Whispers of Grace

Making Music in Our Hearts

2015-04-10T07:34:00.003-07:00

Speak to each other with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs,

singing and making music in your hearts to the Lord.

—Ephesians 5:19 NCV

In my family, we sing.

No, not professionally--though the Haney clan does sing in church choirs and praise team, and my brother-in-law often leads worship from his guitar.

We just burst into random song throughout our days. It’s one of those weird things my family does. Growing up, I’d sing silly songs with Grannie while we fixed dinner (“Oh, I had a little chicken and he wouldn’t lay an egg…”) I’d sing the shaped notes in the faded red hymnal with Papa at his Men’s Bible Class (“Heavenly sunlight, heavenly sunlight, flooding my soul with glory divine!”)

My mom would wake us for school with an excruciatingly cheerful “Good morning, good morning, good morning; it’s time to rise and shine!” (Or, worse, a muffle-the-clapping-with-your-pillow rendition of “Rise and shine and give God the glory, glory!”)

We sang hymns and church songs and pop songs and I-can’t-remember-all-the-words-but-I-love-this-song-anyway songs. We picked out our favorite tunes on the piano. We sang while we set the table or cleaned house. While we got ready in the mornings. In the car.

Sometimes we’d hum. Or whistle. But mostly, we’d sing.

I didn’t think much of it. My parents always had a song in their hearts, and so did we. It was just who we were.

***

In the whirlwind of marriage and ministry and raising babies, I lost a lot of myself… and I lost a lot of my songs. I did rock my babies to sleep while singing favorite hymns. (I was determined my kids would know hymns!) And I taught them a few of the songs of my youth.

But for years, as my life submerged in the relentless stress of church planting and childrearing and breadwinning, without realizing it, I stopped singing.

Those years are far behind me now. Our house is once again filled with music. Our TV is almost always on Pandora. I regularly play from the Baptist hymnal on our piano. On any given day you can walk in to hear my little guy belting out opera-style songs in the shower, J.J. upstairs singing pop tunes while curling her hair, and Miss B practicing a worship song for praise team. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been editing in my study and suddenly realize there are three different songs going on simultaneously in our home. It makes me smile (and then put in my ear buds).

My favorites are the belly-laughs when when we realize one of the kids is singing the wrong words. (Sometimes I like their versions better: such as “like a ninja ready to explode” instead of “like an engine ready to explode”!)

But all the time, we sing.

Just last week, at our family's Easter gathering, we laughed-till-we-cried during lunch while recalling some silly songs, then that afternoon the kids variously played piano, clarinet, and flute while we hung out.

There is always a song or melody somewhere in a Haney house.

***

Which is why I was FLABBERGASTED at this conversation the other day…

We were out running errands. While chatting in the car Miss B said something that reminded me of a praise song, so I chimed in with “Ho-ho-ho hosanna, ha-ha-ha-lelujah, he-he-he He saved me, and I’ve got the joy of the Lord!”

The kids looked at me like I had grown another head.

“What? You don’t know that song?” I asked, incredulous.

Three heads slowly shaking no.

“Wait! What about this one?” I started singing all the kids’ Bible songs I could remember: Deep and Wide, The B-I-B-L-E, Do Lord, Rejoice in the Lord Always (again I say rejoice), Father Abraham, Praise Him All Ye Little Children, Give Me Oil in My Lamp, I Will Call upon the Lord, Zacchaeus, I’ve Got Peace Like a River (etc.)

My kids only knew about half of those. YIKES! I forgot my kids grew up in church plants, so they didn't learn the songs of my Sunday school upbringing. And for so many years when they were little, I had stopped singing around the house.

So now I’m on a mission: I’m going to teach my kiddos all the Bible songs I grew up with. After all, I don’t want to be the last generation on earth singing, “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart!”

What about you?
What are the songs in your heart today?
What songs do you want to pass down to your children?

All Things New

2015-01-03T09:51:00.000-08:00

He who sits on the throne said,

“Behold, I am making all things new.”

—Revelation 21:5

It’s a new year! And we have several new things. Thanks to the amazing generosity of our church, our Christmas was merry indeed! The girls have beautiful new outfits, and my son is thrilled with his new toys.

It’s fun to have new things, isn’t it? I don’t care how old you are, admit it: you get a little excited to tear off the wrapping paper and open the seal to something new-with-tags or wrapped in cellophane. (As long as the packaging doesn’t have a zillion twist ties, that is. Then that’s a totally different feeling. Oy vey!)

New things are especially fun to the four of us because everything is pretty old around here. We’ve lived in this house for almost eight years. Most of our furniture came from friends or Craigslist. As I was setting up for our New Year’s Eve party, I sighed over my rickety kitchen table with the vinyl-peeling chairs and my well-loved sofa with the cushions that don’t stay put anymore. Over the years, so many people have gathered in our home for church events or parties or Bible studies or sleepovers or general hanging out (oh, if these walls could talk!) that all our furniture is wearing out.

I confess: as I dusted my stained and sticky (from what? Ew, I have no idea) coffee table, I wondered what it would be like to have all new things.

***

At breakfast yesterday, we poured cereal in my chipped Pfaltzgraff bowls and opened our family devotional: One Year of Dinner Table Devotions and Discussion Starters.

My oldest daughter began reading aloud. But when she got to this part, I made her stop and reread it:

The reality is that everything on this earth is wearing out. Everything breaks down.

And in the midst of that reality, God says, “I am making everything new!” When we hear this we typically think of new in terms of replacing something old. But God doesn’t say he is making all new things. He is making all things new—in other words, he’s making things better, fresher, brighter, and stronger.

Think about that with me for a sec:

God doesn’t say, “Behold, I am making all new things!”

He says, “Behold, I am making all things new!”

So what? you may wonder. What’s the difference? Why does that phrase matter?

Here’s why.

Have you ever wanted to have a fresh start—even gone as far as making New Year’s resolutions or joining a gym—and then given up, thinking, “It’s hopeless. I’ll never change. That’s just the way I am”?

Have you ever wanted to make something new of your life, but you’ve been afraid to begin, thinking, “God can’t use me because of what I’ve done. I’ve made too many mistakes. I don’t deserve another chance”?

Have you ever wanted to try something new but thought, “I’ll never be able to do that because of what has happened to me. I’m too hurt, too scarred, too weak. I can’t start over now”?

If so, then listen closely to this.

God doesn’t say, “I am making all new things!” He’s not going to discard all of us messed-up, wounded people and replace us with brand-new, flawless ones.

Instead, God says, “I am making all things new!” He’s going to take you and me—all of us who are worn out and rickety and scarred—and he’s going to make us new.

Incidentally, the Greek word translated “new” in Revelation 21:5 doesn’t mean new as in “never before existed.” It means new as in “renewed, restored, refreshed.” It’s not new in time, but new in form. This is the same word used in 2 Corinthians 5:17 (If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature…”) and Ephesians 4:24 (“Put on the new self…”).

God isn’t going to start over by making all new things.

He’s going to finish what He started by making all things new.

And that includes you and me.

You are NOT too old, too hurt, too guilty, too set in your ways, or too hopeless for God to use you. It’s not too late for a second chance. God is going to finish what He started in you!

2015 can be your “new” year—the year God will refresh, restore, and renew you. And trust me, the new thing He will make out of your life will be even more beautiful because of your story so far.

In this new year, let’s lean into God and watch as He makes all things new!

What's Your Calling?

2013-10-12T17:02:00.001-07:00

In my line of work, I regularly interact with people whose gifts and callings from God are highly visible—well-known pastors, authors, speakers. These are people whose names you recognize. They’re writing books, starting ministries, speaking to crowds of thousands, changing lives and changing the world.

They’re blazing a trail for the kingdom in very public and significant ways.

I love working with these amazing men and women. I’m deeply honored to be part of the team helping them communicate the messages God has entrusted to them.

In case you are wondering what these well-known Christians are like, let me assure you: they are regular people—just like you and me. They are humble, gracious, and servant-hearted. They’re the kind of folks you’d love to invite over for coffee. These men and women just so happen to have received and embraced a calling from God that is huge and significant.

But you know what?

You and I also have callings from God that are huge and significant. They may not be as visible as, say, a top-billed speaker or best-selling author, but that doesn't make our callings any less significant for the kingdom.

Let me tell you about another group of people I get to interact with regularly.

*   A man who enjoys doing yard work. He doesn't have a two-piece suit and a pulpit, but he has two strong arms and a green thumb. When he noticed a single mom who desperately needed help with her lawn he showed up, offering to mow and weed and even do some landscaping. His “platform” is his pruning shears, and he has spoken Christ into my family’s life as much as any preacher.

* A young mother who loves to bake. She’s chasing around two small children and barely has time to take a shower much less speak to crowds, but she makes amazing cookies—and she loves to bake for those who need to know someone cares about them. Her “platform” is her oven, and she shares the love of Christ with a smile—and snickerdoodles.

*    A grandfather whose house is one of the main attractions in his neighborhood at Christmas. His collection of holiday decorations grows every year. And when he saw a newly single mom who didn't have the ladder—or the levity—to decorate her home, he showed up with a truckful of lights and gave her and her kids the brightest, happiest Christmas house they’d ever seen. He doesn't write best-sellers, but he wrote unspeakable joy into our hearts with the delight he took in the simple act of shining the light of Christ into our Christmas.

I have a "gratitude journal" filled with precious memories of how people have ministered to the kids and me these past two years. Most of them are ordinary men and women who are doing small things—behind-the-scenes and anonymous things—that are huge and significant callings.

Indulge me in giving you a few more examples, in case you can see yourself in any of these:

·         The woman whose gift is her presence. She stuck by my side through the worst hours of my life, literally walking beside me when I could barely think or speak or breathe. Her gift is her friendship—and her simple act of being there has blessed me more than I could ever describe.

·         The young mom whose gift is her prayers. She came to my home and prayed over each room, filling each corner and crevice of our home with the light of God’s love.

·         The many, many people who gave us financial gifts.Encouraging notes that would arrive in our mailbox, on our porch, or in person with a gift card… a check… cash… all accompanied by, “I just felt like God wanted me to send this…” or “Praying for you and the kids…” Sometimes a significant amount. Sometimes a small amount. Yet always exactly what we needed. Always exactly when we needed it. All these people, receiving and embracing God’s call to share every good thing to those in need.

·         The young couple whose gift was their service. They gathered some friends, did some shopping, and showed up with Christmas gifts for all my children.

·         The men whose gift is handyman work. They have fixed cabinets, moved furniture, changed light bulbs, set up electronics, and have taken care of all my honey-dos—with gracious and willing hearts.

·         The friends who gave the gift of a family photo session. They wanted the kids and me to know that our family was not broken but whole. Their gift of a family portrait finally helped us see ourselves the way others—and God—see the four of us: as complete, healthy, and whole.

·         The friends who gave the gift of meals. They knew that delicious cuisine is best served with delightful companionship, so they brought us meals—and then sat around our table and ate the meals with us, filling not only our tummies but our hearts with their love.

·         The women whose gift is childcare. They would invite my kids over to play with theirs so I could work or simply have a moment to myself to breathe.

·         The grandmothers whose gift is their time. Oh, how my mom’s sweet Bible study ladies have blessed my socks off! They flocked to the house when I needed help. They inventoried and cleaned and purged my home, taking care of all the details I couldn’t bear to deal with at the time. They show up at a moment’s notice whenever I need anything.

·         The people who gave us the gift of a safe place to stay.I have keys to their homes and an open invitation to come on in if the kids and I ever need a safe place. Their gift is their hospitality—and their home.

·         The friends who gave the gift of what they had—graciously passing down clothes and shoes and movies and toys for my kids. I cannot tell you how much this has blessed us!

·         The man who is a computer whiz. He took care of my computer issues, even removing and safely storing files I didn’t have the emotional strength to open.

·         The woman whose gift is thoughtfulness. She helped my kids to buy a Mother’s Day present and still sends me flowers on my birthday, knowing that every girl loves to have flowers. Her thoughtfulness fills my home with the sweet fragrance of Christ.

·         The man whose gift is numbers. His sweet spot is spreadsheets—so he came over and sorted through all my paperwork, getting my bills and budget in order.

·         The women whose gift is room in their car. Every school day, their kids scoot over and let my kids join them on the way home from school, giving me the precious gift of extra time to work and provide for my family.

I could go on and on and on. (Like I said, I have a whole journal full of these!) I haven’t even begun to list the many people who serve us through various ministries at our church, including Sunday school, the single parents’ ministry, and our community group, as well as friends who have simply welcomed us into their homes as an extended part of their families.

But hopefully this brief list is enough to demonstrate that no matter how God has gifted us—as an author, speaker, photographer, accountant, or carpool mom—our callings are essential to the body of Christ.

Whether our names are on the cover of a book or merely in the pages of someone’s gratitude journal, God has given each of us a calling that is huge and significant.

So has God called you to write a book? Then write it with all your heart! (And I'd be honored to help polish it.)

Has God called you to preach or speak to crowds? Then preach and speak boldly and faithfully the Word of God with all your heart!

Has God called you to mow lawns, or bake cookies, or visit nursing homes, or care for children, or move furniture, or crunch numbers, or carpool? Whatever your sweet spot that God has given you to serve others, then respond to that calling with all your heart!

May we be faithful to receive and embrace our callings, no matter how big or small they may seem in our limited perspective. Because in God's eyes, there are no "small" callings.

