Category Archives: mothering

overtaken: what happens when we let go in surrender

Posted on by October 17, 2022

I didn’t know exactly where to put among non-fiction categories; it’s equal parts memoir, devotional, parenting, and snark. But it’s 100% lifeblood, poured out in manuscript form.

Vin quit his job in May after two months of revelation, preparation and planning. Three days before his last day at work we found out we were pregnant with our eighth kiddo, and there was no going back.

overtaken: what happens when we let go in surrender

The manna ceased. Stopped. All done, finis. There was no going back, no back-up plan – the water was rushing in the Jordan River behind them, and in front of them was a fortified city to conquer. In between, they were all in.

And this is where we’ve lived for the last five months. Learning publishing, distribution, formatting, cover design, formatting, even blankety-blank page numbers. Doing the homeschooling, ministry, morning sickness, home repairs, research, the whole shebang, all the stuff, any seventy hours of the week we want. We’ve been living the dream, but the dream is a ton of work.

We’ve swung up and down the spectrum of, “Oh, God, how can we do this?” to “Oh my word, I think it’s working!” and back again to “I have no idea what to do and I hate this part.” YouTube tutorials were made for such a time as this.

Maybe if the manna had kept coming, some of them might have thought to go back to the river, hoping that God would hold back the water again and let them return. But no, this was a sharp knife, cutting off any hesitation to obey – no manna meant they were invested, they were staying, and the only direction they were going was forward.

And my life needs this. A commitment I need to let go of, an unhealthy relationship that needs firm boundaries, that threshold I need to walk through: I’ve been using the blunt edge of a knife to whack at them every once in a while, but those things have been on the cutting board for a long time. Probably way too long, and we’re not getting anywhere.

Turn it over, He tells me. And I squirm a little about it, but He’s right there, saying, Don’t hesitate to obey, Love. You are invested, you are staying, the only direction you’re going is forward.

Before we were able to turn it over full time, we turned it over in weeks at a time, whenever Vince could take a chunk of time off work long enough to make some progress forward.

Vince took two weeks off so I could work on a special project while he homeschooled the kids. I cloistered upstairs in the Thinkery – just a small table by a window, covered in books, papers, a laptop, and a full pot of chai tea containing about 10 cups of caffeinated goodness.

This particular project was part of Vince and Shannon’s Christmas List that we wrote in the fall, and completing it directly related to obeying Him with the sharp knife and stepping through the threshold. But I’d been putting it off for over a year, and God sat me down for a talk.

He told me He had something wonderful for me if I would just hold out my hands and accept it. The problem was I was already holding onto something else, and I didn’t want to let go.

And He was patient with me – because He is like that – and He said, Whenever you’re ready for it, Love. But how long do you really want to wait for Me to bless you with this?

I realized I was being an idiot and stopped dragging my feet. I let go, grabbed hold, and hung on.

– Oh My Soul

Oh My Soul proof

I’ve learned since then that letting go happens in phases. He was preparing us then for what He offered last spring – and the letting go we did last spring was the sharp knife preparing us for whatever is ahead.

Hemingway said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” And he’s right, though I recently read a book where the author trashed Hemingway because he misunderstood, thinking he was saying that writing is easy (sarcasm is totally lost on some people). He proceeded to argue for the same thing Hemingway actually meant, making it obvious that not only did he miss the point, but he rehashed it with more bumbling and less power.

Maybe he could’ve said it better if he’d bled more. Because rattling off a ton of words is one thing, but pouring out your lifeblood onto paper (or screen) for the world to see, judge, and interpret, well…there’s nothing easy about that.

But it’s good.

I went through some old journal entries last week, and came across this one that had been flagged with a yellow sticky note since I wrote it back in July of 2017:

And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God.

– Deuteronomy 28:2, ESV

Overtake. As in, catch up to you from behind, and go ahead of you. Those things you’ve striven for without seeing fruit – those blessings will catch up and go farther than you expect when you are faithful to obey.

I just laid Finn down for his nap, pulling the door shut behind me so the light wouldn’t wake him up. I watched his fluffy blond head disappear in the darkness and I covered him with his blanket.

And I knew he was there though I couldn’t see him.

I touched his forehead in the blackness and he was just as real as when the door was open and the light spilled in.

