humility – EAST WILLOW PLACE

How to Use Courageous Humility to Bring New Connection

Dinner was steaming on the table. Anger was shimmering in the air.

It had been a long, hard day, and the afternoon had dissolved into an evening mashup of bickering, belligerent selfishness, snotty remarks, and defiant disobedience.

My husband wasn’t even home yet, since it was another long work day, and the eight kids and I were eating later than I had hoped. A sense of helpless discouragement over my inability to keep on time stabbed me mercilessly, even as the seething anger at my kids rose like an acidic heartburn.

“Everyone, sit down and be quiet!” I snapped, trying to quell the unending verbal antagonization.

As the kids settled into a sullen silence, with one last glare at siblings before closing their eyes for the blessing on the food, the ugliness of the hypocrisy was not lost on me.

How could we pray and ask God to bless our meal, our time together, when we were holding so much anger, hurt, and offense?

Unwilling and unable to pretend to God or my kids that everything was fine and carry on as usual, I declared:

“OK. We all need to apologize to God, and to each other for all the things we’ve done and said today.

We’ll each go around and pray, asking God to forgive us, and then we’ll ask the people we’ve wronged to forgive us.

I’ll go first.”

And I prayed out loud, telling God I was sorry for my impatience, my anger, my harsh words and my quickness to react when I needed to be calm. I asked Him to forgive me.

I then turned to the children I had been sharp and angry with, and asked them to forgive me as well.

Startled at the departure from our usual method of praying before a meal, my kids hesitatingly opened their eyes, looked into mine, and each told me they forgave me.

“Thank you,” I said. “Now, it’s your turn,” and pointing at the child sitting next to me, I indicated they needed to start talking.

And the amazing thing is… they did.

With the exception of the three-year-old, all seven older children first quietly prayed aloud, asking God to forgive them, and then spoke to the siblings they had offended, asking forgiveness for specific things they had said and done. Several of them apologized to me for various moments of “selective deafness” or snarky back talk.

All of them knew how they had wronged each other. All of them knew when it was they had done or said something hurtful.

Granted, we did have a few bumpy moments… One kid was suddenly struck with severe amnesia about the entire day, especially pertaining to their own behavior (too bad there were too many witnesses.) Eventually the memory was fully restored in an apparent miracle, with an acceptable apology stated at last.

There was also the child who, whenever someone else paused in their apology, would helpfully pipe up with a reminder of another item they should be sorry for as well.

But in spite of these little snags, by the time we had circled around to the last child, the tension and anger in the room had totally gone. Some kids had wept while apologizing, and the sincerely uttered “I’m sorry for…” statements had been accepted without hesitation by all the others. Often, when seeing the contrition in the one apologizing, the offended siblings would spontaneously jump up to rush around the table to give a comforting hug.

When I finally prayed to ask the blessing on the food, there was true peace and a softness in everyone’s face where there had been anger and hardness before. Genuine smiles and kindness lingered, even as we cleared the table and got ready for bed later.

It was an entirely changed atmosphere.

It scared me to think of how the evening might have turned out if I hadn’t said those three words: “I’ll go first.”

Sometimes, to bring back the softness, the repentance, the kindness, and the love – to repair relationships that have cracked or broken – it takes gritty humility to make that hard initial move and acknowledge our own wrongdoing FIRST.

Our kids and spouses and the people closest to us aren’t shocked by our imperfection. They relax in reassurance when we courageously apologize and admit our errors and wrongdoing, since it means that they, too, aren’t expected to be perfect.

They find comfort knowing there is humility and grace waiting to meet them when they share their own lackings and failings.

It takes a lot of strength and courage to lead in reconciliation and repentance. But the rewards are sweet and entirely worthwhile.

“I’ll go first.”

Will you?

God blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called the children of God.
Matthew 5:9 (NLT)

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Toenails & Why Your Life Counts: Finding Ultimate Worth

We are all called to great things. The real question is whether or not we understand what greatness means.

Because sometimes it might mean spending time cutting children’s nails.

Amy was a young woman who loved God and felt his call on her life to serve Him by traveling as a missionary to other countries. She believed strongly that she was to share the truth of the Bible, and her focus was mainly on reaching women (who were often ignored or socially restricted from interacting with male missionaries).

