Grandchildren

My husband and I recently returned from visiting our children and grandchildren in the Pacific northwest, and I was telling my friend about how wonderful it was being “Nana.” As we chatted over lunch she asked, “If you could wish one thing for your grandchildren what would it be?”

It was an intriguing question, and I didn’t want to give her a shallow or flippant answer.  I thought about my own life and how things that used to matter don’t seem to matter as much anymore.  I used to be super focused on getting things right, and I thought living as a Christian meant managing my life so that I looked capable and strong.  I felt a lot of pressure to keep up the image but didn’t realize how it often caused me anger, anxiety, and depression. Of course, I knew that Jesus loved me, but I didn’t recognize the gravity and passion of His love.  Now I want more than that for my grandchildren.

What I’ve learned is that God’s relentless love allows me to increasingly live out of freedom instead of pressure. Though I sometimes slip back into my old ways, I remind myself that my Father delights in me, and it awakens my desire to walk in rhythm with His Spirit and to follow where He is leading, Because of His grace, I can more readily accept His invitation to enter even my anger and anxiety knowing that He will be always at my side with His forgiveness and comfort. His love for me never wavers. 

All of these thoughts and more crowded my mind as I pondered my friend’s question about my grandchildren. Surely I want them to be safe, healthy, happy, kind, secure, confident, generous – and of course to love Nana!  But if I had only one wish it would not be anything from that list. Rather, I want them to grow up desiring to live as godly men and women – not striving in order to please God but knowing He is already pleased with them as His beloved. No matter what disappointments and struggles they may meet with in their lives, I pray they will never forget how loved they are and will always believe that they are God’s treasured, redeemed, gifted children.  And as they abide in God’s immeasurable love, I pray they will generously share this gift with others.

Paul’s desire for the believers in Philippi was this: “I pray that your love will overflow more and more and that you will keep on growing in knowledge and understanding. For I want you to understand what really matters, so that you may live pure and blameless lives until Christ’s return.” (Philippians 1:9-10)   My grandchildren are still too young to understand what most deeply matters in this world. But I told my friend that my one wish for them is that when all is said and done, they may realize that what really matters is love – God’s love offered to them at enormous cost and their willingness to offer love to others, even when it’s not easy.  I fear what my grandchildren might face in this world when I am gone.  But whatever He asks them to face, I want to assure them now that they are God’s beloved children.  Hopefully, how I love them in the years ahead will fruitfully model His divine love for each of them.

- Sonya Reeder
Executive Director of Hope Road

Welcome Them as Friends

There are a lot of potholes and bumps in life’s road. Where is the smooth level path that I

want to cruise on? Why doesn’t life go the way I want?

Can doubt and struggle and life not going the way we want or expect be the beginning of a

path that leads to mature character? When my relationships don’t give me the joy I want and

when it seems that others don’t really value me, could I be in a place that will help me be

shaped more like Jesus?

Am I willing to see the hardships and disappointments in my life and recognize them as

painful and sad - notice the truth about them - and then be willing to sit still in that

uncomfortableness, recognizing it as the attention focuser, the needs magnifier that will

deepen our yearning for the better that God is building in us?

Of course, no one should stay in unsafe situations of abuse and none of us should seek to sin

or remain in sin, but the troubles imposed on our lives, those unsought thorns in our lives

might be the key to us developing into what we were made to be.

To really benefit from trouble it must be named. Problems brushed aside or swept under the

rug have little positive impact. Ignored they still hurt and also cause our emotional and

relational skins to thicken. But if I plainly admit the truth and say that what that family

member said felt like a punch in the guts, that that missed promotion made me angry, that I’m

really tired of doing all the things on my church calendar – then I can understand the impact

of the hardship and let it unearth something deep in my soul.

James the brother of Jesus understood this. Or at least J B Phillips, the British translator of

the last century thought he did. Phillips translated James 1:2-4 like this:

When all kinds of trials and temptations crowd into your lives my brothers, don’t

resent them as intruders, but welcome them as friends! Realise that they come to test

your faith and to produce in you the quality of endurance. But let the process go on

until that endurance is fully developed, and you will find you have become men of

mature character.

James writes with an assumption that is essential to our living and understanding life. He

believes that God is up to something all the time and that the something is good for me. To

demand that life go my way or to pretend that it does leaves me as the determiner and director

of my life and its good. And I wasn’t made for that role. If I never come to grips with the idea

that I’m not the director and that I don’t have all the answers, I can’t change. But if I allow

trouble to humble me, to slow me down to a listening pace, to grab my attention by the lapels

and focus me on both my neediness and God’s desire for my betterment, then there’s great

opportunity to grow into exactly what God meant me to be.

