I am needing to address all the boxes and half painted walls accumulating around me, so my posts may be less frequent for few days. While I elliptical in the afternoon, I am finishing up Nancy Campell’s book and hope to review it within a day or two. I also have some thoughts on writing that need to be put together. So those are the upcoming topics that will come when I am able to steal away a chunk of time.

I have been somewhat successful most of my life at keeping people a fair distance from my heart. Perhaps because of my parents divorce when I was 5 I learned at a young age that love hurts and somehow figured it was easier not to be close to people I don’t remember making any kind of conscious decision in that regard, but as I look back through my childhood, I was a detatched child. I didn’t like too much affection and I was never really close with my siblings until after high school. I never learned to call my step-father “Dad”.

By the Lord’s gracious work in my life, I have been learning to draw close to others and love, but it is still a work in progress for me. I believe that is a main reason why we were given children so quickly in our marriage. My girls, like no other event in my life, have forced my heart open in ways I did not anticipate. My sweet babies have helped me greatly to love others. If I can risk to love my children, other people don’t seem nearly as dangerous to love, except one.

During my college years, the Lord began the uncomfortable work of refining and I began to draw closer to my family, especially my sister, Abi. She is the only sibling of 5 with whom I share the same two biological parents. We look alike and share many similarities of both humor and hurt. She is 5 years younger, and due to a variety of circumstances, I began to love her not just as my sister, but almost as my own child. My parents thought perhaps I could reach Abi in a way they could not and they encouraged my own impulse to try and nurture Abi and take care of her.

At one point she came and lived with us for 6 months. She struggled with Bulemia and depression and panic attacks, among a few other problems. I would try to sing her to sleep at night so the darkness might leave her alone and allow her to drift to sleep before 3 AM. I became pregnant during her stay and my ability, or motivation at least, to nurture her dwindled, about the same time that her desire to try and face her own demons and work through them also dwindled. She ended up leaving our house on a bad not. I still struggle with guilt over not doing enough for her, not praying enough for her, not risking to love her enough while I had her within my home. I can make excuses, but they seem surmountable and stupid now.

She is much worse now than she was those few months two years ago. Add to her former difficulties alcoholism, marriage to a felon drug dealer, a crystal meth addiction, and health so poor I would not be surprised to one day receive a call of her having fallen dead. I pray that she is still alive because God has plans for her, plans to display his might and glory in her life. I have myself dabbled in drugs before and I know the terror and mental pain that they bring when you don’t feel so “high” or something goes wrong. I can lay at night and know somewhat the horror and excruciating pain in her soul that she lives with day by day and night by night. She follows the path of the living dead, and it is nearly more than I can bear because I love her as my own.

My prayer is obviously for a miracle. Last night I pictured running up to the dusty road of Jesus and begging him, “Please, Lord, come save my sister. One word from you and I know she can be healed.” I don’t know the Lord’s timing, we never do until it is finished, and like Martha, I wait with irrational faith while the Lord seems to tarry and my sibling seems to die.

In the waiting, I pray that I would continue to heal and have the courage to love, despite the great pain that it brings. I pray that I would not numb myself, but become a vessel of prayer and blessing; that I would not inoculate myself from pain, but remember the suffering around me so that I might be a hand filled with extended, active compassion. I don’t really trust myself to be able to do this, but then, aren’t I praying for a miracle?

Our favorite videos are all collections of songs. The girls love “Action Bible Songs” by Cedarmont Kids. Elise is very verbal and has most of the songs perfectly memorized but sometimes she will hear a word wrong and stubbornly refuse to be corrected. (She gets this from her mother who for years and years thought the JM song went “Billy Jean is at my door”!) My other daughter, Audrey, just usually stands, wiggles her bottom and grunts in her husky voice along as Elise loudly sings “Climb, climb up sunshine mountain, look to God above. Turn, turn from sin and Audrey, look to God on high!”

Regarding family planning and birth control, consider Beth Moore. She only had 3 children, by choice. She and her husband purposefully limited their family size (to the best of my knowledge and I have read most of her books). Did she sin in this choice? I see no concievable way that she could have the ministry she does if she had a large family. I do not think that those with other giftings and callings realize the enormous amount of work and research it requires to produce quality teaching and writing. Was it God’s true plan for her to have more children and she missed it? Just a thought to consider.

After considering a few of the comments I have recieved, I edited FP I, realizing that I made a few inaccurate generalizations. I appologize for inconsistancies or inaccuracies and again ask, you the reader, to help me think clearly and in a godly manner, through thoughtful, charitable comments. Before children I spent hours and hours and hours reading and writing, but now I am having to learn to think both accurately and quickly!!

After wrestling with my posts on family planning, and just this morning feeling peace about my conclusions, I came across the following passage in my reading of Walking on Water. It may help to know that L’Engle was a devoted wife and mother to whom family was very important.

The moment of inspiration does not come to someone who lolls around expecting the gift to be free. It is no giveaway. It is the pearl for which we have to pay a great price, the price of intense loneliness, the price of that vulnerability which often allows us to be hurt; the less readily understandable price of hurting those we love . . . And I am not sure it’s a choice. If we’re given a gift - and the size of the gift, great or small, is irrelevant - then most of us must serve it, like it or not. I say most of us because I have seen people of great talent who have done nothing with it and who mutter about getting down to work “when there’s time”.

