The Birds and the Bees, Bugs, and the Big Bang Theory

It's been a big day in our house. Meet the "love-bugs" that have invaded our yard.

I don't know their scientific name, and haven't done the research, but thousands have come to visit us lately. Cade (age 7) is fascinated by them. He watched them for an hour. He asked a lot of questions, as he does with most other things. Between this evening, the experience of owning a male dog, Psalm 139, and the Christmas Story, Cade has pretty accurately figured out where babies come from. I guess we won't need formalized "talks".

Bible + Nature + his questions = we're talking

It looks like we won't be taking future weekend retreats to cover these matters with the kids, but we will be retreating from my friend's children for a couple of days. Hopefully, that will give our son plenty of time to be less fascinated by his new-found discovery and he won't see the need to share this information with peers.


In other news: Kinley returned home today from a slumber-party at 8-yr old "Amy's" house. Amy and Kinley have been in public school together for 3 years. On Valentine's Day, Amy wrote Kinley a note: "you are the nicest, kindest person I know." (that does a momma's heart good)
Let me tell you about Amy. She's a genius. She is well-versed in science, history, greek mythology, and anything else she's ever read. She's a leader. At 8 years old, she has quite a mind and mouth and a huge personality. She's wildly crazy, and a wee bit rough around the edges. My husband and I love her.
Amy believes in the Big Bang Theory and something about an acorn at the beginning of the world, and something about stars colliding. (If you are familiar with the "acorn theory" please educate me.) Amy mentioned it to Kinley and her closest friends last night. Kinley said "no, no. You need to read Genesis 1:1. Can you go get a Bible?" Kinley showed her friends where Genesis was, how to read the Bible, and explained Creation in a way that thoroughly impressed me. Her friend did not know where the acorn came from, or who formed the stars in the first place. The other friends stood silent, shaking their heads in affirmation of Kinley's 8 year old defense of God.
After a long discussion, Kinley let it go when Amy said "you know, you're really starting to annoy me with all this Christ stuff." High-five Kinley. They're still friends, and they still love each other. So much so, Kinley is planning on calling Amy tomorrow. She wants to share Jeremiah 13, the "linen underwear" story because "I can really see Christ in that story and Amy likes potty-talk and underwear and talks about f-a-r-t-i-n-g." I am thrilled to know that my sweet, gracious child who spells out questionable words, is about to take an Old Testament Story about dirty underwear and share the Gospel with her friend. Pray for her. We've got three weeks left in this town, and her flame is not flaming out.
I sleep satisfied tonight. I rest my hope not in any parental knowledge or ability. My hope is not in my children. Our entire family has too many failure stories for that. But how wonderful, that God's Word is authoritative and sound. His Seed is good and is bearing fruit. His Spirit is alive and active in the hearts of children. His creation is a great teaching-tool for the awkward topics I never thought I'd be having this soon. My hope is in a Jesus who can even be found in a "crude" Old Testament illustration.

Though I love most of God's created beings, I take all suggestions on how to get rid of these love-bugs. We have had our lesson...it's time for them to go.

Communicating the Gospel to Children

Let me start out by saying it is not my job to convert my children. There is no gaurantee that my husband and I will raise godly adults. It is the duty of Christian parents to teach and train their children according to Scripture in a Gospel-centered home. (The Gospel is simply the Good News for my bad news brought by God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit.  It is not limited to salvation, or even sin, but also the effects of sin.) It is the Holy Spirit's job to convict and save. I do not believe anyone can be convinced, debated, manipulated, scared, pushed or begged into a real relationship with the Lord. As parents, we can not be stumbling blocks, but stepping stones towards Christ.

My husband and I teach our children every night by reading Bible stories. The following book for children was given to us by my in-laws. The one on the left is the 4th our family has owned. The one on the right is what the other 3 look like.

