Emmanuel

O come, O come Immanuel and ransom captive Israel
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Emmanuel, Emmanuel
Emmanuel, Emmanuel
Wonderful counselor

Lord of life, Lord of all
He is the Prince of Peace
Mighty God, Holy One
Emmanuel, Emmanuel

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Emmanuel, Emmanuel
God incarnate, here to dwell
Emmanuel, Emmanuel
Praise His name Emmanuel

Immanuel--God with us. God, with us.

Over the last few months, Izzy and I have been memorizing different passages of scripture. We started with Zephaniah 3:17: "The Lord your God is living among you, He is a mighty Savior. He will delight in you with gladness, with His love He will calm your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful singing." As I tucked her in tonight, I read her this verse, and I was struck by Immanuel. This sweet, reassuring passage of scripture starts with Immanuel.

At first I read it quickly, rushing through what I have memorized--The Lord your God is living among you. But then I took pause, The Lord your God is living among you. He is my God, He has created me, formed me from the start, fashioned me in His image. But He is also Lord of life, Lord of all--my God who spoke the heavens into being, who imagined the tiles on the wing of a butterfly, who sculpted mountain ranges and tiny pebbles. And He is living among me. He is here in my laughter, He sees my tears, He knows my temptation, He hears my lies and cruelty, He sees the oppression and the hurt and the anger. He is here.

The immensity of this idea, of God, the author and creator of the whole of His-story, stepping down into the chaos of our world can sometimes crush me. Why do that? Why leave Your throne? Why abandon the comfort of Heaven for the pallor of earth? Why leave a mansion to live in a hovel? It makes no sense to our human, me-centered logic.

But then I think about my child who is sitting in the mud with a skinned knee crying ugly sobs. I don't want to stand and lecture them, I don't want to sit there and watch them suffer alone. I want to run and kneel in the mud and hold my child. All that is within me wants to run. I don't hesitate about the mud, I'm not worried about my clothes, I want to hold my hurting child. Nothing would stop me. 

 

The way to real love is not to watch from afar. The way to real love is not a band-aid or callous pat on the back. Real love enters in. Real love sits in the muck, looks in the eyes, cries beside the wounded, holds the broken, and listens intently. Real love comes to be present, to sit with us in our suffering. Real love comes to dwell.

And it is only once these things are done that real love offers a hand and pulls us back up. In order for the rescue to truly work, the hurting must know that they are not in the muck alone. And not just for a moment, not an awkward crouch down so as not to get the pants dirty. God comes and sits, fully, in the mud. He is here to dwell. He is living among us. And He is a mighty Savior. First He lives among us, and then, and then He saves us.

 

It's a powerful thing when the mighty humble themselves. Sometimes it makes us uncomfortable, like the first time we see our father cry. We aren't sure what to do with the vulnerability that is there when we are so accustomed to seeing strength. But there is also something so incredibly moving to see someone abandon their strength, their power, their might, and watch as they move in compassion towards the one who hurts. It's a soldier laying down a gun and picking up a wounded child,  it's a President stepping out of the motorcade to shake the hand of a hungry veteran, it's the King who leaves His throne to search for His son who has gone missing in battle. It is love that moves these men to humility, and it is love that moves Jesus to come to us in a lowly stable.

 

Immanuel, God with us, because He delights in us with gladness. Immanuel, God with us, so that He can calm our fears. Immanuel, God with us, so that He can rejoice over us. He is mighty, but He loves us, and so He is here to dwell. Praise be to God!

O Holy Night, Part 1

O Holy Night. It's my mother's favorite Christmas song. I've listened to it sung by Nat King Cole and Andy Williams, Josh Groban and Carrie Underwood, but the most favorite version in our family is N'SYNC. What can I say? The heart loves what the heart loves. And I do love this song.

While this song is iconic for the beautiful voices who have carried these notes through concert halls, across albums and into our hearts, it is the powerful words that strike the listener to the core:

O holy night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of our dear Saviour’s birth.
Long lay the world in sin and sorrow pining,
‘Til He appear’d and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn...

