When You Know What's Going to Happen...

We're in the middle if a major holiday road trip (2 days on the road to our destination), so the three year old gets pretty much unlimited access to movies and the iPad. He's in a phase where he's really sensitive to intense/scary things - even the opening credits of a Pixar film and parts of Builder Bob are "too scary" (no kidding!).

Nonetheless, we re-watched "Planes" in the car after first having watched it for his birthday two weeks ago. On that first occasion, there were many scenes during which I was required to sit next to or to hold on my lap a frightened little boy (only to be dismissed when the action let up - he did have two really cool friends by his side, after all). This time, he was in a car seat so I couldn't hold him (we just took off the headphones), but there were considerably fewer scary scenes that required momma's attention.

"It's a lot less scary when you know what's going to happen, isn't it, Tito?"

You know what? That's not just true of movies. If you live in the moment and that moment is as far ahead as you know with certainty, life is scary because the vast unknown future is truly fraught with scary things. The dark tunnel with the train rushing toward you, the storms, sinister competitors, sinking in the ocean (sorry, spoiler alert?). When you don't know the ending, every scary bit could be the end of the story for you. 

But every good story has plot twists that have you on the edge of your seat, feeling the tension and perhaps on the verge of despair (or in the pit of despair), before the plot resolves and we can breathe a sigh of relief and enjoy the "happily ever after."

We are part of the best (true) story ever written and the best part? We know the ending.

It Matters So Much

I just spent a huge portion of my last few days putting together photo books in order to reach an ordering discount deadline. Don't tell the grandmas, but that's part of what they're getting for Christmas, albeit late since the ordering deadline was for the discount and not delivery before Christmas (Hi, K & A - Merry Christmas!).

What memories contained therein from the last year! Laughter, some tears over spilled milk, poses with mom, poses with dad, holidays with grandparents, visits to my own grandma (90 in January). I spent these hours and these dollars on these books because, in a way, these memories are important. I want my kids to be able to see their childhood, to see the smiles on their faces and the love on their parents' faces. This is a visual narrative of who they are, the nuclear family being the most important early influence in their lives.

I also want to memorialize the grandparents and the great-grandparents because not only are these relatives part of their identity, these relatives are also special people, worth remembering in their own right. I have faint memories of my own great-grandmother, a feisty Englishwoman who married an injured American soldier who enlisted with the Canadian army because he could be part of the war effort earlier. I want my kids and grandparents to remember their own grandparents and great-grandparents.

Yesterday in church, Pastor Alfred used a sermon illustration of a woman who used to sit "right there" in church, and who made remarkable pickles. He correctly assumed that almost nobody would even know who she was, even though she hadn't been gone all that long. That's how fleeting our legacy on earth is. Even my own descendants several generations hence will maybe eventually know me as a name on a family tree, with maybe a note or two about something significant, a picture, or a preserved letter (or blog post!). That's it. The sum total of my life, my hopes and dreams, my joys and sorrows, my years of education, my years as a mom, ministry in church: a name etched in stone on a tombstone and maybe on the branch of a digital family tree.

And yet, we all want to be remembered, and we very nobly strive to preserve the memories of those whom we love. My husband's family did a remarkable job of that at a recent family reunion, even re-creating the Christmas gifts that Great-Grandma would send to her dozens of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren every year. Another generation and that memory will be gone. Another generation and her recipes (currently enshrined in a cookbook) will likely be gone, too. That's just the way it is.

The ancient Greeks believed that the only way to achieve immortality was to do something so significant that people would remember you. And so you had the creation of epic tales like the Iliad and the Odyssey, tales of Greek heroes who are immortalized through their deeds. In modern times, think of the recent death of Nelson Mandela; we mark the passing of this great leader by stories of his life in honor of, and as a means of, preserving his memory. If you do not believe in an eternity of which we are a part, this does seem like the best you can do.

I admit that I am so steeped in my Christian worldview, that I cannot wrap my head around the philosophical rationale of atheists who still believe that what you do right now matters. To me, the only explanation for this is that "eternity has been set in their hearts" (Ecc 3:11); that they somehow know that there is a judgment, that there are eternal consequences. Why else would we not eat, drink, and be merry? Why else does it matter how we treat our fellow man (or animals)? Why else do we want to be remembered after our deaths? We humans can't help but weep at our sorrows and (most of us) strive to be mostly good: that is eternity in your heart. But in the end, if this is all there is, it is a chasing after the wind. What you've done won't matter because you will be quickly forgotten, much more quickly than you would like to imagine.

The great news from our sermon yesterday is this: if you are in Christ, you have a God who knows your name and who will never forget your name.

It matters what you do now. It matters that you be remembered. "See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands."

Happy and Holy

Have you ever heard the saying, "God is interested in your holiness, not your happiness?" I just realized that it's wrong.

