Remember the Y E T

Have you ever noticed that when you are mad at your spouse, your kids are the most annoying? Or when you are the most exhausted, your baby is the most fussy? Or when you have had it with the kids, your husband can’t seem to get anything right? It seems that there is a conspiracy to make us feel worse when we are already at a low spot.

There is a reason for that, you know. When our mood is sour, it impacts everyone around us. Especially those who love and need us the most. Misery is inevitable, but being miserable is a choice. What are you choosing to do with the miserable things in life? As adults we seem to reach back to our childhood when things are going south. “I wouldn’t have said that if you….”  “I was only responding like that because you…”  “How do you expect me to react when you…”  We definitely have a tendency to pass off our attitudes and reactions as if they are totally the responsibility of someone else. I get it.

I married an imperfect man (who seems to be getting closer to that perfect man all the time, but that is a story for a different day). I raised kids that were sometimes noisy, messy, whiny and disobedient. I have felt taken for granted and over-worked and under-appreciated. I have been judged unfairly and treated badly. I have wondered how we could afford groceries. I have endured a myriad of medical issues. LIFE IS HARD. I get it. And there have been those times when I truly felt God had turned His back on me, leaving me in my crisis, all alone and crying. YET…

As I write, I am reliving a day in LaRabida Children’s Hospital. Emily, our oldest daughter, has a relatively rare muscle disease called Dermatomyositis and she was in critical condition. I stayed at that hospital with her for over 5 months. One day when I left her room to go take a shower, I came back to find tears streaming down her face. She had awakened and needed a bed pan, but was too weak to push the button to call a nurse. She was laying in her own waste and I wasn’t there for her. The tears were tickling her as they trickled down her cheeks and she couldn’t raise her hand to dry them. We got her all cleaned up and, in her very weak voice, she said to me, “Mommy, when animals hurt this bad, they put them to sleep. Why can’t you tell the doctors to help me die?”

I’m sure you have figured out that day wasn’t a high point on my spiritual journey. I crawled into bed with her and we cried together for what seemed like an eternity. I was definitely at a breaking point, watching her suffer so long. I was so sad and so angry. I kept thinking that the “God is Love” thing was a joke. A really bad one. How could a God of love let an innocent little girl suffer so much. I really just wanted to walk away from Him and never look back. YET…

Those 3 letters Y E T have made all the difference in my life many times. When the days are long and the load is heavy; when the nights are lonely and the heart is breaking; when loss comes along and the rest of the world seems to be gaining… YET, I will put my hope in God! I will praise Him again and again and again. He is the source of my life and my joy. If I turn and walk away, what is left? On whom can I call in the midst of my sorrow and struggle?

Can I just remind you … when your husband isn’t enough… when your children are sick… when your job is horrid… when your head is pounding… when you are avoiding the mailbox because of the bills piling up… when life is more than you can handle… when you feel like God has turned His back on you… to remember the YET.

When we fail to realize that God is seeing it all and knows exactly what we need we are truly hopeless. But, when we are in those dark valleys we must look up and know that He hasn’t let go of us. The best way I know to turn things around is surrounding yourself with Godly friends who will pray for you and praise with you. God inhabits the praises of His people. That’s why we feel closest to him when we are singing His praises without abandon. When we sit around and bash our husband and complain about our job and our kids, we only fuel the flames of discontent. When we thank God for our mate, our kids, our job, etc. we feel His strength begin to ooze into our sorrow and give us hope for whatever lies ahead.

Remember, wherever you are and whatever your circumstances, you can choose to say, Yet, I will praise YOU. Yet, I will put my hope in YOU. Yet, I will follow where you lead. It will completely alter your attitude and your kids will notice. Your spouse will notice. You will be choosing to set the mood in your home as you place your hand in the unseen hand and walk the difficult road that life may lead you down, knowing that He is worthy of your praise and a safe place to rest all your hope.

