Sara Horn's Blog, page 6

Does Our External Reflect Our Internal?

At the end of the book of Jeremiah, we read of a heartbreaking moment… the kings of Judah continued to do evil in the sight of God and we’re told in Jeremiah 52:3, that “Because of the Lord’s anger, it came to the point in Jerusalem and Judah that He finally banished them from His presence.”

Can you imagine what it must have felt like to be without God’s presence? To hear silence? To feel nothing of His love, His protection, His thoughts or His instruction? As you might imagine, life quickly morphed into chaos, and the city of Jerusalem was soon under siege by Babylon’s army. For TWO YEARS, they were surrounded, with no way to escape. Nothing to eat. They were in the midst of a severe famine, and I would suggest it wasn’t just a physical famine they were experiencing but a spiritual one as well. It did not take long for the city to be captured, the once mighty kingdom torn apart, plundered and looted and destroyed piece by piece.

At the end of the chapter, the scripture goes into great detail of how the Lord’s temple was dismantled by Judah’s enemies – describing the beautiful intricate jewels and precious stones and detailed craftsmanship of the various parts of the temple, now being grabbed and hauled away in the same manner you might see with a frenzied crowd at a going out of business sale.

Just read the description in vs. 20-23.

“As for the two pillars, the one reservoir, and the 12 bronze bulls under the water carts that King Solomon had made for the Lord’s temple, the weight of the bronze of all these articles was beyond measure. One pillar was 27 feet tall, had a circumference of 18 feet, was hollow—four fingers thick— and had a bronze capital on top of it. One capital, encircled by bronze latticework and pomegranates, stood 7½ feet high. The second pillar was the same, with pomegranates. Each capital had 96 pomegranates all around it. All the pomegranates around the latticework numbered 100.”

So much work, so much time invested for the beauty of God’s holy place. We can appear to have everything right on the outside, but if we’re missing a relationship with God on the inside, none of it means anything.

What about you? Are you more concerned with how many “friends” you have in your social media feeds than the friends you’ve actually talked to or prayed for this week?

Are you more worried about what people think about the clothes you wear or the car you drive or the way your house looks than the time you’re making to spend with your family this week?

Appearances are just that – appearances. We can convince many of what we want them to think – but God always knows our hearts. So let’s keep our hearts soft and yielded to Him. Let’s be willing to be changed by God from the inside out. And let’s never push Him away to the point He finally agrees, and leaves. A life without God is not a life I ever want to know.

The Wisdom We Gain When We Notice

Psalm 90:12 ~ “Teach us to number our days carefully

so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts.”

We are so tempted to move our lives along some days, aren’t we? Especially when the season of life we’re in isn’t where we want to be, or isn’t as exciting, or as rewarding, or it’s a season just so filled with conflict or challenge that we look to a new challenge-free season door to open?

But can I share something with you that I’m learning? Wisdom never develops from coasting downhill, like when we were kids on our bikes – we tend to focus on the breeze, and what we’re passing often ends up in a blur in our peripheral. We miss whatever we’re flying by.

Only when we’re making our way UP the hill – do we gain what we need to know, do we notice where we are, and who and what surround us.

We will learn more in our climb up than we will ever learn on our ride down. It’s what we learn that will help prepare and equip us for the next hill we face.

Make this your prayer for your Monday start – ask God to join you in whatever hill you’re slowly climbing, and ask Him for His wisdom to not miss one lesson He wants you to learn along the way.

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Dealing with the uncomfortable

 

This is Lucy. Lucy is our second schnauzer who we adopted about a year ago. She is ORNERY! (If you don't speak southern, that means she's a mess! Always getting into trouble!) She's also a walking set of illustrations for life, and I'll share one of those stories in my new book coming uot this fall, How Can I Possibly Forgive? Rescuing Your Heart from Resentment and Regret.

This is Lucy's bed that came with her and is a whole lot smaller than she is now, but she LOVES it. It's her spot, her safe place, where she goes when she wants to be comfortable despite the fact she's technically outgrown it.

Every time I see her in it, I take a picture because it just makes me laugh at how she loves that little bed when she has to scrunch up just so in order to fit into it.

Her insistence in staying in something so little because it's familiar also makes me think about how we do that in life. Have you ever been in a season in your life - maybe in your job, maybe at church, in a situation with friends - where you know God's telling you to move, to change, to try something new, to step out and lead or walk in a brand new direction?

