Ducks In A Row

Lately I have been able to visit with several moms who are in the same place in life that I am right now. We all have had several children in the last few years, and seem to struggle with the same things. If you overheard one of our conversations, you would hear things like this: “I’m so overwhelmed”, “I feel overwhelmed all of the time”, “Sometimes I don’t want to get out of bed.” We all agree that we have good days when we laugh and play with our kids and give kisses and snuggles and read stories, and life seems rosy. We have days when it seems like nothing we are doing is working and we wonder if it’s worth it and all seems hopeless. But always, every day, we feel we are behind somehow. That we are always a day late and a dollar short – and it doesn’t matter what the subject is. We always think that we’re just a few steps behind getting our ducks in a row…..getting our act together. We’re in a constant struggle to juggle all of the balls. We want to be a good wife, and a great mom, and a good friend, and we want to serve in our church and have a hot and happening thing with God, and just as we get a few of those balls up in the air the other ones come crashing down around us. When we have good days, we think, “Yes. I’m back. I can do this. This time I’m going to keep up. Now I won’t struggle so much.” And on our bad days we think, “What is wrong with me? Why can’t I keep up? I’m failing, and I’m going to ruin everyone’s lives around me.” One woman past this stage in life reflected to me that her name could have been, “Struggle” because that’s all life was!



And what comes with thoughts and feelings like this? Constant abiding guilt. It’s with you your every waking moment. The guilt is exhausting and draining. It sucks the life out of you. People who read all of that would probably diagnose us postpartum depression and urge us to see a doctor, and yet none of us would say that we are depressed and strangely enough, all of us want to have more children!

So are we just that nuts? (Lol!) No! Life as the mother of many is simply what God has used in our lives to bring us to the end of ourselves. So what has he used in yours? Because I’m guessing you’ve thought the same things that I have at one time or another. God is shattering our glass houses of performance based Christianity, and though it’s incredibly painful, it’s also incredibly worth it!
In the past year of experiencing the “work harder, get it together, I’m gonna get all my ducks in a row this time” cycle, God has taught me some important lessons.


1. Give up. I have always dreaded that. My mental image of giving up was me with greasy hair in my sweats and the kids watching TV and eating HoHo’s. I have finally arrived at the place of giving up, and praise the Lord, my hair is not greasy, and there are no Hoho’s in my house. But I have given up thinking that I’m going to arrive.
I am messed up.
I always will be.
I don’t have my ducks in a row.
I never will.
I have problems.
There. You heard it straight from me. But thank God, these things are also true of me:
I have Christ’s righteousness.
God has a fresh supply of mercy for me every morning.
God isn’t going to get sick of me or frustrated with me.
I am a sinner saved by grace. God has chosen me as a showcase of his grace.
So often I am trying to come up with an identity a little shinier than that one. Sarah the scrapbooker. Sarah the homeschooler. Sarah the pastor’s wife. But let’s face it, “sinner saved by grace” is the real identity, and I’m never going to outgrow that. I’m never going to reach a point in my life where I so have it together that I can move forward by my own merit. You’ve heard of being a nut case? Lately I’ve been thinking of myself as a grace case. This lesson should have been a little more obvious to me since the Bible says, “Just as you have received Christ, continue in Him.”
As I give up thinking that I do or will have my ducks in a row a beautiful, fresh freedom is coming into my life. It’s a freedom to serve God and my family out of love instead of fear, because I’m not trying to measure up anymore. I already know that I don’t!
It’s also a freedom to let the disappointments, inconsistencies, surprises, and interruptions of life happen without freaking out, ignoring them, or trying to control them, because they’re no longer obstacles on my way to “having it all together.” Instead I can see even those things as brought along by God’s hand. Ahhhhhh….the fresh winds of freedom in Christ. Can you feel them blowing on you? I’ve just started to feel the breeze wafting through our home, and it’s so refreshing.


2. What do I need to do right now? This is a question that is changing my life. I want to walk with God, love my husband, and build into the lives of my children, and minister to the people around me. That is a huge list. Just looking at it makes me tired. But the reality is I can only do those things one moment at a time, one day at a time. So often I’m stressing about my kids when I could be speaking about Christ, or giving a hug, or asking a question and listening. I can’t “work ahead” on loving my husband or raising my kids. These are priorities that can’t be reduced to check lists. So all I can do is ask God, “what do you want me to do right now?”, and as I ask that – and then DO IT (that can be hard), I find at the end of the day that I’ve accomplished what God had for me, even if that differs from my “to do” list. Elizabeth Elliot wrote a poem about doing the next thing and I'm thankful to Peggy Granquist for introducing it to me. Here is some of it:

“And all through the hours the quiet words ring,
like a low inspiration, 'Do the next thing.'

Many a questioning, many a fear,
many a doubt hath its quieting here.
Moment by moment, let down from heaven,
time, opportunity, guidance are given.
Fear not tomorrow, child of the King,
trust that with Jesus, do the next thing.

Do it immediately, do it with prayer,
do it reliantly, casting all care.
Do it with reverence, tracing His hand,
who placed it before thee with earnest command.
Stayed on omnipotence, safe 'neath His wing,
leave all resultings, do the next thing. “

Now how is that for simplifying the Christian life? Don’t worry about tomorrow, don’t worry about the past. What does God want you to do right now? DO IT.

