getting the focus right

More and Less: the Usefulness of an Impure Pen

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“He must become more.

I must become less.”

John the Baptist’s followers were amazed by their leader’s statement about Christ’s increasing popularity and John’s decreasing fame. “What’s wrong with him?” they wondered. “Doesn’t he realize this is bad for him?”

Deep down, their concern was about themselves, not John. “What about us?” they might have been thinking. “This is not good for US. We were disciples of the popular guy. We were up and coming, well-known. But this guy is cornering in on our market, and our résumés are suffering.”

Confession: I am so very guilty of this. Every time I submit a magazine/Web article or post a blog, there is at least a hint of selfishness. Underneath the good desires (I hope others are encouraged by my journey; I hope my work honors God) are seedier ones. Will people like it? Will this make me better known? Will this lead to bigger writing assignments and opportunities?

Ugh!

I long for completely pure motives, but I know that on earth I’m simply not capable of them. My old nature will always taint my motives, and I have to constantly face this truth. I recognize the selfish motive, acknowledge it to God in confession, ask for His help, and move on–until selfishness creeps in again. It’s a never-ending battle.

At times I get tired of it, sometimes so tired I want to give up: I want to stop submitting, stop posting.

But I feel called to persist, and John the Baptist’s words encourage me to keep fighting. John said, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” He didn’t say, “He’s great; I’m not. That’s it.” A process is implied in his statement. The Amplified version adds these words: “He must grow more prominent; I must grow less so.”

Now I know John the Baptist was a prophet. I know there is a prophetic sense to these words: they are referring to Jesus being lifted up as the Savior of the world and of John being seen as Christ’s servant, His herald. Perhaps John wasn’t speaking about a heart process at all but merely the actual events that were about to take place. He may very well have been so in tune with God’s plan that he wasn’t referring to his own selfishness at all.

But when I say them, that’s exactly what I’m referring to. I’m a lot more like John’s followers than I am like John. Though I know and understand more and more the overwhelming majesty and greatness of Christ, the reality is that I lose that viewpoint all the time; I feel that I should be the center of attention. THAT’S my battle, and the process hinted at in John’s statement encourages me to keep fighting it: “Christ must grow more prominent. I must grow less so.”

So I can GROW in decreasing (that’s a cool paradox). Exalting Christ can become greater and greater in my motivations. I can become less and less. Like Paul learned contentment, I can learn this.

I have a personal teacher who helps me with this very difficult lesson. In Colossians 1, Paul tells the believers at Colossae he continually prays that God will fill them with the knowledge of His will through the wisdom and understanding the Spirit gives so (they) may live lives worthy of the Lord, please Him in every way, and bear fruit.

I know God’s will for me as a writer; it is for HIM to be exalted through my writing.

And the Spirit, my teacher, is not only able to sanctify my motives, the Spirit is also fully capable of using my writing to exalt God at the same time!

The Spirit will enable me to please God with my pen and keyboard, to bear fruit through my words,

Kelly and Em at the junior high gala last night. Two beautiful girls! I must admit, though, my thought all night was, "But how did the time go so fast?"

Kelly and Em at the junior high gala last night. Two beautiful girls! I must admit, though, my thought all night was, “But how did the time go so fast?”

AND to “live worthy” as a writer.

Now THAT is Good News!

 

*Here are a couple of stanzas from the hymn “Holy Spirit, Truth Divine” by Samuel Longfellow (brother of the famous Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) that perfectly express the ideas in this post (and in far fewer words—oh, to be a poet).

Holy Spirit, Truth divine,

Dawn upon this soul of mine;

Word of God and inward light,

Wake my spirit, clear my sight.

 

Holy Spirit, Love divine,

Glow within this heart of mine;

Kindle every high desire;

Perish self in thy pure fire.

suburban gratitude

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Dave bought me this sign for Christmas and I hung it in our family room. I think (I hope) it describes us well.

Dave bought me this sign for Christmas and I hung it in our family room. I think (I hope) it describes us well.

