More Than A Season

Christmas returned to the attic in our house today. I got up in the morning with the itch. “These decorations have got to go…,” I thought, and by lunchtime they were all but gone.

It was an easy transformation for me – from the festive decorations of Christmastime to the normalcy of the rest of the year – but it was a difficult and confusing one for my nearly two year-old daughter. Over the past few weeks, she has grown accustomed to there being a tree in our family room, complete with lights and ornaments. She’s gotten used to stockings hanging from the mantle and the nativity on the table and the Christmas-themed tins scattered around the house. It became normal for her to ask first thing in the morning, “Star on?” as she wondered if I had already turned the lights on the tree on. Christmas, for her, had come weeks ago and, as far as she was concerned, it was supposed to be here for good. As I removed the ornaments from the tree, she stood nearby with a perplexed and sad look on her face. Once the ornaments and lights were all gone, she stared forlornly at the bare tree, asking if we were going to turn it back on.

She simply didn’t understand that Christmas, for us, is a season. She didn’t understand that the changes around the house weren’t permanent and that the things she had gotten so used to were going away.

It was obvious that she didn’t understand why the sights and sounds and smells of the Christmas season were ending.

I don’t pretend to think that she had a philosophical outlook on the day, and that she was pondering the complexities of time passing and the human condition. What she did, though, was get me thinking about those things, and made me wonder some of the same things she appeared to be wondering throughout the process of un-decorating.

Why is Christmas just a season? Why, for us, is it little more than a time of year for us to think about that sweet story from Luke 2 and to bring out the prettiest of our household decor? How did we get so far off track from what it is about that once one certain day – December 25th – is gone, Christmas (and all that it is about) is over? What brought us to hustle and bustle in the weeks leading up to “the day,” only to collapse from exhaustion when it is over and thank the Lord that things can get back to normal? In all sincerity, why is Christmas – and all that it is supposed to be – not our normal way of life?

No, not the stress and the shopping and the spending and all of the other chaos that we associate with Christmas. The tree doesn’t need to stay up all year, and summer need not be marked by blinking lights and candy canes. Rather, why can’t it be about the things God intended Jesus’ arrival to be about? Peace. Calm. Rescue. The unexpected blessings. Love beyond anything we can fathom. A celebration of something really worth celebrating. There is something in the air during Christmas, and it is something worth holding onto. Why? Because it is about something more than what we create. More than we can perceive or imagine.

Once December 25th is crossed off the calendar, nothing changes in the cosmic realm, but the world of January 10th or March 26th or September 17th is barely recognizable as being the same world we see in December. Why? Why does it have to change?

Without saying a word on the subject, the innocent wondering of my little girl challenged me to see things a little differently. May my ramblings do the same for you.

A Little At A Time

Over the past few years, there have been many, many times that I have prayed that God would show me His plan for me. Some of those prayers came at times when I had no direction…had no idea where I was headed or how I was going to get there. The prayers and pleadings with the Lord to show me even part of His plan for me came out of desperation and a need to know that I was, in fact, headed somewhere of significance. It was a search for meaning.

Some of those prayers, though, have come at times when I could feel God’s hand on me, leading me and guiding me and using me. Those prayers came from a joyful heart, excited that He was moving me and eager to see His bigger picture. “Just give me a glimpse, Lord,” I would pray. “Just one little glimpse of where we’re going together.”

We’ve all heard, though, that the Lord won’t give us more than we can handle. I’ve said that to people. I’ve also heard that God won’t show us all of His plans at once because it would be far more than our minds can wrap around. On Christmas morning, God gave me an illustration I could understand, and while I didn’t get the answer to my prayers I was looking for, I now have something to go back to when my heart again begins to yearn for a glimpse of the bigger picture.

On Christmas morning, it became obvious really quickly that it was all just too much for Leah. She was well-behaved, of course, but she was clearly overwhelmed by all of the things we were thrusting at her and letting her open. She would open something, play with it for a minute, and then run back to her older, more familiar things in her toy corner. Occasionally, she’d stick with one of her new things for awhile, ignoring everything else; usually, though, she’d get kind of a glazed-over look in her eyes and zone out. It was just too much, and she just couldn’t process it all.

Because of that, we still have a little stack of gifts that she hasn’t opened. They’re still sitting under the tree and waiting for a time when she is ready for them and can appreciate them better. It may take a few days, but that’s all right.

