To Have or Not to Have: Childlessness and Imago Dei Identity
This past week I found myself cuddling the newest member of our church--a sweet, Dreft-scented little girl named Hope. As I held her in my arms, I have to admit that I felt the ache of maternal longing well up inside me. The memories of my own children at that age and the sheer wonder at new life were almost too much. And yet, my husband and I are not presently pursuing any new members of the family. For us, as it is for many couples, the question of when and whether to have more children has been a complicated one, one that has forced us to wrestle through desire, calling, and limitation. On the other hand, for an increasing number, the question is not when or how many children to have; the question is whether to have them at all.
Last month, Time magazine explored this phenomenon in their cover story entitled, "The Childfree Life: When having it all means not having children." And then earlier this week, Emily Timbol wrote a piece for Her.meneutics, a blog of Christianity Today, explaining why she and her husband do not intend to have children (and why she’d appreciate you not judging her for it.) Now, couples choosing to not have children is nothing new; but what I do find interesting is why they are choosing this. The current argument seems less rooted in the classic appeal to overpopulation or the desire to commit oneself to extreme callings or even a worry about bringing children into a terribly broken world. Instead, it seems that more and more couples are choosing to not have children in order to pursue certain lifestyles and careers unhindered. And while it’s easy to chalk this up to Millennial selfishness, (see here for a piece that rightly challenges the temptation to make Millennials the scapegoat for every societal ill), I don’t think it’s that simple. At the same time, the question of whether to have children is going to be increasingly pesky one for Millennials for a couple of reasons:
- 50+ years of reliable birth control has successfully divorced children from sex and created an entire generation that is functionally illiterate about reproduction and child-rearing. We may know how NOT to have children, but we have not been schooled in how to have them.
- A growing Gnosticism that separates gifting from biology and links it to intangibles like personality and intellect. We simply don’t view gender and the capacity to have children as gifting in itself.
- The belief that aforementioned intellectual gifting is somehow necessary to the. future. of. civilization. Getting sidetracked by mundane things like children wouldn’t be in the best interest of greater human flourishing.
- Increasing inability to think generationally. In a society obsessed with youth, we don’t have categories for aging--whether that is our parents' aging or our own future aging. This means that we also don’t understand children as the bridge that connects generations, stretching back to the past and on into the future.
Among Christians, I think it’s also fair to recognize that that the question of childlessness is heavily influenced by the gender debate. Since 2nd-Wave Feminism, conservative Christians have responded by elevating the calling of a wife and mother. But because this sometimes came as a reaction to feminism, it also sometimes devolved into an idolization of motherhood and wifery, of understanding women only in terms of biology. To be fair, conservative Christians aren’t the only ones capable of this. In this brave new world of IVF, surrogacy, and egg donation, we brazenly reduce women to their reproductive capacities at every turn.
So how should we navigate the choice to have or not have children?
The first thing we must do is clarify what we are actually talking about. When we broach the subject of human reproduction, we are not talking about “babies” or “children” as if they were pets or diminutive, lesser versions of adults. When we broach the question of human reproduction, we are discussing the unique capacity of human beings to create new image bearers of a transcendent God. By definition, this is not reproducing the same way plants and animals do. And the difference lies, not in the mechanics of reproduction, but in what we are creating in our procreation.
Ironically, one of the arguments in favor of childfree living is that we need to view women first as people, as image bearers, and not simply in terms of their reproductive capacities. And while I understand this impulse, I’m concerned that it is often based on a one-dimensional understanding of imago dei. Instead of some nebulous, idealized autonomy, imago dei is better understood as the convergence of the relationships in which we live. We must understand ourselves, as Anthony Hoekema suggests in his book Created in God’s Image, through 1) our relationship with God; 2) our relationship with each other; and 3) our relationship with Creation as its steward.
What that means for the question of children is that we cannot properly discuss the how and when of having them apart from these relationships. Unlike we've been taught, this is not simply a matter of personal choice. Consider how the very act of conception mirrors a relational understanding of imago dei. When 1) a man and woman unite their bodies in dependence on 2) God’s sovereign will, they act as His representatives in 3) stewarding Creation by being fruitful and multiplying. Here in this one moment, the three planes of imago dei identity align and allow God’s nature to shine through their lives like light through a prism. What before was invisible to the naked eye, suddenly bursts forth in a rainbow of color, incarnated through the very process of conceiving, birthing, and nurturing new life.
Of course, this is not the only way human beings image God, but we cannot continue to talk about reproduction apart from it. Unfortunately, in our culture, babies and children are more associated with the cutesy-ness of baby showers, miniature haute couture, and the tallying of “firsts.” And parenting is reduced to a sort of pastime that some couples undertake. Worse still, babies and children, when not wanted, are seen as barriers to self-fulfillment and personal goals. So the message that many young couples receive is that having children is something that you can pick or choose if you like it or not. And if you’re not quite ready to pull the trigger, get a puppy. Because, after all, there’s not much difference between human child and canine one, right?
But what if procreation isn’t simply a hobby but as the Scripture actually speaks about it, the creation of new image bearers? What if, when Adam fathered sons and daughters in his own likeness, he mirrored God’s first fathering man and woman in His own likeness? And what if, bringing a life into being and sustaining that life is one of the most God-like things human beings could ever do?
I don’t think this demands that every individual become a parent—clearly some will not and are no less capable of experiencing imago dei—but I do think that it changes the tenor of the discussion and how we view children. So that ultimately, the decision to have children is not one we make simply because we “feel” like it or don’t. It’s not a choice we make out of sentimentality (maternal ache notwithstanding); and it is not one we avoid out of fear or the desire to be unhindered.
Instead, the choice to produce and nurture a new image bearer is directly tied to our own status as image bearers, and as such, it is a choice that we make in context of relationship not stark autonomy. It is a choice made in prayerful dependence on God, in loving relationship with others, and as a steward of Creation who rules with the same life-giving authority and the same open-hearted generosity that God Himself does.
Loving in the Moments
My husband and I recently celebrated our twelfth wedding anniversary, and true to form, we spent it in a tiny NYC hotel room after a day of jostling three young children around the city sightseeing. We're still waiting for the official "anniversary dinner" by ourselves, but it will come when it comes. One of the things that you learn after twelve years of marriage is that you can't save up your love for special occasions. You'd better be loving right now in the moments if you're going to be loving at all. As author Anna Quindlen writes,
Life is made up of moments, small pieces of glittering mica in a long stretch of gray cement. It would be wonderful if they come to us unsummoned, but particularly in lives as busy as the ones most of us lead no, that won't happen. We have to teach ourselves how to make room for them, to love them, and to live, really live.
Marriages are made of these moments, moments--both big and small--that stretch over the course of the days, months, and years we spend together. It's easy to forget this in the midst of the chaos. In the midst of the laundry to be folded, the grass to be mowed, the children to be fed, the beds to be made--it's easy to miss these moments, to rush through them and never really make room for the very people we share them with.
But we must. We must learn to love in the moments. We must learn to love with the kind of love that the Apostle speaks about in I Corinthians 13. A love that is is patient and kind; that does not envy or boast; a love that is not arrogant or rude or insist on its own way; that is not irritable or resentful; a love that doesn't rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Because this kind of love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.
So while, we often want to express our love in one big event, I think that the most dramatic expressions of love are often the ones that happen day to day. Love existing in small, ordinary ways. Love loving in the moments. So today, on this day several weeks after my anniversary, I want to contextualize I Corinthians 13 for the day to day. I've discovered that
Love means waiting patiently for you to finish your work and while I do, finding little ways to serve you each day--making your favorite mac and cheese, simply making the bed; Love means not being jealous when the children think you are the fun parent and not boasting about what I do to take care of you and them; Love means not speaking poorly about you to other people or saying belittling things when we disagree; Love means letting you have the remote so you can watch the US Open; Love means joyfully tackling the dirty dishes alone because you have to rush away to a meeting after dinner; Love means having the courage to approach you when you are caught in false thinking and rejoicing with you when you have the strength to overcome it; Love means laughing at your corny jokes; Love means believing in your dreams--even if I can't see them; Love means being a place of hope and light when the shadows comes closing in and all you can see is darkness; Love means living a lifetime of moments with you. Until death us do part.
"A Heaven in a Wild Flower:" Discipling Children through Awe
It was one of those moments when I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. So I opted to just shrink lower into our second-row pew, stifle my giggles, and hold my seven year-old son close, thanking God for him and all his glorious honesty.
