Our Daily Bread

I was thinking recently about the ways moms provide for their kids throughout their lives. One of the first and most crucial needs they fill is hunger. In fact, for the first few years of life, most of the food we eat comes from Mom. As you grow older, you start to have more choices about the food you eat and more opinions about when, where, and how you eat meals. You might chafe against the "clean plate club" rule or wish you could go out for pizza with friends instead of being home for family dinners. Then one day you're out of the house and on your own for meals, and you remember how good your mom's Swiss steak and mashed potatoes tasted on Sunday afternoons or how exciting it was to see the fogged-up windows when you came home from play practice because you knew that meant it was spaghetti night. You look forward to coming home for visits to eat Mom's home-cooking again. It's something kids never really outgrow. But twice now, with Steve's mom and my own, I've seen that moms start to outgrow their ability to provide those meals. As with so many parts of the parent-child relationship (the last time you held your parent's hand, the last time your family all went somewhere together in the family car), you don't usually realize while you're eating it, that it's the last meal your mom is going to make for you. My mom's home-cooked meals are a thing of the past. The last time I visited her in her new little personal care apartment, she offered me a cup of coffee, but she couldn't even quite remember how to operate her Keurig.

If you were raised in a family like mine, it wasn't just physical food your mom provided, she also nourished you spiritually. You probably took for granted the daily bread she provided: everything from her little wooden music box full of Bible verses on small colored cards that played "Standing on the Promises," to the familiar sight of her well-worn black leather Bible with its onion-skin pages and the flat red pencil she kept tucked in its spine for neatly underlining favorite verses, to her helping you memorize Luke 2 and the first chapter of John. As you grew older, your spiritual diet started being supplemented at Bible Club and youth group meetings, and those new tastes started to seem a little more appealing than the same old spiritual food you got at home. You may have started to get a little impatient with mealtime and bedtime prayers, and you chafed at missing Wonderful World of Disney every Sunday night because of evening church. Then one day, you are out on your own, deciding for yourself when and where to go to church and pray and read your Bible.

However, unlike all the physical meals your mom made while you were growing up, the spiritual food she provided continues to nourish you throughout your life. Over the years, you find yourself humming the hymns you heard your mom singing around the house and repeating the same mealtime and bedtime prayers with your own kids that she said with you. And your mom's ability to provide spiritual guidance extends much longer too. For as long as I can remember, every three months, I'd find a fat envelope in my mailbox containing a copy of "Our Daily Bread," a little booklet that contains short daily devotionals I've read steadily over the years. In April, my mom's emergency surgery and the aftermath that changed her life and ours ended that long-standing tradition. The picture above is of the last copy she sent me. For four months now, I've been on my own: I've had to forage around and find my own copies of "Our Daily Bread"; it's been fine, but the ones I've found are one-month versions, rather than the three-month copies she sent, and I miss finding those fat envelopes in my mailbox. Although she can no longer mail me those booklets or make me a meal or a cup of coffee, her ability to feed me spiritually has not ended. Last time I was down, she told me about how she's catching up on her daily Bible reading and thinks she'll make it through Revelation by the end of the year; she played hymns for me on her CD player. And I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she prays for me and for my kids and for the rest of the family every single day. Some days I think those prayers are the only things keeping me standing, and I hope and pray that for as long as I live, I will follow in her footsteps and "stand on the promises" as firmly and strongly as she has. Thanks for all the food, Mom.

Almost Done

My husband Steve is almost done with his radiation treatments.  I asked him last night if he wanted to do something to celebrate after his last treatment.  He wasn't sure.  The main thing he wants is to get back to normal.  About three weeks ago, he started having nerve spasms, an unusual and very painful side effect from the radiation.  He can't drive and has had to take a medical leave from teaching.  We're hoping and praying the radiation will have done its job and destroyed all the cancer cells by the time his treatments end, and we're trusting that the nerve spasms will subside completely as his body settles down.  As the end approaches, I've been thinking about how good and bad is so often wrapped up together.  This has been hard, for sure, but even on the worst days, we have been reminded of our many blessings.  First of all, there hasn't been one snowy drive to Jamestown during the past two months; those of you from the area know for this time of year, that in itself is a small miracle and a big answer to prayer.  Second, Steve and I have been loved and cared for during these past several months in ways that brings tears to my eyes as I write.  There have been calls and texts and facebook messages from friends and family members (our dear moms, brothers and sisters, brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, even nephews and nieces). We've gotten encouraging words in grocery stores, hallways, classrooms, and living rooms.  We've received cards and notes from church folks, from colleagues, and from old friends.  An Edible Arrangement appeared mysteriously on our front porch one dark night; books and candy and gift cards for music and food came in the mail on days we needed them the most.  Our own sweet kids have called more, come home more, and checked in more often than usual.  It has meant more to us than all of you will probably ever know.  Finally, I think going through this has drawn Steve and me together in ways we couldn't have imagined otherwise.  All of this makes me think of the Bible verse about how God can take something bad and use it for good.  This alone is celebration enough, but if Steve's up for it on Tuesday, we might go out for dinner, too!

Three to go!

