Is it just me, or do any other moms out there feel like all of the choices and recommendations and guides make our lives harder rather than easier sometimes? I mean it started for me before my firstborn was out of the womb! I remember standing in Buy Buy Baby looking at the pacifier options and saying out loud, "Are you kidding me?"! There were so many different brands and styles and within each brand there were too many options of color and patterns. They all had packaging that claimed why their choice was the best. There were different "sizes" based on the age of the baby, and some had a dentist recommendation. I really just wanted to pick one that came in yellow to match my nursery choice at the time. It's a pacifier for crying out loud!
Another time the choice bus ran me over was when I was looking for a Mother's Day Out program. I thought I could just call a few churches nearby and see what the cost was and the hours. I had no idea there would be tours, applications, every possible combination of days and hours of availability. People were talking to me about parents camping out or lining up before dawn to get the open spots and not end up on the waitlist. Camping out? These aren't concert tickets! Waitlist? This isn't the Ivy League. We are talking about Mother's Day Out. I just wanted my 3 year old to have a place to color, play, sing songs and make friends. Suddenly I was making pro/con lists and comparison charts and losing sleep.
The problem with all of these choices and recommendations and guides is every little decision gets elevated to DEFCON 1 status. As moms, we are often making what should be minor decisions, but we can get psyched out and start to believe that choosing the wrong lovey will cripple our child's ability to be a good spouse in the future. Y'all, we have got to stop allowing these things to mess with our heads, and I do mean we because I have to stop freaking out right along with you!
It starts with us remembering what is really important. As mothers and Christ-followers, our number one job when it comes to our children is to lead them to a relationship with Jesus Christ. That's the main thing. We want to expose our children to God's goodness, love and truth. The future that matters most is their eternal future. As you are making day to day or even moment to moment decisions, discern what only matters in the moment and what will matter for eternity. The momentary things don't need as much of your energy, attention, or time in thought.
Once you get your perspective right, remember that you are the person God chose to be mama to your children. However you got your kids--birth, adoption, surrogacy or stork--they are yours! God chose you to receive them. Our children belong to Him first, so the very fact that the Creator of the universe has trusted us with these children, should give us confidence. We can be confident that God will also give us the wisdom and discernment to make good choices for our kids. Will we make mistakes sometimes? YES! However, we will also recover from those mistakes with His help and, ladies, we get a lot more right than we tend to give ourselves credit for on a daily basis.
As Mother's Day approaches, I want to encourage you (and me) to live with the confidence that comes from knowing Christ and having His loving guidance in your life. You have the Holy Spirit dwelling in you, purifying your heart, offering counsel and comfort, and even praying for you. He is advocating for you as a mama too! When you are next hit with one of those DEFCON moments of motherhood, stop and pray. Ask Him to give you peace and calm. Read God's word and be reminded of what matters most, so you can approach your situation with the mind of Christ. Be confident that the same God who made you a mom, is providing you with all of the resources and wisdom you need to raise your children in a way that pleases Him. Motherhood was meant to bless us and grow us, not trip us up and take us down. I'm just sayin'!
In an effort to help all of us live more confidently, I created Confidence in Christ cards, a collection of a dozen cards each with a Bible verse and words of encouragement. You can carry them with you in your purse, keep them on your desk at work, put them on the wall above the changing table, in your kitchen window above the sink while you do dishes, or anywhere you'll see them regularly. Use them to help you memorize scripture and plant God's word in your heart so that it can strengthen you and build your confidence day by day. Get a pack for yourself or for a friend who you know could use the encouragement!
Sunday, April 22, 2018
Monday, February 19, 2018
Good Grief
Grief is a reality of life. Whether it's the loss of a loved one, a relationship ending, the death of a dream, or the end of a season of life, we are faced with grief over and over again. The sadness can be overwhelming; the weight of grief can feel suffocating. Grief can come and go in waves, so that just when you feel you've come out of it, some small thing can trigger your grief and send you right back into the fog of it again. I have experienced grief in many different ways through various seasons of my life and the one constant I can attest to is the fact that grief can't be put into a box. Yes there are stages of grief, but they are not necessarily linear. You can bounce back and forth from one stage to another. I have often wondered if the hard to pin down, seemingly chaotic nature of grief is the result of the "chaos" that our world was thrown into when sin entered the world, and the perfect creation that God spoke into existence became twisted and damaged by sin and death. Whatever the reason behind the roller coaster ride that is grief, I have learned some things from my grief experiences about how God will carry you through it, and how you can navigate through it if not with ease, then hopefully with a little more grace for yourself.
