My Great Grandmother Gertie and Myself, about the year 2002.
We’re working on anger in my house. And it’s yet another time when I start praying, thinking the seed of these problems lies in someone’s else’s heart, and God says “No, no, honey, let’s look at you, let’s fix you up.”
God is so personally interested in us. He has no worries about fixing outward problems for us. He knows they will fix themselves, if we let Him fix our hearts.
If we let Him make us more like His Son, then we become holier and more righteous by degrees, and by those degrees, we are drawn to Him, closer and closer in intimate relationship.
I put the photo of my Great Grandma and I up because I was thinking of her today.
She’s only one of two of my Great Grandmothers who I know had marriages end because of anger. Who knows where the anger in our family started? I surely don’t, but I can trace a lot of it back through all the stories I do know. Whether it’s to do with resentful women hiding anger or running from it or pretending they weren’t ever angry, to men who had outburst after outburst, or slow burning rage that ruined relationships and kept the world in retreat. I so often think of it.
What I know of my husband’s family had the same threads running through it in different ways.
And I pray, desperately, that our marriage, our children, will be where it ends. Let us be the last generation of our families cursed by anger that causes sin, Lord. And let us be the first who gain instead Your promises realized!
And in that relationship, not only do problems begin to come around less and less, they matter less and they phase your heart less. The next storm comes with less fear and less worry. The blankness of an unknown future cannot make you anxious, of you really know the One Who Has Pulled Me From Every Past Pit and Cliff and Valley And Hopeless Place!
We are going to counseling with one of our Church’s Pastors, we are going to start a video series about anger from a Christian perspective and fixing it with Christian principles.
We’ve been here before, and these are problems many people face daily, monthly, yearly, and especially during times in the world like these, so I thought I’d just talk about it some here and say a prayer for all of us dealing with this same problem.
Lord,
Help us to use our anger as the indicator and tool it is and to deal with the underlying issues that cause it.
Let us peel back the onion skin layers just like we are Shrek, Lord, and really get to the center of ourselves.
Help us to give that center to You for eternal safekeeping, Lord, so that we know in this world we can be honest, forthright, quick to answer, and committed to what answers we do give. We can learn to be vulnerable to those around us, knowing You ever guard our eternal souls and that any bad thing they attempt will be turned to our good and dealt with in Your justice.
Let us speak wisely and wait on Your guidance before action so that we may remain sure of ourselves.
Knowing that all we can control in our lives is ourselves, please let us keep ourselves centered strongly in the direction of seeking You always, so that we aren’t tilting at windmills and trying to control others.
Lord, help us to deal with other people’s anger the way You ask us to, with forbearance and forgiveness and an unwillingness to be quick to anger or offense.
I don’t know the truth of my circumstances until and unless you tell me.
My heart is darkened often to my own self. There’s no hope I could understand another heart than mine any better.
Yet sometimes I am called to try while I live this life in community with those You sent me. Show me how, Lord.
I am desperately lost without an idea of what comes next. I have no hope for solution and no prayer of resolution, except for You.
There seems to my eyes to be no way out of or through these problems. And yet, I know a God Who Saves! I know a Living Redeemer!
Redeem us, Lord, individually, and as a family! Bring us to You, and bring us through this, Lord!
I know that only You can see a way to do that, and I know that You have done it for us before. I praise Your name, Lord! You are Mighty! You are Merciful! You are Loving! Let us be those things as well.
And, Lord, let us cling to You until we can see the way forward again! May we not move our feet into we know the very right thing to do to be on the path You would call us down! Let us do just what You would have us do to take care of these little ones the way You would have us do that.
May we still ourselves in the midst of all pain and commotion, until You say move!
