Speak With Care

“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” Ephesians 4:29

Her text stung. Sharp. She was a dear friend. Why would she respond to me that way? I quelled the gut instinct to shoot back something snarky. Instead, the hurt took root. I wanted to call her and talk about how badly the text hurt. Work it out. Tell her the truth about what she had said and how she had spoken was unkind to me. Another friend, privy to the situation, wisely pointed out she had sent the text out of her own place of hurt.

I took a step back to consider and realized this was true. My dear friend loved me, but the conversation we were having at the time of the incident had struck a deep chord of hurt in herself. I had done nothing wrong, but the truth I had given her had been too much to bear, so she defended by lashing out.

Hurting people hurt people. I had a choice to make. Be the hurting person or be like Jesus.

Jesus was hurt by hurting people. Rejected by his hometown. Denied by Peter, one of His closest friends. Betrayed by Judas, another close friend. Jesus felt disappointment. He knew the burning irrationality of being offended. He was tempted to turn His back on the ungrateful. He had feelings too. I believe for Him to understand my struggles in life, those feelings got hurt.

But He handled it all with grace and gentility, truth and love. Every wounded, hurting person handled with care. He never excused the adulterous woman’s sin, but He also did not condemn her. He got His hands dirty with spit and mud healing some. He was thrown out of towns for healing others. Somehow, the way He spoke to the woman at the well made her love Him more, even though He pointed out her every wrong.  

The hurting who encountered Jesus were not always told truth, but they were always shown love.

Jesus set the example for how to handle the hurting. I’m sure He felt the rub of wanting to speak truth, correct, guide, offer advice, but in His wisdom, He chose to simply show up and be present instead. He must have felt that sensation in the pit of your stomach when you don’t want to say something, but you know you must, so in His wisdom He spoke truth with grace out of love and concern and in the need of the moment. (Ephesians 4:29)

Our conviction and passion are too often received as condemnation when they are not delivered in a package wrapped by love and grace and given amid relationship.

It’s our motives that need a quick check. Speak the truth God has revealed to you but with the intention to show love. Speak it with the intention of offering grace to someone drowning in shame. Speak it to offer a hand of camaraderie or commissary, letting the other person know you are with them and for them. Take time to build or repair the foundation of the relationship, gaining trust, before speaking hard truths.

Because truth is an anchor. It is sturdy and solid. It will ground your faith; be a firm foundation. It will not move when the storms of life come. But it is heavy. To a drowning person, it is heavy. To a person soaring high in the clouds of life, it can be heavy. To the person on a long journey, it is heavy.

Truth may be exactly what someone needs, but you may need to get in the water and help them tread with the weight of it. You may need to be the counterbalance to the weight of the truth, keeping them from crashing. You may need to join them on their journey before you hand them truth to take with them.

Jesus got His hands dirty. He spent hours eating and conversing inside the homes of the hurting. He made Himself available for one-on-one conversations. In those moments, in those ways, when He was doing life with people, He spoke hard truths. Then He offered Himself as the means to help them carry and live that truth.

The sooner we accept we are all hurting people hurting people, the sooner we can get around to figuring out how to be healing people that help each other heal. If I’m not the hurting person, my words and actions can be a healing a help, building up my friend according to the need of the moment. Benefiting her heart and mine.

You're Not Alone

Can I be honest?

I don't know how people grieve without Jesus in their lives. I don't know how they process all the questions, how they find hope for something new, how they vent, grow stronger, move forward.

Because I was reminded the other day, that every grief is deeply personal. As much as people tell you you are not alone, no one else had the relationship with the one you lost that you had. 

My therapist asked me to tell her about my relationship with Savannah Veale the other day. I didn't want to do it. It was so deeply personal to me--all the memories I have, conversations shared, life experiences digested, laughter, suffering, tears, stories, adventures. All the things about her life that Savannah shared with me are unique to only her and me. Even shared events with others, like family vacations, even though my family was there with us, sharing those memories with her and with me, we will all remember different pieces of time, different moments, different conversations from the same experiences. Not my husband nor my children had the same relationship with her that I did, not because any of us loved her more or less but because every single relationship between two people is unique to those two people.

Therefore, when you grieve your loss, you ultimately grieve it alone because the only other person you shared that same relationship with is gone. It is this reality, the loneliness of grief, that can be so hard to understand and so impossible for those watching to step into.

But for God. Except for Jesus. He knew....knows her! He knows me. He knew....knows the meaningfulness of our relationship, the depth, the importance.

