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.

---------------------------------------

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. 

-------------------------

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?

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.

----------------------------------------

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?

His Love is Enough: Our Adoption Day Prayer for You

She labored for you for almost 9 months and then through one long night. You were born at 6:45 that Wednesday morning. She sent me a text right away saying you had arrived and we could come as soon as possible.

We were awake, but not that kind of awake. So we ran in circles for the first fifteen minutes, trying to collect our minds, got your siblings off to school and then packed up our things to come see you.

TiTi Vivian reminded me to make notes of the day so I’d be able to relay them to you. So we took a video of ourselves driving to Florida’s Space Coast. It was an unusually cloudy morning with the sun peeking through occasionally. John Mark and Sarah McMillan were playing in the background, providing the perfect, reassuring soundtrack for our drive.

We settled on your name in the car.

Eloise Sunshine.

Your birth parents loved our other kids’ names, so we wanted to pick something for you they might like too, fitting in with the trendy-but-old-fashioned names of Stella, Ruby, and Schaeffer.

I was putting on my make-up in the car and spilled foundation on my pants. In spite of my best stain fighting attempts, we had to make a quick stop into Target to get me a new pair. Big life events tend to be punctuated with everyday things. I’m thankful the spectacular seems to coordinate with the simple to remind us of our smallness. I felt safer reassured of his greatness, comparatively.

We arrived at the hospital just after noon. Our adoption specialist and the pregnancy counselor met us in the waiting room. We went in together and saw your birthparents first.

She was beautiful, as always, and I told her so. Even after giving birth.

They were understandably exhausted. She shared the story of how you made your entrance.

I want you to know how much she loves you. A mother knows another mother’s tears and feels her heart. She hears the nuances of affection in her voice and follows the inflections straight to those nurturing impulses.

We shared that time together for you, because of you.

Your birth father walked over to your crib and rested his hands on the sides of it. I hadn’t even looked at you yet. I looked at him so I could tell you about him. His face melted into a tender smile but his eyes showed the grief of all that was taking place that day.

There we were. I don’t know when you’ll be able to understand this. But all four of us, they your birthparents, and we your adoptive parents, were together there for you.  Our worlds providentially colliding to share our love for you. To join arms together, each having different roles and responsibilities, but all working together for your good. Delivery and deliverance to be inseparably linked forever.

Then we saw you. I remember telling them how beautiful you were. And in one of the most selfless acts of love I’ve seen, they wanted us to hold you. They wanted, with their own eyes, to see us love you even though it was painful for them. Their broken hearts were laid open for you and we gently picked them up – and you – and held them close.

We have part of them with us all the time in you, and we want to cherish and protect that bond. We will do that, by God’s grace and with his help, for you and them.

Next, the hospital kindly provided us with our own room and there in the quiet, we studied you. Daddy was worried you were too cold and wanted to keep your knit toboggan warming your sprinkles of red hair. You didn’t open your eyes at all on Wednesday but your long eyelashes already grabbed our attention.

Instinctively, I kissed your head every time it came near my lips - exactly like I did our other three babies. And just like that, you were my girl.

You and I share a bit of history in common, so it’s fitting you should have my middle name.  My mom, your Ammy, says I was a ray of hope born into a rather hopeless situation. And you, our Sunshine, with your own chapters added, bring our story full circle.

As I called your Ammy from the hospital with you in my arms, we wept over how God was continuing to redeem our broken story with you. He makes all things beautiful in his time. Remember that, sweet Sunshine. You’ll hear me say it often.

We who have the hope of Jesus are the broken beautiful. Broken stories, beautiful purpose. Broken relationships, beautiful reconciliation. Broken world, beautiful eternity. Broken people, beautiful Savior.

You could not be more loved. But their love isn’t enough for you. Our love isn’t even enough for you. It won’t be enough to get you through questions about your family history. It won’t be enough to get you through struggles with your identity. It won’t be enough to keep our relationship as parent and child close. It won’t be enough to help you process your adoption into our family.

