Five Minute Friday: Unexpected

So, I know it's Saturday, but I am jumping onto the five minute Friday bandwagon anyway.

Unexpected.

It's unexpected, really, how this small, south of Atlanta town, is really beginning to feel like home.

This, I moved here kicking and screaming because it was so far from my beloved midtown and Highlands place, seems to fit me to a T more and more everyday.

And, it's especially unexpected how much this tiny rental house seems to envelop my family in a way that no other house has.  

Could it be, perhaps, that God's plans, though always unexpected, always make the most sense in the end?

Could it be, that it's really true, always, that he is working everything together for my good.  Even when it feels so much the opposite of good.  He's working it out.  Always.

Five Minute Friday: Catch

God has gifted me with a mind that constantly teeters on the edge of "going off the deep end," and hoping there is someone at the bottom to catch me if I do in fact "jump."

In my feeble, "he remembers that we are dust," state of humanity, I have often tried to deal with this crazy mind of mine by controlling everything in sight.  My weight, back in school--my grades, and now, my house and my children.  In other words, I try to take the pill of perfectionism.  And I always crash and burn into a pile of my own sin.

It isn't pretty.

But over the last year, as God stripped me of all control, I learned that, it's true.  When my mind is spinning out of control, and the perfectionism isn't cutting it, because in my "state of dust," I really don't have any control at all, I can trust him.  I can trust him.  He will catch me as I fall.  As I plummet, even.  He will catch me.

You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts you.  Isaiah 26:3

On Friends

Five Minute Friday...






over the past year, Scott and I have been loved by our friends in a way that we have never experienced before.  We have seen the idea of a friend laying down their life happening, in the flesh.  We have gained a new understanding of what it looks like for the church to actively be the body of Christ.  You know this; I have typed it out again and again over the past year.  How thankful we are for friends.

When I pray for Ada and for John, I ask God to give them friends who will love them that way.  Friends who will point them towards Christ and speak truth in a loving way.  Truth that is sometimes hard to hear.  And I pray that they will be a friend.  That Scott and I will be a friend, in the biblical sense I mean.  That we, as a family, will be that to other families.  That Ada and John will learn what friendship looks like in a practical way.  That Ada will see it is more than who sits by her at children's church on Sunday morning, and that it goes way beyond who our personality naturally meshes with.  I want them to see that friendship is active, and it's a choice.

I want them to choose to be a friend.

Ada, with Abby and Hannah--two of her friends--on our first official field trip, to a train museum.  The trip was yesterday and probably deserves a post all its own.

Everyday

It's Friday, and it's been a while, so I am going to take five minutes (give or take a minute or two) to write a little bit about my everyday.  Want to join me?  Head over to Gypsy Mama and join the crowd.  It's a great way to unwind at the end of the week.  Or so I think...

(Please note: when I headed over to Gypsy Mama's blog, I realized that the topic was actually "In Real Life," not everyday.  I don't have the energy to re-do this, so I'm just going to pretend that the topic was "Everyday."  Bear with me...we are all adjusting to our new 5:30 wake up call by my John-John, and the lack of sleep is showing up everywhere)

These days, every day, I am hating my kitchen.  Let's just get real.  The plumber has been here three times since we moved in, and the dishwasher still leaks.  The sink is weird, and something about it's angle causes water to go everywhere every time I was dishes by hand, which is, of course, every time I wash dishes.  And sometimes, in the midst of that everyday reality, it is easy for me to throw myself a little pity party, right in the middle of the piled up dishes and water everywhere.  And I remember my old (new) kitchen.  The one that no one had used before me. 

And when John wakes us all up at 5:30, again, I sigh loud enough to make sure God hears--I don't want him to miss my frustration--because wasn't he supposed to make this an easy transition?  Wasn't the hard over with?  (I know, washing dishes by hand and waking up at 5:30 doesn't even begin to cover hard, but in my everyday they are certainly inconveniences).  I am sleepy, and, let's be honest, I miss my old (much bigger) house.  Ada misses it too, and she tells me that a lot.  

But you know what is also included in my everyday?  This...these giant, wonderful, peaceful, move with the wind, shade from the sun trees.  They are right outside my kitchen window, and under them we spend our everyday afternoons.  And here is where we practice latin and history sentences and general family togetherness.  

