Selah: Practicing His Presence

To learn more about this series, please visit SELAH.

Through the years, I have gravitated toward the spiritual disciplines practiced for centuries by those who follow the teachings of Jesus. At first, I was intimidated to learn about them because they sounded too arduous. I now realize I didn't understand their purpose. Since then, I have found the disciplines to be wonderful gifts that help me connect with God throughout my day and experience His presence within my every day life.

Most recently, I have enjoyed the discipline called  Practicing His Presence*. There are many ways to do this, but I find that I need a tangible reminder to actually do it while I live life. I use a scented candle that I can light any time during the day to help me practice this discipline. For me, the candle is a visual reminder that Jesus is ever-present in my life and that he said, "I am the light of the world (kosmos)." After a while, I may forget the candle is lit, but the scent fills the room. When its fragrance gently touches my senses, it reminds me to pause and remember that God is with me. Sometimes the pause turns into a prayer of gratitude. Sometimes I lift up a request for help. Sometimes I ask for forgiveness for unkind words recently spoken. Sometimes I just need to enjoy its light and God's presence when it feels like chaos around me. 

I took a picture of the candle on our dining table in the middle of the day last week. It captured life happening around it. It was a day that ended with temper tantrums. A day I lost my patience. The candle is not magical. It doesn't make the day go perfectly. It doesn't make me act more "holy" or my kids behave better. But it does help me to stop and remember that God is with me. It helps me worship God, who I believe, entered this life and experienced the same things we experience. A life filled with work, exhaustion, laughter, tears, dirty dishes, laundry, frustration, love, and cranky people. 

One night last week when the candle was lit on the table, God reminded me to ask my son if he wanted a "do-over"... A chance to go back to when we called him to dinner before all the wrong choices started. He didn't want it. We told him that even mom and dad use "do-overs" with each other. We just say, "Can we start the day over again?" Some days, we just need a "do-over."

I wish that lighting a candle made my days go smoothly and my relationships easy. It doesn't. I light it because I need a physical reminder to stop and listen to God. I light it because I want to be a woman who acknowledges she needs God's help and wants to learn to worship Him with her every day life.

I light the candle because I know He longs to show me how.

*Practicing the presence of God is a way of life where we engage in continual conversation with God; walk with Him in love, humility, simplicity, and faith; and do nothing and think nothing which may displease Him, because that is God's will for us. 

Perpsective

I posted this picture on Facebook this week. Some of you enjoyed it too. It made me giggle and think about the warm molten chocolate cake at my favorite restaurant in town. You got a favorite too?

The same day I posted it, I had a very difficult conversation with my son as I was putting him to bed. His vocal tic was very active that day and interfering with speaking. As I said good night, he said, "Mom, why do I have Tourette's? It's like God spun a wheel and it landed on me. Everyone else got one millionth of a chance of getting it and I got it all. It's not fair."  I gave him a big hug and said, "Nope. It's not fair."

Right now life's doesn't feel fair to an eight year old boy. I understand. I had the same battle inside when I was struggling to get pregnant month after month after month. It was especially difficult on the days when a friend would announce she was pregnant and include that extra detail that it only took one try. And it didn't help when people would tell me, "Oh it will happen. You'll get a baby one day." I wish I could tell my son that some day his tics will go away. But I don't know that. So I don't say it. Some one has already said it to me though. Ugh.

Some days feel better than others for my son. On another night last week, he wondered what it would be like to meet other families with kids who have Tourette's. He said, "It would be like a 'Tic Band' with all of us doing our tics on the table." We both burst out in laughter as we tried to imagine the sound. It felt good to laugh together. My son needs to have the freedom to get angry, to grieve, to laugh and to find acceptance in his own time. I think we all do when life gives us more than we can handle.

As a parent, I want to walk this difficult road for him so he does't have to. But I know I can't. That night when I left his room with a heavy heart, I realized that because of my journey through infertility, I can be the mom I need to be to my son.  I don't have to try to fix it. I can let him feel his feelings. Another unexpected gift to come out of the "yuck" of infertility. That was God giving me some perspective.

