The Best is Yet to Come

Nov8

The other night, David and I watched the movie “City of Angels” with Nicholas Cage and Meg Ryan. Nicholas played an angel named Seth who escorted people to heaven when it was their time to go. Meg played a heart surgeon, Maggie, who had just lost a patient. This is how Seth first sees Maggie. And falls in love with her.

Come to find out that angels are able to “fall,” or become mortal if they want to. And Seth wants to once he falls in love with Maggie. Somehow, I think because he wants her to, Maggie is able to see and talk to Seth, thus they are able to form a relationship. And Maggie also has a heart patient who is a former angel, but now lives a gluttonous and irreverent life filled with earthly pleasures, but no sense of God. He’s the one that lets Seth know that he can be with Maggie on earth.

How sad I thought this movie was. It seemed apparent that no God-fearing person worked on this film. I don’t see how they could. It’s preposterous to think that any angel now would want to “fall.” They’d surely remember what happened to Lucifer. Or maybe I’m wrong. I’ve never studied it theologically. Maybe more demons are created every day from the ranks of fallen angels.

One of the premises of the movie was that things on earth are so much brighter and clearer when you’re no longer an angelic being. To really experience beauty and love on earth, you need to be human. While I agree that earth has much beauty for humans to enjoy, the idea that earthly beauty is better than heavenly beauty is just flat out wrong. To be in the presence of God and walk on streets of gold, to have no more pain or suffering, to know fully just as we are fully known; that will be paradise.

Spoiler alert: if you want to see this movie, don’t read this next line, because I’m giving away the ending.

Maggie dies in the end. Just a day after Seth makes his choice to “fall,” Maggie gets killed in a bike versus logging truck accident. Seth is devastated. But as he’s talking to one of his angel friends, he says, in effect, I’d rather have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.

Human love is so much less vital and pure and fulfilling than the love of God. How an angel, who has spent time in the presence of God, could think less is, again, preposterous.

So, needless to say, I don’t recommend this movie. It shows us nothing of the true character of God. I’m very grateful that, though I am loved by people on this earth and enjoy the beauty of God’s creation as much as the next person, I know without a doubt that the best is yet to come. For eternity.

Change Can Be Good

Oct31

At the Women of Faith conference I just attended, speaker Patsy Clairmont told us a story about her son Marty who was recently deathly ill. After he’d been in an induced coma for 20 days, his lead doctor wanted to move him to a different floor. Patsy was not thrilled with that decision, to say the least, but a thought came from the back of her head to the front: Change can be good. Long story short, the move to another floor put him in the care of a new set of doctors, one of whom started out changing Marty’s medication. That change saved Marty’s life.

Change can be good. That change certainly was. I’m wanting to make some changes, but am under no false illusions that this change will be easy. I want to back off a little from my stance that all work needs to be done first before one can play. I want to treasure every moment with my kids. I want to be second. Second to God. Second to my family. I want to do more than simply tell my kids I’m sorry when I do something wrong; I want to ask them to forgive me. I want to be more transparent, more proactive, more emotional (or at least show that emotion more). I want to be openhearted. That would be a change. I’ve had a wall around my heart for many years now. Breaking it down is not going to be easy.

But change can be good. In 1st Corinthians 5:17, Paul says, “17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” That sounds like change to me. I became a new creature 34 years ago, you’d think you’d see change by now. That’s not exactly fair to myself, I guess. I have definitely changed. But not as much as I want to.

Sometimes change is a decision, sometimes it is forced upon us. Sometimes it is foreseen, sometimes it takes us by surprise. It takes us by surprise, but it doesn’t take God by surprise, thankfully.

Embrace the change. That’s what I want my theme to be. Embrace the change that’s in my life. Embrace the change God wants to make in me. Embrace the change, and let God embrace me.

Whiter Than Snow

Oct26

As I was teaching my second graders today, I had to clean off the whiteboard, which had gotten covered with math meeting stuff, in order to do some other math stuff (learning to count money with quarters, woo hoo). Anyway, as I got a damp paper towel and washed away the vestiges of the other words, that sometimes don’t come off so easily depending on the age of the marker, I thought to myself, This is what my heart looks like after Jesus covers it with His blood. Whiter than snow.

How good and pure and perfect it looked–until the next time I got it dirty again with more writing. Praise be to God that my heart is always covered with His blood. Nothing can separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus my Lord. Not my pride, not my covetousness, not my impatience or anger or laziness. I’m whiter than snow in the eyes of Jesus. Just like that whiteboard needs to be washed off every time something gets written on it, my heart becomes clean every time I confess my sin.

“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Hallelujah.

