Say It Enough, You'll Start to Believe It
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No words today. Just silence and thought.
Remembrance.
FATHER!
Pierced for our transgressions.
Bruised for our iniquities.
Thorns.
Mocking.
Caiaphas.
Pilate.
Herod.
Taunts.
Manipulate.
Whip.
Silence.
Cross.
Terrible.
Dice.
Gambling.
Darkness.
Grace.
Forgiveness.
It is Finished.
Jesus.
“Hey Mom,” he said as we walked along a path enjoying a beautiful spring day. “Did you know that the moon was created when a big meteor slammed into the Earth and bounced off of it?”
I snorted and gaped at my boy-man, sure I must have heard him wrong. “What?!”
“Yeah. The whole world was created that way. Giant meteors slamming together. BOOM!” He clapped his hands together and made the bomb sound that only a little boy can make. While he reenacted the world forming out of meteor’s slamming together, I gathered my thoughts. The absurdity of that theory is not lost on me, but to his seven year old mind it’s a really cool image so I gave him a minute to envision it.
“That’s really interesting, buddy,” I said, after a moment. “Where did you learn that?”
“Oh, I saw a video at school.”
“Huh. Well, do you really believe that’s how the world and the moon were created?”
“I don’t know,” he shrugged.
“Do you remember learning about God creating the world, forming the sky and the land and the water and all the animals out of nothing?”
“Yeah, I guess,” he said, picking up a rock and tossing it into a nearby stream.
“Look at the trees,” I said and we stopped. “Look at how each one is a little bit different. Now look at the clovers in the grass.” He and I knelt down next to a patch of clovers and I ran my hand over it. “See how they have three leaves on them? But if you look long and hard enough, you might find a clover with four leaves.”
I stood him up and pointed at the moon that was already faintly showing as the evening began to fade to night. “Look at the moon. Look at the details in the moon. And look at your own hand, at the lines and the marks that are unique and can only be found on your hand. It seems kind of strange that all of these amazing details could have happened by accident, do you think? It seems to me that there had to have been a Creator to place all the finer details together.”
“Well, yeah,” he said. “But the video at school said that’s what happened!”
“Yes, I know and I’m so glad to know that you’re paying so close attention in school. I also want you to know that you don’t have to believe everything you learn.”
“But I’m supposed to trust my teachers,” he protested.
“No,” I responded. “You’re supposed to respect your teachers. You can respect them and you can respect the different ideas they are teaching you. I will tell you where Mommy and Daddy place our trust and that’s in God and in His Word. We trust that it’s true and when Genesis tells us that God created the heavens and the earth, the sun and the moon and all the creatures upon the earth, we trust that to be Truth.”
We walked in silence for a moment as he thought.
“Do I have to believe what you’re telling me?” he asked.
“No,” I replied. “You have to decide on your own what you believe to be true. I can’t tell you what to believe – I can only tell you what I believe and I believe God’s Word to be True.”
“Well how do I know what to believe?”
“Prayer. And knowing what the Bible says about Science. God is the creator of Science and there is a lot we can learn from His Creation. But it’s always important to weigh what you learn about Science against God’s Word.”
He sighed and kicked a rock with his toe. “Okay,” he mumbled, clearly feeling conflicted until…
“Wow! Look at this awesome rock!” He picked up a shiny rock and held it in his hands like a treasure. He looked at me and grinned, the evening sun dancing across his smattering of freckles. And just like that, he was a kid again.
This was a conversation I had with Sloan last week. It’s not meant to start a bashing session against the public school and OMG what are they teaching our kids?! Admittedly I was a little upset when I first heard what he learned, but after thinking about it I realized I shouldn’t be surprised. I knew they wouldn’t be teaching my child Creationism. That’s my job. And I’m glad that, at a young age, he has been exposed to the idea that there are different schools of thought on how the Earth was created.
Vigilance is key when raising kids, whether they go to public school, private school or you teach them in your living room. We must vigilantly teach our children how to weigh academia against Truth. While it wouldn’t have been my first choice for him to learn a modified version of the Big Bang Theory at such a young age, I am glad that we had the conversation that we had. (Seriously, a meteor bounced off the Earth and that’s how the moon was formed? I’ve never even heard of that before! 🙂 )
How are you teaching your children to defend Truth in a world that is fighting against it?
