Tag Archives: Christian

Faith

Anointed with Mud

Recently I was studying the book of John and I found myself struck by the story of Jesus healing the blind man at the beginning of chapter 9. This man had been born blind and spent his life begging near the temple. He catches Jesus’ attention and Jesus does heal him, but here’s the thing – Jesus could have healed the man with a thought, a word, or a touch.

Instead, Jesus spit on the dirt and made mud with it.

Jesus spit.

Into the dirt.

To make mud.

And then He put it on the guy’s eyes.

Spit-mud on the guy’s broken eyes.

In the ESV, it says that Jesus anointed the man’s eyes with the mud. Jesus didn’t just slather it on like some first-century spa treatment.

He anointed the man.

Anointed – consecrated, made sacred, sanctified, taken for use, called for divine service

With mud made from spit.

Jesus used gunk to make this man sacred, to call him to the divine.

This man had a choice when Jesus applied the spit-mud to his eyes. He could freak out and run away or he could trust Jesus and see the situation through. He could get angry at Jesus for the gunk, blame Jesus for the gunk, and allow the gunk to separate him from Jesus. Or, he could choose to let Jesus transform the gunk into an anointing, into something that would make him sacred.

We are all broken. We all have gunk.

You have gunk.

What choice are you making with your gunk? Are you freaking out, running away, getting angry, blaming Jesus, and letting it separate you from your Savior? Or, are you trusting Jesus, seeing it through, letting Jesus transform it into your anointing?

If you read the story, you will find that the gunk did not heal the man’s brokenness. The gunk was the anointing.

What healed him was his trust and obedience.

Jesus anointed the man’s eyes with the spit-mud and then told him to go and wash in the Pool of Siloam. Siloam is the Greek variation of the Hebrew word Shiloah, which means Sent. This particular pool is actually a mikvah near the temple. It was used to cleanse, purify, and make holy those who washed in it so they could enter the temple.

It was a baptismal pool.

And this pool was fed by the Spring of Gihon, which means bursting forth. It is fed by living water that is bursting forth.

The man was cleansed and purified of this gunk in the baptismal pool of the Sent that is fed by Living Water that is bursting forth. He was made holy, not so that he could enter the Jewish temple, but so that his brokenness could be healed, his blindness removed, his eyes opened. So he could become the temple.

When the disciples asked Jesus why this man was born blind, Jesus said that it was so the works of God could be displayed in him (verse 3). So that he could be anointed, made sacred, called into use.

This man’s brokenness prepared him for the gunk that would be his anointing.

We are all broken. We all have gunk. Our brokenness prepares us for the gunk.

The gunk is inevitable. We live in a gunky world. But, for those who trust and follow through, Jesus can use this gunk as an anointing that leads to a purification that makes us into a temple of the Holy Spirit.

God’s presence dwelling within you.

You are broken. You are blind. You have gunk. And you have a choice.

You can freak out and run away from Jesus or you can trust Him, let Him use it as an anointing, and see it through until He purifies you of it. He is the Living Water bursting forth. We are the Sent.

Here’s what it ultimately comes down to…

We all need Him.

Many of us want Him.

But few of us choose Him.

What will you do with your choice?

Marriage

Hunting for Acorns

I grew up as a Grade A certified people pleaser. I needed praise like that prehistoric squirrel in Ice Age needed that acorn. I did everything I could to receive positive, encouraging, uplifting words from those around me. It filled me up. It drove me on. It made everything right in my little world.

When I didn’t receive any sort of feedback, I was disappointed beyond description. Like that poor squirrel staring at his acorn frozen inside a glacier. What I needed so badly was right there inside this other person, yet I couldn’t do anything to get it out of them.

What was worse was when I received any sort of criticism. That brought my world to a screeching halt. It didn’t matter what form it took – a look, a sigh, a body posture, a tone of voice, a word, a phrase, or an action. It was worse than just not getting praise; more than just not finding my acorn. It was like watching the acorn I had worked so hard for be decimated in front of me.

While I have since overcome this people pleasing addiction, I must admit that I still struggle with criticism. That’s the focus of this article – the power of criticism.

Now, I’m about to let all the ladies in on a little known fact. So, listen up ladies. This is the key to the typical man. Yes, I said THE KEY and I’m not exaggerating.

