Author: jdunderwood

Marathon Meanderings

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First sight of him at mile 17.

First sight of him at mile 17.

He did it.

My husband, Dave, along with 45,000 others, ran the Chicago Marathon Sunday. He finished somewhere in the middle of the pack, well behind the speedy wheelchair racers and the first-placing Kenyan runner—who broke the Chicago Marathon record and nearly broke the world one—and well ahead of those persevering souls who finished after marathon officials took down the barricades along the roads and picked up the timing mats at the finish line. (To read about the final finisher, Maickel Melamed, who took 17 hours to complete the course, follow this link: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-final-marathon-finish-20131015,0,3488441.story.)

And here's when Em saw him!

And here’s when Em saw him!

The kids and I, along with some friends, took the blue line down to mile 17 on the course and camped out at the spot where I’d told Dave we would be. We were ahead of schedule, but that didn’t keep us from scanning the crowd for his orange-and-white World Vision jersey. We cheered for every other World Vision runner we saw as well as those who ran for Ronald McDonald and A Cure for Cancer and Leukemia and Autism Awareness and…

Our boys got tired of holding the “Go Dad” and “Go Undy” signs we’d made, so I told them to stand on the curb and hold out their hands. As soon as they did, runners began veering by them to slap their palms.

And he was off again.

And he was off again.

PJ turned to me. “Why do they do that?” he asked.

“For one second they know they will be thinking about the joy of connecting with a little boy—of putting a smile on your face—and in that moment, they won’t be thinking about their feet or their legs or all the other parts of them that hurt.”

“I can do that for them?”

“Yes, you can.”

When we saw runners who’d printed their names on their shirts, we personalized our cheering. “Nice work, Carlos!” If they wore anything distinctive, we referenced that as well. “You rock, Superman!” “You can do this, Lady with a Tiara!”

People smiled, gave thumbs-up, got a little perk in their step, made it round the corner a little easier.

It was fun.

But the entire time, we were looking for Dave.

And here he is after the finish.

And here he is after the finish.

Somehow I missed him until he was almost upon us. I had the camera perched on my left palm and was scanning the crowd to the right, wondering if he hadn’t received the text that told him which side of the road we would be on. Then, suddenly, he was there, just a couple steps in front of me. I jerked my camera up and fired off a couple fuzzy shots, but I failed to capture the brilliant smile that jumped onto his face when he first caught sight of us.

He came around the barrier and joined us for a minute, telling us he was feeling “good, just sore in one calf.” We gave him a hard candy to suck on and handed him the roller massage tool to work on his calf, and then he was off to finish the final nine miles.

We waited for a break in the flow of runners, hopscotched our way across the street, and cut straight across to the finish line. We stopped for ice cream, knowing that several blocks south of us, runners were slogging it out, and we still made it in time to find a shady waiting spot beneath a tree at the reunite area.

I got a text from the Chicago Marathon telling me that Dave’s microchip had crossed the finish line (presumably with him attached to it), and then another shiny smile when he came down the steps (oh, the cruelty of having marathon finishers walk DOWN steps) and saw us.

So many great memories from the day! Emily, our 13-year-old, gave me one when she said, “Mom, it’s really cool watching people push themselves to accomplish something really hard. It’s inspiring.”

One man, running for cancer research, gave me another when I looked at his back and saw he’d pinned a couple dozen ribbons on his back, each one in memory of a person.

But I have to say the best ones have to do with my husband. The moments of seeing him at mile 17 and just after the finish are memories that sparkle.

Great job, Babe! You did it!

You can still donate to World Vision on Dave’s personal page. Proceeds fund clean water initiatives. Here’s the link: http://team.worldvision.org/site/TR/TeamWorldVision/TeamWorldVision?px=1375760&pg=personal&fr_id=2120

Thanks for reading!

Jen

A big reason to run

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Fourteen years ago I ran my one and only marathon. My husband, Dave, ran his first that day as well. It was November, and we were living in Okinawa, Japan. The course was incredibly hilly, and the weather was unnaturally hot for that time of year. With the constant high humidity, the effects were brutal. More people dropped out of that race than finished it, and several were rushed off in ambulances due to heat stroke.