When Lee and I first moved to St. Louis, the land in which I spent most of my formative years, we immediately set out to develop new relationships as a married couple. I did not want to only think of St. Louis as my childhood home, though it felt that way since I spent six years in Texas learning the culture and laws of that strange land.
Big Hair. Big Accents. Big Belt Buckles. Big Hearts.
One of the first families we met was the Krosley family and we fell in love with them from the start. They were fun, giving, kind and one life step ahead of us. They had three young kids, we had a baby. We looked up to the Krosley’s in every sense.
We worked closely with the Krosley’s to develop a new ministry in our church geared toward young married couples and in our time with them we learned of their heart for adoption. We prayed with them as they waited to adopt from China and we rejoiced when God answered their prayer in a mighty way with their fourth child – a little boy they named Andrew.
In the eight years that we’ve known the Krosley’s, we’ve watched their children grow. Their two oldest are young adults now, both impacting the world in different ways. Their sixteen year old daughter, Lauren, was so moved by her brother’s adoption that she longed to return to China and work in an orphanage. And this summer, her dream will come true when she and her mom, Pam, go to Choayang, China with Visiting Orphans to minister to the little ones so desperately in need of love.
The most exciting part about this trip is that we can all be involved in helping Lauren and her team raise money to build a new playground for the children in the orphanage. Most of the children these students will be minstering to will likely grow up in their orphanage and a new playground would be such a delight for them.
Would you consider donating to Lauren’s team?
Here are the details. Click this link and under Gift Designation put June 22-July 3. Under the tab Designate to a Specific Team Member, put Lauren Krosley.
Thanks everyone! I would love to see Lauren and her team raise all the funds they need to build the orphans of Choayang a place to dream, play and be kids.
Switching gears…
A few years ago, Lee asked me to not watch Oprah anymore. “Why?” you ask. Well I’ll tell you. In general, I have never been a big Oprah watcher mainly because I just don’t have time to watch TV at 4:00 in the afternoon. But every so often I was intrigued by her previews and tuned in.
In the span of a couple of months I watched several Oprah specials on the plight of orphans worldwide, specifically orphan girls. I heard horror story after horror story of the sex trafficking that these young ones were subjected to and I would dial Lee up in tears, bouncing an infant Sloan on my shoulder.
“We need to adopt a little girl or five from Romania,” I sobbed once. “You should hear what happens to those girls!” Another time I called him blubbering about the abandoned girls in Africa and begged him to consider adopting a few children from that country…in addition to the five from Romania and three or four from Russia. It was at that point that Lee gently suggested I quit watching shows that upset me so much.
So I did. But the stories didn’t leave. I’m horrified at what little girls around the world are facing. It’s nauseating and heart wrenching and it makes me physically ill when I dwell on it. It horrifies me that any child would go through being sold into sexual slavery, but I was especially disheartened to find out about it happening in this very country.
I’m posting a video below that I saw on Shaun Groves’ site last week. It’s long, so if you don’t have time to watch it right now, that’s fine, but I strongly urge you to watch it later when you’ve got 30 minutes. It’s extremely well done and is gut wrenching, both visually and in subject matter.
This is a short film from Whitstone Motion Pictures called The Candy Shop. It was made to specifically highlight the issue of sex trafficking here in the States. You can read more about it here.
The Candy Shop from Whitestone Motion Pictures on Vimeo.
You can also visit StoptheCandyShop.com to find out more ways you can be involved in fighting sex trafficking in young children.
Thanks for taking the time to read and learn about these organizations and ways you can make a difference in the lives of little ones worldwide.
Passion. It’s a word that invokes emotion, excitement, joy, need, soul moving desire. Passion.
Last night I was in a rehearsal where we sang the song My Passion by Travis Cottrell. Here are the lyrics:
You alone are my passion forever.
Song of my soul,
Desire of my heart.
You alone are my passion, my treasure.
I love You for all that you are.
To the ends of the earth I will follow.
There’s nothing that I will not do.
You alone are my reason for living;
Jesus my passion is You.
Jesus my passion is You.
My Life.
My Love.
My God.
You are my Life.
My Love.
My God.
Everything I do
Everything I have
Every breath I breathe
Everything I do is all for You.
The lyrics to this song kind of took my breath away. It’s not just because they’re beautiful, especially paired with the melody, but because they are simplistically deep. I found this to be a difficult song to sing.
