Author Archives: PearlS

How have You loved us?

I’m determined to squeeze in one more post for the year. 

A friend of mine and I were quasi-lamenting over Christmas cards this year–the lack of, yes, but also the faint sorrow detected because of it.
She told me of one card received from an older woman who wrote in the mass letter that this year has been so awful, there was nothing worth writing about. In fact, there was no reason to take a happy picture with her family (it would have been impossible anyhow, due to Covid) or send it to anyone, so instead she included photocopies of pictures of years past and happier times. A photo of her as a toddler under the Christmas tree. One of her grown children when they were small. Christmases past, happier times.

Oh, it made me sad for this lady. And I think there must be many in this same despair.
It reminds me of Malachi, the last book in the Old Testament, right before God took a 400 year sabbatical (He didn’t really, He was just gearing up for an incredible entrance–)

“I have loved you,” says the Lord.
“But you ask, ‘How have you loved us?’”
Malachi 1:2

Nothing for which to feel grateful? Friend, you have much. Let me help remind you.

People like to reflect and look forward sometime around the end/beginning of a year. Once many years ago, I prayed God would make my love for His word grow. 

As a twenty-something, I was overwhelmed by the wisdom therein. I felt like a failure for not applying myself to studying it, not digesting it as I should. But how to digest in huge doses? How to savor if only biting off big hunks and swallowing whole books? I needed wisdom, and I needed a practical view of it.

If any of you lacks wisdom, ask God! He gives it to all liberally, without reproach, and it will be given to you.
James 1:5

I’m happy to say every promise in Him is yes (a resounding one, 2 Corinthians 1 tells me–this means Yes! Yes! Yes!). Not only does my love for it grow, but it grows exponentially.

It changes everything.
I could tell you, but I’ve already told you. The only counsel, the only assurance, the only forgiveness and right living comes from knowing God’s Word.

Want to know how to succeed in business? How to handle dealing with fools? How to not be a fool? Read Proverbs.

Want a quick lesson in chasing dreams? Care to understand the emptiness in following your heart? Read Ecclesiastes.

Need help expressing the deepest aches and longings of your heart? Psalms.

I am convinced we sometimes feel the sorriest for ourselves because we have tuned out every form of hope. We’ve dialed that radio into white noise and can’t for the life of us find the energy to crank it back.

A sluggard buries his hand in the dish but is too lazy to bring it back to his mouth (Proverbs 19:24).
I have been the sluggard. Lord, sometimes we believe, but help us with our unbelief! Help us with our laziness, our ambivalence toward your Word!
The Bible uncovers every soft, tender spot in us and shines a spotlight there. It heals us. It grinds down our bitterness and pride.

Tonight we had our oldest read us Psalm 73 aloud–King James Version, just for kicks.
I was envious when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. (v.3)
Their eyes stand out with fatness: they have more than heart could wish. They are corrupt, and speak wickedly concerning oppression: they speak loftily. (v.7-8)

Slow down, child!
I had to tell him to pause so I could scribble it in my notebook. Absolutely, I have envied the prosperity of the wicked! Amen, they are fat with good things, they have more than they could wish. I have seen it this very year–how they are corrupt! How much people are struggling while being told it is for their health and safety!

They set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue walketh through the earth. (v.9)

How the wicked talk and talk! How many words! Walking, wagging tongues. Lofty talk concerning oppression–this whole year was filled with phony social justice talk!

My mind flew to Jeremiah, the time when the people made a covenant to free their slaves.
But afterward they changed their minds and took back the slaves they had freed and enslaved them again. (34:11)

This is what the Lord says,
You have not obeyed me; you have not proclaimed freedom to your own people. So now I proclaim ‘freedom’ for you, declares the Lord–

‘Freedom’ to fall by the sword, plague and famine. (34:17)

God throws down air quotes. Here’s some “freedom” for ya. My heart burns when I read it. Justice from the true Judge, not pretense from pretenders.

Racism? Classism?–He addresses it. No tolerance for the wicked, the double-tongued.

But also, no tolerance for the lazy: The one who is not willing to work should not eat (2 Thess. 3:10).

This is the Book that answers all my questions. It speaks to my here and now. It aligns my soul and rights my motives.

Chances are, you have it sitting on a shelf nearby.

How has He loved us? He gave us the Magnum Opus of love declarations. It is displayed in His creation, engraved on our hearts, and written in a tidy 800,000 word Book wooing us back to Him.

