Faith Archives - Page 4 of 15 - Kristen Anne Glover

We’re Expecting!

I have been dying to tell you the wonderful news: Five in Tow is about to grow! Jeff and I are excited to announce that we’re expecting.

I know you probably thought we were done having children. Five certainly is a handful, at least that’s what the Costco sample ladies tell me when my kids clear out their toothpicked cheese cubes in one fell swoop.

There’s also the small part about how motherhood didn’t come easy to me. It took me about…well, five kids to get broken in to this gig, and for some time prior to that, I threatened to pack up my children and send them to Argentina.

But, this child, this sixth child, is something different. This child is not growing in my womb. This child has been growing in my heart since I was old enough to notice that not all children have it good.

Not all children are safe.

Not all children are wanted.

Not all children are loved.

And not all people who can do something about it are. Including me.

Many years ago, before I was married, I wanted to adopt all the babies. I had lived in third world countries and worked with street children and orphans. By the time I was nineteen, I had seen more unwanted children than I could bear. I determined to do something about it.

But then I got married. And pregnant. And pregnant again, and…every time I thought about adding another child to our home, life would get crazy and I would wonder what on earth I was thinking.

I began to believe that I really am terribly busy, and I have used those Costco ladies as my justification for passing up many opportunities to be Christ to this hurting world. I have my hands full already, thankyouverymuch.

But God’s been talking to me about being the Word, and it’s all terribly more self-sacrificial than I am comfortable with.

So I read all through the Word looking for some fine print that would exempt me from anything harder than where I am right now. What I found was Jesus telling poor people to care for poorer people. Jesus telling busy people to stop and bind up the wounds of the hurting. Jesus telling moms who pounded out their daily bread to feed the widows and the orphans with some of it. Jesus saying, “Hey, the harvest is ready, but the trouble is, none of you are willing to stop what you’re doing and labor for me.”

So we stopped. We prayed. We talked to our kids. We did the next thing, and the next thing more. Now, we are knee-deep in the foster licensing process with the intention of adopting a child out of the system. We have to get the licensing part done before Jeff deploys, which is so insane, our case worker is developing a twitch. But we have a set of fire extinguishers in our kitchen and fingerprints on file and a whole lot of friends and family with permanent hand cramps because they had to fill out pages of references forms on us.

It is labor, all of it. But with the labor comes great expectation, abundant joy, and a good share of nausea.

I hear that’s normal for expectant parents.

Hopefully, we can act like a normal family for a few weeks longer so we can wrap up the foster-licensing process. Jeff will deploy, and even though it’s not ideal to welcome a new child to the home while the father is away, we’re kind of over waiting for ideal. When it comes to foster care, there is no ideal.

Our hope is to foster-adopt, so we are praying that the Lord will bring us the right child right away so that we can begin the legal process as quickly as possible. Jeff will be getting orders to a new duty station soon after he completes his deployment, and we need to complete the adoption while we’re still living in Texas…or we might lose the child and have to start the whole thing all over again.

But even if we cannot adopt, we are thrilled to have the opportunity to love and invest in another child for as long as God lets us have her. When you think about it, that’s really what parenting is all about.

Won’t you pray for us? We’re expecting God to show up big time because this whole thing is crazy-scary and infinitely bigger than us. Those are exactly the circumstances God seems to like the most, when I have nothing of my own to offer and He gets to remind me why He’s God, and I’m not.

Pray particularly for this sixth child who may, at this very moment, be experiencing unspeakable trauma at the hands of those who are supposed to love him. Pray pray for the family who is so broken, a child isn’t safe in their care. Finally, pray that we will remain steadfast and diligent as we labor to make room for one more.

Six in tow? I kinda like the sound of that.

Noise

Cutting the noise

“You’re so intimidating,” she said to me from across steaming cups of coffee.

The words tumbled off her lips shyly, like they weren’t sure of themselves, but they rumbled through me like a sudden clap of thunder.

I sat there with a fake smile on my face and a too-loud laugh in my throat while she talked about my blog and how she just wanted to sit and listen to me.

I would have thought it was funny, except she was serious. And that was devastating.

All this time, I had been writing real, or so I thought. In every post, I tore open my heart and parsed out the contents into print. I dragged my blog right through the daily muck with me, and prayed readers would hold on for the redemption. Sometimes it was funny. Sometimes it wasn’t. But all the time, I fought to be real—really real, not just the pretend real that gains readers but lacks sincerity.

