Tablet of her Heart

How many boxes of cereal do you have in your house right now? The number at our house varies, but most of the time we’ve got at least three boxes going, and sometimes more in reserve unopened. Right now we have a household record 7 boxes open. Lots of cereal. That’s great for a family with little kiddos who love to snack on it. My kids are in a serious cereal kick right now. From morning ’til night it’s all they want to do — snack on cereal. This cereal fad poses a potential problem for Sophia because her brother has taken to chasing after her in an attempt to steal her cereal cup. Of course he’d rather have hers than his own. And, of course, she finds this greatly offensive. In order to help her cope with her brother’s lack of manners and social skills, we taught her just to share a piece of cereal with him when he comes hounding after her. Then he will be content and leave her alone.

At first, you would have thought we were asking her to give away gold. Perhaps, to her, cereal is gold. She looked at me like I was crazy. “You want me to just give it to him? Just give it to him?? You’ve got to be insane.” In my own explanation to her, I heard God’s truth resonating in my own heart: “There is plenty of cereal in this house, so you need to share yours with your brother.” I realize that we are never going to run out of cereal. I have, to my two small children, an endless supply. (Realistically it does have a limit, but there’s SO much more than they could ever eat by the time I get to the store in a few days.)

And so it is with our own resources coming from God our Father. He has an endless supply of whatever it is we may need. Everything in this world is his. Yet we walk around hoarding our little cereal cups, because heaven forbid we might run out! Just as my pantry is stuffed with more than enough cereal boxes to last my children many weeks, God’s storehouses are full to the brim. So why are we hoarding instead of sharing? Why are we so concerned with protecting what’s “ours”? Our fists are wrapped so tightly around our little cups of cereal. And there’s God with his giant pantry, full to the brim. We must look ridiculous.

Once Sophie made the choice to share, a magical thing happened. The cereal did not run out. She made her brother happy, and their bond grew that much closer as brother and sister. It is precious to see her take out a piece of cereal and place it carefully in his mouth. He exclaims, “MMMMMMMMM” and usually giggles. And she finds that she still has plenty to satisfy her own desires. Mommy isn’t going to let the cereal run out.

What if I opened my hands? What if I gladly shared what the Father has given me, knowing that his storehouse is brimming with more than I could ever need?

“Do not withhold good from those who deserve it, when it is in your power to act.”
Proverbs 3:27

The epic struggle of my life has been feeling inadequate. I’m sure I’m not alone. When I was a working mommy, I felt like I wasn’t able to give 100% to either my job or my family. I felt horribly inadequate. Even now as just a stay-at-home mom of littles, it’s so easy to feel inadequate. Just this week Sophie was nearly mauled by our neighbor’s dog because Micah had fallen and was crying, and I turned my back on her for just a minute. Like greased lightening she ran around the end of our unfinished fence, unaware that our neighbor’s dog, while not mean, might just take her out. Fortunately I am swift of foot and long of leg. Poor Micah was abandoned, crying on the ground, as I sprinted to rescue Sophie. I’m sure my mad dash into the neighbor’s yard and my frantic yelling did nothing to help the dog stay calm, but my mommy adrenaline was in overdrive. For about 10 seconds, we were all terrified and unsure of what was happening – myself, Sophie, the poor dog. How many times have I wished that I could multiply myself into four or six more Catherines so that we could all take care of everything and everyone. I especially felt this way right after Micah was born. A newborn has so many needs, and a confused two-year-old who has just been unthroned in the family as the sole reigning heir has many as well. I always felt like I was neglecting someone. What a juggling act we undertake as mommies. I learned early on that I was not going to feel like enough, but I refused to allow those feelings to define me as inadequate. Yes, there are still many days that I feel inadequate, but I know that God has chosen me for this task, me specifically, for Sophie and for Micah, and he has equipped me for this purpose.

Great news for you if you’re not a mommy — this is true in all aspects of life! No matter what you spend your time doing, I’m sure many of you, like me, have felt inadequate at one time or another. But, God has chosen and equipped you for the purposes he has in mind for your time on this earth. This is another gem I’ve discovered in my study of identity. God has created each of us with unique talents, passions, gifts, abilities, etc. If you like fitness or nature or sports, great! You don’t need to be a librarian in a long skirt to fit God’s plan for you! He’s not asking you to be something he hasn’t made you to be. I used to think that I had to figure it out, to fit in this box that was what God had for me. Now I see that he’s created in me a love for certain activities and certain people groups, so it’s what’s already in me that tells me what he wants me to be. He created us each differently because he has different places and people for us to reach in a unique way. Maybe we are too concerned about figuring out who we’re supposed to be. Maybe we should just do what we love doing (not destructive things, ahem) and share the love of Jesus with those around us.