I hate my kitchen, but even more than that, I love my backyard.  I love my backyard.  And guess what, my new-old kitchen can do all of the things that the other one did, but that new backyard couldn't do what this one can.  It takes a long time to grow trees like that.

This old dump truck that belonged to Scott was hidden in the garage because it was really hard to take John outside at our house.  Now, this dump truck is John's everyday.  And I am so glad.

And art is still a part of Ada's everyday.

And best of all, I am still their everyday, even when we didn't know if Scott would get another "real" job.  This house is just a tool that enables me to be with them, all the time, everyday.  And I am so thankful.

Five Minute Friday: Loss

It is God's law that he who learns must suffer.  And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despite, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God."  (Reynolds Price, quoted by Tim Keller in his essay, "Suffering:  The Servant of our Joy.")


At fifteen I suffered the raw pain of rejection.  The loss of a relationship that I thought would never end; I was fifteen.  And it was, indeed, awful.  My adolescent pain embarrassingly out there for all the world to see.  And I didn't want anyone telling me about God's sovereignty and goodness.  I just wanted to wallow in the pain, own it.

But even then, at all of fifteen years, God was working out his will in my life.  Wasn't he?  And he gathered up those tears in his bottle.

And somewhere, somehow, in the midst of my pain, I picked up a book, Hinds Feet on High Places, and I began to see that we can count it a privilege to share in the suffering of Christ.  God, in his awful grace, was giving me bits of wisdom.

Last night, almost 15 years later, I said to God about my most recent loss--I don't want it.  I don't want the wisdom or the privilege or any of it.  I just want to run from it.  And his awful grace comes again, in the words of someone much wiser than me.

Isn't he always working out his will?  Always.

And this is why I hate the health and wealth gospel.  Because it's not the gospel at all.  The gospel is death.  But it doesn't end there.

It's also Redemption.

Paul says that if Jesus can uncomplainingly submit to his infinite suffering and thereby have God's life explode into our lives and into the world, then you and I can submit to our finite suffering uncomplainingly and know the same thing will happen.  The death in us will work life in us and others around us.  That's our hope.  (Keller, "The Servant of our Joy", Be Still My Soul, 20)

p.s. there's no news about our situation.  No new information made me feel the loss more last night; it was just a hard day.  I know some of you might be wondering if we heard something, but we haven't.  We're in waiting mode right now.

Five Minute Friday: Backwards

 
Backwards is apparently how Scott and I handled our finances.

What we wouldn't give to go back to that one person apartment in midtown, stuffed to the brim with two people and two incomes and hit the restart button on our finances.  It's a scary thing to figure out the answer to your financial problem when you're a mortgage, two kids, and one income in over your head. 

But, I suppose backwards is better than not at all.  Right? 

So, we continue on our s-l-o-w journey to financial freedom, backwards as it may be.  It's a stop. start. stop. start process, but we are plugging along. 

What we wish for is a really easy, painless, God-to-the rescue, and we are out of debt process.  But it is definitely not looking like that's the way it's going to be.

But, I am currently working my way through Proverbs, and Solomon doesn't beat around the bush--wisdom, he says, is better than jewels.  It's better.  And I really think that we are gaining wisdom in the process.  I really believe we are.  So, we lift our hands up in Thanksgiving, and we crunch the numbers, and we cut the coupons, and we work our way backwards to a place where we will feel so free.

Five Minute Friday: Everyday

Everyday is sippy cups and diaper changes and toast in the toaster at 7 am before I feel prepared to face the morning.  Everyday is cartoons and guilt over cartoons and toys everywhere, absolutely everywhere.  Everyday is more laundry and more laundry and folding and putting away.  And the dishes, oh the dishes.

And it sometimes feels so small.  So insignificant.  So worth the question that I heard once a few years back, and it rings in my ear to this day, "is this what you do all day?"  Yes, this, this mothering--this daily stuff--is what I do all day. 

