Category: Family

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You Did That For Me?

Photo courtesy of wordsofreason.wordpress.com

Three or four years ago our family of five went to see my folks for Easter. It was the time of year when the winter’s cold was gone and the kids could finally get some time playing outside.

While we were all in their backyard one day, I told my wife and kids about some of the places I used to visit in the woods nearby when I was a kid. On the spur of the moment, we all decided to take a trip into the forest to have a look for ourselves.

Our kiddos have always enjoyed being in the woods, but most of the places we’ve taken them have had nice wide trails that make it easy to get around. There were no trails here, so we had to find our own way. Without really thinking too much about it, my plan was to bring them into the woods through one section, then bring them down to see some cool spots along the creek, and then start coming back up through a different area.

We got down to the creek, and I showed them an old well, then brought them to the spot where some of us slid down a natural waterslide and built dams as kids. I had a childhood friend whose dad loved golf; in order to work on his swing, he’d stand in his yard and drive old golf balls into the forest. As a kid, friends and I would come across some of these golf balls while playing in the woods; they were always in the same general area, so he must’ve had a consistent swing. J Now, with my own family in tow, I told my kids to keep an eye out for golf balls. Sure enough, we found at least one.

As we started heading back, I took them along an easy route I followed when I was younger. It’s a funny thing though, if you stay out of a forest for 10 or 15 years, you might be surprised at how much it changes while you’re gone.

We crossed back over the creek and started heading back up the hill. It started getting tricky, though, because in our path were numerous thorn bushes I didn’t remember running into before. We’d make some progress up the hill, only to run into a spot that was too thick for us to pass, so we’d have to scoot sideways or even come back down the hill some. There were spots where we could squeeze through, but I had to step on a few thorny branches and hold back others with one hand while my kiddos carefully passed through.

It’s not so bad when you’re tall enough to see over the thorn bushes, but when you’re only about three feet tall and Mom and Dad don’t seem to know where they’re going, it can be scary and even overwhelming. My kids started getting worried, even coming to the verge of tears, so I stopped being delicate with the thorns in order to move us along faster. Instead of grabbing them with just a finger and thumb, I pushed them aside and held them out of the way with the back of my hand so we could make wider openings and move toward our goal a little quicker.

It was slow going, but the kids hung in there and we finally made it out of the woods. As the panic subsided, the kids noticed that one of my hands had a surprising amount of blood on it. I didn’t have any bad cuts, but the thorns had scratched me enough that it caused the blood to start flowing. It looked much worse than it actually was, but my daughter was very concerned because of how much blood she saw. Through her eyes, all she knew was that Daddy was bleeding so that the rest of them could safely pass through the dangerous spots.

As we had approached Easter that year, we had been talking more frequently about the suffering Jesus endured aside from the cross. The beatings, the humiliation, the crown of thorns, the sheer indignity, and all sorts of other often-forgotten things are still part of the story. He was so weak from the beating and other types of suffering that He couldn’t even carry the cross, as the condemned often did. My wife voiced the connection, using our adventure as an object lesson. It’s like it clicked for my oldest daughter. He took my place. I escaped the suffering because someone else did it for me.

I don’t know where you are in life, or if you consider yourself a spiritual person. None of that changes the fact that Christ paid for the price of your admission into Heaven. You can’t earn it, you can’t pay your own way, and you can’t pay Him back. The only way to get into Heaven is to use the ticket He bought you. He bought tickets for everyone, but only a small percentage of people take Him up on the offer.

He’s holding out a ticket for you, and He wants you to take it. Will you accept it?

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Hanging on by a Thread (Part 3 of 3)

(See Part 1 and Part 2)

Lee with two of his grandkids after returning home from the hospital

When my father-in-law Lee suddenly had a medical emergency right after Christmas a few years ago, it caught us all off guard. For almost a week we didn’t know anything, and all we could do was wait for new developments.

In order to shield the family at the hospital from having to do all the communicating through texting and phone calls, I started emailing out updates to close friends and family. The list of recipients grew quickly though, and soon we had our own Facebook page to help keep people updated and to pass along specific prayer requests both for Lee and for the needs of his family. Lee meant a lot to a whole lot of people, and eventually hundreds of readers received the daily updates I sent out.

There must have been some people hitting their knees hard in prayer on Lee and his family’s behalf, because Lee eventually opened his eyes. After spending a few days in a medically induced coma with a body temperature somewhere in the 80s, his body had some adjusting to do when he regained consciousness. He was extremely disoriented and weak, but, at least for now, he was still with us.

