by Ashley Haupt | May 14, 2013
I’ve been slowed.
Life is still whizzing around me while I make my way around it like Bambi on his new legs.
Wobbly. Weak.
Baby number four inside me claims my energy and wellness, and I am forced to move slowly. Accustomed to greater productivity and pace, it sits ill.
So. Tired.
My five year old, Abby, asks for stories. In the car, at the table, at breakfast, after school, always she asks for stories. Stories from when I was girl, stories from when she was a girl, stories that are imaginary.
And the little girl who once loved stories is a grown up mother, and she has no room for them now.
My mind doesn’t dwell on story, except this one I’m living in, and I know this is sad. In my spare time, I often read how to be more productive and efficient in all this small story of mine. Non-fiction, self help, spiritual reading: kids, house, family, church.
But slowed down as I am, I find story outside myself again. Productivity disabled, I put aside the practical books, and pick up others. Oliver Twist, The Giver. I settle into the couch on a Friday night in early May with a view out the window.
Snow falls in thick sparkles like magic in a circle of streetlight. Snow in May.
Such a workaday world and not enough room to believe in magic. But maybe, just for a bit, my weary spirit finds rest in a world outside my own. I wish to be more like her, my Abby, and I remember my childhood, how golden with promise and hope. I remember how wildly I loved my parents, loved life, pursued everything with passionate enthusiasm. Now I am tired and worn and limping through this season.
Abby wrote me a story into my gratitude journal tonight before bed, complete with pictures, and this was the story:
Rosie slowly walked. She was nervous.
Then she knew what to do. She went to the pond and she prayed.
It’s story enough for me now.
I form the wish into a prayer and send it out into the streetlight circle of magic still falling.
It’s never too late.
by Ashley Haupt | May 9, 2013
Moody Publishers are releasing a new devotional this week called “Cassie and Caleb Discover God’s Wonderful Design,” by Susan and Richie Hunt. It is a beautifully illustrated hardback book with short, story-centered devotions designed for kids 5-8 years old. Husbands, if you are looking for a Mother’s day gift, this might be a great idea for you.
I introduced the book to my five year old, Abby, a couple weeks ago. She loves it. The stories are applicable, the family is realistic (not sugar-coated Christians), and the truths are solid. The focus alternates from Cassie to Caleb so as to be useful for either gender. All of the lessons happen in the context of family, with secondary characters like grandparents, single moms, friends, etc… After each devotion, the “Let’s Talk” section leads you through discussion with your child, with the opportunity to look up verses and pray.
Most parents like me want to have these meaningful discussion with their children, but sometimes we lack the means to follow through. This is a great tool to put your desire into action. In the introduction, the authors identify five key truths they want to teach:
- God’s design for gender roles
- finding Jesus in all of Scripture
- God’s Word as our authority
- Church as significant spiritual family
- the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives
The book is unapologetically complementarian, yet addresses the heart issues behind the differing roles. I have enjoyed this opportunity to talk with Abby about foundational issues and invest these spiritual truths into her life at such a formative age.
If you would like to put your name in to win a free copy, click here and leave a comment with your kids’ names and ages.
If you would like to purchase a copy, the book can be found here.
by Ashley Haupt | Apr 27, 2013
Have you ever passed a field of spent sunflowers? Their burnt brown heads are all bowed in the same direction, like a class of naughty kindergarteners abashed by their scolding teacher.
They look as though they considered the dust from whence they came, and maybe we all should do that occasionally? I have passed that same field when the stately golden heads were lifted high and proud and petal-full.
But the spent sunflowers are beautiful in their bare humility, like surrendered souls having shed all pretense to self-sufficiency. I’ve held my own head high, too, on a stiff neck and I’ve withered down to brown humility and though painful, one is infinitely better. Because to be brought low is to know the security and stability of the Source rather than wavering on your own skinny stalk.
This is the one I esteem, declares the Lord. He who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my Word. Isaiah 66:2
Jesus told those heartsick disciples on the road to Emmaus, Didn’t the Messiah have to suffer these things and enter into His glory? (Luke 24:26)
Suffering, it’s everywhere in Scripture, and everywhere around us, and sometimes we’d just rather have our best life now.
God doesn’t seem to view pain the same way we do. C.S. Lewis wrote in The Screwtape Letters that God seems to take His most precious saints through some of the roughest, driest valleys (I believe he uses the very British word “troughs” instead).
His thoughts are not our thoughts; His ways are not our ways.
So we bow our heads with the sunflowers, give humble thanks, receive the manna-grace for today. We look forward to the day when all our suffering blows away like dust in the wind.
Do you feel withered and barren today, humbled before others or maybe just before your Maker?
by Ashley Haupt | Apr 10, 2013
Benjamin turns four years old the day I drive to help my dad and brother admit my grandmother into a geriatric lock-down facility. I finish the last touches of sweet white icing in a spiderweb pattern on his chocolate cake before I leave. He loves Spiderman.