I wonder if one day my son will see the connection between his journey and my own. Will he realize that I wouldn't have him if I had given birth to a child? What will he see in the years to come that his life has been given because he has Tourette's? Will he be able to see those gifts?

Right now, I am asking God to give me the wisdom to accept the things I can not change and the courage to change the things I can. For me, that usually has a lot to do with changing my attitude or my perspective. And it would was good to be reminded this week that humor is a great place to start.

So enjoy your favorite dessert this week and maybe a good laugh too.

Pressure Cooker

Have you ever cooked with a pressure cooker? It is often used in Indian cooking and many Indian students pack them in their suitcase when they come for their studies in America. I love Indian food so I bought a pressure cooker and taught myself how to use it. It has a very important button on the side that you can press to let off steam so that your lentils don’t come pouring out of your pot. I had to learn to use this often as it took me a long time to figure out how to cook lentils in the pot without making a complete mess.

Last week felt like I was the lentils. But I didn't let off the pressure very well and made a mess. I had a sick child home with scarlet fever (just a fancy way to say strep throat with a rash) for five days, the younger child was fussy because the older one was getting so much attention, too many cartoons, and record heat outside which made it 100F inside the house (our pressure cooker!) where we were quarantined until the sick child was not contagious. 

Here is a snapshot of an evening in the middle of the week. It started to get comical by the end. But I don't remember laughing at four o'clock in the morning.

Broken silverware drawer and injured foot
Rash breaks out all over oldest child and realize he has strep
Broken mercury thermometer in the bathroom, call to poison control,  followed by tedious clean up

Dishwasher leaks all over the kitchen floor
Water bottle leaks in son’s bed at 11pm and completely soaks mattress
Musical beds for mom, dad (to couch) and son
Musical beds again at 4am because son keeps kicking mom and she hasn't slept 

My housemates in Japan can attest to the fact that I do not do well in the heat. After my first summer in Japan, they commented, “Oh, Kim, you have your smile back!” I didn't know I had lost it. Ouch. My kids can now attest to it too, unfortunately. By Friday morning, I was exhausted and cranky and overwhelmed. I lost it when I was doing the dishes one more time because I had just done them. I felt like I had not left the kitchen in five days. It was not a pretty sight. The pans did not go gently into the sink that morning. The mercy in it was that the only one who saw it was my husband.

I am learning, slowly, that having a child with special needs makes a difficult week even more challenging. In my "free moments", I also juggle talking to the doctor about medication, figuring out insurance issues, scheduling meetings at school, and advocating for my son in arenas where he is misunderstood. When you have a child with special needs, you are also learning that parenting looks very different than what you imagined. And you have days when you think you are going crazy because nothing you try is working. Anyone else with a special needs kid feel crazy some days? 

I am very aware that my circumstances were not as bad as I thought. I have been through weeks in the past when I could barely get out of bed because my grief felt like a weight on my entire body. Some of you may be in that season and wishing that you had my week instead of your own. Whatever the season I am in, I have to admit that sometimes I have days that just seem to overwhelm me and I can't get back to a place of gratitude and openness to God's touch in my life. 

My kids will probably only remember that they got to have waffles and ice cream for dinner last week. I hope so. I am thankful that I can make amends and let go. I am also thankful that there is a group of women in my life that are learning how to practice the Spiritual Disciplines in our everyday lives. This past week we practiced Fixed Hour of Prayer**. We did a simplified version and picked one time during the day to set a timer or alarm (I used my cell phone) to remind us to stop and pray. My time was 2:30 in the afternoon. This was my prayer.

Search me, O God, and know my heart; 

try me and know my anxious thoughts. 

See if there be any hurtful way in me, 

and lead me in the everlasting way.

Psalm 139:23-24

I wish that I can say that I was extremely spiritual and was given great insight into God. I was not. I was given great insight into myself. I didn’t like stopping and pausing. I didn’t like noticing how my attitude toward my children and my circumstances was not loving but irritated and grumpy. And yet, I stopped. I paused. I recognized that I needed God’s help. Sometimes I took it. Sometimes I didn’t. I saw how frail I am and how much I need the power of God to enter into my every day earthly life and transform it. This week is “back to normal” but I am very aware that I worship a God who took on our human condition and entered into everyday life so that I could know that I am never alone in it. That is the mercy of God for a mom who needed it so desperately last week. And every day.