If you are a regular reader, you know that my husband pastors a rural church; and while we do our best to keep our kids out of the fishbowl, we do expect them to participate in the full-scope of congregational life. Including our mid-week service. This isn’t usually a problem, but like all of us, there are those days when they’d rather stay home. Perhaps they're tired, busy doing other things, or in the case of my seven-year-old son, simply find Legos more interesting than having to sit still for an hour.
On this particular Wednesday night, we had dealt with the standard objections over dinner, and by 7:05, everyone was safely ensconced in our normal pew with our heads bowed as one of the deacons opened the service with prayer as only a deacon from a rural Baptist church can. About half way through, he asked God to touch the hearts of “those who could have come tonight but chose not to.”
Not missing a beat, my son piped up, “Well, I didn’t want to come, but I HAD to.”
To be fair, my son’s resistance to church is not the only discipleship hurdle we face with our children. It is easily matched by his older sister’s recent acknowledgment that she finds God's eternality “weird” and the fact that their little brother regularly asks to pray at meal time for the sole purpose of being able to control the length of the prayer. (“Dear-God-Thank-you-for-this-food-help-us-to love-each-other-Amen.”) If success is measured by religious conformity, we’re batting 0 for 3 here.
Still, these kinds of situations have the potential to worry Christian parents who desire to pass faith on to their children. With the reports of widespread Millennial angst and stories of even apologists’ daughters rejecting Christianity, it easy to lose heart. And when we do, it’s even easier to respond by simply doubling our efforts to force faith into them through more catechism, more Bible memory, more “church.”
We do this because we are conditioned to think that discipleship is primarily the accumulation of religious knowledge. A quick Google search for “children’s discipleship” brings back resource after resource—everything from catechisms to Bible memory systems to pint-sized devotional books--all promising to produce the next generation of believers. What I rarely hear discussed is the necessity of discipling our children through “natural revelation.” When theologians use the term “natural revelation,” they are referring to what God has revealed about Himself through the world around us. “Specific revelation,” on the other hand, is what God has revealed about Himself through the Scripture—and what is often the mainstay of our efforts to instill faith in the hearts of our children.
And while I believe Scripture is essential to the process of belief, Scripture was never intended to be engaged in a vacuum. Instead, faith happens as the Holy Spirit impresses the truth of God’s Word (specific revelation) onto a heart that has been primed to accept it by experiencing the truth of God in the world around it (natural revelation). Like a pair of chopsticks, the two must work together.
The Apostle Paul understood this and it’s precisely why in Acts 17—that famous Mars Hill sermon—he begins by appealing to what the Athenians already know through their experience of the world. They already believed in some “unknown God” because they could see His works both in them and around them. So too, most of us already understand the importance of this approach in evangelism; we craft winsome arguments and appeal to the nature of the cosmos and the intrinsic code of right and wrong that seems to be written on every human heart. What fewer of us understand is that we must evangelize our children this exact same way. We must disciple our children through wonder as much as through catechism. In Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton, that great British philosopher of the last century, writes that he gained his understanding of the world as a child:
“My first and last philosophy, that which I believe in with unbroken certainty, I learnt in the nursery… a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by mere facts.” It is this “certain way of looking at life” that many Christian parents neglect—or perhaps have never even acquired for themselves. We are not merely stuffing our children’s heads with facts; we are shaping hearts to believe that certain realities are true. So that when they do finally encounter the facts of faith, they will already have hearts that can recognize them. When they finally memorize “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” it will find lodging because they have already gazed up into this same heaven and marveled at its brilliant stars; they have already let the sand from this same earth slip through their chubby fingers and work its way into every nook and cranny of their tiny bodies.
So that in the end, they don’t believe there is a Creator simply because Genesis 1 tells them so; they believe there is a Creator because they have seen His Creation. As you go about discipling your children, as you teach them their Bible verses and correct them when they disobey, do not neglect the sacred discipline of awe and wonder at God’s creation. Take them to the mountains to walk forest trails in search of the millipedes and butterflies that are the works of His hands. Take them to the seashore to be knocked over by the power of a wave so that one day they’ll know how to be knocked over by the power of God. Take them to the art museum to thrill at the colors, shapes, and textures whose beauty can only be explained by the One who is Beauty Himself. Take them to the cities to crane their necks to the see the tops of sky scrapers and shiver with anticipation at God’s miracle of physics that keeps them from tumbling down.
And then take them to Church.
Take them to Church to bow their heads and receive the Word that gives them the ability to know the God behind all these wonders personally. Take them to Church to let the joy of their little hearts overflow in worship of the One through whom all these things consist. And take them to Church, so that in the midst of other worshipers, in the midst of other image bearers, they too will eventually be able to find their place in the great, wide world He has made.
Appalachian Spring
If you’ve never heard Appalachian Spring, I must caution you that your humanity may not yet be fully realized. It’s not that this particular piece of music is an essential part of the process of sanctification, but it is one of the clearest expressions of common grace that I’ve yet to encounter. Originally composed as a ballet, the score tells the story of a newly married couple on the Appalachian frontier who face their future with courage and determination. I first heard it from my father’s record player as a child, and growing up in those same hills, it was impossible that the music would not etch itself on my soul.
Spring in Appalachia is a strange mix of hope and persistence. The dark, dreary days of winter do not go easily; they die off slowly--as my mother described it recently—like a Shakespearean hero. But steadily, the mud and slog and slosh is replaced by bits of green and yellow. The crocuses and forsythia bloom and the hills begin to color, budding in the same gentle hues that will eventually consume them six months later. And finally, finally, you know spring has come when you hear the faint, sweet mating calls of the tree frogs that we call simply “spring peepers.” Clustered around lakes and streams, these little frogs sing to their loves, their warbles and chirrups echoing the hope and anticipation that the rest of us feel.
I attended university in South Carolina, and during the spring of my sophomore year, I found myself feeling particularly homesick. For this northern girl, this thing that they called “spring” would have been more accurately described as one head-long plunge directly into summer. I wandered around campus in a funk—not even really knowing or understanding what was wrong. Then one day, I found a package in my campus mail box. Inside was a cassette tape from my father. He had taken a trip to the lake about two miles from our house and recorded the spring peepers.
I cried.
My roommates figured I was nuts; and when I told my friends about it, they thought that “spring peepers” where baby chicks. Their responses simply deepened my sense of alienation. Here I was, a country girl in the big city surrounded by people who had never heard Appalachian Spring and didn’t have the slightest concept of the significance of spring peepers.
Until one evening. A boy that I had been getting to know over the last several weeks had asked me to dinner and afterwards, we were walking to the library where I worked. As is the case when you don’t know someone well, the conversation quickly turned to the weather. It was springtime after all, and despite the inadequacies of one lived in South Carolina, you can always talk about spring.
“You know what I miss most,” I ventured, carefully putting forward a test to determine whether or not this fellow was worth further consideration. “I miss spring peepers. My dad sent me a recording of them and I’ve been listening to it constantly.”
“Oh I know what you mean,” he answered, this slightly-awkward religion major who dressed in mismatched hand-me-downs but who had those interesting brown eyes and auburn hair, “I miss them too—especially right about this time of night when they’re just coming out.”
My heart stopped. “So you know that they’re not baby chicks?”
“Of course not, who’d be so dumb to think they were?”
Most of the time, we expect God’s providence to reveal itself with the audacity of a Las Vegas neon sign. We expect Him to shout His will from the mountaintops when in reality, most of the time, He simply whispers it. It doesn’t unfurl so much as unfold in a gentle, persistent way.
Because as much as I loved growing up in Appalachia, I never really expected to stay here. At five, I planned to be a missionary nurse in the jungles of Africa, living in a hut, eating flying insects, and standing up to angry chieftains. At fifteen, my dreams morphed to living beside the sea (in no less than a lighthouse) and running an orphanage for middle school boys. Never once did I anticipate becoming a pastor’s wife in a rural context similar to the one I had grown up in.
Never once did I anticipate that I’d marry a boy because he knew what spring peepers were.
But this is how our God works. He uses all things—all the things that we consider inconsequential, all the things that we chafe at—to orchestrate His plan for our lives. And the wonder of it all is that He sovereignly guides both Nature and Nurture to make us precisely who we are supposed to be.