If there is one thing we gleaned from our adoption education, it’s that. Our love will help you, but it is not enough for you. We fought through that statement. We threw up objections and wanted it to be a lie. But after we faced it, it freed us to surrender you to a love that’s greater, deeper, higher, longer and wider than you can comprehend. A perfect love. And dear Eloise, his love is enough. It will cast out your fears. It will help you deal with insecurities. It will stabilize you, rooting you in and connecting you with a family bond that is thicker than blood because it flows from the Father of all. He gave up his son for you. In fact, he knows something about broken relationships, because he broke their relationship for you, forsaking him so you could be brought near to him and us to each other. The most marvelous thing isn’t how extravagantly loved you are by your birth parents and adoptive parents. The most marvelous thing is that you are extravagantly loved by him.

So my song for you, as I’ve picked a hymn-prayer for each of our other babies, is "O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus."

May you see his love in your past, present, and future. May you feel it all around you in brilliant displays, sovereignly highlighting all your days. May you experience it personally in the forgiveness of your sins. That is our prayer for you on your Adoption Day, February 9, 2017, and always, our dearly loved Eloise.

Longing for Home

When I pulled up to 15539 Keppen in Allen Park last December, I instinctively expected to see the faces of our older girls peering out the window at me, waving me in. I expected to see a Dora big wheel parked in the driveway or a tiny picnic table retired from its summer duties, collecting the first snow of the season.

Instead, I saw a “For Sale” sign in the yard. Instead, I saw an empty porch, an abandoned driveway, and tightly closed blinds. No signs of the life we once knew there.

But I quickly remembered what we were selling and what we weren’t. Our family memories weren’t for sale. I didn’t pack up those. And the mistakes made, lessons learned, forgiveness sought, and gospel seeds sown weren’t for sale either. So I let our house go in that moment, knowing God had used it for his purposes in our life and that season was over.

When we first moved into our love shack on Keppen, we hadn’t been married a year. We shared our frozen wedding cake on our 1-year anniversary, seated on our slip-covered couch in the living room. That house was our proving ground as newlyweds, as employees, as church members, as evangelists, and as new parents. So much of the work God has done in our life started within those four walls.

First Anniversary

We learned to work together on managing a house and its projects and responsibilities and eventually fell into a good rhythm of what became my duties and what became Matt’s. It was one of our first partnerships. We learned to wait for things we wanted that we couldn’t afford (or to give up wishing for them!). And, we saw God provide through hard work and the generous gifts of friends and family.

We cut our teeth on hospitality in that house. We had hyper teenage boys from the youth group spend the night. We hosted playdates with new moms, dinner clubs, recovering addicts that needed loved and counseled, discipleship sessions for new and hurting Christians during our kids naptime or after dinner, neighborhood dinners, evangelistic Bible studies, college and career Bible studies and lunches and birthday parties, and even provided them with a couch to crash from their crazy schedules, question-packed lunches with older godly women, and regular community group meetings where we hammered out applying the Bible to our lives.

One of our many beloved Community Groups

  

There we began learning to rejoice and sorrow with others and how to follow the Lord in joy and in sorrow ourselves. From the joy of setting up our first nursery and then big-girl room (ladybugs galore!) for Stella and bringing her and our other two Michigan-born-babies home to that house. There we learned the nuts and bolts of having 3 kids 4 and under and all the craziness that entails -including scrubbing poop off the walls, curtains, floor and crib when a certain child decided to decorate with his/her nap-time excrement.

The stories those walls could tell if they could talk!

Stella's nursery turned big-girl room

Tear drops might still stain the kitchen countertop from when I was mindlessly scrubbing it because I had to do something after finding out that I’d lost our baby after almost 20 weeks of pregnancy. And I can still see the dozens of cards from church members lining the top of our piano in the dining room, sharing in our grief, admonishing us with Scripture, and sharing their own stories of God’s faithfulness to them through unfulfilled expectations.

We loved that house. It had a warmth and coziness we haven’t been able to replicate here in our Florida home. The charm of the curved front sidewalk and the glow of the light from the living room wall sconces in the evening. If I close my eyes and listen hard enough I can still hear what the cries of a hungry baby sound like there at night, the pitter-patter of first steps on those hardwood floors, the frustrated turning of the old, loose door knob to go upstairs to our bedroom, and the echoes of excitement when Daddy came home for the day. God provided our love shack for us in an amazingly generous way, and he continued to provide for us the entire time we owned it. Not just for our material needs, but with all we needed for life and godliness. (2 Peter 1:3)

Ruby as a new walker

And as of yesterday, it is ours no more.

