A Heartbreaking Father's Day

I watch them together. Her blonde hair swirling out around her pink goggles as she laughs and says, "Do it again, Daddy!!" He picks her up legs and arms flailing and tosses her with a splash into the pool. She comes up with a smile as she laughs!

My mind can't help but wonder. What if her wonderful fun-loving Daddy was gone?

We got the heartbreaking news of Mike's coworker's death. He was on his way home from his daughter's game when he saw the drunken pickup truck headed toward them - his daughter's side of the car. He swerved the car so the truck hit his side while he threw himself over his daughter; wrapping his arms around her - saving her life at the expense of his.

His wife and other daughter, following later, found him at the scene still holding her. 

Father's Day will never be the same to those two girls.

My heart screams "why?!" This man loved his family and his girls. It doesn't make sense that with such terrible father relationships rampant that a good daddy has to be taken.

I will not pretend it makes sense.

I know God is good - even in this - somehow.  He will hold those little girls and be everything they need. My heart cries for them. I can't imagine the loss, the pain.

All I can do is ask my Abba to be there for them tonight and hold them and tell them He loves them.

My heart is heavy in the dance...

Exciting Times!

Ever have a time when God is doing so much in your life that it's hard to even begin to share?!

That's me right now.

There's so much I want to share... where I've come from and how God has used it and how He's changing me through it.

Some day. :) The timing will be right. 

But in the meantime... I want to let you know that I'll be speaking at a Mother-Daughter Banquet in Augusta, MI - Friday May 11!  Check out the details here!

I'm excited and nervous all at the same time!!

If you think of me Friday evening, pray that the ladies can laugh, be encouraged, even cry a little as they are challenged with Colossians 3:12-17 and The Mother Curse. :)

Keep on dancing!!

The Mother Curse - Seeing Your Daughter's Potential While She's Driving You Nuts

It’s déjà vu meets out of body experience. I’m sitting on the floor helping my daughter put away the eternal pile in her room, and I see her blonde head pouring over a book she hadn’t seen in awhile. I’m taken back 28 years to another room with shag carpet. I’m sitting on the floor and this time, it’s my mother that is helping me clean up my eternal pile. My short brown page boy haircut flops down in my eyes as I find a book that was just begging to be opened and perused. I hear my mother’s pained frustration at having to remind me yet again to stay on task and finish the job… and I feel that same helplessness. I don’t know how I can put down a book that calls my name. I put that book away and find myself on another rabbit trail when my mother breaks into my thoughts with “Someday, Ruth Lynn, you will have a little girl JUST LIKE YOU.”

I snap back to the present where I’m still sitting on the floor sorting Polly Pocket from Littlest Pet Shop. And, she’s still there, head down, hair in her eyes, enraptured with her imagination. I call her name and she looks up with a guilty deer-in-the-headlights-look. Brusquely, I remind her that the pile will not put itself away, but I refrain from echoing those age-old words. Yes, she will indeed if God so wills it… she will have a little girl just like her, and that’s a good thing. Strong-willed daughters give their mothers gray hair, but someday they’ll change the world if they learn to submit to God.

Some days, however, I wonder if she’ll live that long. My frustration with her feels overwhelming at times. The repeated bickering with her brothers, her refusal to keep her body to herself, her lack of respect to her daddy and me, the lack of desire to obey, and my own sin issues reflected back to me make it hard to see the amazing qualities she does have.

I try to remember that I need to be thankful, that she is a gift. Of course, I think, her very creation is a miracle. But it is so very hard to see that gift in the moments where my peace is disturbed and fights reign and I am forced to fight for composure and justice and patience one more time. Ephesians 5:20 comes to mind, “And give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”.

Ann Voskamp captures my thoughts exactly:

          “The whole of life – even the hard – is made up of the minute parts,

and if I miss the infinitesimals, I miss the whole. …

There is a way to live the big of giving thanks in all things.

It is this: to give thanks in this one small thing. The moments will add up.

She continues:

“But in this counting gifts, to one thousand, more, I discover that slapping

a sloppy brush of thanksgiving over everything in my life leaves me deeply thankful for very few things in my life. A lifetime of sermons on

“thanks in all things” and the shelves sagging with books on these things

 and I testify: life-changing gratitude does not fasten to a life unless

 nailed through with one very specific nail at a time.”

That moment when I see beyond the hands on her hips and the furrow of her brow and the attitude she’s wearing... when I can see the gift of her strong character and love her for it.  That is the counting. That is the nailing. The strong-willed daughter’s mother must be strong-willed as well. She must doggedly see the good gift in her child whether the mood is compliant or volume loud.

I continually feel that there is a piece missing to our relationship. I remember how as a single teacher, I’d tell my student’s parents to look for even the smallest thing to give positive reinforcement. The child finds himself drowning in the negative issues of his own making and unable to see the love of the parent.  Sometimes, I cringe at the gall I had to say stuff like that – having no experience. It had to be hard to hear from a single non-parent like me. Now, as a parent, yeah – I should listen to my former self.