A couple of weeks ago, I was driving home in my husband’s pick-up after our mid-week prayer service. He had already taken our three little ones home because I needed to stay to practice in a women’s trio that was slated to sing the following Sunday. By the time I left, it was already dark and the ground was damp with that persistent Appalachian mist that hovers and crawls on little cat feet. As I approached a narrow bridge that straddles a creek, I slowed and rolled down my windows. And there they were. Those spring peepers singing their love song, singing their love song of spring in Appalachia.
And I knew that all was as it should be. All was right in the world. I knew I was precisely where God had always planned for me to be.
Trusting the True Shepherd
And I guess we could leave well enough alone if spiritual abuse didn’t cut both ways. If ministries didn’t routinely supplement budgets by underpaying staff with the caveat that they’ll be eligible for welfare. If pastors’ wives and children weren’t targeted for the sake of simply existing. If 1,700 pastors didn’t leave ministry every month—many out of despair and discouragement.
But they do.
And so we must talk about spiritual abuse, because we must remember that the danger isn’t in how dramatic it is but in how common it is. The danger of spiritual abuse isn’t simply in the extremes but in how quickly, how easily any of us can use another person’s love of God to pursue our own goals and our own agendas.
I myself don’t have a salacious story to offer—no tragic account of childhood abuse or breaking away from some cult-like congregation. And yet, my husband and I have wrestled through the pain of working in the Church, of rejection and false accusation, of feeling abandoned by those to whom we looked for advice and care. We’ve also watched as friends have walked darker paths and still bear scars from those who wielded power over them. And we’ve watched as they have wandered from church to church—not because they’re troublesome—but because they’re looking for Jesus and He’s simply not as present in most churches as He should be.
So when I speak about spiritual abuse within the Church, I do so from a place of trying to grapple with the brokenness of Christ’s body. It is not about adding fuel to the fire or airing grievances. It’s not about “getting back.” (Although this will be a legitimate temptation for people who have been deeply hurt.) When I write about spiritual abuse, I do so with the express purpose of finding healing, of learning to be whole again.
Because while my husband and I have chosen to stay in the organized church—even to make it central to our lives--the choice didn’t come easily. It came through tears and brokenness and times of angry questioning. It came through feeling abandoned by God and wondering why He thought it was such a good idea to gather a bunch of dysfunctional people together in the first place.
Yet, for all that I don’t understand, I do know this: Jesus is the only answer to the brokenness.
Rejecting the Church will not heal the pain. Harboring bitterness will not heal the pain. Denying these stories will not heal the pain.
Only Jesus can.
A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across Ezekiel 34 in which God speaks against those who have abused and scattered His flock. He speaks against their greed and self-service and warns that He is coming against them in judgment and vengeance. But to the broken, hurting lambs, He says this:
Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out... I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered... I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak.
This is where you find healing. This is where you find wholeness. This is where you learn to love again. You find it in the tears that flood your pillow as you cry out to Him. You find it in the questions that you bring to Him. You find it in His love and you find it in His justice--in arms ready to hold you at the same time that they are ready to fight to protect you. You find it in Jesus, the Good Shepherd.
And when you do, when you find His healing, you may also discover that you can return to His broken, messy flock. Because in returning to His Church, you’re not so much expressing confidence in His people as you are expressing confidence in Him. And in returning to His Church, you may also find that you can point the way for other hurting, broken, dirty sheep as well.
You can point the way to the true Shepherd of their souls.
This is what has happened for my husband and me. By committing ourselves to Jesus, we’re learning to open ourselves again to the love and beauty of His people. We’re learning to trust Him enough to walk into the arms of a congregation who loves well. We’re learning to trust Him enough to receive the healing and restoration that only His body can offer. And we’re learning that even though we may walk through dark valleys, He will always come find us, and He will always lead us home.
Rest for Your Souls
The last several weeks have been perfect for nurturing a martyr’s complex.
Truthfully, it's my own fault. As careful as I am to protect my husband’s schedule and ensure that he takes time away from his pastorate, I’m not as careful to protect my own. So that when we have several busy weeks like the ones we’ve had recently, I often feel a martyr’s complex creeping up; and more often than not, it’s directly related to the fact that I haven’t taken time to rest.
If you know me, you will know that I am by no means a perfectionist. (If you don’t know me, one unannounced visit to my house and you will quickly agree with those who do.) But despite having zero OCD tendencies, I do have a tendency to be busy all the time. I have a hard time saying no, a hard time winding down, and a hard time truly resting. Multi-tasking is a virtue, right?
Over the years, I’ve had to admit that this inability to stop is a weakness and have had to commit to cultivating quiet space in my life. I’ve had to learn that rest is an act of faith and accept that I can stop working precisely because I believe that God will work for me. What I hadn’t understood until recently—recently being just this last weekend—is that rest is also an act of self-control. It’s a way exercising dominion over your own schedule and your own body precisely because you are made in God’s image.
The first time that the Scripture mentions the concept of rest is when God rested after creating nothing less than the entire universe. Most of us understand that in doing this, He wasn't resting because He was tired, but He rested in order to model rest for us. And yet, something more was happening. By resting--by abstaining from work--God was also expressing a form of mastery, of purposefully limiting His creative power. He rested to show that He is not mastered by anything—even His own creativity.
Simply put, just because He could have done more didn’t mean He had to.
So that for us, His image bearers, resting is not only a form of trust, but it is also a way to reflect God’s own control. Resting is a way to express the freedom and power that He has given us through the gospel. Because when we actively stop, when we purposefully abstain from work, we declare that we are mastered by nothing but Him; we declare that we are no longer slaves to our baser selves. We are no longer driven our desires. We are no longer driven by our fears. We are no longer driven by the demands of those around us. Because unlike slaves, who have no control over their work or schedule, we can rest precisely because we serve only Christ Himself.
And His yoke is easy and His burden is light.
So when those feelings of helplessness, those feelings of being used, those feelings of martyrdom creep up inside you, you must not push them aside and soldier on. Instead you must take the opportunity to evaluate whether or not you have subjected yourself to something other than His kingship. Whether or not you have become enslaved to something or someone other than Christ Himself.
Because more often than not, this is precisely what we do and it is precisely why we don’t rest like we should. Often we don’t rest because we are driven by other people’s expectations or our own sense of perfectionism; and when we are, even our good works can become a form of slavery--with bitterness, discouragement, and martyr’s complexes the reward for our labor.
But this is not the call of Christ.
When Christ calls, He calls us to full-humanity--to be conformed to nothing but His perfect image, to allow His nature to mold and shape our own. So that when we follow Him, He promises that our souls—just like His--will be free from the weight, free from the strain, free from the feeling of being driven like a pack-animal. Instead He will replace our spirits of fear with spirits of power and love and self-control. And in this new-found freedom, when we are no longer mastered by anything but Him, we will finally and truly find rest for our souls.
The Abundance of Leftovers
Thankfully, I married a man who doesn’t know any better.
Growing up, my mother-in-law’s longstanding policy was that “Sunday is my day off.” To hear my husband tell it, she’d come home from church, put a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread on the counter, and be done with it. If they were lucky, there’d be leftovers from earlier in the week. So even before entering the pastorate, my husband had accepted that the best way to spend Sunday was to quickly change into comfortable clothes, race to the refrigerator to get the best leftovers, and then collapse on the couch to watch/sleep through an afternoon of football.
Little has altered for him, and this past Sunday was no exception. While he and the children were changing, I found myself rummaging through the refrigerator, praying that I would find enough leftovers to feed a family of five. Chili from Thursday? Check. Two slices of pizza? Check. One sweet potato and a minuscule piece of venison steak? Sure, why not? In the end, there was enough to go around despite the fact that everyone’s plate held a slightly different, “personalized” version of Sunday dinner. So when we bowed our heads to say grace, my husband--ever forthright--thanked God for “the abundance of leftovers.”
The abundance of leftovers.
And that’s when I understood. Those scattered bits of food--that last serving of chili, the single piece of cornbread, the dried-out tuna fish macaroni—those leftovers didn’t represent scarcity; they represented wealth. So much wealth that we couldn’t even eat an entire meal at one sitting. So much wealth that we needed a refrigerator to keep our food from spoiling before we got hungry enough to eat it again. So much wealth that someone had to invent Rubbermaid and Tupperware to hold it all.
So much wealth that our garbage is better than what most people will eat in a lifetime.
