Margaret McSweeney's Blog, page 57

Love on Top of Love

When we had our first grandchild, my husband penned the words “love on top of love” to express how he felt about the new addition to our lives. I thought it was a cute little saying, but I really never understood the implications of the meaning until two weeks ago when our granddaughter made a trip to the hospital emergency room. It all started with a very weak two year old whose usual day consisted of dancing, and jumping, and singing, and talking, and climbing and in- to- everything but…not that day. That day she was lethargic.

A strange pain goes through your heart when you see your little grandchild and you know deep inside that something is more than not normal. After a finger prick for a drop of blood, it is confirmed what we were thinking that afternoon. High blood sugar. With another call to the doctor, she is now directed to the emergency room. Then starts the series of tests, and phone calls to Children’s Hospital three hours away, and the dreaded words “type 1 diabetes”, and discussions of ambulance or helicopter transportation, and a frightened little girl, and a mommy and daddy who are trying to comprehend “why is this happening to our little one”, and… prayer…lots of prayer. Family, friends, churches, anyone who would pray.

God was most gracious that night because for whatever reason He chose to have mercy and grant favor to our precious kids. Our granddaughter’s blood sugar numbers went down all by themselves to a normal reading. She was sent home. And later that week, all follow up blood work came back normal.

So where does “love on top of love” come in?

When my own kids got sick or were sad, we would process; we would deal. But it was different when we were not the ones in charge; it’s my daughter’s baby you know. We not only had to process and to deal with the situation at hand concerning little Elsie, but we were distressed to watched our daughter and son-in-law painfully process over the unknown and their insides hurting as they cuddled their precious sick little one. Just broke our hearts. The circle of love is bigger now, so the emotion we feel and the love we have encompasses so much more. Oh I would never give up the goodness we have when we can support and encourage and be there for our kids when times are tough. We are all made stronger when we have each other. The love is literally on top of love and then the Lord covers us all in His love. Yeah, “love on top of love”, I could have never penned it better myself.

Note-Passing

If you were to meet me in person, you might find me to be quiet. If we were to go out to lunch, I most likely would ask a few questions, and then sit back and listen. I’m a listener by nature. In fact, there are few people with whom I can truly share my heart with . . . verbally. Of course, I have no problem sharing my heart and soul in print!

When it comes to the written word, I get to mess around until I’m sure I will not be misunderstood. Every word I write forces me to choose one word over the other. (To prove my point, I even rewrote that last sentence three times!)

You see, even on things like blogs my mind is always at work as I decide how to start, what information to include, and how to end this thing so my readers will consider their visit worth their time. With millions of blogs, books, magazines, what (I ask myself) would make my blog worth visiting?

Of course, I also find myself turning to the written word other times which don’t involve public readers–just ask my husband and my friends. For every major conflict I’ve been in the midst of, I guarantee I’ve poured my heart out on paper rather than using my voice. Again . . . I want to make sure I’m understood. I don’t trust myself enough to “just talk.” After all, what if I say the wrong thing at the wrong time and make matters worse?

I have a dear friend who is just the opposite. She is more confortable speaking in front of a group than sitting and considering (and reconsidering) her words at the computer. As we were talking about it one day, she told me that when she stands up to speak she has confidence that God, through His Spirit, will do His work. She just has to open her mouth, trusting Him.

I feel the same way when I sit down at my computer. I’ve felt God work through my written words time and time again. There is no pride there, only a realization that THIS is where God meets me.

Does my friend have more faith because she can trust God to speak through her open mouth? Or do I have more faith because I have confidence He will work through me as I sit in front of my computer?

No, don’t think it’s a matter of faith or lack there of. Instead, I feel God has designed each of us to fulfill His purposes, in order to build the body of Christ and give God glory. And through me, He does this best as I listen and absorb. And then . . . as I sit down at my keyboard a type like a mad woman.

What about you? Are you more comfortable speaking or writing? Most importantly, how do you feel God works best through you?

We’re All Experts on Something

[image error]We’re all experts of sorts. Each of us is given something in life that challenges, stretches and stresses us and will eventually qualify us as some sort of expert.

Our challenge? Along with ¼ of the population, we are raising a child who needs full time care because of his special needs. It’s a 24/7 responsibility we’ve been given…and we’ve lived to share about it! Our son Joey is a great gift and amazing blessing – but he came to us with things we knew nothing about: mental retardation, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and many severe food allergies that could be fatal. The bigger challenge – helping others understand!

