Letter to My Mother on Her Birthday

Dear Mom,
When I think of my earliest memories of you, they are of how beautiful you are.  I remember being little and loving the smell of your perfume in the air and standing small, in awe of the rows of shoes in your closet.  I loved to try on your heels that had the bow with the big rhinestone inside.  Didn't you have those in 3 colors?  And you had tall boots in taupe, tan and black, and I loved to wear them in your big closet and pretend to be Wonderwoman.

Thank you for making me tithe, even when I was little.  I remember my $2.50 allowance each week, and I always took my quarter to church.  Giving to God first has become a habit, and I credit you with that.  You also taught me to avoid credit card debt, and that is something I am thankful for (and so is Selden!).  I hope we can teach our kids those same financial disciplines as well as you taught them to me.

You also are to blame for my highly type-A but very efficient way of making a weekly grocery list that is laid out in order of the aisles in the grocery store.  I thought you were so strange for all you organizational quirks, but now I have them too, so I think they are quite brilliant.

Thank you for always welcoming my friends and our messes into the house.  You saw the genius of play and making art without having lines to stay inside of and encouraged me to wallpaper the inside of my wooden bookshelf as an addition to Barbie's "Dream House."  You let me grow up with a sense of enterprise and possibility, and I know that's something God wants us all to develop in our children.  You gave me a shelf to sell my handmade earrings on in your salon, and you taught me about profit margins and invested in all of my dreams.

I love how you made every excuse to celebrate.  You set the table with candles and flowers, just because sitting down as a family to eat is something to be treasured.  And you cooked me fried eggs and toast for breakfast and woke me up with foot rubs until I graduated high school. (Have I told you recently that you are a much better person than I am?  It's true.  My kids use alarms to wake up and make their own breakfasts.  Please don't tell them about the fried eggs and the foot rubs.  Thanks.)

You threw the best spiral with a football of anyone in the neighborhood, boys included.  And you never pushed me to be all the things you loved.  When I didn't really love sports, and I liked art more, you were the biggest art fan on earth.

Thank you for bringing me along to serve others.  You lived out a life of ministry in front of me, and I now hope to live that with my kids.  I remember crouching in the car, hoping not to get shot driving through unsafe parts of town (for those who don't live in cities where this happens, yes, this is a normal part of life in some areas, not that many car jackers rush to steal Datsun 510's, so we were probably very safe, but that's another matter altogether) to deliver Thanksgiving gifts to a teenage mom and her little babies who lived in a two-room shotgun house.  I remember the kids licking Spaghettio's off the bare mattress when we walked in.  You taught me to seek out what others need, not what I think they need.  And you learned that as you went.  We took a turkey that day, and she didn't have an oven.  So you took a list of all the things she needed more than turkey, and we came back with curtains and diapers and other things.  And you took me to visit people who were sick.  And you invited the families of all the prisoners to our church for a special Christmas and made sure they went home with Christmas trees decorated and gifts and that they knew Jesus came for each of them and loves them.

I can't give you a birthday gift that could ever come close to being able to repay you for any of the riches you've cultivated in my life.  You've given me courage and determination and tenderness and Jesus.  And those things are worth everything.

Happy birthday to a mom I can never repay.
I love you to Jesus!

Shannon

Finding Your Value

My writing has been hit or miss the past year.  I apologize.  It's been a year when my heart's been heavy and so many of the things in my mind have felt too personal to share or have been bits and pieces of other people's stories, and I haven't felt it was mine to tell.  So I've been waiting.  Waiting for inspiration or some brilliant thing to come upon me that would certainly be compelling enough to warrant a blog post.

But for the most part, nothing came.

I sat and stared at the screen.  I typed words, and then I hit backspace until the page was white again.  And I shut the computer down.

I've felt a little inadequate sometimes, to tell the truth.

My reality was shattered to bits by moments spent on the other side of the planet. Standing on a hilltop in a Ukrainian village whose name I still can't pronounce, looking past the smoke from burning trash piles to make out the tiny white speck of a building I was told by the boy standing with me had been his mother's home.  I stood there and caught my breath in my throat, because in that moment he stood beside one who desired to be a mom to him and could not be, because of governments and aging-out of adoption eligibility, looking out at one of the remaining bits of visible connection to a mother who had passed away.  And I just have struggled with how to reconcile all this in my mind, even though I know we live in a broken, hurting world.  

I wondered how many times he'd climbed that hill and looked at that house.

His village is a thousand years old.  We were jokingly told we may have been the first Americans to go there.  (I wonder if it's maybe true.)

We ate fresh sunflower seeds, plucked from the gigantic center of a flower he pulled out of a seemingly endless field of yellow.

It's these moments that have sort of tripped me up this year.

But they weren't all heavy.

We had a good laugh that my husband ate the shell of the sunflower seed, and that I ate the skin of a grape (and lived to tell... we Americans... I tell you what), and we all thought it was funny that we were in great anticipation of a small-town parade when we heard horns and sirens ringing out when in truth it was some sort of Ukrainian signal that you could take your garbage to be disposed of.