You know He's telling you, but you still hesitate, you still resist, you sorta just stand there in place hoping God doesn't really mean you, because if you're honest, you really like where you are, right now. Ever been there?

My husband and I are going to be starting and co-teaching a brand new Sunday school class in our church beginning one week from tomorrow. We're excited to see what God does with this group, but as the time gets closer, the realization of what's happening is starting to set in.

This afternoon, we're going to a crawfish boil with the class we've been in since we moved back to our hometown, and it suddenly hit how hard this will actually be. Because if I'm honest, we feel comfortable in the class we're in. Our friends are there, we like our teachers, we've enjoyed the fellowship and community with the other couples.

So stepping out to lead another class isn't easy. We won't know everyone who comes.. at least at first. We'll have to feel our way with those who join us in how things are set up, how our class will look, what our class needs will be.

But God never calls us to be comfortable - He does ask us to be available, and it's through our willingness to be available that His incredible hand shiens - His purpose becomes obvious - His will is confirmed.

So I share this with you for a couple of reasons - first, as we step out in faith, connecting couples in our church and community who haven't yet really joined in with a small group, please keep us in your prayers.

Second, if you find yourself sometimes like my girl Lucy, doing your very best to stay squeezed into the spot where you've been comfortable, but the grunting and groaning and maybe even actual growing pains you're experiencing are letting you know God wants to move you somewhere else so He can use you to glorify Him and His plan and SEE His plan unfold - go ahead my friend, and stand up and stretch out those cramped-up legs!

Walk forward towards that new place or job or move or class or leadership role He's calling you to move to. It's okay to be a little uncomfortable when you do it - because you'll be looking at Him with every step you slowly take.

And that's exactly what He wants you to do.

When Your Kid’s Name Isn’t Called

So the other day I did something exceptionally brave.

Or maybe, in hindsight, really dumb.

I went to my son's 7th grade awards program.

Now - no one told me to go to his awards program. I didn't get a note, or a text, or an email from one of his teachers or his principals suggesting I might come. (Though my friend Karim, whose son Carlos is super smart, didn't either, and she went. So there's a little reasoning for you that I wasn't completely crazy.) I almost texted a teacher friend to ask if I should go, but if I'm being honest, I was actually afraid of what she might say. So, no, no one told me to go to the awards program the other day.

I just went. And not without a whole lot of hope.

It's been a tough year, y'all.

My husband, Cliff, was deployed for most of it and he left for stateside training and mobilization in California about three weeks before Caleb started school. The day he left U.S. soil for Aghanistan was also the same day I picked our 12-going-on-20-year-old son up in the car line and his first question to me was "Mom, how old were you when you first started dating?"

Hello, teenage hormones. What nice timing you have.

(And just in case you only have girls and can't imagine that boys go hormone crazy too - let me make it clear - THEY DO. They very.much.do. I have the slamming doors, rolling the eyes one minute and giving me a big hug and "I love you Mom" in the next minute stories to prove it. Teen boys go just as nuts as teen girls. So I guess we're all lucky. Lucky us.)

The first semester was evil horrible awful. We spent HOURS at the table every night doing homework that should have only taken an hour or so. I was part cheerleader, drill sergeant and prison warden. When I wasn't helping him after school, I was doing online research during the day, trying to find extra help in what he was studying and looking for why he was having such a hard time. We tried rewarding for good grades. Consequences for bad. But nothing seemed to really help. I felt like I was homeschooling without actually having him HOME to SCHOOL. I was also beginning to wonder if someone had re-enrolled me in middle school as a terribly twisted joke because didn't I already go through Algebra 1 (and did JUST AS BAD THEN AS I WAS DOING NOW?! Okay, I was doing worse now, because according to my son's math teacher, that is "not how you do it." Thanks Common Core. Appreciate it.) 

I checked his grades hourly daily and had reoccuring heart paralysis every time the screen came up with "Your child has received a FAILING GRADE TODAY." Which makes me ask the question -why can't they do that for really good grades too? Just to help even out the emotional extremes? Because if I'm honest, I didn't see "Your child has received a FAILING GRADE TODAY..." I just saw "HEY MOM - YOU FAIL! YOUR CHILD DIDN'T MAKE THE CUT TODAY."

If you're a mom of an only child, you will understand this - because when you only have one - you only have one. You are ONE and DONE. You don't have any more chances to get it right. There are no first pancakes in an only child situation. If this kid doesn't live up to your every dream, you don't have three more chances to alter your parenting methods and come out with a different outcome. When you have one child - this is it. When you're the parent of an Only, it's the Olympics, the Triple Crown, the World Series, and Miss America all rolled into one, and right or wrong, as a mom, you can feel all (both real and imagined) eyes on you when your child isn't successful - because after all, you only have one, right? What's the problem? What are you not doing right?

