Taking Life for Granted

Today our guest pastor told us of his oldest granddaughter that was born not breathing, no pulse. She was only expected to live a year and now is 14 years old. She has many challenges that she faces everyday and communicates mostly by blinking her eyes....twice for "yes" and once for "no." I began to cry right in the middle of his sermon.

You see, we have a daughter that was born not breathing, no pulse. Eight and a half years ago, our daughter Halie was born. I remember it like it was yesterday. We had gone in for a test, they didn't like what they saw and we needed to induce labor. After what seemed to be a normal labor she was born. Then it happened......the midwife's face changed expressions, the nurse moved very quickly, buttons were pushed, alarms were sounded, the room filled with professions and I laid in my bed and watched as our newborn daughter was poked, prodded and air was artificially pumped into her body.

The midwife came over to explain that our daughter had been born not breathing and with no pulse. She regained a pulse within the first minute, but she still wasn't breathing on her own. The midwife continued to move back and forth between me and our newborn. It was over 10 minutes. I only know this because as the professions are performing CPR, they yell out the time. Those were the longest 10 minutes of my life.

My husband and I spent those ten minutes praying. Praying together, praying individually, just praying. Praying that no matter what, God would be glorified. After all, He created Halie, she was really not our child, but His. After 10 minutes, she did start breathing on her own and then was taken to the NICU for tests and attention.

Until today's sermon, I never realized how different our lives could be. You see our Halie shows no signs of those first minutes of her life. She has no special needs, she is a happy and healthy eight year old. We have been blessed with a perfect little girl and I have taken that for granted. I have forgotten the true miracle she really is. The miracle that each and everyone of our children are.

You may not have had a traumatic birth experience or extreme situation with your child, but I know you know someone who has. You have heard their stories and have maybe even held their hand as they walked through it. Let me encourage you to hug your precious little one a bit closer today. Let me also encourage you to try and cherish each day that we have together. Let us not take the lives we have been given for granted.

Tonight as I get ready to head to bed and close my day with prayer, I remember the pastor and his family, and any family that I know that is living with a child that has been diagnosed with special needs. May we all truly realize how precious and amazing their lives are!

A Conscious Whisper

As most of you know, we have seven children and we homeschool most of them. This makes for a very active and many times very loud home. Up until recently it didn't really bother me, this is just how it is when you have seven children. However, I think I was simply making an excuse for myself. When I sat back and just listened, I noticed some bad habits that our family had gotten into which clearly made our home louder.

First, is the intense need for everyone in our family to sing and/or play an instrument. I actually love all the Praise music that fills our home, but our children need to remember that the bands on the radio and the worship band at church have microphones. We don't need to be as loud as the last Skillet concert when we are playing at home. We are now asking that all "band" concerts take place in 2 specific area of the home. 

The second thing I noticed was the strange "need" to make senseless noises. When sitting and observing the family, it came to my attention that almost every person makes senseless noise as they move about the house. Some are humming, some are clicking, and other are just making sounds. I have made an effort to point out these noises to the family in hopes of trying to make them aware of the decibel levels in our home. 

The habit that really concerned me was the yelling. I don't mean yelling like when a child misbehaves or when you are angry and raise your voice, (that is a whole different conversation) I mean just talking really loud. It seems like we all have gotten in the habit of yelling to communicate. Sometimes we are yelling to be heard over other noise, sometimes because we are looking for someone and yell their name, other times it just seems to be the way we talk. 

My husband is the one who actually pointed this out. He had worked very late or early depending on how you look at this, and he was trying to sleep when the rest of us were awake. After an hour or so, he came out of our room and asked me what all the yelling was about. What yelling? I had know idea what he was talking about, there had been no fights or misbehavior. That is when I started to listen. We yell a lot! It is a scary thought, but I honestly believe that I have unknowingly conditioned my children not to listen to me unless I raise my voice.

So, we have challenged ourselves and our children to be more conscious of the volume. Like anything we are going to work on, it starts with me. When I hear the children start yelling or raise their voices, I try to intentionally lower mine. I have found that most of the time, that simple response reminds them to lower their voice. We have also started asking, "can you hear me?" When asked in a softer voice, it is a great reminder to an excited child that has forgotten how loudly they are speaking. My favorite response though is the whisper. I love how quietly whispering instructions or whispering in a conversation can greatly alter a moment. I have also learned that by whispering a special surprise, I am training the children to listen to my voice. They are learning to respond to my voice no matter how loud it may be.

Maybe your home is a nice quiet home of three, that is great! But, if you find your home being just a bit too loud or if you find that yelling has become the preferred mode of communication, let me encourage you to try and step back and whisper. God tells us throughout His Word that He speaks to His people with a still small voice or a quiet whisper. My prayer is that by helping our children lower their volume and listen for our small voices, they will also learn to quiet themselves and hear the voice of God as He continues to work on their lives.

May God truly bless your week as you and your children make a conscious effort to whisper!

Growing Compassion

When I look at our children interacting with other children I am usually pretty proud of their ability to share and play nice. However, there are times when I think, "bummer, I wish they would have handled that differently."