My four year old has been reciting the first chapter of Psalm since she could talk. It’s the cutest thing ever to get a two year old to say Bible verses, and if you do it every night at bedtime, they will whisper it back like a silly game. Add hand motions, clap the beat, sing it to the tune of a Disney song. I guarantee there is nothing sweeter, and they will memorize whole chapters if you put in the effort.

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, (stay away from fools and foolish talk!)

Or stands in the way of sinners, or sits in the seat of scoffers (don’t hang around their path, don’t give them the time of day!)

But his delight is in the Law of the Lord
And on this Law he meditates day and night.
(this is THE Book, the one worth reading and studying and thinking about)

He is like a tree planted by streams of water
Which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither,
Whatever He does prospers.

The wise person is planted. Their tree has fruit.

How has He loved you? Maybe you can think of many ways this year has let you down.
But He has given us His word. It never fails. It will make you wise, and if you let it sink in, it will benefit every area of your life.

He can make your desire to know Him grow–the promise is Yes.

Yes! Yes! Yes!

 

If you need help getting started reading your Bible and/or understanding the parts you don’t understand, there are many resources! There are apps you can put on your phone and podcasts you can listen to, like Bible Recap. You can do an easy Google search and find a printable checklist to read the Bible in a year. Personally, I read a One Year Bible that I picked up for a dollar at a thrift store. I can mark it up as much as I want, dog-ear it, etc., and it keeps me on track, reading-wise. Other than that, I listen daily to Thru the Bible with J. Vernon McGee. I cannot tell you how much I have learned from this man. His 5 year study is fantastic and I’ve been doing it for over ten years now. Each daily study is 20 minutes.
If your are an auditory learner, invest in an audio version of the Bible and keep it on your phone or in your car. I have this dramatized version. There is one called The Bible Experience that I’ve been wanting to try out (you can get it free right now with an Audible trial period)–it includes real actors’ voices, like Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker, Levar Burton.
Begin with Judges or 1 Samuel, something fast-paced and fascinating. I promise you’ll want to stick with it just to find out what happens next.

If this is all still very new to you or overwhelming, don’t worry!
Begin with a kids’ version, like the comic-style Action Bible. I have the audio recording on my phone so even non-reading kids can follow along. I love it because it is chronological and includes many details that other children’s Bibles leave out. Yes, your kids can understand Ezekiel! You can, too!
The Jesus Storybook Bible is another precious little kids’ version that hits the big stories and the overall theme of the Bible.

Grant us the weariness

My kids, I joke, are on the sixteenth level of Homeschool: copying and memorizing Gary Larson comics.

It is okay, I tell myself, interspersed with major doubts generally directed at my husband. We made dog biscuits and wrapped them in festive packages–Mr. Mutt’s Christmas Treats. The boys were invested when it came to pureeing the turkey and sweet potato, less interested when hand printing the labels. My energy waned around the second batch. The math kid had already wandered off by the time we were figuring out fixing a price point. And really, I couldn’t blame him. Entrepreneurship is for the narrow-minded. I have a million ideas to pursue.

Nothing holds my attention very long. The six year old doesn’t care about Charlemagne, and I don’t either, not anymore.

Loud noises make me irritable. The second drone (useful in the Canvas drone videography class) has burned up its little propeller motor. All our Amazon boxes have been transformed into a massive castle, drawbridge included.

We have not exhausted our resources; just our mom.

The kids are still doing great. I am convinced all a kid needs is a mom and dad who love them.
I listened to a podcast interview with a novelist. The sweet English lady, having had a mother as a writer, swore she knew nothing more than a mum who picked her up from school, distracted and puffing cigarettes, one after the other. They’d return home, eat a cookie, and her mother would disappear into the bedroom, close the door, and type for another two hours before returning to heat a can of beans for supper.

It sounded romantic to my ears. I know it was not.

Neither is staying home with kids.

I married a man who is extremely successful. It came as a surprise to both of us, I think. He comes home from work bone tired. I am, too.

He makes money–I don’t.

Yes, I say, but you have a real job. You don’t put away clothes and dishes for the millionth time. You don’t yell at kids to stop running through the house.

Pearl, he says, our jobs are the same. People buy product, I order more. We restock the shelves. Then the product goes away and I do it all over again. And, he adds, an underdressed boy streaking through our living room, there is always at least one person who isn’t doing their job right, and I have to get on them about it.

