it's not personal

Parents, when your young child disobeys, what is your emotional response? Does a screaming fit in Walmart cause you embarrassment? Does the declaration “You’re not my mommy any more” hurt your feelings? Does a refusal to come when called make you angry? 

I want you to write this on a note card and put it on your fridge: “It’s not personal.”

It’s a reminder we need, because the emotions we feel when our kids disobey will directly affect the way we discipline. Before we had children, the idea that a three year old could cause us embarrassment, hurt or anger seemed silly. But once we have them, it can be hard not to read their disobedience as evidence of our failure as a parent. But the disobedience of a small child is not personal – it’s just the product of immaturity. And our reaction to it will either reinforce or retrain the behavior.

Children, like the rest of us, are usually looking for a way to elevate their wills above those in authority over them. They don’t want to submit to the authority of a parent, a teacher or a caregiver unless that person’s will aligns with theirs. In other words, as long as Mom wants what I want, the day will go smoothly. As soon as Mom wants something different that what I want, I will employ whatever means of influence I have to bring her back to my agenda. What means of influence are available to a young child? His weapons are few but effective, and they fall into two categories: verbal and physical.

His verbal arsenal includes (but is certainly not limited to) whining, yelling, arguing, backtalk and good, old-fashioned crying. His physical arsenal includes (but is certainly not limited to) hitting, throwing, running away, door-slamming, refusal to hand-hold or hug, and my personal favorite: the full body-flop, usually executed in the middle of a grocery store aisle in front of as many onlookers as possible.

Children like to combine verbal and physical weapons for even greater effectiveness, and I do not have space here to illustrate the glorious near-infinite spectrum of disobedience that can occur. But the unlimited number of disobedient scenarios is not the point. The limited number of parental reactions is. Parents, when faced with a screaming flopper, you have a choice: will you take this personally and respond out of anger or hurt, or will you hold the parental high ground and respond out of love? Your child will come to the battle of wills fully armed. Your response will determine whether she is armed with a sniper rifle or a squirt gun.

Anger is our natural emotional response to having our will violated. Anger, in its initial state, is not sinful. Acting out of anger almost always is. Your child yells or throws a fit because she is angry her will has been violated by yours. If you respond by acting in anger (yelling back or punishing to “even the score”), you show her that her angry behavior is valid, acceptable, and even “adult”. You actually reinforce the negative behavior and prolong the learning process - even if you follow through with an appropriate consequence.

Do the compassionate thing: disarm your child by remaining calm in conflict and responding with emotionally neutral speech and facial expressions. Children are smart and observant. Though they may not have begun a behavior to manipulate you, they will quickly pick up on its manipulative power by watching your response. If you yell, lecture, or act wounded in any way they will sense the power of their actions to control you. This is a power a responsible parent does not give to her child. A parent who takes her child's disobedience personally risks reinforcing not only her child’s emotional immaturity, but her own as well.

So be the bigger person. Be the parent. Don’t be lured into an emotional battle by a small person who can’t fight fair. Teach your young child that conflict cannot be escalated by hurtful words or actions. Do this by keeping anger out of the equation. Set it aside. And in so doing, model the loving correction we receive from our Heavenly Father who has set aside His anger toward His children.

And save that “It’s not personal” note card on the fridge. It just might come in handy in case adolescence rings your doorbell in full battle regalia.

For more thoughts on training young children in obedience, listen here.

Related post: Civility in the Christian Home

why transformation eludes us

“When all your favorite preachers are gone, and all their books forgotten, you will have your Bible. Master it. Master it.” - John Piper

I meet with women all the time who are curious about how they should study the Bible. They hunger for transformation, but it eludes them. Though many have spent years in church, even participating in organized studies, their grasp on the fundamentals of how to approach God's Word is weak to non-existent. And it’s probably not their fault - unless we are taught good study habits, few of us develop them naturally.

