God is good - all the time!

My Presbyterian friends frequently bring a group together by announcing that "God is good", and everyone responds, enthusiastically, "All the time." That about sums up my point of view this morning.

This week has been one of significant change for me. On Tuesday I learned that my job of eleven years is being eliminated in a restructuring of our congregation. Heartbreaking news as I have felt deep joy and purpose in this position. Shocking news as I was completely unprepared to hear it. I have been sad, and mad, a lot this week and will no doubt go down those roads again in the months to come, but in the midst of it I was surprised to discover that I am not afraid. In fact, as the days go by, I find that I am beginning to look forward to the challenges of tackling a new job, perhaps even in a new place. In the middle of the shock and sadness, hope pokes up a green shoot, a promise of something new being born.

It has also been a week of blessing for me. I have been blessed by a tremendous outpouring of support and love. My phone, email account, and Facebook page have been filled with messages of love, appreciation, support, and promises of prayers. I feel like I have not wasted my time or effort, that what I have been giving my time and energy for mattered to a lot of people, that it wasn't wasted. That's more than a nice feeling; it's a huge blessing.

While I was fortunate to be born a cock-eyed optimist, I know that my confidence in the face of this change is rooted in faith. Faith that God has never failed me in the past, and will never fail me, ever. I am so grateful that I had parents who tended the roots of my faith with great care. Parents who pointed out repeatedly the ways that they saw God at work in me and in my life. Who regularly reminded me that with God, all things are possible. I hope that I have done as much for my children. I hope you are doing this for yours.

This is not my first rodeo. I have had my world unexpectedly rocked before, and probably will again. Faith, hope, and love abide through the grace of our most loving God. So I continue to float in the waters of my baptism down an unknown river to an unknowable new future. Never alone and well aware that God is good! 

All the time!

River Authority

Many of the boundaries between states and countries were designated by the river that naturally divides land from land. These boundaries seem obvious, but over time they move, due to erosion, dam building, flooding and a host of other factors. In some cases one state or the other controls the river, and in others everything related to the river needs to be negotiated between the two sides. Eventually, some entity must become the River Authority

There are many parenting parallels here. Think about it. Every boundary you will ever set with your child is ultimately going to shift. The crib that contains them when they awake eventually gives way to a bed they can leave by themselves. Tricycle boundaries that limit the rider to sidewalks within sight distance of the front yard will become bike boundaries that eventually allow for riding in the street and far beyond visual supervision. Your child's seven o'clock bedtime becomes eight, then nine, then ten, and eventually is self-regulated.

So who controls the river? Well, where I live there is an entity called the Lower Colorado River Authority. They operate six dams that provide electricity to this area, protect water supply and quality, educate for boater safety, and perhaps most importantly, decide when to release water from the dams. As a parent, I like the idea of being the entity that is the Child River Authority: providing, protecting, educating, and releasing when the time and conditions are right.

There are entire books written about setting boundaries for your children, and you should definitely read a few of them, but I hope you can use this little river analogy to think about the boundaries you set for your kids. Kids are like rivers in so many ways:

• Always moving forward
• Frequently taking the path of least resistance
• Sometimes forcing their way through solid rock
• Full of life
• Receiving input from thousands of streams
• "Uncontainable" in any permanent fashion
• Sometimes rushing, sometimes meandering
• Easily polluted 
• Less easily cleaned up
• Refreshing
• Enriching to everyone near them

The most successful strategy for managing a river is to embrace the nature of the river. No river can be contained behind a dam forever; it will ultimately go over, around, or through the dam if not released. The Authority can, however, use strategically placed dams to focus the flow of the river to generate power, protect and serve the people near the river, increase its efficiency, and release the water in a steady, safe flow. The Authority can make rules to keep the river clean, protect the life within it, and educate others about this particular river.

Both the river and the child are created and called by God for some purpose. They bless us, and we have a sacred responsibility to be good stewards of both. You are your child's River Authority, and you make rules for the good of the child over stretches of time and space. You can own neither the river nor the child, but you can manage your child on behalf of the true owner. What a privilege!

Forgiven

As a child I was taught to ask forgiveness for my sins each night when I prayed. I was also pretty clear about what those sins were and why I should feel guilty for them. I didn't have to spell them out aloud, but neither was I allowed to sing-song through that section of prayers with no apparent thought.  That was half a century ago though and many children today have never been coached to examine themselves for sin. Judging by the kids I see in confirmation, they are either oblivious to sin, or obsessed by it. There seems to be no healthy medium in this area.