We were all thrilled to see Lee moving in the right direction, but the world didn’t stop turning because he was in the hospital. My young family was far from home; we were able to stay in the area for a few more days, but I had to get back to my job. We had already stayed about a week longer than we had planned, and we couldn’t stay much longer. Lee was still in the hospital when we left to head back home. The day we left the hospital, he was weak from a related surgery he just came through, but was still happy to see us and understood why we had to leave. We had no idea at the time, but that was the last time we would see him in person. We made it back home the next day and we closely stayed in touch to hear the latest news.

Time went on and Lee got discharged from the hospital. Since his scare, the only times that I had spoken with him were in the hospital when he was exhausted or groggy. After he had made it home and had time to recover some of his strength, he called and wanted to speak with me on the phone. After getting a little bit of an update on his progress, he began to thank me. I assumed he was referring to the rescue breathing I did for him when he initially lost consciousness. Just as I was about to brush it off, though, he surprised me.

Of course he appreciated my helping him live long enough to make it to the hospital, but that wasn’t the main reason he wanted to thank me. He was more thankful that throughout all the updates I sent out to the masses, I kept the focus on our family being open to accepting God’s will, rather than forcing God’s will to comply with ours. Lee didn’t have a problem with intercessory prayer, but he appreciated the balance I put on the messaging. It turns out that on multiple occasions during his recovery in the hospital he had read every email I sent out. He was surprised at all he had missed while unconscious; he enjoyed reading the emails to catch up on all of it, and he felt that the updates had taken the right approach.

That was the last time I ever spoke with Lee. A few months after coming home from the hospital, he again caught us off guard and unexpectedly passed from this world into the next. I’m not sure if it was God’s plan all along to have Lee recover enough to come home after his initial scare, or if all of the prayers sufficiently moved God to give us a few more months with Lee, but in the end, God had His way even when it conflicted with ours.

At Lee’s memorial service, as a testament to his character, the church was packed with hundreds of people. Extra chairs had to be brought in to seat everyone. Lee lived his life knowing what was truly important while ignoring what wasn’t, and people recognized that.

It’s so easy to get wrapped up and even be consumed by the things of this life, but it’s important to live in light of eternity. Too often we lose sight of the fact that very few of our daily struggles or any other distractions that preoccupy us will even be a memory once we’ve moved on from this life. The only things that will have eternal significance are the actions you’ve taken to know God and help others know Him too.

How’s your focus? Are you paying attention to the things that are important? As you go through life, are you leaving a positive lasting impact on the people with whom you interact?

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Hanging on by a Thread (Part 2 of 3)

(See Part 1 here and Part 3 here)

The next few days after my father-in-law, Lee, got whisked away to the hospital were a blur. Whatever had gone wrong with his heart was a complicated thing. Doctors put him in a medically induced coma and dropped his body temperature for a few days as a way of “rebooting” him. Since this was right after Christmas, family that had just left turned around and came back. One of Lee and Pam’s daughters flew in from Alaska. People were constantly calling, trying to find out the latest information, even when there was nothing new to report. The adrenaline we all ran on started wearing off, and the exhaustion began setting in.

Lee’s hospital was about an hour away from his house, where my wife and three young kiddos were staying. My wife would go up there every day, but an extra two hours of travel time a day added to the burden. My kids started getting antsy; at the time they were 5, 4, and 14 months, and Mommy had never been away from them this much before. In her place, they got a guy that meant well, but just couldn’t compare to Mommy. Some of the meals I came up with were really just glorified snacks, and sometimes it was the same thing over and over again. The walls started feeling like they were closing in on all of us. We needed to find some kind of better solution as we got closer to the time the doctors were going to try to raise Lee’s body temperature and revive him.

Lee and Pam knew a bunch of people in the area near the hospital, and we decided to make the drive as a family up to that region with the intent to start staying the night up there somewhere. We packed a bunch of our stuff and left Lee and Pam’s house not knowing where we’d be spending the next few nights. We made it to the hospital and went to the waiting room where we saw lots of familiar faces. During the day all kinds of friends and well-wishers came and went, some of them even bringing much-appreciated care packages of food and things to help pass the time. My kids enjoyed the extra time with Mommy, even if it was in a waiting room. Even with all the extra family and friends helping out, though, they didn’t have to stay in the same room long before they started getting antsy again. They needed somewhere to feel settled.

