Fear Behind the Mask:How the church handles honesty

Today I found Ben hiding behind the couch with his flip flops and a roll of tape.  He was taping the sandals back together and it was obvious he had cut them.  Of course, in my mother way I simply asked, "Ben, did you cut your sandals?"

He said no.  I asked again, and he reminded me how Ian's sandals had broken once without being cut.  I showed him on the sandal where the seam was and how the straight cut didn't match up.  I asked again.  "Ben, did you cut this sandal?"

Instead of saying yes, Ben started to sob.  He ran back behind the couch to hide, and I had a choice to make.

I could yell at him for cutting his sandal and do exactly the thing that he feared enough to lie in the first place.  Or I could go to him, hug him and let him know I love him and I am disappointed when he lies to me.  I did the latter.  Of course I made sure to explain that cutting flip flops is not a good idea because now he doesn't have any.

As Christians we are terrified of honesty.  Even though God may know our hearts we still lie to Him, to ourselves, and to everyone else.  We are much more afraid of the consequences of our mistakes than we are of hiding them.  People who confess of hating their spouse, stealing from their work, or skipping quiet time for years at a time are rarely met with a "good job!  thanks for being honest!"  Those of us in leadership talk about Integrity and taking off our masks and being vulnerable.  We tell people that God wants us to be honest and to confess our sins "and he is faithful and just and will forgive us."  We tell people that if they have an issue with another believer that they need to go to that person and deal with it in order to have a richer worship experience.

What is wrong with us that we just can't tell the truth?  For one, the church says with its lips that we are all sinners, but real sinners are uncomfortable and we don't know how to deal with them.  What if the truth is that someone confesses a sin and says "I don't have the strength to stop it?"  What then do we do?  If they pretend to be alright and repentant and they do all the right things, then there is a better chance the church can handle them. (I also believe people can be honestly doing and saying the "right" things as well..)  But if they continue to be honest in their struggles, then the church can't seem to come to a consensus on how to walk with honest people, pray with honest people and help to restore honest people.

Truth is, we should not be so shocked when it comes out that people have blown it big time.  God promises us that we are fallen, that we are sinful, and that we will mess up.  Even the heroes of the faith in the bible mess up often and sometimes big time.

One thing that God consistently takes issue with in the bible is lying.  He calls the pharasees "white-washed tombs" meaning they look clean and perfect on the outside but they are full of decay and death on the inside.  He gets angry at those who did all sorts of great things on the outside for God, but on the inside their hearts were far from Him.  In fact He even at one point tells those people "I don't know you."


Honesty in church seems rare.  We tell people to tell the truth but do we mean it?  We ask people to confess their sins but will we confess ours?  The man hanging next to Jesus on the cross, condemned for a grievous crime, found himself in heaven that very night and yet those who pretended to be so good and yet were so far, were cast away from Him.  I am not saying we need to do away with consequences, but those will come on their own.  I am saying that I believe we need to remember that fake righteousness (lying) should make us more afraid than admitting our failures.  We may never know when someone is lying - they may live out a beautifully godly life all their days but on the inside, be far from God.  But we can sometimes know when someone is being honest and we need to treat them with at the very least, as much respect and care that we treat those who hide from the truth.   

You know you are a mom of boys when...

In case you aren't sure whether you fit into this category, I am referring to mothers of ALL boys although some of the list may pertain to mothers with at least one boy.  Not sure.  I wouldn't know.

1.  You know that a nut cup is not something caterers use to display holiday chestnuts, walnuts and hazelnuts.

2.  You never yell at anyone in your house for leaving the toilet seat up.  In fact, after going pee, you yourself put the toilet seat up.  Otherwise, one of your boys will inevitably pee without lifting the seat and you will have sticky pee all over the seat.  It is just easier that way.

3. You often find yourself cleaning footprints off the wall at eye-height and hand prints off the ceiling.

4. You have a special camaraderie with other mothers with only boys.  People may think you are exclusive...but that's just how it is.  You need to feel you are special in some way because your boys and husband usually just think you are weird.

5.  No one uses plates on pizza night because it makes more sense to eat off of the box.  Boys are very efficient that way.

6.  I never understood the term "hoover" your food until I had all three boys at the table.  It's like magic the way they make the food disappear.

7.  You realize that the concept that a mom of all boys is like the "princess" in the family is a complete fallacy.  No one will treat you like a princess or see you that way because they don't know what a princess is, nor do they care.

8.  You spend more time cleaning urine off the floor than you do having tea parties.

9.  Boys without sisters don't see anything wrong with throwing snowballs at girl's faces or flashing their butts in public.

10.  Your children are honestly surprised when you mention to them to use soap in the shower and to change their clothes or at the very least, their boxers.

