Tag: God

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Don’t Forget to Turn Around

Moving is stressful.  Anyone who has ever moved can tell you that, and anyone in the military who does this fairly often can attest to the reality that sometimes the move goes well, and sometimes it doesn’t.  This has been one of those moves where the list of random things going sideways is almost comedic, but the impact that it has had on my mood and general outlook has been anything but funny.

There was the base hotel that had said they would be able to accommodate me for 6 days, but when I arrived could only do five.  Then the room they put my daughter and me in was less than ideal for two people who had packed up everything they might need for the foreseeable future – the door to the room didn’t close properly at the bottom, so if my daughter kicking me repeatedly in our shared bed didn’t keep me up, the flies, moths, and flying ants that had easy access to the room did a stellar job.  The air conditioner was so loud we had to yell to be heard over it, but we couldn’t control the temperature in the room ourselves, and water pressure in the shower was so bad that my daughter was convinced the shower must be broken.  (And for anyone who would argue that we should have asked for a different room, we had been given the last available room on base.  We were stuck.)  I got into a minor fender bender while trying to figure out which way I was supposed to turn out of a parking lot, because my GPS’ decision to recalculate at the last second was just enough distraction for bad things to happen.  I jammed my thumb somehow and it swelled to twice the size it normally was, which made loading and unloading the car more difficult than I expected.

All relatively little things, but in the context of a move and stress, they added up – big time.  And those little things began to magnify themselves in my brain, especially as I lay awake in the middle of the night, dodging dream-kicks from the munchkin and wondering what bug was crawling on me now?  The morning light, with its overwhelmingly beautiful sunrises, did little to quell my frustration.

I can’t believe I have to pack all of this up again in a few days and move to a hotel off-base – out-of-pocket – and then do it again a few days after that (because of availability) and keep going back and forth from hotel to hotel.  I need a house.  I need a church.  I need some stability.  And, for crying out loud, I need a flyswatter!

Sunday morning arrived, and my heart ached for the familiarity of our church family in the town we’d left.  We’d been known and loved and welcomed there, and I got a stomachache thinking about walking into a new church in a new town where we knew no one.  I did my best to bury my anxiety so that my daughter wouldn’t pick up on it, and we headed to one of the few churches in town that fell into the general description of what we were looking for.  We loved it.  We were warmly welcomed when we walked in.  The kids service used some of the same materials that our previous church had used, and the setup was close enough to familiar for my daughter to confidently hug me goodbye at the door and waltz right in.  The auditorium felt comfortable, the music was good, the preaching – satellited in from a main campus church elsewhere – was fantastic, and it turned out that someone from my new unit was on the worship team.  After the service was over, I picked up my little girl and she chattered on and on about how great everything had been.  I knew then that we had found our new church, and all we had done was show up.

The next day, we arrived at the off-base hotel after a long first day at work.  For the third time, I begged them to see if there was any availability at all that would keep us from having to bounce from one hotel to another multiple times.  With a bit of effort, the nice woman at the front desk was able to work it out so that my daughter and I would be in the same room, at the same hotel, for the next two weeks.  I was overjoyed and relieved.  Finally!

On the way up to our room, I found myself humming the tune to Blessed Be Your Name.  The first line of the chorus says, “Every blessing You pour out, I’ll turn back to praise.”  I always took “turn back” to mean something transformative, as in, I’ll take this blessing you gave me and turn it into praise for You.  But in that moment, in that elevator, it occurred to me that “turn back” might mean actually turning around and remembering to give thanks and praise, instead of just walking on.

As my daughter and I continued down the hall, the story of the ten lepers (Luke 17:11-19) came to mind.  Basically, Jesus healed these ten lepers and told them to go show themselves to the priest, who could verify that they were healed and could rejoin society.  Of the ten lepers who experienced this life-altering, never-going-to-be-the-same event, only one took the time to come back to Jesus and say thanks.  Keying into my room, all I could think was, “I want to be like that guy!”

So we got inside, got settled, and I explained to my little girl that I’d been praying for a resolution to the hotel situation, and God had answered that prayer.  I told her I had prayed that we’d find a church quickly, and I had asked others to pray for the same thing, and God led us straight to one we loved on our first week in town.  I told her it was super important that we not only acknowledge that He’d answered our prayers, but we needed to thank Him for it too.  Adorably, she looked at me and said, “I’ve got this, Mom,” and proceeded to pray for both of us, giving thanks like only a 7-year-old can.

Do you know what it does for the soul when you take a moment to think about and give thanks for the places in which God has moved, in His timing, for your good and His glory?  It’s remarkable.  The other things that hadn’t worked out yet, that loomed so large in my heart and mind, suddenly paled in comparison.  I could easily choose joy, because I had first chosen to turn around and give thanks.

There are going to be seasons in which things aren’t working out the way you want them to.  I encourage you to identify the things that are working out.  Find them.  Acknowledge them.  Call them what they are.  And dedicate a few moments to thanking God for working and moving and loving us enough to operate in His timing and not our own.  Your outlook will change, but you have to turn around first.

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I See You

 

 

 

On Mother’s Day, we tend to paint this picture of motherhood that looks an awful lot like the Hallmark cards so many of us probably bought to give to our moms today. But in reality, while we can speak eloquently about all the great parts of motherhood, we are often silent about the parts that are far less elegant. Let’s be honest; being a mom is hard.

