Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 256

The Real Truth About Really Having it All

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t was after the waves.

 

After the waves of contractions, after the waves of blow out diapers and wet nursing pads that leaked through the let downs and the damp spit blankets that piled high at the bedroom door.

Long after the waves of colic at 3 am and the 4:30 am crying, both the swaddled and terrified toddler, and the sleepless nights in that faded worn flannel that blurred into long stumbling years —

after she had used up all the young and just hung old everywhere, clung and nursed and pulled right out.

It was after all that decade of crashing waves that she stood on the shore with the children, tanned and limbered and long, and they dug castles. She had known visions of castles. What she hadn’t known is that things come true in the most unlikely ways.

Sometimes the crashing waves don’t wash you away, but wash you alive.

She still stood.

She stood and she didn’t know how –

because she’d yelled about tossed socks and abandoned bowls and slamming doors and flipped up toilet seats and she’d hollered and fallen so many times, her skin was right grass-stained with this tripped-up world.

She hadn’t known: Grace is the backbone of every woman still standing.

She was over half way now.

If she was given a full seventy years, she was over halfway now.

Half the sunrises behind her, half the harvest moons, half the fading summers — and all the beginnings and the firsts and all her own babies, all that behind. And it made her hurt and it made her smile: It’s all the things already behind a woman that bring her beauty to the front.

She wondered then if it had been a lie? For women, men, everyone…. It had been a lie and she didn’t know where it had got started except maybe back when it was all paradise and is that why they had lost paradise, because they’d believed the lie?

“You can have it all” — isn’t the whole truth.

No matter where you — it’s never all easy. A crop is made by all the seasons and the only way to have it all — is not at the same time… but letting one season bring its yield into the next.

This is how to have no fear —

each season makes a full year.

The girl ran through the waves.

And three of the boys dug with shovels and hands and pails.

And the firstborn stood with his father at the edge of the water, shoulder to shoulder, talking man to man on the rim of the world.

She had delivered this. And she had been full and round and she, together with him, they had delivered this, each of them, and now she stood full all over again. A mother fills, only to empty, and empty, and empty, which fills her full again, and isn’t this giving away the way to have it all?

And she could feel it, there on the beach with all the children birthed, the light in their hair, in their eyes, all the time passing under her like sand:

There are a thousand ways to be stretched thin and it’s the stretchmarks that a woman wears that can be her thin places, giving her more of God.

The only way to have it all…  is to have Jesus – and like Him — to give it all away.

Fall was coming. Summer fading.

She could feel it in the air, on her face facing right into wind.

She watched how the boys wrestled a log off the beach. She watched how they launched it into waves, into sun, into that endless horizon and everything unknown.

And in the goings and the launchings, she stood there brave — all the seasons were going to do nothing less than make a full year.

The seasons could turn. The seasons could bring it all as He meant it to be.

And she could stand there after the waves and before the waves and she could feel it –

She wasn’t afraid of swimming in the deep end, way out of her comfort zone. 

When you can’t touch bottom, you touch the depths of God.

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from the archives

Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

Dear Church, Let’s, Everyday, Just. Start. Here.:

In the heat of Uganda this past July, my heart burned hard, and I wrote a letter, a post, I keep returning to, igniting with, a post that sort of went crazy, A Letter to the North American Church. That’s what’s fiery in my bones… The church is the beautiful bride Christ’s returning for and I am passionate about the church, committed to her growth, her relentless flourishing, her certain thriving, preparing herself for His soon-coming. How do we, the church, grow and strengthen into the ready and beautiful bride?

I quietly have asked many of my friends to pray for the church over the next several weeks, and share with us here their own Letter to the North American Church. The letters they have shared with me have startled me, kindled me, convicted and moved me — changed me. My prayer is that they edify and fuel and light something deep in us all…

When my wise heart-sister, author and Women of Faith speaker, Patsy Clairmont’s  shared her letter with me — I gathered kids and read the letter aloud, lump in my throat … Simply and profoundly moved. Maybe deep change begins with the simplicity of this:

 

Dear North American Church,

This is a confession.

I whine.

I admit without reminders I forget that I am blessed.

Recently I spoke in Colorado.

At the event I was assigned a delightful hostess to assist me in finding my way around the arena.

I had been dealing with a sore knee and shoulder that annoys me and I began whining about my discomfort.

