Ordinary

I read an article yesterday that made the assertion that being "radical" and "missional" is "the new legalism".  (And makes a troubling snide comment about people who choose to adopt instead of having biological children.  I mean, honestly, that is your business...how?)

Now, I get where the guy is coming from.  I've felt that not-so-subtle pressure, too--like, I have a nice house; should I go all Francis Chan over here, sell my nice house (presumably to someone who isn't a Christian) and give half the money away?  (No, I don't necessarily think Chan himself was applying that pressure; I've run across it in blogs etc.)

But I disagree with this statement from Bradley's article:

"For too many Millennials their greatest fear in this life is being an ordinary person with a non-glamorous job, living in the suburbs, and having nothing spectacular to boast about."

I would say, in the first place, that this tars a whole generation of people with one brush.  I know plenty of Millennials (I think I am one?  I can never get these generational names straight) who really, if you ask them, just want a steady job, a house in the suburbs without crushing debt, and an intact family.  We've come of age during a time when the economy has sucked, when divorce is the norm, when a foreign war has dragged on for 10 years and when terrorism has been a rational threat hanging over all our public interactions.  Are we spoiled?  Sure.  But recognizing we're spoiled and trying to share some of our advantages?  That's not necessarily a sign of pride.

It can be, of course.  But it can also be pride to look at someone who's concerned with "social justice" and concluding, "Well, he's obviously just in it because he wants to look good and impress his liberal friends."

Now.  I'm one of the first to admit that the people in the church who use phrases like "social justice" and "radical" are sometimes startlingly inept at actually helping people and they sometimes don't have enough background in poverty to know what they're doing.  Even selling your house, giving away half the money, and living on the median income in the U.S. still makes you richer than 99% of the world--so for American Christians, whatever "social justice" means, we will have to grapple with affluence.  Maybe the correct response is giving most of our stuff away.  Maybe not--but the conversation is going to be really difficult if both the "radical" people and the "suburban" or "traditional" people are accusing each other of having a hidden agenda--especially when they are mostly recommending the same behaviors.

For instance, I found it a little mind-bending to realize that one book proposing that Christians be more radical relative to the culture was in fact suggesting nothing particularly extreme.  (Read your Bible all the way through, tithe, pray, go to church, and serve in the local church.)  As the Sunday School song I grew up with put it, Read your Bible and pray every day, pray every day, pray every day.

Here is what I think:

Labels are unhelpful.  Ordinary "suburban" people have plenty of opportunities to be "radical" and to effect change for generations to come.  Living for the Lord means doing that in whatever circumstance He puts you in--not necessarily moving to a commune.  If He tells you to sell your house and buy a cheaper one, well, of course that's what you ought to do.  But maybe He wants you to keep your nice house and actually witness to your neighbors.  (Even the suburban ones.)  Given that, a lot of the time, we would rather minister to people who are clearly different from us (see the settlement movement), it can actually be more challenging to show your Christianity to your physical neighbors than it is to go to a soup kitchen and help wash dishes.  Or here's an idea--do both, but without sniping at Christians whose call is different than yours.  The fact is that any actual living out of the commands of Christ is going to look radical relative to our culture, even when it's ordinary people doing it.

Secondly, I don't think it matters whether you are serving God in the city or in a small town.  Yes, the Shane Claibornes of the Christian lit world have a burden for cities.  I suspect that's not because they despise those of us in small towns or suburbs, but because they are from cities--their formative years have been spent there--and that's where they live now.  It doesn't matter; if their ideas are bad, they are bad for cities as well as for small towns.  If their ideas make sense, they make sense in both places (but with different applications).  Many of the same challenges that exist in cities exist in small towns.  For instance, I live in a town of 10,000 people.  We have prostitution, gang violence, drug and alcohol problems, worldliness, pride, racism, xenophobia, a severe lack of intact families, apathetic churches, and poverty.  But there's also this: in a small town everyone knows everything about everyone--you have to live your Christianity, or everyone will know you are a hypocrite.

Thirdly, I think the correct response to Claiborne and David Platt and Francis Chan is not to get in a miff that they are making too many people think they are special snowflakes.  It's like any other human book, right?  Parts of it are going to be right, and parts are going to be wrong.  So eat the fish, man, and spit out the bones.  If you really think they are promoting heresy, then say so.  (But without the snark, please.)

So how to approach it, then?  Well, I think the problem is overblown.  It's simple: in the life where you are now, serve God.  Ask Him what He wants you to do, then do it. 

Here's the thing.  People get stuck focusing on one extraordinary aspect of someone's life--selling the house, starting the commune--instead of the principles behind it.  (I notice they do this even when the author specifically says "look, you are probably not called to give away your house like I was".)  I suggest that instead of defending ourselves (either from the crazy liberal radical people or from the crazy stuffy traditional people) we just get on with doing what we think God has called us to.  In my life, right now, we're called to demonstrate how Christians handle type 1 diabetes.  God has provided a surprisingly large number of opportunities to give Him glory, to trust Him, and to refuse to rail against His sovereignty.

I can't explain the bad stuff.  I have no idea why my sweet little boy had to get this disease.  But I know it didn't just happen to him; I know God wasn't surprised, and I know He's not malicious.  And I know He has something He wants me (and us) to learn, to do, to demonstrate for His glory--even in the middle of the grief and the temptation to fear and the sudden concern with money and medical bills.  Is that radical, or ordinary?  Did this happen to my kid because I was just so worried about being a special snowflake, or because I was too apathetic and satisfied with my Christian Country Club?

No.  Because at the end of the day discerning which social movement I'm a part of is a waste of time.  I have laundry to do (with a thankful heart), insulin doses to calculate (while placing myself under God's hand), and people to pray for (while clinging to His mighty promises).  The debate looks pretty stupid, honestly.  If a book has helped you, great.  If not, well, read your Bible, pray every day, pray every day, pray every day.

Cheers,

Breanna

Doubt

I hesitate to mention that I am writing a book along the lines of this blog.  As in, ramblings about motherhood, housekeeping and faith.  I hesitate because I don't know how long it will take me or if, indeed, anyone will want it.  But I am just putting it out there for you--if you would buy (probably for like 99 cents on Kindle) a book of devotions etc. by me, then maybe you'd let me know?  So I won't feel like it's a silly thing for me to try to do?

So today I read a friend's blog post on how she gets nervous when showing her writing to others, and self-doubtful.  And I've also been talking to someone else who's been experiencing a wave of self-doubt, and I got to thinking about patterns in my own life.

See, when I was in college I used to have this recurring dream/daydream/feeling that there was, somehow, a class I had forgotten about.  Like a whole class.  I went to the first few lectures (in my mind), then forgot about it and only discovered that I should have been attending right before finals.  In my dream I would then try to cram a whole semester of learning into the day before finals.

This is funny because I never did anything remotely like that.  I tended to have all my assignments done ahead of time, and I graduated with a 4.0 GPA.

Later, when I was a nurse, I'd have dreams that I'd forgotten to record a narcotic dose (which I'd also forgotten to give to the patient).  Or I'd be sure that somehow, I'd mortally offended a doctor who would be lobbying for my dismissal.

Again, funny.  I made a grand total of three medication errors in my career, none of them serious, and one of them only about bookkeeping.  When I left the job at which I would get nervous about angry doctors, all of the doctors asked me to please remember them if I ever wanted to come back.

It was at this last job where I finally realized what was going on: I was being attacked.  Hoodwinked.  Tempted.

Some days I would feel great about my job--as I should have.  It was a really good job.  Good pay, friendly colleagues, nice boss, good facility.  Other days, when nothing had changed, I would feel horrible about my job.  I'm not talking about the kind of day that you sometimes have in healthcare when a patient dies, or when there is something that you can't fix.  I mean literally that I'd feel good on Monday and bad on Tuesday.

When it occurred to me that nothing had changed in the interval of feeling good and feeling bad, my mind (it turns slowly on these things) began to tick.  And I understood that if nothing's changed, then suddenly feeling despair about my job was a Lie.  And if it is a Lie, it's not from God.  It's also probably not just a problem I have, me being a Despair-er.

