Category: Identity

Becoming Mom

Published on by bmfreeman101Leave a comment

I am blessed,at thirty-one, to still have the physical presence of my mother in my life.  The wisdom and steadfastness of her as love warrior in my life is a gift that I can never repay to her, but hope to pay forward with my own children.  Here are her words. . .

Anyone can give birth to a child and become a mother.  But it takes sacrifice, commitment, patience and love to become “Mom!”

It’s the sleepless nights tending to a newborn, the sacrifice of “self” each and every day, the constant watch over a toddler, nights spent awake watching over a sick child, the cancelled dinner or party plans at the last minute because of a fever or rash, the meals fit for kings prepared on a tight budget, the kissed boo-boos, the barf on your best dress, the holding of hands learning to cross a street and the trepidation letting go of hands to cross the street alone, the following of the school bus on the very first day of school to be sure they reach their destination.  The lost games, the tears you don’t have power to heal but somehow you do!  It’s standing in the rain to watch a sports game your child may or may not get to play in but wanting to be there “just in case!”  It’s being there for first loves, first dates, first heartbreaks!  Firsts!  Lasts!  Everything!  Day in, day out. . . because, well, that’s what moms do!

Sometimes, it means raising a child with health issues, sometimes disabilities. Sometimes, it means burying your child.  Sometimes it means tucking your dreams away for their future because they have other plans.  And that’s okay, because they have a right and duty to follow their own path.  And sometimes, it means watching them make horrible life decisions and loving them from afar, praying to God everything will be okay.  And sometimes it means loving them from afar because their life’s goals take them far away from you.

Being a mom is one of the most joyous and rewarding vocation’s any woman can ever hope for!  It is unconditional love at its finest.  And it is so very true that, as a mother, your heart is walking around on the outside of your body.  In my life, I have pieces of my heart walking around in eight incredible human beings.  I’m proud that they call me mom and I’m eternally grateful to God for entrusting their care and upbringing to me and their father.

Moms are their child’s biggest supporter, toughest adversary in tests of the will and harshest dose of conscience when you’ve screwed up.  But we do it for love!

To all the “mom’s” out there: Happy Mother’s Day!  Give yourself a little credit for raising up the next generation!  Motherhood is not for the feint of heart!  Nor is motherhood to be taken lightly!

With Mother’s Day just about here, I’m not sure I can celebrate my mothering yet.  I really haven’t arrived yet.

When I was seven and did my first confession, I remember confessing wasting energy opening the refrigerator and my white lies- and what if I was just keeping hold of information so I didn’t hurt anyone?  I was innocent, and loving and trusting.  But as I’ve grown older, I’ve become messier. A lot messier.

And not mom-blog messy of dishes undone and constant clutter, but the evil of spewing poison from my mouth, critical and judgmental, with downright disgust and hatred in my heart at times.  For the ones I love most and hold most dear to my heart.  Messy.  Ugly. Sinful.

And my mother, my love warrior mother, continues to love.  Love me!  Love deeply.  And speak grace and truth over me and each of my siblings.  Holding us accountable to our ugly and our sin, but pushing us forward.  Always forward.  Higher.  Better.

A mother’s love is the most beautiful love that pushes us to be our very best selves, because in Jesus, we can be.  We are new creations and a mother’s love remembers.  That somewhere in her messy, ugly, sinning adult, is the most beautiful gift from God.  An infant.  A new creation who is precious in His sight.  Who is worthy of her trying, her love.  Her all in all.

I’m not there yet.  My children are babies.  Whose energy is the most trying test for me.  They are innocent, and loving and trusting.  Their little mouths have only confessed utmost love for me.  Never uttered disdain or hate.  Their plump baby fingers have caressed and cared and clung.  Never pointed at me and spewed ugly.  Their eyes hold me in highest esteem, and they gift me with their love daily.  They’re in the years where I hold the most power, the most say and the most time.  In every moment, they are mine to steward over, to plant truth and grace into, and water and weed, and water and weed, and love on.

I pray.  Deeply.  That I will be able to be a love warrior in their lives.  To always, always, ALWAYS love them deepest because they are so very precious.  For all time.

True love “always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” (1 Corinthians 13:7 NIV)  God’s gift of a mother’s love is somehow closest to that of Christ’s in its depth, power and sacrifice.  I am eternally grateful.

