemical. 

Worry is a little different for me. It’s a nagging feeling I keep returning to, generally about a question I have no answer for. 

Lately I have had a little growl in the pit of my stomach, a little dirty feeling when the questions rise unbidden. It comes down to meeting a “gray area” where there is no universal rule and attacking it to find a black and white answer. Oh, stubborn heart! Try as I might there are no mentions of perfect immunization schedules in Scripture, nor is there a dress code spelled out. Those are two things that have oddly hounded me. Of course I have prayed about it. Of course I have gone back to the Scriptures, but do you know what I mean when I say praying can feel like worrying? The Bible is no talisman to ward off the troublesome feelings that wear like a bur in your sock. I needed my Father to get to the heart of it.

Cure for Warts

God did just that. He didn’t answer my questions about shots or shoes, he asked me if I trust him. 

Lord, you know I do, that’s why I am asking! 

Then why are you looking for rules instead of asking me about things? Why do you think I won’t answer? I am talking to you now! That discussion leader. If she doesn’t think that people can see me in you, does that make it true? It’s time to stop believing what other people have to say, and believe my voice.    

Here are some verses God brought to my mind that night as he spoke to me in the car. For the actual verse, click the reference.  

Romans 5:8 At my most unlovely and unworthy, he rescued me. 

II Peter 1:3 God’s power has given me everything I need for life and godliness. What else is there, really? 

II Timothy 3:16-17 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness. 

Ephesians 4:30 I am sealed by His Spirit as a deposit of my redemption. 

I Peter 2:9 I am a member of a royal priesthood and a holy nation, a people set apart for his glory. 

John 10:27-28 I can hear his voice and know him and follow him. Nothing can separate us. 

It was time to reject the lies and embrace the truth. Worry hasn’t come knocking on my door since then.

Now What?

It may be out of the ordinary for Christians to live in the freedom of a conversational walk with God, but it was never meant to be exceptional. Walking and talking with God is part of what we lost in the garden of Eden, and one thing we gain through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. Our communion isn’t perfect yet, but that is no reason to hold back. If God lives within us speaking to us and through us personally in the moment, we should expect –if God is who he claims to be– that it would be ELECTRIFYING! Electrifying and attractive! Weird in the best way, and very powerful! You would expect that a believer brimming with Christ would be different from anyone else– even from other believers– radically, and from the inside out. The apostles certainly weren’t a homogenous bunch. They had different strengths, weaknesses, passions, and callings. Close communication with God brings out each believer’s unique reflection of our infinite God.  

Walking with God in this way strikes at the heart extremes of practicing deism as mentioned in Part I. A conversational walk with God tosses out the human measures of goodness and badness. Think of how Jesus cleared the temple with a whip, but scattered the crowd that wanted to stone the woman caught in adultery. He was constantly doing the opposite of the Pharisees’ rule keeping while honoring his Father. So you might think that Jesus abolished the standards and opened up a lot of gray. He didn’t. When you are living in dependance on God there is no such thing as a truly gray area. When you get right up close to life with him as your lens you can usually see shades clearly as situations arise. He can tell you. This approach is more delicate than striking every issue of life into broad black and white categories from the get-go or using the gray areas as a land of everlasting procrastination. It requires trust and communication. Jesus demonstrated radical dependance on God. 

Can you imagine if the Church rose up and lived Christ’s extreme? It would turn the world upside down. Are you ready? He is. 

There and Back Again: My Journey to the Other Side of Functional Deism Part I

Do you believe that God will communicate with you? That he will speak to you specifically about things both large and small, and you, yes you can learn to listen?
I did, then I didn’t, and then I believed again.
There are 3 reasons to tell this story: Recounting helps me remember what I learned. This testimony might help to untangle someone else’s story. Finally, this is also a cautionary tale for leaders because little ideas have big consequences.

 Part I will tell about the lies I bought into that brought me to deism, and Part II will cover the rotten fruit that living as a deist bore in my life and how God broke through.

