Archive for 'Faith is the Evidence'
Isn’t it fascinating when you see your child leaping forward developmentally with apparent abandon? That is when I know God is working mightily.
The past two weeks have been such for Edward.
Last week we went swimming with two slightly older friends–one who is a fairly skilled diver and swimmer. Edward watched this friend absentmindedly, attempted dives halfheartedly, and later annoyed the friends by splashing them and simultaneously blathering “blah blah blah” in an cloying voice.
I was so thrilled when this most patient child finally told Edward that what he was doing was “dumb” and held up a kick board to shield himself. Edward actually garnered enough self control to stop his mind-numbing action immediately. This is big for him.
A few days later, Edward shocked me beyond belief by laying out a decent dive into the deep end of our neighborhood pool. Apparently, when I thought he was in “La La Land,” he had been watching his friend. His swim coach was equally surprised when he claimed he knew how to dive and then dove off the diving board to prove it.
At swimming lessons the next day we saw a dear friend from kindergarten days. He was with another boy and the two were lounging by the pool watching the lessons, dangling their legs into the cool water.
Edward sauntered up to the pool, took keen aim, and laid out a perfect dive in front of the two boys.
The new boy turned to Edward’s friend and admired, “Wow, that dude’s good! Who is he?”
The friend replied, “That’s Edward. He’s my friend!”
I blinked back tears behind my sunglasses.
Edward is a dude who’s been “good” at multiplication, reading and memorizing. He’s a dude who I’ll wager knows more about the Tudors than most adults. Yet I think this was the first time Edward had ever been genuinely admired by a peer for something athletic.
Then the child who has been terrified to stand on his head and flip over at gymnastics, a child fearful of somersaults and a child who would never consider a backward handspring, began doing back flips under the water in rapid succession.
The next day at gymnastics he garnered more shock and awe by doing an assisted back handspring.
Something is going on in that brain of his, and I am beyond awe.
Still, isn’t that the way God works? He wants to bless us so much more abundantly than we can ever imagine, and so often He comes through so mightily just when life has begun to look rather bleak.
“If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” Matthew 7:11.
I have more stories of Edward’s progress that I will share next week. In the meantime, I am going out of town for the long weekend and will be back Tuesday!
Peace!
Update: Elliot came through surgery better than expected today! Praise God! Thank you so much for all your prayers!
Elliot is a 22-month-old boy at our church with a complicated heart condition. I will never forget his parents–heavy with pregnancy and responsibility–coming before the church seeking prayer after Elliot was diagnosed in-utero with a seemingly-hopeless heart condition.
Doctors felt Elliot would not survive the birth process, and told his family that even if he did, he would most likely die during the first few days of life.
Elliot lived. Elliot fought. Elliot defied all the odds because, as we all know, there are no odds with God.
God has brought Elliot through three dicey surgeries in his short life.
I first met Elliot and his mother in the church nursery. For me, an 8:30 nursery gig is a tough deal. I struggle mightily with mornings in general and oftentimes find myself growing bitter about having to be at the nursery when others are either in church or bed.
Such was this morning. Elliot’s mother brought this smiling, glasses-bedecked toddler into the room; the unusually tiny boy was tethered to an oxygen tank; tubes and wire wound about him endlessly.
My first thought was panic. Did she expect me to take care of him and handle all these tubes and wires? How could I do that and take care of all the other babies?
So soon I felt an inward embarrassment and paradigm shift in my own view of the situation, the day, and even my own life. This sweet mother plopped down in the floor of the nursery and proceeded not only to take care of Elliot but also to help with the other babies.
Elliot cruised about, amazingly careful with all his wires and tubes; he was able to crawl and play, occasionally stopping to emit a troubling cough, but then moving on to another toy. And slowly, calmly Eliot’s mother began to weave her tale of his life story, God’s faithfulness and her own relentless love as a mother.
I left the nursery with a shift in my own understanding about tirelessly loving a child with special medical needs, graciously outpouring your life for someone else and cherishing each day regardless of tomorrow’s challenges or fears.
The miracles God has wrought through this child and his family have touched our church and our town. Eliot is now 22 months old and speaks fluently and eloquently in both English and Afrikaans.