Because I have an Adversary who doesn't want me to be happy or effective at anything I do, he would come along and whisper things in my ear like "I bet Dr. Soandso really was ticked off about your mistake today.  Yeah, you'll probably get fired."  These things weren't true.  They were a temptation to doubt.

It was amazing, once I figured this out, how such moments vanished.  All it took was a few times of, when the thoughts would come into my head, saying "No.  That's not true.  Lord, thank You for my job.  I trust You to handle it.  Please help me reject these thoughts."

Eventually those thoughts about my job almost ceased.

Lately the Enemy has been trying the same thing with regard to my children.  It's easy as a mom to focus on all the things you're doing wrong: soandso isn't potty trained, we haven't been faithful about early reading, we don't have family devotions with anything like regularity, and, on bad days, I'm sure my kids will become foul-mouthed gangbangers whose idea of a spiritual experience is to join the Rainbow Family.

(My opinion of the Rainbows is colored somewhat by the fact that the year they had their Gathering in my home state, the Park Service had to spend a month cleaning up after them because of "illegal shelters and all the human excrement" left in the campgrounds.)

Really nothing much changes between Monday, when I feel good about my mothering skills--teach reading, and make really good meatloaf--and Tuesday, when I feel horrible about my mothering skills--snip gum out of hair and make frozen, dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets.  If I can keep in mind what I've learned about two other endeavors in my life when I was trying to do something very important, I'll realize that what I'm dealing with are not legitimate feelings.

Because it isn't really self-doubt.  It's doubting the Lord.  He's the one who's given me this tribe of rampaging proto-hippies who disdain clothing and want to eat raw bacon.  He doesn't ask me to do impossible things.  But He does expect me to use the enabling that only He can give me.

So, as I have never yet forgotten a class, taken home a dose of a patient's medication, or (my latest) forgotten a child at the store, I will trust in the Lord to make sure that doesn't happen.

What are you trusting Him about today?

Cheers,

Breanna

Worry

I was reading Jeremiah today, the satisfying part toward the end when the Lord tells Jeremiah He's going to destroy Babylon.  He tells Israel to flee Babylon because of the coming destruction, but then He says an interesting thing: don't worry when you hear rumors, and don't worry when you see violence break out.  (Jer. 55:41)

It recalled to me Christ in Matthew reassuring us that there will be wars and rumors of wars, but not to worry about them, because the end is not yet.

That made me think about the number of things we worry about that we're specifically told not to worry about.  For instance:

World events - wars, rumors, and political happenings.  We worry a great deal about things like gay marriage, federalized healthcare, and whether churches will have to pay taxes.  It's not that these things are good, pleasant, or that we should vote to support them, but ultimately they're not important and we have no business spending one morsel of extra thought on them.  (I.e., the process should go: is this thing I'm being asked to vote on supported in Scripture? No? Vote no. All done.  Stop thinking about it.)

Having enough - money, time, stuff.  Most Christians realize they're not supposed to worry about these things, but they do anyway because they have a hard time drawing the line between responsibility and worry.  I find that it's very helpful to consciously, every day, thank God for what He's given you, and acknowledge that ultimately money, time, and stuff are out of your control.  Then do your duty, work hard, and stop thinking about it.

The list goes on.  In fact there's not much--not anything that I can think of off the top of my head, but correct me in the comments if needed--that Scripture says we are allowed to worry about, in the sense that worry is cyclic fear that usually doesn't do much but distract us.

And that's the key.  Like lust, resentment, or discontentment, worry is a repetitive way of thinking that the Enemy uses to distract us.  If we are so wrapped up in the way someone's body looks, whether someone said that to us on purpose, whether the other person has a bigger sandwich, or whether the Republocrats are going to win the election, we don't have the mental energy left to think about things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy.

The only way to fight repetitive thinking is to bop it firmly on the head whenever we realize we're doing it.  The easiest way is to have chosen, ahead of time, something else to think about or do.  For instance, I am tempted regularly to think about a church we left under bad circumstances and to sort of peversely hope that the bad things I told them would happen--happen.  How awful is that?  I don't want those things to happen to anybody, if I think about it objectively.  So I have decided that when I have those thoughts, I'm going to consciously stop and pray that the Lord protects that church and makes it grow in holiness.  I don't feel--at all--like praying for that church to grow.  But it's not such a big discipline, and I refuse to be drawn into resentment and bitterness.

Does this mean I have figured out how to avoid sinful thought patterns?  Of course not; I do my share of moping about infringements on my dignity and the fact that I can't choose how my time is spent, wanting something that isn't mine, and worrying about the price of tea in China.  But I share the technique in the hopes that maybe I'll help someone.

Cheers,

Breanna

Seasons of Adversity

This is a famous statue, carved by Michaelangelo, called "Pieta".  It is, as you can see, Mary holding Christ after He has been taken down off the cross.  Presumably she did this, though we can hope Joseph of Arimathea and John the Beloved did as much as they could to spare her.

It's worthwhile contemplating.  There are a lot of little details.  For instance, look at Christ's face:

Do you see the smile?  "It is finished", remember?  But also look at Mary's face:

She doesn't understand.  Do you think any mama does, when she loses her Boy, even if He is Messiah?

This is to get us thinking in the right way when contemplating something I've noticed lately.  A couple of my good internet friends are having sudden, drastic health crises in their families, and literally almost everyone I know is dealing with some kind of out-of-the-way adversity. 

The Husband's plant is having, for the second year in a row, to lay off many of their hourly workers as the economy keeps getting worse.  (They re-hire them when the slow season is over, but that still means that plenty of families will be spending the holidays on unemployment.  I don't know many households that can comfortably take an income-cut of 50%.)  Others are dealing with deaths, sickness, and worries.

Adversity is no fun, otherwise it wouldn't be called "adversity".  And despite American tendencies toward a certain stoicism that I think is left over from our Puritan heritage, I don't think God wants us to deny that adversity hurts.  Just look at some of the Psalms, particularly those authored by David.  It's all right to tell the Lord that it hurts; it's not all right to accuse Him of not knowing what He's doing.

When adversity seems to come all at once, all around you, it makes you wonder if there's not something bigger happening than just the normal ickiness of life in a fallen world.  I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think that, in this spiritual battlefield where we're all stationed, there are times when the fighting gets particularly thick.  We can't see the war, so we never know when we're in the midst of a spiritual Battle of the Bulge.  (And we're smack in the middle of the bulge in the line.)

To which of course, the only sensible response is to determine to hold the line, a la Thlaylai (Bigwig) in Watership Down:

"My Chief Rabbit told me to stay and defend this run, and until he says otherwise I shall stay here."

To me, the best part of the quote is afterward, when the invading rabbit realizes what he's up against:

"A chill ran through the General.  It had never occurred to him that Bigwig was not the Chief Rabbit."

Remember that Smile on the statue above?  Michaelangelo was not inspired--he was not sculpting Scripture.  But I think he had the same ability to know the nature of God from created things that all of us do; and that Smile is important.  That Smile can help us remember that sheer, stubborn, donkeyish planting our feet and refusing to deny the love of God, and refusing to give in, even when it hurts, is our most powerful weapon.  (Hint: technically this donkey-ness is called Faith; there's a good reason in folklore that a donkey has a cross on its back.)  He has told us to stay and defend the run; until He says otherwise, here we stay.

Or, to go back to the Battle of the Bulge, we simply turn our backs on our Adversary and say:

"Nuts!"

Even Christ, on the cross, acknowledged the pain, but in the end He demonstrated for us that
we are squarely in the grip of God, Who finishes what He starts: "Into Thy hands I commit My spirit."

Sometimes that's all we can say; I just wanted to also give you the picture of that Face, and that Smile, to think on.

Cheers,

Breanna

Faith

Do you know why Faith is a virtue?

