School's Out For Summer!!!

Well, after weeks of anticipation, we have finally started summer in these parts.  Last Friday was the final school day for my oldest, and he didn’t have to be there until 10:45.  Our first official morning without having to worry about uniforms, breakfast, and carpool started off with a bang.  And by bang, I mean, I’ll be banging my head against the wall by the middle of June.  The kids woke up just before eight.  By nine-thirty, I had sent them both to their rooms for fighting. 

Sometimes . . . summer sucks.

They’re getting along famously this week, what with Libby at sleep away camp and all.  Yes, we left our eight year old in the woods for a week.  Please pray for us, and more importantly, for Libby’s counselors. 

The nights are the hardest.  It just doesn’t feel right to have only one chick safely in the nest when the sun starts to fall.  Oh, I know our daughter is fine – the child couldn’t wait for us to leave her alone with her camp mates in cabin number one.  She permitted us only enough time to put sheets on her top bunk, and then she was all, “You can go now.  It’s okay if you go.  It’s time for you to go.  LEAVE NOW!!!”

We got the hint.  Surprisingly, I didn’t even cry as we drove away.  Not sure if it was because this was the second time I’d left a chick behind, or because we were leaving our second chick, and she’s radically different from the first?

Either way, the house is very quiet without her. 

Sometimes . . . summer rocks.

So I went to this technology seminar a few months back, and ever since then I’ve been meaning to blow your minds.  I apologize for taking so long to do this, but I’ve got at least two dozen of these ridiculous ramblings started at all times, yet rarely seem to finish one.   Anyway, I figure summer is a great time to talk technology.   In fact, it might be the perfect time, because less than 2 hours before we were leaving to deliver our child to camp, I had to talk myself out of saying something to said child that I really wanted to say, and that was, “It would be great if you could refrain from telling me what you’re doing on the Ipad and asking me to look at what you’re doing on the Ipad because the reason I gave you the Ipad was SO YOU WOULD STOP TALKING TO ME!

I may or may not need a vacation.

The truth is I’ve used technology for all the wrong reasons.  I’ve used it to read mindless gossip about movie stars.  I’ve used it to look at pictures of houses I’ll never be able to afford.  I’ve used it to communicate with people when I should have been communicating in person.  And I’ve definitely used it to entertain my children when I didn’t want to participate in entertaining them.

Now, since I know my poor use of technology on a regular basis doesn’t blow your minds, allow me to do it with the following information instead:

• It took the radio 38 years to reach a market audience of 50 million people.  It took the television 13 years.  It took the internet 4 years, the Ipod 3 years, and it took Facebook only 2 years to reach 50 million people.
• More video was uploaded to YouTube in the last 2 months than if ABC, NBC, and CBS had been airing new content 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year SINCE 1948.
• YouTube receives about 2 billion views Every. Single. Day.
• The number of text messages sent and received each day exceeds the Earth’s population.
• The average teenager in America sends and receives over 3,300 texts a month.
• There are over 100 billion searches on Google each month.
• The computer power on your Iphone is significantly greater than the computer that was on Apollo 11 – the shuttle that took man to the moon.                                                                    

Is your brain exploding?  Yep.  Me too.

Change is a necessary part of life, but technology is advancing at an unprecedented rate.  We can’t possibly keep up.  Not as citizens, not as employees, and certainly not as parents. 

I realize technology has some amazing benefits.  It’s fast, helpful, and convenient, and let’s face it, I’m not about to give up my phone, my computer, or my ability to hand my child an Ipad in exchange for half an hour of silence.  But as my children get older and technology becomes an increasing part of their lives, I’m realizing my role as their mother has a whole new set of parameters to navigate.

I know, I know, you had to walk three miles to school, uphill, in the snow and you had to feed a family of five during the depression and you had to suffer twelve-hour car rides with three young children and only a few fuzzy radio stations. 

But y’all . . . we . . . we have to protect our children from technology.  I’m sorry for your misery, but the snow and the depression and the car rides are all just trumped.  Honestly, have you heard of Snapchat - the app that claims you can send a picture to another person for only a few seconds and then it will magically “disappear forever.”  Seriously?  What kind of sexting maniac invented that crap, and why can’t I get my hands on him to explain that all he’s done is made the toughest job in the world that much tougher?

There can’t be a more difficult task than parenting in this age of technology, and yet, the wonderful man who led the seminar I recently attended said something I’ll never forget.  He said, “The issue isn’t the technology, it’s the parenting.”

I don’t necessarily want him to be right, but I know he is.

The technology isn’t going anywhere.  In fact, if anything, it is infiltrating every aspect of our lives.  I must accept the fact that it is my responsibility to shepherd my children in ways that encourage them to use technology positively. 

