Up the Sunbeam

-- There are few things as toxic to a relationship as disapproval. Husbands and wives, parents and children, pastors and congregations, employers and employees, teachers and students and among friends--disapproval does damage and leaves wounds that rarely heal on their own.  Stories abound of grown men and women who find themselves crippled in their adult lives because on some level, they are still trying to win the approval of fault-finding, never-satisfied parents, sometimes years, even decades after those parents have been laid to rest. Spirits wither and waste under the harsh, hot glare of disapproval and I pray that as a fallible, imperfect parent, I would not fall into communicating in ways that feel like criticism and disapproval to my children. Human disapproval is bad enough.  What about disapproval from God?  Isn't He always stern and endlessly disapproving, looking with disdain and disgust down a long nose and a longer finger, always pointing out our fai...

-- When you become a mother (or a father), you can never anticipate all that you are saying yes to.  If you're wise you'll let the prayers fall from your lips like raindrops. Three times life has blossomed within, twice I have delivered beautiful, healthy babies into the world.  Three times I have known the rending of my heart to make room for the flood of love it would have to hold as a new life came to be; one of those times I had to release that too-brief little life to heaven in the sorrow of an early miscarriage , and twice I have been blessed to watch those new lives grow into the amazing children God chose me to mother. I was a few months pregnant with She So Sweet the first time I heard the song "Breath of Heaven" by Amy Grant.  I was nervous in those early months, especially when complications came that felt like a repeat of the miscarriage.  As I prepared to go home from a scary trip to the ER, relieved to get good news but still shaken, the male n...

The best basketball coach I know teaching She So Sweet the game he loves. Daddy, I hope you know that you’re my hero    My hero, my champion, my coach And every good thing a father should be and rarely is    You have taught me such important things In such creative, memorable ways. Daddy, you’ve always made me feel so wanted    Wanted and beautiful and loved Things every girl should have a chance to feel but seldom does    You always encouraged and believed And somehow you made me believe in me. Daddy, when it was time for me to leave home    Our home, our family, our bit of heaven All the safe, sweet things the world wants and hardly ever sees    You gave me the courage to step out To go find my life and to live it well. Daddy, I hope the way I live makes you proud    Proud and hopeful, and certain That all the things you taught me have settled down and taken root    My life is so much better, rich...

Celebrating is the easy part.  Lights, laughter, favorite food and sweet treats, songs that set bells a-jingle and us all warm and tingly with joy, and the Baby in the manger . . . yes, celebrating falls easy into our Christmas lives. It's living Christmas out in the gritty grind that is sometimes very, very hard. I must choose my words wisely to write this, I beg your patience for being deliberately vague about details. I don't WANT to be nice.  I don't WANT to pray for them. Mama Grizzly is growling low and menacing in me and I would like to unleash her to tell them about themselves.  I could have stood it if they had hurt me, but they hurt my cubs, and now are adding insult to injury--the Mama Grizzly crouches, ready to spring, everything in her screaming for the chance to put them in their place! Photo courtesy of freelargephotos.com, Copyright © 2010 David Chudnov All stirred up inside, alone in my living room, I called home to my parents to vent my m...

“Yet, O LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.” Isaiah 64:8 (NIV) I am so often prone to believe that I have to ACT right, WORK hard, TRY with all my might to become the person I ought to be, and yet, this passage tells me that I am clay in the hands of the Master Potter. The only help the Potter needs from me is to be soft and pliable when He shapes me. That is so counter-intuitive in our modern culture where everything is about performance, achievement, success, image. I have the hardest time being patient with a process that takes place on God’s timetable, not my own, and over which I have no control except to be still. I was writing about this to a friend this morning to encourage her in her Christian walk. I wanted her to rest in the truth that the Christian life is not about self-imposed behavior modification, but the transformation that comes at the hands of a loving Father who has promised to make us just lik...