Joy and Fear

The days are flying, and I can’t get enough of silly little Sam.  He does the funniest things these days…stands at the front door with palms pressed against the glass saying “Hi, Bye, Hi, Bye, Hi, Bye,…”; crawling around like a crazy man in the bathtub splashing and yelling out of joy; putting all his food in a tupperware and then taking it all out; refuses to leave Y-play (the gym childcare) because he is having so much fun with the big kids; says “thank you” when he hands me his paci and sippy cup because I had always said “thank you” because he handed it to me rather than throwing it on the floor; rolls around in the dog beds; laughs at Huey biting at his toy cars; moves his hand back and forth over his mouth while making noise to hear it get loud and quiet in the backseat of the car; climbs stairs like nobodies business; puts his hand on his head whenever I sing “head, shoulders, knees, and toes”; and so much more.  And the latest was this morning come to find him in his crib with all his pacifiers lined up on the bed rail.  Usually they are all thrown on the floor, but it looks like his OCD is taking on new forms.  It was absolutely hilarious!

“What this?  It is just my little collection in order from favorite to least favorite.”

So proud!

But oops…eyes half closed because of the flash, he comes by it honestly as my eyes are always closed in pics

I have been really anxious lately about not being here for all these moments, a fear of dying.  I am not necessarily afraid to die because I know to die is to be with Christ, but as I get to know Sam more and more my fear is in dying and not being here to be his mommy.  I know he would be loved and taken care of but he wouldn’t be loved by me the way I want him to be loved.  I want to love him well and be there to cheer him on in whoever God has made him to be.  I am the only one that knows how he likes his toast (with butter and a pinch of salt) or that after naps he likes his sippy cup and a snack, but not too big of a snack or he won’t eat his dinner.  I know our nightly routine.  I know his favorite books.  I know how he likes his sippy cup of milk.  I know his favorite foods.  I know all our little inside things, like how I give him the lid of my starbucks chai to lick after I am finished with my drink and how he likes to hold rocks while he is in the jogging stroller on a long run.

And yes, if  Zach and I both died there would be a period of adjustment and then he would adjust to a new normal; but I don’t want there to be a new normal.  And at this stage I recognize that he wouldn’t even remember us, and that makes me sad because we love him more than we have loved anything else on earth.  I think I also know that there are very few people who know me well enough to keep me alive to Sam in all his growing up, and I would want him to know me; even if it came through someone else reminding him of his mommy.  Then, I remind myself how that isn’t the whole story though and as I read in Matthew today all things will be known one day.  And in heaven, we will all see clearly all things.

Even as I read back through this I see how this is earthly focused and self focused.  I by no means think that we have the best and only way figured out, it is more that I love him so much that I want to have the opportunity to selflessly love him and point him to Christ.  I want to be strong for him, but also be honest with him and humble and show him all the ways I mess up and all the ways God has been so good and faithful and patient and kind and gentle with me.  I want to give away my life in service and love for him in hopes that he would grow up to know the Lord and know love and truth and hope and gentleness and patience and compassion and mercy and joy and…I want to be around and be there for every second of it!  There is nothing I want more here on earth than to know and treasure Christ and love and point Sam to Him.

Zach is quick to remind me that if something did happen to both of us that God is sovereign and is good.  God knows what is best for Samuel, and He will take care of him better than I ever could.  I think this all comes up because last time we flew we were all on the plane together to Montana; this time it will just be me and Zach going to Chicago and Sam will stay home with grandparents.  I think that is why it is so much on my mind.  That and the crazy dreams/nightmares I have been having. And then, I came across this  (which really has given me the greatest peace) -

“If God has work for me to do, I cannot die.” Henry Martyn. And if he doesn’t, why would I want to live?

So, so very true.  If I have done all that God has me to do here and now; then it is futile to be here and how I long to be with Christ.  All that to say, this is a sweet stage with Sam and now when I look at him I no longer see a baby.  He is a little boy, and I love it.  Today he sat on his own chair and ate his snack and watched Veggie Tales after his nap.  Such a big boy!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

We have enjoyed the holidays with family and friends.  It has been a whirlwind, but a sweet whirlwind.  Looking forward to the year ahead and what God has for us.  Saw a tweet…

New Year.  New Joys.  Same Jesus.

I think I might make a small adjustment,

New Year.  New Joys.  New Hardships.  Same Jesus.

What comfort.  What peace.  He is big enough and good enough and gracious enough to be in everything in the year ahead that holds so much unexpected things, He is expected.  He is not changing.  He will be there.

