As I struggled through introspection all week, I realized at the end that I had not done or planned anything sacred for this week. So, I began praying and the sunrise soon came to mind. I asked Mike what place nearby we might see it from best. His mind went straight to the Parkway so this morning we woke up long before the alarms and began our ride to the mountains.
We drove past the house we rented when we moved to North Carolina in dire circumstances, unknowing that it was the beginning of being set apart from the world's systems and traditions. Then, we passed near the camp where the kids summer after summer learned so much of God's Word and how to test their limits of work. We rolled up the Blue Ridge Parkway, the road I used to be so scared of, Mike had "Dead Man Walking" playing, something very different than what he would have then. As we approached the hill called "The Lump" that I used to put McKala in a backpack and hike and that Mike used to take our Jeep Wagoneer to in the snow to escort the kids back up after they slid all the way down, I saw that Megan and Jeremiah were already there along with 4 or 5 other people scattered around. We began the ascent, and I thought of how easy my walk is compared to what Jesus' was.
We went to sit with them right there in the grass. Although the sun was shielded by cloud cover, the rising was a brilliant color, Dawn, my middle name and something I never saw much of until I determined to read God's Word through and through.
It was so quiet, just the wind blowing gently. I thought of how quiet the world was and how we're sent home from our many ways, including pagan traditions, something the Lord warned me of back then in those mountains. There would be no real Easter egg hunts today, no mixing of holy with the unholy, worshipping the created with the Creator, "; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom the Lord had charged them, that they should not do like them" (2 Kings 17:25).
I thought of the women approaching the tomb in a similar setting. I didn't know that Mike would ask me to read, but I did have a Bible in my coat pocket. But when I began to read Luke 24, "Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, …" I couldn't even make it through that. I regained my composure and started over. Again, I couldn't. And that's when Megan asked me to hand it to her. That allowed me to video the scene and our firstborn's reading of God's Word.
When we left, we drove by the little Blue Ridge Baptist Church (whose pastor baptized both Megan and me in the river) which is right down the road from where we lived, but not before we stopped at a pasture that decades ago was Mike's great grandfather's. There was a fresh calf, no more than a day or two old, so happy to be alive, clumsily running around, face white as snow. We stopped later at a couple of other overlooks and stayed at one for a good while, leaving the radio up and worshipping, Mike more than any of us.
We came down the mountain by the church we called home for five years where four of the children were graciously baptized all in the same baptismal at the same time. Macklynn then Madalynn were baptized there, too. We came home to eat a little something and watch Franklin Graham preach from Central Park. Now that Melody has been given the green light to GO as a medical technician, it's of particular interest! She was afraid none of us would want her to GO. Turns out everyone did! How can I ask her not to GO, when I've told her the words of Jesus to GO her whole life? As much as I love home, a willingness to GO is what defines who we really are and not going where it's easy but going where it's scary and with a skill the sick, poor, and oppressed need.
She's out of work right now and out of school. What better time? Meanwhile, everyone else is working having virtually no debt, with some money stored up. They all love the outdoors and know how to utilize it, know how to cook and to cut hair, at the very least trim. They all can change their own oil and rotate their tires and are basically self sufficient. This is all well and good but nothing without the Lord. To see that they are observing Him today and trusting in His teaching is what this mother longs for and blesses her most.
A new day is dawning for our family. The thing about the low, dark places is that they make the high places seem all the higher. And I have to write about them! I have literally nothing from my ancestors other than some light-hearted correspondences. Well, I do have The Ideal Life that was Mike's great-grandmother's, but it's such a large, imposing book that it's been left mostly unread in my pursuit of studying the Bible.
This journey, this moving around from place to place, church to church; I think people might feel sorry for me, especially people who know the details. What they may or may not know though is that Jesus has been working on me, making me like Him, working things out of me, working in the whole family's favor including Mike's ...so, these things were necessary.
I don't why I just NOW realized that we have as many as 5 weddings left to have, 7 high school and college graduations, and 6 more families with babies. This really is just the beginning! I feel like I'm coming out of a tunnel and everything looks big and new and good and bright. I'm truly happy, rather than just putting one foot in front of the other, for the first time in a good, long while.
Sunday, April 12, 2020
Wednesday, April 8, 2020
Tell Somebody
People ask what's my favorite color, place to eat - where I want to travel, what I want to do. I usually don't have a straight answer. I like to look at blue, but I like to wear pink. I like good food; I mostly like my own. I don't care where I travel; I'll spend eternity with Jesus on a new earth; I don't know what I want to "do." I know what I don't want to do and that's spend the rest of life cooped up in the house ever learning. School is so belabored that the very life of a person is sucked out, creating a sedentary existence because ": of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh" (Ecc. 12:12).
