Some Things That Bring Me Joy

-Hearing my children sing hymns together

-Watching Christian run up to Eliana for a hug after school

-Serving them homemade chocolate chip cookies

-Eating homemade chocolate chip cookies

-Listening to the kids laugh, and scream, and laugh, and play outside

-The Chronicles of Narnia

-Math

-Just kidding about that last one

Personal

What a joy it is to know that God is so involved in our lives, and orchestrates the smallest things, so that we can know even more, be even surer of his presence, his activity, his very personal attention to us.  It is true from me stopping at Sam's on a whim and picking up a truckload (or small van load) of meat and other food so that I was prepared (completely uncharacteristically) for a spontaneous dinner with some friends, to the devotion that I did with Michaela tonight which spoke to my fears about germs.  Seriously.  What is really amazing is how pointed it was to me that God was in it all. 

When the kids shouted out that we should have dinner together and we went downstairs to start that dinner (me and the other mom) she said,"Are you sure you have enough food?"  I opened the fridge and pulled out the three pounds of ground beef I had just bought, pointed out the bag of salad that was in there (that usually is NOT), and then she noticed the six loaves of whole grain baguette-type bread that I had purchased today.  Dinner was not a problem.  I even had a gallon of Breyers ice cream and homemade chocolate chip cookies, left over.  I mean, come on!  Left over?!  That just doesn't happen.  (With the cookies, not the gallon of ice cream.)

Now.  I have issues, right?  This is pretty common knowledge.  But my issues make it hard for me to do things like have impromptu dinners with guests.  I have a hard time being hospitable because of my stupid germ thing.  I was having some anxiety later in the evening (when getting my kids to bed), and was very irritable, because I was mad at myself for robbing my own self of my joy, the joy of having friends over, of doing life in a way that felt like community.  (It felt a bit like when we lived in Princeton.) 

Background info:  the devotions Michaela and I are doing are in a book which you are supposed to start on January 1st and do each day throughout the year.  We started late, on February 13th; since we did that our plan was to do two each day until we caught up to the day that we started.  So, on the 13th of February we did January 1st as well.  I can't tell you how many times even the make-up devotions have been EXACTLY what I myself needed to read and hear.  IT HAS BEEN WEIRD.  In a great, God-is-so-here-in-my-life kind of way.  Tonight was just like that.  The first devotion we did was from February 5th, our make-up devo for the day.  It was called...are you ready for this?!  "The Grumpy Germ". 

Are you laughing?  "The Grumpy Germ". 

The Scripture was from Exodus and Numbers, the parts where the Israelites complain to Moses; first about being led out of Egypt to die in the desert.  God sends quail and manna.  Then they complain about the manna!  The lesson pointed out that complaining is like a germ, it's contagious.  But being thankful can help wash that grumpy germ away.  Goodness, this is all so...tied together, even with the book I spoke about previously (One Thousand Gifts).  The lesson for me was three-fold.  My grumpiness was just as contagious as the Israelites', and just like a germ, that attitude spreads from person to person quickly.  But germs can be washed away, the grumpy germ just like the germs we spread with our hands...when we thank God we exchange grumpy for grateful.  One of the things that Ann Voskamp says over and over and again in One Thousand Gifts is that thankfulness, deliberately thanking God for all of the blessings in our lives, naming them each one up to a thousand and then more, will transform a life.  It will wash away the grump, the grumbling, the selfishness and the ungratefulness.  With thanks comes joy. 

God knew when we started the devotionals, even with the doubling up of the days, that on this day we would get to February 5th and it would be just the thing I needed to hear.  (Don't be a smarty-pants and think,"Well, any day would be a day when that would be the thing you need to hear,"!)  (I know that's what you're thinking...'cause I thought it too!)  The realization of his providence, how intricately he weaves things, has come again and again, and it always makes me full of wonder.  Silly me. 

Then again, I hope I keep the wonder.  God is wonderful.  May we be wonder-full.