Is there evil online?  Absolutely.  We are fallen people – our sinful nature means we can take every beautiful thing God creates and twist it into ugliness.  Is technology making us more impersonal in our relationships?  Of course it is.  Does the overuse of television, video games, computers and cell phones mean we are more easily distracted, less productive, and addicted to immediate satisfaction?  Yes, yes, and yes. 

I’m afraid that last yes might be the worst one of all.

As a follower of Christ, I’m trying to teach my children the concept of delayed gratification.  Jesus hasn’t returned yet, after all, and while faith reminds me that my citizenship is in heaven, I still have to live in the world – the very tangible, visual world, where things are often immediate and the concept of waiting doesn’t get nearly as much practice as it used to.  I want my children to become independent thinkers who make healthy, moral decisions.  I want them to learn to discipline themselves so they can become trustworthy adults.  Achieving these goals will require me to use the challenges of parenting as opportunities, and be intentional in what I model to my children.  It will also mean I have to give up some control, even when technology is concerned.

The world and its technology are changing so rapidly.  It truly is mind blowing.  It scares me and frustrates me and overwhelms me and excites me.  This week, I will have moments of gratitude for technology, because it means I can send email bunk notes to Libby each day she’s at camp.   It means I can look at pictures of my daughter online when my heart aches to see her face.  This week, I will have moments of hatred for technology, because my phone will take a perfectly normal, frequently used word I spelled slightly wrong because the letters are too darn small and turn it into a word I've never heard of in my life, and I will not notice it until AFTER I press send.  

My hope, however, is that amidst the gratitude and the hatred, I will remember the truth.  Yes, change is as inevitable as it is difficult.  And technology is different every day.  But my Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.  If I trust in Him with all my heart, and lean not on my own understanding, but submit to Him, He will make my paths straight.  He will help me make the right decisions for my children.  And he will forgive me when summer gets to be so long and loud, that I hand them an Ipad instead.

Ceeeeeeeeelebrate Good Times, Come On!

Have you ever read 1 Corinthians 12:21-26?  I never had, but I recently did.  My study of Romans took me there.  If you’ve never done a Bible study before, you should know this before you start one.  There is a boat load of page turning in a Bible study.  When you sign up to study Romans, don’t go thinking you’ll be all sacked out and staying put in Romans, Romans, Romans for the next nine months of your life.  You might have signed up to study Romans, but you will be instructed to read six-hundred verses on four –hundred different pages in three dozen other books of the Bible.  Your study of Romans will have you looking up things you didn’t even know could relate to Paul, and yet somehow, they will.  God is pretty cool like that.  He can make things that don’t make any sense, make perfect sense.


So I read 1 Corinthians 12:21-26 and I’m pretty . . . okay absolutely . . . certain God wrote it for me when he decided I was going to get myself a brand new semi-colon at the end of 2013.  Why he felt the need to speak truth to me through thoughts of internal body parts, let alone the ones that do what colons do, I might never fully understand, but he got my attention. 


These verses are about parts of the body, and the truth is, God is talking about the body of Christ, not my large intestine.  He is reminding us that everyone plays a role in sharing the love of Jesus.  We are all important and relevant and necessary to grow God’s kingdom. 


If I had read these verses a few months earlier, I would have stopped there.  I would have enjoyed and accepted their reminder to cherish all people, because everyone has indescribable value and infinite worth.  We all need each other because our Creator provided us all with different gifts, and by working together, we can glorify Him.  


The thing is, I didn’t read the verses a few months earlier.  I read them less than two months after major surgery, and they took on a completely different meaning.  If I truly believe God is in the details of my life, then I have to believe he planned that particular detail.


Verse 26 says, ‘If one part suffers, every part suffers with it.’


My friends, I now know that to be true. 


After surgery, my stomach hurt, my incisions throbbed, my back ached.  There was a lot of discomfort sitting down, even more when I managed to move. Everything was uncomfortable – standing, sleeping, showering, sneezing – holy cow was sneezing almost the death of me.  There was constant pain.  There was suffering.


Please know that I realize my suffering was small compared to what so many have been through or are going through.  My pain was temporary and minimal.  It was first world pain.  No children were starving, no little girls being sexually assaulted, no young men being gunned down.  I was suffering in a warm home, heated, furnished, and filled with every necessity (and a whole lot of other stuff).  I was suffering with my family safely by my side and any medicine I needed at my disposal, while friends delivered food and gifts.  In all honesty, ‘suffering’ is totally NOT the right word for what I was doing.    