I’m working on chapters three and four of our adoption story, so I spent a couple hours this morning sorting through emails I sent out during 2008 and 2009. Some of those were specifically about adoption matters: court dates and home studies and official documents, but many others were simply newsletters about our family.

Em was seven and Jake and Maddie about three and a half in the earliest updates (January 2008); the last one I read was written six months after Patrick and I came home from Uganda (September 2009). I wrote about funny things they said (like when Maddie was pretending to be Jake’s mommy until Jake, fed up with bottles and blankets, ran away from her, crying, “I all growed up now, Maddie. I not a baby any more”). I wrote about daily routines that I’d forgotten, like Patrick coming home on the preschool bus in Kansas. He would bring his backpack inside, tell me to “Close eyes, Mommy,” and then show me each paper he’d worked on that morning, one by one. Then we read his new library book—they went every day—TWICE. And all this before lunchtime. I wrote about life lessons they were learning, like when Em got the teacher she did NOT want and her words three weeks into the school year: “Mom and Dad, you were right. I think God did want me to have Mrs. Farney. I really like her.”
The emails made me a little sad. Those times are gone, and life with my kids isn’t so simple anymore. It’s not full of long Saturdays spent at home or morning playtimes at the park. They’re growing up and away—just as they should be—but I was suddenly a little nostalgic.
And I was also grateful—for something I don’t think I’ve ever before been grateful for. I was thankful for all the driving, the times in the car, the back and forth to this activity and that practice that consumes so much of my life these days.
Usually this is one of the things I hate most about life in suburbia. Twenty-minute drive here, thirty there, another fifteen…
But my kids are captive in the car—right there with me, right there with each other. And we talk about our days and we listen to good books (yay for audio books), and we sing, and we spend time together, and they can’t escape, and I can’t get all busy with housework or writing projects. And when it’s me and just one of the kids, we get quiet, let’s-really-find-out-what’s-going-on time.
Hmm. Maybe there are other things on my “hate” list that I can learn to be thankful for.

Tweet response

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A couple days I tweeted about trust in God and I used the word “converse.”

Val, a good friend who teaches geometry, responded, “Hi friend, I just wanted to comment on your post about the converse statement. Did you mean to say inverse instead? Inverse statements are when you negate both the hypothesis and conclusion. Converses are when you just switch your hypotheses and conclusion but don’t negate. Sorry if I am being nerdy, but love teaching this in geometry.”

Did you understand that?

I messaged back that I need to take her class.

I’ve often marveled at how she LOVES geometry, at how her mind understands concepts that just boggle mine. Judy, one of my international daughters, is in Val’s advanced geometry class. When Judy did her first homework assignment, I took one look and said, “Well, you’re not going to get any help from me in that subject.”

One of the benefits of my job (writing stories for Wheaton Academy’s website and magazine) is that I get to sit in on all kinds of classes and listen to teachers share their passions with students. Just in the last few weeks I’ve watched science students make E. coli bacteria glow (they injected jellyfish genes into it!); history students experience the Depression by standing in a soup line; and theatre students fly—literally!—in this year’s musical, Peter Pan.

As I interview teachers, asking how they came up with their ideas, I’m fascinated by all the different ways they think. The drama teacher dreams in images and themes; the science teacher is fascinated by the interconnectedness of small with big; the history teachers see the cycles of humanity through the ages.

I listen and am amazed at the breadth of knowledge there is just on this planet. There is so much to know—and the more we know, the more we realize we DON’T know—and one human mind can only grasp a very small portion of a very small sliver of it.

And it all comes from our infinite God.

Isn’t that incredible!

Think about the huge amount of knowledge that mankind now knows. Then think about how much is discovered each day—how much will be discovered the next day and the next and the next, each discovery revealing that there is still more to know. Isaiah 55:9, Hebrews 4:13,

Imagine all the “unseen” things that we cannot view with microscopes or telescopes, no matter how high-powered. An entire spiritual realm hovers outside our senses. Ephesians 3:10

Reflect on the ages of recorded human history and the ages before that—when “time” was not measured by the ticking of a clock or the flip of a calendar page but was encompassed in God Himself (as it still is!). Jude 1:25

Have you ever fully known a person—inside and out. For that matter, do you fully know yourself? Think of all the billions of people in this world, each unique in personality. Now remember that there were billions upon billions of people before—each one individual even down to fingerprints. I Chron. 28:9, I Cor. 4:5, I Sam. 16:7

All of this, all of everything, is in God! It came from Him. It has its being in Him. It is sustained by Him.

