Drawing Circles

What I am about to write is a story written in the middle. There is no ‘happily ever after’ - yet. We know the beginning and the 'end', but are stuck right in the middle where all the suspense lies. Recently, our pastor recommended a book for our congregation to read called, ‘The Circle Maker’ by Mark Batterson. My husband and I decided to read and study it together. This is the synopsis of the book:

'Drawing prayer circles around our dreams isn't just a mechanism whereby we accomplish great things for God. It's a mechanism whereby God accomplishes great things in us.' Do you ever sense that there's far more to prayer, and to God's vision for your life, than what you're experiencing? It's time you learned from the legend of Honi the Circle Maker---a man bold enough to draw a circle in the sand and not budge from inside it until God answered his prayers for his people. What impossibly big dream is God calling you to draw a prayer circle around? Sharing inspiring stories from his own experiences as a circle maker, Mark Batterson will help you uncover your heart's deepest desires and God-given dreams and unleash them through the kind of audacious prayer that God delights to answer.

The concept in this book rang true to us for many reasons, but there is one in particular that is prominent in our minds. We have one child and have been trying for over a year to have another pregnancy. Medical professionals would call me ‘infertile’ after a year with no success, but there is something we are holding on to. We feel very strongly that God has promised us twins.

I said we knew the beginning, so let me tell you about it. I have wanted twins since I was very young. My first memories of kindergarten involve being disciplined for refusing to share a set of identical dolls in our classroom. I tried to explain to the teacher that they were my twins and therefore could not be separated, but she didn’t buy it and I was forced to share my twins. I held a fascination for twins throughout my childhood, asking for a set of twin Cabbage Patch Dolls when they became available and receiving a set as a Christmas present one year. As I told people that I desired twins, they would ask why and I began to come up with reasons why although the reasons didn’t feel right.

In my late 20s, still single, I enjoyed watching TLC’s ‘Baby Stories’ and while watching it one day, I saw a woman deliver twins. I teared up, and at that time, I received the first assurance from God that I would have twins. It was then that I realized that my desire for twins was not from me, but from God. Just last November, while at a womens’ retreat at my church, I received a second assurance of twins. At that time, we had been trying for a second pregnancy for 8 months with no success. I discussed it with my husband, realizing that he didn’t understand the depth of my desire to have twins. Although he didn’t hear the promises himself, he now believes it too.

The struggle with not getting pregnant has not been an easy road, even with this promise in my pocket. I have felt a bit like I have a split personality - one that firrnly believes the promise and one that keeps eyes fixed on the physical reality. You see, it was very easy to get pregnant with our son. It took 2 months and we were expecting our first child. I expected it to happen the same the second time, but it hasn’t. Shortly before we started the process, my body began to change its usual pattern and became completely unpredictable, making it very difficult to plan for pregnancy to occur. I expected a positive pregnancy test ever month, falling into a depression every time evidence showed the opposite. There has been a lot of doubt, worry, impatience and sadness, while at the same time, I was proclaiming my belief that we would have twins. Our pastor introduced the ’Circle Maker’ with a 4 week series on the book in January. It piqued our interest and so we decided to read the book for ourselves.

Even though I felt strongly about God’s promise to us, I was praying for twins. In the book, the author encourages those who have a promise from God to thank Him for it instead of praying for it just as if we already have it. So we began to do that and because of that have begun to prepare for it. In another chapter, he encourages people to draw circles around their prayers by risking their reputation and telling people about it before the promise is received. I am certainly risking my reputation by talking about this before I have even conceived. I had planned to tell the whole story after I had conceived them to more than just friends, church and close family. Those who know me well know that I want and even expect twins. I have not kept that a secret. Most of all, I am putting God’s reputation on the line and He will always follow through. The final thread to this was today, I was writing a letter to my sister in law expressing my struggle with ‘infertility,’ but then followed up with telling her that I believed God’s promise for us. The utter absurdity of that hit me like a ton of bricks. How can I believe and worry/doubt/despair at the same time? I love God. I believe God. I know He will follow through on His promise, so why am I having such trouble with not being pregnant yet? Yes, impatience is a big part of it, but I trust His timing too. I have been letting my joy in the circumstance be stolen away. I have let my faith be rocked by physical appearances. As I wrote that letter today, I felt God telling me to ‘Tell more people.’ It is a move of faith for me. A risk of my reputation staked on a promise the only One who keeps promises has given.

