I was full of fear, fretting, knots and hopelessness when Nathan called from work on Thursday and asked me to pull out some paperwork. In the middle of a pile of building permit paperwork, this fell out:

A verse written on an index card by someone who loved me dearly. It was a great gift. I needed to be reminded of those words.

And later in the day I read these words that seemed just for me:

I mean that last sentence seriously.

I’ve been trying to bring back memories of my mom from when I was Audrey’s age. I remember the radio being on the local Christian station and hearing lots of Insight for Living. I remember pretending to go to sleep for a nap and really staying up and dressing up in my favorite red and white checked dress. I remember writing her notes that always ended in “I love you and I love you all the time” (I must have been older than Audrey if I was writing that). I remember fighting over my hair every Sunday morning when she would curl it all cute. I longed for my hair to be long and feathered. I can not count the number of arguments and tears shed over my hair. I remember seeing my mom sitting out on the deck, from time to time, crying.

I wish I could ask her now what was going through her mind then. I want to ask her, “How did you navigate growing up and establishing your own family in the midst of a crazy, broken world where there are so many other demands and how did you do that while establishing a new way of relating as a friend, a daughter and a sister as an adult?”

I was thinking those thoughts as I stumbled onto this post yesterday. Here’s a portion that jumped out at me:

“Perhaps there was something more powerful to experience than a perfect Mother: the wonder of a committed Mother who simply humbles herself.

Like that Shepherd who knew the cost of relationship, chose to pay the price, and, staggeringly, “humbled Himself… even to the point of death on a cross” (Phil 2:8).

Out of the ashes and brokenness of our sin, rises the breathtaking exquisiteness of humility and grace, the Cross. And out of the anguish and woundedness of Mama’s life, surfaced a gentle humility and a dogged devotion to relationship. Regardless.

I felt the strangling terror give way to realization. Motherhood does not require, thankfully, perfection. It simply requires commitment and humility.”

As I reflect on Mother’s Day, I’m very thankful that I had a mother who did have a commitment to relationship. I never doubted that and I’m very grateful. She was such a great example of the quote from that blog post: “It’s not that you aren’t going to blow it. It’s what you do with it when you do.”

Oh boy, have I blown it and I’m only 6 years into this. It’s my prayer that I’ll be humble and committed and devoted to relationship over saving face or things that wont matter in the end.

Mom, if you can read blog posts in Heaven, I want you to know that I still love you and love you all the time.

Mom holding newborn Brian. Brian was born at 29 weeks.

I have to admit that my first reaction to the public out-pouring of support was one of jealousy. The updates on facebook and twitter didn’t bring me to my knees immediately, they just brought me back to 3 years ago. It was 3 years ago today that my mom died. Thousands of people all over the world did not pray for her healing. Famous people didn’t send word out to all their friends to send letters and pray. I know it’s a silly thing to feel jealous of, but it was my very real and honest first reaction.

But the Holy Spirit has been doing some work in my heart and when Satan tried to discourage me by trying to show me the inequities and seeming randomness of God’s healing, I have been reminded of truth and there are some things I know today that I had never thought of 3 years and 1 day ago.

• My mom’s sudden and early death cannot take away the fact that I had 31 years with her. She was there when I graduated from high school and college, she was at my wedding, got to hold my first two babies (and actually drove me to the hospital when I was in labor with Audrey) and I have many wonderful memories with her.
• Having a solid, Bible-based understanding of suffering is crucial to navigating a world full of unexplainable sadness. This quote by Joni Eareckson Tada is profound and explains it well: “Suffering is connected to sin; if God were to get rid of suffering, he’d have to get rid of sin, and then he’d have to get rid of sinners—and God is too merciful to do that.”
• Knowing the right answers isn’t what initially brought comfort. I know this is kind of contradicting my previous point, but hang in there. God’s truths are loving, but they can also be painful. I learned that knowing the answers was of secondary importance to knowing the person of Jesus. There have been times when I couldn’t open my Bible, but I held it and wept, “Jesus, help me.” And He did.
• Suffering can be isolating. So many times people are afraid of saying the wrong thing so they say nothing, avoid the situation, or avoid the person. Shauna Niequist has a chapter in Bittersweet that talks about this very thing. Her advice for when you don’t know what to say is to say this: “I heard what happened, and I don’t know what to say.”  Say something.
• In the middle of it all, I have needed to feel it, mourn it, talk about it, and process it, but I can’t let Satan convince me to stay stuck there. That great big, overwhelming hurt you’re holding (and I’m holding) is not the end of the story. In some ways, I’ll carry that with me for the rest of my life, but not in a way that crushes. With God’s help, it’s carried in a way that brings hope, healing and encouragement to others.

So, today I pray for the Heim family. For Joanne’s husband, Toben and for their very young school-aged daughters, Audrey and Emma. They may have well wishes sent to their mom from Beth Moore and Tiger Woods, but I can guarantee you they would all rather have their wife and mother back. Sweet Jesus, please heal Joanne so that she can tuck those girls in at night, celebrate all their important milestones with them and hold hands with Toben while watching Audrey and Emma marry men of God.