The story of Gideon (Judges 6-7) is a beautiful reminder that God sees more in us than we see in ourselves. Gideon, and Israelite, considers himself the lowest member of his family, in the weakest branch of the family tree. When the angel of the Lord finds him, he is hiding from the Midianites, threshing wheat in a winepress. He is not exactly the picture of strength. And what, you may wonder, is God calling him to do? To deliver the Israelites from the captivity of the big bad bullies also known as the Midiantes. Yikes! I imagine that Gideon must have had one of those moments of looking around for somebody else in the winepress: “Oh, you’re talking to me? You mean me? You do see that I’m hiding down here, right, Lord? Why don’t you go ask Steve over there, he’s from a much better family than me!” Oh, Gideon. He doesn’t want to do what God is asking him to do. He clearly sees himself as inadequate.

Even after Gideon accepts what the Lord has for him, he continually asks for signs and encouragement from the Lord, because he is still afraid. And what I love about God is that he gives it to him. He gives him even more signs and encouragement than Gideon asks for. In this, I see how good and how loving our God is. He’s not mad at us when we feel fearful or inadequate. He longs that we would trust him and know that he is calling us not into something we aren’t designed for, but into a purpose that he created us exactly to fill.

I love some of God’s first words to Gideon when he’s calling him forth: “Go in the strength you have and save Israel.” He already sees Gideon’s strength, even though Gideon himself doesn’t see it. God has gifted each of us and he sees precisely how we are gifted and why we are gifted that way. If we follow his leading, we will find his gentle guidance moving us into what he has planned for us to do. He is the source of our giftings, after all, and he is the power behind them. In the end of Gideon’s story, he does take victory over the Midianites, but with only a measly 300 troops, who never really even attack. They just make a bunch of noise and, as the story says, God confuses the Midianites and they basically defeat themselves.

God sees your strengths. He is not calling you into something that he hasn’t created and equipped you for. You don’t have to have it all figured out right away. Just walk with the Lord and take the next best step. When it’s time for another step, he’ll show you the way. Go in the strength you have.

When I became a mommy, I had a huge identity shift. Before Sophie, my biggest identifiers besides my faith were my status as a wife and teacher, a friend and daughter, a sister or sister-in-law. But somehow all of those other parts of me shrunk down to ity-bitty little pieces when I gained the title of mommy. And being a mommy is all-consuming.

I remember talking to a friend whose children are already grown up, telling her how I had become known to many now as “Sophie’s mom.” She told me to embrace it because that’s how I would be seen for many years to come. This new part of my identity has been so wonderful for me to discover, as it is for any new mom. And eventually the balance returns and we emerge from our houses with our new little babies and once again find out how to be a sister, a friend, etc.

When Micah was born, my identity shifted again because I decided to quit my beloved job as a teacher to stay at home with my babies. Teaching is like breathing to me. I can’t help but teach. I feared that I would suffer an identity crisis of sorts when I identified myself as a stay-at-home mom rather than a teacher. But I found that I didn’t struggle nearly as much as I anticipated because my teacher-ness was still oozing out of me in other ways. That has never changed.

One of the ways that I continue to enjoy teaching is through working on Sunday school curriculum for our high school teens at church. This has literally been a lifeline to me as my roles have shifted. Our most recent study has been about identity, and I’ve gleaned some very important reminders from my study of this topic. Below is the first gem that I definitely want written on the tablet of my heart.

God knows my name. My true name. Not what I call myself, not what others call me. But who I truly am. I was touched so deeply as I re-read the story of Jacob in Genesis 27-32. Jacob was a terribly deceitful man. Most of the things he had in life involved deceit either on his part of the part of someone in his family. But one night he wrestled with God, and everything changed. I love all of the images and feelings that are conjured up in thinking of wrestling through the night with God. In my heart I have spent many a day and night wrestling with God, so I feel what Jacob must have felt that night, the fight, the angst, the fear, the determination, the surrender. Jacob was never quite the same afterwards.

My favorite moment in this story is when God asks Jacob a simple question: “What is your name?” In one simple question, God cuts through all the nonsense. “Jacob, tell me who you are.” It’s not that God didn’t know his name. Of course he did. But he’s putting his finger right down on the issue that he wants to address with Jacob, the issue that they’ve undoubtedly been wrestling over all night: Identity. “Jacob, who are you?” Jacob, whose name means trickster, must tell God who he has become because of his own sinful choices and the sinful choices of others. When he answers God, he is saying, in essence, “I’m the trickster, the deceiver.” He has to be honest with God about who he is. But then God does something that just blows me away. He cuts right through all the lies that Jacob has believed about himself and lived out in his life thus far. He says, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and men and have overcome.” When God looked at Jacob, he saw the trickster, the deceiver, but he also saw something so much more. He saw a fighter. He saw an overcomer.