I am currently reading a Spurgeon sermon on the immutability of God.  One of the section is on the attributes of God.  See excerpt below:

He changes not in his attributes. Whatever the attributes of God were of old, that they are now; and of each of them we may sing “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, Amen.” Was he powerful? Was he the mighty God when he spake the world out of the womb of nonexistence? Was he the Omnipotent when he piled the mountains and scooped out the hollow places for the rolling deep? Yes, he was powerful then, and his arm is unpalsied now, he is the same giant in his might; the sap of his nourishment is undried, and the strength of his soul stands the same for ever. Was he wise when he constituted this mighty globe, when he laid the foundations of the universe? Had he wisdom when he planned the way of our salvation, and when from all eternity he marked out his awful plans? Yes, and he is wise now; he is not less skillful, he has not less knowledge; his eye which seeth all things is undimmed; his ear which heareth all the cries, sighs, sobs, and groans of his people, is not rendered heavy by the years which he hath heard their prayers. He is unchanged in his wisdom, he knows as much now as ever, neither more nor less; he has the same consummate skill, and the same infinite forecastings. He is unchanged, blessed be his name, in his justice. just and holy was he in the past; just and holy is he now. He is unchanged in his truth; he has promised, and he brings it to pass; he hath saith it, and it shall be done. He varies not in the goodness, and generosity, and benevolence of his nature. He is not become an Almighty tyrant, whereas he was once an Almighty Father; but his strong love stands like a granite rock, unmoved by the hurricanes of our iniquity. And blessed be his dear name, he is unchanged in his love. When he first wrote the covenant, how full his heart was with affection to his people. He knew that his Son must die to ratify the articles of that agreement. He knew right well that he must rend his best beloved from his bowels, and send him down to earth to bleed and die. He did not hesitate to sign that mighty covenant; nor did he shun its fulfillment. He loves as much now as he did then, and when suns shall cease to shine, and moons to show their feeble light, he still shall love on for ever and for ever. Take any one attribute of God, and I will write semper idem on it (always the same). Take any one thing you can say of God now, and it may be said not only in the dark past, but in the bright future it shall always remain the same: “I am Jehovah, I change not.”

Semper Idem!!

 

 

 

Sam on Christmas morning

 

Sam and Elizabeth bringing in the New Year at the slumber party

 

Dada and Sam on New Years Eve

 

Friends

Busy, busy.  Everyone is these days.  We thoroughly enjoyed having our friends Tyler and Allie here over the weekend!  Highlights included breakfast at a bakery downtown, walking and jogging around Franklin, the boys enjoying a motorcycle ride (Dumb and Dumber style with Zach and Tyler on it at the same time), dinner in Nashville, and the Andrew  Peterson Concert (Sam and I stayed home).

And yes, it is totally blurry which is sometimes the case with cell phone pics.

In the world of Sam…he took his first steps about a week ago.  It was a fluke.  He still walks but only while holding someone’s hand.  Of course, everywhere I go people tell me I shouldn’t be encouraging it, and then giving me the comment, “This must be your first child.”  Yes, he is and yes, I know it will make life harder in some regards, but I am excited about it.  He has been sick a few times over the past few weeks, but I can’t complain because he has overall been pretty healthy.  He loves playing with his Noah’s Ark that his grandparents got him for his birthday.  He is really starting to get into “Little People” and putting them inside the boat and then taking them out.  Same thing with a little mailbox he has – all the letters go in, all the letters come out.  The kid still loves him some Baby Einstein and is now enjoying Elmo’s Song on our cell phones during dire situations.

Life has been sweet the past couple of months, with some bumps along the way.  We are looking forward to spending Christmas together with family and worshiping Jesus who came and bled.  It has been a sweet Christmas season reading John 1 in Sunday School and singing songs of Jesus’ birth.

Immutability

I am currently reading The Knowledge of the Holy The Attributes of God: Their Meaning in the Christian by A.W. Tozer.  Yes, the title is long, but the chapters are rich, but very short.  It takes a chapter for each attribute.  I highly recommend it. I have been reading a chapter each night when we get into bed.  I find it to be the perfect, satisfying thing for my soul after a long day of running around and losing focus of what really matters and what is really going on all around me.

Last nights chapter was on the Immutability of God.  Here are a few excerpts from that chapter that were particularly sweet to my soul -

“All that God is He has always been, and all that He has been and is He will ever be.”  Nothing that God has ever said about Himself will be modified; nothing the inspired prophets and apostles have said about Him will be rescinded.  His immutability guarantees this.

The immutability of God appears at its most perfect beauty when viewed against the mutability of men…In this world men forget us, change their attitude toward us as their private interests dictate, and revise their opinion of us for the slightest cause, is it not a source of wondrous strength to know that the God with whom we have to do changes not?  That His attitude toward us now is the same as it was in eternity past and will be in eternity to come?

What peace it brings to the Christian’s heart to realize that our Heavenly Father never differs from Himself.  In coming to Him at any time we need not wonder whether we shall find Him in a receptive mood.  He is always receptive to misery and need, as well as to love and faith.  He does not keep office hours nor set aside periods when He will see no one.  Neither does He change His mind about anything.  Today, this moment, He feels towards His creatures, toward babies, toward the sick, the fallen, the sinful, exactly as He did when He sent His only-begotten Son into the world to die for mankind.

