Praise Report

When you quit your jobs and move your family and start a business and don't sell your old house and rent a new one, the forecast is STORMY with a 100% of FINANCIAL WOES. But God is good, of this I can attest fully and specifically.

Last month I was feeling a little downcast about my ability to buy the kids new things. There is a blessing in buying the $.25 bag of Matchbox cars from the Samaritan Center. My kids are still of the age where new-to-them is just plain delicious. That doesn't mean I wasn't feeling like Charlie Bucket sometimes.

It is no coincidence that the people who have entered my life in the past year have very much encouraged me to be financially solvent. Several of the people whom I consider new friends have all mentioned Dave Ramsey, often right out of the gate in our conversations.

When I was feeling mopey last month, I prayed that God would help me just be faithful in my finances. That I'd just be really intentional about the flow of dollars and cents. In my heart, I also had a desire to buy Baby Girl some new doll clothes and a new organizer for the playroom. I vowed not to buy anything new and if anything, to seek to acquire these through craigslist or the like.

The next day. THE NEXT DAY, Baby Girl's teacher handed me a bag. You get one guess...

A brand new-to-her doll with a whole wardrobe of doll clothes. Not to mention a generous assortment of movies and toy cars for the little man.

This morning my co-worker told me to pull my car around to the parking lot where she was parked. She removed two--COUNT 'EM 1-2--of the very organizers that were in my mind's eye. I hadn't even told a soul that I was in the market for these. She just knew.

Friends, this is not to congratulate myself for my own faithfulness. I am at best a pauper with a bad Ann Taylor habit.

This is not about me. This is also not a coincidence. God is just that good. He is just Goodness that exceeds all of our understandings of good. He defies the very gravity that pins us to this earth, that keeps our hopes about what is possible from soaring too high. He is the Lord who "is able to give you much more than this" (II Chronicles 25:9).

Feeding Stuck

I find irony in the term "Facebook feeds." If anything, the steady stream of humblebrag and milestone pictures does not feed me but but deflates me and vacuums out my store of happies. I doubt I am alone. I would guess its effect is similar for most: It feeds off our insecurities about choices and relationships and whether or not we are the first or last to experience the season's first pumpkin spiced latte. And yet we still log-on and click the heck out of that like button. Affirming others and logging off to pity ourselves and our inability to handsew Halloween costumes by deadline. Unlike.

It's no wonder why so many of us feel stuck. We are not distressed about any one thing in particular. We are also not excited by the prospect of any one thing either. We are just stuck and pirouetting in the same hollow we were last week. Searching for meaning or an exit door, or at least a clue as to whether we are standing in a hallway or if this is actually just a dark coat closet.

For the last few weeks, I have entered my office and gamely made a to-do list of perfectly manageable tasks that I had no intention of completing. I sit in my office and feed off the feeds, wondering why I can't get any work done.

In my prayers of late, I sit on my knees and words come not in sentences but in single words and fuzzy reminiscences of the day's events. I have nothing to offer and I receive no concrete answers, except for the fact that God is present. He is here and sometimes He is holding me and He will keep showing up--I am given this assurance.

In these times of stuckedness, I feel a lot of shoulds. I should read, I should go, I should put on make-up, pants, a new attitude. I asked the sages of Facebook what they did when they felt stuck. Responses ranged from eating one's feelings to crying tantrums to shoe shopping to running a 10k. I appreciated the candor and was reminded that we all feel stuck (and what an appropriate forum in which to discuss it, with the rest of the feeds of happy engagement news and weight loss triumphs).

I am not a fan of being stuck; control is deeply interwoven in the fabric of my being. The condition of getting stuck and then getting un-stuck, though, becomes less of a spiritual battle the older I get. I see it as a spiritual opportunity. Oftentimes, these are chances to lean into God and His promises and most recently, it has been an opportunity to rely on the body of Christ to uplift me, to be praying the words that don't seem to come to me as readily.

I broke my ten year streak of not crying in front of my boss last week. I thought I was going to be okay, but then one of my co-workers led a beautiful prayer in staff meeting and my tears pooled. When she ended, I thought I was still going to be able to recover, but then another colleague sort of called me out and the tears came gushing. Just that simple release was enough to feel a little bit lighter and a little bit less stuck.

Wishing you all stuckedness so that you can experience unstuckedness. The captivity and confusion isn't nearly as tremendous nor as powerful as the release, I can tell you that much.

Rimbos

I wasn't even sure what Little Man was saying. His eyebrows were raised, his hand was pulling mine, and I had to come see something and, "Hurry, Mommy!" See, see the rimbo, Mommy? Oh oh! It's on the chair! And on the train table! You see the rimbo?

He didn't want me to miss the rainbows, the kaleidoscopic kisses that a setting sun casts on living room furniture, on walls, on otherwise crumb-laden floors.

Isn't that the living definition of the work of every child? To hurry us in order to not miss the fading rainbows? We push them, literally, into the world, checking off milestones, counting down hours until bedtime, our voices escalating as we teach them to hurry to put on shoes, get in the car, and hurry through life.

I go through seasons of trying to obliterate the word "hurry" from my parenting vernacular. In those seasons, I realize I must say that word a dozen times a day.

I know this isn't novel but it did give me pause. What are the things to which I am rushing? To work? To the can? To the Dollar Store before it closes? How often am I rushing to the Bible? To open the door for someone? To see those sweet faces that greet me with unabashed glee?

I want to be the first to rush to see the beauty. I want to be changed by the rainbows quickly fading.

I have been a mother now for 1,643 days. In school years, I'm in the ninth grade. By that measuring stick, I should know a few things. But I am grateful for my little teachers that are not loathe to repeat the fundamentals, and who gently but insistently take me by the hand and make sure I don't miss my life.