Women and the Holy Spirit

Recently I (Adria) had the opportunity to attend a regional women's retreat through World Impact at our organization's camp in Florence, Kansas.  I, two other staff ladies and one of their infants, and one of my neighbors crammed all of our stuff  into a minivan and headed out there on Friday.  It's about a seven hour drive, which allows plenty of time to get to know one another.  The lady from the neighborhood is a Mom of four, and grandmother of nine.  She cares for several of her grandkids, and has a house full of little ones at all times.  It was such a blessing to get to know her more and for her to have some much needed rest.  She loves the Lord and is looking for more ways to deepen her relationship with Him.

When we arrived, we realized that a good portion of the attendees from Dallas and Wichita (the other two city ministries in our regions) were Hispanic, and some did not even speak English!  The demographics of those cities are so different from our own; North St. Louis is 98% African American.  The retreat was set up to accommodate the Spanish speaking ladies, with interpretation and even by singing worship songs in Spanish. 

Yes, I took High school (and a little college) Spanish, and I lived in Houston and Camarillo...both areas where there are a lot of Spanish speakers...but I'm ashamed to say that almost none of it stuck.  Much of our World Impact staff from Wichita and Dallas can speak Spanish, but the rest of us were at a loss to communicate.  It was uncomfortable to try to sing songs in a language I couldn't understand, and the sessions were hard to focus in when every sentence had to be translated. 

However, I was so encouraged by the way the Holy Spirit worked and brought unity among us.  Jesus doesn't ask us to change our culture to worship Him.  But, He does ask us to be ONE in Him.  That means we have to do the hard work to bridge the cultural and social barriers that divide us.  It was humbling to sit through the Spanish sections and be completely clueless.  I had to check my impatience several times, realizing the Spanish speaking ladies were having patience for me, during the English speaking sections. 

It wasn't the easiest way to conduct a conference, but it certainly proved to be a powerful expression of the unity we have in Christ and how the Holy Spirit overcomes all barriers! By the end of the weekend everyone agreed that the Holy Spirit had been at work. One of the older Spanish speaking ladies came and gave us all hugs as we left Sunday morning. I couldn't say anything of consequence to her, but in her hug there was an understanding that we are all on the same journey with Christ. I didn't have to understand her words to understand that she was my sister in faith.  All in all it was an encouraging time, and to steal the words of my neighbor and friend, we'd been refreshed and "ready to come home and kick butt!"

Save our Children...From Veggie Tales?

Our front porch is a gateway to the world.  In our neighborhood, hanging out on your porch (or someone else's) is one of the best ways to build relationships.  It's also a great way for your three-year-old to learn the F word, watch a screaming match, and hear raunchy rap lyrics bumping from a nearby car.  Right now he's still fairly oblivious, but the day is soon approaching where he will take note of these things and we will have to have conversations about how we as Christians are to be different from the world.

You might think that we fear these upcoming moments, but I'm actually looking forward to them.  We have a pretty controlled environment inside the home and monitor what he watches and hears very closely.  But, outside the home, we don't have any control, so, it is best that we embrace life and use it to teach. 

There are probably some of you who think we are bad parents for exposing our family to so much of the world and raising our child in a potentially dangerous environment, and that's OK.  I don't agree with you, but you're entitled to your own opinion.  I grew up very sheltered and I appreciate my parent's efforts to ground me in Biblical truth and protect me from emotional and physical dangers.  And we take much of the same approach when we dictate what Andrew and I pour into our little guy.

But, like we are all so good at doing in the suburbs, we can build false senses of security, neglect our need (and our kids' need) for God, and think that the best way to be a Christian is to live a life separate from the world.  But, that's not the life we were called to as Christians.  We are called to sacrifice and to live by faith, to deny self and carry our cross.  And, most of all, we are called to infiltrate the world with our light.

I say this because I recently had a conversation with two families who have children from 13 years on down who went on a tirade about movies.  Movies can be such a hot issue, everyone has their own standards, but when I heard them agree that Veggie Tales were often questionable I had to laugh out loud.  Apparently they occasionally slip in appalling things, particularly that one based on the Lord of the Rings! 

I would find this opinion ridiculously extreme from anyone, but knowing that one set of parents engages in regular verbal/emotional abuse with their children and the other has such a loose grip on reality that their children will never be able to engage in the world appropriately made me almost bite my tongue in half.  I couldn't help the derisive laughter that escaped my lips, masking my rage at their hypocrisy.

Is this what we have become as Christians?  We stand in moral judgment of something as innocuous as Veggie Tales, while we call our children "idiots?"  We disparage the Lord of the Rings for being evil, but would never have a real conversation with an unbeliever?  We won't let our children participate in an Easter Egg hunt because of its pagan heritage, yet fail to let our children engage in a church community at all?

