Parenting

Give Me Patience…NOW!!!

Blog_ParkInSpringThe other day my son was begging for one of his toys while on a short drive. “Just be patient,” my hub told him. “I’ll give it to you when we stop the car.”

My son replied with his signature, charming pout. “I’ll be patient if you give it to me nooow.”

I often respond in the same way when waiting on something I really want. “If only I could have it now,” I think. “Then I could really be patient.”

Unfortunately, that’s not how patience works. The very nature of patience involves waiting. And ironically, it sometimes involves waiting for the very patience we need to endure the wait. Ugh.

Patience doesn’t magically emerge when we get our hearts’ desire. Instead, it’s cultivated through a long process of letting go, of releasing our desires again and again to the One who knows what we need and when we need it.

As for my son, he forgot all about that toy he so desired. When the car finally stopped, he saw that his daddy had something better in mind. A beautiful day at the park is enough to make any kid forget a whole pile of plastic toys.

Maybe once we master the art of patience, we, too, will forget what we thought we wanted. In the midst of the waiting, we’ll find our Daddy had something better in mind all along…something far more worth the wait.

 

Photo Credit: Madison Square – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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 …

Legacy

Beyond_Legacy

The world has enough “successful” people, but too few who know how to love.  Imagine the difference we’d make if we chose to fully love all of those within our sphere of influence.  Such love would be a greater contribution to our world than any of the greatest missions in history. #thegiftoflove

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

Empty

Blog_EmptyRoomMy classroom is empty. And yes, I am breathing a sigh of relief, short-lived as it may be. After a few days, I’ll be going through withdrawals from my students. After a few weeks, I’ll be begging their parents to send them to summer school because I’ll miss them that much.

A year ago around this time, I was preparing my classroom for the kids. In the school where I work, we have the privilege of being as creative as we want with the materials, so it was a lot of fun setting everything up. By the end of the summer, after much hard work, everything was in place. Admitted, it was hard watching the kids mess it all up when they first plowed through the doors. I had to remind myself that’s what it’s all about—the kids, not the classroom.

It’s like that in life. We have our plans set, our schedules in order, and then life happens. Things get out of order. Our schedule gets overrun by other, more important things. And that’s how it should be.

For many years, I worked in an outreach ministry. We’d spend many hours planning and preparing for events and services. Then the people would come, and we’d have to remember…it’s not about the program, it’s about the people. Who wants a ministry full of programs yet void of people?

Days are meant to be filled, and life is meant to be full. That doesn’t always mean our schedules have to be unbendable, our plans unbreakable. When people come through and the order of our day veers from our original intent, maybe that’s how it was meant to be.

Empty rooms may be peaceful, but they are just that…empty. There are times when we need solitude and order, but there are times when we need to be interrupted by more important things. And it is in those important things that we will be filled.

 

Photo Credit: the big empty room | Flickr – Photo Sharing!

Unplugged

More info about the Wellington Musicircus at http://musicircus.net.nz/Sometimes I feel invisible. I call my children multiple times with no response unless it involves cookies or ice cream. One time I asked my son why he wasn’t listening, and he told me, “Wait a minute Mommy. I can’t hear you. Let me get these fruit snacks out of my ears.”

Having children has made me more aware of how selective our hearing can be. Kids tend to hear what they want to hear, when they want to hear it. They tune in to those things that most interest them while lowering the volume on what they don’t want to hear.

It can be like that in our relationship with God. In a previous blog post I talked about what I termed “misunderhearing”. But sometimes we take it a step further and just don’t listen at all.

Maybe our ears are plugged up with fruit snacks, just like my son’s. We jam our ears with feel-good sweet-talk rather than the nourishing truth of God’s word. The media so consumes our senses that we can’t hear what our loving Creator really wants to say to us.

The Bible says, “A time will come when people will not listen to accurate teachings. Instead, they will follow their own desires and surround themselves with teachers who tell them what they want to hear.” How true of our day and age. We live for social media likes and follows, wanting to hear what people have to say about us while completely unconcerned with what God has to say.

As a wise man so aptly stated, “You can believe in whatsoever you like, but the truth remains the truth, no matter how sweet the lie may taste” (M.B. Johnson). Do we realize what we’re missing while our ears remain plugged up with lies? Our joy is diminished, our senses dulled, when we neglect the life-giving word of God in favor of saccharine junk food.

 

Photo Credit: Ear plugs | Flickr – Photo Sharing!

(Not) Photoshopped

Blog_CameraConfession: on multiple occasions I’ve been tempted to ask my tech-savvy husband to photoshop my pictures. And on a couple of occasions, I’ve almost followed through. Though my husband is expert in all things graphic design, I wouldn’t have been happy with the results save for the red-eye removal. I’d rather be real than photoshopped.

Still, I hate having my picture taken and only do it now to preserve memories for my children. My sister was always the photogenic one, with the perfect smile. It takes about a hundred shots for me to take a decent picture, and even then I only like the ones where my super-cute kids draw attention away from me.

Even now the only profile pictures I use consist of me and my kids. My preferred gravatar shows only my face, but if there were space to pan out you’d see that I’m holding my daughter. The day my husband took the picture, we’d gone to take some professional family photos with my in-laws. None of the professional pictures turned out, but the one my husband took is among the few photos I like of me because it captures a moment of genuine contentment and joy—not fake and forced as in a photo shoot.

Maybe my aversion to selfies is a result of pride, not wanting my flaws on permanent display in photo format. Or maybe I only like the ones with my kids because I’m most relaxed and real when with them. In those pictures, I’m laughing, joyful, genuine, not posed. They make me feel beautiful.

Yes, I’m content with how God made me. But I realize it’s who he’s made me that determines beauty. As the Bible says, beauty doesn’t come from external things, as the world would have us believe. It comes from the heart. My children make me feel beautiful because I know I’ve sacrificed for them, and would give my life for them if needed. They’ve seen me at my best and at my worst, and they love me still. They’ve seen me in my most real, most raw moments—unphotoshopped, and somehow find the beauty in it. And that’s how God sees me, too, because he looks beyond the surface and into my heart.

Photo Credit: Free stock photos of analog camera · Pexels