Having had the opportunity to hear a lot of “expert” advice over the 31 years of raising my son, here are some things I’d like to offer as my own “expert” advice to the many wonderful people who will come in contact with a special needs person and/or their family at some time in their lives:

• Think twice before offering or suggesting a miracle cure to parents or caregivers – they’ve heard most everything (and probably investigated it).

• Refrain from telling us how we should feel or what we should do unless you’ve helped us more than a few days (not for 3 hours) and actually know what you’re talking about.

• Ask questions, offer help, show concern – before offering advice.

• An individual with special needs often says things we wish we could, but we’d never get away with it….be patient with them.

• When waiting for a response to your comment or question, give them time to respond. Counting to 10 to yourself before repeating your question or starting another thought pattern allows them the needed time it takes for their brain to formulate thoughts.

• Don’t shout – a person who is mentally slow won’t understand us any better. Look to (and even ask) the caregiver for clues if you’re not sure how to respond. Lowering volume, speed, and tone can help!

• “I feel like such a retard” is not a positive comment anyway you look at it. It’s especially hurtful to those caring for someone who is. If you say it and catch yourself, a simple apology is better than saying nothing and moving on. While we’ll pretend not hear it – we did.

• Using a word like see with a blind person, hear with a deaf person, or walk or run with someone in a wheelchair is usually not something to worry about if you are using it in general conversation.

• Feel free to ask the person with special needs to repeat themselves. As the caregiver for help if needed.

• Ask one question at a time and wait patiently for the answer. Count to 10 again. That rule is always helpful.

• When speaking to a deaf person who has an interpreter, make eye contact with the deaf person.

• When conversing with a blind person, don’t “make friends” with their Seeing Eye dog. Don’t pet, offer a treat or otherwise distract the dog from the job for which it has been trained.

• If you’re able to stoop down to face someone in a wheelchair, that’s polite and helpful.

• Stay positive and pleasant. It helps everyone in those awkward moments.

• Don’t correct the person unless you are sure they understand what you are trying to say and “check” what your motivation is for doing so. Their thinking patterns and abilities don’t always make sense to “outsiders” let alone their caregivers!

Perhaps today you’ll meet a person with special needs for the first time. It will make their day if you use something you’ve learned here. Share this with others so they can learn, as well. We all have to help each other…..that’s my advice, and I’m stickin’ to it!

The Cost of Looking for “Everything” Over There

Have you ever compared yourself to someone else? Maybe a best friend who seems to have the “perfect” life. Or the girl at the gym who’s half your age—and half your size. Or how about your boss who makes more money than you and works a lot less? Let’s face it we’re always comparing ourselves to others, looking to find our “everything” over there. Where does it lead? To envy, jealousy and discontentment. In case you missed it—that’s sin.

It follows the old adage “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.” The problem is, when we get over the fence, there are a whole slew of problems there!

As I’m reading my friend Mary DeMuth’s book, Everything, I realize that there are so many ways we look for everything “over there.” In essence what we’re saying is:

• God I don’t like what you’ve given me

• I don’t like the story you’ve written for my life

• I’ll be happy when…

• If only I had _______I’d be happy

• God if you do this, I’ll be OK

• God if you hadn’t done this I’d be OK

Believing your everything is over there is an illusion—sometimes a costly one. Take Renee. She was a “good girl.” She always followed the rules, never rocked the boat, and never did anything wrong. After ten years of marriage, she felt bored. She loved her husband, but he wasn’t meeting her needs.

It started with fantasizing. There was this guy at work who paid attention to her, and it felt good. She’d find herself thinking about him— a lot. She fell into the “if I only” trap. She believed if only her husband was like the guy at work, she’d be happy. Because she was bored with her life, Renee justified her feelings. “God, I don’t like the husband you’ve given me, if only I had a husband who paid more attention to me, I’d be happy.”

The truth is, Renee didn’t really know the guy at her office. She was looking for her everything “over there” without even knowing what the “over there” looked like. But because she felt she had missed out on life from playing the good girl, Renee took the bait and started an affair with the guy at her office. The results were catastrophic.

In the search for her everything, Renee lost her family. She was empty, broken and alone. The saddest part was Renee had everything, but it took her losses for her to see it.

Renee had been raised a Christian. She loved God. But somehow the enemy of her soul convinced her that her everything could be found in the things of the world, when all along she had it buried deep within her heart.

As bad as things got, God used the circumstances in Renee’s life to show her the bankruptcy of looking for her everything through worldly pursuits. Once he got a hold of her heart– Renee’s life changed dramatically. With Jesus as her everything, Renee found she was content to stay on the right side of the fence.

