Babblings and such

5 H's: HEARTACHES

Ah, the dreaded H.  Nothing is more vulnerable that I can think of than sharing heartaches.   Today, when we shared them in our girls leadership meeting my palms were sweaty and my stomach was in knots.  I got over it.

I almost hesitate to share any more because I don't want anyone to misinterpret these heartaches for feeling sorry for myself.  I am confident that God has purposed these for my good and His glory and I believe that sweet promise that His power is made perfect in weakness.  So I will boast in those weaknesses in hopes that His power will be demonstrated in my life. 

Some of the events of my past have caused me two heartaches.  The first is for a person in my life who has been deeply hurt by those events.  My sister is a wonderful girl.  I admire so many things about her.  She is strikingly beautiful, witty, and giving.  Yet she fails to see that she is valuable.  In fact, she spends a lot of time acting as if she were not worth much at all.  I see a lot of her "behavior" completely wrapped up in the abandonment we all felt both times my mom divorced.  Grace is a foreign concept to her.  She often feels like the church would cave in on her if she were to walk through the doors.  And it doesn't matter how much you tell her that there is no sin that could possibly discount what Christ did on the cross... she does not have the eyes to see or the ears to hear.  My heart aches over her more deeply than it has ever over my own scars.   

Oh, if dads only knew the magnitude of the influence that they have in their children's lives. 

The other is this - intimacy is difficult for me.  And I am not necessarily speaking about physical.  I have no idea how I will respond to that, but we will cross that bridge when we get there.  Even in friendships, I have to work very hard to figure out how to not run in the other direction when a certain level of closeness is reached.  It's not so much that I am scared of it anymore, but that I'm not sure what it looks like.   Several friends have helped me (and still are helping me) move further down that road by their loyalty and persistence in spite of my lack of effort.  I praise God for them.

I also used to have a deep distrust of the male gender in general, especially those of the handsome and charming variety.  Fortunately, God has placed several men in my life who fear Him and follow Him wholeheartedly.  I know they exist.  The current heartache is that I fear at times that none will ever want anything to do with me beyond a surface level friendship.  What it really boils down to is that I don't trust God with that area of my life to the extent that He is trustworthy.  I will always combat that with the truth that God is sovereign over all things.  It is a comforting thing to understand that God is sovereign and that God is good.  And God does not grant these things (specifically marriage) because we deserve them, but because He is gracious and concerned with bringing us to completion in Him.

Whatever your heartaches may be, may you find yourself casting your burdens first upon the Lord. And may you be eager to share the burdens of those around you.  You will not ever be too much, too overbearing, too needy for Christ.  His yoke is easy.  His burden is light. 

5 H's: HEROES

This one has been a difficult one to narrow down.   At almost every stage in my life, God has placed people there who have made a significant impact on who I am.   It would take more time than you have to read and I have to write, so I will narrow it down to three.  Two are what I call personal heroes - the kind of person that gets in on your life and you admire them up close.  The other is what I call a distant hero - the kind of person that perhaps you have never met, yet you admire for certain qualities they possess or things that they do.  I will start there.

If you know me well, this should not be a shock to you.  I can barely get through a theological discussion without quoting him or make a book recommendation without throwing out John Piper's name.  I don't even care that it is quite trendy right now to read him (which usually sends me running in the other direction).  There is something about the way that man writes that has made a connection with my soul.  Outside of Scripture itself, God has used his books more than any other to shape the way I think about who God is, to reveal sins in my life to be burned away, and to draw me into a more intimate relationship with Christ.  Despite growing up attending Bible teaching churches, I had never once heard that we were created for the glory of God.   I heard that first from Piper and that realization has turned me upside down and inside out forever. 

I suppose my first personal hero is no surprise either.  I adore my mom for so many reasons.  I know that she has flaws.  I know she has made a lot of mistakes.  I think that makes me love her even more.  She is a real person. 

