A Quieter Christmas?

Slowing down is not heralded in our society. I suppose there are places, somewhere in the world, where being quiet and calm is greeted with approval, but I haven't lived in that world. As parents, we rush. We rush ourselves and our children; we rush to work and school and ballet and baseball and all of the places in between. Rushing leads to short tempers, and short tempers lead to harsh words and then someone ends up crying. The irony of screeching at my children, that if they don't hurry up we will be late to church, has not escaped me. I am taking them to church to learn to be charitable, loving, kind and patient, but on the way I am being impatient, wrathful and unkind. Slowing down is the answer, but the path to slowing down is difficult.

To slow down we have to let things go, a whole lot of things. To slow down to a child's pace there needs to be extra time at every juncture. There are some events we can't orchestrate, but there are many we can. The path to slowing down starts with saying,"No." Saying, "no" to things to which we have never considered saying, "no".

Christmas time is the worst time of year for the problems of the big rush. The kids are involved in everything. There are Christmas parties, pageants, outings; the gifts need to be purchased and wrapped and mailed and there are all of the traditions that have to be upheld. Does it all need doing? It doesn't, it really, really doesn't, despite what the TV and your family and the church and school all say. All of that business, no matter how noble, will not bring your child closer to Christ.

If you say no to most of these things someone, somewhere is going to be disappointed in you. Someone, somewhere, is going to be shocked that you are not doing your part for the school or the church or the family. If you say no and instead opt to stay at home with just your immediate family and cut out snowflakes or make a Christmas red and green paper chain for the tree without rushing, or sit at the piano singing Christmas carols off key, it will be scandalous.

I say this at my own peril. As the Children and Youth Minister, I rely on volunteers for everything from a child to light the Advent candles to all the many duties of the pageant. I know that the pull to do everything at Christmas is strong, so I'm not really worried that the programs are going to collapse. If every parent pulled out and said that they needed to stay at home and teach their children, in a real and hands on way, the love of Christ, how could I complain. I wouldn't or at least I would try not to complain.

Even if you have to say no to the church (though consider saying no to someone else as well), I encourage every family to set aside one night a week each and every week between now and Christmas to be with your children, without distraction. To slowly be in their presence, to listen to their stories, (even those long, long stories with no point), to share your stories with them and to teach them about Christ would be the best gift you can give. Grandma and every one else may complain, but being a good parent is seldom easy or popular.

Have blessed and peaceful Christmas,

Michelle

If only I were perfect.

I hate making mistakes. I guess everyone does, but my mistakes always seem bigger and dumber than anyone elses'. I’ll readily admit when I have made a mistake, but then I suffer to no end about having made an error. I have an inner critic who is quite the task master. My critic tells me that if I were more organized, if I was more thoughtful, if I didn’t rush or if I rushed a little more, if I prayed more, if I had more faith, if I was more like my mother, if I wasn’t so thoughtless, then I would not make mistakes like this one.

My inner critic is with me as I mother, as I exercise, as I clean house or fail to clean house and certainly is in full voice when I look at the contents of my minivan. I think that listening to this critic is a sin. It is a tricky thing to recognize this as a sin. It is like a friend who is giving you constructive criticism with snide undertones. That is a bad friend, not a friend at all. That inner voice is really whispering, “You aren’t good enough and never will be. Don’t believe all of that silly Jesus loves you business. How could he? You lost your car keys …again.”

It’s not a sin to recognize there is growth potential in your life. It’s a sin to let the little voice tell you that the most important thing about you is that you made a mistake. The most important thing about us is that God loves us and accepts us. And that through the love of Christ, we can grow in faith and grow in love.

The kicker is that our children do as we do, not as we say. That inner mean friend, that criticizes me and shoves aside the peace that a life in Christ offers, is contagious. It jumps from me to my children in a blink of the eye. When they see me disgusted with myself, then they suddenly are disgusted with themselves. (Boy, then do I feel bad, which is a little circular. My, “I am a bad mother,” thoughts turn into proof that, sure enough, I am a bad mother; my kids are worrying just like me.)

