Taste
It happened again. This time it was the tip of the stylus we use with our tablet. Tooth marks and a chunk missing and a guilty looking preschooler. She destroyed another just last week. And bit a hole in a pretzel bag, letting salt and crumbs pour all over the back seat of the car. And shredded part of her blankie, and took the corner off a book, and left indentations in her stuffed monkey’s eye… It’s like living with a puppy. Or maybe a dinosaur. Our oldest outgrew putting things in her mouth very early on, but this one is still at it at almost three and a half. We’re starting to wonder if it will ever stop. This is a child who MUST experience everything with all of her senses. It’s not enough to touch something with her fingers; she has to chew on it to get...
Read MoreOpen Handed
Receive all God has. This is the scariest phrase I’ve ever heard. Receive ALL God has. Opening up to all God has for us is hugely risky. God has good things for us. Big things. But to receive big things, our hands have to be open, fingers uncurled. And I am a grasper. I want to cling to what I love – the people in my life, my plans, my comfort. It feels more secure to close my fist and squeeze tight so that none of it can slip away. I hold on to the things I’ve been given like my daughter clutches her security blanket. She loves that thing, but there are times I ask her to put her blankie down so I can hold her hand. And she does, because she trusts me, and because I’m a bigger comfort to her than her blankie is. She puts down something she can’t imagine life...
Read MoreToo Much and Not Enought
I talk too much. My house is too chaotic. My kids are too wild, and I laugh too loud. I trust too easily. I cry too frequently. I eat too much sugar. I lose my temper too often, and I leave too many things half way done. I’m not strong enough. I don’t bite my tongue as often as I should. I don’t vacuum the stale Cheerios out of my car until they reach critical mass. I don’t always speak up when it’s needed. I’m not as patient with my kids as I should be, and I haven’t memorized enough Scripture. I am too much, and I am not enough. Really, a lot of the time I feel like a disorganized, impatient, emotionally charged mess. So what makes me think I can handle uprooting my family and making a life on a mission field half way across the world? I remember my mom...
Read MoreMoving On
I haven’t written for quite a while. There’s a reason for this. I’ve started writing four times, tried to write on four different subjects, but each time my thoughts circled back around to the one thing I couldn’t talk about publicly. Until now. We are moving to Papua New Guinea. If it all goes the way we are planning, at this time next year we will be a couple of weeks into the Pacific Orientation Course on the coast of PNG, preparing to spend the next few years serving missionary families through youth ministry and staff care in Ukarumpa. To those of you who know us, who have heard us talk about the month we recently spent in Ukarumpa, this news may not come as a surprise. But, for us, this shift of purpose and passion feels very sudden....
Read MoreNot So Silent Night
I’m not sure what we were thinking. We had grand illusions of a peaceful get-away to the Virginia mountains. No internet, no cell phones. Just beautiful views, a little unrushed Christmas shopping, and plenty of quiet time to be together. I don’t know why I thought it would be quiet. After all, we brought our kids with us. The first morning started at 5:22am, when the three-year-old woke the twelve-year-old up and asked her to read a book. While I’m usually thrilled to see my girls snuggling and reading, it doesn’t look quite as heartwarming when we’re pulled out of bed before 5:30 by the sound of enthusiastic voices and bed rails being used as rhythm instruments. Keeping two girls quiet for two hours before our hosts got up was… well, it was impossible. The...
Read MoreThis Kind of Faith
This week I’ve talked with two friends whose stories rock me to the core. These friends of mine, Amber and Lyn, have not had an easy road. Lyn’s beautiful fifteen-year-old, Bethany, died two years ago of an aggressive brain cancer, and Amber’s sweet Sadie was just seventeen months old when leukemia ended her life last December. The thought of losing one of my children, just brushing the bare edge of the thought, leaves me weak-kneed. How do you keep doing life after watching your child lose the ability to walk and talk and even eat? How do you push past the nightmare that continues when you open your eyes in the morning and realize that your baby really is gone? I would be destroyed. And both of my friends have been. But in their destruction, something...
Read MoreFreedom
“I’m going to take some pictures of the kids. They’re being such free spirits!” My friend Stacie grabbed her camera and ran out the door into the front yard, where our kids, hers and mine, were tearing around in wild circles, yelling loud, and throwing leaves into the wind. It was a chilly day, but only one of the kids had a jacket. Two of them were barefoot and blue-toed. Stacie didn’t take the time to send her boys inside for shoes. She was more intent on capturing the beautiful freedom. There she stood, jacketless herself, hair whipping crazy in the cold wind, soaking in the joy of moments that will be outgrown too soon. It made me smile. And it made me think. How often do I stop freedom in its tracks because it isn’t what is expected? The...
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