Still, I learned an important lesson during my “sort of suffering.”  I learned that God was right when he said, ‘If one part suffers, the other parts suffer with it,’ because y’all, my colon might have been the source of my pain, but it was my head that needed the healing.


I wasn’t created to be sedentary.  I’m not cut out for giving up my independence.  I’m addicted to guilt, and relying on others to do so many of the things I usually do on my own threw my addiction into overdrive.  And so, while my incisions got better by the day, my mind became more muddled by the minute.


The world looked blue.  Everything seemed like work.  Life felt incredibly hard.


I’ve never been diagnosed with depression, though I feel certain I had a touch of it after Charlie was born.  It didn’t last long – his smiles somehow brought back my own – but I remember those incessant, dark nights in the weeks after his birth, awake and alone at all hours, the tears falling as I longed for a hope I couldn’t seem to find.


That hopelessness appeared again after my recent surgery, uninvited and unwelcome, and it changed me.  I will never again underestimate the strength of anyone who suffers from a chronic illness or is struggling though a lengthy recovery.  And I will never again doubt the power that is in the body of Christ, because in the end, it came back to that after all. 


Leave it to the author of life to write just the words to make me understand, and to lead me to those words in his ever perfect timing.


It took a diversion into my own circumstances to make 1 Corinthians 12:21-26 settle into my heart and stay there, but I’m glad for it.  My depression went away on its own, and I’m glad for that too.  But as I face new circumstances in my life that might send people I love into their own depths of pain, I know without a doubt, the body of Christ is alive and well and full of mercy. 


There are stories everywhere about people all over the world making a difference, and there are people right here in my own community who are willing to do the same.  There are so many amazing people making up the body of Christ.  People who have been given spiritual gifts and are obedient to use them to help others.  All our gifts are equally valuable.  They are gifts of grace used to ready God’s people for service.  They are not meant to compete, but to complement one another, so the body of Christ may be built up as a unified force - one capable of doing the greatest of things for the least of these.


It took a new semi-colon to help me fully understand this truth.  Hey, sometimes God has to knock you over the head to shove you into the light.  Or, in my case, he had to let me experience the super fun phenomenon of phantom poop.  (Call me for the exciting explanation if it doesn’t come up on Google!)


You see, when my body wasn't 100%, my head couldn't function at its best either.  The body works as a team - each part doing it's job to accomplish a goal - and so must the body of Christ.  Mind and body are always related, just as human beings must always be relational.


We are meant to suffer with one another.  We are meant to suffer for one another.  And as Verse 26 continues . . .


If one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.


Don't you love how God often saves the best for last? 


If one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.


Yep.


We are meant to celebrate together too.


I can't wait for that part!!!
 

If You Turn 'Mom' Upside Down, It Says WOW!!!

God made me a mom and I’m so glad and grateful and, sometimes . . . even all these eleven plus years later . . .  alarmed. 


This job?   This permanent role?  This relentless responsibility?


It’s Just.  So.  BIG.


Carrying life and then caring for life for their whole life and mine.


The sleepless nights never end.


I held them in my belly for all those months and in my arms for what felt like years, but it’s the heart that does the heavy lifting every second of every day of every week forever.  And the heart, though it beats strong and constant, it breaks easy and often.  It swells with each milestone they reach, the fullness of love, joy, and pride overflowing as I stand in awe and witness their growth, only to shatter with the realization that every act of independence they take is just another good-bye.


Motherhood is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. 


It’s also the most extraordinary.


So I’ll stay up all night if I have to . . . for their whole life and mine.  The heart will ache and the heart will break.  But more than anything, it will beat with the certainty that motherhood is an incredible blessing from God, and next to Jesus, Charlie and Libby are the greatest gifts I’ll ever know.

Happy Mother’s Day sweet friends!  I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend celebrating the greatest, most challenging and complicated and wondrous and exhilarating job in the entire world!!!

Turn on the Light

Life has been a bit of a whirlwind lately, and the words just haven’t come.  That Lent project of mine seems so far in the past – the days when I could find gratitude around every corner.  Turns out, when you’re searching for things that make you feel thankful, the world seems full of those things.  You feel thankful.  But when you stop looking, the gratitude is no longer so easily found.  And the thankfulness?  Well, it begins to wane as many of those things you once counted as blessings begin to bear down more like burdens.

It’s when I’m in the dark that I realize how far I have to go.  When life is hard and everything feels like work and I doubt and fear and dread.  That’s when I understand the true state of my soul.  That’s when all signs point to the fact that I still don’t look anything like Jesus. 

