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Open Letter to Our Young Adult Sons and to Their Moms

April 21, 2016 admindeb 6 Comments

Photo Credit: Quotesgram

When we were first becoming serious, my husband Dave answered his aunt’s question about a girlfriend and that’s how his mom found out we were dating. He would have told her, but she didn’t ask…not because she wasn’t interested…but maybe because that is the pattern we develop as moms of adult sons…

This past weekend I had the great joy of being with a large gathering of extended family. My place in that gathering was the aunt who has lived far away all their lives (at least, the young adults, for sure). I am only in town a few days, and maybe, we get one visit. It’s Q & A with Aunt Debbie – catching up, fairly non-threatening (I’m hoping), and it’s only for a few minutes with each one…so minimal and limited discomfort.

As I checked in with each of these young adult nephews, their moms were in the background in conversations of their own. When the question I asked (usually related to work/future) drew a response of new information to their moms, a maternal radar flipped on, and in the middle of their own conversations, these precious moms zeroed in on their sons. “What? When did you decide that?” When this happened with more than one nephew, it led to a sort of fascinating “aha!” moment – “No, it’s not just your mom who does that. All us moms do that sort of thing. We are just interested in our sons’ lives.”

Days later, this dance between moms and our adult sons has stayed on my mind. I’m still figuring out the steps myself, but thanks to other moms wiser and more experienced, I have grown in this area. So…if I had your sweet face in front of me right now, cherished sons and devoted moms, this is what I would say to you:

Young men…you are a marvel. Especially to your moms.* We believe we know you better than you know yourself. Forgive us for that… it comes from loving you across every day of your life…including the days you weren’t even easy to like. The closeness we have felt to you over the years isn’t an easy thing to let go. Somehow we missed the cues as you grew up that you were actually learning what we taught you – to manage your life, to make strong relationships, to become independent, to go after your dreams. We spoke into those things as you grew…and now you’re grown. Forgive us when we nudge our way into your life…we don’t really want to control as much as we want to be a part. You’re doing fine…and even when you’re not, we know from our own experience, that helping you too much isn’t helping. You know that yourself, in your heart. It may be why you hold us at arm’s length…when we press in.

Just be gentle with us…your moms. We don’t really mean to be intrusive. We’re just trying to figure out the balance ourselves. What’s too much? What’s not enough? It keeps us up at night sometimes. Can you believe that? Yes…you probably can. Anyway, we will try not to ask so many questions, and we’ll try not to give unasked advice…but you know we’re going to fail at that. So call occasionally before we have to hunt you down… Be your familiar self at home with us sometimes (we miss that old normal). Share your successes with us, so our hopes can crowd out our fears. Your mama loves you…she just misses you sometimes…even if you’re still living at home. This next stage of your life…this newly grown-up stage is both exhilarating and strange for her…She will figure out her place in it…as you give her grace to do so. Stepping on toes is part of the learning, so thanks for your gentleness and your strong arm of support.Photo Credit: Good News Network

Moms of adult sons…I’m one of you. Doesn’t it feel like it’s always our fault…about something or other? Well, for a few minutes, let’s leave off blaming…ourselves, our sons, or anyone else in the equation. Right now, I wish we were having coffee around the same table and talking together about what we’ve discovered of this new life – this new relationship between our grown-up sons and us.Photo Credit: Saga

Here’s what I’m learning and what has been helpful counsel from others:

