There is so much we can learn from toddlers. They live life in complete freedom. They are happy to walk around with food on their face, shoes that don’t match, and let’s face it, even a dirty diaper. When you think of your child’s first few words, I think most moms would agree that somewhere after mama, dada, more, and please is the word ‘no.’While we have to parent our kids and teach them when it is appropriate to say ‘no’ there is so much freedom in that word. As adults, we become conditioned to find ourselves taking on unnecessary responsibilities, people pleasing, overachieving and simply losing the power and freedom to say no.
It got me thinking about a group of people that don’t have the freedom to say no. Slaves. Slaves are stuck in a life that leaves no room to refuse anything. They don’t have a choice. I am reminded that Jesus died for us to set us free and in that freedom, we can say no.
The Israelites were slaves in Egypt with no rights. They didn’t wake up each morning with the ability to decide what they would or wouldn’t do. God sent Moses to grant them their freedom, to gift them the power of no.Are there things in your life that you need to say no to? Have you taken on too much? Do you feel responsible for things that aren’t yours to own? Maybe other people’s happiness? Have you become a slave to the pressure of saying yes? You can say no. It is part of living in freedom! Find your freedom in your NO!!
When our youngest son was in preschool, my husband would take him and drop him off at school on his way to work. On this particular morning, our little one was four years old and having a rough morning. His attitude was less than great. Kam, being the fun parent for sure, would often if not every Tuesday and Thursday morning stop on the way to the school to get him a donut.
On this morning our youngest knew his behavior did not warrant a sweet treat and was ready for the drive to land him directly at school. Kam made that extra turn and stopped in the parking lot of the donut shop. He looked our littlest in the eyes and said, “I am not getting you a donut because you are good, I am getting it for you because I am.” It was a huge moment for both of them. Our son realized that our love for him was not based on his behavior. Kam’s goodness for him was always available.
Psalm 34:8 says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”
This verse reminds me of this moment. Because it is about donuts? No. Well maybe. God’s goodness is not dependent on our good behavior. His goodness just is. Period.
It is a simple message and yet hard to metabolize, just like that sugar filled donut. But oh how good it is.
I know Easter weekend has come and gone, but there is so much value in learning from our experiences. As you all know, Easter in this season of quarantine was very different in every way. As that weekend approached my mind was spinning with ideas (or expectations) of what I thought our Easter at home would look like.
Like many moms, I had thoughts of our family still wearing our ‘Sunday best.’ I gave that expectation up real quick. It wasn’t a battle I cared to fight. I didn’t even have the discussion. Honestly, I didn’t want to dress up either. I was holding someone else’s expectation on that one.
It is amazing to me how many other expectations I had for the day that were 100% living in my head without me even knowing it. I wanted to have brunch, watch the service, have communion as a family, watch The Passion, do an egg hunt and color eggs. We color eggs every year.
I have been married 20 years and have learned a thing or two. I knew all of those activities were only in MY head. I would have to communicate each piece in detail with my husband and hope I had buy-in from him. I shared with him my thoughts for Easter and he was on board. The only piece I did not communicate was coloring eggs. We have had that tradition for years. Surely it didn’t need to be said.
Our morning started late as we had a late brunch and watched the service. We had a little bit of technically difficulty but my husband, Kam is always our IT help and he got it going. We then had communion as a family and watched The Passion. After the movie, we set up the egg hunt (which with teenagers included a little bit of cash mixed in with some chocolatey goodness.) It had been a great day with hours of family time. Even with the day seeming so perfect, my head knew we had not colored eggs. My teens were now officially checked out. They had spent over half the day together and were ready to disperse.
I was a little sad. I quietly mentioned the eggs the rest of the day, but no one was interested. I had a few errands to run the next day, so I was out of the house for a number of hours. I came back to a dozen eggs that had been drawn on with sharpies. They hadn’t been colored but they really were cute. My husband drew each of us in the family on four of the eggs. He then proceeded to make each of our eggs talk. He even did little skits for the next few days with those silly eggs. It was soooo much fun. He would have his egg and my egg kissing and send the video on our family text while we were all at our make-shift desks focused on either school or work. It was hilarious!!
