Category Archives: Adult Children

On the Move

Posted on by

Fall is a season of change. Children go back to school, college co-eds head back to campus, and many young adults sign new apartment leases. Each change involves packing up, rearranging all things familiar and, in some cases, making a major move.

Last week my sister and brother-in-law joined the relocation parade by moving from their suburban home of 40 years to downtown Chicago.

The buyer of their 5000+ square foot house was a young couple with a toddler and baby. After hunting in the area for a year, they toured Bervin and Mary’s home and fell in love with it the first time through. We puzzled over why such a small family would commit to such a large house, but gradually the pieces came together.

The young mother, on her second visit, made mention of the “Christian energy” throughout the rooms, commenting on the peaceful atmosphere. “It’s just what we’ve been looking for,” she said. Her husband asked if they could buy the 3’ X 4’ framed Scripture verse hanging over the front door: “Know thou the God of thy father, and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind.”

At the real estate closing, the reason they chose a large home became clear. The buyers handed Mary a note of gratitude and described how they felt called to help missionaries and planned to use their extra rooms for that purpose.

It can be a challenge to leave the home where you’ve raised 7 children, but when the process became difficult, the testimony of these young buyers made it easier. As Mary said, “I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather have living in our home.”

Last summer Bervin and Mary offered housing to missionaries from Ireland. This family of 6 needed a place to stay for a month, and also needed a car. Bervin and Mary gave a thumbs-up to both requests, proving to be good examples of the scriptural instruction hanging in their entry. Their buyers will continue in this vein.

All of us can look back on multiple moves, and it’s a good idea to search for God’s plan in the progression; sometimes it’s as plain as an architect’s blueprint. Over four decades of time, because of Mary and Bervin’s willingness to serve, God used their home for his purposes in hundreds of ways. As they left that address, he moved along with them and is preparing a fresh blueprint with plans for use of their new home.

Yesterday Louisa and her cousin Marta made a move of their own, from their family homes to an apartment just north of the Loop. After unloading cars and pickups full of boxes, bins and beds, we gathered in their small living room and Bervin prayed, inviting God’s involvement in their new home.

And we know the Lord is ready with the perfect blueprint for two 20-somethings living in the heart of Chicago.

“Know thou the God of thy father, and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind. If thou seek him, he will be found of thee.” (1 Chronicles 28:9)

Spiders on the Web

Posted on by

Every generation considers itself sharper than the one before. Since I see 3 generations coming behind me, I assume I’m “getting it” less and less. There’s one area where that’s indisputably true: the World Wide Web.

Recently three of my boys tried to explain to Mary and me what happens when someone researches a topic through Google. The two of us had initiated the discussion with questions about how the impossible occurs each time we Google anything. Literally millions of sites jump to the screen in seconds, and we wanted to know how.

The boys began describing the technical reasons behind this phenomenon, explaining why it wasn’t “the impossible” but was quite understandable. We asked question after question, but their answers were beyond our grasp. No matter how they tried to simplify it, we still couldn’t get it.

Mary said, “But who typed in all that information? Somewhere, at some time, someone had to put all those facts on the web.” The boys threw back their heads and laughed with gusto while Mary and I looked at each other’s blank faces and thought, “What’s funny about that?”

It was as if our two groups were talking different topics. Maybe we were. Adam patiently described the spiders that crawl around the web collecting data in a category requested through Google, completing their task in milliseconds, another nonsensical concept.

“Spiders?” we said. Mary and I are fully acquainted with real spiders in the real world, but these imaginary ones didn’t compute. But then, because the information they collect is real, they must somehow be real, too. It was mindboggling, and I’m fairly sure smoke began seeping from our ears at that point.

The root problem is that Mary and I think differently than the generation beneath us. It’s like pointing to a tree and asking what kind it is. One group might say, “A tree with red leaves,” the other, “Deciduous.”

I thought of the parallel between generational confusion and the confusion we sometimes feel in trying to understand God. In our bewilderment we ask him questions and he uses his Word to answer, but more often than not, we still don’t get it.

Sometimes we’re incapable of figuring it out, sometimes just off topic. We might be asking, “Lord, which retirement center should I choose?” while he’s answering, “My grace is sufficient for you.”

Much like Mary and me peppering the boys with sidebar questions, all of us are guilty of asking God the wrong questions, too, focusing on our expected answers rather than trying to understand his new ones. When God says something that seems off topic to us, we just repeat our question.

God does offer one answer, though, that answers every question, in every situation, both those we understand and those that confuse us:

“Just trust me.”

And because he’s God, we get that, no matter what generation we’re from.

“What they trust in is fragile; what they rely on is a spider’s web.” (Job 8:14)

In the Baby Business

Posted on by

Today I’ve had babies on the brain, probably because one of mine had a birthday today. It may also be because another of mine is soon to deliver a new grandbaby. Mostly, though, I think it’s just because I love babies.

Each birth is a miracle, not a single one “unwanted” or “unplanned” by God. Every child is born for lofty divine purposes, equipped with a soul that will live throughout eternity.

God wouldn’t have had to propagate the human race by bringing miniature people to earth through direct participation of a man and a woman. He could have brought smaller adult-lookalike “children” to the families of his choice just like he brought Eve to Adam, arriving with a new addition and saying, “This one’s yours.”

Instead he designed people to come from their mothers’ bodies in miniature, endowed with tiny fingers and toes, chubby arms and legs, and incredible cheeks. I can’t wait to talk to Eve one day and ask her what she thought when she was holding newborn Cain, the very first baby. She referred to him as a “man”, probably meaning “human”. Surely she was in awe of his soft skin and sweet scent, wondering if and how he would some day morph into a person like the adult Adam.

God surprised us by arranging for new human beings to arrive on the earth in a clever way wrapped in adorable bodies, but he’s been delivering surprises in many categories ever since. We can listen to “Science Friday” on public radio or watch “Nova” on TV or read any source that investigates God’s creation, both macro and micro, and see there’s no end-point to what he’s made and the ideas he’s come up with. The more new things science discovers, the more reasons we have to stand amazed.

Today as I talked with birthday “boy” Hans, I had the pleasure of participating by phone, from 4000 miles away, in the bath routine of my 3 British grandchildren. “Mee Mee’s going to come upstairs with us tonight,” he said, “so we can have bath time together!”

Their squeals of excitement came back through my speaker phone. “Shirts are coming off now,” Hans said, “and now the nappies. Oh what a big tummy you have!” (Katy’s giggles came over the air waves, too, as she joined in the fun.)

I could just “see” their pudgy toddler bodies lined up in the tub, “…like the three stooges,” Hans said. Hearing them splash, and listening to these young parents laugh with their children again and again was a gift my son gave to me on his own birthday.

Babies bring enthusiasm, cuteness and joy into our world. When God decided to get into the baby business, it was a spectacular idea. And even Jesus enjoyed handling them.

“People were bringing babies to Jesus for him to place his hands on them. ‘Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me.’” (Luke 18:15, Mark 9:37)