Theologians throughout history have argued that pride is the root of all sin—the lifting up yourself, the thinking of yourself as better than others, better than God even. Pride leads us to all sorts of evil because we can justify just about anything thinking that we “deserve” it. But if pride is the root of sin, ingratitude has to be its first blossom. The ingratitude that says that I deserve better than what I have. The ingratitude that fails to recognize that what I have is so much better than what I deserve. So that when we fail to acknowledge God’s goodness in our lives, when we fail to be thankful, we set ourselves up for a world of temptations.
And yet, we don’t fight our ingratitude with feelings of shame or by pushing away God’s good gifts. After all, the opposite of pride isn’t guilt--it is humility. And the opposite of ingratitude, thankfulness. So that even as we live lives of abundance—even as we indulge in the things that God has given--we do so with profound and utter humility. We do so with profound and utter dependence on His goodness. And we do so with a profound and utter joy in the abundance itself.
Even if--especially if--that abundance just happens to come in the form of leftover chili on a Sunday afternoon.
When Less Is... Less
If you’re not among the mommy set, you may not have heard about Hattie Garlick, the UK mom who has vowed not to spend a single pound on her two-year-old son for the next year. Hattie's decision is part social rebellion, part necessity. She credits a growing distaste for “kiddy consumerism” and the fact that she was recently laid off (or as our British cousins say, “made redundant”). Ultimately, her decision is rooted in the ideas of minimalism and thrift--that we don’t need what everybody says we need and what we do need, we can find more cheaply.I know a bit about this kind of counter-cultural lifestyle. I grew up in a family of seven with an extremely limited income. We gardened, canned, and wore hand-me-downs, not because my parents were making a public statement, but because they were trying to clothe and feed us. Even today with a smaller family and a decidedly larger income, I still buy most of our clothes at Goodwill, we hunt, garden, and can, and my idea of a good time is shopping at Aldi. And yet, even I am skeptical of frugality for frugality’s sake. (If I’m honest, I suppose I’m also a bit of a curmudgeon. Whenever being counter-cultural becomes trendy, I immediately get suspicious--I don’t make a very good hipster.)
Because even while those of us enmeshed in consumerism might need to cut of our hand to save our souls, minimalism can have as many pitfalls as materialism. It’s entirely possible to trade consumerism for a Gnosticism that elevates efficiency and thrift above everything else. Just because we might be counter-cultural doesn’t mean that we don’t have our share of sub-cultural baggage. See if any of this luggage is yours:
- You don’t buy what you need. You skimp. Of course, the difficulty lies in determining the difference between a need and a want, but when thrift becomes your predominant value, it’s common to overreach on the definition of “want.” Toiletries are not wants, people.
- You get angry when the manager’s special corner is empty. Another pitfall is that you begin to feel entitled to a discount. You get addicted to “the deal” and refuse to pay full price for anything. You believe that the Sunday paper exists for the sole purpose of protecting your coupons and you feel cheated when there are none inside.
- You buy cheap instead of good. While the culture of advertising does ratchet up prices, a cheap price isn’t necessarily a bargain. Not all products are equal--there are reasons why the dollar store can sell dish detergent for a dollar. Any of which might be that it doesn’t work, it was produced with slave labor, or it includes toxic chemicals.
- You never throw anything away because “you never know.” Strict minimalists will have less of a struggle with this, but it is a significant problem for those of us devoted to thrift. I once had a great aunt who washed and dried paper towels. And Styrofoam meat trays. And plastic wrap. After all, you never know…
- You hear your children talking about life in terms of money. When you are uber-frugal, you begin to evaluate things by how much they don’t cost. Designer brands aren’t your status symbols; how cheaply you bought something is. When your children see this, you teach them that the value of something is directly related to its cost. This could come back to haunt you down the road--like when they’re choosing your nursing home.
- You become cheap with other people. Once you being to elevate thrift above your other values, it’s hard to contain it to your immediate family. While I love re-gifting as much as anyone, we must not forget that giving requires sacrifice—not on the part of the recipient but on the part of the giver.
- You judge other people who use money and space differently. For me this exhibits itself in suburbaphobia—the clinical fear of suburbia. I literally shut-down in malls and hate myself after eating at chain restaurants. And yet, I have to admit that this is simply another form of elitism; it’s the snobbery of thrift.
I wonder how we frugal-types will react when we finally reach heaven and God showers us with abundance. “I’m sorry, God, no mansion-- I’ll just take that cottage over there. And I’m not sure if I can make it to that marriage-supper thingy…don’t want to have to buy a gift. But while you’re here, where can I get the Sunday paper?”
This is not a rant against thrift but a caution about not letting our thrift and minimalism become the defining factor of our lives. Because even as our budgets shrink, it’s entirely possible that our souls could shrink right along with them. Our thrift can quickly become parsimony and our frugality, stinginess. We must remember that the problem isn’t how much money we have; it’s how much we love the money we have. So that while we steward our blessings, we don’t for one minute believe that our stewardship provided them in the first place. Or that our stewardship could ensure that they will be there in the future.
Only God can do this. And He can do this precisely because He is a thrifty God—He doesn’t waste anything and has the power to make even our suffering work out for good. And ultimately, He can do this because He is a generous God—He doesn’t spare expense and has bought us for Himself with nothing less than the precious blood of his Son. And if He didn't spare Him, how shall he not with Him freely give us all things?
All God's Children
It’s been a very confusing week.
And like many of you, I find myself trying to parent through it all. Because as much as I’d like, I cannot shield my children from the world they live in. Within a matter of day, they have been confronted with our history of slavery; they’ve learned about the racism that up until fifty years ago was institutionalized in our governments, schools, and churches; and they’ve heard about a society that allows women to kill their unborn children. (And just to round things out, we also had a conversation about the restaurant Hooters this week too.)
This past Sunday as we celebrated the sanctity of human life, I finally began to fit the pieces together. Our history of racism, our present struggle against abortion. And I began to wonder if it wasn’t time that we needed to recognize that we created this. As much as we like to believe that abortion is simply the fallout of the sexual revolution, as much as we like to blame radical feminists, it’s not that simple. Because when--for over two hundred years--we chose to see minorities as less than human, we created a culture that would one day allow us to view our own children the same way. When we refused to see the image of God in our African-American brothers and sisters, we lost the ability to see the image of God in our unborn sons and daughters.
We have sown the wind and we are now reaping the whirlwind.
When we speak about the sanctity of human life, we must remember that we are not simply speaking about abortion. We are not simply speaking about euthanasia. Honoring the sanctity of human life means embracing God’s image bearers where ever they may be and whatever they may look like. True sanctity of human life means understanding that all human life--every man, every woman, every boy, every girl—is precious to God and should also be precious to us.
So that when we take a stand for the sanctity of human life, we are also taking a stand against all racism, all sexism, all elitism, all sectarianism—any ideology, any prejudice that would say that another human being is somehow inferior or somehow unworthy of our love, somehow unworthy of Christ’s love. When we celebrate the sanctity of human life, we are saying that because of Christ, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male or female." There is no born or unborn.
The work of fighting abortion doesn’t begin with legislation. It doesn’t begin with marches or protests, and it doesn’t even begin with crisis pregnancy centers. The fight to sanctify human life begins in our own hearts; it begins as we root out the vestiges of pride and hatred and selfishness. It begins as we accept the fact that young minority women (who are disproportionately affected by abortion) will be hesitant to trust us when we offer them alternatives to abortion because for the last two centuries we have judged them simply by the color of their skin. It begins when we recognize that our own daughters chose abortion because they didn’t believe they could come to us without feeling this same weight of judgment.
The fight to end abortion must begin with grace. The grace to believe that all of us are made in God’s likeness. The grace to believe that none of us have any righteousness apart from Him. And the grace to believe that no matter what we have done—whether our sin is racism or promiscuity—that the power of Christ is great enough and the love of Christ is strong enough to reconcile each of us to Himself and to each other.
Merry Christmas
Deliver Us from Evil
And while we were initially absorbed with what happened and how it happened, we are now left wrestling with the question of why it happened. Undoubtedly over the next few days, we will discover bits and pieces of the story. We will hear about mental illness, previous altercations, worrisome signs, and we will cling to these scraps as some sort of explanation for horrors that simply cannot be explained.
But even as the details become clearer, I’m afraid that it will become increasingly harder for us to truly understand. As the details take shape, we will be tempted to isolate this tragedy, to relegate it to the result of a broken mental health system or a society glutted with violence. And while we must have those conversations, we must not forget that what happened on Friday is part of something larger than any of us. What happened Friday in those now sacred halls was one more attempt by the Evil One to fight a battle that he has already lost.
