My daughter was highlighting my hair (yes, from a box. Yes, to cover the gray that’s laying siege to my scalp) when she told me about a friend who’s not sure if she identifies herself as a Christian anymore.
As when I hear about anyone who’s deconstructing faith, my chest tightened at the sternum. It’s painful for the person, and it’s painful for those who love them.
In a couple of weeks, my youngest turns 13. Which means I will soon be parenting four teenagers. Which means my prayer life is thriving.
As some parents of tweens chatted with my husband and me last week, I recalled some of the best advice given to us for parenting teens: Keep them talking. Keep the relational bridge open.
It’s great advice for all of parenting, right? But at times with each of my kids, that’s required supreme effort.
This week on a phone conversation with a friend, she asked what’s become our custom at the end of our calls: What’s one intimate prayer request I can pray for?
It was probably telling that I didn’t really know.
It was a conversation in my cubicle more than a decade ago, but my friend’s words remain seared in my mind: “You know, I think God loves strugglers.”
You know? I see it.
Genevieve’s voice poured through the phone to me. She’s a former pastor’s wife still wading through court proceedings following a horrific, jarring divorce. That’s not to mention the affair, the pregnant mistress, the mental disorders and gaslighting. Her descriptions called to mind a life upturned, shaken violently, spilled. How do you help a friend grieving after divorce?
Some pieces of her former life had temporarily skittered beyond vision: Her ally in the world’s onslaught. Financial security. A co-parent and advocate for their boys. Her helper to pick up the kids or fix the washing machine. A calm presence after a nightmare. Someone to process the day with. A lover of her body.
A missionary friend told me once of a person she’d spoken with who, as a child in Africa, was slapped every time she asked a question.
I was moved by the person’s insight: “You don’t just stop asking questions,” they’d mused to my friend.
Before my husband’s last (pre-COVID) international trip, I realized one of the things I miss most about him.
As he was packing–so methodical, everything in precisely-sized containers, shirts carefully folded over a packing template–I told him quietly, “See, you humanize me.”
Reading Time: 4 minutes
This is one of those posts where I need to hand it to my husband. He’s a master of the mini-date (and he probably hadn’t heard of those till I told him about this post).
I read the following from a reader of Real Simple this month–in answer to the question, “What do you admire about your parents’ relationship?”
“Even if it’s just a silly thing, like taking out the trash together every Monday night, they always carve out time to connect. May parents have been married for 36 years because they’re masters of the minidate.” (@thedapple_)
So this made me realize all the cool ways my husband does this–and ways I’ve learned to do it back. It means our day brims with potential for little touchpoints, especially when we’re both working from home.
Mini-dates are all about intentionally forming intimate connection in the little moments. It turns something as simple as driving or making the bed together into a time that says, I see you.
A mini-date doesn’t substitute for longer, more meaningful conversations or quality time. It’s not so you can check off your box: Well. You should be satisfied for the day!
(It’s like how quickie sex can be a nice little addition to a day, but you wouldn’t want every sexual encounter to be record-setting in that particular way…?)
Note: Mini-dates are also not a great time to bring up what’s irritating you about your spouse. (Nothing screams “romance” like “You never put the toilet paper on the holder,” right?)
Maybe like me, you have four kids, but it feels like six. You could be hoping your next mini-date doesn’t involve a diaper pail (at least not one you’re carrying) or scrubbing something out of the carpet.
Wondering when or where a mini-date could happen?
Ask good questions that help you see your spouse’s world. Bonus: The more you mini-date, the easier it is for you to get deeper in the future.
Other tips:
Keep a few items on hand to ratchet up your mini-date:
Another option to kick things up a notch? These pairings of a sweet, clean movie with takeout.
Connection doesn’t have to be non-existent when you have kids. Start with a mini-date–and branch out from there.
Reading Time: 5 minutes
I woke early on Easter morning. It was not the kind of, “Oh! I get, like, an hour more of sleep! I love this feeling!” But more, “Hey, there is absolutely no one else up! Listen. Hear that? It’s the sound of NOTHING. I think I will wake up and enjoy it.” This was before I knew the kids drank the last of the milk = no coffee for me.
Maybe because the light in our bedroom felt hopeful and springtime-ish–and because I wanted to make the most of this day–I thought of the light in the garden, that morning Jesus rose. Yes. I am totally #thatmom.
And as my thoughts kept snowballing (story of my life)–I felt something I didn’t expect.
Healing.
So I guess this is the part where I confess to you a bruised and confusing part of the whole “We think your son might have lymphoma” debacle a couple of months ago.
After we found out the lymphoma was actually an extra rib (yes, that’s a thing)–two CT scans, an ultrasound, and a lot of scary appointments later–I was unquestionably overjoyed. Cartwheeling, let’s-blow-bubbles-and-get-doughnuts-and-dream-about-future-grandchildren happy. I called family, sent out mass texts, wrote a blog post to you.
But when I closed the door of my heart and went into that quiet room where God and I meet? (It is a woodshop in my mind. I could blame Max Lucado for this, in all those Wimmick books. Or maybe my husband, who smells like such a mighty-good-man with an extra layer of sawdust.) I was asking God something like this: Um. Hey. You put this there.
You knit this thing to him, and knew this would happen in 2019.
The fear of this thing took off, like, two years of my life.
Why would you want us to go through that?
Why–?
The woodshop version of God, in my mind, wipes his hands on his apron. Looks at me.