Why, with so many study options available, do so many professing Christians remain unschooled and unchanged? Scripture teaches clearly that the living and active Word matures us, transforms us, accomplishes what it intends, increases our wisdom, and bears the fruit of right actions. There is no deficit in the ministry of the Word. If our exposure to it fails to result in transformation, particularly over the course of years, there are surely only two possible reasons why: either our Bible studies lack true converts, or our converts lack true Bible study.

I believe the second reason is more accurate than the first. Much of what passes for Bible study in Christian bookstores and church resource libraries just isn't: while it may educate us on a doctrine or a topic, it does little to further our Bible literacy. And left to our own devices, we pursue a host of unsavory (and un-transformative) self-constructed approaches to “spending time in the Word”. Here are several that I encounter on a regular basis:

The Xanax Approach: Feel anxious? Philippians 4:6 says be anxious for nothing. Feel ugly? Psalm 139 says you are fearfully and wonderfully made. Feel tired? Matthew 11:28 says Jesus will give rest to the weary. The Xanax Approach treats the Bible as if it exists to make us feel better. Whether aided by a devotional book or just the topical index in our Bibles, we pronounce our time in the Word successful if we can say, “Wow. That was touching.” The Problem: The Xanax Approach makes the Bible a book about us. We ask how the Bible can serve us, rather than how we can serve the God it proclaims. The thing is, the Bible doesn’t always make us feel better. In fact, quite often it does just the opposite (feeling awesome? Jeremiah 17:9 says you’re a wicked rascal). Yes, there is comfort to be found in the pages of Scripture, but context is what makes that comfort lasting and real. The Xanax Approach guarantees that huge sections of your Bible will remain unread because they fail to deliver an immediate dose of emotional satisfaction.

The Pinball Approach: Lacking a preference or any guidance about what to read, you read whatever scripture you happen to turn to. Hey, it’s all good, right? You’ll just ask the Holy Spirit to speak to you through whatever verse you flip to. Releasing the plunger of your good intentions, you send the pinball of your ignorance hurtling toward whatever passage it may hit, ricocheting around to various passages “as the Spirit leads”. The Problem: The Bible was not written to be read this way. The Pinball Approach gives no thought to cultural, historical or textual context, authorship, or original intent of the passage in question. When we read this way, we treat the Bible with less respect than we would give to a simple textbook. Imagine trying to master Algebra by randomly reading for ten minutes each day from whatever paragraph in the textbook your eyes happened to fall on. Like that metal pinball, you’d lose momentum fast. And be very bad at Algebra.

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The Magic 8 Ball Approach: You remember the Magic 8 Ball – it was able to answer even your most difficult questions as a child. But you’re an adult now and you’re wondering if you should marry Bob, get a new job, or change your hair color. You give your Bible a vigorous shake and open it to a random page. Placing your finger blindly on a verse, you then read it to see if “signs point to yes”. The Problem: The Bible is not magical and it does not serve our whim. The Magic 8 Ball Approach misconstrues the ministry of the Holy Spirit through the Word, demanding that the Bible tell us what to do rather than who to be. And it’s dangerously close to soothsaying, which people used to get stoned for. So, please. No Magic 8 Ball.

The Personal Shopper Approach (AKA the topical Bible study): You want to know about being a godly woman or how to deal with self-esteem issues, but you don’t know where to find verses about that, so you let [insert famous Bible teacher here] do the legwork for you. The Problem: The Personal Shopper Approach doesn’t help you build “ownership” of Scripture. Much like the Pinball Approach, you ricochet from passage to passage, gaining fragmentary knowledge of many books of the Bible but mastery of none. Topical studies serve a purpose: they help us integrate broad concepts into our understanding of Scripture. But if they’re all we ever do we’re missing out on the richness of learning a book of the Bible from start to finish.