Those of you who are literature buffs may remember Shakespeare’s play Henry V. The story climaxes as a young King Henry successfully leads his ragtag English army to victory over superior French forces at the Battle of Agincourt. During the battle, when it becomes apparent that the English will prevail, a band of French soldiers slip behind the English lines to do the unspeakable—they slaughter the young boys who had been left at camp.
In Kenneth Branagh’s 1989 film adaptation, the fighting on field abruptly stops when the air is pierced with high-pitched screams of panic and anguish. The soldiers rush back to camp to discover their boys--their sons--murdered. Viewing their lifeless bodies, a war-hardened Henry wails, “I was not angry since coming to France until this instant!” War is one thing—that is business—but there is a code of honor, a code of warfare that is supposed to keep the innocents safe.
But as we were reminded last Friday, the Evil One does not play by the rules.
Especially when he is on the run, especially when he knows that he has been defeated. Instead, the Evil One lashes out in fits of senseless, puerile rage because he knows that the only thing left to him is the possibility of inflicting suffering as he flees. As the Apostle John recorded in The Revelation, “Woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath because he knows that his time is short.”
This is also why, despite all the coming conversations about mental health and gun control and school security, we will never be able to make sense of what happened that cold morning in Connecticut. We will never be able to make sense of it because there is no explanation, there is no reason, there is no point. When the Evil One attacks, he destroys all that is natural, all that is good, all that is beautiful, all that is just. And he does so by attacking the weakest among us.
This randomness, this refusal to play by the rules is precisely what makes him so terrifying and why it is easy for us to fear him. Deep in our souls, we know that for all our precautions, for all our legislation, for all our whispered prayers, we cannot predict where he will strike next. And so, even as we desperately pray for the Father to deliver us, we wonder whether or not He will. And sometimes in the worst of the battle, when the skies are darkest, we don’t even know if He can.
As Henry and his men stand helplessly surveying the carnage, a French herald rides into the English camp. Snapping from his stupor, Henry lunges at him, throws him to the ground, and is seconds from impaling him when the herald cries out that he is come seeking terms of surrender. Soul-worn and body-weary Henry responds simply, "I tell thee truly, herald, I know not if the day be ours or no."
Translation: I don’t even know who is winning anymore.
In this life, in the muck and mire, in the sweat and tears, we too don’t always know who is winning. It seems very likely that the Evil One prevailed on Friday. If the grief and pain in our hearts is to be believed, he certainly did. But he did not.
Instead the grief and pain must remind us that we grieve precisely because things are not as they should be; and the fact that things are not as they should be promises that one day they will be. The fact that the Evil One acts in such deranged, malicious ways proves that he is helpless; his very struggles testify to a prevailing and conquering God. Because in battle, only the winning side has the capacity to be generous, to spare the lives of its enemies; the losing side cannot risk it.
And so we endure in hope and longing. We wait not in fear, but in power and love and sound minds. Power that enables us to continue the fight against the darkness. Love that allows the pain to seep into the corners of our well-guarded hearts and break us so that we weep—deep, guttural wrenching sobs—with those weep. And sound minds that remind us that we do not despair as those who have no hope; we know this is not the end.
We know that for the all times that the Evil One tries--for all his cowardly acts of violence, for all his desperate attempts—he is not winning. Christ has conquered; the Evil One is defeated and he is fleeing the battlefield. Through His own valiant struggle, our King has made him a weak, pitiful, paltry, powerless fool; and through His own victorious resurrection, our King can give life even to those the Evil One tries to destroy.
This is all we can know. This is all we can understand. And yet, it is enough. It is enough to know that even as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death and even as we cry to our Father to deliver us from the Evil One, we do not fear because we know that He is with us and we know that He already has.
Friends and Neighbors
Our culture has a funny perspective on relationships, and often we don’t realize how much it shapes our own until we find ourselves struggling through real-life ones. Romantic comedies have taught us that we need some kind of mystical Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks connection or our marriages are doomed, and for the last two decades, shows like Friends have taught us that the only valid friendships are those that are close, intimate, and never ending. You know the type—a group of five to six friends who live in a common location and get into all kinds of exploits as they navigate the ups and downs of relationships, careers, and life. The appeal of these shows isn’t simply the quirky characters and inside jokes—it’s the community, the sense of belonging, of having friends that “get” you and accept you regardless of how often you mess up or how silly you act. And slowly, this is what we’ve come to expect from our friendships too. We begin to think that the only legitimate ones are those that play out over long conversations in coffee houses and involve perfect chemistry.
As Christians, we generally spot the false expectations of romcoms--we know that they set us up to be dissatisfied with normal relationships--but I’m not certain that we’ve been as successful in recognizing our unrealistic expectations about friendship. In fact, sometimes I wonder if we’ve tried to be a “Friends Lite” (minus the whole sexual promiscuity thing) and in doing so, have set ourselves up to be very disappointed when friends move on, to feel guilty when every relationship isn’t deep and meaningful, or to be disenchanted when no one in our church seems to “get” us. We have become so captured with some idealized notion of friendship that small, normal, warm relationships are no longer enough.
Trust me, I’m know the benefit of community, of small group settings that foster deep, spiritual bonds. But I’ve also been in situations where the bonds didn’t happen easily, where it took a long time to begin to be true friends, where we felt obligated to force a sense of intimacy because of our shared expectations about friendship. But in doing so, we actually became less authentic and essentially guaranteed that we wouldn’t achieve the very relationships we longed for.
Instead, I think we need to remember that one of the greatest benefits of community is the opportunity to live with people who wouldn’t naturally be our friends, to live in close proximity with people who don’t always “get” us. (This is also one of the benefits of spending time with extended family.) And while words like transparency, accountability, deep, meaningful, and connectedness may be the watchwords of our generation, we must recognize that these things are the by-products of commitment--they come after choosing to live life together, not before. We must also accept that they are not necessarily the measure of whether or not a relationship is worth having. Sure, it’d be lovely if we all had relationships like those on Friends—where every friendship is deep and meaningful and close and never ends--but those relationships are scripted by Hollywood screenwriters, and the ones scripted by the Divine Screenwriter are usually messier, more chaotic, less consistent, and don’t play out as we expect.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t pursue deep friendships when they come (we all want the kind that C. S. Lewis describes here); I’m simply suggesting that when our other relationships aren’t as fulfilling as these or when old friends become “Christmas card” friends, we shouldn’t see them as failures. These relationships are not inferior; they are simply what they are—opportunities we once had to walk with a fellow pilgrim along a portion of this life’s journey.
So now, whenever I’m sorting through my Christmas card list, instead of feeling guilty, I’m going to take the opportunity to revel in the Providence that allowed each one of these people to be part of my life for a given moment; I’m going to marvel at the Wisdom that made our lives intersect in order to sanctify us both; and I’m going to rejoice in the knowledge that one day, through His Grace, we’ll have the chance to live in true friendship for the rest of eternity.
Singing in Harmony
We almost missed it. Like the classic “big picture” person that I am, I had mixed up my dates, double-booked house guests, and created the very distinct possibility that we would be absent from a mainstay of the church’s yearly calendar. File this one under “How NOT to Be a Good Pastor’s Wife.”
Fortunately we didn't miss it. A little rearranging and a couple blushing conversations later, we ended up at Miss Kay’s front door promptly at 7:00. (Okay, not promptly… but we did get there.) The evening began like any other social gathering—food and small talk—but then about forty minutes in, something happened. A whisper spread through the house and with the enthusiasm of children, this eclectic group aged 17 months to 77 years assembled themselves in the front parlor (yes, I do mean parlor). Out came the guitars; next a mandolin; and before you knew it, someone was seated at the piano, running gospel scales up and down.
Then it began.
And with the initial chord, with the first blend, I knew that I was witnessing something special. I was witnessing what is fast becoming one of the rarest (and soon to be extinct) forms of social interaction in our culture—communal singing. Now this wasn’t the embarrassed-national-anthem-mumbling type of singing that happens at ballgames and graduations. No, this was classic “daddy sang bass, mama sang tenor” and everyone instinctively did seem to know how to “join right in there.” Song after song, voices called out favorites and all of us--from the boy soprano to the bass who in a another life had traveled with a gospel group—sang with abandon. At times, a soloist would take over and the rest of us would simply drop back without a word. We repeated choruses and elongated final lines all via a silent understanding that only exists between people who have lived a lifetime together.