I'm not advocating bombarding our children with foul things.  I care about protecting my son's ears and eyes and heart.  But when do we cross the line of protection and step into a lifestyle of fear and self-righteousness?  When did Jesus become enough for us but not enough for our children? 

My husband and I have responded to the call to be inner-city missionaries, which comes with its unique challenges when raising a family.  I'd be lying if there weren't days when I fear the variables of raising children in this environment.  But, I know that God will pour out more grace and more mercy on my son, because I will ask Him for it, and he will have a beautiful (and difficult) opportunity to know the price of sin, see God's mercy in spite of it, and share forgiveness and love with others.

Granted, there's no easy formula for how much to shelter or expose our kids from and to the world.  But, I think a good place to start is in our own hearts as parents.  Is our protection based in fear or pride?  Or, is it an appropriate shelter from biblical danger?  Are your teachings and rules meant to train our children to love and serve the Lord or to abide by "Christian" rules?

If we are to teach our children to love and serve the Lord, it will be a messy, challenging, and sacrificial process and our kids will experience hardship along the way.  But, ultimately, it is our lives that will dictate what our children become.  Are we the kind of men and women we want our children to be?  Do we LOVE and SERVE the Lord?  If we do, chances are that our children will follow our lead.  It doesn't always look like we want it to and it certainly is not easy, but we can rest in the knowledge that our children are sheltered in the hands of God, much more capable and loving hands than even our own.  

We do not have to live in fear or stand on pride when leading our children.  Jesus is enough for us and He is enough for our children.  Let them experience His power, as well as know about Him.  Your children will never mistake the meaning of Easter with Easter Eggs if they get to see the power of the resurrection bringing the spiritually dead back to life!

A New Blog

I know, I know.  I'm not the avid blogger that I imagine myself to be.  I always have the best of intentions to be a "real" writer and blog every day...but life and laziness and a million other things get in my way.  So, what should a person who is scarcely an adequate blogger do but start TWO blogs!

I love having an outlet for family and ministry updates, but I've also been looking for a way to blog through a more focused lense, something more my own.  My new blog The INTJ Life: One Woman's View of the World is a response to a blog I posted on "Written Not With Ink" last year called I'm an INTJ Woman and a Freak of Nature.  I got several responses from INTJ women who also felt just a little off center from the rest of the world and then I noticed that I got three times the views of that post than any other.  I knew I was on to something.  There may not be many of us (INTJ women that is) in the world but we sure want to know that we're not the only ones!
So, I'm going to attempt to lead a double blogging life...we'll see how it goes!

A Modern Day Plague

I'm convinced that incompetence is a plague for the modern day.

If we were in the book of Exodus, somewhere between the plagues of frogs and lice, it would read, "And then incompetence swept over the land.  When you couldn't find an item in Walmart, absolutely no one could point you in the right direction.  When you ate at a restraunt your server would inexplicably vanish, leaving you with empty drinks and no E.T.A. on your missing food.  When you tried to navigate the incredibly confusing foster care system, everyone would give you different answers to the same question...that is, if they bothered to call and tell you at all!  And there was gnashing of teeth and tearing of clothes because everyone was frustrated all the time."  Or, something like that.

Lately our journey with said foster care system has included some gnashing of teeth...although we have spared society and left our clothes untorn.  Sometimes I just reach my limit and want to yell in the halls of the court or in the isles of Walmart, "Does anyone give a crap anymore???!!"  I mean, I used to believe people who had jobs knew what they were doing.  Silly me.

Not to be melodramatic, because bad service at a restaurant is annoying but, hey, its not like I'm on the verge of starving.  But, in situations where lives hang in the balance it would be nice to know people knew what they were doing.

Today was supposed to be a big day for our family.  Instead it was frustrating and left us feeling a little shell-shocked.  I am grateful our little guy is yet too young to fully feel the emotional roller coaster like Andrew and I do.  I would never wish to change our journey, because it has brought us Little Man, but it has tested our faith and our character every step of the way.

In the face of such grand incompetence I have been forced to acknowledge two things:  I need more grace and more faith.  I need more grace/love/patience for people around me and I need more faith/trust that the Lord is bigger than any system and He is ALWAYS competent.  When I feel like running through the streets screaming, there is comfort in the knowledge that His timing is always perfect and He will never let me or Little Man down.

I'm so grateful that I don't have to go on this journey alone, because, I might go crazy (or crazier, I guess).  Love you, Andrew, and Happy Anniversary. It wasn't the day we had hoped for, but it was a day that proved God brought us together for a reason and He's not finished with us yet!

