Life & faith reflections

“what’s your story?”

/ Heather Davis Nelson / Leave a comment

The following is the manuscript for a devotional I gave at the conclusion of my church’s week-long women’s Bible study yesterday morning. 

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I’ll never forget the first time I met her. I was a brand new staff member at her church, freshly graduated from seminary, and she was hosting a kids’ vacation Bible school at her gorgeous, historic Philadelphia home. And I’ll admit that I felt intimidated. She was outgoing and funny – clearly “the life of the party.” She leaned over after introducing herself and took me aback with her atypical first question, “So what’s your story?” She later told me that she intentionally asks this question rather than the more common, “So what do you do?” because she finds that typical opening question to be rather off-putting. You’re immediately put on the spot and labeled and categorized based on what you do (or you don’t do). And how many of us feel comfortable claiming our profession as our primary identity? Of course you and I are much more than what we do. The opening, “what’s your story?” captures this so much better.

So I want to pose the same question: what’s your story? My story this morning is of a mom who feels tired with trying to balance mothering twin daughters with the demands and privileges of a job I love as a counselor; and mine is the story of a woman learning to find my voice and seeking to explore my creativity through the art of writing. My story is of a daughter who misses her parents in South Carolina, of a sister who feels too far away from her brothers and their families, of a wife whose husband is a pastor and all the dynamics that this entails. My story is of a woman who longs for summer and spring with all my heart – who still associates summer with “free time” although having preschoolers at home means summer will be the opposite of this. My story is of a friend who wants to do more story-telling and story-listening than tasks accomplished and projects completed.

Studying Romans with my church’s women’s Bible study this year has given each of us a new angle on our story – a new way of understanding our stories – and this story is the best ever told. God’s story, or the shorthand Paul uses throughout the book “gospel.” Let’s think of the thesis in Romans 1:16-17 –

for I am not ashamed of [God’s story], for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in [God’s story], the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’

What’s your story when you’ve read and studied Romans? Maybe one of the following –

  •  the story of someone who’s trusted in your own goodness too much and so Romans is a story of being beckoned out of your self-righteous judgment and hypocrisy into the freeing grace of admitting your sin and your need for grace found only in Jesus and HIS perfect goodness
  •  the story of someone who has found grace and power for salvation for the first time – who has found God’s story of grace, forgiveness, and righteousness in Jesus to be THE story your life needs
  • the story of someone who thought your badness was too bad for God – that your rebellion was too much – and God’s story beckons you to come home. To be truthful with where you’ve wandered far from him and to find refuge in grace.
  • the story of someone who’s found Romans to be profoundly and deeply unsettling as you’re confronted with a God who is not as we would make him to be – a God whose character seems harsh or even capricious at times if what Romans says about him is true. So perhaps your story is one filled with questions that feel haunting.

There are parts of my story that fit with all of these scenarios, but I find myself identifying most with the story of my goodness and judgmental heart exposed AND the story of unsettling questions weighing heavy on my heart. Whatever has been stirred up in your story during Romans, don’t leave it here. Don’t end that for the summer.

Maybe you could find a few friends or people you connected with from your table and meet regularly throughout the summer at someone’s home or a park or a coffee shop for the purpose of sharing stories – either your own and/or the stories God tells in His Word. Perhaps you could find a book or resource to read on your own that will help you to grapple with your questions and your story. I’ve brought a few that I would recommend: Extravagant Grace by Barbara Duguid, The Prodigal God by Tim Keller, To Be Told by Dan Allender; Grace for the Good Girl & A Million Little Ways by Emily Freeman; Grace through the Ages  by William Smith and/or Out of the Spin Cycle by Jen Hatmaker as short devotional thoughts. For exploring some of the hard questions raised by Romans, these are two of my favorites: How Long, O Lord? by D.A. Carson and Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God by J. I. Packer.