And He has never left my side. He has taken the brunt of my anger and tongue lashings. He has stood with me, never flinching, and let me beat on His chest and sob and ask why over and over and over again until I can't ask why anymore.

Not once has His presence left me. He rubs my back and rocks and holds me when I cry, catching all the tears in His bottles, never letting one go unseen. Even in my hardness of heart, when I turn to hide from hope, when I want to numb out of life and not feel anymore, even in those pits, He stays with me. He crawls inside and whispers He is there. I am not alone. He sees me. He sees my pain, and He knows why I hurt. so. much.

Only He heard all the prayers I prayed over Savannah's health and safety for years. Only He had sat in that room with  just the two of us every week for a year, trying to find joy in her circumstances. Only He saw me stand alone in the hallway at the hospital, not family, not friend, but somewhere in no man's land. Only He saw me break down, utterly and completely, mourn and weep outside the hospital, alone. He saw me gasp for breath through the tears. He saw my body shake and heave in the overwhelming tidal wave of her death. Only He knows how often I relive that day and that experience and my relationship with her over and over again in my mind.

And while I can share these things now, I can reveal details of my love and my pain to try and help you understand, to help me process, the truth is, no one actually ever will understand except my Jesus. Because He saw us both, and He saw it all.

Yes, He has been the one I've blamed the most. He has been the one I've wrestled for answers, but He has also been the One who is faithful to show up and be present and Who knows how I personally struggle with all of it. No matter how angry I have become at Him for taking her, He is ultimately the only one who knew why it hurt me so much to lose her. So in the end, when I need to talk to someone who knew her and knew me and knew our relationship, I end up talking to Him.

People, friends, can step into this arena of pain and understanding only from the perspective of a loving, sideline fan. The ones who have stepped into the pain with me, have tried to wade in the waters with me, they are life preservers that I appreciate and cling to and need, but Jesus is the breath that keeps me breathing. He is solid ground when grief quakes. 

Because He knows us both. He knows it all. Intimately. He was there when we said all the things and did all the things and made all the memories. He was there too.

So for those that grieve without Jesus, I pray for you. If you know someone who's grieving without Jesus in their life, go BE Jesus to them because they won't make it without Him. I'm convinced of this. People who are grieving feel deeply, personally alone in their grief at any given moment for reasons I've tried to explain above. 

Another person will never be able to meet anyone in their grief completely, and as a minister of compassion, I've learned to accept this hard truth. But Jesus! Jesus can meet them right where they are and understand every hard feeling, rough edge, and deep wound because He knows it all! Take your grieving person to Jesus in whatever way that looks like. Grab the corners of their mat, cut a hole in the ceiling, and lower them down right in front of Him. (Luke 5:17-39) This looks like a lot of prayer, a lot of silent sitting, encouraging notes, long hugs, smiles with lots of eye contact. This looks like any number of small things and big things. Make them laugh, let them cry, send that text, plan that coffee.

Jesus knows how to reach the hurting because He knows their hurts intimately, and He uses His children to be His hands and feet to a hurting world (Matthew 25:40-45), and we don't have to understand or have a personal stake in their loss to be a conduit for His love. 

If this journey of grief has taught me anything, it's taught me that I don't have to understand or relate to anything about someone's situation to bring Jesus to them in the middle of it. And Jesus rarely looks like the right words. Jesus is a presence in the dark. He simply let's you know you're not alone. That's a message I can whisper in the dark to someone too.

You're not alone. 

Who in your life needs to hear those words today? How can you whisper it today? Stop wanting someone to whisper it to you, and go whisper it to someone else because Jesus is always whispering it to your heart, all the time, if you'll stop long enough to listen.

Today We See Jesus

Today we say goodbye.

It's weird. Why does a ceremony seem to hang over our heads as if that's the thing that's going to bring closure? Why does it feel so important? so reverent? so necessary? Why does Ecclesiastes 7:2 say, "It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart."?

Burying people dates back to the days of Abraham in the Bible when Abraham lovingly bought the first piece of the land God promised to him and his descendants to bury is beloved Sarah.  He buried her in a cave in the side of a mountain, and laid her to rest.  God records many a burial in the Bible, so it must be important.  He must know that it gives us something we need.

So as much as this past week has felt like the calm before the storm for me, as much as crawling out of bed this morning felt like a weight around my body and mind, I know today is needed.

