Category: sally clarkson

Grasping my Father’s Hand.

Driving into town this morning I was still foggy from a late night of fretting over an issue that continually rears its ugly head in my life.

I’m sure you have none of those, right?

It’s a thirty minute drive, which is usually the perfect length for a podcast.  I had started listening to Sally Clarkson’s latest as I was getting dressed so I finished it about halfway into town. As is so typical of God, it was exactly what I needed to hear this morning. (Go to sallyclarkson.com/blog.  It’s episode #172.  You are welcome.)  Still, though, the fog persisted in my mind.  Thoughts swirled about and I fought to choose joy.  I just wasn’t feeling it.  .

Have you ever been in that place?  Knowing what you should do yet not finding the gumption to get up (physically, mentally, or spiritually) and do it?

I still had about fifteen minutes of driving to go so I switched from my podcast app to the radio.  On one of the local Christian stations a song was just beginning and my first impulse was to move on to the next channel.  I wasn’t in the mood for worship.

I bet you can guess what came next.

It was like a Holy Hand held mine to the steering wheel.  Nope.  Stay right here.  Listen.  Worship Me.

Suddenly the air in my car was filled with words that refused to be ignored, even in my cynical state…

Here I am, God
Arms wide open
Pouring out my life
Gracefully broken


Gracefully Broken by
Matt Redman, Tasha Cobbs Leonard

I forced my thoughts to slow, to focus on these lyrics that I have heard and sung many times.  Words I believe…or do I?

Am I living what I sing?  Am I gracefully broken?  To be honest, the lyrics to my life could read more like this…

Here I am, God, arms pried open.  Pouring out my life, forcefully broken.

Ouch.

As much as I want to believe I am a mature believer, the truth is I am often like a toddler, throwing a kicking, screaming fit on the kitchen floor.  For a season I am fine, walking and trusting and holding God’s hand along the way until I come across an obstacle that stubbornly refuses to budge.  “This is not what I thought,” I complain.  “This isn’t what you promised.”  I wriggle my hand free of His and try to push the obstacle out of the way.  I fight and complain and plop down in a huff, sweat beading on my brow and fingers bleeding.

All the while my Father has worked quietly around me, clearing a path, whacking away thorns and brush to allow me to pass safely around the obstacle.  As I have whined and cried He has stayed faithfully steadfast, knowing at some point I will exhaust myself and take His hand once again.

But you know what He never does?  He never forces me.  He doesn’t pry my arms apart. That’s not worship and it is certainly not relationship.  He waits.  He clears the path and stands there with his hand extended.

Are you done?  His gentle words hold a fatherly reprimand.  Are you going to stop the fit now and come with me?  Come on, let’s go.

I reach up from my position on the cold floor and grasp the warmth of His hand.  His strength pulls me to my feet, to His side, and He leads me around the obstacle.

To the other side.

And I am reminded, once again, that though the obstacle may not move, God does.

Sometimes God moves mountains.  Sometimes He moves me.

Excitement!

As you may know, I am a huge fan of Sally Clarkson.  I wrote all about her in this post. She has written several books that have changed the way I live and her podcast is on constant play when I am in my car.

For the past month I have had the pleasure of being on the launch team for the book, The Lifegiving Parent, written by Clay and Sally Clarkson.  (Which means it is for daddies, too!) It has been such a privilege to share and participate in this good work of spreading the word about a message that will change the fabric of countless families.

Well, today is launch day!

Today the book will be in the hands of those of us who pre-ordered!

And today, I’d like to bless you with a giveaway!  🙂

If you will share the link to this post and leave a comment in the comments section of this page telling me so, you will be entered into a drawing for your very own copy of this wonderful new book.  The winner will be announced next Tuesday, so get to sharing!  I’m so excited to get this into your hands, too!  You will love it.

Have a wonderful week!  I’ll be out back on the porch with my nose in the book!

To order click here:  The Lifegiving Parent

 

The Forgotten Feast

Late one evening, while driving home from a banquet that had been held to celebrate the end of the latest basketball season, I heard a voice pipe up from the nether-regions of my dark and messy Explorer:

“I didn’t get to eat.”

I forced my face to stay forward, eyes on the road, while I said, incredulously, “What?”  (Read that with all the emphasis you can imagine.  Because that’s how I said it.)

“I haven’t had dinner, Mom.  I didn’t get to eat.”

