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Hold Onto Hope

Feb26

IMG_2048Awhile back, I wrote a post about my avocado tree. (See The Beetle Within Us) I was sad to have to report that, after just a year of bearing fruit, the tree had to be taken out because it was diseased by the ambrosia beetle. Well, we had a storm more than a year ago that knocked down part of our back fence near where the tree used to grow. In removing the old fence, my husband came across this 18-inch-high seedling that had been growing from a pit discarded by the squirrels in the corner of the yard.

Imagine our surprise and our pleasure at finding this small glimmer of hope that we could still have a healthy avocado tree in the future.

This seemed to me a perfect analogy for the life of a prodigal: There is always hope that there is life left in those who wander from God.

When the new fence panels went in, the seedling was transplanted to our front yard. It was so small back then, and it was hot out, so daily, even twice-daily, watering was vital for its survival. It’s now more than 10 feet tall. It is surrounded by other plantsIMG_5551, yet given its own space. When it was still very small, we could watch it, we could nurture it, we could pray that it would grow big and strong and eventually produce fruit. All we could do was give it the best environment that we knew how to give; the rest was, and still is, up to its Creator. It hasn’t borne fruit yet, but we hope it’s well on its way.

I recently read a phenomenal article by Abraham Piper, the son of pastor and author John Piper, whom I greatly admire. Abraham was a prodigal for many years, and his insight into how to love prodigals back to Jesus is something I think everyone struggling with this should read. The article is quite long, so you can read the entire text here (Let Them Come Home). The following points are his, with my condensed interpretation.

1. Point them to Christ.Piper contends that the real problem with your prodigal is not their behavior, it’s that they don’t see Jesus clearly. Therefore, the best thing you can do is show them Christ. Their only hope is to clearly see Jesus and His love for them.

2. Pray.
“Only God can save your children, so keep on asking Him to display Himself to them in a way they can’t resist worshiping Him for.”

3. Acknowledge that something is wrong.
Don’t pretend that everything is fine. Don’t ignore their unbelief. Reach out and keep reaching out.

4. Don’t expect them to be Christlike.
“No matter how your child’s behavior proves his unbelief, always be sure to focus more on his heart’s sickness than its symptoms.” If they’re not believers, they’re not going to act like believers. Hearts need to change first.

5. Welcome them home.
No matter what they’ve done, if they want to come home, let them. If they have any desire whatsoever to be with you, let them come. You are going to be the best influence in their life. Make sure you aren’t pushing them away.

6. Plead with them more than you rebuke them.
Piper says, “Be gentle in your disappointment. . . Her conscience can condemn her by itself. Your role is to stand kindly and firmly, always living in the hope that you want your child to return to.”

7. Connect them to other believers.
If you know another believer you think might reach them better than you can, by all means, get them together.

8. Respect their friends.
Be hospitable. Her friends are someone else’s wayward children, and they need Jesus, too.

9. E-mail them.
“When you read something in the Bible that encourages you and helps you love Jesus more, write it up in a couple of lines and send it to your child. The best exhortation—better than any correction—is for them to see Christ’s joy in your life. Don’t stress out when you’re composing these as if each one needs to be singularly powerful. Just whip them out and let the cumulative effect of your satisfaction in God gather up in your child’s inbox. God’s Word is never useless.”

10. Take them to lunch.
Have actual facetime. Even if it may hurt to hear what they’re up to, do it anyway. Your interest in them as a person will speak volumes to them. Make the time to get together.

11. Take an interest in their pursuits.
Find value in what they like. Ask questions. Hear their heart.

12. Point them to Christ.
“This can’t be stressed enough. It’s the whole point. No strategy for reaching your son or daughter will have any lasting effect if the underlying goal isn’t to help them know Jesus.”

Be faithful and don’t give up.

 

When The Womb Runs Dry

Jan23

9-25-02.2I remember with vivid clarity the day we learned I had miscarried our first child. We were traveling home from Colorado to Florida when I started spotting. After 4 years of infertility, the thought of losing this long-awaited baby was terrifying. When the loss was confirmed, it seemed my tears would never stop.

That was almost 21 years ago.

I have 3 healthy children, 13, 17 and 19. Although we lost 2 more babies in the midst, our quiver is as full as we want it. Yet when the realization hit that I was on the downside of menopause, I cried.

I loved being pregnant. I didn’t suffer the nausea of so many of my friends. Although worried during my second pregnancy that the same thing would happen as the first, it got increasingly easier to relax. Nausea-free pregnancies, problem-free births (well, there were 2 short stays in the NICU for #1 and #3, but all was fine in the end), pain-free nursing (although I had to supplement #2 and #3 because they weren’t gaining enough weight). After our infertility struggle, I felt very blessed.