 

Winter Blues

Published on by bmfreeman101Leave a comment

There’s something about stomach flu for New Year’s, the accompanying never ending dirty laundry and social isolation, the follow up illnesses, the single digit temperatures, and pitch darkness at 6 PM that leaves one in an existentialist crisis at the start of a brand spanking new year.  Or maybe just me.

Who am I?  What am I doing with my life?  Does any of this have meaning?

We get tired and discouraged.  Facing treatments and our mortality head on, or accompanying someone who is.  Starting businesses, taking on side work or more hours, trying to make ends meet.  Caring for babies with fevers or reflux night after night, or aging parents who have gotten confused as time passes day after day.  Having the same fights with our kids, our spouses.  Being alone.  Not hearing from God for any kind of direction.  Uncertainty.  Obstacles.  Doubt.  Fear.

Who am I?  What am I doing with my life?  Does any of this have meaning?

These questions and the feelings that accompany them can bring us to awful places.  But don’t run from them.  Don’t avoid or ignore them.  Sit with them.  Embrace them.

The darkness, the desert, the existential crisis place can be the holy ground where we meet God.  Where we, like Jacob, feeling lost and alone may arise and say, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” (Genesis 28:16B NIV)

Most of us want to wait until we’re on the “other side” of troubles to share our story, to relate with and love on people, to begin new journeys, to be totally and freely ourselves.  We feel like hard times and places are to be overcome, so that we can start anew.

My life counselor and pater familias reminded me earlier this week about the power of “dripping truth,” when we aren’t in a place to do more.  Different seasons mean different roles to play, and if God is sovereign than He is aware of every detail in our lives,  He knows.  He knows, “we (may be) hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” (2 Corinthians 4:8-9 NIV)  There is plan for us in the hard, difficult places.  He is there, in the midst.

The place where I end is my beginning.

ChristmasTrees.jpg

Somewhere in between Christmas and Easter, in the months we call “winter,” we cling to the unexpected birth of Messiah and look forward to a glorious Resurrection.  In this dead season, where nothing flowers and we struggle and wonder if there’s a point to anything, we wait with Hope for the victory over death that we know has come.

Isaiah prays over our meals each night, “Bless our food, and help the things grow up so well.”  We prayed in the summer over our harvest, but he continues to pray the same prayer into the winter season.  How important this lesson is, and amazing that it comes from my spirited three year old.  To pray in the dead time.

The time when we don’t see any progress, no blossoming or growing.  The times where it feels like we’re just hanging on, and persevering through the hard parts of life, namely sickness and death in whatever form that comes.

“The climate in which prayer flowers is that of the desert, where the comfort of man is absent, where the secure routines of man’s city offer no support, and where prayer must be sustained by God in the purity of faith.”  (Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer)

The greatest of faiths are built in the times where we ask the hard questions.  Who am I?  What am I doing with my life?  Does any of this have meaning?  When you’re tempted to give up, press on.

The place where I end is my beginning.

“Through Jesus… let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise–the fruit of lips that openly profess His name.” (Hebrews 13:15 NIV)  The season is passing.  There will be new springs, new Life, and more troubles, more death.  A heart that trusts and continues to praise, even in the midst, honors Him.

We must start here.  We must share our stories, relate with and love on people, begin new journeys.  Be totally and freely ourselves.

A Step Away

Published on by bmfreeman101Leave a comment

This month has been a crazy one.  For most of us, I think.

Between election results and backlash and strange swinging weather in the Mid Atlantic, Thanksgiving celebrations and a seemingly slower Black Friday weekend (Cyber Week, yes?), this November has rushed by, pushing us closer to 2017 than I can comprehend.

I can’t help but pray for unity in this season.  There’s been so much division, so many soapboxes with so much ranting this year.

But you know what?  We’re all trying.  There’s unity in that we care.  In our activism and quest for justice.  We may not see eye to eye, and we might be on opposing sides of the proverbial coin, but we care.  We love.  We screw up.  We maybe talk too much, but we try again.  And we’re called to forgive.  To converse.  To keep loving.