For my part, I joined in when I could although I was raised more Watts than Gaither. Mostly though, I just sat in awe—in awe of the secret that I had been entrusted. A secret best kept in mountain hollers, family reunions, and small country churches—the secret of singing as community.
We are people who are quickly losing the capacity to live together in peace. We are consumed by our private issues and personal angst; so much so that we can’t even elect a president in civility. At the same time, we are losing the ability to sing together; and as this piece notes, even when we want to, we don’t know what to sing. And as we lose the music, I’m afraid we’re losing something more. We’re losing a metaphor for life, for how to live and engage in community, how to be silent when the soloist is singing, how to support the melody with our harmonies, how to not need the spotlight. Because as we lose the ability to sing together, we also are losing an opportunity to learn how to work together to reach larger goals.
What’s saddest to me is that we’re losing this in our churches as well. After decades of projecting lyrics onto overhead screens, the gradual disappearance of hymnals, and the repetition of simple melodies, we may have just raised an entire generation that never once encountered the beauty and wonder of singing in parts. (To quote Church Curmudgeon: “Worship team practice is canceled. Use the four chords from last week.") This is not a rant against contemporary music—our family has been part of communities that have been exclusively contemporary and those that have been strictly traditional. And in every case, there’s been good... and otherwise. This is simply a call to not forget that corporate singing must be corporate. It must be more than simply singing in unison because our congregations are not uniform. They represent people of different backgrounds, giftings, personalities, and ages; and what better way to embody that than through music that lets you find your place and sing at the top of your lungs.
Because honestly, corporate worship was never intended to be--nor can it ever truly be—simply a collection of individuals expressing their private worship to the Lord. No, we must sing in parts. We must embrace the unique callings that we each represent and then combine our voices in harmony to praise a God who can orchestrate the motliest crew into a beautiful chorus. And we must teach our children this—it is as necessary as any other educational experience or process of socialization. We must teach them the magic of harmonizing and the joy of not having to be the soloist; we must teach them the wonder of singing as a group.
And along the way, we might just learn a little something about life in community as well.
On a Dime
Only now, I’m the mother.
I don’t know why I haven’t yet gotten my act together yet. Every Sunday the ushers pass the offering plate and every Sunday my children hold out their hands to me. And still, I routinely find myself playing Minute to Win It. Your challenge: find enough money to distribute between three children so that each of them can put something in the offering plate by the time the ushers reach your pew. You have sixty seconds. And… Go!
To be fair, I have learned a few things over the years. I’ve learned that the denomination of coins must be roughly equal in order to avoid protests. At the same time, I’ve also learned that in the cosmic realities of childhood, two quarters do not equal ten dimes (“No fair! She got more than me!”). And forget the widow’s mite--according to my children, God doesn’t want pennies. Still knowing all this, I routinely find myself caught unprepared. It’s particularly problematic now that my husband’s pastoring again and we sit only three rows from the front.
But this last Sunday, something happened. In the process of sorting through my coins, mentally calculating and dividing the little change I had, I noticed a coin that I didn’t recognize. It was the size of a dime, but slightly thinner and the profile was definitely not a Roosevelt. Initially I thought it was a foreign coin that had simply gotten mixed up in some return change. So I paused to take a closer look. This coin was worn, thin—almost elegant. And although I couldn’t make out all the script, I quickly realized that it was no foreign coin. No, this stranger in my wallet was United States currency. In fact, it was a dime. From 1918.
I quickly passed along some other money to the kids and handed the dime to my husband for safe keeping. As the dust settled, I sat there taking it all in. Without warning, I had unintentionally become the owner of a small bit of history. Later I discovered that this particular dime is known as a Mercury or Winged Liberty dime and unlike today’s coins, is predominantly silver. Still, even in my pew that morning, I could tell that my dime was no museum show piece—no this dime was a working dime. A dime that had made it way through the masses, serving those who owned it faithfully, and nearly one hundred years later had found itself in my wallet. And the whole time, I hadn’t even known it was there.
Suddenly, I felt both very small and yet oddly connected to the larger scope of humanity. Had this dime—this very dime that I held in my hands— passed through the hands of another mother? Who was its original owner? What work, what sweat and labor, had first earned this newly minted coin? And after that, what route had it taken?
Had it fed a hungry belly for just one more day during the Depression?
Did it buy a midnight cup of coffee for a GI returning from WWII, grateful to be back home but unsettled by his experiences?
A decade later, was it the price of a candy bar for a little one thrilled to see daddy coming through the door from work?
Or was it the dime that paid for that phone call from a child who had wandered a bit too far and simply wanted to come home?
I don’t know. But unexpectedly, in the scope of five minutes on a beautiful Sunday morning in October, I could trace the hand of Providence. It ran through the worn profile of Liberty and the now nearly illegible “In God We Trust.” It is a Providence that controls the fates of nations even as He nurtures and guides the individual lives of those caught in the whirlwind. A Providence that brought this dime to my wallet without my even knowing it and in doing so, offered a ten cent reminder of His hand, of the grand scheme of His plan, and the truth that none of us--even dimes--escape His watchful eye.
*Image from http://coinauctionshelp.com/How_To_Grade_Mercury_Dimes.html
To My Baby Sister on Her Marriage
It’s funny to think of you getting married—not because I didn’t think that you would, but simply because baby sisters, by definition, are never old enough to get married.
I remember life before you ever existed. I was the only girl wedged between two brothers and while this was beneficial when it came to things like playing baseball and learning to wrestle, it left a lot to be desired in the realms of dress-up and fairy princesses. My solution was to pray for a sister, and so I began my personal crusade to convince God that an addition to the family was in order.
He agreed and you came along.
But I soon learned that the compliant, accommodating sister that I had planned to lead in playing house and dressing up had her own plans. Eventually, you and I found a way to bridge the personality and age differences and one night, before I left for college, I found you crying because you didn’t want me to leave. I tried to comfort you, to convince you that nothing really significant was changing, but with a perception beyond your ten years, you knew that family life would never be the same for us. There would be fewer and fewer dinners together, fewer and fewer television shows to fight over, fewer and fewer vacations, and ultimately the rhythms that had marked your young life would be gone entirely.
Life has a way of never staying what you want it to be. Just as you are savoring the moment, just as you get comfortable, it flies away and you find yourself entering a new normal. Soon you will enter one of those transitions. You will be married. I’m only eleven years into that journey myself, and while there are many things that I have yet to learn, let me take this opportunity to give you some advice. (I am your older sister after all--so just sit there and take it or I’ll tell Mom.)
The first thing that I want to tell you is that, despite what you think, you are not marrying Prince Charming. None of us do. Instead, I’ve discovered that you often marry someone better. And you learn this, not through candlelit dinners or romantic cruises, but through moments when
>He doesn’t want to you to make a big dinner when he comes home because he’d rather just spend time with you... >He buys you your favorite candy, just because… >He helps you fold the laundry while he’s watching the Steelers’ game... >He walks through the ups and downs of pregnancy with you and still thinks you are beautiful... >He packs school lunches at 9:30 at night because that’s when kitchen is finally clean enough to have the space to do it... >He gives you room to continue to grow and change as the years pass even as he grows and changes himself... >And through it all--despite the changes--he stays by your side for a lifetime.
No, you’re not marrying some storybook character. You are marrying a man, a good man. But even in this, you must remember that he is a man--a man with feet of clay, made from the same pitiful, earthy dust that you are. Because know this: whatever weaknesses you have, he will have them too.
And really, that’s one reason why we get married. It’s not because we’re perfect people, but precisely because we are not and God knows that we need all the help and support we can get to make it through this life. And ultimately He uses marriage to make us better people. Through every fight, through every disagreement, through every time that you humble yourself to ask forgiveness and every time that you extend forgiveness.
Some people think that the gospel is best displayed when we are doing a good job at being a wife or a husband. But I’ve come to learn that often, the gospel is best on display when we’re not. When you’re weak and selfish and he loves you anyway--just like Jesus does. Or when he’s stubborn and frustrating and you forgive him anyway--just like Jesus does. And when you spend a lifetime sacrificing for the good of each other, dying daily to your own desires, your own preferences, your own wishes—just like Jesus did. Because when you love like this, you can’t help but be changed and then the gospel will truly be on display through both of you.
