Something Better Than President (To my Mom for Father's Day)

I guess in some ways it would've made more sense to write this post on Mother's Day. I could have, but I didn't. Because although you have been a mom to me these past 39 years, you've also stood where a dad should've stood all these years, too. When you're a single parent, you don't think about taking off the "Mom" hat to put on the "Dad" hat, do you? You just see what needs done and said and paid and corrected and kissed and tackled and you do it. All. Alone. Every. Day.

Last week, I glanced at our faces in the mirrored dining room when we laughed, not sure which was yours and which was mine. Our eyes, our hair color, our size, our smile. Have two mothers and daughters ever looked more alike?

It's no wonder I have a hard time telling us apart. A baby doesn't make itself and neither does a toddler, a preschooler, a student, a teenager, or a woman. So much of who I am, you have made me, and what I have, you have given me. I can't always sort out what's mine and what's yours on the inside either.

When my newborn hand first wrapped around your barely 19-year-old finger, you wrapped your love in determination and sealed it with a kiss on my tiny black-haired head. That kiss was full of expectations for how we would get through. Starting with the first time the babysitter would pry my little arms and legs from around you so you could go to work. You'd be brave, telling me and all my tears I could too and then run to your car crying on your way because you hated leaving me scared and sad. What hat were you wearing then? "Mom" or "Dad"? Or were you just knowing you had bills to pay and our mouths to feed and if you didn't work, who would?

You had expectations for me the summer before Kindergarten when we took a walk on Daytona Beach and you told me things would be different. I was becoming a big girl and would have to go to school and pull my chin out of my chest and make friends. And you knew I could do it. I believed I could too because you said so.

You had expectations for me when Amy, who had every toy she wanted, made fun of me because I didn't even have a dad. You didn't say all I'm sure you wanted to say about her, nor did you justify our situation. You helped me take pity on her because she had toys, all right, but she didn't have a relationship like ours.

You had expectations for me in 3rd grade when Carla said I looked like a chipmunk with my buck teeth hanging over my lip. You didn't rush to the orthodontist and throw some braces on me to boost my self-esteem or tell me buck was the new beautiful. You expected me not to take myself too seriously and suggested that I go with the theme and dress up as one of the chipmunks for Halloween. So out came the over-sized sweatshirt and paint for Alvin's signature "A". Trick or treat!

You had expectations for me in 5th grade (Stella's age) when I had to start setting my own alarm clock for school and getting myself out of bed, ready, and out the door on time. I couldn't miss the bus because you were already at work and couldn't leave to come get me if I did. I think I ran to the bus stop many mornings that year, climbing those bus steps panting and wind blown. I may have even chased it down a few times, running across Forest View Drive to the last stop in our neighborhood. (Punctuality was never my strength. Wonder where I got that from?!)

You had expectations for me in 7th grade when I didn't make the cheerleading squad in spite of being favored for a spot going into tryouts. The teachers picked the girls from "good families" and who knew what mayhem I might introduce considering the kind of family I came from. You gave me strict instructions that I was to be as glad for the girls who won as I would've been for myself. That I shouldn't dare talk badly about the judging or any of the other girls who beat me, regardless of what I thought of their "barely off the ground toe touches" and "horribly uncoordinated dancing."

You had expectations for me in the summers from 5th grade on. I was to be out of bed by 9 AM, check my to do list for the day, and get busy completing it before you got home that afternoon. I was also to read Five Little Peppers and How They Grew and list every word I didn't know the meaning of. Then I was to look up those words in the dictionary and write out their definitions. (Thankfully, you let this one expectation go after awhile!)

You had expectations for me in high school when one of my teachers, who by all other accounts was a nice person, had the audacity to say a woman could never be President of the United States because she would constantly be changing her mind about what color the drapes should be in the White House. (Even typing those words now still makes my blood boil a little too much.) I don't think I'd ever heard someone criticize and demean my gender like that because you had taught me, not in a man bashing way, nor in a we-need-men-as-much-as-a-fish-needs-a-bicycle way, women were as competent as men. Didn't everyone think that? I knew you couldn't care less what color the drapes were in the White House, but you were a woman who could capably lead our house and your office, with a multi-membered staff and several departments, because you were smart and decisive and strong. And you expected the same from me.

