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Being the Church

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A few days ago, we drove east, until the modest, stubby mesquite trees of west Texas gave way to the majestic, fragrant pines that hide the horizon and cover the eastern part of the state with lush greenery. We were home. Well, one of our homes. It was the first church that took a chance on a starving artist, turned attorney, turned pastor. This is where we remembered that life is fun, where our sweet church taught us what it looks like to be selfless, to be generous, to be patient. These people took us in and loved us well when we moved here ten years ago. And now, five years removed from these precious friends, we drove there again this past week to honor the life of a dear church member who had encouraged us many times through the years.

In the funeral home’s hallway, I rounded the corner to find a chapel filled with dear old friends, people we adore and miss terribly. I listened as one of Sawyer’s preschool teachers told me how attentive he was as a toddler, how he would intently listen as she taught and then he would open his baby mouth and ask deep questions. We talked about how he has such a tender heart toward the Lord, and I got the rare opportunity to hug her and thank her for the years she invested in him, for the ways that she helped to nurture a sensitivity to the Spirit that I see in him today.

I watched as friend after friend approached our children, exclaiming about how much they have grown. I reminisced with an 86 year old who had made sure, six years ago, that she was the very first person to come to our house to hold Emerald after she was born. One of our favorites, a tall, white-haired friend who used to keep Chad company in the front seat of the church bus while he drove all over the countryside, walked into the room, and we heard about some of the many sorrows that he has endured in the time since we’ve been away.  Still, he smiled, he hugged us, and he commented on the kids’ freckles. He has always loved freckles.

And then, as the service ended and it was time for us to say goodbye to our dear ones all over again, I walked out of the chapel arm in arm with a sweet friend who used to invite us to her home where she and her husband showed us old pictures and their beautiful glassware and made us fried catfish just for fun. One night we sat with them, just sat with them and ate hamburgers when their son passed away. We just wanted to be close to them. We sat and ate hamburgers and reminded each other that God is good. As we walked out of the funeral home, she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, “You didn’t know it, but you saved our lives that night.”

Tears sprang to my eyes. It was such a precious reminder that, in the church, God has gifted us with the sweetest opportunity to experience all the joys and sorrows of life with each other. To sit together and eat hamburgers when every word you think of saying seems wrong. To sit together in solidarity, knowing that even tragedy can’t break our faith, that no unexpected heartache can loosen God’s grip on us. To sit together, remembering that Christ is enough. He is always enough.

I know we have many more moments like this ahead of us. Times when we will just hunker down with loved ones right in the middle of a hurricane of heartache. And there will be times when dear friends will do the same for us. This is the church. This is one of the many reasons that we need each other. And, I am so thankful that I got to go “home” this week so that I could be reminded that we are called to give all of ourselves to each other.

As we made our way back west, the sky opened up again. The gorgeous pinks and oranges of the sunset cast a funny hue on the wide horizon. I smiled as I watched our beloved hometown come into view. This is where we belong. This is where we are called to give ourselves away. This is where the rich, beautiful blessings of the church continue to pour out on our little family. I’m thankful.

41 Years Old

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Tomorrow I will officially turn 41 years old. I recently heard another blogger talking about how when she turned 41 she decided she was going to do all the things that she wanted to do but had always been too afraid for. She woke up at 41 and completely changed her life. Then she wrote her book and she got on all the talk shows. It’s been fun to watch it all unfold, spying on her life from a distance, seeing a whole bunch of her dreams come true.

Tomorrow I will wake up early and meet a swarm of sweet kids at the church parking lot to head to camp. I’ll get on stage and jump around and sing and I’ll dance in my awkward way, and the day will be long and Texas summer hot and oddly fun. I’m not expecting any revelations when I wake up as a 41-year-old. Here I am, with a blog that has lulled through the summer and a book that is still unwritten, dishes waiting patiently in my sink, three kids who are trying to deny the fact that school will soon be starting. Here I sit, still not reading my Bible enough, still praying too little, still fearing too much, still letting the same old sins creep up on me while I get distracted by all the things that don’t matter.