So, if like me you think that neither of these places is good for your kids, you may wonder how to approach this with your kids. Here are a few practical ideas for your consideration:

• First, think about your personal reaction to the word sin. Does it sound foreign? Condemning? Old-fashioned? Scary?
• What do you identify as sinful? If you're not completely sure - ask your kids what you hate most - they know!
• What do you think will happen to your kids if you ask them to look over their own behavior at the end of the day?

Those questions, by the way, make good journal fodder.  The more you write, the clearer it will become. You'll unearth things long since forgotten. Some of them will entertain you. Some will help you understand your own behavior better and a few will make you really mad at someone (which will require more time with a pen in your hand to work through.)

Now that you know where you stand, you're ready to introduce this to your kids. If you're Lutheran like me you can point at the general confessions we use in worship for clues about what needs to be forgiven: 

• what we have done, 
• what we have left undone, 
• not loving God with our whole heart, 
• not loving our neighbors as ourselves. 

With your freshly prepared heart you will have fun discussing this with your children. I know that my own children were pretty clear about what they had done wrong, but found it harder to identify what they had left undone. They also, being children, were much more inclined to love with their whole hearts and so I was enriched by them in the whole business of loving God and neighbor. 

One important thing remains - you have to explain that God will forgive their sins. You may have to wrestle with this yourself first because if you don't believe it, they will smell it. God will forgive their sins and yours. Period. End of subject. 

Confess. Ask forgiveness. Receive forgiveness. Done and done. We have a great and loving God. Share that gift with your kids. Let them know that just as nothing can separate them from your love, nothing can separate them from God's love. 

Unforgiven sin can divide people from one another as effectively as a river divides two banks.  So it is with God. It is not the sin that separates us, it is the unforgiven sin. Forgiveness builds the bridge that brings us together again. Going to sleep knowing you are right with God and world makes for a much brighter morning. Help your kids build a bridge!

The Serving Season

Serving food, serving drinks, serving the hungry in soup kitchens, and serving our neighbors are regular hallmarks of the "extreme season." All around the church and community people are lining up volunteers and asking for donations of money,  gift cards, time, and patience. At home, this may begin to take a toll if your heart is bigger than your available hours or dollars. I remember a lot of years where I was just plain mad all through the holidays because I felt like a failure on every front - everyone needed more from me than I had to give. I used to think this was because I was a single parent on a tight budget but I have since learned that almost everyone feels this way at some point during the holidays. Here are a few things I figured out along the way:

• Start by deciding how much money you will give ahead of time and then, as a family, DECIDE where you'll give it. Some families pick one thing and stick with it year after year but others like to mix it up and give to a lot of places. Your family members may not all agree so you may have to divide the budgeted funds between several causes. That discussion will be almost as rewarding as the giving. Depending on the ages and temperaments of your children there may be spirited debates over the merits of buying dog food for the animal shelter or toys for children whose parents are in prison. People may get passionate but that's OK - it's for a good cause!
• Choose ONE actual hands on service project. Giving money is very helpful to recipients but less valuable to your children who really won't fully grasp the giving of money until they have earned some themselves. If your children are very small, substitute for a Meals-On-Wheels driver and take them along. Take older kids to wrap gifts at Blue Santa, help an elderly neighbor put up a tree or some lights, or serve dinner  at a soup kitchen. Wherever you serve, serve together.
• Find a way to participate at church. Welcome guests, make cookies for the choir members who will sing multiple services on Christmas Eve, help carry all those poinsettias into the church - or offer to deliver them to shut-ins after the Christmas Day services. Check to see if someone could use a ride to church. Sing in the choir or play in the orchestra. Even offer to stay and lock up the building after the last service! Take some of your baking to a family who has had health issues or recently lost a loved one. Serving at church helps reinforce for your kids that it's really all about THE BABY.
• Don't do things you, or your family, resent. If traveling to see relatives is more chore than joy - stay home! Go another time when you can enjoy it more.  Hate sending Christmas cards but want to stay in touch? Send a New Year's letter or a valentine or write a generic letter that can be sent with birthday cards.

I think it's easy to feel like you're in a rubber raft about to go over a waterfall as the holidays approach but try not to lose sight of the countless blessings in your life and the baby in the manger.  Holding those things at the center can help you float a little more gently down the holiday river.