Although WBS ends today, your story doesn’t and neither does the community you’ve found here. Join us for Easter week celebrations – Maundy Thursday, 12pm or 6pm Good Friday service, 9am or 11am Easter Sunday. Help out with CAMP/Camp JR. (and send your kids!); join a community group that meets weekly; if you’re a mom, contact me to be added to the list to be informed of Nurture events and meet-ups throughout the summer.

Live into your story – tell your story – listen to others’ stories. That we may live out the truth of God’s story as seen in Romans more truly through stories of more grace and less judgment, more freedom and less condemnation, more acceptance and fewer barriers to love, more of trusting in God’s goodness for us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and less of trusting in our own.

 

how story reveals God

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 5 Comments

photo credit: readbreatherelax.com

What is it about a good story that draws you in? Isn’t it the unfolding plot, the developing characters, a sense of movement and intrigue and the yet unknown? Do you live into the story that is your life? Do you view your life as story? And what kind of story is your life telling?

Enter last Thursday’s “To Be Told” conference taught by Dan Allender. Ironically, I hardly have words for how powerful it was. This conference, in this moment of my story, illuminated my own story and reminded me of the power of the story of a life. Of my life. Of your life. We are all living a story. But do you know your story? And what story is your life telling about God? And how are you telling your story and being an engaged presence to listen to the stories of others? These opening questions were the invitation to a conference I hope to be processing for the rest of my life. For that’s the thing with the stories that are our lives – they never end. There is no resolution this side of eternity, simply respites and hints of the Grand Resolution to come, and chapters that begin and end.

Story reveals the heart of God. The best stories always do. That’s what I love about the Harry Potter books, for example. There’s the undeniable themes of light versus darkness, and times when darkness seems to have won. But then it doesn’t. Not ultimately, though darkness in the personification of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named certainly takes many casualties down with him along the way.

Allender spoke into this connection between story and God’s revelation as he said:

We don’t know the heart of God outside of story, but we don’t know our story outside of God’s character.

What this says to me as a writer, counselor, wife, mom, daughter, sister, friend is that (1) I want to be a good listener to the stories of others. To look for and point out and worship alongside the revelation of God in the stories of my traveling companions. 

(2) I want to tell my story well. Which might mean, to tell my story. I hide from my story not because it’s “BIG” and “DARK” and “SCARY” but because it seems quite ordinary to me. Of course it does – it’s all I’ve ever known. I also often feel like compared to the stories of many clients I walk with and friends I journey beside, it does not reveal God as dramatically as theirs do. But that’s simply not true. There’s no comparison in this art of story-telling. The goal is story-telling. To tell your story. To know your story and tell it, and in telling your story, to know it better. And because we live in a world inhabited by the God of every story, knowing my story better will mean that I know the God of my story better. Similar to the way that listening to your story will also mean I know a different aspect of God in a deeper way, a part of God that he wrote specifically into your story and none other.

Intrigued? Let’s tell stories together. And I cannot recommend his book To Be Told or the accompanying conference highly enough. This will be the beginning of many posts on “story.”

 

eulogy for Uncle Ashby

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 1 Comment

In memory and celebration of the life of a dear saint now in glory, Uncle Ashby, upon news of his passing through the pearly gates early this morning of Friday, March 7, 2014 in Columbia, South Carolina.

For all the saints who from their labors rest
Who, Thee, by faith before the world confessed
Thy name, O  Jesus, be forever blessed,
Alleluia, Allelu/

Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress, and their Might
Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well-fought fight,
Thou in the darkness drear their One True Light,
Alleluia, Allelu/

O, may Thy soldiers, faithful, true and bold
Fight as the saints who know they fought of old
And win with them the victor’s crown of gold
Alleluia, Allelu/

The golden morning brightens in the west
Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest
Sweet is the calm of paradise the blessed
Alleluia, Allelu/

But, Lo, there breaks a yet more glorious day
The saints triumphant rise in bright array
The King of glory passes on his way
Alleluia, Allelu/

There is no better hymn to sing through tears and smiles as I pause in Panera this Friday morning to remember the great and gentle saint known as “Uncle Ashby,” my great-uncle, the brother of my paternal grandmother, Emma Davis (who preceded him into glory over 32 years ago). What I first knew of him was his kind thoughtfulness and generosity to support me on various short-term missions endeavors throughout high school and college. He and his beloved Aunt Dot were eager to support my ministry not only financially but through prayers and encouraging phone calls. Throughout the years, they would always call to hear the report of how I saw God at work through these experiences. He was a gospel cheerleader, as it were. And he lived it out. Always eager to listen when he himself had the greater stories of God’s faithfulness to share, stories he would talk of only when prompted and asked about.

