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Okay, so I don’t want to be one of those people… but honestly, aren’t we all a little too impressed with our children? That’s not a terrible thing… is it????
So here’s the deal… uh, hum hmmm… “why I think my child is a prodigy, by Karli Venable.” You see, it’s just that lately my little Noah-bear has been overly impressing his mommy and daddy with his insanely creative imagination. Now I’m not sure, but I think he’s a little “advanced” for his age… you know, maybe just a little bit ”ahead” of his time : ) (Hopefully you know I’m kidding… okay, well, maybe there’s just a teensy weensy part of me that is not totally kidding and might think my kid is kind of impressive at times… I gotta be honest.)
Seriously though, Noah has been blowing me away lately with his little imagination. The other night I gave him a bread stick that came in my salad and he instantly grabbed it and started running it up and down his high-chair saying, “vrooooommm” (that’s his car noise) and “go go go go car”, making it stop and go and spin around. Another time last week, he was watching a praise video (Hillsongs kids praise – he has been entranced with this lately) and he lined up all his stuffed animals and made sure their eyes were so they could “see” the video too… then, he made them dance and raised their hands. For a 2 and 1/2 year old or 3 year old, I would think this is totally normal… but I was so taken aback by it for some reason with my barely 2 year old boy. It’s like all the sudden my baby boy, who has sat back and quietly watched the world around him for the most part, is exploding. He was like a sponge taking it all in – and now we’re seeing all this creative energy bursting forth. He surprises me every single day.
Tonight before he went to bed, he wanted to be with “mommmm” as he so affectionately refers to me these days. So he sat on the bed with me and grabbed my wallet. (It’s a sad, sad statement of things, but for a long time now whenever we go to the store, he likes to get the credit cards out of our wallet and swipe them in the machine.) Anyway, he opened the wallet and started pulling the cards out one by one and then putting them all back in. I have a pretty small wallet so he had to work at getting them to fit just right in their slots… and of course, being a toddler, he did it over and over and over and over and over and over… well, you get the idea.
After he did the whole taking them out and putting them back in again thing I don’t know how many times, he started taking the credit cards and “driving” them in… with his little “vroooommm” for each one… then he would close the wallet and say “cose da doors” and then open it and say “open” and drive the credit “cars” back in. He was pretending the cards were cars and the wallet was a garage. Isn’t that creative? (Well, you know maybe not to you… but obviously, I really thought so.) And these are just a few little examples that my brain can come up with at the moment — but they are only the tip of the iceberg. It’s so fun to see Noah create and pretend.
And then, not to drive this prodigy thing into the ground but he then proceeded to tell me what color the different cards were. He’s so great with his colors… has been for a while… but of course, it still impresses me every time as though it was happening for the first time. He ended his performance tonight by grabbing the cards and feeding them to Fluffles (his lamb). And he imitated the eating and biting sounds with his mouth… where did he learn that?! I’m sure just by watching us do it with him, but still, it amazed me.
So yeah, maybe I’m just a mom who’s totally undone by her child and very easily impressed. I think a little bit or even a lot of that is a good thing… as long as it’s not the out of control headline-making stuff that defines “those people” that none of us want to ever become. (I have this sermon running through my mind of John Piper’s where he said that he never ever says that he’s “proud” of his children… overjoyed, undone, humbled… but not proud… not full of pride.) Ouch. That was one of those that just seems to stick with you… every time I want to say “I’m so proud of you,” I subconsciously change my words now… it means the same thing, maybe even more, if I say instead, “I love you so much… you amaze me in every way.”
Noah also has a new found fascination with watching any kind of live music. He LOVES the prayer room (online or in person). Stephen took him a few weeks ago and when they were leaving, Noah let go of his hand and tried to escape back into the double doors into the prayer room and threw a toddler tantrum because he had to leave. (I guess if your toddler is going to throw a tantrum, it’s nice that it is because he wants to go to the Prayer Room.) And if we’re watching the prayer room online from home, he cries if we turn it off. The other night I happen to have the tv on and the Country Music Awards were on one of the channels. And much to his daddy’s dismay, Noah was completely enraptured by it. He crawled up on my lap and while the songs were playing he took his little hands and kept a beat by hitting his knees. It was SO cute that we suffered through country song after country song. (I told Stephen Noah’s got some Texas country roots – what can I say : ) Now Noah brings me the remote control and taps his knees and asks for the music every time we’re downstairs because he thinks I can make it come back on. So cute though.