When I came home I cried.  And I pushed the Lord to please do something.  Anything.  Give me something to "do" so I feel better about all of this.  Give us an adoption plan.  Give me a ministry opportunity. Something.  Something to be busy and to feel productive.

But I'm learning again to quiet that and to wait. And that's not really my strength, but it's something I am developing with practice, this waiting and this patience. (If you haven't yet, I highly recommend NOT praying for patience.... really.  Anything but patience.  There must be oodles of things God develops in us that are more fun to develop than patience...)

And somewhere in the midst of my stubborn nagging of the Lord to let me remind him of his will and to be sure he knew how very good and well thought out all my plans are for my life, He reminded me of something.

I already have something to do.

I already have a ministry.

He's been whispering to my heart about how my eyes sometimes are focused too far out ahead of me.  So I've pulled back.  And I've been renewing my focus on home and family and the things that are right this minute my work and my offering to him.  And all of these things - these children, this man, our home - are gifts to my life from a really loving and gracious God.  A God who gives good things.  Who is good always.

Last night, I went into a small group class at church called Christianity in the Marketplace.  So, yes, I partially went because I was a smidge shy to go into the women's Bible study alone.... I know, I know- I'm too old to be nervous to attend something without a friend.  But there you have it.  It's true.  So I tagged along with my husband to this class.  And you know what?  It was wonderful.

It was relevant for me.  Because I do have a marketplace.  It's my home.  And in that hour last night, as we heard teaching and as I read the familiar passage of scripture reminding me to "do everything as unto the Lord," I was so encouraged to see my "work" in a new light.  I was able to grab hold of the vision that I saw so clearly 4 years ago when I first stayed home full time.  God reminded me that what I do each day in my home, if I do it heartily and for Him, does have big impact and eternal value.

It's easy for us moms to sometimes forget that what we spend our days doing is of great value.  And I think sometimes the most critical voices we hear are our own.  We sometimes try so hard in our own strength to "make" something valuable of our lives and our time, when really, it's already that.  Because each of our moments is a gift from God.  And no matter what it is we do, when we do it fully and joyfully and diligently and heartily and "as unto the Lord," we can consider our days an offering to give back to the One who has given us this gift of today.

Today is beautiful.  I had coffee earlier than usual, and Sage and I made granola bars.  We took coffee to my husband at work.  Then we went to Target and chose some fun things to use making birthday gifts for my mom and grandmother.  Sage leaned her second memory verse of our "ABC's of Scripture," and she recited it while working diligently on her special gift.  She played the metal triangle instrument we found in the dollar section of Target spontaneously at a number of different occasions: to signal nap time, to signal prayer time, to signal that I could give her a kiss. (Now it's quiet upstairs, so I'm enjoying her sleeping after a 3 week stretch wherein I feared she'd outgrown nap time!)

I'd like to encourage you today to see your time and your life and your value as the Lord does.  Right now, today, you are in a place where God will use your energy and time and talents to be a blessing to others and an example of His love in this world.  Have you had any seasons of life that God has used to change how you see your time?  Are there any ways I can be praying for you today?

Measuring My Life with God's Ruler

Converting measurements is not my thing.  I'm a word girl, not a numbers girl.  I measure in inches, and in Ukraine, measurements are in centimeters.  So, when I'm shopping for my heart-son, I always get a kick out of having to Google the conversion of measurements, so I get the sizes right.  I mean, I can't even think in centimeters!

It's like this in my relationship with the Lord, too.  He measures things differently than I do.  He measures time, progress, prosperity and success by standards that are not natural to me.  And He is faithful to teach me how to convert my measuring tape so I see my life more like He does.

When I think things aren't happening quickly enough, I am reminded "For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by." (Psalm 90:4)

When I'm not sure things are turning out as they should, He whispers, "For my thoughts are not your thhoughts, neither are your ways my ways... As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:8,9)

When I've sought out abundance in terms of owning nice things, Jesus says, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven...For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Matthew 6:19)


When I've seen success at times as something people achieve through financial security or things I can see, I'm corrected by the words of my Lord, spoken to a man who had attained every measure of success as society would define it.  "Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, 'Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?'...Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.  Then come, follow me.'  When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth." (Matthew 19:16, 20-21)  Jesus himself is clear that being willing to let go of our "stuff" is far more a measure of success in his eyes than being able to aquire it.

God's Word indeed pierces right through to the division of the bone and marrow (Hebrews 4:12)!  Every word of God shoots Truth and conviction straight into my spirit, and I cannot hear this Truth and remain unchanged.  I cannot spend time with a Savior who abandoned the splendor of heaven to suffer consequences of sin I earned and walk away with anything but a very clear understanding that I cannot be the one who decides how things are done or what is valuable.  I cannot measure my life by comforts or possessions or feeling a certain way.  I can only hold up as my standard a life lived in emptying out of love undeserved and yet freely given.

I'm not sure I'm ever going to become really good at figuring out sneaker sizes using centimeters, although my boy is worth every moment I'll spend trying to figure that one out!  And as I work on my centimeters-to-inches conversion for things like shoe shopping, the Lord is very faithfully about the task of changing the way my heart measures.