During the day we were still trying to find a place to stay. One family offered us an available room in their home, but five of us is a lot to cram into one room (especially when two of the kids still napped), so we wanted to see if we could find anything else. Someone had two rooms available for us, but they had a dog that my son would’ve been allergic to. Late in the day we got word that there was a family willing to let us stay at their place. They had two rooms for us, no pets, and the house was less than five minutes from the hospital. The offers weren’t going to get much better than that and it was getting late, so we grabbed it. By the time we arrived at the house it was after dark. The house was cheery and still decorated for Christmas, and when the door opened we met some of the sweetest people we could have hoped for. Jay and Esther and their daughter Tracey welcomed us into their home in one of our young family’s hours of greatest need.

Jay and Esther were great-grandparents, and they had a large family. Their house was so warm and welcoming, and someone was always popping in because…that’s just the kind of place it was. They had one of their grandsons staying in their basement at the time, and he and a visiting friend helped us bring in our luggage, pack ‘n plays, and anything we brought with us. By the time we got there, it was time to get the kids to bed. We got our daughters set up in one of the rooms, and we set up our son on the floor in the room where my wife and I stayed. I think my wife and I spent a little time visiting with the family before we collapsed into bed, too. That was our first restful night of sleep since the whole ordeal with Lee began.

The next day my wife headed off to the hospital early again, but my kids and I were able to stay in a place the kids finally felt comfortable and occupied. If memory serves, Jay and Esther had five kids; as grandparents and great-grandparents, many children had come to visit this house, and there were all kinds of fun things for my kids to play with and explore. They also had all kinds of Christmas decorations that sang or danced after it got squeezed (a favorite for kids). In addition to all kinds of stuffed animals and toys, they had a foosball table and a pool table in the basement…something that kept my kids occupied for a very long time.

Our hosts also figured out that Daddy was good at getting his kids riled up and roughhousing, but maybe needed some help in the food preparation department. Oh, man, they were so great. My kids actually started having balanced meals. Those wonderful people made it possible for us to put one foot in front of the other on our march through the trial we faced.

Last story about staying at their place. During naptime one day, I laid down my youngest in a pack ‘n play in a room by herself. I laid my son down in his sleeping bag on the floor in our room, and I set up my oldest daughter to play/color/draw on the bed in our room. My son fell asleep right away, and I told my daughter I was going to read on the floor. Once I laid down, though, I figured out pretty quickly that I wasn’t going to stay awake long, so I let her know I’d probably take a nap on the floor. My five-year-old daughter got down off our bed with her little blanket, came and lay down beside me, and all three of us took a nap in a row on the floor. We were finally in a place where we could rest.

I’ll get you caught up on Lee in my next post, but this one’s about how much we were able to benefit from the generosity and hospitality of these wonderful people. That was their gift, they loved helping people, and it was amazing and much appreciated to be ministered to in that way.

This whole site is geared toward encouraging you to use your gifts to live a life of higher impact for Christ’s Kingdom. Not everyone is going to be an international gospel singer or someone that proclaims the truth boldly in stadiums across the globe. I don’t know what your gifts are. You might not accomplish anything earth-shattering by being hospitable to someone who needs help, but let me tell you…it can mean the world to the person receiving the help. Whatever your gift is…please…find a way to use it. God gave you that gift for a reason, and if you let Him, He’ll tie you into His master plan.

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Hanging on by a Thread (Part 1 of 3)

Read Part 2 or Part 3

For Christmas 2014 we visited my wife’s folks in northwestern Ohio. Instead of going straight there from Virginia, we drove to see some family near Dayton first. The kids had lots of fun playing with cousins, staying up later than usual, and generally wearing themselves (and us) out. At the end of that visit, we drove about two and a half hours to my in-laws’ place.


I think it was the afternoon of the 26th or 27th; I was worn out. There were two Christmas celebrations with two different sides of the family, but my young family had to skip one of them because the kids were worn out, sick, or getting sick. My oldest actually developed an ear infection, so we spent some time in an Urgent Care because of the pain she was in. I was beat, so I was laying on the living room floor, starting to fall asleep.

There were people moving around. My father-in-law, Lee, took a moment to sit down on the couch, put his feet up, and close his eyes. My wife and her mom Pam were moving around the area, working on a few other things as I drifted off.

Then I heard my wife’s worried tone. I don’t remember much of what she was saying, but she was urgently trying to soothe Lee. Pam came rushing over, too, and then there were two worried tones. I opened my eyes to see what was happening, and Lee, still reclining on the couch, looked like he was having a seizure.