Making Memories

There's a scene in the movie "The Parent Trap" where one of the twins, pretending to be her sister, hugs her grandfather tightly and kind of sniffs at him.  When he asks what she's doing she replies: "Making a memory! Years from now, when I'm all grown up, I'll always remember my grandfather and how he always smelled of peppermint and pipe tobacco."  Since my own grandpa also smelled of peppermint and pipe tobacco, this idea charmed  me the very first time I heard it.  And it contained an idea that has stuck with me ever since:  We can deliberately choose to remember certain moments.

As I work at holiday preparations I often muse about what will make this Christmas memorable.  It's not always possible to predict - some of the best memories are completely unplanned, but not all.  As I look back over my Christmas memories it seems like it's about half and half.  Half of my favorite memories were created by someone's intention: carefully chosen gifts, invited guests, inspired worship.  Others were happenstance: blizzards, random encounters, life-stages.  Either way, memories shape both our anticipation and our definition of Christmas.

I have many memories of Christmases past.  Most of them make me smile.  Two have shaped my Christmas perceptions more than any of the others.  The first is probably from around age six.  That was the year my mom introduced the tradition of Jesus' birthday cake. I can remember singing Happy Birthday to Jesus on Christmas day. There were even candles.  It made the central point of the whole celebration so clear to me. The second was my last Christmas before becoming a parent. I was, as they say in the Bible, great with child.  There would be no traveling to parents or in-laws that year.  I remember hearing the Christmas story that year as if for the first time: a young couple, far from home, a child about to be born. . . it was God's story and it was my story.

Like Mary, I have pondered these, and many other memories, in my heart for years.  Some of them may bear little resemblance to the "facts" of the event or to someone else's memory of it.  They are my memories, and they are part of who I am.  Like a river running through the hills, my memories have shaped the landscape of my life.  They have rounded the sharp places and created new routes in my thoughts. Looking for things worth remembering is a useful habit, especially if you choose well.

I know, and we all know, people who seem to remember all the slights, the hurts and the disappointments of their lives. While they may truly never have had a happy moment to remember, I think it's more likely that their constant focus on past hurt has blinded them to the good things in the present.  Others are constantly comparing this year to their "perfect" memories of Christmas past and always feeling that the present falls short. This is equally blinding. We can't really focus on two things at the same time. This is where looking for things worth remembering can be helpful. If we are looking for things to happily remember in the future, we will not be busy remembering unhappy things from the past or finding fault with the present.  (I'm not advocating for pretending things never happened or that everything is perfect when it's not.) I am just choosing to make memories in the present. To BE PRESENT in the present and not lost in the past.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas and please, make some wonderful memories!

Dam Habits. . .

My work e-mail has now been down for about 16 hours.  I am stewing, wondering:

• What am I missing?
• Who might be trying to reach me?
• Do they think I'm ignoring them?
• Did my last e-mail go out?
• Should I call somebody?
• Whose fault is it?

Is this really the fabric of my life?  Is my whole life held together by e-mail?  (The answer to this is apparently yes, as I have four e-mail accounts and facebook!)  I cannot believe how anxious this is making me. 

Yesterday I read a reflection on the story of Jesus healing the "crooked" woman on the Sabbath (Luke 13).  Jan Richardson of Painted Prayerbook, asks these questions in her reflection: What are the habits, patterns, and rhythms by which we live our lives?  Are there patterns and habits that, over time, have become confining, keeping us bound and bent and feeling less than whole?  Experiencing this anxiety around the absence of my  e-mail makes me think that this habit might have become confining.  I definitely feel less than whole without it.

I thought I had evolved beyond that. . . I like to think I am a fairly free spirit, unbound by convention, regulation, and rules.  Eldest daughter and I had many discussions about rules while she was visiting.  She, having been raised with the broadest possible rules  likes to devise rules for daily living.  She thinks of them as building good habits - and I have to applaud her creative use of rules for that purpose.  It seems to me that she uses her chosen rules the way children use rules in games - to keep it fair, to foster peace, to make it more interesting.  I, on the other hand, who generally perceive rules as confining, now find myself vicitmized by habits randomly formed, rather than chosen. 

When my daughters were children, I chose their rules with great care. (e.g. "If your action could hurt someone, including you, don't do it!" or "People are ALWAYS more important than stuff.") I didn't want to have to enforce anything I didn't believe in wholeheartedly.  I also didn't want to stifle any of their creativity, or put them in a box that would force them to grow in particular ways.  I wanted them to be free to become the women God had created them to be. 