As I thought about the way that Scott and I had pulled some of her gifts back for her to open later, I realized the parallel between that and what God does with us. He blesses us, for sure, but He knows us too well to heap everything on us at once. He knows that as wonderful as His plans are, we wouldn’t be able to appreciate or process everything at once. He holds things back, not revealing them to us until the proper time, in order to keep us on track and focused on the moment.

I, for one, am thankful for His wisdom in His care for us. He knows me better than I know myself, and while He would never withhold blessings from me, He times them and distributes them so as to maximize their effect in my life. He’s smarter than me, and I’m learning to trust His plans….even if I can’t see all of them at one time.

“Look at the nations and watch—and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told.” (Habakkuk 1:5)

Unexpected Places

One of my favorite things about walking with the Lord is the way He consistently surprises me with lessons and new perspectives of Himself in the most unexpected of places.

Scott’s birthday was about a month ago, and that was the first time she began to realize that with birthdays come cake. Logically, then, when I started telling her that Christmas was Jesus’ birthday, she began asking me if we were going to have a cake for His birthday. Whenever the subject of His birthday came up, so, too, arose questions about His cake. I’m no baker, nor do I claim to have extraordinary cake decorating abilities (as you’ll soon see), but I wanted to fulfill my daughter’s request. Last night, I made a cake so that we could decorate it today.

This morning, I set out to create some Christmas memories for Leah, and wound up with a lot more than I bargained for as God showed me a few things about Himself and life with Him. Bear with me on this one. It makes sense to me…..but it might be one of the more odd parallels God has ever given me.

As I started frosting the cake, I soon remembered that I’m just not good at this, and wondered what I had gotten myself into. I thought about just throwing in the towel and giving it up, thinking that it wasn’t worth doing if it wasn’t perfect. As I worked, though, I began to see the cake as a sort of representation of my life. Soon, I thought of something: the cake – like my life – is for Jesus. Neither has to look perfect, because really, all He’s concerned with is the offering and the fact that it’s dedicated to Him. The effort and the intent are what matter. The heart behind the project are the important thing. I live to please Jesus, and I make random birthday cakes to please my little girl. The products aren’t perfect, but the motive behind them is.

I didn’t have a plan for how I wanted the cake to look, so I had to make it up as I went along. That made it kind of messy, and pretty random. At some point, I decided that there needed to be a little icing border along the bottom of the cake, which went well…..until I realized I was running out of icing and had another side of the cake to do.

“Nice,” I thought. “What am I going to do about that? Keep that side pointed against the wall so no one sees it?” I worked on it more, though, and was barely able to squeeze out enough frosting to cover the edges of the cake. I ran out just as I reached the last corner.

Through that, God showed me how His sanctification works. Sometimes, in life, I think that I’m just too big a mess and too sinful and too much for God to fix. I see all of the imperfections in my life and wonder, desperately, if I’ll ever be all that He wants me to be, or if His work on me will ever be finished. Sometimes I feel like I am an endless project, with one thing after another needing His touch and never quite making it to the point where I should be. God reminded me this morning, though, that He is enough. He is enough to cover it all, and He is enough to create His image in me. It won’t happen until the very end of my story, but it will happen. He can pull it off because He is enough.

There was one corner, though, that was quickly messed up. Every time I would frost it, I’d turn away and turn back only to find the icing gone. I covered that corner with the border I was trying to get around the whole thing, and when I looked again a minute later, the border was gone….and a little girl sitting nearby had icing on her fingers. As frustrating as that was, I saw God in it.

He reminded me then of how He works. He reminded me that He works and works and works….and that sometimes I mess up what He has already done in me. He reminded me that even in those moments, when He is frustrated and even a little disappointed that I did what I did, He loves me beyond measure. He showed me, too, that in other ways, sometimes the work He does is just irresistible to people around me. Follow me here. If I am the cake, and He is the baker, sometimes His touch on my life makes me irresistible and attractive in ways I can’t understand. People around me might be drawn to me not because of me….not because of what I look like or what I do….but because of who is working on me and because He makes me good.

Sometimes, people are attracted to a life that is covered in the fingerprints of God, and it’s hard for them to stay away.

And the sprinkles….the sprinkles that I covered the cake with…..

The sprinkles are joy. They go all over the place, bouncing over the cake and onto the table and overflow onto the cake plate. There is no containing them. They go where they want to go, and nothing I do can hide them or restrain them. They abound, drawing people in, and cover everything I am and everything I do.