I got up and ran over. He was unresponsive, his eyes were fluttering, and his body was spasming. I tried picking him up to lower him to the ground…no easy task when someone’s body goes completely rigid. I laid him flat on the ground, and my CPR training from nearly 20 years prior came rushing back. I checked for breathing, but there didn’t seem like there was any. I retilted his head to try opening his airway, but still nothing. I forgot to do a finger sweep to see if there was anything in his mouth, which ended up causing some complications later. I began doing rescue breathing on my father-in-law.

Finding a pulse can be a tricky thing. When I learned CPR on dummies, we didn’t use the kind that simulated pulses. As a result, we did a pulse check knowing full well there wasn’t going to be one. I tried his neck, I tried his wrist, and I tried his chest. I couldn’t find anything, so by all counts I should have begun doing CPR, but I doubted myself. I thought “well this might be a faint one right here.” In my mind it’s a scary thing to begin chest compressions, because that means someone’s in REAL trouble. I ended up not doing any compressions because I wasn’t thinking objectively; I hadn’t thought about any of this in years and I was scared of messing up.

Somewhere in this sequence we called an ambulance. Thankfully, there was a volunteer fire station not two blocks away, so they arrived very quickly. That time we spent waiting for them seemed like it took forever, though. Between trying to find a pulse, rescue breathing, trying to shoo the kids out of the room, and all the confusion going on, it was chaos. My youngest, who was a little older than a year at the time, crawled over Lee’s legs, cheerfully unaware that anything was wrong, before we got the kids wrangled up.

Once the EMTs arrived I happily yielded to someone who knew a lot more about what to do in this situation. Almost right away after evaluating the situation, they wrapped some kind of band around Lee’s chest, and it began doing chest compressions on its own. We filled in some of the volunteers on what happened, what kind of meds Lee took, etc., all while the EMTs worked on him. It seemed to take awhile, but eventually they prepared to load him into the ambulance. As they were busily moving about, I asked one of them “do we have a pulse?” I was very glad to hear “we do, but it’s weak.”

They loaded Lee into the ambulance, and off they went. I drove Pam to the hospital, chasing right behind. The trip was a short one, thankfully. We went into the ER and eventually met up with the doc on duty, and we told him what we knew. A flurry of phone calls, conversations with doctors, and newly arriving friends of the family followed. This particular hospital wasn’t well equipped to deal with this situation, so they prepared to transfer Lee via helicopter to a larger hospital in Toledo about an hour away by car. Shortly before the helicopter departed, the staff invited a few of us back to where Lee was being prepped for the trip. He was intubated, had IVs and heart monitors in place, and was still unconscious. This was Pam’s opportunity to see Lee one more time before splitting up to travel separately.

After a few moments, we left the ER. Some friends of the family volunteered to drive Pam up to the hospital in Toledo. We went back to the house and got a few things packed for Pam. My wife, deeply concerned about her father, wanted to go along too, so she got ready to leave. In a whirlwind they grabbed a few items and headed out. Once they departed, I was left there with my three young kiddos, just the four of us, in a house that suddenly seemed very quiet, and we didn’t know how long it would be before anyone came back.

Looking back, I didn’t do any chest compressions on Lee even though I probably should have. No, I hadn’t had any refresher training in a long time, but I knew what was next in the sequence. The reason I didn’t do it was because I was so scared of making the wrong decision (starting chest compressions when there was no need to do them) that I ended up making no decision. On the other hand, enough training came back to me to be able to help Lee in the immediate situation until more skilled people arrived. Ultimately the EMTs and volunteers’ speedy arrival was crucial in Lee living long enough to open his eyes again, but for the next few days we weren’t sure if that was going to happen.

You have to train now for things that will happen in the future. By the time you get there and need the knowledge, it will be too late to learn something and start new habits. I’m not talking strictly in the sense of emergency response, but for difficult and trying times in general. They’re coming. How do you react when things go sideways? What are you spending your time thinking about, moving toward, and taking steps to become? When hard times come, do you dig harder into devotions and prayer, or stop doing them altogether? If your track record is to be considered your training regimen, have you been training yourself to turn to God, or away from him?

Lee’s chances of survival were dropping the longer I hesitated. Even though I knew what I should be gearing up to do, I didn’t start doing it because I wasn’t confident about his pulse. The things you’ve spent time repeating, drilling into yourself, come back to you though, and you can draw on them when you need them. What do you do repetitively and regularly today in order to prepare yourself for when you’ll need it in the future?