Today as I submit this post, Elliot will undergo the Fontan procedure in Philadelphia to heal his tiny heart. His family’s prayer is that he will sail through surgery with no complications and emerge stronger than ever and able to leave the oxygen tank behind.
If you are so led, please join me in praying for Elliot.
“For as many as are the promises of God, they are all YES! in Christ Jesus.”
II Corinthians 1:20.
Certainly, I’m not sure what is going on in my life at any given moment, but whatever it is of late, it has to do with dodging and near-misses.
Sunday afternoon, after returning from the wedding, we made a leisurely drive-stroll through Alabama. We stopped in one of our favorite towns, and former homes, Birmingham, and hit Cahaba Heights to eat at a cool place called Mudtown.
Edward spilled his Sprite, swizzled ketchup and twirled precariously on his stool. Sue insisted on visiting the bathroom the minute we hit the place and rejected her chicken fingers because the breading was too “spikey.”
Things felt normal.
We’d already seen a rainbow earlier, and much to the excitement of the boys, an old couch floating in a flooded culvert, so we felt quite peaceful and jolly about the storms.
(Sorry I missed the couch in the shot! Isn’t this photographic excellence? I know Karla will be particularly impressed for two reasons.)
We’re relaxing on the porch with our salads and sweet teas, enjoying the break in rain,when the storm sirens suddenly go off. H leisurely walks inside the restaurant only to notice blaring tornado-red Weather Channel panic. Soon we are faced with several looming tornadoes quote close to the restaurant.
Our waitress speaks in shrill tones to her cell phone, “The tornado just hit my neighborhood! My children are OK. They were on the trampoline but my neighbor’s house is toast!” She throws down our bill and rushes inside to check the weather.
Soon we realize that if we hadn’t stopped at this lovely spot, we would have driven right through one tornado and directly into the paths of at least three more!
Joseph began to feel a bit panicky, with good reason. Two years ago, a large tornado hit our neighborhood, completely destroying one of our best friend’s homes, our former church and 13 other houses nearby. The devastation was massive and shocking, and the freight train sound and fear of what could have happened have lingered with Joseph, and of course, many others.
With dueling cell phones connected to weather.com, we tracked the storms throughout the night, stopping to let certain angry “cells” pass and arriving home around 1 am with two sleeping children and one wide-awake Edward! We barely missed one tornado that actually hit our town, causing damage to several businesses and homes, but thankfully injuring no one.
During the whole drive I felt undeniable peace. I knew God was protecting us, and I knew we would arrive home unscathed, despite the rain, potential hail, other reckless drivers, hydroplaning and a host of other typical fears that generally plague me in situations such as this. This assurance allowed me, often a fearful, anxious person, to (hopefully), pass my faith-confidence on to my son.
While I was thinking about the whole experience, the term “dodging” kept running through my mind. Yet as I worked on this post, I realized there was no dodging on my part. Instead it was God who was guiding us through this literal storm just as He guides us through the figurative storms of life. And whereas I so often rush to panic, and therefore cause alarm and terror in my children, by remaining calm and giving in to a new level of trust, I finally gave my children an important gift.
While I was pregnant with Sue, I had many occasions to “rush to panic,” yet early in the pregnancy a dear friend’s mother gave me this verse from Isaiah 28:16:
“So this is what the Sovereign Lord says: ‘See I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; the one who trusts will never be dismayed.’”
Certainly this verse spoke volumes to a mother with two recent miscarriages: the stone, the tiny embryo; the foundation, my womb.
Another translation of this verse reads, “If you trust in Him, you will not give way to sudden panic.”
Sue is almost four, and sadly I had “abandoned” this verse in an old flip-deck of verses I used to carry around. I’ve panicked too many times when Edward or Sue crashed over backward in a chair onto the tile floor, fell off the patio table onto concrete, or simply ran headlong into a door jamb, their foreheads purpling with a burgeoning swell of unknown severity, ice bags applied, pupils checked, prayers muttered.
I’ve screamed too many times Joseph has almost fallen out of a tree, cavalierly employed a butcher knife to open a video game or been crunched in football by a hulking boy twice his size.