I mean, as C.S. Lewis points out, if faith is believing it doesn't seem like it would be a virtue.  It doesn't seem like it would be voluntary, in fact.  If something is proved, it's proved.  If it's proved, you believe it.  If not, you don't.

But he goes on to say that this assumes that humans only stop believing because of insufficient evidence, or because of new evidence becoming available.  In other words, it assumes that we believe and disbelieve things based on rational proof.

And of course, we don't.

For instance, we all have days where we are depressed.  Sometimes this has a physical cause--like lack of sleep or hunger--and sometimes we've just had depressing circumstances happen to us.  Usually I start by losing faith in myself and then in the Husband.  The mental script goes like this:

You're a bad mom.  You're letting your kids eat dry Lucky Charms and juice for breakfast while they watch their fourth cartoon.  And you're still in your pajamas.

I should kill it right there.  I know I'm not a bad mom.  Maybe I'm not the world's best, but I'm not a bad mom.  But usually the script is subtle, so I combat it feebly at best.

Meh, I'll just read this one more thing online and then I'll get them some fruit.  I've screwed up my good mom morning opportunity, might as well take a little break, since I won't have any peace if I shut the cartoon off now.

Pretty soon my depressed thinking is being used by the Adversary for overt temptation:

You noticed, didn't you, that the Husband went off to play computer games as soon as you got up?  (Note: not true.  He might be playing computer games, but he greeted me quite kindly.  Should be my next red flag, when my thoughts are lies, that this is not all me.)  He's not acting very loving.  (Note: also not true.)  And can you blame him?  You're still in your pajamas.

Quickly, if I don't stop it with some pretty harsh language and immediately flee to prayer, the temptation moves from doubting myself and my spouse to doubting the Lord Himself:

Why can't the Lord arrange things so that your kids sleep more?  Or maybe He's trying to tell you you're not very good at this writing/mom/wife/whatever thing and that you should give up.  And yes, reading your Bible will be too difficult to accomplish this morning.  Look how distracted you are already.

Hear it?

The opposite of Faith is Doubt, and here's the thing about Doubt: it's a lie.

We like to confuse skepticism and the scientific tradition with Doubt, but Doubt is not rational.  Doubt is when we question something we already know to be true because of emotion or circumstance, not because of proof.  Doubt, I think, delights the devil because it's so painful--if you actually knew that what you feared was the case, well, you could do something about it.  I.e., if the Husband announced "I am unhappy with you and so I am going away for an hour", I could say, "Why, dear?"  And I would immediately feel much better, because I would have picked a direction.

(Yet another note: this is all hypothetical.  The Husband doesn't pull stuff like that.  Don't give him any dirty looks--I love him.)

Doubt is sheer wondering, clinging with each hand to different opinions, paralyzed in fear and indecision.

Faith is a virtue because Doubt is so easy.  Doubt puts me in charge of the universe and makes my experience the ultimate arbiter of reality.  Faith is hard, as hard as realizing that an optical illusion isn't real.  It means persevering through agony, and--what is sometimes more difficult--through day after day after day after day of sheer irritation.  It means repeating to yourself what you know is true: God is just.  God is holy.  God is love.  He is not surprised by your no-good, very bad, terrible, not-such-a-great-mom day.

Faith does not mean belief without reason.  It means refusing to make your own truth.

All of which is easy to say; obviously if I had a handle on consistently asking for more Faith and shutting down my temptations toward Doubt I wouldn't be writing this blog.  But perhaps writing it down will help me recognize the slide downhill faster next time.

And those are my thoughts, as we get on toward Sunday.

Cheers,

Breanna

So. This Thing Happened.

"Every day God has the rain fall, a plant's roots drink it and turn it into fruit, and men collect the fruit of the plant, crush it, and ferment it into wine.  Every day, God slowly turns water into wine.  Once He bypassed the process.  Every day, in grains of corn that are planted and produce more than themselves, God makes a little bread into much bread.  Once He did it instantaneously and fed five thousand...the miracles are in the same style, so to speak."

--C.S. Lewis

It wasn't at all like this:

It was much more like this:

In other words, I didn't do anything.  Shall we get that clear at the start?

On the other hand, something sort of overwhelming and amazing happened yesterday, and I feel I should, like, tell people.  So here goes.

The Husband and I have had a busy summer and a busy vacation, as have my Mom and Dad, so the Husband decided to take the day off yesterday and invite Dad for a round of golf.  Mom came up too to see the kids, visit me, and have some She-Shopping with me.  (She-Shopping, where you look at lots of things without really wanting to buy any of them, just for the pleasure of browsing, as opposed to He-Shopping.  He-Shopping has been defined as "I'm cold.  I go in a store and buy a coat.  I'm not cold anymore.")

So the boys had a blast in the morning golfing 9 holes, and we had a blast She-Shopping (and I found some instruments for the kids, which Miss Boo calls "Racas"--otherwise known as maracas and drums).  The menfolk decided, after lunch, that they were up for another 9 holes, and we decided to stay home.

While we were shopping, Mom had mentioned that her bad ear has been sore, and could I look at it when we got home.  I have a cheapie, $14 otoscope from Walmart that is designed to check for toddler ear infections, so I said sure.

(This is the ear, by the way, that Mom hasn't been able to hear out of since, in 1990, a series of infections and traumas burst her eardrum and, according to the specialist she saw, dissolved the small bones in her ear that vibrate behind the eardrum.  The specialist said the only way to fix the ear was to have expensive surgery to put in prosthetic bones, which for many reasons Mom elected not to have.)

I look in the ear and see what looks like an infected sore, which looks painful as all get out, and a perfectly intact (though opaque) eardrum.  I've seen Mom's eardrum in this ear before, and it's always opaque.  We assume this is one reason she doesn't hear.  I offer to try to clean up the infection, and Mom says sure, it's hurting all the way down into her throat, and she's ready to stand getting the ear washed out if I think it'll get rid of the infection.

So I looked around the house, because I don't have any proper tools at home--no nice 30cc syringe, no ear tips, no ear spoons, no catch basin, nothing.  We end up trying to sop up as much of the drainage as we could with q-tips (evil as it usually is to put those in your ears), and then I found a 2cc syringe from an old bottle of Baby Motrin that I washed out.  I mixed up a solution of hydrogen peroxide and water and commenced to squirt out Mom's ear, hoping to get the junk to come out.

Well, a tiny scab did come out, but as we're flushing, Mom goes "I can hear."

(I'm still peering into her ear periodically with the $14 otoscope, wondering if there's not an infection in the ear at all but rather in the eustachian tube, since she can pinch her nose and blow and I can see bubbles in the area of the sore.)

We keep flushing until we're not getting any more junk out, but now Mom is feeling drainage inside her head and periodically saying "I can still hear!"

She got a little dizzy, laid on my couch for a bit until the men got back from golf, and keeps saying, dazedly, "I can still hear!"

We go to dinner and she could barely eat because the restaurant was so loud-- "Sound, all around!"  (She hasn't been hearing in stereo since 1990, mind.)

They drove home over the pass.  Her ear popped as they changed pressure and she could still hear.  She could hear everything, she said, even her hair rustling.

This morning she can still hear, and I am as overwhelmed as she is, because listen closely:

There is nothing about flushing out a sore ear with a baby motrin syringe and peroxide that should have made a ear with no bones there to vibrate hear again. 

There's no explanation I can think of.  If the ear healed on its own, like the bones grew back or something (which doesn't seem likely), then why did it suddenly get better, instead of gradually?  If there was some kind of blockage, for twenty years, it doesn't seem likely that a 2cc syringe and a quarter cup of warm peroxide water would dislodge it, does it?  Especially when specialists looking at the ear detected no such thing?  And again, if it was some other structure in the ear that healed on its own, why did the hearing come back suddenly?

It's Mom's opinion that God did a miracle.  After thinking about it all night, I don't have a better explanation--one that covers more of the facts with fewer assumptions; but I emphasize again that I didn't do anything.  I'm not just speaking medically, when I did the equivalent of putting a bandaid on a broken leg.  I mean I didn't pray, or get a sense of holy power, or glow, or anything.  I had two toddlers in the house playing their new drums and Racas for Pete's sake.  I didn't do ANYTHING.

