Nancy Wilson's Blog, page 11

On Everyday Joy.

Occasionally when someone who is holding their first tiny baby tells me that they read my book I can’t help telling  them not to judge me. I remember so clearly when motherhood was a new thing to me and I seriously could not understand a mom getting frustrated. I was still just eating the appetizers of frazzled, and tired, and emotionally expended. I knew the feeling of being touched too much, but had not accounted for that same nursing around the clock feeling being accompanied by a people trying to brush your hair, children climbing on your back, children leaning on you and whispering into your ear, or just general disobedience in the line of sight. I really truly had no idea how much deeper that pool would go. Cold ankles is one thing, but when it gets up to your stomach and knocks the wind out of you is another.

Some people feel this at two kids, or three. Four was the magic number for me, since with the twins I never experienced three. Anyways, if this is where you are, or even if you are past that now here is a short list of things that I found to be helpful in maintaining joy as you slog.

1) Confess actual sins, not feelings. Mommy guilt is probably familiar to us all. Lying in bed at night just thinking about how bad you are and how your kids deserve better and what a mess the whole situation is.

For example, you might be feeling guilty that you were tempted to be unkind to your kids and that you did not feel like getting a cup of water for so and so. Remember that temptations are like birds flying over you – do not let them nest in your hair. The thing is that you can feel really bad that the big ugly crow of resenting your children was circling your head. But what you need to do is not confess that you saw it in the air, but continue to resist letting it land. Sometimes, the confessing of something like this turns out to be a sort of invitation to let it nest. We turn our attention at night to something that really was a passing temptation and we own it. We ask it to land so we can really get a look at it. We pick through it’s feathers for bird fleas. And then we wonder why all this prayer isn’t giving us peace. Well honestly, it is  because we aren’t so much praying to God as we are paying great homage to our sinful inclinations.

So here is some simple suggestions to combat this kind of temptation:

First, try not confessing sins at night. If you sin in the day, make it right when it happens. If you snark at a kid, ask them and God to forgive you the moment that it happens. Make your nighttime prayers a time for thanksgiving and rejoicing over your blessings.

Second, if you feel yourself slipping into self pity or resentment in the day, sing a hymn or a psalm. Change the station inside your head to gratitude and worship. I often turn on pretty cheesy kid’s christian music and sing along with the kids.

2) Keep a sense of humor. I know this comes more naturally to some than to others, but cultivate your ability to laugh at yourself, laughing at the diverse and outrageous situations you can get into in a day. Laughing at the desire your children have to make enormous messes will really keep you from becoming a very tedious parent and spouse. Laughter really is good for the heart, and if you have little children you have opportunities for laughter crowding in on you all the time.

Yesterday I opened a new can of Diet Dr. Pepper, and went to hustle upstairs. I sort of stubbed my toe on the first stair, letting the sole of my flip flop peel down and make it impossible to recover. I wiped out on the stairs – not half way, more of a full bodied whip lash onto the wood steps. Luckily, channeling all the inner angst of the moment, I was able to squeeze the can so hard on the way down that I completely crushed it. Dr. Pepper erupted as I fell – straight into my face and raining down all over my head. It hurt like crazy, but it was spectacular. I had to laugh at the fact that God composed that moment. No one saw it but me and Him, and I know He was laughing so I better do that too.

Once Bekah was trying to get something out from under the bed in their guest room when she was 8 months pregnant. She was using a hanger, and all bent and twisted under the bed. Just then her young son came and climbed up onto the part of her that was sticking out and perched. He could not hear her asking him to move. “What mom? Did you need something? Mom? Where have you gone?”

There, surrounded by dust bunnies and a unique panic, her contact popped out. It is at times like this that you have to get out of your immediate dust bunny surrounding and really appreciate the whole picture. God is joyful. Sometimes we laugh at the jokes he writes, and sometimes we are them. Either way, it is good to thank the Lord and to laugh at His jokes.

If you just don’t find your life funny, try. Try writing down the funny story. Try telling it to someone with the point being laughter and not pity or sympathy. Try laughing with your kids about it.

3) We all know that mothering takes a lot of sacrifice. We want to follow Christ, and so we want to sacrifice for Him. But it is incredibly easy to start to think that sacrificing what we want to is the same thing as obedience. This is how it is possible to latch onto an idea of what you should be doing – maybe a nice meal or a decorated room or something, and then be angry at all the people who are getting in the way of you sacrificing up a little something special for them. Sacrificing anything is not obedience, but obedience is sacrificial.