Sudden panic has been my middle name throughout much of motherhood, and I have realized this week that it must stop.
Luke 5:34-39
[34] Jesus answered, “Can you make the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? [35] But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.”
[36] He told them this parable: “No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. [37] And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. [38] No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. [39] And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, ‘The old is better.’ ”
that all I can manage these days is Monday Mumbers. Not to discount that weight-loss maven, cupcake rejecting Kia or anything, but I have scores of unfinished drafts and still have nothing ready for this week! Without further adieu:
3 Number of days I have before leaving for my brother’s “now-no-longer-a-surprise-wedding!”
77 Number of times I have panicked this weekend realizing all the things I still haven’t done to prepare for this event like: get children’s hair cut, (thereby qualifying for Stone Fox’s ‘Hair Dare’, I hope), buy matching shoes for boys (a wedding requirement), find a pair of khaki pants that will fit a rapidly-growing nine-year-old for longer than two weeks, lose 10 lbs, make pale pink rosette-shaped home-made mints with heirloom mint molds, and the list goes on…
20 Number of children at my house Saturday for a mudfest Easter egg hunt. (We put down a tarp and taped off treacherous mud-seep areas!)
24 Number of fleshly-colored turkey hotdogs H prepared for the Easter egg extravaganza!
4 Number of “flesh-turkey” hotdogs consumed by guests.
35 Number of “standard beef” hotdogs relished by guests.
16 x 21 Dimensions of the over-sized Easter basket Edward insisted on using for the egg hunt.
2 Number of “pitiful” Easter decorations I put up before the party and H took pictures of to make fun of my decorating attempts!
Here’s my mantle graced with Easter lights and children’s pottery masterpieces!
1 Number of children who captured a caterpillar, placed it in an Easter egg lined with soft leaves and exclaimed, “This is Fuzzy, my new pet caterpillar! She will live in this egg, build her cocoon here and live happily ever after until she comes out of the cocoon as a beautiful butterfly and follows me around, flying just above my head, for the rest of my life!”
Enough of the humorously pitiful!
What is truly pitiful is a fact our pastor shared with us today: If you Google the word Easter in “images,” in the first 18 images (which comprise the first page), you will only see one image of Christ or the cross. The rest are frolicking bunnies, bright eggs, ducks and fluffy chicks. (Try it!)
Now that, my friends, is honestly pitiful because the true meaning of Easter is Jesus Christ!
He has risen! He has risen indeed! Hallelujah!
I was sitting in the kitchen with my coffee yesterday, having a rare quiet moment, when I heard the tell-tale “ka-chump-wump” followed by a searing screel. Edward shot in the kitchen, both hands clamped down firmly over his mouth, and began hopping up and down frantically.
I threw out my trademarked, “What-on-earth-happened-haven’t-I-told-you-all-not-to-run-in-the-house-why-can’t-you-all-just!” only to watch Edward open his mouth and emit a large pool of bloody gruel. Then, as fast as he opened it, he closes that mouth and, through bloody spittle, wails, “Ma teef! Ma teef! I think they’re gone!”
I jump down to his level, not too terribly panicked because I’ve dealt his 27 other bloody lips, a major tongue laceration, a torn frenulum, etc.
“You’ve got to let mama look!” I implore. “I’ve got to see what’s going on! I’m sure they’re not all gone!”
Then he begins this wild bloody spitting while hopping, clasping his mouth and moaning, “Ma mouf! Ma mouf!” Sophie, our five-month-old Boston terrier puppy, hurries over in some sort of blood lust and lunges at the collecting pools.
It’s hard to see what is actually going on, what with the hopping and spitting and such, but I do discern the absence of one big tooth and two cuts on the lips. I relax. We can handle this. The tooth was slightly loose, and, as I’ve explained before, he’s an early puller anyway.
Joseph and Sue finally run in breathlessly, feigning an air of concerned innocence. “We were, uh, playing and then he fell and I…”
I’ve seen this action before. “You were wrestling, weren’t you?”
“Yes, well, sort of. And my knee kind of knocked against his mouth and sort of, well…I think I might have knocked out some teeth.”
“You think?”
