Family

Who’s Holding Who?

Blog_HoldingHandsThough my 3-year old son insists he’s “bigger now” and can “do everything” without my help, I still want to hold his hand when we cross the street. He typically yanks his hand away to emphasize his independence. “No, Mommy…I can do it myself!”

While I don’t doubt his capacity to cross the street without assistance, I do question his understanding of the potential dangers of oncoming cars. And so I’ve changed strategies. Instead of asking him to hold my hand, I ask if he’ll let me hold his. “Mommy needs your help,” I tell him. “Can you protect me from the cars?”

Being the little gentleman that he is, he quickly takes my hand, smile on his dimpled face, and leads me like a little pro. Smart as he is, he hasn’t come to suspect my ulterior motives. I don’t need his help; he needs mine. In the end, I’m the one leading him, not the other way around.

It’s much the same when God calls us to serve. Does he who created the heavens and earth need our help to keep the world spinning? Yet he’s chosen to work through frail humanity, and as he does we become increasingly aware of our dependence on him.

As we navigate life’s challenges, we may be tempted to say, “It’s okay, I can do it myself!” God lets us move forward until we realize how impossible it is apart from his help. We look up and see that all the while, he was holding our hand, leading us, showing us our need for his intervention.

“For I am the Lord your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you.” (Isaiah 41:13)

 

Photo Credit: Free stock photo of person, walking, young

With

Blog_FathersDayOne talent I would love to have been gifted with is the eye for photography. I admire those with a knack for getting the perfect shot at the right time, in the right lighting. My reflexes are a little slow, my hand a bit shaky, so my pictures tend to turn out blurry and off-center.

For a while, I didn’t bother to take pictures at all. Until my kids came along. Now I’m a regular mamarazzi. That’s paparazzi, take out the Papa, add the Mama. Of the multitudes of pictures I’ve now taken, a few have actually turned out okay.

Among my favorites is one of my husband sitting on our daughter’s bike as she walks alongside him. It almost looks as though she’s schooling him in the art of bike riding when in reality, he’s teaching her, and humbling himself a bit along the way.

The picture aptly captures what I love about my husband. He’s a good father, and he loves our kids so much he’ll relinquish the more “important” things on his agenda to invest quality time with them. And most often, he relates to them on their level.

It’s also a picture of what I love so much about my God. He loved us enough to lay down his very life, to relate to us on our level. Emmanuel—a name most often associated with Christmas, is equally appropriate for Father’s Day. It means God is with us. And that’s the kind of father he is: one who sacrificed everything to be with his children forever.

“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.” (1 John 3:1)

 

Photo Copyright j.e. fernandez

Teach Me These Words

Blog_KidWithBookMy son piled books on the couch, next to me, until they towered so high one wrong move would send them crashing down. I woke up early that day, anticipating some much-needed quiet time, but my son had other ideas about how I should spend that time. “Teach me these words,” he pleaded, adding another book to the pile.

Admitted: at this point, I was too tired and desperate for some alone time to be taken in by his charming smile and heart-melting dimples. “How about you look through the pictures in your books while Mommy reads her Bible?” I suggested. “We’ll work on teaching you those words later.”

He reluctantly obliged, though my devotional time was consumed with one thought. Among my greatest of missions in life will be to teach the next generation the power of words—how to speak them, handle them, read them, and write them.

I’d spent the days prior at a writers’ conference, learning to hone my craft. Yet what’s the point of writing to the greatest of my potential if the next generation doesn’t benefit from it? Writing is a high calling, but my higher call involves teaching my kids and my students.

Much of what I’ve written has remained in obscurity for twenty-plus years. It’s just now that I’m teaching some of my songs to my own kids, and to the kids in my classroom, and reading them stories written years ago. I’ve learned that my labors were never meant to benefit me, but generations to come.

The same is true in anything we may be called to do. It’s not ultimately about us chasing our dreams, fulfilling our calling. It’s about investing in the next generation, helping them to find and fulfill their purpose in life.

“Let this be written for a future generation, that a people not yet created may praise the LORD.” (PSALM 102:18)

 

Photo Credit: Child And Book Free Stock Photo – Public Domain Pictures

Road Trip

Blog_RoadTripI took a road trip to California once and afterwards vowed I’d never do it again. While the drive there was scenic enough to warrant 36 hours strapped in a tiny car, the drive back did me in. Something about it diminished my tolerance for anything beyond a few hours’ ride.

Maybe the terrain had something to do with my change in outlook. On the way there, we had mountain vistas to keep us occupied; on our way back, we chose an alternate route through the desert. Beautiful as the desert can be, it’s not so inspiring when you’re exhausted and want nothing more than to get HOME.

Halfway through I called my sister, on the brink of tears, lamenting, “We’ll never make it!” When we finally crossed our state line, I thought, “Maybe we’ll make it after all.” Until I realized we had another six hours to go, and might I add, the longest six hours EVER.

At the time, my hub and I were in the midst of our second adoption and very much in a similar state of mind—exhausted, wearied by the journey. Thinking maybe it would never happen even after all our efforts. Doubting we could endure what remained to make it happen.