Ask Leah, and I think she’d tell you now that the sprinkles are what it’s all about.

Ask Jesus, and He might say the same thing about my cake. It's not so much about the cake...as it is about the message in it.

Happy birthday, Jesus. The cake isn’t perfect, but it’s for you. I did the best I could.

More Than Memories

Christmas with a child in the house is a very different experience. It, like everything else in parenting, has become a much more intentional affair, and just letting it pass by without much fanfare or deliberation is no longer acceptable (if it ever was). I still don’t think she understands all of what’s going on, but she is able to talk with me about it and seems to be processing things. She knows that Christmas is Jesus’ birthday, and is asking for me to make Him a birthday cake. (That will be in a couple of days.)

She knows that the big guy in red is “Slaus” (as she calls him), and points to the fireplace when she asks if he is coming.

She knows that the presents under the tree are not for her, even though she helped pick some of them out and even “helped” me wrap them. Strangely, she remembers who each one is for and can pick out their gift when asked.

I don’t know how much of all of this she will remember, but I take my job of “memory maker” and “legacy leaver” very seriously. The tree and the stockings and the traditions of the season are important to me, of course, but the most important thing to me is that she grow up knowing that Christmas is about more than all of that. A nativity on the kitchen table and a cross on the tree and a candlelight service won’t teach her how much God loves her and the lengths He went to save her. That’s up to me, and she will know.

Oh, she will know.

Emmanuel

I wrote this last year as I reflected on the miracle of Christmas, and I thought I would repost it now. Let’s celebrate what it’s all about.

Yesterday I was listening to this song in my car and was struck by its message. I can’t remember when a song has touched me so deeply. As I listened to the words, I couldn’t believe it. Jesus – God with skin on – came here, into our sinful darkness. He left the perfection and glory of heaven to come live with us…all because of His love for us. An all-consuming love that knew no limits. A passion for us that drove Him to extravagant obedience.

All of the power and glory of heaven came to earth in a tiny baby boy. A tiny baby…..a human baby……not so very different from the one I carried and delivered less than a year ago. I wonder what He was like as a baby. When one of our friends or relatives gives birth, there is a sequence of questions that inevitably follow. I wonder those same things about the baby Jesus.

How much did He weigh? Was He a tiny one, or did He already have the rolls and folds of a healthy baby? And how long was He?

Did He have hair? Maybe just a little bit of fuzz….or maybe it was a full head of thick, dark hair.

Did His mother have to trim His tiny fingernails, to keep Him from scratching His holy face?

Did He have baby acne? Cradle cap? Diaper rash? Did his skin flake and peel as He adjusted to His new surroundings?

Did His eyes – the windows to heaven – drain and crust during His first days on the earth? Was Mary concerned?

Did He like His first bath, or did He fuss and cry until He was once again in the warmth of His mother’s arms?

Was He a good sleeper? A strong feeder?

Did He ever have bouts of colic? Gas pains? Spit up?

When did He learn to walk? Talk? Write His name?

Are these uncomfortable questions to ask about our Lord? Is it inappropriate to wonder these things about Him?

Perhaps. He is the Creator of the universe, after all. The Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. The cloud maker and wave tamer. Yahweh – the One whose name Jewish tradition holds as too sacred to be spoken by human mouths. He is the Holiest of the Holy….

….and He humbled Himself to come to earth as a baby boy. A baby boy who would have to learn to sleep through the night…feed Himself…say His name…walk on His own…

Yet that baby– the One born in a stable on a cold night in Bethlehem – was very different from other babies. His sleep brought dreams of heaven. The bread He would feed Himself would one day become a holy sacrament. The name He would learn to say was one first uttered by angels. The feet that had to learn balance would one day be pierced by nails.

Yes, that baby boy was very different. No other baby boy can be known as the Prince of Peace, the Light of the World, the bread of life, the True Vine, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The King of Kings. The Lord of Lords. The great I AM.

No other.

And there is no other reason that we celebrate. There is no other reason that we sing. It is all for Him, that precious God-child born so long ago.

Illogical

While we are not sure if it is a phase or an indication of her little personality, we are certain that Leah is a hoarder. She collects things – anything small enough to fit in her little hands – and treasures each of them as though they are the only things she owns. Rocks, toothbrushes, sticks, acorns….if it is within her reach and is present in any significant number, she must have it and find more and more like it. She is obsessed.