And He fully understands ALL of it.

Wow!

Are you feeling a little small now?

I am.

Small in the presence of our BIG God.

That’s a good thing.

 

Turn TO

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Judy is 16! Cake by Emily.

Judy is 16! Cake by Emily.

Last week I tried on a pair of jeans I hadn’t worn in several weeks and discovered they were a bit tight. That prompted another thing I hadn’t done in awhile: I stepped on the scale.

It was certainly not the result I was hoping for. (By the way, weight loss is NOT the focus of this blog post.)
I stepped off the scale and thought of the week ahead of me—a week full of baking and sweets for three of my kids’ birthday parties.
Not a good week to try to cut back.
So I came up with a self-control strategy: I would wear those slightly-too-tight jeans to remind me that I needed to resist.
It didn’t work.
In fact, it had the opposite effect: I felt slightly depressed, and chocolate seemed like a good antidote. After scraping brownie batter from the mixing bowl into the pan, I eyed the spatula in my hand and the leftover batter on the sides of the bowl. I shifted my jeans with my free hand and thought dark thoughts, like, “Oh, why not? It’s not like these are ever going to be completely comfortable again.”
Today I went back to wearing my comfy, stretchy jeans.
And I had a complete change in attitude! I felt good, relaxed but also confident. Yes, you CAN say no to that, I told myself when I pulled rolls hot from the oven. You can have an apple instead.
I’ve realized there is a correlation between my tight-jeans strategy and my attitude toward my sinfulness.
I’ve been writing about my sin a lot lately. I find that the closer I grow to Jesus and the more I study Scripture, the more aware I seem to become of my own sinfulness—that it’s not just actions or even thoughts but a selfish focus rooted deep in my core.
I identify with St. Anselm, who said, “My life affrights me. For when carefully reviewed, its whole course shows in my sight like one great sin; or at least it is well-nigh nothing but barrenness. Or, if any fruit is seen in it, that fruit is so false, or so imperfect, or in some way or other so tainted with decay and corruption, that it must needs either fail to satisfy God, or else utterly offend Him.”
I don’t think I would have understood Anselm’s quote as a young believer. I used to think I was okay, not such a bad person, but now I see my faults much more clearly. And I know that as I grow older, my sinfulness will grow even more apparent to me.
I understand that Christ’s death was the once-for-all payment for my sins: past, present, and future, but how do I deal with this growing sense of my sinfulness?
The answer is this: I repent—again and again, like the first of Martin Luther’s 95 theses: “When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said, ‘Repent,’ He called for the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.”
“Repent”: to turn from sin and turn to God. It has TWO parts, but all too often my approach has been like my wearing the too-tight jeans last week: I stay, at least subconsciously, halfway between the two. “Oh, I see that, deep down, I am not patient. I am not kind. I am mean and self-centered, and even my goodness is NOT good—not true GOOD.” I turn from my sinfulness in horror, but I don’t complete the “turning to.” I stay in between in a state of guilt and shame.
It’s not true repentance if only do the first “turn.”
Hudson Taylor, the founder of China Inland Mission, regularly asked his believing friends, “Have you repented today?” Now obviously Taylor was asking if they had done some self-examination, if they had asked the Holy Spirit for conviction. But Taylor didn’t want his friends to stop there. He didn’t want them to mope through their days, laden down with a consciousness of their sin. I know this because I’ve read Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret. It took years of spiritual self-beating for Taylor to realize Christ’s finished work and CLING to the cross as full payment for his shame. He wasn’t about to suggest that his friends go down that same path. No! He knew that wallowing in an acknowledgement of sin is not good! This becomes a denial of Christ’s amazing work.
Taylor wanted them to fully repent: to turn from AND turn TO.
I have several Biblical examples that help me understand complete repentance: Isaiah was “undone” by the contrast between himself and the Holy God; Peter was crushed by the realization that he had denied his beloved Jesus; David wrote, “…my sin is ever before me” after Nathan confronted him with his adultery and murder; and the Prodigal Son said, “I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”
Yet all four were quickly restored. Isaiah’s mouth was touched with a burning coal and moments later he was jumping up and down, saying, “Send me, Lord, send me (to do your work)!” After only a short (though very meaningful) conversation, Jesus restored Peter and charged him: “Feed my sheep.” Three verses after his proclamation of sinfulness, David asked, “Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness… restore to me the joy of Your salvation.” The Prodigal Son’s Father ran to him, embraced him, kissed him, and threw a party in his honor.
Turn from—fast.
Then, turn TO.
And find that GOD is turned to US.
Because of Christ, He has arms wide open, ready to embrace us and draw us into His limitless love.
“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” I John 1:9

