Christianity Archives - Kristen Anne Glover

Mr. Whitter’s Cabin

Mr. Whitter’s Cabin

Mr. Whitter lives two doors down on the opposite side of the street. He owns an old hunting dog named Rosie and a faded blue ten-speed which he sometimes pedals up the hill to collect his dog when she comes to call on our chickens. “Hey, Kiddo!” he says when he sees me.

It has been Mr. Whitter’s objective to get our family out to his cabin. His thirty-acre slice of Alaska lies along a river just past the town of Willow, where the Iditarod starts every year in early March. Decades ago, Jim and his wife built a cabin on the bluff overlooking the water. Over the years, more and more grandkids carved their names in the ladder leading up to the loft, and extra bunk beds have been built along the wall in the great room to accommodate them all.

In other words, it is the perfect place to share with the neighbors and their slew of kids.

coffee pot

Mr. Jim Whitter could not stand the fact that the silvers were running, wild raspberries were dripping on their canes, and the long summer days were already beginning to yawn—and not a single kid was running rampant over his land, taking advantage of it all.

“Just go on out there, and treat it like it’s yours,” Mr. Whitter said, pressing a hand-drawn map into Jeff’s hand. The combination to the padlock on the rusty chain fence was scribbled at the top, and Mr. Whitter had already hauled out the portable generator and an extra can of fuel to tuck into the back of our van.

“I think we’d better go,” Jeff said with a grin when Mr. Whitter left. The thought of being able to shoot targets with the kids at Jim’s homemade range was more than my husband could bear.

Mr. Whitter's flag

But it was Sunday afternoon. I was still in my church clothes, and the children were eating stale popcorn for lunch. Nothing was packed.

A few years ago, that would have been a deal-breaker. A spontaneous overnight camping trip for seven people would have stressed me out to the point of making it less-than-fun for everyone. I would have said no. I would have offered a million reasons why going right now was impossible: My refrigerator was bare, the laundry wasn’t done, and did we even know where the camping lanterns were?

cook stove

But I’ve grown a little, I guess.

Instead of saying, “That’s not enough time to get ready!” I said, “Okay!”

We fed the chickens extra, made a quick food-intolerance-friendly dinner in the Instant Pot, dug up fresh batteries for the lanterns, and hit the road. I forgot deodorant. At least two kids didn’t pack underwear. But I didn’t stress, and I didn’t give my family an extra chance to practice forgiveness.

Because of that, we got to spend the night in a cabin by the river, nestled in the trees, with beaming kids who couldn’t stop saying, “This is the best place ever!”

I would have missed it all—and forced my family to miss it—if I had given in to my nature that says, “I can’t do this on such short notice and still have a good attitude.” That little area of growth in my life opened us up to an incredible blessing that my weakness would have robbed from me.

campfire at Mr. Whitter's Cabin

I realized that perhaps I’ve been a little backwards in my thinking. I have operated under the assumption that God longs for my sanctification because He is tired of my immaturity. He is sick of seeing the same sins and mistakes day after day. Won’t she ever grow up?

But I am beginning to understand that God longs for my sanctification so that He can pour more of Himself into me. My Father wants to bless me with all that He is; He desires me to grow up into the riches of Christ in the heavenly places. I can reach some of it now, right where I am. But God’s riches are like the cherry tree in my grandmother’s orchard—all the best fruit is in the top branches.

raspberries at Mr. Whitter's cabin

The more I grow, the more of God’s abundance I have available to me. He has such good things in store just beyond the reach of my stubbornness, fear, and rebellion. I think I would be devastated to know how I have closed myself to God’s blessings because I have been unwilling to let go of my lack.

It makes me wonder, perhaps what saddens God the most about my weakness is not the fact that I am messing up, but that I am missing out. I am missing out on His infinite fullness, richness, abundance, and power to more than fill everything that is lacking in me.

teapot at Mr. Whitter's Cabin

Suddenly, God looks a lot like an old man on a rusty bike, holding out a hand-drawn map. “Hey, Kiddo!” He says. “The salmon are running and the raspberries are dripping on the canes, and I can’t stand that you’re missing it.“

The riches of God are there, waiting.