Following Christ is not the simple thing that we often think. We think “Jesus is our trail guide, and He is up there and we are way back here just keeping our head down and trudging along after him.” But Jesus is actively involved in your life. He is alive. He is here. Think of it more in terms of a dance – where the leader may be pushing you to take a step back, to turn, or to go forward. Following Him does not mean that every step you take will be forward.

Early on in my mothering life I had to follow Christ to lay things down that I didn’t want to. Lay down your body. Lay down your perfectly decorated house. Lay down your enjoyment of shopping. Lay down cooking ridiculous and involved meals. Lay down your life. And now, I am in a new place where much of what I struggle with has to do with picking up the things that I laid down then. Then He wanted me to lay it down, now He wants me to pick it up.

The important thing is staying in fellowship with the leader – responding to ways that He is prompting you. Just as a bride glorifies and adorns her husband, so our obedience to Christ glorifies Him. We tend to want to do the thing we want to do and then say, “for the glory of God” like an afterthought.

But the whole of the sacrifice glorifies God. The whole act of listening, responding, acting in faith – that is glorifying God. And that is the chief end of man! To glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Glorify Him in your obedience when you don’t want to. Glorify Him by responding in laughter. Glorify him by ignoring ugly crows of discontent and frustration. Glorify him by laying down your actual life in actual steps of obedience, even when they are backwards, or sideways, or not what you expected.

 

 

When You Were Nothing

The other day my husband said into the  rear view mirror, “We love you guys so much!” and Chloe piped up from the back to say, “We know that, Dad. We’ve known that since we were nothing.”

Of course today is Mother’s Day in the US and I’ve been thinking about those women who loved me when I was nothing. My own mother, who loved me before she knew me. Her mother, who loved her when she was nothing, and loved me when I was nothing too. My Dad’s mom, who loved us when we were nothing, and my Great grandmothers who somehow found the  capacity to love so many of us when we were still nothing. 

Somehow in my mind this love into the future, this love of thousands of people who are still nothing is all tied up in Biblical warnings to not despise the day of small beginnings, and to look at the love that is only the size of a man’s fist and see a great flooding rain of love coming. Thinking of Abraham and the promises made to Him by our God – that we would outnumber the grains of sand, and the stars in the sky. Looking at my own children and wondering just how big of an impact can this love make? How many thousands of people are we loving now, as we spread peanut butter for the generations to come, or get another cup of water for the little person who will be the old person some day? At our dining room tables, feeding generations with the same love. Sacrificing little things for people who will outnumber us so quickly.

Last summer we stopped in to visit my Grandma Greensides – the three of us kids, and our sixteen children. And she loved them. They lined up and filed through to see her and give her a hug. They introduced themselves to her repeatedly, and kept getting back in line for more hugs, because even though she didn’t remember them, they wanted to hear one more of her funny comments, her sweet jokes. They wanted to feel the incredible softness of her relaxed skin, and make her laugh and smile again. And she didn’t know them, but she loved them. She loved them when they were nothing.

My younger children don’t know their Great Grandma Bessie, but they know her love. They feel her love in the way their Papa loves them, the way their Nana reflects the things she learned from her. They know her love, and they love her back. She loved them when they were nothing.

As we pour all this love forward, into people who are still nothing, we thank God for His great love to us. His love that enables us to love each other – that provides us with a depth of love that makes no sense, that never fails. He loved us when we were nothing.

 

 

 

Happy Mother’s Day!

Wishing all of you who have mothers and all of you who are mothers a Very Happy Mother’s Day! It is a sweet thing to remember your mother, and it is a very sweet thing to be remembered by your children. I thank God for my own dear mother, pictured above a few years ago with my dad. I bless God for a mother who made our home a sunny place. I also bless God for my children and my grandchildren who continue to make my life a sunny place!

Late Night Accusations

If you ever wake up in the middle of the night and use that time to listen to a little self-condemnation, this is a post for you. Now you mothers of young children are probably awakened in the middle of the night often, but you are so exhausted that you fall back asleep first chance. So maybe you don’t have time to lie awake and think about what a bad person you are. Nevertheless, you still might want to read this, just in case this happens in the future.

