christian

I'm afraid that, here in the West, the term 'Christian' no longer imparts the kind of loving life I want for my children. Too many people accept that label but don't live the life.

-Zonoma

don't freak out, mommy!

As a mother, I get little glimpses of myself through the eyes of my children every day. Unfortunately, it isn't always flattering.

Yesterday we had Honored Friend and her 2.8 children over for dinner. As the children were unloading the dishwasher, I snuck off to change my shirt. Halfway with the shirt over my head, I hear a knock on the door. It was my oldest son, who by some genetic mutation, has the freakish ability to tell when I'm only half dressed and suddenly 'need to talk to me'. His brother, by the way, has a similar genetic disorder that hones in on those times when I'm in the bathroom, invariably taking care of business. They also both have the 'Quick! Mommy's in the bubble bath. Let's rescue her from all that peace and quiet!' disorder, though as I understand it, this is somewhat more common. Back to the story...

Captain Awesome, in the confident and high-timbered voice of a first grader, solemnly informed me (through the bedroom door) that he could now put away the glasses. Now normally, I'm the one who puts those away. The layout of the kitchen just doesn't allow for me to keep everything where they can reach and glasses seemed the logical choice for something kept up high. Today, though, Awesome told me that he could reach without a chair, without climbing on the cabinets, and without breaking anything (I know because I asked). After listening to his little speech, I wasn't sure how to respond and, in the time it took for me to think, he took matters into his own hands.

"Mommy, I'm just going to put them up this time."

"What? Are you sure you can do that?"

"Yes, Mommy. I'm going to put them up." He stood there in silence for another beat and then, before I could think of a reason to protest, he added, "Now don't freak out, okay Mommy?"

And he had me. Even through the door, my son knew me well enough that he cut off any further protests with that one little phrase. Such an adult thing for him to say, too. I wasn't certain whether I wanted to laugh or get offended. Why in the world would he say that to me?

"Mommy, did you hear me? Don't freak out when you see them put away."

"Okay, Honey. You can do it."

Oh yeah. I would have freaked out. If I had come back into the kitchen and found the glasses already put away, I would have third degree'd those boys! 

What are these doing up here? Who did this? Did you get Daddy to put them away? Did you get a chair? WHAT? Then you climbed on my counter??!! I don't believe you. There's no way you could reach that! Oh yeah? Show me. ... Oh. .... Okay. ... mmm sorry.

Do I always freak out about stuff like this? Looking back, I think I do. I never considered myself a 'freak out' kind of mom, but I guess I am. I recall a time last fall when Little Man came home with grass stains on his jeans and a serious, apologetic confession to accompany them. When I just him it was 'okay,' he was stunned.

He blurted out, "You mean you aren't mad?"

I laughed and asked why I should be.

"I just thought you would be. You don't like when I ruin my clothes."

I tried to explain to him that I understood when things were accidents and when they could have been prevented (wiping his hands on his pants instead of on the napkin, anyone?) but the look on his face told me that it never mattered to me before, at least as far as he understood. Wow, I really do sweat the small stuff more than I like to admit!

So, FreakOut!Mommy needs a chill pill, apparently. It is funny how simple moments become epiphanies that shine a spotlight on flaws we didn't even know we had. Thank goodness for these moments, else I remain flawed and my family suffer. Thank goodness for these moments, else it might be a tragic moment later on when I look back and see the flaws too little too late.

smooth criminal

Overheard today:

"Watch out, [Trooper]! Mommy just cleaned the window with a dangerous criminal and you shouldn't touch it."

I've always thought that Windex was a bit shady.....

dishwasher wars

My husband is trying to get me to restrict him from loading the dishwasher.

Do you hear that, honey? I know what you are trying to do. IT WON'T WORK! So you continue to load it the wrong way, with the pizza pans blocking the opening for the dishsoap and the bowls crusted with cheese from the French onion soup. I shall persevere. You can continue to call the dishes 'done' without starting the dishwasher, I shall persist! Continue in your heinous counter-wiping form-- I shall not be deterred. Though you feign ignorance of how the water jets inside work and insist on putting the bowls in backwards, I shall overcome!

I'll start next week, as soon as the kids are over the flu and I'm over this nasty bout of Strepthroat. I'll have time to fight it out then. For now, I guess I'll go clean up the mess he made of cleaning the kitchen.

Macaroni Power

Once upon a time, before the advent of slumber parties and hulu, Friday nights were Forced Family Fun nights. We ate junk food and sipped root beers while we played board games. The boys and I planned for Fridays all week long, hammering out important questions like, “Pizza or nachos?” and “Monopoly or LEGO Star Wars?” For the record, I started opting for LEGO Star Wars because I got sick and tired of being bankrupted by a seven year old. When the big day finally came around, Little Man (aka: Captain Awesome) would catch the bus to school while Trooper and I got busy cleaning the house.