Preparing For The Inevitable

No matter how tough we can appear to others, we all have something that can send cold chills down our spine. For me, the fears of childhood pale in comparison to the fears of parenthood. Being responsible for raising a child and protecting them, teaching them and directing them is a huge responsibility. As my kids reached the age where they were venturing off into adulthood, I recall thinking, “I wonder if I have covered everything that they need to know in order to make wise choices out there.”

There truly are so many things that can happen. The world is not a safe place. People are not always who they claim to be. Illness and accidents happen. There are injustices that can alter the course of your life. In these areas we have very little control.

Here is the bottom line: we live until we die. That is all we can know with certainty.

So if the only thing that is certain is death, and we as God followers believe in the eternal life that Jesus promised, how are we preparing them for the inevitable?  

We run ourselves ragged to every practice to make sure that our child is able to compete. We are on their case about getting their assignments in so they will be on the honor roll. We ground them and restrict them and punish them in order to curb the bad choices and redirect them. We work hard to build responsible adults. But what are we doing to prepare them to recognize the still small voice of God? How will they be prepared to hear and understand His direction in their lives?

I have some good news for you today. You don’t have to be a perfect parent for your children to find God. You don’t have to be a Super-Christian for them to make it to heaven. God does a pretty good job of filling in where we are weakest, when our heart’s desire is to follow Him. God’s grace is far beyond my comprehension. I can’t fathom a love so strong or an understanding so deep. But the more I know Him, the more I believe that His desire to unite with us is unimaginably strong.

When I meet Him face to face, I really do want to hear Him say, “Well done.” I want my kids and my grandkids to hear it, too. And I want to spend the rest of my days, however many there may be, knowing the voice of God so that I can follow Him more closely. I want to follow so closely that those who follow me will see Him, too. I want to make Him known through my attitudes and my choices and my words and deeds. I want it to be obvious that I am not living for ME, but for HIM. I want to leave this world with no regrets about how I spent my days or whether my goals were appropriate.

Will you join me on my quest? Will you make sure that in all the good things you do for your children, you won’t neglect to point to the God who made them for a purpose? We cannot make the decision for them and we don’t know when the Spirit will call them to Him, but we can do a whole lot to help them recognize His voice as we raise them with grace and peace and wisdom and the knowledge of an Awesome God.

Death is not the enemy. It’s the door to eternity. Preparing them for that door is the best way to parent and when we understand that, it can minimize all the fears of living in this broken world. 

Reflections

LORD, remind me how brief my time on earth will be.

Remind me that my days are numbered— how fleeting my life is.

You have made my life no longer than the width of my hand.

My entire lifetime is just a moment to you; at best, each of us is but a breath.

We are merely moving shadows, and all our busy rushing ends in nothing.

We heap up wealth, not knowing who will spend it.

And so, Lord, where do I put my hope? My only hope is in you.

Psalm 39: 4-7

May is a month of reflection. Mother’s Day comes every May and causes us, as moms, to look at our role and wonder when that day will come when our kids will rise up and call us blessed. Or maybe we wonder when they will figure out that we are the ones, primarily, that gave them life and kept them alive; that we are their biggest cheerleaders; their biggest prayer warriors; perhaps the ones that have taught them some of the most important life lessons. We wonder what we have left undone as they walk out the door. We pray that the seeds we planted in them will find root and grow strong. We fear that the world will snatch them away from us before we are ready to let go and panic at the notion that they will get off the right path.

May is also a month of when we send them off to prom, dressed as adults, with high hopes that they will have the maturity to behave as such. It is the month when we watch them graduate and consider all we have taught them and all we wish we still had the time to teach. It is the time when they look, with longing, to an unseen future as though it were simply an adventure. All the while, we are terrified that we have failed to help them develop appropriate values and wonder if we have, perhaps, misused the 18 years we had in which to “grow” them.

This fall I will celebrate 40 years of being a mother, and I can tell you that all the hoping and wondering hasn’t stopped. I have four kids that are pretty amazing adults, but I still find myself wondering if I could have done more, taught more, prayed more, shaped more so that they are ready to be the best possible parents for my grandkids!!! Did I let them down? Occasionally. Did I do the best I knew to do? Mostly. Are the seeds planting still growing decades later? I certainly pray that is true.