So here is my explanation:

ALL healing comes from God.  We like to assume a paper cut "heals itself", but of course that's nonsense; He has created and sustains our bodies in such a fashion that, most of the time, they heal without our thinking about it much.  While Christ was on earth, and frequently through the Apostles afterward, God chose to heal instantaneously.  I don't believe there's evidence in Scripture to say that God has limited Himself in modern times to only healing through "natural" means; why should He?

That said, until now I've never personally experienced clearly miraculous healings--I've never spoken in tongues, never had holy laughter, or any of those Charismatic experiences, k?  I don't knock them, I've just never experienced them.

I didn't do anything.  I happened to be standing there when my Mom's ear was miraculously healed.

Glory to God!

Breanna

P.S.  Did I mention she can still hear this morning?

Praying for patience

It's been an interesting few days.

Holy, of course.  It is Easter Week.  But have you noticed the wry sense of humor with which the Lord decides to mix things like Easter Week and babies waking up at 5:30 AM for three days in a row?

People who haven't expereinced the hellish sleep deprivation of early parenthood don't know what I'm talking about.  They chuckle merrily and picture something out of an "I Love Lucy" episode, maybe.  But I'm not exaggerating when I say I haven't had an entire night's sleep since my daughter was born in late 2007.  Yep, that's almost three years.  You can get your trucker's certification faster than that.  You can even become an LPN faster than that, for Pete's sake.  So sleep, all sleep, becomes this gorgeous, precious thing that you are continually trying to obtain.  To the point that I have, several times, looked at my husband at 8:10PM and said "Well, I'm going to sleep."

And he says, "Yeah, that sounds like a great idea."  Sigh.  We used to be normal adults, who knew that there were shows on TV other than The Wonder Pets and who had your normal social hangups about mentioning poo in conversation.  (No, we don't have those hangups anymore.  And I don't watch Dancing With the Stars.)

The practical consequence of this sleep deprivation is that on bad days I have less patience than, say, Mike Tyson.  This is bad; patience is a fruit of the Spirit, so not having it in my life is a significant lack.  Also, I have children whom I am trying to teach impulse control.  When you find yourself snapping "JUST WAIT FOR A SECOND!  A SECOND!  A MEASLY SECOND!  BE PATIENT!" at your two-year-old, you become aware of the dictionary definition of "hypocrisy".

So the other night I prayed, "Lord, give me more patience", and then I cringed.  Because you know what they say about praying for patience.

Which is surely a backward way of looking at things.  God is the definition of love; He doesn't look for reasons to trick us while answering our prayers a la Hera or Zeus.  If I need more patience, I am instructed in the book of James to ask for it.  If I need to get a handle on the tone of my voice when I discipline my youngsters, I should ask for it.

So why don't I?  To my shame I just don't think of it.  This, I think, exposes a fundamental lack in my basic way of thinking: I'll work on it myself and call on God if I have any problems.  Which is a little like deciding I'll buckle my seatbelt real quick if I seem to be getting into a car accident, right?

Which brings me here, on Friday of Holy Week, praying for patience.  We've decided getting the girl up at 6AM is probably the best plan, since it minimizes our "I'm-not-tired-and-you-can't-make-me-sleep" issues at night.  In theory. 

I am dying thinking about it in a way that only another nursing mother can really understand.  So can I ask all of you to pray for my patience as well?

Thanks.

Breanna

A Thought

Dad gave me Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness by Eugene Peterson to read whilst I was in exile at their house and the Husband was in exile in Arkensas.  Returned from our Diaspora, I am very slowly working my way through the book.  And while I agree with Dad, who says "You can see why they call him a liberal theologian", I think the man has a fistful of points that hit home.

The book is about pastoring, but I think it really applies to any vocation.  For instance, Peterson talks about the application of products to congregations, in an attempt to make them bigger, or happier, or healthier or whatever, and how that is really idolatry and a snare of the devil.  How often, I thought, do we apply products (like self-help books, lists off of TV shows, or tips from magazine articles) to our families or marriages?  And isn't it the same thing?

Here is a passage that struck me, one that Peterson says was originally about monasticism and which he substituted "pastoring" for; I have substituted "family" or "marriage" or "mothering" for his substitutions.  (Clear as mud? Buy the book and read the original passage.  It's worth it.)  Here it is with my substitutions of his substiutions:

What is useless and destructive is to imagine that enlightenment or virtue can be found by seeking for fresh stimulation.  The mother's life is a refusal of any view that will make human maturity before God dependent on external stimulus, "good thoughts", good impressions, edifying influences and ideas.  Instead, the mother must learn to live with her own darkness, with the interior horror or temptation and fantasy.  Salvation affects the whole of the psyche; to try to escape boredom, sexual frustration, restlessness, unsatisfied desire by searching for fresh tasks and fresh ideas is to attempt to seal off these areas from grace.  Without the humiliating and wholly "unspiritual" experiences of family life-- the limited routine of trivial tasks, the sheer tedium and loneliness--there would be no way of confronting much of human nature.  It is a discipline to destroy illusions.  The mother has come to the family to escape the illusory Christian identiy proposed by the world; she now has to see the roots of illusion within, in the longing to be dramatically and satisfyingly in control of life, the old familiar imperialism of the self bolstered by the intellect.  (Emphasis and substitutions mine.)

Wow, huh?  And the thing of it is, it applies to everything.  That's probably at least one reason why the book of Jonah is in the Bible; everyone, in every situation (not just mine! not just yours!) is regularly tempted to just quit, to chuck it, to drive off into the sunset with the music turned up, and to find the better life.  Recognizing that it is really a temptation and not a legitimate need or longing is half the battle. 

"Grow where you are planted" is a trite way of saying what I'm getting at (and I hate that saying, actually, mostly because it's usually accompanied by bad art of a flower in a tin can or something).  In a more profound way, we can recognize that our vocations (whether they are mother, engineer, nurse, pastor, farmer, or whatever) are the conditions we have been given for sanctification.  Saying that we'll become sanctified as soon as we get a new job (or as soon as our husband starts doing his fair share, or as soon as the kids are sleeping through the night, or as soon as we lose the weight) is the same as saying we'll be sanctified when there's nothing else on our list--or, never.

As C.S. Lewis puts it in the Screwtape Letters, Satan's strategy would be to never let us suspect that the hypothetical object of our fear ("what if I lose my job?") isn't the cross we're being asked to bear.  The fear (or the boredom, or the loneliness, or the routine) is, and the grace we are provided with will help us with that current temptation.  But attempting to submit to a dozen hypothetical futures at once ("He'll never help me with the kids, I'll get fat and wrinkled, and my house will always be a mess!") is rather silly, and we shouldn't expect much help with it.

Just food for thought today...

Breanna

In My Father's House

In my Father's house are many mansions

Many mansions in my Father's house

In my Father's house are many mansions

Many mansions in my Father's house

I go to prepare a place for you, for you

I go to prepare a place for you, for you

In my Father's house are many mansions

Many mansions in my Father's house.

--Steve Green "Hide 'Em in Your Heart" Scripture Songs

A couple of things have happened this week.  First, a great uncle that I only met a few times has gone home to Heaven--a loss that was expected, attended by his family, and gentle, but still a loss.  So I've been thinking about Heaven a little more this week, though, no doubt, not as much as I should

The other is that on Monday night, Brother pulled over the torchiere lamp and shattered the shade on an end table, quite impressively.  He sobbed and watched while the Husband cleaned up the glass, and while I held two squirmy fascinated kids.  On Tuesday we went out to Home Depot to look for replacement shades, which they apparently only sell in some expensive online store in Connecticut.  Since a replacement glass shade cost as much as a new lamp, I bought a new lamp.  We installed it, decided we liked it, and went to bed.

