Elizabeth’s

The thing that happened while I was scrubbing the kitchen floor with a toothbrush

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by Elizabeth

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It was many years ago now. My boys were preschoolers, and my girls weren’t even conceived. I was literally on my hands and knees scrubbing my kitchen floor with an old toothbrush when I got the call: the call from a university professor offering me an interview for a chemistry lab instructor position.

For a bit of background here, let me just say that I’ve loved chemistry ever since I walked into Mr. Smith’s 10th grade chemistry class nearly twenty years ago. I love the ingenious organization of the periodic table, I love the way chemical reactions balance just so, and I love learning about how the smallest structures in creation affect large-scale life.

I always want more chemistry in my life, but with two young boys to take care of, such chemical thoughts were few and far between. So I cannot explain to you just how much I wanted this job. I would run the lab, prepare the chemicals and equipment, instruct the students, and grade their lab reports. It was an ideal part-time job for someone like me — someone with a love for chemistry but lacking both substantial experience and a graduate degree in my field.

Now, I had worked (very) part-time at the college chemistry level before, tutoring chemistry about five hours per week at a community college. And even that I had given up so I could stay home and nurse my newborn second son without interruption. Then suddenly I was handed this new opportunity — and from a prestigious private university no less.

The hours required for the job were somewhere between 10 to 20 hours per week. I had gone in for the interview hoping it would be fewer hours than that, but it wasn’t. Both financially and family-wise, it was too many hours for me to take on. I simply couldn’t afford that time outside the home, and I knew God was saying NO to this particular opportunity.

The interview had occurred, painfully enough, when my husband was out-of-town on a work/ministry trip. I was alone with two little boys when I heartbrokenly realized I wouldn’t be able to take this job. I was alone with no one to comfort me in my obedience. I was alone as I cried so hard I couldn’t breathe. I was alone when it seemed to me that my world was ending. (I thought it might be my last chance to grab a chemistry job before too many years elapsed and I was unemployable.)

But I knew God’s message to me was clear. For my family, and in that time, I needed to focus my full-time energies at home. And the funny thing about that experience? I never once longed for outside work again. I was really content at home and went on to have more babies (those aforementioned darling little girls).  Obeying in the moment was hard, but the fruit in my daily life was lasting.

So what does obedience mean for me today? Because in the nine years that have ensued since my kitchen floor story, my passions haven’t waned a bit. I still want to do ALL THE THINGS. And I want to do all the things NOW.

I want to doula, and I want to write, and I want to edit, and I want to teach calculus, and I want to teach chemistry, and I want to do youth ministry, and I want to do women’s ministry, and I want to spend more time reading to my kids, and I want to spend more time with my husband, and I want to spend more time taking care of myself.

But I can’t do all those things at once. I can’t even do many of those things at once. And I’m currently coming out of a season of discerning which things I need to be doing and which things I need to be saying “no” to. It’s been a hard season. Not break-my-heart-hard like it was several years ago, just plain hard.

For me today, obedience means looking at the people who are already in my life, and saying yes to THEM. It means saying no to certain other things. I’m finding that as I practice my yeses and nos, I’m more content in each moment. I’m more joyful in each moment. I’m more present in each moment.

But make no mistake: saying both the nos and the yeses has been hard. Contenting myself in my current stage of life has been a slippery path to plod. Obedience isn’t as clear this time, and there’s not just one monumental decision to make. In its place are a multitude of tricky choices and subtle attitude adjustments. I hope practice makes these choices, if not perfect, at least a little easier.

Because in my mind’s eye, I can still see myself on my hands and knees scrubbing the dirt out of an old linoleum floor with a toothbrush, listening to the ring of a landline telephone, and continuing to scrub as I answered it. I can still see the hope in my young heart when given the opportunity to do something I loved. And I can still see that nervous young mom walk into the chemistry building — then under construction — and wait, and pray.

I can still see me walking out of the building when the interview concluded and knowing, knowing that I couldn’t say yes.  I can still see me crawling into my boiling hot, broken-down 1988 Honda Civic and trying to catch my breath from the disappointment. I can still see me calling my out-of-town husband, unable to stop the flow of tears, and hearing him tell me with love, “I’m so proud of you.”