One day, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with celebrities and unknowns, each of us will hear our same Savior say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
***

Christ gave gifts to people—he made some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to go and tell the Good News, and some to have the work of caring for and teaching God’s people. Christ gave those gifts to prepare God’s holy people for the work of serving, to make the body of Christ stronger. This work must continue until we are all joined together in the same faith and in the same knowledge of the Son of God. We must become like a mature person, growing until we become like Christ and have his perfection.

—Ephesians 4:11-13 NCV

Why I'm No Longer Praying for My Kids to Be Safe

2013-08-27T08:50:00.000-07:00

Marlin: I promised I'd never let anything happen to him.

Dory: Hm. That's a funny thing to promise.

Marlin: What?

Dory: Well, you can't never let anything happen to him. Then nothing would ever happen to him.

Today, I joined the ranks of all the other parents launching their kids into a new school year. The girls were up extra early, donning new outfits and curling their hair and filling their bathroom with a swirl of Pink Chiffon body splash and hair spray and lip gloss. (Oh, this whole new world of preteen girls!)

Little guy was also up early, but with only one thing on his mind: did the Tooth Fairy come? (He lost his OTHER front tooth yesterday!) I actually had to remind him it was the first day of school, so he threw on a T-shirt and shorts and sauntered out to breakfast. (Obviously, boys are a LOT easier at this age.)

Over breakfast, we read our daily devotional and then I prayed for them as they begin this new adventure.

But this year… my prayer for them is different.

In years past, I've prayed for God to keep them safe. To protect them. To make sure nothing happens to them while they’re away from home.

There’s nothing wrong with praying for your kids’ safety, of course. The Bible is filled with prayers for God's protection.

However, I've learned something very significant this past year.

In order for us to grow and mature and become the people God wants us to be…

* We have to fail. And learn from our mistakes. Then we can give ourselves grace and move forward with the wisdom that comes only from experience.

* We have to get hurt. And learn to get up again. Then we can experience the freedom of forgiveness and develop a tender compassion for others who are hurting too.

* We have to experience hard things. And learn from the struggle. Then we can deepen our strength, courage, tenacity, and character.

* We have to be challenged in our faith. And learn that God sends us as lights in this dark world. Then we can see others from God's perspective and depend more fully on God every day.

So if we want our kids to grow into the men and women God designed them to be, something has to happen to them.

As Dory pointed out in Finding Nemo, if your goal as a parent is not to let anything happen to your kids... well, then nothing will ever happen to them. They'll be stunted in their growth. God can't sculpt our kids unless we step back and allow Him to get out His chisel.

So this year, I'm not praying that God would keep my kids safe.

Instead, I'm praying that God would do whatever it takes to shape my kids into mature Christ-followers.

I'm praying that God would give me wisdom to guide them through their failures, pain, and challenges and keep pointing them toward the Cross.

And I'm praying that God would use their experiences this year to make them dangerous--to stand up for what is right regardless of consequences, to show unflinching compassion, to take risks, and to share with boldness the good news of Jesus Christ with those who desperately need hope.

Whether you are sending your kids off to school on the bus, in school uniforms, or to the kitchen table, I urge you to join me in praying for so much more than safety for our kids.

Let's pray that something will happen to them.

What Should You Tell Your Kids about the Boston Marathon Bombing?

2013-04-15T22:32:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I wish I could just bubble-wrap my kids and protect them from all the sad stuff.

Like most parents, I try to make wise choices about what my kids are exposed to. I monitor their entertainment and their activities. I want them to be cultured, but not corrupted.

Yet I also want our home to be a safe place where they can wrestle with the big questions.

When they're having conflict with friends or frustrated by school, I want them to talk about it at home.

And when they're worried or sad about something, I want them to talk about it at home.

So I told them about the Boston Marathon bombings.

My 11-year-old had heard of the tragedy. We don't have the TV news, but her friends had texted her about it.

My other children are 9 and 6. At first I hesitated.... Did they really need to know about something that happened all the way across the country? Something that might really upset them?

Yes.

Because I know good and well that my kids are eventually going to hear about it. And I wanted them to hear it from me--and not from another kid at school.

They needed to hear it at home.

So over our family dinner, we talked about it. They asked questions. I answered honestly. We prayed. When it was over, the kids were fine and all slept soundly last night.

***

I'm a far cry from a parenting expert, but I know what it's like to break bad news to my kids.

Here's what works for us:

1. Be honest about what happened.

Don't try to gloss over the tragedy by saying, "Well, honey, there was this kind of sad thing in Boston, but it wasn't that big of a deal, so don't worry, okay?" Be honest.

I told my kids: "A really sad thing happened today. A lot of people were running in a great big race called the Boston Marathon, and there were two explosions near the finish line. Lots of people got hurt, and a couple of people were killed by the blast."

NOTE: You don't have to go into gory or horrific details. (Please don't!) But do state the basic facts. Your kids are going to hear the facts of the tragedy from someone--it might as well be you.

2. Point out the goodness wherever you can find it.

Take Mr. Rogers's famous advice and "look for the helpers." Point out something--anything--to teach your kids how to stop focusing on the negative and look for something positive. Not all tragedies have an obvious silver lining, of course. But there is always a glimmer of goodness.

I told my kids about a picture I'd seen on Facebook: "You know what was interesting, though? I saw a photo snapped immediately after the first blast. All you could see was smoke... and about six first responders rushing into that smoke. In a split second, they all instinctively ran INTO the danger to help other people." Then we talked a bit about what it takes to have that kind of self-sacrificing love.

NOTE: It's not always easy to find the goodness in a tragedy. Sometimes it might be as meager as "she's no longer suffering" or "it could have been worse." The point here isn't to try to be Pollyanna; it's to show your children how to adopt a different perspective.

3. Remind them that God is always in control.

As Christians, we know that God is sovereign. He is always in control, even when things don't make sense to us. "The secret things belong to the Lord" (Deuteronomy 29:29). If God were small enough to be understood, He wouldn't be big enough to be God.

I told the kids: "It was really awful what happened today. Setting off that bomb was an evil thing to do. But God is bigger than evil. In fact, since there is no one and nothing bigger than God, we don't have to be afraid. God is for us. What's the worst thing that could ever happen to us?" (My oldest reponded, "We'd die and go to heaven." My youngest sagely pointed out, "Well, we might be in pain for a while and then go to heaven.")

NOTE: Don't change the subject when your kids ask questions about God. Let them ask--and then listen to them. Kids old enough to grasp abstract concepts need a safe place to ask their questions. I had a great discussion about heaven (and even the biggie: "How do you know there is a God?") with my 9-year-old last night. Give your kids the freedom to ask. And then calmly help them think their way through it. Don't be too quick to jump in with answers.

4. Assure them of God's peace.

Wrap up your discussion by assuring your kids that nothing will ever happen to them outside of God's hands (John 10:28-30). Every single day of their lives has been written in God's book since before they were born (Psalm 139:16). As my mom says, you can't live one day longer or one day shorter than God has planned for you. God's plan for your kids (and for you) is perfect, so they can live in peace--and not fear.

As the kids and I polished off the pizza and wrapped up our dinner discussion, I reminded them of several verses we memorized during a particularly trying time in our family:

"If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31)

"The Lord Himself has said, I will never leave you or forsake you" (Hebrews 13:1).

"The Lord is my light and my salvation--whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life--of whom shall I be afraid?" (Psalm 27:1).

"When I am afraid, I put my trust in You" (Psalm 56:3).

5. Pray.

We closed the conversation by praying for the victims, for their families, for everyone involved. We asked that God would grant them health and peace and that He would shine His light into the darkness of that tragedy.

***

I don't know the specifics of your family--maybe your kids are too young to understand any of this, or maybe you're not ready to tell them about it yet. (Obviously, you can't help your kids be at peace if you are fearful.)

If that's the case, may I leave you with this sentiment?

(Photo Credit: Bob Goff and @Nella365)

The Mess That Makes It REAL

2013-04-12T08:54:00.000-07:00

I own 46 Bibles.

But only one of them is REAL.

Now, I don't mean that the other 45 are fakes. Obviously, the other Bibles are equally God's Word. Many are study Bibles I use for teaching and for personal devotions. Others are various translations I use for work.

(NOTE: whenever you're reading a book with Scripture quotes, know that an editor has verified each scripture word-for-word against the cited translation. Back in the old days--before the Internet--we had to do this with hard copies.)

Each Bible in my library is valuable and serves a purpose in my spiritual and professional life.

But only one is my REAL Bible.

My grandparents gave it to me for Christmas when I turned 13. I don't know if you can read the inscription in the picture, but my Grannie wrote, in part:

"We have no other gift to give you that would contain all the answers to life's challenges the way this beautiful word of God can and will.

Keep very close by at all times, searching the scriptures for all the great truths and promises that will give you the strength and grace to face and overcome each disappointment and temptation that comes your way..."

I've carried this Bible for more than a quarter century.

It's been beside me through middle school drama... high school ups and downs... youth camps and sleepovers and Dawson McAllister conferences. (See that page number in the upper right corner? That's the starter page for the "Romans Road." Before I learned the books of the Bible, I used page numbers as reminders.)

It traveled with me to college--my faithful companion in the dorm room... college Bible studies... road trips... mission trips. (Oh, how I remember those early mornings in the dorm, wearing my fuzzy pig slippers and PJs, carrying my Bible and coffee maker to the end of the hall and setting up in one of the study cubicles.)

It was at arm's reach after college--beside me all those years I lived alone... on my desk at Word Publishing... eagerly studied at Dallas Seminary... and then Southwestern Seminary.

It came with me to my honeymoon... to the hospital rooms when I had my babies... to the six different churches we served and the seven places we lived.

It was clutched tightly when my marriage fell apart... when my world came crashing down... when I had to start all over again.

Its pages are crumpled, yellowed, smudged, taped back together, filled with underlines and notes and highlights. Its bonded leather cover had to be replaced several years ago when the stitching fell apart.

It's a mess.

But that only makes sense, because there's so much of ME in there. And I'm a mess too. ;)

It's the mess that makes it REAL.

All those notes. The tear stains. (And yes, coffee stains.) The underlines and the questions in the margins. Cross-references and comments on things I struggle with. Highlights to remind me of God's promises.

Let me say this again: this Bible not technically "more real" than any other version of the Bible.

But it's REAL to me.

In this messy Bible, God has met me on every page.

For more than 25 years.

The same God.

He met me in my middle school drama. In my high school grief. In my college questions. In my married issues. In my sleep-deprived mothering. In my middle-age anguish.

Every time I open this Bible, and I see all the mess and marks from all these years... I remember:

[God] Himself has said,

“I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you."
(Hebrews 13:5)

This Bible is a tangible reminder that God is always with me.

No matter WHAT.

****

In much the same way that the mess of the pages makes a Bible REAL... the mess of our lives makes our faith REAL.

It's a long and painful process, to be sure.

You get marked up and tattered and taped. You get stained and torn. Sometimes your stitching completely falls apart and you have to get sewn back together.

But through it all, you are deeply loved by the Author of life.

And in the end, your faith becomes REAL.

****

“What is REAL?" asked the Velveteen Rabbit one day... "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When [someone] loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.

"Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand... once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.”

--Margery Williams, "The Velveteen Rabbit"

Our Normal, Crazy, Fun, Adventurous, Everyday Life

2013-04-02T07:54:00.003-07:00

So... it dawned on me the other day that the only time I sit down to write a blog is when I'm feeling reflective AND when everything else on my daily list is done.

Which, obviously, isn't that often. :)

I mean, I often feel reflective. And I enjoy writing--it's cathartic and fun. But to be honest, blogging isn't super high on my to-do list right now.

It's not that I don't adore all of you lovely readers! I do!!! It's just that, with rare exceptions, I'm a 24/7 single mom and sole provider. So when I do have quiet moments, I usually spend them in personal devotion or squeezing in some extra editing to provide for the kiddos.

Or, you know, sleeping.

I Heart Sleep.

Anyway... there's a LOT more going on in the Stair house than what you see on this blog!

Since I don't have time to write about it now, let me just show you a few snapshots of what life is like in our home these days.

Obviously, we do all the regular stuff like homework and chores and showers and bedtime routine. But I don't have pictures of that. Just imagine your family and all its regular everyday stuff. Yep, us too.

What else do the kids and I do these days?

We dance.

We play outside.

We feed the ducks at the pond by our house.

We go to the park.

We have picnics and fly kites with my sister and her family.

We go to school events.

We hang out with friends.

(Do girls ever grow out of the "dress-up" phase? Hee hee)

We celebrate half-birthdays.

(Ack! J.J.'s next birthday will have DOUBLE DIGITS!)

We make dorky, themed holiday meals.

NOTE: what I lack in baking stills, I make up for in food coloring.

Valentine's Day breakfast...

[[NOT PICTURED: our green St. Patrick's Day dinner, and the "resurrection rolls" we made for a sleepover on Easter weekend. If you ever make that recipe (widely circulated on Facebook), please note: Jesus-as-marshmallow tends to escape from His crescent-roll grave, so make sure kids know the Bible pretty well or they'll be concerned...]]

April Fool's! Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and green beans are actually Cocoa Krispies treat, ice cream, and fruit roll-ups.

These are just some of the pictures I had on my phone. But I wanted you to see that we don't just sit around and pontificate and wax philosophical over here.

We LIVE.

We watch too much TV. We tickle. We giggle at our ever-expanding repertoire of family inside jokes. We get cranky at each other. The kids fuss. (I take deep breaths and remind myself of the immortal words of the Dog Whisperer: "Calm, Assertive Leadership.")

We eat breakfast for dinner. And sometimes, dessert first. (Who made up the rules, anyway?)