He was delighted to hear that I was engaged to marry a man in training for full-time ministry as a pastor, and he and Dotty sent their support through a card and beautiful bouquet of flowers. They eagerly received us as visitors when their health failed and their care was transferred to a nursing facility, he asking after Seth’s seminary study and ministry positions and then delightedly meeting our twin daughters when we brought them for a few visits.

As he talked and as Dad filled in the details he was too humble to discuss in the first person, I gained the picture of a saint who labored for his captain in a “well-fought fight.” After injured in combat during World War II, the trauma of that experience sent him into a mental breakdown. In this painful time, God found him. And when God healed him, he devoted the remainder of his life to full-time ministry, preaching throughout the low country of South Carolina and as an Army chaplain. Dad described this gentle man as “on fire” when he stood behind a pulpit to preach about the good news of Jesus Christ in the Scriptures.

Uncle Ashby was the picture of a devoted husband to his beloved Dotty through her share of difficulties and suffering to the very end of her life. His face lit up to speak of her, and it is only natural that he would follow her into glory but a short three years after her passing. And he loved his family. He loved us, his great-nephews and great-nieces (and our children) as if we were his own grandchildren. In many ways, he was the paternal grandfather we never knew while we were the grandchildren he never had. He was thoughtful and kind, sending cards on special occasions and calling to commemorate big life events for each of us (marriages, births, graduations).

sunriseWe will miss this kind soul, while rejoicing that he is in glory. At daybreak today, glory broke open for this man to see face-to-face the realities he had lived out by faith to the very end. The King of Glory whose gentleness and kindness this man reflected so well is even now embracing a fully restored and glorified Uncle Ashby. I imagine there was quite a party this morning in heaven as they welcomed him home! We grieve; they rejoice. And one day we too will rejoice to be welcomed home by this one who has gone before.

Earth has lost a man who brought joy until his dying days (evidenced by the weeping of the nursing staff who loved him so much), and this is a void that will not be filled. I am reminded of the travesty that death is for all of us left behind; how very unnatural it is that life should end. And yet in the tears there is hope, glorious hope, that death is never the end for those who trust in Jesus Christ as their own Savior and Redeemer. Grief now; glory later. And so we press on in hope as Uncle Ashby would have us to do, continuing to labor until we, too, like him will end the well-fought fight and rest in the welcome of our Savior.

the danger of Lent from a self-professed Pharisee

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 4 Comments

Last year, I practiced Lent seriously. According to my definition of “serious,” and I gave up not just one thing, but multiple things in this 40-day season of self-denial to prepare for Easter. My Lenten fast last year included denying myself Target trips, non-essential phone apps, sweets, and TV watching. Wowzers. What was I thinking? Good thing I blogged about it … !

But what was the result of this? Yes, certainly less needless spending of money and time … but also having to confront my age-old temptation to be better on my own strength. Lent broke me last year. And I think that’s part of why I want to practice Lent differently this year. Not to avoid being broken, but to get to that broken repentance place sooner. 

For someone who too often puts my trust in my own strength and “right-ness,” Lent is dangerous. It can provide a new law for me to follow and feel alternately better about myself AND self-condemned; it can give me a false standard by which to judge others and look down on “those who don’t practice Lent like I do” (note the upturned nose and haughty air in that statement); it can stand in the way of the heart of the Lenten season: which is to find refuge in Jesus’ righteousness for me and repent of all the ways I’ve sought to establish my own rightness with God apart from Easter.

