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I am startled. Scraping out that pulp, I face my own insides. I am taken aback at what twists and knots within me. I test again. Yes. Raw, messy fear. Can it be that is, right now, what snarls and writhes around my soul, strangling me? Yes, that is what I feel in this moment of time. I can feel it, as real as those squash strings between my fingers. Funny. I never have named this feeling before. Not this name. Perhaps “uptight.” Or “stressed.” But today, fleshy pulp in the palm of my hand, I can simply say it: I am afraid. Am I enough? Loving enough, gentle enough, giving enough? Can I do, BE, enough today? Will I be able to stay ahead of the mushrooming laundry, the army of hungry stomachs, the endless waterfall of questions, the tsunami of needs today that will overwhelm? Do I have enough inner resources today to ride the pounding surf? I don’t want to fail. I know this feeling. It’s the same squeezing panic that wrung me when I’d swim too far from shore and my feet couldn’t find a slippery, algae covered rock to cling to. In the murky depths, currents relentlessly tugging and dragging, I’d flail and feel about, looking for a toehold. Like every mother, I am in way over my head. The depths plunge deep and dark, and I am a helpless cork bobbing about the smashing waves, breathlessly trying not to panic. It is like my soul cannot touch bottom. I lay down my knife and quarter of squash. I am stunned by the naming of this tangle of feelings inside of me. I think that I multi-task. I juggle. I orchestrate, co-ordinate, manage, one eye on the clock, one eye thinking of what comes next: change over the laundry, check on Hope and grammar lesson, switch Shalom from puzzles to legos, call the butcher shop to place an order, set the table with bowls for the steaming lentil soup, mark Levi’s math exercises. But I have named the beast that lurks just below the waters, with gleaming eyes waiting to spring: fear. Five-year-old Malakai, still learning to decipher the puzzle of phonics, wanders through the kitchen, his church kid’s club booklet in hand, pretending to read his Bible verse for the week. He lilts the words from memory, eyes fixed to the page as he walks: “Then He arose and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace, be still!” (Mark 4:39.) And directly, something within me stills. I cease to flail. I almost want to laugh at the surprising aptness of it all. (But, really, is it surprising?) He rebukes my winds. His word, alive, relevant, sovereign, from the lips of an illiterate child, calms my waters. “Peace, be still.” And underneath, my foot feels an anchor, a verse from my Bible reading in the dark still of coming day, a verse that I nearly skimmed over, but now revisits me, knowing it is a lifeline meant for this very moment: “No, there is no other Rock. I know not one” (Isaiah 44:8). I pick up a spoon to finish scooping squash pulp. The tangled part of me unknots. Floats. My insides have loosened. For I have found it. When fears, even nameless, cloaked ones, sinisterly drag, there is a Rock who cries through the waters, “Here… I am your home in these seas. Place your foot here, your heart here. Stand on me. And live.” These fears diminish, cut down to size. How to hold to the Rock in the midst of everyday storms? “Prayer is the most concrete way to make our home in God,” writes Henri Nouwen. When I pray, I intimately know the crevices of the Rock, the texture of its surface, the immensity of its steadfast character. I lay the squash halves in to the enamel dishes, and slip them into the oven. Turning to the sink to wash the last remnants of squash strings from my hands, I hear the sea as the water runs over my fingers. My fears are washed away with a prayer of three simple words, a lullaby on the waves: Peace, be still. ©2008, Ann Voskamp Related resources: Peace is a Person
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Houses may be bought, built, or borrowed. But homes can only be made, and that with ourselves. Or so the ducks told me. They told me without a sound, just simply as they preened and nestled, oil on canvas. The children press in close too, for a better look at Alexander Max Koester’s painting Ducks, and I read aloud the caption below the brushes of color.“Mother ducks pick feathers from their chests to line their nests.” I pause and the children gaze thoughtfully at a clutch of plump white, blizzard of feathers fallen down. But it’s those words that mesmerize me: “pick feathers from their chests, to line their nests.” Eyes fixed on a duck breast puffed, mother plunging beak in deep, I question wondering self: “How else did you think nests were lined?” With leftovers. With the discarded, the molted, the not-so-necessary feathers. I thought mother ducks picked feathers up from what was laying about, scraps, lining nests with what simply could be mustered after the fact. But no. (Is that only the way of other mothers?) No, a mother duck plucks each feather out from the heart of her bosom, warm and soft. She lines the nest with bits of herself. The best of her, from the deep spots. She cups her young in her sacrifice. Children pull at the corner of the page, anxious to see the next painting, and, reluctantly, I move on. But for weeks, part of me lives among Koester’s ducks. (Koester, captivated, painted dozens of duck paintings throughout the course of his life. I’ve come to understand.) Days later, I am scrubbing out the arches of muffin tins after breakfast, the clock ticking insufferably loud in my ears. Children need books and learning, and I’m tuned for the expected chime of the doorbell, a service personnel’s scheduled visit. And the words rise near to the surface, “I don’t have time for this! No muffins tomorrow morning!” Pluck. The words sharply sink. And I, learning, line this nest with a feather. Not a leftover. But one decidedly plucked. The service man meets me with muffin tins still in the sink, and a circle of happy young. Whose tummies next morning fill with another batch of muffins. The sun’s perfect globe of glow nears the horizon when boys, glint in eyes, recalibrate vacuum cleaner to fire socks. Weary, I have food to find, laundry awaiting escort, math sheets to mark. They fire. And I Pluck. Bellies jiggle, peals of giggles, as old mother chases after future men, wrestling them down, tying them up in tickles. We warm here in laughter. It feels good, wild and alive. So again they fire, and again I pluck, and we pile high, one atop the other, nesting down into sacrifice, soft and small. Some feathers for this nest have hurt, pain of the plucking lingering long. But why speak of the details? And was it really sacrifice, or just this too-tender skin? It’s done, it was necessary, it was for something better. Some nights, when all sleep, I feel along the hidden bald patches. There are times, too many, when they call, “Read me a story?” “Wanna play a game with me?” “Can you come help me?” And this mother refuses to pluck. Something, some task, someone (me?), rates as more pressing, more important. I deem the nest acceptable. Then comes the pecking, the scratching, the squawking. With lining wearing thin, the nest chafes hard. We hurt and cry. Nests need feathers deep. Someone must pluck. When will I learn that down sacrificed settles and soothes? For scraps won’t suffice. Snippets of time, leftover me, a trinket, a diversion, tossed. Mother ducks don’t line nests with feathers, dirty and trampled, the molted and unnecessary. Why would I? Nests need feathers fresh, warm with mother’s life. Night descends and calls children to dreams. I lead them to their gate, arms and legs under quilts worn from the ride. I read stories, stroke hair, say prayers. Prayers to Him who plucked hard from His own heart. A sacrifice, staggering and true, for love of His very own. We learn love from His laid down. Tired heads nestle into pillows, pillows of down. On feathers plucked, we rest. ©2008, Ann Voskamp Related resources: May the Children Eat First The original Koester painting, "Moulting Ducks," is part of the collection at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle www.fryemuseum.org _______________________________________
