How I ruined a trip to the Bahamas

Do you ever look back at a season in your life and wince?

I had that experience today.  It wasn't very pleasant.  In fact it gave me an upset stomach.

The fact is, God has been rooting up a lot of junk (sin) in my heart over the last couple years and as I look back on my life I see how those things impacted my life and my relationships...and it's not pretty.

There was a six to seven year season of life that forced a wince today.  It began my senior year of college, ran through my first years of marriage and motherhood and infiltrated the years that we lived in Kentucky.

They were years full of fear and jealousy that were covered with pride and control.

For example, when my roommate got engaged before me, I couldn't celebrate with her.  I wanted it to be me so I shunned her.

I screamed at my sister over the phone when she lived far away and I disagreed with one of her decisions, causing a deep rift for a long time.

I assumed leadership roles and thought I had something to give, never seeing that I had so much to learn.

But this is probably best seen in our trip to the Bahamas.

We were invited by some friends to travel with them to the Bahamas for a vacation when Nick was about 11 months old.  Sounded awesome so we eagerly agreed.  To be honest, I was jealous of these friends and their ability to travel and I was fearful that my lack of travel experience would show me lacking as a person so...I didn't ask some very important questions.

As a result we lost our luggage halfway there, missed a flight and on top of that our son spent the entire travel time throwing up on us as we tried to make our way through the Miami airport.  Nick had been so sick that I panicked when we finally arrived and insisted on seeing a doctor and then calling her every few hours even though he simply had a rough tummy bug.  I had so wanted these friends to like me and to think I was "cool" but I'm pretty sure they were happy to see us go at the end of our trip.

I was a jerk in that relationship.  Jealousy and fear smothered in pride and control does not make a good friend or travel companion.

I know that God always has his purposes for the things in our lives but sometimes I wish I could go back and handle things differently.  I wish I could see those experiences through different eyes, eyes of grace, love and humility.  I wonder what I'll think when I look back to 2014 ten years from now?  Scary thought!

It's such a beautiful thing that God never stops working in us, changing us, digging up the sin in our hearts so we don't stay where we are.  And on top of that he gives us grace even while we are in the midst of the mess and blesses us.  God is so good in the midst our failings and sin and when he opens our eyes to finally see them clearly.  We still talk about that trip and dream of going there again, except next time we will ask lots of questions.

PS: If you knew me during those years, I'm sorry.  Sorry that I chose fear and pride over openess and humility.  I am sure I had something to learn from you and am sad that I missed the opportunity.

Seeing Clearly through Broken Eyes

This morning my 8 year old brought me up short.  We were in the car, as usual, driving home after dropping the other two off at school when I got stuck behind a slow dump truck.  It was drizzly and the truck was nicely dropping dirt onto my car.  I complained under my breath and my son responded with, "Well, at least we're not walking!"

Wow.  Perspective switch.

I'm always amazed by my own tendency toward a negative perspective, a pessimistic view of life and all things in it.  I know that Christians should be full of joy and peace but after 24 years as a believer I still struggle daily with anxiety, frustration and depression.  I know I need a new perspective.

Jesus said it best in his Sermon on the Mount:
"The eye is the lamp of the body.  So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad,  your whole body will be full of darkness.  If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!" 

I can attest to bad eyes.  Without my glasses or contacts the whole world is fuzzy, formless and dark.  Nothing makes sense, I have to guess at what I'm seeing and fumble along.  Can the same thing be true of the eyes of my heart?  Jesus seemed to think so.

So what perspective should I take?  There are so many options!  But looking at the verse in the context of Jesus' sermon shows that the one He calls us to contains these things:

 - making him our only treasure
 - serving God as our only master
 - trusting him for all things and laying down anxiety
 - seeking first his kingdom

I will be the first to admit that I masterfully fail in all these areas on a daily basis.  I treasure comfort, I serve money, I'm anxious about everything and my own little kingdom tends to trump anyone else's.  So what do I do?  Will my eyes ever see clearly?  How do I cling to a new perspective?

"Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:25a)

"You will never be able to find steady joy in this life until you understand, submit to, and even embrace the fact that you are weak and sinful....  Zechariah 3 shows us a visual picture of the spiritual truth that we possess in Christ.  He paid the penalty for all our sin by dying on the cross, and now he wraps us moment by moment in the embrace of all his righteousness given to us.  He is everything that we need, not just for salvation but for every day of our lives.

