faith Archives - Page 21 of 39 - Kristen Anne Glover

The Trouble with Rest

*100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood: 33

Two. That’s the number of times this week I set the tea kettle on to boil and walked away, only to return some time later to find it bone dry and smoking. The second time, the handle, which was made to be impervious to absentmindedness, melted off in slow agony and dropped onto the burner.

The children smelled the burning plastic and asked if I was making dinner.

I was not.

I stared at my tea kettle. The heat had caused the metal to swell abnormally. It was as fat as a little piggy and much more likely to explode. Black smoke drifted lazily up from the tar-like goo on the burner.

This was concerning to me, not just because of the fact that I very nearly gave my children an unplanned lesson on shrapnel, but because it said something about me that wasn’t good. A woman who burns her kettle dry two times in five days has issues.

My issue is this: I have trouble resting. I have so much trouble resting, I can’t even slow down long enough to brew a cup of “Quite Moments” tea. I run around like the house is on fire (which, ironically, was very nearly a reality) because I feel like I have to work my way to a place of rest.

But the work is never done and rest is always elusive because I live at work.

My “office” is strewn with socks and dirty dishes and way more Thomas the Tank Engine tracks than is professional. And while my coworker is cute and my boss is great, the subordinates tend to run around half naked and spill milk. Everywhere I turn, I see reminders of the things I have yet to do, have not done well, or have not done at all.

Sometimes, I just want to put on a pair of heels and commute. Preferably to Hawaii. Perhaps then I could find a way to be done at the end of the day.

But of course, being done is not the point and work is not the problem. The problem is not the dishes in the sink or the floor that needs mopped. The problem is I lack the faith to rest the way God commands. I lack the faith to be still, to be quiet, and to pursue the things that are more important than dusting the furniture.

I lack the faith to trust that my identity in Him is secure, even if my work is not done.

There will always be work. But here in the middle of the mess, I am commanded to rest. Rest, true rest, is what I need. Not like when I go to bed and dream about cleaning my kitchen. Not like when I finally get all the rooms straightened up on the same day and I collapse into the couch, exhausted. Not like when I finally check everything off the to-do list and feel like I’ve earned it.

True rest is a grace. It sees the work left to do and nourishes me anyway. It sees that I am not yet done and rewards me with strength for the course. It resets the priorities that have gotten scrambled and brings my focus up from the temporal to the eternal.

I forget that sometimes, and I fight against it. I act like God is punishing me, somehow, by calling me to a place of rest. I kind of think that if He wants me to rest, He should find a way to clean my kitchen first. But He doesn’t do that. He leaves the mess, and asks me to leave it too.

So I put the kettle on, but I struggle with the fear that if I take some time off, my entire world is going to descend deeper into chaos and disorder. Who is going to do the dishes while I sip my tea, God? I sneak off and try to put away some laundry while I wait for the water to boil and pretty soon, I find myself face-to-face with a charbroiled kettle.

The truth is, I can never work my way to rest because rest is an act of faith. It requires me to act on the promise of God that one day, the meaningless repetition of earthly work will end. All that is lacking in me will be filled up, and all that is undone will be completed. I will no longer live at work.

I will live at rest.

So tonight, I am putting the kettle on. It’s a little rusty now and I can’t quite pry the lid off because the knob burned off. I am not done with my work. I guess that’s why it’s the perfect time to act on the belief that even in my imperfection, God’s promises are true. Not being done is the best reason to practice being at rest.

Fathers and Daughters: 100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood {23}

My dad died when I was not much older than she is now. I think of it in moments like this when he puts his arms around her shoulders and squeezes her to his side.

I think of it when he calls her Fluffer-Puff and asks her about her day, or when she’s tucked into her bed with a book and he sits down by her feet and talks to her in his unhurried way. He is never as hurried as I am.

I think of it when he builds the Swing of Awesome because he knows she’ll love it. It’s constructed out of a curvy old bike handle and a length of chain strung way up high in a sprawling tree. He pushes her out over the field where the bank slides away and her giggles fly away into the sky.

I can’t watch.

I think of my dad when her dad buys her bread sticks because she likes them, or when he let her have chickens even though he did not want chickens. But she did.

I think of it when he asks me how he can pray for her better, and I am reminded of how my own father prayed for me. It is not even a memory. It is part of my making.

And it minsters to me so deeply, the fatherhood of my husband toward our children. I see in him the love my own father had for me, and I am grateful. I see in him the love the heavenly Father has for me, and I am amazed.

I watch them together and I am thankful that she has him. I am thankful that her father’s love will lead her to understand the love of the Father. I know my husband is securing her affections toward the things that are good and holy, pure and righteous, beautiful and lovely. My daddy did the same thing for me, and if the story repeats itself as I think it will, she will not be able, after, to choose anything less.