But this is not an easy thing. So when you stand before us and make vows to love and care for each other for the rest of your earthly lives, understand this: you are not capable of keeping those vows. You need Someone bigger and stronger and more faithful to keep them for you. And He will.
Because even before you ever thought to make promises to each other, He had already made some of His own. He has promised that He will never leave you or forsake you. He has promised to uphold strengthen you and to give you joy and laughter along the way. And He has promised that even when things look darkest—when despite your best efforts, you still end up hurting each other—He will be there to pick up the pieces, offering grace and resurrection.
Perhaps in another eleven years, I can give you more insight—maybe you can give me some as well. But whatever road God leads you on, whatever path you take together, remember that I love you and I’ll be rooting for you all the way. And then maybe sometime, after the dishes are done and the children are grown, you and I will have time together once again. Time to catch up on all the years we’ve missed and time to play fairy princesses like I’ve always wanted.
All my love,
Hannah
On Being a Stay-at-Home Mom
This is not our family.
Gaps the size you can read between.
So I want to write a follow-up post to tighten up those lines and explain some of my assumptions when I talk about motherhood and domesticity. And I figured one way to do that is to talk about being a SAHM myself. Let’s start off simply,
1. I stay at home with my kids because I can and I choose to. It really is that basic. Sure there are values and opinions that undergird this choice, but in the end, it is a personal choice that we have made as a family.
2. And the primary reason that I choose to this is because of the freedom it gives me. Freedom to devote myself to my family’s well-being without the obligation of a boss or an office. Freedom to pursue without distraction the values that my husband and I want for our lives together. These values include not only supporting each other in our God-given callings, but also nurturing the gifts of every member of the family. For me, that means being at home; here, I am actually more capable of pursuing the things that I’ve been gifted to do--not only to love and care for those closest to me but also to write and study and dream.
3. At the same time, I understand that this freedom, that this liberty to be in control of my working hours, comes because I have been blessed. In staying at home, I am giving up the extra income that some families need to accomplish these very same life goals. (Believe me, if your children are not warm and fed, it doesn’t matter how gifted they are—no amount of love and time will fill their bellies and help them become what they were created to be.) At times, this process has included sorting through our priorities, tightening our belts, even getting help when work wasn’t available; but always, in the end, it has been the result of abundance—an abundance that in this age is really only accessible to a certain class of people living in a certain western paradigm.
4. Because the truth is that not all women who want to be SAHMs can afford to be. I’m thinking of the single mother whose has been abandoned by a man who, after bringing children into the world, has left her with no way of raising them. I’m thinking of my friend whose husband has suffered long-term illness and when work became available, they didn’t think twice about who did it—they were just thrilled that God sent it. I’m thinking of the immigrant family struggling along on (below) minimum-wage jobs, happy to have the opportunity to put food on the table and clothes on their backs in peace. I’m thinking of my sisters across the millennia that have been caught in slavery and have never imagined the possibility of being able to devote themselves exclusively to the interests of their families. And I’m thinking of the whole host of other individual circumstances to which I’ll never be privy.
5. And since staying at home is a privilege, it is also a gift that I am responsible to steward for the benefit of others. I must be diligent to use my freedom to bless my husband and my children and my neighbors and my friends and even my enemies. And here’s a twist: I must use my ability to stay at home to serve others mothers who do not--whether that means helping them with their own children, making an extra meal so they don’t have to, or simply praying that God would give them the strength they need. You see, the danger for those of us who do stay at home is that we can very quickly use our independence for self-absorption instead of service. And like jewelry on a pig, selfishness looks worst on women who assume that they couldn’t possibly be, simply because of who they are or what they do.
Because ultimately, even as I stay at home, I’m not “at home”—not on this earth anyway. My mind and heart and emotions and gifts are all directed toward building that greater home, toward nurturing that larger family—a family that includes not only my own husband and children, but one that spans gender and age and race and time. A family where we are all brothers and sisters caring for each other simply because our Father has so generously cared for us. In this sense, I guess we’re all homemakers, we are all nurtures—it’s just that some us do it by picking up wooden train sets and making peanut butter sandwiches and spending our days quietly within our own four walls. And some of us do not.
Mysterious Ways
We were walking along a particularly steep section of trail that ran just above a mountain stream when my daughter suddenly took off at breakneck speed. Apparently, despite my warnings, the sheer wonder of reaching the water below was too much for her. My maternal imagination kicked in with visions of her stumbling and careening over the edge, and I was just about to offer another warning when her six-year-old brother beat me to it.
“Sister, slow down! You’re going to fall. Just be patient.”
And suddenly my heart soared. Did I hear him correctly? Not only was he looking out for her, but he understood to connect her recklessness to a character quality! As far as parenting goes, this was a back-to-back win. Especially in light of the fact that we’ve spent the last three weeks working through a small book called Get Wisdom. It's designed to teach children core Christian virtues like love, thankfulness, and yes, even patience. I think each lesson is meant to involve my reading through the associated Scripture and then engaging the children in meaningful dialogue about how the highlighted virtue plays out in their lives. In reality, I usually make it through the Scripture and our “meaningful” dialogue devolves into a discussion of the existential quality of boogers.
I wasn’t sure how much impact it was having.
So here, in this one blissful moment on a wooded trail in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains, my hope of actually rearing these three children to responsible adulthood was restored. And, like the well-read parent that I am, I knew that I needed to affirm this moment with my son.
“Thanks, Mommy. (pause) You know where I learned that?”
“From Get Wisdom, right?”
“Nope. I learned it from Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Furious Five.”
(the giant whooshing sound of my hopes evaporating)
“You didn’t learn it from Get Wisdom?”
“No, not really. I learned it from Kung Fu Panda”
Later, after we'd returned home, I was reliving this moment along with the beauty that had surrounded us--a beauty in which every branch and every rivulet seemed to speak His name—and I realized that maybe my view of God was too small. Because truthfully, God isn’t a God that can be contained. He is so big that He fills the mountains and the streams and the valleys and when you have eyes to see Him, He just starts popping everywhere! You can’t hold back His wisdom either. You can’t contain it in a book of virtues or ten-minute sessions at breakfast. No, this God, this marvelously transcendent God, is making Himself known throughout the world and displaying His character sometimes in things as inconsequential as a child’s DVD.
I wonder if this is part of the reason why the Scripture tells us to talk about Him to our children “when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.” It’s not that we must attempt to make every moment a “spiritual” one--it’s that every moment already is by the sheer magnitude of His presence. And even while we faithfully teach our children about Him, we must also remember that He is faithfully teaching our children as well. Because no matter where they go--no matter if they sit down or rise up or walk by the way or wade in a creek in the mountains of Virginia--there will be glimpses of Him everywhere.
And if you're lucky enough, and you're a six-year-old boy, and your momma lets you, you might just be able to see His wisdom in Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Furious Five as well.
White Picket Fences and Surrender
I’m asking because I’m not sure that I know.
If you’re a regularly reader to SAL, you know that our family has had our share of difficulties—some related to ministry, some simply the pressures of adulthood—but over the last year, God has brought us into a season of blessing and stability. We recently bought our first home, my husband has a job that he loves (and does well), and I’m in the full swing of motherhood and domestic life.
But what you may not know about me is that I never really had any plans to be here. I never had any plans for Prince Charming to sweep me off my feet and even if I had, they certainly didn’t include marrying a pastor. A missionary perhaps--but only if he planned on living in a grass hut, learning countless native dialects, and contentedly eating grubs with the chief of the tribe. Instead, I married a man best suited to a quiet rural life, happiest puttering around his country parish, making plans for chickens and gardens, and putting down deep roots.
So here, over eleven years later, I’m still coming to terms with it all.
It’s not that I didn’t expect to be involved in ministry—that has always been a significant part of my life as my parents were teachers in a small church-based school—but I guess I never expected to live a “normal” American life. Growing up, because of my parents’ work, we often struggled to simply get by. I learned very early the difference between want and need and as a result, I think I actually was a lot happier than some of my peers. (To this day, I can still get a thrill out of something as simple as eating out at IHOP.) On top of that, we also suffered a house fire when I was five and spent the next decade rebuilding our home bit by bit with the help of friends and family.
Still what we lacked in finances, we had in abundance in faith and dreams. We lived on 10 acres of family homestead, complete with fruit trees and gardens, woods and a creek. We never lacked for books, music, imagination--or British television. My dad believed strongly in Christian education and made sure that his both his sons and daughters received one. And when I announced that I wanted to study the Humanities for the sheer joy of it, for the sheer joy of discovering the world that God had created, instead of trying to dissuade me and guide me to something more practical, he simply said, “That sounds fine. College is too expensive not to love what you’re studying.”