Bath Time

Bath time used to mean bath toys, Johnson's Baby Shampoo, and sweet-smelling, pajama-clad toddlers afterwards.  These days it means a hot bubble bath, a good book and a calmer, cheered-up, pajama-clad me afterwards.  I think I'll always miss the former, but I like having time for the latter.  I guess that's what I'm beginning to understand about this whole emptying-of-the-nest stage I'm in: losing some things means gaining others.  I don't know why it took me so long to realize this--the same principle is at work throughout life.  When you move from childhood to adulthood, you lose the simple, carefree days of having someone take care of you, but you gain independence and the freedom to make your own decisions.  If you decide to marry, you give up some of your autonomy but you gain a lifetime of companionship.  If you end up having kids, much of the relaxing couple time you had with your husband or wife disappears, but in its place you get warm, rich, rambunctious family time.  And, as I found out recently, if your husband is diagnosed with cancer, you give up your sense of well-being (at least temporarily), but you gain a deeper understanding of how very much he means to you, a fresh realization of how lost you'd be without him, and a new appreciation for every ordinary and extraordinary day you get to spend together.  I don't know why it took a bubble bath to help me grasp this, but now I see there really is a season for everything and a time for every purpose under heaven (Ecclesiastes 3:1).

Lot's Wife

Do you remember the story of Lot's wife in the Old Testament?  Lot and his wife and daughters were sent away from the city of Sodom and Gomorrah just before it was destroyed with the words, "Run for your lives!  Do not stop anywhere in the valley.  And don't look back . . . "  Lot and his two daughters followed their instructions, but Lot's wife couldn't do it.  She couldn't help herself.  As she was following along behind Lot, she looked back.  And it cost her everything.  In the days immediately after Steve's prostate cancer diagnosis, I spent a lot of time online learning as much as I could about the disease and the treatment options; on one of the websites, I came across this bit of advice: "When you are comfortable with a decision, once you have made it, don’t look back. Remember, you made the best decision you could make. There is no room for second guessing yourself."*  In the hard couple of days that followed, I thought of those words often and even offered them to Steve when he started worrying about decisions he had made and wondering if there was something he could have done in the past that would have prevented him from getting prostate cancer.  It was the "don't look back" part that made me think of the story of Lot's wife, of course.  But in her case, the words weren't just a bit of helpful advice, they were a heavenly command.  And if Lot's wife had heeded them, she would have been protected.  So this got me thinking: maybe the same is true for each one of us--whenever we are assailed by doubts over decisions we've made as carefully as we could, or when we are threatened by temptation or fear, we will be protected if we remember to look up, not back.

*http://prostatenet.com/page/userfiles/pdf/13215907386.pdf

Loaves and Fishes

I think one of the things that is hard about an emptying nest is the fact that it’s not really empty.  It’s filled with memories—both good and bad—and regrets.  The good memories warm you and lift your spirits most of the time, but they can also leave an ache inside on a lonely day.   The bad memories make you cringe or cry if you’re not quick enough to brush them away when they creep in at the corners of your mind.  But it’s the regrets that are most dangerous, at least for me.  I worry a lot about the things I got wrong as a parent even though there’s not a thing I can do about them now.  I drive myself crazy thinking about things I didn’t do but should have, things I did but shouldn’t have, and things I should have done differently or better. On a bad day, I can get myself pretty worked up over stuff like this, but here’s what I try to remember in my saner moments: I always did the best I could.  And I remind myself that all my efforts would never have been enough on their own anyway.  It’s like the story of the loaves and fishes from the Bible: on its own, the boy’s lunch was nowhere close to being enough, but in Jesus’s hands, it fed thousands.  The boy gave all he had, and God did the rest.  So I continue to trust and pray that God will take the loaves and fishes of my parenting and use them to work miracles in the lives of my children, despite the mistakes I made and the missteps I took along the way.

Years of Plenty

I was reading the story of Joseph in Egypt recently, the part where Joseph tells Pharaoh the meaning of his dreams and recommends that Pharaoh find the wisest man in Egypt to manage the grain during the years of plenty so there will be enough to eat when the years of famine come.  Pharaoh thinks this is a great idea and decides Joseph is the man for the job.  I got to thinking that all the years your kids are growing up are years of plenty, not in terms of money (at least not for us), but in terms of all that time you spend together.  You are feasting and you don’t even realize it.  It is a time of abundance, and you kind of take it all for granted and stop noticing and appreciating it because you’re all filled up.  But then, gradually, the time you spend together starts to diminish.  At first, it’s subtle, your kids go to camp, they go on school trips to other countries, they spend more and more time with friends and less and less time at home.  By the end of their senior years in high school, you’re beginning to feel a little hungry, so you gather them in as much as you can for meals and backyard fires and family game nights.  And then, before you know it, just like in Egypt, the years of plenty come to an end.  What follows are not really days of famine, but you do have to start getting along with less.  Sometimes the simplicity is peaceful; other times you get hungry for the old days.  So you do the best you can; you look back on the memories you stored up during the years of plenty.  And as you set just two places at the table, you begin to enjoy the tranquility of this new stage in life.  But you also look forward to the little islands of plenty that appear each time your kids come home.