This comment brings Edward to certain level of acceptance and then a fresh concern, “OK but where’s my toof! Where is the toof! Don’t let it be like last time!”
Now I start to worry slightly that he’s actually swallowed the tooth.
“Joseph–run man! Go find that tooth!”
Joseph rushes away and is gone for a few long moments. I apply ice to the toothless mouth, sop up the floor and the child, and attempt a general calm-down. Joseph finally returns, a triumphant look on his face.
“I found it, I found it! It was stuck to the couch.”
Yes, well, that does make sense…
I settle Edward down with an organic high fructose corn syrup-free lemon ice to stop the bleeding, and we bag that tooth for the tooth fairy. Not two seconds after I have him settled, Sue runs in the kitchen, a crazed look on her face, her tiny deft fingers clutching something small and white.
“A tooth! A tooth! I found another tooth, Mama!”
Curled in her tiny palm is what, to the untrained canine dentistry eye, looks like a small, white puppy molar.
Joseph immediately begins to calculate: “Mom, do you think the tooth fairy can tell the difference between a child’s tooth and a dog tooth? I mean, do you think if we put that tooth under his pillow she would bring double the money?”
(Remember, this is a lad who rents wooden bats to naive friends at baseball camp, sells official “tadpole water,” trades worthless McDonald’s trinkets for $5.00 Bakugans, and generally considers himself some sort of Donald Trump of the nine-year-old set.)
“Well, I feel certain the tooth fairy is well-acquainted with the difference between human and canine teeth, but more importantly, do you think it would be honest to try to trick the tooth fairy into leaving something nobody deserves?”
Joseph looks down sheepishly…lesson learned.
And then everyone wants me to take pictures of their mouths!
Many disparate events have collided in the past two weeks only to push me kicking and screaming to consider a topic that frankly infuses my veins with ice crystals: The Birds and The Bees.
I’ve conveniently viewed my need to address this issue as a lengthy, serpentine road whose end I didn’t have to see quite yet–after all my oldest child just turned nine. He spent yesterday with a friend catching green lizards activated finally by the 70-degree weather, finding various grubs and such to feed the creatures, holding Star Wars battles in the back yard and playing “Duck-Duck Goose” on the trampoline.
Why does he need to be faced with anything further than “good touch/bad touch?” Plus, he’s homeschooled. Doesn’t that protect him somewhat from this sort of thing?
NOPE!
Well, I was a bit freaked out last week when I had dinner with several girls from church and they began discussing their own 10-year-old girls’ burgeoning maturity. I was slack-jawed. I personally didn’t reach such maturity until my mid-teens, and while I had one friend who “blossomed” during 5th grade, she was the exception. I knew she was different because she wore a bra, but that was the extent of my understanding regarding her maturation.
My upbringing was “churchy” but not spirit-filled, and my parents told me nothing about the topic other than “DON’T DO IT!” In fact, the first time they warned me not to do it, I had no idea what they were talking about. I had to ask my mother what monthly accoutrements were for because I had seen them in friends’ purses and didn’t know why they would need such strange objects.
I learned the details in a shocking, frightening way by reading Judy Blume books, and I vowed then and there to share the truth with my own children so they would not have to find out in such a troubling way.
I was the girl who left for college knowing nothing, got a roommate who was on the Pill and got an such an earful the first two weeks I had to ask for a different room arrangement.
So the perfect storm of “birds and bees acknowledgment pressure” further roiled when another mother called to let me know a “friend of a friend” had been exposed to pornography while at another child’s house. The culprit? An unsupervised computer, of course.
This tender nine-year-old began having such anger outbursts and depression that his parents finally sent him to a psychologist who got to the bottom of the situation; the images this child saw disturbed him to such a degree that he is now profoundly depressed, his innocence cast into a fiery furnace for which no child is prepared.
I felt further nudgings through Stone Fox’s post on exploitation, Elaine’s recent thought-provoking posts on purity, and a frank conversation yesterday with Kim. I now find myself at a crossroads for which I was not prepared.
(Are we ever truly prepared for crossroads?)