For 26 years under your roof, you told me what I should be and you lived it for me like a mom should and like a dad should've. My old high school teacher might be surprised that you raised me to be something better than President. God used all you invested in me and expected of me to help make me a Christian woman.

Happy Father's Day, Mom. For all the days you did what needed to be done, said what I needed to hear, worked your fingers to the bone, studied into the wee hours of the morning to earn your degrees, stayed up late to wash clothes and floors and dishes, and lived the expectations you held me to. You became part of who I am. And I couldn't be prouder to be so much you that I can't tell us apart.

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*Some names have been changed in this post to protect the guilty:)

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A Recap of ReNEW

I spent this past weekend in FL at Keystone Bible Church's ladies retreat, "Renew," featuring Elyse Fitzpatrick as the keynote speaker. Let me just say these women love to have a good time, they love to be together, and they love to learn God's Word.

A few things I observed:

1) Jesus is building His church. I was thrilled to see our dear friends, Andrew and Vivian Haney, and their spiritually healthy church, growing under Andrew's capable leadership to over a few hundred people now from the 7 members they had when they arrived in Odessa almost 8 years ago. Their church is a wonderful blend of backgrounds with people at all stages in their spiritual growth process, fighting sin and loving God and each other for His glory. Of course, it made it easy to love these ladies because I saw how much they love my more-like-my-sister-than-friend, Vivian.

2) Few have mastered gospel-centeredness like Elyse Fitzpatrick (or maybe I should say, few have been mastered by gospel-centeredness like Elyse Fitzpatrick). I marveled at the thoroughness the gospel has effected every area of her life. I listened to her expound precious gospel truths and they became sweeter to me as I drank in all I could that I too might know them better!

3) I need to keep letting the law do its work in my heart pushing me to Jesus. I am too skilled in self-justification. When we were having a small group discussion after Elyse's first session and discussing our inability to keep God's commands, one of the ladies in our group said, "I might be able to keep these commands for 10 minutes but certainly not my whole life!" I thought to myself that this lady had missed the point! But then I saw my own efforts in her words and knew what she said was actually the sad commentary of MY spiritual life. How much more I need to abandon my own efforts and embrace the truth that "the strength to follow His commands could never come from me!" Not for 10 minutes, not for 5, and graciously not even for 1! I need a Savior who did it perfectly ALL the time.

4) Each of us needs to be much more acquainted with the gospel. If you have a voice, talk about it! Speak of it all day long to yourself and to any who will listen. Even sing about it! If you have a mind, think about it! Turn it over and over and over in your head, discovering all its glorious nuances and how it can renew the way you think in gospel categories. If you have a blog, write about it! We need more people spreading the good news through the written word of how it is changing them and the way they parent and the way they work! If you have a heart, let it go to work on your affections, transforming what you love and why you love and how you love. If you have a will, let it chisel away at your bent toward selfishness and self-glory and revel in the freedom of self-forgetfulness and God-centeredness that the gospel grants you. As Elyse Fitzpatrick pointed out, "We are so dull of hearing and understanding." So we need to keep hearing the gospel, rehearsing the gospel, and applying the gospel.

Thank you, ladies, for a wonderful weekend together. The gospel changes everything! And it is changing US!

 

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Breaking Molds and Taking Numbers

Zachery David Photography

When your birthday rolls around every year and I ponder the focus of my post for you, I notice that the opening line in my head is always the same, "Oh, Ruby!" But after I recover from the initial exasperation I feel, I'm eventually able to collect some thoughts. Your dad and I laughed together about my inclination and I wondered to him if that's one reason God commands parents not to exasperate their children...because children so take the wind out of their parents' sails, it makes sense our temptation would be to respond in kind. And boy do we need supernatural help not to! Whew. Christian parenting is all of grace!

So, Ruby Jean, now that your Mama has caught her breath, I do have a few things to say to you on this milestone birthday.

I guess this post could be a sequel to your birthday post from a year ago. More kicking over icons and helping you derive your identity from Scripture. That's the way you roll. Breaking molds and taking numbers.