Can you feel it? Can you feel the sorrow? The heavy weight of this broken world on your soul? Can you close your eyes and see the hurt on the faces of the hungry you've driven past today? Can you call to mind the tears that streaked down your child's face as they were ridiculed, teased and rejected? Can you remember the ache of a body broken by sickness? Does your soul groan over the loss of someone you love so deeply?

That is where God finds us. In the mess, in the anguish, in the longing for things to be different. He finds the Israelites amidst great oppression. He finds His chosen people displaced from their homeland. He finds women without position or voice. He finds brutal Roman leadership. He finds a weary world. And that's His cue to enter in.

He doesn't look from afar. He doesn't send money, or a delegate, or a rescue spaceship. He comes. The King comes Himself, into a broken, humble, lowly world. He sees our pain and He enters in.

I love the language of this stanza. It is the perfect tension of light and dark, of defeat and victory, of sorrow and healing, of despair and hope. The night Jesus comes to this earth, the dark no longer stands alone. The despair no longer holds court. The sorrow has a challenger. The oppressed have a champion. The light of the world has come, a new morning is breaking. Our souls can feel it break as the music crescendos to this glorious moment.

And we fall on our knees. It's amazing because our pain has brought us to our knees before. We've fallen to our knees and begged for mercy. But now, now, we fall on our knees in awe of the mercy that has come. We can't help but be amazed at how God has seen our need and come, in person, to dwell with us. To dwell with us in our pain, in our fear, in our loneliness. The God of the universe has come to comfort His people, and He's come in person. We fall on our knees and thank God that He has arrived just in time.

The power of this song is that there is a thrill of hope within this weary world; this song captures both the longing of our hearts for the complete healing that Jesus will bring someday and the complete relief we feel that He has not left us to dwell in the anguish alone. He has come. We, the weary, are rejoicing! How miraculous is that?!

I want to stand in the light of the dawn breaking. I want to feel the first rays of sunlight on my face. Yonder it breaks. The fulfillment of hope is coming. The anguish will end. And while I stand and wait, I will take the nail-pierced hand of my Savior, and watch the glorious morn break with Him by my side. He has brought hope, He has cued the dawn. The soul has felt it's worth. The night which was once so bleak is now holy and glorious. Praise be to God that the night breaks way to dawn!

Who Would Imagine a King

Happy Advent! As the Advent season is about drawing near to our sweet Savior, savoring the moments of anticipation as we wait on this unexpected, unimaginable gift, I have decided to intentionally give time each day to drawing near. This season I want to draw near through my two favorite mediums, music and writing. So each day I'm planning to pick the lyrics from one of my favorite, some common, some lesser-known, Christmas songs and write about Jesus through that lens. If you want to peek into my humble journey through the Greatest Story, I'd love your company. I hope you discover a few songs you never knew you needed to love, and also, perhaps, God and Holy Spirit willing, see new glimpses of our Savior. That's my prayer for myself--I want to experience Jesus and this precious time of year through fresh eyes. I know God will honor that desire; He's all about drawing near!

When I first thought of this project, I thought I would start with "O Come All Ye Faithful" or "Come Thou Long Expected Jesus", but today I found myself in search of a song that captured the shock, the awe, the unimaginable way that Jesus arrived. Izzy and I started the day with Ann Voskamp's Advent book, Unwrapping the Greatest Gift. Lingering in Voskamp's beautiful language (thank goodness God gave me a daughter who loves words!) I found this beautiful image:

Their family tree was a fallen tree.
When their family tree crashed to the ground, it crushed all of their hearts.
The stump--and all of their days--felt utterly hopeless. Like their hearts had been cut right out of them.
But it happened: the wondrous impossible. It came right out of that chopped down stump--the miracle no one ever dreamed of. Except for God. God never stopped dreaming of the miracle, the one He'd dreamed right from the very beginning, because love never stops dreaming of a way to draw close again.