From those who have traversed these waters before me, I welcome your insights, wisdom and experiences. For those whose children are still too young, I pray I do not cause fear and dread. And for those swirling along in these roiling waters beside me, I welcome your support and friendship. Shining the light on this topic can only serve to keep it in His Light where the enemy has a trying time with encroachment.
From all of you, I seek your prayers.
I don’t blog about it too much because it’s a tad odd and I’m trying not to scare off readers, but I have been selling rare books online for 10 years. It is a bit like a treasure hunt and allows me to run into the most bizarre people–some of them rather frightening–others surprisingly engaging.
I hunt a great deal at a variety of thrift stores in my town, and, in doing so, have become a tangential part of the “thrift store underground.” I’m known as “that book girl” or “that book lady” depending on the age of the commenter.
I’ve gotten quite tight with a heavy-lidded weight-lifting woman whose eye makeup rivals Ann Coulter’s, and who used to own her own carpet cleaning business that was “stolen” by an ex-husband who set her up to be busted on a coke charge. Tanya won’t let me walk to my car alone if “Crazy Elise,” who is 65 at least but dresses like she’s still following Jerry with purple hair streaks and exaggeratingly stenciled eyebrows (Joan Crawford), is milling about the parking lot, hitting up people for rides or handouts.
I’ve prayed with John, a 60-something quadriplegic whose world is relegated to the sidewalks that border his section 8 housing. His story involves incredible faith, a failed business and an attempt at finding some way to make ends meet on his meager disability check.
Collins is a 50-something thrift store worker–a funny, leprechaunesque Irish fellow who can barely read but will save books back for me with childlike enthusiasm in the hopes that they are great treasures.
Larry is a rangy ex-Vietnam vet who rarely finishes a sentence without mentioning faith or the Holy Spirit; he manages one of the thrift stores and sells old war memorabilia at local flea markets.
Barbara is 45 but looks 55; her fiance was killed by a tractor trailer that crushed him while he was fixing his delivery truck. She had become a mother to his son, aged 8, who was thrown out of the house by his own mother, an admitted meth addict. The dear mother went back to court recently to fight Barbara for custody but, in an unprecedented move, the judge gave the child to Barbara permanently. She has made sure he attended school and completed his homework, and for the first time ever, he is on the honor role. Barbara’s faith is contagious and she has brought her new son to know Christ as well. She is a “tee-totaler” but will partake of a “hot toddy” when she feels a cold coming on.
Debbie’s daughter has five children and a bad meth habit. I met the daughter briefly once when she came to hit up Debbie for money–four children crammed into the back seat of an old Buick with no car seats. Debbie wanted to retire but needs to work in an attempt to clothe and feed her grandchildren; she recently gained custody of one boy who is seven and failing kindergarten for the second time. She and I discuss ADHD, homeschooling, reading intervention ideas and speech therapy. Debbie drinks gallons of Mountain Dew to get through the day, always looks tired and is developing acute osteoporosis.
These people talk to me, share their stories, pour out their woes. They have allowed me a glimpse into a part of society I would probably never have known much about. Yet what is more fascinating is how they have accepted me into their culture. Me with my minivan, my now-bobbed hair, my unfake purse…
Now, lest you think it’s all inspiring stories and insight, last week a creepified 60-year-old man with a handlebar moustache began following me around the thrift store I’ve named “Crazy Cecil’s.” His penetratingly evil eyes with no discernible pupils told me to beware. He fixed on me and began a deluge of questions on faith and Christianity. He berated Christians, asserting that his own mother loved him to no end and thought Christianity was “bunk” and if she had thought there was something to it, she would have told him. I suggested he read the Bible and see for himself, at which point he began regaling on UFOs, his own abduction escapades, and the extraterrestrials’ plans to abduct people like me.
I headed out of that place. My life is complicated enough at the moment.
Perhaps I’ve gone over the edge with the T.S. Eliot? I know people are reading my last post, but only a few have dared to comment.
Where is she going with this?
(One insightful friend did indicate she thought there was more to the post than just a hair cut. Another friend called me “brave,” [isn't she kind?], and promptly sent me the picture above taken a few days ago when I still had long hair, while another asked me if I was a modern-day Lady Godiva.)
Let me elaborate.