I’ve read Your word on what a wife should be, on what will bless a woman, on how to behave in my marriage and out of it. And yet, I worry that I am not doing all I can to help this family, to steer us towards Your blessings and not Your wrath. Help me, Lord, to wait on Your guidance and to do as You ask. Help me to be able to follow You and to be a blessing to my family in that way. Let me be a part of their provision here, Lord, though I know You supply all. In any way I can, help me to be able to facilitate their well being and their care. Help me with the communication between us all, Lord, which seems hard lately. Help me to understand their hearts with Your help, and to help them get fed Spiritually, Lord, by giving them more and more of Your word.
I have always wanted to be a parent. It was my only true and deep “real” goal in life. I talked about many other things, things I thought might sound good to whomever I was thinking was cool and influential in my life right then, but the only thing that really came from my own heart and mind was parenthood.
Despite that, I’ve never been the parent I want to be, at all, not ever, not even close.
I have boiled all my parenting down to one very simple Saving Grace, in fact, and that is one quick prayer I pray desperately and often, “Jesus, please fill in for me in all this that I lack.”
This photo above is the floor right now in my Mother’s house. She’s gone for the day and we, having not made good months or weeks or days ahead plans like I think that Good Mothers might do, had been scrambling this morning to find something to buy for and do with our 4 year old and the other kids for the 4th birthday.
Confetti poppers and a grocery store pinata to the rescue, now the paper baby shark is dead, no one ate anything but cake and candy today, and we all just wish Jesus would come and whisk is away from all this already because it has been a seeming cascade of feelings and humanity and my selfishness warring with yours all day long. Not only from the kids.
You see, like I said earlier, this isn’t my house. My house is the dark underbelly of this house. My house is a 1970s wet bar, orange indoor outdoor carpet, unfinished concrete, dingy dark corners, mess everywhere, and a constant junk pile out back which refills magically every time we go to the dump.
I say none of that to garner your sympathy, it is fully a place I chose, as a cognizant adult to live. It’s, in fact, somewhere I’m grateful to have.
I’m grateful because we own it, because it’s still much more than I deserve or could get on my own, and because I still believe it is exactly where Jesus sent me.
A few years ago, I started praying very hard for a house of my own. I had a long laundry list of ever changing requirements I was praying over with the Lord, and I believe right before we moved here, He refined it.
I would start thinking I’d like a new house, because something about our old rental (due to its age) would be driving me crazy or harder to fix than it should be. But, I’d think and pray on it and feel that wasn’t right for me. God would start to move my mind around how I hate the look of all things new, all those Pinterest perfect copies of each other out there.
I realized I had never owned a new house but from what I could tell, new construction often had as many problems as older, and no one knew what they would be.
I feel the same way about cars, give me something tested and true, rather than something new and ready to spring up with new trouble. I like to have the kinds of problems so many people have had before that as soon as I ask a mechanic, they’ve fixed it 90 times and already know what I’m talking about.
That probably says a lot more about me than I mean to reveal.
Today, this fear of new and mysterious problems really reared its head.
I’m so incapable of even sorting through problems, mostly, and even more incapable of trying to fix them. All I can do, I know from the beginning, is run to Jesus with them shoved into and spilling out of my big emotional baggage all the time. I’m pretty sure the zippers broke long ago, too, because half the time I’m incapable of even that exercise.
This was one of those days. I found myself just on the side of the proverbial road, zippers open, problem baggage all over the muddy ground, and me just wallowing and crying in the middle of it.
The problems started forever ago, but 7 months back we moved here and things started top get more complicated. My husband, my Mom, and I, plus our two kids and her one, my half sister, all under the same roof.
We technically have two living spaces, and we technically all get what we want plus go where we feel God is leading us, but from the moment we arrived, the Devil had been poking his awful head in as much as possible.
This morning, as soon as we got up, I said something my mom heard and took as criticism which only proves that no one has any privacy here, we’re all far too much in everyone else’s business, me probably more than anything since I’m sort of the center of this triangle. And then when we ran off as fast as possible to pick up a cake we hoped someone had made it in from the flood to make, to get some kind of gift because we had put it off until last minute.
Lest you think it was the flood’s fault and you should feel sorry for me about that, the last minute stuff and the “I’m too tired” type selfishness on my part is what made this a big deal that we just couldn’t manage it.
