Jupiter

On Wednesday night we discovered that Michael's pet gecko, Jupiter, had passed away.  We have buried dogs and flushed fish, but this death was significant.  As Michael's first pet of his own, he was understandably very upset to lose him.  And, of course, nothing brings out the tough life questions like the death of a pet.  As I struggled to explain many things I finally landed on this....that we don't know how long we'll have with the people or dogs or lizards or anything else in our lives.  None of us can know how or when the end will come for anyone.  So the best we can do is to take care of each other, the best we can, while we have the chance.

It isn't a complicated truth, to love one another.  We like to muddle it up pretty good, though.  Taking a position on this, having an opinion on that.  Time, energy, finances.  And believe me, I'm at the top of the excuse-making pyramid.  But several times in the last week or two I've heard someone talk about when you've been nudged to do something--like reach out with a phone call, deliver flowers, provide a meal--and put it off until you've talked yourself out of it.  I think perhaps God is whispering to me about this.  Take care of each other, He says. 

To love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your soul and with all your strength...and your neighbor as yourself.  There is no commandment greater than these.   

In the love and example of Christ, take care of each other indeed.  Those times we feel nudged to reach out to someone, but don't....that's all on us, putting the other commandments first.  Before and above all else, love God, love one another.  Only this, very simply, in whatever capacity you can manage.    

Michael did a great job taking care of Jupiter.  I believe he's in heaven now, the best of him alive and well with God.  And until we can see him again, may we do the best in love that we can, in His image here on earth. 

XOXO....Kelly

Last week.

Good riddance to last week!  It started with a tornado warning, kids up at 6:15 sitting in a closet with flashlights.  It ended with me shutting Parker's fingers in a door.  Somewhere in the middle there was storming, flooding, school canceled, the last day of Pre-K for Zachary and Kevin's appendectomy.  It's a new week now and a new month, so we shall have no more of that.  I have declared it.

Here's the thing about a week like last week.  No one thing is insurmountable, but all together it's just a big hot mess.  You've barely had time to process the first event before the next one is upon you.  You are pushed to the edge emotionally and physically.  It is at moments like these that the only recourse is to throw your arms in the air and declare, I give!

"When I said, 'My foot is slipping,' your love, oh Lord, supported me.  When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought me joy."  Psalm 94:18-19

These are the days the Lord has made for me, days to rejoice and be glad in.  Though my circumstances are not always ideal, not a moment goes by where I am not held in the perfect strength of Jesus Christ and His love for me.  My feet may be slipping, but my spirit is steady, resting in an exact me-shaped niche in His hands.  I am not forsaken.  I am loved.  The Lord does not roll his eyes at my anxiety and worry, but expects it, soothes it, turns it into peace.  And so, I give. 

..........Still--seriously, though--I've had enough.  Here's to June.  :)

Blake. 

Taking out the trash, moving on. 

Now who's ready to party? :)

XOXO.....Kelly

Don't limit God.

"How much Greater is the God we have than the one we think we have."  --Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart

Do you limit God? 

I never thought much about it until a Bible study lesson a few years ago with a group of high school students.  We were talking about God as our Abba Father, where we seek an intimate relationship with Him instead of just regarding Him as one in a position of authority over us.  Those students in the room that had good relationships with their parents had no trouble with this view of God.  But those that had experienced a degree of familial strain could not make the connection between the God of authority and the God of love.  I had never considered how much impact the role of a father figure might have on someone's relationship with God, the Ultimate Father Figure.  I wondered, what else do we do to limit who God is, either in our own perspectives or for others because of our actions?     

I suppose it's hard for us as the very human beings that we are.  We approach the Gospel with a black and white outline of who God is and what He does and use our life experiences to fill it in with color, add detail subject to our own perspective.  But surely God is not confined to the outline on the page. 

Our church's confirmation class a few years back attended mass at a nearby Catholic church.  During a meeting with the priest ahead of time, one student asked about who would go to heaven and who would go to hell.  Father Lockey's reply.....To judge a person in any capacity is to presume that we can understand the depth of God's mercy and we simply can not. 

