More than just not calling him a name...

The other morning I woke up early to spend some time in prayer. It was an ordinary morning and I began talking to God in my ordinary way. A few minutes into it, however, the conversation took an unexpected turn. It went something like this:

Me: “Lord, be with Matt today. Help him to have a productive day, to seek your will in his decisions, and to be surrounded by your grace. Give him wisdom to do his job, strength to tackle his responsibilities, and a greater desire to serve you.”

God: “Yes, child, he is a good man, isn’t he?”

Me: “Yes, Lord. Thank you for him and his love for me. And Lord, help me to be a good wife to him, a good helpmeet, and encourager.”

God: “You know? You don’t always treat him with the honor and respect that you should.”

Me: “Huh?”

God: “Yes, daughter. Sometimes you talk to him as if he was your child, not your husband.”

Me: “Wait, what? I was just praying that he has a good day and…”

God: “Listen. You know the times you ask him to fold the laundry while he watches that show and he forgets? You know how you put your hands on your hips and chastise him? He is your husband, child, not your son. That is not very respectful.”

Me: “But, but he… but I… but...”

God: “You know the times when he eats a donut for breakfast and you roll your eyes at him? Do you think that is honoring to him?”

Me: “No, Lord. I understand.”

God: “I’m not finished. Sometimes you tell him what to do as if you knew best, criticize his choices as if he was not very intelligent, belittle his opinions as if yours were the only valid ones. Would you treat a stranger in this way?”

Me: “No, Lord.”

God: “Then honor your husband. Respect him as you should. Be a wife who serves, who encourages, who forgives. Speak only praises of him before others. Make your home a place to where he wants return to every night. A safe haven from the pressures of his day. Treat him like the blessing and the treasure he is in your life. Don’t forget.”

Me: “Yes, Lord. Thank you for being so gentle in your rebuking.”

I walked away from this conversation changed and I was reminded of what I vowed to do almost thirteen years ago before all those friends and family members.

We said for richer of for poorer and we have survived times of plenty and through times of need.

We said in sickness and in health and we have made it through less than healthy times.

We said for better or worse and we have navigated tougher than tough times right to the other side.

But we also vowed to honor and respect and I guess I thought that honor only meant to be faithful and respect only meant not to call each other ugly names when we argue. And it is that...but it is also much more.

To honor means to deeply value. It means to appreciate the tremendous contribution he makes to my life, to our children, and to our family by the kind of husband, father, and leader he is. Honor means to focus on what he brings, not on what he lacks. It means to be keenly aware of what his absence would mean so I can cherish every day of his presence. 

And to respect means to be considerate of. It means to extend him the same grace to err, to fail, and to be flawed as I would want extended to me. It means to be gentle, to be kind, and to generally treat him with the deference with which I would treat a friend. 

But I'm finding that it is in the daily living, in the every day navigating of life together, that honor and respect are most important but most difficult to achieve because when you live with someone you can find a million opportunities to be aggravated by them and with them. 

And it is the continuous wear and tear of a relationship, the small, annoying, seemingly insignificant disagreements, “fussing” my father-in-law calls it, which can destroy a relationship little by little if not handled properly.

Like a leaky faucet, I can wear my husband down with my ongoing criticism, nagging, and contempt. And who can stand that for very long? He may not leave me because he is a man of his word, but what kind of marriage would that be? What kind of example would I be for my daughter?

No wonder wise Solomon once wrote how it is better to live in the corner of an attic than in a lovely home with a quarrelsome wife!

I asked the Lord to help me remember that, while I criticize Matt, I am far, far from perfect. I asked him to give me patience and humility, wisdom and humility, grace and humility to pray daily a version of the serenity prayer for my marriage that goes like this:

Lord, give me the serenity to accept the things about Matt I cannot change, the strength to change the things about ME that I can, and the wisdom to show honor and respect to my husband in every interaction that we have.  

The Lonely

*Linking with Lisa-Jo for Five Minute Friday. You have five minutes to write. Period.*

We hear people tell us how big a heart we have for having adopted. How unselfish we are and how lucky our children are to have us. 