Her travels led her to India, where after traveling around in an ox-cart, evangelizing to women in villages with a small, devoted team, she eventually became aware of the prevalent practice of child prostitution in the temples (both young girls and boys). When a little girl escaped from a temple and fled for refuge to Amy’s home, the issue became personal.

Amy began working to free children from this terrible form of sexual slavery, and her efforts led to hundreds of children being freed, fed, clothed, housed, and educated at the orphanage and mission she founded.

No longer able to travel about evangelizing, she instead became “Amma” (Tamil for “mother”), and her newfound duties as a mother of many included that of “cutting the toe nails of a thousand children” (as her biography quotes*).

Amy Carmichael died today, January 18, in 1951, at the age of 83. She had worked in India as a missionary for 55 years without furlough. A law was passed outlawing temple prostitution for children about three years before her death.

The mission she founded still operates today.

She had traveled to India planning to work as a evangelist and focusing on teaching adults about the Gospel… and ended up cutting toenails and mothering a huge number of little children instead.

Would you say her life was wasted? Do you think she missed the mark of making an impact? Toenails seem like an insignificant task compared to preaching the gospel… but apparently not to God.

God had so clearly orchestrated the timing and work He brought her to be about that she cheerfully and joyfully submitted to His plan, His definition of great things.

Her faithfulness and deep humility give me such encouragement, especially in my current season of diapers, pots and pans, laundry, constant teaching, and yes, often cutting toenails.

What I am called to do right now as a homemaker, a wife, a mama, may not seem like high value in the eyes of the world, but I have no doubt it is exactly where I am supposed to be, and therefore I can trust that my God in His wisdom has decreed it to be worthwhile and significant.

And in that trust I can wake up each morning and know that my longing to live a life of worth and purpose is carried out by my faithfulness in serving and loving those around me to the best of my abilities, with the strength and joy He gives.

I fiercely believe this is true for you, too.

What have you been given to do in this season? Do you also fight the thoughts that sometimes come to tell you your efforts are meaningless and trivial, insignificant, worthless?

Here’s what the Bible says: Whatever you do, work at it with your whole being, for the Lord and not for men, because you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as your reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.
(Colossians 3:23-24)

I find joy in remembering Amy and her work as “Amma” because it gives me renewed strength in my own often seemingly mundane and unimportant work . You can take heart knowing it applies to your work, too.

God sees you, sees your faithfulness, your efforts given in love and service. And He finds that to be of great value – regardless of your opinion or perspective, or anyone else’s. Keep on in your faithful work, my friend. Keep on walking each day in what you have been given to do!

So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.
(Galatians 6:9, NLT)

Even if doing what is good is clipping the toenails of little children.

Maria

* Amy Carmichael: Beauty For Ashes, A Biography; Iain H. Murray, Banner of Truth Trust, Carlisle, PA (2015)

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Bridging the Angry Divide: Reconnection & Restoration for Frustrated Mamas

Confessions from a Mama of Many

I was gritty with frustration last night. None of my punks were listening to my directions to stop fighting and please clean up messes. My house looked as if a daycare, an elementary school, a grocery store (I had just gotten home from errands), and a laundromat had a head-on collision. There were no survivors.

Dinner wasn’t ready.

I was getting snarky attitudes from the older kids and whining tears from the littles while my middle kids ignored house rules and raced each other up and down the halls shrieking.

The burning anger was rising. The exasperation in me was roaring toward all-out irrational irritation and picking up sarcasm and sudden outbursts of yelling along the way.

Here’s a relatively frequent experience:

When the throbbing starts in my temples and my jaw starts aching a bit from the clenching, it’s a good sign that I’m a leetle angry and close to my frustration limit.

Too much more and the harsh words come much too quickly, the cupboard doors start getting shut a bit too hard, and the onions get chopped as if I were a teppanyaki chef with a personal vendetta against vegetables.

Then the kids start looking up at me with slightly wounded, pouty expressions, even as the whining ratchets up a notch and the bickering takes an uptick.

“When mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” (Who decided that brilliant axiom, anyway?) It doesn’t really seem fair that the household generally seems to find me the emotional thermostat, following my stress levels, hovering equally near to my cheery high moments or my discouraged lows.

And yet this is the case. We mamas wield a lot of power as we captain our own little crews, trying to avoid the shoals while being rocked by waves and splattered with storms. It’s hard to maintain perspective that my children are learning how to navigate life based on my example, even as I sometimes just try to survive the day.