I finished well beyond my expected time and thought, “That’s it. I’m done.”

I’ve never run another since.

Dave however, ran several in the next few years.

Then he had an eight-year gap.

This summer, he decided to try it again. But he needed a really good reason, one bigger than his desire to drop a few pounds and increase his endurance.

So he decided to run for World Vision.

I offered to do some of his training runs with him. One weekend, I even ran a 14-miler (he says it was only 13, but I’m adding the distance between the end of the trail and the parking lot–and padding it a bit.)

School started then, with all its weekend activities, so the next weekend, when he ran 16, I ran only 8 of it with him. The next week, only 6. The last couple weekends, a friend of his ran the first half or so with him.

But after his friend or I called it quits, Dave would grab his iPod and head back to the trail, slogging out more miles.

 

He tells me that when his hips ache, when his knees burn, he remembers two little girls from our last trip to Uganda. The first is little Comfort, abandoned in the Katanga Slum by her mother and father, placed in Dave’s arms by neighbors who didn’t want to watch her die of starvation. In recent pictures we’ve seen of her, her eyes are still somber, but her cheeks are full, and her arms have the plump roundness they should have at 10 months of age. In every picture, she’s cuddled in the arms of the nurse at Mercy Children’s Home, who looks pretty darn proud of her progress.

The second little girl is Scovia. She’s six but about the size of a four year old. She was born with damaged legs; her mother died; and her father left her locked in their shack for days at a time while he looked for work. When she was rescued by Mercy Children’s Home, she had pressure sores, malnutrition, and severe developmental delays. Now she walks pushing a wheeled contraption, she babbles happily, and she has unending, overflowing JOY.

Comfort and Scovia are healthy today because of child sponsorship, because people who are not worried where their next meal is coming from have concerned themselves with those who do have to worry about such basic needs.

Mercy Children’s Home and hundreds of other orphanages around the world benefit from child sponsorship. Two of the largest sponsoring agencies are Compassion International and World Vision.

So even though Dave is running the Chicago Marathon this Sunday specifically for World Vision, in a way he’s running it for all the orphanages in the world, for all the children who need a safe place and someone to love them. He’s ultimately running it for Jesus, who welcomes children and holds them in His arms.

If you would like to sponsor Dave, please visit this link:

http://team.worldvision.org/site/TR/TeamWorldVision/TeamWorldVision?px=1375760&pg=personal&fr_id=2120

All proceeds go directly to World Vision.

Thanks,
Jen

 

 

Mommy Magic (another journal written during my small-children stage)

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They were younger even than this when I wrote this post--but they were still a lot younger than they are now! I cannot believe I have an 8th grader! (But I sure don't miss pairing up all those teeny-tiny little socks!)

They were younger even than this when I wrote this post–but in this picture they are still a lot younger than they are now! I cannot believe I have an 8th grader! (But I sure don’t miss pairing up all those teeny-tiny little socks!)

Mommy Magic.

I don’t mean the warm, fuzzy feeling I get when my 2 ½ year old twins look adorable in their footy pajamas or the way my heart melts when my 6-year-old sings a solo at the school Mother’s Day program. I’m not referring to the magic in motherhood—no— I’m referring to—

The magic that mothers provide.

In my household it works something like this. My children strip off clothing as they’re running through the house to the bathtub till I could follow the trail like I was a bird behind Hansel and Gretel. No matter how muddy or food-slopped that clothing was, it appears, clean, unstained, and folded, in the dresser drawer a few days after being dripped all across the house. And my children don’t give it a second thought. In fact, sometimes they complain that favorite shirts aren’t in pristine condition and back in the drawer the morning after being worn.

More examples: the last morsel of cereal is poured from the box, and another box gets produced from the storage pantry—or something edible appears. Toothpaste sprouts on toothbrushes on frantic mornings; lunchboxes, forgotten on the kitchen counter, are delivered to the school office by noon; the favorite bowl, plate, and spoon set—with the bunny or truck or princess or superhero on it—appears, filled with food, every dinnertime. Lost shoes and homework and action figures are found, and hats, coats, and gloves pop on just before the plunge into the cold outdoors.