On Wednesday morning Brother, scooting innocently around the couch, knocked the lamp over again with his butt.  I am still not sure how he managed this: I can barely lift the new lamp, it's so heavy, and we haven't been able to replicate it falling.  The shade wouldn't have broken if it had fallen to the carpet; as it was, the updown happened to be sitting in an unusual place on the floor, just where the lampshade hit--and shattered.

So Brother yelled in the playpen, Miss Boo yelled on the couch, and Mama tried gingerly to pick up the second shattered glass shade in two days.  It took two rounds of vacuuming to get it all.

Then it was time to get everybody dressed and breakfasted, and at the table Miss Boo began singing the little Scripture song above, and once again I was surprised at how the Word can penetrate, even when sung by little kids.  (I'm not sure why I'm surprised.  The Word is the Word, after all, whether it's read or sung.)

In my Father's house are many mansions?  That's right.  So what's a lamp or two?  What, in fact, are entire houses?  Here I'm a sharecropper, of sorts, but there I'm a son.

It made for interesting meditation fodder as I ran around town (again) looking for lampshades.

Incidentally, I found two fabric shades at Target that fit the bases of the lamps, and that look just fine.  So now I have two lamps instead of one, and the Lord taught me a valuable lesson: why waste fretting on things that won't follow me to my Father's house?

Which is not to say I won't make the same mistake again, but at least I'm making a start.

Cheers,

Breanna

Today, Tomorrow, or the Next Day

A certain little girl who shall remain nameless (not me or Miss Boo or Aunt Kenny, though) used to pray that God wouldn't let the communists come today, tomorrow, or the next day. That way, you see, if she missed a day, she'd be covered.

My reaction to this story until this morning was always along the lines of, "oh, how cute" with an undercurrent of "children think such funny things about prayer". Which meant, I suppose, that I assumed that a prayer like that didn't do any good in something as big as holding back the communists.

This morning, as the Steve Green "Hide 'Em in Your Heart" CD that Miss Boo likes warbled "Let the little children come, let the little children come, let the little children come to me/For of such is the kingdom of heaven" it occurred to me that it's surely very arrogant to think children's prayers don't do anything. Given that the Lord told us over and over again to make ourselves like little children, it would be a better to assume that their prayers have lessons for us adults.

How do we know, after all, that the little girl praying for the communists not to come today, tomorrow, or the next day didn't hold them back?

Granted, some childrens's prayers are just cute. Like two nights ago, when I asked Miss Boo what we should thank Jesus for that night. As usual, she responded:

"Mama, Daddy, and Brother." We have to move on beyond this, so I said:

"And what else?"

"Dogs." This is also standard.

"Thank you Jesus, for dogs. And what else?"

"Pat-pat." Our dog isn't included in the general category, you see.

"Thank you, Jesus, for Pat-pat. And what else?"

This is the part of the nightime prayers that gets interesting, because she chooses things evidently at random to be thankful for. The dog had bacon grease poured over his food that morning and had been odiferous all day. She thought for a moment, then said:

"Pat-pat's stinky butt!"

I had a hard time keeping a straight face as we solemnly thanked the Lord for Pat-pat's stinky butt.

Cheers,

Breanna

Conspicuous Christianity

I found myself the other day referring to C.S. Lewis as "aggressively Christian". I've been thinking about that, and I don't think the phrase was correct. He wasn't a particularly aggressive Christian--in that "aggressive" has pejorative connotations--but he was definitely a conspicuous Christian. And I don't mean he had a fish on the bumper of his car. (Come to think of it, I don't know that he even owned a car.) Is conspicuous Christianity desirable?

This brings up two kinds of conspicuous Christians: the bumper-fish kind, and the do-all-things kind. They are usually, though not always, mutually exclusive.

The Bumper-Fish conspicuous Christian has, as you might guess, a "Jesus fish" on the bumper of their car. Their radio at work (which they have been asked to turn down) is tuned to the local Christian radio station. Probably not the one with sermons on it-- the one with cheap evangelical knockoffs of the secular music that was popular five years ago. They end their emails, under their signature, with quotes like "Let go and Let God". Even their work emails. They regularly write inarticulate but outraged letters to networks and congressmen, can be counted on to give a flustered statement to the local news, and they wear buttons at Christmas that say "Jesus is the Reason for the Season."

Am I a snide jerk, that I think this kind of conspicuous Christianity is sometimes undesirable? I hope not; I don't wish to make anyone act against their convictions. Rather, I want to challenge people who think that a fish on the bumper is sufficient witness to examine the rest of their conduct.

For instance: it's cliche, but if you have a fish on the bumper you'd best not break any traffic rules and be polite to a fault in parking lots. If you're going to play Christian music at your desk, you'd better be extra careful that your radio doesn't annoy anyone. (And no, your boss asking you to turn it down ISN'T persecution. He's your boss. He gets to decide what you can have on your desk and how loud it is--he's paying you to sit at the desk. It's really his desk.) If you're going to sign your emails with a Christian quote, 1) be sure they're not representing someone else, like the company you work for, as Christian and 2) make sure it's a good quote. "Let go and Let God" is so cute and so elderly that it registers with about the potency of "We'll leave the light on for you."

Which leads me to the Do-All-Things (as in, For the Glory of God) folks, of which I think Lewis was one. These people do not go out of their way to partake of alternative Christian culture, though they don't avoid it either. They read secular books, watch secular movies, and work in secular jobs, but they bring with them a clearly Christian mindset. Thus, for instance, they are not tricked into thinking adultery is all right by the brilliance of the writing in Out of Africa, and they can even trace the personal havoc it wreaks. As well, they don't go out of their way to label their things "CHRISTIAN" at work, but when asked to give an opinion on which worldviews differ, they'll quietly give a Christian opinion. Some of them may have fish on their bumpers; but I think most find that if you truly attempt to take every action from a Christian perspective, your oddity becomes apparent without any identifiers on your car. ("But...why aren't you moving in together with your fiancee? But...if you just didn't mention it, no one would know! But...everyone pads their time sheet. But... I know the bartender and I could get you in. But...but...")

You see why the Bumper-fish folks are so much more common? It's much easier to identify ourselves with branding than it is with behavior--whether the brand is the WWJD bracelet or the Hannah Montana sweatshirt--and we're much more comfortable simply displaying something than we are taking a difficult action.

The Church is not a brand. When we treat it like one, we are treading very close to sacrilege.

Something to think about, eh?

Cheers,

Breanna

Jephthah's Daughter

So I was going to put this really pretty picture of Jephthah's daughter at the top of the post, but for some reason Blogger won't let me, so no picture today.

Anyway, I was reading today in Judges about Jephthah--you know, the guy who judged Israel and, while chasing the Ammonites, says "God, if You let me defeat the Ammonites, I'll sacrifice whatever comes out of my house to meet me when I get home as a burnt offering", and then it turns out to be his daughter--and a couple of things struck me.

One was that the enemies of Israel aren't terribly creative; when Jephthah asks the king of Ammon why Ammon is fighting a war with Israel, the Ammonite king says, "Because you stole my land." Jephthah points out that Israel never did conquer any land that could be considered Ammonite, and that anyway it's been 300 years since the conquest, so why hasn't Ammon done anything in all that time? To which the Ammonite king replies, more or less, "Well, I'm still going to kick your butt."

The second thing I noticed was the whole notorious vow-to-sacrifice-the-daughter thing. This is usually cited as included in Scripture to point out "Don't make rash vows" which, indeed, the Lord Himself reinforces in the New Testament when He tells us not to swear oaths at all, but something else about it hit me today: Jephthah was ignoring a path of action that God laid out, and taking his own path.

You see, this wasn't happening back in the pre-Mosaic era when folks could be understood for not knowing the kinds of sacrifices that God wanted. The Lord had spent forty years in the wilderness, and who knows how many more in the land, hammering into the heads of the Israelites exactly what kinds of sacrifices He wanted for exactly which occasions, what they were supposed to be comprised of, and when and where they were supposed to be offered. There was already a "Wow, I'm grateful, God" sacrifice, and a "I just feel like praising God" sacrifice. That Jephthah was circumventing all this might be understandable (like the guy from my home town who promised God that he'd build a giant statue of the Virgin Mary if his wife didn't die of cancer) but it was not right.

