Selective Service

“And you, my son Solomon, acknowledge the God of your father, and serve him with wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind, for the LORD searches every heart and understands every desire and every thought.” 

1 Chronicles 28:9 NIV

My kids have amazing servants’ hearts (for the most part).  They each love serving in different areas at church.  A couple of my kids offer to help clear other people’s plates at the dinner table without ever being asked.  All of the kids go with me each week during the summer to my dad’s place to help with the yard work.  My girls are even already talking about finding some way that they can volunteer at the local humane society next summer. 

Sometimes, though, my kids are not so much about helping from a servant’s standpoint, but out of a selfish desire to do what they want to do because they want to do it. 

Confused?

Follow along with this random conversation that usually takes place with one of my girls, oh, maybe a few times a month (and usually stems from my beginning a task involving a spray bottle or cleaner of sorts with a desire to actually clean something):

(Mom on stepstool cleaning inside window)

DAUGHTER:  Mom, can I help you?

MOM: I love that you want to help me.  I am almost done here, but you can ________________ (fill the in the blank with any age appropriate chore that needs desperately to be done such as emptying the dishwasher, vacuuming a room or switching laundry).

DAUGHTER: Nah, that’s okay.

(Exit daughter.)

REALLY?  

Did you not just offer to help me? 

Did I not tell you what was going to help me at that moment?

Now, I know I have some control issues.  Some of you Supermoms are probably shaking your heads right now, convinced that I should have given my daughter her own towel and let her “clean” my windows.  In theory, I completely agree.  In reality, I wanted to be able to see out my windows when I was done and didn’t know when I was going to get around to doing them again.

But, I digress.

When the child that seemed so willing to help walks away, I experience a twinge of sadness.  She did not wholeheartedly want to help.  She was not willing to serve, but rather she wanted to serve her own desire.

My sadness then overwhelms me.  Not because my daughter was not willing, but because I realize I treat God in much the same way.  My daily servitude looks something like this…

God I am wholeheartedly wanting and willing to serve you, except for…

… forgiveness when it comes to someone who has hurt me

…or the patience part when one of my kids messes up

…oh yeah, that good steward stuff seems hard

…and don’t get me started on the whole “die to self” thing

Lord, I want to serve you when it is convenient for me.  I want to serve you, not for Your glory, but for my convenience.  And BTW, please bless me and answer my prayers.  Amen.

Sound silly?  

Maybe.  But it is true, on a daily basis, that I selectively choose how I want to serve God instead of asking Him how He wants me to serve His kingdom.  When He calls me to something too scary, too risky do I push my fingers into my ears and chant “la-la-la-la-la-la-la” over and over again until I don’t hear Him anymore?

How must He feel when I walk away from what He asks me to do?

This has got to change.  

My prayer…my heartfelt, head-to-toe prayer must be one of surrender not selective service.  One of submission rather than omission.  One that tells God I am willing to do anything, not just something.  My mind and heart must be willing to say “yes” rather than “yes, but…” with wholehearted devotion.

The truth is, I must be perfectly content to vacuum when what I really want to do is to clean the window.

My Morning Idle

The mornings are getting cooler. 

Not quite cold, but definitely much cooler.

So, in preparation to take my oldest, a senior this year,  to high school early to catch the bus for his off-campus classes, I decided to start the car a few minutes early.  Our seven year old minivan is a workhorse, but she seems to run more smoothly with a gentle easing into our crazy days.

Five minutes before we were scheduled to leave, I turned the car on and went back inside to finish up some things and hustle him out the door while the other children proceeded to get ready for their regularly scheduled day.

I walked in to a last minute change of plans.  

His girlfriend was going to pick him up along with his brother, the freshman, as well.

I was off the hook.

They left.

And I proceeded to help get the girls ready.  Oatmeal and tea consumed.  Email read.  Hair braided or straightened.  A cup of coffee for me, please, with the Today Show on in the background. Backpacks and lunches double checked.  Pinterest scanned.  Shoes on.  Grab my key….my key….where is my….oh no I didn’t…

You know where it is, don’t you? 

Wait for it….

Wait for it…

My key was STILL in the van and the van was STILL running!

Yup, mother of five kids, 42 years of age and I failed to remember that I started the car and left it running in the middle of our driveway for over an hour.

After a huge moment of relief to see the car actually still in the driveway, the rest of the kids were loaded for my next scheduled drop-off.  As I pulled out of the driveway, the low fuel light came on (uh, yeah, it was only running for the last hour) and I began to process my swirling emotions.  Grateful that I still had the car and that it had not run out of gas in the midst of my brain fart.  Guilty that I needlessly spewed fumes into the atmosphere for over an hour.  Embarrassed that my life is so chaotic that I failed to remember that I turned my car on in the first place.