We were living Radical long before David Platt ever suggested it.
So coming into adulthood, I don’t think I had any dreams of financial success or settling down into the routines that are assumed by so many Americans. And yet here today, I find myself living a life that is polite, domestic, and comfortable. In a word, the American Dream. I’ve also discovered that this “dream” can come with a lot of angst.
How can you spend money on extra clothes for your children when you know that there are children in this world who have no shoes?
How can you indulge in the luxury of dieting and exercising when men and women around the world are expending legitimate sweat and tears simply working to provide a few morsels of food for their evening meal?
How can you enjoy the blessings of family when your friends’ marriages are falling apart and you know other mothers who are facing life-threatening illnesses and may not even live to see their children grow up?
Of course, you help where you can. You send money. You pray. You even go when God calls. But still, you return to your lovely home and air conditioning and full pantry. And on Sunday, you worship God together with other believers in freedom and comfort. And soon, the blessings, all the milk and honey, start to feel like burdens. Maybe you don’t have this problem—maybe it’s the opposite for you. Maybe you grew up in such comfort that it’s hard for you to let go of it. But maybe, like me, you grew up with deprivation and you find it hard to let go of that too.
Maybe you have a hard time accepting the blessings of God.
Because what I’m discovering is that as much as some people have to surrender to the possibility of deprivation and instability, some of us have to surrender to stability and comfort when He chooses to send them. And I’m learning that it takes as much faith to accept blessing as it is does to accept trial. It means believing that all things come from His hand—wealth, poverty, stability, trials--and it means learning to be content and thankful and full of joy in whatever circumstances He chooses to place us.
Even when it is the best of them.
The Given Life
“Mommy… (thoughtful pause) I just wonder, ‘Why am I me?’ Why don’t I have somebody else’s life? I mean, why can’t I see different things or do different things? Why am I me?”
I snapped to attention. Forget the Lucky Charms and blocked streets, this was a “teachable” moment.
“That’s such a good question.” I said. “In fact, people ask themselves that question all the time. I mean, why am I a Mommy? Why am I driving home in my van? Why do I have three children? These kinds of questions are the things that we all ask about our lives, and--”
“Not me, Mommy,” said my six-year-old son, quickly correcting me. “I never ask myself those questions--I like my life.”
Like most epiphanies, this one was quickly eclipsed by more interesting things—namely, arriving home and racing to see who could turn on the Olympics first. The moment lasted a bit longer for me though because it came on the heels of a conversation that I’d had with my husband the previous weekend. We were out celebrating our eleventh anniversary (apparently while the tenth anniversary nets you a Caribbean cruise, number eleven involves Chipotle, Starbucks, and back-to-school shopping). As is natural on this kind of occasion, we were talking over the years that had led us to this point. Because here we were in our early thirties, with three kids, living in yet another state, finally settling into our first house and none of it could have been predicted that day we first exchanged vows over a decade ago.
There’s a part of you that can’t help but wonder what would have happened if at any point you had taken a different route? If a particular street hadn’t been blocked and you had simply taken the road you intended to. And you realize that you could have been something--somebody--very different entirely.
This kind of backward longing is most tempting when things aren't as they should be. When life is difficult, when a marriage is struggling, when you feel like you’ve lost yourself along the way. And you being to believe that maybe, just maybe, you were meant to be someone else after all. That who you are today was not who you were supposed to become. And even if you were, in these times, you wish--like my daughter--you could be someone else entirely.
But the reality is that this life—the one that you are living right now—is a given life.
It’s not that we have no choice in the matter and it’s not even that our mistakes and failures don’t affect the outcome. It’s just that we’ve become too enamored with our own ability to shape our lives, with our own ability to control our destinies, with our own ability to be whoever we want to be. And we forget that today--who we are in this moment--is as much a gift as the day we first entered the world. We get so busy longing for the life we wish we had that we're not thankful for the one we’ve been given.
The given life. To live not just as if your first breath were ordained, but that every breath after it was as well. To believe that even as each choice presented itself, the hand that offered the choice was His. And to know--despite its twists and curves— He made the road run straight before you and led you exactly where you were meant to go.
This is where we must live. We must live in this moment. We must live as we have been called. We must be precisely who He made us to be.
Because once you reach that place, once you recognize that the given life, like all of His gifts, is a good one—well, in that place, it doesn’t much matter why you’re not someone else. All that matters is that He has given life to you, that He has ordained that you would exist, that He has made your life to be useful and reflect Him in a unique way.
And once you reach that place, you can say, with the confidence of a six-year-old, “Thank you--I like my life.”
Olympic Dreams
www.kraftykid.com
And it seems to shout loudest every four years.
It says things like, “Just look at her--you never did that. You’ve never achieved success at that level much less any other. What have you done with your life? You’re a stay-at-home mom trying to convince yourself that you’re a writer. And let’s not even begin to talk about that body… you might as well pass the Doritos sister because there is no way you’re ever going to recover from the last fifteen years.”
You think I’m joking. I’m not.
Only three days ago I was on the phone with my father reminding him of the Olympic champion that I never was. Because one way I cope with all this angst is to do what so many other people do—I blame my parents. After all, if I was ever going to be a real contender for the women’s gymnastics’ all-around gold, they should have gotten their act together when I was three and enrolled me at the local gym. From there, it would’ve only been a matter of time before I was discovered. But they didn’t, so I wasn’t.
Now, every four years as I sit and watch all the pageantry, as I thrill at those hundredths of a point that separate good from best, there is a part of me that continues to feel very judged by it all. You’re not good enough. You’re not competitive enough. You’re not dedicated enough. You’re not one of the best. In fact, you never even had a chance.
Before you judge me one neurosis short of certifiable, let me quickly acknowledge that I agree with you. I have a huge problem with accepting my limitations. Because of this, even the smallest decisions (and their accompanying restrictions) paralyze me. I know that once I choose one option, all the others will be closed off to me. Pick the linguini and I can’t have the shrimp. Buy the purple heels and I have to pass on the yellow flats. Put my kids in traditional school and they’ll miss out on the opportunity of a free-range education. In short, take the road less traveled but understand that there’s no shortcut back to the other one.
Still, through this last decade of adulthood, I’ve also come to realize that I’ve got to stop playing the “What if?” game. Blaming my parents or berating myself for my own lack of decisiveness hasn’t made me more successful or happy—it’s simply makes me resentful and guilty. Because the real cause of this touch of existential flu isn’t that I’ll never win an Olympic medal or that life often takes unpredictable turns. No, the real cause of all this angst is my need to regularly and humbly accept the role of providence in my life.
For most of us, God’s providence comes with overtones of the grand sweep of history, seeing the bigger picture, or understanding the tapestry of life. Providence is “God’s intervention in the world.” But for me? Well, I need my providence to be of a bit more personal variety. Because for me, personal providence is the only thing that keeps me sane during those times when I’m feeling particularly small or I feel like I don’t quite measure up. In short, God’s personal providence explains why I never made it to the winner’s podium and why I never even came close.
In my life, learning to trust His providence means accepting that the decisions that I’ve made—and the ones made for me—are entirely within His will. It means accepting that He placed me precisely in human time and space for a specific purpose. It means trusting that His sovereign power has deemed me to be exactly who I am, where I am, and when I am.
Ultimately trusting God’s personal providence means embracing His hand as the guiding force of my life, not my own.
And here, there is no room for regret, no room for remorse, no room for failure, no room for angst. Instead trusting Him frees me to pursue what He has always intended for me--loving my family and friends, developing my distinct gifts, and serving those around me. Trusting Him frees me to live right here, right now.
In a world where success isn’t easily quantified like at the Olympics or grade school, where no one is handing out medals for finally making the monthly meal schedule and the only gold stars are the ones we use for potty training; in this world, personal providence means everything. Because in this world, we’re aiming at a goal much more elusive, much more private, but much more enduring. We’re pressing toward the goal of the high calling of Christ Jesus; we’re waiting for “well-done.”
And that only comes by faithful obedience to His providence.
It doesn’t come by chasing someone else’s dreams; it comes by chasing the ones specifically prepared for me. Dreams of love and peace and security. And in my case, that means that every four years, I have to once again accept that maybe, just maybe, He never intended me to be a champion Olympic gymnast.
(Maybe.)