The Armchair Quarterback Approach: This approach involves reading books about the Bible instead of reading the Bible itself. If you can quote Piper more than you can quote Paul, you may be the Tim Tebow of the armchair quarterback approach. I don’t actually know anything about football, so that metaphor may make no sense at all. The Problem: We’re called to love the Lord our God with all of our mind, not John Piper’s mind. Get in the game. You’ll get way more out of Piper if you read the book he loves above all others.

The Jack Sprat Approach: This is where we engage in “picky eating” with the Word of God. We read the New Testament, but other than Psalms and Proverbs we avoid the Old Testament, or we read books with characters, plots, or topics we can easily identify with. The Problem: All scripture is God-breathed and profitable. All of it. Women, it’s time to move beyond Esther, Ruth and Proverbs 31 to the rest of the meal. Everyone, you can't fully appreciate the sweetness of the New Testament without the savory of the Old Testament. We need a balanced diet to grow to maturity.

Why do these six habits of highly ineffective Bible study persist in the church today? Why does Biblical ignorance continue to dog the church, despite the good intentions of leadership to obey the Great Command to make disciples? I believe the answer lies in our definition of a disciple.

A disciple is, literally, a learner - “one who follows another’s teaching”. But the modern church has shown a tendency to define a disciple as a “doer” instead of as a “learner”. We have been asked to do service projects, join home groups, find an accountability partner, get counseling, fix our marriages, sing on the worship team, get out of debt, help in the nursery, hand out bulletins, go on mission trips, give to the building fund, share the gospel at Starbucks – but we have rarely been challenged to pursue the most fundamental element of discipleship – earnest study of the Word. Yes, a disciple is decidedly a doer, but one motivated to act by a love of the God proclaimed in the Word.

I don’t know how long it will take the church to return to a love of the study of Scripture, but why wait? Disciple, stop waiting for your community of believers to call you to be what Christ already has. Be a student. Be a good student. Read repetitively and in context, line by line. Keep the God of the gospel at the center of your study. Strive for comprehension before interpretation. Give application ample time to emerge from a passage. Watch ignorance flee and transformation flourish. Study the Word. Master it, master it.


Related posts:
How Should We Approach God's Word? - audio
Dangerous Bible Study and Puffy Christianity
Albert Mohler: The Scandal of Biblical Illiteracy

Need some good study resources to get started? Try these:
ESV Study Bible
How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth
NavPress LifeChange series
Precept Ministries
...or any of the studies linked on my blog

otherness

Dear child-of-my-heart,

Today you came to me sad and I wanted to comfort you. Your friends spoke of owning things you do not own, watching movies you do not watch, going to places you do not go, and wearing things you do not wear. Even in the telling, they spoke in ways you do not speak. You were feeling very sharply your “otherness” today.

But what comfort can I give you? How can I pull the sharp thorn of comparison from your tender flesh? Mothers don’t like to see their children hurt. My own heart wants to find the shortest path to the removal of your pain, a pain that spills over on to me because I remember being thirteen. And because I know you are being singled out for boundaries you did not set.

Should I comfort you by giving you the things that separate you from the well-provided, worldly-wise woman-girls at the lunch table? Not everything you do not have right now is a “no” – some things are just a “not yet”. So I might revisit what you’re ready for, not because I want your friends to like you, but because I want to give right things at right times. Your friends would have you believe that being different is an unbearable state, but I would have you believe otherwise.

Sweet child, study the way you are feeling today. Because I love you, I ask this of you: lean into your “otherness” – learn the contours of its face, feel out the steady grip of its hand. Because I intend it to be your lifelong companion. It is a truer friend than those who surround you now. More than I want your comfort I want you to be an alien and a stranger. You are beginning to understand what that means – that not-fitting, that dissonant chord, that unease in the midst of ease that has been the faithful travel companion of the children of God for millenia. And I rejoice in the faithfulness of the God who is showing you this truth.