11.  If you can make it one week without someone breaking a bone, setting a fire, getting a black eye or getting a bloody nose sliding head first down the stairs on a piece of cardboard, it is a good week.

12.  If you can make it one week without any body slamming, double dipping, running in the house naked, ball-throwing, grunting, inappropriate gas-passing or burping, drinking out of the milk carton (again boys are efficient), or roll-down-the-window body oder...

Well...I wonder if you really have boys at all.

Let me know what I missed!

The Halloween Party

Yesterday my husband posted on why we celebrate Halloween.  You can read his excellent post on the subject here and just know it receives a hearty "amen" from me.

Yesterday was one of those really fun days when I am happy that we are not seclusive Christians on Halloween night.  Ryan and I both believe that the best way to share the love of Jesus with the world is not by being one of the only darkened porches on the street with a sign that says "Jesus Loves You."

And so, we threw a party instead.

In the bible, the kingdom of heaven is described as a party (banquet) with lots of food.  




All day the boys and I prepared for the party - we made homemade salsa and carnitas, mummy cakepops and my favorite caramel apples.  First, we had to go foraging in the woods (or the empty lot behind the old abandoned bank down the street) for sticks.  I get giddy when I think about a party and as an introvert...I won't lie; the anticipation and preparation is my favorite part.

Jesus tells us...I will go and prepare a place for you...

We set out the food, lit some pumpkin spice candles, stuck some beer on ice, opened the door and in came our Halloween revelers.  First, it was some Junior High boys from my oldest's school.  They are new friends of his and are just learning about Jesus from my very verbal and not-ashamed son.  One was a vampire and one was a Civil War Veteran.  Next came the neighbors - every one of the houses we invited showed up as well as two extra families who don't even live on our street.  They were friends of neighbors.  Next came our friends from church.  We only invited one family from church because we wanted to really get to know the families on our street.

God invites everyone from every street corner.  

I love that our understanding of God not only allows, but compels us as a family to open our doors to anyone who will come.  And we don't invite people to convert them.  We invite them so we can know them and so they can know us.  It's a fun way to live.

Prayer and stoplights and parking spaces

This past week I had two different "opportunities" to talk about prayer with people.  I was the substitute bible study leader for our regular leader who was on a trip.  The topic: Prayer.  Later in the week I was helping Ryan teach a discipleship group at our church and this week happened to be on prayer as well.

I felt very unqualified to teach on prayer.

I talk to God a lot and I have heard from God a lot.  But I just don't have all the answers in regards to prayer.  I am not one of those "faith pray-ers" who claims the promises of God's word and banishes Satan from the room, and says Amen and Halleluiah a lot.  I love those people, but that is not me.  I also struggle with praying with the faith of a child.  I completely trust that God CAN do whatever he wants but it is hard for me to pray and trust that God WILL do what I am praying for.  I have friends who have complete trust in the goodness of God and pray knowing He will answer because He loves them.  I just can't do that.  I think I am a bit jaded.  

I do pray for the parking space sometimes...but I fully believe that God will answer me with a big fat NO because He cares more about my character than about my getting what I ask for.  And a parking space shouldn't be important to me when I live in this amazing country and I have food on my table each night.  But I have friends who see those little prayers as a way for God to bless and to gift you when you really don't deserve it.  I admit, when I pray what I consider to be a dumb and trivial or selfish prayer, and it actually is fulfilled in a "yes" from God, I feel pretty cared about.  And then humbled.  And often silly for asking but so happy that God heard.

 In fact, just this past weekend I was driving home and my car started breaking down.  Thinking of this blog post, I started to pray.  I asked God to "get me safely home."  And then I clarified..."home, meaning the house, not to heaven."  Then I prayed "and please get the car home, but not in a tow truck, rather on it's own wheels."  It was ridiculous and I was totally serious but also thinking God must seriously be rolling his eyes at me.  But then I got off the freeway, and for 10 stoplights in a row...the light was red, and just as my creaking and lurching car would come within a few feet of the light, it would turn green.  No kidding.  Every light from the freeway to my house.  Is that because I was clear with God?  I highly doubt it.  

A lady came up to me a while ago and told me a story of how she overheard me saying something to someone else at church, and she took it to heart.  She said it really impacted and challenged her.  Now, what she had recounted to me was a quick off-handed comment I made to someone and had not put any thought into whatsoever.  I laughed and said, "Gosh you shouldn't listen to everything I say!" And she replied "Yes I do...you are the pastor's wife."  Yikes!!  

