Road Maps

"Recalculating."
The word that strikes fear into every owner of a GPS.  Recalculating can mean "traffic jam up ahead" or "you've taken a wrong turn" or "I am a computer, not a nice lady, so I am blipping and you are going to end up in an corn field."  When my husband was in the military and we were stationed in Germany, our GPS, after "recalculating" several times, took us through a narrow, 2 lane mountain pass in the Austrian Alps with few railings and daredevils on speed motorcycles.  Let me just say that we learned from that experience.

I no longer trust our GPS completely.  I look up directions on GoogleMaps, Map Quest, and an actual, physical, paper map.  Yes, we have learned that a GPS is not always the best guide to get to an unknown place.  And even after so much planning, there may be detours, road work, or accidents.

Raising children is a little like that.  We have what we think is a high tech road map to bring them to some kind of success.  Today's parents, more than ever, plan their children's future.  They plan the classes they will take, beginning them at an early age and enrolling them, sometimes hours a week, in sports or dance or music or perhaps all three. I can look back at my own mistakes as a mom and see that, at times, I was focused on the wrong kind of success for our girls.  What do we define as success for our grown children?  Education?  Talents?  A profession that brings in a lot of income?  Or character, selflessness, godliness?

Do we give more encouragement when our children perform well and look good?  Or do we let them know we appreciate qualities of justice, compassion and mercy?  In the words of Jesus, "What good is it for a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?" Mark 8:36

Proverbs says, "Train up a child in the way that he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it."  Proverbs 22:6

What does it mean to "train up a child" and what, exactly, is "the way that he should go?"  Here is the ultimate road map for raising kids, one that will not steer us wrong.

First and foremost, it had to do with the culture of the land which involved the instruction of godliness.  Secondly, the Hebrew roots of the words give the general idea that each person has a life planned by God, a "bend" if you will, for what he or she is to do in life.  Clark's Commentary on the Bible puts it this way:

"Dedicate, therefore, in the first instance, your child to God; and nurse, teach, and discipline him as God's child, whom he has intrusted to your care.  These things observed, and illustrated by your own conduct, the child (you have God's word for it) will depart from the path of life."

Join me as I ask God to give me the wisdom and strength to live a life of character, selflessness, and godliness and to encourage our children and grandchildren.  I pray that He would show me areas in my own life example that hinder them from seeing, seeking and giving the love of Jesus.  This parenting thing is not easy at any stage.  How thankful I am for a God of grace who works through me and works apart from me!

Obedience Rather Than Sacrifice

The last two weeks of my life have been spent with my new grandson, Michael. My daughter and son-in-law live in Brevard, North Carolina, nestled in a valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains. They have lived in western Carolina for almost 5 years now, and these mountains have become a sabbatical for me. Every time I visit, I discover a new place to experience the very presence of God. This time, it was in a waterfall glen about a mile hike from the road. Transylvania County (great name, isn't it?) has more waterfalls than any other county in the United States, and each one is unique, one rushing, another hundreds of feet high, most tumbling. But nothing prepared me for this quiet place of a slight steady stream of water cascading gently overtop a high, shallow cave indentation back in the Appalachian woods. For a few minutes, as I stood and looked at the waterfall, true silence surrounded me. No footsteps, no cars, no overhead airplanes, only the sound of God spilling gently into a wadable rock pool. I wanted to stay there all day and listen.

That water has no choice but to do what it is meant to do...run downstream somewhere. It obeys gravity. In that quiet place, God spoke to my heart about obedience. We do certain things, or at least I hope we do, every day, without thinking, that are a mark of obedience. We exercise restraint because of laws: stop at stop lights, follow the speed limit, especially though school zones when we see a police car. What if we saw God looking at us when we choose to disobey Him? Have you ever seen a toddler who is told to not do something and then he looks directly at his parents and does it anyway? Are we not like that at times with God? We know He is looking at us and prompting our souls not to do something and we do it anyway?

A wise woman I respect once sent a prayer request for the children of an ill mother who was in a coma, and in the request she included this: "pray that they will be obedient to God's Word, because I am sure their mother would be praying the same thing for them."