We sing. If you drop by pretty much anytime, we'll have Toby Mac or Chris Rice on Pandora (any guess which is my favorite and which is the kids'?). I have a habit of singing to myself--more of a "joyful noise" I guess--and the kids have picked up on that.

Sometimes I'll pause my editing, listen closely, and realize all three kids are singing three different songs to themselves.

I Heart Earbuds.

I'm not a very good cook. I'm terrified of crafts--glitter gives me hives. And I had to ask Miss B to explain the newfangled way the elementary school teaches math.

But the one thing I'm good at? Finding creative ways to have fun.

We have a lot of FUN.

So, that's pretty much our life. Regular stuff. Chaotic stuff. Messy stuff. Fun stuff.

Family stuff.

Because that's what we are! We're just a regular family. Doing regular family things.

Loving God.

Loving each other.

Doing our best to make the most out of our days. :)

Okay, that's all, folks! See you the next time I'm caught up enough on editing to blog!!!

Why is there a Holy Saturday?

2013-03-30T07:32:00.003-07:00

Today, I woke up early—while my house still sighed with the rhythmic breathing of five sleeping kids, exhausted from late-night sleepover giggles. While I tiptoed in the kitchen to make my coffee, it was quiet, and it was still dark.

And as the excitement of yesterday melted into a silent morning. . . I realized:

Today is Holy Saturday.

I didn’t grow up in a liturgical tradition, so I haven’t contemplated the significance of Holy Saturday. Honestly, to me, it was just a bonus day sandwiched between Good Friday and Easter Sunday—a day to grocery shop for Sunday lunch, to take the kids to local Easter egg hunts. And for the thirteen years I spent as a pastor's wife, Holy Saturday was a hectic day, the final push to invite people to our Easter service (i.e., the Super Bowl of the church)—passing out flyers, doing some kind of community blitz to get our name and service times out there.

Never before has Holy Saturday been a quiet day.

For some reason I’ve been feeling especially reflective this Holy Week. So as the sun peeked over the rooftops this morning, I wondered, Why do we have Holy Saturday?

Why did Jesus stay in the grave an extra day?

I mean, I know the seminary answers: Jesus was fulfilling prophecy of being in the heart of the earth for three days (Matthew 12:40). Jesus was staying in the grave long enough for people to know He was dead, but not long enough for His body to decay (John 11:39; cf. Psalm 16:10). And some Bible scholars believe that on Saturday, Jesus preached the gospel in hell (1 Peter 3:18-20).

But even if Jesus “descended into hell,” as the Apostles’ Creed says—why did He need a whole day to preach the gospel? Jesus’ longest recorded sermon is the Sermon on the Mount, which can be delivered in only eight minutes. So Jesus could have been taken off the cross by sundown, made a quick trip to hell to preach the gospel, and been back in an hour.

Why is there a whole extra day?

I thought about what the disciples must have been feeling on that first Holy Saturday. They didn’t know it was Holy Saturday. To them, it was just another day. The day after their Master died.

The day after everything they'd been living for was snatched away in a matter of hours.

The day after their entire world fell apart.

Now THAT I can relate to.

About a year and a half ago, my dreams died. The tragedy shocked my faith like nothing I’ve ever experienced. He not only broke his vows with his marriage and his ministry, but he told me he was “tired of pretending.” Then one chilly morning, he chose another life and simply walked out.

Everything I had lived for was snatched away in a matter of hours.

I was devastated.

My faith was shaken to the core.

I had put all my eggs in this Easter basket, so to speak.

My life had been centered on the church from children’s choir to youth group—and then college Bible studies and mission trips. After college I worked for a Christian publisher and went to seminary, where I met and married a preacher. Together we planted churches and led ministries—all while I edited hundreds of Christian books. It is not an exaggeration to say the church was my entire world.

Everything I had been living for was saturated in the faith.

And then one day . . . it was gone.

So I can relate a bit to the disciples that Saturday.

Maybe you can relate, too. You have your own story. Perhaps you’ve lost a loved one. Or gotten a phone call with devastating news.

Perhaps your dreams died with the words “cancer” or “infertile” or “runaway” or "downsizing" or “There's been an accident" or "I just don’t love you anymore” or “Your child needs some tests” or “He’ll never walk again.”

Or maybe for you, it was a crisis of faith that came out of nowhere. You were sitting on a pew or serving in church, when suddenly you were seized with doubt and thought, "What am I doing? Is this even real?"

Have you ever faced your own "Holy Saturday"?

Has God ever disappointed you? Not met your expectations? Been silent when you desperately needed Him to speak?

The disciples didn’t know that all their doubts, aches, and disappointments would be answered on Sunday. To them, Saturday was a dark day. A day of grief and anguish. A day of God's echoing silence. A day of enduring pain in the raw, empty place where their dreams used to live.

Everything they had believed in was buried in a cold, dark tomb.

God could have reassured the disciples by giving them some handwriting on the wall or a burning bush or something as a sign to let them know that Jesus was coming back. That their emptiness would be filled in the morning. That their faith was NOT in vain.

But He didn’t.

He let them wrestle in the darkness of that wide borderland--between anguish and hope--for a full day. Aching. Waiting. Grieving. Fearing. Wondering. Too shocked to pray. Too shattered to trust.

Why did God let them wrestle?

Why does God let us wrestle?

Why is there a whole day when God is silent?

***

When you're in your "Holy Saturday," faced with pain and doubt amid the silence of God… what do you do?

Do you turn and walk away from your faith, trying to fill the emptiness with something else?

Or ...

When you’re suffering in the silence, wracked by the feeling that God has abandoned you, do you notice that tiny, flickering, almost imperceptible spark of hope? The hope that makes no sense? The hope you cannot prove, you cannot see, and you cannot even quite say for sure is actually there?

Did He really say that He would rise again?

Is there a chance that maybe He hasn’t abandoned me? That there is a future I just can’t see? A hope beyond this barren borderland?

It is today, Holy Saturday—the in-between place where we cannot see or sense God—when our faith becomes REAL.

If you are wrestling with your faith today, let me encourage you that there are thousands of other strugglers like you and me. We are the ones who know what it's like to be shattered by pain, assaulted by doubt and fear, and yet still desperately clinging to the hope that just barely throbs beneath our heartache.

Don't give in to the grief of your Holy Saturday. Don't run away from the One who alone has the words of eternal life.

Wait in the emptiness.

And watch.

Embrace the sacredness of your Holy Saturday, whatever it may be. Allow yourself to wrestle and to ask and to grieve and to fear and to doubt and to ache. Cry and pray and struggle. And through it all, pay attention to that tiny flicker of hope that just won't go away.

Then, as your heart is made tender by pain and your eyes softened by tears, the stone of doubt and emptiness will begin to roll away and reveal the transforming faith and fullness and glory of a Resurrection Sunday like you’ve never known.

Where reasons are given, we don't need faith.

Where only darkness surrounds us,

we have no means for seeing except by faith.

--Elisabeth Elliot

The Best Gift a Daughter Could Ever Receive

2013-02-18T07:28:00.001-08:00

I saw something at Starbucks last week that took my breath away.

Hang on, let me set the scene.

As a book editor, I often take my laptop to Starbucks to get work done. The particular Starbucks I go to is filled with all sorts of interesting people.

Just this past week, I sat by a group of young men giving each other advice about how to treat their wives (ahem), a MLM meeting in which the leader admitted his product didn’t work and was training his sales force on the placebo effect (really?!), and on and on. I try not to listen to conversations while I’m working, but sometimes it’s hard not to notice.

But my favorite—the one that will stay with me forever—was a middle-aged man and teenage boy who walked in last Friday.

The man seemed pleasant, chummy with the boy At first I assumed it was his son. He bought the teenager a latte and they settled at the table beside me. Between sips of coffee, the man casually asked how the boy’s senior year was going, what he enjoyed about school. Where did the boy go to church and so on.

Okay, so it’s not a father and son, I surmised. It was DNow weekend, so I thought maybe the man was mentoring the young boy or something. That’s sweet, I thought, sticking in my earbuds and turning up the volume on The Piano Guys channel to drown out their conversation.

I heard only a few bits and pieces between songs…

“my daughter…” “How did you meet…” “I only have two rules...”

And then this:

“…You don’t put your hands anywhere on my daughter that I wouldn’t put my hands on my daughter…”

Wait… WHAT?

It finally dawned on me:

This father was “interviewing” the boy to see if he could date his daughter!

Well, what would you do? Yeah, me too. I hit mute on Pandora and totally eavesdropped on the rest of the conversation.

The man went on to explain how precious his daughter was to him. That she was his to protect until someday God gave her a husband and that he took that job very seriously. That whoever dated his daughter needed to be a man of integrity and honor. That his daughter was a treasure, and she deserved to be treated as such.

The father’s demeanor was agreeable and friendly, but you could tell he was serious about watching out for his daughter.

The conversation was peppered by a lot of “yes sir”s and nodding from the young man. A young man of such character, mind you, that he had been willing to meet with her father first.

Honestly, how many high school seniors would DO that nowadays?

Only the ones you want your daughter to date.

All right, I confess. I was tearing up at this point. Oh, what I would have given for my dad to have lived long enough to do that for me! And what I would give for my own daughters to have had a father like that!

I have no idea who this father is or who his daughter is. She may be glad her father is interviewing her potential dates, or she might be groaning in embarrassment that he’s sooooo old-fashioned.

Regardless, I know this: I’d give anything to be that girl. She’s the luckiest daughter on earth.

Dads of little girls, wherever you are, DO THIS for your daughters.

She might protest now, but someday, she will thank you.

I'm no expert on dads, but I know a lot about being a daughter. And I'm pretty sure that's the best gift a daughter could ever receive.

Freeze-Frame

2013-01-20T06:20:00.002-08:00

I love lazy Saturdays.

My kids still haven't figured out how to sleep in, so they wander in my bedroom, one by one.

First, my middle child, carrying her Madame Alexander doll. "Can I snuggle with you?"

Of course. I scoot over.

Next, my young son. "Mom, I had a bad dream."

I groggily turn and pat the bed on the other side of me. There's plenty of room. He climbs in.

We cuddle, the three of us, somewhere between consciousness and dreamland. I don't know how many minutes pass. One? Ten?

Then my oldest child comes in. She's fully dressed, awake, ready to start the day. "Mom, can I play on the computer?"

"Mm-hmm," I affirm, rolling over to create some room for myself, resituating arms and legs that have streched across the mattress and wrapped around me, reducing my personal space in the king-sized bed to about ten inches. How can such small humans take up so much room?

I'm vaguely aware of the hall light switching on. The desktop computer playing its "powered-on" arpeggio. And the best sound of all: the gurgling of the coffeemaker.

I congratulate myself on what a great idea it was to teach my older kids how to make my coffee.

Soon, cuddles turn to conversation, and I resign myself to getting up. We make a game of it. I pretend to be dead weight as the kids scooch me over and grab my feet and pull me up.

We are a little parade of pajamas down the hall to the office, where my oldest is playing on the computer. The kids plop in the armchairs. I detour to the kitchen to pour my coffee.

In the two minutes I'm gone, the kids are already squabbling over the computer.

"Hey, it's MY turn! No fair! You've been on the computer forever."

"No, it's not! Mom said I could play it!"

"Hey, get out of my chair!"

My little guy, who had apparently climbed up beside his sister, wails in response.

Sigh.

I walk into the office, steaming mug in hand, and call a moratorium on the computer. "If you can't get along with electronics, then you'll have to get along without them." I shut down the desktop.

Three gripy children wander into the kitchen, variously accusing the others of it being their fault, reaching past each other to forage in the pantry and the fridge, aimlesslessly searching for food.

I twist open the blinds to a sunshiny morning and recruit them to help me make breakfast.

One turns on the music. Another stirs the batter. Another helps me flip the pancakes. The table is set. Vitamins portioned out. Apple juice poured. Jesus Calling for Kids devotional placed on the table.

Gradually, tattling turns to teamwork and breakfast is ready.

Between bites of blueberry pancakes, I tell the kids our plans for the day. I have to work today, so they'll be going to Gran's house. My younger sister is bringing her kids over so they can play.

My kids are eager to see their younger cousins, who weren't able to join us at the last family gathering. They can't wait to tell them all about their adventures in the big, country ranch house where we overnighted in Goldthwaite, graciously provided to us by a family friend as we gathered for my grandfather's funeral.

The kids remind each other of their stories--the "wild dogs" they encountered in the pasture (which turned out to be the next-door neighbor's pugs), the five cousins piling on top of each other in Keith's red truck as he took a bull out to join his cattle--and their mad dash to dive back into the truck once the two bulls met. Their "hike" to the windmill with their uncle. The time my little guy got to "drive" a pickup (atop the actual driver, of course).

The stories are interrupted by my ringing cell phone. My mom wants to know, would it be okay if she took my kids to see their other cousin's basketball game? If so, we'll need to be at her house a couple of hours earlier than expected.

The kids whoop in excitement. All the cousins! They'll get to see ALL of them!

Breakfast is hastily abandoned. I call them back to clear their spots at the table. And then I call them back again, reminding them for the upteenth time that "putting up your dishes" does not mean leaving them in the sink. I introduce them to the dishwasher. (Someday their spouses will thank me.) And I remind them that the pancake syrup isn't going to walk itself back to the pantry.

Three hopping, giggly kids quickly finish cleaning the kitchen and bounce off, Tigger-like, to get dressed.

One daughter insists on taking a shower first. Another wants me to braid her hair. Little guy is detemined to wear a "basketball outift" so he can shoot some hoops with his oldest cousin, who is twelve and, as the only other male cousin in our family, like a rock star to my son.