 The great blessing of my childhood is that my parents believe that God speaks. They taught me to listen. Growing up reading how God sent fire and rain when Elijah prayed on Mount Carmel and spoke to him in a whisper in the desert it never even occurred to me that God would not do the same with me. He did. Just like the scripture “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” John 10:27 I can hear God’s voice. Not an audible one.
Most of the time there is a montage of Scriptures, memories, phrases, snatches of things I have read. Sometimes it is just knowing, and all of these thoughts on the inside of me are cleaner, stronger, quieter, and more accurate than the tenor of my own thoughts. Yes, I can hear God’s voice– except for *ahem* the times when I can’t.

So here is my terminology.
Deism: Boiled down it is the belief in God and His principles, but that He just more or less got things started and walked away. It is the belief that his involvement in the world is distant or nonexistent.
Then there is Functional Deism: Though I would never identify myself as a deist, my life was telling a different story.

The titles below in bold are lies I started believing that led me down a path of doubt and worry.

 “What makes you so sure it is God you are hearing?”
 The silence of God is something I am not qualified to talk about. What I have in mind is my own deafness and worry grown from a seed of doubt. Until college I always served in the church with mentors, not peers. My mentors had their struggles to be sure, but they moved with the assurance of years walked in God’s presence. Uncertainty and doubt was not in my model, or at least I didn’t pick up on them until I was serving on my campus with peers and young campus ministry staff. Doubt and uncertainty are really popular these days. It’s kind of cool to have doubts because doubts, by this model of thinking, indicate humility and being “real.” This is not to diminish the herculean struggles of people with genuine doubts and uncertainty, but I have observed that the habitual posture of vague hesitation is sometimes a mask for laziness or fear of listening.
 As Christian leaders and students we would have inevitable questions about which way to go, and there was always this tentativeness about the answers.
 You know that fear you get when you turn your blue book in way before anyone else finishes the test? I started having that disquiet because while I was getting answers in the space of a thought in communion with my heavenly Father, others were really wrestling with angels or something and I began to wonder: Am I making things up, showing off, or deluded?
I would like to posit an alternate theory in hindsight. What if everyone forgot to tell 3 year old me that people in this day and age don’t communicate with God like Moses and the prophets and God had almost 2 decades of practice into me before anyone thought to question it?
That was really just the seed. The seed of functional deism.

 “God only speaks through the Bible– which most people cannot understand.”
 It was in a church that really elevated the Bible that the soil was prepared. The pastor was extremely gifted with exegesis. Exegesis means “critical explanation or interpretation of a text, esp. of scripture.” It was intimidating to read the Bible there, to teach, or to discuss. It was hard to know if you were doing it right, and context was so all-important that application of what we were reading was hard to focus on. This put a whole heap of authority on the pastor– who never asked for that burden, by the way– who specialized in reading and discerning the Scripture, instead of on God’s Holy Spirit working in believers. I don’t remember anyone out-and-out saying that God doesn’t speak to his people anymore, but it was heavily stressed in classes and studies that the way we hear from him today is through the Scriptures.
 This line from the excellent book on this subject Hearing God by Dallas Willard puts it succinctly: “...while the Bible is the written Word of God, the Word of God is not simply the Bible. The way we know that this is so is, above all, by paying attention to what the Bible says.”

