Author: rosegarden5

It hit me this week.  It started with me almost puking during an exercise class because I got so winded that I couldn’t breathe.  But it really hit me with what I have lovingly dubbed the “furniture fiasco’. My husband put our couch up for sale on a whim and it sold in an hour flat. That night, we had nothing to sit on to celebrate our victory lap- you know, the last part of the day when the kids are in bed and you get to sit on your couch and watch whatever you want on TV.   My husband suggested we lay on the floor.  I heard myself rebuke his idea with such utter disgust that I knew I had to finally acknowledge what I have been afraid of for quite some time; I am getting older.  My back will hurt, I complained.  I followed with, my hip will do that weird thing where it goes numb when I lay on it to long.  He just laughed and teased me for being an old lady but the truth is,  I am getting o-l-d-e-r.  This is my last year in my thirties.  I can’t think about it to much because it kind of gives me this panicky feeling.  Something about knowing you have probably lived half your life already really punches me in the gut.  I was talking to someone the other day and he told me that he had calculated how many days he had left on this Earth if he lived to be double his age.  I was intrigued so I ran some numbers myself.  If I live 39 more years, I have 14,235 more days to wake up and live.  Giving it a number might seem morbid but it has helped me to put some things about growing older into perspective.

I live loud.  For some people I am always to much.  For others, I am never enough.  I have spent the better part of my life trying to mold myself, my quirks, annoying behaviors and personality into something, someone, to make those people like me.  I have always wanted so badly to fit in.   In my teenage years, I was the outsider who was always trying to squeeze her way into the “in” crowd that had grown up together.  In my twenties, I wanted to be accepted by all the super beautiful girls on campus that seemed to have in all together.  And as an adult, I have sought out relationships, even within my own family,  that I so desperately desired.  The funny thing about life is that it rarely gives you what you think you want.  Despite all the bending and turning I have done to make myself someone I am not, I have never been able to get away from myself.  My constant anxiety and plotting to change to fit someone else’s mold has never, not even once, gotten someone to love me more.

Love me or leave me, I am who I am.  When I get tickled, I laugh obnoxiously loud.  I am not even the least bit funny, no matter how hard I try.  Actually, I am a cheesy nerd who laughs at her own jokes.  I can make a funny situation awkward in about two seconds flat.  I never know what to say in small social talk and usually wind up endlessly stringing a bunch of confusing words together.  I don’t have a good poker face so you never have to guess how I am feeling..my face will tell the story.  I can sound like a snob in social situations because I occasionally forget my raisin’.  My mind moves faster than you can imagine and sometimes it causes me to cut off others in the middle of their sentence just so I can blurt something out.   I am habitually running late.  I have no idea why.  I love hard and wear my feelings on my sleeve.  Some people see me as dramatic because I am expressive and theatrical.  I am impulsive and moody.  My emotions change as much as the direction of the wind.  I am loyal to a fault and will be there for you, even when you don’t deserve it.  I’d rather eat wings and have a Pepsi in my blue jeans than get dressed up and go to a snooty restaurant to eat food I can’t pronounce.  I love a good roller coaster and I’d eat junk for every meal if my husband would let me.  If you invite me to go out on a weekend, I won’t come.  But if you don’t invite me, I’ll be sad and worry why you didn’t.  I will helicopter the crap outta of my kids and lose sleep about things that are out of my control.  I am honest and try to be kind but if I am not prayed up, I can be a little ugly.  I am mess most days but no matter what, I made a promise to myself that this is the girl who is apologetically showing up from now on.

My late 30s have taught me that the people in your tribe will love you hard just the way you are.  They will see your faults, your screw-ups and your awkward moments and will continue to show up, day after day.  They will be there when you need them and even when you think you don’t.  My tribe might not have as many people as I used to think it needed but I wouldn’t trade the people who love me with reckless abandon for a hundred people who are fair-weather family or friends.  Life actually does go by in the blink of an eye and I mourn for all the time I’ve wasted worrying about the people who don’t see the value in me.  In my twenties I had far fewer wrinkles and way less cellulite but I also had far less self-esteem.  In my thirties, my glorious thirties, I have learned to love myself and love those who appreciate the real me.  It hasn’t been easy but with approximately 14,235 more days to leave my mark on this world and live for Jesus, I don’t have time for anything less.