I just love that idea--love constantly dreaming up a way to draw close again. Isn't that the truth? Think about how often our broken hearts have longed for mending, how we imagine reuniting with long lost loved ones. In fact, every romantic comedy I can think of consists of a conflict that draws lovers apart and leaves viewers longing, in fact dreaming, of how to get those two love birds together again. These pieces of our heart are merely glimpses of God's heart; we were made in His image and as image bearers, albeit broken, we are looking for ways to draw close again.

We are indeed broken, and God knew we would be, and He had already orchestrated a grand plan to win us back, long before we ever fell away! He "dreamed right from the very beginning" a way to reconnect the relationship we had torn asunder.

He talked of this plan in Genesis 3, right at the very beginning, immediately after the Fall. He then spent the whole of the Old Testament, making covenant after covenant, sending prophet after prophet, using story after story, to hint at His great rescue.

The wisest, most faithful men, read these stories, interpreted these prophecies, held tightly to these covenants, and yet they had no idea what God had in store for them. They imagined a triumphant military leader, a stately King, a powerful Messiah. But no one, not a one, saw a baby born in a stable.

And perhaps this is why I have always loved this song. The Preacher's Wife is one of my favorite Christmas movies, and this song pierced me to the heart when I first saw the movie. I'm certain my 6th grade self didn't truly understand the power of this question: "Who would imagine a King?" I didn't know the history, I didn't know that the Pharisees were imagining a King of quite a different sort. What I did think of often was Mary, her innocent, school-girl dreams of what her family might be like. As she played house with her siblings and cousins, I imagined her assigning her children names, giving them qualities, envisioning who they would be when they grew up. Surely a fisherman or a carpenter or a teacher, these everyday professions that would be taken from the world she knew. Perhaps, if she were like Izzy, she might dream of a daughter who became a princess, like Esther. But would she ever imagine assigning her fictional child the role of King?

Yet here was the angel, and he was announcing just that--an infant King. Mary's ponderings in this song are so beautiful, so innocent:

Mommies and daddies always believe
That their little angels are special indeed
And you could grow up to be anything
But who would imagine a king?
A shepherd or teacher is what you could be
Or maybe a fisherman out on the sea
Or maybe a carpenter building things
But who would imagine a king?
It was so clear when the wise men arrived
And the angels were singing Your name
That the world would be different 'cause You were alive
That's why heaven stood still to proclaim
One day an angel said quietly
That soon he would bring something special to me
And of all of the wonderful gifts he could bring
Who would imagine?
Who could imagine?
Who would imagine a king?

Mary treasured up all of these things in her heart; all the what ifs, all the playing pretends, and also the angels proclaiming the birth of her Son, the Glory to Gods, the Shepherds kneeling at a trough, and the Magi bearing priceless gifts. "Who could imagine that I would give birth to a King?"

The answer, Mary, is the God you hold in your arms. He dreamed this up with the Father from the very beginning. This was His plan. This was His grand gesture of love. You and I could not have imagined it. It seemed impossible that love would come in the form of a baby. It seemed incredible that this baby would grow to be a man who loved fiercely, spoke truthfully, and moved in great power. It seemed unthinkable that He would then willingly walk the hill to be crucified on a cross. And it seemed unimaginable that He would rise again the King over death.

He worked beyond all we could imagine so that He could draw close to us in love. Praise be to God for doing exceedingly and abundantly more than all we ask or imagine!

The Unplanned Moments of Parenting

It's been a rough parenting week...again. Maybe I should start thinking of this as the status quo? I've found myself reflecting on how much I focus on the hard. I'm so quick to list the faults of my offspring, to talk about the ways in which they have pushed my buttons or gone one step too far. I, ashamedly, have twice in the last weeks downloaded on a complete stranger about my frustrations with my child. My heart hurts knowing that I've done this; I've repented, I've sought to be more gentle with the way I speak. I'm such a truthful speaker at times that there's no hiding my heart. And therein lies the problem, my heart.