And so this Lenten season I’m not sure what I’m going to abstain from. It won’t be like last year. I’m struggling to balance the value of fasting with the danger of self-denial-for-my-own-sake. I want to practice a more godward rhythm to my days, so after our Sunday school study last week about the importance of the “Daily Office” (through our study on “Emotionally Healthy Spirituality” by Pete Scazzero), I’ve ordered his book of “Daily Office” prayers and meditations, and I think Lent provides a natural launching point for starting the practice of turning to God often throughout a day for strength. Turning TO God, away from myself. I am praying that God will make it clear how to incorporate some type of fast as part of this practice of this unique season. And even more so, I am praying that God will give me a true fast from my attempts at establishing righteousness on my own apart from him. This passage in Isaiah 58 seems appropriate for us on this Ash Wednesday:

Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?

Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure … Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the Lord?

Is not this the fast I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, … And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.

On my bookshelf

/ Heather Davis Nelson / Leave a comment

20140227-134653.jpgIt’s been awhile since I’ve written about what’s on my bookshelf, and as I have picked up two books recently which I absolutely love, I thought that today’s a good time to pick up the “on my bookshelf” series. Without further ado …

1. Extravagant Grace by Barbara Duguid is one I haven’t yet started. But I have heard so many raving reviews about it, both on Amazon and through friends, that I am featuring it in faith that I’ll also love it. Another reason I’m confident that I’ll love this book is because the author was one of my distance-ed students through the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation. The class was no easy one – “Counseling and Physiology,” taught by Dr. Mike Emlet, exploring the connection between soul and body through a variety of counseling situations including bipolar disorder, OCD, and depression. Her papers were the top of the class – beautiful writing, grace-infused, thoughtful and our emails back and forth were characterized by the same gracious quality. I cannot wait to read an entire book by her. Want to join me? Leave a comment – and/or send me your thoughts/review for a future post (counselinginhope[at]gmail[dot]com).

2. A Million Little Ways by Emily Freeman is no surprise to those of you who have been following my blog for at least the past year. I loved Grace for the Good Girl (it was my #1 for favorite books read in 2013), and this one is following suit. Her honest writing and poetic invitation to “uncover the art you were made to live” is compelling and finds me (yet again) right where I am in life. It’s in the category of “books I wish I had written but someone beat me to it.” I hardly know where to begin, so here are a few of my favorite quotes so far:

Perhaps those who make art in the ways we traditionally think of art give the rest of us a framework from which to live our lives. They offer a gift of knowing what life could look like if it were handled more like a mysterious piece of art rather than a task-oriented list. We may not all have the same skill or training as do the painters or the musicians, but we all bear the image of a creative God.

…being an artist has something to do with being brave enough to move toward what makes you come alive. … Art is what happens when you dare to be who you really are.

For me right now in this season, I’m seeing that nurturing my art and moving toward what makes me come alive has hundreds of applications including:

  • being brave enough to say “yes” to speaking at a women’s retreat or teaching a difficult passage of Romans at our women’s Bible study
  • being brave enough to say “no” to what isn’t my art or to distractions from the art of living
  • blogging even when I doubt I have anything new to say
  • taking time and space to BE with my family and friends and listen to their stories and help them make sense of them, or at least let them know I want to be with them there in the midst of the confusion or the joy or the sorrow
  • stopping the tendency to schedule-to-the-brink-of-every-hour so that I can have an afternoon where I enjoy my children, laughing at their preschool jokes and delighting in their imaginative play and reading stories with silly voices

3. The New Strong-Willed Child by Dr. James Dobson. The title truly says it all. I love my daughters dearly, but parenting them has been one of the biggest challenges of my adult life. I think simply being three-years-old and being twins qualifies them for strong-willed, because that’s how it feels when they conspire on some new “project” that results in a mess (like using diaper cream to “paint” their nursery or writing their “signature” on every item of white furniture using red marker – thankfully the washable type). They’re spirited; they’re stubbornly independent; they want their way all the time. Kind of like me. In the first few chapters I’ve read, I think there will be many good nuggets of how-to’s as well as insight and understanding into what to expect of them and what makes them the way that they are. If you live locally and want to read along, let me know! I mentioned this book to another friend, so we may end up doing a one-shot book club in a few months …

Ok, back to reading!