The thing is, all the sacrifices that God ordered were so exact because they were a physical picture of a spiritual reality, a foreshadowing of the ultimate Sacrifice on the Cross. God wasn't interested in sacrifice per se; it's not as though He needs to eat. He just knows us well enough to know that only a picture as vivid as a lamb or bull getting its throat cut and then being totally consumed on an altar will teach us the seriousness and costliness of sin.

When we ignore the provision of God and make up our own way of doing things, we're being just as foolish as Jephthah was. Death may not result from our foolishness--but it's not out of the question. There's a reason why the Book of Proverbs over and over again condemns a fool. A fool behaves in ways that are not consistent with reality, and sooner or later reality (occasionally in the shape of the law of gravity or a hungry bear) will fall on the fool's pointy head.

Perhaps the death we're talking about is the death of a relationship, because I ignore God's commands to speak lovingly and forgive my friend, with the excuse "I'm just a blunt person." Maybe it's the death of a freedom, because I ignore God's commands to pray for those in authority, excusing it because "We've tried that and nobody comes to those meetings." (Who said there had to be meetings?) And just maybe I ignore God's commands to bring my children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, because it's easier to let them sass me, have their own way, and throw fits about having to go to church--and the death is really the premature death of a disobedient child that is the flip side of the promise in the fifth commandment.

The encouraging thing? God is the Lord of Life, not death, and He honors repentence. Just because we may have engaged in foolish Jephthah-type behavior before doesn't mean we have to keep doing it. We can confess it to the Lord, Who says He will forgive us, and we can stop doing those crazy, foolish things, and start doing the simple things He asks of us.

Granted, having your pastor lay his hands on you and ask God to heal you isn't as impressive as putting up a fifty-foot statue of the Virgin Mary, but it has the advantage of actually being obedient.

Now if Icould just stop fussing at the kids long enough for this to sink in...

Cheers,

Breanna

The Vocation of Motherhood

Tackle every task as a direct response to God, just as if He were asking you "Will you go do your laundry now?" Just say, "Yes, I will." And smile at Him. Then you'll be moving ever closer to the heart of your Mother's Rule.

--Holly Pierlot, A Mother's Rule of Life

Oof.

Sort of puts things in perspective, don't it?

This quote struck me last night, and a blog I've been looking at lately, Conversion Diary, had another quote today:

Duty before holiness.

This sounds like an oxymoron at first, but it might be more clear if we said Duty before "holiness". In other words, God has clearly called you to something, and that something usually has its boring days or its days when everybody is whining and pooping at once and the hamburger isn't defrosted. (Clearly, I'm called to motherhood.) It can be tempting to neglect the duty God has placed before us--like washing dishes or doing the laundry--for something "holier" like spiritual reading, church work, or...ahem, writing blog posts.

I think this is because, quite simply, we like to define holiness. Doing what God has asked you to do is always more holy and important than doing something that fits our own definition of holiness. If we get to define holiness, we'll always achieve it; and Isaiah says that all our goodness is like filthy rags. If we do something "holy" instead of the actual task God has placed before us, no matter how routine or small, then we are not being holy, we are being disobedient.

Sort of puts a whole new spin on doing laundry and dishes, and helps me understand how everything can be done for the glory of God. Not that I argue with that Scripture, because after all it is Scripture, but sometimes it's hard to see how, practically, I can wash up the counter for the glory of God. If, in actual fact, He has asked me to wash up the counter, than washing up the counter as if He was watching me is doing it to the glory of God. And, incidentally, He is watching me.

I think this might also be something like the "practice of the presence of God" that Brother Andrew talks about.

Anyhow, worth thinking about today as you deal with your own versions of laundry, dishes, and poopy diapers.

Cheers,

Breanna

Perceptions

When I woke up and saw the alarm clock flashing 12:00, 12:00, 12:00, right away I knew what had happened--time had frozen for everyone but me.

--Johnny Bravo

I was thinking the other day about the turn of the millenium and a piece done by some news agency (or all of them) about "greatest events of the millenium". Of the "greatest" events of 1000 years, better than half of them supposedly happened in the 20th century (they threw the sixteenth century the sop of the printing press and modern drama), and better than half of those happened from 1980-1999. Now, even at the tender age of 16, it did seem to me like this was an obvious failure of perception. The twentieth century might be a very interesting century indeed, but it's hard to believe that it had more important events in it than the last nine combined. And having a distressing habit of reading old books, it did seem to me that people in 1930 might have quarreled with the idea that nothing much really happened (besides a couple world wars) in the 20th century until around 1988 or so.

It's easy to make fun of Johnny and the news gang, but the reality is that we all make mistakes in our perception. It's easy enough to see them when other people make them, but not so easy when we ourselves are walking around, amazed at how time has frozen for everyone but us. Two mistakes that Christians make as a group have been before me lately.

The first one is what I'll call the We Must Protect the Republic mistake. Any of you who read this blog with any kind of regularity will know that I don't advocate that Christians stay out of public life, but politics is sort of like eating: good and lots of fun when you do it right, can take over your life if you do it wrong.

Christians in America have a tendency to think that it's our first duty to legislate right and wrong in the country. I won't repeat the old saw "you can't legislate morality" because, obviously, you can--we wouldn't have laws against murder if we didn't think you could--but we go about it backward. We get all upset about something like gay marriage or whether or not the courts are deeming it constitutional this week to have the Decalogue in public buildings. We mobilize support and write our congresspeople and make speeches on television.

What ends up happening is that we expend a great deal of energy that is, therefore, NOT spent on preaching the Gospel. (No, "Gay marriage is an oxymoron" is not the content of the Gospel.) This is surely a failure of our perception-- in 1000 years, it won't matter one whit whether or not Americans had some legal form by which homosexuals could leave their property to each other. It will matter, however, how many people became Christians. You see, those people will still exist, either in heaven or hell.

(Sometime I will write a post and deal with gay marriage in more detail; for now suffice it to look at the oxymoron point above.)

So, politics can be a fun hobby and even something we do for a living, but running the most successful political campagin there ever was is less important than raising up one godly child. If we dwell on eternal things, our perspective will reflect this.

The other failure of perception isn't unique to American Christians or even to modern Christians. I mean the easy way we forget that we have another, eternal life coming and that this life is just Freshman Orientation for that one, as it were.

We get all tangled up in how we're going to pay our mortgage, or whether we'll be able to send the kids to college, or if we're "fufilled as a person", or if we have a "normal" marriage, or if the country is going to the dogs, or fill-in-the-blank. Not that these things should be ignored, but if we have an accurate perception, we'll be able to put them where they belong: primarily, they are just opportunities to learn to obey and trust the Person we'll spend the very real rest of our eternal life with.

This is why the Lord told us to watch birds and lilies as a specific reminder that we're not to worry about material provision or the future.

Me, whenever I see a lily from now on, I'm going to think: "12:00, 12:00, 12:00."

Cheers,

Breanna

The Goose-girl

I was thinking about why it is, exactly, that I don't think humans can wreck the earth. It isn't solely that the people who think we can tend to try to manipulate science, or that they claim to put humans in a class with all the other animals but don't want to allow humans to do what they do (in other words, beavers build dams, men build houses, if they are each animals, how can you say the dam is okay but not the house?). It isn't even the Jurassic Park catchphrase "Life finds a way."

I think the reason that I'm skeptical about man's apocalyptic abilities is how well everything works. From the water cycle to the human pancreas, nature really works remarkably well. Of course, it sometimes gets screwed up--that's our fault--but things are designed to work perfectly, absent sin and its whole rotten inheritance.

Which is what you'd expect from a perfect Designer, after all. God looked at His creation and said it was good. And so mighty was this goodness that even after the people God had put in charge of nature decided to wreck themselves, nature followed her human masters but kept hints of her former character, like the princess who is forced to be a goose girl temporarily.

