Time to Say Goodbye

To this blogger site, that is.

Matt started this site in 2005 basically while I was in labor with Stella as a way for us to keep our out-of-state family satisfied with cute pictures of the newest family member.

A lot has happened since then as you can see from the nearly 13 years of archived posts.

I'm going to keep writing, I just switched my platform, so please follow me at ericasunshineowen.com. Today I wrote a new post called "Dying to Exercise" about something my grandpa taught me regarding the most popular New Year's resolution.

Thanks so much for reading all these years! Your comments and engagement have been such an encouragement. Let's keep up the good thing we've got going. :)

Cleaning Up Messes

My in-laws never let us help pick up the toys and mess before we leave their house after a visit. They say it's part of a grandparent’s joy -the packing up and putting away - a liturgy of sorts, to recount memories made, to relive how imaginations had run wild, and to cherish remnants of being together. 

And Wednesday night, before our kids went back to school the next day, I understood what they mean.

As our three oldest have grown, I have less mess to clean-up. Their crumbs and spills are fewer. We don’t lose each other anymore, or break appendages, in mounds of toys and puzzles on the floor. And although I don’t wish for all that back, I did enjoy walking around the house the other night, seeing the mayhem of a wonderful Christmas break decorating our house.

A football helmet on the sofa, a random sock on the living room floor. Crumbs and books on the coffee table, blankets in piles, and Nintendo Switch controllers and cords pouring out of the entertainment center. 

As I tidied up, I reminisced over laughs we shared, necessary confrontations we dealt with, movies we watched, crossword puzzles we completed, cookies and gingerbread houses we decorated, and gave thanks that they were all sprinkled with the priceless investments of biblical encouragement, teaching, and correction.

I didn’t want our break to be over. 

I tried to cheer myself up and remember that all of these good times and efforts made are part of the joy of parenting in faith, of eternally investing in our kids. But even that comfort was tinged with anxiety. So I pressed my heart further. 

While I would be quick to say I parent in faith, I had to ask myself, “Faith in what or whom?” Like the act of giving thanks, faith, too, needs a Source, an Object. 

My heart worked through this question with, “I’m parenting in faith so my kids will come to faith and follow Jesus and love him and others.”

And that’s when it hit me. In that moment, at least, my source of faith in parenting was misplaced. I was putting my faith in my kids and their response to Truth. 

I let that sink in. I was parenting with faith in my kids.

Photos By Robyn

So I had to ask, “Is it enough for me to parent for God alone, putting all my faith in him?” That’s where my soul finds peace as a parent and I find joy and more ease with letting them go and grow.

Because then, I can teach them the Word regularly, as I do, and build a portfolio of wonderful memories together as a family, without worrying if I’m doing enough or being enough or saying just the right things to make them follow Jesus. 

Instead, I can do these things as worship to him, as the service he deserves from my parenting, rejoicing in his truth shared from my lips, trusting his goodness and wisdom to use his Word and the works of my hands in my kids’ lives in the way only a perfect God and Heavenly Father could. My expectation is ultimately in him, then, not them. 

They will let me down. He never will!

And there, my heart finds rest, because I’m no longer parenting my kids as a puppeteer thinking I can control them, but as God’s physical creations and the only one who can use our imperfect parenting to re-create them spiritually, too.

So, it turns out the last mess that needed cleaned up from Christmas break was my own heart. The sorting of my motivations and expectations. And unlike my kids mess-making around our house, God knows the mess of my heart isn’t something I’ll outgrow. But he doesn’t need a New Year’s resolution for that reorganizing project! Thankfully, He’s already committed to it as a lifelong endeavor. 

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For Reflection

1) Can you identify anxiety (fearing a bad outcome) or cynicism (doubting a good outcome) in your heart as a parent?

2) As you trace the source of that anxiety and/or cynicism what do you find? Where are you placing your faith? In your efforts? In your control? In your kids' acceptance of the Truth?

3) How can you adjust your motivations and expectations to parent from a place of rest, joy, and peace?

