From Kids to Mom: Day 2

Do you have one of these? These are among the priceless treasures we collect when our kids are young.

The love expressed is effortless and frequent. But there is a hidden message in each: put the love in your heart vault because the day is coming when your child goes AWOL.

AWOL is Away With Others' Lessons. During adolescence and young adulthood, your child will be a new creature who looks to others with admiration that is effortless and frequent.

That is the time you find the letter and draw encouragement out of your heart vault. You endure some loneliness as you patiently watch him discover his new world.

Someday his world circles back and draws you into it again. If you have endured in a healthy way, then he is even more healthy when he returns.

If your child is AWOL on this Mother's Day weekend, his unspoken love says, Thank you for my gift of freedom to find God's love in other people. Reread my priceless treasure that assures you 'there is only one mother in the whole wide world!'"

From Mom to Kids: Day 1

A few tidbits of advice gleaned over the years, shared with my kids as a Christmas gift a few years back--a book of pictures, their letters to me and my letters to them:

Deeply respect the concrete of belief into which people are anchored. Listen with animation...share your own joyfully and prudently.

To the extent that you are unlikeable, people can't hear your story.

God wants to help you write your story.

Keep your heart melted.

Park often on the spiritual side of your house.

Ponder what you are and what you aren't. Insight comes from both.

Minimize the divide between you and that person who could be helped by your gifts. If he could cross that divide, he would...therefore, go get him and lead him through the deep.

And, above all...

Feed your strength.

Mercy and the Moment

These are a few of my favorite things:

4:30am.

A spring morning that is 10 degrees colder than normal.

The moon half-full or better anchored in a clear, starlit sky.

My tattered pink Life is Good comfy sweatshirt jacket. (No commas--all those words belong together).

Home-brewed Starbucks in my green Fiestaware mug.

Do they come together in a single moment very often? No.

Perhaps that is why the moment reminds me to give profound thanks that God knows my heart so well that He would nudge me.

The nudge? A moth flying around my already busy-at-the-computer hands. I caught it, decided to give it mercy, and walked to the door to restore its freedom.

Mine was restored instead...in the moment.

These are a few of my favorite things.

Our To-Do Lens

We view every day through our to-do lens.

Just like a good camera lens, we choose certain items on which to focus and allow others to fade into the background.

A skilled photographer tells a story with his picture, and you are captured by the clarity of his subject and the moment in time that is shared.

Does she make the jump? Your heart wants to know.

Our to-do lens, when properly focused, brings into clarity serving others; moments in time are shared, giving those hearts the knowing that they are cared for and loved.

Photographers snap dozens of pictures to practice and get a stellar shot. We have many days to practice focusing our to-do lens on others to find the balance between caring for ourselves, our families and others.

Practice often. Find the focus of love and serving that warms God's heart.

P.S. She made the jump.

Photographer: Stuart Kime

Step Into Your Giftedness

Lovely people...every one.

That, I would think, is God's view when we step into our giftedness and let Him fashion our gifts into love and service toward each other.

Reba McEntire writes in Guideposts that she remembers the moment she almost turned away from singing. As she faced the crossroads of that decision, she recalled words from her mom, "Sing what you feel, sing from your own heart, and you'll discover the voice God intended for you."

Those words moved her to trust and step into her giftedness that was and is uniquely hers.

Well, that's Reba, you say. I can't compare to that.

Lovely people...every one. That includes you. Your gift is a song that perhaps has not yet been sung.

How you do find your own voice, your own giftedness?  You give God a chance to bring it to the surface.

Time + trust + a little bit of failure + believing it could be you = the discovery of what is uniquely yours.

I set out to be nearly everything but a teacher. I spent my freshman year pursuing pharmacy...until I realized I was pretty dismal in science. Then psychology, then English and then...a curious thing happened.

Now a junior, I was sitting in class and a word on a book under a classmate's desk just seemed to jump off the cover: Teaching.

I walked back to my dorm, called my mom and informed her I was going to be a teacher. I didn't see it coming but it certainly became "the voice God intended for" me.

Now, many twists and turns later, I continue to try to keep stepping into my giftedness. It is a lifelong journey that carries me toward what might be God's view:  lovely people...every one.

Come...step into your giftedness.

Mother-in-LOVE Lessons: Day 3

How do we move from being a mother-in-law to becoming, as my friend Amy so beautifully puts it, a mother-in-LOVE?

Endorse their new voice.

Your child and his or her spouse create a new family that sings a new song by finding their new voice. Together, they are a new unit in God's eyes--no longer the child that belongs to you but rather a new pair that God wants to gift to the world.

Can we disrupt the process? Absolutely. We simply grip too tightly and try to get our child to come back toward us.

But if we are determined to let God have His way with this new family, then we will learn the pain and self-control of endorsing their new voice.

Dr. Scott Peck, in People of the Lie, writes: "...it [is] the task of parents to assist their children to achieve their own independence and separateness. In order to succeed in this task it [is] essential for parents to tolerate their own loneliness so as to allow and even encourage their children to eventually leave them." He goes on to describe the opposite: "...to discourage such separation not only [represents] a failure in the parental task but a sacrificing of the child's growth to the parent's own immature self-centered desires. It [is] destructive."

Ouch! So we can mess it up...badly.

This love is so different because it releases your child. Becoming a mother-in-LOVE requires new wisdom, the loneliness of restraint, and confidence in what can be accomplished when you endorse their new voice.

Do the work. The world needs their song.

Mother-in-Law Lessons: Day 2

Maybe President John F. Kennedy would have smiled: Ask not what your daughter-in-law (or son-in-law) can do for you, but rather what you can do for your daughter-in-law.

Study your gifts. How do they line up with what this new family needs?

I am known as the babysitter. I always told my kids that I would be the grandmother whose means would be my presence. I love to keep all of the kids for a stretch and free the parents up for important time together.

Perhaps you are the storyteller. You can spin tales that will be kept in that special grandparent vault of memories for all time. No grandchildren? No problem. Spin those tales during warm family dinners and dazzle your in-law child.

How wonderful if you are the provider. You have extra dollars that they could use, but that money is a trap and a gulf between you if it comes with ANY strings attached. Money is like love--if it is a bargaining chip, it is not love and it is certainly not a gift. Better left not shared if it smacks of control.

Whatever your gift(s) to your in-law child and this newly created family, you are another adult on the scene with whom they must reckon.

Perhaps the most powerful truth for mother-in-laws to remember: you must earn any respect and love that you gain in the relationship. It is the work of wisdom, self-control and love.

New family relationships will always be a bit messy since humans are involved. With great thoughtfulness and care, mother-in-laws can make sure the new messy is grounded in love and respect