One last Noah story and off to bed — last night, while we watched North Carolina basically pummel Michigan (who, by the way, I was rooting for — I am convinced that if you took my brackets and just picked the exact opposite of whatever I choose, you would go all the way)… anyway, she said with a hint of bracket bitterness in her voice, Noah was watching that Hillsong praise dvd again (on portable dvd) and Stephen walked into the kitchen and Noah was just standing in the middle of the kitchen with both hands raised in the air watching the dvd. Oh, how I wished we caught it on camera… it was one of those moments you know you’ll never forget. It was SO sweet.
Yes, my child impresses me every day. And it isn’t pride either. It’s unfathomable wonder that this little person came from inside me… awe that Stephen and I made a covenant before the Lord for forever and the Lord allowed us to become ‘people-makers’… and appreciation of the glory of the human frame and the unique soul of every individual that especially seems brilliant as you behold your child. It’s utter humility… because I knew the minute I saw the little flicker of a pen point on a monitor and heard Noah’s tiny little heart beating in the same way that I know every day that I watch him grow and learn now that my God is a Master Craftsman and an Artist like no one this world has ever known, worthy of all my adoration… because I know that I am but a guide and a shepherd (no small job or title by any means), but I am not the Author or Perfecter of Noah’s life. It is not me Who knows every hair on his head and every day of his lilfe before even one comes to pass… because though Noah came from me, I know he does not belong to me.
The word prodigy means something inexplicable or something unusually marvelous and extrordinary… and so, I have to be honest and say that I do think Noah is a child prodigy… but it is not because of me or even because of Noah. It is the handiwork of God that makes him so, and not just Noah, but every child… and not just children, but all of us. Even me. Even you. You are inexplicably marvelous, because you are His. How crazy and glorious is that?! May you know the heart of the Father tonight as He rejoices over you with singing and gazes over the balcony of heaven with the undone heart that only a parent really understands (though only in part) at you, His inexiplicable treasure.
Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” (Job 1)
He gives and He takes away… blessed be His Name. Those words are piercing my heart this morning.
Last night before I went to bed, I read a few blogs, something I haven’t done much of lately, and I came across MckMama’s blog through several other friends’ blogs. Her youngest baby boy, Stellan, went into the PICU (pediatric ICU) on Sunday with SVT (supraventricular tachycardia), which basically means his heartbeat is irregular and extremely fast. I am one of those people that reads stories like these and they are always more than words on a page… my heart gets involved with the very real people on the other side of the story and I tend to carry them and pray for them as if I knew them intimately – (and in a sense I do, because they are the children of my Father and the friends of my Lord.) Thus, my heart was instantly undone and Stephen and I prayed for Stellan together and then I prayed several times last night… and I feel like I was wrestling in prayer even in my dreams for this beautiful little boy (whom I have never met) all night long.
There are trials, and there is suffering, and then there is the experience of watching your child suffer or worse, of losing a child. I do not think there is any pain in this world that could be worse. Nothing could even come close.
I had my first surgery when I was two years old and had some sort of operation every other year from that point forward throughout my childhood. I was always getting poked and prodded by doctors and I spent months in body casts from my ankles to right under my arms. But that was nothing compared to some friends I made in the halls of those pediatric wards that were my ‘home away from home.’ I remember one girl in particular, Beth… she had leukemia (I think) and was so frail that many of the other kids wouldn’t play with her, because they were afraid of her, I guess. But she and I became great friends and we’d play Candyland (her favorite game) for hours in the hospital playroom. Funny what you remember. She was the reason that I wanted to become a pediatric oncologist for most of my life (a pediatric cancer doctor). Obviously, the Lord hijacked my life and took me into ministry but up until I was around 20 years old, that was my plan… just because of my friend Beth. Anyway, at night, I remember hearing her crying out in pain down the hall. But you couldn’t see that pain in her face… she was so brave and so full of life. You wouldn’t know, if you couldn’t see it physically, that she was even sick.
My little cousin (who is not so little anymore but I still call her ‘my little cousin’) was the same way when she was faced with lymphoma as a little girl. She was the bravest of us all… and I think of the lot of us, she was the one who handled everything with the most courage and character (which is good, since it was really happening to her more than anyone else). And she is still that way, even more so as she grows up. She is unlike any other almost-16 year old I have known – I have so much respect for her. And honestly, I think those really difficult years of chemo, spinals, and every kind of yucky hospital experience you could imagine only made her stronger… her relationship with the Lord more real… and her character more humble and upright. She has more compassion and generosity in her little finger, even as a teenager, than most adults I know. She is a living testimony of Matthew 18:4 or 19:14.