I wander up the stairs and into his closet. Basketball clothes? We settle for windpants and a T-shirt that reads "USA." He pulls out his only pair of Nike shoes, the ones with actual shoelaces.

A few minutes later, I'm in the downstairs office, editing a manuscript at my laptop.

My son, dressed down to his socks, carries his shoes downstairs. "Mom, can you help me tie my shoes?"

He passes his oldest sister, who is standing at the hall mirror, Stridexing her forehead.

"I'll help you, Buddy," she offers.

He plops on the floor, small legs extended, laces agape. She crouches down beside him and I pretend to be working... but I can't help listening as she shows him how to make the bunny ears and thread the laces. He can't figure it out. She patiently shows him again. And again... until his clumsy fingers can finally form the loops.

In the background, I overhear my middle daughter in my bathroom, belting out "How Great Thou Art" at the top of her lungs in the shower.

And I freeze-frame the moment.

This moment. This.

I don't want to cheapen it with a picture. That would turn the sacred ordinary into newsfeed fodder. Some moments are simply too precious for the mom paparazzi.

So I just hold the memory.

Snuggles and squabbles.

Tattles and teamwork.

The four of us have formed a new family. Our new normal. No longer feeling incomplete but whole.

All of us, finding our way amid preteen hormones and sibling drama and homework and manuscripts and school activities and book deadlines.

It's not perfect. At times, it's downright messy. But it's ours. Our little family.

This family.

This.

A New Perspective

2013-01-01T22:23:00.002-08:00

Happy New Year!

Don't worry...this isn't another one of those "new year's resolutions" posts. I think setting goals is a great idea, but I've learned the hard way that I don't actually know what the coming year holds.

Plus, I confess: I'm a teensy bit intimidated by all those resolutions about losing 50 pounds or running a marathon or writing the next great American novel. Around here, my personal goals are more like "keep the kids alive" and "try not to run out of coffee."

So instead, I'll just tell you about something that's been percolating in my heart for about a week. Let's call it a "new year's perspective" post. Better?

* * *

It hit me on Christmas Eve.

I was blessed to have my kids for Christmas break again this year, and we kicked off our bevy of Christmas Eve traditions by attending candlelight service at The Village Church with my family.

The kids and I arrived early to meet my sisters and save rows for our clan. As the clock ticked toward 1:00, I ducked out of the sanctuary, weaved through the lobby, and peeked outside so I could escort my elderly grandfather to his seat.

Amid the throng coming through the front doors, I heard someone call out, "Jenny Haney!"

I love when people call me by my childhood name.

I turned to see my college friend John. After exchanging delighted greetings and "great to see you"s, John introduced me to his lovely daughter and filled me in on his post-college life--a decade in the military, a wife and kids, and a successful career as a surgeon.

Then it was my turn.

I told him about my kids. That I'm still editing books. And that I'd spent most of my post-college years in ministry, planting churches with my husband...but then he left us, so now I'm a single mom.

"I'm so sorry," he said sincerely. "I heard about that."

As we wrapped up our conversation and parted to find our respective family members--it hit me:

Why do I define myself by that?

I'm so much more than The Pastor's Wife Who Was Abandoned.

* * *

It's strange how tragedy brands you, at least for a while.

I remember those awkward weeks during my sophomore year, when I was The Girl Whose Dad Died. Fifteen-year-olds are supposed to be getting driver's permits and going to the mall and giggling at movies, not grieving the death of a parent. The shock of it reveberated through the school halls in whispers from friends and faculty alike who weren't sure how to treat me.

But I've long since put away that nametag. I no longer identify myself by my father's death. It affected my life profoundly, of course, but it's not something I feel compelled to tell people anymore.

My father's death shaped me, but it doesn't define me.

And, like you, I've weathered my fair share of trials and tragedies since then. But I haven't let any of those things define me. If you and I met at Starbucks to catch up or to get to know each other, I wouldn't mention those circumstances in the "who I am and what I've been doing" part of our conversation.

So why was I letting this particular trauma define me?

* * *

To be honest, part of the reason my scarlet D seared so deeply was that my situation was so scandalous. The shock of it reverberated throughout our community from church members and neighbors alike who, too, felt betrayed.

But the biggest part was that I hadn't yet chosen to put away that nametag. Maybe deep down, I wondered, without that label, who would I be?

For fourteen years, I had defined myself as a pastor's wife. Bible study teacher. Church planter. For many of those years, I was the sole or primary provider for our family of five. My life was a cyclone of ministry and mothering and editing and marital issues and making ends meet. I was having babies and birthing churches, trying my best to nurture them and help them thrive.

It's been a long, long time since I was Jenny Haney--girl who loves God, hangs out with friends, plays spades, and can find the fun in almost anything.

But you know what? It's long past time for me to set aside the cumbersome labels of "single mom" and "abandoned wife." I don't have to define myself by those circumstances anymore.

Yes, I've grieved. And yes, my life has been profoundly and permanently affected by the situation. But honestly, I'm much healthier and happier and, well, more myself now than I've been in years.

So after setting aside the nametag of "single mom," who am I?

I'm Jennifer Haney Stair--woman who loves God, hangs out with my friends, plays the Wii with my kids, and can still make almost anything fun.

Yes, the divorce has shaped me.

But it no longer defines me.

* * *

And you know what, sweet friends? Whatever you're going through doesn't have to define you either.

You don't have to wear that nametag of The Woman Whose Husband Has Cancer or The Man Who Lost His Job or The Parent of a Special-Needs Child. I don't know what your nametag says, but I know what's it's like to feel so wrapped up in that identity you feel compelled to bring it up in conversation--as if you've been so branded by your pain that you have to wear it on your lapel.

Yes, the circumstances we face in this life shape us.

But our identity is something else entirely. It comes from our Creator, not our circumstances.

So no matter what your new year's resolutions may be--or whether you make resolutions at all--remember, the ultimate goal is not what you DO. It's who you ARE.

"You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it.

Live out your God-created identity.

Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”

--Matthew 5:58 (The Message)

Blessing My Blessings

2012-11-01T08:16:00.001-07:00

No doubt about it: children are a gift from the Lord;
the fruit of the womb is a divine reward.--Psalm 127:3

It's already NOVEMBER! Woo hoo! I'm so excited about the holidays! I've already dug out my Christmas CDs and lit my minty candles. Seriously, y'all are going to have to stop me from putting up my Christmas tree already. :)

But first... I need to slow down and enjoy Thanksgiving. After all, November is the month of gratitude, right? So instead of skipping over this month and rushing ahead to Christmas (like I really want to do), I'm going to try to fill each day of this month--NOT with memories of the pain that happened last November, but with thankfulness for the joy that lies ahead.

I choose to redeem the month of November for my family.

With that in mind, I'd love to start off this month by sharing something special I did with my kids.

A couple of months ago, I began studying passages in the Bible about blessing your children. Not just a casual "I love you and have a great day" kind of blessing, but a well-thought-out, intentional blessing.

A blessing that gives children....

An assurance of identity.
A strong sense of belonging.
A clear vision for their future.

The more I read about blessing your children, the more I realized that was exactly what my kids needed. They had been very hurt and shaken by the divorce. And they needed to feel secure. They needed to know, for sure, that God created them with high value, that they belong in our family, and that God has a plan for them... no matter what circumstances they may encounter in their lives.

I could go on and on about the signficance of blessing your kids, but these articles pretty much sum it up.

So I prayerfully wrote out a blessing for each of my children using the five biblical elements:

Meaningful and appropriate touch
A spoken message
Attaching high value to the one being blessed
Picturing a special future for him or her
An active commitment to fulfill the blessing

Then I took the kids to my mom's house, where my extended family--my mom, my sisters and their husbands, and their kids--joined me in surrounding the kids as I spoke these blessings over them.

(Note: that's my mom's ginormous Bible study whiteboard behind me, still set up in her living room from her Precept Bible study the night before. Anyone wonder where my love of teaching the Bible comes from?!?)

Do you mind if I share these blessings with you? I've omitted some personal details for the sake of privacy, but I'd like to post them here to remind myself of how grateful I am for each of my three precious treasures.

***

MISS B

[[Miss B]], your name means “royalty.” And I’ve always called you “my princess.” But much more than that, you are God’s princess. You are a daughter of the King of kings! May you always remember that you are royalty—God is your heavenly Father and you are His much-loved princess.

And your middle name is in honor of my dad. You are not only the precious daughter of your heavenly Father, but you bear the name of my earthly father, who was a very godly man. My dad loved God very much, and He loved others. This is your legacy to carry on.

Sweet [[Miss B]], you are the first child God gave me. And because you are the firstborn, you are a leader. In our home you are a role model for your younger sister and younger brother—and as the oldest female cousin, you are a leader for your younger cousins as well. Whether you realize it or not, they are looking up to you. May you always set an example for them of faith, love, and kindness.

God has made you a leader not only in our family but in all you do. You have a natural gift of leadership that shines through at church and at school. Your friends look to you to lead them. May you use your gift of leadership wisely, to lead other people toward God and His kingdom and His righteousness.

[[Miss B]], you also have a strong desire for knowledge. You want to know everything about everything! God has gifted you with intelligence. But more than that, God has given you the gift of wisdom—the ability to use your knowledge to make right choices. As you grow up and continue to learn, I pray that you will have more than just "book knowledge," but God’s true wisdom—the ability to use your knowledge in a way that glorifies God and makes His name great.

Not only are you wise, [[Miss B]], but God has given you a special kind of knowledge called discernment. When you were three years old, God placed His mark of grace on your left eye. And that “God mark,” as we call it, not only saved your physical sight, but it’s a reminder that God has given you a special “heart sight,” or insight into the hearts and motives of other people. You have a unique gift of being able to perceive what others are truly like, of looking beyond their words and actions and directly into their hearts. May God use your gift of discernment to help you make wise choices and stand up for what is right.

[[Miss B], with your gifts of leadership and wisdom and discernment, I envision a future in which God will use you to lead others to Him and to teach Him them about His love.

Together with our family here, I pray God will use you to bring many people into His kingdom. We pray that you will use your gifts to serve God by serving others as a teacher, ministry leader, and friend.

***

J.J.

[[J.J.]], your name means “beautiful.” And you are beautiful, inside and out! I pray that you will continue to see that true beauty comes from within, from the beauty of Christ shining through your heart and life.

And your name is a special name I chose in honor of my grandmother and my mother. Both G.G. and Gran are godly women who love God very much! G.G. loved to pray and to help others. And Gran loves to teach the Bible and to share God’s love with everyone she meets. So you are not only beautiful and loved, but you are carrying on the legacy of two very godly women!

I call you “my jewel,” because that’s what you are—a precious jewel, a treasure. And you know what? You’re not only my jewel, but you’re God’s special jewel! Like a diamond, you sparkle and shine wherever you go. You are God’s treasure, a glimmering gem reflecting His light into our world.

And like a diamond, you have so many facets and sides! You are creative and artistic and musical and filled with zest for life. God has made you unique, and He has a great plan for your life. The Bible says you are God’s “masterpiece,” like a special painting filled with His light and joy. May you always remember that you belong to God and that all your unique gifts and ideas and beauty come from Him.

You are not only creative, but you have a very tender heart. God has filled you with compassion and empathy. That means when others hurt, you hurt with them. And when others are happy, you are happy with them. May your heart always stay sensitive toward others: to listen when they need a friend, to reach out when they need help, to comfort them when they are sad, and to show them the love of God.

[[J.J.]], with your gifts of creativity and artistry and compassion, I envision a future in which God will use you to shine His light and love to others around you. Because you think outside the box and see things that no one else sees, I pray that you will expand God’s kingdom by doing things that have never been done before. God has uniquely designed you to make a great big difference in the world.

Don’t be afraid to take big risks for God, [[J.J.]]. Remember, you have no reason to fear. God is always with you, as close as the smile on your face. You are God’s precious jewel, His treasure, His masterpiece. Your heavenly Father cares for you, and He will always protect you and guide you every day of your life.

Together with our family here, I pray God will use you to help others see God’s love and beauty. And we pray that God will use you to take big risks for God’s kingdom and to shine His light into this dark world.

***

BUDDY

[[Buddy]], your name means “strong.” But being strong is much more than having big muscles. Being strong means having the courage to do the right thing. It means being brave enough to stand up for people who need help. It means protecting those in need. And it means letting God give you His strength when you need it. I call you “my little superhero,” but the truth is, you are God’s mighty warrior. I pray that He will fill you with His strength and that you will always be strong for Him.

You are named in honor of my dad. You not only have God as your heavenly Father, but you bear the name of my earthly father. My dad was a strong man. He didn’t have great big muscles, but he had a great big heart that was full of love for God and for others. He also had a strong sense of justice; and I see that in you as well. I pray you will continue to have a strong sense of right and wrong and the courage to make godly choices your whole life, like my dad did. This is your legacy to carry on.

[[Buddy]], you are my only son, the man in our family. In our home you are the protector of your sisters—and of your younger cousins too. Although you will grow up to be physically stronger than they are, don’t ever use your strength to hurt them in any way. Remember, you are strongest when you remember that your strength comes from God. He will make you strong to protect them and help them.

And just like my dad, [[Buddy], you have a contagious laugh! You are full of giggles and joy. I hope you keep laughing and having fun your whole life. Don’t ever feel like you’re too “grown up” to giggle. The Bible says the joy of the Lord is our strength, so keep on laughing and showing others the joy of the Lord.