You Don't Know How Long You Have

The kids that used to drive her crazy were mostly grown and now had driven her to her knees instead. And not just them, but this granddaughter she was helping to raise and the ladies in Appalachian Ohio who knew her but didn’t know her Jesus.

So, that early morning when I didn’t think anyone else was awake and found her in the living room on her knees in front of her chair, her Bible open and head bowed, I knew I was seeing the secret to how she loved and lived when she got up off her knees. The God of wonder she saw in the pages of that Book convinced her he was still in the business of jaw-dropping, life-changing work. In fact, she knew it from how her own life was changing.

Since I was born that pedal to the metal day in April, God, through better teaching at a new church, was softening my grandma’s heart with compassion and genuine Christ-like love. She was seeing the depths of her own sin and knew what people needed most wasn’t to clean up their lives on the outside to make God happy but to be washed

clean on the inside.

So, she made it her business to take his heart-cleaning message to all she knew. We’d load up in the car and drive those twists and turns to visit ladies in the hills who chewed tobacco and didn’t have any teeth. We’d walk and talk with neighbors nearby. If she knew you, she loved you, and wanted you to know of an even greater Love than hers.

My grandma was the first missionary I knew, although she never moved out of southeastern Ohio. She lived his mission right where she was all day, every day. She was the first person to tell me about Jesus. God helped her to turn all those sorrowful regrets she had from not raising her own kids in a Christian home, into faithfulness to teach me about him. When we lived with her, and then later when she had me on weekends and in the summers, she’d start in the morning talking about Jesus and off and on all day, until we ended our day praising him and thanking him still. 

She lived and breathed the Word of God and packed his truth in my heart from the time I could barely speak. I was the three-year-old memory verse champion at their church because of her.

I, like young Timothy, saw faith first in my grandmother. And soon, her faith became my faith too, when I asked her how I could be part of God’s family. Belonging to his family was the truth God used to show me I was not one of his children. In a very small way, I must’ve known I could survive without an earthly father, but couldn’t without my Heavenly one. And this gracious Father, who had such compassion on this fatherless little girl, accepted me as his very own daughter, when I asked him to save me from my sins. And my precious Grandma was kneeling there beside me as I prayed to him.

A few years later, when I called their house to see if she made it home safely in the snow storm from the Christian school where she taught, and my grandpa couldn’t answer me but asked to talk to my uncle instead, I knew something was horribly wrong.

The car had to be removed with the jaws of life from the creek where it sunk after spinning out of control on the ice and snow-covered roads. Her possessions were found down the creek after it thawed.

I remember someone handing me her Bible they found there. The pages, now dry, were crinkled and brittle from being wet. I held it in my hands and opened it to see her markings covering the pages. The ink was blotchy and her handwriting faded. I may have been the only one who knew that before it’s pages were wet with creek water, they were wet with the tears of a kneeling mother praying urgently for her grown children to come to faith, and the tears of a friend burdened for her friends and neighbors to trust Jesus, and the weeping of a grandmother asking God to protect and grow her nine-year-old granddaughter to become a godly lady.

But now I’m not the only one who knows, Grandmothers, not to underestimate your influence over your grandkids. What they see you value and the priorities that shape your day are teaching them. What you talk about and who you talk to are communicating something to them too. 

You may not love their home life or the way their parents do things, but for the sake of their souls and their future, love them enough to give them something more than toys, sweets, clothes, and trips. Give them something that 30 years later, when you’re dead and gone, still will be bearing fruit in their lives and in others lives because of your intentionality, selflessness, sacrifice, and grace-driven persistence. 

My grandma would want me to tell you, you don't know how long you have, so don’t waste your grand-mothering.

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For Reflection

My grandma was killed in that car accident in 1985, at the age of 49, when I was just 9-years-old. In those 9 short years I had with her, she shaped the rest of my life by investing in me spiritually. 

What children/teens has God placed in your circle of influence?

How are you using your time with them and what priorities are you communicating to them through your words and example?

Have you bought into the American mindset that since the work of parenting is over you can now indulge and entertain your grandchildren instead of passing along your faith and growing wisdom from the Lord?