Read Part 2 or Part 3

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Fatherhood Fun

I don’t know what it is about Dads, but we love to get our kids riled up. We know we shouldn’t  do it as much as we do, but we can’t help it sometimes. Daddies are the loud ones, the human jungle gyms, and the ones that tend to ratchet things up rather than down. Mommies are the soothers, the comforters, the ones the kids go to when something hurts (probably because of something Daddy did while roughhousing).

Since my kids were little, the basement has been the place where they could be loud. If they had too much sugar or they were just a little extra wound up, we’d banish them to the basement for awhile. When my two oldest kids were pretty young, one time I took them in the basement to work off some energy while Mommy got a little peace and quiet upstairs. My oldest daughter and my son loved when Daddy went a little crazy with them.

Around that time we came up with a game that was kind of like dodgeball. Back then our basement was set up so that as you came down the stairs, you pulled a U-turn and walked down a hallway to another room. Right across from the bottom of the stairs was another room. I’d go to the room at the far end of the hall and throw a ball at the wall near the bottom of the stairs while my kiddos ran back and forth between the two safe zones (the blind spot at the bottom of the stairs and the room across from it). It sounds kind of sadistic, but they loved it and they weren’t going to get hurt. I had a ball that was kind of scary because it was very loud when it hit the wall, so any time it “just missed” them, it was a big thrill for them because they had snuck past Daddy’s throw without getting hit. I pegged them plenty of times too, but it usually ended with lots of giggles. J

My kids weren’t very old at this point, probably about 5 and 3. They loved playing this game though, because this is where they learned to use teamwork to “distract” Daddy. One would feint, act like they were going to dash across the line of fire, but it was really just a trick to get Daddy to throw the ball while they were still safe, and then the other one would make a break for it before the ball bounced back to Daddy.

I’d try bouncing the ball off the hallway’s walls, or putting spin on the ball so that it still bounced after them even if they were in the safe zones. Naturally, the ball would get stuck on their side every now and then, but they’d peek out from behind their cover, pick it up, and throw it to me and dive back for cover before I could pick it up and throw it again.

Little dodgeball champions

One time my little guy picked it up and threw it to me, but then forgot to get back behind some cover. I gave him some warning and made a big show of winding up for a big throw, but he still wasn’t catching on that he was exposed. With all the gravity of a life-and-death situation, big sis dashed across the line of fire, knowing full well that Daddy was about to unleash a fastball. My little medal-of-honor-winner-in-training jumped behind him and grabbed him under his armpits, and then yanked him back to safety. He fell down on top of her in the process, with the ball narrowly missing both of them.

There are some things in the Bible that you just don’t fully appreciate unless you deal with young kids a lot. This story about my kids helps me better grasp one story in the book of Mark (10:17-31). A rich young ruler came up to Jesus and asked “what do I need to do to have eternal life?” This guy was probably a young ruler in the local synagogue, steeped in the legalism of the day. With his line of thinking he was essentially looking for some kind of religious deed he could perform that would guarantee his entry into Heaven. Although he was misguided, that didn’t make him insincere.

Jesus more or less told him “you know the deal…follow all the commandments…don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t defraud, and honor your father and mother.”

While most of us at that point probably would have remembered at least one time in our lives where we told a lie or let Mom or Dad down, this guy had a different reaction.

“Yep, I’m good with all that. What else do I need to do?”

If you’re Jesus, and this guy has the nerve to say that to you, even if he believed it was true, what are you gonna be thinking?

Here’s the part that my kids helped me understand. “Jesus looked at him and loved him.”

Some translations might say that Jesus felt great compassion for him. I was truly moved to see my daughter sacrifice her safety for the sake of her little brother. The guy in the story was earnestly seeking the truth from Christ, but he didn’t know he was now playing in a different league. Like seeing my little guy standing in the line of fire without knowing he was in danger, Christ probably looked at this young man and thought to himself “Bless your little heart. You’re so clueless and you don’t even know it.”

There are lots of other fatherhood experiences where those words came to mind: “Jesus looked at him and loved him.” Christ had compassion both for people that were His followers and for people that were not. We’re called to do the same.

Who can you show compassion for today?

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Valentine’s Day Gift

Ever think about how you don’t need help getting into trouble? Ever notice how you don’t need to teach kids to do bad stuff? For example, did you show them how to lie, or did they just kind of figure that one out on their own?

