What Is Living?

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 according to my earnest expectation and hope, that I will not be put to shame in anything, but that with all boldness, Christ will even now, as always, be exalted in my body,whether by life or by death.

Philippians 1:20

I keep waiting for the headline that reads in bold… SHE CHANGED HER MIND!

However, now I fear that all the hype of the event might lead her to follow through… despite her small smidgen of doubt that I know is there.

What is living?

As I type this my wrists and my forearms are swollen and bulging with inflammation and the blood veins in my hands and arms feel as if they are drawing up inside of me as they seem to grow before my eyes and I watch knots build up in my hands and up my arms and into my shoulders and neck and both my legs have gone to sleep and yet ache at the same time while my veins crawl inside the calves of my legs and stinging electric like shock shoots into my hips… and for this there is no cure.

At least once every week my youngest daughter asks me if my hands are going to turn in like the pictures she sees at the doctor and all I can say is I don’t know

Yet at the same time, my Dad is fighting lung cancer… my sister-in-law is fighting liver cancer… and my father-in-law is fighting bladder cancer… and my dear friend is fighting ovarian cancer… and I have a hard time complaining about my non-life threatening quirky aches and pains.

Just tonight we went to visit with my in-laws. My father-in-law got up to go to bed and my youngest ran into the hall to hug him. She turned around with the biggest smile and said, “I got a stand up hug!” It has been seven months since she got a stand up hug from her Papaw… and she knew it.

A year ago this month, one of my childhood friends received her healing in eternity. Melanoma took her into the presence of the Lord. When my friend’s Pastor asked her how she wanted him to pray, she said “Pray that God will allow me to live every day that I am supposed to…” 

I watched my friend grow worse with each visit. I also watched her son crawl up in his mother’s lap and pat the the side of her face that held a growing tumor and smile as he said something about it to his mother and saw her smile at him the best that she could. Would it have been less physically painful for her, less emotionally stressful for the family had she chosen to die before the treatments took her hair and the tumors grew outside of her jaw? Perhaps. But had she done that… she would have missed so many hugs… so many smiles… so many prayers.

Her family would have missed that many more laughs… In one of my visits with her she was making jokes about her mother trying to force miralax down in her so her bowels would move and she just flat out was not going to drink anymore of the nasty stuff. She was with us, all of us until the end. The depth of who she was never left her, cancer couldn’t destroy the intrinsic value of the beautiful uniquely wonderfully and fearfully made soul that God created.

My sister-in-law was first diagnosed with breast cancer. She beat it. Then she was diagnosed with colon cancer. She beat it… to return for a routine follow up scan to discover that she now had liver cancer. That was thirty-five months ago. She could give up. She could. But instead she has chosen to believe that each day that she is given by God is a gift. Each day brings a possibility that a cure could be found. Each day brings the possibility that the next scan shows that the cancer is gone. Each day brings the possibility that someone will make her smile. Each day brings the possibility that God will use her to make someone else smile. Each day is another day that she makes a memory. Each day is a day that she has to glorify her God.

My Daddy fights. I am so glad that he fights. This past weekend we went to the mountains. My girls got to have their picture made with their Papaw Wayne at the same tree that I had my picture made with him many times. They got to hug him. They got to laugh with him. They got to make memories. The last PET scan revealed the cancer was gone in his lower back and was dying every else in his body. What if when my Daddy got the prognosis that the cancer had spread from his collar bone to his tailbone he decided to say it’s everywhere and there’s no hope? THERE IS ALWAYS HOPE!

For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

Romans 15:4

What is living?

Is living supposed to be pain and trouble free or it’s not worth it? Is living only living if we don’t have to depend on the help and strength of others? Is living only living if we look young and beautiful and have all of our faculties about us?

This is what I don’t understand… the “supporting” family. I am jealous for every single moment of time that God will give me. I am jealous for every hug, for every smile, for every offhanded remark, for every possibility of a sunrise. I am holding on to the hope that a cure is around the corner, that Christ is on the brink of return, that the doctors, SHOCKING I KNOW, might, just might, be wrong. They are not God after all.