What a painful process! But in my own life I have seen that I really only move in response to

a desire. And I rarely sense a desire when I think I am satisfied. When I really start to grab

for something better is when I am dis-satisfied. Then I yearn, and then I learn.

God didn’t make us to be self-sufficient. He didn’t intend us to be more determined to

determine what is good. He made us to rely on him in relationship with him. And he didn’t

make us to do that alone. Our brains were made to process better when we are in

conversation with someone else. A good listener, especially one that can help you see God’s

presence can be the critical key to recognizing the deep yearnings that God is stirring in you

on the way to shaping you to be like Jesus.

Really, to be human is to be wounded, weak, wicked. We were made vulnerable. Until we

acknowledge these deficiencies in ourselves, we are incapable of seeing God as he is. Our

shape & our problems do not define God, but our shape and problems do help us see and

experience him as he is: he forgives; he provides; he binds up. I don’t experience God acting

this way when I am taking care of myself. But if I pause and ponder as trials come, I might

notice that our lives with their troubles are designed to tell us that God loves and that we are

loved. And that is a great beginning point (or continuing point) for a journey to spiritual

maturity.

- Joey De Graffenried- Advisory Council

A Hope for the Helpers

How many of our conversations really matter?  What do you feel when it comes time to attend your small group at church?

I wonder if I sometimes talk just to hear myself talk or if I talk to impress those on the receiving end of me? In Larry Crabb’s book SoulTalk, he calls this “self talk” while encouraging us to learn to do more “soul talk.” 

Recently, I sat with a small group of people that discussed their discouragement with church and the relationships they had there.  Their discouragement came as they were thinking they would find more at church than in other areas of their life.  This small group also consisted of stay-at-home moms that shared their feelings of loneliness.  They talked about setting up playdates and joining a women’s Bible study, hoping for meaningful conversations  in those places only to feel discouraged after attending.  They were saying they felt like their “fellowship” time over dinner with friends and at church was about eating, discussing work, kids’s activities  and talking about the local sporting event. 

One lady spoke up, with some hesitancy, to say that even her Bible study evenings were filled with surface talk and hiding behind the correct exegesis of the passage they were studying. She went on to say how after being together weekly for four months, she knew very little about people’s personal lives and much less their personal souls.   

I don’t think this kind of relating is what the author of Hebrews had in mind when he wrote, “Let us think about ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works.  And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another , especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.” (Hebrews 10:24-25) Perhaps the author of Hebrews had in mind for us to relate more in a soulish way that would invite what is most alive within us to be heard and seen.  This invitation is accompanied by curiosity, presence, and availability.   

If we want to encourage people to love more like Christ and to serve as He did, we must become people who empty ourselves in order to be available and present  with others.  Perhaps listening with an attentive curiosity to one’s stories might encourage them to persevere until the day of His return. 

When one does speak from his or her soul, like my friend did as she shared her experience about being in Bible study at her church, we are often quick to correct or fix that person, while we fail to connect deeply with what is in their soul.  Larry Crabb used to say that the real power in helping others to look more like Christ is not to do something to them but to join with them.   

I wonder what kind of relationships we might have if we were willing to set aside ourselves and our agendas and join with one another by doing soul talk.  As we listen and see into another person’s soul, perhaps then we could offer life-giving words into a soul that feels alone and unseen.  If we relate like this in our times of being together, our conversations, our community, and our churches may become a place for others to rest and be encouraged as the day of Christ’s return draws near.   

- Sonya Reeder
Executive Director of Hope Road

“What if, instead of running from grief, we leaned into it and let it wash over us?”

Grief is something none of us enters lightheartedly, or even willingly. Instead we  usually try to avoid it. It’s painful, it’s exhausting, and we think it is going to  overwhelm and drown us if we engage with it. Besides, grief is closely connected  to pain and sorrow, whereas our hearts are all about finding happiness. However,  there actually is a great good in engaging with grief and the losses we’ve  experienced. What if, instead of running from it, we leaned into it and let it wash over  us? 

Unfortunately, we tend to operate out of a commitment to avoid the pain that  comes with grief rather than choosing a way to live life well and relate to others  richly in the midst of our sorrow. Reactive protection from pain is limiting, and  avoidance of pain becomes all consuming. The territory of grief seems like a  black hole to be avoided at all costs, when in truth it is a natural, necessary and  intrinsic process of living life. For no one, absolutely no one, can avoid  experiencing sorrow, sadness, and loss in this life. 

