The Influential Woman

5 March 2010 · 0 comments

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I was up early this morning. My eyes popped open, as if I’d just blinked last night instead of slept,  and thoughts still full of last night’s message.  Last night was our March Adorn, our monthly time for women of our church to get together, hear a speaker, enjoy some treats, and get to know each other. We set up the room in 14 little “living rooms”, 6 people in each, with couches, chairs, lamps, candles, flowers, and harp music in the background.  People must have been praying because from the moment women began to arrive, it seemed that God’s Spirit was just on our time in a special way.

The topic was The Influential Woman.  Becky Doel, a seasoned, wise woman of God, spoke, and I felt like a sponge, on the edge of my seat, wishing I could somehow physically take her words and tuck them into my heart and soul, make them my own, make them work in me that things God’s done in her.

Her words were simple.  She’s the first to announce her influence comes not from degrees or prestigious job titles.  She is “only” a wife and mother. She’s homeschooled her children, loved her husband, and biblically influenced the women around her. She has embodied Titus 2:

“Older women likewise are to be reverence in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled… so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior.”

Women, this is our job description.  All of us. I think so often I make influence, mentoring, discipling, whatever you choose to call it, too complicated.  One thing I loved was that Becky thinks there is an “older woman” and a “younger woman” in all of us.  We can all learn from each other.  But those with the life experience of walking with Christ need to share with the younger women around, teaching them.  And what are they to teach them?  How to love their husbands and children, how to be self-controlled and pure, how to work at home and put their time and attention there, how to be kind, how to submissive to their own husbands.  So that God’s Word would not only not be reviled, but that it would be adorned, adorned by our beautiful lives, made attractive to the world by our pure conduct and by our love.  Women, that’s what we’re called to do.

As a young woman, I can vouch for the fact that we younger women are hungry, starving for godly mentors.  I wanted to climb into Becky’s purse and have her take me home so I could learn everything she had to offer.  Older women, please know we want to learn from you.  Becky admitted she feels insecure, especially around some of us younger women who are educated, “accomplished”, confident in speaking, etc.  She feels like she’s not sure of what she has to offer. Hogwash!  Good grief, older ladies, you have so much to offer.  Those of us who have been married 7 years want to hear from you who have been married 37 years.  Those of us with 3-year-olds want to hear from you with 30-year-olds. My mom knows this, she is (as a wise mother/mother-in-law should be) always cautious of giving advice, so I usually have to beg her to give me wisdom, twist her arm to tell me what I should do! :) As I write that though, I realize that is one of the things that makes her so attractive.  We’ve all been around women who are so eager to tell you their advice (I can be one of these obnoxious sorts), you leave wanting to do exactly the opposite of what they said.  God’s influential women listen, support, care, empathize… and share the godly wisdom and counsel that God has laid on their hearts.

I for one am praying and pleading with God to raise up the older generation of women to be pillars of wisdom and beauty in God’s house, strengthening the younger women, encouraging, exhorting, praying for, believing in.  Though it’s always been a passion of mine to be an influential woman, I was so inspired last night to, Lord willing, help empower those older influential women around me.  We’re calling you, we love you, and we need you.

Please share with us. Please reach out to us.  We’re listening.

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If we knew He was listening…

22 February 2010 · 1 comment

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If we knew He was listening, I wonder how it would change our lives.

I’m so excited tonight and tomorrow to teach 1 Peter 3:8-22.  One of the tiny little nuggets tucked into this passage is a quote from Psalm 34:12-16. Peter writes (v.12) “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer.”  It could also be translated “attentive” to their prayer.  The first week of our “letter lessons” we taught Dutch the word “attentive” in order to learn the letter A. He learned that Attentive means Look, listen, and respond (3-year-old definition).  That is exactly what this passage tells us about God. He is not only listening to us, He’s looking at us. He’s watching us, with open ears, attentive to our prayers.  Do we believe this?

I remember the very first day of my Prayer class at Multnomah, our professor chose two volunteers to tell about their Christmas break. The first was a shy, quiet, timid girl.  Our professor pulled up a stool, sat down across from her, looked her in the eye, leaned toward her, and listened.  She began slowly, and he nodded as she spoke, use verbal listening cues, laughed at the funny parts, smiled, eyes on her constantly, intently listening. She went on and on, her face flushed at the joy of really being listened to.  When she was done she beamed.

Next he picked Jeff  (who he knew could handle some abuse :) .  Jeff began and immediately the professor got up and went and looked at his teaching notes, completely turning his back on Jeff.  He rustled through some papers, cleared his throat, looked at Jeff impatiently, looked at his watch, fidgeted, glanced up at the clock. Jeff tried to persevere (since he knew what he was doing), but eventually he couldn’t take it any more. “I quit,” Jeff finally resigned, “you’re not even listening.”