I took a deep breath, willing myself to show grace and use this teachable moment.  “What would Sally Clarkson say?”  I thought to myself…

“You mean you were too busy hanging with your friends to eat, right?  You mean you chose not to eat because you were having fun, right?  Because when we left they were throwing out whole pans of spaghetti and meatballs and chicken alfredo…there was an entire banquet, a FEAST, laid out for you.  There is absolutely no reason for you to be hungry except that you chose not to eat what was provided for you.”

I paused there, knowing that continuing to lecture would be overkill and that this sweet fun-loving (and now hungry) kiddo of mine had gotten the point.  We arrived home, hungry child had a small snack, and everyone went to bed.

Then God started thunking me on the head.

 

You know the above-mentioned teachable moment I wanted to use to make a point to my child?  Well, the Lord decided to turn that one on me.

He’s pretty faithful about doing that.

Proverbs 9:1-6 (MSG)* says…

Lady Wisdom has built and furnished her home;
    it’s supported by seven hewn timbers.
The banquet meal is ready to be served: lamb roasted,
    wine poured out, table set with silver and flowers.
Having dismissed her serving maids,
    Lady Wisdom goes to town, stands in a prominent place,
    and invites everyone within sound of her voice:
“Are you confused about life, don’t know what’s going on?
    Come with me, oh come, have dinner with me!
I’ve prepared a wonderful spread—fresh-baked bread,
    roast lamb, carefully selected wines.
Leave your impoverished confusion and live!
    Walk up the street to a life with meaning.”

How often do I walk around hungry despite the literal banquet God has spread before me?  He tells us He has everything we need in place.  Every gift of the Holy Spirit is available to us, His beloved children.  Like a mother who takes pleasure in feeding her growing children, who delights in watching them savor delicious food made by her own hands, our God has spread out a Kingdom feast and sits at the head of the table, waiting for us to join Him.

But, too often, we don’t.  Despite the tantalizing smells of “fresh-baked bread, roasted lamb, and carefully selected wines” we run right past the table and try to live our lives on empty.  “I’m not hungry!” we declare as we slam the door behind us and skip to the playground (work, school, relationships, life) not wanting to take the necessary time to fuel our spirits before engaging with this broken and dying world.

Then we hit the wall.  We run out of energy and despair over our weakness.  We stubbornly declare, “I didn’t have time,” but the truth is we didn’t want to make the time.

Because you know as well as I do the time is there.

It may mean setting the alarm earlier to spend quiet time with God before the rest of the family awakens.  I could be choosing to listen to a podcast from a trusted Bible teacher or music that fills our minds with truth in the car (or while feeding babies). Maybe it involves putting down that magazine we had planned to thumb through in the doctor’s office to pick up a devotional or (wait for it) the actual Bible in our purse or even on our phone.  Wherever we choose to carve it out, we have the time to consume the feast our God has prepared for us.  It may not happen all in one sitting.  In fact, it may mean we are taking small bites throughout the day.  It’s not really about making time to feast on the Word, it’s about making the feast a priority.

And I’m telling you, sisters, that we will never walk in victory unless we are well-fed.

We cannot walk around starving and spiritually malnourished and expect to be effective in our marriages, our mothering, or any other area of life.  Because the Word is life.  Jesus is life.  He sits at the head of the table, but the seats are too often empty.  This has to stop!  The culture is running at us, chasing down our families at breakneck speed, and we are so tired and distracted that we have no energy to fight!  But fight, we must, or we will end up on our knees with a weak and broken spirit from years of malnutrition as we watch our homes crumble.  It begins with small changes, tweaks in the schedule that we can make every single day.  I’ve heard a good rule…”Work before play.”   Well, how about, pray before work?  Or sit at the feet of Jesus before logging in?

Verse six, above, says,
“Leave your impoverished confusion and live!
    Walk up the street to a life with meaning.”

Yes, that’s it!  A hungry soul is an impoverished and confused soul!  We cannot think clearly when we are hungry.  Any parent knows this.  We have all dealt with a “hangry” child…well, I would venture to guess that many of us are spiritually hangry.  We struggle to find meaning to our lives, feel bitter and angry and tired, but the answer lies in stopping…eat, drink and be filled.  Be still and know that He is God.  He is our provider, our strength, our portion and our cup.