If so, how, by God's grace, can you be more intentional in giving your grandchildren something that will outlive you?

Pedal to the Metal

Her mom’s black patent leather shoes clicked over and over on the tile as she tip-toed around the kitchen. The quieter she tried to be, the more magnified the clicking was, reverberating through the house like a clanging cymbal. 

My mom, a teenager about to become a parent, sat in the living room clenching her teeth, mostly because of her mom’s annoying tip-toeing on blast, but also because of the contractions starting closer together.

Her official due date had come and gone. So, April 22nd became the day both anxiously dreaded and eagerly anticipated by the family. An unplanned pregnancy invites that kind of mixed emotion, I suppose.

Her parents had kicked her out of their house when they found out she was pregnant. Their own act of rebellion to match hers. They tried to ignore the life growing in her. But God was using my life to stir more life in them. A life he wanted them to live in love, not one lived meeting sin with sin, but one responding to sin with grace.

It was a lesson they fought. One rainy day my pregnant mom was walking the streets in Byesville. She saw a truck she recognized and knew it was her dad’s. Maybe he was coming for her! As he stopped at a red light, she ran up and pounded on the passenger window yelling, “Dad! Dad!,” trying to get him to look at her before the light turned green. But he didn’t budge. His foot pressed against the gas, thinking if he pulled away fast enough he could run from what God had him to learn, leaving her standing in the street, wet and cold, because of her expanding waistline.

But God always wins. Those he pursues can’t get away from him no matter how hard they press the pedal to the metal. 

In time, Mom was back at her parents, sitting with her dad, as he invited her to give me their last name since Mom would not be marrying my biological father. Most parents struggle over a first name for their baby, but Mom had to struggle over a last name for me. By grace, I would became a Neuhart, taking my maternal side's last name.

Maybe it was the aggravation of the clicking patent leather on the tile that accelerated the contractions, or just nature taking its course. Whatever it was, my mom got a seat in her parent's vehicle that day, April 22nd, no pounding on the window required, as they sped, pedal to the metal, to the hospital for my birth. 

My life certainly did awaken more life and grace in my grandparents' heart. They lovingly provided a roof over our heads. But even more, Grandma gave me, her originally unwanted granddaughter, a front row seat to the wonder of a life transformed by the power of the gospel. 

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For Reflection

How is someone else’s sin affecting your life right now?

How are you responding to this unwanted and/or unplanned trial, circumstance, or relationship? 

What would it look like for you to respond to sin with grace instead of meeting it with more sin?

Waiting for the Main Course

In those comfortless days, although at the time my eyes couldn’t see it, my hands couldn’t touch it, and my mouth couldn’t taste it, God was answering my prayer for “a sign of [his] goodness.” (Psalm 86:17)

1. He was teaching my heart to hunger. Learning anything is a lengthy process and takes time. Although I knew what it felt like to hunger for the Word, God was maturing me by helping me learn what it felt like to hunger for the Word even when I didn’t experience immediate relief from my hunger. In his wisdom, he was helping me to learn perseverance in hunger, to keep scavenging, searching, and desperately longing to have my growing hunger satiated. 
2. He was teaching my heart to hunger for what would really satisfy. Even though I tried to placate my hunger in many ways, and although God felt so far removed from my struggle, I would eventually learn he was actually drawing me closer, showing me that none of my striving for self-justification, self-righteous boasting in my good works, tears of grief over my sin, or even my self-loathing because of regrets and shame, were adequate to atone for my sin and give my soul rest. I came to him with a long list of attempts at satisfying my hunger and, although at the time it made me angry, he was kindly crossing off each one as failing. Not working. Insufficient. 
3. He was teaching my heart only Jesus would satisfy. As my angry despair was growing with each feeble try I made and he crossed off the list, he was narrowing my focus, fixing my soul on the only thing that would truly satisfy my hunger. Jesus and Jesus alone! And oh how good he looked against all of my sorry attempts at satisfaction. Yes, I knew Jesus. I knew Jesus had forgiven my sins in the past. But I believed the Christianized, moralistic lie that my joy and fellowship with him, moving forward, was based on my performance. How well I was keeping up with the expectations he had for me. If I was good at obeying all the “Christian rules” those around me were heralding as a measurement of spiritual growth. But finally, after I had tried it all, he showed me that what I was looking for had been there all along. Him! His perfect life of law-keeping for me. His perfect death on my behalf, satisfying the terror of God’s wrath against my sin from which I had been foolishly and unsuccessfully hiding and running. His perfectly secure standing before God held for me, immovable, regardless of my ongoing struggle with sin, and unchanged whether I felt like I was secure or not. His perfectly tight, inescapable grip on me, not because I had great faith, but because he is faithful and strong and will never lose one whom the Father gives him. I was in his hand and no one could pluck me out of it! Friends, I saw Jesus! He was my sign of God’s goodness; my assurance of God’s love for and acceptance of me! He was the Living Word for which the Written Word made me hunger. He was the Water for which my soul was panting. He was the Bread I craved. And I tasted of him and saw God’s goodness! My angry heart softened in the satisfaction of knowing that from his perfect fullness, I had been filled!