When I was almost three, my parents had another baby and cut my hair into a bad pageboy. Then they sent me away to a spinster aunt’s for two weeks while my brother ‘got bonded,’ and my aunt bought me a horrific, leering-eyed clown jack-in-the-box at K-Mart, from which I’ve never recovered.
So to get even, I stabbed my mother’s vinyl kitchen chairs with a cheap, serrated steak knife and pulled out the tufts of polyester fiber stuffing, ruining each and every chair.
How’s that for three-year-old sibling newborn angst?
From that point forward I pledged to keep my hair long. Long hair, for me, exemplified graceful, flowing femininity and acceptance. It represented an array of hairstyles from pony tails to pig tails, Princess Leah braids to headbands, handpainted name baretts to yarn puff-ball cheerleading hairties, elbow-length, face-covering Dead head hair to shoulder-length, trimly cut wedding veil hair. And of course the pregnancy-fertile mommy hair that promptly coated the shower stall a few months after childbirth.
Two Christmases ago I saw a friend I hadn’t seen in years. This normally bobbed-hair, perfect lipstick friend had rangy, shaggy hair halfway down her back. We were in the toy store debating the evils of various Transformers when I finally had to ask her what the deal was with the hair. Was she getting the band back together?
She explained that she was growing her hair out for Locks of Love. “Wow!” I thought. I could do that. I mean I grow hair. I love my hair. Still, I could do that. I filed away a short mental note and moved on.
Yet that memory of her “hair plan” nagged at me. God began to whisperingly remind me about my pledge. Each month when I would visit my hair stylist, I would ask him how many more months it would take for me to grow my 10 inches. At one point, it was June and I thought how lovely it would be to have short, smart, Summer hair.
Next I felt it might take until the Holidays to have the right length. “Yes, after Christmas, would be perfect,” I would think. “Then I will have long hair for all the holiday pictures and will still have some time to grow it out before Summer.”
This hair dance continued. Month after month, I’d sheepishly enter the salon, clutch my long locks, and admit I was simply not ready to shed them. Yet why? Why was this shock of admittedly stringy hair so important to me?
Finally the whole affair became a bit ridiculous. Wednesday afternoon when I told H I would be emerging from the stylist with a significant alteration, a strange Lenten offering, he looked at me in a bemused way and gave me a hug, (ie, he didn’t believe I’d go through with it.)
My “stylist” is a 20-something, super-straight, University of Georgia football fan with an 18-month-old son and lovely wife whose hairstyle I pirated. The man is the best colorist in South Georgia, and he does a great hair cut too, but he can’t put hair in a pony tail. He gave me what looked like the rubber band off of a newspaper and asked me to put my hair in a loose pony tail.
Hurry up please, it’s time.
All I can say is as I did this, I felt this floating, surreal sensation as if my head was disconnected from my body. In slow motion I watched him take the shiny scissors, clamp down on my hair, and deftly cut. And as he cut, the visceral nature of what I felt can only be described as akin to having a baby pulled out of your womb.
Those of you who have pushed and pushed to no avail only to have the unfortunate experience of a forceps delivery will know what I am talking about. I felt as though something was being removed from me…something I didn’t want to leave…yet something I knew had to go.
So when Tari asked me this morning via email if I missed my hair, I had to answer that not only do I miss my hair, but I am actively mourning my hair.
While I am missing the way my hair felt on my back, and I admit to looking longingly at the stray pieces that litter the floor by my computer, what I lament the most is my own inability to find joy in sacrificing my hair.
Let’s be honest: this is a miniscule sacrifice in the grand scheme of things. It’s not like I had to cut my hair to prepare for chemotherapy like several of my friends have done lately. Why has this seemingly small sacrifice been so difficult for me?
While I believe there are several reasons from the frighteningly vain to the extremely personal, honestly I am still trying to understand it all. Perhaps you have some insight, and if so, please share it with me.
I do feel God calling me to acknowledge my own struggle with a new level of faith, and this reminds me of Stone Fox’s revelations of late.
Or perhaps the decision is just as simple as God called me to cut my hair to help another person and I finally obeyed just because He said so?
Could it really be that simple?
Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Because I know that time is always time
I rejoice that things are as they are
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace His will