There is one memory I will always remember very distinctly.  One evening my mom came home from work.  If I remember correctly, it was one of three jobs for her at the time...in addition to parenting three girls under the age of 8.  The electricity had been shut off.  No storm.  No lines down.  Shut off.  But that is not what makes her my hero.  It is what she did after that.  She lit oil lamps and candles all over the house.  She had me and my sisters change into our pajamas and got out our sleeping bags and pillows.  She pulled some ice cream out of the freezer and popped some popcorn on our gas stove and we had a slumber party.  Now I don't know about you, but when you are an 8 year old little girl and you get to eat dessert first and have a slumber party in the middle of the week, but that is a memorable night.  I remember laughing so hard with my mom.  She had such an amazing way of making the best of the worst of times.  I'm sure she must have cried after we all fell asleep, but she held it together and genuinely had a good time with us while we were awake. 

The last is a current hero.  I'm sure I have mentioned at some point that i live in the garage apartment of someone else's very beautiful lakefront home.  I don't know that I have mentioned the family that lives in that house.  Living so closely to the Langemeiers has been very redemptive for me.  Craig and Carrie have 4 kids and one on the way.  And they do family in the most God honoring way I have ever seen.  Carrie, in particular, has been a source of great hope for me.  Her heritage is  woven with brokenness and sin.  As a young woman, her greatest fear was that she would screw up her marriage or her family because of the baggage she brought with her.  It is almost laughable to hear her say that because they have such a strong marriage and are training their kids to be devoted to Christ.  Not perfect, but devoted. 

I asked her once about how she learned how to be such an amazing wife and mom given her background.  She told me that there was very little that she wanted to model after her family growing up.  Craig brought a lot to the table when it came to parenting because his parents did a great job, but really together they have sought the Lord for wisdom and asked to be led by His Spirit.  When they dated and in the early years of their marriage, they spent hours talking, reading the Word together and praying.  She said that there have been so many times when they  felt unsure or like they had failed, but that God has been their help and has given them grace to love each other and to love their kids. 

I have shared that same fear that Carrie had as a young woman and thought it would be better for the whole world if I just stayed away from having a family of my own all together.  And yet, I also have this deep seated desire to be the generation that is different.  I have wanted to make whole what has been broken by honoring God in a marriage and as a mother.  I don't know that God has that for me, but I no longer fear it in the same way.

5 H's: HERITAGE

Every time I attempt to tell "my story," my thoughts become so jumbled I can hardly say a complete sentence.  I also want to give a disclaimer that as a follower of Christ I cannot help but tie every event in my life to my relationship with Him in some way, shape, or form.  I also want to say that I love my family tremendously and am so grateful to God for them, so I have prayed that anything seemingly negative I write would be seen through grace giving eyes.  Please forgive this "babbling," I'll do it the only way I know how.

I suppose I should start with my parents.  They grew up in the same area and went to High School together in Pinole, CA.  I can't remember if they dated in high school or just after they graduated... not that that particular detail matters, but they were very young.  Neither of my parents were believers when they married.  Together, they went on an emotional roller coaster of sorts, so a lot of my early memories have the same feel.  Some things in our family were so wonderful and some things I would rather not remember at all.  I suppose that is true for most people. 

Both of my parents are passionate, sensitive people.  I'm pretty sure that apathy is the emotion that they would both find unfamiliar.  On one hand, I love that about them both.  On the other, I fear it.  When I hear people say that they never talked or felt like their parents were "closed," I can hardly imagine it.  Even if they were screaming at each other, thoughts and feelings rarely went unexpressed or held in for long.   As you can imagine, that made some arguments pretty explosive.  That happens when fire and dynamite interact.  Hind sight is 20/20 and as an adult I have realized what things were that I did not fully understand as a child.  For the purposes of something that is about to be printed on the Internet, the details are not so important.  Let's just say that things got rocky (and scary) pretty early on. 