[[Buddy]], you have a lot of friends. People love being around you! God has given you a charming and charismatic personality. Because people are naturally drawn to you, you will always be surrounded by friends. May you be strong enough to set a good example of right choices and brave enough to stand up for what is right in God’s eyes, no matter what others do. Have fun, but always remember who you are.

And you have such an imagination! You have an amazing gift of telling stories that amuse and entertain us all. And you know what? Jesus was a storyteller too! He used stories to help people understand important truths about God. I pray that you will use your gifts of storytelling and imagination to follow Jesus’ example of telling stories that teach others about God and His Word.

[[Buddy]], with your gifts of strength and joy and imagination, I envision a future in which God will use you to draw others to Him through your stories and your strong friendship. God can use you for His kingdom as an influencer, someone who introduces people to Jesus and helps them know Him more deeply.

Together with our family here, I pray you will use your gifts to serve God your whole life by being a strong and courageous follower of Him.

***

I know this is a crazy long post. But I needed to remind myself that I am exceedingly blessed to be the mother of these three gifts from God.

Thanks for letting me share my "blessings" with you today!

Jesus put his arms around the children

and blessed them by placing his hands on them.

--Mark 10:16

What Kind of God Allows THIS?!?

2012-10-30T11:28:00.004-07:00

I don’t have a TV right now.

But all it takes is a scroll through my Facebook feed to see startling pictures and hear crushing stories of the devastation Hurricane Sandy left in her wake last night. I just Googled the news headlines, which currently cite 39 known fatalities from this monster storm.

So far.

I can’t wrap my brain around the reality of 39 people being fine one minute… then washed out to sea and killed the next by some freak storm.

It’s unfathomable.

No, it’s more than that. It’s downright unconscionable.

An “act of God,” the insurance agents call it.

Wait…God did this? The “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life” God?

Okay. Let’s ask the question we’re all thinking but are sometimes ashamed to admit.

We asked it after 9/11. We asked it after Hurricane Katrina. We ask it whenever we turn on the news these days. (On the news website I read today, I was sickened by headline after headline of murder, horror, pain, and loss.)

We ask this question when our spouse betrays us. Or when a friend calls us with heartbreaking news. Or when the doctor gives us the diagnosis. Or when we watch the coffin of a loved one lowered into the ground.

[[Before I go on: let me gently say something to any Christians reading this who may claim that you’ve never doubted God’s sovereignty in the face of evil. As one pastor well said, the only Christians who don’t ever doubt are the ones who don’t really think. Author Mark Buchanan agrees: “The depth of our doubt is roughly proportional to the depth of our faith. Those with strong faith have equally strong doubts. That principle bears out in the other direction as well: People with a trivial and shallow faith usually have trivial and shallow doubts.” So trust me, if you haven't asked this question yet, someday you will.]]

But for those of us who have been shattered by pain… who know Anguish on a first-name basis…who simply cannot hide in steepled buildings or Christian conferences and pretend that suffering doesn’t exist, let’s come right out and say the question that’s haunting us:

What kind of God allows THIS?!?

What kind of God allows a pastor to walk out on his church, his family, and his faith?

What kind of God allows spouses to be abused? Children to be bullied? Neglected? Molested?

What kind of God allows people to be killed in freak accidents? By drunk drivers? By murderers?

What kind of God allows infertility? Miscarriage? Stillbirth? SIDS?

What kind of God allows rape? Cancer? AIDS? Poverty? Terrorism? War?

The questions are endless. Insert yours here:

What kind of God allows ____________________________?

Eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume asked the question this way: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”

That’s a good question.

Now, I could go one of two ways with this blog post.

One option is that I could vehemently and eloquently denounce Hume’s trilemma by filling page after page with myriad Scripture verses and biblical proofs of God’s sovereignty. I could pull a few of the dozens of apologetics books off my library shelves and meticulously articulate the logical and philosophical rationales for God’s omnipotence and His overarching plan for the universe.

Twenty years ago, I would have done exactly that. Because it’s a billion times easier to cite Scripture verses than it is to wrestle with reality.

But I simply can’t do that anymore.

Because logic doesn’t mend the broken places.

Philosophy won’t bring back our loved ones.

And all the books in the world can’t turn back the clock and undo the suffering around us.

So what’s the other option I have for this blog post?

I'll skip over all the “God works all things together for good” answers (even though they’re true), and just get to the core of the matter:

God is always good.

But life sometimes sucks.

(Sorry, Mom, if you're reading this.)

I’ve been a Christian for 32 years. I’ve led Bible studies for decades. I have a seminary degree and twenty years’ experience in editing Christian books. I’ve spent my life immersed in the Word of God.

And while I could quote Bible passages, articulate theology, and write endless papers on this topic, the truth is, I don’t really know why God allows suffering. And this side of eternity, I'll never know. Because as my college roommate used to say, "If God were small enough to be understood, He wouldn't be big enough to be God."

After years of walking with Christ though good times and grief-stricken times, I can only say this for sure:

Jesus loves me. This I know.

I know that might seem like a cop-out for those of you who are hoping for a different answer to the question, “How could a good God allow suffering?” But it’s the only answer I have.

If you want a comprehensive answer replete with philosophy and logic, you can find those in any bookstore. I have a dozen or more tomes to recommend.

But if you boil down all those volumes of theology and apologetics and philosophy, you’d come up with the same answer.

No matter what the circumstances…

When your mind is swirling with doubts and your heart is shattered with pain...

You can hold on to this simple truth for dear life:

Jesus loves you.

That you can KNOW.

Fear Not!

2012-09-27T08:17:00.003-07:00

Do not fear, for I am with you;

do not be afraid, for I am your God.

I will strengthen you; I will help you;

I will hold on to you with My righteous right hand.

--Isaiah 41:10 HCSB

Okay, sweet friends, I have one more thought to share before I finally get to tell you about the special thing I'm doing for my kids this weekend. I'm really excited about it, so stay tuned!

But something else has been heavy on my heart this week. I've tried to avoid writing about it, telling myself I need to focus on editing in stead of blogging, but I simply can't get it out of my head until I get it on paper. (Or computer screen...whatever. Y'all know what I mean!) So let me take a quick break and tell you...

This week I've come face-to-face with fear.

Early this week a violent crime was committed in our neighborhood. The local news reported that similar violent crimes had occurred in nearby residential areas as well.

And the neighborhood erupted in fear.

The streets were eerily quiet as parents locked their doors and kept their children inside. Our neighborhood Facebook page exploded with residents urging one another to protect ourselves with guns and self-defense classes. Many neighbors commented that they were terrified to leave their house alone, especially at night.

And you know what? I completely understand why so many residents reacted in fear. (N.B.: I think self-defense and gun protection is a great idea. Please don't misunderstand.)

But it was the level of fear that struck me.

Overnight, we went from a typical suburban community to high alert, terrified for our safety and our children.

And it got me thinking...

Why are we so afraid?

Now, before you mistakenly think I'm approaching this subject as a "what's wrong with those people" post, let me assure you that I know fear firsthand. I've been suffocated by it, ambushed by it, paralyzed by it. Fear so physically painful that it sent me to the doctor, convinced I was having a heart attack. Fear that consumed me with the crippling worry of endless "what-ifs."

Just to give you an idea...

When my dad died at a young age, I was very afraid of dying.

When I miscarried my first child, I was afraid I would never be able to have kids.

When my daughter was diagnosed with glaucoma, I was afraid she'd become blind.

When my marriage started falling apart, I was afraid my husband would leave.

When our church plant started struggling, I was afraid the church wouldn't survive.

When my husband abruptly moved out, I was afraid of being alone.

I was controlled by fear.

Why???

I am a Christian, so my fear doesn't make any sense. In my head, I know that fear has no place in the life of a child of God.

After all, "Fear not!" is the most repeated command in all of Scripture. The pages of our Bibles are replete with God's assurances that He is with us and will never forsake us. Reminders that He will protect us and is our refuge and strength. Commands to trust Him and to cast our cares on Him and to be anxious for nothing.

Why, then, did I react in fear? Why do any of us feel afraid?

Regarding my list above, some of my fears came true. Some didn't. Either way, I couldn't alter the outcome. All my fear and anxiety didn't change the fact that I am helpless to control my life.

Ah... there's the rub.

I can't control my life!

(Yes, I just heard you say, "Well, duh.")

I know, I know. Of course I can't control my life. God is in charge of the whole world. Those of us who cut our teeth on church pews learned this foundational truth as preschoolers. We sang, "He's got the whole world in His hands!"

Over and over in our churches, we read and teach and sing this fundamental reality:

God is in control.

Ironic, isn't it? The truth that troubles me the most is the same truth that gives me the most comfort.

I am not in control. God is.

That is both alarming and assuring.

Alarming, because I can't plan my life the way I want it to turn out.

Assuring, because I know that the God who gave me life loves me and has a plan infinitely greater than anything I could ever concoct.

Obviously, if I was writing the story of my life, I would NOT have included the plot twist of my former-pastor-husband leaving me. Or of my miscarriage. Or of my daughter developing glaucoma at age three. Or of two church plants failing. Or...

You get the picture.

But you see, God Himself is writing my story. In fact, He finished the entire story and wrote "The End" before I was even born. All of my days were written in God's book and planned before a single one of them began (Psalm 139:16).

As much as I'd like to whip out my editor's pen for a substantive rewrite of my life, all the red ink in the world can't change the story God wrote.

And all the wishing in the world won't bring my husband back or give me back the child I miscarried or reestablish the church that failed.

And all the worry in the world won't add one moment to my life's span or alter any of the circumstances God allows.

And all the fear in the world won't change the future that the Author of Life has already planned and penned for me--and for my children.

So day by day, I choose to obey the command to "Fear not!" I've filled a spiral notebook with scriptures that remind me of God's sovereign care and protection. And over the past few months, I've learned to respond to unexpected and even tragic events with faith, not fear.

That's why when I heard of the devastating event that struck our neighborhood this week, I can honestly say that I didn't react in fear. Maybe after all these years, I'm finally learning to rest in this whole "God is in control" thing! :)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is a grand thing to be able to say, "Wherever I go, and whatever happens to me, I belong to God; and I can say that God will prepare my way as well when I am old and grey-headed as he did when I was a boy. He shall guide me all the way to my everlasting mansion in glory; he was the guide of my youth, he shall be the guide of my old age. I will leave everything to him, all the way from earth to heaven; and I will be content to live only a day at a time."

--Charles Spurgeon, "God's Will About the Future," written only a few days before he died, 1892

What I've Gained from Divorce

2012-09-19T08:17:00.000-07:00

I will lead her into the desert
and speak tenderly to her there.
I will return her vineyards to her
and transform the Valley of Troubleinto a gateway of hope.
--Hosea 2:14-15 NLT

For those of you who regularly read my blog, thanks for putting up with my tangled thoughts about my recent divorce. I know my past few posts have sounded like same song, second verse; but I promise I'll be moving on to other subjects! For example, I'm eager to share something significant I'm doing for my kids... and I'll get to that soon.

But for now, one more thought about the wilderness I've been in the past year.

In my DivorceCare group meeting this week, the leader urged us to write out a list of our losses. Making this list, he said, would help us realize the magnitude of what has been taken from us as a result of divorce so that we can understand the depth of our grief.

I've been putting off this assignment because I didn't want to have to face the reality of how much my life and dreams have changed. But this morning, I sat down with a notebook and made The List.

Most of the list is too personal to share publicly, so here are just a few things on my long list of What I've Lost from Divorce:

1. My husband (obviously).

2. My identity as a wife. I'm no longer a "Mrs." I have to get used to calling myself "Miss Stair." (I still get a little pang of grief every time I say "Miss.")

3. My identity as a pastor's wife. For fourteen years I've been a pastor's wife, and I've loved that role. I really miss it. Now I'm learning how to function as a "regular" member of a church.

4. My church home. The church Brett pastored didn't survive the shock of his sudden leaving. They closed their doors in January. I truly loved that church and poured my life into the people there for five years. But I can't go back to my church home, because it no longer exists.

5. My vision of a life together. When I married Brett, I married for life. I envisioned growing old together, watching our children grow up together, having the kids and their spouses and the grandkids come over for fun family gatherings, like I do with my own mom and sisters. That dream has now been snatched away.

I could go on, but you get the picture.

Anyone who's gone through a significant loss--whether from divorce or death or illness or any unexpected change in life circumstances--could make a simliar list of losses: a lost sense of identity, security, hopes, dreams, financial status, future plans, family life, etc.

My list of losses ended up being pretty long. And to be honest, I was overwhelmed to see them in writing. Somehow writing down all those losses made them seem very REAL.

Then I sensed a strong leading....

Make another list. Make a list of what you've gained.

Gained?! That's crazy, I thought. Who GAINS from divorce? Then I thought, why not give it a try? It couldn't hurt.

And you know what? It's a lot more than I expected.

So here's my second list. The list of What I've Gained from Divorce.

1. A (faithful) heavenly husband. In Hosea 2:14-16, God calls His beloved into the wilderness to speak tenderly to her and to restore her vineyards. There, God promises to "turn Heartbreak Valley into Acres of Hope" (v. 15 MSG).

In this desert, she will no longer call God her master, but she will call Him her husband (v. 16 NLT).

As much as I never, ever wanted to be in this postition, the desert of divorce has deepened my relationship with God. I ran to Him because I had nowhere else to go! And during this past year, I have no longer merely known Him as my Lord, but I have known Him as my heavenly husband--the One who loves me with an everlasting love and makes a covenant with me that will never be broken.

