Life and Truth

Here's a copy-paste post from my other blog, MandyMom.com.  I wanted to share it here as well since it deals with matters of faith.

 It's been hard to find time to update, and when I do have the time, sleep sounds much more appealing. Other priorities, y'know. I'm sure you all can understand that.  I know I say this just about every time I write a real entry, but gosh-darn, life has been so busy.  I can't remember the last time I had a day to just relax.  I don't think I've had any of those for the past, oh, seven weeks.  In retrospect, I'm so thankful that we sent the kiddos to my mother-in-law's after Jub'ee was born because once the kids came back, life went from zero to sixty in point five seconds.

I've had a couple of those, "Man, I wish my mama was here," moments.  I really cannot allow myself to think about how I wish things were.  Fact is, she's disabled and unable to help in that capacity, but I know she really wishes she was able, and, if she was able, she would be here every time I whimpered. I know I've expressed before how my mom was before the car accident that changed her life (and therefore our lives) eleven years ago.  She was able to whip a house into shape (and I'm talking model-home-shape, white-glove-test shape, near-perfection sparkleatude) in what seemed like mere seconds, all while dinner stewed on the stove.  Seriously, Mom was Wonder Woman, except with a bun (and more modest clothing).  I know my mom has spent many hours (days) sobbing because she can't be what she desires to be for her daughter and grandchildren.  There are few things my mom wants more than to serve us in that capacity.  She would have been the picture perfect epitome of a grandmother.  Not that she's not a fabulous Nana just as she is now, but her disabilities keep her from serving as I know she desires to serve.  She just isn't able to do that, and I totally understand that.  I am very grateful that she was able to do that with my first child.

{Mom and Jubilee}

 I remember coming home from the hospital with Merikalyn wrapped in my teenage arms.  Mom and Dad had overhauled our humble abode (a tiny trailer, just perfect for a family of three), caught up the laundry, and prepared meals for us to feast on.  My place had never seemed more inviting.  And boy, did I need my mama that first week (not just because I was a new mother, but because I came home with double mastitis and a high fever, plus a severe case of anemia to boot).  I know that was extremely exhausting for my Mom, but I am so glad the Lord gave her strength to do that for me.  What a blessing! The Lord has been gracious to give her strength when I've really needed her to have strength!

Anyway, like I said, life has been a little crazy.  My husband worked nights for the first two months of Jubilee's life, which was nice in many ways (having him home during the day has been such a blessing!), but exhausting as well.  We are both so tired.  In fact, a couple days ago, after dinner with my favorite midwife (my friend Nanci), I came home, did that "bad mommy thing" (put the babies to bed, then put on a movie for the kids to watch and told them to go to bed when it was done), and crashed.... at 7:30pm.  I slept for 12 hours (not solid sleep, since I did have to wake up to make sure the kids went to bed, and to nurse the baby several times as well, but solid enough), and still felt weary when I woke up.  I am definitely having to take naps.  I told my brother today that I am turning into our mom! (I used to think it was crazy that she had to take daily naps!  I didn't understand that we adults don't have all the energy our kiddos do!)

I am really not sure how we manage to do all that we do.  I could use more hours in the day, but I am thankful that there aren't more hours in the day because I am worn out with the twenty-four I'm given!  I am really, really glad we put in the effort to teach our children how to care for the home because I know that I would be even more weary if I had to do everything myself.  They don't know how much of a blessing they are by helping with the dishes and laundry!  (But I try to encourage and remind them of how awesome they are!) I am so amazingly, wonderfully blessed. I feel like God has just loaded my arms with gifts beyond measure.  Sometimes I get "a little" overwhelmed, but that overwhelming feeling is just a reminder that I am trying too hard to juggle on my own terms, and I need to rely on Him and His strength, not my own ideals, my own agenda, my own strength.

The Lord has been doing some major "house cleaning" in my heart, and as a result I have experienced a lot of spiritual warfare.  Satan knows just how to push my buttons, how to flare up my pride and selfishness, how toget me berating myself... and the Lord keeps reminding me that I don't have to listen to that garbage.  One of the things I have felt prompted to do is regularly write down truths the Lord wants me to focus on. I don't know about you, but I've spent much of my time rehearsing the lies the devil whispers in my ear, but not near as much time reminding myself of God's truths.  