This is how it goes. You either can’t get to sleep right away, or you wake up in the night, and while you are trying to get to sleep, you are prompted to think about what a bad: daughter, wife, mother, mother-in-law, grandma, sister, or Christian you are.

This is a supreme waste of time for two reasons (besides the fact that it’s robbing you of much needed sleep). The first is because even if you confess your nebulous “sin” of being a bad daughter, wife, mother, mother-in-law, grandma, sister or Christian, the guilt does not go away. It stays. And the more you reflect on it, the more tangled up you become, and the more you confess, and the worse it gets. So it is totally unproductive. A truly productive time of reflection ends in repentance and forgiveness, relief and gratitude. This however, ends with you feeling rotten. If you have ever read The Pilgrim’s Progress, this is the Slough of Despond.

The second reason this is such a supreme waste of time is because it is simply not true. You are not listening to the Holy Spirit but to the accuser. The Holy Spirit is the comforter, not the accuser. Yes, the Spirit convicts us of sin, righteousness, and the judgment to come. But He does not do this by accusing us. Accusation is the language of the devil. So we must learn to distinguish between the two.

The best thing to do when you are assaulted with accusations (whether in the middle of the night or any other time) is to ignore them. The more you listen and engage, the more foot-hold you give the devil, and the more you feel beat up, not forgiven or restored. Simply say, “Not true. I am in Christ and in Him I am forgiven and made new.” Then change the subject.

Now some of you may be wondering if I am being too dismissive here. What if you are being truly convicted of a true thing? Certainly, if you yelled at the kids today, then confess it to God right away, and then confess it to the kids first thing in the morning (no sense in waking them up). This kind of confession is helpful and will take care of it. But false guilt can be confessed all day (and all night) and it never goes away. In fact, it snowballs.

So if you really can’t get to sleep, count your blessings, not your sins. You will sleep much better!

Out of My Comfort Zone

I have never been abused or molested. I have not been mistreated by men close to me, or put in a position that made someone else’s sin feel like my own and haunt me like a shadow for years. But I want to write to those of you who are victims, who do carry this kind of shame or anger or guilt or fear with you every day.

I know that I am walking into a subject that is full of emotions that I do not know personally, and honestly, that is the reason that I do not usually talk about them. All that said, it is on my heart to write about this right now, and I hope that you may find it helpful.  Give me some grace here as I try to bring the beauty of the Gospel into a dark and difficult part of some of your lives.

First of all, if you were abused or molested in a way or at a time of life when you absolutely could not resist, did not understand what was happening, or were otherwise completely innocent, someone sinned dramatically against you. And the message that I want you to hear is that you are in good company. Jesus Christ was a sinless victim – and the weight of the sin that He bore was the weight of the sin of the world. That darkness, that fear, that heaviness that you know – that is the weight of having been close to sin that did not belong to you. Think on the Savior who did more than be with us in our sin – He took the sin from us. He shouldered the whole burden of the sin, and the terrifying consequence of it – separation from the Father. Jesus Christ is no stranger to the weight of sin, although He himself never sinned. Our sin destroyed a sinless relationship. That Son and that Father were torn apart by other peoples’ sins.

Identifying with the Savior in this is having company in your sorrow, but never being left there. Jesus did not remain separated from the Father. He was victorious.The Father not only brought justice on the sin, He brought salvation to the sinners. Identify with Him in your grief, and identify with Him in your victory. He is sitting at the right hand of God the Father, and He is not afraid. If you are in Him, you do not need to be afraid. If you are in Him, there is no eternal sorrow, no wounds that cannot be healed, no guilt that cannot be taken away. Keep your eyes on Him, and you are safe.

If you were complicit in the sin in some way, this Savior is still yours. That sin that He shouldered was yours, it was ours. But it is finished. It is gone. If you have repented and turned to Him, you can know peace. Jesus Christ is sufficient. Give it to Him.

But what about the people who have sinned against us? What about the people who molested little children, or beat your aunt up, or cornered your cousin in a church bathroom? What about the people who committed the sins that you remember in nightmares? What about the people who talked you into an abortion? The sins that have changed the way you see the world? How are we and the church to see these people? What are we to do with them? How are we to think about them?