"I’ll marry you for good—forever! I’ll marry you true and proper, in love and tenderness. Yes, I’ll marry you and neither leave you nor let you go. You’ll know me, God, for who I really am" (Hosea 2:20 MSG).

2. My identity as a child of God. Being a child of God isn't a new identity for me--I gave my heart to the Lord when I was seven years old. But when my life fell apart last year, I was shaken to my core. In those first few days when I was in such shock that I could barely breathe, when I wasn't even sure who I was anymore... I knew this truth: I am a child of God.

He is not only my heavenly husband, but He is my heavenly Father.

My father died many years ago. I miss him all the time, but there are certain situations when his absence is achingly palpable. When my husband left, I desperately wanted to run to my dad, for him to wrap his strong arms around me and take care of me and tell me that everything is going to be okay. But I couldn't do that. I don't have a dad anymore.

Instead, in those lonely, grief-stricken days, I found God Himself to be the Father I longed for. I can't fully explain it, and I know this sounds really "girly" (which is SO not me!), but I have felt God's strong, fatherly presence around me during the difficult times when I'm tired of all the responsibilities of being a grown-up and I just want to be a child crawling up in my Daddy's lap so He can hold me and take care of me and tell me that everything is going to be okay.

"God in His holy house is a father to those who have no father" (Psalm 68:5 NLT).

3. My identity as God's servant. On Sunday, November 6, 2011, Brett stood in the pulpit at The Church at Sendera Ranch, told the congregation he was no longer eligible to be pastor, walked out of the church, came home to pack his things, and moved out. In a single day--just a few hours, really--my identity as pastor's wife was stripped away.

This was a much harder blow than I had anticipated. I didn't realize how much I had treasured the role of pastor's wife. Yes, full-time ministry is hard. It's life-consuming, to be sure. But I enjoyed the opportunities that came with being the pastor's wife. And, well, let me be honest here: I loved the status of being a pastor's wife. It made me feel significant, as if I was doing something really important for God.

Oops. Um, there's a word for that.

PRIDE.

It would have been nice if I could have learned this lesson an easier way, but through the divorce God reminded me that I am His servant. The Christian life is NOT about my identity as a pastor's wife or Bible study teacher or anything of that sort. In fact, it's not about me at all. It's all about God. I'm just His humble servant.

And in the upside-down economy of God's kingdom, where the last become first, I've found that being God's servant is the most important thing I could ever do.

"Remember, our Message is not about ourselves; we’re proclaiming Jesus Christ, the Master. All we are is messengers, errand runners from Jesus for you" (2 Corinthians 4:5 MSG).

4. A new church home. Finding a new church home after the divorce was challenging for me. For all of my married life I had gone to the churches where Brett was on staff. The kids and I continued to go to The Church at Sendera Ranch after Brett quit, because we loved the people there and they poured out God's love and compassion on us.

But when the church closed its doors, I was on my own for the first time in fourteen years.

Through friends and God's leading, the kids and I started going to a local, nondenominational church. After our divorce was finalized on July 23, and after the 30-day appeal period had passed (to give Brett every opportunity to change his mind), the kids and I met with the pastor and became official members of the church. It's a much larger congregation than the kids have ever been part of, but they love it there. And every Sunday, as we worship with the community of believers at Hillside, I feel a strong sense of peace and belonging.

I am confident that this place--this congregation--is the church body God has prepared for us. So as a result of the divorce, I have gained a new church home.

"But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired" (1 Corinthians 12:18 NASB).

5. A new vision of a life together in community with loved ones. Journalist Walter Winchell once said, "A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out." And since November, I have found this to be true! At the moment of my deepest pain, when I felt isolated and abandoned, God sent a deluge of friends to care for us. I've written about my friends elsewhere, but suffice it to say that my home has been filled with the happy chaos of kids and friends and loved ones, just as I had envisioned it.

In fact, this year has been filled with more fun and love and joy than I could ever have imagined prior to the divorce.

While my losses nowhere compare in scope to those of the Old Testament Job, I am finding this to be true: "The Lord blessed the last part of Job's life even more than the first part" (Job 42:12 NLT).

So for as many years as God gives me in this life, I will celebrate His love with the new family of friends and loved ones that God has so bountifully provided for the kids and me.

"God sets the lonely in families" (Psalm 68:6 NIV).

***

I guess what I'm trying to say in this long post can be wrapped up in this:

Though my cup may be stained and marred and cracked... my cup runneth over (Psalm 23:4 KJV).

What My Friends Are Doing Right

2012-08-20T22:22:00.002-07:00

Being single isn’t easy.

Call it whatever you want—single, single-again, unmarried—my life now seems to be branded by what it’s NOT, rather than what it IS.

As if I’m no longer a whole person.

As if single somehow equals incomplete.

Case in point: the dictionary I use for work defines single as “not married” or “unaccompanied by others.” (So according to Merriam-Webster, singleness is, ipso facto, something “un-” or “not.”)

True, my former pastor-husband left me, but I beg to differ with Mr. Webster and the Merriam brothers regarding the rest of their definition of single.

I am NOT “unaccompanied by others.”

I am, in fact, surrounded by friends.

Fabulous friends.

Friends who are doing a lot of things RIGHT.

May I take a moment to brag on my girlfriends?

(By the way, if you know people who are single for whatever reason—never married, single-again, widowed, with a military spouse deployed, etc.—some of this might help you be a good friend to them.)

· They give great hugs.

A single person doesn’t have the kind of physical touch that spouses take for granted in marriage. (No, no… not THAT!) I mean the simple things, like a hug or pat on the arm. You don’t realize how much you need these little nudges of affection until they’re snatched away from you. And my girlfriends wrap me up in great, big, love-you-lots bear hugs. I need those.

· They include me.

I wondered if my friends would shun me when I was branded with the scarlet D. But the opposite has been true! Our friendship has been even stronger these past few months. My girlfriends keep inviting me to their get-togethers. They don’t stand protectively closer to their husbands when I’m around. They don’t invite single men to “even out the numbers” when I come. They just include me. They treat me as their friend Jen (not their "single" friend Jen). When I’m with them, I don’t feel like I’m wearing a label. I just feel like myself. That's a huge blessing.

· They offer to help—and follow through.

My girlfriends understand that being a work-at-home single mom can be overwhelming. So they’ll text me: “Going to the grocery store—what do you need?” or “At the pool—want to bring your kids?” or “My son wants a friend to play with—bring yours over?” Just today, my neighbor brought me a Route 44 Coke Zero because I couldn’t go to Sonic while my three kids were napping. I can’t tell you how much I love these specific offers to help! Don’t get me wrong: I appreciate the general “let me know if you need anything” offers too. But it's hard to ask for help sometimes. That's why I’m especially grateful when my girlfriends take the initiative to ask if they can help with specific things.

· They let me bounce ideas off them.

With three kids ages ten and under, I often encounter parenting-related issues that I want to discuss with someone. In two-parent families, one spouse tends to even out the other when it comes to parenting—or anything else, for that matter. But what if you’re spouse-less? If you have wonderful girlfriends like I do, you call your friends! Remember, an unmarried person doesn't have a companion to discuss things with, so it's a huge blessing to have friends who are willing to be a sounding board.

· They hold me accountable.

I know, the word accountable sends up all kinds of negative red flags—much like the word single. But accountability is a good thing. (Well, for me anyway. I can’t speak for every unmarried person, of course!) I have a few close girlfriends who pray for me regularly and hold me accountable for several specific things, ranging from spending time with God to maintaining my work schedule to keeping a pure heart. They ask me the hard questions. They check on me. They have the freedom to correct me. With no one else at home to notice if I sleep in or slack off or stumble into sin, I desperately need their fierce friendship.

I could go on and on... but then I'd get a text from one of my girlfriends wondering why I'm blogging so late at night and why haven't I gone to bed yet? :-)

For those of you who actually made it all the way to this paragraph, thanks so much for indulging me on this post. Sometimes when I feel overwhelmed and am tempted to tunnel-vision on my struggles, it helps to step back and choose to be thankful for what God has given me.

And tonight, I'm especially thankful for my girlfriends.

I love you gals!

Days of Laughter

2012-08-12T07:06:00.003-07:00

For all the people were weeping. . . .

Then he said to them, “Go, eat of the fat, drink of the sweet,
and send portions to him who has nothing prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord.

Do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

(Nehemiah 8:9-10)

It's been birthday-palooza around my house this week. Two of my three kids are born just one day apart in August. (What was I thinking?!) So the past couple of days have been filled with cake and squeals of joy and cake and presents and cake and fun and... well, you know. Cake.

The kids and I have danced and sung silly songs and giggled and had sleepovers and hung out with friends.

In other words, it's pretty much what our lives have been like lately.

Which begs the question I've been tossing around for a while...

Is it okay to have fun again?

I'm not sure how this grieving process is supposed to go. I've been through so many emotions since my former-pastor-husband walked out nine months ago: Shock. Disbelief. Loneliness. Sadness. I've dug deep into the psalms and smeared the pages of my Bible with my tears. I've woken up from dreaming that he came back to the startling reality that our family will never be the same again. That my life and the lives of my three precious kids have been dramatically changed, permanently seared with the scarlet D, branded a "broken home," forever.

No matter how desperately I want to make things turn out differently, I can't change what happened.

I'm divorced. Our family has been ripped apart. My marriage is over.

Which brings me back to the question:

Is it okay to have fun?

To be honest, sometimes I feel guilty for having fun. Because I don't want people to think that I'm celebrating the fact that I'm divorced. That I'm somehow happier after he left me. Or, worse, happier because he left me.

But you know what?

I am happy.

(Is that okay?)

I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but in the months since he left, I've actually had a LOT of fun.

No, not the go-out-and-get-crazy-drunk kind of fun. Seriously, y'all, I grew up Baptist! I've never done the bar scene. In fact, I've never even had a sip of alcohol (unless you count the Nyquil I took once in college and the time I received Communion at an Anglican church.) I mean the clean, giggle-with-your-girlfriends kind of fun. The water-hose-fight-with-your-neighbors-over-the-fence kind of fun. The dance-with-your-kids-like-no-one-is-watching kind of fun.

I've finally felt free to have people over--and my home has been filled with friends and laughter. In fact, several of my friends feel so comfortable here that they just come on in anytime. They've made themselves at home here. There have been times when so many people are here for impromptu dinners or get-togethers that I've lost track of how many adults and kids are in the house at any given time.

I love that.

My girlfriends and I have had a lot of fun together in the past few months. Zip-lining. A "What Not to Wear" party. Cookie exchange and recipe exchange parties. Bible studies. A sleepover with giggles and lots of chocolate. Girls' movie nights. Several girls' nights out. Our neighborhood book club and LCR. A girls' summer camping trip. Just to name a few. :)

The kids and I have fun together too. (They tease me all the time, "You're not a normal mom. But you're a fun mom!") We do all kinds of dorky things. Here are just a few of the silly things we've done this week:

* Asking the kids to tell me about their day, but making them tell me in rhyme. (Miss B: "A funny movie we did see... excuse me, now I have to pee!" Me: "Well, off to the potty you shall go.. before from you the pee does flow!")

* Random dancing to celebrate the completion of my manuscript. (Anyone seen iCarly? We do random dancing quite often to celebrate things around here.)

* Eating cake for breakfast on their birthdays (a tradition I started with the kids a few years ago). And cake for lunch. And oh why not, cake for dinner. After all, you only have one birthday a year, right? :) Enjoy your sugar coma while it lasts, kids.

Want to know some of the other silly things the kids and I do around here?

* We talk to each other in Shakespearean English ("Verily, forsooth! Cometh thou downstairs anon to partake of thine dinner. Posthaste!") or, in honor of the London Olympics, in British ("You jolly well better come down for supper, my poppets, or I'll be gobsmacked! Tally ho!")

* We practice talking in various accents. This is really fun because my children are quite good at accents. (I, however, always manage to sound like an Australian pirate. Which, of course, makes it all the more hilarious.)

* We sing to each other. Not just songs, of course, but we'll have complete conversations set to song. Especially opera--the kids love to do that. You know, you can tell your kids to do pretty much anything (clean your room, go to bed, etc.) in the form of an exaggerated operatic aria, and they'll giggle while they do it.

* We also sing actual songs--a lot. We sing praise songs and movie soundtrack songs and silly songs ("Oh I had a little chicken and she wouldn't lay an egg..."). Lately, the kids have been asking me to sing them to sleep, and I've surprised even myself by how many old hymns I know all the words to. (Granny would be proud.)

* We play cards. And board games. And made-up games. The kids put on plays, and I gush with applause and beg for encores and make them autograph my playbill. We have themed picnic-in-the-living-room-movie nights such as ocean theme (with goldfish crackers and gummy worms and Surf's Up!) and sports theme (hot dogs and nachos and Sandlot). We camp out in the game room. I make pancakes in the shape of Mickey Mouse or their names. We celebrate half-birthdays and half-Christmas. We hang out at the neighborhood pool and take our fishing rods to the catch-and-release pond by our house. The kids have played "restaurant," complete with a hostess seating me and a menu of various entrees for me to select, most of which featured peanut butter and jelly.

In other words, we have FUN.

(Is that okay?)

Don't get me wrong--I'm still going through the post-divorce grieving process. I'm not sure how long this will take--years? A lifetime? There are so many things to grieve, so many missing and broken pieces to sort through, so many dreams that were snatched away.

I still have many difficult days. A lot of rough places.

And yet... I keep thinking of the psalm I learned as a child that says that weeping may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning. I love how it's rendered in The Message:

The nights of crying your eyes out
give way to days of laughter.