No wonder my children have no trouble believing Cinderella had a fairy godmother and the man in the yellow hat can fix every problem for George the curious monkey. After all, they’ve got a magic to top them both.

Too bad for me that it’s—

Me!

My kids watched Mary Poppins not too long ago. They were most impressed with jumping into chalk drawings and riding carousel horses across animated landscapes. The scene they were least interested in was the one that fascinates me most. Mary Poppins regards the littered nursery with disdain. Click! She snaps her fingers at it, and—presto! The toy soldiers march into the box. Click! The bed makes itself. Click! The clothes fly to their places in the closet. I paused in my search for miniature plastic people under the couch to gaze in awe. “Oh, if only,” I thought, and tried snapping at the dishes by the sink. Nothing happened until I grabbed a sponge and scrubbed at them. And then—it was like…

Magic!

I may not like it, but I understood even before I became a parent that mommy magic is part of the job description. After all, my own mother provided me with plenty of magic while I was growing up. When my brother and I both invited friends to dinner—without phoning ahead—we assumed the meal, prepared for four, would magically stretch to feed six, and it always did. When I needed three costumes for my part in the low-budget school rendition of Cheaper by the Dozen, somehow my mother prepared them—and they looked like they arrived straight from the 1920’s. Mom equaled magician, but I didn’t know until well after I gave birth myself how much work this magic actually was.

What I also didn’t know was that the magic would spread. Several months after my first child Emily was born, the dog began searching the house for me—specifically me—whenever he wanted food or to go out. Often he walked right past the man sitting at the kitchen table or in front of the TV in the living room (the man is my husband, and prior to parenthood he was an equal partner in pet care) to find me in the upstairs bathroom. Suddenly I became the only one privileged enough to freeze my tush waiting for the dog to do his business.

Then I realized other children—not my own—had recognized the mommy magic in me. Before becoming a mom, I could have stood in the middle of a playground all day and been used for little more than a center for ring-around-the-rosie or a base for kickball. Now, however, little kids come up to me. “You’re Emily’s mom, right?”

I hesitate before answering. I’m learning. “Ye-es,” I say.

“Well, my little brother just puked on the slide.”

The expectation, of course, is that I will do something about it.

And I will. “Okay,” I sigh. “I’ll be right over.”

The kid nods, not impressed—I just did what was expected—and then stops, his eyes riveted on my huge purse.

“You got any snacks in there?”

Laundry, snacks, cleaning, organization…

I need some Mommy Magic for ME!

From one generation to the next: advice from my mom

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Long ago, when I was a middle-school student, I disliked a girl in my class.

“Krista” was sweet, kind, and genuine. She had a transparency to her that was unusual in my Southern “Christian” upbringing.

I think she revealed my own shortcomings to me. When I was around her, I didn’t seem so “nice and sweet.” She did.

And that was why I didn’t like her.

Though we had been friends, I suddenly found myself annoyed by all kinds of things I’d never before noticed. In my head I judged her clothes, the way she walked, even the way she looked. I could hear my inner voice making catty comments about her. I don’t ever remember saying any of this out loud, but my attitude manifested itself through my withdrawal. I answered her questions with one-word answers. I didn’t encourage conversation. I kept a blank face when we talked.

I knew what I was doing was wrong.

But I tried my hardest to shift blame.

I told myself that her sweetness was too “over the top” to be real, that my critical spirit was simply my ability to see through her.

I almost convinced myself.

But I didn’t fool my mom.

I was planning a party, and my mom noticed “Krista’s” name wasn’t on the list. “Why not?” she asked.

I said something like, “She’s just kind of annoying, Mom.”

She raised her eyebrows. I went on.

“Like, she doesn’t get anybody’s jokes.”

The eyebrows went higher.

“Well, you know how it is when some people…”

I don’t remember what all I said.

But my mother’s words are clear in my memory. “There’s no good reason for you not to like her, and I’m not going to listen to you talk about her. But I am going to give you some advice: Pray for her. It’s really hard to keep a hard spirit toward someone when you’re praying for them, especially when the problem is in you and not in them.”

That was all she said, but she might as well have delivered a sermon on the first part of Matthew 7.

