The greatest gift my husband has given me

 The Lord your God is with you;
       the mighty One will save you.
    He will rejoice over you.
       You will rest in his love;
       he will sing and be joyful about you.

Zeph. 3:17(NCV)

I want to tell you all about my husband.  He’s a wonderful man.  He is a real partner in our marriage, taking on household responsibilities alongside me, running errands I don’t like to run, and sharing in the joys and achievements of our children.  He seasons my life in many ways keeping me from being the dull person that I most likely would be left to my own devices.   He is a much more fun person than I am. He makes me laugh and encourages me to not take myself too seriously.  He is intellectually challenging, forcing me to think outside my own perceptions.  He is more socially gifted then I, often bridging the gap in what for me might be an awkward social moment many, many times.  But these are not the best gifts he has offered me in the time we have been together.

No, the greatest give that he has given and continues to gives me is unconditional love.   I don’t mean that we never fight or that he always agrees with me or that he does everything my way.  Quite the opposite is true much of the time.  We have had our share of difficulties and problems at times causing our relationship to feel much like a roller coaster ride.  

What I mean is that he absolutely loves me despite my all the problems, imperfections, and ugliness found both on the outside and inside of me.  When we first started dating, he used to tell me I was perfect.  That scared me.  I was afraid he wasn’t seeing me for who I really was.  I was worried I would at some point fall off of the pedestal he placed me on and he would lose all respect for me because he wasn’t looking at me from a realistic point of view.  But after being together for almost 20 yrs (3 dating and almost 17 married) I have come to realize that all along he saw everything  about me, the good and bad, and he loves me anyway.  He sees the extra pounds, the stretch marks,  the blemishes.  He sees the grumpiness, the selfishness, and the  tendencies to be reclusive, shutting myself away from others.  He sees all that garbage and so much more that I am not ready to share  here.  He has flung held any  of that stuff back into my face.  He has never made me feel ashamed, humiliated, or  worthless.  He sees the junk.  My garbage pile has often stunk up our relationship and caused us to argue, disagree, or be hurt.  We have spent days in silence and nights with our backs to each other in bed.  And yet, none of it has changed how much he loves me.  His love has not wavered or diminished.  He loves me.  Oh, how he loves me.

Having my husband’s unconditional love is more than enough in itself.  But being able to be loved like that every day, is a constant , tangible reminder that this is how God loves me.   God knows me even more intimately than my husband, and loves me even more deeply.   I do not have to pretend to be what I am not.  I do not have to try to be perfect.  Just as I am able to rest in the knowledge that my husband loves me despite of my many faults, I can rest in the knowledge that God has accepted me as I am, he knows what I am, and he loves me still.  He will never fling my own garbage in my face to remind me of how wretched I am.  He just loves me and oh how he loves me.

Thank you Billy for creating this picture of God’s love in my life.   Thank you God for blessing me with such a man as my husband who teaches me every day what true love is. 

Everything I Know, I Learned from a Book

“…If I do not have love, than I am nothing” I Corinthians 13:2

Those who know me best know I love to read.  It is my absolute favorite thing to do with my free time.    One of the reasons I love books is what I can learn from them.  And I am not talking about self-help or even Christian living books.  I rarely read those, although they offer wonderful wisdom at times.  No, I am talking fiction, people.  Stories.  I recently finished a book entitled Beyond Justice by Joshua Graham (which you can download as an e-book from Barnes and Noble for only $2.99 or if you have a Nook I can lend it to you).  This is one of the best books I have ever read (although my “best -books -I’ve -ever -read” is a lengthy list, this one would be close to the top).  I will review this book on my other blog at some point, so I won’t’ go into detail here, but the book’s themes center on love and forgiveness.  So already I am dwelling on these profound ideas.  Then, I begin a new book entitled The Mailbox by Marybeth Whalen (Which you can also download as an e-book from Barnes and Noble for $9.99), and something the character, Lindsey, writes  in the very beginning of the book just resonates with me. You know, one of those epiphany moments.  Here is the quote from the book:

“ …I don’t care how lame it sounds—I found my purpose.  And that purpose is loving Campbell with all my heart. Always.”

And this is why I love to read.  Because I can learn to look at things from a perspective that is not present in my own mind or heart.  What a concept!  The fact that my purpose here on earth could be simply to love someone.  The idea is enlightening to me because I, probably like most people, often feel that God must have some bigger purpose for me here on earth than being a high school teacher, mother and wife, living in a nondescript American suburban town.  Right?  Not that there is anything wrong with being these things of course, but it seems that anyone can do that.  Lots of people lead a similar life so why would God want me to just do that.  Isn’t there some higher calling for me?  Like what, you ask? 