After awhile my hostess looked at me with compassion and said, “I have such a heart for people who suffer in their limbs.”

With that she slipped her foot out of her shoe and to my amazement half of her foot had been amputated.

Then she showed me her skin grafts that covered her legs and arms, all damage from a fire.

I didn’t complain about my sore knee the rest of the day.

Actually I haven’t complained in days because I’ve carried the picture of this gal and her joyful spirit in my mind.

And when I’m tempted to carry-on about my inconvenience I start reminding myself of all my blessings.

We live in a land of liberties, and even though things aren’t exactly the way we want them, and life is hard (Jesus reminded us it would be), and people are, well, a tad odd —

we have much to rejoice about.

 

Your Church-lover,

Patsy Clairmont

{And I read Patsy’s simply profound letter again and keep coming back to this:

When we wear the habit of gratitude, the church becomes irresistibly attractive. }

 

An original Women of Faith speaker, Patsy Clairmont’s quick wit and depth of biblical knowledge combine in a powerful pint-size package. A recovering agoraphobic with a pronounced funny bone, Patsy speaks to women from all walks of life. Patsy and her husband, Les, live in Tennessee.

You can find Patsy making folks laugh, cry and love Jesus more at these Women of Faith dates.

I absolutely love this woman and her sold-out heart for Jesus — highly recommend her five star, life-giving upcoming release: Twirl: A Fresh Spin at Life

Related: My burning A Letter to the North American Church

 

Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

One to Put on Repeat For All of Our Days …(or like One Thousand Gifts set to music)

 

Yeah … exactly what he said:

 

 

{consider pausing music player in bottom left margin? and RSS readers may listen here} 

{The title track from Matt Redman’s newest release: Your Grace Finds Me}

 

And the real mystery of grace is that it always arrives in time. Like the wind, grace finds us wherever we are and won’t leave us however we were found. 

 

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. (Romans 5:1-2)

Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

How to Figure the Equation of a Good Week, a Good Life

The hour drive it takes to get to the lake on a Sunday afternoon, I think of the Sunday morning sermon.

The preacher was preaching pure gospel, how to be born again.

25 years he’s been preaching it in our little country chapel, to the hog farmers, the corn-croppers, the mothers with babies in arms.

How you can’t work for it, angle for it, or jockey for it –

You can’t earn God’s love. You can only turn towards God love.

When we all unpile, the little girls run and cousins squeal and holler happy at the water’s edge.

My mama and I stand there, toes in sand and the wind blowing back hair –

Our faces turned straight into the sun.

It’s the gift, that’s what the preacher said.

Salvation is the gift, the one wrapped in God taking on skin, laying his bare love out for the world, arms spreading to the very ends of the limbs of the tree of life.

There is their giddy laughter.

There is their young, wild running.

There is my mama smiling.

There is that singular sea gull writing across the sky. These are gifts. They beg praise to Him.

Holy joy lies in the habit of murmuring thanks to God for the smallest of graces.

Sure, I mess it up and gripe a thousand times, but just like you keep doing the laundry, you just keep beginning fresh again — The habit of Thanksgiving is the one habit to wear for a lifetime.

And the thing is, really –

There is only one gift — the one ocean of Christ that falls as rain over us in a thousand ways.

Christ is the offering and salvation is the gift and repentance is what makes us recipients of grace.

Christ is the gift. Christ is the bridge Home. Christ is our joy. How can I forget this, ever stop giving thanks for Him alone?

Happiness is not getting something — but being given to Someone.

Communion with God is possible anywhere.

Yeah, it’s wild, but you’d better believe it, because that’s what believing is: Communion with God is possible anywhere.

A million little things will happen this week — and there are always really only Two Choices:  You get to decide whether you want to Complain.  Or whether you want Communion.

Life’s complicated. That’s clarity:  Complain… or Communion.

Some pundit sipping carbonated knowledge said it somewhere: Reality – Expectations = Happiness

The equation supposedly goes like this:  if your reality is greater than your expectations, then you’re happy.

[Reality (25) - Expectations (6) = Happiness (21)]

But if your expectations turn out to be greater than your reality, then you’re unhappy.