He’s in there somewhere.  Buried deep among my discontent, he sits patiently waiting for me to look past my selfish mess and see him reaching for me.  Every so often, I acknowledge that he’s calling my name, and I rush towards him, full of eagerness for our reunion.  But the connection is brief.  I’m like a child who races towards her father when he shows up at the park, only to give him a quick hug before running off again, free to go and do and be as she pleases.

I know I should linger in his presence.  He is the only one who can provide the comfort I seek.  And yet, I search for it in anything . . . in everything else . . . and then act surprised when there is no comfort to be found.

There will always be dark places in our lives, and dark is difficult .  It’s disorienting and dangerous and it makes us feel so alone.  Just imagine being in a completely dark room – nothing but blackness all around.  You can’t even see what’s right in front of you.  You’re scared and you’re stuck and there seems to be no hope at all.  Now, think about what the flame of even one small candle brings to that dark place.  With a single spark, physical light enters your surroundings.  It makes the darkness recede, and suddenly, you have knowledge and understanding.

Jesus is light.

When life is dark, He is the one who illuminates what is real and shows us the way.  We just have to remember to look for the light.

I stopped looking.  That little Lent project of mine – the channeling my inner Ann Voskamp and counting blessings each and every day – it ended when Easter came.  I celebrated the resurrection – the single greatest reason for hope - and then I stopped looking for reasons to be thankful. 

Man I have SUCH a long way to go.

You see, when I don’t focus on the source of light, all I see is dark.  When I don’t let the light of the world bring clarity and truth that point me in the right direction, I end up in stumbling through blackness.

Light overcomes darkness.

Jesus overcame death.

If I walk towards the light . . . if I run to Jesus . . . I will find my way.  I will find the comfort and peace and freedom I’m looking for.  The dark will disappear and I will be thankful again. 

Happy Easter!

 

Easter always seems to arrive at the height of happiness.  When the weather is warming and blooms of all sizes color the earth in every direction.  When another school year draws near its end and celebrations become common.  There is a freshness to spring and the Easter season.  It feels like a rebirth of sorts . . . an awakening that reminds us we have another shot to get this thing right, to make our lives sing, to find glory in a new beginning. 


Some of us . . . we worry.  It runs in our blood and when the blood runs cold, the anxiety chills us to the bone.  All though the long, gray winter, we wait and we wonder and we worry . . .


Will hope return? 


Will the gray skies lift and the chill subside?


Will we ever again sense the opportunity for resurrection?  


Then, the sun begins to linger in the sky.  The dogwoods erupt in white and the tulips stand bright and tall and happiness sparks in the air around us.  And that hope we’ve been missing?  It settles back in and inhabits us to our core, warming our skin and making our hearts swell with possibility. 


We shop for new dresses and dye eggs.  We buy jellybeans and set out wooden bunnies.  We give up chocolate for Lent and we go to church with the grandparents and we sing about an empty grave.  We talk about sacrifice and stare at the cross and the happiness is so real, so full and true we can hardly contain it.


Easter is full of happiness.  It’s full of holiness.  And yet, there is an ugliness to Easter that we can’t ignore.  The ugly is part of the story, in fact.  Holiness requires wholeness, and the whole story of Easter?  It’s ugly.


The way they deserted him was ugly.  The way they disowned him was ugly.  The way they denied him, disregarding promises of loyalty to hand him over to death without a second thought.  It was ugly.  They tormented him and tortured him and treated him like a criminal.  This perfect man, this man without sin?  They made him out to be a common criminal.  He was their creator, their teacher, the author of their lives, and they nailed him to a cross and watched him suffer and bleed and die. 


IT WAS SO UGLY.


But that death on the cross?  That bleeding and breaking and breathing his last while the earth trembled and the sun refused to shine?  Oh, that utter darkness brought such light.  It brought such beauty.  It tore the veil completely, exposing His face as our Father and our faces as the ones of those He dearly loves.  It cleansed our hearts of all shame and washed us as white as snow.  It redeemed our souls forever.


If the story ended there, He would still be worthy of praise.  This Jesus . . . he showed us how to live and how to love, and he suffered and died for our sins so that each of us could have a personal relationship with the Lord. 


If the story ended there, we would still have an example.  We would still have a teacher.  We would still have a Savior.


But y’all . . .


HE LIVES!!!


Yes, he suffered and bled and died.  Yes, he took on all of our sin.  Yes, he sacrificed himself so that we could be free. 


But that isn’t the end of the story. 


Good Friday is awful and amazing, sorrowful and staggering, unbelievable and undeniable.  But most importantly, IT IS NOT THE END OF THE STORY.


Jesus. Is. Alive.


He was dead and buried, wrapped in linen and spices, sealed in a tomb.  And three days later, just as he said he would . . . just as so many who came before promised he would . . .  our Jesus . . .