I am beginning to think that compassion starts in the sandbox. When we teach our children to share and put the wants of their friend before their own, we are helping them to understand compassion. I realize that this is really compassion in its simplest form, but young children need to start somewhere. I don't believe that compassion is something that just happens, I believe that it is a quality our children need to learn. Learn through modeling, demonstrating and some trial and error.

With our 52 weeks of blessing adventure we have been taking this year, I have noticed more instances for us to learn compassion. It seems that helping others, helps you see things from a different point of view. We have had a great time coming up with different ways to show compassion to others. We are now more than half-way through our journey. Here are some blessings we have shared:

Our children like to make things for others: cards, notes, crafts and such. We have found that these types of items really do a lot to tell people that they our loved. We have used ours for blessing those on the prayer list at church, showing compassion for the struggle they are going through. We also made a bunch for the members of our extended family, neighborhood or congregation that God lays on our heart. Every time we make these types of notes we receive such wonderful stories about how they touched the receivers heart. The cards/notes don't need to be fancy, they can even have misspellings, people just really like to see the work of the children and know that someone cares.

Another activity we have grown to really enjoy is random giving. The first time we gave out gift cards at a local grocery store, that one was certainly the most impactful, but also the most expensive. Since then, we have also given out free ice cream cone cards for a local restaurant and freezie pops to workers at a Christian music festival. We have found it extremely fulfilling to just stop and give someone something for no apparent reason. 

One of the easiest ideas we have used to bless others is baking treats. We have baked treats for crossing gurds, lifeguards, church coffee hour, and the cast of the community play. This is one project that is easy to involve even the youngest members of the family. It is also great for blessing many people all in the same location.

God might not be asking your family to take a 52 week challenge, but maybe He is calling you to bake some treats for Sunday or write a note of encouragement to the lady down the block. Whatever ideas come to mind, let me encourage you to include your children in the process. They will enjoy the quality time with you and learn a little bit about compassion along the way. If we desire to have children that are compassionate, let us start now and help this characteristic grow with our child.

Brave Enough To Love?

The US experienced another senseless school shooting a few weeks ago. So, many days have been filled with numerous news persons trying to explain what happened and how we can keep it from happening again. I have listened to/ read many of the reports and heard several different points of view, and I am not sure if any of them are right. Almost all of the reports I have seen are blaming someone or something: guns are the problem; psychiatric drugs are the problem; his parents are the problem; the state of our mental health system is the problem; and on and on. I don't disagree that these areas may have contributed to the situation, but I certainly don't think that changes made in any of these area are going to prevent another occurrence. It seems to me that blaming these items is the easy way out. 

To be honest, I think many of our problems today come from the underlying murmur of "it is none of your business." In the recent decades our society has been pushing an agenda that says, "this is my life and you have no right to interfere." While I agree with this thought in principle, I am not sure that it is working in real life. What I see now are many lonely, emotionally needy people. They have pushed people so far from "their business," that they find they truly have no one to share their life with. It is very sad, or at least I feel it is very sad.

Just think back with me a few years and see how far things have come. When I was young, there was a phone book. If I wanted to find my friends number I would simply look it up and give them a call. Now a days everyone has cell phones and those numbers are not listed in most registries. When a pastor wanted to go visit one of their members in the hospital, they would simply call up the hospital and the hospital would tell you what room they were in and if any new members had been admitted overnight. No longer, everyone at the hospital is sworn to secrecy because of HIPAA rules. It has actually gotten so bad, that sometimes parents can not even find out about their own child's diagnoses. (I know that many of the laws are good, I am just using it as an example.)

So here is my question....what if we were brave enough to love? No, I mean it, really step outside of this box we call our life and really love. I know you have seen them: the young person that always stands outside the coffee place looking like they have nowhere to go; the elderly person sitting by themselves in the back of the sanctuary; the mom at the park that often looks beyond exhausted and worn; the child on your block that never seems to have anyone to play with or anywhere to go; and so on. Why haven't we engaged them? Sure we might smile and say "good morning." But, do we know their name? Do we know anything about them? I am going to venture a guess and say that there is at least one person in your sphere of influence that could use someone willing to show an interest in who they really are. 

I have an idea of how to get started. Can you close your eyes for me a moment? Think about the errands you ran this morning, or make a glance in your memory around the office or even around the worship center from Sunday. Is there someone who is sticking out in your mind?  Maybe it is someone in your family, a nephew or cousin or sister-in-law. Okay, is God putting someone in your mind? Don't let it go!

Let me encourage you to take sometime to invest in this person. Get to know them, really know them. Invite them to join you for coffee or a picnic or just sit with you on the front porch as you watch the kids play. Once you have earned their trust they will begin to open up and you will see why God brought the two of you together. They really need you. They need to know that someone cares. They need to know that God loves them, and you are going to be the one that shows them a tangible example of God's love. Please pray about this and see whom God is calling you to love today. Will we all be brave enough to love? I hope so, and I KNOW that LOVE can change the world.