Yes, I think God's outline is far, far beyond the page indeed.

It's easy to try to limit God.  We do it without even thinking we're doing it.  But, oh how much greater, deeper and wider is His love for us.  We can get there.  We can serve instead of judge, worship instead of complain.  We can forget the lines all together and instead be open to what He reveals to us, when we're not so busy trying to figure out what it's going to look like. 

"I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your innermost being, so that Christ may dwell in your heart through faith.  And I pray that you, being rooted in faith and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure with the fullness of God."  Ephesians 3:16-19

May God be limitless to you today, friends.  Limitless.

XOXO....Kelly


 

"There isn't a thing you don't have to teach them."

"There isn't anything you don't have to teach them," says my friend, Cathy, of raising boys.  And this is good advice.  Like, why do I have to tell them they can't pee in the trash can?  Or make a zip line out of bungee chords in the back yard.  Or lick things.  When you become a mother you are well aware of all the big things ahead of you--potty training, reading, driving, tying shoes.  It's all the little things that you don't see coming. 

My mom taught me how to sing.  Not the do's and the re's and the mi's or how to stand up and breathe from your diaphragm.  But how to pick a song you love and work on it and sing it for someone.  How to make the words sound like real words and the notes sound like your own.  I got to sing alongside her for many years in our church choir, not to mention my aunt and my sisters, until she and Dad moved to Pittsburgh four years ago.  Singing a duet with my mom is still one of my greatest joys, her the alto, me the soprano.  It's as if God knew exactly what He was doing when He placed me in her womb.  :)

When Kevin and I joined a new church a couple of years ago, I was hesitant to join the choir.  Despite all that music has meant to me for so long, I couldn't imagine singing without my mom next to me.  It had always been such a family thing.  But it would have been a disservice to all that has taught me not to try, so I showed up one Wednesday night to give it a shot.  In a room full of strangers, I was placed next to a lady that reminds me so much of my aunt it's spooky sometimes (a little nod from God that I am not alone, I like to think) and I began to sing.  And before long, I realized that all my mother had taught me about singing during all those duets wasn't so much about the two of us, her and me, but the One above.

"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb...your eyes saw my unformed body.  All the days were written in your book before one of them came to be."  Psalm 139:13, 16

This is what God does through a mother.  He sees the plans laid out for us and carefully places in just the right hands.  The hands that know the lessons we need to learn.  Did my mom know all that she was teaching me as she was doing it?  I don't know.  But God did.         

This Mother's Day I get to sing a little song with Michael in church.  I will sing and he'll play the piano along with me.  I hope he has a good time doing it.  I hope he's not too nervous and has a great experience.  I hope he likes it so much he'll want to do it again.  And I hope, twenty years later, he'll look up and have learned something from it, not just because we did it together, but because it brought him closer to the One above. 

Happy Mother's Day.
XOXO....Kelly

"Mom, what happened to your face?"

That's what Michael said when he happened upon this picture of me the other day. 

Well, 40 and a half weeks of pregnancy, 16 hours of labor and C-section.  The miracle of childbirth.  That's what happened to my face.  I don't begrudge him the question at all actually.  If there was any maternal glow about me following the birth of my first child it came much later, after I'd had a sandwich and something to drink.  I can admit that.

Here's what I looked like shortly after Blake was born (#2), 13 months later.

 

 

My face may have fared a little better, but I have no idea what day it is and by the time they took this photo I'd already called both boys in this picture the names of both dogs in this picture.  We were tired.

 

Here's post-Zachary (#3).  I had my stuff together by this one.

 

Look at that....I even blow-dried my hair.  Let's be honest.  By this point I'd caught on to the whole two nurses thing and the fact that the baby can sleep all night in the nursery there if you so choose.  It's like a vacation!

And Parker (#4).

We realized how much much time we had before this one would start to talk back.  Someone get me a margarita!

Oh, how a little time and perspective can just change your whole world, can't it?  I'm not sure that I'm any more equipped as a mother than I was in that first photo, but I sure have learned a lot since then. 