To love our neighbors as ourselves we have to love ourselves (which sounds very 1970’s). God loves us. Christ sacrificed himself for us without concern about how often we lose things and make mistakes. Indeed, he did it with full knowledge of our many flaws. To love our children, we must love ourselves and know that we strive for perfection through Christ, not aside form him. In this way, our children will learn the same thing. In Christ we will find the love and acceptance we need to then reach out to others.

So, now I have to go next door and admit a mistake and try to let it go with a smirk, an apology, and the effort it takes to make it right and tell that little voice to take a hike.

Peace,

Michelle

Top 10 Christian Kids' Web Sites

The World Wide Web can be a wonderful resource, but it can be like slogging through a dense jungle sometimes. So I have turned to Love To Know to help us clear a path to some of the better web sites when it comes to Christian kids.

I hope you enjoy looking at them, and please share your favorites with me to add to the list.

Kristina Setliff

TOP 10 CHRISTIAN KIDS' WEB SITES

Christiany Today Kids’ Channel Access fun and easy to understand Bible stories, ideas for activities and crafts or check out a wide variety of games. Perfect for Sunday school teachers, parents or kids. Also offers information about learning more on core subjects such as math, science and language arts.

Worldwide Christian Children’s Website Church of Christ offers a website just for Christian children. Included are Bible stories, poems, Christian children's' songs, coloring pages, puzzles and games and a monthly worship bulletin just for kids with puzzles, games and a Bible study on a specific theme.

The Kids Zone Site's goal is to provide a safe place where children can link to websites without fear of coming across inappropriate pages. Offers a clean Christian chat room, book reviews. Also offers games and sells action figures based on characters from the Bible such as Moses and Noah.

Belverbears Many different ways to learn about God and teachings from the Bible. Includes coloring pages, posters to download, Bible stories, scriptures to memorize, prayers and poems. Teachers and parents will want to download the activity of the month, such as making a tithe box.

Beyond This Planet Resources for Sunday school teachers. Lesson ideas include many seasonal items. The just for kids area contains sections such as riddles and jokes, word searches, and how to know the Bible is true. Links to tons of other websites focusing on Christian youth.

Bible Coloring Pages Free printable coloring pages featuring characters and scenes from the Bible. Broken down by Old Testament and New Testament and including subjects such as Adam & Eve, Abraham, Noah's ark, nativity and angels. Plain pages or pages with stories.

Christ for Me Online magazine offering a KidZone with Bible studies, life lessons, games, an area where kids can email their questions and get answers based from a Christian World View and take Christian challenges. Also offers online Bible courses and serial stories.

CBH Ministries Goal is to teach kids about Christ. They offer Keys for Kids, which is a devotional with a story and memory verse. They offer a new key each day. While there, listen to Down Giliead Lane, a radio drama for Christian kids.

Danielle's Place: Crafts & Activities Dedicated to teaching children about the Bible with crafts and activities. Includes Sunday school crafts, crafts for rainy days and games. Get detailed instructions on how to put together a Sunday School memory book. Themes for scrapbook pages include Moses and the burning bush and Moses crosses the red sea.

Christian Character Builders Tons of online games such as puzzles, word search, crossword and other word games. Includes a Bible study on a child's daily walk with Jesus. Links to sister sites with more details. Be sure to check out their bookstore for further resources for strengthening your child's

Grace

I once represented a woman who deserved no more chances from the court. She had been given several chances to do the things she should do and she had failed. Yet, to my surprise, the court granted her one more chance. I represented her, I was the one person in her corner and even I had grave doubts that she deserved another chance.

God gives us another chance and another chance. Rather than judge us as we deserve, rather than mete out the justice we have earned, the Lord calls us back, back into the fold again and again. Through his loving kindness he reaches out to pull us close again after we wander away.

If the Lord can bring himself to this act of mercy and grace for each of us, then certainly we must do the same for our children. They make mistakes. We are required to correct the mistakes but then we can move forward. We need to stop looking back. It is easy to return to the mistakes they have made and harp on them. To remind them of what happened before, point out where we were right, assure that they never forget their errors.

