It took a while to sink in; a tragedy of proportions too great to wrap ones mind around. Now, after so long of seeing their faces on the computer screen, I have to shut it and walk away. I like all of you, am so filled with nausea and grief, and incomprehension. Why? We all keep asking; as if knowing the answer will assuage our sorrow, or prevent it from happening again., But the answer to why will not make it go away: it is our sin, the brokenness of our world; a world that wants to pick and choose when God should be present and relevant in our lives. In times like these we are overwhelmed by it's brokenness. We are discouraged. The consuming destruction of sin seems inescapable.
One of my facebook friends said events like this make her consider homeschooling. I hear what she is saying. How can we send our children into this world? The reality is, they are not safe anywhere. There are shootings in shopping malls and theaters, abductions in quiet neighborhoods. We can not protect our children.
How, then, do we go on? There is only one way. We must send them into this world knowing, they are His. They are gifts, for us to shepherd for a time, and should they be taken from us, they will go only to the comforting arms of Jesus, who loves them even more than we do. We send them with the purpose that they should be light in a dark world. The only way to survive in such times is to overwhelm the darkness. We cannot do this alone, but as the body of Christ, we can. We are called to live, and teach our children to live in such a way, that our kindness and love shines into the world, and causes those who despair to look to the one place that hope remains;, He is mighty; he can use even darkness to turn others to Him, He uses our light to help them find their way.
We cannot prevent evil. We can not eliminate danger. We can not solve the problem by looking for someone to blame, but what we must do, is unite to show with our love, that Jesus is still real and present. We must go forth boldly, "as sheep among wolves" to be"shrewd as snakes, and harmless as doves." For He knew what we would encounter, and He promised to be our hope, the hope of our children, and of all those that love him. We can not teach our children to walk in fear by being afraid ourselves. The ending has already been written; let us not forget, the enemy looses. Love conquers. Do not despair, we are His, let's try to live like it.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Friday, December 14, 2012
Cold shoulder and a side of snubbin
After being with my husband for 71/2 years, I still have a sister in law that likes to pretend that I don't exist. Christmas cards come addressed to my husband only, I am a ghost at family gatherings, gifts go unacknowledged or only my husband gets thanks, as though he sent her flowers on her birthday.....If I make an attempt at conversation, I receive only the most curt, perfunctory response. After all this time I have no idea what I have done to warrant this. I have tried to chalk it up to her being shy, and give the benefit of the doubt, but honestly, even a seriously socially impaired person could write my name on a Christmas card.
Since these in laws live out of state, the only result so far has been tears of frustration on my part after holidays, but since they have recently decided to move to Billings as soon as they can find work here, I foresee more opportunity for....well, tears, frustration, and giving up, or....grace.
She has one son, and is now pregnant with their second child. Her child and mine will be born within months of each other. I really want to be able to be a blessing and a support system for them here, but I don't know how to begin after so much hurt.
I really need your prayers, that I will be able to hang in there, and love the heck out of my sister in law until she has no choice but to relent, and for her, that she will be able to let go of whatever is burdening her, and accept that I am her brothers wife, and will be staying for the duration, and no amount of ignoring will cause me to vanish, and that even if her feelings toward me never change, that the love of Jesus will show through me and sustain me for as long as it takes.
Since these in laws live out of state, the only result so far has been tears of frustration on my part after holidays, but since they have recently decided to move to Billings as soon as they can find work here, I foresee more opportunity for....well, tears, frustration, and giving up, or....grace.
She has one son, and is now pregnant with their second child. Her child and mine will be born within months of each other. I really want to be able to be a blessing and a support system for them here, but I don't know how to begin after so much hurt.
I really need your prayers, that I will be able to hang in there, and love the heck out of my sister in law until she has no choice but to relent, and for her, that she will be able to let go of whatever is burdening her, and accept that I am her brothers wife, and will be staying for the duration, and no amount of ignoring will cause me to vanish, and that even if her feelings toward me never change, that the love of Jesus will show through me and sustain me for as long as it takes.
Monday, December 10, 2012
The Terribles
My beloved Baylie Rose is starting to go through the terrible twos. She is a happy little angel until she doesn't get her way and then she is a tiny but terrible ball of fury, but Alas, she is not the subject of this post. Morgan, who seemed to begin the terrible twos at 17 months, had a bit of a lull at 3, has taken it up a notch since Baylie was born. Though she has struggled with listening at home, she has always managed to be a model of politeness and caring elsewhere; garnering mind boggling compliments to those of us with her at home, but recently, she has been having trouble listening at school, she bit her best friend, and today she threw ice in her school friends face, even after he was crying for her to stop.