The moral of the story is:
Communicate your expectations. This means you will have to identify them first in your own mind. Come to your family with the attitude that these are your desires, not your demands.
Let the creativity of your family allow you to be flexible with traditions and memories. They can often turn out to be more meaningful moment, simply because they contributed to the idea.
Living in a state of mandated quarantine has allowed me more time for jogging. Today I was jogging uphill (that is only important because, ouch!) on a narrow sidewalk. I could see a man jogging in my direction, and I was making a plan to move off the sidewalk, provided there were no cars coming. As I stepped off into the road, the man gave me a look that looked less than kind. He kept eye contact until I was completely past him.
I was not being mean or cruel. I was simply putting the mandatory 6 feet of distance between him and I. My heart in moving away was protection, not rejection.
Sometimes we feel that way with God. He allows or disallows things in our lives that feel like rejection when in reality, He sees the bigger picture and is truly offering protection.
…When we do not get that promotion, when we don’t get the job, when that close friend now seems distant, when we don’t get invited to that social gathering, when that seemingly perfect guy is not interested, when someone else gets credit.
God is not moved by our emotions. He knows the end from the beginning, and He is our protector.
He will protect us from unhealthy friendships that will corrupt our hearts, wealth or notoriety that our character cannot handle, settling on a position when a better one is right around the corner, authority and power that we do not have discipline to wield, and decisions in the present that will harm our future.
The enemy will hand you the facts.
“You did not get the promotion.”
“You did not get the position.”
“Those girls do not want to be your friend.”
“You were not invited to that event.”
“He is not that into you.”
“You should have gotten the credit.”
The enemy will NEVER present the TRUTH! The truth is God is GOOD!
There is protection in His “No”, and in His “Not yet”.
Just like I was trying to protect the man on the sidewalk because I knew more than him, God knows more than we ever could and is working all things for our good.
Have you ever watched a sporting event where one team was considered the underdog? The sports casters outline every possible stat and explain how one team will in no way beat the defending champions. As a teenager I was a basketball fanatic. I may date myself with this fact, but I used to video tape the Houston Rockets, not because I was going to miss the game, but because I wanted to watch it more than once. I remember so many games that they should have lost, but they rose to the level of their competition. They would play a team that was statistically the best defensive team in the NBA and the Rockets would take their offense to another level.
Great defense spurs great offense!!! This is an amazing platitude for sports and is often what makes it fun to watch and even play. Unfortunately, this truth also applies to human interactions. Think about that for a minute.
When a person confronts another person with an offense, the offender’s natural response is to defend themselves. Did you follow me there? The offender presents his best defense, just like with sports, which then spurs a greater offense. Do you see the cycle? It is not nearly as fun in relationships as it is in sports.
All of a sudden, we have become confused as to who is our real opponent. As humans, we are on the same team. The Bible says in Ephesians 6:12 that we don’t wrestle, (compete or war) with flesh and blood. Our offended brother or sister is not the enemy. In this sports analogy, our brother or sister (or spouse) is not the opponent. Our true enemy is the Devil. His ability to confuse us is so slick. We work a great defense against an opponent that isn’t truly our opponent and we totally forget that the devil is at work. We are doing his work for him as we attack each other.
Take a look at the photo of x’s and o’s. I am no football expert, but this picture gives a great visual for understanding who we are really lining up against. The enemy would love for us to believe that both the x’s and o’s are people. He then becomes the spectator as we battle against each other. I would argue that we (as in “we the people”) are on one side. Let’s say we are the o’s, while our very real adversary, the devil, is the x’s. This brings new perspective to our relationship struggles. Those very people are actually lining up on the same side of the scrimmage line.
What sparked this thought? I was on my treadmill listening to scripture on my phone and hearing how Jesus did not defend himself and realizing that He truly understood that His battle was not with the people.
