Into His Hands

We sang the following hymn in church the other day. I don’t remember ever singing it before. It’s to the tune of “Crown Him with Many Crowns.” During the first verse, I was thinking, “Wow, yes, I do have griefs to commit to God.” I started getting choked up during the second, and was full on crying by the third.

Commit Now All Your Griefs

1 Commit thou all your griefs and ways into his hands; to his sure truth and tender care, who earth and heav’n commands. Who points the clouds their course, whom winds and seas obey, he shall direct your wand’ring feet, He shall prepare your way.

2 Give to the winds your fears; hope, and be undismayed; God hears your sighs and counts your tears, God shall lift up your head. Through waves and clouds and storms he gently clears your way; wait for his time, so shall the night soon end in joyous day.

3 Still heavy is your heart? Still sink your spirits down? Cast off the weight, let fear depart, and every care be gone. He everywhere has sway, and all things serve his might; his every act pure blessing is, his path unsullied light.

4 Far, far above your thought his counsel shall appear, when fully he the work has wrought that caused your needless fear. Leave to his sovereign sway to choose and to command; with wonder filled, you then shall own how wise, how strong his hand.

As our wonderful pastor encouraged us in his sermon, we are right to have concern over current events, but the Lord is our hope. The Lord is our hope.

Covid, political unrest, and multiple personal issues have been weighing me down. I’m sure I’m not alone in this. The sermon and this hymn hit me where I was and tenderly directed me to focus on the truth and comfort of God’s sovereignty. It was quite moving and lovely.

An hour later, my daughter’s birthday party was pretty much ruined at the last minute due to covid concerns. (Well, not ruined… we still had a pleasant day together.) I was angry because all our preparations were for nothing. (Well, not nothing… we still enjoyed the food and what company we had.) And sad for my daughter. Another covid disappointment to add to the list. (But she is a better sport than I am and takes things in stride.) For me, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It sure didn’t take long at all for me to forget the hymn and sermon that I had just been crying over. To forget my commitment to turn my sorrows over to the Lord.

I have a strong drive to make everything special. I love traditions and festivities and I want to do them up right. But one after another, these holidays, graduations, camps, vacations, classes, and birthdays are being tweaked, adjusted, ruined, and/or canceled. I’m sure everyone has been feeling bummed about things they’ve missed out on this year, and I’m surely not trying to say we’ve been effected more than anyone else. In fact, we have so much to be thankful for in all this – my husband’s job has remained almost exactly the same, we’ve been healthy, and I’ve been enjoying not being quite so busy. But the isolation and inability to celebrate as we usually do has definitely gotten to me.

Another aspect of my personality is that I’m quite politically outspoken. I used to spend hours debating on Facebook and enjoyed it very much and thought it very important. The last couple years I’ve struggled to keep up with these discussions because they seem to have increased and also our lives have changed and I have trouble justifying the time it takes. Add to that a bit of weariness from the name-calling, etc. Then 2020 happened. The number of challenges has exploded, as well as the vitriol. I find myself feeling like a coward if I don’t speak out, but also genuinely concerned that I’m going to lose friends if I do. I go back and forth between these responses and I suppose neither is correct. But the point I’m trying to make is that my friendships are very important to me, online and in person.

Our family was quite isolated for so long before we moved here. Then we experienced true togetherness and celebration. After four glorious (and one not so glorious) years, we were clearly betrayed and had to start all over nearly from scratch. Three years later, we have more or less built most of that back. But the wound has left me with some significant social anxiety and wariness. And now with covid opinions crossing party and religious lines, I feel somewhat trapped. I’m not sure who to try to socialize with, and even the ones that are OK with this sort of radical behavior are often busy, etc., just like during normal life.

I saw the post about churches handing out red, yellow, and green bands to signify how comfortable people are with physical contact. While very helpful and pragmatic, it also just makes me sad. I love to go to church, but the masks bring me low. I long for fellowship and faces. I long for gatherings and glee. I want to eat, party, play, share, and sing with people. This has always been the case, but I feel it so much more now that it’s so difficult to achieve. I feel lonely, discouraged, and frustrated.