So, under clouds of selfishness and under expectations, we left the house this morning in a rush to try and buy our child a good day. I wish I were the mind if parent who were wise enough, long gazed enough, to see the essential Spiritual lessons in things and to perhaps prosaically proclaim that we can solve these unmet expectations through happy surprises that teach us all the value of taking life as it comes.
We could have let the girl open the small but perfect gifts Grandma had all ready and wrapped, and then declared it was a day for Eva and the family to do what Eva wished. I know what she would have picked and we were already up for it. In fact, most of it she did want to do and we did after we were done losing our collective minds.
We took her to the park and to what she charmingly calls the “moo-see-um”, the only two things easy to get to, open, and mostly finally dry in the one square mile of our town that’s not fully under feet of water.
The only other thing she would have loved would have been if we played games with her. There’s lots of games around here lately and she, being too young for many of them, gets left out feedings. We could have played memory and Eye Spy and Operation with her all day and she would not have cared if there were a cake or a gift at all.
Instead, out of fear and frustration with our own selfishness, we spent the morning rushing through the grocery store, fighting everywhere we went over big and small problems old and new, and then came home and let the girls beat a Baby Shark pinata full of way too much candy to death, still snarking at each other as we held the pole for the them, then we exploded leftover New Year’s confetti cannons that were ill advised themselves, but what was worse, I exploded in retribution all over my husband, in front of the kids.
I hate it when I’m a big immature jerk just flailing around in my own emotional garbage like that.
Eventually, I think, I started to reach out again and at least ask Jesus for help. Isn’t it funny how He comes straight over and starts right then? We think we need to do all these things. Put the emotional problems in the baggage, take them to Jesus under our own power, work at getting closer to better, but when we just calm down enough to have that second thought, to breathe in and reach for Him–the solution to ALL of it–He’s already right there.
Maybe we think we can work harder at being Christian, acting Christian, loving like Jesus, going to church, proving we love Him with more and more giving, read 7 chapters of the Bible a day and listen to only sermons in the car, and that will keep us on the straight and narrow. But it can’t fix our brown zippers, or save us from our own base selfishness, and it can not stave off those side of the road moments.
We can wait to make a choice like moving until we’re sure the Spirit led us to exactly where God wants us, and then find when we get there that our expectations for what would happen after are nothing like God’s plans for us there. We become the complainers wandering the desert. So close to seeing the fruits of their obedience and their relationship with God, and working our way right out of the blessing in our own blind ignorance and childishness.
So what good does obedience, being yielded to God, having a relationship you tend and seek do? What good is God if we are only going to run away and wallow in our own selfishness?
The best thing, I find, about God in these situations is his sheer eternal-ness. He waits patiently so often for us to finally have the second thought.
We come out of the side of the road wallowing and we see He’s still there. In fact, He’s usually mended the zippers and helped pack things back up and given you strength to keep carrying it all. By the time we settle down from our emotional outbursts, we see the Lord never left us, wasn’t so far away, and used something here for our Good.
Lord, I don’t remember that You’re always there. I don’t see clearly how broken I am and how often I try out a solution I already know doesn’t work again. I need You, Lord, to show me the Truth of my circumstances, and to show me the Truth of what will help. I know that You can lead me to every answer to every problem, because You are the Creator and Designer of All. Help me, Lord, to remember to simply stop and run to You. I am trying to rest in You, to trust You, and to know that You gave me these children for Your good reasons. Help me to honor them as the gift they are, and to aim them back at You, just like arrows. Thank You for them, Lord, and help me to do all I can to raise them as You would have me do.
All of Chapter 7 of Acts is a picture of “turning one’s eyes upon Jesus”
Acts Chapter 7 is an absolute guidebook on what to do in troubled times. Or any time. Focus on God! Remind yourself of the things He has done before, and why He did them!
Proclaim His goodness and remind yourself and those around you that He knows we are not good, and He loves us anyway!