I was 4 days away from being 35 when I had my first child, and I was almost 41 when I Xmas 04had my 3rd, so another pregnancy really wasn’t in the cards for us. But still, the idea that it would never happen again stirred up feelings I didn’t even know were there. Somehow we think childbearing defines us as women and when we find ourselves unable to do that, our self-image takes a hit.

Now, after 2 years of no more visits from Aunt Flo, I am mostly at peace with the situation, knowing that an infant in the house would really throw us for a loop, but the baby boom in the young moms around me causes some melancholy. My friends from high school and college are becoming grandparents, having started parenting a lot sooner than I, and my arms long to cuddle newborns again. I plead for time holding the young mom’s infants, but somehow someone consistently beats me to it.

I know that there are many who cannot bear their own babies. Some opt to remain childless, some adopt infants, some adopt older kids. I have friends in all camps. The struggle is real. When I didn’t know whether I’d be able to have children or not, each new birth around me was painful. Now, each new birth is a joy as I know that it’s my time to be a mentor, to let the younger women have their chance. I’m certainly glad to be able to sleep through the night! And it’s probably a good thing that my daughter and I won’t be hormonal at the same time once she gets in on the act.

IMG_4533Bearing babies isn’t what makes me a woman. It isn’t what gives me worth. It isn’t even what defines me. I am a mom and it’s a wonderful thing. But I am first of all a child of God. Nothing will change that. Instead of being defined by the blood I used to shed each month, I am defined by the blood shed for me on the Cross. It will never run dry.

 

Now excuse me while I go find a baby to hold.

 

 

 

4 Tips For Helping Teens Find Financial Health

Jan24

Trying to teach a teenager about handling money is like trying to teach a toddler to share his toys. It can be done, but it doesn’t come naturally. I have one son who is a saver and one who is a spender. Luckily, it’s the spending one, my senior, who has the job. When he saw his W-2 recently and realized how much he had made, and yet had nothing to show for it but the food in his belly and the accessories for his air soft guns, he realized that he had a little work to do in the budgeting category.

Teaching our kids how to handle money is a life skill that is absolutely invaluable. Here are 4 tips that I believe every parent should know.

IMG_41101. Start early. We began giving our children a small allowance when they were very young, I would say school age. I got them little plastic storage boxes that had 3 drawers. One said “give,” one said “save,” and one said “spend.” Right off the top they had to put 10% in the “give” and “save” drawers. Then, when a few dollars had accumulated, they would take the cash out of their “give” drawer and put it in the offering box at church. This simply became a habit from that time on. The “save” category could be used for big things, like a bike, or an iPod, or a hamster. If you missed the “early” part, it’s never too late to start. Any money coming to them from any source can be budgeted this way.

2. Model budgeting. As we know if we read the financial pages, credit card debt is a huge problem in America. It’s imperative that we teach our kids early how to avoid that deep, dark hole. My senior asked me recently when I thought it would be a good idea for him to get a credit card and start building up a credit history. My answer to him was that he needed to stay in his budget for several months first. We buy everything we possibly can on our Discover™ card so that we can earn Cashback Rewards™, but we always pay off the bill fully each month. We even put our new roof on Discover! That allows us to supplement our entertainment budget with gift cards. When our kids ask for something, they know I’m going to check whether that’s in our budget or not. They’ve seen it modeled their whole life. We started out our married life 24 years ago using Ethan Pope’s Money Allocation Plan. I highly recommend it. It’s basically the envelope system, but I just do it electronically.

3. Give them the tools. I’m kind of a tech geek, so I have a budget app on my iPhone that syncs with the program on my Mac. When my sons started high school and got their first cell phones (yes, we waited until they were in high school), I had them get the same app I have so that I could help them. I also started giving them the money each month to buy their own clothes and toiletries and whatever else they wanted. They were in charge of that amount each month. We still paid for anything relating to school, but everything else they had to budget. Now, I coach them along in balancing that budget and making sure everything stays straight.

4. Give them the freedom to learn—and possibly fail. Since my senior is a spender, he had a very hard time staying in his budget. If he wanted to grab something to eat, he simply did it. He never took the time to look at whether that was in his budget or not. He wanted to order something for his air soft guns, he just did it. No matter how much we had given him the tools and modeled it for him, ultimately, the decisions were his. When he said he wanted a laptop late last year and asked us if we would get him one for his birthday, Christmas or graduation, we told him we would help, but he needed to save for it. We would match whatever he saved. Then I showed him how, in 13 months, he had spent more than $1300 on food. I said, “There’s your laptop. You ate it.”

When shown on paper how much he had spent just because he didn’t want to make lunch at home, he realized he needed to do what we had originally said: make a budget and stick to it. He doesn’t want to live at home while he’s going to college, but he knows he’s going to have to, a. earn more than he’s earning now and b. be a much better budgeter.