**Fixed-Hour of Prayer calls for regular and consistent patterns of attending to God throughout the day. Benedict of Nursia believed that both physical labor (work) and prayer were in God’s hands. They were both God’s work. He is renowned for saying “Orare est laborare, laborare est orare” – to pray is to work, to work is to pray. Benedictines today continue to punctuate their work with prayer rhythms begun over 1600 years ago.

God Box

The best advice I was ever given was to start a God Box for my prayers. At first, I wondered if it would be helpful, but I gravitate toward word pictures to help me grasp spiritual concepts so I was drawn to the idea. The God Box is a tangible picture of learning how to turn over my worries to God and leave them in His hands. 

I've been surprised how the simple act of writing down my concern on piece of paper and putting it in the God Box has transformed how I pray and how I see God. For years, I prayed to God and thought I had let go. But what I was actually doing was telling God how I wanted Him to answer my prayer. Or I was praying for someone or something to change so I could feel better.  But when I write down the prayer and put it in the God Box, I am letting God have it. I am truly letting go. My prayer is simple.  "This is too big for me to figure out on my own. I need Your help.  I'll wait for You to show me what to do."

Don't get me wrong. It's not easy to put some of the big ones in the box and leave them there. But the gift of the God Box is that I'm not trying to figure out the answer anymore. I wait. I live. I listen. Sometimes I have to remind myself, "It's in the God Box. Don't take it out today." Some of the things I put in my God Box are in there for a long time. Months. Maybe years. (I just started in 2011.)  But when I look back months later, I've often discovered that what was once a burden is now gone. My attitude or perspective has changed, and I can just remove it.

This past spring, my son struggled with two boys at school. No matter what he tried, he couldn't get them to stop bothering him. Our school was helping and intervening with the boys, but my son was beginning to feel overwhelmed by the situation. It was often the most difficult on Sunday evening when he was thinking about going to school the next day. I told him about my God Box and how I put problems that are too big for me to handle in it. I told him he could let me know if he wanted to use the God Box for his prayers.

That following morning at breakfast, he said, "Mom, can I put Jeff and Andy (not their real names) in the God Box?" So he wrote down their names on a piece of paper and put it in the box. He loved that the box had a special lock. One side has panels that slide into different positions to lock the box shut. I chose this box because reminds me that my prayers are locked in tight and safe and not to be taken out again!

As my son put the prayer into the box, I found myself thinking, "Okay, God. You got this one? You better show up!" Then I started thinking of ways I might need to explain to my son why God was not answering his prayers right away. Once again, I saw that I think I need to have a back up plan for God.  I too had to put this situation in the box that morning and trust that God could handle it.

When my husband picked up our son from school that day he was beaming. He was surrounded by classmates all trying to stand next to him. We soon found out that his teachers had decided to have a meeting that day with the two classes in my son's grade that included my son and the two boys.  My son was able to share in a safe environment about the teasing and how he felt like he had no friends at recess. Other students also opened up about how they felt the same way as my son. They came up with solutions on how to solve the problem. The teachers initiated letting my son pick a special friend for each recess over the next week. When the teachers asked who would like an opportunity to be my son's special friend, everyone raised their hands and wanted to be chosen. One teacher shared that this meeting was one of the most moving moments that she had experienced in her 30 years as an educator.

You can say it was a coincidence. I say it was God touching my son's life with an answer to his prayer. It was his dewdrop from heaven. And his mom got to enjoy it too. We were both so excited to take out our slips of paper in the God Box that evening. I wish that every slip of paper came out the next day. But that is not the case. But this experience with my son sure made me want to trust God to take care of me ... one day at a time. I could share time and time again when the answer comes in unexpected ways. But for right now, I want to keep those as God's special gifts to me that I keep hidden in my heart.

In this season of my life, I am learning to put my son's diagnosis of Tourette Syndrome into the box. Today I will be writing down, "How to parent a child with Tourette's?" This is what I need to put in my God Box. What about you?  I would encourage you to use the God Box and see what you discover.