When a child returns to you with an “A” on a spelling test, to respond by saying, “You see you do much better on a spelling test if you work on the words every day rather than on the bus the morning of the test,” isn’t encouraging. Instead it is reminding the child, once again, of how wrong they were and how right we were. God doesn’t seem to set that example for us. That is not the lesson Christ brings to us. We are not conditionally brought back into the fold. Rather, as in the parable of the prodigal son, there is great rejoicing when we turn from what is wrong and do what is right. There is no scolding in the prodigal son, no belittling, no “joking” about what a terrible mistake he made. It wasn’t the topic of conversation at every Thanksgiving dinner. (“Well, we all know somebody who slept with the pigs.” Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.) Once he had learned his lesson, his father moved on to celebrate his son's new found wisdom and welcomed him back with loving kindness.

It is only with godly wisdom that we can hold our tongues and not belittle or unduly scold our children. In remembering the many undeserved second chances and loving kindness that has been shown to us, through Christ, is it possible to conform our own behavior so that we wisely lead our children while simultaneously modeling the grace which is daily extended to us.

Blessings,
Michelle

The Sky's the Limit

Setting expectations for our children is difficult. How much can they do and at what age? What is enough? What is too much? No matter where you set the standard someone thinks that’s an unreasonable standard in one direction or another. My suspicion is that, all of the parents I know, myself included, expect too little of our children. If I could ask my grandmother what she was expected to do at different ages throughout her childhood I’m sure it would be more than today’s children. Our children are as smart as and probably healthier than children were 100 years ago, so why don’t we expect as much of them?

I have recently browsed through a book written by two teenage boys who have positioned themselves as rebels against low expectations for teens. The book is called Do Hard Things by Alex and Brett Harris. Earlier in the summer I read the review of a book discussing the woes of expecting too little of teens and the ills of holding teens back from achieving based on their age. If our teens are not achieving it is because we haven’t prepared them to do more. The low expectations don’t just start the day a child turns the corner from 12 to 13, magically becoming a teenager. Low expectations seem to begin around the age of 3 and often spiral out of control from there. At three, it is time to start to civilized a child in earnest. By 10 they should be down right charming and helpful.

This is easier said than done, of course. Kids like being the prince or princess of their world. Who wouldn’t like to have someone fix the exact meal we want, when we want it and how we want it? Do our laundry, pay our bills, drives us to the fun activities and certainly not interrupt our TV and computer time. When parents call a halt to all of this pampering, kids are not happy and they share that sentiment with everyone. Any tranquility which once reigned, while little precious was plugged into the TV or computer and eating only the food he found palatable, will be shattered when expectations are spelled out.

Your once marginally, happy child will now sigh, cut their eyes at you, grumble, accuse you of unfairness, inequality, meanness and otherwise try to irritate you out of your decision to make him put forth effort. They will alternately pout, plead inability to do the work, lack of time to do the work, tiredness, stomach aches, headaches, homework and other injuries to soul and body. It is trying to live with these little fountains of misery. It would be so much easier to just do it yourself. Or better yet, hire someone to do it. They don’t learn much about life if someone else is doing it.

We like our children to be happy. We like to nurture them, sooth them, not irritate them. It takes a while for them to discover that there is a certain happiness to be found in a job well done. It takes twice as long, if ever, for them to admit it. There is no quick return on this investment. But God did not tell us to treat our children as pets, giving them the things they want because it is fun for us. Raising children isn’t a hobby; it is our work and sometimes it is hard, which provides a certain symmetry in this plan. It’s hard for us to make them do hard things.

Our job is to start them down the right path. Raising children who expect to be catered to is not the Godly way to raise a child. We can’t keep coddling them if we expect them to work for Christ, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, spread the word and love of God. We have to train them.

If we were sending our children out to run a marathon we would insist that they be trained first. Before we send them out into the world, we must train them as well. And it is a long training schedule. If we set expectations high, children will achieve more and will be on a lifelong path of meeting high expectations, of fulfilling the calling God has given them.

Proverbs 22:6 “Raise up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it.”

So grit your teeth, or gird your loins, or whatever it takes to expect more of your children. Make them do some things that are hard to do and they will probably surprise you when you see how very much they can do. It’s for their own good, whether they believe you or not.