Socks hurl across the kitchen, a hail of chaos splintering morning routine and order. Thunked in the back of head, I spin from sink and into the face of a grinning twelve-year-old. I am set to return with volley of words about maturity and setting an example and simply folding laundry instead of rocking the boat. His younger brothers are already whipping back knitted wools with mismatched sweatsocks. And then one of the statutes of the Geneva Convention of Motherhood flashes across my interior screen: Ignore negative attention-seeking behavior so as not affirm it. I can still remember the assured voice of the retired schoolteacher who insisted that was the only way to raise children. Eyes on stacked plates, I quietly direct younger boys to return to the organizing of the cutlery drawer, gently ask older boy to finish folding towels. The commotion slowly calms and I am left to wondering. Is it true? Ignore attention-seekers? Don’t give them what they seek: attention. I shine the kitchen sink, mulling. Attention-seekers are hungry. They are empty, needy. They seek that which they need: attention. We feed hungry children. We clothe cold children. Do we not give attention to attention-seeking children? True, no negative, lecturing attention. But, surely, more good, loving, affirming attention. I mentally revise that mothering statute: Attention-getting antics are red flags to do just that: give more attention. That the relationship needs more attention, more time, more intimacy, more affirmation. I carry in another load of wet laundry and call for that boy-man. A laundry rack needs assembling. I carefully read instructions, noting parts and pieces; he dives into connecting, screwing, aligning. I applaud. He screws on a wheel, never looking up, but a smile leaks. I hand him a section, ask what he needs next. We laugh when we get one rack backwards. The roots of relationship grow deeper. And I think: are behavioral problems symptoms of relationship problems? If behavior breaks out in an attention-grabbing rash, doesn’t the relationship require immediate heart attention? Not ignoring. Not time-outs. Not banishment. How does Father God parent? He whispers, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Though I was “a brute beast before [Him]…[He] hold[s] me by my right hand” (Ps. 73:22-23). He meets my raging antics with what I need: more of Himself. Relationship. When we have behavioral problems, it is indeed a relationship problem: we don’t have one with Him. “Parenting is not a skill to perform. But a relationship to cultivate,” writes Dr. Gordon Neufeld, author of Hold On To Your Kids. Mirroring our spiritual development, parenting growth results not from techniques or procedures, but from rich and real relationship. A close friend writes me of recent day of mothering. “Katharina, when tired, quickly becomes sour and sullen… which moves quickly to nasty. I rebuked her and gave the space and option to change her attitude. In her “space” she decided to lay it on more. I gave her some warm, unrelated attention and let her lie on the couch under a blanket with a book, but the snuggle on the couch didn’t change her heart at all. She just kept working her way in deeper. “I called her to me, (and of course, she refused at first… and then came, all the while telling me how I was wrecking her day.) She wouldn’t let me touch her nor look me in the eye. I pulled her stiff body towards me. And then I said just what you said to your child the other day. She didn’t budge. At first. I said it again… She almost immediately crawled into my lap, melted into me, and stayed there several minutes. Before she left, she gave me several kisses and for the rest of the day… the whole rest of the day… hardly left my side.” What had I said that day to my child, the words my friend spoke too? Words that didn’t originate with me. I only repeated the words God Himself spoke first. To this nasty, impenetrable, attention-seeking heart. I had been putting away the last of the laundry. Cookies cooled on the countertop rack, the wafting sweet luring boy-man to hunt down the source. Walking through with a stack of towels in arm, I shook a no towards prowling boy-man. “Cookies are for bedtime reading. Please don’t touch yet.” Moments later, out of the corner of my eye, a glimpse of the swipe, the dashing away. I call boy-man’s name. His face says it all: guilty, red, ashamed. A rebuke surges, punishment riding its crest. But the Spirit comes quickly. And brings words of relationship, relationship that I only know because He first loved me. My lips move, but the words are His: “Child, I love you unconditionally and nothing you do will change that. Always, no matter what, I love you deeply. I am very sorry for what you did here.” I inhale, exhale. “But I love you all the same.” I pause and take a deep breath. His eyes are watery blue. “May I grant you mercy, just as Jesus grants me mercy?” His eyes drift away. And I slip to the mudroom, seeking quiet dark to lick these mothering wounds and all the disappointment. But he comes too. With words of his own, words I don’t expect. “Mom? I am sorry I hurt you. I did the wrong thing. I shouldn’t have done that…. Is there anything I can do to make that right? Can I help you with something?” Mercy did that, performed a heart change that punishment is impotent to accomplish. It did it to my own heart: transformed relationship. I wanted And yet He knows there is no formula, or pat, easy answers. We reject Him, sin against Him, betray Him. But He, Love, pursues relentlessly. In the face of heartache. Our behavior drives Him deeper into relationship. He knows full well that the relationship problem is not a result of His failure to love, but the stoniness of His children’s hearts. It is not an issue of how much Father loves His children, but how much, if at all, His children love their Father. Undaunted, He gives His immediate love attention to the rash of our sin. In hopes that His love will stir our hearts. I look into the face of boy-man. “Yes, son, there is something you can do.” He waits and I wade into those eyes. It feels rich and right. “Tomorrow, could we match the socks together, you and I?” ©2008, Ann Voskamp Related Resources:
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Love is patient. Is there a reason why patience is the first qualifier in the biblical “love chapter” describing the characteristics of love? I wonder. Only because I am a mother who is long on love and, too often, short on patience. I mean, why not first, “Love is gentle,” or “Love is tender?” Or, better yet (to my feeble mind), “Love is a flash of divine revelation, a supernatural infusing of the spirit of God.” It is all that, yes. But first, of utmost importance, (I’ll trust the order of the inspired Word) love is patient. Nitty gritty. And hard. That is what I am thinking as we pour pancake batter into the griddle on a Saturday morning. Milky, buttery circles loop about the pan in interconnected rings, misshapen hearts that sizzle and pop. A toddler looms dangerously close to heat. A preschooler anxiously slops more. A lanky one flips prematurely, batter oozing, dripping. Sensitive child bursts into tears that the hearts are all smeared, the rings mashed. Oldest, with egg poised to crack, asks if I want more? More? More of this careening ride? I sense a loudness, akin to a pleading howl, surging close to my lips. The Spirit soothes, strokes the frayed edges: “Love is patient.” Love is patient. How can I be patient in the tipsiness of this domestic chaos? How can I be patient in the pain of now? When vocal cords pitch screams, when tears brim and fall, when the clock keeps ticking steadily ahead and we just keep sputtering, stumbling along? I want to strive ahead of here, into the future where we all stick to the script of buffed perfection. Deep breathe. Love is patient. And it strikes me, an epiphany over the fry of bubbling pancakes, “Love can only be patient when it is first grateful for what is right now.” It is true: I can love only when I am thankful for the now. When I embrace the present as a gift, a time and place not to be afraid of, to resist and fight, but a place to accept, to welcome and receive as a bestowment from a kind Father. Love cannot be patient when I am discontented, when I am trying to micromanage. I fail to love when my fears (of failure, of bedlam, of tardy, tangled, turmoil) drives me to control, to strangle every moment with my demands. When my obsession with control chokes out gratitude, patience lies limp and love dies. Patience can only grow in the soil of gratitude. Lack gratitude, then lack patience, and, ultimately, lack love. Henri Nouwen suggests that “[t]he word patience means willingness to stay where we are and live out the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us.” Patience is only a possibility when we mindfully invite this moment to rest here, and not hurry on. And we can, because we know that this moment brings us something, something yet hidden that