Our enemy is not as strong as he would have us think, but as my dad always said, “He is a foe to be contended with.” Foe for all the youngsters reading, simply means, your enemy. He is an enemy that deceived the angels. He is good at his craft.
Let’s not do his job for him. Let’s love each other.
1 Corinthians 13:4-6
Love is large and incredibly patient.[a] Love is gentle and consistently kind to all. It refuses to be jealous[b] when blessing comes to someone else. Love does not brag about one’s achievements nor inflate its own importance. 5 Love does not traffic in shame and disrespect, nor selfishly seek its own honor. Love is not easily irritated[c] or quick to take offense.[d]6 Love joyfully celebrates honesty[e] and finds no delight in what is wrong.[f]
Before we discuss all things puzzles, let’s just declare a couple of promises from God. We will come back to them later. Like the pastor always says, turn to Psalm 138:8 and Psalm 121:4.
Psalm 138:8 says, “God will be faithful to complete a good work.”
Psalm 121:4 says, “He never sleeps nor slumbers.”
Every holiday season my boys and I do a small Christmas themed puzzle. We have a few different ones and we just re-do them each year. It is a tradition we have done since they were toddlers. This year I got a little over ambitious and decided to buy a 1000 piece puzzle. I wanted to stick with a Christmas-y puzzle so Kam and I went looking. The only one we could find that was slightly holiday themed was a Thomas Kinkade puzzle that had lots of snow and a sweet snowman on the left side of a cozy looking home.
Look back at the picture I posted. In the first couple days/weeks of starting this puzzle I had a couple of different friends/family come and spend some time helping me. As I made some progress one-night working on my own, I sent the picture posted above to those that had invested some time with me on the puzzle. None of them were impressed with my progress. This puzzle was so tough it took an average of 30 minutes or so to find one piece. The picture has 6 more pieces than it did when they were at my house. That equals at least 3 to 4 hours of work. But it doesn’t look like much.
How often is this scenario the case in our lives?? We want God to work in our lives but we de-value what He is doing based on our expectations. We don’t see the progress. We don’t see things changing or improving. We don’t see the 6 pieces put in place.
I sent the picture of my progress, knowing I had put some tough pieces in place that were going to set me up to do more. The recipients of my pictures could not see the work that had been done behind the scenes. They couldn’t see or consequently value the work I had done. Honestly, looking back at the pictures, I can’t see the additional pieces either. If you did not have the picture on the box as a reference, those few extra pieces were definitely not clueing you in to the end result. But they were important. They HAD to be placed. They could not be skipped. Do you see their importance now, even if you don’t really SEE their importance visually?
God is always working. We don’t always see it. Let’s be honest, no one in our life sees it. Often times, well-meaning family and friends will down play what God is doing in our lives, because they too can’t see it.
On my puzzle journey, more than once I had doubters, including myself. We joked about ‘if’ I would finish the puzzle. We joked about ‘when’ I would finish the puzzle. It may sound over dramatic, but I had lots of moments where I wanted to quit. I was done.
I recently had a long-time friend reach out and send me some sweet truths God gave her when she put together a 2000 piece puzzle recently. I loved reading her words. Each sentence caused me to pause and say, “Amen!” Honestly, my favorite part was reading that after putting together each piece, she would stop and clap.
Ummm, yes!! My whole family knew every-time they heard a cheer that I had found ONE piece. Learning to celebrate the little things kept me going. Of course, I had those moments where I celebrated the ONE piece and then did the math and realized I still had over 700 more pieces. But that couldn’t be my focus.
Something else my friend pointed out is that you can’t rush a masterpiece. That is a big truth right there and not one people are quick to be excited about. Puzzles are a time commitment. Setting out to complete a 2000 piece puzzle in a short amount of time will do nothing but frustrate you. There is a lesson there. God loves us so deeply that He won’t be found rushing the pieces of our lives. He knows the end from the beginning and sees the way the pieces fit together. Just like we start a puzzle by finding the edge pieces, God works in order too. While we want to see the whole picture at the beginning, He is working one piece at a time.