There are times that I sit and curl up next to my husband… he doesn’t have to say a word or do a thing… I just want to feel the warmth of his body next to mine and lay my head against the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes and weave my fingers in between his… because his very presence is important to me. There is no way, I tell you NO WAY, that I would look at him, still appearingly in pretty good health regardless of what disease lay ready to destroy him within and say, Yes baby, just go ahead and go on now. I don’t need any of those weak feeble smiles and I sure have no desire to actually fulfill that “in sickness” part of those vows. I mean really, we’ll be fine. See you on the other side one day. 

NO!

There is no way. I would be on my knees begging him to reconsider. BEGGING HIM for one more day, just one more hug, just one more kiss, just one more time to lay down beside him and feel the warmth of his body against mine.

If this was my child… it’s unimaginable. There is no way I could set a date for her death. Why not simply say, let’s just deal with today… let’s not worry about tomorrow. Today let’s live. And tomorrow, if we awake, it is now a new today, and today we will live and we will love. Today.

 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death works in us, but life in you.

2 Corinthians 4:7-12

Small Studies on Prayer

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On two separate occasions I had the opportunity to share on the subject of prayer. Here are the PDF copies that I handed out to those that were at each event.

Pray In This Way

You can find the posts that developed as I processed through this study beginning here: God Forbid It

Praying for Our Children

You can find the posts that go deeper into the message that the Lord laid on my heart to share beginning here: Praying for Our Children

Do You See Someone Falling?

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You pushed me violently so that I was falling,
But the Lord helped me.
The Lord is my strength and song,
And He has become my salvation.

Psalm 118:13-14

I don’t know about you, but I have been in seasons when the world has pushed me violently… I have been in a place, more than once, that I found myself falling because the circumstances of life were doing all they could do to push me down.

But… the Lord helped me.

That’s one thing that the circumstances of life do not consider when they push you violently so that you are falling… the Lord can even be found face down on the ground in the pit of rock bottom.

From my distress I called upon the Lord;
The Lord answered me and set me in a large place.

Psalm 118:5

Tonight I will be sharing at a women’s event. The message that the Lord has given me is one of encouragement. Sadly, we seem to have come to a place in our day, where those who are called by the name of Christ get more fired up about condemning than encouraging.

The posts that go viral are the ones with the mom’s degrading the preteen girl who is posting less than modest selfies on social media… or the one’s that use sarcasm to prove a point (and I am pretty sure if I looked through my own blog, I would find myself having written those sarcasmy posts as well)

Let me tell you what I see when I see a preteen or even teen girl posting immodest pics… I see a young girl who has never had a father who hugged her tight and told her that she was beautiful… inside and out. I see a girl who is starving for someone to tell her she has worth and value and that she is absolutely stunning.

There is a reason that even a grown woman when she gets ready asks, how does this look? She doesn’t want to know if it matches… she just wants to know if you, the one she has asked, thinks that she looks beautiful. I don’t know if men understand the level of vulnerability that is there when a woman asks that simple question, that has become a punchline in so many comedic circles.

This past Thursday, my husband and I, along with our middle daughter attended his company crew party where we had the honor to hear John Croyle share about a ministry that he and his wife started many years ago, Big Oak Ranch. As he shared he made a huge point… well he made many huge points, I could have listened to him for hours longer (and in case you want to know more about him and this ministry I have added it to my blog as a highly recommended ministry to support).

One of the points was that that there are two things every girl and every boy wants to know.

Every girl wants to know 1) that she is loved, no matter how bad she screws up, she wants to know if she is still her Daddy’s little girl, 2) and she wants to know that she is pretty, does someone think she is beautiful?

Every boy wants to know 1) am I loved, and 2) do I measure up? John shared that there is a reason that little boys want to wrestle with there Daddy all. the. time. There is a reason they ask how am I doing. There is a reason they say, hey watch this.

We live in a world today that tries to convince us that we will never measure up. We live in a world today that tries to convince us that we will never be pretty enough. We live in a world that is doing all it can to strip us of our identity and value… a world that is pushing us violently so that we are falling.

And to often those who are called by the name of Christ are right there to make the final push instead of reaching out to help. I think we have forgotten something very important…

The Lord is for me among those who help me;

Psalm 118:7

Let that sink in.

The Lord is for me among those who help me.

Beloved, when was the last time you helped someone? I don’t mean sent a check to an organization that helps. I mean you, with your hands, with your feet, with your words… when was the last time that you helped?