will reveal itself as a gift for which we can give thanks. Nouwen offers that “patient people dare to stay where they are. Patient living means to live actively in the present….” I reflect on and concur: Patient pilgrims linger in the present, thankful for what is. Where thankfulness flourishes, patience blossoms, and one reaps love, abundantly. And when I am not patient? My failure to love is first a failure to be grateful. My sharpness springs from my lack of appreciation for who they are now, my impatience for them to grow into someone different. The more afraid I am, the more controlling I am, the more dissatisfied I am, the harder it becomes to be patient, to be loving. Patient people dare to accept people where they are, grateful for who they are now, appreciative of works of art not yet finished but still deeply loved. Deep breathe. Love is patient. And it can only be patient when it is first grateful, receiving the present as a present, grace. How to be grateful when careening? Remember…. There are few emergenciesThen why that pitch to the parenting voice? Emergencies are wildfires, screeching sirens, and gaping wounds. In everyday life, we rarely experience emergencies. Then why do we need to holler, fly, rush off? As Simone Weil writes, “Waiting patiently…is the foundation of the spiritual life.” Yes, love is the foundation of the spiritual life, and it begins with grateful patience. And, when I think on it further, really, what catastrophe will befall if we slip into church 5 minutes late or dinner is on the table 15 minutes after six? Sure, it’s time to be in the car and junior can’t find his other shoe. Or the soup needs seasoning and toddler wraps like vine up a parental leg. Take a deep breath. This really isn’t an emergency. Now is good. Now comes in a box to be unwrapped and, yes, even this, can be appreciated. Now is not an emergency to rip through, but a moment to embrace with gratitude. There are all, only, gifts When it all teeters off-kilter, if we wait patiently, long enough to peel back the droopy (or is that weary?) eyes of our heart, a hidden gift reveals itself. If we tilt too and see the world slant. This toddler leaning over the griddle? That curiosity endears, lights, impassions. Here, let’s lift you away from that heat and let you see these frying cakes. Sensitive child wailing? That tender heart is a unique gift. Why don’t we pour another batter heart again and mend yours too? Instead of pulling hair out, cock head to one side and pull the waiting gift out of this mayhem. Count His gifts: the way the light shaft pools on the floor at child’s feet, the curl of little one’s nose, the nape of growing child’s neck bent over books. When the gifts are patiently unearthed from the rubble, gratitude surfaces too. Love then stabilizes the chaos. There are never fearsFears grip tight, crushing my chest cavity. Alot is on the line in parenting. A soul. A young person’s future. And, when I am ruthlessly honest, seemingly even my own reputation. Fear of failure prods, pierces, weighs. Fear and gratitude mix like oil and water: incompatible. I cannot appreciate the gift of this moment, this child as he or she is now, when fears puncture. Trust births gratitude; fear stabs it. I can only accept this situation as a gift when I trust the benevolence of the Giver. If I fear that the current scenario is actually to my detriment, harmful either currently or for my envisioned future, then I am anything but grateful, anything but patient, anything but loving. Most likely, when fears close in, I grow impatient, wanting to escape, or change, the present scene. True to the flight or fight theory of response, my fears too often feed either anxious fleeing or angry fighting. I am waking to this in my own life: The more afraid I am, the harder it becomes to express gratitude, the harder it becomes to practice patience. The harder it becomes to love. The kids crush in and I grin. I think I get it, the order of love, the preeminence. Love is patient first. Because it first is grateful. ©2008, Ann Voskamp _______________________________________
So I watch it come, this first day of the first month of a brand new year, breaking over the horizon, breaking up through our jaded hopelessness. Just on the rim of our clean farm fields of white, a new time, fresh hope, dawns. Do these fields of unspoiled winter await new tracks, like an unfurled year awaiting new ways of being? Pristine and blue in morning light, this snow gives me pause. Before embarking into the pregnant hope of 2008, I think: which way will I step? What will be the path I choose across this stretching expanse of time? Tracks can only be made once. That decaying rank that I know all too well: malodorous, rotten fear. Fear that I am impotent of change, that I am doomed to this body of death, that new ways can’t be my ways. What if I will always be this way… (fill in the blank with fear of personal choice: self-centered, overweight, uneducated, unmotivated, debt-ridden, angry, anxious, apathetic, unfulfilled…) What if our family, this marriage, these children, stagnate, fester, languish? What if all tomorrows are just more of all our yesterdays, never learning the lessons that were meant to be learned? I remember from yesterday (and the string of days behind it) with its muddied mess of imprints: trying harder only results in harder trials. Self-striving nurtures self-hatred. Toiling in the flesh produces foiling in the soul. Looking back on the trail tromped through other years, I have eyes to see: to forge new tracks one needs more than simply sheer effort, gritty determination. Yes. But what then? As the premier day of the newborn year stretches, I watch the wind lift, gently lull, the branches of the spruce trees that tower outside my window. I cannot see the wind, where she comes from, where she goes, but I watch a thin veil of snow, blowing in with her, going off with her. How then to make tracks just through this Day One? How to set out into the New Year?
Set back to the wind, and let His Spirit gently move you forward. Let His Spirit carry, when feet are too weak to carry on. I abruptly arrest myself with every “I must try harder.” And gently remind to form new words, utter new prayers that transport to new places: “Spirit, fill more of me. Lift me, Spirit.” Set out into New Year’s hope knowing, “It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh profits nothing (Jn 6:36)…Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord Almighty (Zech. 4:6).” Set back to His Wind, and let Him fill your sail, your life.
Set back to the wind and set jaw to persevere. For we add to our faith, perseverance. The day will be long, the way deep. We will grow weary, discouraged, tempted to turn back to familiar, rutted paths. But set hand to the plow and refuse to turn back. For, really, what can go awry? The Spirit’s got your back. So set jaw—persevere, be patient, embrace long processes-- and let the wind blow.
Set, fixed, times to make certain tracks each day allows for the wind to move us, for inspiration to surprise us. Sporadic creativity, intermittent, random commitment, generally fails to forge a steady trail. If we pursue new, desired paths simply when we can get around to it, too often the darkening sky of the urgent distracts us, detours us. Progress is born out of rhythm, routine, regularity….set times. It is how the saints met God: Daniel prayed three times a day facing Jerusalem (Daniel 6:10), the psalmist purposed to praise seven times a day, the early disciples prayed at fixed hours, 9 am in the upper room, (Acts 2:15),on the roof for noon prayers (Acts 10:9), on the way to temple for 3 pm prayers (Acts 3:1). If set times are the necessary catalysts for spiritual growth, so are set times critically compelling elements for life growth. With back set to the wind, and jaw set, set habitual times to pioneer new habits. Uncertain times will lead to certain failure.
Embark daily with a keen focus on the trail markers, on the intermediate goals that line the way. Be it daily markers of an hour of reading aloud to thirsty young minds, fifteen minutes in prayer, twenty minutes invested into a relationship, intermediate rest stations dot the path of our long, arduous journey. Set goals along the way, and fix your sights on the these midway markers: one pound shed this week, 5 chapters read, one date night with a child. Set sights close… “By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I am not turning back” (Phil 3:13 MSG). Set eye on the intermediary goals along the way, breaking the trek into achievable segments—and be off and running!