My son has told us some lies before. These were like, blatant, totally unprompted lies. He’s a little more slick about it these days, but when he was just a little guy, he once said “I don’t have anything in my mouth” after he got into a bag of chips without our permission. His mouth was…you guessed it…full of chips! On another occasion he was supposed to be up in his room napping. When he came down, without us saying anything, he told us “I wasn’t looking out the window.”

Dude, at least make it hard for us.

Most of the time instructions and laws seem to be phrased in negative terms. “Don’t lie.” “Don’t cheat.” It’s much more rare to have laws that are positive in nature. Most of the Ten Commandments are the same way. Only two of them are phrased in the positive (remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy; respect your father and mother).

Elsewhere in the Bible God gives other instructions. Sometimes He says stuff that’s intuitive or obvious. Other times He tells us stuff that maybe we’ve heard or read a few times, but we still miss it even though it’s something we ought to know and need some help learning.

Valentine’s Day presents the opportunity to reflect on one such instruction.

In many marriages, you can ask the husband “does your wife love you?” Often he’ll answer “well, yeah, sure she does.” Probe a little further, though, and you might identify a problem. “Does she respect you?” The answer probably doesn’t come as quickly, and if he doesn’t feel as though his wife respects him, there could be an issue.

Hang on though, guys, ‘cuz you’re not perfect, either. Stick with me, there’s a Biblical basis for this. The opposite is often true for wives. She might feel sufficiently respected, but she might not quite feel loved. (There’s a difference between knowing you’re loved and feeling that you’re loved.)

Regardless of whether you’re a male or female breadwinner, “working all day just to put food on the table and keep a roof over our heads” is great, but isn’t the only thing your significant other needs from you.

If either one isn’t getting what they need, that person is running at an emotional deficit. Wives, maybe you respect your husbands, but he may not feel it. Husbands, of course you love your wives, but you need to make her know it and believe it. For everybody…your spouse needs what they need; just because you don’t feel like you require extra love/respect doesn’t mean they can go without it. Don’t cut them off from what they need just because you look at them through the prism of you.

Take a look at the book of Ephesians. In chapter 5, God tells us (in positive verbiage) what to do. He doesn’t give us a “don’t,” he gives us a “do.” These days the first part is easy to misconstrue as being outdated and part of the “toxic masculinity” you hear about in men’s razor commercials. Don’t twist it; read the whole thing. Right on the heels of talking about how to live with and treat other Christians, the author turns his attention to household relationships in verses 22-33.

22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. 24 Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, 26 that He might [g]sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, 27 that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. 28 So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. 30 For we are members of His body, [h]of His flesh and of His bones. 31 “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. 33 Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Note how it doesn’t say “husbands, respect your wives,” or “wives, love your husbands.” Why not? Because most of the time, those things aren’t the shortfalls. We’re probably already doing them. This passage guides us to do something that doesn’t come naturally.

There’s a whole study on this topic called “Love and Respect” by Emerson Eggerichs. I’ve never read the book, but the DVD series was phenomenal. “Pink and Blue…not wrong…just different.” Great stuff for a small group setting or Sunday School class.

If you haven’t been offering what your spouse needs, and then you start providing it, watch how powerful an agent it can be. Flowers and chocolates are great and all, but how about this year, you make a concerted effort to deliver what your spouse or significant other really needs?

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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A Temporary or a Lasting Peace?

Our youngest child is at the stage where she still has bad dreams fairly often. She wakes up crying during the night, and my wonderful wife usually goes running into her room to try to settle her down before she wakes up anyone else in the house.

A few mornings ago my daughter woke up crying. I was already awake, laying in bed, when I heard the cry begin. I jumped out of bed before my wife started stirring, trying to return the favor. I went into my daughter’s room and told her “Daddy’s here now.” I brushed her hair out of her face, rubbed her shoulder, and kissed her cheek. She calmed down and we prayed, but she wasn’t settled. I stayed with her a little bit longer, and then went back to bed.

Laying there for a bit, it wasn’t long before I heard her little feet came walking into our room. But she didn’t come walking over to my side. She made a beeline right for Mommy. My wife talked and cuddled with her a little bit, then brought her back to bed and got her tucked and settled in, where she stayed for the rest of the night.

How many of us are like that? Whether we like to admit it or not, there’s a God-shaped hole in all of us. We’re restless until it’s filled. We try to fill the hole with different things…anything. For some it can be destructive things; alcohol, drugs, relationships that aren’t built to last, more serious types of crime, or even dark spiritual things. Others try to fill it with things that might be good, but don’t quite quench the thirst. Making more money, performing charity work, being very active in community groups, donating your time/energy/resources to civic or political causes you believe in, etc.