Is He alone my passion and my treasure? Will I follow Him to the ends of the earth? What if that requires walking through heartache? Can I sing this song and really mean it?
Our wise choir director addressed this last night. “It’s not possible to always sing this song and mean every word,” he said. “But we can sing it and genuinely want to mean it.” There is truth in that. Right now, I don’t think I’m being honest if I say to the Lord, You alone are my passion. It’s the alone part that gets me.
But I want that to be true of my heart and spirit and I believe that when desire and willingness meet, passion can spring forth.
I desire to be able to fully and unabashedly sing that song without an ounce of shame. I desire to approach the Holy of Holies, beneathe the Veil of Grace, and sing Everything I do, Everything I have, Every Breath I breathe, Everything I do is for You.
My desire is that Passion would overcome flesh.
On Friday night Landon asked to go to bed. This was after he asked to take a nap on Friday afternoon and he slept for two hours.
Not normal.
At 11:00 Friday Landon woke up crying. He was at the tail end of a cold so a little medicine, a kiss and a cup of water and everyone settled once again. Until…
One O’clock rolled around and we heard the desperate pleas of our little one. And he never went back to sleep.
“My eeaaaw huwts,” he cried all night, clutching at his left ear. We rocked and sang and he’d slowly drift to sleep only to jolt awake again with a cry. Back and forth we went between his room and our own room, Lee and I alternating trying to sleep and holding our hurting boy. We debated heading to the ER but knew it was an ear infection and decided to wait it out until morning.
At 5:30 we put in High School Musical and I dozed on the couch. By 9:00 we were in the pediatrician’s office where it was declared he had a nasty inner ear infection with a painful looking bulge and by 10:30 we were home with a little boy who looked like this.
Not only did he look exhausted, he also look abused due to an unfortunate run in with the corner of the iPad the night before that left him with a shiner. He was pitiful and in pain most of Saturday but by Sunday morning had perked up considerably thanks to numbing drops, antibiotics and twleve hours of solid sleep. We were on the mend, and we were happy.
When his ear began dripping blood on Sunday morning we began fast and furiously treating what we think may have been a slight perforation in his ear drum with both antibiotic ear drops and oral antibiotics as we are flying a week from tomorrow and we need his ear healed. So far the pediatrician has cleared us to fly and is confident that he will be fine by the time we leave. This is a good thing because if she said he wouldn’t be I was already planning the car trip.
Sunday afternoon I went to a practice for an Easter drama that a few of us are putting on on Easter Sunday. It’s a beautiful piece of work and I found myself very emotional at one point when the character of Christ speaks the word, “Mother?” This happens during the crucifixion scene.
And my heart broke a little as I pictured Mary watching her baby suffer. My heart crumbled just seeing Landon suffer through ear pain, but Mary watched her son beaten, bruised and hung. She watched the blood drain from the very hands that she held as a small child. She saw the flesh torn from the back of the boy she bathed as a boy.
She suffered.
As my children grow I’m realizing more and more that I will always and forever see the infant form of them. Sloan is developing a man-child look about him and yet I still see the expressive toddler who marveled at the moon. Tia’s face matures a little more each day and yet I still see the big-eyed infant who couldn’t wait to conquer the world.
Landon is right where I want him right now. He is today who I will never forget.
Mary felt the same way. I understand that more and more the longer I parent. She saw the man who hung on the cross, but did her mind flash to him toddling into her arms? It most surely did. Did she remember sloppy kisses and delighted laughter? I’m sure of it. As she stared at his arms stretched wide across the beams, did her own arms ache with the memory of the weight of her infant? Did she smell the stench of the stable and see the dark, round eyes of her firstborn nuzzled against her chest?
What kind of memories flooded her mind’s eye?
And as he suffered and died slowly, did she experience pain herself? What was swirling through her heart? It pains me to even think about it, as it pained me to watch my toddler clutch at his ear in pain.
When they hurt, we hurt.
And then, when she heard He was alive – what did she feel? What kind if disbelief and shock and fear and joy coursed through her veins? When she saw His resurrected body, did she still see the little boy she raised or was He different somehow? Did He give her an extra long hug and a kiss on the cheek, a balm to the wound she had suffered three days before?
I wonder about these things.
Mary was a mother.
I am a mother.
And so I ponder.