My heart toward my difficult children is one of hardened selfishness. I'm frustrated and angry at their choices because they make life hard for ME. There is a self-serving agenda here in which I want easy children who make good choices so that my life can be more comfortable. If my daughter would just pull her emotions together and stop melting down in the car, I could listen in peace to that podcast I wanted to check out. If my son would calmly ask for help when the physics of trains not fitting into a small tunnel frustrate him, I could quickly rebuild the track and get back to surfing Facebook (or even cleaning toilets!) If my kids could just accept the transition of leaving one place to go to another more easily, I would be spared the embarrassment of offering consequences that have no effect, bargaining that accomplishes nothing, and ultimately the carrying of a screaming child to a car with a look of frustrated apology to the parents around me. Do you see the focus of my frustrations?

ME. The problem is ME. Parenting is inconvenient. Parenting happens while the water is boiling on the stove and the sauteed garlic and onions are burning so that you can stop and get on eye level with an upset child. Parenting happens when you just want to be in the bathroom by yourself for 5 minutes and you waddle out to the living room with your pants still down to break up the fight that has escalated to screaming. Parenting is putting down the toilet brush, holding your dirty hands together so you don't get bacteria everywhere, and reminding your kid to take another deep breath before speaking unkindly to you. Parenting is dying to self, over and over and over again.

How refining the work of parenting is! We must daily, hourly, momentarily, let go of what we want and do what is best for our children. We must recognize that we don't want them to be perfect, well-behaved children on the outside because then we miss the opportunities to talk about the broken, messed up thoughts brewing on the inside. We must choose their character and their hearts over convenience. We must be twenty minutes late somewhere because we need to make sure everyone was calm enough to continue on to our destination. Parenting is not what we want, at all; it's what they need.

It's what we need too. Jesus instructed that, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me." (Luke 9:23) In John 3, Jesus reminds us that, "He must increase, and I must decrease." We need these little people of ours to show us just how selfish our hearts are. We might think we are dying to ourselves, we might think we are doing a pretty good job of being selfless (I mean, being a parent at all and just taking care of the immediate needs of children requires us to die to ourselves--hello, sleepless nights for crying babies, puking toddlers, and nightmares of elementary school!) We are selfless, as far as we are willing to let ourselves be selfless. We've made up our minds just how selfless we are going to be and then we draw a line. "I'll give up reading this book to make lunches, I won't watch TV so I can sew this Halloween costume, I won't talk on the phone in the car so I can hear about her day, but I WILL shower by myself! That's where I draw the line!" I do this all the time! I list in my head the millions of ways I've been selfless today and I use those to justify just a few more minutes on Facebook before I go in and read with my child.

When I think about my own heart, I realize just how selfish I am. Because if I've made up my mind about when and how I will be selfless, is that even selfless at all? If I've scheduled it in and made room for it, then how much has it really cost me? I think the truth is that the really selfless acts come in the unplanned moments, the moments where I have to stop what I'm doing, change my agenda, and place my eyes on the child in front of me. Some days this feels like the most impossible task I will ever face, especially when I'm changing my agenda for what seems like the 100th time that day!

This is where I found myself praising God this morning in the car! "God I'm so awful at this! God I'm so selfish, but You are not. You give freely, always, whenever I ask. Whenever I demand Your attention because I've faltered again and need more correction and instruction, You stop, You listen and You give. You give freely, selflessly. That is what the cross is all about. That is the God I serve. Thank You for being the perfect parent even when I'm not. Give me a fuller measure of You this day as I parent in the unplanned moments. Help me to see what is most important. Help me to see my child's heart, and give me the willingness to turn towards it, and the words to speak into it. I cannot parent without You. Thank You that I don't have to! Amen."