Then,

from that nourished and fulfilled state,

we can emerge from the safety of home to face the world and be effective, energetic laborers in the fields.  We will no longer be searching for meaning, because meaning is found at the banqueting table.  We will know who we are and Whose we are and be better able to live out of that truth, living forward and purposefully into who God created us to be at the very beginning…fully dependent, empowered disciples of Jesus Christ offering hope and life to a desperate and hurting world.

Our kids are watching.  Our friends and families are watching.  If we don’t lead them to the banqueting table and show them the value of sitting with the Lord, feasting on all He has to give us, who will?

Let’s eat!

 

*MSG refers to The Message.  It is a modern paraphrase of the Bible.  I like to use it when trying to clarify passages or get better understanding of context.  

If You Lack a Mentor: In Gratitude to Sally Clarkson

As a now “older mom” among many of my friends, I found myself in an odd and often lonely season of motherhood.  It is so easy to make friends when our kids are little.  Playdates at the park or story times at the library are the perfect conditions for forming friendships around the common experience of mothering.  But there comes a time when the kids grow up and our day-to-day interactions with them vary to such a degree from what others around us may be experiencing that mothering can no longer be an easy common ground from which a friendship can spring.  The friendships are based on other things.  Good things.  But not necessarily common parenting styles (or outcomes!).

Then there was the realization that, as an “older mom,” I lacked a mentor for myself…someone who has weathered the storms and walked through the hardships that are the reality of raising children to adulthood.  The lack was not out of desire to have one, but out of the practical nature of my life these days…finding time to sit and chat over coffee is difficult to do.  Homeschooling four children, parenting five, shuffling kids to ball practice, dance, music, youth group, doctors’ appointments, etc (and carving out time to practice my cello!) consume my daytime hours very quickly.  Then factor in the reality that we recently moved into a new neighborhood in a new town and, well, building a mentoring relationship just takes time.  Time that I haven’t had.

Do you relate to this?

Enter Sally Clarkson.

sally clarkson

I had heard of her for a couple of years and knew she had homeschooled her children ALL THE WAY THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL.  Nothing less than a heroic feat, in my book.  Because teenagers.

Anyway, I began to listen to her podcast, “At Home with Sally” and in this older woman, who I have never met, I found what I needed.

A mentor.

Sally raised four children who all turned out to be amazing, gifted adults that love Jesus and love their mama.  But that is not why I love her.  I love Sally because what she did was not easy.  Learning disabilities, mental illness, tragedy and hardship were all part of her story of mothering.  She is honest about those things, honest about her failures and successes.  She looks back through the lens of experience and wisdom and gently reminds us that, though there are things we can do to foster life in our homes, above all our kids belong to the Lord and we can trust Him with them. Somehow, in her quiet voice, she speaks loudly into my flaws and struggles, encouraging me to not let failure prevent me from taking the next step, or from loving when it is hard.  She has taught me that much of my tension comes from being highly idealistic, which is not a bad thing but can certainly be frustrating to certain members of my family.  Ahem.  She models selflessness and faith and the gift of hospitality as a form of worship.  She reminds me to light candles and warm up the pancake syrup because those little things speak into the hearts of my children and draw them close.  In the difficult seasons of my life, Sally reminds me to hope and to never, ever give up.  God uses broken vessels.

I’m most definitely a cracked pot in His Kingdom!

I don’t know if you have a mentor.  I certainly hope you do.  But if that is something you wish for I would love to introduce you to Sally.  She doesn’t know me, has no idea this little corner of the internet even exists, but I feel that so many of my friends would benefit from letting her speak truth as we drive our kids to appointments or get ready in the mornings. Nothing can replace real-life relationships and face-to-face conversation, but someone like Sally has filled a much-needed gap in my life.  And while my “real” friendships grow and develop I feel that what I am learning from her will serve me well as I move forward into this next phase of life.   I will share the links below.  I receive nothing for this.  It is purely out of a desire to bless you that I share Sally Clarkson with you.

Life With Sally – a membership site worth every penny.  https://lifewithsally.com/

Whole Heart Ministries – helping Christian parents raise wholehearted children.  wholeheart.org

At Home with Sally and Friends – if you do nothing else, subscribe to this.  I anticipate each new episode every week, listening to many of them over and over.  Rich with stories, hope and encouragement, Sally’s gentle voice is always calming to my often fretting heart.  http://sallyclarkson.com/podcast/