The rules I consciously choose for myself tend to work a lot like the rules I chose for my daughters:  they are there to protect me and free my creativity.  My habits, however, are not so intentional - and obviously it is time for some examination and re-evaluation.

Since one of my "creative" rules is to find a water connection for each of these musings, I'll share this mental metaphor with you.  Habits are like dams on a river.  They can generate power and regulate flow but they can also cause flooding upstream if they are too high or too inflexible when the rains come. 

I'd like to hear your thoughts on habits and rules. . . so please, jump in and leave a comment!

New Places to Swim

I had lunch at the Walnut Room at Macy's in Chicago on Monday. It's a restaurant in the original Marshall Fields store and it's been there since 1907. The building is nearly twice as old as I am. Our waitress suggested we order the 103-year-old pot pie (which definitely took us aback for a minute!) Two people at the table, whose ages added together do not equal mine, ordered, consumed and enjoyed the ancient recipe. We covered a myriad of topics over a 3-hour lunch and I marveled at these young people and how the world looks to them.

The spatial proportions of their lives are distinct from mine: the height of the buildings, the distances they commute, how long it takes to get from point A to point B and how much time they spend calculating that. How far ahead they plan - 5 minutes in some areas and 5 years in others. So much is instant that it makes many things possible - but also creates in them an appreciation for things that can only happen over long stretches of time.

The future looks different to them than it did to me at their age. They do not seem to dream pipe dreams; instead they carefully construct their plans. They want to be financially secure enough not to worry, but they want to do work that is both interesting and meaningful. They don't seem to believe they can change the world but they are willing to try and influence the sector they know.

One of the things I most loved and admired about these young people, but struggled to understand, is the way they can hold different positions on significant matters and not be uncomfortable with each other. There is something very Christ-like about the way they interact with one another, without judgement or shaming but with simple acceptance and appreciation. Perhaps because they have experienced the world so broadly (whether actually or virtually) they have come early to a place where they can accept that what is true for me may not be true for you.

Home from my adventure I turned to the recurring task of preparing for Bible study only to find that in the text (Luke 7) for this coming Sunday Jesus tells the parable of two people who were forgiven their debts; one a large debt, one a small one. Then he poses the question "Which one loved [the lender] more?" Clearly, how it looks and how one feels are related to where you are and what you've experienced. Jesus didn't say, or even imply, that they should love the lender equally. He simply pointed out that their circumstances would affect their response . I think my young people are on to something!

I know my customary swimming hole very well. I have recognized a lot of "truths" that help me enjoy it. I need to remember that local knowledge may not serve me as well in the Atlantic Ocean or the Nile River or whatever body of water others inhabit. I'm so glad I swam in a different pool this week! I feel energized, encouraged, excited and empowered.



Go ahead, try out a new pool and see how the world looks from the top of a wave or the bottom of a waterfall! It will change the way you love.

The Gulf of Mexico

I was 16 years old before I saw the ocean. While I had spent much of my childhood in the land of 10,000 lakes, visited the great lake they call Gitche-Gumee (Superior) and been to the source of the mighty Mississippi River and the Great Salt Lake, the ocean was still a whole new experience. It was the Pacific Ocean and the waves were big and the water was cold. I can barely describe the experience. It was amazing. Hypnotic. Cathartic. Holy. Later I would visit the Atlantic (both sides) and the Caribbean but my favorite salt water place is the Gulf of Mexico.

This can probably be attributed to a number of factors: the water temperature, proximity, familiarity, but I think mostly, it is because that is where I got to encounter the ocean with children. To see the ocean through a child's eyes is a wondrous thing. Chasing and being chased by water, digging down in the sand where an air hole appears, building castles and counting pelicans provide endless delights for a child. Searching for shells and examining jellyfish provide many opportunities to encounter life and death in the most natural of settings. The questions come faster than you can answer them: Where did it go? Why did it die? Is it in heaven? Where is the mommy fish? Who ate it? What was inside this shell? Why does it only have one foot? Why are those shells stuck to the boat?

At the water's edge, life and death are encountered in (for most kids) an impersonal and un-painful way. Dead fish wash ashore. Empty shells abound. Big fish eat little fish, birds pick the shore clean, and the waves roll in and out relentlessly. Nowhere can you find God's circle of life more clearly demonstrated than at the beach. Life and death are the BIG topics that get us to thinking about God. Try taking your kids to the beach this summer and think theologically for a bit!

Come on in, the water's deep but filled with life and joy!