I woke up early yesterday morning after a nightmare. I remembered the hymn above. Yes, I do have griefs. Yes, my heart is heavy. May I remember to give that to the Lord and trust that his plan is for my good.

Psalm 33:22 – Let your steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us, even as we hope in you.

I Have a Brother

As some of my Facebook friends may have noticed, I’ve been reading The Faith of Christopher Hitchens by Larry Alex Taunton. I eagerly preordered the book on Amazon, shortly after I heard about it.

You see, my father passed away six years ago. At the time of his death, he was involved in an online debate with an atheist co-worker friend over CH’s book, God is Not Great.

I also love writing and debate, am a staunch defender of my conservative Christian views, and sometimes get into trouble for being bossy, gruff, and insensitive. In other words,

I am my father.

Less than two years after my dad died, Christopher Hitchens passed away. They were close in age, and died of the same cancer. In this way,

My father was Christopher Hitchens.

It is due to these strange coincidences, as well as my seeing Hitchens in various video clips and reading (admittedly not many) of his writings, that I developed an affection for him from afar. I remember immediately being drawn to his sarcasm and “cut to the quick” style. I also appreciated the delicious contradiction apparent in some of his beliefs and opinions. (Along those lines, I am also fascinated by Kirsten Powers and Tammy Bruce.) I cried when he died, not only over him, but also because he and his death reminded me of my dad. It’s a connection that may seem odd or even a stretch, to someone I’ve never met and hardly read, but there it is.

So, of course I knew all of this going into the book. But now I am in the middle of the chapter entitled Brothers. You see, Peter Hitchens is the younger brother of Christopher. He is also an author – a conservative Christian author. This chapter blindsided me. I had already known of Peter, but I had never connected that information to my own life. As the outspoken conservative Christian who might make Southern evangelicals cringe,

I am Peter Hitchens.

But as the perfectionistic eldest in the family who has always been sure that I know best,

I am Christopher Hitchens.

Likewise, as the younger sibling who is the polar opposite of the eldest,

My brother is Peter Hitchens.

However, as the committed socialist atheist,

My brother is Christopher Hitchens.

There are a lot of parallels here, criss-crossing over each other in a jumble. I am not trying to say that I am as intelligent, influential, or accomplished as either of these men (or my dad!). I am just saying that I identify with all of them in different ways. Life is complicated and can be difficult and disappointing. (Unfortunately, this is the kind of thing that inspires me to write!)

From the book mentioned above –

One might be able to avoid conflict with a family member when he only has to listen to his opinions at Thanksgiving and Christmas. But here were two columnists writing regularly on politics, religion, and social issues for prominent newspapers and magazines. …they read each other and wrote knowing that this was so. Each brother was always aware of the other in the manner of a woman secretly keeping up with her ex-boyfriend on Facebook…

Whenever Christopher spoke to me of Peter, it was always in a favorable way. But in a more honest moment, he acknowledged the broken nature of the relationship and offered a reason for it: “Accident of nature. We were born only two years apart. Consequently, we competed with each other for everything.” He wasn’t looking at me when he said this. That he and Peter were at odds bothered him. He mostly dealt with the conflict by alternately pretending it didn’t exist and fanning the flames.

 

Many, if not most, of my Facebook friends might not even know that I have a brother, and that’s saying a lot due to my frequent sharing (or oversharing) of most things personal. I won’t go into it more than that in order to respect his privacy and that of the rest of my family’s.

But I wanted you to know that I have a brother.

His name is Brad.

Bob

Last night, my in-laws’ neighbor Bob passed away. We’ll have to tell the kids this morning and there will be some tears shed. We’ve had to share five deaths with our children that I can remember. My brother-in-law died when we only had two kids and they were 2 and 2 months, so we didn’t have to worry too much about explanations. Next was my grandfather. We had three kids at that time and they were about 6, 4, and 1. We didn’t live close to my grandparents and hardly saw them, so I wasn’t expecting the emotional response we got, especially from our 6yo. The next was about a year later, and was our elderly neighbor. We had some pretty regular interaction with his wife, but hadn’t spent much time with the man. Again, I was surprised at how sad the girls got. Are they especially sensitive, or is there just an instinctive reaction against death that we are born with? The fourth death was, of course, the hardest, as it was my father, and if you are a regular reader of my blog you know how difficult that was for our entire family. Last year, another (now former) neighbor passed away, and again, there were many tears shed by the girls and surprise on my part. This was another older man, and my older girls remembered him coming by regularly to give them cookies and other little gifts when we lived in TN.