I have talked with women who have been through things that should scare anyone. I have friends who have been molested, have known victims of brutal rape, and talked with women who still feel some kind of vague guilty haze resting on their lives. Sometimes even the straight facts of someone’s memory can make you sick, make you feel like the whole world is death itself. And that is partly the truth. Right now in the wake of the Vision Forum horror show, you can easily find accounts of Christian girls getting misused and abused and wronged all over the place – the kind of accounts that make you think we should throw the world away and start over somewhere without sinners. This is part of living the body life – we bear one another’s burdens. But we can also be deceived. We can start buying into lies. We can get what my sister-in-law so aptly calls the emotional flu. We can start to wallow in the darkness in the name of bringing in the light. We can slip into a lynch mob mentality – someone must pay for this.

But here is the good news for sinners and the bad news for lynch mobs. Someone already has. Jesus Christ died with the sins of repentant pedophiles. He became not only our sins, but the sins of the people whom we are looking on with hatred. Jesus Christ is the One True Perfect Sacrifice. His blood is sufficient. And here is the hardest part of what I want to say – and I truly hope you will be willing to listen and not be offended. Even if you are a victim, you and I and the entire race of Adam are also the offenders. This sin, all of it, was our inheritance in Adam. It belongs to us, and we to it. I don’t have to have molested anyone to share in the guilt of the sin we have all inherited from our father. We are in Adam by birth, and in the new Adam by the new birth. If you are saved, then in Adam you are filthy, and in Christ you are pure. And by being born new in Christ, I am not sinless, but I can be blameless. The sin is both oppressively ours, and it is as far from us as the East is from the West.

But what if a person who was not the victim but rather the abuser is converted? What if they were abusers, but they repent? What if the weight of their sin drives them to the Cross? What if Christ opens His arms to them and takes that burden on Himself? Then what?

Where I think we are stumbling is that we want to identify the “sinners” by their sins instead of by their Savior.  We have been heavily influenced by the world in this – wanting to believe that you can be born with a certain “identity” in sin that cannot be overcome. Well guess what? We were all born with that identity in sin, and we can all be reborn with a new identity in Christ. Do you really believe that there is a sin that the blood of Christ cannot wash away? Do you believe that there is a sin so bad that it has come through the death and burial and resurrection of the Son of God and is still strong enough to be the identity of the sinner? When God claims a sinner, He doesn’t do it half way. His blood is sufficient.

Sin is a destructive mess. And sexual abusive sin is one of the most destructive kinds of sin. There is no clean and smart and perfect way to deal with it after the fact.  It does not help that our civil justice system is seriously confused, and “justice” will often not be seen here in this life. Do churches often screw this up? Absolutely. Does Christ? Never.

This is the thing – we are to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves at the same time. But we can be – because we are children of Adam and children of God at the same time. We have to believe, and remember that we are capable of grotesque sin, because in Adam we have done it all. And we have to believe that Christ is capable of a greater righteousness that can and has swallowed that sin up.

When Christians make messes of situations like this – like being foolish enough to bring an abuser back to church with his abuse, or acting as though forgiveness and trust are the same thing, pretending not to know something terrible about someone they respect, or  simply forgetting what people are capable of – it is fundamentally a problem with what we believe about ourselves and about Christ.

Lately I have seen many Christians with an anger against this kind of sin, which is right. What is wrong is to forget the solution.  We cannot save ourselves by trying to separate ourselves out from the sinners. We cannot banish sinners from us and remain pure. We cannot save ourselves with the blood of a perpetrator. We are the sinners, all of us, and He is the Savior, whose blood is sufficient for all. Do not let fear or guilt or sexual confusion or brokenness or anger become your identity. Your identity is in Christ. A victorious, conquering, joyful, rejoicing, steadfast, merciful, just, holy, true and faithful Christ. He has taken our sin so that we might never have to be apart from Him. Praise Him. Love Him. Worship Him. Be His.

Out of my comfort zone…

I have never been abused or molested. I have not been mistreated by men close to me, or put in a position that made someone else’s sin feel like my own and haunt me like a shadow for years. But I want to write to those of you who are victims, who do carry this kind of shame, or anger, or guilt, or fear with you every day.

I know that I am walking into a subject that is full of emotions that I do not know personally, and honestly that is the reason that I do not usually talk about them. All that said, it is on my heart to write about this right now, and I hope that you may find it helpful.  Give me some grace here as I try to bring the beauty of the Gospel into a dark and difficult part of some of your lives.