God never changes moods or cools off in His affections for loses enthusiasm.  His attitude toward sin is now the same as it was when He drove out the sinful man from the eastward garden, and His attitude toward the sinner the same as when He stretched forth His hands and cried, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Yet as much as we deplore the lack of stability in all earthly things, in a fallen world such as this the very ability to change is a golden treasure, a gift from God of such fabulous worth as to call for constant thanksgiving.  For human beings the whole possibility of redemption lies in their ability to change.  To move across from one sort of person to another is the essence of redemption: the liar becomes truthful, the thief honest, the lewd pure, the proud humble.  The whole moral texture of the life is altered.  The thoughts, the desires, the affections are transformed, and the man is no longer what he had been before.

And to my little man who is constantly changing in terms of sounds and activities and in all the little ways, and yet staying the same with his hair so fine and thin and still perfectly content being a little speedy crawler.  He loves the dogs more and more each day – throwing them tennis balls, giving them his food (which he is not suppose to do) and just chasing them around the house.  He continues to love to be outside, despite the cold air.  He is cruising more and more along furniture and will now walk while holding my hand, but gets over it pretty quickly.  He truly is a bundle of energy and a bundle of joy.

At the park

And you can see where we have gotten to with the calendar pictures, those days are long gone.

So Very Thankful

It was very easy this year to be thankful.  There was much to enjoy on Thanksgiving this year.  Thankful for all my family (those we saw and those we missed this Thanksgiving), thankful for sweet Sam and all his cousins and grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts and uncles and great-uncle and aunt, thankful for delicious food and beautiful weather, thankful for all the ways children remind us of the simple joys in life.  For Sam, it was laughing at grandparents, climbing up and down and up and down stairs, playing with cousins, and enjoying all the attention from uncles and aunts.  He laughed and played and slept all weekend long.

With cousins Cate, Lillie, and Ben

Then a meltdown after too many pictures when we tried to get one last one with great Grandaddy McCord.  If you can’t tell, Sam pushed off Lillie which caused Lillie to begin to push off the couch.  It was absolutely hilarious.  No children were harmed.

And I am daily thankful for every opportunity we get to experience the outdoors together.  This was at the Fall Festival/Halloween/Chili Cook-off in October.

Back to reality, or for Sam, back to his toys at home that I think feel brand new after the long weekend away.

The Days are Long, Years are Short

I heard this “The days are long but the years are short” on Moody Radio the other day speaking of motherhood.  I have found this to be very true.  Some days I wonder what I accomplished other than keeping Sam unharmed, alive, and well fed.  I am totally busy doing just that, but in terms of efficiency and productivity, some days there isn’t much to show.  I am learning though to see it not so much from a day to day perspective as from an eternal perspective.  Keeping him alive and playing games and laughing and crying together is exactly what the day to day life is about.  Most days, even as working adults, we don’t have grand achievements or acknowledgments.  I hope that Sam and I can be totally content and thankful in the mundane days of playing and tantrums and errands and cleaning and work, as in the big important days.

And man, how the years are short.  One full year, it is so hard to believe and exceedingly sweet to think back upon.  I am thankful for each and every day that makes up the year…the good ones and hard ones.  It is funny how you look back on one stage and all you can think about is why that stage was so much easier than the one you are in now.  But then, I look around and see friends still in that early stage, I realize that I am totally romanticizing it.  Funny how we have a tendency to do that.  I think it is a grace in some regards, but in others it can makes us struggle to find the good in the current stage of life.

We had a relaxing (well as relaxing as it can be with 4 dogs and a toddler) weekend with our sweet friends Matt and Laurel and a most beautiful and fun lake house this past weekend.  Thanks for inviting us and all the fun from Blockus to Ping Pong tourney to Wii to watching football to long walks and great time with friends!

 

 

The Love of God

We are studying God’s love in our “Sunday School” class right now. We have all acknowledged how important it is to not isolate one of God’s attributes because then it is very hard not to compromise other attributes, and He is perfectly all attributes, all at the same time. In one instance He is not loving and then in another just. He is always both. He is perfectly all these attributes.

Yet, at the same we have come across many tough questions while attempting to study the love of God before moving on to other attributes – “Does God ‘love’ everyone? If God loves everyone, what does it look like for Him to send some to hell? How do you reconcile texts like vessels of mercy and vessels of wrath or Jacob he loved but Esau he hated in Romans?”

And, so this is something I have come across while studying on my own and reading sermons. Piper quotes D.L. Moody:

Written on the outside of the gate of heaven are the words, “Whosoever will may come.” And on the other side of that gate, which you can read from the inside, is written: “Chosen before the foundation of the world.”