What freedom we have to know that the perfect parent is parenting us all! I was delighting in creation this morning, delighting in the blue skies and the puffy white clouds, and it hit me--Izzy and Josh are God's creation too! They were created for me to delight, just as much as the clouds and the sky were created for me to enjoy! God created them for me to search them, discover all of the nuggets of beauty hidden within them, and to delight! Praise be to God that I have a lifetime, however long that is, to learn about and delight in my children! Jesus, please don't let me miss the opportunities to stop and delight in the unplanned moments either!

God let the unplanned moments of parenting be a source of joy to me. Teach me to relish them. Teach me to praise You for them. Help me parent my beautiful children as You would. Amen.

Grace for the Weary Mom

It's been a rough parenting day. You know the kind; some crazy, awful behavior falls out of your child and sends you into a craze of pure anger and trying to find an appropriate consequence amidst the blurred eyes of fury you are experiencing. You take a deep breath, try to regroup, try to ask for God's guidance, and yet still find yourself knee deep in the ripples of the wrong words you've spoken, the wrong tactic you've taken, the ill-timing of your words in your child's tender and sensitive heart. You ask her to stay in her room, while she calms down and you climb into the shower to try and make sense of all that's happening. You're sobbing now, and you can't figure out where you've gone wrong.

Was it when she was a baby and you didn't know whether she was tired or hungry or just fussy and you were doing whatever it took to survive?

Was it when she was a toddler and you let her explore to her heart's delight in every nook and cranny of your house without realizing that you probably should set boundaries as to where and when it was appropriate to do those things?

Was it when your second child was born and he was so fussy that you never invited her into teaming with you to help you with her new sibling?

Was it when you moved to a new city and your own heart's attitude was so full of anger and bitterness that it spilled out of you onto her?

Was it when...? Was it when...? Was it when...?

Five minutes into your giant list of failures, you hear God speak to your heart, "She will never understand your grace or My grace, until she has a mother who has been changed by it."

And now I am really crying. You see, I just can't seem to understand grace. I get it intellectually. I understand that I am broken, that I'm a sinner, I'm imperfect. As you can see, I had no trouble listing my failings as a parent. But I also have spent so very much of my life trying to be perfect, believing that if I just do more, if I just follow all the rules, if I am externally perfect, then I will win the Lord's approval, and the approval of everyone else. And even though I remind myself so many times a day that it is not about perfection, that no amount of perfection will be enough in the presence of a righteous and holy God, I still rely far more on what I do for God, rather than on His grace. It is a daily battle to recognize that Jesus is my righteousness, that I am indeed imperfect. I am so arrogant and have such a hard time seeing my need for a Savior. I am good enough, I'm certainly better than that person next to me, isn't that enough?

I hate this about myself. It is such arrogance, such judgment in my heart, both of which are complete evidence of my need for a Savior. And so I am humbled, and so I am reminded of how much I need grace, and there I stand in the shadow of the cross for a good 10 minutes before my brain starts justifying how good my behavior is and how I'm superior to the next person. I don't allow the grace of Jesus to leave my heart changed.

And so here I am in the shower, back to humility, back to realizing how much I need grace to penetrate my hardened heart. Izzy will not know and feel the depths of grace until she sees me know and feel the depths of grace. If I keep going back to trying to be perfect, to being unwilling to see my sin, to thinking that "what I'm doing is enough so if you think it's not enough then get off my back", then that's the heart I'm going to reflect to my sweet daughter. I must know grace, I must let it transform me into a humble, repentant woman, if I'm ever going to show Izzy how to live that way.

The hard part is how do I teach my heart humility? How do I teach my own heart its need for grace? I don't think it is anything I can do. I think it has to be the work of the Holy Spirit. And so I get on my knees and ask God to humble me, to show me my need for grace, and to let my daughter see that process in me. May I be transformed by grace so that my children might also be transformed by it. May that be my testimony and my legacy, a broken woman, a failed mother, who allows the grace of God to redeem the fractured moments and restore them to something better than I could have done myself.

