Many friends have expressed an interest in our children, where they are, what they’re doing and how they’re coping with having lost their father. Today I opened 56 envelopes in a three week stack of mail accumulated while I was gone. I left the hand written envelopes till last, knowing they’d be best. Among them was one from our firstborn, Nelson.

It was a letter he’d written in February, just before leaving the country for six months. I knew the gist of it, but as I read it in my quiet cottage with twilight settling outside the sunroom windows, my heart nearly burst to realize anew what God had done in this son’s heart and life.

Nelson is a strong believer in Christ, spiritually mature, passionate about the Bible and full of wisdom, but he wasn’t always that way. As a teen he rebelled wildly, yanking Nate and I into police stations and court rooms with his antics and eventually running away from home. He made one bad choice after another over years of time, accumulating the related natural consequences. But somewhere along the way, Nelson heard God calling his name and made the decision to surrender his life and follow him, no matter what.

It hasn’t been easy, but he’s stuck like glue to that commitment, craving time with, and knowledge of God over everything else. As I wept with joy over this son in whose life God holds preeminence, I was encouraged to keep praying for those who are still resisting. Following Christ can be difficult for young men, because they are taught to lead. But as I’ve seen in Nelson, God rewards the surrendered. Please allow me to quote from Nelson’s letter, which will answer questions about how he’s doing:

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“On September 22, my Dad told me his back surgery would be delayed because the doctor found cancer in his pancreas. I raced to Michigan to be with him and Mom. For the next 42 days I watched my amazing family gather together and rally around my Dad as he clung to life on earth, and as he eventually let go to be with Jesus.

For November and December, I stayed in Michigan with Mom. We had dinner and a fire almost every night and spent lots of time talking about Papa while the rest of the ‘kids’ came and went on the weekends. During this time, I spent time praying about the next thing.

On my birthday I got an email from a Youth With A Mission (YWAM) friend who asked if I would consider working on staff with a Discipleship Training School (DTS) out of Oxford, New Zealand. Actually, she’d been asking for at least a year, but I always turned down the opportunity. This time she persisted. She told me they were short on male leaders and reminded me I had previous experience (1996-1998, leading teams to Japan, Korea, the Philippines and India). I had always hoped God would call me back at some point.

So I prayed and decided to get a second opinion from my ‘home’ church in Brentwood, TN. After gaining their support and that of my family, I agreed to go to New Zealand. My job on staff is a combination of being a facilitator, leading discussion groups, being the worship leader, planning outreach mission projects, supervising student work duties and accompanying the group as they travel across the world from New Zealand to Jerusalem where graduation will occur 8/20/10. This is the opportunity of a lifetime for these young people as they get to serve under several long-term missionaries and see the world in the process. Only God knows what vision and ministries might be birthed as we go.”

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When Nelson was praying into his decision in January and February, God regularly sent concrete nudges toward a “yes”. Nelson followed that leading and decided to go. Immediately afterwards, a most powerful confirmation message came from the grave, from his own father, in an unusual way.

Nate’s close friend Wayne visited four days before Nate died, flying up from Florida to do so. As they brought each other up to date on their children, Wayne took note of Nate’s words about each of ours. On February 11, just after Nelson had decided on missions, an email from Wayne popped into my inbox: ”The thing I remember most [in the details about the kids] was Nate’s prediction that Nelson would return to mission work, and how proud he was that he would do so.”

I forwarded this gratifying confirmation to Nelson (who was then helping a friend in Honolulu) and marveled at God’s amazing creativity. For Nelson to be cheered on by his father at this important life road-fork was a gift-wrapped package from the heavenly Father. (And thank you, Wayne!)

Who says life as a Christian is boring? Today it was so thrilling, I couldn’t even hold it in. It spilled out in tears of joy.

I’ve always been a glutton… a photo glutton. I came by it naturally, since Mom was one, too. But as is often the case, the next generation takes everything to an extreme.

Mom got her first camera as a teenager, unique in the 1920’s. Her albums show the homes and rooms in which she grew up, as well as her friends. She established a babysitting business at 16 and pictured her charges. She taught piano lessons and photographed her students. She also snapped photos of the beaus she dated.

As a kid, I remember Mom stepping into a dark closet to change her film. If I put my hand on the outside doorknob, she’d shriek, “Don’t open that door! You’ll ruin my pictures!”

By the time I was grown, I knew photographs were important. Mom let us use her camera on occasion and bought each of us our own, encouraging us to chronicle life through a lens. Today I have the excess to prove I took her advice to heart.

I’d say 196 albums and 32 separate photo scrapbooks definitely constitute gluttony. Storage has been a challenge, particularly after we moved to a smaller house. I tried to pawn the albums off on several of our grown children, who take pictures religiously but store them on line. “Scan ‘em, Mom, and put ‘em all on a few disks. You’ll get your shelf space back.”