　
Our children have combed these pages. Though we have found this book to be accurate, it does not give every story, or the full details of the stories it contains. So here's what my husband purposed to do since our first child was two years of age: It is his philosophy that we will let the Bible raise the questions for our kids. He reads the story nightly. I read on the nights my husband isn't home. He will ask the kids questions to see if they have grasped the information, and give them an example of how it applies to every-day life. The kids ask a lot of questions. Sometimes the answers are directly quoted in the Bible, so we'll further explain it or show it to them from the pages of Scripture. Now that our oldest is 8, we are starting to read more texts of Scripture and less out of the children's book.

The "training" comes when they need to be showed what to do or how to think. We hold out the "law" or the rules to our children. When they fall short, we show them their need for a Savior. Here are some practical ways we have made our children aware of their need during specific situations:

Sharing
Mom: "you need to share with your sibling."
Kid: "I don't want to."
Mom: "Of course you don't. That's why you need Jesus to help you." or
"God shared His Son with us. Jesus shared His life with us. We have been given a great example, and God can teach you how to share."

Family Conflict
We seldom let our kids work out their conflict by themselves because God stepped into human history and taught us how to deal with ours. Once they have been trained, then I can say "talk to your sibling first and if you can't work it out, come to me."

We purposely use the language of forgiveness. It's okay for my child to say "I'm sorry" if she really means it. More often than not, the child is not sorry for their sin, only for the discipline they are about to incur. I can not make my kid feel any emotion that leads to repentance. But I can make them practice by admitting what they did wrong and asking for forgiveness. Example: "Would you forgive me for biting you? I shouldn't hurt you." "Would you forgive me for ripping up your drawing? I was being selfish, and it is wrong to mess up other people's things."

Defiance towards parents
After my husband had finished disciplining one of our children, I noticed the child stomp out of the room and mutter under breath, "I don't love you anymore." What did I want to do? Shame our kid for disrespecting Dad like that. What did my husband do? He got eye-level with the child and calmly said: "that makes me very sad. I want you to know that I will always love you. God loved me a long time before I loved Him."
Wow! What a perfect example of "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." It is God's kindness that leads us to repentance, and this father's kindness softened that kid's heart.

When they feel shame
One of our girls feels easily embarressed when she gets caught sinning. She will run away from us and bury her head in her bedsheets. We remind her this is what Adam and Eve did in the Garden. They hid because they were naked and ashamed. But what did God do? He covered them with animal skin clothes. "Sweetheart, you do not need to run away or be afraid of us. We love you and you're covered by grace."

Self-righteousness
One of our children is notorious for tattle-telling. The kid runs to me with that obvious whiny tattle-tale voice and says "____ did such-and-such." I reply "It sounds to me like your brother/sister needs Jesus just as much as you do. Do you think you are better than them?" Ahhh, yes, Jesus is the solution for self-righteousness.

Competing against one-another
When Kinley and Cade were toddlers, they would race in the living room. Cade became very frustrated, emotional, and upset because Kinley could beat him. I tried several solutions:
"Don't worry, when you get older, you'll get faster and you'll win a lot."
"Cade, you're good at other things. You can catch a ball, jump really high, etc, etc."
"Winning isn't important. Having fun is what matters."

None of that satisfied him. He can't have fun unless he's winning. It doesn't matter if he can beat her in other things, because he sees this one area where he just doesn't match up. It's that awful comparison game we all play with other people. A Christ-focus is the only solution.

"Okay kids. New game." I went to the other end of the living room and got down on my knees. I spread both arms out wide and said, " The goal is to get to Mommy." They both ran across the room with a lot of giggles. One ran into my right arm and the other my left, and it didn't matter who got there first because I swooped them up and tickled them until they were overcome by laughter. In that moment, I just displayed what Jesus did for us on the cross. Arms spread wide in self-sacrifice, bringing to us a new kind of race. Run, hop, crawl, or roll a wheel-chair to Jesus, because we'll forget about our physical limitations and be overcome by joy when we stop looking at each other and focus on the Cross. Christ is the cure for competition and comparison. I want them to imagine Him when they feel insecure.

