He loves me?

One of my greatest frustrations as a parent is wondering if Emma knows she is loved. Does she? Is she secure, certain, confident that her parents love her? 

After years of therapy, Emma can articulate most words, but that doesn’t mean we have conversations. She gets her point across, but abstract feelings and emotions? No. We are left to wonder.

While her brothers are experts at communicating their feelings about everything from the fairness of life to the tastiness of the food on their plates, Emma often resorts to wordless whines or grunts of frustration when she isn’t getting her way. The other day she stood at the bottom of the stairs for several minutes trying to formulate a word. When she yelled out, “Mad!” I had to force myself not to throw a party. I was thrilled that she’d been able to express what she was feeling. 

(Not that it changed anything — she was NOT taking those crayons up the stairs. The artist-in-residence lost those privileges a LONG time ago).

But back to my point. We tell her we love her. We show her love. We quite literally pour our lives into hers and make every effort to give her a joyful life. 

But the reality is that there are things about Emma’s life that are challenging. For her and for us.

One of our biggest challenges is food.

Emma is allergic to just about everything. It’s easier to list the foods she CAN have than it is to list the foods she can’t. On top of that, she has eosinophilic esophagitis. Basically that means certain foods irritate and damage the lining of her esophagus. The solution? Don’t eat those foods.

Because of this, Emma’s dietary landscape is quite small. 

But she knows there is more out there. And she wants it!

She’s her mother’s daughter and if she can get her hands on an Oreo, she’s going to eat it. She’s well acquainted with cake, and she knows that the pizza she eats and the pizza everyone else eats are NOT the same. If you leave her alone in a room with access to Goldfish or brownies, you can expect to find them missing when you return. 

I often wonder if she thinks we dislike her because we don’t allow her to have those things. Does she think we are unloving or uncaring?

When I see her grab a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and I take it out of her hand right before she eats a bite, does she think I’m MEAN?

After all, those foods are yummy. Her brothers can eat them. Why can’t she? And bless her heart, she does not understand how bad those things are for her. It’s so hard to communicate why they aren’t bad for everyone else, but they are for her. 

So when I have a chance to give her something that she enjoys, I try to take it. 

I had that chance this morning. When I dropped her brothers off for camp, I turned to her with a big smile and said, “Emma, let’s go to McDonalds. I’ll get you a hash brown. (And mommy will get a ginormous iced coffee).”

Her response? “Chick-fil-A.”
My response? “Baby, McDonald’s is closer. (And while I LOVE me some Chick-fil-A, I prefer McDonald’s iced coffee).”
She said okay and I pointed the van toward McDonald’s. But I felt like a mean mommy. We got a quarter of a mile down the road and her little voice piped up from the back of the van….”Chick-fil-A.”

I turned the van around. 

I drove a mile in the opposite direction all the while thinking that we were going to spend more money, I was going to get a so-so iced coffee, and she probably wouldn’t even eat the stupid hash rounds.

When we pulled into the drive-thru, Emma sang out, “Yeah! The right place!”

In that moment, the extra time, money, and not-so-awesome coffee no longer mattered. I’d made her happy and I was as thrilled as she was. It made my morning to be able to give her something she wanted. To bring her some joy. To say “yes” to her. And even though it meant jumping through a few extra hoops, her happiness filled me with delight.

As we pulled from the parking lot, I felt that nudge in my spirit.
“You know that’s how I feel about you.”

And I had to ask myself…do I?

When God takes something that I had in my hand? When He refuses to give me something, even as He lavishes it on someone else? When no matter how much I pray for something, He keeps saying, “NO?”
Do I believe that He loves me?

Do I?

I know I don’t act like I do. I get mad. I even tell Him I’m mad. Or sometimes I just pout and trust that He’s clued in to my frustration. 

Does that hurt Him? Does He look at me, the One who loved me enough to send His only Son to die for me, and does He wonder what it would take to convince me? He’s already given me everything.

Well, except for those things that He knows are bad for me.

They aren’t necessarily bad things. And they aren’t even bad for everyone. But they are bad for me. Maybe they would lead me to sin. Maybe they would ruin my life in a way I can’t fathom. Maybe they would cause me to chase after things other than to chase after Him. Maybe they would, quite literally, kill me. 

So to those things, He says no.
Not because He’s mean.
But because He loves me.

I’m sitting here with tears in my eyes and a barely sipped on iced coffee, listening to Emma play in her room, and I’m amazed at the lengths my Father goes to to remind me of His love.