As I was pondering how to bridge the gap in our mother-daughter relationship, I heard a song speaking the name of Yahweh: the God who wanted us to know His name. It hit me. I need to make myself known to her. I struggle in almost the same ways she does. I’ve done this a few times before, took the time to open myself up to her, but never on a regular or intentional basis. Each time, though, she looked up at me blue eyes rimmed with thick lashes in solemn understanding that she’s not the only one.

That’s the most appealing thing about Jesus. He, our High Priest, wore the same flesh and bone and struggled with temptation just as we do. Hebrews 4:15-16

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

When I find myself working on that eternal pile in her room, I will see beyond her rabbit-trailing to the gift of who she is.  I will speak words of encouragement to her and give her hope that her mommy understands the struggles she has.

There is indeed Someone who can empathize with our weakness. Praise God!

Greatest Gift Ever!

The other day, my little girl looked up at me and asked, "Mommy, why did Jesus have to come as a baby?" My heart did a little jump. I live for these moments! I talk and teach, but I know it is only when she asks the questions that are on her heart that she truly learns.

The question comes from the child who knows the Story in detail and is a "know it all" rather like her mother was at her age. Instinctively, I knew there was more to this question than just her words. She is trying to mesh what she hears at school and what she hears at church and what she knows we believe.

So, I asked her what babies can do. We talked about how babies can do nothing for themselves and need their moms for their very life. I then asked her what Jesus can do. She smiled and told me how there isn't anything He can't do, that He said words and the earth began. I swallowed the lump in my throat as I was reminded again of His great sacrifice - leaving Heaven and ultimate power and glory for the dirt of our world, to have to have His diapers changed, to need His mother for His very sustenance.

As we talked, her blue eyes became thoughtful. She turned over in her mind the idea that He had everything and He gave it all up to be a baby. I asked her what happened when He grew up. She told me how He would become a man who would die on the cross for our sin. I cupped her face in my hands when I asked her why could He die for our sin but not anyone else? Her eyes grew large as she answered - because only He was perfect. He never ever sinned. Never disobeyed His mom. Never fought with His brother. I smiled.

She's understanding. She's putting it together. She's seeing beyond the Santa and Rudolph to the precious reality of the Greatest Gift Ever!

But she doesn't know that she's given her mommy the greatest gift ever - the privilege to speak answers to her questions and in the process remind myself that He gave up Heaven to save me. Me - the no good sinner who hated Him. Oh how He loves me!

My challenge today? To be still and remember His gift when the craziness swirls most.

Friend Time

There was once a little baby girl.
She was born with a propensity for driving her mother crazy. Cooperating on any level - even as a baby - was not in her plans. A 5 minute scream-fest was a regular occurance at naptime, and if you interrupted that process, sleep would be exponentially slower. My dreams of her nursing were quickly extinguished when she figured out that she didn't have to work hard to eat - she could just have a bottle.

This little baby would look at her daddy and he would melt under those saucer-like sky blue eyes. She would smile and the world seemed to offer itself to her on a silver platter. Her grandma would just about jump through a fiery hoop to get her to laugh.

As this baby's mommy, I felt such disappointment. She didn't seem to need me. At all. My previous occupation of 2nd Grade Teacher began to glow rosy as all things do when you're looking back. It just didn't seem like my job as Mommy was necessary.

Then one day, after a particularly painful and exhausting morning, her wise daddy told me to go rest on the couch. He calmed the baby girl and then brought her to me. I almost refused, but he gently insisted and called it Friend Time. He told me there's no training to be done right now. All I need to do is love and snuggle her. That was the singularly most important moment of her baby-years.

That little baby girl is now my tall athletic can-run-as-fast-as-the-boys yet primp as she dresses in her princess gown for the ball. I've come to understand a whole lot in the 6 almost 7 years of having this Mommy job. We still have Friend Time, this little girl and me. She comes looking for me Saturday mornings while still in her jammies. I wait for her in bed knowing. I hear her quiet, "Mommy, can I snuggle with you?" and I smile. Remembering.

This little girl who is my chapter-book-reading-first-grader and like her mommy gets herself in trouble when she envelopes herself in a book is so much like me that it is hard to encourage her in the good things because the faults are all too visible to me. 

I had spent so much time trying to exert my will over hers and train her that I felt disconnected from her when she showed none of the responses I was expecting. Instead of focusing on her quirky personality and loving her because of it (sometimes inspite of it), I was trying to change her.

I wish I could truthfully write that I've come to accept her for who she is and that I encourage her in every way while giving grace in her faults. I'm learning every day what it means to be her mommy and train her to love God above all else. I love that every day is a new day full of grace.