Great Eternal Father

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Sometimes my praying is scattered. Some days my thoughts seem to jump and prayer gets lost. Not long ago I had one of those times. I was even using a verse to pray, thinking that would help, but I couldn’t get past the first line: “Great and eternal Father.”
I was about to go down my familiar road of beating myself up for being unable to focus on more, when I understood that “great and eternal Father” was more than enough. Those words—standing for the God they symbolize—gave me all I needed, both that day and forever. So I stuck with them and pinpointed my focus on my GREAT ETERNAL FATHER.
He is GREAT—all-powerful and all-good. My doubts don’t change God’s greatness. I can get hung up on questions or balk sometimes at “hard” passages of Scripture or cry, “Why? I don’t understand!” about injustices and pain, but all these problems—as I will see very, very clearly when my sight is enlightened by Glory—are with my perspective, not with God’s actions or character. Bottom line, He is great and good. No exceptions.
He is eternal. E-TER-NAL. I am fickle. My moods are upset by a headache; my values changed by circumstances; my commitments by my feelings.
He never changes.
He never will.
He is the same yesterday, today and forever. ETERNAL!
FATHER! How amazing that the GREAT, ETERNAL GOD has taken on the role of Father. He calls Himself “father to the fatherless.” He uses the picture of a mother hen who gathers her chicks under her wings to give us insight into Himself. He tells us He sings over us and holds us by the hand. He is immeasurably better than the best earthly father and so different from the worst that the word “father” is a travesty when applied to the human version. He even adds “Abba” (“Daddy”) to his title and gives us the incredible, unbelievable privilege of approaching him as a small child does a good father. In Christ He made the ultimate sacrifice so we could come to Him in this way.
GREAT and ETERNAL FATHER—that is a bedrock for my wavering soul.
DSC_0300

Happy birthday, twins! I can't believe they are 9! As they reminded me, this is their last year in the single digits. NOOOO!

Happy birthday, Jake and Maddie! I can’t believe they are 9! As they reminded me, this is their last year in the single digits. NOOOO!

I want to see

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Bartimaeus the beggar was sitting alongside the road when he heard a great crowd pass by. “Hey,” he asked someone nearby, “what’s going on?”

“It’s Jesus!” they said.

Now Bartimaeus may have been blind, but he was in the know. He had heard of Jesus.

And Bartimaeus had no shame!

I love this about him. He understood his great need, and he let go of inhibitions and the desire to please people.

“He shouted, saying, ‘Jesus, Son of David, take pity and have mercy on me!’

But those who were in front reproved him, telling him to keep quiet; yet he screamed and shrieked so much the more, ‘Son of David, take pity and have mercy on me!’” (Luke 18:38-39, Amplified version)

This past Sunday night our church held its monthly prayer/worship night. Philip, who is from Uganda, led the service. “We must realize how desperate we are for God. Only then will we really seek Him,” he said. “People in my country are desperate because their needs are obvious, as basic as food, medicine, jobs. Great needs and loss surround them. Here in the U.S., we are not so desperate for physical things. But if we want to really follow after God, we have to realize that we are just as desperate spiritually. Then we will seek Him.”