I’m not sure what’s going on in your world. I’m not sure why He’s told you “no” or why He’s not giving you something you want—maybe even something you really believe you need.
I am sure of this. He loves you. He loves me. 

Someday, I believe I will be able to talk to Emma about this stuff. I don’t know what she will be like in heaven, but I have a peace that there will come a time when she will understand. That some of the things we’ve missed out on here will be ours there.

I wonder… does He feel that way about us? Does He look forward to the day when once and for all we will be eternally certain of His love for us?

And I wonder how different life here would be if we lived each day like the beloved children we are?

For those of you who are new here and may not already know, our daughter Emma was born with Rubinstein-Taybi Syndrome, a syndrome some people say is caused by a “misspelling” of a specific chromosome. We say God is an excellent speller and He makes no mistakes. We believe that Emma is EXACTLY who God intended and created her to be. 

Grace and peace,

Lynn

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Run to Him

Hello! Hellooo! Anyone still here?!

Please forgive my lengthy blog absence. Re-writing half of my book turned into a very lengthy process and there just haven't been enough hours in the day. But the revisions were accepted and the book is headed out to a copy editor in the next week or so. For the foreseeable future, I’m hoping to write one blog post a week (I just typed “month” – think my subconscious is trying to tell me something??) J

FYI - The blog will be going through an overhaul in preparation for my book release, but that probably won’t happen until after the first of the year.

So, enough with the news.

Here’s what’s on my heart…

This weekend, we took a huge step in our family.

We packed away the nursery.

(sob)

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I Blame the Kale

I blame the kale.


All pre-chopped and bagged.
It’s why I took the kids into the store in the first place.

Have you ever been to Trader Joe’s? It’s—interesting. The layout is odd, it’s significantly smaller than I thought it would be, and the shopping carts are tiny.

On this morning, I plopped my three-year-old into the back of the cart and allowed my 5-year-old to ride along on the outside. You know. The way the little diagram on the seat warns against? Yep. That way.

It would have been fine if I hadn’t paused to grab the kale.


That light-weight shopping cart couldn’t handle the combined weight of both boys at one end, and in a flash, it flipped. The three-year-old rode it down and tumbled out with nary a scratch. (I think he enjoyed it). My five-year-old suffered two completely different injuries.

The first was physical. The cart landed on his arm. So minor it never even bruised.

The second was to his heart, and there was nothing minor about that one. He stood there, tears pooling in the eyes he refused to raise from the floor, saying, “I’m sorry, Mama, I’m sorry, Mama” over and over. And because he is so much like me, I knew that his regret had as much to do with causing a scene—with “messing up”—as it did with the trampled flowers and flying strawberries.

Once I’d confirmed no one was bleeding, I sat right there in the middle of Trader Joe’s and whispered, “Baby, it’s fine. You didn't do anything wrong. It was an accident. I’m not upset. I think you’re awesome and I’m so glad you’re okay.”

I want my little man to grow up secure in the knowledge that there is nothing—NOTHING—he can do, that will ever change my feelings for him. He’s going to make messes and he’s going to get hurt, and he needs to know that I am always and forever going to be on his side.

But the truth was that even as I comforted my little guy, I was fighting the voices in my head. You know the ones who point out how everything you just did was W-R-O-N-G. The ones pointing out the workers righting the buggy, the shoppers pausing to see if the kids were okay, someone picking up the kale. All because of my mistake.

By the time we had finished shopping, the voices in my head were screaming. I was replaying the incident from the moment I put the boys in the cart, to the second I turned loose to grab the kale, to the fact that I was so focused on the kids, I never thanked the people who got the buggy back on its wheels or located my strawberries and how rude was that and was I teaching my kids to be ungrateful?

As we approached the cashier, a woman asked if the boys were okay. Then she did the craziest thing. She looked at me and said, “You’re such a great mom. The way you were comforting him . . . you’re doing a great job.”

I wanted to ask her if she’d noticed that I was the “great” mom who’d let her kids be mauled by a red shopping cart, but instead I mumbled something like “Thanks, just glad they weren’t hurt” and moved on before her words made me cry.

It wasn’t until much later that I realized what had happened. That my heavenly Father—who saw the whole thing go down and knows me better than I know myself—chose, in that topsy-turvy moment, to remind me that He thinks I’m awesome. And He used a stranger to say it for Him.

He knows that while I have no trouble believing He loves me when I’m singing praise songs with the kids or volunteering in Sunday school, it’s so much harder to believe when I’ve messed up. Dropped the ball. Blown it.