Give space and keep space. I don’t understand it, but it does seem like our sons need a bit of breathing room. There is so much change in their own lives, they need to process it themselves. If they choose not to do that with us, we must give them the space to do it with someone else (best friend, Dad, girlfriend/wife). Don’t pull away when that happens (which might be our temptation). Keep space in our lives for these sons of ours. Whether through a card, a text/quick phone call, an occasional invitation for dinner. If you’re like me, you long for those regular family dinners like we see on the TV show Blue Bloods…but a quick burger out can also be a joyful experience…if we let it be.Photo Credit: Huffington Post
Helping and enabling may look similar but are not. I will be brief here because there is tons online about this. Related to our adult sons, we can help them (as they can, us) without it being a toxic or enabling situation. Do we treat our sons more like neighbors and friends or more like those little boys they once were? We have to examine our own hearts on this one. When it comes to our adult sons, do we love them in ways that free them to love others? Do we invest in them such that they actually are able to get farther down the road in life or the investment tightens their dependence on us? Puzzle this out as I do the same.
Communicate in our adult sons’ heart language. This came as a shock to me as our sons grew up, because I thought we communicated fairly well through the years. Unfortunately, I discovered that while they were in our home, it was Mom who too often set the tone and topic of our conversations. Now I am learning (still a beginner here) to follow our sons’ leads on conversations… I may still choose a topic but I don’t push it to its limit with them, as once was the case. Hopefully, this makes sense, and hopefully they have seen me grow in this area. How about you, Moms? Would love to hear (in comments) what your experience is in this language/conversation arena.
Keep our sense of humor. As these sons of ours are growing up, we are growing older. They are not us…their choices and life aspirations may surprise us, but they are still works in progress. Our lives are, as well. We have not arrived. When our values or decisions clash, moms tend to either get mad or hurt…neither bode well in our relationships with our sons. We must learn how to take our emotions by the neck and wrestle them to the floor… proactively. Some song lyrics come to mind as I think about this – also these lyrics reflect the advice received from wise moms in my life. “Get over it“, “Let it go“, and tell yourself, “I will survive” and “Tell your heart to beat again.” [Sidebar: I don’t even like the song “Let It Go” from the Disney film Frozen, but it’s advice that I’ve frequently received from mom friends].

So…that’s all I have today. Anything you’re willing to add to the conversation? It’s still somewhat of a forest for me…picking my way through…with you.

And, you sons of ours- we love you. Not as well, maybe, as we had hoped…but if we all keep at it, we may find even our relationships will get sweeter as life goes on. I’m hoping, anyway. Believing.

Photo Credit: Quotesgram

*This open letter may only speak to some, so if this is not helpful or doesn’t address your situation, I don’t mean to offend or presume. Parenting and being parented can be immensely satisfying and, at the same time, greatly complicated. If I can encourage, that is my goal…having the answers has to come from someone wiser than me.

YouTube Video – I Will Survive – scene from the film The Replacements

Parenting Adult Children by Todd Carey

When Helping Hurts – Are You an Enabling Parent? by Allison Bottke

When Is It OK to Be a Helicopter Parent? by Susan Krauss Whitbourne

Relationships Between Mothers and Adult Sons by Susan Adcox

The 6 Things You Shouldn’t Say to Your Adult Child by Linda Bernstein

Photo Credit: Amazon.com

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Worship Wednesday – With Hope – Steven Curtis Chapman

April 13, 2016 admindeb 6 Comments

We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. – 1 Thessalonians 4:13

It’s been quite some time since I attended a funeral. Not that we haven’t lost dear friends in the last few years…but we lived far away at the time and just didn’t go. This time…when Heath died…we went.

Death is something no one wants to have to look on full-face. There’s no way really to polish it up. It is our final enemy. Our temptation is to remove ourselves as far from suffering and death as we can. When someone you love is on this path, then how can we do anything else but enter in…?

Heath lived 15 months or so with a devastating, killing cancer. That in itself was a miracle. When he died, a small loving family is left to figure out a new normal for their lives. They won’t be alone in this.

How thankful I am that God draws close to His children in the daily and in death. Heath’s wife and children will have what they need to face what comes next. God is faithful. God is good.

When a gifted, lovely 42-years-young man dies, leaving a wife and three little girls, can we say in this that God is good? If we cannot, then we never can. We cannot see what God sees, but we know from experience and from His Word that He will work good out of every situation in His children’s lives…every. single. situation.

Heath understood that, and he lived it. His family does as well.

You might not think that a funeral can be a joyous thing. I don’t cry easily. Maybe after so many of our own losses, maybe after years of cancer nursing…tears just don’t come at the usual times. During Heath’s funeral, I couldn’t stop them from rolling down. Out of love and out of loss…but also out of wonder at the beauty of God’s care and character.

With Hope is a song written by Steven Curtis Chapman in 2008 after the accidental death of his 5 y/o daughter, Maria. The tribute video for Heath at his funeral featured this song as the soundtrack and it was so right. Somehow, especially in times of loss, God weaves a deep hope into our faith. I saw it in Heath’s family…and I experienced it myself. God is good…always.

Worship with me.