A few weeks ago, one of my kids was trying to explain away a jealous attitude and mean behavior by pointing the finger at the other person. (I just “love” how I can see my own faults so clearly in my children!)

I interrupted the rather clever blame shifting.

“Sorry, kiddo. I think the problem here is in your own heart.” (I’m a little more blunt—and way less “Southern”—than my mother.)

My child’s eyes went round with shock at my lack of sympathy.

“It’s pretty easy for me to recognize it because I struggle with the same issue. I don’t want you to lie to yourself. Nothing will change until you admit the truth.”

The eyes narrowed then. “Other mothers would be nicer about it.”

I grinned then. “Well, God didn’t give you a different mother. He gave you me.” I suddenly remembered my own story. “Your Mama D told me the same thing once.” (Okay, maybe she was a little nicer about it, but it was kinda/sorta the same.)

That perked the interest, so I told about “Krista.”

And my mother’s words were just as wise and powerful now as they were then.

Thanks again, Mom.

A purpose in being overwhelmed

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I write so often about feeling overwhelmed, I wonder if people think it’s my constant condition.

Well, it’s not 24/7, at least not most days.

But daily, at some point, by one thing or another?

Yes.

Last Monday I was overwhelmed by my schedule, by the keeping up with this and that. As I drove the kids to school that morning, I couldn’t stop thinking about the teetering tower of papers on the corner of my desk at home. These were “school papers”–all the ones my kids kept bringing home from school and others I’d been handed during back-to-school night two weeks before. I’d put off dealing with “the tower” because I knew I would discover several forms I needed to fill out, many new dates to put in my calendar, and–at this point–a couple of deadlines I’d already missed.

Though “the tower” was on my mind, I couldn’t do anything about it right then, because from 10:30-12:30 on Mondays, I help out in an ESL class run by World Relief (worldrelief.org). I started doing this last year, but I was in the “bridge” class then, which “bridged the gap” for refugees whose English was almost proficient enough for them to take college courses. This year I’m pretty much at the opposite end of the spectrum, helping with the lower section of the “Job Class.” Students in this class are the primary breadwinners for their families. They need jobs quickly, and this class is a crash course in conversational English and American work culture. Last week we worked on giving/receiving firm handshakes and pronouncing numbers, particularly dollar amounts. After a student completes 60 hours of training, a World Relief job counselor begins working with him/her to find a job.

I often ask these students, “When did you come to the U.S.?” and the answers range from “last week” to “six weeks ago.” After only 60 hours of class, they will enter a work environment with bosses and coworkers who speak a language they are not proficient in, in a culture very, very different from their own.

I panic for them just thinking about all that.

So back to last Monday morning. Since the World Relief class is closer to my kids’ school than it is my house, I go to a Dunkin Donuts after I drop them off and write from there until it’s time for me to go to World Relief. So there I sat, feeling overwhelmed with my own life and wondering how on earth I was going to be of any use in the job class when I was such a wreck myself. I opened BibleGateway.com to look at the “verse of the day,” trying to change my focus.

It was James 3:13 in the New Living Translation, and the second part jumped out at me: “…doing good works with the humility that comes from wisdom.”

Now, I don’t claim to have wisdom (being regularly overwhelmed quickly cures me of feeling I do), but this morning I was certainly feeling humble. I was amazed by the refugees’ pluck and determination.

Suddenly my overwhelmed-ness didn’t seem so negative. God had put me in exactly the right frame of mind to honor the people I would work with that morning. My humility sure didn’t come from my own wisdom but from God’s. He had put a task in front of me and then equipped me to do it in the way He wanted me to.

I stopped thinking of the leaning Tower of Papers on my desk and settled into work, and then I went off to class where I shook the hands of men who have never encountered a female boss before and need to be prepared to do just that. I helped a woman say the breathy form of “th” and we laughed and laughed together at all my antics (because it can be really funny when you stick the tip of your tongue between your teeth and hold a piece of paper in front of your mouth so it moves when you say “think” and “three.”) I listened to a man practice the difference between $3,146 and $31.46.

Maybe being overwhelmed isn’t a bad thing. Maybe it simply makes us aware we’re human.

Just like everybody else.