Reflections - Ann Voskamp One Thousand Gifts

Losing is certain.  What does that mean as I live the Christian life?  What do I think of God's grace, when good things come and when bad things come?  Through celebrations or through tragedies?  I don't believe that we can or should always just say,"We have the hope of eternity!" and get on with it.  Of course, we do have that hope, but we also have the promise that when God says he saves us it starts now, not after our bodies die, nor just after the second coming of Christ.  We have new life now.  Even though we still live in this fallen and broken world, where so many things happen that don't make any sense, or that kind of make sense but hurt anyway.  Whether it's the death of a child because of accident or illness, or the death of a beloved grandparent after a very long and wonderful life...there is pain in it.  When someone loses a job, or makes a bad choice and ends up in trouble with the law, or even just does a naughty thing and writes on the wall that her daddy just painted for her sister (guess who?)...those things cause heartache or hurt another person. 

We lose.  We gain.  We lose loved ones.  We lose money.  We lose homes, clothes, precious possessions...think of the fires, flooding, or robberies that unfairly and unexpectedly steal not only material belongings but joy that comes from having furniture or jewelry or even photographs or journals from mothers, fathers, grandparents, and further back.  We gain perspective.  We gain a sense of the futility of holding on to things.  We gain an awareness of our own mortality.

We know and we learn that we ought not hold tightly to the things around us that we can see and grasp in our hands.  Our eyes must instead be focused on God and our hands must be stretched towards him, clinging to his words, his promises.  That must be more than a nice sounding, platitudinal sentiment that we can flip out any old time in any circumstance no matter what.  What does it look like?  How does that look in a life?

Ann Voskamp writes of thanking, seeing, trusting.  I am learning.  There is a lot to learn.  I'll be thinking and writing more.

"Mommy"

Becoming a mommy is not the same as becoming a mother.  I have been a mother for a while now.  Not long enough to be very good at it, for sure.  But long enough to know some things.  Just some.  There are so many moments, during so many circumstances that I want to burst into tears because I do not know the right thing to do.  It could be something as insignificant as,"Should they play on the computer while I get dinner ready?" or something that carries a bit more weight like,"How do I respond to such disrespect or flagrant disobedience...punishment or mercy?  Or can I do both?"

The transition from anticipating being a mom to the reality of being a mom for the first time is quite shocking.  Maybe for some it comes very naturally, but this was not my experience.  It was hard work!  It was all-day-and-all-night work.  It was spit-up and blow-out diapers and really sore nipples work. 

Then there were the smiles and the coos...oh, how happy those things were!  Those sweet looks, those eyes that were just for me.  Michaela was delightful, and she brought joy to everyone around her.  She became a big sister with the greatest of ease.  She made it easy for me to become the mother of two.  And since I had done this before, the difficulties weren't so great with Christian, when he was a baby.

Time passed, and there were many changes.  We left friends in a seminary community; we lived in a place where I didn't know many and the few that I knew I didn't feel very connected with; for a while I was exercising but then I had two miscarriages so I stopped exercising and haven't started again; we moved again, had another baby, moved again, lost another baby, moved again.  For years I worked hard at something that I don't even think I was aware of doing...distancing myself from others, especially my family.  I had a job as a homemaker but I didn't show up to work.  I was busy with something else, something inside myself, all about myself. 

One of my favorite bloggers is Miz Booshay.  She is a wonderful, lovely, Christian woman who is always encouraging, says simple and profound things, and takes beautiful pictures.  Just recently on her blog she wrote:

I know I have a lot of fulfilling to do. I do not believe I have arrived.
I have joy in my heart and I'm pretty sure that means I am on the right path. 
I feel so sure that I was created to love others.
Perhaps it becomes clearer when I realize how miserable I am when I love myself most.
Isn't it funny how that works?

I was really struck with the intense truth of these words.  I read them just after my, well, what we have been calling my resurrection around here.  It is very true...loving one's self the most leads to a great deal of misery.

So, I struggled for a while with this job.  I wondered what God was thinking when he made me a mom.  Like Eve, I looked for someone else to blame for what seemed like a mess...this situation in which I found myself.  Like Adam, I sought to tell God this was his fault.  I was looking at myself instead of at the three small miracles that had been, literally, handed to me, from my very own body.  Instead of looking at myself in them, and at the three very unique persons which were a blend of myself and my husband.

