Yanked Out Y's ~ Life Lessons from Being Sick ~ A to Z Blog Challenge

When I began thinking about the A to Z challenge, I thought for a long time about what I wanted to write. I tried to think of ways to find neat things about the English language with each letter. And then I thought, what if that letter didn’t exist? So I am doing an abbreviated version of my Life Lessons series that I normally do on Fridays, but without using the letter of the day. What would life be like without that letter? Let’s find out...

First off, I am feeling much better. No more stories about Xander and his musical instrument.

Second, I would like to express something that occurred to me while being sick. I keep the children at home. It is something I have been blessed to be able to do. However, with little ones running around, it’s a problem when mom is out of commission. And believe me, mom was out of commission.

This is where another blessing comes into the picture. I live about an hour from Grandma. This is the perfect distance, I think. Close enough for a quick trip but far enough not to just stop over whenever the mood strikes. The fabulous, loving people that birthed and raised me rearranged things so that Grandma could come to the rescue.

Here’s the catch: I didn’t want her to.

No, this is not the house I live in. This picture is from MorgueFile.com.

I was desperate. It was almost impossible for me to care for the kids, but I wanted so bad to be able to tell her not to come. Because the house is a disaster. Not the “oh, there’s a bit of a mess so I’ll call it a disaster and people will think I’m cleaner than this on a normal basis”  kind of disaster. It was the “I dare someone to find a clean flat surface including the floor” kind of disaster.

And I didn’t want her to see it. But I needed her. I couldn’t do what needed to be done without her.

Life is like that. People have mentioned to me several times “I’ll come to Jesus when I get a few things cleaned up in life.” We want to bring Jesus into a clean house so He’ll think better of us. The thing is, Grandma knows I’m a horrendous housekeeper. This is not news. God knows the worst things we’ve done in life. It’s not news to Him either. Even Christians tend to hide from God when a little mess gets into their life.

We need Jesus. We can’t function as were created to without Him. So let Him in, no matter what the mess. And here’s the best news: He’s great at clean up.

Check out other A to Z participants using the link below. 

Illuminating I's ~ Life Lessons From a Dirty Van Window ~ A to Z Blog Challenge

When I began thinking about the A to Z challenge, I thought for a long time about what I wanted to write. I tried to think of ways to find neat things about the English language with each letter. And then I thought, what if that letter didn’t exist? So I am doing an abbreviated version of my Life Lessons series that I normally do on Fridays, but without using the letter of the day. What would life be like without that letter? Let’s find out...

The back glass of my van got cleaned the other day at the QT. The handled sponge/squeegee worked well as a glass washer, but there’s a funny aspect of water: water runs.

Before one could say “You should really wash the whole van” black streaks decorated the back of my van. Yes, there was that much crud to clean off. The prospect from the seats was now clearer but the van as a whole looked worse.

The sponge could swat at the worst of the streaks, but every attempt to correct the new marks came to naught. (There’s a fun phrase for you. We should all say “came to naught” more often.) Unless the whole van got washed, anyone who looked at the van would see the smudges and crud that covered the body.

How often do we try cleaning spots? We clean one area of ourselves only to be left with black streaks on other parts because we haven’t bothered to address the real problem. Stuff God doesn’t care for covers our whole soul and unless we get the Creator to clean us, we can only move the muck around.

As a flanked note the van has yet to be washed. Repentance, however, has been requested from and granted by God.

When I decided to do this lesson from the van’s back window on the day for letter I, I thought I was crazy. Turned out to be easier than I expected. The hardest part was not saying the word ‘I’. It made me look at things differently. Try going through the day without saying the word ‘I’ and watch your perspective change. Check out other A to Z participants using the link below. 

Perseverance Makes a Difference ~ Life Lessons from the Stop Kony Movement

Unless your internet has been disconnected or you avoid social media like the plague, you've probably heard this week about the Stop Kony movement by Invisible Children.

If not, you can...
       See the video here.
               Read an article critiquing the movement here.
                         Read Invisible Children's rebuttal here.

Today, I am not talking about whether the movement is right or wrong or whether or not you should participate. There are other blogs happily debating the topic.

What I want to do is look at the movement itself. Whether you agree with the movement or not, you can't argue that if their goal has been to get people to talk about it, they're succeeding. The message is spreading like wildfire. Can you imagine the change that would come over this world if the gospel message of Jesus Christ were to break out and spread like that? It's amazing to think about.

