2023--What a Year

  I published this last year. I updated it for this year, but didn't change the lessons. I decided as I read through it this morning that the experiences remained pretty much the same. I truly don't think it's because I didn't learn from them. I did, but things have stayed the same except for one thing: God kept his word when it comes to tithing faithfully. Our debts kept getting worse through unavoidable events. No fault was involved. I admit, that my fears and anxiety were heavy upon me, but I kept tithing even though our outgoing money was increasing. 

Then another budget-crushing item happened and I felt we could no longer tithe. I told this to the church finance secretary. Within the month, an enormous amount of money came in and I was able to pay off all our debt. And because Will's VA disability rating was increased, we are getting more money each month. I could have never predicted this and just when I had given up hope, God proved his promises are sure. He is faithful to keep his word. He took my fear and anxiety and turned them into rejoicing. The following paragraphs are from last year:

New Year's Day is tomorrow and I'm not making any resolutions. My prior experience has taught me I rarely keep them for more than a month. Honestly, I have only made them because there is an unwritten rule in our society that we need to promise ourselves we will set goals for the coming year. A lot of folks do, but like me, they rarely keep up with whatever expectations they have placed on themselves, which leads to a degree of self-shaming, or worse leads to continued unhealthy behaviors that can get worse than they were before swearing off them. 

I prefer to look back and see what I've learned in the past year. I may take those lessons to heart and by grace live by them in the coming year. One lesson I've learned this past year: I set myself up for failure when I place unrealistic expectations on myself. It's taken a long time to learn that lesson. For example, I was published in a prestigious journal this past year, and immediately I felt the bar of writing well raised exponentially. I was placing an expectation on myself to write beyond my current capabilities. What was published was written in a flash from pure inspiration. It's impossible to write at that level all the time. Writing is actually grunt work most of the time. Writing to learn to write better is what all authors do. It may be a while before I write something that good again. But I shall continue to write. No writing is ever wasted.

Trusting God to protect the people I love has been a lesson in 2023. I would like to say I've got it down pat, but that would be a questionable statement. So I will say God has protected people I love dearly this past year in spite of the true danger surrounding them. I want to trust he will do so in the coming year. Paul was stoned, whipped, and imprisoned, yet God protected him from death until his race was complete. Struck down, at times perplexed, facing the answer of "No" to some prayers, yet trusting his Savior to keep him safe to do what he was anointed to do. I must do the same, having seen God's protective providence in action. 

Finally, I've learned I must be at peace about things I have no control over. Health concerns and financial difficulties, to name a couple. There are more I won't go into, but I'm called to be at peace knowing things may not improve and in fact, some will get worse and I'm powerless to stop it. God has called me to bear a burden that only he can enable me to bear. And in the midst of it, I am to be at peace. A peace that passes all understanding. 

So here's to 2024. May all God's children find joy, peace, and grace to enable them to overcome the world. Jesus will return and as he asked, will he find faith? 

I want to raise my hand and say here I am, I have faith. 

The Gift of the Incarnation

I have published this before. I wrote it several years before my mother's passing. I offer it as an annual Christmas essay:

 The season has officially arrived. Time to bring out the holiday decorations collected over the years, along with new ones purchased at half price after Christmas last year—the special trappings that announce the season of celebration. Trees are trimmed, candles lit, carols sung, lists made, gifts purchased and wrapped, parties planned, church plays produced, turkeys roasted, and every tradition of every family is carefully observed for the sake of memories.

It would be tempting to write a critique about the increasing secularization of our “holy days” traditions. But the deepening layers of fluff that threaten to obscure Christ are a legitimate concern I’ll save for another essay. Truthfully, the whole season with its traditions can produce a warm feeling in me, a kind of rosy glow that makes me want to stuff cash into the red pots of bell ringers, hug strangers, and maybe even “teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.” That’s a good thing—or is it?

I’ve heard many Christmas sermons over the years, but none has enlightened nor disturbed me more than the words of an unsaved woman I knew some years ago. While helping decorate a hall for a holiday party, she made the off-handed remark, “I just love Christmas. You know, the baby Jesus thing and all that stuff. It gives me a warm feeling.”

I had forgotten that conversation until today. At the time, I didn’t think much about her comment, except that she needed to know baby Jesus grew up and died for her. Maybe I even said that, I really don’t remember. Now I find her words unsettling in a different way. She had expressed sentimental feelings that are uncomfortably close to what I, and probably other Christians feel.

Sentimentality isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but when it masquerades as spirituality, it satisfies merely at a surface level, distorting love and grace by diminishing them. The deep ocean of God’s love and grace becomes a wading pool. Instead of being immersed in His great love, we slosh around, accepting shallow spirituality and risk missing the awesome waves of His passion that can only be experienced when we venture out into waters over our heads.

The memory of that comment resurfaced today in the form of a question God posed to me: Do you understand the cost of the Incarnation?

Christians are (or should be) familiar with the basic theology of the Incarnation: Christ was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. God became fully human. We recite it in our creeds, we read it in the Bible, and hear it from the pulpit. We proclaim Christ’s divinity and humanity based on the doctrine of the Incarnation. But do we really understand the price the Son of God paid when He became the Son of Man?

I must confess, this morning during my prayer time, it occurred to me I did not. As I prayed, I wondered if indeed it was even possible in this life to fully comprehend the depth of sacrifice Jesus made when He stepped out of eternity and into time.