And use the power of this focus to do right even when everyone else may be doing wrong, to shout forgiveness even while they stone you.
Lord,
Keep refining me! I want my goal to be holiness, not happiness! Let me be more like Stephen, Lord, and please, help me keep my focus ever on You.
In Jesus’ Holy Name, Amen
Mary is a portrait of keeping Jesus in His proper place.
The Lord has spoken to me so often about the list of “shoulds” in my head.
I’ve long had a neuromuscular disease that often leaves me paralyzed in various ways. It gives me very low energy mentally and physically, and physical disabilities that come and go without warning.
This means, in a practical sense, that I’ve spent a large portion of my life feeling I couldn’t keep up with my duties as a daughter, as a caretaker for my disabled sister, as a mother, as a wife, as a housekeeper.
I often, shamefully, felt I couldn’t keep up with my “duties” as a Christian.
It was at the very depths of this illness, when I could hardly swallow, speak, breathe, or walk, that the Lord called me to do more. What a slap that felt like! What a tragedy! How could I, Lord?
Oh, but He showed me. First, He showed me how to properly rest in Him.
Then, He showed me how to properly pray to Him.
And He continues to refine my skills in these ways, and to remind me of right priorities.
If there are some days you just can’t get it all done, some days that feel overwhelming and frantic, when you just don’t have the time to manage it all, as counterintuitive as it is, set it all down and sit with Him instead.
I promise you will learn at least two things. First, the Master of All Time and Space can help things be managed no matter what you do (or don’t) do, and second, putting Him in His proper place (first in everything) makes all else right!
It is not only that we need to remember we are much less important than we think, but that we need to remember how completely important He is. He is penultimate!
Order your priorities, and order your mind! And don’t you ever feel guilty if you need to sit in the one clean spot in the house, surrounded by crushed cheerios and dirty dishes and whatever else and spend time with Jesus.
Start with Him, and He will help the rest follow in good time. And start again with Him whenever you need.
Lord,
Please, Help me remember not to spur myself towards tilting at windmills!! Help me not to look about and think that these things I can see and fuss over in the physical world are my first priorities.
Keep my gaze on you, Lord, not the clock in the car, though I may be running late. Not the mess from the household, though it may be bothering me. Not the terrors or troubles of the world, though they are ever present in front of my face.
Let me know how to continually order my life so I’m never putting you behind trivial things.
Early in the pandemic time, in May of 2020, just when I was beginning to realize what might be coming for us, worldwide, and to wonder and worry about it, we went on a little trip.
It was a trip we had taken many times, before then, and have already taken quite a few since, because it was just our usual visit to see my Dad in Montana.
That time was different, and in ways I’m only beginning to barely realize just now.
We decided to go down a different route than usual which included even more craggy mountainside driving than the typical 4 mountain passes we go through, and we were worried about the weather because it was still quite stormy and wintry even though it was May, but we made it through the worst worry on White Pass and right at the top, we drove right through a rainbow!
We prayed in thanks, because just before that we had been second guessing our decision to take the trip because of how unknown things would be. Back then, like now, you couldn’t tell which town up ahead or county or state would have which restrictions in place. Would the people in these places be friendly and forgiving to us if we didn’t know their ways or would we find ourselves in trouble?
Worse than just uncertainty, I did have some real fear. There was a real possibility that we would get to Montana and find ourselves stranded. Things were changing fast and unpredictably in the world and I felt I prayed through the whole of the 8 hours driving and one overnight stay that we had in our home state in the first leg of the trip.
It turned out, we didn’t just go through one rainbow that day, we encountered 5!
We delighted in counting them and praising the Lord each time we saw a new one, and almost all of them were so low hanging and different than our usual seen-from-afar at home rainbows that we literally drove through them, the nose of our green Ford Explorer getting all rainbow dipped until it passed over us, or we passed through it.