The problem is, those things are like Daddy trying to settle his daughter in for the night after a bad dream. They might serve as temporary solutions, but they don’t bring a peace that lasts.

To fill the God-shaped hole in your life, only Christ will satisfy.

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Why Would God Create People if He Knew They’d Let Him Down?

Photo courtesy of eBaum’s World

Kids are nuts.

If you don’t have kids, having one (or several) changes just about every aspect of your life. When you don’t have kids, you might not even think about it, but life can be amazingly simple. I’m not taking a shot at people without kids; I’m saying that if you don’t have kids and you want to walk out of the house and go somewhere, all you need to do is put on your shoes and leave. Doing the same thing with young kids can turn into a wrestling match, a drawn-out battle of wills, or a frustrating game of hide-and-seek that results in one of you (parents included) wearing mismatched shoes and only one sock as you walk out the door.

Kids can simultaneously be the sweetest and most frustrating people in the world. When my son was 3, he had a bad habit of coming downstairs after we had laid him down. Most of the time it would happen before my wife and I went to bed; we’d hear something that didn’t quite sound right. We’d mute the TV or stop whatever we were doing and say “What is it?” Almost always, our little guy would sheepishly stand up from sitting on the bottom step and come walking toward us, trying to see what was on the TV. It wasn’t always at night though; sometimes it was in the early morning. I usually get up long before everyone else in the house so I can beat a lot of the traffic on my way to work. One morning I heard him coming down the stairs when he was still expected to have a few more hours of sleep to go. Exasperated because I didn’t want my sleep-deprived wife to hear him and wake up, I walked over to the stairs and asked him in a sharp tone “what are you doing?” At that age he had trouble pronouncing his “L” sounds and would have lots of pauses in his sentences. My little guy looked anxiously at me with a furrowed brow and nervously said “Umm, I just…wanted to tew you…to have a good…day…at work.”

Imagine how badly I wanted to melt right into the floor.

You can often tell what kind of environment kids spend their time in by listening to the things they say. We’ve told our kids many times that we love them no matter what. When they’re still a little too young to make total sense of everything, they start to say it back to you in their own little way: “Mom? Dad? Did you know that I love you even when you’re bad?”

Kids bring so many crazy moments to your life. I’ve received bloody noses from little elbows. They break stuff that you really didn’t want broken. They seem to know the difference between when you’re prepared and when you don’t have an extra diaper or outfit for them. They’re sick and have stuff oozing out of every hole in their heads for the first two years of their lives. Their “help” with something you’re doing actually makes it more difficult. I’ve been in a totally dark house after everyone’s bedtime, then went to open my bedroom door only to jump out of my skin when I saw a toddler standing on the other side of the door, holding a stuffed animal and staring up at me with big eyes.

They’re messy, expensive, and suck the energy out of your body. They make your hair gray (or thin). Why in the world would anyone ever CHOOSE to have children?

You can’t explain why, but after you’ve had them, you know you wouldn’t trade it for anything.

It’s the time they spend with you and the love they have for you. It’s the times you get down on the floor and they use you as a jungle gym. It’s the way they shriek “Daddyyyyyyyyy!” and come running to hug you when you come home from work. It’s the way they cling tightly to you when you wade into water that’s deeper than what they’re used to. After you’ve disciplined them and they come and just want you to hold them as they sit crying, broken, and sorry, you want to squeeze them back and wipe their tears away, sometimes blinking back tears of your own in the process.

When I hear people ask “Why would God create humans if He knew they would let Him down?”, these are the things that come to mind. Like children, we are deeply flawed and are prone to do things our Heavenly Father doesn’t want us to do. Again and again, we fail to meet the standards set before us. We are stubborn and take forever to learn the lesson that’s being taught to us, sometimes even intentionally.

At the same time though, we are the source of tremendous joy to Him. When His children want to spend time with Him and seek a deeper relationship with Him, it brings Him colossal happiness. We all mess up again and again, but when we come to Him, broken and sorry, He holds us gladly while blinking back tears of His own. He doesn’t need anything from us, but He’s thrilled when we pursue Him.

This is a difficult time of year for many people, and maybe that includes you. You’ve almost certainly heard this before, but God loves you. Just in case those words have lost their meaning, I’ll say it another way: God really likes you. You’re loved, and you’re loved hard.

