My husband and I spent the weekend at our church's annual marriage retreat. We spent the weekend watching the ocean, eating, laughing and learning. Mostly we paused. Retreat is a time to step out of our crazy schedule and remember. Oh yes. I know you. I picked you. I love you. We spend time watching other couples. Hearing their stories. Knowing their stories. It helps me to watch those around me. Sometimes that can reflect where I am. The whole weekend is an investment. It takes time to know my relationship matters as more than just a household partnership.
The Song of Solomon. Oh Lordy. Sex. Marriage. Love. Touchy topics there. No pun intended. My ten–year-old, my mother and my husband all read my blog. This post makes me want to hide in the closet or turn pink. And for that very reason I love the book of Song of Songs. For the truth is that those hide and blush or strip and shock reactions are not what God intended. Sex is a gift. Romance is a beautiful picture. Both are holy. And fun. God created sex in all its measure. Partly for creating children for sure. But partly for binding hearts, healing pain, comforting and enjoying each other. My beloved is radiant and ruddy, outstanding among ten thousand. Song of Solomon 5:10 The Song of Solomon is a book of poetry that describes the emotional and physical attraction between an engaged couple. It's full of steamy scenes and weighty emotion. Through the years, this book has been banned, edited, misunderstood, skipped over and explained away. But it's a powerful book. Hudson Taylor, the great missionary, says Song of Solomon is all about union and communion. Let him lead me to the banquet hall, and let his banner over me be love. Song of Solomon 2:4 Song of Solomon reminds me that God is all about relationship. He's comfortable with emotion. He doesn't want stale or boring to be words that describe our human relationships or our relationship with him. Song of Solomon also runs straight into the bedroom. Lots of people want faith in God to be a part of their lives but they build a brick wall around their sexuality and post signs that say "Not Welcome". "Not Here". "You don't know what you are talking about". I think people are scared if they agree to let God be God of everything, including their sexuality, that they will lose out. Truth is Song of Solomon makes it very clear that God's isn't out to wreck anything. He's out to save everything. Including our identities, expressions, relationships and sexuality. OS Guiness in the book Fool's Talk describes the way that our problems start when we begin to suspect God of wrongdoing and our views as correct. "On the one hand, for each of us, sin is the claim to the right to myself, and so to my way of seeing things, which - far more than class, gender, race and generation - is the ultimate source of human relativity. On the other hand, sin is the deliberate repudiation of God and the truth of his way of seeing things. If my way of seeing things is decisive, anyone who differs from me is wrong by definition - including God. No, especially God, because his way of seeing things is more powerful and therefore more threatening than anyone else's. His word, our interference." When we cheapen sex to a visual or a one night stand or refuse to seek God's guidance in all areas of our sexuality, we cheapen the gift. It's like drive-by faith. Sunday morning confessions that mean nothing on Monday. A marriage is supposed to be a way to live out the picture of the gospel. And so the Song of Songs encourages me. The faith is supposed to be deep and fun and joyful and life long. It's supposed to be emotional and passionate. To know and be known. My beloved spoke and said to me, "Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, come with me." Song of Solomon 2:10 The Song of Solomon challenges the idea that God's view of sex is boring, wrong, outdated, restrictive or wrong. Read the book. It's beautiful. It's a gift. I'd challenge you to shift your heart. Invite Him in to shape and guide your relationships and your sexuality. You can trust him. Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Song of Solomon 8:6 Resources
Date your Spouse! Need ideas? Check out the Date Box.
New Spring Church has a full list of devotionals HERE.
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Our grown up girls....still goofy. My husband Duane and I are often asked the secrets for how we managed to raise our two daughters and how they turned out to be such amazing and productive Women of God. I always respond by saying that God has blessed us, but there really are some relevant guidelines you can utilize if you wish.