I don't think man has the power, or for that matter the time, to tilt things so far that the world becomes uninhabitable.

We can be foolish, of course, and waste and wreck and damage her, or obsess over and worship and fear her, but the world is older than we are. She has seen us swing back and forth between treating her like a goddess and like a whore--we're in a goddess phase at the moment--when in actuality she's neither. We've been given dominion over her in the same way that a good man has dominion over a dog or indeed, that Christ has dominion over us: not to exploit us, but as C.S. Lewis puts it, to make us "more ourselves than ever".

In other words our proper occupation is to garden the world, which means neither leaving huge slag heaps nor fencing off large portions of the outdoors lest any human footstep soil the virgin forest. Being sinners we want to do one or the other. If we're redeemed, we know we must repent of both and set about gardening.

So Nature, in her goose-girl rags at the moment, waits like the rest of us for Christ to come and make all things new. I think she'll last until then. God has seen to it that she will.

Cheers,

Breanna

Tax Day and the Limits of Civil Disobedience; In Which, I Disagree With Francis Schaeffer

Today is Tax Day, and all across the country a strange phenomenon is taking place: conservatives are having protest rallies.

The protest march is typically regarded as something that liberals (even socialists) do, with the technique honed during the 1960s of showing up in ragged army fatigues, flowers, and face paint. Preferably, you had a good supply of herbal substances, as well. This time, the media is watching, bemused, as people take to the streets with signs that say things like "No More Taxes!" and "Bailouts Are for Bozos!", wearing business suits and looking pretty normal. Nobody appears to be stoned, but they are talking about Tea a lot. As in, Tea Party, as in, Boston Tea Party. They are clear this isn't an anti-Obama protest, necessarily, it's an anti-establishment protest. I think it's all kind of funny that the people who protested the establishment in the 60s and 70s are now the establishment getting protested against. Civil Disobedience: Not Just For Hippies Anymore!

All of this is amusing to watch, but does it have any implications for Christians? Francis Schaeffer thought it did; he thought that after Christians had exhausted their options to change their government through legal channels or to flee, they had the option (even the duty) to engage in civil disobedience to a wicked government. For him, one example of this might have been refusing to pay taxes if the government subsidized abortions. Of course, we are in this very position now; the government does in fact use tax money to subsidize abortions and any number of other godless things.

So am I going to send out a rallying cry to you all to stop paying your taxes? Am I going to suggest you hold your own Tea Party and tell Washington where to get off?

Why, no, I'm going to tell you to pay your taxes, fear God, and honor the king. I'm telling you this because this is what Paul told Christians in the New Testament, back when the government they were dealing with was ancient Rome. If Christians weren't justified in refusing to pay taxes to Rome, which used tax money to fund genocides, the hunting and public execution of Christians, and the building of pagan temples, then we are not justified in refusing to pay taxes to our government. If they were supposed to honor not only Ceaser but their corrupt local officials, we can't not honor the king.

Now down to brass tacks: does honoring the king mean agreeing with everything he does, or pretending he is wise when he's a fool? No, of course not; but it does mean that you can't make fun of his ears or his accent in place of critiquing his policy. Does the fact that we have to pay our taxes mean that we should never engage in other forms of civil disobedience? No, of course not; but the forms we may engage in are pretty clearly deliniated.

We are allowed to 1) Refuse to obey laws that require us to break God's laws. For example, laws requiring us to worship idols (like in the book of Daniel), or laws requiring us to cease from preaching the Gospel (like in the book of Acts), or laws requiring us to break any of the other Commandments. 2) Get persecuted and martyred for refusing to obey wicked laws. 3) Preach the Gospel.

That's about it.

I see nothing in Scripture that says protest marches and writing to your congressman are wrong, but the idea that they are the primary ways to change society is founded in democratic thinking, not theology. The way Christianity brought down Rome, after all, was not by holding rallies and convincing the government to accept it. The Roman government only accepted Christianity after it became apparent that it was an unstoppable force, moving from individual to individual, and that people would rather die than give it up.

Perhaps, instead of getting hung up on the democratic process and whether or not America is or ever was "a Christian nation", we should just be working on whether or not our neighbors are Christians. The best form of civil disobedience might be a sort of divine fifth column work--if the people are mostly Christians, what else can the government do but bow?

So in honor of Tax Day, why not pay your taxes, fear God, honor the king, and make it a point to talk to someone (over a cup of tea) about the Lord today?

Cheers,

Breanna

Seder

We've done a Seder every year since we've been married. It's a really fun tradition, and it gets more meaningful each time we do it.

We change things up a bit, of course, figuring we're under the New Covenant and that we really wouldn't be doing it right even if we tried to do it perfectly right (for one thing, this pregnant lady isn't going to clean her entire house, including the bottoms of all the shoes, looking for little crumbs that might have leaven in them). For another thing, we have some food that's probably not strictly traditional and omit others that are (you can't make me eat gefelte fish). We do, however, have the real Seder plate, and we do go through the ritual where we remember that God saved us out of Egypt.

Tied in with all the Passover traditions in our Haggadah are a lot of references to redemption, freedom, victory, and blood. This is an Orthodox Haggadah we're talking about; they don't apparently know that they've anticipated Easter or foreshadowed the ultimate Passover Lamb beautifully. But as Christians, it's amazing to see the continuity between the Old and New Testaments, and to see the beauty of the Lord setting up Communion during the last Passover meal He ate with His disciples.

In keeping with that, we sometimes end our Seder with my husband serving everyone Communion, using the wine and the matzoh. The symbolism is powerful, and it becomes immediately apparent what He was claiming to be--the Lamb to end death, the King of redemption, the Bringer of freedom. There's a moment during Seder when you invite anyone who is hungry or desolate to come and eat with you, symbolically inviting the whole world to share the feast. When Christ said He wouldn't drink the cup again until He drank it with us in the new kingdom, He suspended the Passover meal until all those who would, could come and share His meal, so to speak.

God doesn't do anything accidentally. If I don't remember anything else from this Passover, I'm going to try to remember that.

Have a blessed Easter tomorrow,

Breanna

Your Serious Post of the Week

So PBO has been making odd decisions for the past little while. I've been holding my tongue (or keyboard) about the little eccentricities like presenting the Russians with a Staples Easy Button and announcing our relationship with them has been "reset" or the bizarreness of a sitting president getting into a smackdown with a talk radio host (and then wussing out when said radio host offers to actually debate him). No, I've been restraining myself, even when PBO has declared that Nuclear Iran is not really a problem and is using the strategy on North Korea that Parenting magazine advocates for tantrums: ignore them, they only do it for attention.

But on Monday PBO announced--snottily, I might add, stating that his policy would be "based on facts, not ideology"--that he was reversing the current policy on embryonic stem cell research. In other words, federal dollars will go to fund research that involves killing small, defenseless humans in order that big, wealthy humans have a chance at maybe someday sort of making some illness better possibly.

See, here's the problem with making policy that is not based on ideology: you can't do it. There IS an ideology here, and it's not pretty. The ideology behind embryonic stem cell research says that it's all right for some people to take lives because they are more important than the people they kill. This is the same logic behind other, more frank abortions--somehow, the perceived good of a big person is treated as more important than the very life of a little, defenseless person.

"Well," proponents say. "They're only cells. It's not as though we're murdering people. And look at all the suffering we will alleviate."

First of all, once an embryo is fertilized, you can't make a logical or scientific argument for when it "becomes" a human. The process is chronological and seamless. A fertilized embryo has its own, unique DNA. (Yes, this is also why I'm against any in-vitro fertilization that destroys embryos. Sue me.)

Second, all the stem cell research that has been going on unabated in other countries has produced not one cure. Stem cell research in this country, which has gone on under private funding, is barely "promising"-- it has lately enabled one rat with paralysis to shuffle.

Thirdly, there are stem cells that are not from embryos. You have them in your fat tissue, among other things. Why not study those? Why are we so comfortable with abortion in all its ugly facets that we don't even bother to pursue alternatives?

