Posts Tagged "thankfullness"

On Love and Respect and All the Hard Things

Posted in Home Life, marriage | 5 comments

I don’t think marriage is supposed to be easy.

It seems that most things worth doing are hard, they require thought and sacrifice, they spend you to the last ounce of energy and the reward is great because of the effort.

Paul says it’s a  picture of Christ and the church, of uncontainable love poured out and lavished on the somewhat unwilling.  Of submission and trust and respect for that loving authority.

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. … Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, – Eph 5:22, 25 NKJV

Loving me as Christ loved the church must be tough. 

I think submission is hard sometimes, but to love the unlovely, the crabby, grumpy, unthankful,  and mumbling?  The pony-tailed and sweaty?

And to love me not only in the way that makes me feel loved, with flowers or chocolate or date-nights or spontaneous house-cleaning.  Or built-in book shelves.

To love me the way I need it, too.   The way I sometimes don’t want  it.

Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church.

Loving me by telling me no sometimes, telling me to wait, to be patient.

Or telling me, for my own good, to do those hard things.  You love me like that, and I’m the better for it.

You love me enough to tell me what I don’t want but desperately need to hear.  You’ve never said it quite like this, but you could: “Put your big girl panties on and deal with it.”

Yep.  You married a silly, selfish girl.  Did you know that?   Did you know that loving me like Christ loved the church would be such a sacrifice?

You sure do it well.  You are gentle with me and patient, and I just want to thank you.  Thank you for being like Christ and loving the unlovely.  For sacrificing and  cherishing and nurturing.

Like iron sharpens iron, we bristle and grate sometimes on our way to sanctification.  But what joy in this marriage!  How blessed I am to share life with you.

Thank you.

And that part at the end of Ephesians 5, about wives respecting their husbands?

A man leaves early every morning and sweats and toils, tapes up bleeding fingers and makes beauty out of wood and nails.  He gets up 6 days of the week with an alarm, eats thousands of sandwiches over the years without complaining, counsels, teaches, builds, fixes,  reads stories, preaches to the unreached, runs miles and miles with his slow wife, and sometimes makes pancakes for his family or does the dishes.

Respect almost seems like an understatement.  Couldn’t there be a bigger word?  You deserve more than I give, but I hope, pray, yearn for you to know that I do. 

I do respect you.

You are amazing, for so many more things than I can list here.  

You are amazing when you smile at the end of a hard day and when you play that game of checkers or Linkology.  You are amazing when you laugh at my silly-woman-who-needs-to-get-out-more humor, when you read my words and think I’m something special.

My encourager, my gentle leader, my strong-man and my teacher.  My crush and my best friend.

Thank you.

{Edited and re-posted from the archives}

Linking up with Emily at Imperfect Prose, and Crystal at Thriving Thursdays

How Babies Make You Forget, and Remember

Posted in Parenting | 16 comments

There was a time when I didn’t think I wanted kids.  I had decided that other people could give birth and populate the earth, I was just-fine-thank-you and didn’t really need to experience that whole labor thing.

I’d raise horses. Or dogs.

Of course, I was ten years old and had just witnessed the birth of my sister. I don’t really know what  my mom was thinking and maybe she never hoped to have grandkids, but it was a bit much for me to grasp.

I still don’t understand why people describe child-birth with words like ‘beautiful’ or ‘exhilarating’. Messy, painful, shameless and loud seem more appropriate.

Yes, a new baby is amazing.

Yes, bringing life into the world is a God-honored gift.

Yes, most near death experiences draw us closer to God, but the whole thing was enough to make me relish the idea of a childless adulthood.

But like I said, I was ten.

Shortly after I turned twenty I was married, and a year or so later I was working at a child-care center. With the babies and toddlers.

And I can’t tell you, probably don’t need to tell you, what little-girls-named-Lauren who say “peach-es” and little-boys-named-Logan who wear Baby Gap, do to a young newlywed.

Can’t even describe it.

