a great P.S.

So, as a P.S. to my last blog. After I set up the blog to post, I went to get the mail. We got an anonymous note in the mail.

It was addressed to Steven, but I couldn't wait for him to come home and read it.

I opened it up and it was a card from the lady that I wrote about in the last blog. She wrote us the sweetest note about how nice it was to meet us that day and how she was praying for us and wanted to send us something.

Isn't God amazing? I love it when he's not quite finished with a story.

I guess we're behind

On Sunday afternoon, Maggie and I were relaxing in the backyard.

I asked her what she learned in church from Mr. Mike in her class.

She said that they talked about when Saul met Jesus.

Then, she asked me what we talked about.

I told her that we talked about sometimes it's scary to go and do what God wants us to do it, but it's important that we do it anyway.

She looked puzzled.

She said, "We talked about that a LONG time ago."

I guess the adults are behind.

Psalm 139: Perfectly made

I have to admit that this is kinda like a repeat for me. I was in charge of our ladies' bible study a couple of weeks ago. This is what I talked about.

Psalm 139: 13For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

14I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

your works are wonderful,

I know that full well.

If you have been pregnant, think about how you prepared for your new child. Or how did your mother prepare for you? What do people do to prepare for a child?

We look at ultrasound pictures and desperately try to see things. Unless we have someone telling us what to look for, can you tell anything about him from these pictures?

Before Maggie was born, I had approximately 7 showers. Her room was perfect. She was wanted and loved and read to every night in the womb. I had a monitor where Steven could talk to her in my tummy. It was funny because she would start to kick really hard when he would talk to her. He would have to move his head back or he would get kicked in the head. I even have a scrapbook page with this verse on it and her ultrasound pictures.

Fast forward 5 years later, we got a call the week before Labor Day and we got Patrick on that Friday. We had no time to prepare. My grandmother’s crib that we had used for Maggie fell apart the night before he showed up. We had to get one from Kim and Daniel. Rikki brought her old car seat and he came with a few clothes. He was not prepared for at all.

He came from a mother and father who could not take care of him. They did not care what happened to him. He was not wanted.

Sounds like an awful start to life. How could these two children be any different? Won’t they grow up to have a different outlook on things? But, in a message Steven gave recently, I heard this verse in a different way. When I think about the psalm, I am encouraged.

Psalm 139: 13For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

14I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

your works are wonderful,

I know that full well.

He wasn’t wanted by his biological parents. But, God had him in the palm of His hand. He had put him together perfectly in the womb.

This is so encouraging for us. Maybe you don’t see yourself as perfect. Maybe you weren’t prepared for and WANTED. But, you were perfectly made by God.

Think about what it was that you don’t like about yourself. What was it that you burned last week? Tell your neighbor something that you don’t like about yourself. Anyone want to share?

We don’t have to hold on to that negative stuff. God made us perfect. He had just the right parts and temperament and personality and made us that way. What is one thing that you like about yourself that God made perfect in you?

Is it easier or harder to think about a negative thing or a positive thing?

What about what we see in others? Do you see the negative or the positive thing in others first?

How do you keep in mind what God sees when you see someone else? What about when they annoy you?

How do you handle someone when you have a conflict with them? Do you try to remember how God sees them?

Find someone now and talk to them about a conflict you have with someone in your life. If you don’t have a current one, maybe one in the past that you have a hard time letting go.

Pray together for each other and the issue you are having. Get together this week and discuss how you are doing with this conflict. Then, what do you need to do with that conflict. Can you meet with that person that you are struggling with? Would that help?

Pray for the group.

A new year, a new decade, a new beth?

I feel the need to write something momentous and awe inspiring and a brand new start to an old blog. This is a new year and a fresh start. It's even a new decade. I feel like something awesome should start!

However, the "old dishes" are still needing to be washed and my kids still need to be bathed. Our cute pastor talked about a visualizing what our 90 year old church could look like. He's reading a great book about our dreams and what God can do through us and beyond our wildest dreams.

I have always been way too practical. I like structure. I like playing within the rules. I'm all about working within the system. I have a hard time dreaming and imagining what God can do through me.

My daughter is the opposite. She has wild dreams and wonderful ideas and is ready to turn our home into a puppy shelter/lemonade stand to raise money for people who don't have any money. She doesn't understand why I don't want to go gung ho with every idea that she has.