There’s a battle going on out there. You may not think of it in those terms, but that’s what it is. Christ came to offer salvation to everyone. The enemy didn’t like that, so he’s doing everything he can to prevent people from hearing about or accepting that gift. God created you to be a part of that fight, but the enemy’s going to try everything he can to demoralize, distract, discourage, and deceive you.

You have it within you to do amazing things for God’s glory that you dare not even think possible. Let me tell you…it can be done. There’s going to come a time where He calls on you to do something you’re not comfortable doing. He can and will empower you to do things you can’t do on your own, and it will surprise you what He can do through you.

For now, just know that like a child who knows Mom or Dad truly has their best interests at heart, it all starts with being confident and secure in your Heavenly Father’s love for you.

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Ask Me

It’s funny how much parenthood can teach you about Christ’s relationship with us. I’ve got three kiddos under 10, and it’s been fun to watch them develop and learn as they grow.

Of course, parenthood has its exhausting moments. I have to credit my wife with doing the heavy lifting. Anytime there’s a bad dream or an injury, they don’t come looking for me unless Mommy’s unavailable (and even then, sometimes they’ll just wait for her rather than come to me). I can have one sitting on each of my knees, be hugging the third, and have all of them crying, but all of them will want Mommy.

But anyway…my wife and I found ourselves repeating the same things many times as our kids were very young. “Eat what you have, then ask for more.” “Obey first, then ask questions.” “Slow obeying is disobeying.” Some day, when our kids get old enough to do impressions of us, these are the maxims that I’m sure they’ll use.

It’s funny, though, to watch kids get a little more slick as they grow. Sometimes they wanted something, but they didn’t want to come out and ask for it. Instead, they might just throw out an unprovoked comment. “I wish we could have a snack pretty soon.” “It would sure be fun to watch a show right now.” “If you asked me if I wanted more milk, I would say yes, because my glass is almost empty.” My wife and I thought this was kind of fun to see, but we also wanted them to learn that it was okay to ask questions. One of the common sayings we had was “So…do you have a question?” They caught on pretty quickly that if they wanted something, they couldn’t just “wish out loud” about it; they needed to ask us (and the word “please” had better be a part of that question). Sometimes the answer would be yes, other times it would be no, but their chances of success would be much higher if they actually asked.

Going back to what I said earlier about parenthood teaching you about Christ’s relationship with us…God wants us to ask Him, too. The most blatant example I can think of comes from Luke 18:39-43. A blind beggar heard that Jesus was passing by, so he started yelling to get Jesus’ attention. When bystanders started shushing him, he only got louder. Then Jesus had the blind man brought to Him. What Jesus asked next is a little bit mind-numbing. “What do you want me to do for you?”

What kind of a question is that?! The guy is BLIND! This wasn’t like being blind today, where you can receive an education or get a job despite being visually impaired. Back then it’s not like there were specialized accommodations like Braille signs and traffic signals that made noise when it’s safe to cross the street. Blind people back then couldn’t get work. They had to beg, and they relied on whatever they received. If nobody gave them anything, they didn’t have anything. Christ knew exactly what the guy wanted, but He wanted the beggar to ask for it. He wanted him to articulate it, to express it, to say it out loud. It was perfectly obvious that the beggar had faith in Christ, but without him articulating his request, his chances of getting what he wanted were much lower.

Without ego, without hesitation, without any kind of pretense, he told Christ exactly what he wanted. “I want to see!” Verse 42 makes it clear that this beggar’s faith worked in his favor. Christ healed him; he immediately received his sight, and everyone that witnessed it gave glory to God.

When we pray, we must ask with thankfulness and with faith. Ever since the temple curtain tore in two, we have direct access to God. We no longer have to go through a priest or some other intermediary. You can talk directlyto your savior.

What are you asking for when you pray? Are you asking for mighty and impossible things? I once heard a preacher say something to the effect of “we can boldly approach the creator of the universe, who waits with His hand cupped behind his ear to hear our requests. What do we ask? ‘Dear God, watch over the parakeet and water the grass.'”

I love the mental imagery that this same preacher goes on to convey. When you pray, ask God for things that are so big…so impossible, that when He hears you, God slides forward in his throne, elbows an angel, points at you, and says “did you hear THAT?!”

He’s waiting for you to ask Him. You’re invited to live a life of daring and greatness on His behalf. So…do you have a question?

A little motivation (I’m more interested in the audio than the video)…