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him…

Genesis 2:18

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I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever;

John 14:6

We are on this earth for a purpose. You have a purpose… and that purpose is not to get all you can out of this life… your purpose is to give life, to give help, to share the love of Christ with others…

But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and drank up the river which the dragon poured out of his mouth.

Revelation 12:16

That slippery serpent, that nasty dragon, that evil one does not need our help in making a way for his river of vile condemnation and deception to pour out upon the souls of others… the world is hurting… people are hurting… precious ones… Let. Us. Be. Help.

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord;
We have blessed you from the house of the Lord.
The Lord is God, and He has given us light;

Psalm 118:26-27

Let us come from the house of the Lord with light and with hope and with help. Let us shine life into the darkness of the hearts of those that God places in our path… let us speak words of truth with grace and love. Let us never forget that others will only discover that the Lord is for them when we who know Him choose to help them… not ignore them… or hurt them more.

Parenting is Serious Business

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Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in Your sight,
O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.

Psalm 19:14

Many times we seem to discover the last place that the words of our mouth or the meditations of our heart are acceptable in the Lord’s sight is when we are within the walls of our own home. Usually we find that the vilest of our words and actions are acted out right here in this place that should be a refuge and a place of safety from the groaning fallen world.

I remember the day well that I KNEW some things needed to change in me… in me… not my kids… IN ME.

I saw a replay of the epiphany that I had as I watched my girls interact one day with their younger cousin. My teenager was patiently and kindly explaining to my niece how to do something… and my youngest turned around and got up and came to sit in my lap with tears in her eyes and said, “Mommy it hurts my feelings to watch her tell somebody else to do something, because she is always nice to them and she tells me in a mean voice

Here’s the thing… Do your kids sit and watch you treat other people’s kids better than you treat them?

Here’s the other thing… If you can hold it together for other people’s kids… guess what… you have just proven that you can hold it together for your own.

Too often our attitudes and actions are matter of habits that need to be changed. In changing habits you have to have a starting point and you have to have accountability. The National Center of Biblical Parenting has tons of material to equip you with both. They have books and programs too offer you tools for successful parenting from birth to hey, it’s time you got a job 😉

Their latest release is *The Family Toolbox for Preteens and Teens

The Family Toolbox has 8 lessons. Each one has a 1-2 minute scene of a family living life and experiencing common challenges in their relationships. A discussion guide prompts dialogue between parents and teens and a 10-minute teaching session for parents featuring Dr. Scott Turansky and Joanne MIller, RN, BSN gives practical tools to use right away.

As they work through the lessons with their parents, teens learn 16 Life Success Principles and parents learn valuable tools such as:

• How to focus on the heart instead of just behavior
• The cues you give that tell your children when you mean business
• Practical ways to remove conflict from the problems of family life
• How to end correction times with impact
• A tool for maximizing heart change in the correction process
• The value of teaching kids to accept no as an answer
• Ways to reduce anger episodes in children

What I loved about this material is that it is something that you work through with your kids. This is not you trying to incorporate some new parenting skills incognito with your kids. In this material you sit down with your family and say, Okay, some things need to change around here… with me and with you. So we are going to start this study as a family and work through this thing together. We are going to discuss what the parents are doing and what the kids are doing and we are going to see what we can learn so that our home is a place of peace and mutual respect.

*FT New Release

As the parent you want to watch the videos and work through the parent page first. This will help you to be prepared when you sit down to go through the videos with your kids and dialogue with them through the discussion questions.

Believe it or not, even if our kids whine about starting this, they will love doing this with you. It shows them that you care. It shows them that you are trying. It shows them that you want to see them succeed in life. Make sure that you give them the freedom to answer honestly. Examine your own self as you work through this with them and be willing to admit and address your own shortcomings… don’t just point out theirs.

This Family Toolbox study will take you less than 30 minutes a day… it’s well worth the time investment. You could make it dinner time convo. Set up the laptop at the dinner table or make it a pizza night in front of the tv in the family room… just do it. Trust me, you won’t regret it!

FT Disclaimer

*affiliate links used

*Find more parenting tools here: NCBP

God Said It At Least Ten Times, We Might Should Listen

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In our homeschool co-op chapel time I am teaching through the book of Proverbs. This past Monday we were focusing on Proverbs 10:1

The proverbs of Solomon.