I didn’t want to be insincere.

I didn’t want readers.

I wanted co-laborers. Journeymen. Sisters. I thought writing real was enough to keep us walking side-by-side. I thought that was enough to keep the words from elevating me as we all seek to elevate Christ.

But it wasn’t.

This woman thought, somehow, that I was worth being intimidated by, and it left me spinning. What have I been doing wrong?

Just as soon as I asked the question, I knew the answer because God is good like that. He often gives the answers first and provides the ram before I realize the altar is bare.

All along He had been whispering the answer to my heart. “Be the Word incarnate,” but I didn’t understand.

Now here I was, sitting next to a woman who thought I was intimidating because she knew my words and not my flesh. She knew only the bits about me that could be seen through the peephole of a blog.

Suddenly, I got it. I had been ministering in word only, and it was not enough.

I am called to be like Christ in word and flesh, inspiration and incarnation. One without the other leads to irrelevance or irreverence, and often, both. How quickly we elevate those with golden tongues or pretty words! And how easily lifeless words fall from the lips of those who have no connection to real hurt, real brokenness, and real suffering.

That’s exactly what I was doing–writing lifeless words from the safety of my laptop. I never had to show more than I wanted or get my hands dirty in a ministry I couldn’t control. It was all very tidy and conveniently removed.

But words are meant to be incarnate. Otherwise, they are nothing but self-promoting noise, no matter how honest or real they are. “If I speak [or write] in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”

If I write a viral blog post but do not have time to help a woman get through a deployment, I have not love. If my article is reposted by a big-name Christian personality, but I hate the people who leave insensitive comments, I have not love. If I land a book contract and have people waiting in line for my signature, but I can’t be bothered to feed the hungry or care for the orphan, I have not love.

What I have is a bunch of noise.

If there is one thing the world doesn’t need more of, it’s more noise.

We don’t need more professional preachers.

We don’t need more blog posts.

We don’t need more legislation.

We don’t need more people who sit on one side of the stained-glass windows, splitting hairs.

We don’t need more intimidating Christians.

What we need is Christ lived out in the flesh and blood of His body, the Jesus who had dirt under his fingernails and bags under his eyes, who gave out bread while his stomach growled and held out his heart to people who would not—could not—do right by it, the Jesus who did not write a single word of his gospel because he was too busy living it.

Word incarnate

Word.

Incarnate.

Anything else is just noise, and noise is not love, not matter how good the marketing is.

And I did not want to spend my life on noise.

I had been asked to apply for a position on the Executive Board of the Protestant Women of the Chapel at Fort Bliss. It is a ministry to military women, by military women. Every week, nearly 160 women and children come to us to get more of Jesus.

Only I didn’t want to apply because I thought I already had enough to do.

I already had a ministry, and lots of words to prove it.

But that woman said the one thing that could have changed my mind. You’re so intimidating. You are word but not flesh.

Just like that, God won the one-sided wrestling contest I was holding in my soul. I interviewed for a position on the board and was offered the presidency.

It blew the peephole wide open. No longer did anyone have reason to find me intimidating. After months and months of ministering together, it is clear that I am just as messy and inglorious and cracked as the rest of them.

Serving as president of this ministry has been beautiful exhausting, the most fun I’ve ever had, and the very thing God had in mind for me all along. Every day, the tide goes out in me, and nothing is left but the mud. But every day, God brings it back again, and everyone can see what is really worthy of praise in me: Him.

It is real. Messy. Incarnational.

Just the way words are meant to be.

Green Light

I’m going to tell you something your mamma probably never did: Sometimes, God doesn’t rent a billboard to tell you what to do. He doesn’t always do the light-show-and-thundering-trumpets routine to confirm you’re on the right track.

Sometimes, He just expects you to have read His Words and to do them.

The end.

No chubby cherubs dancing in the stars.

No warm fuzzy feelings or great excitement.

No road maps.

No visions.

Just, “Hey, I already told you what to do if you love me. So…just do that.”

Sometimes, God isn’t very complicated. And it irritates me every time because I kinda prefer the thunder over the still, small voice. I have a distrust of easy when it comes to God. If it’s hard and God is loud, I think I’m doing something right.