Well, for you it might look different.  But I would love to write a novel that profoundly affects people and of course makes me famous in the process.  Or maybe to be that inspirational teacher that you see in movies like Stand and Deliver, Dangerous Minds, or Freedom Writers.  What if one of my students became the next Bill Gates, Oprah, or President of the United States? (I always remind them that if this were to happen, they are to acknowledge me publically for my influence  and send me money so I can retire having fulfilled my purpose.)

But then, one night in bed I read the quote above .  Sleep almost overtakes me, causing me to put my Nook down and turn off the light, but I had not quite relented to sleep’s irresistible pull enough to leave that sentence in the book.  Laying in the dark, my mind ponders the idea that my purpose here could be to love.  Just that simple.  Yet, not so easy I think.  Loving my husband, children, family, and friends, now that is easy.  Yes my family is reading this, but I am being honest.  They are wonderful, all my in-laws included, and very easy to love.  If I find them unlovable at times, it is usually because I am the one feeling particularly unloving.  Instead it ism y students, the homeless man begging on the corner (who may or may not truly be homeless), the person who just cut me off in traffic, the sullen cashier at the grocery store, the mother on the news who leaves her baby in the car to suffocate to death while she partakes in sinful pleasures, these are much harder to love.

But love is the eternal legacy right?  Isn’t this the purpose Jesus fulfilled in his life in earth?  “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”(John 15:13). Great novels often fade into anonymity, great teachers also.  But love never ends.  It always endures.  

How does this play out in my life?  I am not always sure.  I don’t always know the best way to go about loving someone.  But God does and if He put me here for that purpose,  and he puts the people in my life that I am suppose to love, then certainly He will provide me the means for carrying out that purpose.  I will admit that loving people is scary to me.  It means developing relationships, caring, making myself vulnerable, hugging people (I’m not a big hugger), and getting emotionally messy.  And it certainly isn’t as glamorous as being a bestselling author or the focus of a box-office hit.  But if this is God’s purpose for me, I am pretty sure it will be more rewarding, satisfying, and amazing  than any purpose I can dream up for myself.   So I am going to lift my eyes from lusting after these other lofty goals. Who am I anyway, to think that the life God has given me isn’t exactly the one I am suppose to be living?  Mordecai told Esther, “And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” Loving others.  That is my “royal position” today and each and every day God gives me. 

Not that I am going to give up on the Great American Novel, I might still get around to writing it.  But I think that it would be more like the icing on the cake and not the cake itself.  When you eat just icing, it tastes wonderful, but you know that there is something substantial missing. 

All I have to do is Ask

I don’t know how you guys pray, but my prayers tend to be more like me telling God what to do.  You know, kind of like the following:

Dear God, make all the traffic lights green on the way to work. 

Dear God, let this be a better day than yesterday.

Dear God, make all of my students behave and do what I ask them to do.

Dear God, open this door for me because I really want to walk through it.

Dear God, give me a sign so I know what to do.

Dear God… well, I think you know what I mean.  I pray this way all of the time, and then wonder when is God going to move?  When will I see His hand at work in my life?  I pray earnestly, genuinely.  I really want God to guide me and help me and I have always thought that by praying this way, I was inviting Him into my life to lead me.  But more often than not, I’ve felt frustrated because I didn’t see evidence of God answering my prayers.  I felt disappointed and didn’t know why God didn’t hear me.  Recently, though, my pastor gave a sermon that was a revelation to me. 

 During a sermon, my pastor was encouraging his church to pray specifically and to ask God for an answer.   Immediately, doubt filled my heart.  God would not answer me like that.  That was my first thought upon hearing his words.    My pastor seems to have such a close intimate relationship with God that while I have often desired such intimacy, I have felt it was not something I would ever attain. Honestly,  I don’t read my Bible as I should, I sometimes don’t attend church, I often  get so caught up in worldly things and attitudes that I feel so unworthy to ask God anything.

As I tried to push away the doubt I was feeling, I realized that fear played a part in the way I prayed as well. I think that I am a little leery of how God would answer. What would He ask me to do?  What if I don’t want to do it?   But after hearing this sermon, I thought I would take this approach with my prayers and an amazing thing happened.  God answered.  Yes, it was Him, unmistakably, and though the answer was a little out of my comfort zone, I decided to follow through.