Sometimes I try to set them straight. Sometimes I just shake my head. 

But always, I remember this…

Because we have learned to seek God’s wisdom no matter how obvious the choice may seem, when the call came that a baby girl needed a momma and a daddy, as much as our hearts thumped wildly inside of our chests, we asked for a day to pray. To ask for 24 hours was tortuous when all we wanted was to run out to get her. 

But we did. 

And we prayed. 

And as I laid face-down in the room that would eventually become the nursery, I cried out for wisdom and courage to become what I had been dreaming of becoming for several years: a mom. 

I opened my Bible to my favorite book and my eyes fell quickly on these verses:

“Father to the fatherless, defender of widows- this is God, whose dwelling is holy. God places the lonely in families; he sets the prisoners free and gives them joy” (Psalm 68:5-6, NLT).

I felt the answer wash over me.

Yes, there was a fatherless baby girl. Yes, God was lovingly caring for her life through the adoption agency. And yes, this would be our baby. But you see, the reason we are not saints with big hearts, unselfish people who just wanted to help someone is because the ones who needed most desperately to be placed in a family, the lonely ones the verses speak of…that was us, not her. 

The Little Boy That Saved The Day

Happy birthday, my baby!

Noah is six years old today and, as we celebrate his arrival into the world, I can’t help but reminisce about how his arrival into our home, at one-month old, marked a turning-point in our story that changed the course of our family and saved our marriage.

Six years ago I didn’t know if we would make it. It is strange to say this now when our life is just right, but six years ago the story seemed to be at an end. We had been married six years, and the last one of those had been a nightmare. We should have seen it coming but we didn’t: the stress of two demanding jobs, being parents and forgetting to be a marriage, lack of communication, and selfishness had crept into our marriage quietly and relentlessly until we looked at each other one day and wondered How are we ever going to find our way back to what we used to be?

As Matt was preparing to take a new church in a town a few hours away there was discussion of me staying behind. On my part I was doing all I could to make it happen, finding excuses not to go with him: the house needed selling, the move would mean I would start a new teaching job in the middle of a semester which I did not want to do, if I quit we would lose our health insurance and go down to one income for at least a year. We were broken, lost, and desperate people. The distance between us was widening and neither one could figure out how to reach over and bridge the gap.

But God, oh, this God who goes before me, who is more faithful to me than I could ever be to him, stubbornly refused to let go of us. He had put us together and his mercy would not stop pulling us, prodding us, opening doors to opportunities to regenerate, to find our way back to each other, to obey his law: that which God has joined together, let no one separate (Matthew 19:6b. Emphasis mine).

One night in early August we received a phone call from our adoption agency. A baby was born that needed a family. We were in no position to adopt an infant at the moment. We both understood that another child was not the answer to our broken marriage because new babies can add more stress than almost any other life-changing circumstance. Of course the timing was all wrong. But this baby was Isabel’s biological brother.

How could we say no?

So we sat and we talked. And we renewed commitments. And we worked on things for the first time in a long while. And we realized we had to heal our relationship for these children’s sake if nothing else. They were ours and we had chosen to be their parents and we had to make things right between us. So we did the only thing we knew could help and something we had not done together in a while: we prayed.

And we prayed. And we prayed. And we prayed.

We asked the Lord for a renewal of the love we once had. We asked for wisdom to find the path to restoration. We asked him and each other for forgiveness. We asked for strength to obey him, for courage to follow through, for faith that He could help us, and for a heart turned upwards and not inwards. And we cried out together for his presence in our marriage.

And when we got up from our knees it was decided: we would bring Noah home, we would leave the house to sell itself, we would deal with the job and loss of insurance and loss of income, and I would move with Matt to start afresh again. We would trust God to help us do what seemed impossible to save our family.

And He delivered. As He always does.

One by one God closed the doors to my excuses and provided an answer to each of my But, Lord… Because of Noah, I was given both health insurance and paid maternity leave from my last job while I waited to start on the new one. Because I was on maternity leave I was hired to start a new teaching job mid-year, in January, in our new town. The house sold, not quickly, but quickly enough. And even though we were the poorest we had been in a while we lacked nothing.