And for the rest of you, who are more like me: A million people may not know to pray for your story, but God knows your name. He knows your hurt and it’s real. I’m praying for that God would be near today. May God bring beauty from ashes.

Honestly, I have not been living a way that proves that I do.

I will answer that question in big and little moments all day. I will choose to trust the One who is completely trustworthy. Even when it’s confusing and I’m in the murky, confusing, dark “middle”. That place where nothing is clear. I will trust that this is not the end and that a beautiful “end” is coming.

I digress. We were talking about grace.

I have known for a long time that, on my own, I am not good enough to earn my way into heaven. I’ve done the math on that. I make a lot of bad choices. I sin a lot. I remember telling my mom one day when I was 5 or 6 how happy I was that I hadn’t sinned all day! Hah! Oops, I guess that’s pride. Anyway, I know that doing good things doesn’t give me a free one-way ticket to paradise. That hasn’t stopped me from struggling with issues of performance.

I think that people will like me more if I’m prettier, thinner, wear nicer clothes, have a clean home, and have well-dressed and well-behaved children. I transfer my thinking from those relationships to my relationship with God. I act like I think that God will like me more and be more pleased with me if I participate more in church, read my Bible every day, and make good choices.

That’s not what grace is about. The power of God’s grace is that He knows every last ugly thing about me and He couldn’t love me anymore than He already does, because when He sees me all those ugly things are made right and beautiful by the sacrifice of His son, Jesus. Whether I truly live it out or not doesn’t change God’s approval of me, but it does change how easily I can accept myself and others and how I am able to participate in community with others.

For me, learning to understand grace, means being honest with those around me about my struggles. It’s communicating that I need grace as much as anyone else does. It’s being willing to tell my story of how grace is redeeming all the ugly parts and, it’s about extending grace to others.

The love the words of this hymn:

Wonderful grace of Jesus
greater than all our sin.
How shall my tongue describe it?
Where shall it’s praise begin?
Taking away my burden,
setting my spirit free;
For the wonderful grace of Jesus reaches me.

Do you know someone who seems to really understand grace?

There were two separate things that caught my attention in this chapter.

First, John says that he wishes someone had taken him aside a few weeks before getting married to tell him that, even though he and his bride were both fine people, that there would very soon come a point where they would have conflict and that-

God is going to use your marriage to get to issues in your life that he wants to address.

True words.  And I like the reminder that marriage is hard–even in the best marriages. The problem with advice before the conflict is that no one actually thinks they are going to need it themselves. It’s certainly been true in my life that my “issues” have been magnified in my marriage. I’ve always struggled with developing healthy, close relationships. I’ve always wanted them, but I’ve never known exactly how to do it because I have a hard time allowing myself to be really open vulnerable. That would never cause any struggle in a marriage would it? I’ve learned to get beyond that a little in marriage, but it’s put a heavy burden on Nathan when he becomes the “one” person I feel safe with.

Second, I’ve been thinking about the question, “What was it you wanted when you first fell in love?”

I think the answer for me is that I wanted to be “chosen”. I wanted someone to see me, fall in love with me, and pursue me. And I dreamed of a husband who would adore me, provide for me and protect me. And he would do the “heavy lifting”- fix things that needed fixing, provide our primary income, and lead our family spiritually. Now that I type that out, I remember conversations in our premarriage counseling about what our expectations would be for roles and tasks in our home and family. I think it would be great fun to get that list out again (6 1/2 years later) and see how things have actually played out.

*you can find Nathan’s thoughts here.

After the very well-written introduction, I was expecting chapter 1 to be good, and I wasn’t disappointed. I was, however, very surprised: This is a book about marriage. Written by a married couple. The last thing I expected was for them to reveal that 2 years into their marriage, they were considering divorce. It didn’t happen — they went on to relate a story about their 25th wedding anniversary — but I wasn’t expecting that sort of down-and-dirty reality in chapter 1.

This is a book written by imperfect people about the very real problems that confront married couples. It means a lot that they can be this open about the struggles they experienced in their own marriage.

There were a number of key points in this first chapter that struck home with me. The first was that when boy meets girl and they get married, they both enter the relationship as “deeply broken people.” No one can claim differently. Everyone is imperfect in at least some ways. In addition to dealing with the work of a marriage relationship, these personal issues must still be addressed!

All those fairy tales about a boy and girl who find themselves thrown together into an adventure in a dangerous land, and how they must come to work together if they have any hope of making it through, but they are both carrying a tragic flaw, an Achilles’ heel that pricks the other constantly and they barely do make it through — those fairy tales pretty much have it right.

The second thing I noticed was that though I can definitely see that I am a broken person, I am broken in very different ways than the authors. I see far more insecurity in myself than John relates. He identifies one of his main issues early on as being too overachieving and narcissistic. I, on the other hand, feel that I do not push myself hard enough, content to let things happen as they will.

The next thing that jumped out at me was that the authors consider having a “shared life” and “living for the same things” as key triumphs in their marriage. It’s not enough to simply be there for each other, supporting each others’ individual goals. As a couple, you must be pursuing the same prize, working together and not simply backing each other up. I want that for Amy and me.