Here is what you must come to see: what the lunch table calls your enemy I call your friend. “Otherness” is a sensation not to be dulled or diminished but to be cultivated and cherished. So though it goes against every mothering instinct, I will not pull the thorn from your flesh, not because I want to withhold comfort, but because there is no true comfort in a lie. This world is not our home. We are sojourners, travelers on our way to the only true comfort the human heart can know. I will not help you populate your life with things that lessen your grip on this reality.

Because I love you, yes. But because I love your Heavenly Father above all else. And I will give an account to Him for whether I have raised citizens of Earth or citizens of Heaven.

I pray for you – do you know how much? – I pray for you to be able to say with David that the boundary lines have fallen for you in pleasant places. It is not a mindset that we reach with ease. But it is the mindset of someone who has learned the safety and joy of “otherness”. I am willing to give you the years you will need to learn this truth. I am trusting the Father to show you the comfort of being called His own. There is no real comfort besides this.

I could not love you more.

Love, Mom


"LORD, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure.The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance." Psalm 16:5-6

a unified sisterhood

Today is International Women’s Day, a day when the world pauses to think about human rights, harmful female stereotypes and sexism. It’s a day when women ask men to think a little harder about the words they use and the attitudes they hold. Within the walls of the church the debate over male/female roles rages as hotly as ever, but in our hurry to align with one side or the other we sometimes neglect to take a step back from the fight and look for common ground.

I propose we do just that. But I’m not asking men to do a gut check – I’m asking my sisters in Christ to face squarely some of the unhelpful stereotypes that we hold for other Christian women. What follows is a collection of attitudes or statements that I have encountered during my years of ministry to women. See if any of them sound familiar to you:

• Single women are leading second-best lives.
• Single women in their 30’s are too picky.
• Single women who are self-confident need to “tone it down” if they want to find a man.
• Women who don’t have children are leading second-best lives.
• Women who are childless or single by choice are selfish.
• Women who express their opinions with confidence are threatening.
• Confident women marry weak men.
• Wives who study the Bible more than their husbands threaten male headship.
• Wives who commit to evening activities are neglecting their husbands and children.
• Mothers who choose to work love God and their families less than mothers who stay at home.
• Daughters need less education than sons because they won’t need it to be a mother.
• Daughters need fewer career options than sons because their husbands will support them.
• Divorced women and widows need our help, but not so much help that they start eyeing our husbands.

Why are we so mean to each other? Why are we still pushing each other down on the playground? It is the hallmark of little girls to dress alike and speak alike to avoid being marginalized by the crowd. But we are not little girls, and we must stop. At the root of some of these stereotypes is fear: fear that someone else’s choices somehow threaten the validity of our own. At the root of others is pride: pride that our own choice is more righteous than another woman’s. If we embrace these stereotypes we say no to the unity we are called to in scripture - a unity centered not around fitting into a certain mold, but around loving a certain God.

Do we really think womanhood should look one way? In order for that to be true, so many factors would have to be within every woman’s control. But of course, they’re not.

What if we spent less time drawing lines in the sand to separate the righteous from the unrighteous and spent more time cultivating a gracious heart? What if we embraced the idea that womanhood looks many ways because the Church needs many kinds of women to flourish? God sanctifies single women and married women and divorced women and educated women and uneducated women and loud women and soft women and working women and women who stay at home, and He uses them all uniquely to fill out the mosaic of the church to its full vibrancy. Give grace to your sister, and guard your heart from calling something sin that is not sin to justify your own actions or choices. “Love one another with sisterly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.”

What unhelpful stereotypes have you encountered that you could add to the list? Leave a comment and join the discussion.

robe your minds for action

I had the pleasure of returning to my alma mater, Texas A&M University,  to speak at All Women's Breakaway last week. Breakaway is a campus Bible study that began over 20 years ago when I was a student at A&M. My husband (boyfriend at the time) and I used to go to it when it met in a community center and numbered about 45 people. Now it meets in Reed Arena and numbers in the thousands each week. The Lord is moving at Texas A&M.