In my life I've tried so many things: food and drink, beauty and men, and intellect and talent. Like Solomon though, I've found this only, "Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man" (12:13) with the one thing that's missing from this mandatory staying at home: telling somebody. Yes, I could write, and I thought that was what I wanted to "do," but the sadder I've gotten and the harder I've searched, I finally realized what I'm actually missing is telling people about Jesus everywhere I go. I don't even mean to. It just gushes out. And I don't mean to the church people; that's good, like when I run into Eva all around town or when I have deep talks with Andrea at art class, but I mean to anyone who'll listen: the young pregnant mother buying the same scrub brush as I at Dollar General, the teenager selling me shoes, the single mom at the football game, the girl at the pool, and the lady on vacation.
I don't leave the house with some prepared message or agenda, so I'm always surprised when God gives me an opening! THAT is what's missing, and I didn't even know it until today. It is why though I'm careful to leave a "margin," extra time for encounters, ever since I heard a sermon about it. What I'm bad to do though is not leave a margin for home. When the grown kids call, they ask what I'm doing, and I'll answer them then often say, "Talk fast." And to the ones who live here, I'm liable to say, "Spit it out," when I'm interrupted from a task.
See, I actually love being at home and totally agree that it's a good place for everyone to be right now not only to protect each other but to appreciate our own families' company. I'm good with, okay with, not always great at: cleaning, teaching, and cooking. But I didn't know that I'm not good with having no one new to tell the Good News to face to face, the way Paul longed to do in his letters.
From these experiences, I don't even need the relationship or necessary follow up or encouragement of my own. It encourages me when I am able tell somebody that God is relevant to their lives and what He's done in mine. To know that it pleases Him is my joy and breaks any monotony or sense of duty I feel with the other components of my life. It's a pressure valve that I didn't even know I required. Even my children, I love them and they love me, but they can only take so much of my teaching and talking. All I really want them to learn though is that every conversation they have everywhere they go counts, that God get the glory somehow some way.
People have different expressions of their love for God whether through music or art or any number of things. Not everybody writes like I do. Not everybody talks as readily as I do. But EVERY Christian should be about the business of talking readily, introvert or no. He is worthy of praise to every ear that will listen in every place that we stand. We can smile and help people all day long but without the utterance of the Gospel, it is in the end for our own glory.
I think everybody knows by now how I feel about a woman taking care of her own. But that's just a baseline, like tithing is to giving. To do it well is so much more than developing gifts, skills, and intelligence in our children but is teaching and exemplifying the sharing of God's goodness always with all people, not solely as part of some ministry but as part of the Kingdom of God. Everything else is vanity. I have to be reminded though when I become works based and even create a self imposed prison, indoors trying to get the lesson done, the room cleaned, or the call made.
Having this slow down has revealed to me that I'm not living the life I love. I love the outdoors. I love communication. The latter has been temporarily taken to a degree, from me and from everyone. But the former is something I've done to myself, only seeing the pretty days through a window because I gotta get that A. It's made me hate school, which oughta be matter-of-fact, let's-get-this-over-with simple.
You know, I said I was going to keep dancing after Megan's wedding, but instead I went to the gym and then not even that. I said I'd start singing again, but I'm forever reading. I said I'd start drawing again, but even that became work stuck in between the assignments I have due and the responsibilities of home. Some days eating has seemed like my only pleasure, something I thought I had kicked but the stressful, sedentary life reintroduces. And it's not just mom doing college. So many home school moms think we have to recreate a school environment at home - again, sucking the very life out of everything. And, of course, there's the other extreme, not requiring much at all, myself guilty of just throwing up my hands. And sometimes something even worse happens; we get proud and our children get proud, set apart not out of humility and preparedness to affect the world but just plain snubbing our noses at the world and missing the very essence of homeschooling: to be light in the present darkness, not only to people we like but also to people we don't.
Here's what I'm gonna do: I'm gonna go on walks with no particular outcome in mind; I'm gonna turn the radio back on; I'm gonna sit in the sun; I'm gonna teach Madalynn more about cooking rather than keeping that time for myself; I'm gonna make food my friend again; I'm not gonna be so serious; and I'm not going to get all As (computer class has already taken care of that). I'm gonna laugh more and enjoy my family because time with them is impossibly fleeting but so is time to tell the world.
You, when everything opens back up, be ready. Tell somebody while there is time and opportunity. I believe there will come a day when Christian speech will be considered hate speech. So, don't be that somebody who won't tell anybody until there's nobody and no time left to tell without persecution. What will we say before the Lord when we have brought no one with us to His feet? Is that even possible for someone who has learned the grace of God not to have convinced somebody somewhere to follow also? At the very least, we can be planting seeds for those who harvest. Ask yourself during this time what your walk ought to look like when you're unleashed on society once more. It ought to be characterized as a burning flame. Study up and pray up and be and stay available not just to your family but with your family to the lost and perishing world.