[Reality (25) - Expectations (35) = {Un}Happiness (-10) ]

There’s the beach, us at the edge, and there’s the figuring, figuring life out:

Your Reality in Christ is that you’re 100% saved, redeemed, accepted, carried, cared for, watched over, provided for, comforted, loved. Christ isn’t just sort of for you, Christ is 100% for you – your Reality is 100% safe in Him.

As for expectations — your expectations have a direct correlation on your irritations. The higher your expectations, the greater your irritations.

Mama’s watching the girls run down the shore and she’s about told it to me as many times as the waves keep lapping the shore:  Expectations kill relationships.

Your Expectations in Christ are that you don’t deserve anything, can’t earn anything, don’t merit anything — your expectations are 0% in and of the flesh. It’s all grace.

The formula for life turns out to be blessedly simple:

Reality in Christ (1oo%) – Expectations (0%) = A Happiness — that has nothing to do with what Happens

The waves just keep coming and they can.

I turn to my Mama, the water washing up over our toes.

The whole sea’s rushing up to meet the feet turned and surrendered….

And there’s the Father always there, catching …

all this happiness –

just in Him —

right into last light.

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This week, an equation for good things, promise:

1 sheet of paper, folded into 1 booklet, to write down just 7 gifts, 7 days this week, (folding instructions here)

And join us? And happily change everything by keeping your own crazy list of One Thousand Gifts?

Please, jump in, make your life about giving thanks to God! — Just add the direct URL to your specific 1000 gift list post… and if you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other in our refrain of thanks by sharing the community’s graphic within your post. Give thanks to the Lord! His Love Endures Forever!

button code here

Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

Free Bonus Christmas Ornaments {Free Jesse Tree Ornaments}

 

The Greatest Gift , written this spring, for your Christmas, to change your whole new year — change you.

 

“I’m a mom to three small children, so my focus during Advent tends to be on how I can make the season memorable for them, how I can teach them what it means that God became a baby to save the whole world. After I tuck them in at night, or when I wake up in the still dark for a few moments of quiet before they wake, I’m tired–tired from the mothering and the making it through of another holiday season. This is why I am utterly thrilled to make this book a new part of my holiday tradition.

A Jesse Tree ritual–for me. A tired–happy, yes, but tired–mama. Because that baby came in to the world for me, too. Ann’s powerful poetry of words are strung together so that I can be reminded on those dark, cold hours of Christmas that I have reason to rejoice just as much as my children. He is Emmanuel! Her words are a warm blanket during a busy season, reminding me to reflect, renew, and rejoice.”  ~Tsh N. Oxenreider

“Christ the gift of Christmas changes everything. I don’t know of anyone who continues to unpack that gift with more beauty and grace than, Ann.”  ~Sheila Walsh

“Poetic cadence and profound truth, make this resource a pure delight. I could literally feel my soul dancing in the reality of who Jesus is page after page.” ~Lysa TerKeurst 

“In a season often marred by rush and worry and self and greed, Ann Voskamp invites us to slow down and breathe and worship the Savior who came as promised. The weary world rejoices indeed.”  ~Jennifer Hatmaker

Just a quiet whisper…. If you are looking for a Christmas you’ve never experienced before — but have always yearned, you’ve started here:

with The Greatest Gift : Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas.

25 fresh, powerful, completely new and awakening Advent readings with 25 free, co-ordinating, exquisite Christmas ornaments…

If you are a reader of The Greatest Gift, you are looking for the breathtaking free bonus ornaments? It’s our joy and humbling privilege to share them with you HERE.

 

“Because some years you desperately don’t want a Christmas that can be bought,

or a Christmas you have to produce.

You want a Christmas you can hold.

A Christmas that holds you,

remakes you, revives you.

You want a Christmas that whispers: Jesus.”

 

Christmas like you’ve never experienced it –  but always wished for: 

The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas 

@ Amazon : @ Christian Book : @ Barnes & Nobles : & @ your local bookstore

  

Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

For All the World’s Children: Why We Need First-Responders, the Purple-Hearted, and the Brave

You talk with a police offer on your last Sunday.

Your last Sunday still living at home —  after the Preacher had said his Amen 10 minutes before noon, you walk up to one of the guys milling around with these smooth stones of small talk out in the chapel foyer –

and you up and ask the cop how to shine a pair of shoes. There are people who find small talk soul shrinking. That would be you.

“Just how do you do the spit and polished kind — like the mirror polish.”