But, God never quits being patient with me. He is patient like the dishes in my sink. Like the laundry in my baskets. He is patient like that book that is still in my brain. Only with his unending patience comes compassion, understanding, and great love. He has shown me again and again through these decades marked by my imperfection that his grace never stops covering me. He is good. And his goodness keeps binding my wandering heart to my Savior.

There are so many ways I wish I were different. But, one thing I know for sure: Jesus never quits. He never stops saving me from myself. He never throws up his hands in despair and walks away. Blogs and books and even families fade and pass away, but His grip on me is sure.

So, I guess instead of deciding that year 41 will be the year that I finally do all those things that need doing, I will pray that this will be a year of remembering instead that nothing in this wide and wonderful world matters more than the love of Christ. The fact that he would stoop to love me is a miracle that I hope I never get over. Let all that I do in year 41 be for you alone, Lord. You deserve all the glory forever.

Every Testimony is Dramatic and Miraculous

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My Christian testimony is what many would call vanilla. I came to know Christ when I was eight years old. My family was something straight out of a 1950s sitcom–hardworking father, loving stay-at-home mother, two kids and a dog. We were deeply involved in the church that my parents grew up in, and I don’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t love Jesus or didn’t want to live according to His word.

It’s true that when junior high school hit I didn’t always make the best decisions. I tried out some different personas for short periods of time. But, for the most part, God has kept me on an extremely short leash. Anything I tried was immediately found out and punished. I felt humiliated by my sin, and was known during my growing up years as a “good girl.”

I went to college and didn’t experience any kind of trauma or drunken mistakes or shocking revelations. By God’s grace I made sweet Christian friends and we lived for the Lord as well as we knew how at the time. I married Chad, and he has helped lead me closer to Christ as the years have gone on.

I have no dramatic background story or miraculous turnaround to speak of. I don’t have one of those testimonies that make people say to one another, “You have GOT to hear what God has done in her life.” No, my story is simple and may not seem all that profound or even interesting at first glance.

But, the truth is that every single Christian testimony is dramatic and miraculous.

I may not remember a time when I didn’t love Jesus, but it is there in my history–a period when I was 100% dead in my sins, as dead as Lazarus in the grave. And then the Lord called out to me, and I heard His voice. How much more dramatic and miraculous can a story get? I was once dead, and now I am alive! I was bound for hell, and Jesus snatched me out of the clutches of eternal torment. May we never be guilty of seeing that kind of saving grace as ordinary or humdrum. It is the very power and love and goodness of God on display in a dramatic way, even when we forget it and we start to feel inferior to all of those with the fascinating and drama-filled testimonies.

God has worked a stunning miracle in my life. I don’t know why He has protected me from so many heartaches, but I’m grateful. If you also have an undramatic testimony, know this: there is nothing basic or boring about the life-transforming power of our Lord Jesus Christ. The angels throw a party every time someone comes to Christ, and the parties aren’t less enthusiastic for the freckle-faced eight year olds. Salvation is never small. It is big and dramatic and miraculous, every single time.

Let’s never forget what Jesus has done.

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.

Ephesians 2:1-5

What He Holds

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When I was a kid, Vacation Bible School was the highlight of my summer. I still remember how the slightly watered-down KoolAid tasted when it washed down exactly two sandwich cookies from the local grocery store, each lovingly placed on a white napkin and eagerly gobbled up by children who were that special brand of midsummer morning starved.

I remember how much I looked forward to painting the red bricks on the outside of the church with water, the brilliant notion of some long ago Bible School director. The buckets and paint brushes and cool, cool water were a big part of my summertime dreams as a child.