So I asked God, “What would You say to a mom on Mother’s Day?” The answer came simply, settling into my spirit in the way that only His voice can:

I see you.

I. See. You.

To the mom who is perpetually invisible, always taking the pictures but never in them – unless they are selfies…

I see you.

To the mom who is in the trenches of parenting (and isn’t just about every age and stage “in the trenches” somehow?)…

I see you.

To the mom whose survival depends on coffee and dry shampoo…

I see you.

To the mother in the grocery store whose child is in the throes of a full-on meltdown and you’re convinced everyone within a 5-mile radius is judging you…

I see you.

To the single mom, and the temporarily single mom due to deployment or business, you’re holding it down on all fronts because no one else will, and “exhausted” is just your normal now…

I see you.

To the mother raising a child with special needs, walking down a life path you never could have anticipated…

I see you.

To the deployed mom, your willingness to go has never been a desire to leave, and this day feels to you more like a sacrifice than a celebration…

I see you.

To the mom battling mental or physical illness and trying desperately to hold it together for your family…

I see you.

To the mom who had one of “those” mornings and may have even lost your mind in the car before getting the whole family to fake the “we’ve got it all together” look on the way into church…

I see you.

To the mom who has adopted a child and is facing the unique challenges that go along with it…

I see you.

To the stay-at-home-mom and the working mom who can’t seem to escape mom guilt or the Mommy Wars…

I see you.

To the mom whose relationship with your kids isn’t what you hoped it would be…

I see you.

To the mom who is convinced that you’re a nonstop hot mess who will never be a Pinterest Mom and that your efforts will never quite compare to the highlight reel you see on everyone else’s Facebook and Instagram…

I see you.

To the mom who wishes your mom was still here…

I see you.

To the woman who desperately wants to be a mother, but is 1 in 8 women dealing with infertility. It is so common a struggle, and yet you feel so alone, and this day is so, so hard…

I see you.

To the mother who has known the unimaginable loss of a child, at any age – whether in the womb or as an adult, and this day is a painful reminder of that loss…

I see you.

To the mom who is struggling and overwhelmed, who harbors this shameful suspicion that you are too much and yet somehow at the same time not enough…

I see you.

I see you. I know you. And I deeply, powerfully, perfectly, recklessly love you. If you think My seeing you means I’m judging you, guess again. Don’t you know? I rejoice over you, I sing songs over you, and I absolutely delight in you.

Genesis 16:13 – “Hagar gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: ‘You are the God who sees me.'”

Oh mama, the God who sees, sees you. He sees you. Let that wash over you and soak into the dry places in your soul, and with that knowledge may you have the happiest of Mother’s Days.

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Tell Your Mountain About Your God

Confession: I’m a worrier.

Always have been.  It’s probably genetic, although I think it skipped my parents’ generation.  My mom says that if I don’t have something to worry about, I’ll find something.  It’s called borrowing trouble.

And it’s exhausting.

I recently made a list of the things that I fear, that I worry about, that wake me up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and threaten the peace that I hold so dear.  This was really important, because lately it has seemed that fear has been in crazy pursuit of me.  I mean, an all-out hunt for my heart.  I made this list as part of a prayer, fully intending to give the list to God in exchange for that peace that passes all understanding He is so good at giving.

That’s not how things played out.

Instead, I pictured a mountain, and I heard the phrase “tell your mountain about your God.”  I’ve seen that phrase a million times; I always thought of it as a clever script-flip on telling God about your problems…but I hadn’t really considered what it meant.  Until I had a list of mountains, and I had told God all about them, but suddenly sensed that maybe they needed to hear about my God too.

So, I kid you not, I told my mountains about my God.  As in, I stood in my bedroom and had a conversation with each of them.  (I’m not nuts, I swear.)  For example, one of my worries (that exists every time I have a move coming up) is about finding a home in my new location.  I told that mountain about my God who is Himself a shelter and a refuge, who could snap His fingers and create the house that is best for my daughter and me if He chose to.  I told that mountain about how God has never failed me in this area; I said this as I stood in the bedroom of the home discovered three months before moving to this assignment, for a great price, in a great area.  I told that mountain that it might as well shrink into nothing, because my God would make quick work of it in no time.

I went through every item on my list – some huge, some small, all important enough to gnaw at my soul in the late hours of the night.  I told each of the mountains about my God, about His character, about His willingness and ability to fight for me and for my daughter and to prepare the way ahead for us.  I regaled them with stories of His faithfulness, over and over, again and again.  And as I did so, my mountains transformed.  They were no longer huge, hulking obstacles to overcome; they became an audience – an audience for watching my God work, and my telling of who He is and what He can do was simply the opening act.

I told my mountains about my God, and I ended up reminding myself about who He is.  His character, His faithfulness, and His promise were enough to melt the giants into nothing.  The worry, the worst-case scenarios, the lies, the cringe-worthy things that my brain comes up with in the middle of the night – none of them can stand when faced with who He is, the light He brings, and the fierceness with which He fights for His own.

I made a list of my mountains and expected God to just handle it.  He could have, obviously.  But there’s something about facing the mountains and watching the magic happen simply by declaring God to be who He says He is.  Where the mountains disappeared into nothing, my faith grew in their place.  God handled it, just not the way I expected – but that’s usually so much better anyway.

Do you have mountains?  Of course you do.  We all do.  I challenge you to tell them about your God…