I’m not in charge of his finances anymore, and he’s 18 so he can go get a credit card without my approval, but hopefully he’s learned enough now to know that making good decisions now will help with his financial health in the future.

Repeat After Me: 5 Things To Keep Reminding Myself

Sep23

little_heartsWhen my eldest was born, I found a quote that I wrote in his baby book: Having a child is like having a piece of your heart walking around outside your body. And boy does it hurt. I have good kids. They haven’t rebelled, they get good grades, they are respectful to us and others, we have a good relationship with them all. But it still hurts to see my almost-an-adult son make decisions contrary to our advice simply because he likes to beat his own head against a wall in order to find out that, hey, that actually does hurt.

So, I have to keep reminding myself of a few things:

1. My son is not me. He will not make the decisions I would make. He will not follow the path I would follow, nor will he follow the path I want him to take. And I have to be alright with that, or it will tear us apart.

2. Don’t worry! I keep telling my son I’m not worrying exactly, I’m just concerned. Semantics, that’s all that is. I have this totally unfounded fear that he’s going to do something to derail his future. He tells me to trust him. I have in the past, so why is it so much harder to do now that he’s got one foot out the door?

3. Keep your hands to yourself. Whatever I do, I need to let him become the man God has made him to be. I stopped making his lunch years ago, I need to stop trying to manipulate things in his life now. He will resent me for it. He is not a baby anymore.

4. Be thankful for the time you get. These days, my son is gone more than he’s here. He has a new girlfriend. He has a job. He still has classes both at his high school and at the nearby college. And I miss him, frankly. We knew this time was going to come, and I thought I was maybe a little bit prepared, but I wasn’t. I’m not. But it will be worse when he actually moves out, possibly out of state, at the very least out of the house. I need to treat this as a year of preparation for the real thing.

Wah.

5. God is in control. No matter what decisions my son makes, God is ultimately in control of his life. If he misses deadlines for college applications, or isn’t successful in being appointed to the U.S. Air Force Academy, or even decides not to go to college, his life will not be “ruined.” It might not look like we hoped it would look, but God is firmly, ultimately, sovereignly in control.

I keep having to remind myself of these things, and what I said here about how I should be parenting him. Letting go of a piece of my heart isn’t easy, but it’s necessary. It’s the right thing to do.

 

illustration from theroadtocrazy.blogspot.com

8 Life Skills I Want My Senior To Have Before He Leaves My House (#5-8)

Aug1

Last week I talked about the first 4 of 8 skills I wanted to make sure my son possesses before he leaves home. You can read that here. Here are the last 4, as promised.

clip-art-telephone-960170#5 Making phone calls to get information or make connections

I feel like a lot of teens struggle with this area. Maybe it’s just boys, but making phone calls seems to be a lost art. When Justin was applying for the job he has now at Chick-fil-A, he was told to talk to them again once he turned 16. The day after his birthday, I made him call the hiring manager. He didn’t want to be pushy; I told him he was showing initiative. With this whole Academy application deal, he has had to make calls to several different people. He hasn’t wanted to, but he’s done it. And he’s done very well with sounding professional. I think the more he does it, the easier it will be. There are still at least 3 other people I would like him to call to get advice, but I’m letting him take the lead on those. So far, he’s not leaning that way.

job_interview#6 Going on a job interview
Last week, a friend of mine asked me to help her 18-year-old daughter prepare for an upcoming job interview. We set up a mock interview one morning where the daughter would come to my house as if she were going to a real interview. I prepared real questions, used an assumed name and arranged for my husband to call me part way through as an interruption. Everything went well and I gave her feedback after it was all over. Yesterday, she told me she got the job! When my son was applying for his job with Chick-fil-A, we talked him through what to expect and went with him since he was a minor. But he was on his own for the impression he made. If your child hasn’t yet held a job, I highly recommend prepping him or her in advance. It’s gotta happen sometime.

preaching#7 Evaluating a church for biblical accuracy
Having been brought up in the church, attended small-group Bible studies and heard the truth taught in his home all his life, my son should be well prepared to find a truth-filled church. But we know that the devil is sneaky and can cause a lie to sound like the truth. Helping my son discern truth from lie is priority to us.

 

returns#8 Dealing with businesses
Not only does adulthood mean making decisions for yourself, it means dealing with people who might not always be easy to deal with. We started out easy—having our kids order their own meals from the server at restaurants when we went out as a family. Getting them talking to strangers in a safe environment helps prepare them to talk to clerks or potential bosses on their own. If you are not satisfied with a product you purchased, you need to let the business know. Making purchases, returning items, calling ahead to see if a store has something particular you’re looking for, these are all skills kids need to learn before they leave home.

I know there are plenty more ideas out there. What do skills do you want your children to have before they venture out on their own?

images from gifpic.com; roundpulse.com; Acts29today.com; wikihow.com