It reminded me of something I heard a pastor from Ghana say. He was asked what advice he would give to U.S. believers. “You have a decision,” he said. “Will you seek God out of desperation or devastation?”

Bartimaeus recognized his desperation. It was easy for him to: he was blind; he was a beggar.

We, too, are desperate. Appearances may testify otherwise, but Scripture tells us that without Christ, we are blind, lost, and imprisoned (Acts 26:18). We are sick and injured (Jeremiah 17:9). We are walking dead—true zombies (Ephesians 2:1).

It just isn’t easy for us to realize this in our culture. If we’re not in a place of being devastated, it’s really easy to forget that we are desperate. We distract ourselves with stuff and activities and media, and our desperation stays hidden.

But when we don’t realize our desperation, we don’t cry out. We politely ask for growth and help. We share requests and sometimes remember to pray for others.

But desperate prayers are different. Bartimaeus is a good example of that. Out of desperation he cried out! More than that, he screamed and shrieked! He was NOT going to let anything keep Jesus from hearing him. Even when the crowd “reproved (him) and told (him) to keep still, … (he) cried out all the more” (Matthew 20:31).

Jesus, of course, answered Bartimaeus’ plea for mercy and pity.

“Then Jesus stood still and ordered that (Bartimaeus) be led to Him; and when he came near, Jesus asked him, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ (Bartimaeus) said, ‘Lord, let me receive my sight!’”

Jesus will answer our pleas, too.

But we have to ask. Really ask. Desperately ask–because Jesus knows our hearts. He knows when we’re simply going through the motions, mouthing prayers, checking devotions off our to-do list.

We MUST recognize our desperation to cry out authentically. Desperation is an absolutely necessary step. All other steps follow it. Again, Bartimaeus serves as an example: out of desperation, he cried out; Jesus met him and healed him; and then Bartimaeus followed Jesus. Jesus told him, “Go your way; your faith has healed you” (Mark 10:52). But because Bartimaeus realized he been saved out of desperation, he saw with greater than physical sight. He knew his way was now with Jesus. “(He) began to follow Jesus, recognizing, praising, and honoring God; and all the people, when they saw it, praised God” (Luke 18:43).

I often want to skip right to the following part and the praising part. I want to be a witness to others.

But an acknowledgement of desperation is a prerequisite for all of it.

God, I need you desperately—and I need to know that I need You.

Help me, please.

I want to see.

The guilt of simply being human

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I'm so thankful for the view out my kitchen window! Beautiful!

I’m so thankful for the view out my kitchen window! Beautiful!

Yesterday, after reading a Facebook message from someone I had unintentionally hurt, my stomach was in knots.

When I shared both the Facebook message and my guilt with my husband, he looked at me in surprise. “Jen, why do you feel guilty? You simply weren’t able to do what he needed. It wasn’t possible.”

But I still wrestled with the feeling of guilt.

The guilt of being merely human.

The guilt of thinking I should be able to do it ALL (in other words, of thinking I am like God [the oldest sin of all]).

The guilt of forgetting that I am completely incapable.

To deal with this kind of guilt, I needed a broader definition of sin than the one that defines it as intentional actions, thoughts, and words that “break the rules.” That is a very limited—and unbiblical—definition of “sin,” and it didn’t help me deal with my Facebook situation.

The New Living Translation of Romans 3:23 defines sin as “(falling) short of God’s glorious standard.”

I fell short with my friend—not because I wanted to, not even because I had another choice, but simply because I had no capability to meet his expectations. I’ve “fallen short” in some other areas as well lately, and, for reasons only God knows, He has made me sit for awhile in the discomfort of my own inadequacy, my own “falling short.” I have tried to mute the message, tried to distract myself with writing and meal prep and people and the radio, but uneasiness has burrowed into my soul, and my thoughts circle constantly around my feeling of guilt.

