November 2011 – Manna For Moms

The Mooch

Megan Breedlove November 28, 2011 0 Comments

My daughter Jessica is a mooch. She’s a happy, cheerful little mooch. In fact, she admits to being one. Sometimes, she will say, “Mommy? Guess what I’m going to do after I finish my lunch.”

“What?” I ask, as if I don’t know.

“I’m going to mooch your lunch,” she’ll say with a mischievous grin.

Other times, there’s no warning at all. As I sit eating a snack, I’ll sense a presence next to me, and I’ll look up to see Jessica standing there with her mouth open, her index finger pointing to her tongue, a grin crinkling her eyes. “Aaaaahhhhh,” she’ll say cheerfully when I notice her.

Jessica comes to me when she knows I have what she wants. She comes confidently, expecting to receive what she asks for. She comes to her mother the way we should come to our Father: eagerly, cheerfully, and expectantly.

I’ll confess that I don’t always approach God that way. I sometimes ask Him for things, knowing He can provide them, but not really expecting Him to. I don’t come confidently; I come out of a sense of obligation. I know I’m supposed to make my requests known to God, so I do. Not that I think it’ll do any good, I think to myself.

Maybe you too sometimes have difficulty believing God will grant what you desire. True, there are times when God says no to our requests. He knows far better than we do what would be a good thing for us, and He sometimes says no when we think He should say yes. But that doesn’t mean we should approach Him merely out of a sense of duty, not out of a sense of expectancy. You see, each time we make a request of God, He grants us what’s best for us. It may not be what we asked for, but if not, it’s going to be something better.

This can be a tough pill to swallow. Some requests seem so obviously good that we can’t imagine their ever being denied. But God often denies the seemingly good in order to give us what is certainly best.

That’s because He desires to give good gifts to His children. He rejoices in giving us what is best for us. He looks forward to our requests, because He knows He will have the chance to give us a gift. Yet when He goes for the “best” instead of the “good”, we get mad or hurt. We think He’s done nothing, when in reality, He’s done even better than what we asked for.

I’m still learning this truth myself. Even now, I can think of situations where I might make a certain request, be denied, then wonder how God’s actual answer could be better than what I asked for. But either I believe God or I don’t. Either He knows what He’s doing, or He doesn’t. Either He’s God in times of suffering just as much as He is in times of joy, or He isn’t.

I choose to believe that He is. I hope you will choose the same. Then we can both look forward to bringing our requests to God, knowing that either way—whether our request is denied or fulfilled—we will receive something good.

Psalm 107:9—For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things.

In Everything?

Megan Breedlove November 21, 2011 0 Comments

Three more days, and Thanksgiving will be here. We’ll watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, eat too much Thanksgiving dinner with family and friends (sweet potatoes, here I come!), and lie around for the rest of the day, too stuffed to move. Somewhere during the day, my husband and I will sit our kids down and have them record what they’re thankful for, as we do every year. Then we’ll pray, and they’ll thank God for things like home and family, friends, their favorite stuffed animals, and our cat.

I’ll tell them that of all the things on earth, I’m most thankful for them and their daddy/my husband. I’ll mention that I appreciate our home, the fact that we have enough food—in fact, more than enough—and all the material blessings God has given us. Those are the things that come immediately to mind when I stop to think about what I’m thankful for.

This year, I’m thankful for other things, too, even though they certainly don’t come to mind first. That’s because these things are all tied to pain in my life, and since I don’t like to dwell on the pain, I don’t usually think about the gratitude I could feel in the midst of those situations, either. But God tells me to be thankful in all circumstances. So this year, I will make it a point to be thankful for the following:

the strength God has built into my life by helping me deal with broken and twisted relationships. If it had been up to me, I would have chosen for certain experiences to be much different. But that’s not how life went. I can either focus on the painful parts, or I can choose to be thankful that God has made me stronger by teaching me to thrive despite it all.
the friends I’ve made in the course of taking my son to his therapy appointments. Kenny has Asperger’s Disorder, and though he’s doing great, he still has some skills to learn. I would not have chosen Asperger’s for him, but I can choose to be grateful for all the friends we’ve made along the journey.
the many times I’ve had to rest during this pregnancy. It would be easy for me to be resentful of or ungrateful for those times and to see them as burdens, not as opportunities. But God has given me the gift of allowing me to stop and rest more than I would have otherwise if I had felt better. Instead of bemoaning the fact that I’m not as high-energy as usual, I choose to appreciate the gift of rest time.

