God, Family, Country

This is the motto of the Daughters of the American Revolution, to which I belong. It certainly sums up my heart! Which is one reason I love DAR. 

This year I have given much thought to this list and its order - I suppose now that I have a family of my own, it has become more complex to me. From day to day I will switch around the order of these three pillars of life, and chew and chew on it. 

Country First

(for which John McCain has recently received flack for saying!)

A few months ago we watched the HBO miniseries John Adams. It is AMAZING and I would HIGHLY recommend it to everyone!!! Actually I would require it of every American if I could! But it really got me thinking as I saw how John and Abigail sacrificed EVERYTHING for their country. His was most definitely Country, God, Family. He served (begrudgingly yet with a great sense of duty) overseas for many years during his children's formative years. Abigail ran the family and the country house all by herself while then Ambassador Adams was in Europe seeking financing for the Revolution and support for the colonies as a Nation. Once he did become president, his peers stung him consistently with the reminder that he wasn't even in the country when the Constitution was written. 

Anyway, his children and wife suffered greatly, to which he struggled mightily, and always wished it were not so, but in the end he would say something like: "If we don't step forward to serve in this most important time, someone else with less morals and scruples will. We cannot allow that." And his wife always concurred, and they counted the great and heavy cost together.

Adams also said: "Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives."

"I have accepted a seat in the House of Representatives, and thereby have consented to my own ruin, to your ruin, and to the ruin of our children. I give you this warning that you may prepare your mind for your fate." (to Abigail)

Seeing his family's loss played out onscreen saddened my heart. But it also increased my awe and appreciation for the Adams and all of the men and women who sacrificed their lives and fortunes (and families!) to create this nation. If they had not put their families on the back burner, we would not be who we are today. Period.

And all of this could be said for those who serve today in the military and government service! How many servicemen have left their families to give their all for ME and my family to be free? How much have these families sacrificed and lost? The cost could never be counted.

And of course enter Sarah Palin: mom of five, Governor of Alaska, potential Vice President of the US. Some have criticized her for putting her country above her family.  Do I wish she was 10 or 15 years older so her kids could be with her more? Absolutely. What a cost this must be to herself, her husband and her children. But what if she is called for such a time as this to serve her country in a role that no other woman in history has ever served? Or what if it is more her civic duty and desire for change than her spiritual duty that has lead her to this point? What if she is just being herself as a pro-active no-nonsense person and her desire for things to be right has brought her here? I have a friend who is on staff at our church and she is able to give input to the church operations from the perspective of a mom of small children - the only one on staff. If we think of our government in the same way, how great would it be to have an actual mom in the thick of it to bring new perspective to the system? I know this is a stretch, I know, but in a small way I think you could see the congruous thought here. 

God First

I have also done a lot of soul searching as I have seen people in the ministry give so much to their service of God that they have nothing left for their families - or perhaps they go overseas and their missionary lives appear to my limited view to be detrimental to their kids. I go back and forth on this a lot... part of me is sure that if God calls us to something, He makes a way to provide for our children. Maybe those MK's are totally happy and have everything they need from their parents to grow up well-adjusted and not jaded. But then there are times when this does not seem to be the way it actually turns out to be. And part of me is sure that God would not even call me to something that would sacrifice my family. And I lean on this assurance the most. But then in the same way that Adams felt called by God to serve, there are assignments in the Kingdom of God that cannot be done with excellence unless it is your absolute priority. I mean, something has to give - no one person can do it all! Aaaugh!!! This is so complicated!

Family First

Right now if I had to make my list, honestly I think it would be Family, God, Country. I mean, if you can't take good care of the ones He's given you, if you can't love your own flesh and blood with excellence, what is the freaking point??????? If we can't raise our kids to be responsible, giving, intelligent, loving members of society and reflectors of Jesus, then what will become of our world? Isn't this the greatest difference I can make in the world? In this season as a young mother it certainly is, but I have many seasons of life yet to live after my children are grounded.

But if I really do trust that God would not bring harm to my family, then I can relax know that God is first. It's just that I see so many people do the human thing and mess that up. In my opinion.

No Firsts or Lasts

I was just running all of this past my husband and he came up with the brilliant concept that maybe we don't have to list it one, two, three. Maybe it is more like a pie chart (what a wonderfully Jay-the-engineer thing to say!), with all the pieces of our hearts converging in the middle equally, and we can move around the grid as needed, when the situation arises. We don't have to always choose one over the other, and they are not always pitted against each other. One area may give and flow into another, and they can all coexist peacefully. So I will start chewing it this way... hmmm.... lots of food for thought!

Core Value: Honor

We LOVE honor! In fact, when Jay and I began our relationship, he spoke something to me that sealed the deal right then and there:

My heart is to honor you, he said. I told that to several friends when I called to tell them of my BOYFRIEND!! aaahhhhh!!!!!  They were all in amazement, as I was, and still am. Let me tell you, his heart is realized every day in our marriage.  And I try my best to honor him in return.