So this morning I took a long walk in the thick snow at the dog park. Two women were there when I arrived, but they soon left, and I was alone—with my thoughts.

Still wrestling.

Round I walked, breaking through the snow crust, doing battle in my mind, swinging like a pendulum from excuses to accusations.

On the third lap, I stopped. “God,” I said, “I want to prove myself right in this situation. I want to ‘feel’ right. And I have been doing a whole lot of talking in my own head trying to figure this out. But I can’t–because I’m not capable. I fall short—both of a complete understanding of this situation AND of any ability to fix it. I am only human. Help me to see myself—and then see YOU—as I should.”

“Please, God, I need You!”

Then, finally, rest came. I could admit my own inability, my own “falling short.” And I could glory in the fact that the God who loves me has NO limitations. He is not bound by time. His strength is unlimited. He does not run out of energy or patience or goodness. He never forgets, not ever. He never fails—not at anything He does.

He IS the glorious standard.

And He is fully aware that there is no way I can reach His standard. In fact, I think He gets tired of my thinking I can.

So when I let go of trying to reach His standard on my own, I see HIM and His grace far better.

And I am awed by the Glory!

I continued my walk, joyous now, rejoicing in the beauty, and just before I left I did what I could not have imagined doing twenty minutes earlier.

I fell back into an untouched patch of snow, gazed up at the tops of the trees, and made a snow angel!

Addicted, part 2

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A few years ago I shared my “mixed bag” with a wise friend of mine. “Sometimes I hate the public side of writing because it reveals a twisted darkness deep inside me,” I told her.

I thought she would be shocked. I thought she might say to stop blogging.

She wasn’t and she didn’t. “Of course it does,” she said. Then she shared her view with me, that often the very ways God gifts us—the very things He calls us to do—have purpose within us as well as without, and often the “within” purpose is to reveal and begin pulling out deep roots of sin.

“It’s a little like the parable of the wheat and the tares,” she said, “though it’s clear in Scripture they’re symbols for people. But I think they can also symbolize our motives. Some are pure, coming from the Holy Spirit. But others are straight from our own selfish hearts. When we use the gifts God gives us, we will see both.”

“The ‘tares’ I discover in my heart make me want to quit writing,” I told her. “Sometimes I think it would be safer just not to do it—or at least not to publish it.”

“But that’s exactly what you should NOT do,” she said. “We will never have pure motives for any ‘good’ we do this side of heaven. It’s far better to have our sin revealed to us than to be safe and leave it hidden. We can’t deal with it until it’s out. We have to trust that God will not only reveal the sins but will also pull them out AND He will work good through our trusting Him and pursuing Him with our gifts.”

So the answer for how to “not become engrossed with things of this world” is NOT to quit using them. If that were true, we would have no believers in business or marketing or the fashion industry or law or coaching or…

No, many, perhaps most believers are called to use the things of this world AND not become engrossed in them. Many are called to wrestle constantly with the tension.

And to let the tension pull us ever closer to Jesus.

Because in this tension, we see our need;

we see His sufficiency;

and we fall deeper in love with Him.

 

“This high priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for He faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin.” Hebrews 4:15 (NLT)

 

 

Addicted

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I blog my “thoughts” a couple times a week, and I recently started tweeting—since all the agents and publishers say that’s a “must” for any writers who are trying to get a book published. Those same agents/publishers say writers should check their blog and Twitter accounts a couple times a day.

Okay. Can do.

But I’m finding that this creates a tension in my soul, one that reflects the difficult “be in the world but not of the world” paradox in Scripture. I am using Twitter and the internet to, I hope, help others draw closer to Christ, but the stats and the publicity of it often draw my own focus onto ME.

In I Corinthians 7, Paul refers to a “crisis” in his time and gives advice related to that crisis. Some of the advice was specific to crises (such as not marrying), but Paul’s overall point is applicable to all times: to let nothing distract us from living fully devoted to Christ. Right in the middle of the passage, there is an interesting phrase that I am pondering in relation to blogging/Tweeting/social media: “(those of you) who use the things of this world, (live) as if not engrossed in them, for this world in its present form is passing away” (NIV).