And you motion with your hand like you’re polishing that mirror and I see clearly who you are, how you are about to walk out of here, a man-son gone.

We BBQ chicken for Sunday dinner.

I slowly make a spinach salad, roast a pan of squash, onions, carrots with rosemary and garlic, cut up tomatoes.

You leave your scuffed up shoes at the side porch door, next to the golden lab, Boaz, all sprawled out.

You’re reading over your course agenda, the schedule of of your university classes. And I’m stepping over your shoes, in and out the door, checking on the chicken on the BBQ that’s puffing like a dragon. Your whole childhood, puffed and gone. Tomorrow, I’ll look in the fridge and realize you aren’t coming home for dinner anymore. There really are last suppers.

At the porch door, I lean over your shoes. Pick up your shoes, your man-sized shoes. The friend at church, the off-duty cop, he’d said 7 coats of polish. You’d need 7 coats laid down first. The BBQ sizzles. I sit on the edge of the porch and begin. Begin to polish your shoes before you leave, as if I can polish all the battered years into something better.

You know how there’s this cheering when the calendar rolls around again and kids have to catch buses and go back to school? All those happy sighs of relief for 18 years of back to school days?

Well, sitting on the front porch, polishing your 18 year old’s shoes, all I can do is swallow around this burning ember in my throat and think of is that Piers Morgan line to Susan Boyle: “Well, nobody is laughing now.“

There ain’t nobody who gets to the final leaving and laughs relief. You wildly want one more day, one more strawberry sundae in the park, one more canoe paddle down the Maitland, one more load of laundry, one more sticky cereal bowl in the sink. And time’s run out.

I don’t think you know all the elements of the periodic table. And I am pretty sure your four years of desperate Latin wrestling are reduced now to only a feeble recitation of amo, amas, amat. The year we learned it, till you could sing all the countries of the world? How many do either one of us remember now?

The black polish spreads across the back of your shoe heel like butter. How can you spend so many of the fleeting days of a child’s life on the fleeting things? How could I forget that the only thing that we’re always really teaching is love? What if I’m wild to go back to Dr. Suess and begin again? What if I want to go back and make the schedule simpler so our lives could be richer? So I could tie your shoe one more time and bend down and kiss your cowlick.

What if I want to play more games of monopoly and leave the dishes in the sink more often? What if I want to take you fishing more Saturdays and blow off cleaning up the garage? Why doesn’t someone tell all the homemakers: Cleaniness isn’t next to godliness. Love is.

What if I still want to memorize Romans with you and finish reading the Old Testament and build a tree fort in the woods with you and sleep a week under stars? Motherhood is made up of childhood — and what if I missed it? What if all those glory days are gone and you won’t be at the table tomorrow and next week and next Sunday noon? Grace allows u-turns; it’s Time that doesn’t. This is a grace too, to coerce us all into waking up to the here that won’t be here tomorrow.

You may forget the chonology of the Eyptian pharaohs, but you’ll remember your Dad sneaking up behind me and kissing my ear while I was scrubbing out the breakfast frying pan. I’m not partial to how much you remember of calculus; but it’s dire that you know that the sum of how you see the ordinary is all that ever adds up to an extraordinary life. The lessons any kid remembers are the ones his parents lived. The goal is simple: It’s not about a 5-year scholarship but being a life-long learner and a life-long lover.

I wish I had cared a lot less about your room being clean and a lot more that you and your brothers being close. Why didn’t I paint it in neon on a wall: More important than a clean house is a close family.

I’m polishing your shoes, slow and sacred and silently brimming, trying to buff out all the creases of the last 18 years and there’s no changing it: I got a lot of things wrong, son. I wished we went to more free skates at the arena and had more free evenings because that buys peace. You and I both know how I should have bit my tongue more, prayed more, and what on earth kept me from smiling more?

I wished we’d read more Charlie Brown books together and laughed loud on the floor. I should have gone slower. Every time you saw me, a smile is what you should have seen first.

I’d give my eye teeth, my liver and lifetime worth of free bacon to go back and tell you three times a day to look you in the eyes and tell you: I really like you.

Forgive us for not painting those ghastly school-bus yellow walls in your room a different color about 5 years sooner.

By His grace and a few thousand miracles, there was good and smiles can swim through tears. Remember how we read a million library books together? I’ll never regret every page we chose over screens.