Missing the Mom Gene

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Yesterday Patrick squatted like this and asked, "Mom, can you do this?" Um, NO.

Yesterday Patrick squatted like this and asked, “Mom, can you do this?”
Um, NO.

“How did this happen?” I ask Dave when the house is particularly noisy and chaotic (which is much of the time). “How did we get so many of them?”

Fourteen years ago, when we were nearly eight years into our marriage, we’d actually begun talking about having our first child and then we discovered she was there, splitting cells like crazy in my belly. Seriously, though, God tricked us into all the rest. Three years after Em was born we’d just about made the decision we were supposed to be a one-child family when, surprise! Four months later the ultrasound technician shocked us into laughter when she said, “I assume you know you’re having twins.”

My father-in-law often jokes the Lord gave us two-in-one because if He hadn’t, we would never have had a third child, and He nearly wrote the edict for Patrick’s adoption on the wall to make that entirely clear as well.

It doesn’t really matter how they all happened. They’re here—as are Judy and Kelly, our two international students. I’m a mom—whether I planned it or not. I love them, deep down in my gut, all the way to the ends of my fingernails, and with a ferocity that surprises me at times.

But I didn’t exactly “plan” them (that word makes me laugh!), and I’m not an especially nurturing person. I’ve never read a parenting book cover to cover; I don’t put little notes in my kids’ lunches; I completely space out sometimes about their activities; I tell them, “yes, eat the cookie” because it might allow me to push back dinner or—I admit it—get by with fixing a snack instead of a full meal.

When my kids were little, my mom kept sending me outdated  Parenting magazines from the lobby at my dad’s office until I asked her to stop. All the pictures of “good” moms making cute crafts with their kids simply made me feel guilty.

Thank heaven, we’re past the “cute craft” stage, but I don’t do what I’m supposed to in this one either, it seems. Not long ago a co-worker complimented me on getting all my international students’ school paperwork in before the deadline.

“I have to,” I told her. “I have this two week window in the late summer when I drop everything else and do all my kids’ school ‘stuff.’ If it doesn’t happen in that window of time, it doesn’t happen. Don’t ask me for things in October. The window’s closed, and I won’t do it.”

Her eyes got a little goggle-eyed until I told her I was kidding.

But I really wasn’t, not completely.

I don’t enjoy volunteering at my kids’ school activities. I’ll read to kids, but that’s about all I like doing. No one has EVER asked me to be a room mom—there’s a reason for that, you know. Last year I sent in a special day snack to the wrong kid’s class and I completely forgot to show up for kindergarten lunch relief one day.

All of this can make me feel like I’m not a good mom, that other moms are better, but I’m not writing this to ask for affirmation  or for advice on how to be more nurturing. I’m writing it because I think a lot of other moms the feel the same as I do.

Last week a friend told me, “I think I’m missing the ‘mom gene.’” At her son’s football game the week before, the team mom passed out lanyards with laminated photos of the individual boys. My friend’s immediate thought was, “How did she even think of that?” but then she realized all the other moms were oohing and aahing over the pictures.

“What’s wrong with me?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I told her. I was talking to myself, too.

And because I think we’re not alone in this, I’m talking to a whole bunch of moms (and dads) who get stuck sometimes on who they are not as a parent instead of who they are.

I am mom to Em, Jake, Maddie and Patrick. I am host mom to Judy and Kelly, acting as a support to their beloved mom, Josie. I am equipped with a specific and correct ‘mom gene’ to fit each of these kids and their needs and personalities. I can trust God didn’t forget to complete my DNA; He didn’t match me with the wrong kids; and He doesn’t require me to act like some other mom to be a good mom—the right mom—for the ones in my home.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying this is easy—far from it. Parenting Em is different from parenting Patrick or Maddie or Jake. Daily I need wisdom, grace, patience, and love—most of all love.

But even in motherhood’s perplexing and frustrating moments, even when one of my own children says to me, “Well, so-and-so’s mom does it different,” I can know that “so-and-so’s mom” would not be a better fit for  my kid.

Because the best mom for my kids is me .

Even when I send the special snack to the wrong classroom.