Once a year, Breakaway hosts an evening for women only. This year they asked me to come speak. Rudder Auditorium was filled to the rafters with college women ready to hear from the Word. I thought hard about what I most wanted those young women to hear, and if you have heard any of my teaching, you won't be surprised that I decided to challenge them to love God with their minds. It was a very fun night.

You can listen to the audio here.

sundered and sealed

Why do you believe the Bible is the book it claims to be? Why do you believe it is the very Word of God?

Scholars say it can be trusted because of manuscript evidence, archaeological evidence, prophetic accuracy, and the statistical probability that a message could be written so consistently across so many different authors and so many years. M-A-P-S. I’ve taught that acronym many times, and it is reassuring to think about even now. Knowing there is objective proof that the Bible is the book it claims to be appeals to my love of reason and my desire to keep reason and faith inseparably joined. But I have a deeper reason for believing the Bible is what it claims to be: I believe it to be the Word of God because it has done exactly what it said it would do.

“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

And this it has done: it has divided me. It has cut me to the bone.

It has severed the offending hand of my greed and gouged out the offending eye of my desire.

Over and over again.

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True to its diagnosis, I am a creature of a thousand grasping hands and a thousand roving eyes. Yet it continues its ministry of a thousand faithful amputations, parsing the sin from the sinner, separating the lie from the truth, dividing the darkness from the light.

And in the dividing, miracle of miracles, it is rendering me whole.

So, yes. I believe the Bible is true. It says this is who you were and it is right.

It says this is who you are and it is dead on.

So when it says this is who you shall be I can readily hope.

And when it says this is who I AM I can readily worship.

No blind leap required. This book has not lied to me. Not once.

It knows me. I am known by it.

I thank God for dusty scrolls and artifacts and fulfillments and probabilities all raising their voices in a chorus of affirmation: this book is what it claims to be.

And I add my own voice to the clamor: “You have sanctified me by the truth: thy word is truth.”

I believe because I have been sundered. I believe because I have been sealed. Living Word, cut and cut again, that truth may be found in my innermost parts. Separate me from my sin. Seal me unto salvation. And what you join let none put asunder.

a lesser communion

"Thou preparest a table before me...my cup runneth over." Psalm 23:5

If you were to visit my home, you would see this sign hanging above the cook top in my kitchen:

It started off as a joke - a little irony directed at the Martha Stewart mindset that anything less than the perfect pork roast could potentially unhinge the cosmos - but as time has passed it has become less of a witticism and more of a manifesto.

When the kids were small I remember thinking that family dinners were a tool to bind us together as a family for the time we lived under the same roof. They would help Jeff and me to raise our children to adulthood with good dialogue and good nutrition. Check, and check. Family dinners were a snap back then. Now, four adolescents and their accompanying schoolwork and schedules have made shared meals more of a challenge than I ever anticipated, even with our notoriously stingy approach to activities.

But I’ll continue to fight for family dinner around our table. It is where little heads learned to bow in prayer, little hands learned to serve one another, little voices learned “please” and “thank you” and how to take turns in a conversation. It is where we learned to read the Word as a family and to talk about how it changes us. More and more, it is a place where we are all learning that we would rather be together than apart.

Friendships may wax and wane – this year’s best friend may be next year’s acquaintance because of a schedule change or a falling out, or anything that severs the fragile thread of our overlapping experience. But the people who remain constant in our lives, the relationships worthy of our deepest investments, are our family. With family, overlapping experience is not a fragile thread but a strong cord, binding us together and lending us the strength we need to navigate the years ahead.

And that’s why much depends on dinner. Though work, school and activities may pull us in different directions, nightly dinner is our chance to sit down together and strengthen the cords of family. Dinner is the time we gather to share not just a meal, but the stories of our day, our victories and losses, our observations and questions. Though it may happen at other times as well, dinner is the time of day when biblical community consistently happens in our home.