 

 

 

Being a person in today’s world is hard.  Being a parent today is even harder.  Being a Christian parent in today’s world is next to impossible.  The facade of Christian parenting is easy to pull off; cleverly placed scriptures on your social media sites, polished children who sit quietly in the church pews and smile on Sunday mornings, blessings before dinner and bedtime all make you feel like your doing alright.  But the uncomfortable truth is that if that’s all you’re doing, then it’s not alright.  No, parenting children to be warriors for Christ requires so much more.  It requires that we actually train up our children in the way they should go and that is an enormous task.  When a soldier trains for battle, they do it day in and day out.  When a soldier rises in the morning, they condition.  When a soldier puts food into his/her body, they are mindful of what they consume.  When a soldier trains for battle, they practice what they will do should the enemy attack.  You see, training our kids to be Christians in today’s society requires that we show them how it looks with our every word, thought, action and reaction.  Isolated, our family does okay with training.  When thrown into school with their peers however, we are like salmon swimming upstream.  I get so frustrated because I feel like we are among the last of our species, fighting against extinction.   We are parents who have rules that go against the grain.  We take our kid’s phone and check his messages constantly, we won’t let him have it at all hours of the night, his search bar is linked directly with mine so I can see what he searches on his phone, we question him and poke and prod until he gives us information, we check up on his friends and say no when we are uncomfortable with a situation or set of people.  Are our kids perfect?  Lord heavens, no.  I know they aren’t.  I know who their parents are and quite frankly, that scares me because I know what they were capable of.  It’s exactly this reason that we constantly fight against the grain.  I realize my children’s natural inclination is toward evil and not good.  I know that if we want to raise children who love the Lord with all their hearts,  it actually requires catching them in awkward situations at school and with peers, it requires finding out that they looked up something inappropriate on their phone.  If we never intercept their bad actions or catch them just after they have been done, we are losing out on the ability to show them the overwhelming grace of God.  We lose out of the instructional moments that show them how, even at our worst, God can turn a situation around.  If we never acknowledge the sin in our own children, we can never show them the freedom that can be found in Christ.

I’m not trying to discredit anyone’s parenting style.  Parenting really is hard and unless you beat your kids, I promise to never judge.  I have given in to my kids many times even though I knew that I was spoiling them.  I have bailed them out of stuff even though I knew I was doing them a disservice by bailing them out.  I get it.  Maybe you didn’t have much growing up and love to spoil your kids, maybe you are divorced and carry guilt about it so you give in more than you should.  Maybe you fear that your kid will get bullied and made fun of if they don’t have the newest, greatest things like everyone else.  But guys.  Listen.  We are killing each other and ruining our kids in this crazy giving-in-to-their-every-request mindset.  We are taking an already exhausting job and making it so much harder by taking the path of least resistance.  I see it in things my own kids say about their friends at school AND I see and hear it in the things my students at school say and do.  I actually had someone argue with me the other day about constantly checking our oldest child’s phone.  They said I was a “helicopter mom and needed to trust my kid.”  You know what I say to that?  Ha.  Ha.ha.ha.  Why on Earth would I trust my 13 year old kid with a cell phone with unlimited access to the world and all it’s information?  Just Thursday on my way to work I saw a grown woman texting on her cell phone, slowing down the fast lane and a guy who almost killed everyone on the interstate swerving back and forth while he WATCHED A MOVIE ON HIS PHONE.  And this was just on my twenty minute drive to work, with grown ups who know better.  Why would I think my kid wouldn’t use it to do foolish stuff as well?  I know I have been guilty of sending an ugly text or email in the heat of my anger and I bet you have done some foolish things with your phone, too. And don’t get me started on the unlimited access to inappropriate videos and pictures that my 13 year old, hormonal child can get his hands on.   Some of ya’ll have forgotten what it’s like to be a teenager and it really shows.