A wise son makes a father glad,
But a foolish son is a grief to his mother.

As I prepared for this lesson I noticed that God restates this phrase in various ways at least ten times in the book of Proverbs alone:

Proverbs 13:1        Proverbs 15:20

Proverbs 17:21      Proverbs 17:25

Proverbs 23:24      Proverbs 27:11

Proverbs 29:3        Proverbs 29:15

Proverbs 29:17

I think this is a word… a message… a thought of God that He seriously is trying to convey the importance of to us… not just in relation to our earthly parents but to Him as well. As I began sharing this verses with the diverse ages in our chapel I wanted to first give a picture of what it kind of looks like when a wise son makes a father’s heart glad.

As we watch this interaction between father and son, we see what happens when a father realizes that his son has made that move from “foolish boy” to “wise son”. When this happens we see a mutual respect explode and blossom between the father and son. Father realizes that son has been listening, learning, and is ready to apply and the son realizes that the father believes in him and he boldly makes his move as his father supports him, shouting, “listen to my son!” The mutual respect becomes oh the more evident when we see the son proudly say, “that’s my dad!” Nemo, no doubt, showed himself to be a wise son who made his father glad.

Now for the second part of Proverbs 10:1…

As we watch, Merida thinks she is going to show her mother who is boss. Merida is foolish. She is so foolish that when this act backfires, and harms the relationship with her mother even more, she goes to a witch, gets a potion to change her mother to do what she wants her to do, and ends up turning her into a bear. Merida’s foolishness almost destroys her mother and the kingdom. What we have in this example is a lack of mutual respect and Merida’s foolishness was a grief to her mother.

In watching the Finding Nemo clip we see a snippet of a son who grew in wisdom and found favor with his father and those around him… this is a cute example, but our best example is found in the Person of Christ…

In the book of Luke as we are introduced to the baby Jesus we learn that

The Child continued to grow and become strong, increasing in wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him.

Luke 2:40

We learn further on in this book that Jesus did not just grow in wisdom in such a way to impress only Himself, or even to just impress God the Father, but as He grew in wisdom, He grew in stature, and He grew in favor with God and man.

And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.

Luke 2:52

Jesus grew in such a way that the Father placed full confidence in Him and pointed others to Him… as Nemo’s Dad swam up telling all the other fish to listen to His Son, God the Father made the same declaration of His Own…

While he was still speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice out of the cloud said, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him!”

Matthew 17:5

As I began to share with our co-op families in chapel that day, I began to encourage the kids to trust in the love their parents had for them, reminding them that no one would ever love them as their parents… as I scanned the room my eyes caught the beautiful face of a young man who I knew was living with one of our families within the context of the foster care program. It was here when the Lord said, readjust…

I immediately changed my wording from parents, from mother and father, to saying, those who God had given them to take care of them… because as I shared I knew that when I said mother, when I said father, I meant those who are pouring their life into them, whether they be foster parents, adopted parents, grandparents, or their birth parents, but they might not, and I wanted them to know that God was not leaving them out.

Jesus, once again, is our example in this.

I think we sometimes forget that Jesus lived with a surrogate mother and an adoptive father. Yet we never once have Him recorded as turning around and telling them He didn’t have to listen to them because they were not His momma and daddy. No. We are given the opposite.

And He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and He continued in subjection to them; and His mother treasured all these things in her heart.

Luke 2:51

God the Father had placed His Son in the family of Mary and Joseph, these two would love Him, care for Him, provide for Him, educate Him, and train Him up in life… Jesus was to listen to them just as He was to listen to God the Father.

In looking at the relationship of Christ with His earthly parents we see that He always honored them… He honored them until His last breathe… and in looking at the relationship between Jesus and God the Father we see that Jesus only did what His Father asked Him to do… not once do we have Jesus turning around and saying, “I don’t think so Daddy, I am tired of living My life the way You said I have too, You don’t care about what I want, You only want Me to do Your will, well I ain’t havin’ it no more!

However, when you look at the programs set up for our kids in this modern day… is that not the message they preach to our children?

How many teen/preteen movies and television shows have this underlining theme between the kids and those who cared for them? How thankful I am that Jesus did not bow up and say, “No, Dad I’m throwing away Your’s”

No Jesus didn’t say that… He said the opposite

And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.”