He is right–of course he is right. His work life isn’t glamorous. There is no totem pole, no ladder to climb. We’re all in muck and mud–his just happens to gleam a bit.
My griping lands in knowing ears, kindly, but unsympathetic.
Our responsibilities are split down the middle.
Once a person told me the breadwinner of the family only has a part time job. When they come home from work it is time to clock in for their full-time job.

It sounds lovely. There is a piece of me that wants to argue this, to put it into practice. But the practical me, the tired me, she knows a secret: my kids have parents who love each other, and this is good enough.
Love really does cover up a bevy of faults. Grant us both the weariness to not find them, Lord.

We break out the oil pastels. I forget and let the kids use them on the carpet. My husband, who will never notice pink streaks in the carpet, not even when he lays on it every evening to stretch out his back, doesn’t mind. He doesn’t mind because I don’t tell him. I don’t tell him because he doesn’t want to know.
He loves to see me paint, loves it when I cook, loves to come home to the newest endeavor. Loves to hear our kids make music, cookies, pictures, projects. Enchanted by our homemade candle making, chemistry experiments, gingerbread decorating, outside adventures.
He is tired, I am tired, we are equal; equally tired.
It is satisfying, to be loved dearly by another tired person.

After kids are put to bed, he comes back to the living room and watches the news or Youtube. He dives in the rabbit hole–videos on growing strawberries in Alaska, choreographed Christmas lights, rednecks feeding raccoons, traveling in Turkey, how jellybeans are made. After a half hour or so, he turns it off and sighs, done for the day.
“Well, that was an interesting smorgasbord,” I tease.

“Yeah, I guess I’ve got a lot of interests,” he says.

“Or none at all,” I joke. 

And these weary parents go to bed, happy.

Advertising 101

Thanksgiving break finds me flipping on the TV more than I’d like. Maybe it’s the green bean casserole that always makes me sick and couch-confined, or maybe it’s the futile hope to catch a decent, classic Christmas movie to watch with my kids. And football is always a good second option.
I’ve waited years for my boys to grow up enough to sit still for more than a minute, so I take primetime football as a sign we have finally arrived at our destination. Televised football, I reason, is my reward for the hours and years I’ve spent on the floor racing hotwheels and reading board books.

But along with football comes some awful commercials. The TV we are so careful to monitor becomes a minefield. 

This is where my feelings get worked over, where I doubt my standing, if I’m really a nice person, and most of all–where I stand on Culture.
I remember learning in sixth grade about advertising. We took notes on how companies try to sell product, services, and ideas by putting an emotional or compelling spin on their brand. Drinking Pepsi makes you fun and possibly capable of rollerskating backwards. A diamond necklace wrapped up under the Christmas tree means your daddy loves your momma, and she will cry ecstatic tears of joy when she opens it. Good food and family time can be bought, and endless breadsticks will never let you down–Olive Garden.

Maybe the rest of it went over my head; maybe commercials haven’t changed that much. But I get a sense there is more culture molding, more propaganda than ever before. Brands aren’t just trying to get me to buy what they are selling. They’re actually trying to invade my brain with their version of the world. They want to destroy my conscience by numbing it. Repetitive, outrageous behavior becoming normalized.
I’m not talking about healthy, slender people sinking their teeth into a Big Mac, Coke, and fries (though I’ve never seen an obese, self-loathing character in a McDonald’s commercial).

I’m talking about same-sex everything, the glory of “coming out”, grown men pretending to be little girls, drag queens, nebulous he/she/they situations, women falling in love with women. I’m not saying JLo undressing on a pole during halftime is any better, but this influx of regularly, reliable “strange flesh” (Jude 7) on television is disconcerting. 

If you don’t think these situations are a problem, if you think it is mere “conspiracy”–there is a good chance you have become desensitized to evil. You are ignorant to the impact these advertisements have on your conscience, your morality.

It isn’t just on television where my kids are exposed to this cultural revolution. In my six year old’s online Spanish curriculum, he was introduced to the idea of two women on a honeymoon (nevermind he is still only mastering greetings and simple phrases. Donde esta tu esposo? No tengo esposo, tengo esposa! Um, que?!)
Several days ago, our school district sent out an email to the parents of 85,000 children, announcing the celebration of Trans Week.