On the particular morning I’m remembering, the house needed more attention than usual but all I could think about was the warm, fuzzy blanket on the couch and how nice it was to have Trooper cuddled up next to me watching cartoons. As a result, when the bus pulled off that morning I curled up with Trooper on the couch and fell instantly, blissfully asleep.

Why is it that when we compromise it is our loved ones who seem to suffer the most? When I woke up and realized how far behind schedule I was, I panicked. I began to clean like a madwoman, brushing off poor little Trooper’s repeated attempts to help with phrases like, “This is a Mommy-sized job. Go play.” I was making pretty good time this way until I began to unload the dishwasher. That's when I hit a speed bump. I wanted to ‘get it done’ so that I could tackle the mountain range of dirty dishes covering my kitchen counters. Trooper, though, was in a helpful mood and he knew that unloading the dishwasher was a job just his size because it has been his job for nearly six months now.

Have you ever watched a preschooler unload a dishwasher? It is excruciating. Painful, even. I am fairly certain that this in the only span of daylight that my young son moves at less than 90 miles per hour. He is ‘busy’ by nature and never really walks anywhere but rather dances everywhere. I’ve worked a long time to make sure he understands the importance of walking slowly with mommy’s dishes and he is ever so careful with them now. He practically tiptoes, cradling one dish in his two little hands, all the way to the other side of the room and puts it away. He then allows himself a little victory dance for being so clever before running over to the dishwasher for another plate or bowl to put away. The concentration needed for this harnessing of energy is immense and he is so relieved by the time it is time to put away the ‘plastic’ and the ‘silverware’ that he is back to dancing his way to the pantry where they belong, even more hyper than when the dishwasher was opened.

Please remember, I was a woman on a mission. I had a house to clean and a meal to cook so that I could relax and have Forced Family Fun Night with my children, come Hell or high water!

My youngest son, oblivious to my personal mission statement and the exasperated looks I was giving him, was nearly finished unloading the dishwasher when he began a kung-fu style fight with an invisible foe. He whirled and kicked and began to make ‘cool’ sound effects like “whoosh” and “kaPOW” in all the right places-- all while wielding a dripping silver colander and a dangerous looking wooden spoon. The fight must not have been going well for him because as I opened my mouth to tell him Just hurry up!, he pulled out the big guns. Before I could get the words out, he thrust the colander into the air and brandished his spoon with a flourish and shouted, “MACAWONI POW-WAH!”

I’m not sure where Macaroni Power rates when compared to Superman and the Justice League or the X Men and the Mutant League but I know that it had an immediate effect on me. Instead of hurrying my son along, I found myself thinking, “I did it again.” I got so caught up in ‘how’ I could get things done that I forgot ‘why’ I was doing them. Wasn’t the whole point of cleaning the house so that I could spend time with my children? It took a new and dubious superpower to remind me of that little fact.

Macaroni Power, who knew?


(rewrite, original 02/2008)

Psychology of a Modern Priesthood

"But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy." -1 Peter 2:9-10


I wanted to pray the New Year in this evening so, groaning, I got up to turn off the Time Square special on NBC and turn up the lights (so that I wouldn't be tempted to 'sleep' the New Year in). Letting go a great big sigh as I turned back to the couch to pray I had a thought. Why do we regard prayer as such a burden? I've been taught to think of it as something that I must do - to the point that, when I don't, I suffer from a lot of guilt (which, consequently, makes me put it off even longer). Even at it's best and most celebrated prayer I’ve thought of as an emergency help line. Prayer Hotline, This is God, what is the nature of your emergency?

I would really like to know how it was that we have been able to twist the truth of prayer around into something that is so... ceremonial. It really isn't. Prayer isn't just another chore to be accomplished somewhere between making dinner and washing the dishes and twice on Sundays. Prayer is one of our highest and most treasured privileges. In the Old Testament, it was an enormous honor for a priest to be chosen to even approach the Holy of Holies once in his lifetime.

We are sanctified and encouraged to approach the throne room of the Most High God, heads held high, and... tell Him about our day. Our frustrations, our joys, our hopes and our dreams. This wasn't always the case, it is by God's mercy alone that we are justified and that, surely, is something to celebrate!



This year, I am going to pray not because I have to but because I can.

legacy of truth

The seeds of my faith in God were not planted within a church or by a caring friend. They were planted by my parents. My father is a great man… it is only now that I can look back and begin to catch a glimpse of the legacy he is building for each of his daughters. Though we rarely attended churches, it was not unusual for us to discuss his (and later our) faith. In some of my favorite memories my mother would find my father and I pouring over some often read passage of Scripture while he tried to help me understand with something more than a child’s eyes. My father rarely answered any questions without pulling out a Bible and showing me the answers in black and white. He never fielded a question and never told me I wouldn’t understand. Likewise, he never tried to hide ignorance if he didn’t have an answer.

I loved these talks- and sometimes debates- with my father. I still do, though they are rarer now. They didn’t always clarify the particular point I was asking about but they always left me wanting to find more for myself, to KNOW. You see, my father’s greatest gift – his legacy – to me was that he taught me to think.