Nevermind the contagious biting or the tantrum epidemic. Forget about the flying toys and flinging raviolis. I. was. smitten. And no amount of birth-related-horror-stories could dissuade me.

I had to have one. Then two. Then three in three years. My dad threatened to buy us a television.

And they say that a mother forgets all the pain of labor as soon as she sees that newborn baby. I’ve forgotten a lot of things, but not the pain of childbirth.

But bringing home a newborn, being exempt from all other cares of the world, and being someone’s mother, those are moments worth pain and tearing and breaking.

Those are heaven-filled moments, and I get it now.

I am a step-mom, an adoptive mom, a frazzled, short-tempered and scatter-brained mom. I am mom with four m’s and six o’s. With kids who now look down at her. Mom who reminds and who laughs and who messes up daily, in plain view of the ones she wants to be perfect for.

I pray warrior-prayers for my children.

And I am cynical about the pain and labor of child birth but Jesus, He bore us with the greatest of agony. With all the blood and tearing and heart-wrenching abandonment. Alone. And the pain of rejection from us whom He bore, all of us standing there mocking.

And we call that wonderful. Beautiful. Redemptive.

I was offended a couple of weeks ago by a picture of a cross made of guns. Offended, because my Savior was hanging on this crude cross made of gun metal and I thought that somehow that was irreverent. Less holy than a wooden cross. Yeah.

On so many levels, that picture means more to me now. I can  barely wrap words around it.

A cross is not beautiful, not fashionable jewelry even when it’s made of precious metals. It’s a method of death. Of ugly, torturous, agonizing, slow death. The beauty and the victory isn’t in the method, it’s in the Life that overpowered death and gave us life.

And so with child-birth. Every near death experience brings us closer to Life, one way or another. I’m steeping in this thought still and trying to word it just right, but the bottom line is this: the most beautiful things can come by terrible, horrible, ugly means.

Now I hold the baby born of that sister who I watched-into-the-world 27 years ago. And oh, the glow of motherhood looks good on her.

Linking up with Emily at Imperfect Prose, Tell Your Story, and Crystal at Thriving Thursdays

Five Minute Friday: Cherished

Posted in Five Minute Friday, Parenting | 5 comments

For all the struggles and squabbles, there is a grace to keep going.

The moments when you play legos though you’re “too old” for that. The two, three, four of you down on the carpet, building your colony and being good neighbors.

The spontaneous moments a mom could never plan, when a tug on your sleeve from little brother or sister brings a softening and relenting, when you give in to the playing and the time is quality. Pure quality.

There is grace to keep on when I catch you snuggling during the movie, or when I peek in the door Saturday morning to see you all piled up and listening to Odyssey.

When you read that story together, when you share that memory, laugh at that joke, and even when you join sides in coercive plots against me.

Trust me, I see. Because I’m looking for it, looking and hoping and filling the ears of God with requests for this: that my children would be friends.

And you are.

Friends who live and work and play together almost 24/7 and yes, friends who rub on each other and annoy the heck out of one another sometimes. But friends, nevertheless.

I wonder, and I’m pretty sure, that God cherishes when His kids are friends, too. A mother’s heart comes from the Father.

For every disagreement and stomp of the foot, for every selfishness and self-will and Precious Self, there’s something in the memory to pull out and cherish. I forget a lot of things, but I remember the things I cherish.

And we’re all growing up together, making moments to forget and ones to remember. Here’s to remembering more.

Linking up with Lisa Jo and the Five Minute Friday community. Follow the link and write with us for five off-the-top-of-your-head minutes!

How to Thrive From Failure

Posted in Perspective | 3 comments

We rise most mornings at 5-ish. The first snooze alarm coincides with the beeping of the coffee pot, both of them annoying but necessary, and I’m usually in the kitchen with freakish hair and one eye open by the time he’s pouring his mini-wheats.

It’s a slow awakening, with the requisite silence of early morning.