Why do I want twins? Because it is the desire God has put in my heart. There is no other reason. It is the instrument He is using to make me more like Him, to give a testimony of His goodness and faithfulness and to grow the faith of others whether you are following hard after Him and running hard in the opposite direction. I also believe He has something big planned for them (as I do for my son). They will have a story to tell about their life before it even began. God had a plan for them and put the desire for their existence in their mother’s heart long before they ever appeared on this planet. We will not be doing more than the conventional method of getting pregnant. No drugs, no surgery, no adoption. This is for His glory and His alone. Anything less is meaningless.

Please feel free to pass this on, even if you don't know me.  Help me to draw the circle ever wider.  I could look like the craziest woman in history, but that's okay with me if it makes people see God for who He really is - a promise maker and a promise keeper.

Judge & Jury

A couple of weeks ago, I took my almost 3 year old son to an indoor playground at a nearby mall. My little man is all boy and loves to wrestle and tackle and has been known to bite when overwhelmed. I sat down with him before I sent him off to play and warned him that we would have to leave if he wrestled, tackled or bit anyone. He did great! He steered clear of the other kids and played his heart out. We took a break for lunch and went back to the playground for a little more playtime with his best friend before we headed for home. He was showing some signs of getting tired, so I was keeping a close eye on him and soon found him pushing another little boy rather aggressively. I rushed over, got him away from the situation and gave him a good talking to. The father of the little boy was understandably upset at my son for pushing his son, but as he walked away, he said, under his breath, “What the h--- is wrong with that kid?” Well, the mama bear in me rose up and I, uncharacteristically, asked, “Did you just say what’s wrong with him?” I then gave him a bit of a tongue lashing for judging my son on a 15 second experience.

Yes, what my son did was wrong. I knew that and was disappointed with his behavior, but I didn’t like that someone else thought they had him all figured out and labeled him as having something ‘wrong’ with him. It made me think. A lot.

First of all, for me resisting the temptation to be judgmental is a minute by minute battle. It comes naturally. That doesn’t make it right, just a harder battle to fight. It was a reminder to me that I have no right to judge another person because I don’t know anything more than what I see in the moment or at best, small snippets of that person’s life. What didn’t that dad not know about my son? Well, he really is a very sweet boy. He loves to snuggle. He tells me he loves me several times a day. He tells me he likes me several times a day. Anytime he does something fun, he wants to take a friend the next time, so they get to enjoy it too. I have never had to teach him to share. Just that day, he had been slapped and shoved by other kids, but had not touched another child himself until that moment. All that man saw was a bad moment in a great day. None of us know what another person is going through or what there struggles are.

Secondly, I got a view of how God feels when we judge others. We’re all His kids. Talk about a Papa Bear! When we make judgments on others, we are putting ourselves in God’s role and implying that we somehow know others better than He does. I, as a mom, have grace for my son’s learning curve. I know his personality and his struggles and love him in spite of anything he may do wrong. God feels the same way about His kids. When we judge others, we get a heavenly ‘Excuse me?! That’s my kid you’re talking about!’

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.” Matthew 7:1-5

  The third thing I thought about was that this man was caught off guard when he realized I had heard him. He actually left shortly after the incident. Would we conduct ourselves differently if the person we were judging could here what we were saying? Judgment begins in our thoughts, but becomes something more when we verbalize it (Prov 26:22). This is sobering for me. In this situation, my son didn’t hear this man’s judgment on him, but I did. It hurt thinking someone could think of my sweet little boy like that. He didn’t know I stepped in and defended him. We don’t realize God does that for us. When we judge someone else, God steps in and advocates for them. He reminds us of how we would feel if someone said the same of us or what it would be like it that person heard what we said. He does the same for us.

We tend to judge others based on our own standards and rules. It is self-righteousness. How well are you following them yourself? It’s something that the Lord is working on in me, daily. Just because someone does something differently than I do, doesn’t make it wrong. And if someone is doing something wrong, we are told to ‘Speak the truth in love” (Eph 4:15) to encourage and spur each other on. Instead of judging others, we would do better to show love and gain God’s view of others and ourselves.