Upon returning  home, I decided to take a few minutes to regroup thoughts with an online devotional which of course led to a link…..where I clicked on another link…and eventually ended up reading a preview chapter of Steven Furtick’s book Greater.    

The morning’s mishap still had its grasp wrapped tightly around my heart as I read this line:

“The thing is, most believers aren’t in imminent danger of ruining their lives.  They’re facing a danger that is far greater: wasting them.”

YIKES!

You see…I turned the proverbial key to start this blog well over a year ago.  I planned the route, declared it God’s calling for me, gunned the engine a few times and then left it idling in my proverbial blog driveway.      

And then my hugely overwhelming, sit down now and write this out, light bulb moment struck: You can let the car idle all by its lonesome or even sit in it with the pedal to the metal, but if it isn’t in the RIGHT GEAR,  you aren’t going anywhere.

Mine is not the idleness of not doing, it is the idleness of not being.  

Not being obedient.

Not being willing.

Not being discontent with mindless mediocrity.

It is not the idleness of sitting on my couch eating bon-bons (although that happens sometimes too), but rather the idleness of being very busy in the house with trivial pursuits while the car, the vehicle poised and ready to take me great places, sits running in the driveway.

Most people think of “idle” as being synonymous with lazy or inactive.  The primary definition in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary is “lacking worth or basis”.  How much of my time is spent idling…pursuing, obsessing over, accumulating, micromanaging, buying things without worth or basis in the eternal scheme of things while ignoring the godly?

This is not a reminder to do more in my life, but a rally cry to make more of my life.   

This is me…changing gears again. 

Want a ride?

MY DAYS OF SMALL THINGS

For as long as I can remember, I wanted a family and, just like my own mom, I wanted to stay home with my kids.  Having excelled in both academics and athletics as a student, I felt certain I was going to rock staying at home and that I would give Martha Stewart a run for her money.  Homemade Halloween costumes, neatly coifed hair, cake from scratch and a home straight from the pages of the latest Pottery Barn catalog would be the standard.

Fast forward several years (okay, decades) and you will find that the reality of my every day is vastly different from the life I imagined.  Laundry piled high, more crumbs on my floor than grains of sand on the beach, and on most days our youngest’s hair is not even combed, much less coifed.  I find myself pulling out my “I have 5 kids” card a lot, but truth be told, I’m not rocking my stay-at-home world as well as I thought I would.

In fact, a few weeks ago, I found myself drowning in the chaos otherwise known as my home.  Mounds of laundry had quietly morphed into mountains.  I was still in my PJ’s well beyond a socially acceptable hour and there wasn’t a clean spoon to be found in the house to eat our gourmet breakfast of cold cereal.  

            That’s it!  The proverbial straw (or spoon) that broke the camel’s back.

            I flopped on the couch littered with Littlest Pet Shop creatures and scattered remnants of my failed attempt at extreme couponing.  I sat there crying.  First, in a “pity me” kind of way, which then quickly turned into an ugly, angry “why me” wail.  Was I doomed to live the same exact day, over and over again with no end in sight like Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day? Alarm.  Breakfast.  Pack lunches.  Off to school.  Dishes.  Laundry.  Cleaning.  Lunch.  Drop off.  Errands.  Pick-up.  Homework.  More laundry.  Soccer practice.  Soccer practice.  Dinner.  More dishes.  Bedtime.  Repeat.  The futility of it all was overwhelming.

            I grasped desperately for my Bible and devotional as a drowning woman reaches for a life preserver.  I flipped to verses I had before turned to in times of need.  Skimmed chapters in my devotional I thought might speak to my anguish.  Something?  Anything?

There it was.

A verse I had never come across before.

“Who despises the day of small things?” Zechariah 4:10(NIV)

And somewhere,

From the very depths of me,

A weak and defeated and ashamed voice answered,

“I do…”

Maybe not every day, but there are days…too many of them…when I despise the small things that surround me.

And I hated myself for such a thought.

This guilt inducing revelation prompted me to dig further.  What did this verse mean?  What context was it in?  How did it apply to my days?  These words were not outright comforting, but they spoke loudly to me in the moment.  Further research was required….

Is God Your "Soft One"?

After the first four kiddos, my husband and I were quite certain we had seen and experienced a lot regarding children’s habits, quirks and idiosyncrasies.  In fact, we were probably a bit too confident in our ability to roll with the punches UNTIL…

…along came Makenna!  While we expected each of our kids to be different, #5 decided to declare her own individuality from the get-go.  From her quite scary “push her out or she may not make it” entrance into this world to her “I don’t need to walk until I am 17 months attitude”, she has challenged everything we had come to expect from our Kovacs Kids.  So, when the issue of a security blanket came about, why would she start conforming now?  Yes, Macdaddy is our only blankie kid!