Blessings,

Michelle

Miles to go before I sleep

If I thought I was all alone in this endeavor of raising children I might run away. Raising kids is hard. It takes endurance. Just when I think I have it figured out the rules all change. It is a moving target.

It starts, oh I don’t know, the day a child is born. That day or one very soon thereafter, is the day the awareness that the best laid plans are out the window. All of those self righteous, pious thoughts you had about the right way to raise children dissolve somewhere in the fog of interrupted sleep, inconsolable crying, and mountains of dishes and laundry and on top of that there is a baby to nurture.

I don’t know when the constant crush of decisions and responsibilities abate, but I’m entering my 14th year of motherhood and the end is not in sight. Everyone sleeps through the night now, but the mystery of the right response is still lacking a certain definitive quality. Should I be more involved or should I be less involved. Should I care that I am an unqualified embarrassment or ignore the mortification I am causing by the way I chew and laugh and talk and dress and, probably, breathe.

The comfort is that I am not alone. God has given me friends for each stage of my journey in motherhood. Community is a wonderful thing. The church creates community and there is comfort in that sense of enveloping camaraderie. The women I have known through my life in a spiritual community have had different opinions and different lifestyles and different priorities. Many of us have almost no common ground except motherhood, but we still support each other. We laugh and cry in snippets of conversation about the frustrations of potty training or the unexpected sassy retort from our little angel’s lips.

It is easy to help each other and we need to remember to take the time to do it. New mothers need, not advice as much as, reassurance. You will sleep again for more than an hour or two in a row. Of course withholding a little information is good too. That long sleep may not be for six months.

Admitting mistakes or moments of frustrated anger or the bewildering changes visited upon a household when adolescences takes hold, to other women and seeing their nodding heads and commiserating grins, helps ease the frustration of dealing with those moving targets. We should be thankful that God has given us this support group. We should now step out, not to criticize each other, but to support and laugh and cry together for the sanity it brings. A sane mother is a better mother. Just being heard and knowing that you are not going it alone is a blessing. Sometimes it takes the edge off, in the moment of frustration, to know that tomorrow night when I see my friends at church this is going to be a funny story.

There are plenty of places to get advise but not too many places where you can get encouragement and support. Church is one of them. Develop these gifts of friendship God has given us. Give by listening and receive by honestly sharing; it is for the good of us all.

Blessings,
Michelle

Lost & Found

As I sat on the floor with eight little children one Sunday, we talked about being lost. Not figuratively or spiritually lost but really lost, the, “I can’t find my Mom," kind of lost. The lesson was one of those lost and found parables, either the coin or the sheep. To my personal relief it seems that every child has been lost at least once. Every single one of them has been lost in Wal-mart. (I was relieved because I have always been embarrassed that I have lost my daughter more than once, only briefly each time, yet I always felt very bad for my lack of diligence in keeping track of her. To compound my guilt, I don’t recall ever losing my son, but I seem to frequently misplace my daughter).

They each had a tale to tell. We heard about being lost in a neighborhood while at a party, being so lost the police had to come, being lost at Busch Gardens, being lost at a campground, being lost at the mall. Listening to the various versions of being lost was enlightening. In the eyes of the children they weren’t lost per se, rather their parents had just wandered off leaving them behind. Not one of them believed they had failed to stay with a parent, but that it was the other way around.

Listening to the six and seven year olds’ versions of finding their parents was equally entertaining. One said he followed his mom’s voice. (I know his mom and that was a good plan.) Another just looked through the racks of clothes until he found Mom. One said he watched the feet. He knew what his mom’s shoes looked like so he looked down until he found her feet. Each of them had a way different from the others. They each searched for Mom, but their methods were not the same. Each found their mom in the end. None of them seemed to consider that in the end they were found, in part, because Mom was looking for them. In their eyes it was a unilateral effort.

We are the same when we lose touch with God. We immediately assume that God has left us and not the other way around. We were just standing right here and God wandered off. Maybe we need to rethink this equation. Equally analogous is the way we find God. Some people “find God” through the love of family or friends, some find God in quiet, some in the sound of music. Just as the children in my class found their moms in a way that fit that child, so our children will find depth of meaning in their spiritual walk in a way that fits that child. As a parent it is easy to say if you get lost this is how you find me. If you don’t see God, this is how it is done. We need to remember each child is different. We can give them some guidelines, some tools but each situation is different and they will use their abilities to find their way. We must trust that God is looking for them and will help in the search until they are again reunited.