So I started thinking, "Why this cause?" Invisible Children is hardly the only charity out there fighting to end an injustice. There are many groups out there fighting for causes that I would consider to be bigger than this one. Acts of injustice that effect more people than Kony does. So why is Stop Kony such a big deal?

1. It's specific.

There are girls being kidnapped everyday and forced into sexual slavery. Millions are affected by AIDS. There are places without clean drinking water. There are people starving in the United States. Homelessness. Abandoned Children. Worthy causes are endless.

What's different about this one? There is a specific target. There is a single man to get mad at. The goal is definable - get one man arrested. With a definable goal comes the confidence that the goal can be reached. Often times causes seem to be endless. Those working to erase poverty will never actually win the battle because someone will always be earning less than everyone else. That can make it hard to get people to join your cause.

2. There's a sense of urgency.

They aren't asking for a long term commitment from anyone. They are asking for a year. Even less than that, they are asking for one day. If you miss that day, then you miss the movement. You can't decide three months from now to take part - you'll have missed it. There's a now or never mentality to the movement that spurs people to action. They even tell you to stop wearing the bracelets when the year is over.

There will always be children abandoned because their parents can't or won't take care of them. If I miss helping one, there will be another one on another day. With the Stop Kony campaign, if you miss it, it's gone. People don't like to miss out, especially when it could be something huge.

3. The request is simple. 

Yes, they would love to have your money. Yes, they want you to go plaster posters up in your city. But mostly, they want you to talk about it. They want you to sit at your computer and make it a big deal. Tell your friends. Share the links. What they are requesting is easy for a lot of people to do.

They are even giving people a reason to contact big name celebrities that most people would never have the guts to talk to. They've given people a reason to send messages and letters to their favorite actors and singers. The request is simple and something most people enjoy doing anyway. They just ask that instead of tweeting about the big basketball game, you tweet about Kony.

4. They've been at it a long time.

They didn't just gather last week and say, "Hey, let's stop this guy!" If I understood the video right, they've been working at this since 2001. That's a long time to keep at something that doesn't seem to be having the desired result. It's been a slow process, but they've kept at it. You can't win the race if you stop running it.

5. They got emotional. 

This is not a dig at the fact that he used his adorable little son in the video. It's not a complaint about the possibility of left out or simplified facts. It's a statement on human nature. If we are not emotionally involved, we will not get involved. We don't stick out noses in places because it is a smart thing to do. We do it because we're curious or angry or scared or jealous.

We try to save the whales because we're mad about what people do to them. Sometimes we help the homeless out of guilt. Emotions drive actions. Ideally people get emotionally involved, then bring their heads with them to examine the facts and decide the best course of action. But without the initial emotional tug, they aren't going to act.

6. They kept the message simple.

There's also only so much thinking most people are willing to do. Attention spans are low and we don't normally sit at our computers wanting someone to ask us to think. So they made the information as basic as possible. It's like when I teach things to my daughter. I gloss over some technicalities because her brain is still trying to grasp the basic concept. Once she understands that, we come in and teach the details.


What now?

What do we do with these lessons? To be honest, I'm still thinking about that. But I know that anytime there's an effective method of reaching a lot of people with a single message, it behooves evangelical Christians to look at it and learn from it. So let's think of ways we can apply these lessons.

After all, every day 7 billion people contract a disease that will ultimately lead to death. There are 3,800 entire people groups that have not even heard of the cure for this disease. Some of them will die today. The disease? Sin. The consequence? Hall and eternal death and separation from God. The cure? Jesus Christ.

How can we take these lessons and apply them to tell more people about the cure?

Chuck the Junk - Life Lessons from a Minivan

We cleaned out the family car this week. I mean, hauled the vacuum out there, took out the car seats, and swept out the goldfish kind of cleaned. I do not even want to think about how much yuckiness came out of my van. Because we have to drive so far to church, we end up eating at least two meals and two snacks a week in the car. No, it's not ideal, but it's just the way life is right now.

We found chicken nuggets, old biscuits, crushed Goldfish, and fossilized french fries is just about every crevice in the back of the van. The front wasn't much better. Bags from our fast food ventures, old bulletins and church papers, crushed Mountain Dew cans, and a couple of jackets were tucked around the front seats.

It's amazing there was room for us, to be honest.