Simply, finally, take the first step. Again and again. The wind, hope on its wings, sweeps each new day clean before us, and sweeps over our tracks from yesterday, filling with grace. Quell fear. Keep setting out. “Jesus said, “No procrastination. No backward looks. You can’t put God’s kingdom off till tomorrow. Seize the day” (Luke 9:62 MSG). Seize the day! Set out, fixing “attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out!” (Ro. 1:12 MSG). Changed from the inside out. Set jaw, set times, set sights, set back to the wind…and unfold arms, like wings extending, feeling that change coming through. We are set to Soar. Set to Soar. ©2008, Ann Voskamp _______________________________________
Awake. And arrive. ‘Tis the season. The Latin definition of ad- venio proclaims it: “to come to.” ‘Tis the season of Advent and we are ones as coming to, waking. ‘Tis the season of Advent and we are ones coming too, ones who have left and are on pilgrimage, ones on mission. ‘Tis the season of Advent. We awake, we set out, we come, we arrive. Haven’t we slept too long? Drowsing. Slumbering in the dim and the shadows. But Someone has turned on the lights. The Light of the world has flashed and we stir, rouse. We awaken, coming to. “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned” (Isa. 9:2). A star, brilliant and shattering, pierces the hanging black, like a nail of light tacking up the heavens. Radiant warmth falls in shafts, lifelines, across chilled dark . This is no mere festival of lights--this is a staggering explosion of hope. And haven’t we stayed too long out in our own fields, tending to our own business? Indifferent. Comfortable. Self-consumed with our own orbit. But Someone has heralded breathtaking news: God has arrived. How can we not go? We are irresistibly drawn to a star, a swaddled One, a Savior. We can no longer sit idly, blindly. Shepherds hurried. Wise men raced across the sands to see. So we do. We come to. We come, too. This is not about decking our halls --- this is about coming Home for Christmas, our hearts true Home. I understand: it would be easy to stay asleep. We are weary. The pace of this season wears and grinds. The ads and flyers shroud us in numbing commercialism, veil us to the stark reality that we will never need anything more: Emmanuel is here, God with us. I know: it would be easy to stay. Isn’t the dizzying season enough of a whirl with an exhausting merry-go-round of dinners and dates? Can’t we just curl up at home? But the wise men did not stay home, trimming the turkey. God is the missio dei, the mission God, the going God. He left heaven in search of you, because He had to have you, He had to be held by you, rocked by you, adored by you. What will you leave this Christmas in search of Him, because you must touch Him, caress Him, know Him? For isn’t that what you really want this Christmas? To wake up and see our very God (Lk. 2:15-16). To see the star, and to be over come with joy (Mt. 2:10). To bow down and worship Him (Mt. 2:10). For, really, what else is there? How do you wake up this Advent? Where do you go, to come before your Lord? Consider taking a handful of wheat and a planter of dirt on this year’s advent journey. Take up a few wheat kernels and, like wise men going, set out in search of a Savior. Go and tuck a loaf of fresh bread in the hands of a widower. Plant a wheat kernel in dirt. Go and shovel out the walk of an elderly neighbor. Plant a wheat kernel in dirt. Go and make a bed for a brother, make a hot chocolate for a sister, make a batch of cookies for someone incarcerated. Plant a kernel, plant a kernel, plant a kernel. Volunteer at a soup kitchen, visit a shut-in, write a letter to a persecuted Christian, donate to a charity, say a kind word, offer a hug, listen with all of you, look into souls, give time, talents, resources. Leave a trail of seeds of kindness through your Advent pilgrimage, and as you do, as your family does, as your community does, plant kernels of wheat in your planter of dirt. Water often. Watch seeds grow. We, mothers, fathers, children, communities of faith, bury Advent wheat seeds into the ground, a symbol of our own dying, our sacrifice of self. Yet these Advent seeds resurrect to new life, a bounty of green in dead of winter. Like light breaking forth in darkness. This way of self-dying is the way of the wisemen, the way through the night, following a star. This is the incarnational way, the Emmanuel way. This is the way to Jesus: For when we reach out to give to the least of these, we reach out and touch the One who has come, very King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Wake up. God is close. In a manger, in a hostel, in a prison, in a back alley, in a hospital bed…right next door, right across the table. He is calling you to come. Wise men have always have answered the call. Upon backs of camels, across shifting dunes, through the smother of high noon heat and the death chill of starry night, wise men come bearing gifts, gifts that cost them something: gold, frankincense, myrrh. Gifts that cost them everything: family, friends, comfort, time, ease. Do we desire to raise up families of faith who are wise men, wise women and wise children? When God took on flesh, and cried the wail of a Babe, wise men did not come with hands outstretched, seeking, wanting. When God of the Universe inhabited a chest cavity, clenched wee fingers, filled lungs with air of this world, wise men came on bended knee, bowed low with offerings. How to be wise men this Advent? We come with gifts to the least of these: the oppressed, the neglected, the disenfranchised. And in the quiet of Christmas Eve, young faces and old lit in the halo of candlelight, we gather the wheat sprouted from our seeds of kindness. Our seeds have awakened us to God. Our seeds have sent us to God. This Advent we have awoke and arrived at His feet. We have wakened and we have went into the world, wise men bearing gifts of His love. And now, thinking on the star overhead, we take up this Advent wheat and approach the nativity. This wheat is our gift. We come with heart straw to bed the manger for the Little Lord Jesus In flickering candlelight, we watch pudgy little fingers line the crèche with this Advent straw. Wrinkled fingers tenderly spread out wheat shoots, Advent’s living gift, for the Babe to come lay His head. This Advent He is calling you to awake to something simpler. Something deeper. Something richer. He is calling you to arrive at that which is eternal: Himself. Won’t you awake and come? The manger needs your heart straw. The manger’s Babe longs for your heart. ©2007, Ann Voskamp ________________________________ Related resources: Whose birthday is it Anyways? A Free Advent Calendar
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They are known as the fleeting golden hours. Do they arrest you, too? Those gilded moments when a day is unwrapped and beheld, or packaged up and sent off. When that glowing ball of fire touches the rim of our understanding and we are startled awake. Radiance explodes and saturates the sky. Hues, surreal and otherworldly, suck the breath right out of our lungs. Sunrise upon sunset, millennia after millennia, the Master drenches our celestial ceiling with celebratory color. So that we know. We cannot miss it. He gift wraps the day extravagantly, lavishly, so we grasp it, there, unmistakably before us, larger than life: every day is a gift. Ribbons of that fading light fall across the dinner table. We finger the ethereal streamers, and consider the day given. The song comes softly at first, spontaneously sung by the preschooler between mouthfuls of rice and vegetables. “Count your blessings name them one by one, count your blessings, see what God has done.” His smile is mirrored around the table. He bursts with a name of an older brother. Older brother contemplates and chews. Then acknowledges a gift, “Riding with Dad down to the other farm.” Dad nods his gratitude too, and the refrain begins again, this time joined by many voices. So it goes: refrain, then a name of one chosen, then a counting of the blessings of the day’s bestowment. An unpretentious way of seeing “to it that no one misses the grace of God” (Hebrews 12:15). The meal is nearly done. But we are eating again. This is the bread from His hand, like that which war-torn children clung to. Do you know the story? It is World War II and bombs are falling, shattering the earth and all that is within it. Children weep for parents, cry for food. Refugee camps offer beds but cannot furnish sleep. Their days haunt their nights. Nothing comforts these shell-shocked, gaunt children. Until someone serendipitously tucks each child into bed with a slice of bread. Surprisingly, sleep comes to these traumatized orphans, full and deep. The bread clutched in their hands rocks them to slumber with this lullaby: “The sun has set, and you ate and were filled. Tomorrow, the sun will rise, and you will eat again.” It’s soul bread we are feeding our children when we gather together to count the blessings of the day. As the day is wrapped up and the sun presented to children on the other side of this spinning orb, we reflect. He fed us today from His hand. We laughed together. We cried. We ate and we swept up the crumbs. We were filled. So we can lay our heads down on pillows, hearts full of gratitude and good things, and let perfect peace tuck