3. Last, when life is overwhelming and you don’t want to get out of bed and all seems hopeless, be consumed with Christ Alone. When I sense that I’m slipping, I tend to try to create a spiritual to do list. “I’m gonna get my act together, so from now I’m reading the Bible for 30 minutes a day and praying for an hour and…..” And thus begins another cycle of struggle. Of course I need time in the Word and prayer, and spiritual disciplines are important. But when you’re in the spiritual hospital you don’t need something to mask your symptoms, you need the Physician Himself. Chances are that if I seek the face of the Physician, He will meet me in the Word and prayer, but they are not an end in themselves, they are the means to end, and that end is God Himself. And the Bible tells me that I am His child, and that I have intimacy with the Eternal One (mind blowing truth), so don’t try to impress Him with your spiritual “to do” list or your self-improvement plan. Pour out your heart to Him instead. I have been in a very, very dark place several times in the past year. I have clung to Psalm 62, especially verse 8, “Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts before him; God is a refuge for us.” So often when we are a mess we tend to run away from God, when really, it’s just the time to run to Him. I have many times run to God with a sin stained heart and teary eyes, and you know, He has never rejected me. Why? Because of the cross. He sees me through the lens of Christ’s righteousness. Are you caught in sin? Run to Him. Are you depressed? Run to Him. Have you just done what you swore up and down you would never do again? Run to Him. Like the verse says, He will be a refuge for you.

“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.” – Leonard Cohen


I love this song! It summarizes what I’m trying to say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD_pCr_Xrnc

*For my friends who are raising kids, here are just a couple more thoughts. First I am learning that there is no substitute for authentically living out Christ before my kids. That means that instead of trying to hide my failures, I am open about where I have failed and share what God is teaching me. It also means that while I plan specifically what I want to teach my children, I know the greatest teaching opportunities happen in the course of Real Life. So even when life is crazy, it’s OK, because God says Deuteronomy 6 teaching works. SWEET!
Second, I’m a very task oriented sort of person, and tend to set these mental benchmarks, like: house clean, breads in the freezer, vehicles clean, papers all filed, all laundry simultaneously washed and folded……the list is quite long so I’ll stop now. When I’m reaching my mental benchmark, I’m happy. When I’m not, I’m sad. I’m still cooking and cleaning, but I’m slowly…..SLOWLY learning to not set my heart on “things accomplished”. Because, after all, the Christian life is more about “being” than it is “doing.”

How Hungry Are You?

Scripture memory has been apart of my life for as long as I can remember. When I was Naomi's age I went to Awana and memorized verses just like the kids in our church. I think my mom still has my little red vest somewhere. My parents worked at teaching us verses at home, and when my mom was homeschooling us in my high school years she had us memorize the book of James together every morning before we began our regular lessons.

Then came college. In Bible school, writing down memorized verses was a part of just about every test. You lost points on your test for every mistake you made. Memorizing became very stressful! One time I even started crying during a test because I couldn't remember what I had perfectly memorized a few minutes before.

So when I was done with school and got married and started popping out kids, memorizing Scripture wasn't a high priority. I knew how much I would benefit from memorized Scripture. Memorizing the Bible gives you the weapons to defeat sin, and keep your mind focus on what is true. It's the simplest way to meditate on Scripture, and you need to have it memorized to have the right things to share with your children, and your friends, believers or unbelievers. But I just couldn't seem to be disciplined enough to memorize very much.

A few weeks ago I was listening to Nancy Leigh DeMoss's program ”Revive Our Hearts” on WRVM (Which I HIGHLY recommend by the way). Her guest, Janet Pope, has memorized 14 books and 121 chapters of the Bible. Crazy, right? As Janet talked about how God had taught her through Scripture memory and how it had become a great joy for her, I felt very inspired to put forth more of an effort, but kept thinking,”how can I make that happen? I'm too busy! Then Janet shared that she doesn't just sit and memorize every day. She does it while she is cooking or driving or getting ready in the morning. Just as all of my excuses were vanishing, I heard this:

Janet: Well, if I might share this story. I want to share it in the most loving way that I possibly can. Recently I was teaching a conference to a small group of women, a group of friends. They actually call themselves “The Bible Girls.” I’ve been speaking to them for the last three years.
On the final night of the conference, one of the girls said in front of the group, “My problem is I’m just not disciplined.”
And I said, “Penny, can I say this to you in the most loving way? And I mean it with all my heart. What if I said to you, 'You’re so disciplined in eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day. You rarely miss a day.'"
Nancy: Most of us could say that.
Janet: But you would say, “No, it’s not discipline. I’m hungry.” And so I would say to you, it’s not that you are lacking discipline. It’s that you are not hungry.
And in that moment God gave her a teachable heart, and she said, “You’re right. Thank you.” And so what we all decided as a group was that our prayer would not be “God make me disciplined,” it would be “God make me hungry. Make me so hungry for God’s Word that discipline is not the issue.”

Wow! That really hit me! How often do I think that, that I just need to be more disciplined, when the root of the issue is my heart. I'm not hungry, or should I say, I'm plenty hungry – just for a so many things besides God and His Word.

So I'm trying to put into practice what I've learned. I'm working on memorizing the book of Phillipians. I'm finding that memorizing whole passages instead of just verses here and there is so rich. I'm getting the big picture of God's Word, instead of just bits and pieces. I know I'm in this for the long haul, so if you think of it, ask me how I'm doing and encourage me to keep going!

How about you, have you ever memorized the Bible? It's never too late to start, and even if you never memorize chapters or books, every verse is priceless and will reap a harvest in your life. Please feel free to share what you would like to memorize, and I'll be praying for you, and I may even ask you how it's going!

And if you see a puff of flour go up in the air when I open my Bible on Sunday, you'll know I've been multitasking!





To read or listen to these programs about Scripture Memory go to: http://www.reviveourhearts.com/radio/roh/past_programs.php?topic_name=Scripture+Memory
To find out how you can listen to WRVM go to www.wrvmradio.org/translators/ to find the best frequency for you to listen at.