In The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis wrote, “… the higher a thing is, the lower it can descend—man can sympathize with a horse but a horse cannot sympathize with a rat.” I believe it was also C. S. Lewis who observed that it is barely within the capacity of humans to understand how amazing an act of condescension it would be for a man to become a lower creature. It is one to thing to have a level of consciousness that enables one to sympathize with a lesser creature, such as a rat, it is entirely another to actually become one and experience all that rats experience, having left the lofty realm of humanness and all that entails.

We can only imagine the possibility, since no man has ever emptied himself of all his natural attributes, retaining only the knowledge that he is still in essence a man, and taken the likeness and consciousness of a lower creature—to be both that lower life form and man. Even though the chasm between man and rat is incredibly broad, the analogy falls short because humans and rats still share a common bond: they are both created beings. The analogy cannot begin to express the magnitude of the condescension of the Creator in becoming the creature.

It is the mystery of the Incarnation: God becoming one of His creatures, yet still being God in essence. What Jesus left behind when He condescended to the level of a dividing cell in Mary’s womb is what I have never fully appreciated, and I say that to my sorrow, because the sacrifice of Jesus on my behalf began long before the cross.

The entire seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of John records the last time Jesus prayed with His disciples before His crucifixion. Next to the anguished prayer in Gethsemane, it is probably the most passionate prayer ever uttered, and He prayed it not only for the small band of men gathered around Him, but also for us:

“And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was… Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may also be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world (v. 5, 24).”

The inclusion of that request in His prayer reveals His desire that we understand the level from which He had descended to walk among humanity. He had willingly left the Father’s presence in a place of grandeur and glory beyond human imagining, and emptied Himself of the attributes that made Him God.

In Philippians 2:6-11, Paul attempts to describe the depth Jesus’ sacrifice through the Incarnation:

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore, God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.


He made Himself nothing. The All in All, the Alpha and Omega, the Almighty became a creature, a lowly servant, and willingly bore the cross—our cross, our sin, our shame. The question still reverberates: do I understand the cost of the Incarnation?

I will enjoy the Christmas season. I will probably overeat, spend a little too much, and observe all the traditions, sacred and silly. But there will be a silent prayer offered continually from my heart: that I would grow beyond sentimentality and press deeper into the heart of God where emotions are transformed and become holy.

Moses prayed to see God’s glory, and God granted his request, but only gave him a glimpse. He covered Moses’ eyes with His hand as He passed telling him, “you cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me and live.” But Jesus is the face of God, and we are commanded to focus our attention and our hope in Him. The hand of God no longer blocks our view, only our own hands cast up in fear, shame, or ignorance.

It may well be that before “the mortal is clothed with immortality,” my vision will be obscured for countless reasons. But His prayer will ultimately be answered. Until that day, like Paul, I will seek to grasp the width and length and depth and height of His love—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, the love that compelled the Incarnation—and to truly understand His incredible Christmas gift.

Empty Places At the Table

 Today, December 19, is the tenth anniversary of my mother's death. Every year I grow depressed during the Christmas season, knowing there are empty places at our Christmas table: my father, my brother-in-law, and my mother. I suppose some think I should be beyond the grief, but grief has no timetable. Arbitrarily assigning an expiration date for grief is like comparing it to a can of green beans. That minimizes and invalidates emotions that were God-created as part of our existence. That ability to feel joy and sorrow is a reality we live with. 

I was with my mother when she took her last breath. And even though I knew she was seeing the face of her Savior and no longer suffering, I broke down in uncontrollable sobs. My mother was no longer there to mother me even as an adult. Her love, her wisdom, her experience, gone in an instant. I'm choking up as I write this.

We still gathered for Christmas dinner. I still went to the Christmas Eve service. I went through the expected motions, but inside my heart was broken and emotions were extremely difficult to maintain. But I was able to make it through, swallowing my pain as was required, only making the grief more intense. 

My mother wished to be cremated and was. But for some reason, her ashes were assigned to me for safekeeping until her memorial service and interment. I numbly accepted the container and kept it as carefully as possible. I felt the sting of tears every time I looked at it. I wrote the tribute from my brother and sister, and me that was read at the memorial service. A nephew read it. There was no way I could have. I don't know if I still have it. I'm doubly sorrowful if I don't have it saved somewhere. 

My mother was laid to rest with my father at Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery. Once a year I drive there to visit and leave red roses, my parents' favorite flower. I cannot hold back the tears as I look at their simple white marker. I don't even make the attempt not to and there is no shame attached to the tears there. It's been ten years, yet feels fresh all over again today. 

I genuinely pray no one truly thinks I should be over it by now, that I should move on, because that exposes a degree of hardheartedness and a lack of grace and mercy. But I know there likely are some who feel that way. My grief is what it is. I cannot shut it off on command. I don't know when I will mark this anniversary with only fond memories and no tears. I do not place that burden on me and hope my readers will follow suit. 

My greatest comfort comes from the knowledge God accepts my pain. Even though I know my mother is with him and has unending joy in his presence. Even though I have every confidence I will see her again and that is a cause for rejoicing, it is tempered by grief and may still be for a long time. I don't know. But I refuse to be ashamed of it because my Savior is not ashamed of me for struggling this time of year. I can kneel before the manger and know I am accepted just as I am. Emotions included. 

The empty places at the table will always remind me of my loss. But it is also a means by which I honor the memory of my loved ones no longer with me. They are not forgotten. They are honored. My tears are there, but that's okay. God granted permission when Jesus wept over the death of his good friend Lazarus. If my Savior cries, then I can, too. It's called grace.