When their Mommy loses it
I can make myself look pretty good when I'm teaching my kids about their sin. But they see mine too. I can will-power some self-control about 10% of the time. Thanks to the Holy Spirit, that percentage is way higher, but it is UGLY the moment I start walking in the flesh. In those times, it is important that I practice what I teach them.

"Mommy is tired but that is no excuse. When Jesus was tired, he didn't use his tone of voice to hurt others. Would you forgive me for yelling at you?" (I want them to know, it is not their fault.)

"Mommy is very frustrated. Now, your job as a child is to obey me. That is your responsibility. But it is my job to teach you in a way that honors God and I didn't do that. Would you forgive me for speaking angrily?" ( I want them to know they are not off the hook, but I will take 100% responsibility for my actions.)
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My husband and I have been taught well. We didn't come up with this info on our own; there are many godly people who have influenced us. We pick and choose the ways we want to pass this important message to our kids; we don't always make the mark, but grace covers us too.

Stop, drop, and roll.....or crawl

This blog post has no point unless you like to keep up with our family. If you like to keep up with us, maybe you should find a less difficult hobby.

My dryer hasn't been working well for a while, which means lint was backed up in the dryer pipe thing. Our dryer doesn't back up to an outside wall, so the pipe makes 2 right-angle turns and has to travel 10 feet through the attic to push lint out of the house. After my van fire, I refused to use the dryer until we cleaned out the pipe in effort to minimize all fire hazards. Chris had been working in Conway during the week, so it was the top item on my "honey-do" list when he returned.

On Saturday when Chris was crawling around in the ridiculously small area in the attic, the twisting and turning caught up with him. By Saturday night he was laying in bed with a considerable amount of lower back pain. We don't even own pain medicine, so when he said he needed some I knew it was bad. First thing Sunday morning I went to buy Ibuprofen. When I got home, Chris was on the floor crawling around. At least he was laughing at how ridiculous he looked. I was hesitant to go to church because he couldn't walk out of our house if it caught on fire! "No," he said emphatically on his hands and knees."I have willpower. They say stop, drop and roll. I'll just roll out of here."

We spent Sunday afternoon at the doctor, and that helped him walk out of the office looking like a cripple. We were all very supportive. Cade took one look at him and said, "If you're gonna walk THAT slow, you should just get a wheel-chair." I offered him Kaci's jogging stroller. Kinley made a contraption that would enable us to wheel him around the house.

Her plan was that Chris could sit on the pillow gently placed on a dinosaur and she could drag him around by the dinosaur's head. Kaci built a fort of pillows for Chris on the floor that he could lay on, and she was going to gaurd it against our dog, Kobii.

It's nice to have a husband with a sense of humor even when he's in immense pain. The last two days, he has been to the chiropractor, and is getting better each day. He should be back to normal by the end of the week.

It's been the "perfect" way to end an entire school year of week-day seperation. Summer of 2010 to Summer 2011 has consisted of one trial after the other. Fortunately, summer has begun for Chris and he will work from home. I'll take him however I can get him...and now that the dryer works, he can crawl around in clean underwear.

Fire, Heroes, and the Power of Perspective

Friday started out like many normal days: a whole lot to do in a short amount of time. The plan was to meet my husband, Chris in Conway, then travel to Little Rock to help Sabrina move. (This is one of my best friends whose husband died in September. Her brother lives with her now, and she was moving into a bigger house to accomodate the household.) From Little Rock, we were headed to West Point to stay with my parents. On Saturday we were driving to Jonesboro to celebrate the 40-year ministry of the people who probably had the single greatest impact on Chris and Tonya's life. On Sunday Chris was preaching at my home church. Since our house was on the market, I had to get it spotless before we left, arrange the dog's weekend care and pack for myself and three kids while fighting an ear and sinus infection. On Thursday, I had done all the important things: oil change, hair cut... pedicure.