As a testimony to God’s incredible power and grace, we were experiencing most of the worst stressors that a marriage can withstand at the same time: a new town, a new job, a new baby and a toddler, going from a house to a two bedroom apartment, the financial burden of the adoption, and the loss of one income.

Yet we had never been so happy.

This time we were dealing with life’s difficulties from our knees together. God’s timing in bringing Noah to our lives changed the end of our story. And while I don’t advocate adding a child to your family to save your marriage, his arrival shook us awake from our selfishness and self-centeredness. God had a bigger plan for us and we had a responsibility not only to survive but to thrive as a couple not only for the sake of Isabel and Noah’s future, but for ours as well.

As I thank God today for this little baby who came in the nick of time to a hurting family and saved the day, I am reminded in a small way of another little One who came more than two thousand years ago to a hurting world to save all who would believe in him.

Thank you, Jesus, for Noah’s life and for the one You gave so I could be telling this story today.

Paper Altars

I journal to remember.  

In my bookshelves there are volumes of my life. I write in the sad times and I write in the happy times and sometimes, in the in-betweens. I write prayers, poems, psalms. I write sobs, laughter, and screams. I write whys, whens, wheres, and hows. 

I write when I can't pray and I write when I can't keep it inside anymore. There are days of never ending ink of praise and thanksgiving and there are blank pages with only the date on top and I know those were days of deep pain and disappointment.

I write for the days when God seems to be silent and hidden. For the days when I wonder if anyone is listening to these ramblings of my soul. I write to remember that He has always been faithful and He will be faithful again. I write love letters and dear John letters and why-have-you-forsaken-me letters and I-will-always-love-you letters to the same One reader to whom I have been writing for almost 20 years.

I go back and write the date of the answers to the prayers I have bled into the paper. There are many, many "yes! yes! yes, child, yes!" and many, many "child, this time you need to wait" and many, many "no, child, not this" 

And I rejoice. Anyway. Even then. 

Because I know there will be a date next to each prayer. Some dates are separated by years and years and some by mere hours and some are still date-less.  But a date will come because He listens, and He sees, and He loves.

So I journal to remember. 

Each volume is an altar. A place of remembrance. Of sacrifice and offering. Of prayer and praise. Like Noah and Abraham and Joshua before me I build altars of thanksgiving made with words instead of stones, paper Ebenezers to the God who goes before me.

Because my mind is forgetful and my heart is weak. Because He has said taste and see that the Lord is good, and when the darkness descends and uncertainty threatens, and when He seems far away and the path is crooked, and when I am hopeless and I feel alone, I pull out a tome of our story, His and mine, and read, and read, and read. 

I read until the memories of His never-failing, never-wavering, never-leaving love come alive again and build towers of refuge around me, and I can continue this journey secure not in the feeling but in the fact that throughout the best and worst times of my life Jesus has held me by the hand. 

Read a story, help a cause!

My beautiful imaginary-blog friend turned real friend, Amy, sent an email a while back about CausePub. If you don't know Amy, you don't know that her blog's mission is to introduce people to big and small ways to change the world. She is constantly posting about organizations, ideas, and projects in which average people like you and I can become involved and that will help make a difference in the lives of others.

CausePub, she told us, is looking for stories for a book they want to publish and the proceeds will go towards helping people in Africa to have clean water. Stories to help people, you say? 

I'm all there.

So I went to the CausePub website to find out more about it and what I found out made me want to help. From their website: "CausePub is a community of story-tellers working together to create best-selling books that directly impact specific causes."

Basically, CausePub wants to get a bunch of storytellers to submit stories for a book called Couch Rebels. A Couch Rebel is someone who got up from the couch and had a life changing experience. They say it best: "While the rest of society is imitating potatoes, you’re learning, growing, and experiencing the incredible things life has to offer."

Once the book is published they hope to sell 15,000 copies and for every book sold, an organization called Blood: Water Mission will be able to provide three people in Africa with clean water for one year.

Isn't that awesome!? That's 45,000 people for 15,000 books!

So how can you help and why am I telling you about this? Well, the stories that are published will be chosen based on a few criteria; one of them is number of votes.