After the teacher met me in the drop off line, on the way home from school, I cried. I have never been more shocked and disappointed as a parent. Now you all know that I don't have perfect control of my temper, that I raise my voice more than I should, and I confess, on a couple of occasions I have slapped my daughter across the face before I even thought about what I had done. Terrible thing to confess in a blog, I know, but I have to own what is my hand in this. Sick and ashamed, I had to ask my small daughter for forgiveness. It is no justification, I know, but breaking the pattern of parenting in anger that you grew up with is no easy task. Though that was quite some time ago now, I imagine it is something she won't soon forget, and I never will, but on the whole, we have tried very hard to be consistent loving parents. We have taught our children about Christ's love and forgiveness, even when that means sucking it up and admitting that we need it as well. We have read all the right books, and try to do all the right things. We have had many conversations about kindness and bullying. Yet as I write this, I can not understand why, from the beginning this child has been a challenge to me unequal to any other challenge in my life, and why she would behave this way when she knows right and wrong. I do know, a good deal of it comes down to attention. I feel like even though I am a stay at home mom, I will never have enough to give; she always needs more, and yet every time we take her aside to do something special, she acts out immediately afterword in spectacular fashion. Also, when we calmly explain the consequence she has earned, she often respond punitively, :Well then I'm gonna______"
This is a post written in desperation! Can those slaps across the face when mommy lost control be enough to cause all this??? It seems like nothing we do has any effect, that getting her way is the only ruling force in her mind. She doesn't seem to grasp the cause and effect of having earned the consequences, though we talk to her about it, she always says that it is us not being nice.
Am I a terrible mother??? How can I get through to her before it is too late? I will never be perfect enough to never raise my voice. Am I doomed to ruin my children? If so, why is God giving us another one? Help!!!
After the teacher met me in the drop off line, on the way home from school, I cried. I have never been more shocked and disappointed as a parent. Now you all know that I don't have perfect control of my temper, that I raise my voice more than I should, and I confess, on a couple of occasions I have slapped my daughter across the face before I even thought about what I had done. Terrible thing to confess in a blog, I know, but I have to own what is my hand in this. Sick and ashamed, I had to ask my small daughter for forgiveness. It is no justification, I know, but breaking the pattern of parenting in anger that you grew up with is no easy task. Though that was quite some time ago now, I imagine it is something she won't soon forget, and I never will, but on the whole, we have tried very hard to be consistent loving parents. We have taught our children about Christ's love and forgiveness, even when that means sucking it up and admitting that we need it as well. We have read all the right books, and try to do all the right things. We have had many conversations about kindness and bullying. Yet as I write this, I can not understand why, from the beginning this child has been a challenge to me unequal to any other challenge in my life, and why she would behave this way when she knows right and wrong. I do know, a good deal of it comes down to attention. I feel like even though I am a stay at home mom, I will never have enough to give; she always needs more, and yet every time we take her aside to do something special, she acts out immediately afterword in spectacular fashion. Also, when we calmly explain the consequence she has earned, she often respond punitively, :Well then I'm gonna______"
This is a post written in desperation! Can those slaps across the face when mommy lost control be enough to cause all this??? It seems like nothing we do has any effect, that getting her way is the only ruling force in her mind. She doesn't seem to grasp the cause and effect of having earned the consequences, though we talk to her about it, she always says that it is us not being nice.
Am I a terrible mother??? How can I get through to her before it is too late? I will never be perfect enough to never raise my voice. Am I doomed to ruin my children? If so, why is God giving us another one? Help!!!
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Control Freak
Okay, I'm not gonna lie; within the last few days I feel like I have sloughed off the cliff from" settling for a little less" to "if I didn't absolutely have to get out of bed, I wouldn't". I am flaking apart piece by piece. I think my organizational skills must have stayed in bed, and I definitely left my sanity at the doctors office. When my kind nurse practitioner saw me back again, she said "I don't think micronor is the right birth control for you." I said, a bit manically, "JoAnn, I think a vasectomy is the right birth control for me!", and then when they told me I was not as far along as I hoped, and I was faced with another month of exhaustion and all day nausea, I admit, I had a rough time swimming to the surface.
Surprise though this pregnancy was, I quickly developed a vision of how things would go: me and my bump running 3 miles a day, eating our fruits and vegis, wearing cute maternity clothes that I'll never (Please God) have to wear again, and finishing up in our new house, and finally being settled.
This pregnancy has instead, served to remind me on every front, how little control I really have, and what a control freak I really am. I want to tell God, " I JUST WANT THINGS TO RUN ON SCHEDULE!!"or "ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY????" Learning to do things on His timetable is not easy for me. This is a lesson that has been revisited in many guises many times.