And God said, Those things you can’t see, that fruit you’ve been praying for, is just as real as Finnegan. The healing for your kids. The healing in your hearts. The writing career, the new home with space for kids who need it, having Vince home and doing work and ministry together – it’s just as real, even though you haven’t seen it yet. It’s just as real as this baby sleeping in his dark room. You can touch him and prove to yourself that what your eyes can’t see is still real.

Keep praying for what you can’t see, He said. Soon the light will come on and you’ll be amazed with what’s been there all along, waiting to emerge with vivid color and beauty.

And now we do see it – or, most of it, at least. Six months after I wrote that, we moved into the Lighthouse, two months later we found out Vince could quit his job to write full time, and as of this week, we’ve each published one of those books that spent years on the back burner. We’re seeing glimpses of healing and growth in our kids who desperately need it. We are working together, and last month we also started doing ministry together in ways we never expected.

It doesn’t look like what we dreamed of, or even what we planned for. And no, it doesn’t look opulent or magazine-perfect – but it looks like He’s had His hand upon us in ways that we never realized.

It looks like the threshold He asked us about several years ago.

A couple of weeks ago I was in the beginning of Acts, and read this:

He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

– Acts 1:7-8, ESV

And then I wrote about it on social media and heard God clearly say, “Do you want the plan? Or do you want power?” 

I have so badly wanted to know the times and seasons – but I am learning to bleed in surrender. When I don’t, I bumble over too many of my own words and miss the point in my efforts to control the blessing. And there’s nothing wrong with planning or preparing when it’s anchored in surrender – but He’s teaching me that, if given the choice between knowing the plan or having the power, I want power every time.

And that’s nothing to be ashamed of or shy about, because when we choose surrender over control, it’s what He wants for us, too.

______

Oh My Soul: Encountering God in Honest, Unconventional (and Sometimes Messy) Prayer is now available here on our site and everywhere books are sold.

losing no time: how we make up for past choices

Posted on by September 27, 2023

The days are long, but the summers around here are short and this one is gone. We were a month late in planting the garden this spring because of morning sickness and all sorts of I-couldn’t-even, so here in the middle of September we finally have zucchini blossoms galore…and three miniscule zucchinis, smaller than my pinky finger.

losing no time: how we make up for past choices

Did we miss out on the growing season? Yes, and no. We did what we could. There’s always next year. And we grew plenty, just not veggies.

My belly is growing. People seem skeptical when I tell them Kavanagh’s not due until December – the other day I almost knocked myself over just trying to put my socks on while standing up.

Oh My Soul, the book I started four or five years ago and spent the last four or five months finishing, launches October 16th. The Kindle edition just came available for preorder, and the paperback and hardback should follow next week.

(And now it makes sense that so many people teased us about having twins earlier in the summer because, yes, all these babies – it’s just that some of these babies were books.)

We’re ordering school materials, and to Chamberlain’s delight she discovered only three assignments left in her math book and I completely forgot to order the next level, leaving her math-less for a minimum of three weeks until the next ones ship up here. But I made a quick phone call to our umbrella school, and to my delight, we discovered they had an entire set on hand and we won’t miss a beat. Sorry, kiddo.

So much of what we do is not on an academic plan. Reagan’s language arts involves reading story books and picture books, and I document that it’s for “learning sentence structure and speaking in full sentences” but it’s also for understanding the relationships between birds and trees and seasons, how people interact with each other, and constant repetition of simple concepts we take for granted that fall through the holes in her memory.

Andrey has art on his curriculum, and the materials include cross stitch – not because he loves it (though he doesn’t hate it), but because it is good practice at following instructions and obeying, and gives an almost immediate reward or consequence for whether or not he does so. Botched string and knots to untangle are a remarkable illustration of not following directions; clean stitches that match the picture are clear rewards for obeying.

A few nights ago we talked with a new friend who worries that certain choices he made before he was following Jesus were the wrong ones – and he wasn’t talking about the easy, cut-and-dry kinds of choices. These were the kind with no obvious answer, the kind that people still struggle with even after surrendering to Jesus. They were the kind that force us to lean in hard and listen close, and even after the choice is made we wonder what would’ve happened if we’d chosen differently.

Did he miss out on the growing season? Yes, and no. He didn’t have the intimacy with God to move forward confidently when he had to make the call. But is he growing in that intimacy now, and losing no time in his forward progress? Sure looks like it.