Father, please help me to teach my children that they don't have to try and be perfect, that they do not even need to pretend to be perfect. Help me to show them that You already see and know our imperfections, there's no need to hide them from You. And not only that, Your grace, Your mercy, cover them all. You look at them and see the perfection of Jesus, and they can rest in knowing You have done the work. And finally, teach them the obedience that pours out of a love so rich in grace and mercy. May they obey because they feel truly and deeply loved for who they are, Your precious, chosen children. And first and foremost will you teach those things to my heart, so that they may see those truths lived out daily within me. Amen.

My Stay At Home Mom Calling

It’s always been a struggle for me to embrace this stay at home mom gig as a calling.  Other women would tell me that in this season, these children are my ministry. It is my job, my calling, my mission field to love and serve my kids day in and day out.  These words of encouragement would pour out of the mouths of all sorts of people, and in my mind I would think, “that’s just something people say to encourage the mom who cannot get it together enough to serve in the real mission field.”

I would search out scriptures to support their proverbs.  I would scour Christian mommy books and blogs in search of passages that would support this “home as the mission field” mantra.  Even Proverbs 31, THE ultimate woman’s passage in scripture, reveals a mother and wife working hard out in the real world, reaching the poor, starting a business, a pillar of the community. Gosh, where did she find the time? Her kids must have actually slept at naps and nighttime, unlike some children I know.

And so I have languished in this in between place, the place of longing to be something more, to do something more, to really impact the world for Jesus. I hadn’t completely checked out of my mission field of two, but I also felt a listlessness as I folded socks again, cleaned up pee from the floor again, and broke up the one millionth fight of the day.

But this summer I began to pray a new and different prayer. I’m not sure exactly what inspired it, a book, a podcast perhaps, or just the whisperings of the Holy Spirit. I would wake up each day and pray, “God let my heart attitude be that I don’t have to play with my kids today, I get to play with them. Amen.” That was it. Simple and sweet. Change my perspective, change my heart. Help me to see my children not as a burden, but as a blessing. Teach me to delight and not dwell. Move me from the place of selfishness to one of selflessness. Help me Jesus, I want this!

As no surprise to anyone, as I prayed this prayer, the circumstances with my kids got harder. More fights. More tantrums. Bigger, harder words falling from Izzy’s mouth. Tougher spiritual conversations. More moments of me desperate on my knees asking Jesus what on earth to say next, or begging Him to bridle my tongue so that I wouldn’t say all of the awful, hurtful things I was thinking. And yet, each morning I would rise and pray once again, “God let my heart attitude be that I don’t have to play with my kids today, I get to play with them. Amen.”

What did happen as I prayed this prayer was that I began to cherish the moments a bit more. I set down my phone and could find myself laughing, smiling, enjoying without the need to capture it on my camera and send it to 10 of my closest friends. I caught myself whispering to God, “did you hear what Josh just said? I love when he quotes things from his favorites shows!” I stopped myself from grumbling about the spilled cup of paint water, and remembered that it wasn’t that long ago that she couldn’t paint these vibrant pictures at all. I had more glimmers of joy, more moments of gratitude.

God was softening my heart, He was laying the groundwork for His crescendo, His climax, the revelation He’s been so patiently waiting to teach me. Monday I opened 1 Peter 5 and read these words:

“Therefore, I exhort the elders among you, as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ, and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed, shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight not under compulsion, but voluntarily, according to the will of God; and not for sordid gain, but with eagerness; nor yet as lording it over those allotted to your charge, but proving to be examples to the flock.”

And God opened my eyes. I am not an elder in the church, but I am an elder in my home. I may not have a congregation, but I have a flock. God has entrusted me with two sweet tender lambs, and He has given me charge over them.

I love the language of this passage, the language of the calling: not under compulsion, but voluntarily. Not for sordid gain, but with eagerness. Not lording it over your charge, but proving to be examples. Is this how I love my children? Do I love them, serve them, minister to them out of compulsion because I have to? Because that’s my job? Or do I honor them willingly? Do I cherish them, pursue their good, encourage them for my own personal gain, cursing them when they ruin my image as the perfect mother? Or is there an eagerness in my heart for their good, for their finished, pure hearts who long after Jesus? Do I lord my authority over them as one who knows what’s good for them if only they’d listen? Or do I remember my own brokenness and need of a Savior and show them time and again what repentance and forgiveness looks like?