So please, dear ones, stop pointing fingers at the people around you.  Don’t vilify your neighbor for checking a box, or label them some derogatory term that simplifies the entirety of their being into a single word.  Just don’t.

We’re not Democrat or Republican.  Nasty women or deplorables.  We can’t be boxed in by our gender, our nationality, our religion.  We’re not contained within a noun for sexuality.  We’re not just our location, our economic state, or our education.  We’re human.  In all of our glorious infinite and infinitesimal diversity, complexity and potential.  And most of us are trying our damnedest to do this human thing right.

We’re all just a step away.  A step away from being an entirely different person in an entirely different scenario.

Our culture pushes us to take pride in “creating ourselves.”   But control is an illusion– think about all the factors you didn’t choose for yourself.  Your birthplace, the color of your skin, your gender, your parents.  Your family.  The socio-economic status you were born into.  The public school you attended.  Or the private one that your parents decided on for you.  To think that we did anything on our own for our own is unmerited pride.  There are just too many factors in our lives that were written.

But for the grace of God go I.

If you’re angry or agitated with the world around you, first take a look in the mirror and examine yourself.  “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23 NIV)  We’ve all hated, and spoken untruth.  In this age of internet and social media, we’ve helped propagate division and probably told a few jokes at another’s expense.  Or laughed at one.  Or been spiteful behind some screen that makes us more confrontational than ever before with someone we disagree with at an ideological level.

We accept and join along in the media circus.  With the bashing and the division.  We allow and join in on the smack talk, and don’t seek answers on policy or push for resolution on some of the biggest issues facing the whole of the American people today:  a mountain of national debt, dangerous overspending, an aging population, whose safety net is quickly disappearing, and this strange obsession with the poor and marginalized, either vilifying them for the “choices” they make or elevating their interests to predominate over the common good.

And we let the media distract us.  We listen to what we want to hear, don’t fact check and re-peat and re-post without a thought for unity.  We allow division and untruth into our homes.  We talk about it at our water coolers and over our dinner tables.  We unveil and flaunt our most base selves, before our coworkers, our families.  Our children.

We embrace the division.  Revel in it, even.  And talk about how different the “other” is.

Tell that to your babies.

Tell them we need Jesus.  That as a society, we dig up dirt and like to point fingers when the problem is in us.  That sin is rampant in this fallen world.  That politics are supposed to be about policy and philanthropy about loving people.  Period.  And then.  Speak with respect.  Listen deeply.  Educate yourself.  Those little eyes are watching.

Most people aren’t left or right.  We’re right here, in the middle.  And our states are some blend of purple in these election years.  Most of us try hard to treat the person in front of us with dignity and respect, despite our standings and our platforms.  We really aren’t all that different.

The answer to our division and brokenness?  It has never been outside of us-in a government, or legislation or policy.  The answer lies within us.  Micah wrote more than 2,500 years ago, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”  (6:8 NIV)  We must embrace Emmanuel, God with us, and move forward, walking humbly and understanding His story.  We’re all just a step away.

To Life

Published on by bmfreeman1011 Comment

To Zoe, my little bird, who turned a year this month.  To all the world’s children, with love.

Dear one,

You are so loved.  Truly.

You are breathtaking.

In all of the world, in all time, there will be never be another like you.

So be you.  Be complicated, wonderful you.  The one who is teary eyed with joy-pain, who has reminiscent-laughing-anger and a thousand other hyphenated emotions.

Don’t let them tell you you’re not normal, that you’re too much for being painfully, vibrantly alive.

For the times your head is empty except for the sensual rain on your skin or the all-encompassing joy of an embrace, and the times your mind races with opportunities and consequences and eight hundred and seventy-one other thoughts.  For every complicated bit, my darling.  You are loved.  With a deep, real love that knows you are enough.  In all that you are and all you will be.

For you are not this moment, or the next, or the next.  But a wonderful story that’s only beginning.  You are all of the moments, my love.  And the story will be glorious, so treacherous, so full of love and joy and pain.  It is not one moment that defines you.  So do not be afraid.

You are not, now.  You stared at me with brave eyes before your first steps in the sand.  You throw yourself into our arms, and giggle at crashing waves and big dogs.  You stand wide legged and strong, bracing yourself for the upcoming challenges.  You grow and explore, and discover and grow.

You are amazing.