 It is true that the Bible is the written word of God, and stop me if I am crazy here, you also need communication with God to understand what is written. If you can’t trust yourself to hear the Holy Spirit to help you understand his word to you, it starts to be very difficult to understand at all. It casts doubt on God masked as doubt in yourself, which sneakily doubles for humility, but isn’t. You have to boil the Word down to axioms. You take the breath out of the God-breathed. There start to be a lot of gray areas– not in theory, but in practice. Every church I have been a part of acknowledges that it is God who reveals his word to our hearts, but hear me here, when you start stressing your own understanding of the Scriptures it is natural to stop leaning on God for it. Church can be such a factory for deists.
 When interpreting Scripture without the Holy Spirit I have seen two extremes: Some can’t admit to there being any ambiguity, in which case God has already either said everything in the Bible if you can just find it, or you weren’t meant to know anyway. These folks are Do-It-Yourselfers. It’s up to them to find the path God set out in his Word. If you have broad categories then you have a rule book and no great need to listen.
 At the other extreme there are people who really like ambiguity and gray areas and the license it gives them to justify any decision. The ambiguity people are Armchair Architects talking big, loving to pontificate on theory, quick to criticize. They have some edgy scale models, but they haven’t built a thing. If you live in the gray and God hasn’t made himself known, then there is also no need to listen.

 Both of these heart approaches are deistic because they presume that God got you started, but on a day-to-day basis you can do it yourself.
When did I stop expecting to hear from God? Here the hard soil of my heart met the doubtful seed of functional deism, but it needed some water.

 “You are alone, and you use an imagined voice of God to get what you want.” 
 Had church leaders undercut my walk with God when I was confident in recognizing God’s voice, I would like to think I would have fought back or removed myself to a safe distance, but by now I was vulnerable and bewildered which left me open to attack.
 I want to be clear that these were not first and foremost attacks from other Christians, but from the enemy of my soul who used words and situations and all of our brokenness as leverage against us.
 I want to avoid blow-by-blow accounts, but I don’t want to be mysterious either.

1. In prayer about a ministry position, I felt I had received an answer from God that I was free to step down. My mentor disagreed and did not accept my resignation. Message: You manipulate God to get the answer you want. 
2. When asked to design something for the women’s ministry the leaders tossed ardent days worth of my work in favor of clip art without telling me or giving me another shot. On the surface that is inconsiderate, but it was more. Like most artists and fine craftsmen, I know that my creativity comes from who I am, and that some, though not all, of my work is a spiritual expression, i.e. that it comes from communication with God. Message: Not only are your relationship with us, your time, and your skills not important to us, clip art is of higher value than your communication with God. 
3. I was told multiple times in public by a discussion leader that people do not see God in me and are not drawn to him in response “in the real world.” This one blows a few circuits, and it would take me pages to fully address all the reasons why! Do people not see God through his people in general or is this peculiar to me? Is that because God does not shine through his children, or because his children are opaque, or is it just me in particular? Since I was referencing actual statements people had made to me, were we not in the real world? What world were we in? Scariest of all, if it isn’t God people see in me what DO they see? I’ll stop there, but you get the picture. Message: God is not with you, you are alone and possibly delusional. 

 These propositions are not strong in and of themselves, but years of little incidents like these worked into the fissures in my faith and had me feeling terribly alone. It is almost comical now, because God didn’t actually quit speaking to me, nor did I stop seeking him, if only in name. I simply didn’t expect an answer, so I wasn’t listening. If I had stopped to examine my beliefs and seen how fallacious these were they couldn’t have lasted long, but I didn’t. The plant grew and took root. Much like planting a fruit tree it took a few years for the deism to produce fruit, but when it did it was rotten to the core!

Why We Are Fostering

Next month if all goes smoothly the State will open our home and we will welcome our first foster child. Daniel and I have completed our preservice training, we have filled out paperwork and gotten background checks. There are a convertible crib and convertible car seat waiting in the spare bedroom. We just need to get our physicals and finish baby-proofing while our friends send in their personal reference forms. We have asked for a child between newborn and age 2 so that he or she will be younger than our youngest. The next question is always "Are you looking to adopt?" and the answer is that we are open to it but not seeking adoption specifically. If we feel God urging us to we will, but at the same time there is a need for families who are willing to be there for kids for just a year or so as well. 

When we talk to other families who foster I can see the burnout lurking and it scares me. Exposing my own children to the deep problems of other children scares me. It's not like I am just bursting with emotional energy and enthusiasm right now. Passion, yes! Enthusiasm, no. Twenty seven hours of training on where these kids are coming from and what it takes to be a "professional parent" has done little to raise my spirits. Passion, yes! Spirits, no.