But best of all, I can still see myself enjoying full-time young motherhood in a crackly, crinkly 60-year old parsonage, day in and day out, for the next five years.

Those images are, for me, a symbol of choosing the best thing now, of choosing life for my family, of obeying even when it’s hard. I hope and pray I take those images of wisdom and love with me through the rest of my mothering years, because that kind of joy is something I don’t want to miss out on.

A Letter for the One Who’s Waiting {Velvet Ashes}

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by Elizabeth

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You in the waiting,
Yes, you
And yes, me too —
For we are all waiting for something —
Dear sister,
Beloved one,
You in the waiting,
This much I know:
There are no shortcuts to healing.
There are no shortcuts to wholeness.
For we can’t know God as Healer without first being wounded.
And we can’t know God as guide without first being lost.
We can’t know Him as counselor without first being confused.
And we can’t know Him as comforter without first sustaining pain.
We can’t know Him as intimate companion without first feeling abandoned.
And we can’t find our identity in Christ alone without first losing it elsewhere.

You in the waiting,
Dear One,
This much I know:
There is no way around the ache of the human soul.
There is no detour through the pain.
When we walk through the valley —
And we will all walk through the valley —
None of us gets to skirt around the edges.
We are completely baptized in sorrow,
Fully immersed in its grief.
For there are no shortcuts to healing,
No shortcuts to joy.
There is only Jesus.
If anything, He is the short cut:
He is, after all, our Way home
Even if that way be long and broken.

So you in the waiting,
Keep waiting.
Keep seeking,
And keep asking,
Even in the silence —
For there may be silence —
And even in the darkness —
For there may be darkness —
But don’t you give up Hope.
Hold on to Hope.
Hold on to the name of our Jesus.
This waiting, it takes time.
It takes space.
And, I wish I didn’t have to say this, but —
It takes hard work too:
The hard work of shedding the lies we believe about God,
The hard work of shedding the lies we believe about ourselves,
The hard work of being honest with Him about the injuries,
And the hard, Spirit-assisted work of letting go of our entangling sins.

So you in the waiting,
Yes you —
And yes, me too —
For we are all waiting for something —
Dearest sister,
Beloved One,
You in the waiting,
This much I know:
There are no shortcuts to healing,
But in Jesus there is healing.
And there are no shortcuts to wholeness,
But in Jesus there is wholeness.
So we hold on to Him,
We hold on to Hope,
And together, we wait.

Originally published here, reprinted with permission.

The Two Things I Believe About Youth Ministry

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by Elizabeth

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I was 19 years old when youth ministry bored its way into my bones and penetrated my marrow. I’m 34 now, and youth ministry still pours into my blood and circulates through my veins. I believe in youth ministry, in all that is good and holy about loving and caring for young people in the context of the local church. And these are two of the things I believe about youth ministry:

1. Effective youth ministry isn’t in opposition to involved parenting. It doesn’t have to be “youth ministers are bad and war against the parents.” And it doesn’t have to be no ministry at all. Youth ministry can be respectful of parents and their influence and authority. It can bridge the gaps between parents, teenagers, and the local and global Church.

2. But effective youth ministry needs more workers: more Bible teachers and youth leaders, more Christ followers and relationship builders. Group ministry is great — and I believe in it — but one-on-one discipleship is even greater, and I believe in it even more. One minister or even a ministry team can’t possibly disciple all the youth in the church. So we need more people who care. More people who aren’t afraid of teenagers. More people who think youth ministry means something, something really important. Because youth ministry does mean something. It means the world to every teenager you invest in. So let’s do a little investing. A little guiding. A little caring and a little paying attention. And we just might witness the restoration of lives and the rescue of souls.

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With many thanks to the youth workers who poured into me as a young person, the youth workers who now pour into my own children, the parents who have trusted me to minister to their children, and the teenagers who have allowed me into their hearts and lives over the years. I love you all.

The Home School Manifesto

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by Elizabeth

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We will remember why we started homeschooling in the first place, and we will write those reasons on the door frames of our houses and tie them as symbols on our hands so that on the hard days – for there will be hard days — we will not forget the bigger picture and higher purpose.