The clouds tower high like glowering gray giants as I drive to the facility. Nervously, I smooth my ponytail and wipe my mouth of the remnants of lunch I had eaten on the way. My hands smell of vanilla frosting. My stomach is queasy.
I walk timidly in the front doors. The facility is dimly lit and smells of urine, but quiet except the sound of hospital personnel at work. Grandma is lying on a bed, rolling from side to side in pain. I hold her hand and she clings tightly to mine. We answer queues of questions, trying to paint a picture of the woman on the bed, explain how we had journeyed to this point.
Thomas* nods and listens, makes notes. We can tell he’s seen his own share of troubles by his familiarity with the pain meds we’re discussing. He has braces on his ankles, mentions two hip surgeries, and diabetes, too. I check his hand for a wedding ring, but there is none. I’m sad. No one should have to go through all that alone.
Grandma writhes on the bed, pain meds ineffective. She becomes more agitated. I rub her legs, hold her hand, tell her it’s going to get better. That’s why we’re here. She pulls back her lips until you can see her fillings on the top front teeth. I find that I am tense, too. I purposely relax my face.
An hour passes. Nurses come and go and a doctor, too. Everyone seems as mystified as we’ve been as to the source of the pain.
During a lull in the questions and visits, I tell Dad his eighth grandchild is coming in December. His haggard face breaks into a smile and a tiny ray of sunshine brightens the gloomy room, even while Grandma writhes on the bed. The power of new life. Life’s relentless circle, and maybe the tiny ones ease the pain of the aging just a little. I remember how Tim’s grandmother held her new baby great granddaughter the night before she passed away.
Dad tells Grandma about the new baby coming. She replies that she already knew, which of course she didn’t. She tells me I’ll be such a great mother. Then he tells Thomas, who asks me if it’s my first baby. He seems to be feigning interest, but I think of the empty finger and wonder if it’s sad for him.
I tell him it’s my fourth.
It doesn’t seem fair, new life within me, birthday party waiting at home, and we leave grandma in a wheel chair with a dispassionate aid standing by taking her blood pressure. So much life, and I wish I knew how to spread it around a little more evenly, like I did with the chocolate icing on Benjamin’s cake. Scoop up more frosting, smooth it on, even out this low place with a little extra. Enough sweet for everyone.
I try. I come back the next day during visiting hours. I memorize her patient code and speak it into the phone outside the locked doors. They let me in, lead us to a room to be alone.
Grandma cries a little when she sees me and tears rise in me, too, and I think we’re going to be a big weepy mess, us two. But instead, she cheers up and so do I. She tells me about group therapy and the doctor who looks like a movie star, only she can’t remember which one, and how she talked and talked, telling them all about her family. She says she enjoyed it.
And tenderness rises up within me, for her, this weak woman with a tear still on her cheek, and I know, I know how God feels about her.
He loves her.
Despite all the weakness and failing and anxiety and fear, He loves her, so tenderly. I feel Him, pouring it into my own heart. I take her hand and tell her, It’s going to be all right.
Sometimes we just need to hear that. And it’s true, even in the darkest shadows of sad places, there is still hope.
I’m reminded again: It’s not the healthy that need a doctor, but the sick.
The sick and weak and falling-down failures, he loves us.
Lord, make us willing to open our lives and spread the sweet around. Make Your will my will. Align my life with Your purposes. Let me not hoard sweetness, but share it with those who have little.
by Ashley Haupt | Mar 26, 2013
My three-year-old son doesn’t like to pray.
He doesn’t really grasp abstract concepts like God and Jesus yet. He’s pretty sure Spiderman hung the moon in the sky.
I try not to get too fussy about it; I know these things take time. And if I am honest, prayer is one of my weakest spiritual disciplines.
I still remember sitting in a class for young seminary wives as the teacher went over a prayer notebook she had given us. The weight of the notebook was like a load of guilt on my heart as she explained how we ought to be systematically praying over each aspect of life, ministry, country, family, etc, on a daily and weekly schedule, so as to insure we didn’t miss anything.
I think I gave up right then and there.
This is how Ben closes his eyes.
So, I am circling back, kneeling down, and asking God to teach me.
Teach me to pray. I’m ready now.
And I’m beginning to see this: prayer is this way of making the invisible kingdom visible. For we live in this loud world, but we serve this quiet, invisible God.
In the Old Testament, the priest burned incense in the temple, and it pleased the Lord, and the priest prayed for the people of Israel.
But now, we kneel or we close our eyes, or we lift them up in prayer, and the Holy Spirit swells within us, rising to God with the fragrant aroma of burning holiness and this is our incense now.
And if we could see it, the power of these quiet, invisible prayers, rising to heaven and filling Revelation’s golden bowls before His throne, I wonder if we wouldn’t struggle so much to pray.
Abba Father inhales the sweet scent of our whispered words and He is pleased.
We believe in this invisible kingdom, we trust in You as Father, and so we pray, Thy will be done.
So be it.
Revelation 5:8 “…each one holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.”
Psalm 141:2 “May my prayer be counted as incense before You; the lifting up of my hands as the evening offering.”