He pushed that stone aside and walked right out of that grave.


We serve a living God.


That is the hope of Easter, my friends.  Any possibility for our own resurrection dims without the truth of His.  Our faith must be grounded in the whole story, the holy story of Christ. 


He died for our sins. 


He died to save us. 


He died.


But today, and forevermore,


He is risen. 

Good Friday 2014

Then the governor's soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him. They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand and knelt in front of him and mocked him. "Hail, king of the Jews!" they said. They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again.  After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him. From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land.  About the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"  And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. 

From Matthew 27 

Good Friday.


All I can think about is that he knew what was coming.  He knew his friends would betray him.  He knew they would leave him all alone in the garden of Gethsemane.  He knew the crowd would strip him, spit on him, strike him.  He knew there would be a crown of thorns on his head, nails in his hands, pain, pain, so much pain. 


Hours of pain.


He walked toward it.  He didn’t flinch.  He didn’t falter.  He knew what was coming and he went there to die.


He knew God’s will and he fulfilled it. 


He was the perfect lamb, without blemish.  The perfect man completing the perfect plan.  And he hung on that cross in my place, and in yours.


Good Friday.


Grace Friday.


Grace . . .


Thank you, Jesus.

My Lent Project: Lives to See Another Day

I know, I know.  There are 40 days of Lent, so why am I on day 43?  Math was never really my strong suit.  There's that, and the fact that I didn't take off Sundays.  The 40 day Lenten period doesn't include Sundays.  Sadly, knowing the Bible was not one of my strengths either, so I can't actually tell you why???  Nonetheless, there are still 3 full days until Easter Sunday and I'm going to keep counting blessings, because hey, God doesn't take days off.   And so here’s what I’m feeling incredibly thankful for today . . .


Dreams that shed such light.


My own predictability.


A gaggle of second graders running down the field.


Easter parties.


Relay races.


Giggling girls.


Balloons.


Creative people.


Amazing teachers.


Connections.


Noon dismissal for the kids.


An extra long Easter weekend.


Options.


Mark 16:4-6.


Dinner with my girl.


My boy on the lacrosse field.


Unanimous decisions.


Jesus, who knew what was going to happen in Jerusalem . . . and went anyway.

My Lent Project: In Overtime

I know, I know.  There are 40 days of Lent, so why am I on day 42?  Math was never really my strong suit.  There's that, and the fact that I didn't take off Sundays.  The 40 day Lenten period doesn't include Sundays.  Sadly, knowing the Bible was not one of my strengths either, so I can't actually tell you why???  Nonetheless, there are still 4 full days until Easter Sunday and I'm going to keep counting blessings, because hey, God doesn't take days off.   And so here’s what I’m feeling incredibly thankful for today . . .


Sheets to keep my newly planted flowers from freezing.


Waking up to daylight on late arrival Wednesdays.


Organic maple syrup.


Houzz.com.


Charlie's growing maturity.


Our interesting chats.


Libby's happiness.


Shakeology.


Community Bible Study.


Learning from others.


Booked flights for our summer vacation.


Her wagging tail.


A walk with my husband.


The pink dogwoods - wow.


Shawn T's Dynamic Core workout.


Shawn T's Speed 2 workout.


Walk and talk Wednesdays for the 2nd grade girls.


Good friends.


Coloring with my daughter.


Jesus, for he is our refuge and our reward.

My Lent Project: Extra Innings

I know, I know.  There are 40 days of Lent, so why am I on day 41?  Math was never really my strong suit.  There's that, and the fact that I didn't take off Sundays.  The 40 day Lenten period doesn't include Sundays.  Sadly, knowing the Bible was not one of my strengths either, so I can't actually tell you why???  Nonetheless, there are still 5 days until Easter and I'm going to keep counting blessings, because hey, God doesn't take days off.   And so here’s what I’m feeling incredibly thankful for today . . .


Mornings.


The snooze button.


The rush of emotions when I think about this Holy Week.


My husband's dedication to our family.


Getting a fist pump out of Charlie.


Libby offering reminders.


Extra whitening mouthwash.


My Sonicare toothbrush.


Cars with cameras that help you reverse.


Closets.


Cabinets.


Eye drops.


The apostle Paul.


A wise woman offering her thoughts.


Knowing someone has prayed for me.


Tony Horton's Shoulders and Arms workout.


Tony Horton's Abs/Core Plus workout.


Meeting a goal.


When it becomes official.


My newly acquired Georgia real estate license!!!


When the skies clear.


A brisk walk.


Family time.


Jesus, who carries my yoke and gives me rest.