All you have to do is say yes.

lunch at Mr. Whitter's Cabin

(why) I Don’t Want More Kids

“Why do you want more kids?” people ask me when they find out we’re planning to adopt. “Don’t you think you have enough already?”

I don’t know how to answer this question because I don’t know how many kids is enough.

Do I have enough kids to drink all the milk before it goes bad? Yes.

Do I have enough kids to make our own basketball team? Yes.

Do I have enough kids to finance our orthodontist’s dream trip to the Caribbean? Yes.

So…is that enough?

I find myself stumbling over answers because the question is all wrong. It infers that the reason for having children is to fulfill something in us, and people should only have the minimum number it takes to be personally satisfied.

When people say to me, “Don’t you have enough kids already?” the assumption is that I am somehow unfulfilled by the number of children in my home now. I need more children in order to be happy, and isn’t that selfish and irresponsible of me?

Why on earth would I want more?

The simple answer is, I don’t want more kids.

I do not want to add broken children to my manageable home. I do not want to risk my own children’s emotional or physical safety in order to take on someone else’s “problem.” I don’t want to pour my heart into a child who might hate me in return. I don’t want the lice. I don’t want the attachment disorders. I don’t want the sexual aggression, the lying, stealing, manipulating—any of it.

I am not lonely, or bored, or in need of affirmation. I don’t want more kids because I have some kind of superhero complex, or because I’m such a great mother. I don’t want more kids because somehow, five kids is not enough. Oh, no. Five kids is enough, and some days, I am not sure I can handle one more.

(Of course, I said that when I had one. And I said it when I had three. And now I have five and I really, really think it’s true this time.)

I don’t want more kids because I think I can handle more. I know the truth: in my own humanity, in my own weakness, I can’t.

I cannot love more than enough children. I cannot have Christ-like compassion for the child who shreds me with her brokenness. None of us can.

What wrecks me is this: God doesn’t seem to be particularly interested in what I can handle. He seems to care more about what He can handle.

And that just blows the question out of the water. At the end of the day, fostering is not about me. It’s never been about me. It’s not about my ability as a mother, my desires as a human being, or even my comfort level as an American.

It’s about what God has called me to do through His power working in me to love my Savior by loving His children. It is the thing that makes the “wanting to” irrelevant and the “able to” inconsequential. God wants, and God is able. That is enough.

Enough kids

Do I want more children?

The only people who ask that question are clearly not God because that is not a question God ever asks.

God does not ask if we want to love unwanted children (James 1:27). He doesn’t even have the consideration to ask us if we’re able to. With all the audacity of the Lord of the Universe, He assumes that if we’re breathing, we can do better than just think of ourselves and do for ourselves because He did better, and it is His power at work in us equipping us to be and do like Him. Not our strength. Not our ability (Ephesians 3:20).

It’s scary to believe it. I do not like to jump into the unknown and hope to heaven I land on supernatural wings. I am afraid, and that fear would make me turn tail and run if not for this: my fears do not excuse my obedience to God.

Fears are the stuff of shadows anyway. Worst-case scenarios rarely happen. The worries I toss about in my head are minor in comparison to the actual, horrific suffering of real children, right now.

I look at my home, my godly, patient husband and my compassionate, loving children, and I know that I cannot allow imaginary hurts to keep us from infusing living hope into a child’s present, perpetual, real-life.

That doesn’t mean hurts won’t happen. We will do everything we can to prevent them, but love doesn’t always come out clean. Our five kids might feel the sting of it

But for our sixth child, it will hurt much, much less. Infinitely, eternally, less than life hurts now.

That is the thing that keeps me pressing forward when my heart fails. Do I want more kids? No.

What I want is to get to the end of my wants. I want to get to the end of controlling and taking on only what I can do. I want the immense privilege of seeing what God can do through me. That fills me with unspeakable, illogical joy at the prospect of being used as He wills. I have a Christ-like love for a child who is not my own and all the anticipation of Christmas at the gift—the privilege—of being his mother, no matter the cost.

Why do I want more kids?

That is why.

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.