We are better than this, guys.  We are smarter than this, too.  Our most important job on this Earth is not something we will do at work.  It is raising our children to be the next generation of warriors for the Lord.  And warriors are in constant battle with the enemy.  Warriors don’t need to be spoiled, they need to be TRAINED.  Let’s agree to choose the road less traveled more often than not.  Let’s agree that our kids are worth it and let’s agree that if we see each other’s kids doing something that would put them in Hell, that we will tell the other without fear of offense.  I believe in the next generation of warriors and I believe in US.

Train up a child in the way he should go,and when he is old he will not depart from it.  Proverbs 22:6

 

At my son’s Upward game last weekend the ball went rolling across the gym floor.  My child and his teammate both went to get it, eager to make a play.  They wound up rolling around on the floor with each other, fighting over the ball.   I heard the coach shout, “Boys!  What are you doing?  You are on the SAME TEAM!!”   Under my breath I muttered a quiet, “that’ll preach.” but didn’t think much else of it until the next day.  The Lord sent those words back into my heart as I wrestled with him over some things that are going on in my life.   The question from the Lord kind of caught me off guard.  I wanted to shout, “Lord!  I love you!  Of course I am on your team!!” but somehow the words evaded me as I examined my own heart.

Over the next several days I wrestled, and I mean wrestled, with the Lord.  Finally, my husband looked at me and said, “I love you but you are wrong, Christy.  You aren’t supposed to wrestle with the Lord.  You are supposed to surrender to the Lord and obey.”  Ouch.  After I got finished nursing my ego after the hard blow from my hubby, I sobbed in frustration.  The truth is, I don’t allow the Lord to be the captain of my ‘team’.  I crave control in every situation of my life.  I spend days calculating, planning and overthinking decisions so that the risk of failure is minimal and so that I am as comfortable as possible in the process.

I know everyone could tell a sad story about their childhood so I will spare you any details but in the early years of my life, my parents divorced unexpectedly, my mother lost most of her vision soon after and we had to move in with a grandparent in a one bedroom apartment.  With the divorce came a new school, new friends and a new normal.  Somewhere in the process I made up my mind that I would control everything in my life so that I never felt such hurt, shame and confusion again.  At first glance, I guess that might seem like a great quality to have.  Most things I have set out to do, I have accomplished.  But under the surface, I have spent years of my life wanting perceived control of everything and everyone and it has left me a miserable mess.  I say perceived because obviously I am not powerful enough to control what happens to others and what decisions they ultimately make but it isn’t for lack of trying.  It’s exhausting, almost debilitating.  And it really comes to a head when I try to grow closer to the Lord.  As long as things are going well in my life and the blessings flow, it is easy for me to have perceived faith.  I say all the right things, I know the scriptures and I will quote them often but in reality, since things are going the way I want them to, I secretly feel in control.  Like I am the captain of my own team.

Recently, a series of events have made it blatantly clear that I have zero control over what is going on in my life or the life of those I love.  And boy, have I been a huge brat about it.  I have been wallowing in a puddle of anger, resentment, questions and tears.  Hence my “wrestling” with God.  Do you know what it made me?  Exhausted.  All of the arguing with God, all of the questions and fear, none of it has changed his sovereign power over my life and his plan for me.

I was praying about my wayward heart this morning and I begin thinking about soldiers in battle.  Soldiers in the same army are fighting a common enemy, a common cause but each side fights with all they have until the point of utter exhaustion.  I think that the moment of surrender in battle has to be relieve both sides.  Yes, the surrendering side might be giving over control but they are also ending the fight. The winning side is probably weary from the battle as well but relieved that the fighting will stop and everyone makes it out with their life.  Yes, I know that in actual war it is much more complex than this but stay with me here.   The waving of the white flag brings peace to the battle.  And at some point, if you want to grow in your walk with Jesus, you have to come to a point of surrender.  Waving the flag and showing Jesus that you are just to weary to fight for the areas in your life that are hindering you from advancing.  I am sure Heaven’s army rejoices when they see your white flag waved high in surrender.