There will be days.  Days you are not brave at all, but uncertain.  And scared.  But you are so okay.

Continue, my love.  Persevere.  True love endures all things.

Embrace the moments.  The seasons.  The constants and the changes.

I love you.  Always.

 

In the Heart of God

Published on by bmfreeman101Leave a comment

My heart hurts.

The news is covered in tragic tales of loss.  Fathers and husbands, sons and nephews.  All over the web, the newspapers, social media. While there is mourning, there is even more judgment.  Hate.  Ignorance.  People “choosing sides” in what they post and comment on.

The news media digs up back stories as if petty theft justifies a murder.  And I can’t help but wonder if it were me, just which “me” would be portrayed.

The 20 year old ace student who drank and worked a lot.

The “lost” and underemployed 23 year old, who grappled with the way the world worked.

The pregnant woman, on top of things with her white collar job and hunger for God.

The stay at home 30 year old mother, the financial wreck and seemingly unstable woman who cries at church and sometimes feels overwhelmed with her three year and ten month old who need her.

All of us have complicated identities.

All of us, every one, are this hodgepodge mess of success and defeat, sin and grace.  And we’re all either worthy of death or worthy of redemption.  And while the news tries to piece together stories of victim’s pasts for some kind of seamless judgment as sinner or saint, our God says we can be both.

We stand in front of Him, sin-stained and unworthy.  Repugnant before the King of Kings.  But He reaches down to cover us.  He wraps His arms around us as the prodigals, and clothes us in “garments of salvation and (arrays us) in a robe of His righteousness” (Isaiah 61:10B NIV)

We become “His children, (and) we are His heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory”  (Romans 8:17A NLT) when we choose Him to stand in the gap for our insufficiency.

Heart of God

We live in this evil ridden world where problems aren’t as simple as the Confederate flag or lack of education, financial inequality or gun ownership.  It’s complicated.  We’re born into a fallen world where the inheritance is sin.

Sin begets sin begets sin begets sin.

In Matthew 6, Jesus points out that if you’ve ever been angry at your neighbor, you’re guilty of murder.  If you’ve looked at a woman with lust, you’re guilty of adultery.  With generations of sin introduced to the habitat of sin, we can’t help but be very lost, very hurting and broken sinners.

The world is way more complicated.

One of the greatest successes of Satan is the belief in “End Times” that bring judgment for all sinners and despair for all believers.

When we vilify our neighbor, and simplify and dismiss the world as headed toward the proverbial “hell in a hand basket,” then we’re not concerned with sharing the Love of Christ.  We no longer have compassion for our fellow man, or hurt at the suffering of the loss of unity between God and people, and people with one another.  In fact, we step away from the Heart of God completely, and begin to think that there are those not worth saving.

Christ came with the clean slate for all who dare to call upon His Name to be saved (Romans 10:13 NIV), “for it is by grace (we) have been saved.” (Ephesians 2:8A NIV).

The person of Jesus reserved His greatest judgment for those holding God as untouchable to those most broken and hurting, and held great compassion for those who have yet to know the Love of God.

As believers, our sin and brokenness are just as despicable, but miraculously we are covered in grace, and our stories need only to be His.  We can not stand in judgment over the lost, feigning to know the complete hearts of men, but rather, ought mourn over the loss of Life.

This is when we are in the Heart of God.

Mitigating Weakness

Published on by bmfreeman101Leave a comment

We live in this world where we think we should be perfect.  News stories embroiled in controversy and judgment.  Instagram filters and photoshop for so many teenagers, let alone magazines.  Advertisements shrieking beauty and attention and money, selling the elusive perfection.  Expectation, expectation.

Criticism.

We apply for schools, or work, or meet new people, or God forbid, date.  And have to give this account of ourselves.  Life necessitates us committing to exposing ourselves.  Looking for work is terrible:  listing your life in blurry dates and bullet points, searching Indeed.com and wondering if your resume is ever actually read by a human being.  Character examinations, cover letters and the challenge of explaining your career decisions and gaps in employment in first interviews make us paranoid.  We begin to question ourselves for every move we make.  We’re afraid to take chances, make mistakes.  And dating is even worse.

But life is messy.  We are imperfect.  And our stories have much more to tell of grace and eeking by than they do high on the mountaintop successes.