Finally, they wrap up the chapter by asking us as reader what we dreamed our marriage would be like before we said I do and even back when we were kids. I identify with John’s dreams quite a bit, especially his first one: “I wanted to be believed in.” I too wanted (and still deeply desire) that.

I also look back and see that I had always wanted my wife to participate in “some grand adventure” with me. If I think back to my adolescent and teen years, thinking about books and movies that tickled my early understanding of what a relationship with a girl might be, I remember things like Goonies and the Princess Bride. Relationship that grew stronger as the couple (or couple-to-be) overcame very real obstacles in their adventure.

Chapter one got me thinking. I’m excited about chapter 2.

How exciting is it to sit across the living room from my husband blogging at the same time about the same thing! Ahhhh! Well, I think it’s the same thing. That will be some of the beauty of this. We’re reading the exact same thing, but I don’t know what he’s going to choose to write.

Let me get a couple of disclaimers out of the way. First of all, Nathan and I are not disciples of John and Stasi Eldredge. I picked the book because I thought that reading a book on marriage with my husband would be a growing experience for us. My hope is that the book will give us things to think about, discuss and process together. We may or may not end up agreeing with everything the authors say. Second disclaimer: We’re not professionals or experts when it comes to marriage. We’ve been married for 6 1/2 years. During this short journey, I’ve become a bit of an expert on the things that I’m doing wrong. With that in mind, I thought I should probably approach this book with the idea that I’m reading it to learn how to be a better wife not how to tell Nathan to be a better husband. Alrighty. Moving along.

The introduction of the book has Stasi relating the experience of listening to her husband officiate a wedding ceremony. At one point in the ceremony he says this:

. . . you are about to abandon yourselves to each other, throw caution to the wind, forsake independence, isolation, and all others. You will vow to each other your undying love. Before you do, we must call this what it is—this is perfect madness.

and later she relays John’s charge to the couple:

You have what it takes. Hold this close to your hearts. It can be done. And it is worth it.

Well that was good enough to keep me reading. As we go through this book, Nathan and I will each post weekly on the same day. That’s our only format. How it will specifically end up, we don’t know!

The Crib I Find Myself In

Today as I see Ethan getting up and desperately wanting to get out of the crib. I am reminded that I as a sinner was once in a crib. The bars of that crib were the sin and results of my own doing. How do I get out? There has to be much more to life than being stuck in my sinful crib.  But no matter how I try, I can not get out on my own. How I long for some help.  I wonder if I would cry out to my heavenly Father, would He hear me or even care if He did hear me.  I think I’ll keep climbing on my own a few more days or weeks or years. No, I tried that didn’t I?

Father I need your help! I can’t do it alone, please help me out of this crib. Send help!

Now I wait, but the wait is short, for I hear Him coming!  My heart is lifting, there is hope. My Savior comes. His name is Jesus.  Our Heavenly Father sent his Son to get me out of my crib!  Mother and father told me I could call out.

But wait, babies in their crib are usually wearing wet or messy diapers. Will He reach down for me even when I am a mess?  He comes with a smile on His face and arms outstreached. It looks like He has been wanting to see me.  Could He have wanted to help me as much as I needed His help?  I believe it is so. He has picked me out of the crib and now is cleaning me. Thank you God. You picked me up just as I was.

Why did I wait so long to call. Now I am free and in my Father’s presence.  This is going to be a great life!!  The world looks different when I don’t have to look out between bars.

Steven Henning –Ethan’s Grandfather- and a child of God

As I was getting ready for the last session with our group, I made a list of things that were different about David. Here’s the list I made as I paged through the completed pages of the study:

• He obeyed and accepted the Lord’s call
• Trusted God’s timing
• Repented for his sins
• Changed his course of action when it was wrong
• Praised, trusted and worshiped in the middle of heart ache
• Learned from his mistakes
• Became more sensitive to sin
• Turned toward God and not away during rough seasons
• Humbled himself
• Finished Strong

What characterized David was his perseverance and continual dependence on God. He didn’t let his missteps keep him off track.

The other big thing that jumped out at me regarding David’s life was the timing of God’s covenant with him. In 2 Samuel 7, David had not been king for long and had just brought the ark of the covenant back to Israel. He wanted to build a temple, but God had other plans for him. This was the time where God established and communicated his promise that the Savior of the world would come through David’s line. This was a plan that would  include Solomon, the son that the Lord gave to David and Bathsheba after their first son died as a result of David’s sin.

God certainly didn’t want David to make the horrible decision to claim a woman for his own that wasn’t David’s and then commit murder, but He did know that was the way that David’s life story was going to unfold. When David took Bathsheba and killed Uriah, God wasn’t wringing his hands thinking, “What should I do now to make this right,” or “How am I going to fix this mess?” There was never a time that David’s life was going to be any different than it played out. God knew what would happen and how David would accept responsibility for his actions and had already provided a way to fulfill his covenant and blessing. I love the application that how my life is today (with the good things and the disappointments) is not an alternate ending to my story. It was never going to be any different than it is unfolding now. It’s encouraging and freeing to know that He isn’t thinking, “What am I going to do now? He already knows and his promises to us are firm. God’s character doesn’t depend on my actions.