Most men – in fact, I would venture to say the vast majority of men – are praise-acorn chasing squirrels. They want it. They thrive on it. I believe they need it. Praise. Encouragement. Support. Faith. Respect. They collect them and hoard them away like acorns as if facing an impending eternal winter.

Withholding it from him is like freezing the acorn in a glacier. That’s harsh.

But, criticizing him is like destroying the acorn right in front of him. If the criticism is bad enough, then you’re reaching into his stored up stash of positivity and destroying it too.

I’m not exaggerating.

I’m 100% serious right now.

This is the real deal.

Criticism is like kryptonite to a man.

It can show up in a look you give him, in your body language, in a sigh, in your tone of voice, in the words you choose to use, in your overall interaction with him.

This might not make sense to you. You probably don’t think it’s that bad or that you do it that much or that it affects him that deeply. Here’s the truth – it is that bad; you do it more than you think; and it does affect him deeply.

Consider what your acorn is instead. Maybe it’s affection. Maybe it’s compliments. Maybe it’s help around the house or with the kids. Maybe it is time alone with him. Maybe it is actual, meaningful conversation. Whatever it is for you – that thing that drives you, that you crave more of, that you store up like those acorns before an impending eternal winter – bring it to mind.

Picture what it feels like to get one. Imagine what it feels like to have one withheld just out of reach. Remember what it felt like to have it destroyed in front of you or, worse, to have what you had saved up demolished in one shot.

Just because you hunt different acorns, doesn’t mean his are any less valuable.

Quit trying to feed him your kind of acorn and instead realize that you have an endless supply of his kind right inside of you. You have kind words. You have praise. You have encouragement. You have respect that you can give your man any time you want.

The question is, are you willing? Are you willing to be mindful of what your man needs? Are you willing to serve him by giving him what he needs? Are you willing to pause your own fervid hunt for affection-acorns in order to contribute to his hunt for praise-acorns?

In my humble opinion, it really ultimately comes down to what kind of man you want to have – one that is well-fed and confident because of his plentiful store of acorns or one that is angry, defensive, starving and also highly unmotivated to share with you the stash of your kind of acorns that he carries around inside of him.

Faith

“What is man? A miserable little pile of secrets.”

My 4-year old son has recently taken to sneaking things so that he can enjoy whatever seems enjoyable of that particular item before getting caught and having it taken away.

It has become quite frustrating. My husband and I have tried explaining the wrongness of sneaking, hiding, and lying. We have told him many times that if something has to be hidden or performed in secret, then it most certainly is something that he should not be doing at all.

That fact has not yet sunk in for my son, which shouldn’t surprise me, because I think that fact eludes most adults as well. Except we shroud our actions in terms of privacy and personal space and individual rights. The truth, however, is that most of what we do in secret should not be done at all either.

But, the idea of confessing our wrong actions, of bringing into the light whatever we have been keeping in the dark, is quite scary.

For some things, we know exactly what is hidden, which is why we keep it hidden.

For other things, we imagine our secret to be worse than it really is because it has been secreted away for so long. If we were to open the door to that particular closet, we’d realize that what we believed to be a monster is really a mouse. Unfortunately, for most of us, our fear keeps us from ever investigating and we continue to live in fear of our secret monsters.

For all the rest, we stashed them away in the dark a long time ago, and we have allowed ourselves to forget about them. It is as if our mind has erected a barrier that keeps that part of ourselves locked away so we don’t have to deal with it. We look in that direction and all we see is darkness. We have no real idea what is there.

We hide things from others. We hide things from ourselves. We hide things from God. Or, at least, we think we do.

The Bible says of God, “He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with him” (Daniel 2:22, ESV).

He reveals deep and hidden things. Things we have removed from sight, not to be searched out.

He knows what is in the darkness. An inherent knowledge, a revelatory knowledge of our darkest places.

The light dwells with him. Both an illumination and a wisdom that fellowships and abides in him.

A light and a wisdom that abides within every Christian through the in-dwelling of the Holy Spirit.

That means that there is nothing truly hidden, no real secrets, and no impenetrable darkness in which we can keep our actions from being found out. Which is both a dreadful notion and a relief. We dread the judgment, reaction, and mistreatment that could accompany such revelations. Yet, there is also a relief in knowing that these hidden, secret things do not have the degree of power that we currently believe them to have.

Walking out of the oppression that is the darkness in which we hide and secret things away is a difficult process, at best. However, if we can take one thing at a time and first confess it to God, then to ourselves and finally to one other person, then we could truly be free.