Guest writer: Anna Lindus

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Anna and Shawme

Anna and Shawme

Anna Lindus is a junior at Wheaton Academy. She was part of the team that went to Kenya and Uganda with us this past July. When we were in the Katanga slum in Kampala, Uganda, a little girl came up to Anna. Anna picked her up and carried her as we trekked all over the slum, visiting homes and praying with people. At one point, Anna whispered to me, “Is this okay? Won’t someone be worried about her?”

“News travels fast,” I told her. “Whoever cares for her knows she is with us, and they know we can be trusted because we have come with Pastor Wilfred. You are showing love to this little girl–and by doing that, you are showing love to others here.”

Not long ago, Anna gave me a poem she wrote about Shawme, that little girl. I think it is beautiful, just like Anna and Shawme are, and I wanted to share it here.

“Shawme” by Anna Lindus

Little hands wrap around my neck

and sweet eyes peer into mine.

Just three years old, her life is a wreck.

So young and small, she’s all alone,

having to face the world on her own.

She says no words, but speaks with actions and her gentle touch.

Abandoned, helpless, and oh so young,

In order to survive,

Anna and Shawme

Anna and Shawme

she must push her innocence to the side,

tattered and torn, it’s not just her clothes that are worn.

Her eyes say it all to me: she is as tired as could be.

But there is no nap time for her

Because time is precious, can’t I see?

Food is scarce and she is hungry.

Fighting hard to survive and belly expanding each day,

Little Shawme’s life is astray.

Little hands wrap around my neck

and sweet eyes peer into mine

as she tells me her story.

Everyday Gospel, continued (part 2 of conversation with Jake)

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Game pieces? I think so. Why? Not sure. Because he's a nine-year-old boy? Good answer.

Game pieces? I think so. Why? Not sure.                       Because he’s a nine-year-old boy? Yep, that’s probably it.

Sunday night Dave took the crew out for ice cream. Jake decided to stay behind. As soon as everyone left, I found out why.

“Mom, I need to talk to you about something.”

He’d been waiting for just such a quiet moment.

“What’s up, bud?”

“I think I have an idol.”

It took me a moment to process that one. It’s not a phrase a 9-year-old boy often uses.

“Where did you hear…? Never mind. How ‘bout we sit down together.”

After we were snugged into the chair-and-a-half, with Jake’s hand rubbing the back of my hair, I asked, “What do you think your idol is?”

“Legos.”

“Why do you think Legos are an idol?”

“Because I think about them so much. I would rather play with them than read my Bible. I know that reading my Bible is good, and Legos are keeping me from doing as much of it as I should. I think they’re an idol.”

Ah! A repeat of our conversation the week before.

I held my hands up as if they were scales and launched into an explanation of how we can never do enough “good” to earn God’s acceptance. It’s impossible, which is why He made another Way.

But the anguish in Jake’s face stopped me.

I thought of what I’ve learned through spending time with believers from other cultures—how our Western view of salvation as a transaction is not the only way God presents the Gospel in Scripture. It is justification, yes, but it’s also reconciliation and restoration. It’s relationship, made possible through Christ.

“J-man, what do you think your dad would say if you told him, ‘Dad, I know you’re a runner, so I’m gonna’ start running four miles a day to make you love me more’?”

Jake’s face screwed up as if I’d bought him a hot pink shirt. “Mom, Dad already loves me. That’s not gonna’ make him love me more!”

I grinned.

He was quiet, his brain connecting the dots, seeing in them a picture, a constellation of beauty.

We talked more, about how we know someone loves us, then specifically about how we know God loves us. We talked about God’s joy in Jake’s enjoyment of Legos, how Jake’s creativity, imagination, and collaboration please God; they are gifts from God. We talked about how good things CAN turn into idols (and I thought, “Even Bible reading, clearly!”) and what we do about that.

At one point Jake said something truly beautiful. I don’t remember the exact words, but it was something like this: “So God wants me to read my Bible so I can know better that He loves me! It’s NOT so He will love me more! That’s not it at all.”

I laughed aloud in delight.

But part of my heart grieved.