As I hold my 3-week-old grandson and have held my 4-month-old granddaughter Maile in Colorado, I pray many things for them. I pray that they will have a personal relationship with God through His Son Jesus Christ, I pray that they will know that they are set apart for something special, I even pray for their future spouse. But I have also been praying that they will be obedient to Him and His Word. The troubles that we bring to our own life really can be traced back to this one and most difficult daily thing: obedience. It is true of my own life, and I see how my disobedience has affected others. And although I have studied about it, talked the good talk about it, and prayed for a heart for it, I don't think I have truly practiced it.

"Now then if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be my own possession among all the peoples, for all earth is Mine." Exodus 19:5

Love Like a Hurricane?

"We've been through a lot together, and most of it was your fault." So reads a pillow that I bought and now has a place of honor in my husband's and my bedroom. I laugh a little every time I see it. I have quite a talent for blaming Mike for everything.

Just this morning, I was about to read my daily devotional, and suddenly it dawned on me that in all of my unpacking over the past 3 weeks, I hadn't found some of the things I treasure the most: a collection of whole conch shells and driftwood that our family collected over many vacations to one of our favorite places, the Outer Banks. Cape Lookout, Outer Banks, to be exact, the place where Hurricane Irene made first landfall (kind of ironic when you think about it, isn't it??). Suddenly, I was obsessed with finding those shells. Ever become obsessed with finding something? I was convinced they had been lost by the movers, or worse yet, thrown away by my husband.

I searched high and low in the house- the garage, the basement, anywhere there were still boxes. NO SHELLS. First I shed a few tears, then I let anger take over. Really, Mike, I thought to myself, don't you know better? I imagined him finding the box of shells in the attic back in Georgia and thinking they were useless, that they didn't need to be moved anymore, after so many moves with the Army. Those shells even went to Germany and back. How could he throw them away now that we had finally settled down?

Somewhere in the runaway train wreck of my angry and hurt emotions, God got ahold of me. I decided to let go of my gotta-find-it obsession and go read my morning devotional. Maybe it would speak to me. Yeah, it spoke to me. Like a lightning bolt.

John 15:12, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” (NIV)

That's very hard sometimes, isn't it, especially when we have started fretting? One of my favorite verses is Psalm 37:8 : "Cease from anger and forsake wrath; Do not fret; it leads only to evildoing." When I fret, I usually start casting blame on someone else. My mind runs in the wrong direction, and there is no love to be found. Oftentimes, the people I want to throw stones at are those that I care the most about.

So, I decided to forgive my husband for his wrongdoing. How magnanimous of me! Except I remembered one place I hadn't looked for the Outer Banks box of treasures.

The enclosed patio.

Now, if I had thought about how my organized and smart husband's brain worked, I would have looked on the enclosed patio FIRST. I went out on the patio and looked on the stand where I used to display the shells and driftwood. Guess what? There was the box, with each shell individually wrapped. My husband had done that, I am sure, because when I packed the shells, they were loose, able to shift around and break.

Had the Holy Spirit not whispered to me to spend time with God this morning, I might have gone in, woken my husband up and demanded to know where the shells were. Pretty embarrassing when I think about it. Thank you, Lord, for one little victory at a time getting ahold of my mean girl.

Keeping It Clean

I love my new stove. I can't even remember the last time, if ever, I owned a brand new stove that I picked out. The last 10 years of my life were spent in military housing mostly. But that's another story...

My new stove is stainless and has a ceramic glass top (Samsung if anyone wants to know. I highly recommend Samsung.) The only problem with the stove top is that it is black. I should have read the directions first about keeping it clean. There are special cleansers that have to be used on it, and if you let spills sit, the top gets speckled and dirty PRET-TY quickly. And forget something like spilled spaghetti sauce that has hardened. That's an hour job. Awww, but when it's polished with the correct cloth and cleanser, it shines so that I can see my reflection in it. If I maintain it daily, the surface is protected, which keeps the upkeep of the entire stove in tact.

God reminded me that my soul, my being is like that stove top. When we read God's Word regularly and spend time with Him in prayer, He shows us the dust and spots of dirt that need to be cleaned away. Maybe big spills of emotion have been internalized for a long time and a mess hardened our hearts. God showed me just yesterday that I was hardening my heart to grief. Through the Bible, God's Holy Spirit reflects right back to us the instructions of life, the right way to view ourselves, the grace to fall and get back up again. And just like that stovetop, it's easier if we are proactive in reading how to keep ourselves shiny.