I hope that we are building at our kitchen table a bond that holds not just for the eighteen or so years we will share the same roof, but for the 60 years after those – years during which our children will navigate marriage, having children of their own, job successes and failures, moves, the decline of their parents, and their own aging as well. Whether we like them or not, our family travel the length and breadth of life with us. How much better, then, to like them? To welcome their company on that path? Yes, much depends on dinner because dinner deepens our dependence on each other. It binds us together for the long haul. And we will need each other for the years ahead.

Here is what I am coming to realize: there is only one shared table in this life more holy than that table in my kitchen. This lesser communion we gather for each night whispers of that other table: the breaking of bread, the sharing of truth, a nightly remembrance of what matters most. No, not a sacramental meal, but certainly a sacred one. This lesser communion we gather for each night differs from that other table: its gaze is fixed not backward but forward. Tonight we gather as parents and children, but one day we will gather as brothers and sisters. Tonight we hunger and thirst for food that will fill us for a time, but one day our hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied. Tonight we give thanks together around a simple kitchen table, but God willing, one day we will give thanks together around a banquet table in the presence of the Lord.

I want my children there. I want my children’s children there. So, yes, much depends on dinner. No coach or choir director or church program or career gets to supersede this ritual. Whether we dine on chateaubriand or cereal, this nightly intersection of our lives means strength for today and hope for tomorrow. We will not grow weary of meeting together. A table is prepared for us. This is the place where we are fed.

Related posts:
Guarding Sabbath for our Children
Worship Together

new year, new self-control

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A new year is upon us, and unless this one is much different from others, our conversations will be laden with talk of fitness goals and holiday diet missteps. The New Year is traditionally a time for resurrecting our self-control, so this is no surprise. But this New Years' I have a different form of self-discipline in view - one with potentially longer-lasting impact than dropping a dress size.

I recently came across an article showing ads from the 1930’s and 40’s selling products to help people gain weight. The ads made claims that sounded completely comical to our 2012 ears: “Add 5lb of solid flesh in a week!” “Since I gained 10lb…I have all the dates I want!” I showed the ads to my daughters, whose response was “Mom, I don’t think those are real. Have you checked that on Snopes?”

But they’re real alright, despite how preposterous they seem. My first reaction, I am ashamed to admit, was that I was born too late. How great would it be to live during a time when well-padded women held the glamour-girl title? (As long as I’m being honest, I had a similar reaction to learning that in South America women get implants in their bottoms to achieve their culture’s ideal shape. By some cruel twist of fate, had I been born on the wrong continent? Why couldn’t I live where hips were hip?)

But of course, to seriously entertain these thoughts is to drink a Kool-aid that has been served up to women since the dawn of time: the belief that ideal physical beauty exists and should be pursued at all costs. For much of human history, the curvy beauty has prevailed. Statues of women from ancient Greece and Rome celebrate a body type we would call “plus-size” today, as does Renaissance art. Historically, padded women were considered beautiful because only the rich and idle could achieve such a figure, and because curviness indicated fertility. For women of past generations curviness was extremely hard to achieve unless you had the money to eat well and work little. Thanks to trans fats and high-fructose corn syrup, this is no longer the case. Ironically, the rich and idle of today strive to look undernourished and overworked. And the rest of us rush to follow suit.

So, would it have been better to live during a time when well-fed women were hailed as beauties? I doubt it. Because the issue is not “fat versus thin” – it is “perfect versus imperfect”. There has never been a time when women have not defined themselves by (enslaved themselves to?) some ideal of physical beauty. Though its definition may change across the centuries, one element remains constant: it is always a definition of beauty that is just beyond our reach. We want what we cannot have. If curvy is hard, we want curvy. If thin is hard, we want thin.