It is good to mourn AND celebrate with the body of Christ.  Other believers.  Other people who loved Xander. It's kinda like the red blood cells of the body of Christ all merging together to cover the wound, clot together, stop the bleeding, and heal the wound.  Of course this started a week ago with text messages, Facebook pictures and condolences, hugs, prayers, and shared tears.  Today's services are kinda like taking the band-aid off, letting the wound breath and begin to harden, so healing can continue underneath the scab, and movement--albeit however stiff--can continue without pain.

And that's what will happen today.  We will all get to breathe not just the air of shared sorrow, but more importantly the air of shared joy.  Xander's joy.  We will celebrate his life together.  His sweet, joy-filled days here on earth.  And we will sing with tears in our eyes knowing that he is experiencing a joy we can only hope to try and understand, but never fully will. All the joys of this life we wonder he's missing out on PALE in comparison to where he is today and what he's enjoying. And there's not one suffering we endure in this lifetime that will ever touch him now.

And when the fresh air of that realization washes over us, the body of Christ, we will feel the weight lift, the wound uncovered.  We will feel a peace as we come together firm to support each other. Underneath in each of our hearts, the wound will still be tender, but healing will continue in time. But for today, as one unit breathing fresh air of a new life in God's Home, realizing that in Christ this is NOT the last time we will see him, praising our God for being good and claiming the truth that He will do right by His people.  Together, we will begin to move forward from this day.

And because we clot together, when we move forward it will be with less pain.  A little stiff maybe. A little tender underneath, but not as painful as the hole ripped open a week ago today.  No.  After today, Jesus will bind us all together in one hope, one joy, and one peace.  Unity in Christ will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, and we will have each other to remind each other that He holds us close that He is our Strength, our Help, our Refuge.

And when we lay Xander in the ground, we will be continuing the process of letting him go. Ceremonies are necessary to help us remember, to help us move on.  How many piles of stones marked significant blessings and words from God in the Old Testament?  How many ceremonies were meticulously described in the books of Moses to help people remember and continue their lives in covenant and celebration?

Today will be a good day.  As much as we may dread all the emotion we are about to experience one more time, today will be a good day.  We will see Jesus in Xander's life.  We will see Jesus in each other.  We will see Jesus in the music.  We will see Jesus in his remembrance.  We will see Jesus in the unity of our love for one another.

Today will be a good day people!  Look around and don't miss it!  Camp out and stay and watch! Today WE WILL SEE JESUS!  If you're looking, even through bleary eyes and weary souls, you will see Him.

And today will be a good day.

Letting Them Go

I've watched them.  You know, the mothers who pour their entire life and energy and self and identity into being a mother, mothering, motherhood.  I've watched them for decades now, taking notes, swearing that I won't end up like them.  That I won't lose myself in my children. That I am and always will be more than just a mother in identity.

Then the day comes when both my children are in school full time for the first time ever. A kindergardener and a second grader. And now I'm a stay-at-home mom with no kids at home. That reality has been gnawing away at my insides for months. It's taken me a while to realize one season in my life quietly ended while another one began. In silent moments all to myself, that reality makes me weep. Hard.

If there's more to me than just my kids, why do I spend so many days feeling so completely lost? They're just going to school, you say.  No, I can feel the change in my bones. My soul is raging against the changes that must in turn happen also in me.

This is just the beginning of the letting go--the slow painful separation of mother and child. I dare say it's more precarious than separating conjoined twins. I'm grateful my life is in the hands of an Eternal Surgeon skilled at His craft.

And there will be those that say, "If you feel that way about it, then home school them." But that's not my calling at this point in the journey. And if I know my kids, in so many ways in this season of life, home schooling them is not the solution to this problem. The issue is with me needing to let them go.

Let them go make new friends. Let them go begin living their own stories. Let them go write chapters where I'm not a character in the plot. Let them go to discover new things without me. Let them go to experience new hurts without me. Let them go because their life isn't about me.

And that's a hard truth.  My kids' lives aren't about me.

They play a part in my story, and I play a part in theirs, but ultimately they are simply a small man and a small woman in need of my care for a short time on loan from a Father who has a much grander plan in mind for them than I could ever dream.  It's my gift from Him to be a part of their story.

And so letting them go becomes essential because if I hold on, they become my idols.

And in the night my mind wanders frantically to the Scriptures for truth, for examples from whom to glean wisdom, cautions even.