This past week, in the grand tradition of many, many summers long past, our church was filled to the brim with excited children. When you are a grown-up,VBS is all at once the most fun thing you do all summer and also the most exhausting. In the famous words of then four year old Sawyer one final day of Vacation Bible School, when I am done with VBS, “my hair is tired.” I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a more perfect description of how one feels on that last day of a long week of over-the-top enthusiasm and  Holy Spirit-inspired patience. Maybe it’s the consecutive days of restraint that is really what so completely wears out a VBS worker.

This was Adelade’s first year to be a VBS volunteer. She effectively graduated from Vacation Bible School last year, after years of loving every second of it. It was sad for me, thinking about how quickly the time goes, about how she had passed a milestone that we could never really return to–the days when she would wake up with the sun, smiling before her eyes were even open, ecstatic in the first seconds of consciousness because she knew it was a VBS day.

This year I watched as her long and lean frame took the stage, helping lead the children as they sang and learned the motions to the fun music. For the most part I didn’t think much about it. Her enthusiasm was still off the charts. Her smile never waned. She was having great fun. But then in one, tiny mama moment, I stood at the back of the sanctuary, watching one of the more mischeivous boys from my class walk, no, run, no, tumble to the bathroom, and I was mesmerized by my first-born daughter, standing there at the front of the room. It was only a few seconds before the spell was broken by the tumbleweed of a boy who was barrelling toward the restroom. But, in those seconds I felt like I was seeing the beginnings of who Adelade really is and who she is to be.

The next day I sat with my rowdy little class and watched them listen intently while she taught them about the hope we have in Christ. She was so sincere, so true and sure as she spoke of the love of Jesus, and I found renewed hope in my Savior just by watching what He is doing in my dear little girl.

Thirteen years old. Vacation Bible looks different now. It looks like a lanky teenager and braces and teacher break room privileges for my own little Adelade. And as her faith and understanding grows, I’m learning that a merciful by-product is the growth of my own faith and understanding, just watching in awe while Jesus forms her into a girl after his own heart.

This week she managed to meet David Platt. When she spotted him in the hallway of a huge convention center, she gasped. She literally gasped. The president of the International Mission Board was standing right in front of her. So, she smiled up at him with that silver-bracketed precious grin that turns up at the corners. They talked about seventh grade and Secret Church, and she walked away encouraged.

And tonight she came through the door with red eyes, tears still flowing as she tried to explain things that words don’t quite have the capacity to express. She had prayed over young missionaries at their commissioning service, and all the while God was speaking to her own heart. The same David Platt who had been so kind to her yesterday was now on a big platform, speaking about calling and mission and the way that the Holy Spirit will sometimes grab you so tightly that you run out of vocabulary to describe what it feels like.

And in all of this she grows. She changes in ways that I never could have predicted back on those simple summer mornings when she awoke with a grin and a VBS song in her heart. And I change, too. I learn how much more she belongs to Christ than to me. I learn to bind my wandering heart to a Savior who calls little girls and makes them courageous Christ-followers. I learn to loosen my grip on my teary-eyed, God-gripped daughter, remembering once again that God’s hand is sufficient.  I will trust His hold on us. He is good, and He is working here.

The Long Drive Home

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She was the kind of girl who always said the wrong thing. She tried to claw her way into the popular crowd, in her de-clawed, shy kitten sort of way. It was high school in the early nineties, and we were all just doing the best we could with the very little that we knew about being teenagers. It felt like none of us really had a clue as to what kind of reaction we would get when we opened our mouths to speak, and we continually tested out all of the different ways to be, a petri dish of social experimentation in small town America.

I was no different. Predictably labeled the “goody two-shoes” of the school, I don’t remember being particularly kind or thoughtful. She was new to our school, and when the popular crowd rejected her she turned to me, and I invited her to come to some sort of youth group event with my church. I don’t remember where we went or what else happened that night, but I remember feeling like I was being mean to her. Somehow she was just such an easy target. She kept saying things that were ridiculous. I kept setting her straight. In the back of a dark church van I, the oldest leader of the youth group, sat with a crowd gathered round me while I ungraciously showed everyone all of the ways that a Christian shouldn’t be.