Interestingly, because we love her and want to spend time with her, my husband and I are now obsessed with these things, too. On any given day, you are likely to see one or both of us walking around our yard, stooped over in an awkward position as we scour the ground for acorns or rocks or whatever else might interest her that day. When I was in Belize, I gathered rocks and toothbrushes for my sweet girl because I knew that nothing else I could bring her would please her as much as that would. Wherever I am, I look for the things that interest her because it comes naturally. I love her, and because I love her I am interested in the things that interest her. Because of my love for her, I will do things that are unnatural to me to make her happy. I am a college educated, reasonably intelligent woman, but I walk around hunting for rocks and collecting buckets full of acorns. It is not logical, but it is love. It works out well for her because she gets to spend time with Mama and, of course, gets more and more rocks and acorns and toothbrushes. It works out well for me, too, because I get to spend quality time with my little girl.

The trouble with this habit, though, is that her little hands don’t allow her to hold nearly as many of anything as she would like. If she had her way, she would be able to tote acorns by the thousand and toothbrushes (yes, toothbrushes) by the dozen. Instead, though, she is severely limited in what she can carry around at one time, and this is very frustrating for her. She tries to carry her treasures and simultaneously gather more, which inevitably leads to an avalanche as everything falls to the ground. She can’t handle it all, and when I see her struggle, I have to step in. I have to help.

We’ve done different things to help her with this. My husband introduced her to the concept of pockets; this naturally made my work with the laundry more interesting, but it made her task of hunting and gathering easier. We’ve given her different bags and buckets to carry her treasures in, and at times have our own hands and pockets full of the things she’s found. Again, it isn’t logical that two grown adults would spend their time and energy in this way, and it makes little sense that we would voluntarily weigh ourselves down with rocks or dirty our hands with acorns. It isn’t logical, but it is love.

And now…..the parallel.

Has it ever occurred to you how illogical it is that God – the creator of the universe, seen and unseen, fathomable and beyond comprehension – would stoop to involve Himself in the mundane things of our lives? He is Almighty. All powerful and all knowing, He can do anything and be everywhere at all times, and what does He choose to do with that power? He chooses to be with us. He chooses to walk alongside us, stooping in awkward positions as He preoccupies Himself with the things that are important to us and getting His hands dirty with the loads we carry. Just as it would be easier for me to sit on the porch and watch Leah play by herself, searching for rocks and struggling with her handfuls of acorns, it would likewise have been easier and more logical for God to stand at a distance as we busy ourselves with the things of this life. Instead, though, out of love and an intense preoccupation with the objects of our affections, He and I both step out of our worlds and into the lives of others. I become obsessed with rocks and gather thousands of acorns, and the God of the universe takes on my burdens as though mine were the most important thing in the world.

It isn’t logical, but it is love.

From One Extreme to Another

Coming home from Belize has been a difficult adjustment for me. The things I saw there and the things I experienced – in the flesh and in the spirit – were so profound and life-changing, and coming home to such comfort and complacency is difficult. The poverty of the world is such a dramatic contrast to the extreme materialism of life in the United States, and the Christmas season and all of its extravagance amplifies those differences. My greatest fear is forgetting it all. I went to make a difference in this world for Him, but the difference that lingers in my mind is that which appeared inside of myself. I’m shaken somehow. I’m different, and there’s nothing I want more than to never, ever be the same as I was before.

Even so, I am afraid that I will revert back to the same ways of thinking I had before. I am afraid that I will fall back into the comfortable way of life I know here, rather than continuing to live in a shaken, unsettled state of mind. I just don’t want to forget, and my singular prayer has been that God would allow me to remain changed and to never be comfortable with my old way of life again.

As I have struggled to adjust (or rather, to not adjust) to life in the States, I have been struck by the thought that this might, in some small way, be the way the Lord felt about His coming to Earth. When I got on the airplane to go to Belize, I was in one world; when I stepped onto the tarmac in Central America, I was in another. Similarly, when Jesus stepped out of the splendor of heaven and emerged as a tiny baby in a dirty, smelly manger in relatively poverty-stricken Israel, He found Himself in a world that was completely foreign to what He had always known. He chose to come, because He knew that He had to and because He knew that there was something He had to do here; still, though, He had to have felt a bit of culture shock at what He saw and experienced. He lived in the middle of our mess, though, for 33 years, walking our dirty roads and touching our disease and speaking to our deafness and experiencing our painful life just as we did. He felt it all, as a foreigner but yet as a native…..God made flesh, resident of heaven relocated to the depravity of earth.