This is not at all
How we thought it was supposed to be
We had so many plans for you
We has so many dreams
But now you’ve gone away
And left us with the memories of your smile
And nothing we can say
And nothing we can do
Can take away the pain
The pain of losing you

And we can cry with hope
We can say good-bye with hope
‘Cause we know our good-bye is not the end
And we can grieve with hope
‘Cause we believe with hope
There’s a place where we’ll see your face again
We’ll see your face again

And never have I known
Anything so hard to understand
And never have I questioned more
The wisdom of God’s plan
But through the cloud of tears
I see the Father smile and say ‘well done.’
And I imagine you
Where you wanted most to be
Seeing all your dreams come true
‘Cause now your home
And now your free

[Chorus]

We have this hope as an anchor
‘Cause we believe that everything
God promised us is true

[Chorus]

We wait with hope
And we ache with hope
We hold on with hope
We let go with hope*Photo Credit: Facebook

Postscript: Toward the end of Heath’s funeral, a solitary musician with guitar began to sing Come to Jesus. We, in that gathering, were all suspended in our thoughts of Heath, sad in our loss of him and full of joy that he was Home with the Lord. In the emotion of that moment, the singer, just into the first verse of that beautiful, soulful song, faltered. He willed his voice to continue but couldn’t. Even as his voice gave away, soft voices in the congregation took up where he left off. He strummed the guitar, and we sang…quietly, full of reverence at the meaning of all before us.

It is what we find in the truest experience of the Family of God and the grace of God. We all falter sometimes…we all fall. He lifts us up – either through the hands and voices of others, or by His own hand and word. He carries us. He helps us see beyond the pain and wretchedness of an unbelievable loss…to the glory of that life, of our lives, and His glory reflected in them.

Hallelujah!

*Lyrics to With Hope by Steven Curtis Chapman

Steven Curtis Chapman

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” – 1 Peter 1:3-9

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5 Friday Faves – Compassionate Baristas, a Foster Child, Joey Feek’s Legacy, a Daredevil Guitar Arrangement, and a John Piper Sermon Jam

April 1, 2016 admindeb Leave a comment

How is it that Friday arrives every week with lightening speed?! Okay, maybe not for everyone…but be glad about that. I am left wondering again: where did the week go? Fortunately it did not pass by without leaving me with some treasures I’ll share with you.

1) Compassionate Baristas – You may have seen the story this week of Dutch Bros. Coffee baristas Pierce Dunn and Evan Freeman. They discovered that a woman in the car line waiting for her order was crying [her husband had died the night before]. They quickly reached out to her, and in a moment of grace-filled spontaneity prayed for her at the window. Her coffee was on the house. Sweet story and video.Photo Credit: Daily Mail

2) A Foster Child – The circumstances that force children into foster care can be devastating and tragic. Nathaniel Matanick produced a magnificent short film, entitled “ReMoved“, about the journey of a foster child (through her eyes). I watched it on Facebook this week and was so moved by the story – the heart-break and the hope. You can watch it here. Also, I just discovered Matanick has finished “ReMoved – Part 2“.Photo Credit: Child Advocates

3) Joey Feek’s Legacy – When country singer Joey Feek died, she left behind her husband, Rory, and a darling 2 y/o daughter named Indy (Indiana). Indy has Down’s Syndrome…although the fact seemed irrelevant to their story. Last Fall, Joey realized she probably wouldn’t not survive the cancer and she quite deliberately began a self-less, loving process for Indy’s sake. This little girl who wanted to be with her all the time. This little girl who Joey loved more than anything. Joey began the painful process of intentionally becoming less in Indy’s life and opened up opportunity for Indy’s daddy, Rory, to become more to her. He writes magnificently about it in his blog. What a picture of great love! What a loss! What a legacy!Photo Credit: Today

4) A Daredevil Guitar Arrangement – Nathan Mills of Beyond the Guitar just posted a new guitar arrangement of the theme from the Netflix TV show Daredevil. It is beautiful.

5) John Piper Sermon Jam – 3 minutes of powerful preaching about the perfect love of God for us and the deep cost of that love. Don’t miss it.

Hope you have a weekend ahead full of friends, family, and fun (which could mean just a few hours all by yourself). For those of you who celebrate Eastern/Orthodox Easter this weekend, Happy Easter!

“He is risen! He is risen indeed!”

P.S. I know a few men who have a man cave and are still wise (and possibly even great), but I loved this graphic all the same.Photo Credit: Facebook

Would love to hear about your favorite finds of this week. In Comments. Thanks!