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

– Psalm 32:1-2, ESV

God is above time, and yet still in time, and on time, and never wasting time. He knows our weakness and where we’ve dug in our heels against correction, and where we’ve been moldable and allowed Him to move us. He’s not a parent like me, looking at a child still dealing with the same stuff from years ago and shaking my head, desperately wanting to say, If you had dealt with this earlier instead of shoving it under the rug – which has long outgrown the ability to hide the pile of detritus underneath it – you wouldn’t be dealing with it now, and the last several years would’ve been more pleasant for yourself, and for all of us.

I’ve been in Psalms. It’s a long book, I’m only forty-some chapters in out of 150, so I’ll be here a while. But last week I was in Psalm 32, and I keep going back to it.

For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long. (verse 3)

For when I pushed things under the rug and refused to deal with my issues, refused to repent, to apologize, to make amends, to acknowledge the truth of my actions, I diminished into an ever-shrinking ball until sparks shot out of me from the friction of my choices.

And I’ve been here, too; I’ve dug in my heels and been the stubbornest of sinners. Maturity isn’t shown by perfection, but by the ability to recognize sin and turn from it earlier than we were willing to before.

For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. (verse 4)

He wouldn’t let me get away with it; He loved me too much to leave me shrinking and imploding. He held my feet to His fire, and when I burned myself with my own behavior He gave me reason to move. And now as parents, He’s teaching us to hold our kids’ feet to the fire, too.

I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not cover my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. (verse 5)

The pain forced me to admit reality. When I confessed and repented of the ways that had never worked for me, His light broke through and irrigated the stench of infection. Fear, doubt, shame, despair, vanished when I agreed with Him.

Therefore let everyone who is godly
offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found;
surely in the rush of great waters,
they shall not reach him. (verse 6)

We don’t have to drown in the fire of our choices; we can yield to His presence before we’re in over our heads. He pulls us out when we admit our need for Him and our inability to save ourselves.

There is no shame in the turning, only in our insistence to keep drowning – to stay tied to the millstone while sinking, to stay behind the gravestone He wants to move out of our way.

Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.”  

Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”

– John 11:38-40, ESV

Martha is just like us. We look at our hard hearts, our hard situations, our hard children, and we ask, Do You not know how impossible this is?

Don’t you know that we’re out of time?

Are You not aware of how deep this hole is that we’ve dug for ourselves?

Do you not see how his heart is like that stone?

Do You not know that her brain was repeatedly blanched with alcohol while she was in utero and the damage to her memory, speech, cognition, and intellectual and social maturity are said to be incurable?

And He answers, Have you heard of what I can do with stones?

Did you forget that I am above time, outside of time, but never out of time?

Do you not yet know that I’m in the business of doing the impossible?

In spite of everything in her past and every diagnosis against her, Reagan is learning to read.

You are a hiding place for me;
you preserve me from trouble;
you surround me with shouts of deliverance.

– Psalm 32:7, ESV

He is the shelter, the Savior, and the celebration. And He tells us, Hey Love, the impossible is what I do.

_____________________

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great(er) expectations: when His ways are not our ways

Posted on by August 23, 2018

I think I forgot to mention it last time, so let’s pretend it was because I’m a good wife and didn’t want to rub in the fact that VINCE WAS WRONG IN GUESSING THE GENDER OF THE BABY (ahem) but for the record…we’re having a boy. Ta da!

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His name is Kavanagh and we’re at 23 weeks, and both of us are doing great – one morning I ate one bowl of vanilla ice cream, some stewed peaches, two shots of espresso with milk, three strips of bacon, two pieces of bread, some lettuce, tomato, mayo and pepper.

So, yes, that means I had coffee, ice cream with fruit, and a BLT for breakfast, and I’m eating like The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Sometimes, most of the time, I go through these days like it’s no big deal because, well, this isn’t our first rodeo. I can feel him kicking right now, and usually it’s familiar enough to not pay attention to. But there are other times when I stop to think about it and realize we are having another baby, there is a tiny human in there, and I’m so stunned I hardly know what to think.

We never in a million years expected this little guy, but this year has shocked us with so many things we never expected, we should get used to it, I guess. His ways are not our ways.

Our expectations are wildly deceptive. I scrolled facebook and saw an ad that said, “Dream of being published?” featuring a gorgeous 20-something, tan, white-blonde girl in a heavy sweater, short-shorts, and messy bun; she sat in a pristine room with an airy curtain and smiled at her iPad. So glam. So attractive.

So false. Don’t fall for it.