I don’t know how your Monday has been. How you’ve struggled. Where you’ve failed.
But this I know.
He loves you.
He thinks you’re awesome.

Zephaniah 3:17 - The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. (ESV)

I Blame the Kale - What I learned about God's #love in the produce aisle. #motherhood #faith (Click to Tweet)



***I want to apologize for my lengthy absence.  I spent three months frantically writing a novel and I have no idea what happened to the month of June! I'm hoping to be back here on a more regular basis in the weeks ahead.

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Sawdust

I love the smell of sawdust.

One whiff and I feel like a young girl standing in the barn, holding the end of a board while my Daddy cuts it with a Skilsaw. I’m transported to a safe place to talk, to spill my troubles, to ask questions, to get answers.

With each deep breath, I can remember the unique smell of my Pa’s flannel shirts - a combination of sawdust, gasoline and sweat. I’m transported to Friday evenings sitting beside him watching Knight Rider. Or riding on the back of a tractor down to the mailbox, giggling all the way.

To me, sawdust smells like hard work and childhood.

To me, sawdust smells like love.

I was thinking about this recently as I walked through our new home which, at that moment, was covered in sawdust. A new home which is clearly a part of God’s plan for my life, and which, as usual, has not unfolded in the way I expected.

God’s ways are unsearchable. He plans beyond our grasp. And sometimes, He feels so far above us, so far beyond us, as to be unknowable.

But He wants us to know Him.

As I walked down the stairs, leaving footprints in the sawdust, breathing in the delicious aroma, He spoke.

“I love the smell of sawdust, too.”
I froze on the stairs.

What?

God loves the smell of sawdust?

Really? And why would He take the time to tell me? What is He trying to reveal to me about who He is?

I’ve thought about it quite a bit over the past few weeks. Perhaps it reminds Him of long talks in a barn, holding the end of a board while Joseph made practiced cuts with a handsaw. Maybe He recalls childhood laughter with His siblings as they built towers and forts with the scraps left over from Joseph’s latest project.

Or maybe, there was a hint of sawdust in the air as He bore the cross, as the nails pierced His flesh, as He died for me.

Maybe, to Him, sawdust smells like love.

I John 4:7-10 ~ Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (ESV)

From the archives...originally posted 3/14/11

image courtesy of photobucket.com

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Do You Feel the Love?

Every now and then, I have a great idea for a blog post, but the words won't flow. So I change gears. Write something else.

And wait.

I have waited months.

This time, I only had to wait a week for God to finish my thoughts and leave me, again, in wonder at His love for us.

But, maybe we should start at the beginning…with sick littles and long staircases and twin mattresses on the floor...

Not so long ago, we lived in a home where the bedrooms were close. So close that despite being in this 24/7 job we call motherhood for almost nine years, I have rarely felt the need to sleep in my children’s rooms. Even when illness raged, I slept in my bed, they in theirs. And if they whimpered or called my name, I was by their side in seconds.

In our new home, our bedroom is on the main floor while the kids’ rooms are upstairs. We’re still in the same house. Still close.

But when the stomach bug hit a few weeks ago, a flight of stairs was too far away. So for several nights, I found myself “sleeping” on the trundle bed mattress we relocated to my son’s bedroom floor.

As I tucked him back into his bed after yet another race to the bathroom, the words from one of my favorite Psalms settled in my mind.

The Lord is near to the broken hearted.

I love the idea of God being near. And from my spot in the floor of James’s room, I could appreciate the concept of His nearness more than ever. When we are hurting, sometimes we need God to be nearer than near. When we are suffering and miserable, our need to feel His presence is more desperation than desire.

I thought about it for a while. Decided to write about it. But something was missing. . .

When it hit me, it blew me away.

Because while it’s true that James needed me, the real reason I was sleeping in his room was because I needed to be there. My little man was sick. It hurt me to see him suffer. I couldn’t bear the thought of him having to wait an extra second for my comfort.

Do you realize God feels that way about you? When life overwhelms. When pain stabs deep. When loved ones suffer. When you wish you could wake up and discover it was all a nightmare.

God sees.

God knows.

And God is near.

Sure, it’s for your benefit.

But it’s also for His.

But now thus says the LORD,
he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
² When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
³ For I am the LORD your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you.
⁴ Because you are precious in my eyes,
and honored, and I love you...

(Isaiah 43:1-4a, emphasis mine, ESV)

Happy Valentine's Day - You are Loved!

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