But everyday, somewhere right smack dab in the middle of the mundane, (because it is certainly mundane, right?), I catch a glimpse of the extraordinary.  The little hands on my face at 6:30 am, asking, "can we get up now?"  John's toddler body, so quickly leaving babyhood behind, sinking into mine as I rock him before nap time.  And the way he loves to rub his cheek against mine.  Because as mundane as it is, it is equally extraordinary.  That I get to be a firsthand witness to these little people becoming.  Discovering.  Growing and learning and grasping.  That I get to be the mother in their everyday. 

It's a gift of the highest sort--this everyday.

And a few pictures from our everyday day today (lots of days in that sentence).  This summer's first trip to the pool and the sunscreen hair to go with it.

Five Minute Friday: Forgetting

It's Friday.  Five minutes to write at the end of a long, long, long day.

Forgetting.

And the words that pop into my head are...forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead...and I turn to my trusty ESV study bible and look it up. 

Paul is pressing on, walking away from all that used to define Him.  He was the best of the best of the best of the Jews, and he found out it was all rubbish compared to knowing Christ and wearing the righteousness of Christ.  (Philippians 3)

On this day, when God says no again to prayers that we have been praying for months now, and the bills pile up, again, I find myself tempted to turn right back around and run fast and strong into the arms of the things that I used to believe would save me.

When the scale and the diets beckon and offer the promise of control in a season when things spin wildly around me, then I must press on.  Turn this body right around and flee the temptations to find myself in something other than Christ.

Because I learned the hard way that all those idols really are just broken cisterns, and they can't offer me anything but despair. 

Instead, I will crash into the arms of Jehovah-Jireh, who offers me the living water.

...Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus, Phil. 3:13-14

Five Minute Friday: Deep Breath

It's Friday.  Where did the week go?  It was just Monday, and I was posting my thankful list.  But anyway, it's Friday, and I just love Gypsy Mama and her blog and especially these five minutes on Friday to just write it out.  Will you join me?  And her?  And all the others writing for five minutes on Friday?

Today's Topic:  Deep Breath

Here I go...

Deep Breath.

Because it's 10:33 pm on Friday night, and I haven't stopped all day long.  Breathing deep into the fact that finally the kids are sound asleep, and the house is quiet and I can breathe for just one second. 

Deep Breath.

As I stare at the grocery list before me on the kitchen table.  Coupons scattered all around, and I punch the numbers into the calculator one more time in hopes that a math miracle has occurred, and I feel overwhelmed by this not-so-small task of feeding this family while sticking to the budget.  Deep breath.  Because he has promised to provide, and that might just mean giving up my idea of the perfect breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as he opens my eyes to my full pantry and fridge, and he reminds me of the Israelite's manna.  "And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD," (Deut. 8:3, ESV)

Deep Breath.

As John kicks his leg in frustration at the nurse, wanting that blood pressure cuff off his leg, and we just need to be cleared for operation.  But his typical anger is making that blood pressure soar too high for an all-clear.  Deep breath.  And I ask the nurse for a cracker, and John holds it in hand and he is good, as is his blood pressure, and we all breath deep with relief, as the nurse and I both let out a relieved laugh. 

Deep breath.

On a Friday night spent at three different grocery stores, a far cry from the Friday nights of the early years of dating.  John is crying, and Ada is dancing down the aisle, oblivious to the three other customers trying to get their shopping done, and the prescription eye drops will be another 30 minutes.  Deep breath, and Scott will take the kids to the car, and I can enjoy ten minutes of peace on this Friday night in Target.

Deep breath.

On this afternoon when the dishes and the laundry and the toys are piled high because of a morning spent at the doctor's office, but there is still much to do and never enough time to do it.  Deep breath, as I hear that all familiar lie that I am inadequate as their mother, his wife, the homemaker.  Deep breath, as I am reminded that I am home not to have the perfect house but to walk and talk the gospel with these children when we sit and when we rise and when we lie down again.  And that can happen in the midst of messy; in fact, that's probably the ideal place to talk of the gospel.

Deep breath.

And I remember, "Rejoice in the Lord, always.  Again, I will say Rejoice...the Lord is at hand," (Phil. 4:4-5, ESV).

Deep breath.

Killing time in Target, while waiting on John's eye drop prescription.  John was thrilled about the situation;)