I've learned that God loves me.  I mean really loves me.  He loved me just as much before I had kids, but I didn't understand in the way that I do now, with four little pieces of my heart walking around outside me.

I've learned that God has a purpose for me.  I'm not always perfect and I don't always hit the mark, but that's what grace is for.  I've learned to lean on grace.

I've learned that my kids don't complete me and I don't complete my kids.  They can be cute and wonderful and magical and sweet.  But I can't be their everything and they can't be mine.  There's far too much in the world for all of us, though what we have in each other is certainly a nice bonus.

I've learned compassion, though I've still got a ways to go with patience.  I've learned to pray instead of criticize, praise instead of moan, coach instead of push, ask instead of demand.

I've learned to be joyful always, pray continually and give thanks in all circumstances. 

I've learned that life changes you, kids change you, marriage changes you, but God is surprised by none of this.  He is ready when I am not, giving though I am not deserving.

So, I guess that's what happened to my face, Michael.  And you're totally worth it.  :)

XOXO...Kelly  

  

 

 

 

 

 



Change.

A question came up in my book club a couple of weeks ago....do you think it's really possible for people to change?  I mean really change, like from the core.  Or are we just who we were meant to be and will always be?  I once dated a guy who was very philosophic.  And by very philosophic I mean he studied intently the lyrics of Radiohead and drank a lot of Starbucks.  He once said he didn't think people ever really changed, they just continued to undo layers of themselves, like onion skin, until they got to the core of who they were supposed to be.  (Can you hear my eyes rolling???)

As a Christian, I think the idea deserves a little thought.  I know people who don't change or won't change.  The people we've forgiven but seem to keep right on wronging us.  And that's aggravating and difficult and unfair and maybe Jesus didn't know about those people when he mentioned forgiving 77 times???  But He did know about them, of course, which reminds us that forgiveness has nothing to do with deservedness or we'd all be toast. 

And what about myself?  I'm certainly not the same gal I was back with Mr. Radiohead.  So is that just age or maturity or circumstances and not real change? 

What I think I've come to is this.  Change is just a word.  Call it aging, maturing, circumstance, unlayering.  Whatever.  But to abandon the idea that our lives and circumstances, our emotions, our spirit aren't capable of becoming more than they are or have ever been, is to deny ourselves and others hope, to deny God's love for us.

To reject the concept of change for anyone is to doubt the power of God in everyone. 

"Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold....the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect God's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit."  2 Corinthians 3:12,17-18

Be bold in your hope, friends, for yourself and for those around you.  God's spirit is at work everywhere, in ways we see and ways we do not.  You are loved, you are held, you are His.  Be changed in Christ today.

XOXO....Kelly

 
 

Happy Easter.

"It was the Saturday before Easter, and Mom and I were headed to Lowes to buy flowers...." 

When I want to hear my family groan I simply start with that sentence.  It's the tale of how the precious and wonderful Oscar Mayer Long came into our lives, what I jokingly refer to as the true miracle of Easter.  Wasn't he a doll!!!!!????

I love Holy Week.  It is undeniably my favorite week of the whole year.  I don't love it because it marks the time in my life when I would, at long last, get a dachshund puppy of my own.  I love it because no matter what is going on in my life--loss or gain, happiness or sadness--I am reminded of my own worth. 

From Christ's triumphant entry into Jerusalem, to His betrayal in the garden.

From the injustice of His trial, to the cruel magnitude of His suffering.

From His death on the cross, to the miracle of His resurrection. 

He did it for me.  And for you.  And for the person next to you!  He did it for all of us.  Do you know the worth of that?  Can you feel the love of God, designed to reach everyone of us no matter where we are, where we've been or what we are to become? 

Dang.

My pride is brought low, my humility raised up, so that in everything His glory would shine through me.  Christ came to bring healing to a hurting world, to redeem us by His mercy in ways we do not always understand, with a love we can not fathom.  He died to save us and in God's power, was raised again. 

"For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God.  I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ who lives within me.  The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who love me and gave himself for me.  I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!"  Galatians 2:19-21

Christ is Risen, friends. 

Because I am worth it.  And so are you.

Happy Easter. 

XOXO.....Kelly