Last week, the Lord had me focusing on these truths:

• My identity is found in Christ.
• I am loved, deeply loved, by God.
• There is infinite power in the palm of my Father's hand.
• The Lord desires to bless me, not to hurt me.
• My Father hates to see me suffer, but loves me enough to allow it because it refines me, grows me, molds my character.
• Jesus will NEVER let me down.
• I can ALWAYS depend on Him.
• He cares about even the smallest details of my life. It matters to Him.
• He hears me. He is listening.
• Nothing is impossible for Him.

Whenever Satan starts poking and pestering me, the Lord reminds me to live and move in the Truth of His Word.  I am not what or who Satan says I am. I am who God says I am.  God is not who Satan says He is.  God is who He says He is, who His Word says He is.  I cannot tell you how ..... strong..... the Lord has been impressing that upon me. Satan wants me to believe lies about myself and my God so I live a defeated life.  God wants me to believe that, through Christ Jesus, I am worthy. I am passionately loved and pursued by Him.  When I live and move and breathe in those truths, I live in the light, and the Spirit can live mightily through me.

My sweet little Evie-toddler just came to me with her pajamas gripped in her chubby little fist wanting me to put them on her, and I was reminded that, you know, she makes a lot of mistakes.  She's learning. She's growing.  When she makes a mistake, I don't furrow my brow and shake my finger at her yelling, "Why are you so dumb? Why did you do that!?  Why can't you get that right?"  That would be ridiculous! Her little toddler feet are going to trip and fall.  She's going to get into stuff she's not supposed to get into.  She's going to spill stuff, break stuff, ruin stuff.... and I will still love her just as much as I do when she's perfectly behaved.  I know she's going to make mistakes. I know she's going to have booboos and break things and hurt my mamaheart sometimes. God knows I'm going to have booboos and break things and grieve His Spirit.  When I slip and fall and make massive mistakes, He's not hovering over me berating me, telling me I'm worthless. That is what Satan does, not my loving Father.  When I screw things up, nail pierced hands pick me back up.  I am deeply loved. When I make a mess, the Lord helps clean it up. He loves me. He adores me.  A good picture of His love is the parable of the Prodigal Son who takes his inheritance, wastes it, and returns home a complete mess.  His father doesn't go off on a tirade of how dumb his son acted. The father doesn't punish his son.  He doesn't call him names and tell him he's worthless.  NO! He welcomes him home, hugs him tight, and throws a big party!  He kills the fattened calf and invites everyone to celebrate.  Why? Not because his son was disobedient, but because his son turned his heart to his father.  What a picture of the Father's love for me.... and for you!

Anyway, I had not intended to go into all of this.  I really was just coming here to say, "Hi, I'm still here. Still putting one foot in front of the other."

It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.  Lamentations 3:22-23

The pouring out

Four or so years ago, God gave us this desire to move out to the country and live a simple life. Now, if you knew me before all of this, you would know that sort of thing would not have been very appealing to me. I really liked the city, and the idea of being out in the middle of no where and getting my hands dirty? Like, ew. When I was a kid, I would have loved to live out in the country. I was a tomboy, and loved getting dirt under my nails, but somewhere in my late teens and early twenties, I had definitely become quite the priss. In fact, the idea of working hard... actually having to work with my hands and work up a sweat... yeah, no thanks.

So, you can see how much of a change it has been for me to have my desires completely flip flopped. Brandon and I went from desiring a bigger house, nicer cars, more stuff, more money to just wanting to simplify. A lot of people thought we were nuts when we started talking about building what is called a "tiny house" and cramming our growing family in less square footage (so we could move out to the country). I used to talk about it a lot, but it seemed like such a distant dream. I had no idea how we were ever going to get to that point. It really felt like an impossible dream- that God had put this desire in my heart and this dream in my head that we would never achieve. It took a few years for me to realize that was kind of the point.

I believe the Lord wanted me to realize that this was not only a God-planted dream, but also a God-directed one. He is going to arrange it. It is in His hands. One day it became very clear. I was telling a friend about our dream, and then said something like, "Well, it'll be a miracle when it happens because it just doesn't seem possible."

