Category Archives: Submitting to God

Family Relationships

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A while ago a good friend from the Chicago suburbs drove the 110 miles between us to spend the day with me. Maria and I used to pray together weekly before our family moved to Michigan, and we know each other well. After all those years of praying over family members, we know each others families pretty well, too.

Family b-daysWhen Maria came, she brought a unique gift: a wall hanging representing the importance of family. Somehow she researched all the birth dates of my children and grandchildren, and then hand-made a beautiful work of art that included every name and the day they were born.

I hung this masterpiece near our dining table where it has frequently been scrutinized and also has stimulated many a conversation. And just two weeks ago I had the joy of hooking a brand new circle onto the January line with baby Isaac’s name and date on it.

FAMILYOnly God knows which row(s) will be lengthened by how many additional circles in our family’s future. Maybe he’ll decide to hang circles from our “blank” birthday months (March, November, December). But it’s possible Maria’s display is complete just the way it is. None of us can predict.

 

When I look at this work of art, I’m impacted by the importance of those circles. Except for Jack the dog (who’s there too), each paper disk represents a human soul that will live throughout eternity. And each one of them has to decide what they want to live for and what, if anything, is worth dying for. Each name has to settle on whether or not they believe in God and then determine which of the many gods available for worship these days is the real One.

But just like those small circles are separated from one another, each individual is seen and known separately by God. He has special plans for every name on the wall and a desire to shower each one with blessings. He has also prepared a few difficult challenges for each name.

God chose that particular group of people to be in the Nyman family, and he wants all of us to relate to one another lovingly. Though we don’t always do that, he wants us to work at getting along, looking out for each other, and sharing what we have with whomever is in need. God wants the Nyman family (and every other earthly family) to be models of his spiritual family in these same ways. Earthly families are to be a mini-version of the Great Family of God, relating to one another with sacrificial attitudes and tough, unshakeable love.

Gettin' alongOf course no family can act that way all the time, but we can do it some of the time, and when we do, our relationships will strengthen and our joys abound. That goes for earthly families like the one on my wall, and for God’s much bigger family, too.

I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name.” (Ephesians 3:14-15)

Can I stop?

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???????????????????????????????One of the delightful pleasures of having babies around is watching them sleep, and one of the sweetest things they do in their sleep is practice their sucking. They’ll suck on bottles, pacifiers, their own tongues, or on mommy, all while unconscious. Sucking is their greatest skill, and we now know they do it even in the womb.

Experts debate about how much sucking is necessary for babies, but all agree it is beneficial. Somewhere along the way, though, all this sucking becomes a negative. Parents of pre-schoolers who have become too attached to their pacifiers or bottles know the difficulty of taking these things away.

Thumb sucking.I sucked my thumb as a baby, a toddler, a preschooler, and even as a school girl. By the time I was 8, my parents had tried every-which-way to make me stop: pinning the ends of my PJs closed, painting my thumb with distasteful medicine, punishing me, and threatening me with braces. Even dangling rewards in front of me to make me stop didn’t work. I loved sucking my thumb and didn’t ever want to quit.

Eventually I “went underground,” hiding my thumb-sucking behind a book or a long sleeve while in school, sneaking it at  home when no one was looking, freely sucking my thumb during the night. What finally made me stop was being caught (and teased) by my peers. The pain of that outweighed the sting of not being able to suck my thumb, and one day I just quit, though the longing didn’t disappear for several years.

God understands how hard it is to break a well-entrenched habit and can see what’s going on in our heads when we’re tussling with our self-will. He thoroughly understands the complicated nature of our brains and appreciates the whole serotonin thing, but he still asks us to work on taming bad habits. “You don’t have to do it alone, though,” he says. “I’ll help you.”

Many bad habits get their start in something good that we’ve taken to an undesirable extreme. Then, when we try to reel it back to reasonable levels, we’re dogged by failure and conclude we’ll never be able to break free. Success can be ours, but probably not until we admit we need the help and cheerleading of someone else. We need “a higher power,” and that, of course, is the Lord.

Once we take advantage of his willingness to partner with us, we’ve taken the first step to becoming the person we wanted to be all along. And best-case-scenario, that habit we struggled to conquer will become only one small piece of a very distant past….

Thumb sucking in the womb….just like the sucking of a baby.

“There is a time for everything.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

Good Editing

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When I got the chance to write a book two years ago (at left), it was a dream come true, and the long process of thinking, organizing, and writing was pure pleasure. Secretly I hoped for the chance to repeat the experience. Now that possibility is coming into focus.

Looking back to the first book, I see how critically important it was to be partnered with a good editor.

A hard working editorHer name was Miranda, and I learned more from her than I did in all my college writing classes combined.

Although writers and editors all work with words, they use completely different skill-sets, and Miranda’s meticulous critique was invaluable to my little book. If I do get to write another one, my highest hope will be to team up with her again, because expert editing makes the difference between a mediocre end-result and a memorable one.

All of us need our words edited once in a while, for example in our prayers. God knows that, so he makes two supernatural editors available to us. The first is his Holy Spirit and the second Jesus Christ. These two have never made, nor will they ever make, an editing mistake.

We should be deeply grateful for them, since they take the prayerful petitions we make to God and edit them into viable, acceptable requests he will hear and answer. Theirs is an awesome duty that benefits us daily. Scripture says the Spirit edits with sounds that are actually too deep for words but that God understands his specific groans on our behalf. And Jesus bridges the natural gap between us and God.

We edit.So why can’t we edit our own prayers? The truth is, we do, but it’s not positive. Let’s say he asks us to obey in a specific way and we respond with, “Ok.” But then we edit: “You know I’m only human, Lord. How ’bout if I obey half of that and let the rest go.”

Unacceptable editing.

In another example we might think, “God doesn’t really mean what he says. He meant to say…” and we fill in the blank in a way that doesn’t require too much of us.

More bad editing.

A good editor like Miranda will take the first draft of a book and raise questions with the author about words and concepts, listening to her rationale but sometimes insisting on changes. God does that too, as his Son and Spirit commune with him about us. Their editing makes our imperfect requests perfect to his ears.

An editor's workI hope I can work with Miranda again, but that won’t be up to me. Working with God’s Son and Spirit, however, is left completely up to us.

“There is one God and one Mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus. […and] we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” (1 Timothy 2:5 & Romans 8:26)