(Psalm 30:8)

Days of laughter.

So if you see the kids and me out sometime, and we're laughing and having fun or doing something silly, please don't think that we're HAPPY about the circumstances we've experienced.

We're just happy.

Because as Nehemiah 8:10 says, we're finding that the joy of the Lord is our strength.

Layers of Forgiveness

2012-08-07T00:48:00.002-07:00

"When we forgive someone, we're not minimizing the harm they caused nor condoning the sin they've committed. We're simply choosing to place the offense into the nail-scarred hands of Christ."
--David Jeremiah

Forgiveness is a funny thing . . . it doesn't happen all at once. It comes in layers, like an onion. First, you peel off a layer and shed a few tears, and you think you're done. Forgive and forget, right?

Wrong.

Then out of the blue, after a few days or weeks perhaps, something reminds you of the offense and you realize you haven't forgotten it after all. So again, you have to choose to forgive. You peel another layer off the onion. And shed a few more tears. And think, Whew, finally I have forgiven that offense.

Nope, not yet.

Because months later, you might discover that an unwanted root of bitterness is springing up within you (Hebrews 12:15), and you'll be peeling off another layer of that onion, shedding a few more tears, going back through the process of forgiveness all over again.

And again.

Allow me to clear up a possible misunderstanding out there. Yes, Jesus taught us to forgive those who hurt us (Mark 11:25-26). And yes, the New Testament is replete with commands to refrain from anger and to love our enemies and to pursue peace with all people. Forgiveness is absolutely essential to a Christ-saturated life. Yes, yes, yes.

But Christians who say that we should be able to forgive effortlessly those who hurt us, as if it's the most natural thing in the world, are CRAZY.

Forgiveness is not natural. It's hard. It requires the intentional focus of every part of your being--your thoughts, your speech, your actions. You have to practice a LOT of self-control. You have to release a LOT of hurt. You have to keep bringing your broken heart to the One who heals you.

In other words, you can't do it alone.

You need GOD.

Forgiveness is NOT for the faint of heart. And contrary to popular belief, forgiveness is NOT a sign of weakness.

As I often tell my kids, "The wrong choice is the easy choice. The right choice is always harder, but you will never regret it."

If you've ever been betrayed or offended, you know that it is a bazillion times harder to forgive than it would be to seek revenge. To tell the world of your hurt. To vindicate yourself. To get people on "your side." To make the offender suffer in some way.

Because let's admit it: the wrong choice (unforgiveness) is clearly the easy choice.

Much, much harder is the choice to release the offense. To purge your heart of bitterness or anger or hurt or pain. To care more about what God thinks than what people around you think. To "place the offense into the nail-scarred hands of Christ," as pastor David Jeremiah put it.

But when you make the right choice (forgiveness), you will never regret it.

When the apostle Peter asked Jesus, "Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?", I wonder... do you think it's possible that Peter was thinking about how often he had to forgive the SAME offense over and over? (I've always thought he meant that someone offended him seven different times. But could it be that the same offense kept popping up in Peter's mind, so he had to keep forgiving that same offense over and over, like layers of an onion?)

Now to Peter's credit, seven times was pretty generous. A Jewish law at the time said you only had to forgive someone three times. (Three strikes, and you're out!) Good ol' Peter... he magnanimously doubled that and added an extra one for good measure. SEVEN TIMES! I'm sure the apostle's burly chest swelled with pride at his astonishing pronouncement of uber-spirituality.

"No, not seven times," Jesus replied (can't you imagine Peter's smirk fading here?), "but seventy times seven!" (Matthew 18:21-22 NLT).

Seventy times seven?

This isn't a math problem. (We shouldn't keep score.) It's Jesus' way of saying that there should be no end to our forgiveness. Like the parable Jesus told next in Matthew 18 to illustrate His point, the offenses people commit against us--however heinous or malicious or painful--are infinitesimally miniscule compared to our sins against a holy God. To have a right understanding of forgiveness, we need a right perspective of holiness.

So as those forgiven by God, we are commanded to forgive others.

Even if that forgiveness is for the SAME offense. Over and over. Peeling off layer after layer. Pouring out tears upon tears.

Every time that offense comes back to haunt us or hurt us, we can--and for our own sake, we must--choose to place it, with God's help, into the nail-scarred hands of Christ.

Again.

And again.

"When we forgive, we set a prisoner free

and discover that the prisoner we set free is us."

--Lewis Smedes, The Art of Forgiving

Hemmed In

2012-08-05T15:12:00.003-07:00

You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me. (Psalm 139:5)

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking these past few days about what it means for God to go before me. As I continue to walk along these unfamiliar paths, I'm trying to look for the ways He is going before me to make the rough places smooth and to turn the darkness into light (Isaiah 42:16).

In my study this week, verse after verse confirmed something so precious I have to share it with you:

Not only does God go before us, but He is also behind us.

In other words...

We’re bookended by God.

(Forgive me for thinking in bookish terms. I’m a book editor; I can’t help it.)

I love this verse in particular: “You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me” (Psalm 139:5).

No matter what our circumstances, you and I are hemmed in by His love.

Hemmed in by His grace.

Hemmed in by His protection.

We are hemmed in by God.

This reality hit me like… well, like a flicker of grace this past week. As I mentioned, I'm a book editor. And I’ve been working on creating a compilation of Max Lucado stories. (Yes, I actually get PAID to read Max Lucado books. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it!)

While I was skimming through Max’s previous books, looking for stories of (of all things) second chances, I suddenly had this striking realization:

When my husband walked out nine months ago, I was in the middle of working on a Max Lucado compilation. With eyes blurred by tears of grief, I read story after story of God’s grace and comfort and peace.

And when the divorce was finalized a couple of weeks ago, I was in the middle of working on another Max Lucado compilation. Again through my grief, I read tear-stained story after story of God’s grace and comfort and peace.

Coincidence? Of course not.

God bookended my storm with His love.

He went before me. And He is behind me. And according to Psalm 139:5, He is also over me, sheltering me with His hand of blessing. The Lord stands beside me (Psalm 121:5 NLT). And underneath are His everlasting arms (Deuteronomy 33:27).

He's before me, behind me, above me, beside me, and under me.

I’m utterly surrounded by God.

And so are you.

No matter how abandoned, overlooked, unappreciated, hurt, or insignificant you feel, you are hemmed in—bookended--completely surrounded by our great and faithful God.

Whatever you have done, wherever you are, whatever has been done to you... I'm praying that you feel bear-hugged today--this moment--by God's all-surrounding, everlasting, unfailing love.

Allow me to borrow Neal Plantinga's blessing to pray over you:

God go before you to lead you, God go behind you to protect you,
God go beneath you to support you, God go beside you to befriend you.
Do not be afraid.

May the blessing of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be upon you.
Do not be afraid.

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
Amen.

The Rough Places Made Smooth

2012-08-01T13:47:00.001-07:00

... along unfamiliar paths I will guide them;
I will turn the darkness into light before them
and make the rough places smooth.
These are the things I will do;
I will not forsake them.

--Isaiah 42:16 NIV

Ever had a week that was full of "rough places"? Mine has been like that so far.

If you've been reading my blog--or know me at all--you know that I'm recently divorced from my former pastor-husband. (Note: as I've mentioned before, I'm not sharing details about the divorce, just sorting through some of my thoughts as I trudge through the process.)

As I'm discovering, the process of rebuilding a life post-divorce is very rough indeed. Here are just a few of the "rough places" I've gone this week:

* updating my will
* seeing my doctor before my health insurance was cut off
* finding a mortgage company that will refinance my home loan in my name only
* cleaning/prepping the house for the assessment--and getting rid of many memories in the process

I'm definitely traveling along "unfamiliar paths" these days (Isa.42:16).

Unexpected paths.

Rough places.

Yet as I've stumbled along some rough places this week, I have discovered that God has gone before me. Here are a few examples:

* The lawyer who helped me redo my will is my former Sunday school teacher who has known me since I was very young. Before one particularly difficult decision, she stopped to remind me how rare it is to have such a great family. She said far too many people sit across her table and struggle to think of just one person they trust enough with their kids or finances. Yet there I was, with an amazing mom and sisters and brothers-in-law who all love God; I trust each of them implicitly to raise my children wisely. Yes, I agreed, I am very blessed. In that moment, at that table, God shone His light into that dark place to remind me, Look at the family I have given you. I will not forsake you.

* Next, I went to the doctor--not thrilled about the fact my health insurance was being canceled. What if my asthma flares up? What if something happens to me? After I waited anxiously in the frigid room (why is it always subarctic in doctors' offices?), my doctor came in. He, too, is a Christian and has encouraged and prayed for me for months. He asked me how I was, and I told him--weeping--the latest news. He gave me a fatherly hug, had his staff fill a bag with samples, and assured me he would make sure I always have medical care. I was overwhelmed with relief. Awash in gratitude. Aware of another God-whisper: Don't worry about tomorrow. I will not forsake you.

* The process of refinancing my home has been filled with God-glimpses. My father-in-law-in-law (what do you call your brother-in-law's dad?) who has been a father figure to me through this whole "unfamiliar path," is helping me with the paperwork. My friend who works for a title company is helping me with the process. My Realtor friend came by to help me stage my home. My fix-it friend taught me how to unclog my sinks by disassembling the pipes underneath. (I felt so empowered!) A dear friend gave me delightful scents to make my house smell nice. A neighbor mowed my yard. Another neighbor came over to help me change my light bulbs. And--surprise!--a friend told me I won a Scentsy drawing and got a new plugin! So many God-reminders: Look at the people I have given you to help you through these rough places. I will not forsake you.

Little by little, I'm starting to see how God is guiding me along these unfamiliar paths and turning the darkness into light. Now, to be honest, it doesn't feel like God is shining a dazzling spotlight and dispelling all the darkness ... but if I look hard enough as I travel through these rough places, I can see the flickers of grace that guide me along the way. Step by step.

Even as I stumble on these unfamiliar paths, He IS going before me to make the rough places smooth.

He WILL NOT forsake me.

Satisfied

2012-07-27T06:39:00.003-07:00

I'm not sure how often I'll be able to blog, but in these few quiet moments before the kids wake up, I'll share something God has put on my heart this week.

When I visited with my girlfriend last Saturday, we reminisced about our college days when we memorized the Westminster Catechism together. (Yes, we were nerds.) We smiled over the fact that both of us, twenty years later, still have our flashcards in the top drawers of our desks.

So when I got home, I pulled out that old set of flashcards. Yellowed and worn, smudged with coffee stains and crumbs, the familiar words were a bedrock of hope--the anchor of my soul which is both sure and steadfast (Hebrews 6:19).

"What is the chief end of man?" the first question asks.

(NOTE: my girlfriend and I memorized the old-timey version in tiny print below the paraphrase. If you squint, you can read it.)

"Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever" comes the resounding response.

(Or, as John Piper so eloquently amends, "Man's chief end is to glorify God BY enjoying him forever.")

Question: Why am I here? (Why are you here?)

Answer: To glorify and enjoy God.

To be SATISFIED in Him.

My "chief end" or reason for existence is not, as I sometimes think, to have a perfect life, like all those status updates in my Facebook news feed of smiling families with happy marriages and well-behaved children and adorable pets, posting pics of family vacations and cute kids. (Disclaimer: I do love all of you, Facebook friends. And I'm truly happy for you. But sometimes I have to take a break from my Facebook news feed because it makes my reality so raw. And it makes me ache for something more. Something that feels so palpably MISSING.)

As Ann Voskamp writes in her book One Thousand Gifts,

"Our fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren't satisfied in God and what He gives. We hunger for something more, something other."

These past few months, I've been wrestling with what it means to fully satisfied in God. Not to be satisfied in my marriage (which came to a shocking end). Or in my accomplishments (which aren't that much). Not even in my ministry as a pastor's wife (which was taken away) or the children I love immeasurably.

But what does it mean to be satisfied in God Himself? In God plus nothing? To fall on your face in worship, like Job, when your world falls apart and proclaim, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I shall return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord" (1:21)?

It comes down to this: if I never again have a husband... if all the people who are precious to me were snatched away... if I lost everything here on earth...

Is Jesus enough?

YES! my soul cries out from the deepest place where truth lives.

And NO! my heart protests, when the waves of grief crash around me, when I am confronted with stark reminders of what I no longer have, when life just flat-out doesn't make sense.

I'm not there yet. But I'm limping into the arms of my heavenly Father every day, asking Him to help me look past the What-Might-Have-Beens and the Missing Things in order to be fully satisfied in Him.

The Lord will continually guide you and satisfy your soul in scorched places... (Isaiah 58:11)

A Surprise Beginning

2012-07-23T21:12:00.002-07:00

Well, as most of you know, it’s official. I promised myself that I wouldn’t write specifics about the Thing Itself, so if you’re looking for “the scoop,” you can go ahead and stop reading. You won’t find it on this blog.

For those of you who are still here, I’m finally taking a few baby steps into writing about what I’ve been experiencing and learning the past few months. And I'm trying to process how to live a faithful life and hear God's whispers of grace in the midst of my new and unexpected circumstances.

Before I start telling you the stories of my recent journey, let’s start off by clearing the air a bit, shall we?

Divorce is NOT contagious. You can still be my friend; it’s okay. You won't "catch" it.
God hates divorce. In His original design, marriages are NOT supposed to end except by death. Yes, Jesus gave the exception for infidelity. But the marriage covenant is intended to last a lifetime, as a picture of Christ's unending love for the church. I absolutely agree.
Despite the truth of #2, sometimes there’s a story behind the divorce that you may not know. So please don’t judge every divorced person and think, “They just didn’t try hard enough.” Sometimes divorce comes even when you desperately don’t want it to. When you pray and beg and plead for it not to.You don't always know what happened in that marriage. So when you encounter a divorced person, PLEASE remember to show grace.

