Musings

At church yesterday, the pastor talked about service. He spoke about all service being equal in the eyes of God. Cleaning the bathrooms is the same as preaching to millions if both are done with the right heart and motives. Service is service and God does not designate one as greater than the other. There certainly are those that appear more glamorous and important to us, but glamorous isn’t necessarily valuable and important isn’t necessarily effective.

So, now I’m wondering if my desire to do more and be more is just my own insecurity surfacing once again. I’ve realized recently that I have a high need to see the results of my work to feel that my effort has been worthwhile. For the most part, results means others seeing what I have done and recognizing it. My attitude has been, “If I spend hours or days working on something and no one sees it or is affected by it, what’s the point of doing it in the first place?” I guess it comes down to a need for external validation.

I know that there are those who serve doing what many would consider menial tasks, but for them the act of serving itself is all the reward they need. I wonder if my need to see the results of the work I do is a character flaw that I need to work on or just a function of the gifts and talents that I’ve been given. In other words, how effective is a painter who paints and then hides the canvases in his attic? What good can a musician do if he never plays his music for others? What use is a writer whose words are never seen? It’s something I’ll have to think and pray about.

Any words of wisdom?


Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.

Waves

Overwhelmed
Waves wash over me
One after another
Sand shifting beneath my feet
I stumble backwards
Regain my balance
Start forward again
Another wave
The tide gains strength
The waves grow higher
But I’m getting stronger, too
Learning what to expect
Brace myself for impact
When to stand firm
When to relax
And let myself be carried
By the currents of the sea
To places I don’t know
Unfamiliar lands
That I’d never have
A chance to see
If I’d fought each wave
And tried to stay
Where maybe I’m not
Meant to be

Lessons I've Learned From My Children Pt 3

Boys and girls are just made to be different.

Obvious, I know, but I didn’t realize how different they are until I had one of each. It’s amazing to me that even at the tender ages of 2 and 4, the difference between the sexes is apparent. We have a wide variety of toys in our home for the children to play with, but with a few exceptions, they gravitate to typically gender specific toys. My daughter loves Abby Cadabby, Disney Princesses, Barbie and playing dress-up. My son’s idea of a great time is building Legos towers, crashing cars, climbing, and knocking things over. If it’s pretty, my daughter likes it. If it makes noise or can be thrown, my son likes it.

Before I had children, I believed that children are socialized to behave in typically feminine or masculine ways. I thought that, all things being equal, boys might play with dolls and girls might like to race RC cars. I really did think that boys learn to like tractors and superheroes because those are the toys that are given to them by their fathers. By the same token, I thought that girls play dress-up with their Barbies because they see their mothers paying so much attention to their appearance.

While I do like to look nice, I am not particularly fashion conscious. So, Imagine my surprise, when my daughter started insisting that she wear a dress every day. I rarely wear dresses, so I have no idea where she got the idea that if a person wears pants, they must be a boy. For about 4 months last spring and summer, all my daughter would wear was dresses or skirts. The only way I could get her to wear pants was to let her wear a skirt over them. She notices if I do something different with my hair and is overjoyed any time I actually do wear a dress. She loves her princess costumes and frequently runs around the house with her fairy wings on and a pink magic wand in her hand. She is definitely a girly-girl, and she didn’t learn it from me.

My son, on the other hand, likes to build towers just so he can knock them down. His favorite words are animal and car noises. He’d rather grunt and point at what he wants than to actually speak the words necessary to ask for it. He only wants to get hold of that pink magic wand so that he can hit someone or something with it. It’s a recurring problem we have that didn’t occur with my daughter. He just likes to hit people for some reason. He didn’t learn that from me or his father.

Some of the differences I see are partially due to the fact that my daughter was the firstborn and my son had a big sister to keep up with. I can’t help but notice, however, that boys who are firstborn or only children are generally still more active and aggressive even than girls who have older brothers. It’s comforting to me that boys will be boys whether or not they have “manly” toys to play with and girls will be girls even if mom doesn’t play Barbie with them. It’s good to know that there is an order to the universe and there’s not much I can do to mess it up.


God created the man in His image; in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them. And God blessed them.

Lessons I've Learned From My Children Pt. 2

When you have a bad dream, all you have to do is turn your pillow over and the bad dreams will go away.

My daughter watched The Little Mermaid for the first time tonight. I should have known when she became very upset when Ariel had to escape the jaws of a shark that maybe it was going to be a little scary for her.

When I tucked her into bed, after she brushed her teeth, read a story and said her prayers, I took the opportunity to ask her how she liked the movie.