Over the past couple of years, Makenna has grown ever so attached to this swatch of fabric affectionately known as “Soft One”.  Being the last of three girls, she had several pink, fuzzy blankets with which she could snuggle, but, forsaking all others, this one and only this one was the Chosen One…her “Soft One”.  

It looked like all the others, but she knew the difference.  She could see the difference.  Feel the difference.  Smell the difference.  Even in the darkness of her room at bedtime, she would call me out if I ever tried to pass one of the cleaner, less dingy imposters off as her Soft One.  “No Mom…I want Soft One!” she would cry.

She cuddles it.

She cradles it.

She craves it.

She talks to it.

She rubs it.

She hugs it.

She runs with it.

She dances with it.

She covers herself with it.

And at times she is absolutely desperate for it.

Whether she is sad, happy, tired, hungry, bored, scared, angry or uncertain…Soft One is never far from her mind and always close at hand.  And when she gets ahold of it….aaaah…the look on her face is one of pure joy and peace.

Watching her one day with her blanket got me thinking.  Is God my “Soft One”?  Is He yours?

Do you reach for Him when you wake unsettled in the middle of the night?

Do you make sure He is with you wherever you go?

Does He ride in the car with you? Run errands with you?

Do you dance with Him when you are happy?

Do you take Him to church?

Do you cling tightly to Him when life gets uncertain?

The Bible reminds us that He is to be our Comforter (Psalm 94:19), our Lord of Peace (2 Thessalonians 3:16), our Joy (Psalm 43:4) and, even, our Friend (John 15:15).  If only I could remember that for a single day!

Now, before you start getting all child psychologist on me, I am aware that at some point Soft One needs to become a distant memory.  As we prepare Makenna for the possibility of preschool in the fall, we have already discussed with her the need to learn to rely less on the blanket (even though it is stinkin’ cute).  One day soon, she will grow old enough that she doesn’t need it at all.  The blanket will be replaced with Barbies, books and boys and a small part of me will be very sad. **sigh**

In the meantime, I am grateful that I will never grow too old to seek comfort in God.  I will never have to relegate Him to a memory box in the corner of the garage.  I will never have to find a way to manage a single day without Him.  He is always there to cuddle with, talk to, dance with and cover me.  I pray for the daily craving and desperation to spend time with my “Soft One”…

“When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought joy to my soul.” Psalm 94:19 NIV

WHAT AM I THINKING?!?!

The simple answer is: I’m not! 

The long, complicated answer is, well, long and complicated, but this is my blog so, here goes…

Anyone who knows me knows, I am not a spontaneous, spur-of-the moment, by-the-seat-of-my-pants type of gal.  I think even the smallest of things through… A LOT!  

Beginning to end.

Plans A, B and C.

Alternate endings.

What will everyone think?

You name it, I will overthink it and, when all is said and done, I land on safe or not-at-all.  In terms of my comfort zone, these are wonderful places to land.  In terms of this game of life, these squares don’t get me very far.  I thought I had come to terms with my complacency until…

Flashback to church a week ago this past Sunday…sitting in my usual seat (back row of the front section right next to the pole), and our pastor is in the second week of a multiple part series titled “Think-Don’t Think”.  The first week we were encouraged to think before we speak.  This particular week we were told “don’t think” when it comes to obeying God’s will. Oooooooooo…..my heart ached.  It was as if God had reached into my chest, poked my heart and said, “I am talking to you!”

You see, this blog is not new.  It isn’t even sort of new.  God planted the idea in me over a year ago and I have been “thinking” about writing it ever since.  I had the title, a composition book full of ideas and quotes and verses, and the natural tendency to overthink it.  By the time I had finished thinking it through, I thought it wasn’t right.  I thought I couldn’t do it the way I thought it should be done.  I thought it wasn’t going to be perfect.  I thought no one wanted to listen to my rambling.  I thought I might make a mistake. I thought people might think me crazy.   I thought and thought and thought myself right back to the “not-at-all” space in my game of life.

So there I sat, in the middle of church, heart racing and palms sweating.  I knew God was talking to me and I knew what He was telling me to do.  Don’t think.  Trust me.  Obey me.  Move off your not-at-all space.  Start playing the game.

This is me…

Not thinking.

Trusting.

Obeying.

Moving.

Playing.

A new blog has begun!

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.”  Jeremiah 29:11 NIV