Okay, now that we’ve gotten THAT out of the way…

I have dozens of stories to share with you. I’ve been bottling them up, nearly exploding with the need to express what has been going on. But it’s so hard to put these things into words.

Here's a little background: I signed the decree on Thursday night, with precious friends covering me with prayer and love and grace (... and bubble wrap dancing, but that's another story!). Then Friday I went on a trip with girlfriends from the neighborhood. So by God's grace, my first full day of being divorced I didn’t spend alone. I was with my closest girlfriends. And the next night I spent with my best, best girlfriend—my heart friend. It was a fun, healing, grace-filled weekend.

There are lots of stories about the girls' trip, of course, that I’m skipping over. It was, to say the least, a very memorable adventure, filled with lots of "firsts" and lots of fun. :)

But here's the story I want to tell you now:

On Sunday, my girlfriend took me to her church in Austin. (Random info: My girlfriend and I both grew up Southern Baptist. We met in a Bible church at Texas A&M. After college, I veered nondenominational and she became Presbyterian. Then I married a Baptist pastor, and she dated an Episcopal priest. Weird how life works out, huh?)

Anyway, the church she now attends is Anglican. It’s VERY far from my Southern Baptist roots. But I really wanted to go. My aching heart longed for the liturgy and reverence and community of the greater body of Christ.

I’ll skip over the details of the service for the sake of time. Which brings me to the heart of this blog—what I really want you to experience with me:

Communion.

(Before you keep reading, note that I'm not going to debate theological views of Communion. Please, let's just all agree to meet at the table as the body of Christ and see beyond our differing views to the God of the sacrament.)

At the end of the service in an Anglican church, you receive the Eucharist.

Let me say it again so my Baptist and nondenominational friends notice the slight distinction.

You RECEIVE the Eucharist. (Or Communion. Or Lord's Supper. Whatever you want to call it.)

You don’t pass the plate down the pew--or folding chairs--and take a cracker or filled plastic cup and put it in your own mouth. You don't "take" Communion. Nope. You walk up front, stand alongside the other believers, and hold your cupped hands in front of you. Extended and open, much like a beggar. Humbled. And ready to receive the elements.

Then the priest walks by and looks at you gently and directly. “This is the body of Christ, broken for you,” he says, placing a piece of bread in your outstretched hands. And you receive the body of Christ in a very personal way. Then he presents to you the chalice. Again, he looks at you and says, “This is the blood of Christ, spilled for you.” And he brings the cup to your mouth (you don’t even touch it), and you receive the blood of Christ.

You RECEIVE it.

Just like you did when Christ gave His life for you. You receive the sacrament the same way you received your salvation. Not of any work of your own, but simply by extending your empty hands like a beggar, cupped and open and ready to be filled by Him.

I’m not going to wax eloquent about all the implications of covenant here, so I will say only this: a covenant is often celebrated with a meal. That’s why a bride and groom entwine their arms to share wedding cake to celebrate their covenant of marriage.

So in God’s magnificent grace, the first Sunday I came to worship with a heart deeply grieving that broken marriage covenant, God reminded me of His own, unbreakable covenant with me.

And I received the covenant meal.

That Sunday, receiving Communion was a significant reminder that I belong to Him. That He is my forever husband.

It was a watershed moment for me. One of those significant times you memorialize as a divine encounter with God. Like the old hymn says, it was my Ebenezer--"rock of help." (see 1 Sam. 7:12.)

It marked a new beginning for me.

Lots of stories have surprise endings—but mine has a surprise beginning. And my new beginning started with a covenant meal with my heavenly Husband.

I don't know how my story will end, of course. Only God knows all the days of my life that were written in His book before yet one of them existed. But I know this: something brand-new started this week. And I am confident that the God who started a good work in me will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

So day by day, I will look to Him and watch the Author of my life reveal the rest of the story.

"That was just the beginning. I have a lot more to tell you, things you never knew existed. This isn't a variation on the same old thing. This is new, brand-new, something you'd never guess or dream up." (Isa. 48:6)

A New Name

2012-03-14T06:36:00.007-07:00

“Do you know what your name means?”

This opening line to our evening’s reading from The Jesus Storybook Bible triggered a quick-fire response from the kids: “What does my name mean?” “What about MY name?” “What’s MINE?”

I reminded our kids that they all know the stories behind their names—each of them is named after a beloved family member. I’ve told them over and over the significance of their names and countless stories about the loved ones for whom they are named.

(Random fact: all three of my kids are named in memory of my father in some way. My oldest carries my dad’s middle name. My middle daughter’s initials are my dad’s nickname for me. And my son is, of course, named after my father.)

But the kids pressed: what did their names MEAN?

It was a good question. I wasn’t sure.

So after our devotional and prayer, we searched baby names on the computer. (How did people do things without the Internet?) The derivations and meanings of all our names were somewhat lackluster, except for my son’s name, which means “strong and honorable.” He liked that one. :-)

Interestingly, the next morning, my own devotional, Jesus Calling, took me to Ephesians 3. And in the opening lines to one of my favorite passages, I saw something I’d never realized before:

“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name . . .” (Eph. 3:14-15)

Whoa. I’d read past that verse countless times on my way to the rest of the chapter, which speaks of “the breadth and length and height and depth” of the “love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” and how God is able to do “exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think.”

But this time, God stopped me at verse 15. It was if He was saying, You want to know the derivation of your name? You are named after Me, your heavenly Father!

I carry the name of my heavenly Father.

And each of my children carries not only the name of my earthly father, but also of their heavenly Father.

And if you are part of the family of God, you, too, are named after your heavenly Father. No matter what your earthly name may be, you carry the name of God, our Father.

(Pause to let that sink in.)

You may not like your name. Like me, maybe your name is too popular and the stores were always sold out of the trinkets bearing your name. (I think almost every daughter born in the 1970s was named Jennifer!)

Or maybe your name is tainted with bad memories. Perhaps you still bear the surname of a spouse who left you or a father who mistreated or abandoned you.

Regardless of the name your parents gave you or the name you took in marriage . . . there is good news! If you belong to the family of God, you have a name you can be proud of! You bear HIS name!

* * *

And as if that weren’t enough reason to praise God today, here’s one more bit of good news about your name:

Revelation 2:17 tells us that someday Jesus will give us a “new name.” Each of us who already bears the name of our Father will receive a nickname from the risen Jesus, a name that only He knows. A special name He will give us because He loves us.

A new name.

And not only that, Jesus says to those of us who overcome, “I will write on him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God, and My new name” (Rev. 3:12).

His new name.

“Behold,” Jesus says to you and to me . . . and to anyone who may be struggling or striving or sad today . . .

“I am making all things new” (Rev. 21:5).

Preparing for the Storm

2010-09-10T07:30:00.000-07:00

You are at home, eating dinner and looking forward to a relaxing evening with your family, when you suddenly hear tornado sirens go off.

Where do you go?

Maybe a first-floor bathroom? An interior hallway?

On Wednesday evening, as tornadoes began touching down in the Dallas area, hundreds of people in the metroplex were forced to find a safe place.

At our house, we head for the closet under the stairs. It’s a large closet, with plenty of room for the five of us. (Brett jokes of the day when he can turn it into his “man cave.”) Since it’s our designated “safe place,” I keep our weather radio, flashlights, extra batteries, a fan, and a portable DVD player in there for emergencies.

We’ve had to take shelter in the closet several times since we’ve moved here. My kids know the drill—when you hear the sirens, grab your pillow and blanket and meet us in the closet, where we’ll create a comfy nest of pillows, watch a movie, and have some snacks. This routine keeps the kids calm until we get the all-clear from the radar.

Brett sometimes teases me about how fanatical I am about being prepared for storms. (He lived in Oklahoma, where tornadoes pass through as regularly as the ice cream truck.) I think it’s because I want to feel like I’ve got everything under control… even though, obviously, I can't control the weather. There's a reason they call these things "acts of God."

Ever since the first recorded natural disaster—the Flood--God has been reminding us that while we can and should prepare for the storms that come our way, we ultimately have to rest in His grace and trust Him to see us through.

In his book Has Christianity Failed You?, Ravi Zacharias pointed out something that I’d never realized about Noah’s ark:

When Noah was building his ark, God gave him detailed instructions about everything: how high, no higher; how long, no longer; what species to include and in what numbers—details ad nauseum. But when all had been done according to God’s instructions and the door was finally shut, it must have been a terrifying experience to realize there was no sail or rudder on this ark. Who was in control? (emphasis added)

Think about that. If ever anyone was prepared for a storm, it was Noah. After all, God gave him a hundred years to get ready. The ark was Noah’s magnum opus—the culmination of a century of painstaking work in preparation for the greatest storm the world has ever seen. He must have studied the blueprint God gave him over and over as he constructed every detail of the three-story-high, football-field-length vessel. After all, his family was about to spend an entire year aboard this oversized life boat.

Surely Noah must have scratched his head at God’s design for the ark--with no sail or rudder--and wondered, Who’s going to steer this thing?

I’ve felt like that before. When storms of life have come crashing down, flooding me with such worry and fear that I feel like I’m drowning, I’ve wondered, How am I going to get through this? Sometimes I just can’t see past the crashing waves of doubt.

Those are the times when I head for the “safe place” of God’s protection. I grab my Bible and seek shelter in the cleft of the Rock, where God’s promises and presence keep me calm. And even with the storm still raging around me, I finally realize…

The God who created the storm is the same God who is going to steer me through it.

What storm are you facing right now?

Whatever it may be--whether a natural disaster or a tempestuous situation--you can cling to this truth:

God is in control.

When I Grow Up, I Want to Be . . .

2010-09-07T08:07:00.000-07:00

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

How did you answer that question when you were a kid?

Miss B wants to be a horse trainer. Or a veterinarian. Or a teacher. Maybe all three—she can’t decide. (Perhaps she’ll be a vet who teaches horse trainers?)

J.J., on the other hand, is certain of her future career: she’s going to be an artist. In fact, she’s already trying to sell her creations. Here’s a photo of a drawing she did last week that she offered to let me buy for “only $100.” (She’s saving up to buy a puppy, she told me.) What a deal, huh?

Four-year-old Buddy wants to be an astronaut. Or a baseball player. (Move over, Alan Shepard—Buddy is going to play baseball on the moon!)

It’s fun to watch my kids grow into the people God made them to be. Each one is so unique! Miss B is rhythm and rhyme, J.J. is spunk and sparkle, and Buddy is charm and charisma.

As parents, there are lots of things that we can do for our kids. We can pray for them and raise them according to God’s Word. We can love them and encourage them. We can teach them and discipline them. But there is one thing we cannot do for our kids, no matter how hard we try:

We cannot re-create them.

It doesn’t matter how many parenting books you read or seminars you attend. You could follow the advice of experts or channel your own inner James Dobson. You could diligently instruct and train your child…

But you can’t change who God created your child to be.

Other people’s kids may be smarter, more athletic, or more outgoing. But one of the most dangerous things we could say to our children is this: “If only you could be more like so-and-so…”

If only you could make good grades like your brother.
If only you could behave like the neighbor’s kid.
If only you could play soccer like the coach’s child.
If only…

But God didn’t create our children to be someone else’s kids. He created them to be the best version of themselves.

In his book The Me I Want to Be, John Ortberg puts it like this:

As God helps you grow, you will change, but you will always be you. An acorn can grow into an oak tree, but it cannot become a rose bush. It can be a healthy oak or a stunted oak—but it won’t be a shrub. You will always be you—a growing, healthy you or a languishing you—but God did not create you to be anybody else. He pre-wired your temperament. He determined your natural gifts and talents. He made you to feel certain passions and desires. He planned your body and mind. Your uniqueness is God-designed.

Brett and I are doing our best to help our kids move toward a healthy, flourishing version of themselves. No matter where their paths may lead—to vet school, an art studio, or even NASA—we’re committed to support and encourage them as the unique people God created them to be.

And that goes for us grown-ups too. You'll never outgrow the person God created you to be. And no matter how much you admire others' talents or successes, you can't be someone else. You can only be you. The you God created you to be.

So what do you want to be when you grow up? Are you frustrated and exhausted from trying to be someone else—or are you moving toward God’s best version of you?

Whispers of Grace

Making Music in Our Hearts

Speak to each other with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making music in your hearts to the Lord. —Ephesians 5:19 NCV

All Things New

What's Your Calling?

Why I'm No Longer Praying for My Kids to Be Safe

What Should You Tell Your Kids about the Boston Marathon Bombing?

The Mess That Makes It REAL

Our Normal, Crazy, Fun, Adventurous, Everyday Life

Why is there a Holy Saturday?

The Best Gift a Daughter Could Ever Receive

Freeze-Frame

A New Perspective

Blessing My Blessings

What Kind of God Allows THIS?!?

Fear Not!

What I've Gained from Divorce

What My Friends Are Doing Right

Days of Laughter

Layers of Forgiveness

Hemmed In

You hem me in behind and before,and you lay your hand upon me. (Psalm 139:5)

The Rough Places Made Smooth

Satisfied

A Surprise Beginning

A New Name

Preparing for the Storm

When I Grow Up, I Want to Be . . .

Speak to each other with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs,

singing and making music in your hearts to the Lord.

—Ephesians 5:19 NCV

You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me. (Psalm 139:5)