In my life I've tried so many things: food and drink, beauty and men, and intellect and talent. Like Solomon though, I've found this only, "Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man" (12:13) with the one thing that's missing from this mandatory staying at home: telling somebody. Yes, I could write, and I thought that was what I wanted to "do," but the sadder I've gotten and the harder I've searched, I finally realized what I'm actually missing is telling people about Jesus everywhere I go. I don't even mean to. It just gushes out. And I don't mean to the church people; that's good, like when I run into Eva all around town or when I have deep talks with Andrea at art class, but I mean to anyone who'll listen: the young pregnant mother buying the same scrub brush as I at Dollar General, the teenager selling me shoes, the single mom at the football game, the girl at the pool, and the lady on vacation.
I don't leave the house with some prepared message or agenda, so I'm always surprised when God gives me an opening! THAT is what's missing, and I didn't even know it until today. It is why though I'm careful to leave a "margin," extra time for encounters, ever since I heard a sermon about it. What I'm bad to do though is not leave a margin for home. When the grown kids call, they ask what I'm doing, and I'll answer them then often say, "Talk fast." And to the ones who live here, I'm liable to say, "Spit it out," when I'm interrupted from a task.
See, I actually love being at home and totally agree that it's a good place for everyone to be right now not only to protect each other but to appreciate our own families' company. I'm good with, okay with, not always great at: cleaning, teaching, and cooking. But I didn't know that I'm not good with having no one new to tell the Good News to face to face, the way Paul longed to do in his letters.
From these experiences, I don't even need the relationship or necessary follow up or encouragement of my own. It encourages me when I am able tell somebody that God is relevant to their lives and what He's done in mine. To know that it pleases Him is my joy and breaks any monotony or sense of duty I feel with the other components of my life. It's a pressure valve that I didn't even know I required. Even my children, I love them and they love me, but they can only take so much of my teaching and talking. All I really want them to learn though is that every conversation they have everywhere they go counts, that God get the glory somehow some way.
People have different expressions of their love for God whether through music or art or any number of things. Not everybody writes like I do. Not everybody talks as readily as I do. But EVERY Christian should be about the business of talking readily, introvert or no. He is worthy of praise to every ear that will listen in every place that we stand. We can smile and help people all day long but without the utterance of the Gospel, it is in the end for our own glory.
I think everybody knows by now how I feel about a woman taking care of her own. But that's just a baseline, like tithing is to giving. To do it well is so much more than developing gifts, skills, and intelligence in our children but is teaching and exemplifying the sharing of God's goodness always with all people, not solely as part of some ministry but as part of the Kingdom of God. Everything else is vanity. I have to be reminded though when I become works based and even create a self imposed prison, indoors trying to get the lesson done, the room cleaned, or the call made.
Having this slow down has revealed to me that I'm not living the life I love. I love the outdoors. I love communication. The latter has been temporarily taken to a degree, from me and from everyone. But the former is something I've done to myself, only seeing the pretty days through a window because I gotta get that A. It's made me hate school, which oughta be matter-of-fact, let's-get-this-over-with simple.
You know, I said I was going to keep dancing after Megan's wedding, but instead I went to the gym and then not even that. I said I'd start singing again, but I'm forever reading. I said I'd start drawing again, but even that became work stuck in between the assignments I have due and the responsibilities of home. Some days eating has seemed like my only pleasure, something I thought I had kicked but the stressful, sedentary life reintroduces. And it's not just mom doing college. So many home school moms think we have to recreate a school environment at home - again, sucking the very life out of everything. And, of course, there's the other extreme, not requiring much at all, myself guilty of just throwing up my hands. And sometimes something even worse happens; we get proud and our children get proud, set apart not out of humility and preparedness to affect the world but just plain snubbing our noses at the world and missing the very essence of homeschooling: to be light in the present darkness, not only to people we like but also to people we don't.
Here's what I'm gonna do: I'm gonna go on walks with no particular outcome in mind; I'm gonna turn the radio back on; I'm gonna sit in the sun; I'm gonna teach Madalynn more about cooking rather than keeping that time for myself; I'm gonna make food my friend again; I'm not gonna be so serious; and I'm not going to get all As (computer class has already taken care of that). I'm gonna laugh more and enjoy my family because time with them is impossibly fleeting but so is time to tell the world.
You, when everything opens back up, be ready. Tell somebody while there is time and opportunity. I believe there will come a day when Christian speech will be considered hate speech. So, don't be that somebody who won't tell anybody until there's nobody and no time left to tell without persecution. What will we say before the Lord when we have brought no one with us to His feet? Is that even possible for someone who has learned the grace of God not to have convinced somebody somewhere to follow also? At the very least, we can be planting seeds for those who harvest. Ask yourself during this time what your walk ought to look like when you're unleashed on society once more. It ought to be characterized as a burning flame. Study up and pray up and be and stay available not just to your family but with your family to the lost and perishing world.
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