They have such a love/hate relationship, which I know is typical for most siblings.  I want them to get along, be best friends and defend each other till they day they die.  So, you can understand why I let them use a flattened, cardboard box for a sled on our stairs.

Because they were laughing and having so much fun.

And when they are laughing and having so much fun, I let them do just about anything.

I was about to head out to church, followed by a dinner afterward, so I was in my bathroom finishing up my hair with my Chi flat iron.

(Because what woman doesn’t love her Chi flat iron?)

(Can I get a witness?)

That’s when I heard it.  The scream of all screams.

I took off in a superhero sort of motion, rounded the corner in a Ninja-like way with my feet plastered across the walls and slid the rest of the way along  our hardwood floors only to find my youngest, my baby boy, my little Sether Joe jumping up and down holding the side of his head.

“Please don’t let it be cut open, please don’t let it be cut open, please don’t let it be cut open,” I began to plead silently with God.

Upon removing his dirty-finger nailed hand, I saw the cut.  The wound was wide open with blood oozing down the side of his face.

I tried not to panic outwardly but inwardly?  Inwardly I was freaking out because there was this substance flowing down the side of my child’s skull that is meant to be flowing through his veins.  I might have appeared a tad bit flustered but panicked?  No ma’am.  Not this chica.  I remained calm and eventually called the After Hours Clinic to see if they did, dare I say it, stitches.

They did.  Whew.  That meant a $30 co-pay and not an exorbitant amount of money for an ER visit.

What?

I am guessing that the Swine Flu cases in Oklahoma county have decreased significantly because the waiting room was absolutely empty.  And that happened to come in handy as I walked right on through to the back with my five-year old in my arms.

When the medical professionals saw us, the questions started coming.  I wondered if they would call Child Protective Services on me because of my negligence as the caregiver of my children.  Thankfully, I wasn’t the first mother of boys who brought in a child with a gash on his noggin.

After giving the nurse the information she asked for, the doctor walked in.  He squeezed my baby’s head and then said the strangest thing to me:

Dr: Eak-spay ig-pay atin-lay?

Me:  (with a questioning look and my eyebrows raised) Es-yay?

Dr:  Aples-stay but no ot-shay.  Doesn’t urt-hay as much.

Me:  Ight-ray.

After our Pig Latin conversation, he prepared my baby’s head with iodine in order to prevent any infection.  And that baby of mine didn’t like that at all.  He got mad and cried all at the same time.  And if that wasn’t bad enough, when the doctor squeezed his wound together followed by putting staples in his precious skin was.

Holy sweet molasses, the child was not thrilled.  He was beside himself and gazed at me as if to say, “What is wrong with you, woman, letting him hurt me like that?”

If only he knew that it hurt me so much more.  That watching those metal pieces being thrust into his precious little head was almost more than this momma could take.  That I’d have taken them for him if I could have.

But I couldn’t.

Putting those staples in my head wouldn’t have healed his and I knew that.

He had to go through that to get better.

So, while my baby doesn’t have cancer or a chronic illness, he did get his first “staples”.  And I know it’ll be a story I tell for years to come just to hear people laugh when I tell them he screamed, “I will never come see that doctor again!” I know this won’t even matter a month from now.

But it mattered today.

You do know I’m part of the most amazing church on planet earth, yes?  (Hopefully, you feel that way about your church, too.)

Tonight at the Oklahoma City Campus of LifeChurch.tv we will celebrate the people who really make our church happen:  Volunteers.

A volunteer is someone who willingly undertakes a service to benefit someone or something other than themselves.  And friends, we have a ton of those in our church.  I imagine you do, too.

In fact, you may be one.  You may be a person who rocks babies to sleep during a Sunday morning service.  Maybe the smile on your face is what people see the moment they walk through the door. It’s possible you’ve found your niche with teenagers by mentoring them, God bless your soul

Whatever it is that you do, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.  Colossians 3:23-24

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets.  And these tweets must be 140 characters or less.

That’s right, you long-winded folks.  Less than 140 characters.

You choose your Twitter name and put and @ sign in front of it.  I am @cindybeall.

Original, huh?

We professional “twitter-ers” have learned to replace words with signs like & for and.  We know that we can use the numbers 4 and 2 for the words for and to.  We know what hash marks are (#), what re-tweets are (RT), what Follow Fridays mean (FF) and how to make our cell phone ding when we get a direct message (DM).

I love (the) Twitter because I know when @jenwined got a deal on the floors she’s putting in her new house.  I love (the) Twitter because I can keep up with @robinstorch and what stores she’s been shopping at that day.  I love (the) Twitter because I can keep us with friends without spending hours on the phone trying to catch up.  I love (the) Twitter because I have been blessed to “meet” some amazing people that otherwise might not have crossed my path like @loriwilhite, @pamcase and @brandiandboys.  I love (the) Twitter because I can get some deeply spiritual thoughts from pastors I follow like @stevenfurtick, @dinorizzo and @rickwarren.