Christianity is a tough gig for me, control freak that I am. I don't just want to sit back and accept that there is nothing I can do, Jesus did it all. He is the only one who could. There is no meditation plan to self actualization, no list of accomplishments to check off, indicating that I have earned my place, no rigorous discipline to whip me into worthiness, just acceptance. Just like this pregnancy. It's a done deal, one that ends in love, but must begin with the hardest thing of all, acceptance.
Surprise though this pregnancy was, I quickly developed a vision of how things would go: me and my bump running 3 miles a day, eating our fruits and vegis, wearing cute maternity clothes that I'll never (Please God) have to wear again, and finishing up in our new house, and finally being settled.
This pregnancy has instead, served to remind me on every front, how little control I really have, and what a control freak I really am. I want to tell God, " I JUST WANT THINGS TO RUN ON SCHEDULE!!"or "ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY????" Learning to do things on His timetable is not easy for me. This is a lesson that has been revisited in many guises many times.
Christianity is a tough gig for me, control freak that I am. I don't just want to sit back and accept that there is nothing I can do, Jesus did it all. He is the only one who could. There is no meditation plan to self actualization, no list of accomplishments to check off, indicating that I have earned my place, no rigorous discipline to whip me into worthiness, just acceptance. Just like this pregnancy. It's a done deal, one that ends in love, but must begin with the hardest thing of all, acceptance.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Settling for Less
I am a list girl. I measure my worth by accomplishment, but with all of my recent pregnancy and other ailments, I have had to let my list go, and instead go with the motto, "Do what's most important." If I can do more after that, then I move on to the next most important thing. This method is unnatural to me; it is against the fiber of who I am, but in this season, it's the best I can do.
You know the pinterest meme, " Some moms make homemade soaps, and reindeer treats, while I'm lucky I got a shower and my kids survived the day."? It seems I have both of these mom's inside of me in a constant stage of warfare. They are like the good and bad proverbial angels atop my shoulder's....but which one is really good? Pinterest, list making mama definitely gets more done, but worn out tired mama snuggles my kids and reads them stories, and doesn't worry so much about rushing off to the next thing. A while ago my oldest daughter brought me a sheet of paper that she had written on. She couldn't make words at the time, so they were just random letters, but everything on the page had lines through it. I'm sure you have guessed that when I asked her about it, she said it was her list, just like mama. Is that what I want to create? I'm not sure. I miss a lot of beautiful moments snapping at my kids because of my drive to reach the bottom of that list; even if I include the fun stuff, like crafts or baking cookies, in my mind it's just another thing that has to get done. And for what anyway? It's not like a mama's work ever gets DONE, like I'm ever going to just sit back and say, I did everything on my list, my work here is complete.
I'm sure that as soon as I'm able, I'll go back to using my list, but I hope I take away a lesson from this time, that I need to settle for a bit less on that list, so that I can give more to my kids within the stuff that has to get done, so that I don't become a model of something ugly because someone didn't buckle their car seat with military efficiency, or be unable to enjoy the moments we have together because I want to cross off "make banana bread". It's easier said than done, but my prayer for all of us as Christmas comes, and beyond, is that we don't loose our kids or our minds in the bustle of our to-do lists. After all, dirty floors, dishes, and laundry will be there another day, but those tiny moments of sublime grace are so easy to miss.
You know the pinterest meme, " Some moms make homemade soaps, and reindeer treats, while I'm lucky I got a shower and my kids survived the day."? It seems I have both of these mom's inside of me in a constant stage of warfare. They are like the good and bad proverbial angels atop my shoulder's....but which one is really good? Pinterest, list making mama definitely gets more done, but worn out tired mama snuggles my kids and reads them stories, and doesn't worry so much about rushing off to the next thing. A while ago my oldest daughter brought me a sheet of paper that she had written on. She couldn't make words at the time, so they were just random letters, but everything on the page had lines through it. I'm sure you have guessed that when I asked her about it, she said it was her list, just like mama. Is that what I want to create? I'm not sure. I miss a lot of beautiful moments snapping at my kids because of my drive to reach the bottom of that list; even if I include the fun stuff, like crafts or baking cookies, in my mind it's just another thing that has to get done. And for what anyway? It's not like a mama's work ever gets DONE, like I'm ever going to just sit back and say, I did everything on my list, my work here is complete.
I'm sure that as soon as I'm able, I'll go back to using my list, but I hope I take away a lesson from this time, that I need to settle for a bit less on that list, so that I can give more to my kids within the stuff that has to get done, so that I don't become a model of something ugly because someone didn't buckle their car seat with military efficiency, or be unable to enjoy the moments we have together because I want to cross off "make banana bread". It's easier said than done, but my prayer for all of us as Christmas comes, and beyond, is that we don't loose our kids or our minds in the bustle of our to-do lists. After all, dirty floors, dishes, and laundry will be there another day, but those tiny moments of sublime grace are so easy to miss.
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