Kids are so resilient that way, you know. I really believe it’s that faith of a child that Jesus talked about with His disciples in the chapters mentioned above. I remember being scared of things when I was having surgery or in the hospital (I was especially scared of the power saw that cut the body casts off), but it never lasted that long. I wasn’t sad and most kids I knew in the hospitals weren’t sad. Their spirits were hard to crush. Fear was real in those settings, but it was momentary and a few balloons or a fun game of Candyland was enough to forget that we were actually chained to IV poles or in wheelchairs. It was far easier to deal with pain, hospitals, recoveries, doctors and disease in general as a child than it is as an adult. I am constantly asking the Lord to give me a childlike heart to persevere and trust and believe, because I know from experience how real and necessary childlike faith actually is.
But for the parents, it was a different story and a different experience. I still remember Beth’s mom’s face… she seemed so old and so sad to me. Beth lost her battle with cancer while I was still in the hospital. But from what I remember, Beth wasn’t scared of dying. She had that ‘faith of a child’ that saw the eyes of another world far better than the four walls of that hospital and chemotherapy. It wasn’t until I had a child of my own that the thought of her mom and dad walking out of those four walls without their little girl became something real to me. In the same way, the tears streaming down my own mom’s face as they tried for the 15th time to get an IV in and the strength she had as she slept in the chair next to me night after night and made sure life was somewhat normal and fun for me have become even more important to me now. My mom is my hero in that way. When Noah was a few months old, we had to get some blood tests and x-rays done on him. The blood tests were especially brutal… and it totally shook me up. And they were just blood tests! I told Stephen later that it was so much harder to be on that side of things… I would much rather be the patient that have my child be the patient… a million times more – there is no comparison at all really.
And that is why these words from MckMama provoked me in ways that words cannot explain this morning. I can only pray that I would have the grace, the humility and the eternal beauty in my own heart to testify of the greatness and goodness of God in the midst of something so difficult.
You know, we sing that song and jump around with our arms raised high… “He gives and takes away… He gives and takes away… Blessed be His Name.” But the reality, the deep and dark depth behind those words Job spoke thousands of years ago is something that I cannot even imagine. He had lost his property, yes. And his servants. And his livestock. But that was a drop in a bucket compared to the ocean of pain of losing not one, but ALL of his children. And it was upon hearing that news that Job arose, tore his garments, then fell to the ground in worship. He worshipped! With rivers of tears that many of us cannot imagine, Job spoke those words that are still speaking to us today in the midst of our own little (or sometimes big) trials… He gives, He takes away, but He is the Lord and blessed be His Name.
Please pray with all of us today that are crying out for healing for baby Stellan, for strength in his little body and in his parents’ hearts in the days ahead, and for the glory of Jesus Christ to be revealed to and through this family.
We are praying to Compassion Incarnate and to the God who also had a mother that wept over Him. He is the same God in the flesh who looked into the heart of the widow walking down the street in a town called Nain and was moved with compassion saying to her, “Don’t cry.” Jesus gave that mother back her only son that day… and though we don’t always understand what happens here in time and space, Jesus is the same Person He was that day in Nain. He is just as near to us as He was that boy’s mother 2000(ish) years ago. God doesn’t change. He is the same. Blessed be His Name.
You can read more about Stellan at the blog above. He really is a miracle and I wholeheartedly believe the Lord has marked his life to be a sign and a wonder to us all.
John Piper just released a fully illustrated hard copy book on suffering through the life of Job. I don’t have it but I’ve read Piper’s poetry related to Job and the passages below have been really touching my heart lately… so I thought I’d pass on some excerpts to you. You can read more here.
These paragraphs are from the end of each of the four sections in the poem. They are my favorite parts. Again, I did NOT write this (so as to avoid plagiarism and/or anything else… including a debate on how sovereignty and suffering work out theologically) — the poetry below is by John Piper.
Part One: O God Have Mercy on My Seed
Light candle one, and count the cost;
And ponder everything we’ve lost.
And let us bow before the throne
Of God, who gives and takes his own,
And promises, whatever toll
He takes, to satisfy our soul.
Come learn the lesson of the rod:
The treasure that we have in God.
He is not poor nor much enticed
Who loses everything but Christ.
Part Two: That I Should Bear This Pain, Not You
This candle two gives little light,
And does not make the darkness bright.
But keep it lit and you will find:
Far better this than being blind.
One little flame when all is night,
Proves there is such a thing as light.
One answered prayer when all is gone,
Will give you hope to wait for dawn.
Part Three: O Spare Me Now, My Friends, Your Packages of God
Come let us make with candle three
An advent warning by the sea -
A signal where the sailors cling
To life through reefs of suffering,
And need the blast of light and bell:
Beware, what here beneath may dwell.