We ate three meals a day together at a table (and don’t think that doesn’t change the shape of a soul and the world). And we never pushed back our chairs until we’d had our dessert of Scripture. Life is about one thing: Coming to His table and inviting as many as you can to come with you and feast on the only Living Food. We gave you this.

And for better or worse, your Dad and I taught you how to work hard. Make it for the world’s better, son.

Seven coats of shoe polish. And there’s no way I’m close to letting you go.

But when I hold your right shoe? Just to polish up the side?

I can feel that spot where your big toe has rubbed the shoe lining through. Makes me smile brave. You’re itching to go and begin.

So that’s what I’m doing: Do not only grieve that it’s over — be grateful that it was.

The world needs a few good men, son. Men who will polish the worn into something better, men who will live dangerously so others can be safe, men who will live as first-responders.

The world needs more men in kitchens and pews and offices and streets who live as first-responders — first-responders to the sullen teenager who’s hurting bad, to the single-mom overwhelmed down the street, to the heartbroken woman who can’t even find words.

For all our messing up and falling down, we raised you for that.

In honor of all those who have come behind…. in honor of Christ who lived like that: Go into a hurting world and live your life as a First-Responder.

And your old Mama with these shoe polish stained hands, yeah, she’s standing sure on the front porch, waving brave as you drive away to make this old world a better place –

wearing this Purple Heart of her own.

 

 

Related:

1.How to be the Parent You Want to be: 40 Things Every Child Needs to Know before They Leave Home

2. 4 Steps When You are not Ready for Change

3. 25 Things Every New, Middle and Grad Parent and their Kids Needs to Know

4. After Steubenville: 25 Truths our Sons Need to Know about Manhood

(and how our son’s in first year university and working to make the world better: JoyWares.com)

Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

How to Live Through the Hard Weeks

Sometimes, even right before it really begins, you know how the week’s going to go.

I look in the mirror early on a Monday morning, the bedhead looking more like a monsterhead, and I look right into that water-splattered mirror.

And tell the woman looking back at me how the next seven days are likely to go down — are going to likely try to take me down.

The mail’s going to bring bills and sucker punch first thing.

And he’s going to the say wrong thing or nothing or claim he never heard you say a thing, and every time you look away from the clock, time will just up and suck down whole hours like an industrial shop vac and you’ll be left wondering where into the bowels of the world did this week go?

The inner chamber of the microwave is going to look like a gory battlefield of losing, epic proportions by Tuesday.

You’ll have to clean a toilet. Or regret that you didn’t. The laundry’s going to laugh at you.

And by Wednesday, you’ll pull a three inch hair from the chin and you’ll replay who you talked to on Monday and Tuesday this week who must have saw it at an inch and a half.

You’ll eat too much, have to referee something between little kids or still-kids in very big bodies, and it’s statistically a cosmic likelihood that you’ll be late at least once, forget something twice, and get a whole lot wrong. You’ll laugh a bit like it all doesn’t matter, or least doesn’t hurt, and there will be broken eggshells left on the counter and broken promises left after the fact and the real, exposed truth of it is, after it’s all said and done? Is that under it all, we’re right broken.

No one knows but you do war every single day with the slanderous voices in your head and you wrestle a bit with the death dark that encroaches around the edges of everything and you’re never the only one: anyone who gets up has to push back the dark.

I’m standing there in front of the mirror.

Standing there, looking right into me and the abyss of the mess of me that I’ll never get all right. And it comes down to this: Christianity is the only hope for this broken world because there’s no other way for the broken to get the Nails they need to rebuild.

That’s what this week needs, that’s all this week needs most:

More than needing schedules and productivity, this week will need a Savior and prayer. God’s not asking me to produce– He’s asking me to pray. God’s not asking me to climb ladders — He’s asking me to kneel and let go. Right there at the mirror, right at the beginning, the week begins to unfurl in slow, in hope.

And that’s what I whisper into the mirror:

His grace will be more than just sufficient — His grace is guaranteed to actually save. Time, me, the week, all redeemed and miracles happen in mirrors and to people we know. When we know Christ, we always know how things are going to go — always for our good and always for His glory. The sun flashes blaze in the mirror.

The week has this written all over it: God only allows pain if He’s allowing something new to be born.

And down in the ditch at the end of the lane, I had witnessed it, on the way out to get Monday morning’s mail.