Have a good summer and I hope you can keep track of your kids.

Michelle

Fear Not

I am blessed with a very able husband. The man is handy at just about everything and has a ridiculously broad range of knowledge. Can't quite remember the details of how an internal combustion engines works, just ask he can tell you down to the molecular level. Forgot how the Federal Reserve board determines the prime rate? He'll explain the current trend in fiscal policy and the geopolitical history that led to this system. Don't get him started on compound interest or how satellites stay in orbit. He can explain how the monks found yeast on the walls of some cave and it all lead to the brewing of some fine beer.

He's not just a brainiac. He has a lot of very practical skills as well. He's very handy with tools and engines and computers and negotiating anything. He can always see which way we should tilt a piece of furniture to make it fit through a doorway that it just shouldn't fit through. He knows when the sounds in the car are bad sounds as opposed to normal sounds. But best of all, he isn't afraid of anything. I mean it. He isn’t afraid of being embarrassed or of the authorities or of things that go bump in the night. He will take on any challenge. Equally he will walk away from anything that loses his interest or becomes boring.

There are upsides and downsides to a husband like this. The downside is all the magazine articles that tell you how to manipulate your man don't work. The upside is that I’m not scared of much of anything either. It's like it is contagious or something. Our family motto is "We can do that." Whatever it is we can do it. We may not win or we might change our minds later but if there is something someone in the family wants to do, we will do it or at least we will try. Fear will not hold us down. It seems to have become our credo "If you are afraid to do something then that is the very reason you should do it." Fear just gets in the way of life.

I think of this these last few weeks of the Easter season. Jesus keeps saying "Fear not". Jesus states clearly not to be afraid. Go help the poor and the hungry and the widows and the orphans. Visit those in prison. You can't do that if you allow fear to control your life. Being afraid of the bad guys in prison or the people who are very different because they are poor, or afraid of the germs of the sick may well be how we feel but if we let that fear be the deciding factor we will fail our calling. If we raise our children to stay inside and stay away from everyone how will they be Christians? How will they show the good fruit? We must encourage our children to be brave, to do the things they can do even though we could do those things for them. If we are halted in our Christian walk by the fear of everything, how much more will our children, who follow our every movement, be afraid?

Jesus extols us not to be afraid. Our God is big enough. We will know when we should take precautions; the warning system for real danger is hardwired into us. God gave us the ability to discern real danger but we have to be willing to trust God and let go of the fear, fear that causes the static in our minds and hearts that can obliterate the sound of danger signals when they are real. Static that obliterates the voice of God. To live in fear of everyday life is to be crippled as a Christian.

The first step is to face something fearful. You may feel fear but push beyond that and act on the mandates of Christianity. Talk to the lonely. Feed the hungry. Be among people who are not like you, knowing that God would not tell us to do these things if we could not do them.

Being around someone who is fearless also helps. Jesus was fearless. He never cowered at danger to his physical well being or his social standing or his pride. He wasn't afraid of embarrassment or of the authorities, be they government or church. He pushed forward doing what he knew was right. We can do that too. We can show our children how to do that. We know what to do. Just do it. Jesus was very clear, "Fear not".

Blessings,
Michelle

Woman behold thy son

Woman behold thy son. Son behold thy mother.