But what if the decision is painfully easy, like whether or not to drive through a green light, and God just sits there, riding shotgun, like he expects you to, well, drive?

That’s when I start getting a little obsessive about things. What if he wants me to turn instead of go straight? What if I’m driving too fast or miss a stop or I don’t know where I’m going? What if I don’t like this road? What then?!

And he sits there, half asleep, and says, “Kristen, the light is green.” As if that’s all there is to it.

I much prefer it when God says, “Turn left. Turn LEFT! TURN LEFT!!!”

I think if God is shouting, I won’t get lost. I won’t mess it up. But what if some roads always lead to the right place, and it’s only my selfish will that makes me wander around in the first place?

Which brings me to this past March. Life was under control and my personal comfort level was at an all-time high. I was parked, doing what I thought God wanted and feeling quite good about it.

Then God whispered, “The light is green.”

It shocked me because I didn’t know I was sitting at a light, and I certainly wasn’t planning on driving in that particular direction.

I was asked to consider applying to be the president of the Protestant Women of the Chapel. PWOC, as we call it in the Army, is a weekly gathering of like-minded women of faith who come together to worship, pray, learn, and grow. It’s kind of like a weekly church meeting, complete with music and small group Bible studies.

Groups just like ours meet on military installations all over the world, and we are impacting our posts for Christ wherever we are by being an extension of the chapel communities and assisting the chaplains however we can. We are military women serving military women.

It’s a stinkin’ big deal.

So of course I said, “No way.” I did not have time for one more thing (which, in French means, “This scares me to death, and also, I can think of at least twenty-three people who are more qualified”).

But people kept asking, and they all said the same thing, “Just pray about it. And while you’re praying about it, fill out this ten-page application.”

So I did. I hauled myself home and had my own personal Burning Bush experience, minus the burning bush and double the complaining about why God should pick someone else.

I already have a ministry!
I am not organized enough to lead a board of sixteen women!
I am barely organized enough to homeschool (See: 3/5 of my children don’t know how to spell their last name).
I don’t have an extra 20 hours a week to do anything, and if I did, I’d clean my kitchen. Or teach spelling.
I haven’t been a military spouse long enough. The only rank I can identify is my husband’s, so I just walk around calling everyone “Sir” just in case. People are going to figure out I don’t know anything.
I am an introvert. Introverts should have blogs, not be president of a large group of women who might want to have sleepovers and scrapbooking parties.
People will be disappointed in me. Truly. I’m just not going to look good if I do this. Which will make you look bad too, God. You should think about that.

When I finally gave God a chance to say, “You’re right. You can’t do this,” he didn’t. He didn’t say much of anything. No writing on the wall, no dreams, just that same still, small voice that seemed to say, “Kristen, the light is green.”

Which, in my mind, meant I needed a second opinion.

My husband, who was not much more help than the burning bush, asked, “What are you going to give up?”

“I can’t give anything up!” I said. “I’m not doing this. I can’t do this. I can barely function with everything I have on my plate right now.” I cried a little for good measure because sometimes he offers to do the dishes if I cry about how busy I am.

We had made up our minds. I only prayed about it anyway because I said I would. The more I prayed about it, the more God kept messing with my comfortable, Christian life. I went to PWOC as usual and was overwhelmed with opportunities to be the hands and feet of Christ to women who desperately needed it.

I began to see that I was parked at a green light.

That green light kept blinking in time to gospel words that said, This is my body, broken for you. This is my blood, shed for you. Do this in remembrance of me…”

And it slowly dawned on me that perhaps remembering Christ’s sacrifice was more than just eating a hunk of crusty bread and slamming Welch’s shots once a month. Maybe Christ expected me to remember his sacrifice by doing likewise. Actually, physically, with my own hands-and-feet-doing the very things he told me to do. Loving. Feeding. Finding. Shepherding. Giving. Sharing. Binding. Healing. Going. Sending. Praying. Rejoicing. Communing.

Green lights, every one of them.

It was so completely obvious, I missed it.

I was looking for the billboard, the blazing lights, the trumpet-tooting cherubs with Mapquest directions to God’s will. “God! Please show me if you want me to serve these women!” I pleaded, and then wondered why he wasn’t talking.

It’s because the light on that road is always green. I didn’t need a billboard. I just needed to drive through.

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