So, now we are about to share Bob’s passing with them. Besides my dad, this one will probably be the hardest. Bob was a retired widowed pig farmer who lived in a trailer next door to my in-laws. My memories of him will always be tied to my son. He was always giving W tractor rides when the kids were visiting there and that was a major thrill. As a rule, we require our children to call their elders “Mr.” or “Miss,” but we made an exception for Bob. We tried to attach Mr. to his name, but it just wouldn’t stick. Part of the reason was that W has some speech issues, but he was always able to say Bob very clearly. For awhile, that was all I heard around here! His Little People farmer was Bob. So were all the other Little People.  Every farmer in a book was Bob. When he put on his cowboy hat, he was Bob. Everyone with a cowboy hat at Walmart (which, in SD, was a lot of people) was greeted with a joyful, “BOB!” It was such a sweet stage in his little life and I already miss it.

I didn’t know Bob very well, but he was very cheerful, sweet to my kids, and had a fun, booming voice. My husband has known him almost his whole life, and he remembers him as being the happiest man he knew. What a great legacy! We had a wonderful discussion at church yesterday about our attitudes about work. Someone made the point that any honest work you do as unto the Lord is your “calling.” You don’t necessarily have to be doing what you love (although of course that’s what we all hope for!) to be following the Lord’s leading in your life. Our joy should be in him first. My husband saw that in Bob. His identity wasn’t wrapped up in pig farming. His joy was in the Lord and in the love of the life he’d been blessed with. I hope that lesson stays with us.

The tractor rides will be missed.

Welcoming and Gladness

 I’ve said something like this before, and probably will again. As faithful Christians, we are in the minority. As faithful Reformed Christians, we are in the minority of a minority. As faithful Reformed Christians who believe in paedocommunion, we are in the minority of a minority of a minority… So, I’m not expecting too many of you to sympathize or maybe even care, but I want to write about it anyway.

I haven’t said too much about this issue in the past because I didn’t want to show disrespect for or stir up controversy at our church in South Dakota. We do dearly love that church and are so thankful we were able to attend there. However, the main reason we were not allowed to become members (and, honestly, would not want to) is because we embrace communion for our children. And now that we are gone, I am going to feel a bit more free to discuss the issue.

I’m not intending to get into a big debate right now – in the midst of moving in, I have neither the time nor the energy. But, I do want to make one small point about it. One of the most compelling arguments for paedocommunion (as well as paedobaptism) that I’ve seen is that there is no mention of it in the Bible. If communion is the replacement meal for the Passover (which children were allowed and expected to partake in), then why were the parents not saying, “Hey!! What about my children!?!? Why are you excluding my precious children from this new covenant??” It seems quite logical that they would heartily protest at this point and run right back to Judaism.

So, anyway, that’s how we’ve been feeling. When we became reformed, about 9 years ago, we became members of a wonderful PCA church that allowed us to give our children communion. They did not support it, but left it up to the family to decide. So, our children had communion, but we gave it to them hunched over, with our heads down, so as not to bring any attention to ourselves. At our (much beloved) church in South Dakota, children were not allowed to have communion until they had gone through a very lengthy confirmation process and were in their mid- to late teens (which always begged the question in my mind, “Why don’t the adults have to go through that? Those kids surely knew much more than I do!”)

We had been hoping to “someday” go to a church that believed as we did, and that was one of the main reasons we chose Lakeland, FL, when we decided to move. So, two days ago, after much anticipation, we went to a church where our children were heartily welcomed to the Lord’s table. We held our heads high, and joyfully assisted them with the wine and the bread. A few tears were shed, and there was welcoming and gladness all around.

Matthew 19:14 – Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”