The study of this passage led me to question my students and myself — What false names have I given myself? What sins have I allowed to define me? Who does God say that I am? I think if we can be honest with God about how we see ourselves and the faults we are living in, then he can rename us, too, just like Jacob. I love what he sees in a scoundrel like Jacob. I love that he could see beyond my faults to who I really am, to who he made me to be. So often we listen to so many other voices to figure out who we are. And we hear so many other names: failure, unloved, terrible mother, not a good friend, unattractive, unwanted, not smart enough, not good enough. The list goes on and on. We call ourselves these things. But what has God spoken over you and me? Loved, wanted, beautiful masterpiece, created for a purpose, overcomer. I want to choose these names for myself. I want to live under these beautiful identities rather than letting my sins and the sins of others define me. I choose to let God name me.

In a recent post I shared about my struggle with emotional word vomit, aka criticism. I’ve come to realize over the years that a very close friend of criticism is judgment. In fact, I think that the former is perhaps birthed in the spirit of the latter. It’s in my judgments that I become critical. And I find that I have judgments, or, as we like to soften them by calling them, opinions, about everything. (Being an opinionated person is a real struggle. Seriously. I would love to be unhampered by my continual opinions.) I’m sure we’ve all heard someone say at some time, “well, you are entitled to your opinion.” But are you? We live with a very real idea that we are indeed entitled to have any opinions we want. From politics, to the behaviors of others, to sports teams, to social policy, to the education system, to religion, to civil rights, we all have these opinions. And I won’t say that you can’t have any opinions, but I will assert that we often form many more opinions than is healthy and in areas where we have no business asserting an opinion.

The Bible very clearly tells us how God feels about us exercising judgment on others. Jesus speaks on judgment in Matthew 7, instructing us not to judge others, “for in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you (v2). This verse gives me that slightly queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Oh dear me, I do not want to be judged in the way that I have judged others. Have you ever found that those judgments have come back around and bit you right in the butt? I have. I cannot tell you how many times I have found myself encountering a situation or acting a certain way and realized that I had previously executed judgment on another person in that situation or acting that way. Talk about humbling. I’m thankful that God allows me to experience those things though, because I need some humbling. Who am I to look at another person’s situation or actions and determine their motivations, or how out of line they are, etc?

Just today I found myself on my phone, texting, GASP, while driving. (I really really don’t condone this behavior. Please don’t get hung up on that part of the story. ) I was feeling desperate because my daughter Sophie had a very hard drop off at school, and had been struggling for a couple of days because her daddy is in China. So I was writing to a close friend, asking for prayer. My need felt immediate. Maybe I should have waited, but my mommy’s heart couldn’t. As I was carefully navigating through traffic, I realized how many times I’ve been quick to judge others who were on their phones while driving. I get so irritated with these people. Can’t it wait?! Get off your phone! I have places to go! You are putting my life in jeopardy for a silly text!? So self-important, I know. But today it hit me, what if these people on their phones, whom I assume are just so self-absorbed and addicted to technology (see that snap judgment there?) have circumstances, feelings, and needs beyond what I can see? What if they, too, are calling out for the support of a friend during a difficult moment? You see, we can never know what is motivating someone else in a situation like that. Maybe he cut you off in traffic because he’s a jerk, maybe she nearly ran you over the parking lot because she’s paying attention to twitter. But maybe, just maybe there’s something else going on.

I’ve come to realize that I only ever see in part. Even in my own circumstances, I can’t be a judge, because I’m only seeing one perspective, only part of the picture. And when it comes to the lives of others, even if they are making a selfish or sinful choice, I must always remember, there’s more to that person than what I’m seeing. And I’m not above the choice that they are making, either. John Bradford is attributed with saying, “But for the grace of God, there go I.” I love that reminder. I’m only one step away from the same types of mistakes that others may make. Only one step. It is only God’s grace that keeps me from destruction. It’s better for me if I turn my eyes to my own business, and when it comes to others, look only with eyes of love, not rose colored glasses, but love, full of grace and understanding, rather than judgment and criticism. I want to be one of those people who chooses to believe the best about others, who chooses grace, who chooses understanding, not judgment.