Add all of that to the emotions and exhaustion of a deployment, and you've got serious pressure going on. All I could think was, I cannot let my son fail 7th grade while his dad's gone.

By Christmas break, I'd tried everything. I knew Caleb was trying. I knew he was tired of the bad grades and I knew he was working hard in his classes and studying at home. But nothing was getting better. It was time to look for other reasons why he was struggling. After some testing, evaluations and input from his teachers and by his doctor, we not only had a better idea of what we were dealing with, but also a plan in place to help him improve.

During the second semester, we saw a turn around. It wasn't an overnight miracle, but gradually, his grades started improving, and I could see his confidence returning. We no longer had to spend hours at the table trying to finish homework. He could do his work, and I could check it after he was finished. As and Bs were starting to come home. The online grade sheet wasn't yelling at me nearly as much about failing grades.  Life was starting to feel a little less like one big middle school study hall.

And then he got sick. No fever, but a headache that wouldn't stop and vomiting at least twice a day.

Every. single. day.

His doctor ran every kind of test and nothing tested positive. At first she thought virus, then flu, then maybe migraines. When it was finally over, he had missed 22 days of school.

I'll spare you all of the details, but after more doctor visits and hospital admittances than he's had in his whole life leading up to this mystery illness, they were finally able to stop the headache and nausea. And about two weeks later we got a more conclusive test back that showed he'd indeed had Mono. It's sad when you're happy it was mono and not chronic migraines. I just wish we'd known that six weeks earlier.

Despite missing all of that time in school, I'd tried my best to keep him up on his homework and classwork teachers sent home, and miracle of miracles, the week before the awards program, his grades were posting happy looking As and Bs. SERIOUSLY. He had to come down with Mono for something to click and his studying to improve?

So I went to his awards program, because surely he might get SOMETHING. Like Most Improved? After this crazy year, he really needed an award.

Ok, let's be honest. This mama needed an AWARD.

So there I sat, in the mom rows, with all of the other award-expecting, camera-toting mothers, holding my breath as I listened to Perfect Attendance names get called. Yeah, that wasn't going to be Caleb. Those were the kids who gave everyone else viruses and colds because their parents sent them to school whether they were sick or not. I'm now starting to see the Perfect Attendance strategy...  I chatted softly with my friend Karim, cooed over her little baby girl in her arms, and took a picture of my friend LiliBeth's son getting an award, since I knew she was at work and couldn't be there herself.

Come on Most Improved... 

They got to the C-average award, given to students who maintained a 2. 5-2.9 GPA or better all year. They call this one the Thumbs Up Award, and my friend Karim looked over at me excitedly, her eyes looking hopeful, and said, "Oh, I bet this could be Caleb's!"

I chuckled and leaned over to her. "I HATE this award," I said. "It's like the "Sorry you couldn't make As and B's" award." She smiled as she shook her head and rolled her eyes at me. Did I mention she's a doctor? Super smart. Her son has her brain genes. He does not get the Thumbs Up award. Caleb got mine unfortunately (aren't you proud that I didn't say his father's?). But I listened patiently to the list of students, and tried not to sigh too loudly when Caleb's name wasn't called. Yeah, there was at least one grade that first semester that might have knocked him out of the running for that one... the same one that kept him from going on his band trip with all of his friends when he was forced to stay behind with all of the "bad kids" who got in trouble for various things like throwing books or running when they shouldn't have been, or not listening to a teacher. Caleb's sin was not passing one too many tests. Like I said, it was a rough year.

Come on Most Improved... don't they give out an award for Most Improved?

By the time they got to the straight As all year long awards and not one but SIX mamas sitting around me all pulled out their smart phones at once and started videoing, it hit me that my son's name was not going to be called.

Like, at all.

There was no award for Most Improved.

That Thumbs Up piece of paper was suddenly looking pretty good.

I sat and glanced at my 13-year-old several rows in front of me, whose face is in that weird ablong-shaped no-longer-a-little-boy-but-not-quite-a-man stage. He'd glanced over his shoulder at me, his face saying what he probably knew I was thinking. No award. Sorry.