As we observed a sporting event not too long ago, I heard a Christian say something to the effect, "It's okay if girls aren't aggressive in sports because according to the Bible women aren't supposed to be aggressive." That statement rubbed me the wrong way when I heard it and as I've thought more about it I realize how strongly I disagree. Don't get me wrong. It's one thing if our kids, boys or girls, don't excel in athletics because they just aren't into getting elbowed or kicked or hit with the ball or don't have the ability or coordination to be competitive. But the statement went beyond that.

Yes, I've read the verses commending a gentle and quiet spirit in women, but gentleness doesn't mean weakness and quietness doesn't mean passivity. I would argue that it in fact takes assertiveness, and even aggression, to conquer those rebel powers that would incline a woman to respond otherwise. And, as I mentioned last year, that's the problem I have with some teaching I've heard targeting Christian women. It holds up a personality quality as the goal not a divine work of the Spirit. That kind of teaching goes beyond Scripture and turns into a form of oppressing women instead of freeing them to depend on their standing before God in Christ as the basis for their ability to bear fruit in keeping with His Spirit - like the fruit of gentleness. Which, by the way, is a fruit men should be bearing too.

So, Baby Girl, get this straight. Jesus doesn't want to give you a different personality. He wants to give you a new heart. His Spirit will soften you and change you in marvelously unexpected ways. But, He's made you aggressive, and although it's exhausting now, I don't want you to lose your fight because you think that's what Christian women do at a certain point in their sanctification process. Make no mistake, God wants Christian women to be aggressive. These are just a few ways it shows.

1) Christian women kill sin.

You can't miss the overwhelming number of commands in Scripture given to the entire body of Christ, men and women alike, telling us to conquer and fight. We are in a war and need to have what John Piper calls a "wartime mentality."

"Until you believe that life is war – that the stakes are your soul – you will probably just play at Christianity with no bloodearnestness and no vigilance and no passion and no wartime mindset...There is a mean, violent streak in the true Christian life! But violence against whom, or what? Not other people. It's a violence against all the impulses in us that would be violent to other people. It's a violence against all the impulses in our own selves that would make peace with our own sin and settle in with a peacetime mentality. It's a violence against all lust in ourselves, and enslaving desires...Christianity is not a settle-in-and-live-at-peace-with-this-world-the-way-it-is kind of religion. If by the Spirit you kill the deeds of your own body, you will live. Christianity is war. On our own sinful impulses." (How to Kill Sin, Part 2)

Use your aggression, Tough Girl, to make war in the right ways and against the right things!

2) Christian women boldly give the gospel.

"Missionary life is simply a chance to die." Amy Carmichael, Missionary to India

As your mom, I had mixed emtions seeing the intensity with which you watched the Frontline Missions DVD during our Community Group meeting in December. It was hard to watch because the radical call of taking the gospel to the nations is portrayed accurately. But you gazed at that TV with barely a blink. I knew the risk of it all was appealing to you and even though you may have a lump in your throat from fear, you were drawn to the possibility of putting it all on the line for the greatest cause.

That's pretty typcial. You seem to leave your hard-core game on the floor in your short sports career and in life in general. You scored a couple goals this past soccer season although you were quite a bit smaller and younger than most of your opponets. But what made us most proud was one of your conversations off the field with your new friend and teammate. You asked him if he knew Jesus. Your dad and I smiled at the irony of your unregenerate evangelistic zeal, but also noticed what this reveals about your boldness. You don't shy away from confrontation. We love that fire and pray God will make you a righteous woman who's as bold as a lion for Him!

We only half-jokingly say about you, "This girl's going to do something big. It's just a matter of whether it will be good or bad, at this point." But then we comfort ourselves with the reality that we have great hope in God concerning you and entrust your little flash of blond hair and blue eyes and muscle bound legs to the One who's stronger still. You're always safe with Him. And that's why, although still with a fearful lump in this Mama's throat, we eagerly anticipate the day you too will embrace your chance to die for His glory to be revealed to the nations.

3) Christian women exercise dominion.

God wants Christian women to play their position aggressively. As you grow up in Post-Christian America, it's going to get blurrier and blurrier exactly what that looks like even in the so-called church. So be tethered to the ultimate Authority on ths subject. Don't let culture set your plays.