First of all, if you were abused or molested in a way or at a time of life when you absolutely could not resist, did not understand what was happening, or were otherwise completely innocent, someone sinned dramatically against you. And the message that I want you to hear is that you are in good company. Jesus Christ was a sinless victim – and the weight of the sin that he bore was the weight of the sin of the world. That darkness, that fear, that heaviness that you know – that is the weight of having been close to sin that did not belong to you. Think on the Savior who did more than be with us in our sin – he took the sin from us. He shouldered the whole burden of the sin, and the terrifying consequence of it – separation from the Father. Jesus Christ is no stranger to the weight of sin, although he himself never sinned. Our sin destroyed a sinless relationship. That son and that Father were torn apart by other people’s sin.

Identifying with the savior in this is having company in your sorrow, but never being left there. Jesus did not remain separated from the Father. He was victorious.The Father not only brought justice on the sin, he brought salvation to the sinners. Identify with him in your grief, and identify with him in your victory. He is sitting at the right hand of God the Father, and he is not afraid. If you are in him, you do not need to be afraid. If you are in him, there is no eternal sorrow, no wounds that cannot be healed, no guilt that cannot be taken away. Keep your eyes on him, and you are safe.

If you were complicit in the  sin in some way, this savior is still yours. That sin that he shouldered was yours, it was ours. But it is finished. It is gone. If you have repented and turned to him you can know peace. Jesus Christ is sufficient. Give it to him.

But what about the people who have sinned against us? What about the people who molested little children, or beat your aunt up, or cornered your cousin in a church bathroom? What about the people who committed the sins that you remember in nightmares? What about the people who talked you into an abortion? The sins that have changed the way you see the world? How are we and the church to see these people? What are we to do with them? How are we to think about them?

I have talked with women who have been through things that should scare anyone. I have friends who have been molested, have known victims of brutal rape, and talked with women who still feel some kind of vague guilty haze resting on their life. Sometimes even the straight facts of someone’s memory can make you sick, make you feel like the whole world is death itself. And that is partly the truth. Right now in the wake of the Vision Forum horror show you can easily find accounts of Christian girls getting misused and abused and wronged all over the place – the kinds of accounts that make you think we should throw the world away and start over somewhere without sinners. This is part of living the body life – we bear each other’s burdens. But we can also be deceived. We can start buying into lies. We can get what my sister-in- law so aptly call the emotional flu. We can start to wallow in the darkness in the name of bringing in the light. We can slip into a lynch mob mentality – someone must pay for this.

But here is the good news for sinners and the bad news for lynch mobs. Someone already has. Jesus Christ died with the sins of repentant pedophiles. He became not only our sins, but the sins of the people that we are looking on in hatred. Jesus Christ is the one true perfect sacrifice. His blood is sufficient. And here is the hardest part of what I want to say – and I truly hope you will be willing to listen and not be offended. Even if you are a victim, you, and I, and the entire race of Adam is also the offenders. This sin, all of it, was our inheritance in Adam. It belongs to us, and we to it. I don’t have to have molested anyone to share in the guilt of the sin we have all inherited from our father. We are in Adam by birth, and in the new Adam by the new birth. If you are saved, then in Adam you are filthy, and in Christ you are pure. And by being born new in Christ, I am not sinless, but I can be blameless. The truth is that the sin is both oppressively ours ,and as far as the East is from the West from us.

But what if a person who was not the victim but rather the abuser is converted? What if they already were, but they repent? What if the weight of their sin drives them to the cross? What if Christ opens his arms to them and takes that burden on himself? Then what?

Where I think we are stumbling is that we want to identify the “sinners” by their sins instead of by their Savior.  We have been heavily influenced by the world in this – wanting to believe that you can be born with a certain “identity” in sin that cannot be overcome. Well guess what? We were all born with that identity in sin, and we can all be reborn with a new identity in Christ. Do you really believe that there is a sin that the blood of Christ cannot wash away? Do you believe that there is a sin so bad that it has come through the death and burial and resurrection of the Son of God and is still strong enough to be the identity of the sinner? When God claims a sinner, he doesn’t do it half way. His blood is sufficient.