And when the time came for Him to go, He went. He cried human tears as His human body was drained of life and He left human existence to return to His home alongside God. I am sure that it was a shock to return to the glory and perfection of heaven after seeing and experiencing what He encountered here. I can’t imagine that the adjustment to golden streets and utter peace and undistorted presence of God was a smooth one, and I can’t pretend that He wasn’t at least a little bit glad to get back home, to the place of comfort where He was exalted as He should always be. I can’t pretend either, though, that He was willing to become completely absorbed by that life and to forget about the life He had lived and the people He had met and the things He had experienced while visiting earth.

No, I think He probably felt a little torn, too. I think He probably felt a little conflicted, realizing that yes, He had done what He had come to do, but that we were still living in such horrible conditions. We were still living in a world of sin, and while He had done His part to free us from that, He couldn’t do anything to simply pick us up and remove us from our context. He had to go back, and we had to stay here.

The beautiful thing for me to remember, though, is that though His surroundings changed so dramatically, He did not. He was the same when He was here as when He was in the heavens, and when He returned there, He did not forget what He had seen. He remembered us, and remembers us still. He sees us and feels our pain as clearly today as He did when He walked alongside us in the flesh, and no distance or amount of time can change that. He has not forgotten, and He never will.

That is remarkable to me as I struggle to acclimate myself to a life that once was so comfortable but that now seems so foreign in so many ways. Even if I do someday forget, I am grateful for the experience, and I am grateful for the insight into what the Lord may have felt as He did what He did for us. Any experience that lends insight to the tremendous sacrifice He made for me is well worth it.

Still, though……I don’t want to forget.

A Riddle

Leah: “Mommy, one? One? One? One? One?”

Me: “What’s up, sweetie? What do you need? One what, honey? One what?”

Leah: “One, TWO!”

She runs away laughing, leaving me standing in disbelief. Her first joke. She got me. She got me good.

The memories flood me. Like a tidal wave, they come.

I’ve been home from Belize for two weeks now, and I’ve been trying since then to process everything that happened….everything that I experienced….everything that God did with me and in me while I was there. There is so much to think about and so much I want to try to remember and so much that I want to be forever changed by, and it’s almost too much to take in. I’ve looked at my pictures a thousand times and have talked about it all ad nauseam, but I still feel like I’ve only scratched the surface. Can I ever really absorb all of it?

I feel like a lot of the struggle to process everything comes from the fact that the learning that started in Belize hasn’t ended yet. I feel very strongly that the things I went through there were just the beginning. I can’t process the whole experience because really, it isn’t over yet. The story is still being written. You can’t summarize a book if the final chapters aren’t on paper yet.

I think that the main thing that God showed me while I was in Belize was that my plans may be fine and good, but He has something infinitely better for me than anything I could plan on my own. So many times during the week, my own plans and anticipations were taken away from me, only to be replaced by something bigger and more fulfilling. In my planning for the trip, I had thought I would be helping with the women’s ministry during my down time from the worship team. Instead, I was with different children and the medical team….where I had the richest experiences of the trip and built the most fulfilling relationships. I hadn’t anticipated being able to speak Spanish while I was there, because we were told that most people there speak English. Instead, I worked as an interpreter for the medical team and spoke (and sang) in Spanish in front of the gathering at revival. I got to see how God was putting pieces of my life together for His glory, and how He always has something planned for my ultimate benefit…even if it doesn’t look that way at the time.

Essentially, God showed me that He is sovereign, and that His plans – infinitely bigger than I know – are better than mine.

I also experienced a peace in Belize that I’m unaccustomed to. Here at home, when things go wrong with my day, I fall apart. I am gripped by fear at the thought of car trouble or missing a flight. In Belize, though, I never felt scared or worried, even when situations said that maybe I should feel that way. I’ve challenged myself to try to maintain a little of that attitude in the rest of my life now that I’ve come home. If I can be at peace with car trouble in the middle of nowhere in a foreign country, I can be at peace with a glitch in my schedule at home.

The experience was (and continues to be) life changing. I’m working hard every day to try to remember everything and not let myself fall back into my old way of living. I have encountered things that should change me, and I am determined to never be the same person again. I think that was God’s purpose in the whole trip for me, and I’m just trying to stick to His plan. It’s better than mine, after all.