1. Remember and remind your daughter that you are all on the same team. Being on the same team means that your child shows up every single time there is a youth group activity, worship service, mission trip, or other worthwhile church activity or camp. (I know that decision is costly and time consuming but it is essential if your primary desire is that your child follow Christ all the days of her life.) Make certain your daughter can pinpoint when and where she accepted Christ. 2. People matter more than things. This affects the focus of how she treats belongings and others. It also keeps a proper focus on what is important. Duane also applied this to undue harping about clean rooms. His comment was, "Messy rooms are why they made doors!" I'm still not sure about that one, but it did alleviate many potential battles. 3. Let your yea be yea and your nay be nay. My mother always counseled me to say Yes as often as I could, because it's important to have NO mean something. 4. Make sure your daughters are obedient and respectful and accountable when they are two years old. The terrible twos are often a precursor to the rebellious teens and habits formed in childhood stand the test of time. 5. Teach her how to work In the yard and in the house. When company is there and when no one is there. 6. Teach her how to play Go on vacation. You'll build lifelong memories. Eat together as a family. Go on dates. Play games. Talk. 7. Tell her you love her and God loves her The more your daughter knows the love of God and the love of you the less painful those teenage girl drama days will be. 8. Wait Five Minutes. Don't like your daughter's mood? Wait five minutes. I can't promise you'll like that one any better but it'll be different. The key is to not over react. Wait. Try again. We set out to parent our children, but we have been surprised by joy as they have turned into our dear friends. It is November, one of my favorite times of the year. There are lots of family birthdays, including my grandson's 1st birthday and my husband's 60th.
It is also approaching the first anniversary of when I received my first cochlear implant. I am truly thankful for this amazing technology. There have been some funny incidents with the thing. For one, I have discovered that the magnet that attaches the cochlear to my head is very powerful. As I was getting into someone's car one day the magnet jumped off my head and attached to the door jam of the car. Thankfully it is easily removed and placed back where it belongs. I also had the magnet attached itself to a rod of clothing at Once Upon A Child where I work. I told the staff that if they ever walked down an aisle and found me attached to a rod, just to pull me off. There were lots of sounds that I was missing and did not realize it. Within the first week or two of getting the implant I could hear birds singing. Then I noticed Mark's whistling, frogs croaking, and precious words from the grandkids. I was sitting at Mark's desk yesterday. The window was open as we were trying to dry out carpets that had just been shampooed. I could hear the rain falling on the roof and water running in the gutters. There was also the day that I noticed a swishing sound as I walked. I finally figured out it was the noise that my jeans make when my thighs rub together. Sigh - that was one sound I could do without. Count your many blessings - name them one by one - and it will surprise you what the Lord has done. "Don't cry, baby." I can hear my mama's voice saying it even now. She said it with sympathetic eyes and a big firm hug. Like most moms, she said it when I fell and skinned my knee, didn't get invited to the cool kid's birthday party, or broke up with my boyfriend. It was a good way of comforting me and patching up my broken heart. It worked. I knew my mama loved me and I could go on. As I grew that good advice got twisted around in my head into a half truth. There's an oldies song that goes; "Big girls...they don't cr-y-y-y. They don't cry". I figured out that my problems were trivial compared to other people's and I learned to focus on helping relieve their situations. I learned to passionately chase after the God who turns ashes into beauty and works all things together for good. I was focused on the dancing, problem was, I completely ignored the mourning. While I was busy waiting and searching for all the happy endings around me, I forgot something very important. Jesus; he was fully God and fully man. Jesus wept. Weeks before my 30th birthday we discovered we were expecting our first baby. It was December and I raced to the store and bought two newborn onsies, one that said "Grandpa's Little Helper" and one that said "I love my Grandma". I wrapped them up and put them under our tree. Turns out that same Christmas my precious niece opened a package that announced that she would be a big sister soon. In that same time period we discovered my sister-in-law was pregnant as well as my sister's sister-in-law. Cousins, cousins and more cousins! It was a joyous Christmas season. Shortly thereafter, my husband and I were giddy sitting in the waiting room waiting for our first ultrasound. We settled on a name for a boy while we waited for my name to be called. Back in the clinic we chatted happily with the doctor as she went about her tasks. Then she got very quiet and asked for another doctor to come in the room. While the doctors searched for our baby's heart beat, mine went numb. My husband held my hand, searched my eyes and asked if I was all right. I wasn't. Weeks went by and there were follow-up ultrasounds with the hope that I was off in my counting and that the baby's heart would jump start. It didn't and my numb heart froze. You see, I learned years prior to bottle my feelings and pretend they weren't there and they didn't matter. Now I was face to face with big, ugly emotions and I didn't have a clue how to release them. I was a professional emotion bottler without a corkscrew and terrified I'd drop my bottle and shatter and spill all over the place. God is good all the time. All the time, God is good. Those were hard words to say during that life chapter, but I knew they were true. It was painful to watch one baby after another join our family. It was even harder when more pregnancies in our family were announced just a few short months later. I felt heartbroken, overlooked, forgotten and left out. I wasn't though. My husband was so kind in those days. My parents and in-laws were overwhelmingly supportive. And my sister let me come over and cuddle her newborn for hours at a time. It helped. I treasure the notes from friends who said they saw my pain and they were praying. I will always remember a friend from church who threw her arms around me and wept and wept on a Sunday morning.
Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Romans 12:15 I went to counseling and I learned something very important. I learned to grieve and grieve well. God made us; body, mind and soul. He created emotions and they are meant to be experienced. The people of the bible knew something I didn't. They knew the art of expressing their hearts. They tore their clothes and threw ash in their hair. They wailed. And all the while they trusted and believed the God that turns ashes into beauty. They cried big tears and let God be the one who bottles those tears. You keep track of all my sorrows, You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book. Psalm 56:8 Jesus himself wept. I learned to cry. Big, ugly, heart wrenching, tummy hurting tears. And I learned to experience and then let go of the pain. We have a special Christmas tree ornament we hang each year in honor of our sweet baby who never made it into this world. It sits near the top and smells of cinnamon. I made it in the shape of a heart. It makes me thankful for the Savior that was born at Christmas and who continues to mold and teach my heart. He molds my heart through grand joy and great pain. To all who mourn in Israel, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair. In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks that the LORD has planted for his own glory. Isaiah 61:3 My mama told me many times that being a parent feels like your heart is walking around outside your body because you love those little ones so deeply and so fiercely. She's right. I'm forever thankful for the baby I will never see this side of heaven. I'm also grateful for his energetic little brother. It meant so much to me when we went into my son's 1st ultrasound and the technician said. "Look at that beautiful heart". I pray he will choose to follow God with all of that beautiful heart. You have turned my mourning into dancing for me; You have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, That my soul may sing praise to You and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to You forever. Psalm 30:11-12 Feelings aren't always facts, but they are real. Process them. Spend them. Know that Jesus sees you, identifies with you and loves you. Then move the heck on. If you can't; go get help. There is too much joy in this world. And there will be even more in the one to come. Jesus promised. No more tears in heaven. "He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever." Revelation 21:4 I want to tell you about the time I was baptized. My family and I were going camping and we went to a baptism ceremony. I had not planned to be part of it. After everyone got baptized my pastor said if anyone wanted to get baptized they should come into the water. I got this feeling in my heart that God was calling me. I looked up at my dad and asked him if it was okay and he nodded. I stepped out of the crowd and the first thing my pastor said was "Do your parents know you're doing this?" And I said "Yes". So my pastor baptized me.
Afterwards I was so happy I listened to God's calling. Let's Run the RaceI’m celebrating. My daughter and your blogger, Mindy, has just finished the Portland to Coast 129 mile Walk. She sped walked through 3 segments of about 6 miles each for a grand total of 19 miles. When she finished her first 6 miles, her teammates cheered and I breathed a sigh of relief. The temperature was well over 90 degrees. Mindy loves rain and cool temperatures and it was literally an uphill climb. When Mindy was approaching her 30th birthday, she decided to get fit and run a marathon. This child of mine is an overachiever but she had never been much of an athlete. She excelled in academics but missed becoming the valedictorian of her class at Ridgefield High School because she was awarded an A- in PE. She managed to pay for college without any student loans and ably represented her college speech team in Rome while she was running a business and preparing for a wedding, but she claims that she was not the first child chosen when sports teams sided up. The 26 mile marathon was going to be a challenge. However, as she explained, “There is really nothing physically wrong with me.” And so the training began. It was long and arduous and so was the race. Her goal was to finish the marathon and to do it during the space of time when the score keepers were still recording finishing times. She prevailed. Her father and I were perched high on the steps of a nearby building in downtown Portland, Oregon when I saw her in the distance approaching the end of the race. As she crossed the line and succeeded in her quest, I put my head in my hands and sobbed. Mindy is like that; she’s a motivator. She even inspired her younger sister to participate in a Portland to coast walk herself. But this story is not really about either of them. It’s about my mother who successfully ran a race of her own.