The prayer I prayed was about my students.  Usually I pray, “God help me love my students the way you love them.”  Not a bad prayer, if I do say so myself.  And I meant it.  But then I would go about my day and I didn’t feel as if I was acting any differently toward them than on a day I didn’t utter that prayer.  I guess I was expecting that God would put me on automatic pilot and take control of my speech and actions.  Probably that is not how God works since He is big on the free-will thing.  So this time I asked God, “What can I do to show your love to a student today?”    I asked the specific question and received a specific answer just like my pastor said would happen. 

I need to give you some context.  One of my students had recently shared that her mother was in critical condition after having a heart attack.  I had been praying for the mom and told the girl as much.  She seemed to appreciate it.  I felt like I had communicated my sympathy to her which is a very “Christian thing to do”, right? 

But after praying that prayer, “What can I do to show your love to a student today?” I knew God wanted me to give the girl’s mom a get well card.   Please understand, this is not something I would normally do. Many of you are probably wonderful at communicating good will with cards, but sadly I rarely send cards or notes.  It is just not something that pops into my head to do.  And I have never sent a card to a parent of one of my students.  Which is one reason I knew that this was God’s answer to my prayer.  Another reason is that as soon as I prayed, the thought filled my head.  It took me a few days to do it, but God kept reminding me.  Finally, one night at home, I found a small blank card with the verse Jer.29:11  on it.   I had heard this student talk about her mom taking her to church.  So I thought the mom might appreciate the verse.

Yet I was nervous.  What do you write to someone you’ve never met?  Well, I wrote what I had told the daughter,  which was that  I was praying for her recovery. A simple message. I gave the card to the daughter who seemed willing enough to pass it on to her mom.  This was not an easy thing for me to do.  I don’t often extend myself into my student’s personal lives. However, I knew God wanted me to do it. 

I  don’t know if the mom received it or what she thought of it, but in the end that doesn’t matter.  The result is up to God.  What matters is I prayed, God answered, and I obeyed.  This experience has given  me a better understanding of a few of the verses I learned as a kid:

 ⁷ “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. ⁸ For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. -Matthew 7:7-8

Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done. ²² If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” -Matthew 21:21-22

Through this experience, God has also reminded me of another time that I asked and He answered.  I grew up in a predominantly male household with no sisters.  So it is quite understandable that from about the time I was fourteen,  I began thinking of what it would be like to have my own children and I prayed for a daughter.  Just one daughter… I would plead.    God answered this prayer twofold, giving me two beautiful girls.  Somewhere along the way, my faith has faltered and as a result my prayers changed.  Now, they are changing again.  I look forward to more answers to my prayers as I ask God to guide me in more specific ways.

Grooming my Heart

James 1:22-24 (New International Version)

 ²²Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. ²³Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror ²⁴and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.

I am not overly vain about my appearance.  I do like to look as nice as possible, but   don’t spend a lot of time getting ready for my day.   And if I had to, I would be okay with going without make-up or wearing something wrinkled.  The one thing I am vain about though, is my hair.  So when a while back I sleepily turned on the shower as I did every morning, but unlike every other morning, no water came out of the showerhead, I panicked. I checked the other faucets and found them to be just as dry.  I heard noises outside and went out the front door to see work trucks working on a broken pipe a few houses down.  After speaking to workman (reluctantly as my hair was a disaster!),  I found out the water would not be restored for at least 3 hours.  I had to leave for work in an hour.   How could I go to work with unwashed hair?  Well, the answer is, I wouldn’t. I absolutely refuse to appear in public with my hair in disarray.  I  would absolutely never look in a mirror, see that my hair was messed up, and go about my day forgetting that I had not styled my hair.   At times, I have been embarrassed  after I have looked in a mirror and realized that I had spent much of my day with my hair out of sorts and not even realized it.  I must confess, that standing in the waterless shower, my first thought was that if I could not wash my hair, I was going to have to call in sick to work.

If only I felt that way about my heart.   In this area, I find I am the person James is referring to  in James 1:22-24.  I often go to church, hear a message that convicts me to the core of my soul, and then walk away from that experience and promptly forget about it as I go about my busy week.  I can hear something in a song on the Christian radio station I listen to, be touched by it, but as soon as I am out of my car where I was listening, I am no different.   If I became as upset about my messed up heart as I did my messed up hair, I would be ashamed to go into public until I got myself right.  If I were as concerned about my relationship with Jesus as I were about making sure my hair looked right, I would be spending much more time  in the Word and in Prayer than I would with my blow dryer in front of the mirror. 