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Worship Wednesday – You Don’t Miss a Thing – Bethel Music – This One’s For You in That Hard Place

March 30, 2016 admindeb 2 Comments

Photo Credit: Bethel Music

“For in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, for we also are His children. – Acts 17:28

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I cannot attain to it. Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. – Psalm 139:7-8

This one’s for you, Dear Heart…when you can’t see your way out of this situation…or the way out is too painful to imagine than even where you are right now.

Amidst all the great joys and reveries of life, our lives are sometimes interrupted by seasons of hopelessness and confusion. Things don’t add up. We can’t ascribe meaning to what’s happening. Nor can we even prescribe some imprint of God on the matter. We are without words. We did not prepare ourselves for this. Even in our worship of and walk with God, it appears we have stayed in the shallows, unprepared for the deep of right now.

Take heart, Child (Husband, Son, Daughter, Friend). Who could have imagined this day, this season? God calls us to come to Him as children…He doesn’t mean for us to have it all figured out. He is not surprised by faith that falters. He is faithful still.

One of His greatest gifts to us is His Word. We find Him there. We also find the strength of His hand and the beauty of His love and truth for the journey…there. How fortunate we are that every generation has its psalmists – its song-writers who He has equipped to put words to our need and His supply.

Bethel Music is a collective of worship leaders who write songs for us to experience who God is and who we are in relationship to Him. Amanda Cook is part of this collective and brings to us today’s song: You Don’t Miss a Thing.

Photo Credit: Bethel Music

In an interview with Kevin Davis, Cook talks about this song:

“For me, I’ve always been stunned by the very thought of God. The thought of God makes me pause and wonder. If I wonder long enough, I wonder about His greatness and Him being God. It starts to transform my thinking about any situation and thought, or patterns that I am in. It prioritizes everything. With the imaginative language of picturing the slightest movements of God and being completely complete in Himself, full of love and kindness and never stepping outside of those attributes, the slightest movement by God or whisper of God’s voice creates an earth shattering reality for myself as a human being. I wanted to express that to Him, kind of like a personal psalm.”

She then talks about the Psalms and the language of the psalm-writers – all the descriptions of the mighty nature of God and how He moves in our world and in our lives. Nothing is beyond His notice and even His smallest touch is widely transforming. As we gain our senses about how gloriously big God is, we put what we’re facing into perspective…not that it is small. It may be huge for us…but He sees. He doesn’t miss a thing. We can stand in that – in the light of His love for us and His provision.

“This song is about placing myself as a human being before the Lord of Lords and being drawn into the reality that even though He’s so Majestic and Big, He’s Emmanuel, He’s with me and He doesn’t miss a thing. He’s so God, and yet He’s so present. That’s the mystery for me, living in the tension of that, throwing myself into that mystery and knowing that I am seen and known— to be discovered by Him and discover Him and spend the rest of my life pursuing that reality.” – Amanda Cook

This dark place…this hard time is not beyond the reach of God. He is near and He is sufficient for this moment, for your need. For healing. For hope. Because He is God, and He loves you.

Worship with me:

When You stand
I feel the floor of Heaven tremble
As You breathe
We live and have our being
When You speak
Oh I feel it in my chest
When You sing
All my fears are put to rest

What a wondrous thing
I can stand to sing
Cause when I fall to my knees,
You’re the One who pulls me up again

What a mystery
That You notice me
And in a crowd of ten thousand
You don’t miss a thing

When You sigh
The wind becomes a sonnet
When You laugh
The storm around me ceases
You whisper
And all my enemies are scattered
You surround me
With angels on assignment

There’s no place I can go that You’re love won’t find me
No place I can hide that You don’t see
No place I could fall and Your love couldn’t catch me
You see it all, You see it all
Through the eyes of love, oh whoa, oh oh

So come and see me, come and know me
Come and search my heart and make me like You, like You
I just want to be like You
Come and see me, come and know me
Come and search my heart, and make me new, make me new
I want it, just like You

Photo Credit: YouTube

YouTube Video – You Don’t Miss a Thing – Amanda Cook – We Will Not Be Shaken

You Don’t Miss a Thing by Bethel Music – Behind the Song with Kevin Davis – New Release Tuesday

8 Bible Verses About How Big God Is by Ryan Nelson

When Life Doesn’t Turn Out as You Expect: 10 Bible Verses that Remind Us of God’s Love and Care by Claire Musters

Through It All – It is Well With My Soul – with Kristene DiMarco & Bethel Music

YouTube Video – For Us – John Piper Sermon Jam

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60 Years Married – Mom & Dad – a Tribute & Photo Montage

March 29, 2016 admindeb 10 Comments

John & Julia – on their wedding day and their 50th anniversary

This week we celebrate Dave’s parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. 60 years! How thankful I am to have been part of their lives for a bit over 30 years thus far. Living in the embrace of their love for God, us and each other has been a journey of constancy and intentionality.