But after I’ve made his millionth sandwich and he’s taken his vitamins with the milk from his millionth bowl of cereal, after the lunch box is packed and the coffee and cream have mixed to the perfect color, we sit together.

It’s routine, and we love it. Coffee time and the first thoughts of the day. We are fairly guaranteed that the phone won’t ring and the kids won’t wake and the only other one who greets us that early is the dog, waiting to go out.

So Monday, after the bowl was in the sink and both eyes were finally opened, the topic of discussion was failure. Specifically, the ways we’ve been failing in our parenting and our walks with the Lord and just life, in general.

This is the point in the conversation where I generally get hurt feelings. I have all the normal coping mechanisms when it comes to critique and I’ve probably added a few new ones to the list, namely, a dogged determination to prove you wrong by my sheer awesomeness.

But this was a different conversation with a different outcome. This was more of a here-we-are-how-do-we-get-back kind of mutual discussion. An assessment. A taking stock and evaluating the outcomes.

And the diagnosis was true. The cold, hard, and unemotional facts are that we are failing in areas.

We’re dealing with people and you don’t make charts evaluating successes and failures, like some business plan. But you do step back and look at fruit and relationships and you examine your days. You walk circumspectly and gain a heart of wisdom. 

You guard against being marched around by your emotions, because there’s more at stake here than your ego.

And again on Monday night, again in quiet discussion but this time with several others involved, we are faced with failure. Our motives are checked by the Holy Spirit and isn’t that always the best confrontation? The one that comes between us and the Comforter?

The brokenness is a hopeful-cracking and we all know that we fall short.

It shouldn’t be such a shock to be faced with your own imperfection, but we often shield our Precious Selves and shy from it. We don’t let it have it’s perfect work in us.

But this is a different conversation with a different outcome. This is redemptive, because I’m determined to make the hard stop and look the ugly truth in the eye.

The ugly truth is that I fail daily.

The redemptive truth is that I am not doomed to string up failures for a lifetime of rotten days. It’s amazing, but I’m holy and blameless in the eyes of God, and I can choose to be grounded and steadfast in Him and to be unmoved from the hope of the gospel (Col. 1:21-23).

I can take stock and pray through changes and come back to Center.

I’m thriving from this failure because of hope for something better, and thankfulness for another chance, and the knowledge that He is shaping us. All of us and each of us.

Linking up with The Better Mom, Grace Laced Mondays, Playdates with God, and Titus 2sdays.

My One Little Word for 2013: All

Posted in Simplicity | 2 comments

It’s not such a little word, really. Three of the biggest letters ever.

“Everyone” is choosing their one little word for the year, the one word to focus on and strive towards. Something to motivate when the resolutions run aground. Mine usually falter somewhere around January 21, because I’m kind of a 3-week person. After 3 weeks, I tend to fall back to old patterns and worn grooves.

So choosing one little word might work for me. I’ve always been a “word person”. Different words speak to me in different seasons, words like balance, perspective, and simplicity. In fact, those three words were going to title this blog but alas, sarcasm won out.

All.

That’s the word for me. Not “all” as in do it all or be it all, whatever it is. Not “all” in an exaggerated, all-the-time kind of a way. It’s actually “all” more like I already have it all.

His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, – {2 Peter 1:3 NKJV}

I chose all because I knew it would come up a lot, in scripture and conversation and my admonishments to my kids. I knew I would be reminded often – something I desperately need – to think on all He’s done and all I need and doing all for Him.

I knew that one little word would become huge to me, and I think I need for small things to become big this year. Like the widow who put in the small all that she had.

I need to be small, myself.

So here’s to all of you and all of our needs being met in Him. Here’s to all the laundry and dirty dishes, all the heartaches and victories, all the runny noses and bad attitudes and each and every Word of scripture that is God-breathed and just for us.

May you find all you need in Him this year.

Do you have one word for the year? I’d love to hear it, and you’re welcome to include a link in the comments to your blog post about it. No blog? Share your word anyways.