And the Lord reminds me first of Jesus.  He was twelve years old, a seventh grader, when his parents lost him for three days.  They didn't even know He was missing until the evening of the first! For that to have even have happened, his parents obviously trusted him to be away for an entire day, out of sight, out of mind, no text messages, no cell phone to check in. (Luke 2:41-50)

Then the Lord brought Hannah to mind. Sweet, precious Hannah. Who was barren and begged the Lord for a child, and when the Lord answered her prayer, she kept her promise to the Lord by handing her six year old little boy over to the care of the priests in the temple to grow up in service to the Lord. Her six year old. He went to live and grow up in the house of the priests, not his mother.  At six. My son is six. (1 Samuel 1)

Then the Lord brought to mind Moses. He was still only a baby when his mother, for his own protection, placed him in a basket on the River Nile not knowing he would be rescued by an Egyptian princess.  By God's grace, his mother would be allowed to continue to nurse him, but once he was weaned, she would leave for him to grow up in the house of Pharaoh.  How she must have treasured every nursing. (Exodus 2:1-10)

Our children were born to be let go into the care of God.  The age and circumstances vary for every child and mother, but in the end, this is God's design. My children were born to be let go into His care.

And I cannot hold onto them in stubborn rebellion without letting go of the hand of my God who still sees me as His child, who cares for me as His child, who still has parenting plans for me in the works as His child and He the loving Father.

I have a choice to make.

I can wallow in the pitiful, aching heart pain that is watching my children grow up and leave, or I can choose joy by choosing to focus on God's presence in my life while praying His presence increases in theirs.

I can become unhappy in wishful thinking, wishing for days past when my children were small and clingy and needy and the only thing they ever really wanted all the time was me, or I can choose gratefulness by praising God for providing a school where they are safe to grow in His presence, where their story in Christ will have fertile ground to take root. I can choose to be grateful that my schedule is now more at the Lord's disposal than ever before.  Every day can be filled with unexpected blessings that aren't currently on my radar, but I trust they are on His.

I can become lost and lonely as a part of my identity begins to change and morph into something new, or I can choose to be content right where I am at any moment, in any circumstance because the truth is I am a child of God, and my heavenly Father never leaves me alone. That part of my identity is as sure and as steadfast and unchangeable as my God Himself.

So the real truth is found in this: My identity has nothing to do with being a mother. That is just a hat I wear, a part I play, for a very short season, and then only in guest appearances as my children see fit the older I get. Do I want to play the part well, so they keep inviting me back? Absolutely!  But ultimately, I still have a story to live of my own where I am the lead, not them.  My children are beginning to play the lead in their own stories now, and that's a good thing for them.  It's not suppose to be a sad thing for me.

And so maybe this blog marks this season of letting go. I'm not a fool. I know there are many more to come. The Lord is showing me that as I let go of one thing, it is imperative I grab onto Him until He reveals what He wants me to grab onto next. He is the only Source, the only Life Preserver, the only Person who keeps me from sinking. Yeah, all those choices I listed above?  There are too many days I make the wrong choice to focus on me instead of Jesus.

I am still a work in progress. Pretty sure I always will be, and that's ok. The longer I live on this earth, the more I can accept that life is never going to get easier or happier, but holding the hand of Jesus it does get sweeter. And for that I'm grateful.

I pray my children see that. I pray they watch their mom turn to Jesus every time something in life changes. Every time the Lord asks me to let go of something, I pray my children see me grab onto Him. If that's all I can ever model for them, then that is enough.

Psalm 105:1

Tonight I sit overwhelmed and amazed and in perfect, exuberant peace. Tonight my daughter accepted Christ as her Savior.

In September, her younger six-year-old brother joined the family of God. He was beaming from ear to ear when we went to pick him up from his Sunday morning class, and he matter-of-factly announced that he had said the prayer to accept Jesus into his heart. Being six years old, Joey and I were hesitant and probably even doubtful this was a real decision, but boy, did God prove this doubting Mama's heart wrong.

My son was different. He was more open to spiritual conversations, more attentive, more willing to listen and attempt to apply Biblical truth to his life. He drew a precious picture of his heart with a stick-figure God inside, writing along the side that, "Yes. I did it. The God of Heaven" with arrows pointing to inside his heart. I didn't even know he had drawn this picture. I had simply mailed the envelope for him, but then my mother-in-love texted me a picture of the drawing when she received it. My heart jumped! Of his own accord, he had willingly told someone else about his decision. In the days to come, he would write messages in the sand on the beach, and my shy, little-man-of-few-words would volunteer to lead prayer time in his Sunday morning class, saying prayers that only come from the most pure of heart.  There's no doubt in my mind, the Holy Spirit filled my son this past September, and the conversations we have had since then have blessed me deeply.