Each time I seemed to worry over a new thing out of my control, and then pray, and then find a new bible verse to reassure myself with. It was quite the spiritual journey for a simple drive on a spring afternoon.
Things felt ominous and I kept trying to tell myself that everything had been so fine in our lives, and even more and more blessed in our house all while the outside world got more chaotic. I felt I had no real reason to worry, but also felt God was telling me things to come would get hard. I prayed He would give me the faith to get through whatever uncertain things were coming.
Then, just before we left Washington by the Eastern border, we made a very brief stop right next door to where my husband grew up.
The town is so tiny most won’t have any clue of it, but it’s name is Pataha, and we stopped at a cafe built in their old flour mill. They also hold church services there and they laid Bible verses at the seats of the 3 of us who were of reading age.
These verses were seemingly pulled from a ready stash, already printed and cut, and given out at apparent random to anyone who came in to eat. Oh, but Christians and mathematicians know there’s no true randomness in our universe.
A man, a father, struggling in faith, working to put his past behind him and cling to God, and there he sits, one driveway down from the trailer park where he painfully grew up, given this verse:
Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him!
Some translations say hope instead of confidence. Both are apt and true.
My husband finds hope hard. I would say it looks painful on him. Hope and confident hope, especially, is not something I think he wears the yoke of easily.
And yet we know that Jesus’ yoke is easy and His burden for us light. And we know we can be expected to be confident in our hope and trust of Him.
And so I took it as a promise, and I hope my husband did too.
It wasn’t only his verse, though, that was set down so purposefully by the Hand of God in his place.
You see, I was still speaking like a drunk, unable to use my legs for more than a few steps at a time, in great pain every day.
I have Myasthenia Gravis. I have had symptoms of it, of varying degrees, since I was 7. This global terminal neuromuscular disease had been diagnosed in me in March of 2019 and infusions that were as hard on me as the disease, then a chest surgery for it in August. As soon as I was beginning an upswing from near death, it seemed, COVID came around.
My verse being Isaiah 40:31: but those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar with wings like eagles, they will walk and not grow faint; could not have been a coincidence or mistake. I took it instantly as a promise as well. I would not always be having such a hard time.
My Daughter’s Verse was:
So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Isaiah 41:10
Oh, that one is a promise I am overjoyed to have seen from the Lord. Our first daughter, to whom this was given, is fearful. She always has been. She had nightmares from about 4 months old, she’s never slept well until she was finally able to gain knowledge of Jesus and ask Him into her heart, the same summer before COVID came.
She is often a bundle of stomach achey worry even now, though, and is sensitive to other people’s emotions and troubles. Poor her, being born to two such human and broken parents.
This promise I would cling to, for her, and for our other daughter who was so young at the time that she just seemed like a big question mark to me.
Now, I cling to it even more for both of them. Protect them, Lord, and hold them up as You have said You will! Amen
We didn’t have a clue then that our older child would never go back to her school, that we and my mother and sister would have our roots shaken and feel we must follow God’s leading to another county to live.
We had big plans to stand where we were and continue on safely until death, until the world shook around us, and God shook things within us.
Now it seems it’s been 7 months of trials and shaking among us, since that shaking within us, and things seem to be coming to a head again in our household.
Things we could never have imagined have come up and tried to steal our peace and shake our faith, and they continue to attempt it.
I keep praying for help not to be shaken.
Today, the verse I was given on that very special trip came back to me in about 3 messages from different people.
I realized that we are again enduring some of the hardest times I hope to ever have to go through. Not only worldwide type hard times, but more personal ones.
And though I’ll not dishonor my family members to explain in detail, I do want to say, I learned definitively that when we think God is warning and reassuring us, we should pray in thanks and store that away.
Even if it comes almost two years later, the things He warns about will come. And so we can take sustenance from that, because so will the promises.
I wait to see them complete.
God reminded me, swiftly and in 3 different ways (when my stubborn mind did not catch on at first) about these verses. He brought back to me these promises on a day of letting go, and a day of surrendering.
