Taking Off the Training Wheels

Taking Off the Training Wheels

by | Jun 11, 2023 | Sunday Scripture

But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves. 

James 1:22

 

I had approximately zero interest in learning how to ride my bike growing up. I just didn’t care. I had training wheels on my little bike, and we had one of those tag along bikes that had a wheel and pedals for me, but that also attached to my dad’s bike when we went for longer family bike rides- why did I need to learn how to actually ride a bike??

 

My parents tried, but alas to no avail. I was dependent on my training wheels and I was happy with them. This lasted until I was around 7 and half years old. It was a beautiful summer day, my mom was out of town, dad was working, and I was spending the day with my grandparents. And they wanted to go for a bike ride. 

 

I told them I couldn’t because I needed training wheels and they were on my bike at home. I remember thinking that was it- end of story. There was nothing to be done, maybe we would go hiking instead. Then grandpa came inside and announced that the bikes were strapped onto the car, there was an extra helmet for me and …. We were going biking. I protested that I couldn’t bike and he told me sure I could. 

 

I don’t remember exactly how I felt, or what I thought on the ride to the bike trail; I think it was a mix of smugness, I knew I couldn’t bike- there would be no biking, and a mix of terror that he was going to sit me on the bike and expect me to bike! 

 

We got there and grandpa explained that I was going to sit on the bike and pedal and he would jog along holding the seat upright from behind, he wouldn’t let me fall. I got on and started to pedal and he encouraged me to pedal faster, so I did and after several seconds I didn’t hear him anymore. I glanced over my shoulder to see grandpa a ways back, jogging to catch back up to me. I was biking! 

 

I don’t remember if I fell that day, but if so I didn’t get hurt but I learned how to ride a bike. All it took was someone taking me outside of my comfort zone and telling me I was going to and not giving me the option to back out. It’s amazing what us humans can figure out when we are not given a recourse. It was time for me to be a big girl and take off the training wheels. 

 

In Hebrews 5 starting in verse 12 the author says that by now the recipients of this letter should be mature christians, teaching others and instead they are still mastering the basics- unwilling to move out of their comfort zones of old religious culture and into their new faith in Christ. 

 

Yet, how many of us sit in faith without maturing as we should? We are meant to be doers of the word- not just hearers. Just like I needed to step outside of my comfort zone and let go of my training wheels, so too comes the point in our lives when we need to step out in faith in roles that God is calling us to, take off our training wheels, and allow God to take us outside of our comfort zone. 

 

Disclosure

Please remember that this post contains affiliate links; that means if you click on the link, I will make a small commission at no extra cost to you. It’s a way to support my blog! I will only ever share an affiliate link if I love the product and think that you just might love it too!

 

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A Prayer for the Graduate and the Long Since Graduated

A Prayer for the Graduate and the Long Since Graduated

by | Jun 4, 2023 | Sunday Scripture

This is the day that the Lord has made; We will rejoice and be glad in it. 

Psalm 118:24 NASB

 

It is early summer, a season of new beginnings and new endings. A season of goodbyes, and a season of new opportunities. For the graduating: this is a new season, this may be your first last time that you have experienced in a big way in your life- congratulations! Enjoy. For those who have long since graduated; remember the excitement you felt as you embarked on a new venture of your own choosing, for the first time? 

 

Enjoy everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or lastime: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory. – A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. 

 

This is a new season, and whether you are graduating from high school, college, or have been graduated for so many years that you’ve lost count, I pray you gain back some of the wonder you had when you first graduated. I pray this is a season of refreshment, of new discoveries, of feeling hope and joyful ambition as you embark upon or continue in the work He has called you to do. 

 

May you have joyful ambition even if it is yet another season much like the last for you. In the mundane, monotonous everyday tasks, I pray for rest for your soul, and joy in the everyday little miracles; a sunrise, a rainbow, sunlight illuminating a field at the day’s end- little showers of grace, every one. 

 

If you are moving on from something big this year, I pray you charge towards your target filled with the naivete of one who doesn’t know how big life’s obstacles can be. I pray you are shining light in your new endeavors, I pray when you are halfway through,and feel as though you want to give up, that you remember the joy of starting this grand new thing in your life, and keep going. 

 

For those who are just happy to see sunny days and are not expecting much out of this summer season, I pray that whatever your hand finds to do, you will do it with all your heart. I pray that you remember that His mercies are new every morning. I pray He will refresh and revitalize you, and I pray that you will remember that this life was exciting once, and it can be again! He has made each of us a special job to do and that may we find fulfillment in that calling! 