News flash: this is not normal behavior.
Romance languages worldwide are not reordering their feminine and masculine nouns to accommodate a generation of gender-confused, sexually-disoriented people.
Most other countries are not suddenly identifying a mass bending of gender.
It still takes one man and one woman to procreate.
The stable family unit–one mom, one dad–is still the strongest predictor of life success (kids actually need both).
In less affluent societies, children desire an education and hope to rise from poverty–they don’t take turns in class declaring their preferred pronoun.
And more telling than anything: these rapid, evolving perversions are rolling in by the dozen. Grooming children? Pedophilia? Tell me, o wise Netflix, what shall I give into next?

Lest you be confused, at this moment in history suicide, anxiety, hopelessness, mental illness, sexual disease transmission (!) is at an all time high. There exists only one explanation, one correlating schema.

Sin destroys people.

Our culture is very, very weak. Take a gander: we have undermined our own efforts at eliminating mental illness in schools by actually celebrating deviant behavior. By normalizing fatherless and motherless homes, we are effectively telling our children there is no one path, no example, no model of right living, because anything goes.
We are confusing our little girls by letting perverse men pretend to assume their innocence and naivety. We are devaluing womanhood and manhood by suggesting there is nothing special about one’s sex, nothing creative and wonderful and God-given. We are unraveling the fabric of our society by claiming birth-assigned gender is mere suggestion, open to interpretation. We are destroying our children with confusing misnomers instead of firmly, lovingly giving them some sturdy truth.

Our glory is our shame.

When, in the past, tolerance of evil becomes the sacred cow, when we’d rather not say anything out of fear of retaliation, when cultures have disparaged the family, when they’ve resorted to total anarchy and rejection of stability–namely values, virtues, and moral uprightness–when they have rejected what is True and Right without blinking, shameless and corrupt, haters of God–this is when they were decimated. It didn’t take a feather to knock them over; they rotted from the inside out.

This makes me want to turn off my TV. It makes me glad schooling is remote this year and that we have our kids under our wing.
But I can’t keep them there forever. We cannot avoid living in this world, cannot hang up blackout curtains and pretend Rome isn’t burning. I want my kids to be able to contend for our faith someday. I want them, more than anything, to stand firm (1 Thess.3:8).

We need practice.

So this is what we’ve been doing–pointing out the inconsistencies.

Just like sixth grade, the lesson is advertising. How are we being manipulated, kids? What are the tools the enemy is using to sear our consciences?
Do you recognize it? Is it worth buying?

And just like that very erroneous, cheap bedazzling kit with which to ruin a perfectly good jean jacket–it might suffice for one glamour shot session in the early 1990s, but it won’t hold up in the washing machine.

Don’t be taken in. Don’t for one second think it is loving, compassionate, or reasonable to fall for it. 

Love allows a person to think and choose.
Love does not pressure us to give in to the madness.
Love begets wholeness, not emptiness.
Love is long haul.
It doesn’t act unbecomingly, does not seek its own, doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness (1 Cor. 13:5,6).


Advertising 101: do it for the kids sitting on the couch next to you. Explain those rainbow flags, point out flagrant, destructive behavior. Change the channel, but bring it up. 

Explain God’s truth, how Jesus died to wash us clean.

Stand firm, friends.

 

…they exchanged the truth of God for a lie.
And just as they did not see it fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper…
Romans 1:25,28

For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace.
Romans 8:6

Stick out your elbows: contending for the faith

In the fall, we play football.

But between feeling a little put off every time I turn on the NFL (seeing as grown men who make millions still pound each other into the ground every weekend but millions of kids in America cannot go to school and learn in person)…and the small issue of my son being a tall, thin reed of a boy…complicated by the fact I have seen and worked with many brain injuries–well, I decided this fall to make it a point to practice our basketball skills. Maybe it is time to branch out and love other sports, the kind that don’t require helmets and full body armor.

We walked past the park to the court. I am woefully behind in the teaching-my-kids-sports arena. Their parents are mediocre, mostly-fans, and we’ve been putting off organized teams (except for a random t-ball and flag football season) since they were born. Saturdays were always easier that way.
Near the hoop, I give him a few pointers. I direct him to post up, lay up, and all those other coachable things you say to a young boy who is bound to be 6 and a half feet someday.

We are several years behind, let’s be honest. He tosses around a football. We play for fun. We’ve moved too much to invest whole seasons in team sports, and defense isn’t a thing when you’ve got parents who prefer amiable games where everyone gets to play. He has no real feel for opponents, grabbing a basketball, pivoting, squaring up, and banking the money shot. On this windy, cold, sunshine day, I lob the ball in his direction and he runs long, ball tucked under his elbow, tapping his feet just in bounds like he’s caught a touchdown pass.

