The Monkey Pumpkin

Megan Breedlove November 11, 2013 0 Comments

The school’s contest rules were simple: get a pumpkin. Decorate it like a character from your favorite book. Do it by yourself.

The very day Lindsey brought home the note about the pumpkin decorating contest, she excitedly told me she wanted to enter. She would decorate her pumpkin like a monkey (of course), and the pumpkins would be displayed in the school library, “where everyone can see them.” Lindsey wanted to go buy pumpkin-decorating supplies immediately.

We weren’t able to go right then, but one weekend we did go to Wal-Mart to pick out a pumpkin, some paint, and some ribbon. Lindsey had already designed the pumpkin in her mind, and she intended for it to be painted brown, with brown construction paper ears, arms, legs, and a tail. The eyes, nose, and mouth would be painted on, and the monkey would have a bow on her head.

So we bought brown, black, and white paint and a spool of ribbon that was pink with white polka dots. “Can I start on my pumpkin as soon as we get home?” Lindsey wanted to know.

I said yes, and that’s what she did. She covered that pumpkin with brown paint, leaving space for the eyes, which she painted in later. She added a nose and mouth, taped on the bow, and then taped on arms, legs, and a tail. The whole thing took…well, not nearly as long as I thought it would.

And the results were…well, it was obvious Lindsey had followed the rules and made that pumpkin all by herself.

Yet Lindsey was fiercely proud of it. She loved that pumpkin, and she still does. She carried it carefully into the school and entered it in the contest. And even when it didn’t win (many of the pumpkins had obviously had parental help involved), she proudly brought it home to display.

Lindsey is dreading the day when her pumpkin begins to rot and we have to throw it away. She will grieve over the loss of that pumpkin. Because even though it wasn’t judged to be much by other people’s standards, it was hers, and to her, it was the greatest.

It’s kind of like how God sees us. He knows that not many of us are judged to be beautiful, talented, wealthy, or valuable by the world’s standards. But He loves us not based on what the world says about us, but based on the fact that He made us. We’re His, and He loves us. It’s that simple.

Your value as a person comes not from anything the world says about you or any contest you might win, but from the fact that you belong to God. When He looks at you, He doesn’t look at your outward appearance (beauty, fame, wealth, or talents) but at your heart. Is your heart right toward Him? Does His Holy Spirit live there? Do you love Him? Are you His? Then you are precious to Him.

It doesn’t matter what the world says. It doesn’t make a bit of difference whether or not you win or lose a particular contest. You are precious to God because you belong to Him.

1 Samuel 16:7—But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” (NIV)

Underneath

Megan Breedlove October 28, 2013 0 Comments

Two nights ago, my daughter attended her friend Darby’s birthday party. The guests were invited to come in costume, and Ellie thought she might want to be a cat. My husband took her shopping for a cat costume, but when they came home, Ellie was holding a Darth Vader mask and a black cape (she’s a huge Star Wars fan). “See, mom? I’m going to be Darth Vader!” Ellie proclaimed. “And underneath, I’m going to be Princess Leia.”

My husband had pointed out to Ellie that she wouldn’t feel like wearing her mask throughout the party and suggested that she take off the cape too and have another costume underneath. So Ellie decided to go with Princess Leia.

Ellie put on a flowing white dress she has that also has a small white cape to go with it. Then I braided her long blond hair into two braids, one on each side of her head, and wound each braid into a “cinnamon roll” shape above her ears. Ellie planned on showing up to the party in her Darth Vader costume, and then, when everyone guessed that she was Darth Vader, taking off her black accessories to reveal her Princess Leia costume underneath. She wanted to surprise everyone, and that was understandable. It’s fun to dress up as your favorite characters. And if you can throw a surprise into the mix, well, that’s even better.

What’s not so good is when, in real life, we put on an appearance for others that doesn’t match the real person underneath.

Usually, we do this because we’re afraid of letting our real selves be known. We fear that if people knew the real us, they wouldn’t like us. So we hide who we really are, putting on a false front that we hope will please others, in order to gain their acceptance. We keep our innermost feelings, thoughts, and beliefs to ourselves. And what happens then is that people may like or approve of our costume, but they don’t know who we really are underneath.

It’s true that sometimes, people will reject us if we displease them. We’ve all had the experience of being rejected by someone who determined we weren’t really what he or she were looking for. We weren’t good enough. Weren’t what he or she wanted.