{*Light bulb moment*}

Then it hit me that God had been, was, is still arranging all the pieces. Just because it's taken four plus years doesn't mean He hasn't been choreographing it all. The message to me has been, "Sit back and watch Me work, Mandy. Don't rush it. Don't push it. Just let Me do it."

Even though the journey has been rough, I am so glad that the Lord showed us that stuff is just stuff. As Brandon often says, "One day, it's all gonna burn." It's stuff. It breaks down. It gets lost, stolen, worn out, replaced, repaired, rebroken. It's stuff. It becomes clutter. More stuff to dust, wash, clean, care for. And, throughout our lives, we keep adding more and more stuff to the collection, don't we?

But I know what it's like to have nearly nothing. I know I've said this a lot, but I like to remind myself of how poor we used to be because that's one of the times in my life when I felt the richest. House on the brink of foreclosure. Truck repossessed. Restaurant going under. Twenty dollars in my pocket for groceries and diapers for the week. Electricity being turned off every month. It looked bad. It seemed depressing from the outside looking in. But I felt so rich. It's not like I loved the position we were in. I was indeed frustrated with the whole situation but boy did we learn a lot of valuable lessons. It was one of the richest seasons in our lives.

It's when we really learned that God wanted us to pour our lives into people, not our business, not our stuff, not the "pursuit of happiness". Our home may not have been much, but it was always open. It became the place of ministry as Brandon and I learned how to reach out to those who were where we had been- those lives controlled by drugs, alcohol, sex, marital woes, and various other addictions, lives that needed someone to love them until they could love themselves, pour out patience and kindness.

Not to say that being in that position didn't sometimes drive me crazy because it is really difficult to work with addicts, to help them get clean and then see them fall back into that pit. It's really hard because you love them, you want them to be free of those things, you want them to see how rich life can be, and how those addictions are chains that hold them back. But it's also a good mirror. It has shown me the love of God, how I was addicted to stuff and a dream that was useless and fruitless and never-ending (because you are never satisfied with the stuff you have if that's what you're chasing after), and how Christ wanted to set me free from my dependence on stuff, and I can get "clean", but I end up falling back into that pit because it's tempting and it's flashy and it's all around me and it's new and it's improved, and man, I've gotta have it.

And yet it never, ever brings happiness. It's brings a temporary high, but it never satisfies.
I firmly believe that nothing in this dimension can satisfy.

Look around at all the people who are constantly chasing after something fresh and new, never satisfied for long. That unquenchable thirst. We get what we think we want, and it's not enough. We're all starry-eyed and wooed and then after a few days, weeks, months or years, when we feel we aren't being served by it or him or her, the search is on. If you're pursing happiness, you'll probably never find it. Happiness is a state of being. It's not something you can find or create. Happiness is contentment, and you will never be content as long as you are focused on yourself, on what you have or don't have, on how you're being treated or how you should be treated, or whether you've achieved the goals you had in mind.

But man, we live in a society that hates contentment. Loathes it. We market against it. We are bombarded with images that stir a longing within us for something "better" than what we have. The "Keeping up with the Joneses" syndrome. An envy, greediness, a Gollum-like obsession over anything that sparkles- "My precioooous."

All that keeps us from really enjoying what we have already been blessed with, blinds us to what really matters, distracts us from what is truly valuable. It's so easy to be distracted. God is constantly realigning my focus. I am like a small child thrilled over trash, refusing treasure. Reminds me of what our pastor in Louisiana once said. "We're clinging to a cow patty, while God is offering us a gold brick."

I'm constantly stripping away the stuff, and yet the addiction is still there. My eye is drawn to things I don't really need, craving meaningless things. I'm no fool. I know that shedding the stuff won't make life perfect. I know that moving out to the country won't make me happy. I mean, yes, it will make life simpler, and it can bring about things I really want, but it, in itself, will not bring happiness. I can't live life waiting for the next phase, living for the "when". I've been in that trap. Life will be better when. I'll be happy when. I'll start really living when. I'll be a better wife/mother/friend/person when. I'll enjoy life more when.