Today I need to revisit why we are doing this, and what hope I have for fostering.   

Reason #1: Obedience.

Throughout the Bible God has a lot to say about societies and people who do not care for the helpless among them: The orphans, the widows, and the aliens, but I will leave it at 2 passages: 

Psalm 68:4-6 "Sing to God, sing praise to his name, extol him who rides on the clouds– his name is the LORD– and rejoice before him. A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families, he leads forth the prisoners with singing; but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land." 

James 1:27 "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."  

The Scriptures make it very clear that while good works do not save you, they are the obedience expected from the redeemed. One of those areas of obedience is toward protecting the powerless. In America the orphans are in foster care and other alternative living situations, and Christians are called to be part of the solution.

Reason #2: I Was Adopted, Cosmically Speaking.

Confession: I often skim the lists of passages people reference online so I try not to use many, but this is important! 

To break it down, the Bible is the story of God's glory as he redeems mankind. Though we were created for intimacy with God, we are each rebellious against him, and dead in sin. While I like to picture this death along the lines of Snow White looking ravishing in her glass coffin, the Bible describes something more along the lines of an orgy that turns into a zombie fest. It's not pretty, and I don't mean ugly-cute, I mean horrifying. You just can't get more helpless or unlovely than the walking dead. That's when Jesus stepped in:  

Romans 5:6-8 "You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

Jesus Christ took my death penalty, bestowed life and righteousness on me, and made me a child of God. As an heir of God and co-heir with Christ I have all the rights and responsibilities of a son.

Before I cringe about bringing little people with inconvenient behaviors into my household, it behooves me to consider that God did this for me, and it was the saving of me.    

John 1:12 "Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God– children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God."     

Reason #3: God's Idea of Family Is Different. 

The human idea of family is people bound together by birth, bloodlines, customs and contracts. Traditionally the individual served the family's corporate wellbeing. American families today are concerned with the family serving each individual, and helping them to be all they can. God's idea of family is people he has redeemed regardless of blood, race, income, or nationality. Jesus said our natural families will divide over belief or rejection of him, but our heavenly family is radically inclusive for those who have claimed him as Lord. In God's version of family we are to lay our lives down for one another, neither to advance a patriarch nor to advance ourselves. It takes us into the realm of true love and giving glory to God.   

We see that dynamic working out in the struggles of the New Testament church as God moved his people and brought down the barriers between Jew and Gentile, slave and free, wealthy and poor, without requiring conformity of culture. Rather than turning the church into mindless clones there was a flowering of freedom and culture within the overarching ethic of the family of God. We have a lot to learn.

Did you know that in ancient Rome when plagues struck the city and everyone who could flee did, the Christians would stay and care for the sick and dying–– often dying themselves? That's radical family. Did you know that in Roman culture the husband had the final say on whether or not a baby lived and was part of the family? If the baby got the thumbs down it was put into a clay pot and left on the doorstep in the elements to die. Later this practice was banned and people threw their babies off a bridge into the Tiber river instead, and in each case the Christians rescued the babies and raised them as their own. That's radical family. 

Reason #4: Family Changes the World.

Daniel's sister Maggie has a heart to stop human trafficking. She has traveled all over the world, worked for amazing agencies, done things you wouldn't believe, and given up things I take for granted. When she visits with churches here in the US people often say "We really want to get involved in anti-trafficking as a church!" to which she responds "How do you see yourselves being involved?" She knows that there are a staggering number of girls blatantly trafficked in our own towns and cities. They may not be locked up in red light districts, but they are in heavy emotional and physical bondage even so. There's a halo of heroism surrounding the idea of taking a trip and being part of brothel stings in asia, but what about the very young girls working the streets in your city? They are emotionally, physically, and sexually abused in horrific ways. These are girls whose strongest experience of family is with their pimps, and they will return to "the life" because that is the family they know. Maggie tells people that if they want to make a difference in anti-sex trafficking as a church they need to become foster families, and support foster families. The rich young ruler sadly left Jesus because he couldn't imagine selling his possessions to give to the poor, and these individuals turn away because they want to travel far away to the pain and be a part of a tidy solution, not bring the pain home with them.  