The idea that there is a special class of people who are not quite human isn't new thinking, and it should be a red flag. When were other times in history when you can remember a group of respectable, educated people making arguments like "Well, obviously it would be wrong to do that to people, but they aren't really people like us" or "We have to do this, for the good of society" or even "The financial burden of stopping this would be too great"?

Slavery in the U.S. and the Final Solution are what come to my mind, and I don't want to go on the record as one of the respectable people who excused a great social evil simply because it was expedient.

Christians stood up and cried out against slavery. Christians preached (and died for it) against the Final Solution. There has to be something more productive we can do about the great evil of our time besides just standing outside clinics with signs. Perhaps Christians could sign advance directives specifically refusing any treatment derived from embryonic stem cells. Certainly we must redouble our efforts at providing meaningful "choice" for women besides abortion, by giving them help, support, and making adoption less of a hassle for all involved. Most certainly, we must pray for the president, and the nation.

Really, when compared to government sanction of murdering some of the populace for the benefit of others, Russia, Iran, and North Korea can't damage us any more than we've damaged ourselves.

Please pray,

Breanna

So Why Don't I?

And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life, he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.

-- 1 John 5:11-12

No, the verse doesn't have anything really to do with the post today, I just need to memorize it for Sunday School so I've put it everywhere I look at often (including the blog). :)

But I HAVE been thinking about the Providence of God lately; last night Miss Boo had another awesome night and woke up ONCE. As in, one time. All night long. In her own Big Girl Bed. I was so impressed. She even saved the Husband from being late for work by waking up for the morning at 5am, since he'd forgotten to set his alarm.

So, beyond "blankets are awesome", what have I learned? I've learned: why do I ever get into anything, even housework or baby care, without praying? Things go soooo much better when I remember to ask God to handle them. I mean, I have the omnipotent Ruler of the Universe available to me to talk to-- why do I try to do things by myself?

It's not overt rebellion, but it is subtle pride. I think to myself (subconsciously) something along the lines of, "it's just housework, I got this". When, of course, every breath is a gift and we never "get" anything by ourselves. One of my favorite psalms tells us to cast our cares on the Lord, but the reason it's my favorite is it says in the margin that another way to translate "cast" is "roll". As in, anything you have that's too heavy to lift, just push it in His direction and let Him take care of the thing that's too big for you.

It's humbling to admit that sometimes my daily work is too heavy to lift; but then it's comforting to reflect that I was never meant to wean my baby, or get through the laundry, or any of the things that seem so heavy and overwhelming, in my own strength. Very gently, by giving me victories, the Lord is teaching me to pray about the everyday, to recognize His providence in laundry, dishes, dusting, and diapers. If He cares when sparrows fall and sees to it that they have enough to eat, I guess I don' t need to feel silly asking Him to help me get a load of diapers washed (again).

Although I'm sure I will be buzzing around later today thinking I've got everything in hand, I'm going to try to remember that not only does doing my work in my own strength not work, but it's much more unpleasant than rolling my cares to the Lord and leaving them with Him.

Cheers,

Breanna

Advertising

First of all, I know I am overdue for a belly picture. At a week shy of 7 months, my belly is present in a room before I am, and I know you all want to see my impression of a watermellon (don't you?) so I will get a picture up tomorrow. Would have been today, but the picture the Husband took of me last night in my nightie made me shriek and delete it instantly. (I'm not REALLY nine feet wide.)

And now, onto the blog post. I've been thinking about writing this post for a while, but was at a loss how to do it without sounding... snotty. So I thought I would begin with an illustration, so at least I won't feel like I'm being snotty alone. The incident I shall describe is a conglomeration of things that have actually happened to me, albeit fictionalized slightly to protect the well-intentioned.

Imagine, if you will, that you are in a group of people, mostly Christians, who are touring a natural history museum of some sort. There is a young tour guide employee of the museum who is reading off prepared cards, and it is clearly this guide's third day because he forgets where the bathrooms are and runs into the vending machine while trying to guide you to the Siberian tiger exhibit. In the course of your tour, you eventually end up in a presentation room where the guide must continue reading off his cards during a slide presentation. The cards are sprinkled with phrases like "adaptations" and "hundreds of millions of years ago" and "Darwin discovered". Halfway through the presentation, the guide asks if there are any questions.

A Member of your Group (who I shall describe in a moment) raises his or her hand and says something along the lines of: "Well, we think God created the world. We don't think it took hundreds of millions of years."

In the awkward silence following, while the guide turns magenta, do you think:

1) "I'm so glad he/she said something, the hundreds of millions of years was really bugging me."
2) "What a wonderful witness for Christianity."
3) *Cringe* "That poor tour guide kid."

I admit I thought #3. Especially since the kid had to go back to reading his cards for the rest of the presentation, and every time they said "hundreds of millions of years" he stuttered and turned beet red again, while a Member of the Group sat with folded arms, the words "tsk tsk" written all over his/her face. If you suggest later it might not have been appropriate, they will say "Are you ashamed of the Gospel?"

No, I'm ashamed of you.

These are the folks who speak up in your university class with the professor who is a notorious atheist, because...well, he says things that might be construed as hostile to religion! (Gasp!) Not that they say anything sensical, they just contradict the professor, who proceeds to politely destroy everything they said. These are the folks who have convictions about wearing t-shirts with logos or animated characters on them, because The Simpsons contains some "worldly themes." These are the folks who send you earnest email forwards about abortion and what happens during a late-term abortion and asking you to sign an email petition. (Because everyone knows email petitions work wonders on Capitol Hill.) You can't SAY anything to them, because they're so sincere, but they're terrible advertising for Christianity.

I don't say this just because they're dorks, although they are; they generally have convictions about which hairstyles are worldly or not and sometimes feel that one shouldn't watch sports because of the advertising, which means they're really difficult to engage in a conversation that isn't about the Left Behind series. Mainly they're terrible advertising because they give Christians a name for being harmless, not very coherent, eccentrics.

Now in one sense we're supposed to be severely weird to the world around us-- Christ warned that we'd be persecuted and frequently murdered for the faith-- but we're supposed to be weird by doing things like loving our enemies, staying faithful to our spouses, and giving our money away. Our belief system is supposed to be so disturbing the the world precisely because it is logical, coherent, and reasonable to accept. I'd like to suggest that it's not really loving unbelievers when we allow them to hold the notion that Christianity is a funny thing that eccentrics get passionate about, like glider-building or composting sewage.

So since no one can say it to their face, I'm going to talk to the Member of the Group via cyberspace and also to myself, when I'm guilty of this: just stop for a minute before you say anything, and check and see if the Holy Spirit is really telling you to talk. If you're talking mainly because you feel insulted or offended about something, that's probably not a good enough reason. If you don't have a cogent argument in mind but just "feel that you should say something" that's probably not good enough either. If you can't express love to the people you're talking to ("well I just think you're wrong"), then don't say anything. Stop and think a minute. God can convict them without you. Don't get extrabibilical convictions mixed up in things that the Bible is clear on. If you are going to say something about Creation, or abortion, don't mix in the general notion that society is going to pot these days. Don't frame your debate on emotion. Comb your hair. Don't act so dang afraid of the unsaved.

All of which doesn't mean that you get to mumble something noncommital if they ask you what your opinion is. But let's face it: how often do they have to ask?

Now that was harsh, I know. And I'm sure I fall into Dorkification more than I know, being as I don't watch much TV, find a lot of clothing trends repellent, and love to talk too much. But I always found it encouraging when I was at university and my fellow students would engage me after lectures to ask me questions, because they knew I was "religious" but also "smart". And realizing that what most of them knew about the Bible and Christianity could be fit into an eyedropper, one had to be very basic, understanding, and non-reactionary in conversation.

Dorks of the world, take heart. I know that your intentions are in the right place, that you really want to serve the Lord. You may just have to consider whether serving the Lord means watching a ball game or two with Larry from work.

Phew, enough serious posting already. We'll have cute posts the rest of the week.

Until later,

Breanna