faith Archives - Page 25 of 39 - Kristen Anne Glover

100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood: Wonder {2}

Snow falling in the neighbor’s backyard

Yesterday, it snowed. The kids were having breakfast when it happened. The drizzly rained turned into fat white feathers that floated softly down from the sky and clung, for a moment, on the evergreens.

All five children dropped their spoons and rushed to the windows, wonderstruck. The twins, who have not seen very much snow in their four years of living, ran to the sliding glass door and looked out on the deck. Jonathan took pictures. Kya asked about sledding. Everyone insisted that we were going to have to take a snow day.

Jonathan can’t help but capture the moment

It was beautiful, to be sure, but somewhere in the course of days, I have wearied of snow. It covers the roads like it did the day my father died, and I worry. It blows up in my face and burns my fingers and makes the chicken water freeze over. It falls in my shoes and freezes my feet all the way to church.

But my children did not know all these things. They were simply captivated by the magic of it. Their faces shone with wonder. Even though snow and I are not on the best of terms, I couldn’t help but be swept up by the wonder myself, like a child.

Wonderstruck

I wondered, as I stared out the window, how many miracles I overlook each day because I have become too old to see. I wonder how much I have missed because I have ceased to wonder. I wonder how much I have missed of God because I have taken the miracles for granted, like the Israelites who grumbled against the manna that fell from the sky and kept them satisfied enough to complain.

I remembered a time some years ago, when I had an opportunity to crawl up on Jesus’s lap like a child and stare at his face in wonder. But I was too big and stood off in the crowd with a frown on my face and a to-do list on my mind.

It happened on a Sunday, and it was all John Paul’s fault.

John Paul is a grown up boy who comes to church every Sunday in the same suit. He is older than me on the outside, but not on the inside.

John Paul lives with his married brother because he can’t quite live on his own, and he walks to church in cowboy boots and a baseball hat because he can’t quite drive. He has a bike which sometimes gets stolen and sometimes gets lost, but he doesn’t mind walking and he doesn’t mind hitching a ride.

Every week, he counts the number of Volkswagen Beetles he sees so he can report the number to me the following Sunday, although I’m 99% sure he inflates the stats because I’ve never in my life seen 15,000 Beetles and I’ve been to junkyards.

If you talk to John Paul for any length of time, you will hear about his favorite football team and the latest movie he has seen. And, you will hear about his mother who killed herself when John Paul was not old enough to understand. He will never be old enough to understand.

But one thing John Paul understands is Jesus.

One Sunday, I was having trouble focusing on the sermon. Was it just me or was this going longer than usual? Was it just me or had I heard this all before? When the pastor launched into a “Come to Jesus” message, I stopped talking notes and started thinking about what to make for lunch.

The cat remains unimpressed with snow or anything else

The pastor’s voice filtered in as I considered whether or not I had tomato soup to go with the grilled cheese. All the parts about sin and a holy God and a perfect payment washed over me without making me a drop wet. “God is a gentleman,” the pastor was saying, “and a just judge! If you don’t want Jesus to pay your debt, you are welcome to pay it on your own. But the debt must be paid. The question is, who is going to pay it? You? Or Jesus?”

From somewhere in the sanctuary, John Paul’s voice rang out, “Pastor, I choose Jesus!”

Astonished, I looked over at him. He held his hat in his hands and he leaned in to hear every familiar word. His face wore the wonder of the gospel, his eyes were wet with tears that came from knowing what had been done for him.

My face burned with shame. John Paul is just a great big child whose heart is still young enough to hear the same story over and over without growing old in the hearing. But I was not. I had lost my wonder. I had grown weary of the miracle.

But God, in His mercy, has given me five pairs of new eyes. He has given me ageless hearts, like John Paul’s, to remind me of the ordinary, astonishing miracles of earth and eternity. He has given me a thousand new opportunities to hear the same story with new ears and to be humbled, felled, and wonderstruck at what has been done for me.

I am reminded when I read the Easter story to my boys and Paul begins to cry. I am reminded when Kya prays almost every night, “Thank you, Jesus, for dying for my sins.” I am reminded when Micah’s voice comes down from his perch on the toilet where he’s singing “Holy, holy, holy!” in his loudest voice. I am reminded when Jonathan wants to give all his money in the offering or when Faith asks when we’re going to adopt a child who needs a home.

The beauty of these days is that they are full of newness. Awe. And wonder. I am given a chance to be a child again, and that is something I need.

“Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.” –Mark 10:15

Awed

30 Days to Enjoying Your Children More: Harvest {Day 30}

The beginning is a great place to start! Click here for Day 1.

It doesn’t take a lot of effort to grow blackberries here. They sprout up and creep out wherever any bird has dropped a seed. The ditches are full of them, as are the hedgerows. People spray them with weed killer and hire goats to eat them, but the blackberries can’t be beat. They line every road and eat up tamed property until it’s turned wild again with thorny brambles and stone-hard green fruits.