Julia and John have been another set of parents to me. My own mom raised us four children pretty much alone, finally leaving my biological father, without looking back. She later came close to God again and wondered if she’d stayed what might have happened. After a couple of visits, right after their divorce, that dad never came again…and we grew up knowing he didn’t love us.

[I’m very, very thankful for a step-dad, who I write about, who loved us as his own. So I do know the love of both a devoted mom and dad.]

With my own mom with the Lord, and my dad dealing with Alzheimer’s, I am grateful for all the years with my mom and the years still with Dad, wherever his mind will wander.

That being said, what a joy to also have Julia and John, my “in-loves” still together, hanging in there with each other and with us. Growing older is not an easy thing. All the vows we make in our weddings become all the more vital in the days when mind and body wear down. To see the kindnesses between these two, and their enduring love, patience, and regard for each other is such a witness to what marriage is meant to be…

They teach us and our children so much through how they have both celebrated and weathered life together – the weddings, the divorces of loved ones, the births, the deaths, the distances between us, and the seasons of all our lives. All the stamps in their passports to be with us overseas…so grateful for that. They have spent long days apart because of work in the early years, and long days together in a different work in the latter years. The interruptions of illnesses and accidents. The great grace they’ve known and lavished on us. Their faith in a God who never left them; never forsook them…ever.

Pictures will tell you more than my words…let them speak for me:

4 GenerationsJulia & John w/ her sister, Nancy & husband Bob – four close friends

The Mills Family, 2015

60 years…of faithfulness, and honoring, and loving through sweet times and hard times. So glad to be part of this journey with them…to be family with them.Happy 60th Anniversary, Dear Ones. You show us what love is and how it’s done across a lifetime.

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Worship Wednesday – You are I AM – with MercyMe

March 16, 2016 admindeb 2 Comments

Photo Credit: Michelangelo, Science Musings

God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” – Exodus 3:14

Jesus said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.” – Matthew 16:15-17

When we get right down to the most important questions of life, what are they? I can’t imagine any other more weighty questions to wrestle out than these two: Who is God and who am I…are we…in relation to Him?

God, the Creator and Redeemer of His creation, makes Himself known to us through 1) His Word; 2) His very creation (this beautiful natural world); 3) His people throughout history; 4) His Son (through his teaching, life, death, burial and resurrection); 5) the circumstances of our own lives; and 6) His Holy Spirit who draws us to the Father and empowers us, as only God can, to live life.

Photo Credit: Examiner

There comes a time in all our lives, really, when we must answer that question for ourselves. C. S. Lewis, a great British scholar and writer, was a studied critic of Christianity for many years. Then he came to the place of realizing that the God he detested was actually the very Person he could no longer contest. Lewis, in fact, was utterly surprised by joy as all his arguments finally crumbled in a heap at the astonishing conclusion of his that God is indeed God.

“A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere . . . God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.” – C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” – C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

I don’t mean to be offensive, except to say (not as well as C. S. Lewis) that responding to God’s calling me to Himself and walking with Him, however falteringly, have given inexhaustible meaning to my life. I look forward to an eternity of knowing more and more of God and being in the company of those who also responded to His call and claim on their lives…out of our own desperate need for a Savior.

The band MercyMe and friends wrote a song that speaks to our human condition and how we answer the questions of who God is. The lyrics were packed with the acts of God and our own struggle past our weakness and doubts to know Him. Praise Him, He makes Himself known to us. Hallelujah!

Worship with me.

