Faith Archives - Kristen Anne Glover

Stuck

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My brothers and I used to play freeze tag on balmy summer nights when the fireflies dipped low across the grass and pesky mosquitoes delivered welts to our bare feet.

My older brother was just enough taller and faster to outrun me every time, and he tagged me down by the creek where the shadows of evening crawled into a hallow of trees and went to sleep. It was impossible for my team mates to see me there and even harder for them to sneak past his lanky arms to set me free.

I was stuck, frozen in some awkward mid-run stance while stars slowly blinked awake. The game continued on around me in squeals and shrieks while my feet remained planted in the cool, packed earth of the creekbank.

At first, being stuck wasn’t so bad. My burning lungs caught a breath; my muscles stopped screaming. I could notice the beads of sweat that trickled down my forehead and into my eyeballs.

It was a welcome pause.

But as the dusk melted into darkness, being stuck began to wear. I slung my body over my knees and squatted in the moonlight, wondering if anyone even knew where I was, or if I’d get a chance to play again before Mom called us in.

The longer I waited, the more I wondered if I even wanted to play anymore, if I wanted to run my legs into jelly and my lungs into fire. Trying to outrun boys was hard. Maybe I just wanted to read my Nancy Drew book and call it a night.

Probably no one would miss me anyway, I thought to myself. They hadn’t so far.

And clearly, I wasn’t the fastest runner, and I wasn’t contributing much to the game. In fact, I could see that everyone else was carrying on very well without me.

Stuck

That’s the stuff you think about when you’re stuck by a creek in the dark.

It’s also the stuff you think about when you’re stuck in real-life, when circumstances plow you over and tag you out, and you suddenly find yourself frozen mid-step and unable to move beyond the little space of ground right in front of you.

At first it can seem like a welcome reprieve, a chance for your soul to catch its breath. But after a while, even the rest can be wearisome. You spend your days warming the same spot of earth, head down and wondering about your contribution to life.

That is where I’ve found myself the past few years. Frozen. Tagged out. Stuck.

Within a few months of each other, three of my kids were each diagnosed with separate but significant learning issues. Their unique brains are mazes of strengths and weaknesses, and the older they grew, the more evident their challenges became. Our days were filled with trips to therapy, intense work at home, teaching and re-teaching the same material, and the daily effort of trying to communicate with kids who could not process language easily.

I found myself in a place that did not have room for much more than my husband and kids. I did not have the space to think or create or wonder. I had to step back from every ministry I had previously cared about. I did not have the capacity to invest in other people or even to let other people invest in me.

It was all I could do to manage the few things that mattered most.

At the end of each day, I felt as if God had taken everything I had, and out of my emptiness I had to trust that in the morning, He’d give me enough for another day.

I’d like to say that I did this really well. But I was often fearful and angry. I allowed impatience to fester where trust should have grown, and I made frustration my crutch instead of leaning hard on faith. I wondered then if God would ever allow me to use the gifts He’d given me, all the while failing to see how God was using me right then to do the things only I could do: be a wife to my husband and a mother to my children.

I felt like my feet were cemented to the ground, and every time I’d remind God that I was missing out, He would gently say, “There is no place more important than where you are right now.”

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That’s a hard truth to swallow when you’ve been stuck in the same square of ground for so long, you wonder if you might be growing roots right into it. Maybe this is it for me. Maybe all those things I thought I’d do and everything I thought I’d be were just dreams and nothing more.

Those are the things you think about when you’re stuck, when little lies begin to creep into the slow and quiet.

You see everything that’s going on where you’re not. You notice how everyone else seems to be able to be and do and go while you’re just frozen.

You fail to notice that the little piece of ground you’re manning is holy ground. What felt like a punishment was really a planting, an opportunity to go to the deep places that busy doesn’t allow.

The truth was, I had not missed my calling. I was knee-deep in my calling. The God of the universe did not ordain me to be a writer or a speaker or even a stellar friend.

He made me to be a mother.

And a wife.

And a faithful child of God.

Those things are the irrevocable call of God on my life, the things that do not change whether I am standing in one plot of ground or running the field.

Everything else is an extra.

But those three things? Those things are worth getting stuck over.