Beware of subtle, shrewd assaults,
A half-truth can be wholly false.
Beware of wisdom made in schools,
And proverbs in the mouth of fools.
Beware of claims that rise too tall:
“the upright stand and wicked fall”
Beware the thought that all is vain,
In time God’s wisdom will be plain.
Part Four: Unkindly Has He Kindly Shown Me… God
Behold the light of candle four:
What we have lost God will restore
When he is finished with his art,
The silent worship of our heart.
When God creates a humble hush,
And makes Leviathan his brush,
It won’t be long until the rod
Becomes the tender kiss of God.
It is true – I am but a servant to the Tyrant of Love, crushed in His torrents and breakers. My body is broken and hurting, but my heart seems to be dancing in Love’s flames today. I could try, but I would not say it better than either of the women below, so I decided to just share their beautiful words instead.
In order to live in one single act of perfect Love, I offer myself as a victim of holocaust to Your Merciful Love, asking You to consume me incessantly, allowing the waves of infinite tenderness shut up within You to overflow into my soul, and that thus I may become a martyr of Your Love, O my God!
May this martyrdom, after having prepared me to appear before You, finally cause me to die and may my soul take its flight without any delay into the eternal embrace of Your Merciful Love.
I want O my Beloved, at each beat of my heart to renew this offering to You an infinite number of times, until the shadows having disappeared, I may be able to tell You of my Love in an Eternal Face to Face! — Therese of Lisieux
For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. (Deut 4:24)
Place me like a seal over your heart,
like a seal on your arm;
for love is as strong as death,
its jealousy unyielding as the grave.
It burns like blazing fire,
like a mighty flame.
Many waters cannot quench love;
rivers cannot wash it away. (Song of Solomon 8:6-7a)
May it be unto me according to Your word, my God and King.
If I owe all I have for being created, what can I add to being remade, and being remade in this way? It was less easy to remake me than to make me. It is written not only about me but of every created being, ”He spoke and they were made.” (Psalm 148:2) But He who made me by a single word, in remaking me had to speak many words, work miracles, suffer hardships, and not only hardships but even unjust treatment. “What shall I render to the Lord for all that He has given me?” (Psalm 115:2) In the first work He gave me myself; in His second work He gave me Himself; when He gave me Himself, He gave me back myself. Given and regiven, I owe myself twice over. What can I give God in return for Himself? …
God certainly deserves a lot from us since He gave Himself to us when we deserved it least. Besides, what could He give us better than Himself? Hence when seeking why God should be loved, if one asks what right He has to be loved, the answer is that the main reason for loving Him is “He loved us first” [1 John 4:9-10]. Surely He is worthy of being loved in return when one thinks of Who loves, whom He loves, and how much He loves… This divine love is sincere, for it is the love of One who does not seek His own advantage.
Bernard of Clairvaux – On Loving God
Last night my heart feasted on excerpts from Bernard of Clairvaux’s “On Loving God” (so rich – if you do not know who Bernard is, I recommend researching his life and writings) along with the glorious Gospel of John. I love John… I have to say. Packed and overflowing with Love Incarnate and Meekness Divine. Anyway, I read Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus (John 3) in a new way last night after reading the above. ”Given and regiven…” “You must be born again…” “God so loved the world that He gave…” “Worthy of being loved…”
My heart was reeling in light of Love Revealed in the Face of Christ and the grace that pours over His lips with each word from His mouth. I felt like saying, “Who ARE You?” Who are You God? I am undone again, as if we were just meeting for the first time! How do You do that? Only one taste, a tiny little morsel of Your goodness, unearths a bottomless abyss of longing within me to love You and be loved by You. What can I offer in return to Love so transcedent, so absolute? What can I give to the One that not only HAS but IS everything? Who I am that You are mindful of me… that You came so near, so close… that You remade me and called me “Yours” when I deserved less than nothing from You… that my “I love You” matters at all to Your infinitely perfect heart? Who ARE You? And Lord, who am I? Tell me again… I will not relent until You bless me.
I have so far to go, yet He is my confidence, the Author and Perfecter of my faith. He’s faithful. He’s good. Loving Jesus today.