us in. As He has blessed us today, He will bless us again tomorrow. With whatever He deems to be best. Does such counting of blessings seem Pollyannish, trite? Sweet… but not necessary? But if we don’t intentionally purpose to count blessings, what will we count? That which comes more naturally: to enumerate, grumble and magnify the day’s aches. Children invariably take up their human heritage: they are ingrates. They, like their parents before them, are gratitude challenged, proficient complainers. Was it not Shakespeare who wrote: “Ingratitude! Thou marble-hearted fiend, more hideous when thou shows’t thee in a child than the sea-monster.” I beg to differ with the venerable bard: ingratitude is impartial. It makes monsters of us all, Mama or child. Gratitude interventions are vital, required essentials for fostering of faith, peace, joy in the heart fields of children. Recent research involved the assigning of 221 students in grades 6 and 7 to one of three conditions: a gratitude group, a hassles group, a control group. Each day, over a period of two weeks, students in the gratitude condition wrote down as many as five separate things for which they felt grateful in the past day. The hassle group, however, focused on that which comes easily, naturally: they grumbled about irritants that had chafed and annoyed in the previous day. At a three-week follow-up session, those children who had counted their blessings were significantly more optimistic about their upcoming week compared to the hassle-group. Also, those young people who cultivated thankfulness not only elicited greater satisfaction compared to both the hassles and the control condition, but grateful students were also less likely to be sick, and more likely to feel appreciative towards others who offered assistance. When children focused on that for which they were grateful, it seems they became more sensitive to perceiving kindnesses from their family, social and learning communities. The evidence in research is clear. Gratitude promotes personal and social well-being. God’s Word is even clearer: “You must be rooted in Christ… and full of thanksgiving” (Col. 2:7). Gratitude is the very taproot of the Christian faith. Gratitude may be psychologically positive, and spiritually essential. But how, in the midst of it all, does one ignite these childhood days with active, daily, transformative gratitude? Might you consider your own gratitude intervention? Yes, it’s simple, perhaps even quaint: we close the day with the singing of our blessings around the dinner table and we rise to the next day to read His Scriptures and pass around the family gratitude journal, recording blessings from Father’s heart. This is the divine daily soiree. Our children come to embrace their spiritual legacy: gratefully, wondrously, learning to dance grace’s symphony. Come! The daily thanksgiving celebration awaits. Let the kids unwrap His gift and revel! And eat: for nothing fills like soul bread. Related Resources: Fostering an Attitude of Gratitude in Children ©2007, Ann Voskamp _______________________________________
I am by the stove cutting warm loaves of dark bread, and my mother is at the window, gentle drops pattering the panes, sewing new and vintage fabric pieces together. I listen to the hum of the machine, thread lacing down, through, up, through, to the watering of the rain upon the earth, and to her. “Now you try, Hope. Just slowly. Take your time and really focus.” Her crown of white hovers over Hope’s shoulder. “Like this, Gram?” I turn to see Hope’s furrowed brow lit by the machine’s glowing light. They are stitching up bibs for the new Carrere baby, the sixth child, fourth son. The needle stitches crisp new cottons to a backing of reclaimed, familiar flannels. Hope’s eyes are fixed on that quarter inch seam allowance, the curving arcs of the material. “If you’ll look closely, do you see how it puckers here, when you push the material through? Don’t rush, or push the fabric along. If you push the material through, you’ll end up with wrinkled, disappointing handiwork. You just guide….” “Gently?” Hope offers. “Yes! That’s it precisely: no pushing…or you’ll wrinkle everything. Just guide gently.” My ladle hangs midair. Empty bowl waits in one hand. I have ears to hear. Rain streams in rivulets down the glass. The needle again begins to purr. I close my eyes, breathe deeply, and finger write those words on soul sand: “Just guide gently.” Don’t I know that too well. How many perfectly good days have I wrinkled because I pushed, arms heavy with an agenda? How many happy faces have I wrinkled into distress with pushing words: “Hurry up! We could have been finished this by now if you hadn’t dawdled here…” I don’t even want to consider how many bare, beating hearts I have crinkled and crumpled with my pushing for more. Pushed and puckered. I come to, fill the waiting soup bowl, and whisper it again, etching it deeper, “just guide gently.” The Spirit nudges: “This is what I meant the other morning. You underlined it, remember?” I find black ink marking the words: “Therefore, although in Christ, I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I appeal to you on the basis of love.” (Philemon 1:8-9). I could be bold and order you. Push, push, push. Yet I appeal to you on the basis of love. Just gently guiding. Gently serving. Gently leading by caring, encouraging, edifying. Wasn’t it Mama who also pulled me up on her lap as a four-year-old and told me the fable of the sun and the wind, arguing over which of the two was the stronger? I can still feel her leaning close to, her voice rich with story: “The Wind began to blow cold blasts, but the man only drew his cloak closer, tighter about him to keep out the cold. Then the Sun took his turn, shining warm and full. Under the sun’s rays, the man released his grip on his coat, then threw it back, and, at last took it off! The Sun’s gentleness accomplished what the Wind’s force could not.” She turned me to look me in the eye: “Remember that, girl of mine: gentleness can do what force fails to do.” I could be bold and order you…yet I appeal to you on the basis of love. To release a child to be all that he or she was meant to be requires the sun, requires guiding gently with loving words of encouragement. Recent research confirms it. A study of twenty-two grade eight students found that those who were kindled with positive feelings generated significant more creative and problem-solving ability than the group of students in which “a neutral mood was induced.” Fail to encourage, abandon children to a slush of neutral feelings, and settle for dismal, uninspired handiwork. Sloppy work, dragging feet, shrugging shoulders, glassy far-off glazes. Push, order, and rush will result in worse: puckers and wrinkles. Tears, pouting, stomping, surly sullen glares, and explosions of defiance. Appeal on the basis of love, with a light touch of guidance and the warm igniting of encouragement, and watch hearts and minds creatively, joyously thrive. The gentle guiding reaps far more than pushing. Can I take up this mothering fabric, and smooth out the wrinkles? Bowls served and dinner bell waiting to be rung, I survey the trail of rainy day pursuits: strewn legos, a blizzard of paper snippets, scraps of material flung about for good measure, counters offering up a trifle of smudged markers, pooling glue and a sprinkle of crayons. Take a deep breath, O Heart. Push and the day—no, more than the day--- delicate hearts, will pucker. What if I were to just guide gently? So I try. “What a day we’ve had, best beloveds! Such grand creations here! Made in the image of Your Creator Father, you are! Come, show me your work!” Books are set aside, scissors left, and masterpieces presented. I appeal to you on the basis of love; true, genuine love. “Such color! What a design! You made that by yourself?” Hearts embroidered with tender, edifying words shimmer. “Let’s clean this up together, so your work will be in its best light when Dad comes in.” No bold ordering. Moments gently threaded with positive encouragement. A love appeal. My hands, their hands, we sort, organize, gather. Laughing, happy bodies pile around the table for soup and bread. I run my hand across the clean counter. No puckering, no wrinkles. My mother smiles. This girl of hers remembers the fable. This mother in Christ turns from blustery, bold ordering and appeals on the warm basis of love. Yes, just guide gently. A pucker-free pattern for hearts. ©2007, Ann Voskamp