After studying that process, I know I don’t have enough hours left in life to complete that job. Besides, at the end of it, I’d still have to deal with the hard copies. Renting a dumpster just doesn’t seem right.

It’s interesting no one wants to house the albums, but everyone wants to page through them. When I make my next move, whether to an old folks home or heaven, the albums will be in jeopardy. Maybe our seven kids will divide them seven ways, though that would amount to 32 apiece, still a dilemma.

We’ve used many of our pictures to make greeting cards, as enlargements at parties, to prove tale-telling true or false, to remember who attended this or that event, and in this blog. Their most valuable use, however, is to insure we’ll never forget details. Photos of loved ones who’ve passed away become precious beyond description, and I’ve enjoyed studying Nate’s face in many of the albums since he died. The pictures remind me of all he’s done and who he was.

God has picture albums, too. He didn’t click a camera but described in visual detail the “photos” he wanted his “children” to remember. I counted 12 times he verbally reminded the Israelites of his parting of the Red Sea, a dramatic picture of power and creativity. “Don’t forget!” he’d say, as he reminded them he was still the same God.

He “showed” them his work during creation, how he provided manna in the desert, the patriarchs and their deeds and Christ’s work on the cross. These and many others were snapshots of history God wanted them (and us) to remember. In a way, the Bible’s 66 books are the albums, and their words are the pictures. On those pages, we “see” God and his truth. And just like in the Nyman albums, we see where we’ve come from. God’s photo collection also shows us where we’re going, which no earthly snapshots can do.

So, if the house catches on fire, I’ll try to grab our 196 + 32 albums, although it would be smarter (and quicker) to reach for the one album-set that truly matters, and that’s God’s.

“Give thanks to him who parted the Red Sea. His faithful love endures forever.” (Psalm 136:13)

Back when I had a houseful of little children to tend to, Nate would often walk in the door after a 13 hour work day and say, “So, what did you do today?”

As an at-home mom, I didn’t have a good answer. Every day was jam-packed with activity and hard work, but I couldn’t give him a summary statement about what I’d done. My temptation was to spout a litany of minutiae in a minute-by-minute report, which of course was the last thing he wanted to hear. After giving a nebulous answer, I’d ask him the same thing. “What did you do today?”

If he’d had a day in which he couldn’t point to anything specific he’d finished, he’d still respond with confidence. He’d say, “It was a building-block day.”

I liked the upbeat sound of that and knew what he meant. So why didn’t I have anything good to say when he asked me what I’d done all day? I decided to give it some thought and come up with a succinct answer, especially for those frustrating days when I hadn’t been able to check anything off my to-do list.

Knowing Nate wasn’t interested in the long answer to any question at that point in his day, I crafted my statement to be short but relevant to my purposes as a mom. When he next asked the what-did-you-do question, I was ready. “I raised your children,” I summarized. That seemed to satisfy us both.

There’s only one problem. If too many building-block, raising-children days stockpile, discouragement can take over. Most of us are result-oriented. If we can’t see the effects of our efforts, we begin questioning our calling.

I well remember a day when I reached a discouragement low. The five kids we had at the time were ages 10, 8, 6, 2 and 1, four boys and one girl. I was on my hands and knees wiping up under two high chairs for the umpteenth time, questioning the choices that had put me there. Self-pity had arrived, priming my pump with tears, and I did the only thing I knew to do: whine.

Since the children didn’t care that their mom was having a  crisis, I took it straight to the top and whined to God. But he stopped me immediately.

Bringing Scripture to my mind (below), in essence he said, “Don’t wipe the floor for your toddlers; wipe it for me.” In one concise statement, he had crashed my pity paty.

The Bible says  Everything we do ought to be done for God, not other people, not even needy toddlers. If we elevate our motives that way, grunt work is lifted to a divine level, and our jobs become privileges, because they have God’s attention and our work matters to him. If we do it for others or ourselves, we quickly lose perspective, as I had.

I had wanted children and was thankful for each one. I’d hoped to be able to stay home full time and was glad I could. The Lord had given me the desires of my heart, and I’d responded by whining.

If we work directly for God without any middle-men, we’re entrusting the most difficult tasks of life to someone who notices, appreciates and understands. Pastor Erwin Lutzer put it this way: “Anything done in private with a desire to glorify God is remembered by him eternally and kept safe in his care.” That’s pretty exciting when applied to wiping a floor!

Pastor also said that what we do is not as important as the person for whom we do it. If I wiped the floor under the high chairs with a happy heart because I did it for God, it could actually change drudgery into worship. And there on my knees, holding a rag loaded with toddler spill-over, that’s exactly what happened.

“Whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. (1 Corinthians 10:31)