I DO use “things of this world,” things that will “soon pass away.” So how do I use them without becoming engrossed in or attached to them?

I am not alone in this struggle (and that alone is encouraging). A few years back I heard a chapel speaker admit that shortly after his first book was published, he became addicted to the book’s selling statistics. He found himself checking these stats dozens of times a day. He shared this with a friend, and the friend partnered with him on a short-term “fast” from his own book media.

It’s very easy—actually, it’s natural—for us to become engrossed in the things we use in this world.

Because even though we have a new nature and the Holy Spirit, we still have that old nature that feels very much at home here.

When I check my blog and find that I have a new follower, there is one part of me that gets excited for all the right reasons.

But underneath that good reaction is a selfish one, the one that believes I become more valuable when more people like my writing.

I’m a mixed bag of pure and impure, and my use of social media often reveals that to me.

And perhaps that’s not a bad thing.

TO BE CONTINUED TOMORROW: I am trying to cut down the length of my blog posts, so I split this post into two parts. I’ll post part two tomorrow, Monday. If you have any comments on how this tension plays a part in your own life, I would love to read them.

Thanks,

Jen

Childlike Joy

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My biggest mess maker is also my most willing helper! Here's my PJ all decked out in his army gear.

My biggest mess maker is also my most willing helper! Here’s my PJ all decked out in his army gear.

I’ve done a lot of mama-fussin’ lately. Laundry, messy floors, dirty dishes, and stuff, stuff, stuff in the wrong-wrong spots!

Do any of you fall into the same trap? Frustrated over messes that are created by some of our very best gifts from God?

It’s one of my recurring sins. And every time I think I’ve found some freedom from it, I go through another bout of it.

Each time I’m learning the same BIG lesson: that I’m incapable of loving my kids the way I want to without God—and I mean, completely incapable—but He is oh, so eager to help me. (“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” Ps. 46:1)

But each time God also has different lessons to teach me.

Tonight it was straight from the book of Mark.

I was reading Wonderstruck by Margaret Feinberg, and she was writing about the Mark account of Jesus and the little children. Christ had just spoken about the beautiful mystery of marriage, and then mothers and fathers brought their most precious “possessions” to Him for blessing. Feinberg paraphrased what Jesus said next: “The kingdom of God belongs to those who maintain childlike receptivity. Those who refuse to receive the kingdom of God like a child will miss it entirely.”

Be a child with Me. It was like the Holy Spirit whispered the words inside my head, taking Feinberg’s words and applying them directly to my situation of the moment.

Stop feeling the weight of being the grown-up, the one who has to notice all the messes, who has to be responsible for the cleaning and the cooking and the organizing and the schedules…

It was a new lesson. There have certainly been times when I’ve been reminded to BE the grown-up: Don’t sink to the level of the child. You don’t have to argue simply because they are being illogical. You are the MOM. I’ve given you this responsibility.

There have been other times when my view of  “mundane” tasks has been challenged. (Brother Lawrence has been a huge help in this area with his dishwashing example and his mantra: It’s all worship.) No one else will notice that I cleaned the bathroom (unless I didn’t do it for a really long time), but if I’m doing it for the Lord rather than for people—then it’s worship!

And there have been lessons about looking to Jesus. “Don’t become weary. Consider Jesus and what He endured.” That certainly puts things in perspective.

But those weren’t the lessons this night. I had something new to learn.

Be a child with Me!

Into my mind flashed pictures of my children at that age of toddlerhood when being Mommy’s little helper was a privilege and a joy. A rag, a bucket, and a request: “Want to clean the kitchen floor?” was a highlight. There was no heaviness to the task; there was a thrill of getting to do “mommy’s work,” of working alongside MOMMY!

Wow! That’s a new way to see homemaking! (or any task we find wearying or repetitive).

I am working alongside God to make a home and a family!

HE carries the responsibility. HE keeps track of what should be done first and then next and last.

And I simply get the joy of being His child!