Maybe you are like me and have trouble giving up control and putting your trust in the Lord.  Maybe you have been hurt by people or events and the wounds are so fresh that you, too, protect them deeply.  Perhaps you need to surrender other things in your life that are keeping you from developing your relationship with the Lord.  Ask the Lord to reveal to you what it is you need to lay down and surrender and then pray that God will give you the strength to do it.  As for me, I was weary from battle and I decided to give it all to the Lord.  I am thankful he loves me enough to walk with me through my hardest valleys just so I will know he is always there.

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.”  Philippians 4:6 

Today I heard someone say, “you’ll find what you’re looking for when you finally get to the end of yourself.”  She wasn’t talking to me, or to anyone I know, it was just happenstance that I heard them at all yet they’ve lingered in my mind all day.  Of all the things I’ve pondered today, I can’t get away from the question that has begged my spirit for a response: what does it look like when you get to the end of yourself?

I’ve been tempted to settle for a superficial answer to appease my spirit and temporarily quiet the voice that has been nagging me all day.  But somehow, at this particular time in my life, a superficial response just won’t do.  I’ve decided that getting to the end of yourself looks a little like the silent sadness that can sweep over you when you’ve sacrificed bits of yourself doing the same mundane things day after day.  The end of yourself is the place you find when the demands of work and home feel like a heavy weight that you just can’t escape.  When the stresses and worries of uncertainty and doubt begin to turn your dark hair shades of silver that can be visibly seen by the world, when the once beautiful smile you’ve worn for so long is replaced by fine lines that show both age and experience, that’s where the end of yourself is found.  When you are praying for the world and sometimes wonder “oh Lord, but who is praying for me?” Yes, the “end” of yourself is the most desperate place to be.  It’s looking up and seeing yourself surrounded by mountains that seem so overwhelmingly large you know you’ll never make it to the top again on your own.  The end of yourself looks just like it sounds.  Maybe not the end as in actual death but something even more dangerous: a weary woman not walking in the safety, goodness and favor of the Lord.

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that coming to the end of yourself, as excruciating as it may be, is necessary to walk in the fullness of the Lord.  In a valley, surrounded on every side by immovable, impassable mountains, a woman has two choices.  She can sit down in her valley, stare at the mountains and cry herself to sleep or she can kneel down in her valley, turn her gaze to the sky and raise her hands to the Heavens like a warrior going into battle!  She can’t climb the mountain on her own and she isn’t strong enough to pick  herself up to even take the first step BUT if she will change her focus from the mountain to the mover, suddenly escape is within reach.

Are you hearing what I am saying, friend?  We let ourselves become self-sacrificial offerings to the vultures of this world.  Leaving a piece of ourselves everywhere we go, we don’t leave much hope for our weary minds to rest.  I am the worst for this.  My internal hard drive wants to talk about worst-case scenario all the time.  I don’t expect goodness to follow me, I’ve trained myself for disaster.  Some people, including myself, call this being a realist.  The truth is I have yet to remove the baggage I have carried for so long and step into the fullness of the Lord.  I have not walked as a daughter of the King, worthy of goodness and mercy, favor and victory.  No, I have allowed myself to be dictated by the circumstances I can see instead of shifting my focus to the one who can see what I cannot.  It’s time that the Godly women of this world realize the goodness that the Lord has in store for them.  Ladies, if you have come to the end of yourself, pick up your crown, steady your gaze on the Heavens and walk into the joy and fullness of the Lord that was bought for you on Calvary so long ago.  You were a weary woman but shifting your eyes on God can make you a woman, reclaimed.

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.  When you pass through waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flames shall not consume you.  For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your savior.  Isaiah 43:1-3

My kids.  Lord, they can drive me crazy.  They almost never pick up after themselves, they usually protest loudly before they eat anything I cook and they definitely don’t have an “inside voice (to be fair, I’m not sure that last one even exists).  I guess that’s why I always find it amusing when God uses them to get my attention and reveal himself to me.  And he almost always uses them to get me to listen.  And so begins the tale of two sorry’s.