Sin is a destructive mess. And sexual abusive sin is one of the most destructive kinds of sin. There is no clean and smart and perfect way to deal with it after the fact.  It does not help that our civil justice is seriously confused, and “justice” will often not be seen here in this life. Do churches often screw this up? Absolutely. Does Christ? Never.

This is the thing – we are to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves at the same time. But we can be – because we are children of Adam and children of God at the same time. We have to believe, and remember that we are capable of grotesque sin, because in Adam we have done it all. And we have to believe that Christ is capable of a greater righteousness that can, and has swallowed that sin up.

When Christians make messes of situations like this – like being foolish enough to bring an abuser back to church with his abused, or acting as though forgiveness and trust are the same thing, pretending not to know something terrible about someone they respect, or  simply forgetting what people are capable of – it is fundamentally a problem with what we believe about ourselves and about Christ.

Lately I have seen many Christians with an anger against this kind of sin, which is right. What is wrong is to become  forgetful of the solution, which is worse than pointless. We cannot save ourselves by trying to separate ourselves out from the sinners. We cannot banish sinners from us and remain pure. We can not save ourselves with the blood of a perpetrator. We are the sinners, all of us, and He is the savior, whose blood is sufficient for all. Do not let fear, or guilt, or sexual confusion, or brokenness, or anger become your identity. Your identity is in Christ. A victorious, conquering, joyful, rejoicing, steadfast, merciful, just, holy, true and faithful Christ. He has taken our sin so that we might never have to be apart from him. Praise Him. Love Him. Worship Him. Be His.

The Oxen Are In

I don’t have a life verse, but if I did, this might be it:  “Where no oxen are, the crib is clean: but much increase is by the strength of the ox” (Proverbs 14:4).

I have an ongoing relationship with messes, a relationship that I do not keep a secret. My children are busy and active. They color about nine times a day at the dining room table, and by “color” I mean scissors, glue, duct tape, foil, and whatever else they rummage up. They play games all over our house. They leave socks in places that make no sense. They shed clothing. They come home full of things that they can’t wait to show me and dioramas that must be made. And all of this is not even any of the mess that comes from the food prep and clean up. Six small children bathing and showering and leaving towels everywhere.

When talking about homemaking, Christian women often refer to the fact that God loves order. He created an ordered world. This is so true, and I love it. This is why I work every day to have an ordered home. But then I look outside my house and laugh – because God also created places where you have a storm of natural messes. My yard is strangely prolific in falling items. We have a huge oak tree, and the squirrels party on down in that thing like a bunch of wood chippers. There are shards of acorns everywhere. And then the tree itself doesn’t lose its leaves until after the snow has fallen. So we can’t rake it really, we just keep the leaves primarily in our gutters. Then there is a beech tree that drops a bazillion leaves that we can rake if we are fast, and then there’s a bunch of nut-like products that make walking on our driveway sound like walking on shells. And in the backyard we have a cherry tree that takes a turn pelting the world with tasty blood-red staining agents. We have a black locust tree that throws huge black pods all over the house like confetti. The squirrels also love that, and they merrily transport them to a picnicking location right outside the living room window where they peel and shred pods until their pants are too tight, and they decide to go nap. And then there is an old apple tree that needs some sort of help to make useable apples on a level we could access, but instead makes a bountiful crop way up high and releases them all at once to rot quickly on the ground. And this fits my life. Because inside my house we work in a similar style.

Have you ever seen some of those breathtakingly serene pictures of Swedish interiors? A home made up of sleek surfaces and rustic counterpoints? Quiet colors and surprisingly modern touches next to acres of plain empty space? I can look at that kind of thing and be filled with a real longing. Longing for a place that does not get messed up like this place. A place that stays beautiful, a place that looks the same in the evening as it did in the morning. I am confident that in that place there are not plasma cars wheeling around the kitchen in tight circles to the soundtrack of hilarity. I am pretty sure that no one got all the washcloths out and into the tub, and I am sure that if you decided to turn on the sink, or begin to bake something, that there would not instantly be three children on chairs behind you asking you to move over so they could get on with their plans. I bet that in that home when I put a stack of clean clothes on the bed in my room, toddlers would not lay siege to it and throw it back in the dirty clothes.  Because in that life, there would not be the unsavory mess of my life. There wouldn’t be all the dishes and all the wet rags. There wouldn’t be the crayon wrappers or the stickers that somehow only stick permanently to the wrong surfaces. There wouldn’t be misused sharpies, or coats that got dragged through the mud outside by a misbehaving puppy. In that life, there would not be the mess of my life.