And then, somewhere along the way, on a long Texas road, her expression changed, and she asked me in all sincerity how to become a Christian. Imagine how my heart stopped for a moment while I realized that after my poor treatment of this girl all night long, I was the last person who should be trying to share the gospel with her. I had misrepresented Christ and refused to see this girl through spiritual eyes, and so I stumbled through a weak explanation of how Jesus changes us. I sat there in front of her, changed, knowing that I had acted all night like I never met Jesus before in my life.

And I was crushed.

I was a high schooler. I had so much to learn about Christianity. And even though I don’t remember much about my high school years, this was one of those rare moments when God was dealing with me so closely and so clearly that it cut me all the way to my immature little soul. I loved Him so. Yet, I was only beginning the sometimes painful process of being refined and sanctified by my gracious God. And in His goodness He has never let me forget the way I felt that night in a church van, as the passing interstate lights played across the face of a girl who was turning to me, of all people, for gospel truth.

I hope I have grown since then. But, I often find myself wondering if the woman from the insurance company who has put me on hold (again) could turn to me for the gospel. Am I treating her in a way that wouldn’t make me blush with shame if she asked me about my Jesus? When the fast food restaurant gets half of the order wrong and I am already running late, am I reacting in a way that would make me feel good about proclaiming that I am a child of God? After all of these long years of being molded and changed and taught by the Holy Spirit, I still have a hard time seeing those around me through spiritual eyes. I still fail to remember that they are souls, not just representatives of a company. Not just school teachers. Not just mamas or mechanics or police officers. Not just kids on the playground who aren’t treating one of my babies right. Not just awkward high school girls who always seem to say the wrong thing. Souls, one and all.

Paul said that we need to preach the word, being prepared in season and out of season. Part of that preparation is simply seeing the people around us. Really seeing them as needy sinners like ourselves. How else can we “reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching”? The simple answer is that we can’t. Not effectively. Not if we are seeing people as nothing more than characters to be dealt with. But if we open our eyes to the spiritual needs around us, it will change the way we treat everyone that we come into contact with. And then we will really be prepared to talk about the gospel at any time.

I don’t know what happened to the girl from the back of the van that night so many years ago. I pray that Jesus rescued her. I’m thankful I can see her face in my mind today, a reminder of how much I still have to learn, twenty-something years later. I’m not ashamed of the gospel, but will I be ashamed of myself when a gospel moment arises?

Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage–with great patience and careful instruction. 2 Timothy 4:2

Truly Safe

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On Sunday we ate breakfast together, a family of faith chatting in the fellowship hall, eating donuts and breakfast tacos. We hugged. We laughed. We talked about the week that had passed and the one that was beginning. When our bellies were full we moved to rooms all over the church; Sunday school rooms that have heard the gospel proclaimed again and again through the decades. Emerald was in the basement, newly painted with cheerful art on the walls. It’s where several women from our church hid from a devastating tornado that hit our small town in 1951. They stayed there and were safe, sheltered by this building that has stood like a beacon on Main Street since 1916.

Chad and I walked upstairs with our friends to sit in a circle of chairs, looking each other fully in the face while we turned to scripture and heard the words of Christ. Chad taught from John chapter 21. Impulsive Peter had just jumped out of the boat to swim to his Savior because he couldn’t wait for the rowing and the docking and the rigmarole. There he stood, dripping next to the fire where Jesus was cooking breakfast, and he heard from the Lord’s mouth a hard truth: …when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go. Peter understood what these words meant-he would glorify Christ with a martyr’s death.

Follow me. A simple directive from the Lord of Lords.

Follow me anyway. No matter what. We sat there in our nice clothes in our comfortable classroom, and we bowed heads together and tried to imagine what it could mean to follow Jesus no matter what. We stood up and men slapped each other on the back and women hugged and winked and walked downstairs to gather our children to us.