Have you ever watched the waves rolls in to shore and been mesmerized by the rhythmic swell and crash? Have you seen the way they slowly pull back from the shore, gathering in a mass, then tumbled in frothy praise to the sand?
I love that.
I love the sound of the water as it tumbles and rolls. It’s praise. And I feel like many times, my praises echo those of the sea. There is a welling up of my soul and it gathers with momentum, then peaks and crashes forward, spilling praise at the feet of the throne.
Sometimes the wave of praise is large – a culmination of fear, heartache, struggle or simply gratitude. It’s a tidal wave of praise that builds up slowly and spills over with force.
Sometimes the waves of praise are smaller, but they are consistent. An ever present gathering and rolling of white tipped praise that cannot be quelched or contained.
Sometimes, though, there is no praise. I am still. Like the ocean on a clear, calm morning, I sit stagnant. At times this stillness is a good thing. I am listening. I’m waiting for the whispers. And if I listen for long enough, I usually end up bursting forth with that tidal wave of praise again.
But, unfortunately, many times the stillness is a result of not listening. It’s a result of stepping away, checking out or simply being lazy. I might send forth a ripple here and there, but the waves of praise stall. This is how the ocean begins to dry up.
I don’t like this place.
Several years ago, as I was in a place of frustration, I penned a short phrase that has stayed with me since.
Used have brilliant words to sing
Now I drift like the wave
I crash to the shore
Then I quickly pull away
I miss sitting at Your Feet
Listening to your tender words so sweet
How I long to surrender
To Thee, Precious Lord
I long for Your presence in me.
I wrote those words in a journal late one night, while the rest of the world slept and my mind churned like the unsettled ocean. It was a time when I felt distant from the Lord. A time when I felt like the stagnant sea. In a burst of emotion I would offer up my praise, then, as quickly as the wave began, it pulled away and the ocean of my soul grew stagnant again.
Lately, these words have been spinning in me again – but in the right way this time. It’s a good place to be. I kind of like this contemplative state of mind. It helps me sit still and wait and, ultimately, the waves of praise will bubble forth yet again.
We’re in a blessed place as a family. But…Sometimes a good place gives way to complacency. I’m fighting it. Really, really fighting it. Because now I have the opportunity to spill forth with grateful praise. I don’t want to miss that opportunity! I don’t want to be content stagnant. And so I stop, and I think.
Shaun Groves wrote about this yesterday. It spoke right to my heart, confirming the emotions already stirring. I love the written word – especially when paired with a beautiful melody.
These are the things on my heart today.
And, obviously, I’ve got the beach on the brain…
Praying for my kids is something I passionately believe in and often forget to do on a consistent basis. I pray for patience with them (six snow days later, that’s almost become a mantra) and I pray for grace to love them well, but I don’t always pray for them.
I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s because to do so would require me to slow down and really get still. I’m not good at that. I hate sitting still. Unless I’m on a beach.
Maybe that’s what we need! We need to move to the beach. My kids would be covered in prayer then. And I’d be tan…
Wait. That’s not right. Scratch that.
The point is, I’m not good at sitting down and really pleading on behalf of my children. I have great days followed by a plateau of mediocrity and on and on the cycle goes. But the desire of my heart remains unchanged. I long to see my kids grow in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man. I long to see them grow beyond a head knowledge of who Christ is and to develop a heart knowledge of Him.
I long to not screw them up.
I think my most consistent prayer for my kids is my pleading with the Lord to fill in the gaps where I am lacking as a parent. On the days when I’m impatient, crabby, tired or just not all there like they need me to be, I pray that the Lord steps in and makes whole any damage I may have unintentionally caused.
This is not an excuse for me to be lackadaisical in my parenting.
Lackadaisical…that’s a great word, isn’t it?
I wake up every morning desiring to be the mother my kids need me to be. I wake up every morning with a prayer on my heart to love my kids in a way that honors God and shows them they are blessed, cherished and loved. And, in the moments that I fail, I ask the God fill in the gaps where I am lacking.
And then I rest in the assurance and knowledge that He loves my kids more than I could ever possibly hope to.
How do you pray for your kids? Do you have specific verses that you pour over them? Do you have a specific place or way that you pray for your kids? If you feel comfortable sharing, I would love to hear how you are praying over your children in an attempt to encourage and spur one another on.
Happy Tuesday!
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