Five minute Friday: “small”

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 6 Comments

photo credit: emilybalazsphotography.blogspot.com

I pick him up from the crib where’s he’s peacefully curled up tight; I cradle this newest nephew. It is his being small that is so inviting. To cuddle, to kiss, to feel reassured as he falls back asleep on my shoulder. The small mouth, nose, hands, feet … it is human in miniature form. And who is not awed by the sight of a baby?

Small is what I try to avoid. I don’t want to need anything or anyone larger than me. I want be big; to write big; to speak big; to be big and help others and not ever ever ever need to return to small, dependent reality.

Cliffs of Moher, Ireland

But it is reality for all of us humans when we see a glimpse of who God is – like seeing a horizon’s edge of ocean meeting sky, or being enveloped by a mountain range, or peering down the Cliffs of Moher on an Irish coast … it is actually in this being small I am able to feel utterly safe, realizing I am cradled in the arms of a God who is big enough to hold me, to give what I need before I know what or how to ask for it, to draw me close to him in love before I even know his name.

As my small nephew cuddled up to his  Aunt Heather last night, not knowing who I am but feeling the love I have, so may I draw close to my God who holds me in his big embrace.

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I’m back for my favorite of blog activities, Five Minute Friday. Write for five minutes unedited on a topic given by Lisa-Jo Baker each Friday. Link up to this community here.

Wisdom looks like love

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 1 Comment

Last weekend, I had the privilege of addressing a group of women at Grace Presbyterian Church in Lexington, Virginia, on the vast topic of “wisdom.” I’ve written a bit about that here, and I’m including a few more thoughts on the idea that transformed the way I’ve studied wisdom these past months. Oh, that it would change the way I LIVE out wisdom, too!

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Since Jesus himself is the wisdom of God, looking at his life provides the definition of what wisdom looks like. At every turn, we see love. Jesus sought out the tax collector who was too short to see him and invited himself over to his home; he healed the woman who had been bleeding for years and took away her shame; he forgave the adulterous woman who was about to be stoned; he had compassion on the crowds and miraculously fed them; he loved us to the very extent of love – giving his own life on our behalf, becoming obedient to death itself so that we might live and be restored to God. Jesus was God incarnate, and since God is love, we could say that Jesus is love incarnate. So wisdom and love are inextricably connected. Love is the outflow of true wisdom that comes from God, flowing out of a heart depending on Jesus.

This really gets me. I can live in my head so much as a woman who loves words – reading them and writing them and pondering ideas. My profession as a counselor calls me to discuss wisdom and love outside of the actual situation where one is being challenged to love wisely, and so I can too often stop at the false conclusion that wise insight equals heart change. If you spent a week with me, you would see the gap between what I teach, how I counsel others, and the way I apply wisdom to my own relationships. Too often after giving marriage counsel to a couple in conflict, I come home and do the very things I warned the couple against. I interrupt before listening; get angry too quickly at petty differences; sulk and say “fine” when I’m really anything but; hold onto grudges instead of forgive. Same with parenting. I can explain to a friend that being calm will bring calm to her kids, but the minute my own kids get in the way of what I want (an uninterrupted shower? a peaceful Target trip? quiet in the mornings?), I erupt in anger and yell at them impatiently.