Such a sweet reminder and such a sweet understanding of how verses like John 3:16 and Ephesians 1:3-10 are consistent and true at the same time. Such a sweet glimpse at the depth of God’s love and all the things I don’t yet fully understand. God’s Word and God’s ways are truly amazing, and I am so grateful for the depth and truth that is found therein. Blessed be the name of the Lord, for His Word never fails.

And to be chosen by God, there is nothing sweeter.

Fall

What is not to love about this time of year – the leaves, the temperatures, the blue skies and cool air, the flavors and foods, soups, hot drinks, holidays, and baby Sam…now toddler Sam!  We have been busy traveling for work and fun, celebrating Sam, and hunting mushrooms.  Yes, this is Zach’s new thing so with the Audubon field guide in hand we go hiking and identify different kinds of mushrooms.

And by the end of the hike we had a little snoozutsie on our hands…

Birthday boy enjoying his big day…birthday dessert yogurt, evening at the park with mom and dad; and one of the best things about birthdays is the gifts that keep on giving – the endless fun with the toys!!!

And what would Fall be without a wonderful weekend at the Lodge with family

Uncle Beano

Early morning run

Eating thai noodles for dinner with Aunt Babenski

Time to go home but already longing for next times visit

And somebody is already dreaming of a white Christmas with jolly Ole Saint Nick.

Humbles, Expands, Consoles

There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity.  It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity.  Other subjects we can compass and grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-content, and go our way with the thought, “Behold I am wise.”  But when we come to this master science, finding that our plumbline cannot sound its depth, and that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the thought that vain man would be wise, but he is like a wild ass’s colt; and with solemn exclamation, “I am but yesterday, and know nothing.”  No subject of contemplataion will tend more to humble the mind, then thoughts of God…

But while the subject humbles the mind, it also expands it.  He who often thinks of God, will have a larger mind than the man who simply plods around this narrow globe…The most excellent study for expanding the soul, is the science of Christ, and Him crucified, and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity.  Nothing will so enlarget the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity.

And, whilst humbling and expanding, this subject is eminently consolatory.  Oh, there is, in contemplating Christ, a balm for every wound; in musing on the Father, there is a quietus for every grief; and in the influence of the Holy Ghost, there is a balsam for every sore.  Would you lose your sorrow?  Would you drown your cares?  Then go, plunge yourself in the Godhead’s deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated.  I know nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of sorrow and grief; so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead.  It is so to the subject that I invite you this morning.

C.H. Spurgeon as quoted in Knowing God

It is so.  To think about God is all of these things, because He is exceedingly perfect in ALL His attributes.  And not only that but to be so deep and so vast and yet at the same time to be so compassion and so accessible and so exceedingly sweet amazes me.  To not just know His might, but to be consoled by His being; ’tis a sweet, sweet thing.

What does it mean

I am always trying to comprehend what the big milestones in life really mean.  I know they are pitched by the culture and reality tv and facebook and blogs to mean one thing, but what do they reallly mean to me, on the individual level.  And it always seems that I can only truly process what it really means in hindsight.  In the midst of it I am too busy trying to soak it all in and not miss a moment.  I am too busy capturing the memories and tucking them away forever in my heart and mind.

And so, a week out, I find myself processing what Samuel’s first birthday really means to me.  As I reflect on all the emotions and feelings of his birthday I have a hard time separating the feelings of him turning one and the feelings of lossing 99% of the videos we had documented that first year of his life.  It was all so bittersweet.  It has indeed been the best year of my life.  I know future years will be incredibly sweet, as well, but there was something about this year, all the firsts (for him, as well as for me being a mommy).  I have journaled about as many of the videos as I can remember.  I will forever miss being able to go back and watch him take his first bites or first bath or first time to roll over or the moment my mom and dad saw him for the first time.  I will long to watch the video of him curled up against the boppy and me worshiping the Lord with him just there looking up at me.  I have recorded them all in words in my journal, and they will forever be in my heart.

I am learning more that eventhough I absolutely adored that first year with him, there are sweet things about each day and each month and each year.  I pray that I never get too busy or too stressed to soak them all in the way I have this first year.  I pray I treat each year with him (and any children the Lord blesses me with) as sacred.  I pray that I am intentional with each moment, each day.  I have done that this year, and God-willing, may I do it each day ahead of me.  I want to remember every moment of their life, and I am hopeful that those moments will be forever kept for me in Heaven, as well.  I pray that each memory will be so vivid and so strong.  If in Heaven we get to re-watch the moments of our lives in the arms of our Lord and really see them with clear eyes, then this year and these memories have brought a new sweetest to that thought for me.

Samuel, Happy Birthday to you!  I am so deeply thankful for you and who the Lord has made you to be.  May I have wisdom to know who that is and a love that is deep and wide and free to hold you close and let you go.