Taste and see that the Lord is good… (Psalm 34:8a)
Your right hand upholds me and Your gentleness makes me great… (Psalm 18:35b)
You have stolen My heart, my sister, my bride… you have stolen My heart with one glance of your eyes… (Song of Solomon 4:9)
If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him… we love because He first loved us. (1 John 4:15-16, 19)
Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)
There is a cause. There is a reason… so my heart is on a journey deeper into the waiting room where I knock, I ask, I seek in Mary’s room until the Teacher comes and calls my Name (John 11). I will journey deeper into faith, for He who is coming will come and not delay… and I want to be called His friend on that day. The cost of friendship (with God) is of no loss to me – I count not the cost of pain or of shadows, for I know that You do. I only know that I am gripped by the tyrant of Love and a heart that longs only for Your words, “Friend, come up higher – come nearer…” No man can ease the desire of my heart and no devil can thwart the force that compels me. I am but a servant to Love, crushed in its torrents and breakers. (copied from a 2002 journal entry)
For context and in order to fully appreciate the above title, it might be helpful to read the post entitled kissing the face of God from earlier this month first.
I found a little treasure today… actually, I have stumbled upon a wealth of true Treasure today but that, if shared, is for another time. Anyway, I found a little prayer book that includes quotes, prayers and devotions from Therese of Lisieux. She was a Carmelite nun in the 19th century, who entered the convent in Lisieux at just 15 and died only nine years later of tuberculosis at the age of 24. I love the writings of Therese… I have quoted them here before. I don’t know… there’s just something about the way she expresses her love for Jesus…it moves my heart in a beautiful way towards a life of Love and Simplicity before God. The simple life of devotion - what she called the ”little way” of holiness and childlike abandonment to Love Himself - it’s just good for the soul.
Anyway, as I was reading through the poem I quote below, I had the thought that ”these are words that resound from the walls of Mary’s room.” Again, that’s just my own made up phrase/place from an earlier post talking about an eternal place of deep communion, love and service to Jesus Christ.
So here is an excerpt from what I was reading tonight:
Beside the tomb wept Magdalen at dawn, -
She sought to find the dead and buried Christ;
Nothing could fill the void now He was gone,
No one to soothe her burning grief sufficed.
Not even you, Archangels heaven-assigned!
To her could bring content that dreary day.
Your buried King, alone, she longed to find,
And bear His lifeless body far away.
Beside His tomb she there the last remained,
And there again was she before the sun;
There, too, to come to her the Saviour deigned, -
He would not be, by her, in love outdone.
Gently He showed her then His blessed Face,
And one word sprang from His deep Heart’s recess:
Mary! His voice she knew, she knew its grace;
It came with perfect peace her heart to bless. (Therese of Lisieux)
Which took me again to a good place for lingering… John 20. I love to ponder what took place at the empty tomb between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. I think about Mary at the tomb weeping at the loss of the One around whom all her life was now centered. She had watched, she had waited and she had wept… and now she arrives at the garden tomb just before the ever faithful sun is beginning to creep up over the horizon (as if to whisper with creation a secret soon to be revealed). Yet her mind cannot be consoled even by the dawn, the thought of another day without Him is just too unimaginable to bear. And something else has been revealed by dawn’s early light… it’s the stone… it’s gone and her Lord too! Angels spoke and others came and went, but Mary wept… “if you see the One I love, tell Him I am lovesick.”
This woman truly loved much… for she was loved first, and not by love fleeting and forgotten but by Love Himself. Mary had met with Mercy in the flesh, she had broken bread with the Bread of Life, she had beheld the Lamb crucified… how could she bear another hour on this earth without Him? Here, in a garden, as if to remind us where it all began, Mary Magdalene is literally bearing the first fruits of Jesus’ words in Matthew 9, “The attendants of the bridegroom cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.“ She is mourning for the Bridegroom.
But He would not be, by her, in love outdone.
Many waters cannot quench Love nor rivers wash it away. Love is stronger than the grave, burning like a blazing fire, the very flame of Yah. Death, oh death, where is your sting? Jesus is alive…
One day, my God! I, too, like Magdalen,
Desired to find Thee, to draw near to Thee;
So, over earth’s immense, wide-stretching plain,
I sought its Master and its King to see.
Then cried I, though I saw the flowers bloom
In beauty ‘neath green trees and azure skies:
O brilliant Nature! thou art one vast tomb,
Unless God’s Face shall greet my longing eyes.”
A heart I need, to soothe me and to bless, -
A strong support that can not pass away, -
To love me wholly, e’en my feebleness,
And never leave me through the night or day.
There is not one created thing below,
Can love me truly, and can never die.
God become man – none else’ my needs can know;
He, He alone, can understand my cry… (Therese of Lisieux)
O brilliant Nature, highest mountains and rose in bloom, deepest oceans and night’s full moon… thou art one vast and empty tomb, unless mine eyes at last shall see and know as I am known. There is only One Love that never dies, Whose flower never fades. Holy, holy… crucified…
Jesus is alive.
I read this post a couple weeks ago and just reread it again. Such a good post… thought I would share: BLINK