If God already knows the worst of ourselves and loves us anyway, and if we can face the worst of ourselves and love ourselves anyway, then perhaps revealing it to someone who also loves us might not be so bad. Perhaps the price of this freedom is worth paying.

“Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed” (James 5:16, KJV).

(Title quote by Andre Malraux.)

Family

Mealtime at the Miller’s

I continue to be caught off guard when people ask how we’ve taken the battle out of eating with our kids after they have noticed how easy mealtime is at my house. So, I’ve decided to write this blog post about it.

Everything we do with our kids comes down to our basic values about parenting. Our overall goal is to raise our kids to be responsible, successful adults who know Jesus intimately.

Applying that to food then, we want them to know how to both enjoy food and to eat responsibly. We want them to have good manners. We want them to have a healthy relationship with food. And, we want them to appreciate food as a gift from the Lord and honor their bodies the way God made them.

Rule #1: Mama is no short-order cook

I make one complete meal, not special meals for each person sitting at the table. They are welcome to take what they want from what I serve. That means that I’m also mindful of everyone’s tastes and try to include something in the meal that I know the kids will eat. But, that doesn’t mean they are off the hook for the rest of the meal. They have to at least try everything that is served with a couple of bites.

My son has been so frequently surprised at how good “weird” things are to him, that recently he told my husband that to “try things is to like them”. I hope that continues to be true for him because one of my goals is to keep expanding his still-developing palate.

Beyond the requirement to taste everything on the plate, we do not require them to eat everything. This is not a “clean your plate” house. I want them to eat until they are satisfied, not until their plate is empty. Now, that means they must eat enough to tide themselves over to breakfast because there is no midnight snacking either. And dessert is always a surprise, not a guarantee. I don’t want them “earning” dessert by eating all of their dinner, although I may keep the surprise for another night if they haven’t eaten very much that night. They just don’t know about it.

Since one of my goals is to teach them how to eat responsibly, I verbalize my decisions about meal planning. I also explain to them why they can’t have another helping of a sugary snack. They understand that there are foods that taste good and are enjoyable for that factor, while there are other foods that are necessary because they make our bodies work correctly. And that it’s a blessing when you find a food that is both! It’s all about balance.

They have juice at breakfast and dinner and water everywhere in between. They get two snacks a day, one of them is fruit or veggies while the other is something a little more lenient in the nutrition area. That second snack could be crackers and cheese, or popcorn, or a handful of cookies, or one of those fruit snacks kids adore. I usually let them choose what they have for snack as long as the morning snack is healthy. (If you haven’t noticed yet, I’m big on offering choices. I’ll blog on that another time, though.)

Breakfast is a cereal of their choosing, although I retain veto rights over the nothing-but-sugar options. Lunchtime is usually a united effort, so they have some choice. Dinnertime, though, is mom’s domain.

As for the rest of our goals for our children’s eating habits, we have a couple of other mealtime rules. First, they must be respectful of their food. That means, no playing with their food. I know that other “experts” may disagree with me, but this fits into our value of teaching gratitude. Which fits into the next rule: we always say grace before eating to acknowledge that it is from God that we receive this food.

The last thing we do is set a time limit if the kids are messing around instead of eating. It goes something like this, “Dinner will be over in 10 minutes, so get what you need to hold you over until breakfast.” Then 10 minutes later, plates are swooped up and dinner is over. That doesn’t mean we rush our kids’ eating. By the time we do this, they have had plenty of time to eat their meal. At this point, they are just messing around. (This is usually where some jaws drop because to some people the thought that their child may go to bed a little hungry is astounding. Guess what? God made your kid’s bodies smarter than that, so they will not let themselves starve. Plus, one night of a grumbling tummy may be a worthwhile lesson.)

I hope that by doing all of this that we will succeed in our goals. I don’t know how it will work out in the long-run, but I do know that our children have good table manners, are grateful for their food, have a basic understanding of eating a balanced diet, don’t fight with us over what is being served, always try everything on their plate, and still eat instinctively**. And that is why people continue to notice how different mealtime is at the Miller’s.

**To learn what I mean about instinctive eating, visit www.amihungry.com.

Marriage

The Sigh Heard Round the World

Into the middle of a group of women lamenting their romantic failures walks Jerry Maguire ready to claim his woman. In this iconic scene of a humble and sincere declaration of love comes the infamous line, “You complete me.”