Here I am, sitting on the bed with the laptop, next to two cats and a basket full of unfolded laundry (hashtag glamlife), staring at the screen for twenty minutes and getting nothing else accomplished. Let’s not talk about what my hair looks like.

The mission, should I choose to accept it, is to tweak an article. You know, just a couple of simple fixes – add a space for a link here, make a few statements about something there, no biggie – and the editor says, It won’t take you more than a few minutes.

Ha. You can always tell someone who’s not a writer by a statement like that.

He is sort of right; the actual typing will probably take all of 22 seconds. It’s the thinking part that takes at least 45 minutes of staring, typing, back spacing, and deleting until everything clarifies into the appropriate “tweak.” Yep. Piece of cake, no problem. Twenty minutes down, twenty-five minutes to go. Yay.

A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

– Thomas Mann

That girl in the ad was smiling at her tablet, for crying out loud – not throwing it across the room in utter and complete vexation at 224 pages of misloaded documents and jacked up indentations and formatting. Those lying marketers.

There was no mention of her messy kitchen heaped with dishes and neglected breakfast leftovers, or the piles of papers and to-do lists all over the desk and coffee table, or the computer cords stationed throughout the house so you can charge whenever the low battery alert comes on, or the stifled expletives when documents won’t load correctly on various platforms.

Maybe I should do something with my hair, I thought. Maybe that would make this feel more glam.

(Eh. It helps a little, but still doesn’t fix the formatting in Word for me.)

But we’re just as guilty of having wildly deceptive expectations at the other end of the spectrum, too. We aim too low, we expect too little, and we have not because we ask not because we doubt too much.

We think we will never get there (wherever “there” is). We think we’re not good enough. We think we have to settle. We think our child will never get their act together. We think too much of ourselves and too little of God, under the ruse of piously thinking we’re doing the right thing by not asking too much or expecting too much, because (insert pulpit voice) God’s ways are not our ways, when we forget that that is true because He is so much better than we are…not worse.

I just finished reading Job. This was also not my first rodeo.

I’ve probably read Job between 12-15 times in the last twenty years, but this time I finally realized why reading it has always been a drag for me (is it for you, too?).

It’s not because the subject is about suffering. We read about suffering in pretty much every other book in the Bible, and in most stories in general. But I realized I get frustrated because when I read the Bible, I’m going there to learn about God’s character, and Job primarily isn’t about God’s character – it’s about human nature. And us humans, we’re a piece of work.

These verses are about our presumptions, pride, know-it-all-ness, superiority, and desire to grasp for reason and accusation when life doesn’t make sense. The verses in Job are, for the most part, absolutely no good for a cute Instagram meme (be skeptical if you see one, and check to see what part of Job it’s from) for the same reason we wouldn’t quote the lies of Pharoah in Exodus or the threats of Tobiah and Sanballat in the book of Nehemiah. We can’t take these verses singly without first checking whom (or Whom) they apply to.

Taken alone, they are only half the truth. They are our ways, not His ways; they are the expectations at the low end of the spectrum.

Once I understood that, reading Job this time around was a joy. Well, maybe not a joy, but at least more encouraging, because human nature is fascinating, yes?

And the Lord said to Job: “Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it.”

– Job 40:1-2, ESV

Sometimes I’m a slow learner, which is why I’ve needed to read it so many times to understand even this much. It’s probably why He’s surprised us twice now: He is continually calling us to raise our expectations.

This is where God calibrates our nature against His.

Our ways would’ve had us done having kids before Finnegan. We would’ve missed out on his bright sunshine, and all the joy Kavanagh will bring with him.

Our ways would’ve struggled and striven for another ten, twenty years, never finishing books and wondering why hope deferred was a constant way of life. But Vince’s book releases next Tuesday, and my next one comes out in October.

Our ways would’ve ruined our marriage, our parenting, our friendships, and future ministry. But He has us growing and learning in each area.

Our ways are not His ways…and He says it as an assurance, not a threat or veiled burden, as it is sometimes communicated to be.

My way would have me throwing the laptop across the room when adding page numbers ruined the spacing of the last half of the manuscript.

But His way is to bring calm, so I can learn how to fix it, and approach the dilemma as writers have for centuries – which, of course, is researching Youtube videos until we get it figured out, and then watching funny cat videos on Facebook for stress reduction therapy.

Which, also for the record, is probably the real reason the lady was smiling at her tablet.