I had stood there with the Food Basic flyer and the hydro bill and the week coming straight head on and I had watched this monarch land.

I had stood there with the mail and the proboscis tongue unfurled into the nectar well and the wings of this king butterfly right ripped open His secret epistle to everything:

Drink the thankful sweet out of each thistle —

because this is how you fly.

And it’s right there at the beginning….

and it’s quite something….

how even at the sharpest edge of things –

there are wings.

 

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…. that He would give any gifts in the midst of thistles — right out of the heart of the thistles -–

more of His endless, One Thousand Gifts … thanks be to God for all of these blessings:

… my dad’s voice on the answering machine {#5, 626}

… my sister coming early every morning with her 5 girls to begin today’s learning adventure {#5, 627}

… being a Purple-Hearted Parent {#5, 628}

… my mama cutting up at pies {#5, 629}

… hard eucharisteo: packing the last of things up for a boy off to university {#5, 630}

… smiling brave {#5, 631}

… how printing this out is changing everything for me and the kids  {#5, 632}

… for the way This is tossing a new lifeline to so many this year  {#5, 633}

… for thistles and the sweet drink He makes with His presence right exactly where we are {#5, 634}

 

Join us? And happily change everything by keeping your own crazy list of One Thousand Gifts?

Please, jump in, make your life about giving thanks to God! — Just add the direct URL to your specific 1000 gift list post… and if you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other in our refrain of thanks by sharing the community’s graphic within your post.

Give thanks to the Lord! His Love Endures Forever!

button code here

Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

Why You Never Stop Being Needed

The plan was supposed to be that we would take him west.

That he’d turn 18 and go west.

That we’d pack up his room, his dog-earred G.A. Henty books, that thinning and scratchy red wool blanket of my grandmother that’s laid at the foot of his bed, the oiled painting that he was given from those mothers up in the mountains of Haiti, and his fading jeans and plaid shirt.

And his dad and I would drive him 4,000 arrow-straight miles west to the ocean and drop him off at a university none of us had ever laid eyes on in our life.

He’d be our first arrow shot. My heart would be pierced.

He made his down payment.

And I laid down my quaking heart and this ridiculous hope that he’d stay close. The kid was crazy pumped. Yeah, so my mama-heart was drained. You still gotta smile brave. Nobody knows it but – Parents wear Purple Hearts: the brave who are wounded and die a bit more everyday – and only get braver.



But then it was his younger brother who went east.

Right to the opposite side of the country, right out to the other coast. He goes with my brother, drives through Quebec through the night, past the farms lined up along the St. Lawrence River, following the aging river where Cartier and Champlain sailed, follow it right out to the ageless ocean and it’s endless lapping waves. They serve for a week at a Bible camp for native kids.

Joshua mops floors and gets dishpan hands and does kitchen duty and crawls into his bunk after midnight. My brother emails me in the middle of the night to tell me how happy he is to be there with our boy. At the end of the week, we pack up the sagging van with the 7 of us and head east to go bring him home.

Our only road trip ever.

And the last road trip before the first boy leaves.

Apparently —

Our youngest boy breathes too breathy and close for our daughter’s liking when packed like sardines into one van heading east.

This may or may not have led to blood curdling screaming fits replete with tears and blankets thrown over heads.

There were flat out World Wars over euchre, pillows and, seriously — the last of the grapes. I may or may not have threatened missile strikes and food sanctions and late night diplomatic negotiations for global peace – or at least van peace.

The Farmer smiles thinly and just kept his eyes on the road and us heading east.

Somewhere in the woods of New Brunswick, when they all blessedly fall asleep but the last stubborn kid, she calls out to her Dad: “You just keep driving and I’ll read to you, ‘kay?”

He wearily nods, leans forward over the wheel, battling sleep-deprivation and father-with-little-peace-deprivation.

And there in her small voice it comes — Psalm 102. She’s reading the Bible to him.

Apparently, right in our messes are where the miracles happen.

“A Prayer for the Afflicted….” She begins slow.

The Farmer grins: “Appropriate.”

“The Lord looked down from his sanctuary on high, from heaven he viewed the earth…“

And we’re all a bit crazy and we’re all a bit afflicted and we have a God who sees every bit of it and takes all of us. We have a God who sees hearts like we see faces, a God who hears ache like we hear voices, and we have a God who touches wounds like we touch skin.