Women around the world let out a collective *sigh*.

That is what we think we want.

To have a man need us. To have him realize that we are his other half, that life would not be whole without you. You want to complete him.

A truly romantic, fantastical notion.

*sigh*

But not at all based in reality. And women truly don’t want it either. Not really.

We need to be needed. We strive to be important, significant, irreplaceable. But to complete someone? Really? You want to hitch your wagon to that half-developed star?

Lifelong relationships will only work between two full-people, not two half-people. These people complement one another. They don’t complete one another.

It was the whole point of another iconic romantic movie, “The Runaway Bride”. It’s what the whole deal with the eggs symbolized. Julia Roberts’ character was meandering through life as a half-person, taking up with different people hoping that they would complete her. It wasn’t until she met Richard Gere’s character that she was faced with the reality of her existence. She was so completely clueless as to who she was as an individual that she couldn’t even figure out how she liked her own eggs cooked.

Do you know how you like your eggs cooked?

Do you have your own set of values and opinions and experiences and emotional reactions firmly planted, making up who you are as an individual? Or are you a reed on the riverbank, bending whichever direction the wind takes you?

I know that it can be scary to look into yourself and ask “who am I?” But, it must be done. No one else can tell you what you think, what you feel, or who you are. You must decide what makes you, you.

Only when you are a complete person, in and of yourself, are you then ready to couple up with someone else. Preferably, another complete person because otherwise you’ll be spinning your proverbial wheels.

Throw out the dependence. Veto the co-dependence. Overrun the independence too. Instead, adopt an interdependence, in which you come together and allow the other person’s strengths to complement your weaknesses.

Find a way to *sigh* over the ways in which you are a match. Maybe one of you is level-headed while the other is passionate and headstrong. Maybe one of you is detail-oriented while the other keeps their eyes on the big picture. Maybe one of you is process-oriented while the other is people-oriented. Maybe one of you is a thinker while the other is a feeler.

The one caveat that I want to throw into this whole love-fest is that you will never, nor should you ever, find another person to fill the role that God is meant to have in your life. It is only God who can truly ‘complete’ you. He knew you before you were formed in your mother’s womb. He has a plan for your life if you will let Him guide you, and these plans are much, much better than anything you have for yourself. He knows what makes you tick, what makes you smile, what makes you feel fulfilled and happy. It is with Him, and with Him only, that you should be dependent because He is the one who possesses your next breath, who holds the keys to the treasure of blessings waiting to be poured upon you, who carries in His hand every tear that you have ever wept, and who died to be your Savior.

I don’t know about you, but that’s the kind of love that makes me truly and deeply *sigh*.

Family

Hot Button Issues

I find it hardest to be a good parent in the face of my children pushing my “buttons”.

It’s like a heat-seeking missile that targets my biggest annoyances and makes full impact, totally exploding them. My children each carry around a box with a big red button on it, pushing it at random and sometimes totally insane moments.

We are on the verge of leaving for a beach vacation and my boys are running through the house screaming (I swear they pierce the innermost workings of my ears). We are driving to the movie theater to see the very film they have been begging to see and they start bickering in the backseat. In the middle of things that they enjoy, things they desire, things that are meant for their benefit, they start detonating bombs and pressing buttons left and right. It doesn’t make sense, right?

I haven’t found the answer to this problem. I haven’t come across the magic solution in any of my studies or experiences. Most of the time I just try to bite my tongue and take deep breaths. If I can, I put either them or myself in a time-out.

I try to remember that my goal is to teach my kids how to be considerate, respectful, responsible, and honest. It’s not about me. It shouldn’t be about my buttons. I don’t want my children to merely learn how to manipulate mom.

Right now, I’m trying to work on some sort of mantra that I can chant in times where it feels like my blood is boiling beneath my skin. It really does help to have some handy phrase to repeat inside your head to direct yourself. It counters all the junk thoughts that pop up without permission, all the knee-jerk reactions that attempt to dominate the situation.

At the same time that I work on keeping calm, I also work on de-sensitizing my buttons. I do some digging around inside my noggin to see why it is that these particular issues mean so much to me. Is there some rule in my head that my kids are violating? Maybe I need to rewrite the rule. Is there some unresolved stuff floating around inside me that my kids are triggering? Maybe I need to search out those issues and deal with them without involving my kids.