I hate (the) Twitter because of the self-pimping that goes on.  I hate (the) Twitter because of people who name drop when they are with popular people.  I hate (the) Twitter because some people re-tweet more than they tweet. I hate (the) Twitter because of how I feel when I see my followers decrease in number.  And I hate that I even care about the last one.

Let’s be honest.  We know when we lose followers because the number goes down.  You go to bed one night with 186 followers and wake up with 183 followers.

You find yourself thinking, “What?  What happened?  What’d I say?  Did I tweet too much about my kids poop?”

In my opinion there are many more good things about (the) Twitter than bad.  So, instead of “throwing the baby out with the bath water”, I just ignore the stuff I don’t care for and enjoy it for the social networking tool it is.

All you Twitter-ers out there, two things…what’s your favorite thing about it and what’s your Twitter “call sign”?

But Stephen didn’t care.

In fact, according to verse 55 in Acts 7 he cared so little about himself that he turned his gaze to heaven and saw the glory of God with Jesus standing at the right hand of God.  He told them what he saw and they all rushed after him in a rage that was uncontrollable.

While I have a hard time reading that Stephen was stoned to death, I have an even harder time reading the last verse of the chapter:

Then he fell on his knees and cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he fell asleep. (v. 60)

Say what, Stephen?

Now, I don’t know about you but I am thinking that if people were coming after me because I was proclaiming Christ, I might say, “Okay, Lord, you go get ‘em.  I laid down my life to follow you and they didn’t like it.  So, you show ‘em who’s boss, okay?  OKAY?!”

Just being honest.

I’m curious.

Do you tend to lean on the side of mercy or justice?

Like this past week when my writing coach/agent, Toben Heim, called to tell me that the one-sentence description I wrote on my proposal about my book was sheer brilliance.  Okay, so he didn’t say brilliance but he did say that “every word has power in your sentence” and that it is amazing.  I am pretty sure he used the word amazing.  I think he said amazing.  Let’s just go with amazing, mkay?

His call to me came on a Friday in the midst of sweeping up dirt and leaves that were blown into my garage by the infamous Oklahoma wind.  It was unexpected but greatly appreciated.  In fact, we laughed about it for the longest time because we “writers” are a funny bunch.  We get critiqued left and right and hope for that sweet someday when the stars will align and all will be right in our grammatical and creative worlds.  And since my sweet someday was him telling me how great my one-sentence description was, don’t you think I didn’t tell all of Oklahoma about it.

So, here’s the deal.  We need to hear good things.  It is no fun at all to only hear the negatives, the corrections as we go through this thing called life.

Focus on the wonderful.

And encourage someone today with something they did right.

Every.  Single.  Moment.

Now, if you know the Bible at all you know that Peter going around proclaiming the risen Christ did not land very well with the rulers, the elders of the people, the teachers of the law and many others.

But he did it anyway.  All of the disciples did it anyway.

But Peter and John replied, “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God.  For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.  Acts 4:19-20

Over the last seven plus years since our story came out, we’ve talked about it with just about anyone who will listen.  Now, we don’t go up to people, introduce ourselves and then spew all over them.

But close.

We don’t do this to get attention.  We don’t open our hearts for others to the see the immense pain we walked through to get a pat on the back.  We don’t lay everything on the line and risk relationships so that we can get a book deal.

We do it because we can’t help but do it.  Just like Peter and John, we can’t help but speak about what God has done in our lives.  It’s remarkable.  It’s miraculous.  It’s life-giving.  And it’s full of hope.

So why on earth would we not share it?

Don’t be afraid to share your story.  This girl, this girl and this girl did.

One of the reasons we often endure heaps and heaps of pain is so that the glory of God will be revealed in our lives.

Oftentimes your pain is what brings life to another.

So.

As we are working our way through the annoying frustrating wonderful math problems, he is just gnawing on his fingernails.  He’s literally going to town on them.  And not only that, but actually chewing at the very skin because said fingernails are gone.  Kaput.  Nonexistent.

I told him to quit doing that because it’s nasty and makes his fingers look bad.  I laugh even as I write this because I am the Kettle calling the Pot black.  I’ve been a nail biter for most of my life.

Tis true.

As soon as I told him to stop doing that, he shouted, “Mom!  I can’t.  It’s an addiction!”

And you know what motherly, wonderful, God-centered encouragement I said to him?  I said with a smile creeping onto my face, “Oh, babe, you know I’m gonna have to blog about this, right?”

“No, Mom!  Please don’t.  I don’t want people laughing at me!” he shouted.

I said, “Buddy, you’re takin’ one for the team here.  This will be a great blog post.”

Then there’s Seth, my very flamboyant five-year old who loves the camera and will do anything for a grin and shot at stardom.

They are so different, yet equally wonderful and engaging.  I adore them both so much but at the same time they attack my heart so differently.

Being a mom rocks.

You see, she’s the betrayer.  She broke her husband’s heart.  She broke her marriage vows.

Yet she is hurting something awful.  She writes:

I guess what I’d love to shout from the mountaintop(but that would be my flesh!) is that the betrayed is not the only one hurting…….and often, especially in the beginning, that’s how it appears.  Until very recently it was not uncommon for him to remind me over and over again of the affair and it’s damage to him/us/our family….i wasn’t looking for him to “get over it,” just live in the same house with me and not verbally mutilate me…..and treat me with some respect as i begged him(literally) to stay/love/give it a chance.