I think we’ve all been in that awkward and kind of embarassing situation (or maybe it’s just me!) when we’re talking in a group and somehow everyone gets distracted doing something and next thing you know you’re telling a story to no one.  Unless you’re really determined, you usually just quit talking, right? I mean, what’s the point if no one’s listening?

My professor’s point was that many of us don’t really believe that God is listening.  We might say that we do, but we don’t really operate under that conviction.  Many of us feel like God is like that  professor who’s checking the clock, fidgeting. As if we have to shout and beg for Him to listen.  Why would we want to pray if we view God like that?

Meditating on this verse this week has impacted me immensely. This morning we had our first every Morning Prayer, from 6-7am at church. It was awesome. Just 5 of us, gathered together in the early morning light, confident that “the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer.”  I realized this morning that God was waiting for us.  He was up long before we were (since He never sleeps!), and He was bent, stooped over, with His ear down to us, waiting for us just to mutter a word to Him, waiting for us to lift up our voices, praise, confession, thanks, and requests to Him.  How this changes the way we pray!  When I realize God is just waiting for me to speak, to pray, to ask, it changes everything.  It was a joy this morning to sit with Him, knowing He was waiting for us all along.

If we knew God was listening, I wonder how much more we might pray. I wonder what we might ask. I wonder what we might dare mention to Him.  I wonder how we might pour out our hearts to Him, knowing He was sitting there, eyes on us, soaking up every word.  Thank you, Lord that Your ears are open to us.  Show us how to pray.

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Dear Blog

17 February 2010 · 0 comments

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My dearest blog, whom I love and miss so much,

I am so sorry I’ve been neglecting you.  I miss you so much and see your little tab at the top of my screen each day, beckoning me to run away with you, while instead I dutifully tackle the other more pressing matters of inbox overload and such. I have 180 pages of theology papers to grade and I’m teaching this coming week at Bible Study and I’m really trying to be a good diligent mom, wife, teacher, TA … though I long to be with you instead.

God is doing good things in my heart, challenging things, and alas, none of it can be articulated because I’m in the midst of it. Perhaps someday.  For now, know that I love you and am meditating on this:

“Every great movement of God can be traced to a kneeling figure”
–D.L. Moody

Goodnight,

me

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Letter Lessons

11 February 2010 · 4 comments

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This may interest next to none of you, but I’m posting it for my own accountability!

–

I didn’t think I”d have to make the homeschool-or-not decision until much farther down the road, but it seems that nowadays the second a kid turns three they head to preschool.  I certainly won’t make any decisions about what’s right for other kids, but at this point we’re  not sending Dutch to preschool, mostly because I need all the time I can to shape that crazy wicked heart of his.

So I recently red this Revolutionary Parenting book, and Jeff and I spent time in Texas talking through our plan for this next year, for Dutch.  If he’s not in preschool I figured I better figure out what he’s supposed to be learning!  And it seems fairly unanimous, among Christian educators (and my mom who owns the subject), that the way to go is teaching character primarily, with other skills as secondary.  Basically, use character lessons in order to teach math, reading, science, etc.  That makes sense to me, since it doesn’t matter if Dutch can do algebra by age 5, if he’s lazy, dishonest, and rude he’ll still be sunk.

So, bear with me, this is kinda scary and vulnerable to share my idea.  I’m one of those people who does best (perhaps it’s pride), teaching something that I developed myself. I have to own it to teach it.  So I decided that to teach Dutch the alphabet, we would learn one letter each week, through a focus on a character trait.  Jeff’s goal is to do a little mini Dinner Devotional–basically a 5 minute Bible story that relates to the character trait we’re learning.  Then we’d reinforce manifestations of that character trait, reinforce the letters through things he’s interested in (they have Thomas the train engines for almost every letter of the alphabet), read verses about that trait, you get the idea.

So, our 26 character traits, specifically picked out because of Dutch’s unique–ahem–needs.