I would define honor as respecting, lifting up, holding in high regard, praising, highlighting all the good, being grateful, and in a certain sense obeying and coming under authority. When I have the opportunity to honor someone, or when I see someone else honored, my heart explodes! (I am equally disgusted when I come across dishonor. Yikes! Hits a huge button.) When I participate in honoring someone, I am participating in God's heart for them. The kingdom is full of honor... and it all comes from and makes its way back to the Throne! 

When Christ was fully man and He let us in on some of His conversations with the Father, we see how the Trinity constantly honored each other. This is My Son, in whom I am well-pleased... I only do what I see the Father doing... It is better for you if I go, so you can have the Holy Spirit...  They are constantly speaking highly of each other. What a model for us.

My husband is really good at sharing about all this - he really carries it in his heart. He talks about the word honor in the OT being the same word for GLORY, as in:

And it came to pass, when the priests came out of the holy [place], that the cloud filled the house of the LORD, So that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud: for the glory of the LORD had filled the house of the LORD.  1Ki 8:10-11

It is the weighty presence of God - the same presence that (what's his name? Obed-Edom?) had when the ark was in his house, and all the days after. 

...Be blessing and honor and glory and power forever...

I will try to add more later - check again!

About our values

I feel the need to say that God (His kingdom, His Word, Himself) and family are obviously at our core, but their importance is so encompassing and obvious to me that I felt like they couldn't be expressed as a core value. It would be like saying air and food and sleep are core values. (Although I could make a case for the latter!)

Core Value: Beauty

Yes, I must add this one. I haven't quite put my life purpose into a sentence, but I know it has something to do with family, friendship, and making things beautiful. I just love being surrounded by beautiful things. It does something inside me to behold beauty. I feel full and clear and rich and deep. I am constantly thinking of ways to make a room or arrangement or item (or person- that one is tricky!) more beautiful. When I am at my calmest, divinest state inside, visions of beauty flash across my screen - flower arrangements, fabrics, paintings, dresses, symphonies, dances, things I could never even describe, much less bring to fruition. 

Beauty is created, recreated, and loved by the Lord. Solomon's temple was built by master craftsmen with explicit directions from God. Reading those instructions and all the labor and precision He required is unbelievable, and the only way I can reason it is that God really wanted His house to be beautiful! 

He made us and everything around us - can you think of anything more beautiful than your baby's eyes, or a Monarch butterfly, or an hydrangea? All painted by our Master Artist. He gives us a crown of beauty and calls us His bride. I love calling Him beautiful, too. Ps 96 says that strength and beauty are in His sanctuary. Here's another one:

One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek:

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,

to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in His temple.  (Ps 27:4)

That deserves a Selah.

Core Value: Community

A while back I promised to write about the values deep within our family. I managed to process one out of my heart and into writing -- about Stability.  I have not forgotten about the others: Community, Honor, and Government. Actually I think I might add one more for me personally: Beauty. I have been chewing on them all along but have struggled to put words to such over-arching, life-long passions - I want to do them justice! Well, last night at 2am, as I was holding my weeping (frightened? disoriented? just plain exhausted?) son, my writer's block gave way to my heart. I hope I can recall the words that came to me! Here goes.

COMMUNITY is so very important to Jay and me. It is a cornerstone of humanity itself! We need each other so very much. No man is an island. We were created to be in relationship with each other. It is in community that we come to know ourselves, and that we come to be known and loved. It is where we experience Christ in a most profound way, and where we can fulfill His charge to be Christ to others. Our dreams are given wind and a larger sail; our weaknesses are exposed and tweaked; our strengths are encouraged and bring encouragement. 

Community is expressed in our home by bringing friends around the table. Breaking bread together, sharing our hearts, our jokes, our kid stories (and sippy cups and pajamas)... Rejoicing and weeping together. Making a point to reach out and create room for friendships to grow deep. How else could we make it, without each other there to cheer on? In friendships we find Jesus in a whole new way. We learn to love as He loves. We come to know Him as the ultimate Friend. We come to the end of ourselves after a shortcoming leaves broken pieces... and we find He is always there to teach us how to be a true friend or daughter or wife. To extend the grace to forgive, and the humility to ask forgiveness. He counted it the great commandment, even almost equal to loving God -- to love your neighbor as yourself. Is there anything more to life? They will know us by our love... Maybe this post should be entitled love. But I think the word community puts a broader perspective to loving, as I will expound on below. (This is much longer than I thought it would be!)

My senior thesis afforded me months of study on Sense of Community.  A large body of work exists on this topic, but much of it left me unsatisfied. To me, communing is so much deeper than any academic study could quantify!