This sounds like such a happy ending and like my “hangry-ness” was dealt with once and for all, problem solved. But, sadly, that just isn’t the case. I am still in the fight.  God has allowed me to see, often, he is cycling through this same pattern, working in my heart through a variety of circumstances. He is making me to hunger. He is showing me all the ways I’m trying to satisfy my hunger apart from him.  And he is bringing me to full satisfaction in Jesus alone - who he is and what he has done - to relieve my hunger. My understanding of him and thankfulness for him increases every time. Even the process reminds me he is good and patient and loves me enough to grow me, all while holding me securely in his faithful grip, no matter what. 

But, praise God, one day when Jesus returns, the hungering will be over. He will finally assuage the craving he started in us. For now, we’re enjoying the appetizer, but the main course is coming! And we will never be "hangry" again!

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For Reflection

Isn’t it a wonderful truth that one day we will never spiritually hunger or thirst again? Until that time, we have to keep submitting to the process of finding our satisfaction in Jesus alone. 

1. What has the process, outlined above, of hungering and finding true satisfaction looked like in your life?

2. Where are you in the process now?

3. What have you learned and are you learning about Jesus that satisfies your "hangry-ness"?

Hangry: Hungering for God's Word When It Makes You Angry

There it was. The peace from the angst I’d been feeling. The solution to the weight of guilt I’d been carrying. If God would only answer! 

Psalm 86:17, “Give me a sign of your goodness, that my enemies may see it and be put to shame, for you, LORD have helped me and comforted me.”

It became my constant plea, “Please, Lord! Show me a sign of your goodness!” 

Each day, I was desperately looking for his answer, eyes wide open, waiting for that sign.

Since I started following Jesus in high school, and began the lifelong process of working through some of the challenges of my past and how God fit into all of it, my relationship with the Bible was changing. 

My first Bible and what almost every page of it looked like!

At first, I couldn’t get enough of it, underlining almost every word on every page, hungering for it even more than my physical food. I was having “Wow!” and “Aha!” moments with every encounter. But increasingly, I wasn’t always seeing the Bible as a source of comfort and a place to find hope. At times, it actually made me feel more condemned and further from God and that made me angry.

Slowly, the initial joy and amazement at my salvation had worn off and I was seemingly left alone to reconcile where I had been spiritually and where I was going. Sins, those I had and was committing and those committed against me, were always before me and I couldn’t rejoice in forgiveness because I didn’t feel forgiven. 

Weeks went by and then months. I was still reading my Bible and waiting for God to do something and show me that sign, but my joy was gone. At night I was dreading waking up in the morning, having to live another day burdened by guilt. 

My spiritual struggles were affecting me physically. I was gaining weight, I had no energy, I withdrew from others, and I was slipping into depression. I wondered if this really was what the Christian life was supposed to be like and if so I hated it. It was not what I expected it to be. Initially I had experienced such thankfulness that I was no longer living in a way that opposed God. But now it seemed God was opposing me by not answering my prayer and keeping his word.