But you know what else there could not be? The fruit of my life. Resenting the mess in the barn is resenting the crop in the field. My children are not here to keep the barn tidy, they are here to plow the fields and bring in the crop.

Some people God calls to live in the desert with one tasteful display on the horizon of rocks and a cactus. And you can honor God there with contentment and joy and sacrifice. And some people God calls to live in the cranberry bog where you can’t go out without hip waders, and the sacrifice of your life will always include messy boots and stains and crazy bounty that has to be raked up. And the only way to honor God in either place is to embrace with thanksgiving the life that He has put before you. Honor God, love your life.

All the work of cleaning the barn is simply a way of honoring the strength of my children and acknowledging their purpose in the world. God has given them to us to shelter and feed and teach (about cleaning up after themselves too). He has entrusted these kids to us to bring in the increase. To work the fields in His harvest. Loving this life I’ve been given means seeing my children the way God sees them: as an inheritance, as a force for increase, as a gift, as a means of a great harvest. Cleaning this barn is a way of honoring the strength that God wants us to desire. The mess in this barn is a mess of plenty, it is the mess of the gift He is giving us.

 I need to see my children as a force for good in the world,  and not simply a destructive force in our home. I need to desire the harvest more than a clean and unused trough. I need to look in faith at the big empty silos, and in gratitude at the mess in the barn. And all that said, I need to throw on some boots and muck out the stalls.

 

Flowers on the Table

You may have noticed that nine times out of ten, if we put a picture up with a post, it’s a picture of flowers. We are in danger of being redundant. But what could be prettier than  flowers?  (Okay, pictures of the kids are stiff competition, I grant.) But I confess that I am completely taken with the glory of flowers.

When I was first married, Bessie (my mother-in-law) showed me how to make a Japanese flower arrangement. Her own mother had passed away when Bessie was just five years old, and her brothers did not teach her much in the way of domesticity. But when she was in Japan as a missionary many years later, she loved the beauty and simplicity of their flower arrangements, and she learned to be quite good at arranging them herself. She told me early on that flowers should always be included in the weekly food budget, and I happily applied her good teaching!

Though I had been a plant lover, I had not really spent much time with fresh flowers. In fact, when Doug and I got married, I brought about thirty houseplants into our apartment, while Doug contributed his guitar and a pile of books.

So here’s how Bessie taught me to arrange flowers. First you need a low bowl, and then you need a frog to set in some shallow water in the bowl. (A frog is one of those pronged round metal things that you stick the flower stems into.)

Then you select three flowers and arrange them at varying heights. You never (never) use an even number of flowers. One is fine. Three is perfect. Five works too. And then you use some pretty greens or branches in the background to provide some height. Many times we simply used flowering branches and no single flower stems at all. I am sure it is more nuanced than this, but this is how Bessie taught me to do it.

This type of flower arrangement is very easy on the budget since you only need a few flowers. Bessie gave me a frog and a bowl, and I had a square dish I had gotten in Japan during my college days, so I was set. I’m sure I never achieved her skill level, but I still love the understatement of a Japanese arrangement.

Americans tend to cram as many flowers as possible into a vase, and you miss the beauty of the individual blooms when you do this. Less is more it turns out. When you put three roses in this kind of arrangement, you really see those three roses.

So give it a try. It doesn’t require a lot of equipment, and surely you can find three flowering branches or three blooms of some kind that you can use to create a beautiful arrangement.

(P.S. The pictures above are from the internet. They were obviously arranged by someone who really knows how it’s done. But it’s a great example. You see the little shallow bowl and the frog. One is more elaborate and the other is as simple as it gets.)

He is Risen!

May your Resurrection Sunday celebrations be blessed!

On not being a victim

I know that everyone in the world right now is freaking out about the Doug Philips scandal, and to be honest, the whole thing grosses me out so much that I don’t even want to read about it. And given that I don’t even want to read about it, I’m certainly not going to pull up my socks and start writing about it. But the whole situation has given me some food for thought, and that is on the question of how to raise our daughters so that they don’t fall prey to the manipulations of that kind of man – because those kind of men are found the world over, not merely in patriarchal conservative groups. Is your daughter ever likely to encounter more than three men in the course of her life? Then she will encounter this kind of man. So how do we teach our daughters to be submissive but also strong? To be gracious but also quick to say no?

