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?

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?

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.”

We Don't Get To Decide

The situation takes me back 9 years ago. I'm standing at the counter mopping up crumbs while I mop up tears too. Wiping up a kitchen mess while I wipe my red, swollen eyes at the same time. The familiar lessons of sovereign bullets and choosing to give thanks in the taking, quickly come to mind. They are a strange comfort to my grieving heart, messengers of sorrow, but simultaneously singing a sweet refrain.

For two months now, we've anticipated the December placement of a baby girl in our home. We met with her expectant mom and talked, crying and laughing, for over an hour. She set up a hospital plan, inviting us to visit her during labor and take over parenting responsibilities immediately following delivery. And then yesterday, she changed her mind, and decided not to follow through with the adoption plan.

While we rejoice for this life and the unification of a family unit, we can't help but grieve over the loss of this baby being added to our family. Adoption always involves grief, and in this case, in spite of our tears, we are thankful that we are grieving so this birth mom doesn't have to. When starting down the path of adoption, it's easy to talk a big game about taking risks, being a father to the fatherless, and painting this glorious picture of the gospel. But actually, we don't get to decide how it all ends. Because really, God is the one who is ultimately Father to the Fatherless, and maybe what he really wants us to do is be faithful to show his love to those in need in smaller ways, like getting an expectant mom through the roughest six weeks of her life because she knows someone cares and is willing to love her child as their own. Maybe he wants us to bring her flowers and write her a reassuring card telling her she matters. Maybe he wants us to faithfully pray for her and her child because no one else is. And maybe he wants us to be willing to open our hearts and enter into her hard story and make it our own, helping her bear all the heartbreak and drama it involves. And in the end, maybe our arms are empty, but hers are full. And that's OK, because we don't get to decide how he uses us.

As friends (who have had more than their share of grief in the adoption process) told us, "We don't adopt perfectly. But God does." And our expectation has to be in him - the real Father to the Fatherless and Helper of the poor and needy. Maybe our adoption story doesn't end like we expect, at the front of a courtroom all smiles with the same last name. But maybe God chooses to use our willing hearts to love others in a smaller way, even to our personal hurt, as just a part of the process and writing of a few short pages in the longer story of their lives.

And we've decided that what he decides is good enough.

 

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An Example of Preaching the Gospel to Yourself

Horatio Spafford, author of the well-known hymn, "It is Well with My Soul," knew that his life was a portrait of grace. He and his wife Anna, served God faithfully through the big, small, and unexpected events of their lives. When they were blessed with five children, they gave thanks to the Lord and followed him in joy. And when their only son died to scarlet fever, they continued to follow the Lord even in sorrow. This untimely death of their son, would mark the beginning of "sorrows like sea billows" rolling through their lives.

Mr. Spafford was a successful and wealthy attorney, but their lives were consumed with ministry. When they lost most of their investment property and financial resources in the Great Chicago Fire of the 1870s, instead of selfishly despairing, they served their now homeless neighbors, providing food and care for their grief-stricken friends.

As they recovered from the tradgedies of the months prior, an oppotunity arose for the Spaffords to travel to England for a vacation. While they were there, they planned to assist their friend D.L. Moody, in his evangelism efforts. Some unexpected business detained Mr. Spafford, so he sent his four daughters and wife before him, commiting to join them in England as soon as he could.

Midway through their voyage, the ship was struck by another vessel crossing the Atlantic. The Spaffords' daughters perished in the sinking ship in spite of their mother's efforts to save them. When Mr. Spafford got word, he immediately set sail to join his wife.

As Spafford's ship apprached that dreadful location where the sea had swallowed up his precious girls, Spafford looked at those waters and preached the gospel to himself. He wrote:

1. "Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
   Let this blest assurance control,
   That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
   And hath shed His own blood for my soul."

Although he was weighed down with unimaginable grief, the good news of Jesus assured him that though all was very wrong around him, all was still well within him. By faith that made all the difference.

So, even today, we too must affirm that every river of peace and wave of sorrow we experience flow together by God's sovereign storm-calming hand to assure us of His unwavering faithfulness. In those all too frequent moments when it feels that our souls will surely give way under the pressures of life, with the eyes of faith, we must look to the cross and remember that our greatest trial - separation from God - has been removed and dealt with in Jesus. "Praise The Lord, praise The Lord, O my soul!"

 

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