I’ve been the one to shake with fear
And wonder if You’re even here

I’ve been the one to doubt Your love
I’ve told myself You’re not enough

I’ve been the one to try and say
I’ll overcome by my own strength

I’ve been the one to fall apart
And start to question who You are

You’re the one who conquers giants
You’re the one who calls out kings
You shut the mouths of lions
You tell the dead to breathe
You’re the one who walks through fire
You take the orphan’s hand
You are the one Messiah
You are I am

I’ve been the one held down in chains
Beneath the weight of all my shame

I’ve been the one to believe
That where I am You cannot reach

The veil is torn and now I live
With the spirit inside
The same one, the very same one
Who brought the son back to life

Hallelujah, He lives in me
Hallelujah, He lives in me
Hallelujah, He lives in me
Hallelujah, He lives in me

Lyrics to You Are I AM – Songwriters: Jason Ingram, Dan Muckala, Seth Mosley, Bart Millard, Nathan Cochran, Barry Graul, Jim Bryson, Mike Scheuchzer, Robby Shaffer

YouTube Video – Story Behind the Song You Are I Am by MercyMe

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Valentine’s Day – Hit-or-Miss Holiday Or One Pointing to a Larger Love

February 14, 2016 admindeb 3 Comments

Valentine’s Day – what a holiday loaded with expectations! As with other special days of the year, the marketing for Valentine’s Day drives us to do something – something different (?) than we might do any other day of the year. That same marketing drains our hearts of joy if we miss the mark of those expectations…either as recipient or deliverer of the goods. Silly holiday.

The pressure to express our love with gifts/experiences on Valentine’s Day is enormous. “How do I love thee? Let me count the dollars.” heads one fascinating infographic on how we spend Valentine’s Day. Americans on average will spend $100 and up on Valentine’s Day – “and up” more likely.

I actually like all the hearts and sweetnesses of Valentine’s Day, but the thought of spreading that love every day is much more appealing.

Dr. Gary Chapman, author of The Five Love Languages, describes five ways we experience love. He wrote several love language books, each focused on a different group – children, teens, singles, men, and women. His books aren’t the Gospel on the topic, BUT they are immensely helpful. How we experience being loved is often weighted toward one or two of the following: acts of service, gifts, physical touch, time, and/or words of affirmation. Both my husband and I share the preferences of love received through words of affirmation and acts of service. Getting older, having time with those I love is also a huge gift of love, knowing how busy and pulled we all are in this life.

Still the oldest, most enduring, and deepest experience of love we can have…and you know where I’m going…is the love of God. Valentine's Day - God's Love - Crosstrain - Blog Photo Credit: Not Consumed

We need look no farther than that. I was single more years than I’ve been married…what we need to fill our hearts goes beyond human relationships, as good as they may be sometimes (whether friend or family). In all the years of my life, after hearing of God’s love and then embracing it, He has never failed me. His love never fails (Lamentations 3:22-23).

In fact, we don’t need to look as much for His hand as His face. God loves, exquisitely, because God is love (1 John 4:8). The very definition.

I bring nothing new to the table on this subject. My longing is to be a good steward of His love to those He places in my path. There is so much brokenness in the world – so much heartache. If mending would come through flowers, chocolates and a candlelit meal, how lovely would that be. Mending our hearts comes through a cross and a love that meets us in our loneliest places. By His grace in our lives, that’s the love we can extend…that love. Photo Credit: Counting My Blessings

What Science Gets Right and Wrong About Love – Think Christian

12 Quotes to Remind You of God’s Amazing Love by Deb Wolf

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Love Notes – A Family Tradition – Started by Our Mom

February 11, 2016 admindeb 10 Comments

From the Archives

[On the eve of what would have been my Mom’s 89th birthday, I want to look back a bit to one of the sweetest customs she had – leaving love notes hidden to encourage us in her absence. She still encourages us…even in her absence. Love you, Mom.]

Therefore encourage one another and build up one another, just as you also are doing. – 1 Thessalonians 5:11

Encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. – Hebrews 3:13

Our family has never lived close to the grandparents. This was never easy…for any of us. Before I married, I did live close to home, and my mom was my best friend. She died several years ago, and I often say to people who knew her that “when I grow up, I want to be just like her.” Still working on that.

Mom and I shared a weakness for words…they are probably excessively important to us, delivering both positive and (sometimes) negative weight. She was an amazing encourager. She rarely missed an opportunity to lift another’s spirit or to speak loving truth to someone desperate for God’s touch.

When I moved away to take a teaching job, she and my dad helped me move. New Haven, Connecticut was a 2-day drive from Georgia. It’s the farthest I had ever wandered from home. She stayed a week to help me settle in. While there, she was such great company. We explored the city together and laughed over a new culture and cried at the missing that was ahead for us.

She filled my freezer with her baking, and, while I was at work, she wrote notes. Then she hid them everywhere. After she flew home, I began finding them. In my coffee mug. Under my pillow. In the pocket of my coat. Among my reference books. Behind my music on the piano. She was with me in the love notes she left, and it made the distance between us…less.