Why wasn’t he? And how was I supposed to move forward?

Sadly, I didn’t receive any specific counsel on this. At least not good counsel. Most spiritual leaders in my life at that point were very man-centered, telling me to focus on all the wrongs I had done and making them right with God and others and finding confidence in my obedient actions. And while the fact of my responsibility to personally deal with my sin was right, it was incomplete and even harmful.

What I needed most no one gave me. But God was listening and he was working, ironically enough, through the Bible, the very book that had made me hungry and angry at the same time. 

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For Reflection

Can you relate to my struggle with the Bible? I am eager to share next week how God answered my prayer for a “sign of goodness” and finally brought me comfort.

1. How did you view the Bible before you came to Jesus? 

2. How has your relationship with the Bible changed since then?

3. Are you reading it now and finding joy or are your reading it and feeling anger, guilt, confusion or something else?

When You're Not OK

We moved around my first 8 years. Making ends meet, keeping cars pieced together, and finding places we’d be welcome. An apartment for a bit, with Grandma and Grandpa for awhile, with one of your friends during my Kindergarten year, then into a nicer public housing complex. 

Cashiering wasn’t your passion and neither was putting together vacuum cleaner parts in the factory. But you did what you had to do to keep me clothed and fed.

You’d read books with one of your co-workers so your brain wouldn’t atrophy from the monotony of the assembly line and have a make-shift book club over motors and threading.

You were desperate for us not to get stuck where we were, the statistics looming over us, trapping us, closing in on us, pulling us under. You fought them with a vocabulary word a day. You sacrificed so I could dance, sing, swim. Anything that might give me opportunity to break free.

An algebra tutor, science camp, Spanish camp, a trip to Washington DC to meet our Senator, delivering “Meals on Wheels” to see, no matter how bad off we were, we still had so much to be thankful for.

I got tears in my eyes watching Kevin Durant hug his mom after winning the NBA championship, knowing a little of what they felt toward each other. The almost tangible bond of survival connecting a struggling single parent and her child.

It was us against the looks of disapproval or pity. (I don’t know which I hated more.) It was us seeing the worst in each other but defending each other still. It was us against the bills. It was us against all the complicated, wound-tight and ready-to-explode relationships. It was us hoping we were safe at night. It was us against the questions people had about our family and why it way the way it was. I’d sometimes lie my way out of those or act like I didn’t understand the question. How can an 8-year-old tell someone your dad chose drugs over you, you don’t know him, and your last name isn’t even his, so no, he’s not one of the Neuharts from Caldwell. 

Always, there you were. Trying. Demanding. Working. Paying. Loving. Studying. Stumbling. Proving. Fighting. And fighting. And fighting.

And, in time, breaking. Breaking before God and me. Admitting you couldn’t do it anymore. Calling on Jesus to save you. All our efforts left us in a heartbroken mess. I understood and wasn’t angry. But you just kept saying you wanted me to be OK and you’d do whatever you could to make sure I would be. You have no idea how often I go back to that tenderness. To that humility. To that love. 

By God’s grace, I am OK. But the irony is, I’m not OK, too. And I’ve become fine with that. Because our God is more than OK. And he takes the brokenness that’s always with me, and the brokenness that catches me by surprise, and he says just what I need to hear through his Word. He loves me in just the way I need to be loved in Jesus. He binds up my wounds with redeeming care while whispering the promise that he will make all things right one day. I am astonished by his heart, and he knows how often I go back to that tenderness. To that humility. To that love. Leaning into his words, listening hard, thankful for faith to believe I will be OK.

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For Reflection

This post poured from my heart after family movie night on Friday watching “Queen of Katwe” and seeing Phiona’s love for her struggling single mom and her mom's sacrifice for her. 

How does your brokenness from your past catch you by surprise?

How do you see God meeting you there?

What are some precious promises from his Word you are listening hard to?