Less Isn’t More

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” Romans 12:1 (ESV)

“Less is more” is the golden rule of womanhood. My mom and grandma hammered that mindset into me ever since I bought my first lip gloss. When applying makeup, always put on less than you think you actually need. You don’t want your face to look ghostly because you put on too much foundation, and you definitely don’t want to put on too much eye liner or else you’ll have raccoon eyes. Take one piece of jewelry off before you leave your house. The basic principle is that it’s easier to add on than to take off.

Less isn’t always more, though, especially when wanting to develop a deeper relationship with God. He encourages us to cake on His foundation – His holy word. He longs for us to draw thick, dark lines with our pencils in our prayer journals. He yearns for us to adorn ourselves with virtues and fruits of the Spirit. Too often we apply the golden rule of womanhood to our relationship with our Heavenly Father, wrongly thinking that we can get by with a quick prayer of thanks for the new day and a glance at the Bible verse posted on our refrigerators. God doesn’t want less. He wants more than more; He wants our all.

PRAYER: Lord, forgive me for holding back on you and for not giving you all that You deserve. Help me to give you everything I am. Amen.

Rock Star Dad

Amazing Grace

In wrath remember mercy.
Habakkuk 3:2

Trespassing can be a serious. I know of a teen boy and his friend who ignored the warning signs near a private neighborhood pond and dropped their fishing lines in anyway.

They had a great time-catching fish after fish. The pond was fully stocked thanks to the homeowner’s association. They fished, caught and released. No harm, right?

The fish and game warden arrived on the scene.

Oops, well bigger than oops. The officer had it in his control to let the boys off with a warning but chose to write a ticket. The holder of the power gets to be the one who decides how to implement it. If the boys had a relationship with this man, he may have been more likely to give them a pass. They didn’t so… he didn’t.

He issued: No mercy. No grace.

Personally, I have figuratively tossed my line into the water with the knowledge I shouldn’t. I am guilty of ignoring the signs. I agree with John Newton. I am a great sinner in need of a great savior.

What if…I got what I deserved?

Punishment. Condemnation.

But instead I get what I don’t deserve.

Mercy. Grace.

I can’t earn grace. I can’t expect mercy. But because I have a relationship with the One who has the authority to judge and who has also paid the price I should have paid, I receive both.

I am thankful.

Thankful for the mercy I have been shown and the grace I have received.

As a parent I try to remember the God’s perfect balance between justice and mercy and truth and grace. There are times I may institute a more severe sentence for trespasses than necessary. In the case of the “fishermen”, the young boys probably would have learned the No trespassing lesson with a less serious consequence and felt a sense of gratitude for mercy and grace shown.

When have you come down too hard in your parenting when it may have been better to show your child mercy (not getting what is deserved) or grace (getting what is not deserved) in your parenting?

Brokenness is the key to finding your Everything

If we are honest, we know that sorrow and suffering are inevitable parts of life. Loved ones die. Dreams crumble. We lose things we love. Eventually, everything we hold dear will slip through our fingers. Not a very comforting thought, but a necessary one. Why? Because loss gets us thinking, it leads us to brokenness, and brokenness determines what happens to our hearts.

The inner loneliness we experience there, the kind that sandblast us to the core, is the best place—sometimes the only place for us to decide who or what will be our everything? We can’t sit on the fence with this one, because every loss and every trial we face will lead us back to the same question.

Many of us have been standing in the river of doubt far too long, causing us to build sacred idols to things that will never satisfy. We say Jesus is everything, but we’ve put people, relationships, talents, looks, abilities, careers, and self-sufficiency on the altar of our hearts, leaving second place for lover of our souls.

If we’re going to move beyond brokenness, keep our faith intact, and allow Christ to be our everything, we have to obtain a decided heart about God, otherwise, when bad things happen we’ll forfeit our faith for a cheap substitute.

In her new book, Everything, which released October 16th, Mary DeMuth asks us to consider three powerful questions: to help us decide:

• What do we think about God?

• How do we allow Him to reign in our hearts?

• How do we obey him?

What we believe about God, what we think and feel about him over time will inevitably impact how we order everything in our lives. Remember, the enemy of our soul has but one goal in mind: to bring epic disaster into our lives and make it look as if God is responsible for it.

If he can do that, by dealing a mortal blow to our hearts, we will live in the shadow of his lies, walling our off our hearts to God and struggling to accept that God is good and trustworthy. And if we believe we can’t trust God we’ll look elsewhere for our everything.

How do we decide about God? Through knowing. Real knowing—the kind that changes us from the inside out—happens as we change our perspective about who God should be and discover who he is.