Yesterday, my daughter got in the car and began emptying out the contents of her folder.  She happily chirped about this and that; who did what at recess, who said what during lunch.  She casually comes across a quiz that she had gotten a D on.  She pulled it out quickly, made a yucky face and rolled those pretty brown eyes.  “ugh.  I’m sorry, mom.   

I got a D on this.”  She had even written me a little note on the side expressing her sorrow.  We talked about what she could have done better and what we needed to study and that was it.  Any anxiety she had carried over telling me, her math teacher mom, vanished.

Later that night, Luke was kind of sulking around the kitchen while I was cooking dinner.  He kept looking at his skates, which he loves, like he wanted to use them.  He had parked them in front of the wall in the foyer a few weeks ago.  He propped them up really cute and told me he liked them there against the wall so I agreed to let them stay there until he wanted to skate again.  Finally, he asked me to come into the foyer with him. As we walked in, he took a deep breath in and with his exhale, confessed his crime.  He explained that he had been skating a few weeks ago and put a dent in the wall.  He was so afraid to tell me that he hid the dent with his skates.  I could tell that this confession took all his strength and courage.  He looked up at me with those little blue eyes and said, “I hope you aren’t mad.  I feel so much better already now that you know.  It was hard to keep that secret.”  I hugged him up tight and thanked him for such a courageous confession.  He couldn’t believe that was all he was going to get but he grinned really big and laced up those skates.  He has talked about how much better he feels now that I know what he had been hiding all this time.

I got to thinking about those two “I’m sorry’s” tonight.  I was wondering why Ava had such an easy time asking forgiveness and was able to move on quickly while Luke struggled with confessing and asking forgiveness.  His inability to confess quickly caused him to carry around unnecessary grief and anxiety inside and it also caused him not to do the thing he loves the most-skating.  I settled on one profound truth.  Ava is used to discussing grades with me.  As a teacher, grades and education have always been a central part of our nightly discussions.  She knew, with certainty, how I was going to respond.  She could predict how I would react, what I would say and that she would quickly be forgiven.  Isn’t that how it is with the Lord?  We get used to our own behaviors and faults and we get fluent in saying, “I’m sorry” for those.  Now, I’m not saying that we continue to repeat the same mistake and carelessly ask forgiveness but I am saying that we know the areas where our flesh finds trouble and, because of our familiarity, we think we know how God, and others,  will react.  He will be quick to forgive and we can move on in righteousness.

Luke, on the other hand, didn’t know how I would react to a dent in the wall.   As far as he knew, he was the first one to do something like this in our house and because of that, it brought uncertainty and fear.  Out of fear, he hid his mistake and chose to carry around the consequences of hiding it.  He felt nervous, probably unhappy because he could no longer do something he loves, and he felt shame for denting the wall.  I think his situation is parallel to many of our own reactions to sin in our lives.  We find ourselves in a funk or overwhelming situation and instead of reaching to Jesus, we look for sin.  We always find it but it usually the sins that we aren’t familiar with.  Maybe you take up an unhealthy addiction you shouldn’t, perhaps you begin to carry the burden of unforgiveness and hate toward another or maybe you develop an attitude of unthankfulness and contempt for the blessings you do have.  It doesn’t matter the sin, it’s the response that is crucial.  When we walk outside our what we consider “normal” sins, we began to fear God’s response.  We don’t know how we will react so rather than confess and ask forgiveness, we hide it and bury it down deep.  We move it around inside ourselves, we ignore it and we try to rationalize it.  What we don’t do is address it head on.  These are often the sins that we fear will bring the greatest disappointment to  not only God but others around us.  It’s a lie that the enemy gets us to believe because he wants us to feel just like Luke did.  Shameful.  Full of anxiety.  Not enjoying our life.  Unhappy.

I had actually been feeling a little like Luke lately.  I had been hiding some shames down in my heart that I needed to forgive myself for and allow in to forgive me for.  I was reminded by my husband that there is no condemnation in Christ.  None.  It doesn’t matter the sin, confess it quickly, ask forgiveness and strive to do better.  Don’t be like Luke and hide it for another month.  Don’t even hide it one more day.  Let me say it again, there is NO CONDEMNATION IN CHRIST.  Allow yourself to feel the joy and relief that comes from knowing that the God of the Universe is waiting for you to just confess and ask forgiveness so he can set you free. Free from shame, unhappiness and anxiety.