I know there are a lot of very biblical and solid answers for this. I can quote you most of them. I know suffering gives us character and hope and endurance, etcetera etcetera (Romans 5:5). I know Job suffered in part due to a cosmic battle between God and Satan. I know Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac (where God knew that Abraham would go through with it) would foreshadow Christ.
But I think of Mary Beth Chapman’s response, reported to me second-hand after she lost her daughter. I am so thankful for all the changed lives and all God’s done with this (someone-told-me-she-said).
But I would give all of that to have my daughter back.
Abraham was the figure I’d focused on this cancer scare, imagining his emotions, too, as God asked me to surrender my son into God’s hands. I thought of the blatant fear and even anger Abraham may have experienced, the helplessness. The need to just get up in the morning again, when a sunrise just signals another day to endure.
And I realized, God doesn’t think like my culture.
See, when I was 37 weeks pregnant with my first, we were in a car accident.
I injured my hand, but thankfully–so much, thankfully–my son was safe. The insurance company not only paid for the overnight in the hospital, but paid me for “pain and suffering”, like courts do. (I now know this is more like “please don’t sue us” money when coming from insurance companies, but I digress.)
When my son was (praise God, praise God) diagnosed with not-cancer?
I did not receive a check in the mail.
(There may, I acknowledge, be one coming. So to speak.)
So, now that you have followed my bunny trails, I hop back to Easter morning. (See what I did there?) The first one.
I imagined Mary from the book of John, somehow either toting spices already, or purchasing them early in the morning, because she wouldn’t have purchased them on Passover. She can smell them, their weight soft in bags thudding against her thighs.
I imagine that this walk with her friends is not only dutiful after she has been wrung out, exhausted from grieving and what-nexts. I imagine it is brave.
Because we know the disciples spend the weekend with the door locked. Their hearts had been gutted, and they now feared for their own lives, from guilt by association. Would the leaders of the synagogue seize them, too? I imagine they spent a lot of Saturday looking into a cookfire, or perhaps being listless or short with one another, all of them feeling carved out inside.
I imagine all the women of the past who have had to tenderly wash their loved ones’ bodies with water and tears, loss flowing over the hard shell of the person they knew.
Mary arrives at the tomb to fresh horror. Someone has stolen this one consolation from her. One more thing, that proverbial straw.
And that’s where my imagination found her that morning, weeping for not just this new robbery, but all of it. All of her fear and grief and lost hope is dripping onto her hands.
It’s where she sees two blindingly attired men. And then, a gardener. (We know she is mistaken. But maybe not. Isn’t he the First Gardener?)
“Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?”
I like that he asks this, even though he knows.
I imagine her ugly-crying, a little like I did. “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”
And I love this, too: “Mary.”
I love this word. In a single uttering of her name, suddenly, I imagine the world cracks open for Mary. Can you imagine her speechlessness? Her awe? Her sudden tsunami of understanding, and then the slow trickle of awe that would happen for the rest of her life?
I imagine suddenly all of the broken pieces of her mind began to stand up, assembling themselves: It had to happen this way.
All the literal hell they had endured, the blackness and fear and guttural tears, must have suddenly begun to heal and right themselves. And not just heal: to construct something better than before.
It had to happen this way.
Maybe, like me, you have “Why’s” in your life that loom so large, occasionally they begin to block out light and sound and even love.
It’s funny: I’m thinking of those woodshop hands again. But I look up a little farther from the callouses. On the wrists, there: Holes.
Scars on him. Big enough to carry my “why’s.”
The biblical view of things is resurrection–not a future that is just a consolation for the life we never had but a restoration of the life you always wanted. This means that every horrible thing that ever happened will not only be undone and repaired but will in some way make the eventual glory and joy even greater.
Timothy Keller (emphasis added)*
This week, in your why’s, may you hear God speak your name. May you have what you need to trust him through your Saturday, until your stunning Sunday.
*Keller, Timothy. The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. New York: Penguin Books (2009).
Reading Time: 3 minutes
After the all-too-recent my-kid-might-have-lymphoma scare? There are some things that have been going right.
For one, after a year of doing my freelance writing and marketing for my only employment, I filed for my own business. I am now the owner of Fresh Ink, LLC. So that’s pretty cool.
And somehow, I’m receiving a windfall of client possibilities and realities I’m pretty excited about.
But something was strange this week: at least two days where I dealt with anxiety. Not panic attacks or anything of that sort–though I know those are real for many people. But more of a low-lying GAHHHHH! That’s not usually me.
Thankfully, I don’t feel like my family is getting the business end of that in any major ways, which is significant for me (and my anger problem).
But I talked to a mentor of mine this morning, also a writer. Paraphrasing my question, how do you know when you’re involved in too many good things?
I think of God’s words to Moses:
What you are doing is not good. You will surely wear yourself out, both you and these people with you. For the task is too heavy for you; you cannot do it alone. (Exodus 18:17-18)
I’ll include his answers below–and you might want to check out The Dangers of Overcommitment, The True Cost of Overcommitment, and Your opportunity…vs. Your Call. (Man. I probably should, too.) I also found a lot of good thoughts in Ruth Barton’s Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership, which I can’t recommend highly enough.
After living so many years out of the country, I’m amazed at how my American ideals of achievement and performance really do color my interpretations of thriving Christianity. I think too highly of myself. My “ministry “plans can be ego-driven plans. I lack the humility to embrace the limits of my humanity, the boundaries God’s put in place. I find identity in what I do for God, rather than what he has done for me.
So I have to constantly re-center my soul on “Kingdom culture” instead–looking under the hood to check out my warning lights.
Shall we?
![Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language](https://www.janelbreitenstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/love-languages-text-1.jpg "Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language")
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