So what would it be like to turn towards grief, to be curious about it, to engage with  it and explore the depth of it? In sorrow and grief lies an invitation from God, the same God who promises and longs to be with us in all things, saying, “When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown.”(Isaiah 43:2) And Jesus invites us: “Come to me, all of you who are  weary and carry burdens, and I will give you rest.”(Matthew11:28), Instead, we miss this call and choose to manage and mitigate our sorrows rather than go to Him with them. 

What if we actually answer Jesus’ call and take our painful grief to Him? There is an intimacy and a depth of relationship that grows in the midst of our sorrow and pain when we go to Him. He promises to be with us and give us rest. Out of our darkness and pain, He calls to us, Come close. Bring your heavy heart to me. If we will quiet ourselves and turn to Him, He will draw us close, tenderly pour His love into us, and sit with us in our grief and pain as long as we will linger with  Him.. God with us …It is in this painful place of grieving that He courts our broken hearts and tenderly knits our souls more deeply with His. 

- Joanie Harris LPC
Advisory Council Member

Sabbath

“Then Jesus said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath!’” (Mark 2:27 NLT)     So we must “remember to observe the Sabbath day by 

keeping it holy.” (Exodus 20:8)

How did I miss this?  Why have I failed to honor the Sabbath?  Why does our culture, even our Christian culture, not value the Sabbath?

I grew up knowing that I had to work, and somewhere along the way, I learned that work often defined who I was in the eyes of others.  In some ways, my work also defined my significance to myself.  Early in life, I was known as a good worker, and through the years I developed the respect of others through my reliable work ethic.  It felt good to be noticed and to feel important.  The feeling of “accomplishment” can become addictive, and the pride that comes from accomplishing things becomes to the soul like an adrenaline rush to the body.  Attached to this need for accomplishment and its accompanying approval is a pressure that never stops, based on the motto “Enough is never enough.” 

Unfortunately, our Western American culture promotes a desperate pursuit of the next big “title and raise” corporate reward.  It demands that our 12-year-olds play club basketball all year long or they won’t make the school team.  Our schools push academics at the sacrifice of fun and social life.  And even our churches have so many committees and programs that some people are at church more than they are at home.  Who is practicing the Sabbath?  Where is it even being talked about?

When Christians do talk about Sabbath, it is most often spoken of as practicing a ritual to fulfill a duty, as presented in Moses’ Ten Commandments.  But in Mark 2, Jesus gives us a new idea to ponder.  The Sabbath is a gift to us, and it was set up for us in order to find rest and enjoyment.  Sabbath is seen by Christ as a place to cease striving and to bask in the beauty of His Presence.  It calls us into peaceful rest in the midst of tumultuous times, for Sabbath is not dependent on circumstances.  It is instead a mainstay in which we can enjoy all that God has created, as well as all that our own work has created.

Not only is the failure to practice Sabbath disobeying God, but it is also affecting our mental health and our relationships with others.  The ongoing “push-push” approach to life is creating an anxiety-driven pressure to succeed.  Relationships then become an afterthought instead of an eagerly cultivated blessing.  During a recent conversation with a good friend, I came to realize that my refusal to observe the Sabbath was often prideful and fearful.  The month before our conversation my busy work routine had been totally interrupted by being sick for the entire month.  As I described that month to my friend, she asked if I had been able to pay attention to my body – and what was it saying?  I chuckled and said I was getting better at that, but I quickly justified myself: I needed to work and keep going.  In other words, I was defensive and still committed to resuming my “work addiction” attitude.

I left our conversation troubled and curious, because the deeper part of me wants to please our Lord.  I really do want to rest in Him as I willingly practice Sabbath, trusting that He will do the interior work of making me holy as I surrender my own frantic efforts to produce holiness in myself.  For those self-sufficient efforts are based on the false assumption that I must strive to earn something which I ultimately cannot earn – God’s unconditional love.  The pressure of living according to that lie accrues over time, and it always negatively impacts the quality of my relationships with others.  To follow the all-American pace of life or to keep up with the Jones leaves us feeling exhausted and depleted.

God accomplished His creation work in six day, and then He looked around to see all He had made, and He called it “very good” – He enjoyed what He had done!  But on the seventh day God rested.  He ceased from His work of creating our universe.  Not only did He rest on that day, but He blessed it and declared it holy. (Genesis 1 and 2)

If God Himself declares the Sabbath to be holy, must I not do the same if I am His follower?  Lord, lead me to you as I practice Sabbath, learning to rest in and to worship the One I say I love the most.

- Sonya Reeder - Executive Director of Hope Road