There is now no condemnation in Christ, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.” Romans 8:1

Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.  That’s what I heard myself repeating over and over again last week to anyone who seemed interested enough to listen.  I had faced a tough disappointment over something I had really, really wanted, something I had prayed hard about and asked God to give me.  I had even thrown in the “if it’s in your will, Lord, let me get this thing that I want” and quite frankly, I didn’t want his will to be different than mine.  I expected that with my natural ability with this particular thing, coupled with favor from God that there was no way I wasn’t going to get what I desperately thought would somehow make my life more fulfilled.  It turns out that God actually had a different plan for me and the answer was a closed door smacked right in my face.  Ouch.  I mean, I realize I did ask him for his will to be done but there is nothing like not getting what you want to make the really immature, spoiled side of you come out.  First I handled it like a champ, then I cried hysterically until I looked as if I had been on the losing end of a fist fight and then I just got incredibly, irrationally angry.  So angry that when i got in the car I purposefully turned the station off of K-Love to another one.  Honestly, you all, I must be so exhausting to the Lord when I let my flesh rise up in me so recklessly like that.  To say I had a full blown hissy fit that afternoon would be a grave understatement.  I grumbled and argued with the Lord for hours that night and was downright hateful to my entire family and strangers alike.  NOT MY FINEST HOURS, for sure.  When the dust settled from my cyclone of a tantrum, I sat alone in my bathroom floor and pleaded with the Lord.  “Why Lord?  Why do I have to always be the bridesmaid and never the bride?? Why couldn’t you give me this one thing that I really wanted just because…?”  Something about the way the sentence rolled out of my mouth and into the air caused the air to seem stiff and uncertain, like the words didn’t belong out there in the atmosphere.  But alas, I am a slow learner and quite stubborn when I am walking in the flesh, so I repeated that one phrase several times over the next couple of days when referencing the disappointment I had experienced.  Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.  Each time I said it, it stiffened the air around me just like it had in the solitude of my bathroom floor days earlier.

I will admit that the sting of rejection and disappointment almost took me under.  My enemy-your enemy- would whisper words of self-hate and insecurities in my heart when the world was still and I was all alone.  I was beginning to feel myself being swallowed up by the encompassing darkness that Satan can surround us with and I would become terrified that I would die in this condition.  But one day, all of a sudden, and right on time, the Holy Spirit spoke directly to my heart.  I was vacuuming my bedroom and I heard him almost audibly say, “Have you forgotten who you are?  Have you forgotten whose you are??  You are a child of the King.  I have given you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the powers of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” (Luke 10:19)  It was a spiritual pep talk and just what I needed to remind myself of my worth.   I have had a rather turbulent year and all of my grief has been within my own soul.  Questioning my worth, devaluing myself and my God given talents, identifying with worldly possessions and titles rather than focusing on Heavenly gains.  It has been a year of misery.  I was suffering from what I like to call spiritual amnesia.  I was walking around everyday, everything appeared to be okay on the outside but inside, I didn’t remember who I was….or whose I was.  Most days I felt like something was missing, as I am sure people with amnesia do, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what I needed to feel whole again.  Thankfully, Jesus left the 99 to come rescue this one lost sheep and made me whole yet again.

I have been reflecting and praying with my whole heart this break and I have finally figured out why saying, “always the bridesmaid, never the bride” just didn’t feel right.  At church this morning I heard the pastor reference what I have heard all my life.  He said that the time was right and that one day soon Jesus would be back for his “bride”.  We, the church, are his bride!  Everyday with Jesus makes me a BRIDE!  On the amazing days when things are going my way and especially on the days when God gives me answers that I don’t like!  I realize that I prayed for God to do what was best for me, his beloved bride, and fully trusting the Lord means accepting “no” without fully understanding why.  If I were him, I would have left my crazy, stubborn self years ago and wouldn’t have looked back but because of his great mercy and loving kindness he never, ever gives up on his bride.

“Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28