No, I tell him, basketball is different. Stand strong down low, keep near the basket. I remind him his opponents on defense will only come up to his chin, so if he can catch it and keep it above his head, there isn’t even a chance they could get it from him, even if they tried.

It isn’t natural, keeping your elbows out and catching a ball eye level. I remember my dad practicing the same moves, passing me a ball, again and again. It was annoying how he aimed for my head, threw it as hard as he could, expecting me to catch it without flinching, pivot, and score.

I should’ve been better, for all we practiced.

Good thing basketball mattered very little in the long run. It was nothing more than an allegory in my life–one that has served well to remind me of what could be called a calling:

Contend for the faith.

Jude didn’t get very far in his little book, didn’t mince words. Fight as though you are going to win.

The apostle wanted our elbows out, hands out and ready to catch the ball thrown our way. We’ve been warned to hold it high–keep truth eye level–handle it with care, and get the dang ball to the basket.

It’s the broken record in me, I guess, or my dad’s persistence to keep throwing balls at a person’s head–we have got to handle the truth. We’ve got to make it to the basket, opposition be damned.

Look around, take in the scene. Out there are masters at manipulating our thoughts, our feelings, our ideology, and we are catching the ball way too low. In fact, I’m not sure we’ve got a very good handle on catching the ball at all, or even realizing we are all playing the game. Perhaps we’ve fallen so out of practice, we don’t even know why it’s important to be a part of anything at all, much less uphold truth.

I, too, take the bait often. If I’m tired or in need of distraction, I usually stumble upon news articles or feel good reports and let it sink in too deep. I let my elbows drop. I listen to the sob stories, I genuinely try to understand where a person is coming from when they use their human reasoning to justify all sorts of contrary matter. I get sucked into the uplifting, fluffy nonsense. I indulge far too often in temporary, this-world-is-my-home, humanistic, nihilistic, and perilous self-centered thinking.

I get it, because I’ve been the person with a bad marriage, secret thoughts, depression, self-issued borderline personality disorder, low self-esteem, narcissism, a quick hand at blaming, and overall complainer supreme.
It’s very easy to wallow in it, let it handle me.  It comes from a very tender soul, the commiserating on weakness, the abhorrence of stigma, the recoiling at every sense of shaming. It almost-almost–makes me feel like I belong somewhere when we are all throwing the human pity party, waxing on about our problems and struggles.

But it isn’t truth.
Truth doesn’t begin and end with self. Justice cannot be just if I’m the one always banging the gavel.
Truth is chained to authority, and God is the one in charge. 

The truth is–I am the one responsible for my sin. Guilty.

Jesus pulled me out of myself and those lowly, worthless groanings. It was the Father who put the ball in my hands and told me to hold it up a little higher. It was the Spirit who made me sturdy enough to weather the practice. They won’t be able to knock it out of your hands–when you stand up, you’re taller than everyone else on the court.

And here is the God honest truth: you aren’t much to look at, when it comes right down to it. You and I have nothing to offer, not one speck of anything special, lovely, or wonderful. But God put Jesus to death to buy you. When I was worthless and wretched, He said, I want her–and it cost Him his Son to make you His most priceless treasure. There was only one Truth who could reconcile me back to the Father and blot out those endless, worthless pity parties.
I will not go willingly back to the pig pen.

The world will not tell you this. It will swipe the ball right out of your hands. You will watch it bounce down the court and you’ll wonder why it feels like your life is slipping away. You’ll maybe think there isn’t a God big enough to rescue you from your hopeless situation. You’ll continually depend on other people to fix your problems, mend your fences, make you feel a certain way. You’ll be a blamer and a whiner. A hater and a gossip. Forever dissatisfied and addicted to self. Ungrateful. Filled with loathing. Despair.

All because truth is gone and the ball is completely out of your hands.

More than anything, I cannot stand to watch Truth being knocked around, when we’ve been charged with protecting it. I cannot tolerate souls in torment when God reached down to ransom them back by the blood of His Son. I cannot fathom a life of just dabbing ointment on the pain, waiting for death as some sort of rescue. And truly, I hate it when people wave off the Gospel as some sort of fairy tale, because it is the only thing that, at my lowest and loneliest, pried me out of the miry pit.

I am throwing the ball in your direction; I charge you to contend for the faith.
Arms up! Elbows out!

They won’t be able to knock it out of your hands.