Because it is in those moments of sacred stillness that God does the best work. My children are now reading. All of them. I could cry when I see Paul curled up on the couch with a book, voluntarily doing what used to be agonizing to him. Micah’s personality has come alive now that he is no longer afraid to speak in public. Kya is writing stories. Every single one of them has a relationship with their Father-God that is sweeter because life has been a little hard.

As for me, I would not have seen the hand of God unless I had been stuck up against a mountain that had to be moved.

And it has moved. All around me, the ground has shifted, little by little, until I realized one day that I am not stuck anymore. The days are not so hard, and I am not used up at the end of them. I have come to the end of my un-doing, and everything I thought was frozen is now free.

stuck
And to my surprise, I have not missed a thing.

Are you stuck? Do you feel as if your feet are frozen in place, and everything you thought you’d be and everything you thought you’d do are lost in an intense season of being a wife and mother?

Know this: There is a time and purpose for all things, even a time to be still and a little stuck.

But it is not for always.

One day, God will free up your time, your gifts, and even your dreams. And you will find that you did not miss a thing.

Failing Grade

“Mom?” I heard my daughter’s voice slide weakly under the bathroom door. “Mom, I got a failing grade on my test.”

Her words quivered in the air.

“Wow, what happened?” I wrapped myself in a towel and opened the door. Rivers were running down her cheeks.

“I don’t know! I thought I understood the book, but then the test had all these questions that were confusing, and I didn’t know what they were asking and…” The words tumbled out with her tears.

We stood in the hallway dripping.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s just one test.”

“No, Mom! It wasn’t just one test. It was a really big test!” My conscientious first-born looked at the ground and wrapped her arms tighter to herself. “I don’t know what happened.”

All she could see of herself in that moment was her failure. She saw a kid who had successfully knocked her grade down a full letter in just one shot. She saw someone who hadn’t studied well enough, who didn’t read carefully, and who made the wrong choices when it mattered.

She couldn’t see everything else that she is.

All she could see was her lack.

Failing Grade

I saw my own reflection in her teary eyes. How often I evaluate myself on my failures and measure myself by my shortcomings! All day long, I collect little infractions and big sins. When the darkness sweeps over me at night and I’m left alone with my thoughts, I lay them all out on the table one by one to see just how bad of a wife and mother I really am.

I lost my patience.

I used “that tone” again.

I put off the project my husband asked me to do.

I made my daughter feel bad about her math mistakes.

I spent too much time on my computer.

I didn’t do the Bible reading with the kids.

It all stacks up to a big, fat failing grade. I wonder why I haven’t been able to do better even though I have tried and tried and tried. How could God love this stumbling, tripping child who can’t seem to go through a day without scraping her knees?

But I look at my daughter struggling with her failure, and I long to embrace her and show her who she really is to me.

She is so much more than a grade on a test.

She is my treasure, my beloved child. Nothing she could ever do or not do could make me love her any less or any more. She already has all of me.

Failing Grade

And suddenly, I know just how my heavenly Father feels about me when I fail. He stands in the hallway with me as I bumble on about my collection of infractions, and I know he longs to scoop me up and say, “Tough day, huh kiddo?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know something?”

“What?”

“You are my treasured possession, the very one I have chosen especially for this.”

I want to argue with God and tell him that he didn’t pick very well, that he should have chosen someone with a little more going on, someone who messes up a lot less, someone who doesn’t need all the grace she takes.

“Look at what I did today,” I manage to mumble.

“I didn’t choose you because of what you could do; I chose you because of what Jesus did.”

I look to the ground and nod. It’s the best thing to do when God is right but you’re not quite ready admit it.

“Can I ask you something?” God says.

“It depends.”

“Do you think there’s anything you can do that will undo Jesus?”

The question stops me cold. I’m sure there must be something. It sure feels like it. But that’s just it: all the guilt and self-reproach is just a feeling, nothing more.

I have absolutely nothing in my arsenal of failures that is more powerful than what Christ has done.

“You can’t undo what Jesus has done—you’re not God. Nothing you can ever do wrong or anything you ever do right will ever erase his sacrifice on your behalf. I planned it that way.”

I smile to myself because it is true, and because it is comforting. None of my shortcomings is strong enough to undo Christ’s sacrifice; in fact, the more I fail, the more profoundly his sacrifice cleanses me, adopts me, and defines me.