For those of you who have experienced such painful rejection in the past and would like to talk more about it, just contact me through my website. I’ve been there too, and I understand what it’s like to be rejected. I also want to tell you that I’m sorry it happened to you. I know it hurts, and I’m sorry.

But there’s something else I want to tell you, too, something I’ve learned from my experiences of being rejected, and that’s this: there is one Person who will never reject you. That’s God.

Despite the fact that He knows exactly what you’re like (putting on a front never works with Him; He always knows better), He loves you. He’s chosen to love you and promised to be with you always.

Hard to believe? I know. It was hard for awhile for me to believe it, too. But as I’ve learned to love and trust Him more, and learned to absorb more of His love for me, I’ve also learned just how vast and deep that love is. It’s stronger than the worst things you or I have ever done. It’s deeper than anything we’ve been or failed to be. It’s limitless and unchanging, and it’s offered to the person we really are, not somebody we pretend to be.

With God, we never have to pretend. We never have to put on a costume and hope to be mistaken for someone else. We can be who we really are, and be confident that we will always find full acceptance and love in God, no matter what.

True, He doesn’t always love what we do, and He never accepts sin. But He always loves and accepts us.

It’s an incredible idea, one that it took me many years to wrap my mind around. But it’s true, because Scripture teaches it over and over. God loves us. He loves us. He loves us. The real us—the person we are underneath.

1 John 3:1—How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! (NIV)

Hebrews 13:5b—God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” (NIV)

Dressed for Church

Megan Breedlove October 21, 2013 4 Comments

Yesterday morning, as she does every Sunday morning, Lindsey (7.5 years old) got herself dressed for church. She chose a red and black plaid dress and her black shoes, and put them on. And then, she did her hair.

When I saw her, she had two ponytails, one on each side of her head. They weren’t quite smooth, and she had missed some hair in the back. Nonetheless, she was proud of having done her own hair.

I had a choice. I could either help her fix her hair, or I could let her leave it as it was. The first option would have produced better-looking hair. The second would have produced more self-confidence in Lindsey.

I chose to let her leave her hair as it was. That’s because her efforts were good enough for me. I was proud of her.

Why? Because she’d done her best.

It’s the same way God feels about us, moms. He knows that our fumbling efforts don’t produce near the results He could have produced. Yet He accepts our attempts with pride in us—if we’ve done our best.

Isn’t it great that God doesn’t demand that we be perfect in order for Him to be proud of us? He’s proud of you, and He’s proud of me—despite the fact that we’re not perfect.

Many times we as moms get the idea that we have to be a perfect mom, wife, woman, sister, or friend in order for God to be proud of us. If God’s perfect, we (incorrectly) reason, He won’t be proud of anything less than perfection.

Let’s be clear here. When we sin, God is not pleased. He is not proud. But when we do our best—when we put forth our best effort—He is both pleased and proud. In fact, He’s even willing to help us by giving us wisdom, strength, and comfort, so that we can do our best.

Have you ever stopped to think that God is proud of you? That if you’re truly doing the best you can, making no excuses but doing your best, He is really, really proud?

He’s proud of how you spoke kindly to your daughter despite the fact that she was getting on your last nerve. He’s proud of the way you got the living room clean, even though the whole house wasn’t clean. He’s proud of how you made that decision or got up repeatedly in the middle of the night with a sick child. He’s proud of—well, anything you did your best on.

So what does it mean to do your best? It means to do the most you can with what God has given you. It means to operate in His strength, taking advantage of His resources, for His glory.

If that’s how you usually operate, mom, you make God proud on a regular basis.

If it’s not, you can always change that. You can go before Him anytime and ask Him to help you make that a reality so that you can operate that way. Tell Him you want to make Him proud, and ask Him to help you do it.

And then bask in the warmth of knowing that your Daddy’s proud of you.

Colossians 3:23—Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.

Labor Days

Megan Breedlove September 2, 2013 2 Comments

Maybe your labor in bringing your child into your home began with contractions. Maybe it began with filling out agency paperwork. Maybe you labored in having to recover from a planned C-section (as I did four out of the five times).

Whatever the case, you labored to bring your child into your home.

And then the real labor began.

I labored with one of my children for 14.5 hours. It was a Pitocin-induced labor, so you can imagine what those contractions were like. And I didn’t have any medication, because I wanted to try natural childbirth. But when the induction failed due to lack of progress, I opted for a C-section.