So we cleaned it out. We even used glass cleaner on the inside of the windshield. The van hasn't been this clean in a long time.

What's the point of this, you ask? Well, I've been driving a clean van around all week and I LOVE IT! I am driving to the exact same places I drive every week, but it just feels better. It's easier to get the kids in and out of the car. Loading groceries or even the diaper bag isn't an exercise in futility. Somehow my little van even seems bigger on the inside than it used to. All because I shoveled the junk out of it.

What would happen if I shoveled the junk out of my life. Would my life feel bigger? Would it be easier to do the things I need to do? I know it would make it so God could put things in that needed to be there. We went to Costco this week and it was so easy to load those big boxes in the car because we didn't have to move fifteen things left in the car from last Sunday. When we got home we unloaded the car! What a novel concept!

I know my life, like my van, will get messy again. Sin will seep it's way into the cracks and crevices like a forgotten french fry. I just need to remember that if I'll let God bring a vacuum in more often, it won't seem like quite a chore to clean my life out.

On a lighter note, when we were cleaning out the car seats we found one of those shaker tambourines on a stick instruments that one of the girls had apparently brought home from church. The funny thing was that the stick was in one girl's seat and the head with the cymbals on it was in the other. It doesn't look like it's broken - it goes back together just fine - but I have to wonder how they decided who got which piece. We also found a piece of chewed gum that had miraculously not stuck to anything, but just sat there and dried out. Gross.

What's the strangest thing you've ever found while cleaning out your car?

Expecting Non-Christians to be Non-Christians - Life Lessons from Eyeglasses, Part 2

It's been an interesting week in our house.

Knowing that my daughter can't see things clearly changed the way I viewed her behavior. I gave her more leeway, patience was easier to come by, and I made a point to guide her around potential obstacles. Because I knew she couldn't see things the way the truly are, I altered my expectations of her.

What an eye-opening thought.

One of the frequent fallibilities of people is that we assume everyone is like us. Because I can see, I assumed my daughter could see. Because I love chocolate, I assume everyone else does as well. (Incidentally, my daughter doesn't. Go figure.) We tend to attribute our own traits to those around us. When it comes to Believers and Non-believers, this is a tragic mistake.

A youth minister that my husband and I mentored under once mentioned that he had to be deliberate about altering his expectations based on the student. While there are certain things you can expect of everyone who crosses your path - for instance, I expect all people to do me the courtesy of not pulling a gun on me - there are other things that you can only expect of another Christian (assuming that you are one yourself).

It isn't fair to expect a non-Christian to abide by God's laws because they don't have the benefit of the Holy Spirit aiding them in that endeavor. That doesn't make it any less wrong for a couple to be sleeping together prior to marriage, but it does make it something easier for me to understand. If it's a non-Christian couple, I have to expect them to behave as non-Christians.

1 Corinthians 5 (You can read the whole chapter here.) mentions this. There is a couple within the church behaving immorally. Paul says that because this couple claims to be Believers, there is a certain level of judgement required from the church. He leaves it to God to judge "outsiders".

The question becomes what do I do with this knowledge? I look back on this week and how I've handled my daughter. I haven't let her run around however she pleases just because she can't see. There are still certain things I expect of her as a member of our family. However, there are other things I have let slide. For instance, I don't tell her to back away from the television anymore. I am more patient when she can't find her shoes and they are right in the middle of the floor, eight inches from her toes. I am not admonishing her to pay attention to where she's going when she runs into the wall.

Next week when she gets her glasses, it will be a different story. I will then be focused on teaching her how to deal with things that are suddenly so much clearer than they have ever been in her life.

I think Christians need to handle non-Christians in a similar way. There are certain expectations when they come visit church - like don't do drugs in the parking lot. But when it comes to other things, we need to remember that they can't see as clearly as we do. Truth may be eight inches from their toes, but it looks like nothing but a blur to them. We can be their gentle guides, showing them the way life can be lived so that they will see the need for their own pair of glasses.

Next week I'll be able to expect my little girl to back away from the TV and avoid the door frame, but this week I have to remember that she's doing the best she can with flawed eyes.


Image Credits:
Eye: Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Scales: vichie81 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Glasses: Wapcaplet on wikipedia

Life Lessons from Eyeglasses Part One

Image: twobee / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I just took my daughter to the opthamologist. It turns out she's quite farsighted. And while it is very likely that her prescription will weaken as she ages, she'll likely be in glasses the rest of her life. I knew when we went that glasses were likely to be the outcome of the visit. What I didn't expect was the strength of her prescription.