Knowing how to think is a fine thing but it was my mother who quietly directed this skill, this fascination with philosophies and cultures and histories. Moms are funny like that, at least mine was. She never tried to enter the dizzying displays of intellect that my father seemed to stir up. She always waited until the quiet moments – she was the center of the home. The eye of the storm in times of crisis and it was her that taught all of us the value of honesty. My mother never let me hide behind my intellect, she always forced me to look into the mirror and see what was broken, what needed fixed before I could move forward. Frankly, she scared the bejeezers out of me. It was like she could read my mind. She can still do it, too.

I accepted Jesus into my heart at a very young age, about 7 or so, and grew up open to the teachings I heard. The older I got, though, the more doubt began to take hold. By the time I was in high school, I vacillated between being completely on fire for Christ and wondering if there was a God out there.  I remember wondering if, in two thousand years from now, people wouldn’t read about me and others like me in their history books and laugh at the foolishness of ‘Christianity’, much as the modern free countries now view the Aztecs’ notion of human sacrifice and the other ancient cultures that seem so backwards to us.

I felt a tremendous amount of guilt for even entertaining the idea that we, as the Church, had it all wrong. What if we already missed the boat? What if I wasn’t really forgiven? What if ‘it didn’t take’? What if Jesus was some long-haired, pot-smoking charmer with lots of groupies and not the Son of God? Now, looking back, I know that these are not original questions, nor were they especially deep. They are profound only because they are, in a sense, a rite of passage for every person who ever encounters the Gospel that Jesus surrendered his divinity for a mortal life of servitude and frustration and death all to give us a chance to spend eternity with our Creator God instead of separated from him. I also realize that I was fortunate enough to have a father who invited questions like this.

 I remember when I finally admitted to my father how worried I was that we would be mocked by future generations. How did we know we were right?  I don’t recall exactly when this conversation took place, nor do I recall that my dad had all the answers. I just remember his response: “You can’t know that, Jessica.” I was disappointed by this and yet, at the same time, I was oddly comforted by the idea that no one else knew, either. This put me instantly in the company of great thinkers throughout the ages. I wasn’t alone, nor was I stupid or faithless for thinking these questions. In fact, I had unwittingly become a Truth Seeker.

When you seek Truth, do you know what happens? He finds you. No matter what path you tread, if you are earnestly seeking Truth, He will find you in the end.

It is an ongoing process, I don’t think one can ever find the entirety of Truth.  Do you? (That would be the equivilent of expecting to fathom all the depths of God!)  I’ve long since stopped allowing myself to feel guilty for the questions I ask. Children are allowed to ask questions of their parents. Why shouldn’t I ask them of my God? I’ve discovered that God is big enough to handle all my questions.

Why is this idea of seeking out Truth for yourself so important? It’s not like Truth comes in different breeds, like dogs. Truth is Truth is Truth. It will never change. What makes finding It for yourself so important is the journey. Truth may not change, but you will. To quote a good friend of mine:

I question whether somebody who hasn't questioned themselves in their own beliefs can really say they carry those beliefs at all.

It's the point where you become a person in your own right, free from whatever formative influences from your youth.  Simply being a Christian, Hindu, or anything else because that's how you were raised and nothing more is an insult to yourself, and it lessens what you think you believe in.  That's not any kind of spiritual or intellectual journey at all, it's an excuse not to take one in the first place.

Socrates said "The unexamined life is not worth living," and I tend to agree with that.  Any belief that in your mind and heart can't endure the rigors of your own questioning hasn't earned your belief at all, and by the same token once it has, you know in that moment that it's true.  And for people who never went through that process, never took the time to try and get a handle on what they believe, why they believe, and whether they want to believe it...that's one of the big reasons they can’t imagine a thing like faith, and will probably never understand it.       –Exeter,  December 2007

It is the testing of what we believe and why that brings our faith to life. It is the trying of our beliefs in the crucibles of our minds and hearts that make them tangible. How often do we sit in our seats on Sunday mornings and listen to a message, nodding in agreement, and accept every word we hear as true because a pastor said it? Sometimes, we even feel something stir inside our chest, our pulse picks up and something resonates in us… our hearts hear the echoes of truth and we get excited. Then, we go home and turn on the game and… the stirring fades away and we get disappointed. How often does this happen? How often do we find ourselves simply existing between random nuggets of truth that are spoon fed to us from a pulpit? Far too often! Isn’t it better to challenge each message you hear in your heart? To rush home and study the given Scriptures in context. Don’t allow yourself to swallow everything put in front of you. Challenge them by going home and opening your Bibles… God is not going to be offended, I promise.

My challenge to each of you for this coming year is this: Become a Truth Seeker. Don’t believe everything I say just because I get up here and teach. Who am I when you have a God you can go to? Who am I? Do I read different words than your Bibles present to you? No. I teach nothing that you could not discover for yourself by opening up your Bibles and reading. When you begin to do that, then call me. We’ll chat.