My mom will tell you she was just lost and wandering.  She had asked her parents for help so many times. And his, for that matter.  My grandparents on both sides did what they could, but neither of my parents could figure out exactly how to make it work and to be perfectly frank, they were too stubborn and selfish at the time to do so.  I know they both look back and regret a lot from that season life.  They have both said so.  My mom, mostly out of fear, started taking me and two of my younger sisters to a little Lutheran church down the road.  Those precious people took our family in.  They cared for us and provided for us in some of our hardest times.  They shared the gospel with her and my mom was utterly and completely turned upside down by the grace of God.  There were no cultural motivations for claiming Christ - The Bay Area is hardly the Bible belt.  And while sanctification is a slow and, at times, painful process - my mom was a markedly different lady.  Christ had captured her heart.  And this lady was primarily responsible for my upbringing.

My mom was in and out of a few relationships after she and my dad divorced.  I did not speak to my dad again until I was almost 19 years old.  She remarried when I was 10.  Tony had been in our life for some time.  He and my dad were friends at one time.  Now that I think about it, they are not so different from one another.  Tony loved my mom.  And us.  I called him Dad.  I even took on his last name even though legally I could not.  He was wonderfully charming and usually had the best of intentions.  He moved our family to Texas when I was in 7th grade, which was a critical turning point in my life.  It was that year that Christ captured my heart and I began to relate to God on my own and not just through my mom or the church.  And while things weren't perfect (no family is), we were fairly functional.  We went to church together.  We spent time together as a family. 

I think it was more of a blow when Tony left than when my dad left (or was it my mom?).  I think with my parents, it was a relief.  Things were just so bad.  With Tony, it felt so personal.  I will never forget my mom's face when she heard from his lips that there was someone else and he was not coming home.  I have never felt God's hand and seen His provision so clearly like I did during that time.  Even more so than when my mom first came to know the Lord.  Again, the church that we were a part of at that time was the healing balm for my family, the means God used to administer grace.  They made sure we weren't alone.  They came and fixed things in our house.  They invited us into their homes. Often.  Even on Christmas.  They prayed. 

Now before this gets any more dramatic than necessary, I want to speak of the things that I think my family passed on to me that I am proud of.   I will leave you to make your own inferences about the things I am not.  I don't have time to tell it now, but the story of how my dad and I were reconciled is worth telling.  I may do that another time.  From him I learned passion.  He is a work 'em hard, play 'em hard kind of guy.  All or nothing.  He is also a generous gift giver.   He is creative and thoughtful in the way he gives them.  From my mom, I learned hospitality.  She welcomes in the outsider.  My mom has a way of making connections with every person she meets - no matter how different they are from her.   She is light-hearted and fun.  She makes the most of the worst situations and still manages to laugh when she should be crying her eyes out.  (Don't get me wrong, she does that too - which I definitely inherited from her).  She is one of the hardest workers I know.  She is a loyal and dedicated friend.

I could go on and mention the things that God has given me through my grandparents (Grandma Joan is also worthy of her own post) and my sisters, but you are probably tired of reading at this point.  But I do want to sum up my heritage with two words.  Grace and Redemption.  If ever I could see grace fleshed out, I see it in my family.  I am a firm believer that he who has been forgiven much loves much.   If you were to meet my family today, you might not even suspect that things were so broken at one point (unless you took note of all the different last names).  And I am blown away at how God continues to redeem even my own heart.    

5 H's

Camp is well underway.  We have been through two weeks of training and we just started our third week of camp and the dust is starting to settle from all the madness.  And then I remembered (vaguely, of course) that I had a blog at one time.  Hello blog.

Every Monday this summer, the girls on the leadership team and our director's wives will spend about an hour and a half together.  We began last week to share with one another "The 5 H's: Heritage, Heroes, Heartaches, Highlights, and Hopes."  It has been such a sweet time to reflect on God's grace in our lives and to get to know one another in a meaningful way.  I thought it only fitting to bring this exercise here.  I've not managed to escape a meeting yet without tears (of the best variety) so I will only share one H at a time.  And friends who happen to stumble across this, I would love to read (or hear yours) as well.