If I worked on my heart issues like I did my hair issues, I would be a doer of the Word.  Instead, I deceive myself into believing that everything is ok and I don’t need to do anything about my relationship with Christ by not looking into the “mirror” of His Word at all.

I style my hair in the morning so that I can maximize its potential.  I use products and tools to bring out the best in my hair.  I make sure before I leave the house, that it looks the best it can and I double check it before I am on my way for any strays out of place.  That morning, that my water was turned off, I found a small amount of water in a pitcher in the refrigerator.  It didn’t matter that it was quite cold, I was willing to go through a little discomfort in order to get my hair into an acceptable do.  I need to do the same with my heart.  I need to use the tools  and products available to me to maximize my potential for Christ.  His word, prayer, church, Christian friends, all can help me be the best I can be for Jesus. 

Today,   I am looking into my spiritual mirror, but instead of walking away and forgetting the condition of my heart, I am going to do something about it. I am going to look at the reflection of my heart and ask God to start transforming it into something  that reflects Him.

James 1:25 tells me that if I do something about it, God will bless me for it.  He will bless you too.

humility can be learned in the church parking lot

So I was in church this weekend, listening as my pastor gave a sermon partly about having a hungry, humble heart. At the end of the service, I prayed for God to make me hungry for him and also to bring humility into my life. My husband and I had arrived at church separately so I said I’d see him at home as we to separated in the lobby to head to our respective corners of the church parking lot. I walked briskly. The air was chilly plus I was supposed to be meeting my parents at my house and was concerned that they would arrive before I did. I was thinking about this when before I knew it, I was on the ground. I had stepped on a rock which threw me off balance and had me tumbling to the ground, my Bible, phone, keys and purse flying from me as I fell. Two women walking ahead of me must have heard me fall. I don’t’ think I cried out, but the sound of me slapping the concrete with the side of my body must have travelled to their ears even in the midst of the conversation they were having with each other. They backtracked to me asking if I was okay, was I hurt. I replied I was fine as I picked myself off of the ground as modestly as I could in a short, strait skirt. One woman picked up my things while the other one wipe dirt off my arm and told me not to be embarrassed.
“I’m not embarrassed,” I told her, “This happens to me all too often for me to get embarrassed anymore.” It was true. I am clumsy and fall down often. I probably should have been embarrassed that two strange ladies, and probably a few other people, saw me splayed undignified on the parking lot tarmac of my church. But it was just too common of an occurrence for me to waste energy being embarrassed about it.
One of the ladies shared a funny story of herself sifting through a clothing rack in Dillard’s and without warning, falling to the ground. She had no explanation for why she had fallen but it was something she had found so funny that her laughing drew the attention of the elderly lady employee nearby who asked if she needed an ambulance all while this woman’s husband looked on shaking his head.
In the parking lot, I laughed with her, a feeling of kinship passed between us. I thanked the ladies for their concern and continued to my car, realizing how quickly God answered my prayer for humility in my life. The irony made me smile as there have been so many other prayers I have prayed that would have made me come out looking so much more poised that God has yet to answer for me. Maybe a prayer for more humility is a favorite of God’s so He moves those to the top of his list. Whatever reason, I am thankful-I really am- that He saw fit to allow me to unceremoniously fall to the ground near those ladies. Why? Because of what God was teaching me. The lady that shared the story about her fall in Dillard’s, also said something that stuck with me. She said, “You are not alone, we all do it.” She meant, of course, that for some reason and to the chagrin of our male counterparts, we women seem to trip and fall many times over the course of our lives and often with very small objects like an uneven pavement or a rock as the cause. But I also took her statement as God reminding me that we all fall in life. At some point in our lives, because we are all messed up with sin, we all find ourselves in some undignified position or another in front of other people. Many people pretend they don’t see, but many others like these ladies, take time to turn away from their paths, come to where we’ve fallen, and without judgment dust us off and help us pick ourselves back up. By the way, humility and humiliation are different, though. God isn’t trying to belittle me and make me feel worthless. Instead is He is trying to remind me that I am not perfect and that I can’t make it through this life all alone. Humility allows us, sometimes forces us, to rely on others for help when we otherwise might not. A lesson I needed as I am terribly independent not wanting to rely on others or feel obligated to them in any way. As always, my life is a work in progress. A week from now, someone may try to help me out and I don’t accept because I completely forgot what God taught me when I fell in the parking lot at church. Hopefully though, there will be times I remember. And with God’s help, if I remember often enough, it will be one more small part of my life that is transformed.