Life gets so crazy busy when we are raising our kids. We find ourselves racing from one event to the next wondering if we even remembered to feed them and hoping nobody finds out that we didn’t! In all the hustling around, we often forget that all that we do in this life isn’t even about this life. When we decide to be followers of God and seek to do as He directs, everything we do, teach, learn, gain, etc… is not about the here and now, but about the kingdom God is building in the hearts of His people.

So, as you are doing your reflecting on the time you are investing in your kids, remember, as did King David, that this life is but a vapor, but the next lasts forever. Make sure that you are saying “No” enough that you can have time to say the best “Yes.”  Look at your calendar and discover if it is so full of … everything… that you don’t have time to prepare them to live a life that will extend into eternity.

And while you are at it, take some time to look at your finances and see how well you are teaching them that life isn’t about gaining more, but it is the giving that matters in the end. Help them to see that it isn’t all about them, but about serving and loving others.

And teach them that anything that goes against what Jesus taught us to do is sin and, because sin destroys, they should run from it as fast and as far as they can. Help them learn to love the Word that shows us who God is. Teach them that it is the best way to find their way… all the way to the end of their lives here on this earth.

Teach well. Love well. Demonstrate Godly living well. Be the very best you can be for God’s glory and for the benefit of generations to come. Someday you will be looking back and wondering if you did all you could have done to guide them. I pray that you will be able to at least answer, “Mostly.”

Remember, our only hope is Jesus. Hang on tightly to Him because those kids, at least for now, are following you!

Finding Hope

I have had many conversations with young couples, mostly young wives, who tell me their story and the struggles they are having in their marriages and they ask, “Do you think there is hope?” To date I have never had to answer, “Nope! You are in a hopeless situation and even God can’t fix this one!” The very fact that they can see that there are some struggles and weaknesses and issues, tells me that they have hope. Maybe even more hope than those who seem to be coasting along without struggling. Why? Because it is in the trials of life that we can find out that we are weak and God is strong. It is in coming to the place that we discover our  NEED FOR HIM that we find HOPE.

Sunday the pastor threw this equation up on the board:

Pain + Belief = HOPE

So there is more to the story. We don’t just struggle and suddenly become strong. It is when we learn to anchor ourselves to the belief that God is all powerful and all knowing and all seeing that we can release our pain and grab onto hope. 

If you are in a relationship that doesn’t seem to be growing or healthy, take the pain of that struggle and be honest about it. Don’t sweep it under the rug and act like everything is okay. Be willing to be real and say, “this hurts and I hate it.”  God is listening all the time and He knows the truth anyway, so why not tell Him how you feel? 

Sometimes it hurts so bad that we tend to believe that God has turned His back and is completely unaware of our struggles. That isn’t true, but He knows you are thinking that… so don’t try to play the tough guy. Cry out to Him as long as it takes to get it off your chest. If it was good enough for King David, you aren’t too big or cool to do it.

But here is the key to get you to the hope that you need… In spite of the pain and ugliness you are living in, there must be a deep awareness of God as God. Not God as a picture, or a mythological deity, or a super hero. Psalm 22 is a great example of David crying about how tough life was for him and how he didn’t feel like God cared or was paying attention, however, his knowledge of and relationship with the God who sees us, helped him to realize that his pain was only one part of the equation. The pain was still there. The circumstances that caused him to fear were still there… BUT… so was the God who hears our cries. Knowing that changed his desperation into hope.

Is your marriage rocky?  Do you have a child that is on a slippery slope? Are you dealing with a job situation that is horrible? A diagnosis that is devastating?

Take that pain and combine it with faith in the One who loved you enough to sacrifice Himself to be connected with you, even in all your hot mess, and you will find hope. Draw close to the One who has the answers, the solutions, the wisdom, the strength that you need and He will take your belief in His goodness added to your pain and sum your life up in hope for tomorrow and all the days to come.