Today I’m thinking about rejection. Well, the combination of rejection and perseverance. Of walking uphill when all odds are against you. Of following the Quiet Voice upward despite what the crowds below are saying.

Yesterday I got word that my third and fourth books were passed on by yet another publisher. And not just yet another, but pretty much my last shot for both of them. It was a banner day. Although I did find a killer dress that somewhat made up for it. But I digress…

This is a death of a dream, but it is also a fork in the road. I had to decide in that moment just after rejection was dispensed — am I going to walk away from this thing that I love or am I going to keep going even though it appears as if I’m not worthy of being published again? Whoa. That’s a sting that stays with you. Read the rest of this entry »

This will not be your run-of-the-mill light-and-fluffy Mother’s Day column. Nope. This month I’m talking about our very real enemy. I’ve written about this before. But I’m going to get a bit more specific.

I’ve known for awhile that I have an enemy…that those of us who follow Christ and take this Christian walk seriously all have an actual enemy that’s as real as you and me. But he’s been prowling around like a lion…around my children. He’s been going after my children. And that is not alright with me.

My children are preteens and with that has come an entirely new shift in my mothering. What was once physically demanding with babies and toddlers and even young school-aged kids has morphed into one emotionally demanding mini-crisis after another. There are hurt feelings and attempted-boyfriends (I don’t think so) and grades that really do matter now and loneliness and lying from time to time. And, I’m sad to say, internet pornography.

Last week I did a fairly random check on my children’s computers and I found pornography on one of them. I literally fell to the ground and wept. Not my babies. Their innocence, in my eyes, gone. Stolen from them. Read the rest of this entry »

I had a speaking engagement yesterday that went…okay.  Not horribly…I didn’t trip or anything.  But not amazingly either…no one came barreling up to me to tell me I had just changed her life.  It was somewhere in between.  In the blah zone.  Which I don’t get.  Because I was prayed up, just like the previous morning’s gig, which was slightly better than blah, thankfully.

This always intrigues me.  I can be prayed up or I can be completely steeped in sin and one day I can be on and one day I can be off.  (I don’t recommend doing it completely in sin, though.)  But no pattern.  Hmmm.  Rephrase: no pattern I can see.

My ten year old son, Jack, is in Awana this year.  His last year before youth group.  He did it last year and it was fine, no big deal.  But this year…this year this boy of mine is on fire.  He is memorizing Scripture like there’s no tomorrow.  (I made the mistake of telling him of a family that I read about years ago where the Dad offered to buy his son a car if he memorized the entire book of Philippians, or something like that, and Jack’s eyes grew wide and his jaw dropped open.  I probably should’ve told him I wasn’t implying anything with that story.)  Regardless of the motivation, be it more Awana bucks, his mother’s praise, the smile of Jesus on his life, or something else internal I don’t know about, he’s blowing me away.  But what makes this year different than last year?  Nothing I can see. Read the rest of this entry »

The other morning, the first thought that popped into my head as I started to wake up was, “on your knees”.  Hmm…that’s odd, I thought.  Ummm, Jesus, if this is You, I’ll get on my knees during my quiet time with You in just a bit. (Yes, that’s what I said to Jesus.  Nice, huh?)  It felt like a good compromise seeing as a) it seemed like an odd request, b) I wasn’t sure it were even Him telling me that, and c) I had a few things on the agenda and needed to get going with my day.

Fast forward about two hours and I was sitting down for my quiet time.  I did, in fact, get on my knees, next to the bed, opening my hands up in a symbolic surrendering of myself and my day.  Then I sat back down in the chair with my tea and immediately felt, “on your knees.”  Okay, I just got on my knees.  Didn’t You just see me do that?, I asked, with a bit of attitude, as in what more do You want from me? “On your knees, in your heart,” said the Voice.  Oh.  Now that’s different.  Wait, Jesus, am I holding something back from you that I don’t know about? My feelings were almost hurt, like when you proudly show your parents a hard-earned B and they ask why you didn’t get an A.  Okay, I literally have to go now, but we’ll talk about this again.  Soon.

He’s been doing that to me more lately.  The whole talking-to-me thing.  There are a few reasons why that I can humanly point to in an attempt to explain it.  For instance, there’s a certain author that anytime I read something he’s written, this happens.  And I’ve upped one of my spiritual disciplines that I had let go of for awhile.  And I just decided to take the plunge and lead a missions trip to Liberia.  Things like that.  But then there’s the part that can’t be explained.  The holy part.  The part that I have nothing to do with. Read the rest of this entry »

It was a typical weekday 3pm, finding me waiting in my typical spot by the front door, watching for my twelve-year-old, sixth-grade daughter to come home from school.  But her typical greeting of “homework” or “good day” would not be coming from her lips.  Instead, she dropped a bomb.  Something I hadn’t expected to hear for maybe another three or four years, which frankly, just reveals my naïveté.  “Remember Jordan from elementary school?” she asked.  “Yep.  How can I forget?  He was your first crush,” I replied.  “He’s as tall as you now and has a voice as deep as Dad’s,” she said.  “Wow,” I said, helping her off with her backpack, not at all prepared for her next statement.  “Yeah, well, he came up to my lunch table, in front of my friends, and said, ‘Wanna go on a date?’”