Attentive

Brave

Compassion

Discipline

Enthusiasm (not sure that he needs this one)

Forgiveness

Gentleness

Honesty

Integrity

Joyfulness

Kindness

Love

Meekness

Neatness

Obedience

Patience

Quick to respond

Respect

Servanthood

Thankfulness

Understanding

Valuing others

Wisdom

eXercise

Yielding

Zealous

So this week we’ve been doing Attentive, and it’s been kind of fun. He can now recognize the letter a, so that’s cool, and we’ve looked up online and found Thomas engines named Arrie, Alfie, Annie & Arthur.  He knows that Attentive means, “See, listen, and respond.”  Now, if we can only get him to do it!  Jeff taught him the story of the little boy Samuel, who heard God’s voice and responded, “Speak for your servant listens.”  He still dumped the bin of Legos on Heidi’s head this morning, however, so we have a ways to go. :)

I’d love to hear others/your ideas on teaching preschoolers character traits, as well as reading and math/counting skills.  This is so new to me it feels like writing with my left hand,  but I figure we have to start somewhere!  And I figured if I posted this I’d be less likely to quit.  So I’m off to be Attentive!

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Beautiful Waste

7 February 2010 · 2 comments

in Thoughts, Uncategorized

Walking with God is always an adventure, isn’t it?  Sometimes I forget, but it always floors me when I look back and see the thread of His hand through my moments, days, weeks, years.

So this trip has been… so so.  I don’t mean to be negative, but it just hasn’t been exactly what I’d had in mind. All I mean by that is that somehow I’d envisioned constant sunny skies, friendly Southern hospitality, trails, parks, beauty, and lots of ice cream.  I told Jeff I think sometimes it’s a curse to be really optimistic–I always believe that things are going to be awesome, amazing.  And then when things aren’t I tell myself they are, and that if I keep choosing to believe they are then I’ll be happy. I’ve mentioned this before in my story of the green walls. It’s not really a virtue as much as a coping mechanism. If I believe things are awesome then they will be, right?  Actually that’s a characteristic of 2-year-olds, I’ve learned–they believe that if they say something it becomes reality (Dutch: “It’s not dark outside.” Meaning, that he doesn’t want to go to bed.)

Anyway, it poured down rain, I got lost a million gazillion times trying to drive around this city, and Jeff was gone from morning until night every day.  So finally, yesterday afternoon, the sun came out, Jeff finished up his conference at 4pm, and we had the pleasure of a really great Tex-Mex dinner, ice cream, and the joy of just being together.  Ahh…finally. This is what I was waiting for. Yay!  Then…just a couple hours later, while Heidi was sleeping, she started choking and coughing and acting like she couldn’t breathe.   Yeah, panic.  I had noticed kind of strange noises for a while, but she she was gagging and coughing like she couldn’t breathe, I grabbed her, got her upright, helped her breathe, and then did what every parent does: panicked.  We through on some clothes, went downstairs, got directions to the hospital, and drove out into the middle of the night, in this maze of a city, looking for the pediatric hospital.  By some God-ordained helpers along the way, we pulled in, talked to the pediatric nurse, and realized Heidi just had croup–some kind of virus that leads to a horrible barking cough and wheezy breathing.  So we came home and spent the night up with her, taking turns sitting in the bathroom with the shower on, walking her around, getting her fresh air, etc.   This morning she was still coughing, and we were totally exhausted.  We’d had plans to attend the small church of a guy who Jeff cooresponds with through blogging, but we knew it met in an old nightclub in downtown…not exactly where we wanted her to be, and as a really small church not the place you can take a hacking baby and remain unnoticed.

As I showered this morning, exhausted, the selfish thought entered my mind–what a waste.  Sure I’ve read some good books, but i could have done that at home.  Just when Jeff gets done and we were going to get some time together, Heidi gets sick.  So we spend our onlyvacation day together sitting in a dark, steamy hotel bathroom.

I know that’s totally selfish, but those were my thoughts.  So, after we got ready, we still needed food, plus Heidi did way better in the car, upright in her seat, so we drove around for an hour or so, drinking coffee while she contently slept. Then Jeff had an idea to go to The Austin Stone, a church in the heart of the city that’s grown to several thousand people.  We figured we could keep her in her carseat, stand in the back, and not be disruptful.  We found it, went inside, and felt right at home.

And then aaahhhh…my soul found its rest in the presence of God, worshipping with the multitudes. Tears filled my eyes as we sang The Stand, and as I stood in the very back, looking at the thousands of outstretched arms reaching to the heavens.   Jeff had had an amazing experience at his conference, but this was my turn.  Heidi fussed some, but we were able to make it through the service and hear the message, on waste.

The pastor shared a story of how just last year he and a group of pastors traveled to South Asia for a series of meetings on missions.  They’d obviously spent thousands of dollars getting there, orchestrating all the meetings, etc. Then, when they got there, he and the guys he was with got jumped by some thugs, robbed, beat up, and the guy who jumped him knifed his face open from his temple to his chin.  The pictures were gruesome.  After getting treatment, they had to return home.  He couldn’t help but think—what a waste. All that money, time, energy—for nothing.