James writes this:
For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.
(James 1:23-24 ESV)

Dear readers, don't forget what God says about you! You are loved, redeemed by the price of Jesus' life, precious in His sight. Knowing those truths enable us to live and give to others that same gift of love. I pray that you will be drawn to the beauty of God's Word, that you will look to Christ to clean away the spills and then mirror the reflection of Him.

Supermom's Cape

All of us who are moms know The Cape. We take it out bravely day after day. Happy Mother's Day, Super Heroes all, who wear the cape with the big read "S" on it!

"Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we shall reap if we do not grow weary." Galatians 6:9

Four Days Waiting in Line

“This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” Luke 11:4

We spend a lot of time waiting. I’m an information junkie and went online to get some statistics...

The average person spends 6 years waiting for …lights to turn green, a person rather than a machine to answer their phone call, lines to move forward. We are in the military. Imagine soldiers who wait a half an hour every morning to get to work on a military post. I figured out that if you have to wait a half an hour five days a week, 4 weeks a month and 12 months a year and take out 2 weeks for vacation, you will spend FOUR DAYS out of ONE YEAR waiting in line at a military gate. That’s a lot of waiting.

In the military, spouses wait. We wait on orders, we wait on promotions, we wait for household goods, we wait for our husbands to deploy and we wait for them to return. We waited 4 months for our unaccompanied baggage to get to the States from Germany.

You may be waiting for a baby to sleep through the night or a toddler to stop throwing tantrums or a teenager to pick up their room. Day to day things that may not seem like much but that wear on you.

I just finished a novel about waiting, a novel about Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha, based on Luke 11:1-43. I used to think of the story of Lazarus as mostly an account of resurrection. Which it is. But it is also a story about waiting. I love this account of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. It teaches us so much about our own humanity. I love the disciples. We see their human side.

When Jesus told the disciples that he was going back to Bethany, they immediately started trying to talk him out of it. "But Rabbi, a short while ago the Jews tried to stone you, and yet you are going back there?"

When Jesus tells them that Lazarus has fallen asleep, but He’s going back to wake him up, the disciples then think they'll give Jesus advice.

“Lord, if he sleeps, he’ll get better.”

Clearly, the disciples did NOT want to go back to Bethany. So, finally dear Thomas, who probably wasn’t the most naturally brave of them all says, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” Can’t you just see Thomas? Squaring his shoulders, sitting up straight and, realist that he was, determining already in his mind that Jesus was going to die if he went to see Mary, Martha and Lazarus.

Jesus doesn’t just wait a day or two after Lazarus died. No, he waits 4 days after Lazarus died.

So, we have Jesus who seems to have taken his time and arrived too late. We have disciples who are trying to give the Son of God advice and talk him out of his plans. We have sisters, dear friends of Jesus, who are grieving.

What does God teach us about waiting?

1) Waiting teaches us that God understands us and grieves with us even though He already knows the outcome. Jesus already knew that Lazarus was dead. Yet, when he came to Bethany and saw the sorrow of Mary and the others, he wept with them. God knows our frailty.

2) Waiting teaches us who is in control. It might seem sometimes like our circumstances are in control, or governments are in control, or any number of things (even our emotions!) but ultimately, the God of the Universe is the one in control. This is one of the foundations of my faith. I can trust a God who has an ultimate purpose for my life and that purpose is to conform me to the image of His Son, Jesus Christ.

Look at Thomas What did he do? He assumed the worst, didn’t he? He thought about the “What if?” and assumed that they would all die. How often do we get way ahead of God’s purposes and assume the worst? We need to wait expectantly for all of the amazing things God will do so that we can say, “God’s hand has surely done this!”

3) Waiting teaches us to go on with life. This is one of the hardest of life's lessons. Mary and Martha had to go on with life while they waited for Jesus to come. They had to go through the ritual of preparing their brother’s body and burying him. There was more to the grief than just that Jesus didn’t come “in time.” Jesus was a dear friend. They wanted to see him in person.

4) Waiting teaches us that God is purposeful in every thing He does, even when He seems to delay.

From the very beginning, Jesus stated His purpose: “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” Luke 11:4

When Martha and Mary both say, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died,” I used to think they were reproaching Jesus for not coming. However, read what Martha says next : “But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” Luke 11:21, 22 What an acknowledgement of who Jesus was and is!

Where are you today? Are you waiting on circumstances to change? Be encouraged! God knows, he empathizes with you, and he has a plan. It is for God's glory that God's Son may be glorified through it!