　



　

Love

It’s almost Valentine’s Day, so it seems appropriate that I have been thinking about love lately. My husband are going through the book ‘Real Marriage’ by Mark and Grace Driscoll and that’s got me thinking about love. I see marriages falling apart around me, again thinking about love. Just what is it? There are a few descriptions we have used to describe it over the lifetimes of humans, but they all seem to fall short. Is it a feeling, an action, a choice? We think we are enlightened in changing how we look at love, thinking we have it all figured out, but really we only know a fraction of it.

First, ‘love is a feeling’. That sounds archaic. We debunked that long ago and replaced it with other, seemingly appropriate descriptions, but it still stands. We ‘fall’ in love simply because we feel something for another person. We divorce because we don’t feel love for the other person anymore. We abort because we just don’t feel love for the ‘thing’ growing inside of us. This idea still permeates our society in how our girls dress, and our many reasons for hurting and abandoning others. In telling a child that ‘Mommy doesn’t love daddy anymore’ as the reason for a divorce, we are teaching our kids that love is a feeling that comes and goes and set them up for a life of attempting to elicit feelings of love in others. It is a futile attempt, because lust, affection, and sexual arousal are all feelings, love is not.

Second, ‘love is a choice.’ Nice, but not really accurate when it comes to our human interpretation. That implies that it’s okay to choose not to love someone else. Yes, it sounds really good when you say you choose to love someone else, ‘in spite of…’, however choosing not to love someone is a lousy excuse to end a relationship. But we are not called to choose to love. 'We love because He first loved us." 1 John 4:19

Third, ‘love is an action’. Okay, but actions can be misconstrued and manipulated. And in our imperfect version of love that can turn nasty as one person acts out love while the other does not.

So again, what is love? First of all, it’s a command. In several places in the Bible (Lev 19:18, Matt 19:19, Matt 22:39, Mar 12:31, Mar 12:33, Luke 10:27, Rom 13:9, Gal 5:14 and James 2:8) we are commanded, not suggested or given a choice, to love our neighbors as ourselves. It is called the greatest commandment. He was not just telling Israelites to love other Israelites. He was saying love EVERYONE as you love yourself. We love ourselves very much, there is no denying that. Jesus reiterates it, reinforcing the fact that it wasn’t just for Jews, but for all to love all. He also goes so far to say to love our enemies. Yes, those who hurt us, those who hurt others. Hitler, Musolini, Jeffery Dahmer. How do we love others as we love ourselves? Humility. Romans 12:3 says not to think too highly of ourselves but to have sober judgment of ourselves. So we love others as a measure of how we love ourselves, then tone it down a notch to think more highly of others than we do of ourselves. It is summed up in the ‘golden rule’ or as I like to call it, Matt 7:12, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do to you.‘ Treat others as you want to be treated. You want to be loved, love others.

As demonstrated by Jesus, love is also sacrifice. John 15:13 says that laying down your life for your friends shows that you love them. Jesus sacrificed his life to show His love for us (Rom 5:8). It doesn’t mean that we need to die to show love for others, but we do need to sacrifice. Sacrifice ourselves. Our desires, needs, resources, happiness, frustrations, etc for the good of others. Doesn’t sound appealing does it? Sounds hard. Think of others first, sacrifice what we want to make others happy? Is it any wonder people focus on themselves and work to make themselves happy, abandoning those things and people that don’t. Love is HARD. But it doesn’t have to be.

1 John 4:8 says that GOD is love. God. Not feelings, not actions, not choices, not our hopes and desires. God. He embodies it. He expresses it. He fills us with it. He sacrificed because of it. He allows us to go through difficult things because love means not letting us wallow in the muck of our current selves. Love means hoping for the best of who you can be. He says to ‘Be Holy as I Am Holy.’ Holy is God. Love is God. Be love as He is love. BE love. Don’t feel love, don’t do love, don’t choose love. BE love. God is spirit and God is love, therefore the Holy spirit is also love.

Love does require choice - a choice for God, to let Him dwell in you. Love does require action - sacrificing our desires to let His love shine through. If God is in you, love is in you. If God is not, you are doing love on your own and that means it plays by your rules and will never satisfy. It is a counterfeit of love.

Love is not complicated. It’s God.