When I consider what L’Engle means by “work” I do not consider “oh I want to get out of the house and away from the kids and do something else, anything else, work”. For myself, I do not even consider finanical necessity work. I am so greatly and undeservedly blessed for that not to be a factor. However, I do consider the weight of my mind upon me which is restless and depressed unless I do the work of writing, though my gift may be, as L’Engle says, small. My thoughts are formless and heavy upon me, my heart is confused and cranky, unless through the art of writing I give them form and external expression, an expression that I can return to and gaze upon. For some women, I believe converstaion fulfills a parallel need, but for me, my spoken words usually leave me with the feeling that something learned has fleeted from me and is gone, without being birthed into a creation to share and reflect upon. I adore a well written sentance of lovely thought as much as a Monet. My books and journals are as important and artistic to me as any piece of art I have displayed on a wall.

If I sacrifice my writing in order to raise my children, in truth I have robbed them of the mother God intended for them to have. I have no plans to ignore my children all day and to sit in front of the computer ignoring their cried, or forcing my husband to pay for extraneous child care so I can have hours of quite time. I do plan to be disciplined and pursue my passion, so that I may be a passionate, artful, creative mother who knows the joy of sharing with her children the gifts God has given.

Marla Swoffer hosted a contest to launch a new site of intellectual Christian women bloggers. I am excited to read the site when it begins June 28th. 31 women entered the contest, including me. I entered a devotional post which had been on my mind for a few days at the time. I origionally had meant it for this site, as a meditation on the blessings of the Lord amidst the weariness of housework. I am posting below the origional version, which was too long for the contest.

Please check out Marla’s site and the new intellectuelle site as well. I think it will be good food for thought!

What makes your heart glad?I have been haunted by a line from John Piper’s DVD The Blazing Center: “The battle is not fought in the realm of duty; by sheer will power doing what is right. The battle lies in what makes your heart glad!” (approximate paraphrase) Wow. I love that! I have heard so much lately about “How are you doing spiritually? How are your quiet times going? Have you done x, y, and z so that you can be spiritually blessed?” I am disturbed by the increase in duty-driven, joy quenching legalism in our American churches. I KNOW I ought to have glorious time in the Word and in prayer daily, but approaching it as a duty akin to brushing my teeth dries up my spirit, especially in times when life is to tough to hack it out with will power.

Yet when I remember these words of Piper and ask myself, doesn’t it make my heart glad to be with God?! Isn’t His pressence so sweet? What is wrong? Have I forgotten who HE IS?! Why don’t I want to be near Him? Why don’t I desire to run to the shadow of His wings? My heart nearly breaks with tears at that last question. All the lies I have believed today, the unconfessed guilt that weighs me, all of it comes rushing foreward to show me the wall built up between me and my kind Savior. It is not a question of “Am I going to do my 7-minute a day duty?” but of fighting for my soul’s delight in the only One who can satisfy.

Our God is a mighty, awesome, As a devotional exercise I want to make a list of what makes my heart glad . . .

1 - Wind. I love the cool feel of spring wind, fresh and exhilirating against my skin. I love the delightfully terrifing winds of a Texas summer storm. A gust of strong wind will immediately awake me from my daily stuppor and remind me that there is an awesome, powerful, unpredicatble God directing the earth to turn and the heavens to roar. I learned to love the wind in Chicago. The daily breath of heaven refreshed me often durring a very dry and lonely time in my life. How could we have any understanding of the Spirit without the wind, blowing where it will, strangly invisable yet real? We can’t see it, yet we see its’ power at work in the trees and upon the grasses. How it can rush across my face remind me of a life and power much greater than I.

2 - When I loose myself playing with my children and for a moment return to the delight of open curiosity, imagination and enrapture. Bearing children has brought depth and joy to the Lord’s words, “for such is the kingdom of heaven.” Though I am a parent to my girls, I am but a child still, so thankful that I can come to my Father and rest in His arms. It makes my heart inexpressibly glad to know that He ask me to have before Him not adult-like confidence, certainty and control, but child-like faith, trust and freedom. He gave His Son to pay the penalty of the law and to fulfill it so that I might live in newness of life, full of delight, open curiosity, imagination, and enrapture.

3 - I love to work really hard to get a worthwhile project done and then rest and see that it was good. Reflecting upon Genesis 1, I believe that is the heart of the sabbath.

4 - Epiphanies. I love to be suprised and delighted with a new thought, a fresh persepctive, a divinely given understanding that the Lord of hosts has been gracious enough to bless me with.

5 - Choral music. The abundance of, at best, mediocre choral music and performance circulating through our churches may cause you to wonder if I am either crazy or lacking in any musical taste whatsoever. However, there is little other music more truly incredible than a tallented choir singing a divinely inspired peace with excellence and passion. The voice is the one instrument crafted alone by the hand of God. Years ago, in the towering marble capital rotunda of Oregon, our highly awarded high school choir sang an incredible arrangement of “We Three Ships” for the yearly Chirstmas concert. The soaring, consuming sound shook my body with absolute wonder and exhiliration. I am quite sure it was a presious taste of the honor we will have forever to sing praises before the eternal throne.

When I sat down to write this list, I assumed it would be a refreshing yet random collage of the God given blessings in my life. I was somwhat suprised to observe that my heart most deeply rejoices in the moments of this embattled life and in the glimpses of creation that most awake my soul and cause my heart to yearn for the unveiled pressence of my Lord. He is glorious, is He not!? He is utterly beautiful and wondrous enough to satisfy the soul of men for a thousand upon thousand of years. How difficult it can be to remember among the shadows of sin and trial that surround us. I cannot fix my mind on the things above and the glory to be revealed out of duty or because I must, for the law kills! I seek the mountain of the Lord and teh courts of His temple because He is supremely worthy. Where else can I go to satisfy my thirsty spirit? He alone has the Words and fountain of life.