1. Let yourself grieve, no matter how recent or distant the loss.
The most ridiculous thing I think we do to ourselves in grief, is set some arbitrary limit on how long or how much we "should" grieve. Loss hurts! If your marriage just ended, your sister just died, or you were just fired from your dream job, you experienced a loss, and you are going to feel the pain and sorrow that comes with that loss. Don't measure your loss against another's loss. Your miscarriage is not less sorrowful than her spouse dying. All loss is loss and your hurt, hurts you. God himself assured us in His word, that there is a time to grieve.
"There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens: ...A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance." Ecclesiates 3:1,4 (NIV)
When sorrow hits you, don't try to block it out or "suck it up". Instead go ahead and allow yourself to feel the sadness and loss. My grandmother died over 20 years ago and I still have random moments when the sadness hits me all over again, and I cry. I miss her. That's absolutely okay. You miss the ones you love when they are gone and there is nothing wrong or shameful about that.
2. Take your sorrow to God.
There is no one more qualified to comfort you in your grief than God. He knows you are hurting and He is waiting for you to bring your pain to Him, as He wants you to bring everything to Him because He is your Lord. He understands grief because He has grieved Himself. Your grief is not a lack of faith nor is it a contradiction to the joy and peace that comes with knowing the Savior. Just this fall, we experienced our fifth miscarriage. I can tell you that it is absolutely possible to be heartbroken and thankful all at the same time. My sweet little family of four spent Thanksgiving day together in sweatpants as I waited for the child in my womb to pass from my body, having learned just days before that the heart had stopped beating. As I cooked our holiday meal I listened to my husband and my two living children giggle as they made gingerbread ornaments and my heart swelled with joy even as my eyes filled with tears of sorrow. Our grief is not an affront to God's faithfulness, but a reminder that we live in a fallen world that can bring us moments of happiness, but will never be the fulfillment of the hope we cling to. The perfect life will only come with the Savior's return.
I spoke and prayed my grief to the Lord even as I thanked Him for all that I do have. I cried out to Him and allowed the Comforter to do what only He can.
"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ."
2 Corinthians 1:3-5 (NIV)
3. Know that your grief has purpose.
I'm not saying it makes it better instantly, but there is something precious about knowing that as I grieve, God will use my loss for His purpose. Just as the verse above stated, we are comforted in our grief so that we can comfort others. I have been the one passing on comfort, and I have been on the receiving end of someone else's comfort, and I can tell you that both bring me a little more peace. When I opened my mailbox this fall and received a card and a charm acknowledging the life I had miscarried this fall from a friend who was walking through her own miscarriage at the same time, I marveled at the goodness of God. She'd heard from a mutual friend of my loss, and when she could have rightly been curled up in her own grief, instead she extended love and comfort to me. She reached out and loved on me, which reminded me to look outside myself and my grief and see who around me was hurting. There is an amazing thing that happens when we let our grief remind us of others hurting around us. We begin to look more like the kingdom of God!
The greatest news I have for us all is that there will be no grief in eternity with God, but in the meantime, it is my prayer that we will all find comfort, purpose, and increased compassion for others in the midst of the grief we will all experience in the here and now. My prayer is that we can all find the little bits of good in our grief.
1. Let yourself grieve, no matter how recent or distant the loss.
The most ridiculous thing I think we do to ourselves in grief, is set some arbitrary limit on how long or how much we "should" grieve. Loss hurts! If your marriage just ended, your sister just died, or you were just fired from your dream job, you experienced a loss, and you are going to feel the pain and sorrow that comes with that loss. Don't measure your loss against another's loss. Your miscarriage is not less sorrowful than her spouse dying. All loss is loss and your hurt, hurts you. God himself assured us in His word, that there is a time to grieve.
"There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens: ...A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance." Ecclesiates 3:1,4 (NIV)
When sorrow hits you, don't try to block it out or "suck it up". Instead go ahead and allow yourself to feel the sadness and loss. My grandmother died over 20 years ago and I still have random moments when the sadness hits me all over again, and I cry. I miss her. That's absolutely okay. You miss the ones you love when they are gone and there is nothing wrong or shameful about that.