I’ve written a blog series entitled, “Confessions of an angry mom,” about how to bring anger under the control of the Holy Spirit through the power of the gospel of Jesus. And it has helped many others. But I still need these words for myself. I will never outgrow my need for wisdom. For I will always be drawn away from wise love by my foolish, selfish desires. Sin dwelling within me – the old self that died with Christ. And so preaching the good news about “Christ in me, the hope of glory” is essential to practicing wise love daily, being transformed by the One who is Wisdom rather than building up myself through my intellectual understanding of wisdom or analytical relational insights.

for the beauty of Romans 8 (and Valentine’s love)

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 5 Comments

In my church’s women’s Bible study, we have been studying Romans this year. And we have finally arrived at my most favorite of chapters: Romans 8. This morning as I was doing today’s study, I was struck again by the security of LOVE expressed, explained, proclaimed in this chapter. A fitting reflection for Valentine’s week … which is about love, however you feel about that.

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I remember as a daughter feeling so loved by my dad on Valentine’s day because he’d bring home a special treat (usually a box of chocolates, or a stuffed animal) along with my mini-bouquet of flowers and a card. In elementary school, it’s fun to give and exchange dime-store cards. Then middle school hits, and all of a sudden this doesn’t feel like enough. I didn’t want my dad to bring me flowers; I wanted the boy I had a crush on to notice me. My friends’ cards were sweet … but …. just not quite enough. High school intensified these feelings. In college I tried to evade the longing by celebrating friends, having fancy dinners with roommates, pretending we didn’t care that we weren’t romantically pursued. Then, finally, I met the man I was to marry and he romanced me properly on our first Valentine’s together – dinner out at a fancy Italian restaurant in Center City Philadelphia, roses, a Hallmark card … my life was complete.

Or was it? Isn’t it true that in many ways, my life was already complete by being privileged to know the security of my Dad’s love for me since I was a girl? And going  even further, isn’t it true that my life was the most complete it could be from the time I became God’s daughter, forever secure in Christ?  I think as I reflect on Romans 8 this morning, I draw a similar analogy to Valentine’s Day memories. I was always securely loved, but I wavered in my feelings attached to this love as the years ebbed and flowed. In various seasons, I desired a different expression of this love. And that’s part of how we’re created. There is a desire for romantic love – for married love – and at it’s best, it’s meant to reflect God’s love in the deepest human way possible. Which means that even if you feel brokenhearted, jilted, betrayed, disappointed, or lonely during this annual reminder of what you don’t have in the way of romance, you can take refuge in the ultimate love that romance is (at best) a fleeting reflection of. You, too, can enjoy the real thing. Not that it eases the pain or disappointment – don’t hear me saying that what you feel isn’t real. It is incredibly real, and God wants you to come to him with all of it. Not to receive a candy-coated “my love is better!” sort of flippant response, but to receive the comfort your heart needs – a comfort that leaves room for your pain and validates it. A love that comes with its own set of promises, too.

Romans 8 for those who take refuge in Christ by faith is a cascade of promises for us. Not only do we belong – adopted into God’s own family – but we have hope for present day suffering. Hope that sustains us when faced again with the stubbornness of my own selfishness or the brokenness of this world where humans are trafficked, children are abused, marriages fall apart. Hope makes us go on, and hope makes us groan for more.

And not only do we have hope, but we have the promises that no one can be against us; that the only one left to condemn us [Christ] is actually pleading our case continually as he intercedes for us; that nothing and no one can ever, ever, ever, EVER separate us from the love of Christ. But don’t take my word from it. Read it here for yourself in Romans 8:37-39 – and be comforted, wherever you find yourself today, that there IS a lover who will never leave you, betray you, give up on you … no matter what. This is better than the best, sweetest, poetic Hallmark card. Read it … believe it … savor it!

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

wisdom starts with listening

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 2 Comments

I am preparing for a retreat I’ll be speaking at in a few weeks on the topic of wisdom (a slight modification from the one I did in September 2013 at WRPC), and I am struck again with how important listening is. I’ve been looking at the verse in James 1:19 which says –

“Know this, my beloved brothers, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger …”

Whew. There’s the trifecta of what I’m not good at. I am slow to hear, quick to speak, and quick to become angry. Just come be a fly on the wall any morning in my kitchen to see my folly on full display. It happens with regularity. One of the twins begins demanding something (they take turns with this, I swear); I get frustrated because I’m already busy trying to do something else they were asking/demanding the minute prior; and I don’t hear them or pay attention. I am quick to spout off with how frustrated I feel; and then it becomes full-blown anger before too long. Refrigerator doors are slammed, their food is slapped onto their plates with vehemence, and I become the martyr-mother-with-a-cause. Not only am I far from a picture of serving with love, but I am empty of self-control and wisdom. My reaction causes theirs to intensify. And so we sit down to eat breakfast as three very foolish women, one who’s old enough to know and act differently.