If you and I want to decide about Jesus, we must search the Scriptures, put aside the false concepts that others helped create, lay down the conclusions we’ve have jumped to based on past experiences, and read the Bible stories intently with our hearts.

Then we must ask ourselves: Who is this God we claim to know? Healer? Forgiver? Merciful? Compassionate? Each story will give you a window into his soul, and I bet you won’t find one to refute the message of unconditional love he came to bring. It’s the essence of who he is.

Then, as you sojourn through those dark nights of the soul, you’ll understand who he really is. You’ll understand your heart means everything to him. And you’ll understand that nothing in this life can be you’re everything except Him.

God’s Gift to His Precious Daughters

Girlfriends are a gift from God. I can say that honestly because my girlfriends are truly a gift directly from my loving Heavenly Father. Each woman is a gentle reminder of His love for me. And I am so thankful!

Just looking around my office there is evidence of my girlfriends. The cross with “faith, hope, and love” painted across it in bold colors from a friend who has encouraged me for years in ministry. The note tucked inside a devotional from my Bible study teacher to remind me of her loving guidance. A book written by one of my mentors used to instruct my children in our American Christian heritage. A wall hanging hand-stitched by my sister (my best girlfriend) that reads, “God made us sisters-love made us friends.” The scarf around my neck from my “birthday twin.” The email I received yesterday from a girlfriend who knew I was looking for a seasonal cookie recipe for my blog. Out the window, I’m reminded daily of the girlfriends (and their husbands) who planted a tree in the backyard in memory of my dad. All touches of love from women the Lord has purposely set in my path.

Girlfriends are there to celebrate mountaintop experiences and to walk through dark valleys. Their presence is heard in shouts of joy and soft condolences, in big hugs and sympathetic tears. God gives us girlfriends as a present, to be present when circumstances are for celebrating or events are heartbreaking.

And we are also to be there for our girlfriends. Scripture tells us, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is the Father who is full of mercy and all comfort. He comforts us every time we have trouble, so when others have trouble, we can comfort them with the same comfort God gives us” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4). We learn through our friends and experiences how to be a blessing to others, to be the hands and feet of our Savior.

So in the joyful and the dreadful, reach out to your girlfriends to celebrate or commiserate. Be thankful! Each one is a precious gift, from God to you.

Meet the Pearl Girls: Lori Kasbeer

Meet Pearl Girl Lori Kasbeer! Lori Kasbeer, a lover of all things chocolate, has a house full of boys; three to be exact, however, if you add her husband, the cat, and the dog testosterone runs rapid. When she is not doing laundry and working full time for a large Florida school district, she is a Christian book reviewer for Lori’s Book Reviews. With a heart for women, she finds it a privilege to remind women today that God is deeply in love with them. Lori is also a contributor for Pearl Girls: Encountering Grit, Experiencing Grace.

Please share a little about how you became a writer.

If you asked me if I was a writer my knee-jerk reaction would be to say that I was not a writer, but after a gentle reproach by friends and family I have soon discovered the first step in becoming a writer is to believe in yourself. Jeff Goins says, “This is the secret every professional knows that the amateurs don’t. We who are gifted with words and language will only earn the attention of others when we first believe in ourselves.”

I became a writer because of my passion to share Jesus with others. Through struggles and accomplishments God has become so evident to me that I cannot keep my mouth shut. It sounds trite to say “this is all a God thing.” In reality when I write sharing struggles and accomplishments, what I am saying is “what just happened was not me, it was God.” I am a broken sinner, who struggles with weaknesses, and yet somehow God is in the business of using weak vessels for His glory!

Favorite Scripture or Life Verse?

Zephaniah 3:17 has always been my life verse. I am like many women who struggle with the emotions of not feeling worthy enough or thinking my sins were to great, but God showed me he not only loves me, but he delights in me and will exalt over me with LOUD signing. What a beautiful picture of God’s love.

The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save;

he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love;

he will exult over you with loud singing.

What motivates you to write for charity?

A financial advisor once told my husband, don’t let her do the finances she will give the farm away. I love giving and I love helping people. What I have found through Pearl Girls and through sponsoring a child through compassion.com is that I am the one who is blessed by giving. Knowing that sharing stories will help a woman’s life is a treasure more precious than money.

Favorite Food:

I can’t limit it to one. Chocolate and Enchiladas (just not together).

If you were stuck on a deserted island, what are 5 things that you’d have to have with you?

Bible/Books

Husband

Lip gloss or hair conditioner

Matches

Tent with air conditioner (born in Arizona and now living in Florida I know I am a wimp to heat).