But in the meantime, my eight-year-old daughter was hesitant, even resistant toward conversations we had with her about this decision. The Lord had to work on me. He told me I needed to shut my mouth, speak carefully and gently only when those small windows of opportunity arose, and not press. This was her decision, not mine. Her life choice. So I shut my mouth and prayed so fervently every night because I knew she knew. I knew she understood, but her open defiance was also clearly on display. She is queen of changing the subject, and Lord help us if we ever started to go deeper into anything than a puddle, she was always the first to come up for air, distracting herself with silliness and giggles and goofiness.

The Lord was faithful. He used a dear friend to point out Romans 2:4 to me, which basically states it is God's kindness that leads us to repentance. Kindness. That is not a character quality I would rank high on my list of attributes. We are a low mercy home in general. Practicing kindness seemed foreign. Good manors, respectfulness, obedience...yes, we do those, but kindness? Kindness relates closely to words like caring, heartfelt concern, mercy, compassion, empathy. Yeah, gut-check. I needed to work on those. My daughter needed to know my kindness, so she could understand in part the kindness of our heavenly Father.

So I stopped rolling my eyes at her dramatic flair; instead, at the Lord's prompting, I took more deep breaths and saw her for who she was right in her emotional moments. Hurt feelings, splinters, bruises, friend problems, school issues--these were all moments to put kindness into practice. Learning to love another person for who they are, right where they are in life, not getting frustrated at their unused potential, not seeing the person God is molding them to be, but seeing the person standing right in front of you, needy, hurting, responding to that person, that child--that has been embarrassingly difficult for me to do.

Lord, thank you for helping me to see my daughter through your eyes--valued, loved, wanted. Even in her rebellious heart, she was still wholly and completely desired as my child. Wow. Such a tender life lesson and peek through the looking glass at the heart of my heavenly Father. I don't think I really got it until I had to live it, to put it in to practice. Thank you, Jesus, for hard lessons.

Over the last few months, I've had to entrust my daughter over and over again back into the hands of her Heavenly Father who made her and knows her so much better than even I can hope to know. I've prayed often in tears. I've trusted the Lord's promise to me that before the age of 12, my children would choose to follow the Lord. I believed the encouraging words of wiser women who spoke truth that one day, my daughter would make that decision for herself. Somewhere in the past few months, I stopped focusing on my desires and my timeline and my daughter's attitude, and decided the only hopeful place to focus was on Jesus.

So I ordered the She Reads Truth Lent study. I've never observed Lent. I'm not even really sure what it stands for or what it is or how to rightly observe it. But I knew it was about my Jesus' journey toward the cross, and it was about intentionally focusing on Him and His sacrifice. So tonight, on Ash Wednesday, I sat my kids around our table. We lit the candle in our Lent Wreath and began the first of a 40 day journey toward the cross together.

Something about lighting that candle cast a spell on my children. They watched the flame and listened intently to the Scripture readings. They read some of the verses from their own Bibles. We talked and discussed and ate scripture together, and my heart was so full. And we talked about sin and repentance and confession and forgiveness and what it means to be a child of God. And in the tender closing moments, right before we prayed, my daughter tentatively announced that God was asking her to repent, that she believed in Jesus and what He had come to do, and that she wanted to follow Him and be a child of God.

And my heart overflowed! It burst open. Satan immediately tried to get in there with his voice of doubt, but I looked into my daughter's eyes, and I chose to believe God, just like she was doing. And she bowed her head and prayed, and I listened to her sweet words of repentance and confession and proclaimed belief in Jesus' death and resurrection. I didn't even have to say the words for her.  She spoke them all herself, and she spoke them perfectly. And then I knew she was my child because the tears of happiness began to flow and her eyes shone and glistened, and the joy of the Lord filled her countenance.

And in the quiet evening of Ash Wednesday our family of four was made complete in the Holy Spirit, sealed together in Christ for all eternity. My children choose Jesus. I can ask for nothing more.

At ages and six and eight, I know that they know. Their Spirit testifies to mine because it is the same.

I have no greater joy than to know that my children 

are walking in the truth. (3 John 1:4)

No. Greater. Joy.

May you also be encouraged. May you faithfully trust the Lord with the hearts and minds of those dearest to you. May the Lord hear your fervent prayers from heaven and look on you with favor. May you too know the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. (Psalm 27:13) Amen and Amen!

Oh give thanks to the Lord, call upon His name;

Make known His deeds among the peoples. (Psalm 105:1)