“The Sea Witch is mean,” she said.

“Yes, she was. What happened to her?” I asked.

“She fell down”

“What made the witch fall down?”

“Ariel was in love,” responded my four year old daughter. At the time I thought that this was just one of her random answers that she gives now and then, but I suddenly see the depth of understanding in that answer. The Sea Witch did fall because of the love between Ariel and Prince Eric.

“Was anything else scary?” I asked.

“King Triton was mean.”

“Yes, he was mean when he got mad at Ariel.” I got to thinking that the movie might prompt a nightmare, or at least an over-active imagination. She sometimes has a hard time telling us when something is wrong, so I’ve been trying to talk to her about what she should do in various situations. With that in mind, I asked “If you have a bad dream and get scared during the night, what are you going to do?”

“I’ll turn my pillow over,” she said.

I smiled at her matter of fact tone. “So, if you turn your pillow over, you’ll have good dreams?”
She flipped her pillow, nodded, and laid her head down, snuggling under the blanket. With the matter settled, I kissed her forehead, turned off the light and said “Good night”. I walked to the living room marveling at her innocent faith. How wonderful to believe that all you have to do is turn your pillow over and bad dreams will disappear. How extraordinary to be unconcerned by fears that may come. How remarkable to be so free of worry. How I’d love to recapture some of that innocence.

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Lessons I’ve Learned From My Children Pt. 1

If I can’t do something by myself, I should ask for help.

It might sound silly, but I actually had to relearn this lesson recently. One evening, after a particularly frustrating day at work, I was going through the bedtime routine with my four year old daughter. I set out her pajamas and told her to go potty, take off her clothes and put on her pj’s. I left her to it and went to the living room to check on the progress my husband was making with our 2 year old son. Several minutes later I heard fussing coming from her room. When I opened the door, she was sitting on the floor crying. Her pajamas were on, but unzipped.

“Honey, what’s wrong?” I asked. No response. “Sweetie, did you hurt yourself? What’s wrong?” Again, no response. Getting a little frustrated, I helped her to her feet and started looking her over, checking for a new boo-boo. She just stood there crying. I sighed. “I can’t help you unless you tell me what’s wrong.” My beautiful, intelligent little girl (who, by the way, already can read full sentences), flopped down to the floor, grabbed the zipper of her pj’s, which was down near her foot, and yanked it repeatedly, obviously in frustration.

OK. Now I get it. She’s having problems with the zipper. “Do you need help zipping it up?” Still wailing, she nodded her head. “Well, why didn’t you just say so?” I asked, helping her once again to her feet. The zipper was a bit stuck, but it only took a moment for me to fix it and get my daughter properly zipped and ready for bed. “If you need help, all you have to do is ask,” I said in my Mommy Voice. “I don’t know what you need if you don‘t tell me. It’s better to ask for help than to get mad and cry about it.”

Later that night, after the kids were tucked into bed and all was quiet and calm in the house, my husband asked me how my day was. His question opened the floodgate. I began telling him, once again, about how the volume of work flowing onto my desk has become much greater then the volume flowing away from it. I’ve been struggling for months to keep up with it, but it’s a losing battle. The client has become particularly hard to deal with, my boss keeps giving me more and more responsibility (without more pay, I might add) and no one seems to care how buried I’m getting.

Then my husband asked me something that he’s never asked before. “Do they know that you are overwhelmed?”

“Of course they know. How could they not? I mean they keep giving me more and more and more and I’m just supposed to get it all done. How could they not know?”

Suddenly I remembered my conversation only an hour earlier with my daughter. “I don’t know what you need if you don‘t tell me. It’s better to ask for help than to get mad and cry about it.” Realization struck. I’ve been doing exactly what my daughter did, only on a bigger scale.
Somehow, somewhere on my way to being an adult, I decided that I should never have to ask for help. I decided that I should be able to do everything that needs to be done on my own. If, for some reason, I can’t change the transmission on the car, get the grocery shopping done for the week, and respond to all 382 emails impatiently waiting in my inbox at work, all on Saturday morning, then I must be a failure. If I really had it all together, as every other working mother in the world surely does, than I would be able to do all those things and look glamorous at the same time. To admit my inability to multitask every task in my life to perfect completion is to admit a fatal flaw in my character.

I would never look down on another person who needed help, so why do I think that others will do that to me? For that matter, why do I condemn myself for things I would never condemn others for? I guess it’s time to start cutting myself some slack . . . and to start asking for help when I need it.

God will be gracious if you ask for help. He will surely respond to the sound of your cries.