What about now? I'm aware that my dream can become just as much an addiction as stuff. I can lean on a dream just as I can lean on stuff. I can chase after a dream just as I can chase after stuff. And it won't satisfy any more than my stuff will satisfy. It's a hard lesson to learn- how to live right now, to be intentional about living this very moment to its fullest. We categorize the days and the moments. This is a good day. That was a bad day. I'm ready for tomorrow. I miss yesterday.

So what about now? Can I choose to enjoy now, even if my newborn is fussy, and my toddler is clingy, and the children are being too noisy, and my house is dirty, and I miss/want/need my mama and..... Can I turn it around, appreciate that I have babies who need me, a house that is full and running over? Can I put on different glasses, change the perspective, realign my focus, tweak the lens through which I see my life?

I want to see the stuff as just stuff. I want to see the beauty where beauty really is. So many things masquerade as gold, but few things are. I want what is truly valuable, I want to clearly see it, never take it for granted.

I want the simple things. You can have the world, I don't want it. I don't want the competition for bigger, better, badder. I don't want to be a celebrity. I don't want to be famous. I don't want to be rich. I just want to live in the fullness of love, to really pour out my life like Christ did. That's where the value is- in the pouring out, not the taking in.

What will I have done with them?

 

I think it's fair to say that Molly Jo has changed my perspective on life.  I suppose that's happened with every birth and every child, but she really has taught me the value of each breath. I don't want to waste one, and boy, do we waste them.

We waste them complaining and arguing.  We waste them as we focus on negative things, grumble over things in our heads, stressing that beating heart.  And every beat of the heart is precious.  I can't tell you how many times in the last few days that I have counted to ten.  Ten seconds.  How can ten seconds seem so long?

Ten seconds without a heartbeat. Mouth to mouth. Chest compressions. Suction. Suction. Oxygen. Breathe.......

My-oh-my how ten seconds can fly at any other time.
I think of how many ten-second-spans I have wasted on thoughts and worries and concerns for tomorrow.  How many heart beats I've used frivolously on things rather than people, stuff rather than relationships. How many breaths I've inhaled, exhaled in anxiety over the pokes and prods of the devil instead of in peace and trust in the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Our time is limited. Our heart beats have a number. The breaths of this body will one day be sucked away.
And what will I have done with them?

Worry or Trust?

Parenthood.  It's full of lessons, isn't it?

Even before the child forms in the womb, many of us learn the hard lesson that we don't have as much control over these things as we'd like.  As we struggle with infertility or miscarriage or still born losses, we become keenly aware that we cannot force a child into being, cannot control the life forming within.

Our baby girls have thrown us for such loops during their womb-stays. Evangeline with her three-chambered heart and cyst on the brain, Molly with her extra amniotic fluid and possibly-flipped organs (we will find out whether she really has situs reversus soon).  We begin to worry, What does this mean for our babies? Will they be okay? And when God moves His hand in a healing answer to our prayer, we feel silly for even worrying about it, yet we find ourselves wondering, Why did God heal my child and not hers, or theirs, or that one? Why are we so fortunate?

From the beginning, we realize that we don't want to go this alone, don't want a day without the Lord's hand crafting each and every moment, leading each and every foot step.

When we walk down that hallway, with our oldest daughter riding in a little red wagon clutching her Clifford to her chest, toward the room where they will open up her skull and slice so close to vital brain tissue I am all to aware that I have no control. I am powerless.

But there is One to whom there are no surprises.  There's no shocking God. He sees the bigger picture. He is standing outside of time, and He knows what was, what is, and what is to come. I am weak, but He is strong. I am limited but He is limitless.

I can fight it, or I can surrender and trust. I can fret and worry and pace which brings forth no good thing, or I can rest in knowing that all things are in the Father's hand.

And so, when my baby is born with fluid in her lungs, and her heart stops, and the midwives are leaning over her, mouth to mouth, chest compressions, suctioning.... I can rejoice in the truth that I am His daughter, He hears my prayers, and He's in control.

 

You can read the birth story of Molly Jo Jubilee on MandyMom.com.

[Link opens in a new window]