The expectation of physical perfection hits modern females early and often.  In middle school, girls cut themselves to deal with the pressures of conforming to the ideal. In middle age, women do, too – but allow the surgeon to hold the knife. We carve the record of our self-loathing into the very flesh of our bodies – a self-marring, a literal carving of an idol. Increasingly, physical perfection is the legacy of womanhood in our culture, handed down with meticulous care from mother to daughter, with more faithful instruction in word and deed than we can trouble to devote to the cultivation of kindness, peacemaking and acceptance that characterize unfading, inner beauty.

In this as in all things, there is hope and good news for the believer: one day we will be free of our self-loathings and will live in harmony with our physical appearance. We will be given new, incorruptible bodies – bodies that are no longer on a collision course with the grave. We dare not reduce this future hope to that of an eternity with thinner thighs or a smaller nose. We must celebrate it as the day when vanity itself is dealt a fatal and final blow.

But how should we live in the meantime? By all means, we should steward the gift of our physical bodies – but for the sake of wellness, not beauty. Two women can step onto two treadmills with identical fitness goals and widely different motives. Only they will know the real reason they are there.

January is typically a time when we talk a great deal about calories, work-outs and weight loss. What if we didn’t? What if we didn’t talk about body sizes at all? What if we made it a point not to mention our own calorie sins or victories in front of our girlfriends and daughters? What if we started living in right relation to our bodies now, instead of at the resurrection? What if every time we looked in the mirror and were tempted to complain we said “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”, laying claim to the future hope that our bodies will one day celebrate function in right relation to form, living in the glorious truth of that future hope now?

What if this New Years’ we decided to fast not from food but from body-talk? Sure - hit the gym, eat the Paleo diet, run six miles a day, wear Spanx from neck to knee  - just stop talking about it. Stop telling your friend she looks skinny – instead tell her you love her sweet spirit. Choose compliments that spur her to pursue that which lasts instead of that which certainly does not.  If someone comments on your own shape, say thanks and change the subject. Banish body-talk to the same list of off-limits topics as salaries, name-dropping, and colonoscopies. Apply the discipline you use to work out to controlling your tongue. Do this for your sisters, and by the grace of God, we could begin a legacy of womanhood that celebrates character over carb-avoidance, godliness over glamour.

Sister in Christ, physical perfection is not within our grasp, but, astonishingly, holiness is. Where will you devote your energy in the New Year? Go on a diet from discussing shape and size.  Feast on the Word of Truth. Ask this of yourself for your sake, for the sake of your friends and daughters, for the sake of the King and His Kingdom. On earth as it is in Heaven.

“Hear and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” Matthew 15:10-11

the hope of advent

We crowd into the room, shuffling songsheets so everyone can see, children in front. I turn so Jeff can read the chords, the neck of the guitar jutting awkwardly in front of me. We have an audience of two.

He lies next to her on the bed, on her left. He is neatly dressed, his white hair carefully combed. She lies slack-jawed, eyes staring up to the ceiling. Purple blotches cover her arm. Her right hand rests loosely on a baby doll placed on her chest. He is holding her left.

He smiles and wishes us a Merry Christmas. He has a request: could we sing “O Holy Night”?

We find it on our songsheets and begin to sing. The key is a bit high, and we search for the top notes of the chorus.

He closes his eyes as we sing.

They have been married for fifty years. She has been in this room for three. When the dementia blossomed, she forgot his name and began asking for the man who left her a widow in her twenties. He requested a larger bed be brought into the room so they could lie next to each other. So he could hold her hand. Some would say he belongs outside this building, but he does not agree.

We marry ‘til death do us part, but we do not choose the manner of our parting. We speak with longing of the desire to grow old together, but we do not picture this. And yet he stays, and he waits for what is next, and he holds her hand.

“Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother. And in his name all oppression shall cease.”

Oppression ceasing. No more slack jaw, no more vacant stare. No more hours of airless waiting, marked off by the whir of the blood pressure monitor. The death of death at the birth of Christ. O Holy night.