Yet here we are. We made it home after that endless road trip, and have made a few others since. And we made it through our second adoption. If you know my son, you know how worth it that journey was.

Since our adoption finalized, I’ve met several couples on the verge of giving up on their own adoptions, and I was able to encourage them to persevere. Maybe now I can encourage you, too, in whatever journey you’re in.

Don’t give up!

You’ll make it through the barren wasteland if only you choose to persevere. And when you come to the end of your journey, you’ll look back and see that it was worth it. You need only look beyond this present, weary moment to the greater end that WILL result from your endurance.

 

Photo Credit: Free stock photo: Desert, Highway, Roadtrip – Free Image on …

Memorial Day

Blog_CherryBlossom.jpgFlower petals fall like snow from the tree outside my window, and I remember. I remember a time when I didn’t have a daughter telling me these flowers have come to celebrate her birthday. I remember a Memorial Day not long ago, holding her in the hospital room, falling in love with her precious face, praying that difficult prayer—“God, I so desire this child to be your answer to my prayers. Yet not my will, but yours be done.”

I remember how God so faithfully carried me through the difficult years preceding, my life and my home ever filled with children, never my own. My hub and I spent a good fourteen years working with children in the inner city. Our lives had been so full with that ministry, it wasn’t until my health slowed me down that I felt a deep down yearning for the opportunity to be a mommy to a child who needed one.

We weren’t wealthy by any means, so we knew that heeding the call to adopt would involve much sacrifice and hard work along with the miraculous intervention of God. I could tell story after story of what we let go of to take hold of this little pearl of great price. And I could write story after story about God’s perfectly-timed provision all along the way.

But if there’s anything I think of on Memorial Day, it’s the great sacrifice God has made for me to be called his own. The price I paid to adopt my daughter (and now my son, as well!) is nothing compared to the price God the Father paid to adopt me into his family. The overwhelming love I have for them is nothing compared to the infinite love God has for me.

Do you know that God the Father, the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth, desires to adopt you as his own, as well? He has made the greatest sacrifice for this to be possible, the life of his own son that all who believe would be called his children. Take time this Memorial Day to remember that God has remembered you first. You are not forgotten. You are wanted. And you are loved.

“But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” (John 1:12)

 

Photo Credit: Cherry blossom – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Different Kind of Beautiful

Blog_TiaraPearlThe other morning my son woke me up by holding my face in his chubby little hands and whispering in my ear, “Mommy, you’re beeeeyoutiful. You’re my most beeeeyoutiful Mommy.” I was ready to give him the world if he so desired, when he went on to say, “Your hair is messy. It needs a brush. And so do your teeth.” Three-year olds. They can be heavenly sweet and brutally honest, and it only makes you love them all the more.

As we enjoyed some precious cuddle-time, I vaguely wondered if his latter comments about my messy hair and other maladies negated his initial compliment. And that’s when I realized. Children operate on a whole different standard of beauty.

We grow up in a world saturated with impossibly-perfect super model standards. Photoshopped, of course. The media convinces us we’re less-than-worthy if we don’t measure up to its definition of beauty. We can’t even pass through the check-out lane without a barrage of images staring us down, telling us we’re not enough. And all this right next to the 700-calorie candy bar display.

Yet in the midst of it all, my son sees his haphazard-haired Mommy-without-make-up and says, “you’re beeeeyoutiful.” It’s not that he ignores my imperfections. Instead, he sees me in all my imperfect glory and knows that beyond it all is a heart full of love for him.

Maybe that’s why the Bible says we should all be more like children. Not childish, of course, but childlike. They see from a higher perspective than we who tower over them in stature. I believe they see from God’s perspective…God, who “does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

Photo Credit: Tiara | Flickr – Photo Sharing!

Beautiful Noise

There are few sounds I love more than the sound…of silence. While some might get restless in a quiet house, I get inspired. It means there will be time to think and write, and maybe even rest. Solitude is one of my closest friends.

As much as I love quiet, I don’t get a lot of it. It’s tough to come by in a house with two high-energy kids, a persistent cat, and a dog who barks at everything that passes by our front door (even if it’s a leaf). Last year for my birthday, I asked for a half-day locked in the bedroom—alone with my computer and a mind full of uninterrupted ideas. But even the closed door and droning fan couldn’t drown out the noise beyond.

It wasn’t long before my solitude was invaded by something not-so-peaceful. The kids played on and squealed in ear-piercing decibels, blissfully unaware there was a momster of a storm brewing on the other side of the door. Before the storm could erupt to full-blown chaos, something stopped me. A still, small voice whispering. “Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.”

I reluctantly unplugged the fan that had drowned out a fraction of the noise, and listened. What I heard calmed the storm within. It was the sound of life and joy and fun and innocence. All too soon, those little noise-makers will be grown and my house will be quiet once again.

Be slow to anger. Listen. That gentle reminder helped me to hear the beautiful noise surrounding me. In the midst of that noise, there is peace. And I wouldn’t have found it had I been quick to anger.

Source: Beautiful Noise