 

I pray we can try to look at the world again through the eyes of the graduate, excited for what lies ahead, excited to see what life has in store, and expecting more good than bad from this life. 

 

Dear graduates, old and new,  when life knocks you down, I pray you remember the One who can help you stand back up. I pray you remember that life is made of seasons. I pray you remember that when life knocks you down, knocks you off course, or doesn’t turn out the way you wish it had, that we serve a Redeemer who can set the captive free, restore life to the dead, and make our paths straight. I pray that in the seasons when life is going so well, that you choose joy, and revel in His goodness, and live wide open to all the blessings be showered down upon you. 

 

We serve a risen Savior, one of love and peace, I pray we remember to live in His peace, this day, and all the days moving forward. Amen.

Disclosure

Please remember that this post contains affiliate links; that means if you click on the link, I will make a small commission at no extra cost to you. It’s a way to support my blog! I will only ever share an affiliate link if I love the product and think that you just might love it too!

 

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On the Right Track

by | Jun 1, 2023 | Sunday Scripture

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3: 5-6 NIV

 

We were lost, and from the bars on all of the store windows we were in one of the not so great sections of Philadelphia. And it was getting dark. My Mother had come with me to Philly for a work conference I was attending, and we had decided to go out for Chinese food for dinner. I should probably mention here that we are a little directionally challenged. If someone gives us directions and says, “It’s so easy, you won’t be able to miss it!” you better believe we will find a way to miss it! In fact earlier that day, my mother had dropped me off at the conference, and while just trying to get back to our hotel room, had made a wrong turn that sent her over a bridge into New Jersey! 

 

We had started the evening by searching for one Chinese restaurant near us and using our GPS had gotten there. That restaurant did not have the orange chicken, dripping with that tangy orange glaze that we were in the mood for so we decided to try again with one of the many Chinese restaurants in the area. The second restaurant didn’t seem that clean, but there was another restaurant 3 minutes away… next thing we knew we were in a seedy-looking area of Philly, where every restaurant and convenience store had bars over the windows. On top of that it was getting dark. 

 

We tried using the GPS to get back to the first restaurant we stopped at- general Tso’s would be just fine instead of orange chicken-  but the ramp we needed to get on to get back to our hotel was, and this may sound weird; blocked by a king size mattress across the road. Why was there a king size mattress on the road? We didn’t know but given the roads, we decided it was better to try another way than to try to get out and move it. Perhaps other people felt the same and that accounted for why a mattress was still on the road! Eventually, we were able to get back on track and we ended the night eating our chinese food, in the safety and comfort of our hotel room! 

 

This work situation has a lot of parallels to our spiritual life too! Take David for example: He was the man after God’s own heart, but he sure messed up along the way. He started off strong in his faith, rightfully giving God all the glory for the defeat of Goliath. He went into battle and gave God all the glory, he spared King Saul when he had the chance to harm him because Saul was God’s anointed king over Israel. Then David decided to stay home from a battle, perhaps he should have gone… Instead, he committed adultery, and instead of confessing what he had done, he furthered his sin by committing murder. 

 

Just like that David had veered off the path and was way in the weeds. God sent the prophet Nathan to call out David in his sin. David had two choices: he could confess and repent, or like Saul he could have hardened his heart and deny his wrongdoing. Thankfully David confessed his wrong and got back on the right track. 

 

We all face this same choice in our lives. We are human, making mistakes and finding ourselves in sin is going to happen. But when it does we can either confess and repent, or we can deny our sin, but denying our sin won’t bring us closer to God, instead it will drive us further apart, and like my mother and myself in Philly we will find ourselves making wrong turn after wrong turn, getting further away from God’s goodness and grace. However, if we repent, and get back on the right track, then we will find ourselves growing closer again to our heavenly father and the comfort of our Eternal Home. 

 

 

 

Disclosure 

Please remember that this post contains affiliate links; that means if you click on the link, I will make a small commission at no extra cost to you. It’s a way to support my blog! I will only ever share an affiliate link if I love the product and think that you just might love it too!

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Holding On

Holding On

by | May 19, 2023 | Sunday Scripture

 

It has been a year since I became a mother—a year of everyone telling me how quickly time passes, that I need to enjoy every moment, that I will blink and find that my baby is grown. I have thought about these things every night when lying my sleepy baby down for bed; I have kissed his cheek and intentionally held onto the moment knowing that, in less time than I care to think about, this little baby will be bigger than me, and not inclined to let me kiss his cheek so often! 