Learning to be a teacher

Oct23

Just about a month ago, some changes at my kids’ school (www.traceacademy.org) shook things up. After just one week of school we lost a family that had committed to teaching, and so that left one of our classes without a teacher, and one of our very small classes even smaller as one of the kids in the departing family was in that class. After many, many hours of meetings, the board and management of the school decided to keep that tiny class intact, move one of its teachers to the vacated position, and try to find another teacher for our tiny second grade.

Well, after much prayer, I volunteered to teach those three second graders–one of whom is my daughter, Morgan. I figured, there’s only three of them, I have three kids myself, how hard could it be? 🙂

Now, a month into it, I feel OK. I’m not a teacher by gifting, but have come to the conclusion that God gives gifts for a season, and this just might be that season.

So, here I am, teaching second grade. I have a lot to learn. But I think it’s going well. I’m looking forward to getting them more into writing stuff and having fun brainstorming ideas for some of our upcoming units.


This is my class going ice skating on a field trip in our Olympics unit.

I have been letting my creative side take too much of a vacation the past several years–you could even say I’ve been a lazy mom. Let the teachers be the creative ones. At home they tend to just do their own thing instead of having some creative fun time. It’s good for them to use their own imaginations, but I could be  a little more involved. I’m hoping this job will help me tap that part of myself a little bit more.

Here's our class learning about shadows

The hardest part is the classroom management. There are so few of them, it’s easy to let them get away with talking or getting out of their seats. But I’m not doing them any favors letting them get away with that, because they’re not going to be allowed to do that as they go on.

To top things off, this week, my lead teacher’s mother passed away in Nebraska. She’ll be gone all next week, when we were supposed to be doing parent/teacher conferences. Oh well, God is in control. Conferences will be rescheduled, report cards will eventually come out, and we’ll work our way through this year. All with God’s help.

Reinventing Myself

Oct22

There’s a scene in the movie “Runaway Bride” where Julia Roberts, as the lead character, tries to figure out who she is. She has run out on something like five weddings before meeting the man who is her reflection, the one who will complete her. But she runs out on him, too. In this scene, she places before herself three or four plates of eggs cooked in different ways: poached, scrambled, fried, Benedict. Before, with all her other fiancés, she’s sort of morphed into what they want her to be or maybe what they expect her to be. Now, knowing she’s really got to figure out who she is, she starts with the eggs. How does SHE really like them? I don’t remember what the answer is, but that’s not the important part. The important part is that she figures out what it is she likes, who it is she wants to be. Then she can go to her man, plan a wedding the way SHE wants it to be, and start a life with him as herself, not some facsimile of someone else.

That’s what I’ve got to figure out. For years and years and years I’ve known myself as a writer, but for years and years, I’ve barely written. Can one still be a writer if one is not writing?

For all of my adult life, I’ve been a church member, one not satisfied to just sit and soak in, but compelled to be a part of the work God is doing through the Body of Christ. I’ve sung in choirs, small ensembles and worship teams; I’ve helped write dramas and plan services; I’ve been an active part of the church community. People know with what church I’m involved. It’s obvious by the work that I do there.

For almost 20 years, I’ve been a wife. That part is obvious too: I live with my man, I wear a ring on my left hand, I sleep in the same bed, I’m committed with all my life. I’m a wife.

For nearly 14 years, I’ve been a mom. Again, something obvious. I’ve got the responsibility to clothe, feed, teach and love three little people (OK, some aren’t so little anymore.) I bore them, I birthed them, I fed them from my own body. I discipline them, I read with them, I look out for their best interests, I try to instill godly values into them. I am a mom.

For 35 years, I’ve wanted to be a writer. For 10 years, I was just that, full time, as a part of the writing team for Worldwide Challenge magazine (http://www.worldwidechallenge.org/). Then, I became a mom. Where did the writer go? Did she disappear into the recesses of life when babies came to the forefront? I know women who keep writing as they mother; why can’t I seem to do the same thing? Where is my muse? Come out, come out, wherever you are!

By God’s grace I, unlike the Julia Roberts character, have not run away from my other selves, the wife, the mom, the church member, the teacher; but somewhere along the way, I have sort of lost who it is that I really am. What puts a “fire in my belly?” As I was asked at a retreat this weekend. What do I love to do so much that I lose track of time when I’m doing it? What situations get me excited or motivated to keep working and pressing forward? What do I long for, dream about and desire to see happen?
Hopefully, those are some of the things I’m going to discover as I write this blog. What am I compelled to do? What can I not live without? What, if I didn’t do it, would cause me to die inside? I hope you’ll come with me as I strive to find out, and maybe you can learn a little about yourself along the way.