In the sanctuary I sat in my usual place on the front row with a long line of kids beside me. The future of our church. They sit together and sing together and draw together and learn the ancient words of scripture together.

We settled in and Chad began preaching. I looked down the row to all of the sweet faces, kids who are so loved and cherished by this family of believers. I wondered what their futures would look like. What is it going to be like for them, answering Christ’s simple, glorious, difficult call: Follow me.

I heard a noise coming from the hallway. A fussy baby with his frazzled mama, maybe. But, as my mind sometimes does, I imagined something much more sinister. I considered what I would do to protect these precious little ones if someone busted through the door of the church in this moment. I realized I would only be able to shield Sawyer and his friend, the two children closest to me. I banished the thought quickly with a whispered prayer and refocused my attention on the words of life pouring out of my husband as he preached the gospel.

Less than an hour later as I prepared lunch for my little family, I read about the terrors of the church shooting in Sutherland Springs. I was shocked to imagine that at the very moment I was wondering about the noise in the hallway during worship, an unthinkable horror was happening just down the road in that little Texas church.

Sanctuary. A place of refuge and safety.

As Peter stood there with Jesus, taking in the somber truth that He had just heard, he turned to see John closeby. He pointed to him, his friend, the disciple whom Jesus loved, and asked, What about him? And Jesus answered in the way that only God in the flesh can: If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.

I pictured a little group of ladies a half a century ago, huddled together in the basement of our church, listening to the train-like roar of an F4 tornado, sheltering one another from the broken glass. Within these walls, we are safe, they must have told each other as the storm raged overhead. How they must have prayed. How they must have wondered if the whole place would come tumbling down on top of them in that moment. God held up the building, and the women walked out into an alien landscape, where many of their neighbors didn’t fare so well.

The truth is that there is no way of knowing where the storm will devastate and where it will blow on by.

Chances are good that when mothers and fathers and grandparents and children met at First Baptist Sutherland Springs on Sunday, they hugged. They laughed. Men slapped each other on the back and women winked and gathered children close. They probably didn’t say so, but they all felt it was true: Outside of this place the world is crazy. We come into the sanctuary and take a deep breath. Within these walls, we are safe. They had no way of knowing that a storm was coming.

Following Jesus is a different kind of safe.

It is safety that cannot be stripped away by any weapon or any disaster. It is a safety that gives us freedom to follow Jesus, really follow Him, no matter what, because we know that He holds us in His hand. It is a safety that doesn’t mind if we ask why because the answer is always the same: He knows. It is a safety that keeps us fearlessly relying on His plans and His ways and His goodness. It is a safety that will bring us back to our churches, back to our family of faith, back to our way of living and dying well.

It is a safety that led Peter to keep going, to keep preaching, to keep following Jesus right to that martyr’s death that Jesus talked about. And, as Peter’s body died, never at any time was he unsafe.

Nor were any of our brothers and sisters in Sutherland Springs, Texas, on Sunday morning.

Jesus holds us tight through every storm.

I pray that the little ones on the front row beside me will understand that following Jesus isn’t the brave thing to do. It isn’t just for the courageous or the brilliant or the wise. Following Jesus is the safest thing. He is that good. His ways are that tender. No one and nothing can ever snatch us out of His powerful hand.

No matter what.

The God of the Hurricane

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They found her today, drifting there in the middle of the chaos of flood and hurricane, clinging to her mother’s lifeless body. She is only three. She has probably learned all kinds of words and phrases and ideas in the past year of her life. I remember when Emerald was three, and she handed me her cup. Here ya go, precious lady! she said, and I giggled and watched her big blue eyes and promised myself I would never forget it–such a grown up thing to come out of that tiny, heart-shaped three year old mouth.

I wonder where the little girl in the flood will find the vocabulary to express what she has been through today. I wonder where she will find the heart to survive the tragedy of watching her only mama, that precious lady, drown before her eyes. Her mother was trying to save her. And she did. The dear little girl was rescued from the swirling, teeming water by nameless men–heroes who keep going back into the turmoil of a world washed away by Hurricane Harvey.