I did, however, come across a thought-provoking and challenging dichotomy that began when our nation was in its birth pangs. The colonists risked their lives to create our nation because they wanted something better for their themselves and their posterity. They first came here with nothing but each other, and were forced to live in tight-knit community in order to stay alive, much less be happy and fulfilled. From his 1630 pulpit, Governor John Winthrop urged his Massachusetts Bay Colony to "delight in each other, make others' conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our community as members of the same body." Sound familiar? I imagine the Great American Experiment must have looked much like the early church.

Here comes the dichotomy: enter the Enlightenment. Allow me to quote my thesis:

"Championed by French philosophers, individualism because popular in the states during the first decades of the 19th century. [Alexis] de Toqueville [a Frenchman who toured America to understand her, and was greatly impacted by her sense of community] believed this new individualistic attitude to be a threat to democracy. He defined individualism as a citizen's tendency to 

'isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and withdraw into the circle of family and friends... Such folk owe no man anything and hardly expect anything from anybody...  

man is forever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.'  

Such independence and self-reliance, de Toqueville believed, suffocates community interdependence and must be countered by involvement in public life. So began a struggle in American culture between individualism and community."

I find great conviction in his words, and I yearn to take my love of community and country and broaden my influence in my neighborhood, city, state and country. I want my life to be very little about me and very much about the world around me. Civic responsibility and activity do weigh heavy on me, believe it or not! (Will expound in Core Value: Government.) Oh, yet another thing to add to my list of Things I Will Be Able to Do When My Children Are a Few Years Older. Apparently I will have boundless time and energy to devote to others at that time. (Maybe I should adjust my dreams a little!) 

In the meantime I ask the Lord every day to help me get to the end of it having loved my children and husband well. And if it is a good day, and I have the clarity of mind to remember, I ask Him to give me a heart beyond my own blood, and even beyond my own 'circle of family and friends.' But for now I am only able to care for them, and invite them into our craziness to help us eat the huge pot of spaghetti and meatballs made by my husband, watch our sons play trains together, and do the thing we call community in our living/dining room.

Stability

And He shall be the stability of your times; a wealth of salvation, wisdom and knowledge; the fear of the Lord is his treasure. -Is. 33:6

I have always loved this verse. This one and the one where Paul talks about a peaceable, gentle spirit. The more I chew on these words of wisdom, the more I realize that this is who He has made me to be, and therefore what I'm drawn to. I am a peacemaker, to be sure - I can't stand conflict! And I am stable - one of those people who will always be around to settle your soul when things get crazy. And these listed above are the attributes I long for, in abundance:

salvation "Yeshua" (deliverance, victory, prosperity)

wisdom (skill in war, wisdom in administration, prudence in religious affairs, ethical wisdom)

knowledge (discernment, perception, understanding)

I used to begrudge my steady nature, wishing instead to be exciting, crowd-drawing, able to better express my emotions, inspiring... all those things that fun people are. I used to equate steadiness with being boring or average. I resented it at times, because it seems like the "world-changers" get all the attention and praise because they take risks and dream up and do outrageous things. But what would the world look like if we were all adventurers and there were no steadies to keep things going? Who would the wanderers come home to? Who would look the dreamers in the eye and say, "and just HOW can that dream become a reality?" Where would they go when the weather turns bad, or they need to rest up for their next great adventure?

There is still part of me that wants to stand out in the crowd or do something crazy just to see what it feels like, but that part of me seems to get smaller every year. :) And I am still tempted to equate my quiet personality with being unseen, unimportant, not able to speak up... but I hope that plan of the enemy won't bear fruit much longer. I DO want to have a voice! Just because I'm even-keeled doesn't mean I don't have something to say. I'm trying. I hope it gets easier.

But back to stability... I love the idea of having a homey home that people come to knowing we're there to give a strong shoulder to cry on, a concurrent shout of joy, good advice, a haven where the storm is calmed. A place where people will be set free, inspired, and most of all loved and encouraged without end.

I love the idea that my children will grow up in a stable environment where we can train them up in the way they should go. And if that way is filled with adventures and unknowns and craziness, I know we will always be there to root them on and give them a home base from which to jump. And if that way is a more "stable" one, together we can look to the author of "firmness, fidelity, steadfastness, steadiness, security, faithfulness in fulfilling promises."

Because most of all, I love that Jesus says in this verse that He will be all these things as I revere Him. He will be my stability so that others can lean into me. He will be their stability when they are across the world and have only Him to lean into. He is our strong tower, our hiding place, our strength, our shield. He is our wisdom, understanding and salvation. I can be found in Him and look to Him. He can teach me how to be the woman He has dreamed up and made into flesh. He can teach me to fully be that part of Him that I was born to reflect.

hitting the target

I recently heard a wise husband of 32 years talk about he and his wife having common targets in view as they walk through life together - core values that they both have in their heart. I began thinking of our shared values and how much we have built our life toward them. I hope to write about each of them in the coming weeks. This will be a great way for me to express my heart, which is strangely hard for me to do! I may add to this list, but I'm certain of these:

community

honor

government

stability