Of course, people like John Piper and Jonathan Edwards and the writers of the Westminster Shorter Catechism (question 1, if you want a reference) are light years ahead of me in figuring this out, but there you have it. God IS interested in our happiness after all.

But here's the deal, we say this phrase as though happiness and holiness are diametrically opposed, and we say it in the same tone of voice that a dad uses when he tells his kids, "This family is not a democracy, it is a benevolent dictatorship." We, the kids in the divine family, are supposed to swallow the bitter pill of holiness at the expense of happiness because this is what The Great Benevolent Dictator has arbitrarily deemed best for his family.

But here's what I've been figuring out about God lately (again, pardon me if this seems a bit slow on the uptake; I have a stubborn heart that can render me slow of mind): God prescribes holiness for our happiness. It's a "both-and!"

Consider this: cars are made to run on gasoline. Hot chocolate is delicious, but it won't make a car go and will, in fact, damage the engine. We are made to thrive while operating within a particular set of "design specs" that happen to be revealed to us in the Bible. Too much hot chocolate in our engines can ruin us, too. A happy car is a gas-fed car.

The problem is that this sounds a lot more like "holiness" than "happiness" to our rebellious human ears that don't want to be told what to do, ever. I think that's why books keep being written on the subject, and some day I will have the time and self discipline to make it through "Desiring God," which I suppose is the definitive book on the subject for our generation.

In the meantime, I think I need to keep training myself and my children to delight in God's law, to see it as a revelation of his love and beauty and perfection (the same way that we all love to eat our broccoli; seriously, the kids love it). To pray for wisdom, "knowing and loving what is best." To have self-discipline to say "no" to short-term pleasures and to trust God that when he says he has greater pleasures in store for us, he means it. To believe that obedience isn't quenching happiness but is training our hearts to enjoy what will bring us the greatest, most lasting pleasure .. And a side benefit is that holiness helps us learn to enjoy the journey along the way. To revel in beauty and fun and laughter and make them a never-wavering part of my kids' lives.

God is happy because he is holy. "And we all, who with unveiled faces reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit" (2 Cor 3:18).

Lean Into It

No doubt about it, being a parent of small children changes the way you experience the world, and it's not always obviously for the better. From the minute that baby comes out, you are a slave to its needs. Once you survive beyond that initial, exhausting phase, you are still tightly constrained by naps, eating needs, schlepping a mountain of paraphernalia wherever you go, and early bedtimes. Ignore these at your own peril.

This past Thanksgiving, we enjoyed small, stolen bites of a cold meal while managing cranky kiddos who weren't eating their meals for entirely different reasons. My glass of wine remained on the table almost entirely untouched, a tribute to the days (past and future) when a satisfying meal would be followed by an afternoon of lounging on a couch with pants unbuttoned, another glass of wine in hand, dozing in between stolen bites of leftover mashed potatoes and blueberry pie.

On Friday after the parade, the childless cousins traipsed off to the mall while the rest of us lugged overly-tired, whiny, sticky children home for long-overdue naps.

Sometimes it's a little hard not to wistfully long for the freedom of days gone by. "No, I can't stay up and watch that movie with you because with the time-change, my toddler is waking up at 4:45 and not going back to sleep." If they put this on the front of the "parenthood club" brochure, I suspect membership would be pretty limited or at least a bit more reluctant.

Through it all this weekend, I kept having this phrase running through my mind: "lean into it."

Have you ever been on top of a mountain, with wind whipping around your body, pushing you away from that peak, but you lean into the wind, holding your body steady in order to enjoy the exhilarating view? (If you haven't, come to Montana and I will point you in the directions of the mountains. it will be good for your soul.) Lean into it. Hold steady. Enjoy the view.

Because, when I don't let my ungrateful heart get ahead of my slowly-sanctifiying-mommy-self, I love the view from up here. The delight in the children's eyes at the parade. The exhausted girl who snuggles in uncharacteristically close while she awaits her nap. The happy dull roar of a home filled with young lives who are exploring their world and building relationships.

This is a phase, a preciously short time that we don't need to be guilted into "enjoying every moment," but maybe we do need to be reminded that when we feel buffeted, the best way to survive is to lean into it. This is who you are right now. This is your life, it is a gift and it is a challenge; it is a blessing and it can certainly feel like a curse. You can get tossed around like a ship at sea, you can hunker into a little ball, or you can plant your feet, face the winds that aren't going away anyway, and do what you can to hold steady. Sometimes the wind on a mountaintop sucks the breath right out of your lungs, not unlike the tightening in my chest when both kids join a chorus of other screaming children or the little one cries for an hour straight on a road trip.

This is life as I currently know it. It is beautiful. It is breathtaking. It feels like I am being sucked completely dry. So I try to remind myself: lean into it. Hold steady. Enjoy the view.