So many stories are emerging from the wreckage of south Texas. But, this is the one that wrecks me. One tiny girl, clinging to the body that brought her into this world, holding tight to the mama who gave of herself in every possible way. Plucked from the choppy water. Kept by God. Sheltered by her sweet mother and a multitude of angels.

I’ve read of another mother who sheltered her baby in the water. She made a basket of reeds and placed her chubby son inside, shoving him out into the unknown, just grasping at the chance to save his life. He, too, was kept by God and guarded by angels until he was plucked from the treacherous waters of the Nile river.

Maybe one day someone will tell the little rescued Texan about baby Moses. Maybe eventually, when she begins to wrestle with the truth that God’s ways are higher than ours, when she wonders with heartbreak what hurricanes have to do with the glory of God, when she looks toward Heaven and cries out to her maker, Why?–maybe the church will be there with answers from God’s word. Maybe she will find a local body of believers who will take her in, who will nurture her with the good and true words of the Bible. Maybe she will find comfort in the greatness of a God who always has a plan, who wastes no storm, no heartache, no tragedy.

We need churches who will be there for her and for millions like her. Churches who refuse to bow at the altars that this world erects. Churches who unapologetically proclaim that God is sovereign and He is trustworthy–yes, even here, in rushing flood waters in Beaumont, Texas, in August of 2017. He is good, even here, in the death of one heroic mother and in the life of her cherished three year old daughter. He is powerful, even here, when the why is easy to ask and hard to answer. One thing we know for sure: He is righteous.

The God who directs the wind and the waves does what He will.  But, we must never forget, when we look at this sweet three year old miracle, that the God of the hurricane is also the God of the rescue. His ways are high. His purposes are good. And, His church should always be a light on a hill for those who wonder why. I pray that my church will be that. I pray that yours will, too. And, I pray that this sweet baby will one day run into the arms of a church that will teach her the truth that God had a good purpose in all of it.

The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the
winds and the waves obey him!” Matthew 8:27

The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and He knows those who take refuge in Him.
Nahum 1:7

Sex Should be Spiritual

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God designed sex within marriage to be a sacred, pleasurable, and spiritual act. We don’t often stop and think about how amazing it really is that God invented sex and gave it such potential to build a physical and spiritual union between two people in the safety and devotion of a Christian marriage. Sex is an amazing gift, a chance to be bonded in body, mind and spirit. One flesh. Yet everywhere I turn Christian people seem to be struggling with sex.

It seems that we have taken what should be a true blessing in our marriages and have turned it into a chore. Women are constantly joking about trying to get out of having sex with their husbands. Husbands are constantly joking about how they don’t get enough sex. And, somewhere in the middle of all of the casual talk about it, are two people, naked and vulnerable in the quiet of their own bedroom, struggling to figure out how to connect spiritually while they make love.

We live in a world that is unbelievably sexual. Every commercial, television show, book, and magazine is putting sexual images and ideas into our minds every day. Porn culture has warped our idea of what sex is. It isn’t a union of two bodies and souls, but a chance to get what we want. Slowly the notion has crept into our minds that we need satisfaction by whatever means necessary, even in Christian marriage. So, we come to the sacred place where we should be experiencing a spiritual union with our spouse, and we bring along years’ worth of images and fantasies that have nothing to do with them. And, instead of being completely present in this beautiful moment, instead of wholly giving ourselves to our spouse, we retreat and call up these images, and the spiritual union is weakened at best, and completely severed at worst.

No wonder Christian marriages are having sex problems.