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And then, as I handed him an alphabet block one sun-saturated afternoon, I think it was the “e” one, I stumbled upon it. Because I customarily wrapped entertainments up in the phrase “Yours,” he had mistakenly come to think that the term “yours” meant, understandably, “mine!” All this happy time the child had had his meaning inverted, upside down to what he intended. Ironically, his upside down was precisely right-side up. We would spend the rest of our parenting years trying to make our way back to that upside down, right-side up notion of “Yours”. “Yours.” It’s starkly simple: nothing in the limitless expanse of the universe rivals the raw potency of giving. Of saying, “Here, this is yours. I am yours.” For God so loved the world, He gave. And science, unsurprisingly, has discovered it to be so: Give, and one receives more happiness. Give and one receives more health. Give and one receives more life to live. MRIs substantiate Biblical, transformative truth: “It is better to give than to receive.” While in the midst of receiving a gift, neurons deep in the brain trigger dopamine, the happy chemical. But when one is in the act of giving, donating a gift, the brain works even more powerfully. Jordan Grafman, chief scientist with the National Institute of Health asserts from his research: “The same regions of the brain that are associated with the good feelings you have when you get something yourself were the same areas that were activated when you give. That surprised us. And not only were the same areas involved, but in fact they were more activated when you give than when you receive.” Giving kindles deep satisfaction and fulfillment in the recesses of our being. And, in this particular study, researchers found that giving induced another chemical that receiving failed to activate: oxytocin. The chemical released when one feels love. When we give, we feel love. God-love. Merciful, gracious, benevolent love. When we give, we enter the way of God. God is love. Jesus said the more blessed life is the giving life. That’s the one we want for our children. Highly regarded psychology scientists agree: “One of the best ways we can help our kids is to encourage their own generosity.” How do we teach a child to lose his life, so he may find it? Jesus whispers the answer: “It is enough that a disciple be like his teacher” (Matthew 10:24). The answer is us. Jesus lived the giving-away life as our example, and now we live it as the model for this next generation. Awkwardly, but determinedly, I mindfully take up this generous way, quickening young ones to come too. “YES! I have the privilege of giving you breakfast this morning! Cream of wheat or smoothies?…. Let’s make cookies today and give Daddy a surprise!…. Can I give you a hand with that?… Let’s give your sister a treat and make her bed for her!…. Can I give you a backrub before tucking you in?…. Think we could come up with a plan to give much to the emergency aid campaign? …. Why don’t we make bread today to give to the kind widow woman at church?” Some days frowns meet such invitations. Dragging feet and mumbling. Some days I too want simply what I want when I want it. And then we shake ourselves up: “Let’s really try out the Jesus-way. An experiment in a day of giving. And let’s see if the giving life really is more blessed…or not.” So, some days, we begin, half-hearted, this giving trial, me leading the giving way. (Decade long studies concur with Jesus that the giving must begin with me: The strongest predictive factor for helpful behavior in children? The presence of nurturing, giving, supportive adults. So I gulp hard, pray harder, and attempt to give and kiss these brains and souls into mature wisdom.) We are attempting to frame our days, beginning and ending, in the Jesus-way of giving. We wake, and we sleep, giving. We are surprised by joy. We give up this saying of “mine.” And whisper to the Giver, “I am yours.” ©2007, Ann Voskamp
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It’s summertime. Kids laze in hammocks and at the end of docks, gather to ring ice cream carts and campfires. And mothers, like breaking up through the surface of it all, breathe deeply, finally expanding lungs again with the stuff of living. Emerging from the murky depths, we tread water for a bit, getting our bearings: what landmarks have been passed and which lie ahead, where has one been and where is one going? Summertime is that in-between time, the days of reorienting, before the next deep dive into daily living. As a young lanky girl, freckles and milk-white legs, I oft spent those up-for-air days dangling my toes off the end of my grandparents’ weathered plank diving board. The bobbing light shimmering on the waters of the pond shyly beckoned my toes to come experience the cool wet. Bullfrogs, low and throaty, boastfully puffed of invitations accepted. So I dangled and dipped and read away the heat-drenched days of summer. Yellowed, textured paper, with its inky lines of arches and spaces and places, transported me, fingers ready at corner edges to go higher up and deeper in. Only the gentle lap of the pond waters grounded me. These days felt right. Come the cool relief of summers’ evenings, Grandma would stand on the back porch, arm slightly crooked to collect me. The diving board creaked as I stood, marked my page, and carefully balanced my way back to pond’s edge. The “What words today, dear?” she’d ask. I would spill. Of characters and ideas, stories and places that had washed me far out across the pond to new lands. Grandma, the soft jangling wrinkles of her upper arm brushing against my youth, would walk in and out of shadows, listening…then string out her life stories to me adrift in the pages and books that summertime had given. I was a person out in the waters of it all, connecting to a person, connecting to the world. The fading mirage of those in-between-days now reorients me, as a mother and educator, towards what a real education is. Wes Callihan writes: “This is the heart of a good education: a small but well-chosen library, a place to sit and study, some friends to do it with, and the time and tranquility to do it in. Read the best books and talk to them with like-minded friends. That’s been the essence of real education since antiquity…” Grandma knew it intuitively. Those summer holidays, a respite from stiff desks and sterile texts, were days of real learning. A well-chosen book, a place to breathe in the words, another human being who collected and connected with learner, and the time and tranquility to do it all in. Safely attached and anchored to Grandma, I ventured forth in the quiet to wondrous worlds of knowledge. For the foundational prerequisite for a course in real learning is real relationship: relationship with the world, its thoughts, and books, and then relationship with a person, a friend, who draws the learner close and shares the journey. Relationship is the marrow of an education. Connected and collected, one can truly discover. Simple yet profound, Grandma’s collection of me, the cord of relationship she plaited everyday, reflected a mother bonding with infant. For our need for attachment remains no matter how large our bodies grow. How to develop a bond with child? DelightDaily, she’d simply delight in me, touching me, (for she knew that to touch skin is to touch the soul), letting our eyes meet and then, smiling into who I was. Like a mother delighting in her newborn, she entered into my space not to teach me something, or change me, but simply to be together and enjoy me. I knew it, feeling her acceptance and affection deeply. DrawnAs a mother holds out a finger for babe, Grandma offered me her arm, drawing me close, but she gave me even more to hold on to: the twinkle in her eyes, the love in her voice. Embraced physically and emotionally in her warmth, I held unto Grandma’s genuine interest as a lifeline no matter where learning and life took me. DependenceInstead of prematurely pushing me out into the dark deeps of life and independence, Grandma generously offered an outstretched arm to me. She had time to give of herself to help me. Inviting dependence on herself fostered a closeness between us, that let me naturally grow into independent learning. DirectOut there in the waters, Grandma was like a compass, directing and guiding me. As a mother draws a babe close and orients the young one to the surrounding environment, so Grandma would, like a guide, offer direction, to our days, to who I was, and to what the world was about. I wanted to stay close to my guide. Getting my bearings in these summer days, I look back to those long ago days, and then to the landmarks we’ve passed in the last year. I can see that too often, unlike Grandma, I have not collected my children, like chicks under a wing, but managed them. How often have my exchanges with my children focused on a task to accomplish, a subject to learn, or a behavior to change? When is it just about delighting in, drawing close, inviting dependence as I offer to help, or about gentle direction as a caring guide in a big world? When is it about simple relationship and companionship in tranquil, rich spaces? The eminent Rachel Carson wrote, “If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.” In these up-for-air days, I’m finding my bearings again, charting my course: As a mother and educator, I am to consciously construct breakers out there on choppy waters, creating circles of quiet, tranquility, on the water’s surface so young ones may embark. And then, to personally enter into that sacred space of quiet, collecting child and learner in a closely bonded, connected relationship. No child should drift as an island. I am swimming out now. ©2007, Ann Voskamp _______________________________________