He then taught the story of Mary, who broke her alabaster flask and anointed Jesus’ feet.  The cost of that flask was almost a year’s wages–so we’re talking probably the equivalent of $40-$50 THOUSAND dollars worth, all contained in her flask. It was probably her dowry, her worth as a marriageable woman.  All she owned. Broken, poured out, wasted on Jesus’ feet of all things.  The disciples, very logically and godly and wisely, insisted there would certainly be a better use of those resources than dumping $50K on Jesus’ feet!  I would have thought the same thing. Or, wouldn’t it have been so much smarter, to pour the oil into three containers, use 1/3 of the money for the poor, 1/3 of the money for her dowry, and a 1/3 of the oil use to offer to Jesus? That seems wise!  Or, she could have worshiped him with words, she could have hugged Him, kissed Him, praised Him.  Come on, I mean, really?! You have to waste all that good money by dumping it on the floor.

But Jesus thought it was a beautiful waste.  He commends her, and then amazingly chooses to record it in Scripture, so that this woman’s story would be told around the world for the rest of history to know.  He thought the waste was beautiful.

One of my favorite pieces of wisdom I’ve ever received was from my great-aunt, who is now 94 and stunningly beautiful and the most amazing godly woman I know. She told me, four years ago: “Nothing’s wasted.”  And I’ve always tucked that way in my heart. But the important qualification for that truth is that nothing’s wasted that is given to God.  Lots is wasted.  People waste their lives all the time.  The woman in the story could have dumped her alabaster flask into the trash and it would have truly been wasted. Utterly wasted. But “wasted” on the feet of Jesus meant that not a drop was wasted, it was invested with the highest return–the glory of God, the worship of Jesus, the love and praise of the Savior. That is beautiful waste.

And the beauty of the anointing wasn’t in the value of the flask’s contents–it was in the value of the sacrifice.  We know throughout Scripture, from Abraham to David to the widow with the two mites to Mary and her flask, that the value of our offering is not in what we give, but in what we give up.  Yes, there is a double meaning there.  What we give up is what we sacrifice, which is the true measure of our worship. And, sorry for the pun–what we give up is given upwards to God, with His glory as the intended aim.  The value of our worship is what we give up, what we waste for His sake.

Wow. Talk about a well-timed message.  Though perhaps the time I spent whining about a disapointing trip is indeed a true waste, the time I’ve spent reading the Word, reading good books, cuddling on the bed with my daughter, praying and planning with Jeff about our parenting strategy, making goals for this year, worshipping my Lord in song with a thousand beautiful people who call on His name.  None of that is wasted.

And what of my sacrifice? I told Jeff in the car afterwards, “I’ve sacrificed nothing, ever.”  We have such an amazing blessed life.  Everything I’ve tried to give to God He seems to always end up giving back.  I look around at people who have given up so much, and our lives seem so teeming full of rich blessing.  What is my sacrifice?  The pastor suggested many things this morning as he encouraged us to identify our own alabaster flask, what is it we can waste on his feet?  I waited, asking God what mine could be.  Then one thing he mentioned made tears slip silently down my cheek.  Giving up my time, my ambitions, my dreams, my preferences, to lay down my life for my kids, to giving every ounce of my being to investing in them to be Christ followers, Kingdom advancers, lovers of God.  That seems so natural, but for me it’s not. It’s hard for me.  Giving time and energy to doing women’s ministry … pause, I have to say this… is not a sacrifice for me. It’s fun. Thrilled. Rewarding.  Getting degrees, reading, learning, teaching—all of those things are good and I’ll keep doing them, but they are not sacrifice.  They’re thrilling, rewarding, self-gratifying in a way.  The one thing in my life which — I know this sounds horrible but it’s the truth! — is not very gratifying right now is mommying.  And as the silent tear slipped down my cheek I realized that was my alabaster flask.  How appropriate that as I heard those words I was standing in the hallway, just outside the sanctuary, holding my daughter upright to keep her from coughing, bouncing her softly and letting her pat my face with her soft, doughy hands, kissing her feverish, sweaty head.  Right there in my arms was the answer to my question.  Right under my nose.

So as we pack up our bags tonight and prepare for our early flight in the morning, I’m praying for God to show me how to live this beautiful waste, how to fight the gnawing hunger for productivity, turn the clock to the wall, and wastefully invest in the two precious souls He’s entrusted to my care.  One of them is coughing, so I must go.  Let my life be a beautiful waste, O God.

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