 Most of what you have learned in life you learned in your family, for good or ill. You imprinted on how your family uses money, deals with conflict, and approaches honor. We can all point to skills and values we are really glad our families bestowed and a few we would pass on if we could. Now imagine that you just didn't have any family to speak of, or that no one had taught anyone in your family life skills so they had none to pass to you. Imagine your heart was so fearful of constant danger that you could not learn a life skill to literally save your life? That's where many kids "in the system" are at. Just being born into their situation put them many steps back, then life doesn't help. They need solid relationships and true love. Transforming families is the way to redeem culture, which is why God spends so much space talking about family in the Bible. 

1 John 3:16-18 "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with action and in truth."

The conclusion for Daniel and I? We are blessed with riches in the form of family, and it's time to spend them trusting that God will provide for our needs even as we lay our lives down. 

Define What You Do

Out with some dancers I hadn’t seen in a while, one of my partners asked what I did. I said “I am a full time stay-at-home mom, so you know. I wrangle toddlers.” to which he replied “No, what do you do?”

To me that was a beautiful and sensitive thing to ask. 

When I say “My husband is an engineer” people always ask “What kind? What does he do?” because there is a lot of engineering to be done in the world so I need to be more specific. 

It made me think of all of the mothers I know. We are all full-time mothers aren’t we? Whatever else we do, we are full time mothers. We all do it differently. Some of you are counselors and therapists, some volunteer a lot at your kids schools, some of you are taking a degree program or backing up your husband in his job. You ladies teach Bible studies and wipe noses and have people over and listen to them when you don’t feel like it. You take care of chronically ill or delayed children, and you write position papers on important subjects and sing on the side. 

My goodness but we do a lot, we mothers! I just wanted to say 

Brava, ladies! You do amazing things against all odds, you are fantastic people and I am proud to know you! Thank you. But do you know what? If Christ is your savior even that’s not who you are! Neither your title nor your activities need define you.

There are also some of you who wish you could say you were a wife, a mother, a stay-at-home mom. I want to tell you

Brava, ladies! You do amazing things that those of us who are married with kids don’t have the time or energy to do. You make the world richer and more beautiful for being in  it, and I am proud to know you. Thank you. But do you know what? If Christ is your savior even that’s not who you are! Neither your title nor your activities need define you.

We are all so much more than our generic titles, so thanks, mister. Thanks for asking about what I do. That’s important, but there’s more.

Who You Are 

“So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise." Galatians 3:26-29.

For our purposes we could add married or unmarried, child-rich or child-free to the list. 

Then the list gets obliterated because that list is how we compare and see how we measure up. 

Which is holier: Working in a job that really helps people or being home for your kids all day? Both. Neither. That’s not really the point. We want a ranking, but in Christ there’s no hierarchy like that. See what I mean? 

Your title isn’t you: You are not a “working mom” or a “full time homemaker” or a “single girl.” You are first and foremost bought with a beautiful and bloody price, and you are a citizen in the Kingdom of heaven, the country which is our eternal future, and which we are called to bring into our world now. Your title doesn’t rank you in the Kingdom of Heaven. In the Kingdom we stand equal because Christ sacrificed himself for us and values us equally. That means there is no inherent value system for color, gender, marital status, work place, etc. We are all on holy ground, and we all have one holy calling to bring the kingdom of heaven down in our unique places with our unique gifts. 

What You Do 

It’s a subtle shift in perspective, then, you royal priestesses, you holy nation, because your days are still filled with the same things as before, be it the day job you are mildly conflicted about, or accosting toddlers with tissues– and in any case trying to get a balanced dinner on the table before 9pm. 

