Prayer: Short & Sweet

Today as I was driving around picking up or dropping off one of the kids, a prayer need came to my mind. Most often prayer needs come around when I am driving or otherwise busily working on something that won't allow me to just stop what I am doing and go find a quiet spot to focus on prayer, but that doesn't stop me from shooting a quick one up to the Lord. 
So today, as I was driving, I looked at the clock and it was 1:30 pm. The exact time my eldest son was scheduled to interview for a new job. A lot is riding on him getting a job soon, since he just moved his family from halfway across the country to where we are. They are starting over from scratch and so finding a job quickly, that pays well, and allows for flexibility in scheduling while his wife also starts job searching are all things that I could have included in my prayer. But as I focused the small piece of my mind that I could spare from concentrating on driving, the only thing I could think to ask of God was, "Your will be done." And then I smiled as I realized that is all that needed to be asked for. God's will, because we trust Him to be faithful, to be our provider, and to be our giver of good gifts.
More and more, my prayers have become shorter and less about asking for what I think I or the person I am praying for needs, and more about resting in the fact that trusting in God only requires we ask for His will to be done.

Matthew 6:9-13 New International Version (NIV) (emphasis mine)

⁹ “This, then, is how you should pray:
“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
¹⁰ your kingdom come,
your will be done,
    on earth as it is in heaven.
¹¹ Give us today our daily bread.
¹² And forgive us our debts,
    as we also have forgiven our debtors.
¹³ And lead us not into temptation,^[a]
    but deliver us from the evil one.^[b]’

On Wrinkled Shirts and Other Failings of a Wife and Mother Part 1

 "I use to wonder about Moms whose son wore the same thing every Sunday and now I'm one of those moms." - The words of a friend of mine.

Last week, I received a notification that I had been tagged in a friend's post. I used to live in the same town as her and attended her husband's church for 2 years several years ago. The quote above had been posted to my page with a happy face at the end of the line. When I first saw it, I immediately recognized the humor of the situation. After all, I have been guilty of silently judging someone when I had no personal experience to base my judgement on. God has certainly had a funny way of recreating those same circumstances in my life, to teach me some humility. My first response was to reply with a laughing emoji and a heart. But then I wondered what exactly it was that my friend had wondered about me back then. I realized that the word "wonder" actually meant "judge". Ever since that morning I have been having flashbacks of times that I've been wondered at, and am finding them quite funny. I thought I'd share some of these funny stories in a multi-part series in case anyone else needs a good laugh at the things people make judgements about.

Interestingly several of these stories revolve around dressing my family. Sadly, a lot of them have happened at church. What's every-bodies' hang up with dressing for church, anyway?

One of the first memories I have of someone trying to make me feel inadequate as a wife was in a church we attended from 2000-2004. During that time our family had grown from 4-7 and lets just say getting 5 kids with 3 of them under the age of 4 ready for church was no easy feat. But we made it every week, with all the kids shoes on, hair combed, manners in check and ready to not only attend but serve. During a little social time between early service and Sunday school, I was with a group of young moms chatting about the things mom's chat about when a well-liked widow in the church approached us with a smile. She joined in on some of the small talk and then said to all of us while looking across the lobby at our group of  husbands, "You can always tell who is doing their duty by their husbands by how wrinkled their husband's shirt is on Sunday morning." She then smiled and walked away to go talk to the other elderly women, while we all turned to check out whose husband was wrinkled. It was mine. So here's the funny part of the story...I actually took it to heart. I made it through church and lunch and got all the little ones settled into naptime while the older 2 played outside and then I went to my husband in tears to apologize for failing him and for him having to go to church in a wrinkled shirt. And he just looked at me like I had two heads and asked me what I was talking about. He let me know that he didn't think I was a failure as a wife and that he was perfectly capable of ironing his own clothes if he thought it necessary. Then we laughed at how ridiculous it was to judge a wife's success by her husband's shirt and it was over. It kind of became a running joke among the other young moms at that church too, whenever we needed to lighten the mood, someone would say, "yeah well, at least your husband's shirt got ironed." It wasn't to long afterwards that we found Downy Wrinkle Releasing spray. I'd like to say that now that my husband no longer had wrinkled shirts due to that magic potion, all judgment against me stopped. But since I will not tell a lie, I will instead tell another story in Part 2 of this series. Stay tuned.

On Being Vulnerable and the Consequences

If you ask me how I'm doing and I say "fine," I am telling the truth. Most days I am happy. I'm in love with my husband, I feel good about my parenting and enjoy my children, I try to keep my focus on being grateful for what I have rather than focusing on what I don't.  Most days I say to myself "I love my life."
But sometimes, I find myself feeling the pain of my brokenness and I am pretty good at telling the truth then too. If my marriage hits a rough patch, I'll ask for prayer. If I feel like I've failed my kids or messed up with a friend,  I'll apologize and I acknowledge that sometimes discontent gets the better of me. I do not hide my brokennes or shame myself for it. I allow myself to feel it, to examine it, to express it and to deal with it. I'm pretty much as open with my failings as with my wins. It is one of the things my closest friends appreciate about me. I know because they've said so. It's also one of the things that drives other people away from me. I know because they've said so, too. I'm okay with that. I know who I am, how I come across and have felt the pleasure and pain of being myself.
A couple of weeks ago I made the choice to share a bit of my brokenness on my personal Facebook page. I expressed the defeat and loneliness I feel when I think about how long I've been trying to find relationship inside my church. I publicly stated that I wonder if I need to start over someplace else. I was not prepared for some of the reactions to that post, and ended up failing myself by succumbing to the pressure of the discomfort someone else felt by my truth. I took the post down.
After a short conversation with someone who saw the post and called, a conversation about how I feel, what I've tried to overcome it, and admitting that I still have some "try" left in me, I felt like, "okay, I'll give it another go." And then I was hit with this statement, "I mean how does it look for an elder's wife to..." I realized then that the conversation wasn't about my pain, but about their fear of my openness. After our conversation,  my husband was also called too. I got told on to my husband. And the same thing was said to him, "how does it look for an elder's wife to..."
As an elder's wife, I took the post down, but as a member of the church who has heard and believes in the numerous messages I've listened to from stages and pulpits about the importance of transparency, vulnerability, and being real with our stuff, I feel betrayed.
The very next Sunday the message preached was about joy, and part of this message spoke about the church supposedly being a place where it's ok to not be ok, where it's ok to be sad, lonely, frustrated, have questions or concerns, etc. And I sat in the pew and thought, "as long as you're not an elder's wife."
Here's the thing, I know that's not true. I know that when it comes to Christ, pastors and their families, church staff and their families, elders and their wives are people too. So not only do I feel betrayed by that caller and any of the other people who've handed me or my husband shame because of that post, I feel betrayed by myself for receiving it and taking the post down. For even now, allowing shame to make me afraid of finishing this post and publishing it on my blog or sharing it online.
I will post it, and I will own it, and then I will move on to focus on the hope that also came out of the other responses to that deleted post. The people who reached out and in their words or actions said, I hear you and feel you, rather than I hear you and don't want anyone else to.