But, for the past nearly three years now, we’ve lived in a different proving ground, learning many new lessons and re-learning old ones. God isn’t done with us yet. We’ve discovered that our homes here are primarily training us for our heavenly home. Whether we have happy or hard home lives. Christian or antagonistic family members. Beautiful or fixer-upper surroundings. It’s all meant to help us on to him. It’s all meant to fit us for heaven. To make us more like him. To make us long for our eternal home, but also to encourage us with grace along the way.

And if God can help us find such love, hope, and happiness in a 900-square-foot house in cloudy and cold Michigan, I can only imagine how beautiful and peaceful and perfect our eternal home will be. Because it will be with him.

“Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” (Revelation 21:3-5)

Remember Your Roots

I was walking out of church that last Sunday in Ohio, dangerously full of 18-year-old-swagger with all the bravado of “The Boss” himself, sick of "living in a dump like this” and ready to find the something that was happening somewhere.

I heard a car pull through the parking lot and an elderly man in the church yelled to me,  “Erica, remember your roots!"

I smiled and waved, asking my Mom what that was supposed to mean. She, relieved someone else was trying to pull me back to earth, said, "It's a way of saying even though you're leaving, never forget where you've come from." 

I resented his advice. Maybe even despised it. In many ways I wanted to get away precisely so I could forget where I'd come from. Leave it behind and start over. So much was a mess in my heart and I didn't even know where to begin sorting it all out. So I figured it was easier just to start from scratch than deal with the junk.

But I’d soon learn that you can't run from your own heart. As hard as I tried and as fast as I ran, the hardships of life in those Appalachian hills of southeastern Ohio kept their grip on me, pulling me back. The roots were deep and even though I desperately wanted to, I couldn’t forget them.

So in many ways, I tried to cut off the people from there, even my mom and the husband she married a few days after I left. But that only compounded the sin in my heart. Come to find out, you can’t remedy sin with more sinfulness.

I’d sneak in the closet under the stairwell of our college dorm where the cleaning products were stored and cry out to God. So many bitter angry tears flew from my bitter angry heart onto that unassuming floor. No cleaning product in that whole closet was powerful enough to remove those tear stains and clean up my mess.

But slowly I began to feel him pruning and untangling the vines and branches that were choking me from the inside out. I began to see the tender hand of the Vinedresser helping me bear fruit in keeping with repentance. I began to follow his hand, always careful and wise, but sometimes allowing me to feel the harsh and bloody prick of the thorns, tracing back to the people and places and faces I only wanted to leave behind. 

“I planted the seeds,” he’d say, “that took root in the soil of your heart. Don’t let the trials of life choke them out. Instead, hear the Word and understand it so you can bear more fruit.” And by his grace, I did.

A few months ago as we traveled those same Appalachian hills I had associated with much pain and sorrow from my past, I thanked God for the joy going home now brought me. I couldn’t miss the metaphor as we reached the highs and lows of the mountain terrain that my life course had been similar. Those treacherous hills were responsible, in part, for the death of my dear grandma, but they were also the birthplace of my spiritual life. “Except one grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies it will never bear fruit.”(John 12:24) I had experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows in that place. No matter where I’ve gone since, God has graciously allowed me to remember my roots.

And I can remember them now, not with anger, or guilt, or shame or bitterness, but with thankfulness. Because there was One who grew up like a root out of drier ground than the coal mining ground of southeastern Ohio. He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And he bore my griefs and carried my sorrows, not just up the rolling hills in Cambridge, Ohio, but up a hill of death to Calvary where he was crushed for the iniquities I’ve committed and for the iniquities committed against me. And his wounds have brought me healing.

So, if there’s a way I would now tweak that wise, older man’s advice to my 18-year-old self, I’d say, “Erica, remember your roots by remembering his.”