God sees it all — and He will see to all of it. No one’s crazy can change God’s crazy love.

And after we get Josh, and there’s a tight 8 of us shoehorned into the van, we drive by this mountain stretched up like this sheer dare over the ocean and we make a U-turn and because we have these unrelenting boys who are determined to climb –and one girl who needs to use every single roadside washroom facility spotted– and really, you can make a u-turn anywhere.

The girls go looking for the vented outhouse.

I sit in the grass and watch the two oldest boys begin their ascent. The Farmer distracts the two youngest boys from their own climbs with one fierce and sweaty game of tag.

I keep watch at the base — as if that’s really going to help if something goes wrong. Stones roll. There’s hardly a breeze.

The boys keep hauling higher.

“Hey Josh?” Caleb calls over his shoulder. “What’s that rattling sound?”

Both boys stop, cling to some stone.

“Crickets? I don’t know — Tree frogs?”

“You sure?”

“Sure, I’m sure: crickets or tree frogs or something else.” Joshua shakes something out of his shoe. “Definitely not a rattler. Come on already, Cale…” Joshua’s already pulling higher.

I’m listening to the rattle in the sun. Cale’s back to reaching and stretching and climbing. How many times have I mistaken more than a few metaphorical crickets in my life for bona fide rattlers?

How many times did I think these boys would stay little and close and safe?

How many times have I thought safe mattered when Jesus died to save us not to make us safe. No one ever got saved unless someone else was unsafe.

“You going higher?” Josh is calling to Caleb and their mother’s watching from the bottom – Purple Heart, Parents live purple-hearted.

“Yeah — higher!” Cale’s man voice echoes down the mountain.

“Hey, Josh?” One brother’s calling over to the other.

“Can Mom see us doing this?”

And I hear that. The old mother at the bottom of the mountain, she hears her boys men hollering that and I nod and smile slow.

Yes, boys – right to my end, I will be your witness.

God as my witness, I will be your witness, and you can climb and you can take risks and you can go east and you can go west and distance never stopped love from being a witness.

Go ahead, sign me up to witness the launchings and the beginnings, witness the dares you take, the challenges you rise to, the heartbreak you don’t want anyone else to see and the crazy you wish you could hide. The Lord looked down, from heaven He viewed the earth in all it’s crazy and God sees it all – and He sees to it all – and He doesn’t turn away. God is your witness: You are seen and known.

Who will be God’s witness? So He is seen and known?

Be brave. In all your crazy, be brave, boys. And I’ll be there, in heart or in body, to witness the first dates and the failed dreams and it’s okay to cry, boys, your tears are safe with me.

Because the truth is: Life’s a trial and everyone needs a witness — someone on your front row, someone on your sidelines, someone to clap you across the finish line when everyone else has gone home.

Everyone needs a witness – someone to testify you were really here and you really tried, someone to witness your wounds and believe in your worth, someone to say even your crazy can’t stop you from being crazy loved. Everyone needs a witness who will stand and not hold you back because if we all only lived safe, no one would ever get saved.

Everyone needs a witness — and I’ll be yours.

You don’t become a parent by bearing a child. You become a parent by bearing witness to his life.

The boys wave.

And I swallow hard and memorize them.

And I wave back —

the witness willing to always bear the weight of all their glory.

 

Related: 4 Steps to Take When You are Not Ready for Change

{Next week: Moving the oldest into university}

Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

3 Ways: How to Find & Fight for Joy

So yeah… in which the neck breaks out in nervous blotches.

And the make-up artist keeps insisting you need a little more and you keep smiling weakly and say no, really, no more, that’s good…

And in actual fact you are at home with bad hair, a whole passel of kids and a full sink of dishes, and this was filmed a bit ago — but the message is desperately what this farm hick with soul amnesia needed today…

An Interview with Life Today with James and Betty Robison 3 Ways: How to Find & Fight for Joy.

And there ain’t nobody who doesn’t need that:

{RSS Readers & email readers, click here for the LifeToday TV interview: How to Find & Fight for Joy?}

 

Just this: Today I will breathe deep…. and be grateful to God for one. more. thing.

Where to Even Begin : 5 Easy Ways



1. !!HAPPY SEPTEMBER!!

DARE YOU to be crazy happy this month!?