Mary, standing at the cross watching her son die, is faced with letting go of the Jesus who is her son and, by faith, embracing the Jesus who is her savior, her God.
Mary, the Mary of the magnificat, "my soul magnifies the Lord he has done great things for me." These were Mary's words at the beginning of her amazing journey into the motherhood of Jesus. Mary was the first to know Jesus as a human. Before he moved in her womb she knew that he was there. Mary held tight to him in the stable. The mother who took him to be blessed by Simeon. Who frantically searched for her lost 12 year old, for three days, while her wonderkind son sat in the temple, amazing the teachers. Mary, who witnessed his first miracle of turning the water into wine; she must have know of all of the healings and miracles, the raising of Lazarus. Mary was there to see even his triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Her son heralded as the king, the savior of her people, the Jews. What mother wouldn't blush with pride? Her beautiful boy fulfilling every great and wonderful prophesy. Not just loved by his mother but loved by many.
Through all of these moments in Jesus' life Mary, like all mothers, was in the process of letting go of her son. Slowly he grew in stature and wisdom and he grew beyond his mother. She was there to see him from afar but he had become his own man, God's own man.
We mother's the world over feel that appropriate but searing pulling away of our sons. They leave so quickly. Every mother has to let go of her son, that is the right way to raise a son. Slowly they break away they leave you. First to kindergarten then to middle school before you know it they are leaving for college and then for a wife or a career or a calling or maybe all three. The leaving, the breaking away is sometimes fast but often slow. It is the right thing but that doesn't mean it is the easy thing. Saying farewell to being the most important person to your son is difficult. Oh, our hearts cry out "Let me hold him like in the stable, let me keep those mean boys away, those terrible soldiers”.
But we can't do that. We, like Mary, have to allow God's plan to play out. Often a plan we can't imagine; a plan that seems ill considered. Mary must stand at the cross and decide does she believe God's plan is being brought forth or is this all a terrible mistake, a mistake that is costing her, her son?
At the cross, Jesus essentially hands his mother over to his beloved disciple. “Woman, behold thy son. Son behold thy mother”. He is saying his final good-bye to Mary as his human mother. His words tell her that he will not be her earthly son any longer. It is his final good bye to the mother/son relationship they have known. While dying and in agony, he demonstrates his tender care for her by making some final and practical arrangements for the care of his mother. A good son. Mary will go with John. John will take care of her and she will mother the grown John. The message is clear, Jesus isn’t coming down off that cross alive, this terrible event is not going to stop. It is continuing and Mary can’t see the end; how this can work out.
Now Mary is at a pivotal moment, can she say good bye to her beloved son and in that moment, in faith, embrace him as her savior, her Lord? Embrace him as the savior who loves all humanity as he had once loved her perhaps even more than he had loved her. Trusting God's plan, moving forward in faith and in hope. In the midst of this terrible occasion, with the celebrations only a memory Mary has the choice of trusting God or turning inward with her pain.
Isn't that where we stand? At the cross with a decision to make. Will we allow the love that transcends human love to open our eyes through faith? Will we accept God's plan for our lives knowing it is a lovingly wrought plan even when we don't understand the elements of that plan or how it could possibly work out for good? Through the web of pain that comes with being human we must find the thread of faith and hope as Mary did and embrace a loving and present Christ.
Mary didn't run from the face of adversity neither when she found herself pregnant and unmarried nor when they killed her son. Neither when she was given that son nor when he was taken away. As the horror of losing her son unfolded before her she stood in faith and in hope. Mary didn’t know what was to come next. It appears that she accepted her loss and within that loss found, three days later, that she gained a risen Lord.
We are called to stand before the cross with faith, faith in God’s enduring love, faith and hope that the resurrection will bring the all encompassing love of God and the peace that is beyond understanding even in the midst of our greatest losses even when we don’t know the end of the story, embracing that faith and hope as God moves us through the journey that is this life.

Amen

Better Parenting in 2008

Changing old habits is hard. I mean really hard. I have an irritating habit of kicking my shoes off as soon as my backside hits a horizontal surface and then completely forgetting that I did it. As you can well imagine the result is shoes under the coffee table, shoes under the dinning room table, shoes in the kitchen nook , shoes scattered all over the bedroom, under my side of the bed, under his side of the bed, at the foot of the bed, under the chair. You get the picture. It irritates me so I know it drives the rest of my family nuts. They persevere. I can’t seem to change this bad habit because I am not even conscious of the act even as I do it. It’s as if the shoes just skipped off my feet of their own volition. How can I change that?