I’m not going to deny any of my painful experiences or pretend that they don’t exist. I don’t suggest you do that either. But I do encourage you to look beyond the things you don’t like to the blessings they have brought about. The circumstance itself may be undesirable and painful, but even in the midst of pain, there is always something good. Don’t let yourself get so focused on the pain that you forget to look for the blessings. They’re in there. Somewhere in the midst of the chaos or hurt, they’re very real and present. So find something to thank God for despite what might be the worst pain of your life. Being thankful isn’t going to make all your pain go away. But that blessing that you haven’t thought about? It’s a diamond in the midst of all the coal. Don’t get so focused on the coal that you forget to look for the diamond. You’ll still be stuck with the coal anyway. But at least you’ll have the diamond too.

1 Thessalonians 5:18—Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

One Hand Only

Megan Breedlove November 14, 2011 0 Comments

A few days ago, the kids and I were hanging out in the living room. I was sitting on the couch watching them all perform “tricks” for me, which appeared to involve various feats of balancing themselves on the furniture or the floor in some creative way. “Mommy, wook at me!” Jessica invited as she balanced herself with her head, both hands, and only one foot on the floor. She extended her other leg up behind her.

Immediately, the other kids tried to imitate her. Her trick wasn’t that hard for them, so I decided to throw in a little twist. “See if you can balance with only one hand on the floor,” I challenged them. “Not the other hand, and not your feet.”

They tried for about half a second before Kenny sat down on the floor and said, albeit cheerfully, “I can’t do that.”

“I’ll twy,” Jessica said. I watched her try a little longer before giving up and sitting down.

At that point, Lindsey, who had been trying the whole time, turned herself upright and looked at me. “I did it for a little while,” she said.

What a fantastic illustration of the responses we sometimes give to God when He asks us to do something. Take motherhood, for example. God asks us to parent a child going through a difficult time, or a special needs child, or simply a child who won’t sleep through the night. We try for half a second and then say, “I can’t do that.” We’ve failed. It won’t work, so there’s no use trying.

Or perhaps we’re willing to try a little longer. Perhaps we don’t mind attempting to parent three kids ages three and under. “I’ll try,” we say, but we soon find it difficult, and we give up and sit down. “This is just too much,” we say. “God’s going to have to lighten my load.”

The third response is the best. We simply get to work, and we try to the limit of our endurance. When strength is gone, we say, “I did it as long as I could.” Not “I failed,” but “I succeeded for awhile.”

Make no mistake about it. We all will come to the end of our endurance. God knows that, and He doesn’t count it as failure. Failure is when we look at the evidence in front of us, and we don’t try, because we just don’t see any way it will work in the first place. Or failure is when we give up too soon.

That day in my living room, I didn’t help my kids balance as I told them to. Had I helped, they would all have succeeded. That’s the point. When God asks us to do something, He will help us. Why then do we ever refuse to try, or ever give up? We know we have His help. God never calls us to do something He won’t help us to perform. So knowing that we have His strength and wisdom to get us through, why would we ever consider doing something other than availing ourselves of the help He has stands ready to give? Then, like Lindsey, we could try to the limit of our endurance. The only thing is, our endurance would go a whole lot farther, because we would be operating in His strength.

In whose strength are you fulfilling your calling as a mother? Are you taking advantage of God’s strength, or are you relying on your own?

Parenting is hard and exhausting at times. Believe me, I know. But when we call upon God instead of trying to balance on one hand and our own strength only, we will make it. Not we might; we will.