Not at his words, but at this truth: my son, like I, will forget, time and time again, that God loves us simply because HE IS LOVE. Jake, too, will wrestle with guilt over “not doing enough.” He will lose the joy of being loved freely by God. He will equate “doing” with relationship, and he will wonder what he has done–or not done–to feel so far from God. He will assume God has withdrawn in anger and fail to realize that his own efforts and guilt have actually pulled him away from God rather than to Him.

I am grateful, not only for strange but wonderful conversations with Jake but also that God is revealing my own tendencies through my son.

But I still don’t want him to wrestle with my struggles. I want him to feel as sure of God’s love for him as he is of his dad’s (and, boy, am I grateful for that!). I want him to draw near to God with full confidence in His grace and mercy.

I want him to fiercely love God—because he knows God first fiercely loved him. I want him to know that God never, ever stops loving him.

I want for him what I want for myself.

And I can be confident that God, Who is a far better parent than I, wants the same for both of us.

The gentle power of God’s pursuit

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God’s pursuit of a human is a wonder.

Yesterday, God pursued me.

He had to.

I’d woken for several mornings with a numb heart. I didn’t want to feel too much, to have my heart stretched by His great Presence. Nothing was “wrong.” I simply wanted to stay cocooned in a tight chrysalis of control and predictability. I didn’t want my days rocked by eternity. I didn’t want to see myself as part of something bigger. I wanted my cocoon to be IT, cozy and snug. Nothing else fit—and I didn’t want it to.

But here’s the rub—the truth. If I want my tight little cocoon, I have to let go of ALL the things that don’t fit, like fullness and joy and inexplicable peace. Like amazement and wonder. I can’t have “control” AND fullness of life. My chrysalis tightens, and my focus narrows, my heart squeezes, and my vision tunnels. MY to-do list magnifies and lengthens.

After only a few days of a numbed heart, I sensed this narrowing, but rather than open myself to God’s gentle knockings, I avoided. I read a book; I checked e-mails—again; I worked—past quitting time. All fine things, except when they’re used as a substitute, as anesthetic to numb myself to God’s touch.

But yesterday God used “little” things to break through my shell. Son Jake had a dentist appointment in the morning, so I had to delay emails and writing assignments. We went to the dental office and learned our appointment was delayed, so we had some extra time together—REAL time, not like the working-on-homework-together time we’ve had so much of recently.

Of course, Jake, being Jake, asked questions I couldn’t answer out of myself. I had to silently cry out for help.

Then I had an interaction with an employee at a store—a good interaction, though nothing “big”—and in it was this reminder: if I want to spread Christ’s love to others, I have to be open to it myself. I have to be a receiver FIRST and ALWAYS.

My chrysalis was cracking; bits were flaking off.

I dropped Jake off at school, and there was silence. My phone was quiet. The radio was off.

I reached to turn the radio on—and stopped. Into the stillness came this thought: If I didn’t allow God to break my cocoon, it would only get smaller, and what could fill it then? It wouldn’t have room for Him. It could only be filled with ME, with a me that would have to shrink to fit, a me that would become smaller and more self-focused by the day.

Ugh.

The last remnants of chrysalis shattered.

And my heart took a deep, deep breath.

 

Oh, Lord, help us to open our hearts to You. We know this is not a painless process. Your presence draws up deep hurts done to us and reveals our own hurtful ways. Your presence expands our hearts so we can sympathize with others. That, too, is painful. Yet with Your presence there is fullness of joy! There is LIFE. (Psalm 16:11)

Mercy Childcare Video

/ jdunderwood / Leave a comment
This is Angel, whom I've known for nearly six years now. Angel was also rescued by MCCM. She is now studying to help communities fight poverty and its effects on children. You go, Angel! I'm so proud of her.

This is Angel, whom I’ve known for nearly six years now. Angel was also rescued by MCCM. She is now studying to help communities fight poverty and its effects on children. You go, Angel! I’m so proud of her.

I have written much about Mercy Childcare Ministries (MCCM) here on my blog. MCCM rescued our son, Patrick, and worked with us as we adopted him. Dave and I and our oldest child, Emily, along with a team of 15 other people, visited MCCM this past July and had a wonderful, God-blessed time there.

The director of MCCM, Wilfred Rugumba, just posted a link to a video about MCCM, and I wanted to pass it on.

Thanks for reading,

Jen