As I grow older, I find that God is so patient and loving with my flaws, my shortcomings.  My bossiness and a lot of ignorance.  My sharp words and fear of confrontation.  My hate of change, and a mild inheritance of OCD.

In His infinite wisdom, He created each of us perfectly.  All of our character is intricately designed to worship Him, to love Him.  To honor Him.

Paul says that “when I am weak, then I am strong.”  (2 Corinthians 12:10B NIV)

As we mature, we begin to understand that our messiness, our insecurities and our brokenness are capable of honoring Him too.  In laying bare all of ourselves– our strengths, our weaknesses, our desires, our fears– at the foot of the cross, Christ can begin to do His transformative work.

Our hesitancy can become intentionality.

Our directness can make us powerful truth speakers.

Our irrational fears can motivate us.

Our neurotic attention to detail can benefit a mindful servant’s heart.

Our ambivalence can be set aflame.

Our uncertainty is transformed to trust.

Love transforms us.  Perfect love doesn’t question itself and pick apart the flaws, but flings itself into the ocean of selflessness and is.  No beginning.  No end.  There’s a beautiful poem, “Saint Francis and the Sow,” that says,

“though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing…”

All parts of us can be healed.  Can be loved.  Can bring light and love to a broken, messy world that is desperate.  We are worthy of second interviews, second dates.  And lifetimes of commitment.

Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (NIV)  Isn’t it incredible that God, the Creator of the universe and each thing in it, knows our every detail, and loves every bit of us anyway?  He knew.

He knew.

Defining Me

Published on by bmfreeman101Leave a comment

My pater familias likes to remind me that we are “human beings.”  Not human doings.  Personally, I need a lot of reminding.  When I was in school, I needed to remember I wasn’t just a student.  When I was new to the workforce, I wasn’t just some ignorant kid.  When I was in government consulting, I still wasn’t defined by my job.  And when I left to work in a kitchen, and then life asked me to stay at home because of work changing and changing family dynamic, I wasn’t defined by that either.  And I’m still not defined by all that I do.  Or don’t do.

We live in a world hellbent on identities.  Who we are defined by what we do, what we accomplish.

The problem with this, of course, is that circumstances change.  We live in a world of constant motion.

We’re single.  Married.  Painfully divorced or separated after years.  Together for longer than not.

We leave our jobs of five, ten, 15, 40 years.  Or are fired.  Or walk away in search of better, different.  We are left unemployed through sickness, or layoffs, or life.

We have more babies than we were “supposed to.”  Or choose not to.  Or life doesn’t work out the way we thought, and we’re on hold.  With relationships, let alone children.

We suffer, be it when our hearts break in a million tiny pieces, or we have an invisible disease that’s killing us from the inside.

We’re happy, and in love, and our hearts are raw outside our body for the first, or the tenth time.

In the English world, in this post-postmodern society, we define a lot with the statement “I am.”  And we put stickers on the back of our car to make sure the world knows these things that we “are.”

But God chooses none of these things to define Himself.  When he reveals Himself to man for the first time after the fall, He is the divine être, the source of all being.  And “All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made”  (John 1:3 KJV)

“I AM” says the Creator of the universe in Exodus 3.  Can you fathom the smirk on His face reading a “Jesus is a Democrat” bumper sticker?

We get so caught up in defining and redefining ourselves.  I get caught up in defining myself.  The French/Communications major who can’t get her three year old to understand.  The words.  Coming.  Out.  Of my.  Mouth.

What my identity appears to be.  Of what kind of box I live in as a white, married, heterosexual, Christian female mother and how much that box can limit if that’s the way I define myself.

Vomit.

In Galatians 3, Paul reminds us that “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”  (NIV)

mqdefault

God chooses over and over to define Himself not by color or race, not by sexual orientation or political standing.  But by His character.  His love.  His grace.  His perfection.  His Word.  His sovereign Will and judgment.  And Hebrews 13 assures us that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

We don’t have to concern ourselves about what we’re “doing.”  Or have fear or take pride in being identified by this moment.  Or the next.  Not by our circumstances, successes, failures or accomplishments.  We’ve been adopted as heirs to Christ, and the most important identity we can take on is His character.  His Name that never changes.