My son has had reflux—a moderately bad case. While we figured out around six to eight weeks of how to manage it, the first six weeks of his life he was held almost constantly unless not he was crying! Not just crying but scream-crying like he was in pain (which in fact he was) and while holding him still didn’t quiet him completely, it helped. For six weeks I was lucky if he took one good nap during the course of the day. I would set him down, tip toe away and do my  best to shower, prepare a meal, tidy up, or whatever else I wanted to do that day, knowing IF he went down for another nap, I’d be lucky if he slept for an hour! It is safe to say I held my baby as much as I could during this period. “Hold him as much as you can,” echoed through my mind as I held him for the majority of every day. 

And yet… did I hold him enough? I know the answer is yes. I remember the days not being able to set him down because when I did so he would cry that excruciating cry, and no, he wouldn’t just cry it out. So while I held him nearly all day every day, I still look back and would love to hold my sleepy baby again because here’s the truth—it’s never enough. 

It’s never enough. And it never will be. Mother’s Day—a day of remembering the ones we’ve lost, and a day set aside to intentionally remember and hold on a little tighter to the mothers we still have in our lives. But as much as we might cling to our loved ones in the time we have with them, in the end we will always wish we had more time.  I remember spending a lovely Father’s Day with my Grandpa the 36 hours before he passed, and it still wasn’t enough! I still wanted, still want more time with him. And even though I have taken advantage of kissing my son’s chubby baby cheeks every time I can, it’s not enough either. The year has still gone by quickly. And slowly. There were sleepless nights, followed by days that seemed like they would never end. There were days that seemed like months when all of us were sick with the flu. There were days we wanted to last forever and days that seemed to last forever.

Then there were the strings of average days—days that were just fine, nothing fancy, nothing special, but just a good normal day. On these days I would wrestle, as every new mother does, with the to-do lists and responsibilities, and spending time with my baby. I would find myself trying so hard to enjoy the moment that I started not enjoying it! Do you know what I decided to do? I decided to quit thinking about all of it. 

I decided to quit thinking about how much I should enjoy everything, to quit feeling like I was either doing too much, or not enough, and to just do what I wanted to. Then I started really enjoying life with my little one. 

Maybe (quite possibly) I am just a basket case, but I’m willing to guess you have felt a similar push-pull in at least one area of your life. While you are really trying to enjoy and hold tightly to a magical experience, you find it slipping through your fingers only to let it go and find that the last part is the part that you most enjoyed about the whole experience. 

This Mother’s Day, and all the days here after, my prayer for you is that you don’t feel the need to hold onto anything so tightly that holding on becomes the only thing you can think about. Instead, I hope you are able to immerse yourself in the moment, let your emotions go, and store away memories of being fully present in your season of life. I pray you are able to live all, or at least most days, filled with love for your life and those in it, and that that love spills over to those you meet, colors your days, and ends up looking like a life well lived. 

 

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Life is Like a Batch of Peanut Brittle

Life is Like a Batch of Peanut Brittle

by | Apr 30, 2023 | Sunday Scripture

The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.

Lamentations 3:25 ESV

 

“The only thing harder than waiting is wishing you had.”

– Steven Furtick

 

I heard this quote the other day and it stopped me in my tracks; well actually it stopped me mid-scroll on Instagram. Talk about pressing into someone’s paint points!  There have been more times than I care to mention that I have rushed ahead only to wish I had waited….

 

The town I lived in growing up hosted a craft show every year; it was the kind of craft show where anyone who wanted to would open up their home and along with some of their neighbors, friends, and family display their handmade goods for sale; good ranging from baked chocolate chip cookies to stain glass kaleidoscopes! My mother and I participated in this show at our neighbor’s house. 

 

The first year we participated I made all crafts, no baked goods, and didn’t sell nearly as much as I wanted to (of course!). However, I saw that people were buying up the baked goods at a much faster rate than they were the crafts so the following year I decided to make some chocolate chip cookies. As you probably know, when you take cookies out of the oven, you should wait for them to cool, either by placing them on a cooling rack or waiting until the cookie sheet itself has cooled down. Well, I was in a hurry! The faster I got the cookies plated and in their bags, the more cookies I could bake and the more cookies I baked, hopefully the more money I could make…. In the end, I didn’t save time as my cookies that I plated when they were too hot, cooled into misshapen lumps which didn’t look appetizing and were hardly fit for public consumption! 