Even those 14.5 hours were a piece of cake compared to the labor I’ve gone through with my son since his birth.

I don’t mean that he’s a difficult child; he’s not. But as every mother knows, the actual physical labor (whether due to contractions or to completing home studies and paperwork) is the easy part. Even when it seems like it will last forever, you know it won’t. There will eventually come an end when your baby is born into the world or your child is brought into your home.

Then comes the hard part.

That’s because the labor after you bring a child into your family is never-ending. True, you may have some moments or even weekends of relaxation, but there is always labor to go back to.

Nursing your baby. Fixing lunches. Driving the carpool. Cleaning up after a sick child. Disciplining your child. Falling into bed exhausted. Then doing it all over again the next day (or maybe even in the middle of that night).

And a mom’s daily, ongoing labor is little recognized. Rarely do we hear the expressions of appreciation we wish we received. Rarely does someone tell us we do an amazing job. It’s not every day that someone throws her little arms around us and says, “Thank you for being the best mommy in the world.”

I’ve written elsewhere about how God can and will affirm us anytime we need to feel appreciated (see, for example, my book Well Done, Good and Faithful Mommy). But I wanted us to take a minute today to stop and realize that God knows exactly how we feel.

He puts in far more labor in parenting us than we do in parenting our children, yet rarely do we stop to praise Him for His amazing Fatherhood. Rarely do we tell Him how much we appreciate Him (unless He’s just done something for us). Rarely do we (figuratively speaking) throw our arms around Him and thank Him for being the best Daddy ever.

The next time you put in a long day with your children, let that be a reminder to you to stop and connect with God. Take some time and thank Him for the long day He just put in with you. After all, at least you get some sleep, whereas He never sleeps. He’s constantly watching over you and taking care of you.

You can’t force the people around you to completely meet your needs for appreciation, because they’re not made to do so. But you can make it a point to fully appreciate your Father—or at least to appreciate Him as much as it is possible for an imperfect human being to do so—and to tell Him so.

When was the last time you stopped to thank and praise God for His care of you? Why not do so right now?

Psalm 121:2-4—My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved; he that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. (KJV)

Excluded

Megan Breedlove July 15, 2013 0 Comments

This past week, my son Kenny has been attending a day camp sponsored by our city. He loves their program, which includes games, play time, and various activities in a group of kids approximately his age.

One day, however, when I arrived to pick Kenny up, his teacher asked to talk with me. She explained that some of the other children had been deliberately excluding Kenny from a game, and it made him cry. She told me what she had done to deal with the problem (I was very pleased with her efforts) and said she would be on the lookout in case anything similar ever happened again.

Naturally, on the way home, I talked to Kenny about it. He admitted that he had been sad but said he still wanted to return to camp the next day. The whole incident didn’t seem to bother him too much.

But the point isn’t just Kenny’s amazing attitude. The point is that in the moment when Kenny was crying from the pain of being excluded out of deliberate meanness, Jesus understood. And Jesus understood not only because He’s God, but because He was excluded too.

People didn’t always like Jesus very much. In fact, some people (mainly the Pharisees) hated Him so vehemently they repeatedly tried to kill Him until they finally succeeded. He was completely excluded from their inner circle, despite the fact that He was the one they should have been worshipping.

Even the disciples excluded Jesus at the time of His arrest and impending crucifixion by abandoning Him. They didn’t want any part of Him. And Peter denied three times that He even knew Jesus or was a part of His group.

We know these things about Jesus, but we don’t always think about how Jesus must have felt. Just because He was God doesn’t mean He didn’t feel the pain that comes from being excluded. In fact, the Bible tells us that He was “despised and rejected, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”. He knew how it felt in that moment when Kenny cried.

Not only that, precious mom, He knows how you feel when you are excluded. When your husband excludes you, or your friends or family, or even strangers, He knows how it feels. When someone doesn’t want you to be part of their group, He understands. When people don’t want anything to do with you, He feels that pain.

You see, Jesus came to earth not just to take the punishment for our sins, as if that weren’t enough. He also came to identify with us so that He would experience what we as human beings go through. He was willing to suffer rejection and exclusion so He could understand what you feel like when it happens to you.

Those memories about times you were rejected or excluded? He knows how you feel. The pain going on in your heart right now because you are currently being excluded? He understands. He’s felt it too.