I have three daughters, all of whom are are now closer to “young lady” than “little girl,” so this isn’t a hypothetical question for me! Here are some of the things that have been bouncing around in my head on this question, in no particular order – things that are very much at the front of my mind as I watch these lovely girls grow up.

1. Christian women should be characterized by submission. No matter how much cool-shaming is thrown at the concept of headship and submission by the hipper-than-thou crowd, we can’t get around it that the Bible teaches this. Some people scream and run when they hear the word submission, and men like Doug Philips make that reaction understandable. Then over amongst the crowd that’s all gung-ho about submission there is frequently a scary lack of nuance. On the two sides of this question you find people waving their flags saying either, “submission is terrible,” or “submission is wonderful.” But submit is a a word like love. Is love good or bad? Well of course that all depends. What do you love? Whom do you love? Do you love God, or do you love the world? Do you love your children, or do you love your best friend’s husband? Obviously those details make all the difference in the world.  It’s all good and well to say that we Christian women should submit . . . but whom do we submit to? Do we submit to God or do we submit to Nebuchadnezzar? One is a great act of faith, the other a great act of cowardice. The word submission, on its own, holds no moral value whatsoever. Submission could be noble, submission could be treacherous. It all depends. So as we teach our daughters to “be submissive,” the ever-important question is “submissive to whom?” And the only no-fail answer to that question is “God.” We teach our daughters to be submissive to God – and that may mean being the extremely un-cool person who believes that wives should submit to their own husbands . . . and that also may mean being the wife who calls the cops on her husband, or the woman who calls the cops on her pastor, or the girl who calls the pastor on her dad. Submission certainly doesn’t always mean saying yes – sometimes submission means saying no, and that can take an awful lot of strength and bravery. Submission always has a backbone – and that backbone is the Word of God. Every human authority requiring our submission should be examined in the light of that. Do I owe this person my submission? If the answer to that quesion is yes, then it is because I submit ultimately to God and He has asked me to submit to this particular man. As a mother, I want my girls to know and understand this, and I want it to be deep in their bones. Ultimately, a heart submissive to God can stand up and resist someone who attempts to exploit that submission for their own ends.

2. Working through those questions is not easy. Girls need to know how think, how to study, how to pray, how to engage, how to take every thought captive, how to understand a principle and then make application in their own lives. That means teaching them how to think, and that means an education. It’s not at all surprising that men who get infatuated with the idea of male headship frequently don’t think that women need much of an education. (They’re easier to manipulate that way – you can get them to do whatever you want and they’ll think you’re smart at the same time. Win win!) As a mother, I want my girls to know how to hold their own in a debate, how to not be intimidated, how to follow an argument, how to spot flaws in an argument, and how to tell a boy or a man where to get off. I want my girls to be intimidating to the wrong kind of guy. I want my daughters to see right through the stupid posturing of machismo just as much as I want them to see right through the sorry pleas to be let into the cool group by women like Rachel Held Evans.

3. Frequently, women are successfully victimized because of their own fear. Fear of their abuser, fear of anyone finding out, fear that maybe this is all their fault. I want my daughters to understand that fear is like quicksand. It will pull you down, paralyze you, and swallow you up – and that is just as true of mothers who fear for the safety of their children. In 1 Peter, a gentle and quiet spirit is described as being very precious in the sight of God – and then a second later we are told that this spirit is not afraid with any terror. So rather than being told to hush up, which is what many people seem to assume, we are being told to be BRAVE. A quiet spirit is a brave spirit. I need to model that for my girls – by not stressing out and wringing my hands over them, by not letting my thoughts and conversation be dominated by worry, and by not falling prey to any of the fear-driven fads on facebook that sweep through in a flurry of comments and likes about every ten minutes.

4. I want my girls to know that if they ever needed help they could turn straight to me. If they’re facing a terrifying situation, I want them to know they can tell me anything. And if I want them to do that with the big things, then I need to let them know by listening to them in all the little things. He who is faithful with little will be faithful with much – and she who is faithful to listen to her daughters in all the trivial things is showing that she will be faithful to listen to them in the big things. If I want them to believe that I would help them work through something big, then I need to be there to help them work through all the small little issues they’re facing right now.