So, let’s go back to those promises that I mentioned in the beginning.
Psalm 138:8
The Lord will accomplish that which concerns me;
Your lovingkindness, O Lord, endures forever –
Do not abandon the works of Your own hands.
God is not sitting at His kitchen table putting together the pieces of your life, wondering if He will finish. He doesn’t doubt whether pieces fit, the way we do. He doesn’t even need to reference a picture on a box. He created us and the Bible says He knows the end from the beginning. He will complete what He started.
Psalm 121:4
He will not let you stumble;
The one who watches over Israel never slumbers or sleeps.
This promise from God is comforting on a whole new level. As a girl on a mission to finish a puzzle, I was limited. I had to rest. I had to recharge. I had to take a break. Let’s all just be thankful that we are not in charge. We are so limited. God is working for us and putting pieces of our lives in place, while we sleep. Rest in this!! Pun intended.
I remember the first time I ever trained and ran a marathon. God spoke to my heart so deeply that I was convinced everyone should do at least one in their lifetime. I am finding myself feeling the same way about puzzling (is that a word?) Everyone should commit to attempting a puzzle that just looks a little beyond their skill level and see what you learn. The lessons are far beyond matching colors and shapes. The lessons run deep.
The final pic. Sadly, I had two pieces I could not place. Again, let’s just be thankful that God is in control!!
Have you ever taken on the daunting task of card shopping? It can sometimes feel like finding a needle in a haystack. The store has three two-sided isles filled with cards anxiously waiting to be read. If you have any anxiety about decision making, these isles are not for you. You may want to take a friend!Continue reading “Card Shopping and Corporate Worship; Changing the Way You View Worship”
Rejection. Failure. The unknown. What did you feel when you read those words? Many people would say they feel fear. My last two articles have been about instances where I was fearful. Let’s look at a story in the Bible about a woman that did something that required her to face some everyday fears. Lots of the stories in the Bible seem hard for the average person to relate to because of the circumstances. We rarely picture ourselves leading armies, splitting the seas, spying out land to conquer, or fighting a giant. But what about the story of Ruth? Continue reading “Just Beyond Her Fears Part 3: Bible Story Time”
Living just past my fears was highlighted in my heart a little more recently. Kam and I had the amazing opportunity to take a cruise to Cozumel. It is something we love to do!! If you have cruised before than you know that when you reach your destination you have a day or more to get off the boat. I am a bit of a creature of habit and lets face it, I make some decisions unintentionally and intentionally based on fear. This was our 4th cruise to Cozumel. Our usual schedule was to get off the boat, jog/walk from the port to some popular shops and restaurants (which is about 3.5 miles each way) and then shop. Kam loves to meet and talk with the people that live their locally. Many of them only speak a little English, but we make it work. On our day off the boat, we were headed back and Kam mentioned renting a jeep to go explore the island. Say what? I was not so sure. I was no dummy. I have seen the shows where people go missing visiting other countries. I had souvenirs in hand and was headed back to the safety of the ship. We walked passed a nicely dressed young man holding a laminated advertisement for jeep rentals. Take a deep breath. Here we go. Kam asked how much and how do we get the jeep and we were immediately hurried into a cab that quickly drove the opposite direction of our boat and what I knew as safe.
Fear. It is limiting. It keeps you bound to living small. It is something God never intended. We recently introduced our boys to the movie, “The Truman Show.” Sitting here typing this article on fear, God brought that movie to my mind. In the movie, Truman is conditioned to not go beyond certain places by a very strategic amount of fear. His life is the plot of the movie. The audience watches him live while he is completely unaware. He is taught from a young age to be afraid of the water to keep him from leaving. He has this deep desire to explore, but the writers of the show literally work night and day to present the most negative ‘what if’ situations. It really is an interesting movie when you stop to think about it. I would not assume the writer meant for viewers to walk away with a deep understanding of fear, but the message is there. Continue reading “Just Beyond Fear – Part 1”