What all this means is that you can take your pain to Him and find in Him someone who truly “gets it”. He’s not just going to tell you to get over it; He’ll help you heal. And He’ll do it because He wants you to know that you are not alone in your pain. He will never exclude you or reject you. He’s on your side.

So run to Him. Let Him take you in His arms and love you. Let Him begin to heal your hurts. Lay your head upon Him as He holds you close, and hear Him whisper, “I understand.”

Isaiah 53:3—He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. (ESV)

Hebrews 13:5b—He has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (ESV)

Wildflower Love

Megan Breedlove May 27, 2013 0 Comments

On top of my piano sits a bouquet of beautiful wildflowers in a variety of shapes and colors. This bouquet was carefully gathered for me not by a florist, but by my four older children on a recent overnight at their friends’ country home. Knowing that there were lovely flowers in the area, the kids decided to go walking and pick several for me.

Now, I enjoy the bouquet in my dining room. But what I enjoy most about it isn’t the beauty I can see. It’s the beauty I can’t see.

Those flowers represent love. Pure, sweet love that was strong enough to motivate my children to expend their energy and effort to do something that would bring me pleasure. And as I look at the flowers, I find that I’m motivated in return—to spend my time and energy on searching out things that will bring them pleasure.

Sometimes, those things might be as simple as making their PBJ sandwich (instead of requiring them to make it for themselves) and then cutting it into shapes. Other times, it might mean reading to them, playing a game with them, or seizing a few free moments on a beautiful day to take them to the park.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be something huge in order to delight our kids; it just needs to be something designed to make them happy.

After all, it’s the same way God treats us.

Every day, God pours blessings into our lives. Every day, He does things designed to delight us. He does them on our good days; He sometimes does even more special things on our bad days. He knows our hearts, and He knows how much we long to be delighted. So He showers us with good things, both big and small.

You and I both can think of lots of things that would bring delight to our kids’ hearts. If we spend some time thinking about it, we could probably come up with even more. We don’t have to be especially creative. We can just do the things we know to do and ask God to open our eyes to see other, special things that would make our children happy.

I’m going to have that bouquet of flowers to look at for days. Maybe even a week. And every time I look at it, I will remember not only my children’s love for me, but God’s love for me. He sent me a bouquet of flowers through my children. So I’ll be thankful—to Him and to them. And I’ll spend time this week thinking about ways to delight my children—not just because I love them, but because their heavenly Father wants to give them gifts through me.

Will you do the same?

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.

Back to Normal

Megan Breedlove May 13, 2013 0 Comments

Yesterday was Mother’s Day. Time for breakfast in bed, flowers, and gifts. Time for artwork with your child’s handprint, carefully printed cards saying “You’re the greatest”, and everybody’s best behavior.

Today is the day after Mother’s Day. Time for…well, for the same ol’, same ol’. No breakfast in bed. No gifts. No special treatment. Everything’s back to normal.

Which means that you probably won’t get as many expressions of appreciation as you do on Mother’s Day itself. You probably won’t get the same pampering. You’ll get the same thing you get 364 days of the year—whatever that looks like at your house.

Getting back to normal can be a bit of a let-down.

That’s because inside of each mom is a longing to feel valued and appreciated. Often, this longing is pretty well satisfied on Mother’s Day. But the other 364 days per year? Not so much.

It’s normal and natural to desire to feel appreciated. It’s a part of being human that God purposely crafted into us. But often, it goes unfulfilled.

Why? Because we’re looking to the wrong people.

Yes, our husband (if we’re married) should show us appreciation. But he may not completely understand what we need. Besides, he has his own appreciation cup that needs filling.

Yes, our children should show appreciation to us. But they can’t fully grasp the magnitude of what we do for them, so they don’t fully appreciate us. (And that’s fine; they’re children!)

Friends, family, and society won’t fully appreciate us either. They all have their own appreciation cups to fill.

So what do we do with this God-given need that the people around us can’t totally meet?

We bring it to Him. Every time we long for more appreciation, instead of trying to force those around us to give it to us, we go to God. He is always ready and willing to pour His appreciation into our souls, and He knows how to do it way better than any human being possibly could.

So when Mother’s Day turns into “Regular, Ordinary Monday”, remember this: you are still appreciated. True, you might not get as many tangible expressions of appreciation from your family. But there is One who longs to pour into your spirit all those intangibles that are so much more fulfilling than what we demand from others anyway.

Why not take Him up on His offer?

Psalm 62:8—Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.