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” (Genesis 1:26-28)

Mark Chanski writes in his book Womanly Dominion:

"[A] woman is to dominate aggressively her environment, rather than allow her environment to dominate her. She needs to work and play with a win it instead of with a surrender it mindset. She must rule and subdue rather than letting herself be ruled and subdued. God has commissioned her to assert herself aggressively as a master over the teeming spheres of her life. God has not assigned her to sit on her porch swing with a pink parasol daydreaming what she might do "if only" the obstacles weren't so complicated. No! She's to get out there and do it with all her might!"

Imitate God by ruling and dominating. Play His position for you by helping make this earth His footstool.

So, you're 5-years-old now, Ruby Jean! You have another year to keep running fast and fighting aggressively. And maybe this is the year the One who broke the mold when He made you, will take hold of you and give you something that's really worth running toward and fighting for!

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The Best of Boys

In September of 2010, I went to my first True Woman Conference. There was at least one male attendee among the hundreds of women there. His name was Joel Schaeffer Owen and, the four month old bundle of baby boy, was with me.

I was still pretty overwhelmed at the fact of having a boy. There had been little question in my mind of how to train the girls early on, pointing them to the gospel first, but then to biblical femininity and striving to model it for them, although imperfectly, for sure. But, not growing up with a dad and not having any brothers, made me insecure about how to interact with a boy and how to train him in biblical masculinity. Matt was quick to comfort, assuring me a large part of that job was his, and we'd work together on it. But, of course, the boy would still be spending almost all of his time with me for at least 5 years so I still had some things to figure out.

By the end of the conference, ironically exclusively for women, my mind was at ease and I had confidence in a significant contribution I could have in raising our son. I realized one of the best thing I could do for him as his mom, was to embrace my womanhood for the glory of Christ. (Read here for exactly what I mean by that.) I needed to strive to manifest the wisdom of God's design in creating us differently, male and female. To show him we are purposefully intended to be different, so God could get all the glory for His brilliance in the created order. So I left committed, more than ever, to using my womanhood in an effort to display God's greatness before my son's eyes.

Now, almost three years later, I'm much more acclimated to most things boy. But, even still, I struggle. The other night I was asking Matt what is it about boys that make them act before thinking. Schaeffer's aggressive impulsiveness is such a mystery to me and I am constantly addressing it with him. I had an "Aha!" moment when Matt explained, "The good aspect of God making us like that is so we run toward the fight instead of away from it!" With images of Boston fresh on my mind, Matt's words made me worship God right then and there. There are so many facets to our amazing God! I just keep turning Him and observing Him from the different angles, displayed in His creating people and nature in general, and am constantly breath-taken!

"Keep showing me Yourself, Lord, through the husband and son you've placed in my life! I want to know more of You through the way You made them!"

A few days ago, Matt forwarded me a helpful (and beautiful) article on the topic of manhood. Another piece of the man-puzzle came together for me. (And they say we're the complicated ones! ;). The author describes, in even more detail, what I have been searching for in knowing how to interact with Schaeffer.

"[His mother is] suspicious of women who like to keep their boys in diapers, as it were. So she nudges Luke toward her husband. She buys them the same kinds of clothes. She admires Luke’s skill in hitting a ball, or painting, or building a tepee—whatever he sets his heart upon.

She becomes to him the best of girls, even when he doesn’t know he likes girls yet. She never ceases to be his mother and to command his respect, but she will also claim his duty as her protector. If the groceries are heavy, she asks him to handle them, knowing that eventually he will overmatch her in strength. When that day comes she’ll boast about it to her friends.

Her love for him is necessarily a love for his nature as a boy. One cannot say, “I love my terrier Whitey, but I wish he wouldn’t wag his tail.” She wants him to grow up to be a man whom a good woman would marry. She cannot encourage that by personal example. She encourages it rather by showing the love of a woman for her husband, regardless of the sparks that attend every union of the sexes. And she encourages it by expectation. She calls him to manhood by letting him practice being the man: as a mother teaches her son to “lead” her in a formal dance."

Everytime I read that excerpt I tear up. Partly because it is hard to let go of my growing boy. But partly because, since he has to grow, I desperately want him to grow to be the right kind of man. After pointing him to the gospel, the main way to help him to that end continues to be pretty straightforward. Be the woman God intended me to be and let him practice being - and by God's grace someday he'll actually become - the kind of godly man I'd want to marry. And, if I do say so myself, I have excellent taste in men.

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