So...you can help me by going here and voting for my story, or...you can go here and vote for any story you like such as Amy's right here, and/or...you can commit to buying a book when it comes out. Judging from the stories submitted it will be a very cool book to own.

I hope you would take a moment to check this out. You can help make a difference with a few minutes and a few clicks.

Easy as pie.

  

Five Minute Friday: Comfort

When you are five or seven, a broken heart, a monster haunting a dream, a stubbed toe can all be comforted wrapped in the arms of the one who loves you the most. Comfort is the warm lap of the woman who would give her life for you and whose tears mingle with yours because she can't bear to see you hurting.

But where do thirty-five-year-olds go when they are too big for momma's lap, or momma lives too far away, or they are simply too grown-up to crawl into a parents' arms for comfort? Are hearts not broken after childhood? Do monsters not haunt our dreams any longer? Do we not hurt physically and emotionally anymore?

When you are thirty-five, a broken heart, a hurting body, haunted dreams, and shattered hopes can be comforted in the arms of the One who loves you the most. Comfort is found in the Word of the One who gave his life for you and whose tears mingle with yours because He can't bear to see you hurting.

He is your Father, your Abba, your Lord. And like a child you can come and find the comfort you seek in the arms of your Savior.

"But I have stilled and quieted myself, just as a small child is quite with its mother. Yes, like a small child is my soul within me." Psalm 131:2 (NLT).

**Linking with Lisa-Jo for Five Minute Friday**

Pride and Prejudice (well, maybe more like Pride and Humility)

They say the first step towards recovery is to admit you have a problem. 

I admit it. 

I have a problem. 

I have a problem with pride that has reared its ugly head for a few months now. So last night I laid it all out to the women of my Bible study. We are studying the Book of James and James, man, James does not strive to treat you gently. He will lift you off your feet, shake you like a rag doll, and set you down roughly. And this week, he did me in again.

I have not written for a while and it took some wrestling to figure this out. I don't write consistently. True. I tend to write when something gets a hold of me and I have to put words to it. But lately there have been stories floating around me that I just can't seem to pin down. I'll start one and never finish it. My virtual waste basket is full of wadded pieces of paper with discarded ideas. But it took an ancient writer to confront me and point out the truth to me: you don't write because you don't write like her, her or her.

James has harsh words for jealousy but I sat smug in my chair. That is a illness from which I don't suffer. I don't envy these bloggers. I'm not jealous of them. I celebrate them. I encourage them with comments. I share their sites with my friends. 

But then he got to humility and my smugness turned to conviction.

I have read post after post about not comparing yourself to other writers, about writing the story God gave you, about how even if one life is touched by your words it is worth doing it. I know. I know. I agree. I've uttered those words. And yet... I'm struggling to accept that God can use anything less than this right here. 

And so, my friends, this is pride. 

"If I cannot write like that, I will not write at all," says my heart stubbornly, in essence denying that God is smart enough to know what gift and to what measure and for what purpose is ours to have.

I know God has called me to write. I know He has given me tools. I know when I write I am changed and I know that some of you also walk away a little different. So why is that not good enough for me? James would not mince words in telling me that it is because I lack humility to accept my place in the Kingdom of God. 

Joan Chittister said that "humility is the admission of God's gifts to me and the acknowledgement that I have been given them for others." Pride is forgetting where those gifts came from but it is also discarding His good gifts and His holy calling in our lives because they are not as important/developed/talent-full/necessary/interesting as other people's.

It was an epiphany. 

I have to stop hiding behind my excuses that I only write when I "feel" it, or that maybe God is not really calling me to write, or that I just don't have the time. The truth is I suffer from pride when it comes to my writing. And the road to recovery will be long because those amazing writers are still out there writing away. Temptation to compare and to desist will keep coming. But I took the first step and it was tough: I admitted it. And not just to myself. To a room full of women who know me.

The cure for what ails me is a dose of humility. And there is nothing more humbling that to speak it out loud: I am prideful.

So here is to step two: hit "publish" and pray for the Lord to continue to teach me who He's called me to be.