Just recently I have taken on, or been given, fresh eyes to see what is before me.  Some days are easier than others...at times it seems like I have put on very old glasses foolishly thinking that they will help my vision, when in fact, they blur and darken things.  But when my fresh eyes are open wide and clear then what I see is beautiful.  Oh, they still fight, and disobey, and do naughty things.  But when they smile!  Or when they sing!  Or when they tell me they love me and give me an unsolicited hug!  What treasures I get to store in my heart!

Tonight I was reading a book that my good friend Missy sent me.  I'll tell you about it when I'm done.  I was reading this book in a quiet house, the dishwasher was swishing water in the background, but all else was still.  Suddenly I heard a very, very quiet,"Mommy."  It was such a faint whisper, that I wasn't even sure I actually heard anything at all.  Then again,"Mommy."  I looked to the top of the first flight of our stairs and saw in the shadow there Eliana, standing with her head leaning against the slats that form the railing, holding her little white doggy in the crook of her arm.  Her hair hung, a bit straggly, in front of her face, looking wild and sweaty.  She just stood there as I came over to the steps, and as I neared the top of the stairs she held her arms out to me. 

Mommy.  That is me.  That is who I am becoming.  And there is joy in it.

The Lion is Near

For a while now I have been thinking of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, for obvious reasons.  The part about Eustace becoming a dragon and then being un-dragoned has always been one of my very favorite parts of the entire series of Narnia books, and now has a particularly special place in my heart.  So, I began reading the book a couple of nights ago (and I am forcing myself not to read the whole thing in one sitting, which I did when Michaela was a baby and I sat up in the bed while she slept next to me...I was just waiting for her to wake up and nurse) and I love that I can read something that I have read so many times before and get something new out of it.

One of their adventures while on this journey eastward happens on an island which is inhabited by invisible people (or creatures).  The invisibles ask a favor of Lucy; they want her to say a spell to make them visible again.  The only person who can say the spell is a girl or the magician who lives there...they can't see him (they made themselves invisible long ago, and him too, as far as they can tell).  So, Lucy goes to find the spell in the great book, in the room that the invisible creatures have told her about.  She flips through the book of spells page by page, intrigued by the beauty of the book, as well as by some of the spells.  One of them is an incantation which will make the one who utters it beautiful "beyond the lot of mortals".  She can see by the pictures (for each spell is illustrated) what would happen if she herself (for she is actually, magically of course, in the pictures) uttered these powerful words.  The end result wasn't pretty.  She was beautiful beyond all others, but the destruction it caused (both in the world and in relationships) was terrible. In spite of the horrible pictures, the beauty of her own face caused her to be determined to say the spell.  However when she returned to the beginning of the page in order to do so, she noticed the face of a lion, the Lion, which she was sure was not there before.  He was roaring, and so frightfully that she immediately turned the page.  

She continues through the book, and finally gets to the spell for making hidden things visible.  She quickly says it, and as soon as the words are out of her mouth the page before her, blank except for the words of the spell, began to be full of colors and pictures.  She imagines that she must have made not only the invisible creatures that asked her to come up to that place visible, but all manner of things that had been invisible.  She hears soft footsteps behind her (her back was to the open door...that is how the book was, and there was nothing she could do about it), turns around, and,"her face lit up till, for a moment (but of course she didn't know it), she looked almost as beautiful as that other Lucy in the picture," for when she turned she saw Aslan the Lion there with her.  She says to him,"Oh, Aslan...it was kind of you to come."

"I have been here all the time," he replies,"but you have just made me visible."

When I read the part about her turning from the book and lighting up, and being almost as beautiful as the other Lucy, I immediately got tears in my eyes.  When we look to our Lord Jesus Christ (Aslan is a Jesus figure in these stories), when our focus is on him and him alone, we are filled with all that we need.  His light fills us up, till we ourselves light up and shine for him.  And in that light lies a beauty that transends physical beauty...it is the beauty of knowing the love of God. 

My favorite part is the phrase "but of course she didn't know it".  When we are paying attention to the triune God, then we will not be so self-absorbed, so conscious of our appearance.  May it be so.

I also love that he tells her that he has been there all along, she just made him visible.  She says to him not to make fun of her, but he tells her that her spell did make him visible...he obeys his own rules (he is King of everything in this world).  I think that is true with us.  God is with us all the time.  We may just not see him.  But when our eyes are opened, we see that he is right beside us, closer than we ever could have imagined.  Praise him for his love and for his steadfastness.