Plans

As a mom, I have learned that with parenting come many lessons to learn. The other day,  my father-in-law came to stay the night with us while on a business trip.  He was going to be arriving after my son's bed time, so I told Owen he would have a surprise in the morning when he woke up.  He cheered and went to bed very excited. He was awake early that morning and had obviously been anticipating the surprise because he asked right away when I walked in his room if his surprise was here.  I said it was and he asked if it was certain engines he had been asking for from the 'Thomas and Friends' collection. I told him it wasn't and took him downstairs to see 'Pops' and though he was happy to see him, he seemed distracted. My father-in-law told him there was something in the living room for him and Owen ran excitedly to see what the 'real' surprise was.  The gift was a book, which Owen normally loves, but he looked very disappointed and was fighting back tears.  When I asked him what was wrong, he said he wanted 'Bash, Dash and Ferdinand.'  My heart broke for him.  He had apparently interpreted that the surprise was these engines and was sad when it didn't pan out the way he had hoped.  He eventually rebounded and loves the book, but the initial disappointment was deep.

At that moment, I felt for him.  That same morning, I had found out that I was not pregnant for the 10th time in as many months.  I was sorely disappointed. No matter how many times I have that happen, I still anticipate ahead of time and am discouraged after.  As I watched my son's reaction, I felt God speaking to me.  What I saw in my reaction to my son's situation was God's.  We usually feel upset and angry when we don't get what we want or especially what we are promised.  I think we do because we feel like God is indifferent to our disappointment and heartache, but I don't believe He is. When Owen's lip came out and he fought for composure, I wanted nothing more than to make him feel better and pull out the engines I have stashed away for birthday gifts.  They aren't what he was hoping for but I didn't like seeing him so sad. I didn't do that, and God won't either. He won't give us less than what He has promised us or give it to us at the wrong time.  I believe He hurts with us.  He wants us to trust and rely on Him, but I don't think He's saying, "Get over it". He feels what we are feeling, but He knows what will come from the disappointment and the waiting.

The other thing I learned from this was that we often anticipate or expect certain things in our lives that are not what God wants for us and miss out on the things He does have for us.  We tend to see ourselves as the director of our lives even as we follow God, interpreting verses like Jeremiah 29:11 in our own words. Instead of 'For I know the plans I have for you..." we subconsciously thing 'For I know (Not God) what would make me happy..." Just like my son overlooked the blessing in a new book in his own idea of what the perfect gift would be, we can often overlook unsolicited, unrequested blessings from God in looking for what we think we want and need in our lives. Sometimes the blessing is nothing more than a change in our perspective, attitude or faith.  Sometimes that comes through difficult situations.  Yes,we should dream, dream big even, but we need to also keep our eyes on what God has for us.  He wants good for us, He wants us to be like Him, and He knows what will happen. 

As I looked at my own situation in wanting another pregnancy to happen, I have to remind myself that He made a promise to me and He will fulfill that in His time and His way.  He has a perfect time for every person to be born and that's His prerogative.  It doesn't necessarily make it easier, but it keeps me focused on Him.  Will I stop being disappointed with negative pregnancy tests? Probably not, but I will continue to turn back to Him. Because He has plans and they're better than anything I could ever think or imagine. 

Creation Whispers - are you listening?

I have been told that I see God in everything. That's probably because I see Him in His creation and because I learned to look for Him in everything I see. Nature has always been fascinating to me, so much so that I fell in love with biology my first class I took in high school and then continued it as my major in college.  In college, studying God's creation brought me closer to Him and taught me more about Him than I had ever known before.  I saw His creativity and imagination, his mind at work and His love for us.  He created this world to be pleasurable for us - to be aesthetically pleasing and to have every resource we need. His creation shows us who He is and that He does indeed exist, if we only look at the miracles and wonders of what He has created.  It's not just in the animals and plants, but in the land, in weather, in the night sky.  God is the original scientist. He created biology, zoology, embryology, astonomy, geology, meteorology - every scientific field you can imagine, He created the basis for it.  It was put there for us to enjoy, study and to draw us to Him.

  I see hearts in many places in nature and have photographed many. God shows us He loves us in everything we see around us, but even more so in the act of giving His Son to die for us. He didn't live in comfort, shy away from the disgusting or die peacefully. He lived and died our worst nightmare and He did it for us.