I am a mother who fails, but I have Jesus. I am a wife who neglects, but I have Jesus. I am a daughter of God who messes up, but I have Jesus.

When God looks at my failing grade, he doesn’t see less of me. He sees more of Jesus.

And for two dripping kids who can’t seem to do better than a failing grade, that is more than enough.

World Gone Mad

Gone mad

The whole world has gone mad.

That’s what people are saying. It’s the only way to make sense of what is happening in our nation at this moment. People must be crazy.

The temporary insanity plea is handy, and comforting, in a way. Madness is for a moment; one bad election season, we console ourselves, and people will wake up. They will get this madness out of their collective system, and the pendulum will swing back the other way.

Insanity provides us with a reason for the unthinkable while conveniently releasing us from any semblance of responsibility or taint of participation.

Madness is convenient.

There’s something in our souls

It is easier to think there’s something in the water than to accept the truth that there is something in our souls that could be causing a nationwide outbreak of recklessness in regard to our national elections.

It is far more difficult to face the reality that what we’re witnessing is not madness at all, but the inevitable outcome of a chronic disease. Our nation has been sick for a long time. But not only have we neglected the symptoms, we have contributed to the decline.

Decades of unchecked sin and selfishness and a gross abdication of roles and responsibility have led to where we are today. People are not crazy. They are infected. We are infected.

Our nation, far from being mad, is symptomatic. We are plagued with wrong thoughts about ourselves, our leaders, and our God. Wrong thinking, left unchecked, quickly solidifies into wrong beliefs, and wrong beliefs lead to wrong expectations, and wrong expectations become the demands that shape policy.

That is where we are today. It is not madness that infects us, but something much longer in the making and much harder in the healing: we have allowed our minds to become darkened.

We have forgotten Who is on the throne, and like God’s people of long ago, we have clamored for a king when we had a Sovereign. We have begged man to do what God has done while smugly calling ourselves a Christian nation.

We have no intention of being a Christian nation.

We do not want God’s truth, we do not want his righteousness, and we do not want his responsibility.

We have given the government the job of the church and given the church the job of the individual. With nothing left to give away, we have collected our rights about us and horded them with jealous suspicion. Those who do not think like us—worse, who do not vote like us—are enemies because they threaten the thin livelihood we hide behind.

Rage boils up in our mouths and blisters our speech. Differences are as unthinkable as a civil debate. We do not know how to have a conversation with someone who differs from us because we view those differences as a threat to our very existence. Instead, we throw around hate and justify it by talking about how much is at stake.

After all, we say, no one stopped Hitler.

In truth, we are afraid. We are afraid because we have forgotten that the Lord in heaven laughs—he knows what is to come. And he is in control of all of it.

We crouch about in our fear because that is all we have that is truly ours—fear. We fear what will happen if so-and-so is elected, or if so-and-so does not. We worry over the policies of the leaders we demanded to have and the politics of the neighbors who do not think like us, as if God is not still on the throne. We spend more time watching the news so we can remember what to be afraid of than we do reading the Word so we can remember why we should not fear.

We fear losing even one of our self-proclaimed rights as if anything we have is ours to keep, as if in any way we deserve the right to speak or think or live as free men.

We are not free men. We are slaves to our own flesh, and we cannot do better for ourselves in and of ourselves. We are sick.

The Lord in heaven laughs–Psalm 2

We are incapable, except by the grace of God, to choose well. We are incapable, but by the grace of God, to do well. We cannot even watch and pray long enough to raise up the next generation. We have abdicated our responsibility to captivate our own minds and teach our own children because there is something on Facebook that needs our immediate attention.

If we spent half the time conforming our minds to Christ as we do worrying over politics, we might have a hope. If we spent but a moment meditating on the truth of the Word, we would not fear. If we understood the reality of eternity, we would beg for God’s refining fire and the singe of sanctification because we would know how much we need it.

It is easy to chalk this election up to madness. But oh, that we would see it for what it is. It is sin-sickness, and it will not change with one election season. It will not change until we let go of the fear long enough to pray, “Come, Lord Jesus. Make us holy. Keep us humble. Be our Sovereign. Let your kingdom come and your will be done no matter what it costs me.”

That is madness, of course. But then, the world has gone mad.

Gone mad