I picked our older children up from school, secured (more like 'forced') all three of their carseats in the back row of the van and popped in a movie. I got annoyed at the gas station pump because it wasn't fast enough: so instead of filling up for 80 bucks, I stopped at $19.62. As I was pulling out of the gas station, my friend Nathalia texted me. I don't text and drive, so I called her as I went on my merry way East-bound across I-40. You have to understand that Nathalia and I know how to talk: we were making plans, discussing the Lord, and the faithfulness of God in the life of Sabrina. There wasn't a bit of silence in that 20 or 30 minutes, and when we finally said "good-bye" I returned Chris' call to tell him when I'd be in Conway. After I hung up, I adjusted my rear-view mirror to do that motherly thing of looking at my children, when I noticed a strange smokey film covering the entire back window of the van. I have zero sense of smell at the moment, so if something was burning I wouldn't have known it. The film didn't look like normal exhaust to me, but since there was a semi in the distance behind me and a bridge in front of me, it took me a little while to pull over.

I didn't want to panic my children, so I calmly said "kids. I want you to get unbuckled." They tell me later that they were immediately reaching for their seatbelts, but were having trouble finding the buckle because they were squished together in the back seat. All I heard was "why?" My calm demeanor quickly changed to yelling "THIS IS NOT A TIME TO ASK ME QUESTIONS! WHEN I SAY UNBUCKLE, YOU DO IT NOW! WHEN I STOP THIS VAN, GET OUT IMMEDIATELY!"
The older two jogged out and then I finished unbuckling my youngest. We stood as far away from the road and van that we could, right next to a line of trees. I called Chris and the conversation went something like this:
Tonya (in a collected, but urgent voice): "The van is smoking. We are on the side of the interstate. Come get us."
Chris (envisioning his children and wife standing on the side of the road with huge vehicles whizzing by): "Oh my goodness. Can you get to the next exit?"
Tonya (in a high pitched, loud and rapid voice): "WHAT?!?!?!? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? NO, I CANNOT GET TO AN EXIT, THAT'S WHY I'M HERE!!!! I WILL NOT GET BACK IN THAT VAN, IT MAY CATCH ON FIRE!!!"
Chris: "okay. okay. Where are you?"


Did he really need to know that small detail in a crisis like this? I mean, I had just been enthralled in a great conversation. I could tell you every word that was said to me, so of course I didn't pay attention to insignificant things like mile markers and highway signs.

I couldn't really explain what I was seeing to Chris, and knowing that he likes detail, I hung up and popped the hood. I could see now that there was a little smoke coming from the front, and thought it was overheating. Just as I had my hand on the hood and was about to open it, a man ran up behind me and startled me. I jumped about three feet back and he got down on the ground with his fire extinguisher. I came to know this man as Randy, my modern day "Good Samaritan" as Nathalia later termed it. (Luke 10:25-37) Then I looked to the right, and a young semi-driver going west bound had stopped his huge truck even with my vehicle. To be honest, he looked like a bowed-up leprachaun, leaping and dancing over tall weeds and mudholes, running and turning his head from side to side to cross two lanes of interstate traffic with a fire extinguisher in his left hand.

I couldn't figure out why these men had extinguishers when my van was just overheating a bit. In moments, HUGE amounts of smoke were billowing out of the top of the hood and around the sides. They fired their extinguishers, other men were calling 911, and here came a policeman, a tow truck, a fire truck, and men in fire suits. At this point, I realized the grass was on fire.  My girls were looking a bit shocked and Kinley remarked how much that extinguishing fluid looked like puke. Cade was jumping up and down yelling "COOL! a fire! a fire! Now we can get a van with a DVD player. Can we get one like my friend ____?"  Here's a picture of the "puke".

    (left: radio guy   Middle:  semi-driver  right:  Randy)
The firemen let the kids play on the firetruck while I filled out paperwork and made decisions. No one had enough seats for all four of us, so the policeman let me get in the cargo van with Randy and all of our belongings for the weekend. I strapped two kids in the front captain chair, and the other kid and I sat on the floor of Randy's van. We drove 10 miles to the nearest gas station: Randy bought us food and drinks, put a movie on his laptop for the kids, and stayed with us until Chris arrived.