I just looked at her.  Please imagine the look upon my face.  This was not the look of a woman who was excited to see her daughter take another carefree step into adolescence.  This was the look of a woman who couldn’t decide between crying and vomiting.  To which Sara replied, “I knew I shouldn’t have told you.”  Ouch.

Now, why am I sharing this with women who have children much younger than mine?  To scare you to death?  No, I am not that unkind.  Keep tracking with me here.

We went on to talk this through, argue this through, pray this through, for a couple weeks.  You see, my husband and I didn’t have a plan.  I mean, don’t get me wrong.  I knew without having to even think about it that no twelve-year-old of mine would be going on a date.  But what about the subtle complexities of the middle school years and the whole “going out” and “going together” business?  The “being boyfriend and girlfriend but that doesn’t mean we actually go anywhere or talk on the phone or anything” scenario that I was told runs rampant among her peers.  What about that?  Read the rest of this entry »

My 2008 could be summed up in one made-up word: upendedness.  So much of my little world was flipped over or tossed around or scratched out or started again.

I found myself jobless this year.  Sort of.  Outside-the-home jobless.  And it has been and is a breathtakingly wonderful, slowing-me-down gift.

I found myself planning my third trip to a third-world country.  Feeling this itch inside of me to not be constrained by the four walls of my little house in my little town in my little state in my little country.  To see how the other half lives.  (To see how the other 85% lives is a bit more accurate.)  To reach across the miles and the cultures and the languages and the hurt and the need and grab someone’s hand or give someone a hug or look someone in the eye and know that we have more in common than we have different.

I found myself on a mission to stop a disease that I do not have, a disease with no cure, a disease that is killing millions, a disease that I spent the last twenty years acting as if it didn’t exist.

I found myself writing and writing and writing…wanting desperately to get things down on paper, to tell my stories so others will feel liberated to tell their own…so others will know that they are not alone in this big, crazy world.
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Peace, as defined loosely in my mind, has something to do with not feeling all chaotic inside.  Something to do with thoughts coming at you one at a time as God intended.  Your heart beating at a regular pace.  No headaches.  No butterflies.  Breathing in and out slowly.  All being well with my soul and in my little world.

Webster’s third definition, the one that has to do with individuals, is a state of mutual harmony between people or groups, esp. in personal relations.

Oh my.  I’m already tripped up.  Mutual and harmony seem out of place to me in that sentence.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, that would be ideal.  But if I can only partake of peace when I’ve got myself some mutual harmony going on, I may never…none of us may ever…really get peace.

Because when I have needed peace the most, over say, the past fifteen years, it has been in a relationship where there isn’t a lot of mutuality going on and none too few pleasing chords are being struck.

Peace comes, for me, in bits and pieces.  That I have come to realize I actually have to fight for.  Wrestling it to the ground like Jacob wrestled with the angel…until his hip was displaced…until he got his blessing.  That’s how I’ve been fighting for peace lately, with a limp and a new name.

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“Jack, what should I write this month’s column about?”, I yelled to my Wii-playing ten-year-old in the next room. “What do you mean?”, he asked as he walked into my office, oblivious to the fact that I’ve been writing a column for about eight years. “Well, each month, I write something and send it to moms all over the country. So, what should I write about?” “Ummm…Jack’s math,” he said, and walked back out of my office. “I don’t think I can get a whole column out of your love for math, but thanks, bud.” Out of the mouths of babes.

I can say that again. Last week, my eleven-going-on-sixteen-year-old daughter and I were going around and around about something…the laundry she hadn’t folded yet, or the shower she hadn’t taken yet, or the next-day’s lunch she hadn’t made yet, something. Something that I was harping about. Something that she was totally capable of handling on her own. And I stopped myself mid-harp. “You know what…you can take care of this on your own,” I said, holding my hands up in the international sign of I’m letting go, I’m moving off this subject now. “Wait,” she said, “don’t just walk away. Either you’re controlling me or you’re ignoring me. There’s no middle.” O.U.C.H. Maybe that little girl is more like eleven-going-on-therapist.
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The Truth

I used to think that authors and speakers had their acts together.  Must have their acts together to go out and do what they do.  Surely their houses were clean before they left for the morning to come and speak.  After, of course, getting their well-behaved children on the bus and sending their husbands off with a kiss and a packed lunch.

But here’s the truth.  Writers and speakers, at least the ones I know, do not have their acts together.  In fact, there’s a chance we’re slightly more of a mess than you are.  I’m now speaking for myself here, but I figure out my life through writing and share what I come up with, and sometimes just the process without any answers, with you, the reader and event attender.

I sit in a neat house, but not a particularly clean one (according to my husband).
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My ten-year-old son asked me to read him something from the Bible before he went to bed last night.  I asked if he were looking for something with Jesus in it – a miracle, or story, a healing or his resurrection maybe.  He said, “No.  I want a battle”.  The book of Revelation might be a little too mind-blowing for him just yet, so we headed to the Old Testament.  I found a battle scene where King David wins, again, and then it talked about plunder for a few sentences.  I went on to give this impassioned speech, a sermon-ette really, about how plunder works these days, referencing a hard time my husband and I went through about three years ago and two specific, amazing gifts that came out of that time that I was claiming as plunder.  I went on to apply it to his life, as any good preacher would, saying that any kind of hard thing that God calls him to go through – bullies, classes he may struggle with in fifth grade, etc. – that there will always be something good in it for him.

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