Honestly, she makes me feel like a stick in the mud.

How can I encourage this wild dreamer? She is going to be a visionary for God. She will do amazing things for Him. But what if I squelch her dreams and ideas? Sometimes I am just tired!

Maybe I have that wild imagination inside of me somewhere too. Maybe it's just buried beneath my desire to have a clean house for more than 2.5 seconds. But, I don't think that God really cares what my house looks like. He is more concerned with my heart and how I am serving others.

I pray that this year I can let go of some of my structure. Or even just follow a dream of another God follower and not allow me to talk myself out of something before it starts.

Control

We have been working with J a lot on control issues. She has had to survive for so long and is very independent. In a way, this is a good thing. What other two year old can get themselves dressed completely, including shoes? It is so different from Maggie who would prefer that EVERYTHING was done for her. :)

However, this independence rears its ugly head in ways that are so hard. She wants to do everything for herself and be in charge of everyone and everything in the house. She is very bossy to Maggie and R. The other day she was in the front of the house in her tshirt and diaper and had her finger pointing in the air telling R and Maggie what was about to happen. I told her that children wearing diapers were not in charge of everyone in the house. It was so ironic.

She has had to be self sufficient and we have to teach her to be dependent on us. Many times during the day, we say, "J, you are not in charge. You don't have to be in control. Mommy and Daddy will take care of things. Don't worry about it." It's almost like you could pull a string on the back of my neck and I would quote this verbatium.

The other night, I couldn't sleep. I can't seem to fall asleep because I worry about what is going to happen to them next. What if R can't sleep and is crying for us? What if they are scared? What if plagues me til I am exhausted and finally fall asleep.

I started praying and thought about J and her issues with control. I heard the word "control". It came together for me. Just like we have to teach her how to give control to us, we have to give the control to God in this situation. He has in under control already. We can't be in charge. He is our Daddy and will take care of the kids when we aren't there.

I guess I won't be buying items from Lifeway Bookstores anymore

http://www.ajc.com/living/content/living/stories/2008/09/18/gospel_magazine_pulled.html


Gospel Today magazine pulled from Christian bookstores’ shelves
Fayetteville-based publication features women pastors on cover
By CHRISTOPHER QUINN

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Smiling women on the cover of a slick magazine. Sold from under the counter. Must request it from store clerk.


That’s not something a buyer would typically find in a Christian bookstore. Not unless it’s one of the more than 100 Lifeway Christian Bookstores across the United States, including about six in metro Atlanta.

Gospel Today, the Fayetteville-published magazine, was pulled off the racks by the bookstores’ owner, the Southern Baptist Convention. The problem? The five smiling women on the cover are women of the cloth — church pastors.

Southern Baptist polity says that’s a role reserved for men.

Teresa Hairston, owner of Gospel Today, whose glossy pages feature upbeat articles about health, living, music and ministry, said she discovered by e-mail that the September/October issue of the magazine had been demoted to the realm of the risque.

“It’s really kind of sad when you have people like [Gov.] Sarah Palin and [Sen.] Hillary Clinton providing encouragement and being role models for women around the world that we have such a divergent opinion about women who are able to be leaders in the church,” Hairston said. “I was pretty shocked.”

Chris Turner, a spokesman for Lifeway Resources, which runs the stores for the Southern Baptist Convention, said, “It is contrary to what we believe.”

It bases those beliefs on their interpretation of New Testament Scriptures.

Southern Baptist representatives at national meetings have adopted statements saying women should not be pastors, but each church is independent. A few churches have selected women, such as Decatur First Baptist, where the Rev. Julie Pennington-Russell preaches each Sunday from the pulpit.

Pastor Tamara Bennett of California is one of the featured pastors on the magazine cover and talks in the article about the challenges of breaking through the stained-glass ceiling.

“God’s assignment is that no souls are lost and all are saved,” Bennett said. “Gender is not how God sees it. We are about winning souls, period.”

Southern Baptists are not the only ones to frown on women preachers. Catholics, the largest Christian denomination in the nation, do not allow women priests. And some conservative evangelical groups, such as the Presbyterian Church in America, do not ordain women.

“We weren’t trying to pick a fight,” Hairston said. “We just did a story on an emerging trend in a lot of churches.”