So on this beautiful day of motherhood, I am thankful for the ministry of fatherhood. I am thankful that God has given us a picture of Himself that I can’t see in my mirror. I am thankful that I can see it in him.

When it Doesn’t Add Up: 100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood {20}

It was the counting by 2’s that got to me.

“Zero—it is zero, right?” Kya asked as she began.

“Yes, the even numbers start with zero.”

“Okay, zero-two-four-six-eight-who do we appreciate?” she chants and dances the way we’ve been doing for months. “Ten…ten-nine-eight-seven-six…”

“No, no Kya, you’re counting backwards now.”

“Oh!” she says with a grin and begins again. “Two-four-six-eight-ten-twenty-thirty-forty…”

“Wait…now you’re counting by tens. Remember, counting by two’s is just skip-counting. Just say our little chant. Remember our little chant?” Of course you remember our chant. We’ve been doing it for months and months and months on end.

Kya jumps right in, happily chanting all the wrong numbers. 12—14—15—16, she says at last, and I do not tell her she is wrong.

“Let’s write them out on paper,” I say instead. Sometimes, seeing the numbers helps, but today, she can’t remember which way a 10 goes, and she can’t remember what to call a 12, and she’s sure that 20 should have a three in it, somewhere.

She can’t do it.

She’s six-and-a-half and she can’t do it. Not today.

I take my heavy heart upstairs, and I think I will not cry. I will not cry. Not today.

But I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what is wrong, and I don’t know how to help. I have helped so many children, but I can’t help her.

It is agony. I want nothing more than to protect her from feeling stupid or slow or different. I want to hug her and tell her it’s okay not to know 1+0 or how many cookies you have left if you eat one. Just eat them all, I think, and then it won’t matter.

Because Kya is exceptional, and I want her always to know it.

Under her bright blue eyes and dimpled smile is a pure heart and tender spirit. Always caring, always attentive, always gentle—that’s my Kya. She is delightful, and delighted, in every circumstance. We call her our Sunshine in Seattle, because it’s always sunny when Kya is around.

She is also highly creative and so perceptive, it’s almost unnerving. Even as a baby, she could tell when something was different, something was new, something was off. It was her habit, every morning, to survey my wardrobe choices and give me her unrestrained opinion in the sweetest possible way; we nicknamed her “Quality Control.” She is witty. She is funny. She is the only one of our children who gets her father’s humor and the only one who can, so quickly, give it right back.

But she is also soft. Fragile. Vulnerable. It will not take much to crush her. Not much more than a stack of flashcards she can’t answer. And I worry about that, way down deep and in words I don’t want to say. I think of my impatience and I wonder, “Will I be the one to take it from her? Will I be the one to make her feel less than she is? Will my beautiful baby grow up to feel inadequate because her mother couldn’t let her be enough?”

That brings the tears out that I said I would not cry. That brings me to my knees and I beg, beg, God to make me more patient. Now.

When I come down from upstairs, Kya has drawn a picture for me. It is a page filled up with circles, each one filled up with a different pattern of beautiful colors. Her math page has been decorated with patterns and grinning people with legs and arms coming directly out of their heads. She doesn’t believe in drawing bodies.

She tells the boys all about it, but she can’t think of a word. “I can see it,” she tells them, “I just can’t say it.” Her sentences are filled with pauses and slowly spoken phrases as she tries to collect thoughts from a brain that can’t access words very quickly. When she was a toddler, she had her own language. It bubbled out of her in giggles and turned-around phrases. But she knows enough now to try to reach for words that sit just beyond her grasp.

Oh, how I love her.

She laughs at her brothers and her own silly words and they laugh too. She lets them answer her math facts and then lines them up to tell them Bible stories that are probably heretical and asks them questions that don’t make much sense.

“Paul, what’s first Genesis chapter six?” she asks.

Paul squirms uncomfortably in his chair because he has neglected his lesson.

“It’s God. The answer is God,” she says. “Micah? Mr. Micah? Do you know who made you?”

“Dod,” says Micah, because his tongue doesn’t quite say the things he thinks. Kya understands about that.

“Yes. God,” she says as hushed and holy as possible. Micah and Paul nod and try to remember that in this class, the answer is always God.

The answer is always God.

Who made you? God. Who knows your worth? God. Who created you just as you are? God. Who can be glorified in your weaknesses? God.

I believe. Lord, help my unbelief.

Because it’s one thing to believe it for me. It’s another thing to believe it for my babies. It’s one thing to come to terms with my own faults, but God—oh God! –it’s quite another to come to terms with theirs.

That requires faith, and on this beautiful day of motherhood, I find my faith is lacking. I find my mother-heart tempted to fear. I find myself worrying when I am told to trust. Trust. It is a beautiful thing to be able to trust my children to the God who made them, to see the missing stitch and give them back to the One who knit them together. It is a beautiful thing to know that love always adds up, even when the math facts don’t.

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