This is a lot of influence to hold! And often it feels like something far beyond my capacity and understanding. And yet: Here at home with my children is the place where I have the opportunity to be the leader God made me.

I can exert my choice to impact my family environment in a way that will benefit everyone, or I can decide to follow my acidic angry mental churnings and end up with figurative heartburn. (And sometimes literal heartburn too, now that I think about it.)

So. Since parenting is a calling which God has entrusted to me, it helps when I stop, take that deep breath, and quickly ask Him to come in and join me in the moments of deep frustration, raw aggravation, and exhausted irritation.

I usually think/pray a line from an old song, “Holy Spirit, thou art welcome in this place,” and just the acknowledgement that I need something – no, Some ONE – greater and more able than myself brings a pause to the anger. It’s not that I need the old-fashioned English, it’s that I’m usually so desperate that I’m kicking into autopilot and often the old songs I heard as a child are the ones that rise first.

I can choose to invite Him to come into this moment, this home, this heart, where I feel so tired, so weak, so overcome with frustration and overwhelm and stress.

And He does. Every single time. Like a cool breeze on a hot, breathless day, I sense His peaceful presence, and my heart unwrinkles a bit. (He’s so kind to tired, frazzled mamas.)

My mouth, open before with sharp words, closes. My breathing (and heart rate) slow. I usually take a deep breath, then if I need it, a drink of water (it helps! Swallowing stimulates the vagus nerve and that aids relaxation and stress relief – fun fact).

Then the conviction kicks in and I feel ashamed of myself and my lack of kindness. So then the prayer of Brother Lawrence comes to mind: “How can I but fail unless You enable me to stand?”

Because my first way back from the other side of that chasm of burning anger and exasperation is firstly to make it right with the One I’ve truly wounded with my sin: God.

Asking His forgiveness is easy. Accepting it is humbling, because it means that once again I’ve proven my inability to cope well on my own. Pride gets another zinger and that’s never an enjoyable feeling. (Especially when I get to feel that zinger a lot. Parenting keeps me humble.)

Calling my kids (or maybe just the ones I’ve been angry and impatient or irritated towards, so… that often means almost all of them…) to me, I wait till they’re all quiet(ish) and listening, looking at me.

Then I apologize for my angry reactions and the things I did and said that were wrong. I ask them to forgive me.

During last night’s situation, even before I could finish my sentence including the words, “I’m so sorry for being angry,” one child was up and gently head-butting me for a loving hug and another was interrupting me with their own remorseful apology. All of them said they forgave me. All of them meant it.

The ones who had done things I had been frustrated at (and suddenly much of it seemed petty and just childish, not worth the amount of angst I had poured into my reaction) apologized sincerely, simply, sweetly.

The tension in the air deflated like a leaky balloon, and a soft tenderness filled the space between my children and me. I was again startled and almost speechless at the speed and wholehearted grace my children give me with no hesitation when I express regret or sorrow over the things I have done wrong.

The relief on their faces that I had initiated in guiding us all back to place of peace and connection again was so clear.

The feeling of reparation and restoration was wonderful.

Choosing the humility and softness of a genuine apology always makes a stunningly swift and stable bridge over what initially appeared a deep and burning gorge between us – as long as I don’t put off the reconnection from a sense of pride. I choose to maintain short accounts, and that builds their trust in me.

I can’t change them or make them sorry for their own part of the situation, but I can definitely choose to make it right on my part. And I often find that when I am vulnerable and courageous to admit my faults, they tend to reciprocate because they see I am no longer setting myself as their opponent.

My vulnerability creates a place of safety for them.

And by showing them my willingness to admit fault (it’s not like they are shocked that I’m not perfect) and my humility to ask their forgiveness, I am showing them the beauty and peace that lies in a life lived with short accounts. I am showing the courage and strength it needs to be the one making that first step back together. And by my quickness to accept and forgive their mistakes and wrongs, I am showing them the loving grace our God gives when we tell Him we’re sorry and return to make it right.

By God’s grace, they will grow to be quick bridge-builders themselves in the relationships they have later. Because that’s what this world needs more of.

May He fill you and me with the ongoing courage and humility to make peace with our children, remembering that as His children He makes peace with us.

(Do you find it difficult to apologize to your children?)