My mother was born at home in tiny Beebetown, Ohio in 1916 to a truck farmer and a German housewife. She learned to love God and to work hard from her parents, but they were very practical and there was not a great amount of love expressed. My mother lamented that her birthday was always ignored. Finally she determined that she would approach the day by announcing that it was her birthday and she would enjoy being wished a happy one. She did not leave the state until she was 18 years old when she left to attend Philadelphia School of the Bible in Pennsylvania. It was there that she met my father, a gifted man who would go on to join Wycliffe Bible Translators. There he would work on translating the Bible into Comanche and would ultimately become the Field Administrator and Translation Consultant in Alaska. In the words of my mother speaking about her future husband from Reflections from a Mother’s Heart, “I realized the great potential he had. He was a good public speaker. My talents were limited and I felt I could best serve as mother and house wife.” This humble woman was indeed a great server. She served everyone and she served well. She served meals to her family and to Comanche Indians and to guest workers and to anyone who stopped by; she served her family by scrubbing clothes in an old ringer washing machine and hanging them on the clotheslines strung between joists in the dirt walled basement of our Alaska frontier home, she served by sewing dresses and shirts cut from flour sacks and making stylish coats from oversized hand-me-downs. She literally never sat down without work in her hands; socks to darn, laundry to fold and clothes to mend. She loved and served God and others with every skill she possessed. My mother insured that her children’s birthdays were always celebrated and we were loved and embraced. She mostly toiled in obscurity and without the praise that was given to my dad. She once stated that the biggest contribution she made in life was to assist my father and to raise all 4 of her children to love and serve God. It was especially disturbing then when my beloved 90 year old mother descended increasingly into dementia as Alzheimers took its hold. She still served; folding imaginary loads of laundry and reaching for a phantom basket to hold them all. Her hand would mimic the precise actions required in mending as she wielded a needle on an invisible garment. Delusions became a big issue. She told disturbing and frightening stories about events happening to those she loved the most. She was convinced that my spouse, whom she adored, had been evicted by me to dwell in the shed he had built to store fire wood. (Amazingly, as a gift from God, she never failed to recognize and remember each of her children and grandchildren by name and by sight.) In her delusions, she was crowned queen and there was a great coronation ceremony. She prowled the halls of the lovely home where she resided at night and was known to enter other resident’s rooms. With the duration of the disease unknown and the future offering only a frightening and uncertain path, it was actually a severe mercy when a diagnosis was made that would lead to her imminent death. We were heartbroken but grateful that her suffering would be contained. Many of her children and grandchildren gathered around the bed side to provide support, offer prayers, and say goodbye. In her final days, this remarkable woman rallied from an apparent coma in her sick bed to sit up and acknowledge her granddaughter Marci, who had made the journey down I-5 to see her. Mom grinned and exclaimed, “Why, Marci’s here!” She was primarily non responsive and many hours were spent in reflection and the sharing of memories. She lingered through days and nights and my siblings and other loved ones verbally released her to make the journey that would result in a crown, one that mattered for all eternity. When the end came, she left this world without struggle or fanfare. As Mom breathed her last breath, I was struck with a vision that comforts me still. I saw my mother cross the finish line with her arms lifted high in victory and celebration. A huge crowd filled a vast amphitheater and the cheers and joy of spectators filled the air. My heart swelled as she strode forward to receive the rich reward that awaited her. She received a hero’s welcome as she finished the race. "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." Hebrews 12:1 |
About MeI love Jesus. I think my two daughters can change the world. I think you can too. Past Posts
August 2020
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