They say a mother wears an apron and a myriad of hats. I say she wears a collar too. A collar which can never be removed. A collar which cannot be observed by the material world: a clerical collar. For she is a priest in her home, before a congregation of children. True, she snaps wet sheets onto the line, mashes heaping bowls of steaming potatoes, kneels to scrub the grime that rings the toilet; she cares for a home. And yes, little bodies wiggle up in her lap for tales of Peter Rabbit, press close to study the topography of Israel, follow her lead through the wildflowers to the woods; she cares for minds. But she never fails to know the essence of who she is: “But you are… a royal priesthood…that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of the darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9-10). While a mother continually changes her hats throughout the hours of the day, her collar remains: she is a priest proclaiming Christ’s glories. She cares for souls. The Cross rent the veil; the priest now lives openly in the Presence of the Holies of Holies, leading little ones to the altar to worship too. The banqueting table is spread; the priest invites these young persons to come and feast on Him Who is sustenance. There is no intermediary, there is no spoon feeding. She is a priest, serving not only God in this domestic, hallowed place but inviting her children to come and do likewise. As Martin Luther wrote, “all we Christians are priests… as priests we are worthy to appear before God to pray for others and to teach one another divine things.” Holy HabitsSo a mother consciously chooses to live out her priesthood as a believer, so that her children might be taught ‘divine things.’ As the Old Testament priest’s days carefully stepped to the beat of His expressed laws, so the New Testament everyday priest thoughtfully orders her days to the divine rhythms of Father’s heart. While the Old Testament High Priest wore the apron-like ephod, the New Testament ministering mother wears apron and holy habits. Holy habits of communing with God, reading and memorizing His Word, prayer, fasting, service, worship. Holy habits of putting on the garment of Christ (Gal 3:27 NEB). The domestic priest cannot forcibly dress her children in holy habits, for these are not outward mantles of routines and checklists, but the interior attire of the heart. One can only clothe one’s own soul. What is a mother to do? She can faithfully adorn herself with her own ardor for Christ, her own daily, holy habits stirring the desires of her children, all the while thoughtfully laying out threads for young souls to take up in their own life’s tapestry. She prays and fasts and sings hymns and serves and loves and meditates on Scripture before her children. Then she creates space, stillness and opportunity for her children to also enter in. She lives so that each child feeds not on her devotionals, prayers or worship, but from his or her own. She kneels beside her child and helps him gather his own spiritual food with his own hands, rather than simply eating from hers. “Lazy people take food in their hand but don’t even lift it to their mouth” (Proverbs 26:15). I wonder: do (my) children sit in Christian homes (like ours) with cupped hands, waiting for someone to take food to their mouths, for a priest to spiritually spoon-feed them? (Do Christian parents attend Sunday morning services, then meander home with hands full of food…but spend the next seven days not even lifting food to their mouth?) Bibles on shelves, hymnals on table, prayer journals in baskets. Food is plentiful. Yet there must be purposeful effort to take it up in hand. The familial priest’s holy habits show how one daily lift’s food to mouth. RelationshipYet it is not solely a mother’s life or holy habits that will make her a model for her children. For children to model a believing priest taking up food rather than emulating bewildered, malnourished peers, they need to be close----spiritually, emotionally, and physically close. A mothering priest’s words and routines are critical but insufficient. Unconditional love, support, connection are the necessary, compelling magnets that draw a child close. Close attachment stokes a desire within a young person to be like mama, to take up holy habits too. Modeling, in short, is a function of relationship and heart strings. The mothering priest focuses, above all, not on parenting skills or behaviors, but on relationship—first with God and then with her children. Without an intimate, emotionally-supportive relationship with mother, young people are less likely to take up the holy habits modeled in a home. Why purpose to be like someone from whom he or she is emotionally distant? Thus, in a mother’s daily service before God, relationships—horizontally and vertically—are the paramount priority. “Have time for a walk down through the woods this evening?” “ Can I give you a back rub while you tell me about your day?” “ Let’s make popcorn and play a board game together tonight.“ Relationship is the essence of our daily reality. Our relationship with God, nourished by holy habits, is the essence of our spiritual (and eternal) reality. Our relationship and connection with our children, nourished by attachment and time invested, is the essence of our mothering reality…and our modeling. Priesthood, mothering, holy habits: they orbit around relationship, the essence of all reality in the universe. FeastSo a mother adorns herself with apron, priestly collar, and holy habits. And there, daily handing out bowls for the Feast, her apron strings ties love knots to young ones gathered around. (Bowls and feasts are nothing without love.) “So, daughter, let’s lay out on the hammock tonight and talk to God under all the stars He knows by name.” “Son, would you like to lead our worship tonight?" "Might you pray for us tonight, dear?” “ Anyone have any ideas of what might we do to serve that family at the corner?” Care to have the next generation of kingdom priests know how to feast themselves with both hands, from their own bowl, wearing their own holy habits? Put on your own collar, take up your own habits, eat from your own bowl. And love them to His Love Feast. ©2007, Ann Voskamp _______________________________________
Our choices add up. Habits into hours, decisions into days, lists into a life. The way in which we live our moments, our choices for the gift of the next 24 hours, are rungs on a ladder. The rungs take us somewhere. These How do we know everyday what is a worthwhile investment of our time and what will burn up, straw at the end of time? How do we cultivate not simply well-trained minds, but nurture soulful, well-lived lives? How do we work everyday towards raising up children, who are not merely academic automatons, but exuberant, soul-healthy, worshipers of God, committed to meaningful, eternal Kingdom work? How do we set our ladders against the right wall, and make the opportunity of today count for eternity? Simply put, how do we make our way through a day? Everyday, we wake, grab the first rung, and begin our way through the day. First Rung ~ Listening: a way of the Spirit (Scripture reading, prayer and memorization) We awake. And listen. Days well lived have a time of listening to Him who spoke the Universe and all there is into being. “Oh, that my people would listen to me” (Psalm 81:13). Soulful days of good things are days attuned to hearing Him, for “whoever listens to me will dwell secure and will be at ease, without dread of disaster” (Proverbs 1:33). Everyday, we gather around the farm table to listen, opening our day with individual, quiet Scripture reading, and then closing each meal with the reading of His Word. We commit the Lover of our soul’s Words to heart through daily memorization of Scripture together as a family. And we listen and dialogue with Him through rhythmic and endless prayer. To know our way through a day, one begins by listening: “And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, 'This is the way, walk in it'" (Isaiah 30:21). Second Rung ~Love: a way of sacrificing (that which is at the the heart of everything we do) Without love, there is, simply and wholly, nothing. Without love, the ladder is on the wrong wall. Thus, love is the greatest rung of all, the foundation of everyday and of a life well lived…and only possible after we have listened to the Spirit, and the story of Christ. “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for one another” (1 Jn. 3:16). This love rung is about laying down our lives, our agendas, our egos, and offering ourselves up “as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Ro. 12:1). If we, with our children, only grab hold of this rung daily, laying down time for Jesus and for others, we’ve scaled the one rung that ultimately matters. Love for Jesus and for those made by His hand is the one needful thing of each day. Third Rung ~ Labor: a way of serving (farm work, household chores, creativity, ministries, volunteer work) For our days to add up to something of merit, for our lives to be truly great, the third rung is non-negotiable: we simply must be a servant. The labor rung is about true greatness: we must teach our children every day how to be a servant. Everyday we must live servant lives. “The greatest among you shall be your servant” (Mt. 23:11). Thus, each day embraces labor. Work unto others. Work onto the Kingdom. Work unto God. We do not shirk dirt and filth and sweat, for Jesus didn’t when He came to serve humanity. An everyday education means days of dirty fingernails, stench in nostrils, sore backs: we endeavor to go the extra mile. And, as God’s act of creation was his work, so our creations—stitches, brushstrokes, kneading, ink scratchings—are also our labor to serve others. Everyday education, holistic, well-lived days, include labor and creative acts, a way of