These are high callings, and Peter knows they are. As Peter writes I can just imagine his mind wandering back to when these words were first uttered, one of his last encounters with the Savior. They are having breakfast and Jesus puts Peter on the spot:

“So when they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these?’ He said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.’ He said to him, ‘Tend My lambs.’ He said to him again a second time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love Me?’ He said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.’ He said to him, ‘Shepherd My sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love Me?’ Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, ‘Do you love Me?’ And he said to Him, ‘Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Tend My sheep.’”

If we love Jesus, we will tend His sheep. As I poured over this passage after reading 1 Peter 5, I sat with the weight of Jesus’ calling. I get Peter here. I know what it feels like to say to Jesus, “Lord, you know I love you,” and to have Him ask me again. Peter turned his back on Jesus three times the night He was crucified. I don’t then think it’s a coincidence that Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves Him. How many times have I said with my mouth that I love the Lord, and then turned the other way and betrayed Him? Far more than three, that’s to be certain. And yet, I just love Peter’s response after being asked that wounding third time; “You know all things; You know that I love You.”

Jesus knows, He knows that I love Him in my meager, tiny offering ways. He knows that I do long to serve and honor Him with my life. He knows that in my grumbling that my ministry of two was too small, my real heart was to change the entire world for His glory. But His response to Peter, and to my, desire to love Him well, is this alone—tend my sheep. That’s what He wants from me. That’s the calling.

So I now find myself repeating new words every day.

“Katie, daughter of Keith, do you love me?”

“You know I do Lord.”

“Then tend my sheep.”

That is my calling.  That is where He needs me to be. Perhaps He has me tending to two hearts to prepare me to tend to 2,000. Maybe He needs me to tend to two hearts, so He can do a mighty overhaul on my one. But one thing is for certain, Izzy and Josh are His lambs. He created them, He loves them, He knows them, and they need an earthly shepherd to point them toward the Heavenly one.

And so may I shepherd my children not under compulsion but voluntarily and with willingness, not for any selfish gain. I've been trying to embody these words--willing and eager. May I serve my kids, love them and pour truth into their little hearts with eagerness and willingness knowing that this is what Jesus instructed Peter to do, and this is what He has for me.

You see it isn’t so much about “this season”, it is about tending the sheep in front of me. It is about believing that Jesus will lead sheep to my pasture when they need tending, and that my job is to respond with willingness and eagerness to each and every one. May I rejoice in every lost sheep found, and may I delight in the tender calling of the Shepherd to tend His sheep.

"I'm ready to rock in the rocking chair"

Last night Josh woke with some sort of fear, maybe a nightmare, and as I walked into his room he said, "I'm ready to rock in the rocking chair." As I was rocking him, praying for him, comforting him, the verse I had been studying earlier that day came to mind. "Casting all your anxiety upon Him, for He cares for you." 1 Peter 5:7 And I started to cry. This calling out, "I'm ready to sit in the rocking chair" was Josh casting his anxiety upon me, so easily, so willingly. Not once did he hesitate and wonder if I would come, if I would care. His history with a loving mother drives him to trust that I will come to him, I will take his anxiety and worry, and I will be with him. This rocking in the chair, this patting and soothing and snuggling, this is because I care for him, so deeply, so intimately. This middle of the night rocking is 1 Peter 5:7 in motion, living and breathing. I'm so grateful for the parent/child relationship God gives us to better understand our own relationship with Him. What a gift to see His love for us tangibly lived out in smaller ways in our own hearts! What a joy to rock away Josh's anxiety and lay him peacefully back down in his crib because I care for him. What a motivation to cast my anxiety upon the One who cares for me. History has shown, He will come 💜