Parenting habits seem to suffer the same problem. I do some things and I am not even aware that I’m doing them. The insidious part of parenting is that children do as you do not as you say. No matter how many times you tell them otherwise. And in that way my bad habits replicate into their bad habits. When I become frustrated and work myself into a snit, I am teaching them to scrunch up their faces and snarl when they get frustrated. When I put off making the final pageant costumes until 10 pm the night before the pageant they learn to scramble around the night before a project is due trying to find glue sticks and teal construction paper.

To be a better parent in 2008 means I will need to be a better person in 2008. This sounds terrible. I want to concentrate on them, the kids. It is so easy to see just what they need to do to be happier and more successful and more peaceful. I don’t want that reflected back on me. The harsh truth is that if I don’t want my children to make the mistakes I make then I need to stop making those mistakes. Easier said than done. Not something I can do of my own strength. Seeking strength through quiet time with God, talking time with friends and honest self examination is the path to correcting my errors, errors in the things I do and say and think. (Don’t think they don’t know the gist of what you are thinking, they do.)

If ever I need reminding that my bad habits are contagious I need look no further than the floor under the coffee table, and the dinning room table and the kitchen nook. There I will find not only my size 9 pumps and running shoes but little white sandals and little black patent church shoes. It is as if my big shoes invited some little girl shoes in for a chat. Such a visual reminded that my daughter will do what I do no matter how many times I say, at the height of hypocrisy, “If you put your shoes away you will always know where to find them.”

So maybe we will work on shoes this month. And maybe I can remember that I am a walking object lesson whether I like it or not. To improve my child requires only that I improve myself. Once again I am reminded that parenting is not for the faint of heart.

Blessings,
Michelle

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Seven years ago Don became the new grandpa in our family. While some of the grandkids had a hard time adjusting, mine did not. My children were 6 years old and 3 years old when Mom married Don. My father died when they were very young so they have very few, if any, memories of him. Don entered with enthusiasm for his new role. He is generous with treats and his time. For the first couple of years it never occurred to him to utter the dread words, ”Maybe we should ask your mother,” in relation to things like Mountain Dew, ice cream and The Simpsons. We all love him.

The only problem I have with Don is how to introduce him. I stumble every time. I once referred to him as my stepfather and a friend said, “Aren’t you a little old to call him that?” I guess to call him stepfather is to imply that he helped raise me. He didn’t. I was 37 years old when he married my mother. Next I tried, “This is my mother’s husband”. Not good. That seems cold and distant. I thought the fail safe method would be to introduce him as my children’s grandfather. That too brought baggage. My son’s second grade teacher, laughing at one of Don’s jokes, was confident that my son, Harrison, had inherited his sense of humor directly from his grandfather. The family cringed feeling we had misled her.

I have, in just the last year, introduced him as my father, my mother’s husband, my stepfather and my father-in-law. Most often I have chosen to say, “This is my mother, Martha and this is Don,” leaving everyone to wonder how he fits in and why I didn’t give him a familial label. My problem is that I want to claim him as part of us, but I don’t know how the hearer of my introduction will interpret each label.

That is the problem with labels; everyone brings their own interpretation to the terms. Label yourself a Christian and one person sees a hate monger out to exclude as many people as possible, another sees a wimp dominated by the church while others see a pleasant but ineffectual do-gooder. A few see a follower of Christ doing the best she can.

Jesus resisted labels. At one moment he was a scholar of the Jewish law and at another apparently flaunting that same law for the good of the sinners by which he was surrounded. He didn’t seem to be interested in telling us what label he thought he should have but rather he asked Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” Jesus seemed more interested in what individuals had to say, what they believed than defining himself. He didn’t seem to spend any time correcting the misconceptions about his label but he spent his time caring for the sick and lame and broken hearted around him. Isn’t that just like him.

As a Christian I try not to engage in debates about the image of Christianity. I should love God and love my neighbor and let the labels sort themselves out or not. In the same way, I will let the world know that I love Don as my mother’s husband, my stepfather, my children’s grandfather, as himself, without the concern of how others interpret the labels. Long explanations are exhausting and generally do little to illuminate a relationship either here on earth or beyond. Loving actions will overcome limiting labels. After all we are not called to declare our correctness but to show our love.

So I am a Christian and Don is Don and the world can sort out what that means.

Blessings in the New Year,
Michelle