What a Savior

I don't always like the songs they play on our local Christian radio station, I mean, I may be a Mom now, but I'm not diggin' the "Mom music."  But every time I think maybe I'll listen to some other station Little Man starts singing along to the current song..."We were made to be courageous...(Casting Crowns)," "O Happy Day, Happy Day, When Jesus washed my sin away...(Fee)," and it makes it all worth it. 

The other night Little Man and I were headed to a Christmas event and Laura Story's "What a Savior" came on the radio.  He started singing along, "Jesus You are stronger/More than any other/Hallelujah what a savior."  I thought, there couldn't be a sweeter sound than my little three-year-old singing off key "hallelujah, what a savior." 

A sense of awe washed over me as I listened to the words, "What a savior."  This year I have to admit I haven't spent a lot of time dwelling on the advent season.  I haven't anticipated the coming of Christ with as much focus...life has just gotten in the way.  But just because I was too distracted to reflect deeply, doesn't take away the profound meaning of Advent and Christmas. 

Sometimes I'm too familiar with the story of a baby in a manger to be shocked by the reality of what God did!  A king, born into poverty.  A king, giving up his throne to be a helpless infant.  To think that even if he was born into the richest home, surrounded by gold and jewels and swaddled in the finest cloth it would be nothing like the glory of heaven.  And he chose to humble himself even further.  What a Savior. 

There's a verse in one of my favorite Christmas songs by Downhere, "How Many Kings" that says, "A child in a manger?/Lowly and small, the weakest of all/Unlikeliest hero, wrapped in his mother's shawl -/Just a child -/Is this who we've waited for?"

The one we have waited for...Jesus.  Not a king by earthly standards, but God, in humble flesh, who came to live and die for us and who will one day return in His full glory for those who believe in Him!

Certainly a cause to celebrate this Advent/Christmas season.  Take a moment in all the holiday rush to dwell on the miracle of Christ and let your heart say, "What a Savior!"

The Red or the Blue Pill

Some days I feel like I'm in the Matrix, not that I have any illusions that I'd look good in all black leather garb, but sometimes I feel so overwhelmed with the shocking and painful reality that the world is steeped in sin (both my own and others') that I wonder how it is even possible go on.  On days like these I wish someone was offering me the blue pill.  I want to gulp it down and return to bed, where I would wake with no knowledge of such painful truths.  It would be the easy way.

But, it is not the better way.  I think truth is the better way, no matter how painful.  Sometimes it is painful because you realize it is your own sin that is jacking up the world around you.  Other times it is the sin of others that is wreaking havoc in our lives and we are powerless to control it.  Either one puts us at a fork in the road.  Do I take the blue pill and ignore my sin?  Do I hope that this drug of complacency can numb me to the pain I feel from others?  Or, do I carefully reach for the red pill and face what God might be trying to reveal to me?  Do I decide to grow in truth whether or not others make that choice?

Clearly, the right answer is the latter choice, but it is by far the most costly.  Death of self is necessary.  Humility and determination are the only weapons we are allowed. 

Yet, sometimes I am tempted to feel that it is hopeless.  But the Lord reminds me that He is a God of restoration.  He can see inside my dark heart and inside the darkness of others' and He knows how to make it right, even if I do not.  And, ultimately, if I give myself to Christ, the joys and the suffering both will lead to being more like Him and being able to accomplish more of His purposes...and that is what the journey is all about.

I Would Like to Take a Moment to Apologize to My Mother

Humiliation.  A screaming child, head thrown back, tears streaking down his face.  People from every dining table looking at us.  I saw no faces as I walked (trying not to run in shame), just a blur of disapproval as I escorted (by escorted I mean grabbed and carried) my child through the restaurant, from the very back of the restaurant mind you, outside to a nice secluded place behind our van where I could administer proper parental attention to such a situation. 

Now any who are concerned at this point in the story, fear not.  No corporal punishment was used, but there surely was corporal punishment going on in my mind.  We had a little "Come-to-Jesus" conversation, in which I expressed my extreme disapproval for his family shaming behavior.

Apparently, our heart-to-heart in the parking lot made an impression.  "Mama, you mad?"  He asked.  Um, yes.  How ever did you pick up on that?

After a bathroom pit stop we headed back.  "Well that was humiliating," I said. "Yep" he quips. Awesome. You have no idea, child.

But, we went back to the table and he ate that freakin broccoli. "Mama angry," he told Andrew.  Thanks, Captain Obvious.

I couldn't really look anyone in the eye after that and felt much better when were able to leave the restaurant and put the whole shameful memory in the past.  However, even now I am feeling some residual second-hand embarrassment.

So, I just want to say sorry, Mom!!  It's my payback time.