And by balanced you do know I mean you maintained your balance between the kitchen and the dining room and didn’t dump the frozen pizza on the floor. 

Still, these things are elevated when we invite our Father “Your kingdom come, your will be done on this corner of earth I live in just as your will is done in heaven.” (My words) Bringing the kingdom transcends my fears that what I am doing is not important enough and I am wasting my time, or that it is too important and I am botching it. It cuts away all of the extras and connects my heart to God’s heart, my work to God’s work. That’s the tranquility I think Paul is talking about when he finishes up a passage on not putting all of your effort into to changing your station in life:

“What I mean, brothers, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives [or husbands] should live as if they had none; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.” 1 Corinthians 7:29-31

That could read as apathy, but within the greater context of the gospel I think Paul is speaking of the peace and sweeping perspective of living this sliver of eternity I am in right now the same way I will live all the others forever through the power of the Counselor, the Holy Spirit. I want the goals of eternity to swallow up my marital status, my grief, my pleasure, my stuff, and my experiences. 

My prayer: Please, please let it be that bringing the kingdom in that kind of peace is really what I do. 

Standing On Your Own Four Feet

This month Daniel and I have been finding out first-hand why "The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." My mom says “Notice God doesn’t say it is not good for the woman to be alone” but I’ll be the first to up and say it's not good for me to be alone, and God knew it! 

If spending 2 weeks apart isn’t a great advertisement for marriage, then I don’t know what is. Wednesday night I got back from a visit with my parents, and we had each accomplished so much, but what a sorry state Daniel and I were in! I had hardly slept between the girls waking up a lot, dancing my feet off, having no one to spoon with, and the fact that when the lights go out I get my best ideas. If I am alone I turn the lights back on and start sketching and writing into the wee hours. When I got back Daniel had finished the kitchen renovation and a whole passel of other projects, and he was living on raisin bran and unseasoned ground beef that had gone bad in the refrigerator, popping antihistamines because of his allergies, and he wasn’t sleeping either! 

Sometimes I feel bad because I don’t bring in any money. I feel a little helpless because don’t even know what our bills are, let alone pay them. I don’t do anything with scheduling, planning, budgeting, filing, paying taxes, putting nails in the wall, comparison shopping... none of that. The way I have seen it I don’t stand on my own two feet when I am perfectly capable of doing so. After this trip I need to concede to Daniel though. There is a lot to be said for 3 good meals a day, someone remembering to change the filters on the air conditioners (hence the allergies), and getting into a bed with clean line dried sheets at night. Having someone to cuddle with and talk to every evening is really fantastic. Oh, and not having a slimy moldy shower. That’s super too. 

The advantages of singleness are that you have waaaaaaay more time to do things and no one’s preferences but your own to consult. 

Married I don’t know where the time goes, and the continual negotiation to find what works for both of you can be numbingly exhausting every once in a while. The great advantage of marriage is that together you can make a more balanced life than you would apart. Alone you have a lot of time, but also some social and *ahem* marital needs that don’t get met, and it is easy to turn to time-killers like media, alcohol, and procrastination to wile away the hours and numb yourself. If most of the time is spent to good purpose, then singleness is an amazing thing! That’s why Daniel always gives this rule of thumb about whether a couple should get married or not: “Can you accomplish more for the kingdom of heaven together than you can apart?” Taking two wholes and making a new whole can be a real challenge. “Opposites attract”, and then you have to resolve all of the opposition! Doing your own thing is so. much. easier. At the same time, all of that conflict resolution stretches and grows you. So maybe refraining from drinking milk straight out of the jug doesn’t really make you a better person in the grand scheme of things, but evaluating what is really important and learning to graciously put aside your freedom for the sake of making peace are spectacularly useful skills in pretty much every area of life. Peacemaking (which is not the same as being a push-over) is a kind of muscle that you may get more of a chance to build when you are married, besides being a fruit of the Spirit.