My mom and I also had a weakness for bits of paper. I kept every one of her notes. These from that move over 30 years ago are fading…red ink on pink paper. There are a lifetime of notes between my mom and me. The tradition she started on that first move has become a life-long tradition for our family. Our visits back and forth, across the US and then the globe, have been papered by these little notes.

Our children, from the time they could write, entered into this tradition much to the joy of their grandparents. Before we would leave again, these three young ones would write of their affection for their grandparents and hide them all over their houses. I delighted in their cooperation in this conspiracy of love.

Mom always wrote notes…not just to us but to so many. She and her Sunday School Class ladies would send cards every week to the sick ones or the sad ones. She had a special burden for the elderly, for widows (including functional widows, deserted by husbands) and for fatherless children (again including those “orphaned” by still-living fathers). She inspired me by her humble ambition .

Pure and undefiled religion before our God and Father is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world. – James 1:27

I am so thankful for my mom’s bits of paper…for her love…and for her perseverance in encouraging and serving others. Her generation is aging, and it is for us to pick up these traditions and pass them on somehow to the next generations…Maybe there won’t be bits of paper or love notes like in the past. I do hope we still take the time to write. Definitely, the call to serve and to encourage is as current as today. My life continues to be rich with those, young and old, who reach out to those around them with words of affirmation and kindness. Written or not, they are love notes to my heart.

Thanks, Mom. Thank God for you.

The 59 “One Anothers” of the New Testament

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Worship Wednesday – An Incidental Finding Opens a Deeper Experience of God

February 10, 2016 admindeb 6 Comments

Photo Credit: Telegraph UK

Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge. I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.…The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; You hold my lot.” The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance. I bless the Lord who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me. I have set the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken. – Psalm 16:1-2, 5-8

An incidental finding. You are referred to a specialist for something that concerns your family doctor. While you find out that the new problem is nothing for concern, in the testing the specialist finds something else that demands further testing. Then you go deeper and longer into the medical processes that eventually provide a diagnosis.

Photo Credit: en.Wikipedia

All through this waiting and wondering, you process much of it alone. It could be benign so why trouble those who love you. Still, the weeks turn into months working through to a diagnosis, and you want those prayers and the closeness that comes in times of struggle. So you decide to tell a few what’s going on. Along with this guarded sharing with some close to you, a deep and sure awareness develops – you were never alone, after all.

I am always amazed how when you need Him the most, God appears in those moments – so real it is as if you can touch Him, feel His breath, lean into His consummately strong shoulder.

Just this past Sunday at church, every single song chosen by our worship leader was meant for me. To know the nearness of God in a stretching season – hearing His voice in these songs: On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand, Lead Me to the Cross, Oceans, To the Ends of the Earth. What a comfort and joy!

This time, I am the one with the incidental finding. Even in the scary bits of the day, God has been so kind in pointing me to Himself and away from any future unknown. Besides, He is there in that future unknown. He carries me now; He will carry me then.

Just last night, a dear friend reminded me to stay on this side of the bridge, because that is where I am. Crossing the bridge is still ahead, after more medical testing. So much good comes through those who love us.Photo Credit: Memorial Health System

Starting on my way to one more doctor this week, as I turned the ignition, the radio came on as well, right in the middle of the most fitting song. Casting Crowns’ Just Be Held. I’ve written about it before here. Reminded again that God is right here with us…in every circumstance of life.

Worship with me, as we celebrate in the midst of a hard place, that God is near to His children. In these moments, “Just Be Held“.

Hold it all together
Everybody needs you strong
But life hits you out of nowhere
And barely leaves you holding on

And when you’re tired of fighting
Chained by your control
There’s freedom in surrender
Lay it down and let it go

So when you’re on your knees and answers seem so far away
You’re not alone, stop holding on and just be held
Your world’s not falling apart, it’s falling into place
I’m on the throne, stop holding on and just be held
Just be held, just be held

If your eyes are on the storm
You’ll wonder if I love you still
But if your eyes are on the cross
You’ll know I always have and I always will

And not a tear is wasted
In time, you’ll understand
I’m painting beauty with the ashes
Your life is in My hands

Lift your hands, lift your eyes
In the storm is where you’ll find Me
And where you are, I’ll hold your heart
I’ll hold your heart
Come to Me, find your rest
In the arms of the God who won’t let go.*

*Lyrics & Story Behind the Song Just Be Held

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Birthday Week – 2016 – Making Memories and Treasuring Them – and the Winter Storm Jonas

January 24, 2016 admindeb 4 Comments

My dad and I share a birthday week each year. His birthday comes the day before mine. After all, I tell him, he will always be older than me. That joke doesn’t register anymore for him, because he doesn’t remember now that it was funny to us…before. Before Alzheimer’s.