My focus needs to stay on parenting for my kids’ sake, not my own. The goals that I want to teach my kids are priorities, but they need to remain teaching priorities rather than hot buttons.

So, here’s one blog post that doesn’t have a solution worked out for you. But, that’s life. We are all working on being the best that we can be, where we are at, in this particular moment. I’ll let you know if I ever find that magic solution to either getting your kids to leave your buttons alone or to throwing out the buttons altogether.

Marriage

Choose For Today

I have been with my husband for the past 14 years. In that time, we have known countless couples. It has always amazed us to see how people make their marriages something awesome, but also how people make their marriages something awful.

We shake our heads and wonder how people make it so complicated.

Because marriage really only comes down to one thing: choice.

You simply need to choose your spouse every day. That’s it. That’s the foundation of all great marriages, of all great relationships, really.

I’m not saying that we haven’t experienced our share of storms in our 14 years together. Trust me, we have had some doozies. But, we have always come out stronger on the other side because the storms never happen between us, they only happen around us.

Our relationship is the calm in the center of every storm we have ever faced. We serve as the other’s anchor. We fight the currents that seek to pull us away from each other, the tides that strive to cause us to drift apart. We cling to each other and hold fast.

Whenever I stick out my hand, whether to give or receive help or comfort, it is for my husband that I am reaching.

It will always be my husband for whom I am reaching. Because I have made my choice.

He was my choice in the summer of 1996 when I first gave him the time of day. He was my choice on March 25, 2000 when I officially said ‘I do.’

He was my choice yesterday.

He is my choice today.

He will be my choice tomorrow.

It’s that simple.

And it’s that hard.

Sometimes it’s hard to forsake all else for him, but luckily he makes my sacrifices few and far between. And he makes them worth it by choosing me back.

So, yes, we wonder why people make marriage so complicated. Because it really just comes down to a choice.

Faith

Just Breathe

Take a breath.

A deep breath.

Draw the air in through your nose and bring it down into your belly space, expanding it like a balloon.

Now let it out slowly.

Like, super slow.

That breath is life.

That breath is a gift.

Your next one is not guaranteed.

Breathing is something that we do without thinking. It is a simple in and out exchange of air in our lungs. We usually don’t pay much attention to it unless we are somehow deprived of it.

Yet breathing is something that we can control, to a certain extent. We can choose to hold it, release it, restrict it, free it, make it shallow, make it deep, make it fast, make it slow, make it quiet, or make it noisy. We have some choice in what we do with that little gift of life we receive every few seconds or so.

Even down to our very breath, God instilled in us a choice of what to do with the life we have been given. We get to choose what we do with our breath, with our life, and with our connection to God. God is in our breath because life is in our breath and God is life.

But, as believers, we have also been given a deeper kind of breath – the breath of the Holy Spirit. In Hebrew, the word ‘ruach’ is translated as breath and as spirit. The Spirit of God is Ruach Elohim, so it could also be translated the Breath of God. With this different sort of breath, comes a different sort of life. Everlasting Life.

Take that breath again.

Draw it in nice and slow through your nose, all the way down to that belly space.

Feel the fullness of that breath.

Now let it out slowly.

Feel the hollowness without it.

You have received the breath of life for your body and you have received the Breath of Life for your spirit. You have a choice about what you will do with your breath, with your life, with your spirit. Will you hold it, release it, restrict it, free it, make it shallow, make it deep, make it fast, make it slow, make it quiet, or make it noisy?

Savor your next breath. Find the life inside of it. Feel God inside of it. Connect to the Ruach Elohim within it.

It reminds me of a scene from one of my favorite movies of all time, “A Walk to Remember”. I know it’s a Mandy Moore film, but it’s based on a Nicholas Sparks book so it’s good. She plays a Christian girl dating a boy that goes to church with his mother, but doesn’t yet believe in God for himself. My favorite scene is when he asks her how she can believe.

She says, “It’s like the wind. I can’t see it, but I can feel it.”

Ruach is sometimes translated as wind, too. It is air and spirit in motion. Don’t we create a kind of internal wind when we breathe? So, that’s how I picture the relationship that I have with the Holy Spirit. It’s like a wind that I create inside of me. I can’t see it, but I can feel it.

I, for one, choose to take my breath of life and make it deep and noisy and free. I choose to draw it out and experience as much of it as I can.

What will you do with the gift that is your next breath?