Considering the strength of the glasses on order, I'm stunned at how well my daughter functions. She has learned all of her letters, can identify most of the major cartoon characters, and is a whiz on the computer. She does all of this without seeing properly which is why she has also been running into walls, sticking her face an inch from said computer's screen, and crossing her eyes when she tries to focus on something. She has no idea what kind of detail the world actual holds because it's all blurry to her. I've been blessed with good eyesight so I don't know what it is to look at something and not see it. I can't imagine what things must be like for her.

How often are we like that? We seem to be functioning well in this world - volunteering at church, spending time with our families, and enjoying a certain measure of success in our chosen professions. The question is, are we missing the best of the stuff that God has created for us? Are we running into the same issues over and over again? Or maybe we find ourselves manipulating situations into something that fits better with our perceptions and lifestyles?

Image: arztsamui / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I don't know what will happen when my daughter's glasses come in. I know it's going to rock her world to discover Mommy has eyelashes. I hope it will ease some of her frustration when she can't quite seem to do something (like open a door because she can't find the doorknob!). In the meantime, I'll be a little more understanding when I ask her to find something and she can't or when I question her about what something is and she says "I don't know."

As soon as I discovered how much my little girl couldn't see, I wanted to run that prescription to the nearest one hour glasses place and fix it immediately. But she needs special lenses and special frames that have to be ordered. I think it will be a good thing. I have two weeks to watch her function and think about what areas of my life as I seeing incorrectly. What God-made blessing am I missing because I choose to look through my own eyes instead of of the lenses of God's?

Fresh Start

Ah, January. The time of year when we all take a deep breath and try to start over. What is so magical about January First that gives us a clean slate? To a certain extent Mondays have this same elusive magic. How many times have you said I'm going to do better starting next week? Something in us craves that fresh start. We are desperate for the ability to draw a line in the sand and start over.

But there's nothing magical about January. There's nothing that happens when the clock strikes midnight that will suddenly turn you into someone who likes healthy foods, knows how to manage their money, and actually gets to places on time. You are still the same person at 12:01 as you were at 11:59. Don't get me wrong, people can change and sometimes that imaginary freshness is the catalyst it takes, but for most people it's a temporary high followed by the status quo low.

Did you know that you can actually have a fresh start? There is actually a way to take the mess of the past and leave it there? Jesus offers you a clean slate - forgiveness for all of your sins when you accept Him as your savior. If you haven't done that, every new year's resolution is futile.

If you have given your life to Jesus, ask him to take this mental imagining we have of the new year and make it a truly new beginning. In my regular Tuesday post, I'll tell you about my life change that I'm making this year. In the meantime, what about you? What are you asking Jesus to help you change?

Where were you...

I did not originally intend to write anything about the anniversary of 9/11. There were a lot of other people saying things better than I felt I could. To be honest, I didn't want to dwell on it long enough to put something together either. When I think about that day, I remember watching the news coverage and the video of the building. The clearest memory I have is the absolutely sick feeling in my stomach when I realized it wasn't debris falling from the burning building, but people.

One of the things that I have seen a lot of people posting about is "Where were you when you heard?" When life changing events happen, we expect people to remember. I have heard it often. "I still remember where I was... when we landed on the moon... when JFK was shot... when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor."

This morning, I was sitting in the pew and listening to a really amazing sermon (Really, it was one of his best ever.) and I got to thinking. We remember the heroes that worked to pull people out of the doomed buildings. Their stories have been broadcast across the television and internet all weekend. But do we remember the hero that saves our souls from the doom of sin?

If 9/11 teaches us nothing else, it should show us that you just never know. You never know when that normal day at work is going to, well, end. End everything. So do you remember where you were when you learned that Jesus had trudged into the sin of a doomed world and sacrificed himself so that you could get out alive?

If you can't remember a time when you realized there was a saving hand to hold, make that time now. Make the answer to that question "I was sitting in front of my computer, remembering the awful tragedy of 9/11."

I was eight years old in the back seat of my parents' car on the way to Sunday morning church. Where were you?

If you don't know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, I invite you to do so today. Ensure that you will go to Heaven when this earthly life is over. Link up with your Creator and discover how He meant for your life to be lived.