So what does that mean for you and me from day to day?  It means that although we sin with every breath we take, at the same time in Christ we actually possess all the perfection we need to please God.  Jesus succeeded in every way that have failed, and although we fall wretchedly short of the obedience we need and desire, he has obeyed in our place and given us his goodness to replace our badness.  At the end of a day when I can look back and see the many specific times that I have sinned in weakness or in willful rebellion, I can also see Jesus obeying for me and giving me his perfect record in each of those specific areas.  There is no other way to survive my failure.  I have been rescued, my sins have been dealt with decisively on the cross, and now God sees me as he sees his own Son, as a perfect lawkeeper.  Isn't that delicious and extravagant grace?

Enjoy this doctrinal truth.  Immerse yourself in it; delight and frolic in it.  It is too wonderful to be believed, and yet is is absolutely true."

 (excerpts taken from "Extravagant Grace: God's Glory Displayed in Our Weakness" by Barbara R. Duguid)

 I can't do it!  But Christ has done it for me!  So I fix my eyes on him, preaching the Gospel to myself over and over and over, repenting over and over and over, each time remembering what he has accomplished for me and marveling in it!  In this is true joy.

Finding Hope in Reality not Expectation

It was Saturday morning and I was standing by the kitchen sink over a stack of dirty dishes as usual.  The rain was pouring down, washing the snow away, replacing it with mud and revealing all the leaves I didn't rake last fall.

My mind was busy as usual, thinking over my goals for 2014 and concocting plans and formulas to make it all work out the way I wanted.  Ways to work our budget, sell our house and end up in a bigger, nicer house with two fully functional vehicles.  Ways to finish homeschooling this year in a way that would ensure Nick would thrive back in the classroom next year.  Ways to travel somewhere warm and sunny this spring.  If I could just manipulate that, change this, make sure the other thing happened then everything would work.  I could finally be happy and at peace.

Then God came.

In His truth-filled yet gracious way He slapped me across the face.

"Christine, this is not your reality.  You will never find a perfect house in a perfect place.  You will never simply drop your kids off at school at 8 and pick them up at 3.  You will never take exotic vacations.  This is not the story I am writing for you."

The truth is, this is the story I want, the one I expected when I started this journey.  When I got married I always pictured us in a modest, nice house with a picket fence, enough space and two rust free cars in the garage.  As a young mom with three boys under 4, I imagined that wonderful day when I would drop them all off at school at 8, drive away with hours to myself and then pick them up at 3.  And to be honest, New England winters drive me to lust for sunshine and warmth come March...or maybe February.

Oh, the power of expectations.

The reality of my life is that my husband is a mental health therapist who will always work for a non-profit and we will most likely never be able to afford the house that I have in my mind.  My oldest son has Asperger's Syndrome and I will walk with him daily through the struggles of school and all things social.  And vacations to Florida are not in the budget right now.

I don't say that so anyone pities me.  I am not to be pitied.

God has given me a beautiful life.  It's not the one I expected but it's the one that's full of hope because God is writing it. 

Why am I so driven to place my hope in expectations instead of reality?

Expectations are easy, they don't need to be grounded in reality because they're "out there," somewhere in the future.  And I avoid reality because it feels so hard, it's a struggle and I don't want to walk it.  Accepting it means that I have to trust that God is working good in it even when it's hard. Trust is not easy.

But when expectations never come to fruition the result is disappointment, discouragement, and then resentment, against God and against those around me who stand in the way of my expectations becoming reality.  I fear that someday I will look back at my life and realize that I missed it because I was too busy trying to manipulate it into the life I expected.   

So for 2014 I am choosing to find my hope in my reality, in the story God is writing.

The one that contains an amazing husband who lovingly serves broken people day in and day out.  A story that has a special boy in it who I have the privilege of walking beside as he finds God's story for himself.  Two other joy-filled little men to enjoy and shepherd.  A house to sell and a budget that contains enough for what we need.  And large enough pools of afternoon sunshine in the living room where we all can pretend to be at the beach!

God is writing my story...and it's a good one.