serving. Fourth Rung ~ Loveliness: a way of seeing (Poetry, Nature, Music and Art) The essence of our days and our children’s education is about how we see, think and perceive the world around us. “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely… think about these things” (Philippians 4:8). In a world of hurt, we want eyes to see what is lovely…so that our awe of God’s breathtaking handiwork might be a medicine to the broken around us. So our way through a day includes setting chords of the classics in the stereo each morning to accompany the day’s dance, then morning moments spent reading lyrical lines of poetry, and appreciating the rich hues of brushstrokes and imagination. Afternoons include time in the orchard climbing trees, walks down to the woods to pick spring flowers.Thinking on the lovely is a way to give us eyes to see beauty…and to catch a glimpse of the face of God Himself, Beauty embodied. Fifth Rung ~ Literature: a way of seeking (discovery through great books) As Roland Barthes suggests, “Literature is the question minus the answer,” so we read and question and seek answers. “Reading maketh a man full," as Francis Bacon surmised: one full of rich words and questions. John Wesley implores, “Read the most useful books, and that regularly and constantly. Steadily spend all the morning in this employ, or, at least, five hours in four-and-twenty… If you need no book but the Bible, you are got above St. Paul. He wanted others too. "Bring the books," says he, “but especially the parchments.” Like the Apostle Paul, we too bring out the books daily, not “twaddle” but full-bodied books of satisfying, filling words. As Wesley appeals, we steadily spend our morning in this employ. And yet in our seeking and reading, we also take heed: “My son, beware… Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh” (Ecclesiastes 12:12). We daily seek and discover and fill through great literature…and yet, we remind ourselves that there is more to a well-lived day than solely parchment and ink. Sixth Rung ~ Language: a way of speaking (narrations, Latin/Greek, grammar, writing) The words we read percolate down. So we steep in thought…and then we pour out, speaking our own word thoughts. As Samuel Johnson expressed, “Language is the dress of thought.” Daily rungs include a way of speaking our thoughts, through verbal or written narrations, compositions, or in the words of a second language. Literature may be about pouring questions into young minds. Language is about young minds exploring and speaking answers. We join the psalmist: “My heart overflows with a good theme; I address my verses to the King; My tongue is the pen of a ready writer” (Psalm 45:1). With tongue and pens, we daily attempt to speak and express good themes of learning and life to our King. Seventh Rung ~ Logic: a way of scaffolding (ideas, reasoning, science, mathematics, discussing) Our seventh rung is about building on what we already know, to go higher up and deeper in. We scaffold. Ideas, reasoning, discussions, mathematical equations, scientific experiments, extrapolations and analysis move us from what we know now, to new understandings. Each day includes logic: "Come now, let us reason together” (Isaiah 1:18). As the sun sets in the west, we ring the farm table, and pause to reflect on the shadow of the seven daily rungs. Then, holding fingers high, we mark off the five remaining rungs:
It is time, in the twilight, to enter into the day’s rest. From morning until evening we have worked (Ps. 104:22-23) and now it is time to sit, Sabbath moments after the seven daily rungs. A day well-lived has moments to simply linger, to be still and know that He is God. In the quiet coming down, we crown the day with laughter, taking our daily heart medicine of joy. Chuckle-worthy incidents that sprinkled the day. Antics of high-spirited children. And then there are the days it’s best just to heave a sigh, give thanks, and laugh with relief. We may have slipped off a rung or two. The ladder may have wobbled, precariously at times, throughout the day. But from each of the seven daily rungs in an everyday education-- listening, loving, laboring, looking on loveliness, learning literature, language and logic-- we’ve kept our eyes on our reward. The Lord Himself. Who is the Way through everyday. ©2007, Ann Voskamp _______________________________________
“I think I am going a touch crazy.” The words catch in my throat somewhere in the midst of scratching casserole remains from the corners of a 9 by 13 pan and monitoring piano practices. Maybe another day I could have found something to feebly chuckle about through the choking words, but today stinging tears of exhaustion and hopelessness blur my vision. From my vantage point at the kitchen sink, it all looks despairingly familiar, a millionth showing of a frame jammed on replay. And at this point in the scene, the script calls for me to sink my head down onto the countertop and have a good cry…or just give up and run away. A few steps from the sink, 6-year-old Levi pounces on the back of growling 4-year-old Kai, the roar and rumble of their wrestle sending wedgits scattering amidst the legos, blocks and tractors. Yet I can hardly move to break up the roiling tangle for the weight wrapping around my feet: baby Shalom clinging to my leg, slapping my hip with her whimpering pleas, “Coat on! Outside! Mammmaaa, coat on!” At the kitchen table, Caleb howls with laughter over his sketched caricature of Joshua, who now fumes retaliation, both negligent of the grammar diagramming lessons at hand. Hope accompanies the entire scene with an appropriate score: gratingly wrong notes of “Morning Has Broken.” “It’s me who is just about broken, somewhere deep inside,” I scoop up wailing Shalom and stumble through the legos to the quiet of our bedroom. “If only I could touch Christ,” the words spill out, “He’d gently smooth out all this mothering angst…” Touch Christ Touch Cross
To walk this way of the Cross is to take up the way of mercy and grace. As He pours mercy mingled down upon this head leaning against the foot of the cross, so now He calls me to similarly extend grace in this home to wrestling, teasing boys and their weary mother. When I am going a touch crazy, I must remember to press lips to this Cross, and inhale: receive Christ’s mercy… then exhale: give Christ’s grace. Mercy, grace, mercy, grace. Touching the cross resuscitates me, changing how I breathe, how I live… how I mother. Touch Cave Touch Children Touch Cana Somewhere in the midst of scratching casserole remains from the corners of a 9 by 13 pan and monitoring piano practices, I had gone a touch crazy, lost my way, lost touch with the hallowed call to motherhood. In the press of it all, I had forgotten how these intense mothering days are a daily spiritual retreat, Him calling me to come touch that which will direct towards Home. Touching Christ, the Cross, and the cave had drawn me back to touch children with the delightful touch of Cana. The scene was the same, but I could hear a new score playing. Morning had Broken and I’d been restored. Touching the things of Christ has a way of doing that. ©2007, Ann Voskamp _______________________________________ |
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Bonnie 
It is an entirely unremarkable moment, one I repeat every day at noon, all throughout the fall and winter. I am cutting squash, chopping, scooping, dicing. But today, as I scoop out the tangly pulp, seeds scattering and falling on the countertop, I scoop deep into me and feel the wrapped tendrils of who I am.
attention. I wanted self-gratification. I sinned. God gave me not penalty, but Himself. He bathed in me mercy, healing deep wounds. He wrapped me up in relationship. “Mercy triumphs over judgment” (James 2:12). Love does what law cannot. 
The New Year wears hope like a fragrance. The scent, tender, young, sweet, carries in on the wind, and carries me. 
He was all of eighteen months, crowned with a mess of ringlets that fell over one eye, when he began gloriously saying it. An only child, yet to be joined by siblings, he lifted our house with exuberance. The place was his. But he kept charitably, delightfully saying, “Yours.” Our hands would fall upon his glossy 1456 International tractor, his engine-red train, scuffed and worn, his basket of board books and beloved Beatrix Potter. And he would singsong: “Yours! Yours!” What a rhapsodic, generous notion! This just grown baby studded with celestial blue eyes, giving his world away to the world, one piece at a time: “Yours! Yours! Yours!” We basked in this blissfully strange absence of selfishness. 
carpet of grass softly gave way under ten toes and heel. Then I’d tuck my arm through Grandma’s waiting one, and together we’d slip down empty gravel roads, out past shadows lengthening across fields of twilight gold. 
moments are rungs scaling each and everyday… making a life. 
final lunge for his hem and hope: “If I only touch his garment, I will be made well” (Matt. 9:21). When I am going a touch crazy, can I remember to close my eyes, and stretch out a quavering hand? Relinquishing my slipping grip on a chaotic day, I lunge to touch Christ’s hem, the hem of Him who can restore and renew. “And Jesus perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?” (Mark 5:30). To touch Christ is to touch the power of hope, the power of wholeness, the power of healing.