We will remember that homeschooling is only part of parenting, and that even when we feel like quitting, we will remember that quitting home schooling will not solve all our parenting woes.

We will find our safe people. We will confide in other parents who understand both our daily struggles and our big picture struggles. And we will politely ignore those who disdain our family and educational choices.

We will commit to seeing our children as whole, integrated beings and not as students only, and we acknowledge that their scholarship — whether high, low, or somewhere in between — is only one aspect of their personhood.

We will remember that we are not trying to produce perfection; we are trying to honor humanity. We are trying to explore the big ideas in Scripture and literature together. We are trying to build loving relationships and make good memories.

We will accept our own limitations. And we will accept our children’s limitations. We will embrace who our children are and not try to squeeze them into any one particular educational mold.

We will laugh often, and we will refuse to take ourselves too seriously. We will release the pressure on ourselves to perform and to produce kids who perform. Performance is not the point of education; neither is it the point of life.

We will remember that kindness and character are more important than test scores, and we will refuse to devolve into check-listing. Or competition.

We will cultivate our own sense of wonder, and we will share that wonder with our children. We will delight in the world God made, we will delight in the children He has given us, and we will delight in learning new things alongside them.

And when we miss the mark and forget these things – because we will miss the mark sometimes – we will return to the notes on our door frames, turn our hearts toward our children, and ask the Holy Spirit to guide us anew.

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Download a printable PDF version of this Manifesto here.

This is what I know about spiritual formation (so far)

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by Elizabeth

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An Anglican priest ruined it for me. He ruined the phrase “enter the presence of God.”

I was at a Lenten prayer service last year when he said, “Let us become present to the Lord, for He is always present to us.” I knew what he was saying was true, for I’d learned it in other areas of my life (Psalm 139 anyone?). So what he said was more a vocabulary lesson than a course correction.

God is always present and available to us, and I can no longer say with integrity that we “enter the Lord’s presence” during a worship service. In fact, now when I hear that phrase from others, I start to tune out. What I can say with integrity is that we can choose to become present to the Lord.

So with that in mind, here’s everything I know about becoming present to the Lord. In other words, here’s everything I know about spiritual formation (so far).

 

1. Regular, private devotional times with God.

I’ve talked about this a lot before and how it’s changed my life, so I won’t rehash it here. I’ll just summarize my low-pressure method for cultivating intimacy with God:

  • Don’t feel guilty for short times with God
  • Don’t feel guilty if you can’t keep up with a fast-paced Bible-reading plan
  • Don’t feel guilty for deviating from your plans
  • Don’t feel guilty about skipping times.

 

2. Meeting with other believers for corporate worship.

The Church has been key to my spiritual growth. I go into a worship service expecting God to speak to me through songs, sermons, and prayers. And He does.

I’d like to quote Misty Edwards here on the mystery of corporate worship: “Musical worship involves a physical voice, physical sound waves that actually move through the air and strike your ear, go into your mind, into your emotions and spirit.” She also noted that “Musical worship is how the Body becomes One.”

I cannot downplay the importance of the Church in my spiritual life; neither can I downplay the importance of my private devotional life. I need both.

 

3. Small group Bible studies and other intimate forms of community.

I’ve talked about this before, but for years in the States I was part of a small ladies’ Bible study. I learned so much about life and faith from those (mostly older) women. They empathized with my struggles and prayed me through some of my darkest days. Most of what I know about Grace, I learned with them.

These days my teammates function as my small group. We share sorrows and joys together and pray for and support each other. I’m so thankful for people who listen to, accept, pray for, and advise the “real me.”

 

4. Getting counseling.

Sometimes personal devotionals, corporate worship, and talking with trusted people are enough to work through my issues; sometimes they are not. I’ve had several key breakthroughs in my life because of counselors (both licensed professional counselors and pastoral counselors), and I cannot overstate the importance of sometimes getting outside help. I would not be where I am today in my relationship with God and my relationship with others without the help and intervention of those counselors.

 

Well there you have it, everything I know about spiritual formation (so far). What would you add to my list?