But if the summer is warm and the fall dry, the berries on all these wild vines begin to swell and ripen until they drip down in inky clusters. Everywhere, the air is heavy with the scent of sweet fruit and blackberry wine, and people come out with Tupperware bowls and empty ice cream buckets to forage for the makings of a pie.

My husband loves a good blackberry pie. He starts thinking of blackberry pie around June when the brambles are in bloom and the neighbors are in full blackberry attack mode. Mr. Greenlee is out in his yard with clippers and napalm, but Jeff is up on a ladder wearing leather gloves, carefully redirecting the willful vines through the evergreens so they’ll grow where the sun shines the brightest. He cranes his neck when we drive past berry-laden ditches and silently makes a plan for September.

When the berries start to soften in the sun, I know there will be buckets stowed between the seats of the minivan “just in case,” and extra trips out to Jeff’s favorite berry-picking spot. It’s right along a walking trail that follows a river past an eagle’s nest. People come there every day to run or ride horses and to watch the osprey swoop down into the water for fish. Sometimes there are otters or delightfully lazy snakes that slither slowly over the rocks and a boy who must remember that his mother doesn’t want him to pick blackberries with hands that stink of snake.

But rarely, very rarely, are there any other berry pickers. We live in a place where “organic” is practically a religion and people pride themselves on eating local and composting the leftovers. But berries? Well, berries are just a pain to pick.

I thought about this one afternoon when Jeff led us on a berry-picking mission down the gravel path along the river. The days had been particularly beautiful, warming the blackberries until they tasted like they’d been dipped in sugar. But we’d already been out picking several times, and I had other things on my mind. I did not feel like fighting the brambles and letting them claw through my jeans while I filled my bucket little by little with those frustratingly small berries. It seemed like a waste of time, and I still had a few splinters from the last time we did it.

“It’s such a short season, Kristie,” Jeff said when he noticed my lack of enthusiasm. “It could rain tomorrow and then it will all be over.”

It happened every year. When the clouds in the forecast resulted in actual precipitation, the berries turned snowy with mold in a matter of hours, and that was the end of the blackberry picking. We needed to take advantage of every sunny day that stretched into fall to fill up the buckets and gather in the harvest.

So I was silent and focused my attention on the task at hand. Birds flew overhead, swooping bugs into their beaks, fattening up for the long flight south. The kids chattered and hummed and filled themselves full of what was left of summer. It was lovely, really.

Faith stood next to me, slowly picking berries, turning each one over and checking for bugs before putting it in her bucket. “She is getting tall,” I thought. Her tenth birthday was coming up, and I was having trouble getting my mind around it. It’s such a short season, Kristie, I heard Jeff say, but he was far down the path with Jonathan, hacking down vines with a machete so the kids could pick the berries hiding underneath.

It’s such a short season. It seemed to me he had said the same thing much earlier in my life, at a time when I thought my talents were better used on something other than parenting. Foolishly, I thought God’s will for me was a little less…ordinary. I had failed to see the shortness of the season and the richness of the fruit all around me.

I looked at Faith. Her eyes are green, a little lighter than mine. She smiled. “You’re really good at picking berries, Mom,” she said.

I glanced down. Without even realizing it, I had filled the better part of my bucket.

“I think that’s the best way to do it,” she continued. “Just find a spot and start picking. If you keep walking, looking for a better spot, well, first of all, you might get lost, and second of all, you won’t get very many berries.”

“I think you’re exactly right,” I said, wondering how my life would have been different if I applied that advice to other areas of my life.

“So I think it’s just best to sit right down, and don’t even worry about the ones you can’t reach. If you can’t reach them, they’re not for you.” She shrugged at the simplicity of the thought.

It was a hard truth to swallow. The biggest and best berries were always just out of my reach, it seemed. Other paths were more interesting and less full of briars and that’s why more people walked there. That’s why I wanted to walk there.

It was foolish to sit down when the path kept on going, foolish to waste time picking berries and fighting brambles, foolish to embrace a task most people don’t want to do. It was foolish, but it was also brave and wonderful and perfectly delightful. Long after the vines have withered and the berries have gone, I will be enjoying the fruits of my labors. Rich pies, cobblers and jams, and a freezer full of fruit to carry us through the winter and beyond—all because we stayed faithful to the task. Long into winter and beyond, we will be enjoying the deep and satisfying harvest of a job well-done.

The season is short. The work is hard. But the result is worth it all.

Micah enjoying the fruit of the season

Thank you for joining us for this series. It has been a (busy) joy!

30 Days to Enjoying Your Children More: Prayer {Day 29}

Thank you for joining us! You can find Day 1 here.