How do I get wisdom in that scenario? What is my hope? It starts with listening. Being quick to hear God’s voice of love and the truth of His presence and acquired wisdom given to me down from the ages. I need to learn to be quick to hear his compassion for me, the tired-in-the-mornings mom who needs her coffee and doesn’t wake up quickly. He is speaking to me through the “wisdom of the ages,” which often sounds like this:

  • Stay calm, and they may not become calm immediately, but at least you won’t escalate things.
  • You can only be in control of you; don’t try to be in control of them. Realize what you can control, and provide consequences calmly. Such as sending the tantrum-ing three-year-old to her room until she can calm down.
  • Catering to their demands will only increase their whines; so will blowing up in frustrated anger in the face of all their complaints.
  • Look at your own heart – you’re just as whiny and demanding of those around you and God, but you’re just better at masking it.
  • Continue to serve with love, confident that God sees the faith it takes to continue to do so when bombarded with two demanding preschoolers.

Once I silence my own angry demands in order to tune in to the wisdom of the Spirit speaking to my heart, then I am able to move on to speaking what needs to be spoken, and slowing down my anger. It really is a self-perpetuating cycle. Start with being quick to anger, the words will spill out too quickly for anyone’s good, and there will be no listening. But reverse this and begin with listening. Then you’ll be calm enough to speak and you keep anger in its place. The question really is who I am listening to – if it’s my selfishness, then I’ll be quick to speak and get angry; if it’s my Creator, I can afford to be slow in speech and allow his words to mollify my angry heart before it spews onto another.

one word for 2014: light

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 1 Comment

Last year, prompted by the invitation of a favorite blogger and author, Ann Voskamp, I chose one word as my focus/prayer for 2013. It was “new” and you can read all about that here.

As 2014 rolled into view, I began thinking and praying for another word. And “light” came to mind, and kept coming to mind. I want this year to be a year of light. A year of knowing the light of God shining into personal darkness (my winter blues, e.g.!). A year of walking in the light with others, speaking truth, listening to input and advice, coming clean when necessary – out of the shadows. A year of inviting others into the light, which is my profession and my calling and my privilege as a counselor. By speaking words of the previously unspoken, light fights against the darkness. As long as something is hidden, it is powerful. But speak it – and the powers of darkness lose. Shame begins to fade away. Light always wins. And I want to know and live that reality in my own heart, in my home, with my family, friends, clients, and city. I want to be part of Light.

I love this word “light” because it is not only a noun that we fight for and walk towards and become enveloped by, but it’s also a way that we live. It’s the promise of our Jesus who says – “Come to me, all who are burdened and heavy laden … Take my yoke upon you … for my burden is LIGHT.” (Matthew 11:28-30) I want to live with light burdens. Not in a Pollyanna sort of sugar-coating way, but in a way where I allow Jesus (and others) to bear burdens for me, with me.

And then there’s this other aspect of “light” – what does it mean to hold lightly to the things which aren’t eternal? To live with light luggage; to give away more than I acquire this year (dangerous words to pen); to bring light to those in need by living with less – living more lightly.

I have a feeling that I’ve gotten myself into deeper waters than I would choose for myself with this word “light,” but I do trust the one who knows me, who IS Light, to shape my life to become more like his own … and to force me to hold on more tightly to this Light as I willingly journey into darkness.

I am anchoring my focus for 2014 in these verses below –

Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you. Isaiah 60:1-2

In him (Jesus) was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1:4-5