Scavenger hunt for God’s gifts everyday — just 3 a day… and all the science says that keeping a gratitude list will make you 25% happier! Twenty-five percent happier? For picking up a pen & giving God thanks? Uh — yes, please!

Print September’s Joy Dare: Right. Here.

(Share your daily gift finds with Twitter {#1000gifts}, Instagram {#1000Gifts} or in our pretty amazing community at Facebook — and enter to win the month’s Joy Basket. Count 1000 Gifts in 2013 and enter to win a Nikon D90 DSLR camera)

2. 15 Ways to Raise More Grateful Kids

3. Free Pocket Gift journal — perfect for the kids, for the pocket, lunchbox, sink to jot down a week’s worth of gifts. Gather round the table each night and share The Good Gifts — the good stuff… and even the hard stuff that He makes good.

4. Free #1000Gifts App

5. Give Pure Joy-in-a-Box {Free}

Bonus: One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

5 Secrets for Every Day One: First Day Back to School

So, yeah, you can find yourself on the First Day of School, standing at the kitchen sink right under the clock ticking loud –

ticking just like your own heart pounding down —

and the faucet’s dripping slow and steady, and you can stand there really wondering.

Because after a parent makes a kid, what they do is wonder if the kid will ever make it.

If the kid who can’t ever find both shoes at the same time and who belly thumps his brother for breathing too breathy on a Tuesday morning will make it further than the local penitentiary…

If the teen who regularly sleeps blithely through an alarm clock set to sound like a F5 tornado bearing down will ever make it further than the local coffee shop….

And if the son scavenging through the fridge every five minutes, who weeps over cleaning off the table, and claims anything green and leafy was never intended for human consumption, will ever make it further than the line at the local drive-through.

Strange how that is and how you finally come to it: You take a child by the hand, but who they ultimately become is never in your hands.

You can breathe.

You can blow it and you can be focused and you can be committed and you can botch it and you can do that all before 9 in the morning.

And the truth can come like a something brewing rich and right and warming, the Truth about the First Day Back to School, about the First Day of Anything, and every day is the first day, Every Day is Always Day One.

Your sin can’t separate you (or your child) from Christ.

Your Father is bigger than your failures, your flesh and your faults.

And your strengths can’t save you (or your child) in Christ.

Your ego, your excellence and your efforts won’t ever be big enough to be a Savior.

Your sins aren’t enough to keep your child from God and your strengths aren’t enough to get your child to God.

Your sins aren’t enough to keep you from God and your strengths aren’t enough to get you to God.

Your sins aren’t enough to destroy your life and your strengths aren’t enough to determine your life.

Your sins aren’t enough to separate you – and your strengths aren’t enough to save you.

That’s the bottom line: Your sins aren’t enough and your strengths aren’t enough. You are not enough — for this parenting gig, this marriage relationship, this homeschooling year, this work project.

Write it on the wall, ink it on some skin, because Christ wrote it with His blood:

Grace is the only thing that is ever enough.

Because the thing is – every sin and every strength always falls short. Every sin and every strength is always both in need of exactly the same thing: the grace of God.

Grace is the only thing that ever makes a way.

You find yourself praying it at the sink, at the desk, at the door:

Life 101 is Parenting 101: You can’t control outcomes — you can only model how to become.

Because Life isn’t about controlling things – but about letting God control you. Parenting isn’t about controlling kids – but about letting God control you. Parenting isn’t as much about raising the kids — but about laying yourself right down.

You only parent as well as you know your Father.

You only live as well as Christ lives in you.

So the First Day comes and there is this bravery that lets you hold on and lets you let go, and there is trust that has you believing and be living it, and there is this:

Grace is always enough when nothing else is.

So you can stand at the sink, right under the clock ticking loud – ticking just like your own heart pounding down — with the faucet’s dripping slow and steady, and you can stand there and see it happen on the face of the clock –

how Grace pushes back those hands of time and gives you forever and always more than enough.

How all the bouquets of fresh yellow pencils start writing new stories today.

 

 

 

First Day Back to School for us here, and the first year of a little homeschooling co-op with my sister, so 10 curious minds here total… and one graduate heading off to university…

Related: Pros and Cons to Homeschooling

Best Ways to Organize a Homeschool Room

How to Simply Homeschool: Four Foundational Cornerstones

Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}