We have lots and lots of friends who are single. The reasons are complicated, and usually fairly good. Lots of you are doing way better than I would, and you are doing amazing things. I am merely musing upon the reasons why I am glad God married me off young. He must have known I couldn’t do it well because He wasted no time!   

In conclusion, (are you ready for the profound moral?) standing on my own two feet is highly overrated. It turns out four is better.

Be forewarned that if we don't die at the same time, Daniel and I have a pact that the survivor will hit up eHarmony (or whatever) at the earliest reasonable date, so don't say we shocked you! 

I Messed With What Works

Slap me in the forehead. I was a daily reader of the Scriptures, a rabid journaler, but also a big believer in the holy devotional cat nap and wielder of a prayerful bubble wand. You could call me a free-range Bible reader. 

Left to myself, I read the Word like I eat. Sometimes I browse, sometimes I hit it hard– not in the food-as-fuel sense, but with ravenous hunger and obsessive study. I usually let the tastes and sensations wander over my palate and revel in them. That’s how I like to read the Bible. I let the phrases burrow into my brain, I mentally connect them with other passages into a web. I daydream. I read a sentence one day, a whole book the next, until eventually I didn’t. How did the girl I just described turn into the irritable and frustrated woman I have become? 

I have many thoughts on it, but it boils down to this: I fixed something that wasn’t broken! 

Have you heard that if you are serious about the Word -and you know I don’t mean Microsoft- you should change Bibles every once in a while? The reasoning made sense and sounded holy, I heard it several places from trusted sources. It sounded like leveling up. I shelved my slimline NIV for a great big NASB study Bible. I truly love to study, and I like that Bible too, but I have had a hard time with daily Bible reading since then! I realized that was because I like to read lying down in bed. That’s how I prefer to read everything, but I couldn’t read that honking big Bible in bed! 

Over a matter of years devotions became an event, then an event I had to fight to make happen, progressing to an event that wasn’t happening much.

When did duty creep in? I was shooting for discipline! When did spending time with God become a way to accomplish something like having a good attitude, personal enrichment or raising godly children? Phooey on that! Continuing the eating analogy, food is necessary to the body but that does not explain the wild array of delicious cuisines in the world. We eat mostly because it is wonderful, and only occasionally because we have to. My spiritual life has been about as flavorful as dry shredded wheat with only an occasional good meal that was God’s pure dazzling grace breaking through my paste flavored efforts. I want to enjoy spending time with God, but doing it someone else's way was a 6 year flop. The irony is that my dogged attempts to be purposeful in my walk with God, starting with “upgrading” my Bible, robbed my devotions of true purpose. The whole point is relationship, and God is the one who does work in the world, not my good intentions. God’s faithfulness, not my discipline. It comes as no surprise then, that it was God who broke through.

It’s a good thing that God is willing to meet me at the ironing board, because I wasn’t meeting him anywhere else, it seemed. He just asked me a simple question “Why does your ‘time with me’ have to accomplish something?” My breath released softly and I had to admit I didn’t know. You mean I can just spend time with God without trying to figure out how it’s going to change me, without trying to learn something, without deep analysis into the implications for my life, or criticism and worry about whether I was coming into it with the right amount of enthusiasm or commitment? To approach a marriage this way would kill the love. Why would I engage my most important relationship this way? 

So I asked God what changed, and he reminded me of how I used to read the Bible and I realized it was always lying on my bed or grass or a park bench. Apparently my best posture for the spiritual discipline of Bible reading is lazy restful. I dug my old Bible out, and have had the best time with it. It works for me, and wouldn't you know it, I am learning and growing. Huh.  

Discipline is important, but I suspect it looks unique for different people. My husband meets God at a clean desk with his materials all neatly spread before him. That is also how he does everything else by the way! God’s Word jumps out at me in more freeform circumstances. God speaks in so many ways, and I am just guessing here, but it seems as if there are a fairly limited number of ways each person is geared toward listening. 

How do you listen? What works for you? What doesn't? Would changing your routine be a good thing or a bad one?