My eyes are pulled to the hand strumming the guitar.

I will hold that hand. I will hold it. Or it will hold mine. I do not know what the years will bring, but I know this with increasing certainty: that hand will stay in my hand. And we will wait together, for as long as we are given, for the end of oppression.  He has come. He is coming.

“Thank you, that was beautiful.”

He is being kind – we are not great singers. I am the one who should speak those words. Thank you. Thank you for the hope in your hand.

the ministry of mary

December means Advent, and at the Wilkin house that means reading nightly from our traditional Advent book. Each page contains a door that opens onto a scene from the Christmas story - twenty five doors, twenty five days to Christmas. Behind the first three doors of this beautiful book lies the retelling of the Annunciation, and immediately I am drawn into the story. A teen-aged Hebrew girl learns from an angel that she will miraculously give birth to God in the flesh. Mary's response? “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” Nothing about this story is typical.

The record of what unfolds next for Mary is mind-boggling in its own right – we open the doors of our Advent book to see Elizabeth’s confirmation of the angel’s words, Joseph’s response, the actual birth of the child – but ever since the birth of my own children the quieter details of Mary’s maternal role have stirred my curiosity. The gospels do not tell us much about Jesus’ earliest years, those years during which any mother is consumed with the care of her child. Surely Mary encountered all of the typical weariness, worry, work and wonderment of raising a little one. The doors to these everyday scenes are closed to us.

Was raising the Christ-child a typical experience of motherhood? It's hard to imagine that it was. Even the ordinary would have touched the extraordinary. Think about this: Mary was charged with caring for the very body that would one day be broken for her. Her hands bathed and clothed him, her breasts satisfied his hunger, her lips kissed his skinned elbows, her arms embraced him, her voice soothed him to sleep. In the simple everyday tasks of motherhood, Mary ministered to the very body of the long-expected Savior. Even her most basic acts of mothering were sacred.

That's not a normal experience of motherhood. Or is it?

In Matthew 25:31-45 Jesus speaks of the day in which the righteous will be separated from the unrighteous according to their deeds. The righteous act selflessly to minister to those in need: shelter for the shelterless, food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, clothing for the naked, help for the sick, compassion for the friendless. Jesus indicates that when we meet the most basic needs of those around us we show forth the reality of our changed hearts. But He says we do more than that. He tells us that when we do these things for others, it is as though we have done them directly for him. This is a pivotal realization for us: when a love for our Savior motivates us to serve others, our most basic acts become sacred acts - as if we had done them for Christ himself.

I am in the process of raising four children. Weariness, worry, work, wonderment. If you opened a door on our lives, you'd find typical scenes: disorder barely confined to the closets and second floor, daily trips to the grocery store (bananas, bread, milk), dirty clothes draping every surface of the laundry room. It feels like someone is always hungry, sick, cranky, or out of clean socks. It is my job as the mom to address these conditions, and I may not always show up to work with a smile on my face.

But if what Jesus says is true, these basic mothering acts are some of the most sacred of all - shelter for the shelterless, food for the hungry, clothing for the naked. As if I have done them for Christ himself.

I don’t share much in common with Mary.  I have great kids, but I can say with some confidence that none of them is a sinless Son of God.  But by meeting their everyday needs out of a love for that Son, I share in some indirect way in the profound mystery Mary knew of ministering to the physical body of her Savior. Even my most basic acts of mothering become sacred.

 “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord.” Such an insightful response to the calling of motherhood. A teen-aged girl could see it. Oh, that I might see it as well - that I might recognize the object of my service as Christ himself, that I might reckon the tasks of mothering not as work but as worship, not as an aggravation but as an altar, not as drudgery but as my dearest delight in service to my Savior. Oh, that sacred service might dwell continually and joyfully behind the door of my home.

Matthew 25:37-40 Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’