Psalm 28:7—The LORD is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped; my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him.

“Hempo” Blanket

Megan Breedlove November 7, 2011 0 Comments

Two or three years ago, Lindsey received a hippo blanket for her birthday. It was made by friends of ours and is hot pink, yellow, and fuzzy, with colorful, happy-looking hippos all over it. At the time, Lindsey couldn’t say “hippo”, so she came up with “hempo”.

She still loves that thing and often takes it with her when she thinks she might be cold somewhere. The other day, she gathered it up as she prepared to get out of our minivan. The only thing was, she was also holding everything else she’d brought along with her, which made quite a load. “Kenny, help your sister with her stuff,” I directed.

Right behind her, Kenny reached for the blanket, which was trailing on the floor. As soon as Lindsey felt him pull on it, she glanced back at him to see what he was doing. Right about the time I was saying, “He’s just trying to help you,” Lindsey realized the same thing on her own and released the blanket, turning her attention away from him and back to getting out.

It made all the difference in the world that she knew he was trying to help her. Otherwise, you can imagine how the scenario would have gone—about as well as when God tries to take something from us and we don’t like it.

There are times in every believer’s life when God must take something away from us as part of His plan. We feel His tug on our treasure, and we immediately try to figure out what God is doing. Sometimes, it’s obvious, but oftentimes, we can’t tell. And it’s during those times that it matters so much whether we think He is trying to steal something that is rightfully ours or to remove it for our benefit.

Some things in life, we’re just not willing to give up. We feel as if we’re entitled to them. We want to maintain control over them, and if God tries to take them away—or if He allows them to be taken away—we react as if He has stolen from us. The only problem with that reasoning is that ultimately, nothing belongs to us. It’s all His. We don’t have the right to hang onto anything He takes or allows to be taken from us because it’s all His in the first place.

The job we lost? It was never ours to hang on to. Our health? Nope, not that either. Our kids? Even they don’t truly belong to us. They are and always have been His.

Most of the time, however, the things God requires us to give up are not the truly precious things—family, for instance. Usually it’s something much smaller, such as a portion of our free time or a peaceful, uninterrupted night’s sleep. Frequently, God takes these things from us because He wants to replace them with an opportunity to serve other people such as our children. But too often, instead of willingly accepting the change in plans, we resent the fact that mothering is often inconvenient.

What do you resent? Many times, resentment is an indicator that something we believe we have a right to has been taken from us. We resent the fact that our husband wants to watch the ballgame instead of help us with the children because we believe we have a right to his help, and that “right” has been stolen from us. Or we begrudge the fact that we have to get up in the middle of the night to tend to our coughing child because we thought we had a right to a good night’s sleep.

What difference might it make in your life and in mine if we were to lay down our rights and realize that we don’t have a right to anything? Instead of focusing on our “rights” that haven’t been fulfilled, what if we started meditating on all the things we do have that we don’t have a right to because they are the result of God’s grace?

Why not make a list of those things? Write down all the things you do have that you don’t have a right to—in other words, all the blessings you now enjoy that were gifts from God based on His love for you and not on what you had a “right” to.

It’s humbling, isn’t it? Realizing that God owes us nothing yet still chooses to bless us anyway—it’s incredible. That He would give us anything at all should amaze us. Yet He pours out His love on us, and as part of His love, He blesses us with gifts.

Let’s not spend more time resenting what we don’t have than rejoicing in what we do have. After all, if God gave us what we deserved on our own merits, we’d all be in hell. Literally. So instead of virtually accusing Him of stealing from us—or at least of doing the wrong thing—let’s thank Him for what He has done that’s truly unfair: lavishing us with blessings we don’t deserve.

1 Corinthians 4:7—What do you have that you did not receive?

James 1:17—Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

The Mooch

In Everything?

One Hand Only

“Hempo” Blanket

You Missed

Priorities

I Wouldn’t Do That

Little Things

8 Seconds