For most of my years, even with living either overseas or out of state, we’ve celebrated our birthdays together. This year we traveled to Georgia for his birthday but would travel back home on mine. That was one of the many differences of this birthday week.

When I captured this image (above) as he talked to one of his grandchildren on the phone, it reminded me of an older picture of him, from many years ago.Dad was often on the phone, answering calls from people who needed his handiness for one reason or another. He was always happy to serve others and he was quite good at it. I wonder, as his strength and memory have faltered in the last couple of years, if he misses those days. So many phone calls…so much purpose in his life. It’s different now, for Dad. He often doesn’t remember even who called a few minutes earlier. For us, though, his life still has purpose.

We have this season to show him love like he showed us for so many years. We are grateful for him…and for what we’ve learned from him. For the joy of just knowing him…and being in his life.

Every time I visit, we go through his picture books to help him remember. We also make new memories together. I’m not sure how many he remembers, but I believe that he remembers that we love him.Photo: Dad & his pastor, David Lyle, who visits him regularly.

Dad and I didn’t have my birthday together this year. Dave and I needed to get back home. This would be the start of a very different birthday for me. My computer crashed while we were away, so I wasn’t able to write for days. Then winter storm Jonas would wreak beautiful havoc on our city over the weekend. Family dinner with our kids was cancelled, as was the game night with friends I was looking forward to. No date night with Dave.

The pity party for one was just getting started…and then I came back to my senses.

Before the massive snowfall, on the evening we arrived back home from Georgia, we had our regular weekly gathering of our community group from church. It was all the more special this week because they surprised me by remembering the day – being with these sweet friends lifted my heart so much.

No matter how old we get, we have certain expectations about birthdays. Some may not like to be celebrated…and I’m not much for being the center of attention myself. Still, to be remembered by friends and family with gifts of words, kindnesses, time…it is really quite extraordinary…and it encourages me to want to be more like those friends and those family members.

Thank you for making this birthday, overshadowed by much travel and an enormous snow storm, one that I will treasure. It taught me the lesson all over again to take nothing for granted and all things as gifts from a loving God who lavishes good on us through all sorts of people and experiences.

Winter storm Jonas shut down the rest of this birthday week. So beautiful and at the same time paralyzing.

I was reminded of a devotional from Streams in the Desert:

“There is no music in a rest, but there is the making of music in it.” In our whole life-melody the music is broken off here and there by “rests,” and we foolishly think we have come to the end of the tune. God sends a time of forced leisure, sickness, disappointed plans, frustrated efforts, and makes a sudden pause in the choral hymn of our lives; and we lament that our voices must be silent, and our part missing in the music which ever goes up to the ear of the Creator. How does the musician read the “rest”? See him beat the time with unvarying count, and catch up the next note true and steady, as if no breaking place had come between.

Not without design does God write the music of our lives…If we sadly say to ourselves, “There is no music in a ‘rest,’” let us not forget “there is the making of music in it.” The making of music is often a slow and painful process in this life. How patiently God works to teach us! How long He waits for us to learn the lesson!” —Ruskin

This lament of a “forced rest” may seem strange to those of you who love to sled or play otherwise in the snow… I love the snow also. My heart struggle came with the snow. It kept me from being with others whom I wanted to be with and had all sorts of expectations in that wishing…because it was my birthday. Right? Sigh….

The snowstorm affected us all differently. For me, it was that forced rest…a time to consider God’s goodness, in the quiet reflections of a snowy winter weekend. A time to reflect and a time to repent…of expectations misspent.

I am so blessed…so blessed. Thinking of my dad, at the winding down of his life…dealing with memory lost, with strength waning…and yet he takes joy in the smallest of graces. That is a prescription for contentment for all of us.Photo Credit: Facebook.com

We share a birthday week…and my dad, and this storm Jonas, reminded me of all the good woven into every situation of life…if we quiet our minds and look for it…it can be found.

[Dave’s card to me…on this very different and blessed birthday.]

As the sun sets on the winter storm Jonas, what did you take away from these days of a different sort? I would love to hear about it…