Lord,
I surrender myself and my hopes to You. Whatever You will lead me into next, I will do. And I will do all I can to waiver nowhere else. Don’t let me be led astray, Lord, because I want to be on Your path.
I give You my children, Lord, and I know You will care for them better than I can. Lead me to be the best Mother to them that I can be, as I follow You more closely. I will trust You for their protection and provision, Lord, in all things.
And give me faith, too, Lord, to trust You for the same for myself. I do not wish to be a stumbling block to them or others, Lord.
Lord, You know all things and You see all things, so I know You see what is in my heart towards my husband and my hopes for our future together with You. I lay it at Your feet, Lord. I submit that wholly and completely to You.
I know You will never forsake me or betray me and that I can rest, strong, calm, and unshakeable, in You.
I know this no matter what is here today or coming tomorrow.
Thank You, Lord, and Hallelujah! Christ the Redeemer is working here today!
I’m very good at ignoring myself. That’s not the same as denying myself. I’m good at just thinking that everything is fine in my heart. I’m one of those highly annoying sanctimonious jerks who is always ready and happy to try and analyze the behavior (and hearts behind that behavior) of those around me, but I stay stubbornly idiotic about far too many of my own motivations and behaviors that grow our of them.
To anyone who knows me and has experience with this side of me, I’m truly sorry. It is one of God’s greatest tasks in trying to eke me closer to perfection to continually show me this and try to drag me out of it. I imagine it as an extra stubborn and thorny part of my temperament, judging by how often the Lord sees fit to send me lessons about this same thing.
It’s proof that we don’t earn love, and that it is a gift from God that I continue to be married and have fairly good relationships with people who have been in my life a long time.
God tells us to take up our cross and follow Him, which is a directive to deny self. What God keeps showing me is that I can’t know which portions of my inner thought life and my “inner want life” to deny if I never take honest inventory of what’s driving me and what’s creating behaviors that are detrimental in my life and my family.
Our pastor has been speaking about being pliable of heart and ready to follow Jesus into the wild of the adventures He determines for each of us. He touched greatly on the topic of how we inhibit our ability to be a part of this grand adventure if we cling too closely to self.
This was our church’s worship Wednesday. I’ve never had a sermon talk to me so clearly about something so immediate in my life, and so useful. https://youtu.be/A9MnbmW9EaQ It asks these questions: How is self love hurting you causing defects in you? How is it hiding these defects from you? Invite God to uproot self love and case His love to take its place.
Lord,
Thank You that You show me how I hold myself away from You and from being a part of Your grand and great plans for this world and those in it with me.
Please, Lord, keep helping me to stay in relationship with You. Keep helping me have the courage to say yes to Your calling to new things even if they frighten me and even though I am so incapable on my own.
Thank You that I can trust You to work out every problem, to equip me despite my own inabilities, and to improve all things for me and any others who sincerely seek You.
Help me know exactly how to put myself aside, and live for Your purposes. Let me know what to do and when and how to do it, Lord.
I’m so grateful for Your contstant and continued revelation! You show me knew things each day, sometimes each moment!
Even in books I’ve read before so many times, I see new things. Look here! I’ve read Job many times, each time thinking “I see that we all must suffer on Earth, but what, really, could be the point of this book?! “
And this time, I see in every chapter, almost each verse, how Job cries out for the Savior not yet known in his time! Thank You for new insight.
I’m amazed to see how many times he asks for Jesus, without realizing it. “Who can make an impure man pure?!” Only Jesus! It reminds me how many times I remind myself and my children, the only true answer is Jesus.
Lord, every true prayer to You from us, Your adopted children, bought by the Blood, must include that gratefulness, that deep knowledge, that You saw us for what we are, and You loved us enough to save us anyway.
You sent the answer to all the seemingly unanswerable questions, and we can never earn it.
But, Lord, there’s none more grateful than I that You are so generous, more in awe of Your intricate and detailed plan to bring us home.
A Grateful Wife's Prayers 