Because of occasional conversations like that, I am very sensitive to the things that I don't have answers to.  Of course, I don't think I have entire answers for anything.  The bible says we will see "dimly" in this world but will one day see God "face to face."  I will strive to know God and His word each day, but my understanding of Him will be dim, at best.  I feel that my understanding of prayer is that way as well.  

People sometimes come to me and ask me how to pray.  There are so many examples of prayer in the Bible and they don't follow a perfect outline.  Yes the PRAY method is good: Praise God, Repent of your sins, Ask for what is on your heart, Yield to God's ultimate answer.  Yes the Lord's Prayer is a good model to follow.  And sometimes people yell at God, sometimes they sing to Him, praise Him, thank Him, sometimes they whine to God, sometimes they use simple words and the Bible even says that sometimes we can't come up with any words at all and the Holy Spirit in us will pray on our behalf.  Sometimes people hear from God in an audible voice, sometimes in the wind, sometimes a stirring in the heart, sometimes through a "prophet" and sometimes through the awesome-ness of Nature.  

I have to believe that prayer is as diverse as the people who pray and that God will listen, regardless of how pious, or how goofy, or how angry those prayers may be.  And in looking for, and listening for His response, I hope ultimately what we can come to believe is that God is saying "I am here."

The Wall: and when to cease praying.

I had a vision.

Yes, one of those crazy-christian-lady (as I like to call myself on occasion) visions.

I was standing in front of a wall, holding a piece of paper.  I was turning the piece of paper over and over, staring at it, worrying over it, thinking about it.  God said, "stick the paper in the wall, and walk away."  So I did.

This happened to me last week when I was very upset about something.  Heartbroken, in fact.  And I was doing just what the Bible tells me to do..I was praying without ceasing.  Yep, when I woke up and I thought about this burden on my heart, I would pray.  And then all day that burden was on my heart and I would pray some more.  And then as I was getting ready for bed, that burden was on my heart some more and I would pray.  In fact, at church last week we forced (ahem, gave the opportunity to...) our discipleship class to pray for 30 minutes on their own, in silence, without writing one grocery list or checking their fb status on their phones (not that I have ever done this at church..).  I took my 30 minutes and prayed without ceasing for this same burden that was on my heart.

In that 30 minutes, we were also supposed to listen for God to speak to us.  We made it clear that this was not a forced exercise and no one fails if they don't happen to hear God speak.  That's silly.  But I was praying so fervently without ceasing, that I doubt I gave God the chance to get in a word edgewise.  But literally, God threw one of those 11th hour, hail-mary (is God allowed to do that?) type God-is-speaking-now passes my way the very last minute of our 30 minutes.

And it was in a vision.

I was in front of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.  Which I have been there before many times.  The wailing wall is part of the ancient temple that once stood in Jerusalem, which was destroyed almost entirely by the Romans in AD 70.  The temple housed the "Holy of Holies" or basically, this is where God lived, where He was present.  The wall today stands as a reminder to the Jewish people that one day the temple will be rebuilt, but it also is the closest thing they have to coming into God's presence.  It is a Holy place for them.

I was holding a piece of paper.  Pilgrims come from all over to the wailing wall and bring their prayers, written on paper.  They roll the paper up into little wads and stuff them into the cracks of the wall.  It's as close as one can get to sticking a prayer into the hand of God.

I was turning the paper over and over.  I was praying without ceasing.  But I wasn't actually putting my concerns into God's hands.  And that is what He wanted me to do.

God's voice in my vision wasn't a gentle one.  It was an admonishment.  It was a bit annoyed.  (of course, that might have just been my take on it).  "Sara, stick the paper in the wall, and walk away."

So, in the vision I saw myself do just that.  I put my prayer into the hands of God and therefore put it out of my hands.  Then I turned and walked away, trusting that He cares more than me and is far more capable than me.  

The real me (not the vision-me) let go of my burden right then.  And I walked away from it.  Every once in a while I can look over at the wall just to check..."you still got this, right God?"  And He does.


1 Peter 5:7 "Give all your worries and cares to God, for He cares for you."

Momnesia

Momnesia is a real thing.  I thought I was clever when I came up with the title of this post, but then decided to google it.  There are definitions online, books, blogs and even a USA Today article on Momnesia.  The basic premise of course, is that a mother, shortly after childbirth, suffers from a sort of mental "fuzziness." I didn't read much on the term, since I already had in my head what I thought it meant and I prefer to live in my bubble and use the term for my own devices.  Also, I am a bit annoyed that I am not as clever as I thought I was.


I always think of mommy amnesia as the condition that wipes away the true memory of childbearing so that we have more kids later.  I won't go into the gory details, but giving birth to my first-born was not pretty. And between the three kids, there was 6 weeks of bedrest, 31 days in NICU, 10 years of cholic (I won't name names), an emergency C-section and 150 pounds of weight gain.  Yet somehow I managed to forget each difficult experience and go for another round.