Her comment made me think.  Really think.

Can you imagine doing something that literally turned someone’s world upside down?  To know that the pain in their eyes and the chaos in their heart was caused by your action?  To know that if you’d made a different choice, they would still be skipping along their merry way in life?

This particular woman confessed her sin, asked for forgiveness and has done everything she knows to do in order to mend her broken marriage.  She regrets her choice, can’t believe she “would ever do such a thing” and wishes she could turn back time.

But she can’t.

So, she has to deal with the consequences of her actions and how they’ve affected those she loves.  She’d die a hundred deaths if she could remove the hurt she sees in her husband’s eyes.

All of that to say:  We all make mistakes.  Some mistakes have far greater consequences than others.  Her mistake is clearly in the devastating category.  But when someone is humble and broken about their mistake and desires to make amends by working like crazy to prove it, show them grace.  They don’t really deserve it, but the last time I checked, neither did we.

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  Romans 5:8

Something to think about.

Yeah, Acts 1, verse 18 really says that is what happened to the wicked ex-disciple  who bought a field with the money he made from handing over the son of God.

But, that’s not what I want to talk about today even though the title of my post probably got you over here today.

What?

Scoot on down with me to the end of the chapter to verse 23.

Jesus has ascended to the Father and the disciples are meeting in Jerusalem.  All eleven of them were “joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus and with his brothers.” (v. 14)

Stay with me.

Peter begins addressing the other ten disciples about the replacement they needed to choose in order to fulfill the Psalms that said the “betrayer would be replaced”.  And apparently, they’ve chosen two men:  Joseph (called Barsabbas) and Matthias.

“Then they prayed, ‘Lord, you know everyone’s heart.  Show us which of these two you have chosen to take over this apostolic ministry, which Judas left to go where he belongs.’ Then they cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the eleven apostles.” (Acts 1:24-26)

Simple enough, right?

The eleven disciples made their decision and they chose Matthias.  Joseph did not get chosen.  He was left out.  Put out to pasture, if you will.  I can only assume this because the next chapter goes on to talk about Pentecost.  There is no and the disciples comforted and encouraged Joseph to continue to pursue the things of Christ speech.

Which would have been nice, yes?

Now, remember, I am no Biblical scholar, but as I read that passage, I couldn’t help but identify with Joseph.  How he must have felt.  While I’m pleased that God showed them that Matthias was their man, what did He show them about Joseph? Suppose I’ll save this question for Heaven.

Rejection isn’t fun.  It doesn’t matter if you know to the very core of your being that what you were rejected for isn’t God’s best for you.  It still hurts.  It causes you to doubt who you are, what you’re doing and even at times, how you look to others.

I have so been there.  SO been there.  At the place where you truly believe God is leading you and guiding you and prompting you to say this or that or move in this direction and them BAM!  The wall comes up and you are standing dizzy from the proverbial slam against something you didn’t see coming.

Oh the pain.

Then I get a gentle nudge from the Holy Spirit reminding me of this:

“I know what I’m doing. I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for.”  (Jeremiah 29:11, MSG)

So I take a deep breath.  Calm down.  Say a prayer of surrender…again.  And remember that I don’t want to be on someone else’s path regardless of how alluring or attractive it may appear.

Because y’all?  The Creator of the universe, He has plans for me.

And I don’t want to miss it.

But she does know down.

Because she’s been on her knees crying her eyes out for weeks now hoping that the pain will subside.  That the anger will diminish.  That her life will “get back to normal”.

But this is her new normal.  She just hasn’t gotten to the place to embrace it yet.  And understandably so.  It takes time.

Lots of time.

She shared with me that her husband is tired of her being upset and questioning him.  Asking who he was talking to, who texted him, who sent that email.  As if that didn’t add insult to injury, he told her that she needed to get over it and move on.  That he should be trusted.

Um, ’scuse me?

Trusted?

If I could take a second to tell you how I feel about the situation:

Sir, you broke your marriage vows, went behind your wife’s back and decided to get naked with another woman.  Not just once, but continually for over a year and a half while your wife was at home cooking YOUR meals, taking care of YOUR home, and raising YOUR children.  Not only that, but despite the emotionally absent atmosphere that you brought into the home, she remained faithful and true despite how she felt.  She didn’t yearn for another man’s touch.  She yearned for yours, but you were giving those touches to another woman.  Your wife prayed for you and believed in you when you weren’t worth believing in.  And you think you deserve to be trusted?  Think again.

I never had to give that speech to my husband.  Ever.  From the day he confessed nearly eight years ago until right now, he has owned what he did and done everything in his power to earn my trust back.  And I’m forever grateful for that.

And maybe that is why I get angry when I hear that people who break the hearts of their spouses by betraying them expect trust to be given right back.

It takes a while, a long while, for that trust to be reinstated.  And even when it’s reinstated, it’s never the same.

It’s a new trust.  It’s a new normal.

It has to be.

Earn it.