 

Years later I was still enjoying baking and we decided it was time for Grandma to teach me how to make peanut brittle! Making peanut brittle is a little bit of a tricky process… there is a lot of time stirring the sugar, Karo, and water together over low heat…. It can stand for a little bit but let it go too long without stirring and it will scorch! The thing about this process though is that it can’t be rushed… You can’t turn the heat up on high in an effort to rush it, and you can’t skip the time-consuming process otherwise the peanut brittle won’t get hard! 

 

After the peanut brittle reaches the hard crack point the scene changes! You want your peanut brittle to be crunchy- not just hard! It should have a quick crunch to it and be light and airy (though not soft of course) on the inside. To achieve this as soon as the peanut brittle reaches the Hard Crack stage you have to quickly add the baking soda and peanuts, stir just enough to combine them, and then quickly pour it onto a cookie sheet. If you don’t do this quickly the baking soda will have depleted its magic and you will be left with a rock-hard mess. 

 

The thing about this whole process is that while you are waiting, you are actively waiting. You have to be accurately tuned into what is taking place in the pan otherwise you will miss it! Isn’t this an apt metaphor for what waiting on God is like too? 

 

When we are in a waiting season it is easy to think, “Well I might as well just settle in and wait on God.” and we get so comfortable waiting that we stop looking to God and forget that this waiting too is just a season. We are to be actively waiting on God, still doing the next right thing in front of us; reading our bible, praying, ministering to others, using the waiting time as a time for God to do His work in us so that when the season of waiting is over, we are ready to do the work that He has prepared in advance for us to do! 

 

 

 

Other Posts You May Enjoy: 

Waiting for Patience

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Sweet Recipes for This Christmas Season (for how to make your own Peanut Brittle)

Life’s Scraps

by | Apr 23, 2023 | Sunday Scripture

Wait my daughter until you learn how the matter turns out. 

Ruth 3:18

 

Recently one of my friend’s wanted to learn how to cross stitch so naturally she came to me because who of her other friends (in their 20s) knows how to cross stitch?

 

Not only does she (now) cross stitch, but she also knits and, I found out, she scrapbooks. She said that she and a group of ladies all get together and scrapbook. I told her I was mad she hadn’t told me sooner! “Oh,” she said, “You scrapbook?” 

 

“Well, no…” I confessed, “But I want to!” 

 

It’s true; I may have cut and glued a few pictures onto a page when I was 10, but taking the time to print pictures and embellish them with glitter, stickers, and pretty handwriting is not something that I have invested any time into in my adult years. But, as I told my friend, I want to! I admire how women can take photos, admission tickets, wristbands, the scraps of their lives, and turn them into meaningful works of art that capture beautiful memories. 

 

I have found myself many times holding on to boarding passes and admission tickets for years, only to stumble across them and ask myself why I kept this junk? What is the point of it? Sometimes I have thrown these scraps out. Other times I have kept these scraps; our stub from when we visited The Anne Frank house in Amsterdam, the movie ticket from the only movie my husband and I have ever seen in theaters together because the memories they evoke seem to justify my keeping of these mementos.  

 

So there they sit, in the one box I allow myself for my  “sentimental” keepsakes. I find myself asking, “Are these things keepsakes, or are they just junk? Is this detritus indicative of a life well lived?” Sometimes it is just such insignificant scraps that, when pieced together, tell the story of a life, or a portion of life, well lived and cherished. 

 

Sometimes life’s scraps aren’t so pretty. Sometimes putting them into the scrapbook would make pursuers pause and question why you chose to include something so unlovely in your work of art. Maybe it would be a symbol of the hard time before the really good life event. Perhaps it looks like the last paystub you received from a company before they fired you, before you started the business you love. 

 

I think of the story of Ruth in the Bible; she had a lot of scraps. She marries a man and they are young and happy and then he dies, along with the other men in his family, and she is young and destitute. She could go back to her parents but instead she decides to cling to her mother-in-law, Naomi and piece together a life with her. Ruth then has to collect the literal scrap from the harvesters in the field so that she and Naomi can have food to eat. 

 

Ruth’s faithfulness and hard work are noticed and she catches the eye of the wealthy landowner in whose field she has been gathering the scraps. God pieces together the scraps of Ruth’s life and not only gives her another (rich) husband, but blesses her and she becomes one of the lineage of Jesus. 

 

It’s hard to see in the everyday details what the bits and pieces of our lives can add up to be, but God has it all figured out ahead of time for us. He knows what the point of all the trials of our lives are. And as Romans 8:28 says, He works everything together for good, to those who are called, according to His purpose.