The Perfect Gift

What picture pops into your mind when you think of God?  Is your image a Santa Clause God who gives you good things if you are nice?  Perhaps your picture includes thunderbolts, fire, an brimstone.  No doubt, there is good reason for the perception of God you have.  

His Mercy Finds Me

The kids and I ventured to a local bookstore recently, the kind that buys back used books and such.  We had just finished selling what felt like our entire lives away at our yard sale.  Fourteen bins of boy and girl clothes, pint-sized crocs and loafers, and the last crib mattress we owned.  It was a liberating experience, but one filled with trepidation as I knew I could not bottle up that former season of life and live it again. 

God Wants to Be Found

“And He has made from one blood 
every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth... 

so that they should seek the Lord, 
in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him..."

Acts 17:26-27

I was folding laundry in the basement the other day and in some glorious stroke of luck the kids hadn’t seen me go down there.  I could hear the clumping around of their feet that shook the exposed beams on the ceiling and rattled the wire rack resting against the dryer.  Eleven years into parenting those noises are hardly noticeable and certainly no cause for alarm.  

I was working my way through unmatched socks when the first of many calls for my help echoed down the staircase and around the corner into the darkened room where I worked.  

“Mom!” the voice of my five year-old rang.

“Mooooooooooommmmmmm!” a louder and more annoyed elven year-old shouted.

Their calls continued and it became clear that they really didn’t know where I was.  Glory, hallelujah!  There was no way in God’s green earth I was going to make myself known to them.    

At this precise moment Acts 17:27 flashed through my mind.  

“God did this so that they would seek Him and perhaps reach our for Him and find Him…”

Down in my basement, close enough to hear their calls, I was hoping my kids wouldn’t find me.  In stark contrast, God tells me that He, too, is near, but He is hoping we will find Him.  Oh, the great love of God to want to be found!

God's Unanticipated Faithfulness

For years I almost missed the faithfulness of God because I expected it to look a certain way. I wanted a swift answer to my every prayer, and always in the affirmative.

Make the baby stop crying, Lord. Pleeeease, I am begging You for sleep. 

Make my husband understand me.

Make my kids love one another.

Make my life fruitful for Your kingdom. Pretty please.

But there I always was, alone and changing another diaper, wiping up another mess, totally losing it, and sleep deprived at that. Where was the faithfulness of God to me? If He was near, why did He feel so far?

Hope For Believing

This summer I decided to clear the space beside my deck of the remnants of my failed vegetable gardens over the years.  We actually got some edible tomatoes and cucumbers last year, but mostly we just grow contorted vegetables or no vegetables.  Bugs come and eat them or disease comes and rots them.  That’s our dismal garden history.  

This year, however, I was bound and determined to reclaim that space and make it beautiful by relocating some garden stones and planting flowers and shrubs.  I did the backbreaking work of clearing away the weeds, leveling the land, and carrying the stones one by one.  The space was prepped and ready and I was filled with hope.

Then my baby turned into a toddler.  You know, the kind that moves.  After that we joined the swim team.  Then my husband decided it was time to stain the deck.  And then we said yes to some old chairs from my neighbor because, hello, they are solid oak, and we definitely needed to refinish those as well.  Let me show you the jaw-dropping before and after of our peaceful garden paradise.  

What Failure Has Taught Me About Forgiveness

The stereotype is true that the more kids you have, the more you let go.  I used to think of it as a frazzled and frustrated letting things go, the type that elicits searing thoughts like, What a shame, she’s really let herself go.  

You know the picture—a disheveled mom with greasy hair and milk-stained t-shirt wearing the same sweatpants four days in a row.  I’m sure I looked down on those poor women.  Children are just such a burden, no wonder she’s a wreck.

Does God Love Us?

I was never the type to ponder the meaning of life when I was younger.  I didn’t think much of death either.  Nothing from within or without forced me to deal with those sorts of things. 

It wasn’t until I lost my grandparents, and then my husband’s grandparents, over the past four years that the questions began to pulse through my mind with regularity.  Since then, all of my “book knowledge” about the Lord has been tested on the stage of real life.