A few hours later, Randy called us. "Chris, I've got a car that I just bought a month ago. Come get it until you get another vehicle." We have it now; this is no junky spare car. It's a shiny red pontiac with 32,000 miles on it.

On Monday, we drove to the mechanic's place to get the rest of our stuff from the burned van. The mechanic and the local fire chief (who was the tow truck driver at the scene) showed us the burnt oil that covered the back of the van. He pointed to a nearby car that had blown up and told us how the woman barely got out. He said over and over "You don't know how fortunate you are." He told me that the van was on fire while I was driving it. He told me all of the things that could have happened: the automatic doors could've stopped working and trapped us in, the gas tank could have blown up, the oil......

I can not tell you how sobering it was to suddenly understand the full extent of what had happened. I now understand why the firemen were there so quickly: someone had called 911 while I was unknowingly driving a burning vehicle at 70 mph. I do not know how long it had been burning. I don't know how all the pieces fit together, but I know the "Who". And because of Him, you can't finish this story without "seeing" the bigger picture.

I was saved on Friday the 13th by no work of my own. I simply did not resist the help that came to me. Imagine me standing between the burning van and Randy or the semi-driver and arguing: "Excuse me men, but I don't need you. I will get where I intend to be. I was going to help a widow. I was talking about the Good Lord. You have no right to my van. I'm the one who puts gas in it, I'm the one who got the oil changed. I know every quirk about my van and you just laid your eyes on it for a few seconds. My dad was a fireman, and I know how to use that extinguisher when I need it."

That doesn't even make sense!!!! But somehow most intend to get to Heaven while they are driving towards Hell. They think they will arrive at Heaven's door by the wheels of their good works. They think because they can say His Name that they have a relationship with Jesus. They think they have rights to their own body, that they know their thoughts more than anyone else, that they'll be saved by the example of their parents. They think they will get to Heaven by knowledge of the Word when they don't even apply it.

I would submit to you that BECAUSE I was focused on my good works in this burning van situation, I was not aware of my true problem. Oh, I eventually saw symptoms. I knew something was wrong, but because I was so close to the van, I couldn't see flames. I needed someone outside of me, someone who had a better perspective, to look at my situation and know that the problem was fire, not smoke.

We sense that there are problems in our lives. We feel them. But few understand that the root of the problem is sin. It's either your sin, or someone else's sin, or the effect of sin on a once-perfect world. You can not fix it, but Jesus defeated it. God killed His Son in order to put sin to death. Jesus rose again, to allow us to share in His life.

You get to be a part of my story through no work of your own. You simply have not resisted reading it. Grace can come to you now because I am alive to tell about it!! Do not resist the greater Help for your greater need. Pray that God would open your senses. Hear His Word. Look at the beauty of God. Smell the sweet fragrance of life. Taste and see that the Lord is good.

How many times have I failed to tell this truth to people? How many times have I seen the real problem in marriages but didn't interfere because it wasn't my place? How many times have I waited to have a relationship with someone before I helped them?  But I have been given new heroes to remind me how I want my life to be.
*I want to be Randy who scared me so that he could save me.
*I want to be the nameless semi-driver, who didn't seem to notice how awkward he looked because he was too busy running for my life.
*When I have no ability of my own, I want to be the one to call up to the "Higher Authority". 
*I want to be the firemen who turned children's panic into a playground.
*I want to be the policeman who chose grace over the law by allowing us to ride in a van without proper seat belts so we could get to a safer place.
*I want to be the spouse that lays down his/her own agenda in order to help the other.

I hope that you will do likewise and stop minding your own business. James 4:19 "My brothers, if any among you strays, and someone turns him back, he should know that whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his life from death and cover a multitude of sins."