Pornography is a huge part of the problem. But, maybe you don’t watch porn. You have seen plenty of movies, read plenty of books, created plenty of fantasies in your mind that don’t involve your spouse. The truth is that unless we are diligent about it, we will all allow our minds to wander to scenes that we have viewed or imagined, even when we are in the middle of trying to make love to our spouse. We may not even realize what we’re doing, inviting other people into this holy moment. Letting outside ideas and images crowd in on the beautiful act of giving ourselves to one another. How can we expect to achieve a soul-to-soul union with our husband or wife when we are escaping to some love scene or pornographic image? Before long we forget how to really be present in this divine moment, this spiritual experience of loving the person right in front of us, in the ways that only we can. We have to keep ourselves anchored to each other during sex, and the only way to do that is to banish outside images from our minds. Not only that, but we have to be careful to keep from bringing brand new images into our minds, by guarding what we see and hear and read.

I know many of you are thinking that this is not a big deal, or that it is impossible to have sex without calling up images and ideas that have aroused you in the past. But, if it were an impossibility, why would Paul advise us to take every thought captive to obey Christ? (2 Corinthians 10:5) If it is no big deal, then why did he tell us to think about what is noble, right, pure, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy? (Philippians 4:8) Why would Jesus tell us that anyone who looks at a woman (or man) to lust after her (or him) has already committed adultery in their heart? (Matthew 5:28)

The truth is that when we allow images of other people into our minds when we are having sex with our spouse, we are sinning, and our sex life will never achieve the spiritual depth and emotional closeness that God designed it for. There is a better way to have sex in Christian marriage. And, it isn’t just okay sex. It is life-giving, soul-stirring, and it connects you to your spouse in ways you didn’t even realize were possible. Kick everyone else out of your head. This moment is for the two of you alone, body to body, soul to soul. Anything else will lead to a lifetime of sexual emptiness, physical connection with no spiritual bond. And, despite what this world tells you, that will never be truly satisfying.

The Things You Learn When You’re a Mother

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From the day your children are born, you begin the letting go.

You, who miraculously sheltered them inside of your own body for nine months, suddenly must hand your tightly swaddled wonders over to visitors, to grandparents, to doctors and nurses. Your heart feels like it could shatter just to look into a tiny face that is at once so foreign and so familiar.

You live difficult and long and exhausting nights, sitting alone in the dark with a restless squirmer in your arms, wondering how it could be that you are a mama, that you are the one who is supposed to figure this out, that you have been entrusted with the awesome, terrifying task of training this child in the way she should go. In one long, draining night you drift between wanting to shove the baby in her father’s arms and wanting to cling to her desperately, willing yourself to remember exactly how little she feels laid there on your shoulder in the peaceful, lonely silence of three in the morning.

You are so tired.

And then children grow. With every new milestone you are forced to let go just a little bit more. Crawlers become walkers who become runners, and crying drop offs turn into casual waves goodbye. Soon you are standing at a kindergarten door, watching your child’s eyes, wide with excitement, and you see he is convinced that his life is finally beginning.

More and more, you are driven to your knees, finding yourself begging the God of the Universe to stay close, to hold your children in His perfect hands, to hover when you can’t. You learn how weak you really are. How anxious. How much is out of your control. You learn to trust Jesus more. You learn to wrestle with the what ifs, and you ask again and again for the gift of more faith, praying that if in the end all you really have is Jesus, that will be enough.

Meanwhile, every day they come home. Every day they grow more and learn more and become more of who they were created to be. And, you just keep white knuckling every new step along the path to their growing up. Somehow, every move shows you more about God’s love and care. Each inch forward helps you relax your grip on your children and tighten your grip on your Savior.

And, maybe that is the real gift of motherhood. In all of the letting go, there is the desperate need to hold on. To cling to Christ and admit that He is the only unchanging thing. The only constant. In a life of never-ending change, in a life of unspeakable joy and inevitable heartbreak, in a life that is as much wrapped up in your children as it is yourself, you are pushed toward the admission that all of it is really about Jesus. And that’s how you let go when you have to. That’s how you allow your children to be who they are. That’s how you survive every phase and every exhaustion and every worry.

From the day your children are born, you begin letting go. And you learn to hold on. Jesus never moves, never changes, never disappoints. These are the things you learn when you’re a mother.

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