2. Take your sorrow to God.
There is no one more qualified to comfort you in your grief than God. He knows you are hurting and He is waiting for you to bring your pain to Him, as He wants you to bring everything to Him because He is your Lord. He understands grief because He has grieved Himself. Your grief is not a lack of faith nor is it a contradiction to the joy and peace that comes with knowing the Savior. Just this fall, we experienced our fifth miscarriage. I can tell you that it is absolutely possible to be heartbroken and thankful all at the same time. My sweet little family of four spent Thanksgiving day together in sweatpants as I waited for the child in my womb to pass from my body, having learned just days before that the heart had stopped beating. As I cooked our holiday meal I listened to my husband and my two living children giggle as they made gingerbread ornaments and my heart swelled with joy even as my eyes filled with tears of sorrow. Our grief is not an affront to God's faithfulness, but a reminder that we live in a fallen world that can bring us moments of happiness, but will never be the fulfillment of the hope we cling to. The perfect life will only come with the Savior's return.
I spoke and prayed my grief to the Lord even as I thanked Him for all that I do have. I cried out to Him and allowed the Comforter to do what only He can.
"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ."
2 Corinthians 1:3-5 (NIV)
3. Know that your grief has purpose.
I'm not saying it makes it better instantly, but there is something precious about knowing that as I grieve, God will use my loss for His purpose. Just as the verse above stated, we are comforted in our grief so that we can comfort others. I have been the one passing on comfort, and I have been on the receiving end of someone else's comfort, and I can tell you that both bring me a little more peace. When I opened my mailbox this fall and received a card and a charm acknowledging the life I had miscarried this fall from a friend who was walking through her own miscarriage at the same time, I marveled at the goodness of God. She'd heard from a mutual friend of my loss, and when she could have rightly been curled up in her own grief, instead she extended love and comfort to me. She reached out and loved on me, which reminded me to look outside myself and my grief and see who around me was hurting. There is an amazing thing that happens when we let our grief remind us of others hurting around us. We begin to look more like the kingdom of God!
The greatest news I have for us all is that there will be no grief in eternity with God, but in the meantime, it is my prayer that we will all find comfort, purpose, and increased compassion for others in the midst of the grief we will all experience in the here and now. My prayer is that we can all find the little bits of good in our grief.
Thursday, February 8, 2018
He Delights in You!
One of the things I know I can say to someone and have a good chance of being on the receiving end of a crazy face, is to tell them that the God of the universe delights in them. Yep. I say those words and as often as not, I can see the eyes in front of me glaze over as the person begins to wonder what other signs of insanity I may have been showing recently.
The fact of the matter is, many of us have a hard time believing that the all-powerful God finds anything delightful about us. We look in the mirror daily and list out our faults and flaws. Some of us make a full time job of displaying an image that will cover the truth of who we really are, because we find something lacking in ourselves.
When I had no belief in God as an active, loving creator, when I just saw Him as a distant "man upstairs", I certainly couldn't imagine him having any real interest in me, never mind taking personal delight in me, so you can imagine my surprise when I began to understand that the almighty God loved me, knew me by name, knows the number of hairs on my head (and with my hair, that number changes daily), and cared about me even at my absolute worst, so very much that He sent His own precious and perfect son to die for me.
Even when I accepted God's love, and believed that Jesus Christ had died for my sins, I still hadn't really taken hold of the idea that God delighted in me. At least I did not until a beautiful woman of God who was walking me and a handful of ladies through a study to help us heal and recover from the heartache of our past abortions, shared these words with me, words from God's own word:
"The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you but will rejoice over you with singing." Zephaniah 3:17 (NIV)
Suddenly, I didn't just have the word delight baffling me, but I had an image that I could truly relate to and understand. He [GOD] "will rejoice over you with singing". Y'all, we are talking about the kind of delight and love that causes you to burst into song. As a lifetime lover of musicals, I suddenly got it. This is the show stopping song that comes in a musical when something amazing happens! This is Gene Kelly splashing in puddles belting out "Singing in the Rain". This is Annie tapping with the household staff to "I Think I'm Gonna Like it Here". This is Eliza spotting Alexander across the room and declaring she's "Helpless"! This is the kind of joy and delight that leads to an expression through song because words are not enough, and this is the God of the Universe singing over you and me!
And here is the best part. You don't have to understand why He loves you. You don't have to think you deserve His delight. You don't even have to do a single thing to earn it. In fact, you can't earn it. You and I are on the receiving end of the gracious and merciful love and delight of God the Father. All you have to do is open up your heart to the Savior, trust in Him and receive it. Once you receive it, feel free to hum along to His song and dance a little too. I know I will. I'm just sayin'!
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