Matthew 26:39

Now please know that I fully understand that parents are not perfect (I know I’m not), and I understand there really are parents who attempt to live vicariously through their kids, and I am sure there are even parents who have no clue what the gifts and talents of their kids are, and I am sure there are parents who have not even considered dreaming of a future and a hope with or for their kids… but I dare say that if you have been so blessed to be placed within the home and under the authority of people who love you and love God… listen to them. They do what they do and they say what they say, because they only want to see you succeed in life. So just take it all in and evaluate it. See if there be any good sense in it before you rebel against it.

A wise son makes a father glad,
But a foolish son is a grief to his mother.

God said it at least ten times, we might should listen.

Not only did He say it at least ten times, bit He spent nine previous chapters teaching us the importance of listening to the words and commands and instructions of our father and our mother. It is in listening that we grow in wisdom… even unwise words can be used to increase our own wisdom when we choose to weigh them against the absolute truth of the Word of God.

If by chance, you read this and you never had a mother or father who sought to see you succeed in life… hang on to this beloved…

You have been my help;
Do not abandon me nor forsake me,
O God of my salvation!
For my father and my mother have forsaken me,
But the Lord will take me up. 

Teach me Your way, O Lord, and lead me in a level path…

Psalm 27:9-11

Beloved, is not our goal, our deepest desire as a son or daughter of God, to have Him look at us and say, “That’s my child, with whom I am well-pleased, well done, well done my good and faithful servant.

Oh and are you not just giddy to point our Heavenly Father out and say “That’s my Dad! That’s my God!

When we come to the Father through Jesus Christ His Son, we have to ready and willing to say, God my dreams don’t matter, my will means nothing, I don’t care what I have to let go, who I have to walk away from, as long as I am Yours… not my will… but Yours be done… no matter what. 

When Your Dad Believes In You

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I have shared about my Dad on my blog several times before. I share about him a lot because I got a good one. I was blessed with a Dad that believed in me, with a Dad who never told me I “couldn’t” do anything because I was girl. I was taught the exact opposite. I was taught there was nothing I couldn’t do if I put my mind to it, whether it be the first female United States President, a Supreme Court judge, driving a tractor, or pulling a trailer full of round bails of hay, or riding a bull.

My Daddy believed in me.

I remember being in 3rd grade and telling my Daddy that I wanted to play basketball. Well that next year, he took me right down and signed me up to play. I was one of two girls that signed up. That meant I could play, but I would be the only girl on the team.

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There I am. Front row, wearing that #2 jersey. It was my first year to play, not only did I play with all boys, but none of those boys went to my school. I was the only girl and I didn’t know any of them, but I played. Terrified. But I played… and I learned.

The next year my Daddy took it upon himself to sign up to coach and I guess he got to spreading the word, because this year there was enough girls that signed up that we had the first all girls team in Hartselle Alabama rec basketball. We had to play the boys, but we had a team.

Basketball

The following year my Daddy got on the phone with the Morgan County Park and Rec and he was able to get our Hartselle girls basketball team into the county so that we could play against other girls. To this day the Hartselle girls continue to play in the Morgan County circuit… thanks to a Daddy who believed in his daughters.

As anyone who follows my blog knows, my Daddy was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer this past May. He has been undergoing chemo since then. Today, we wait for the next PET scan to see if the imaging reflects what the blood work has been saying… and that’s that the tumors are shrinking and dying.

I really wanted to do something in honor of my Daddy just for being the amazing man that he is. I am not sure if the ladies who played or are playing in Hartselle, Alabama have a clue what my Daddy did to fight for your equality in the Hartselle community league athletics program. He fought hard with others (Joe Berry and Ronald Wallace to name a couple) to build up the softball program and he started the basketball program.

So really I am just curious… if you are a woman and have played softball or basketball in the city of Hartselle would you share this post and hashtag #Iplayed #teamwayne

I would love to see how many “daughters” got the opportunity to dream of slam dunks and home runs because my Daddy wasn’t a man who said, “girls can’t” but instead said, “heck yeh, girls can!

Graduation

My Daddy went home to be with his Lord on May 2, 2015. He has experienced the highest healing possible as he stepped out of this fallen world and this decaying body and into the arms of His Savior.