Other signs of Momnesia might be things like putting your purse in the fridge, leaving your bible on top of the car (I literally went through one bible per baby), forgetting your child's name, leaving your keys in the bathroom at McDonalds, becoming clutzy and bumping into things (I might have been born with Momnesia now that I think of it).

Here is where I have been hit the hardest though - I have these ideas in my head of what an idyllic family outing will look like.  Or what Christmas morning will look like.  Or for instance, what a nice family bike ride on the beach for my birthday will look like.  We all love each other, we laugh, we smile.  We are wearing normal, clean clothes and we are polite to all those around us.  We are grateful for life and for whatever experience we may be having together.  So lovely.  There are the ideas in my head, and then there is what is true.  Usually after an outing together or a family holiday, I am making plans to sell my children to the zoo.  And yet, I forget all this, and the very next week, am doing it all over again.  Momnesia.  


This past Friday we went to the Bates Nut Farm Pumpkin Patch.  I was so excited to stroll the fields, watch the boys laugh and play, smell the cold, crisp fall air of...Escondido.  I knew right away that there was going to be trouble when we picked up my oldest from school and immediately the punching began.  And then they got along for five minutes because I told them the name of the pumpkin patch...Nut Farm.  And I have three boys, so they loved the idea of going to a nut farm, and giggled about going to get nuts for a good five minutes.  And then the punching resumed.  And Ben wiped boogers on Isaac's face.  And Ian threw a red rubber ball at Ben's face.  And then we got stuck in traffic.

At the pumpkin patch, the weather was significantly warmer than it had been at our house which is closer to the coast.  The boys were too hot.  They were hungry.  Could they get a giant pumpkin?  They picked up rotten pumpkins.  They made faces for the camera.  They grumbled.  And punched.  They found a poor fake mannequin cowboy sitting on a bench and picked his nose, pulled his ears and tickled his feet to make sure he was really fake.  Getting them to all three sit still for more than 20 seconds to get a photo of our day was like pulling teeth.  I told them that I was leaving them at the nut farm and they would have to forage for food and raise themselves.  Ben the five year old actually thought that sounded like a great idea.  Sigh.

This morning, I went for a run without the children.  It was cold and grey.  I had a thought in my head as I neared the house... "maybe they will all have cleaned the house for me while I was away.  Maybe the house will be cozy, clean and smelling of pumpkin candles and fresh-brewed coffee."  Momnesia.

What throws me off however, is that today, as I entered the house, it was clean and the boys were upstairs playing quietly (they were drawing all over their faces...but they were quiet) and the house smelled of pumpkin and coffee.  Sometimes they actually surprise me and live up to my hopes for them.  And it makes my Momnesia feel justified.  Sometimes I want to sell them to the zoo, but I look back on those moments fondly.  Momnesia.  

peaceful pumpkin patch

Brother love

To Be a Child

Yesterday I got a tetanus shot for the first time in over 10 years. She gave me my shot, and then I got one of those little round bandaids that my kids always get when they get immunizations.  The last few times I got shots of any kind, I passed out.  Therefore, the nurse had me lay back and wait 15 minutes before I could leave the office.

Today, my arm is a little sore, but I no longer need the bandaid on my arm.  It is a tiny little pin-prick.  However, I keep refusing to pull the bandaid off.  And just a bit ago, it hit me why not.  I associate those bandaids with being a kid.  Where someone else is in charge and you just go along with it.  You don't have to be responsible and you don't have to make any choices, you just sit there and get your shot.  And then, if you are lucky, your mom or dad will take you to the store and buy you a can of mandarin oranges in light syrup.  (ok, that was my treat of choice as a kid...).

I am 37 years old and have been married for 15 years.  I have three beautiful (albeit feisty) boys.  I am a grown up.  But some days, I really want to be a kid again.  To not be responsible for anything or anyone, to have no major expectations, to be oblivious to the laundry on the bathroom floor and the dishes in the sink.

It's funny how childhood is so often lost on kids.  They want to grow up, they know better than their parents.  They hate the boundaries and the "forced" family vacations. Us adults, we do know better.  Days like today I am grateful to be called a "child" of God.  It is days like this, that I am glad that the Bible tells me that God has a plan.  That He is in control.  That He loves me and considers me His kid.    And I don't always have to have it all figured out and I can mess up.  Days like today I say to God, "Okay - the day is yours...just pick me up and take me where you want me to go.  Provide what you know I need, not what I think I want.  Maybe then I can take a moment where I don't feel the need to "DO" but can simply "BE."