As the rest of the program wrapped up, I sat there, in the middle of the straight A mom section, and tried to push down the frustration bubbling to the top. I'm competitive by nature. Usually with myself. But I've always tried hard not to be THAT parent that pushes her kid to be what he's not. Which hasn't been easy. He's laid back, like his daddy. Doesn't always have a plan for the future, let alone for tomorrow. He just lives life. Doesn't have to have a strategy. Doesn't even have to have a goal. He's happy. He's content. Just being him. His video-game playing, tv-watching him.

It drives me CRAZY.

As his mom, and someone who has always had a plan and a passion, I've worried that his contentment - while a highly desired trait if you're, maybe, a funeral home director or, I don't know, GHANDI, will hold him back or that having no obvious outright passion in this crazy fast world we live in will cause him to miss out on things. It's probably why I'm always encouraging him to try new stuff. I've even told him that I wouldn't care if he makes below-average grades if he were interested in something else - like bike mechanics.

Or underwater fishing.

Mission work. No, I don't mind if you decide to go to Africa.

SOMETHING.

I keep looking for the day he'll find the "thing" that gets him running in the race instead of contentedly hanging out on the side, cheering everyone else on as they run by.

But as I sat in that seat, with beaming-for-good-reason parents all around me because they'd heard their kids names get called, God reminded me that Caleb hasn't grown up completely void of anything I might have passed onto him.

He might not be running in hot pursuit of something right now at the ripe old age of 13, but he also doesn't run after what everyone else is running after. He never has. When he was just a little guy in water wings, and all the other kids were jumping off the side of the pool, he'd run with just as much energy DOWN.THE.STAIRS into the shallow end and splash around with the rest of them.

He makes his own decisions and follows his own gut and usually most of the time makes the right choices, regardless of what friends or others his age are doing. And in that way, he is his own person. He is thinking outside the proverbial everyman box. In his own way, he's pursuing the path God's laying out for him.

NOT the path his mama keeps trying to shovel or put down in front of him in a neat five-step plan.

So, no, I didn't hear my kid's name called at the awards program this year.

I don't have any pictures to share on FB with the countless other moms in my news feed excitedly proclaiming how smart or how athletic or how all-around great students their children are.

I know there are other mamas who are in the same boat. Mamas of middle school boys who haven't yet figured out why studying is important, mamas of high school juniors who would much rather be hanging out with friends than learning anything, mamas of kids who - you name the reason - just haven't made the grade. Mamas like my friend whose child is severely autistic, who shook her head and chuckled at me when I shared this story the other day with her. She's never heard her son's name called for an award. But it doesn't mean she still doesn't wish at times that she could. There's some perspective for you.

So I didn't hear my kid's name this year - but I can be confident - and content (ok, I'm working on that last one) - that my son's name has already been called by God Himself when He brought him into this world and gave me the absolute privilege and blessing of being his mama. That God knows Caleb's name because Caleb knows God's - and I can be thankful he made that eternal decision and commitment way before we were ever thinking about getting some trophy or certificate at a school awards day. I can breathe easier as I focus less on what I think he should be growing up to be, and instead be prayerfully confident God's growing him up to be who He's called him to be.

Bottom line?

I have no idea who my son is going to become or what he's going to do, whether he will ever have awards in his future, or not, whether he will ever be recognized for anything outside of just being his cute sweet and sometimes teenage awkward and moody self (though, come on, of course I still hope he does - I'm his mama, after all.) But just as Hannah committed her precious son Samuel to the Lord, each and every day I have to do the same with my Caleb. I also have to remind myself that God knows what He's doing and He knows where He's leading my son. (and it's really ok if I never get the memo.)

It's God's job to lead my son to where He wants him to go, just as He lead me when I was growing up (have I really grown up?). It's my job as his mom to pray for him, encourage him, and watch him get there.

And when that day happens? You can bet I'll be the one cheering the loudest.

Yes, I'll be THAT mom.

I AM that mom.

So, like me, if you're struggling with the perfect kid envy virus that seems to hit about this time of year when all of the other parents around you are touting their kids successes and grand accomplishments, making it even more painfully clear that your child is NOT a perfect kid -  can I just encourage you that it's ok?

That for all of the seemingly perfect awards and wonderful honors so many of our friends children have, they also have their own hangups and struggles and problems you just don't know about?

That maybe, some of them might even be wishing their kids could be more laid back like yours, and not so stressed out they're in tears if they don't make As on everything?

Hey, it could happen.

Enjoy your summer free of grade-checking and homework-prodding. And every once in awhile, just for fun, call your child's name. He still needs to hear it.