The lush green rainforest seemed to go on and on without end. Two Philippine eagles were the only things soaring with the airplane in the cloudless blue sky. I peered out the windows at the river that cut through the jungle and wondered what lay beneath the canopy.

Suddenly, the airstrip came into view. I could see a cluster of small huts with woven sides and roofs. The sound of the plane brought children running barefoot out of the houses and down dirt paths to greet the plane.

I was flying into the village to help administer some academic tests to the children of one of the missionary couples who lived and worked among the tribal people. I had to cross the river, cut through a crowd of people who had never seen such a tall woman, and sneak past a guard monkey in order to make it into the house.

The woman who opened the door smiled warmly and hugged me fiercely with willowy brown arms. She tucked her long brown hair behind her ears and welcomed me into her home in an easy manner that made me comfortable at once.

I talked to the children and got the tour of the house and met the monkey properly. I learned that the children were allowed to nail things into their plank walls whenever they wanted. From the looks of things, they did so with great frequency. They often took breaks from school to swim in a river that had been known to harbor crocodiles and venomous snakes.

Their mother kept a hymn book propped up in the kitchen had a reputation for burning dinner because she often got distracted praying. It was a necessary distraction, I learned, because life in the jungle had come with an uncommon cost.

Over dinner, I heard the stories of how God had worked mightily through prayer. Deep in the jungle, with only sporadic contact with an airplane to connect them to civilization, this family had to rely on the power of prayer more than anyone I had ever met. There had been emergency flights and near-death experiences and miraculous answers to panicked prayers.

Prayer was not optional there. It was essential.

This mother had woven it into the fabric of her day to the point that it was nearly impossible to tell when she was praying and when she wasn’t. I got the impression that her heart was always offering intercession because her home was filled with the fragrance of it. She looked at her children like one who had known the joy of standing in for them in the throne room of the King.

I do not know of any other thing that binds a mother’s heart to her children like prayer. When life is challenging and children are difficult, prayer resets the priority and connects with the eternal.

Yet I must confess I have not been so faithful in prayer as that missionary mother. I know it is powerful. I know it will transform my home, and yet I do not do it as often as I ought. It is discouraging to me that I still struggle so much with being still with my God.

Then I am reminded that most of us were not born with a natural desire to pray. It is something that must be learned. If this were not the case, the disciples would not have had to ask how to do it. The fact that I am not yet the woman of prayer I want to be speaks to the fact that I have not taken the time to learn.

Prayer is a discipline. If it is not born out of adversity, it must be born out of obedience.

Sometimes, I feel compelled to pray. I have seen the adversary and I know I am not fit for the fight. Those are times of blessings, in a sense, because then I am happy to draw near to God and to cling to Him for strength and comfort.

Other times, I pray simply because I have been commanded to. I do not always feel like it. I do not always understand that I need it. Sometimes, it feels tedious, like waiting up in the garden with my Lord when I do not realize what is happening and I cannot be bothered to stay awake for it. Sometimes, I sleep in the most critical moments and do not pray at all.

It is a good thing that prayer is not a work of the flesh and the efficacy of my petitions does not depend on my feelings or my abilities.

Prayer is the active work of the slain Christ on my behalf, and that work is always effectual. It is the a power of the Holy Spirit who intercedes for me when my deceived heart and stuttering lips cannot even begin to pray as I should, and that power always transforms. It is the assurance that the One who receives my prayers always wills and works for my best and somehow, simultaneously, for the best of my children.

When I pray for my children, I invite a response from heaven, and I have never known heaven to speak without causing earth to tremble. It is a simple conversation in which I do not speak as I should and am answered in a way I do not deserve from a God who loves me too much to just “fix things.” Prayer is a conversation with a God who reveals, regenerates, redeems, reconciles, and restores the hearts of my family!

It is impossible to come away from a conversation like that without being changed. It changes how I parent, how I feel about my children, and how much I enjoy the process of walking this earth with them. When I do not pray, I do not allow God to work in me in the ways He has ordained. I hang up the phone and prevent His healing words from breaking into the chaos.

If you are struggling to enjoy your children, look at your prayer life. Have you developed the discipline of prayer or are you asleep in the garden? Perhaps it is time to rekindle a conversation with God.

Prayer is where earth and heaven meet

Join us tomorrow for the final day in the series!

For further thought:

1) Someone once said that some things are so important, they’re worth doing poorly. When it comes to prayer, this is true. You may not be disciplined to pray the way you should. Do not let this keep you from praying at all! Even a very short conversation with God is better than silence.

2) The disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray and he responded with the Lord’s Prayer found in Matthew 6:9 and Luke 11:2. If you are overwhelmed with the idea of finding time to pray, you will find it encouraging that this model prayer is so simple and brief. Take the time to pray simply and briefly and trust the Holy Spirit to fill up what is lacking.

3) Prayer is a conversation with God. After you pray, listen. Wait. Watch. How is heaven responding to you?

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