We recently spent a week at Myrtle Beach with my side of the family in what has become an annual trip that works as sort of a mini-reunion for those of us far flung from grandmother, aunts, uncles and cousins. The road trip is a long one, at least by Johnson family standards, but is well worth it. I relished the opportunity to spend time with people I love and grew up having around me. Throw in low country food, and I just don't know how much better life can feel for this gal.
While Katie and Adam have loved the water in previous years, they really enjoyed playing at the beach this year. Jumping waves, collecting shells and digging holes in the sand brought a lot of joy to our two tots, but, I probably took more joy in watching them. And, frankly, I had fun too, drawing pictures and scrawling my baby name suggestions in wet sand. Once vetoed (or at least pondered a few moments), I'd wipe the slate smooth again for another stab at winning Aaron's interest in a moniker for Baby J #3. Because heaven forbid we go on calling her "Baby J #3."
We've officially decided that one of those names long since washed from the Carolina shore will be hers - Nora Grace.
The baby-naming process typically does not represent the unity Aaron and I enjoy in most other areas of our marriage. In fact, I kind of dread it. Poor Adam didn't have a name until two weeks prior to his birth. I've heard worse, of course, with many kids getting their names after Mom and Dad see their little pink faces after they've reached the outside world. Still, the stressful debates are not my fave. So this third round was shaping up to be much like the previous two, and I was getting weary of it more quickly than usual. Maybe it's the extra estrogen in my system, or perhaps I'm just getting old.
Before we found out the baby's sex, we'd already agreed that if the baby is a boy, his middle name would be Aaron, after Daddy. My husband had regretted not pushing for that one when our son Adam was born. Instead, since "Adam" was Daddy's suggestion (or perhaps demand - depends upon whom you have asked) I won the middle war with "Taylor," a family name shared by several including my beloved Papaw Holbrook who died in 2001.
With Katie and Adam peacefully digging holes in the beach nearby, I fingered a handful of names, peering up over my shoulder to read my husband's facial expression. One by one, the grimace came and I patted my tablet flat again. Then came Nora. I looked and saw Aaron tilt his head - a sign he usually gives when he takes a bite of food indicating that he can't decide whether he likes it. But given the usual response to my naming pitches, I'd take it.
"Whatcha think?" I prompted with hope.
"I just realized that's Aaron spelled backward," he said. This, of course, without that superfluous A.
Sold. Nora it is. End of arguments. And that, my friends, is an example of grace in my book. So now she has a middle name to boot.
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I also took the opportunity of having a little more down time than usual to read a book recommended by so many friends - One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. In this beautifully and honestly-written book, Voskamp accepts the challenge to record 1,000 things for which she is thankful and, in so doing, she finds more of the abundant life so many Christians struggle to take hold of, even though it's promised to us. I couldn't recommend it more strongly.
Reading it came at an appropriate time, as Aaron and I have quite a few friends hurting from a number of life's curve balls. And, honestly, when he and I encounter periods of deep pain, we tend to do a little flailing of our own. It's a very human response. I must admit that I still have a few more chapters to go, as mommy duties and general busyness have made a definite dent in my pleasure reading. But I'm getting so much out of this book I really wanted to suggest you start reading it right now. Plus, several friends who met for dinner earlier this week spent quite a while discussing the book's merits, which sort of re-energized me.
Several of Voskamp's points (thus far) bear repeating:
- "Eucharisteo always precedes the miracle." - Voskamp notes that on the night Jesus shared the Passover meal with His disciples, as recorded in Luke 22, He broke bread, gave thanks (Greek: "eucharisteo") and gave it to them. This was mere hours before Jesus was arrested, beaten until He no longer looked like a man and crucified, and yet He gave thanks for what would come to symbolize His broken body. And, of course, the miracle that followed is Christ's conquering of death in His resurrection and the salvation of many in taking our sin upon Himself. A word study of eucharisteo yields other miracles preceded by giving thanks for which Jesus is famous: the feeding of thousands with just a few loaves and small fish and Christ's resurrection of his friend Lazarus, who had been dead for four days. So, perhaps thankfulness becomes part of the equation in abundant living. Could it be that our own consumer mentalities and general discontentment keep us from experiencing everything God offers us?
- "Do not disdain the small. The whole of the life - even the hard - is made up of the minute parts, and if I miss the infinitesimals, I miss the whole." - This one penetrated to the heart of my role as a stay-at-home mom. Our days are filled with back-to-back minutiae, as are Voskamp's - a farmer's wife who homeschools their six children in southwestern Ontario. She stirs the porridge, shreds a mound of shredded cheese, folds the laundry... Good grief, I could go on and on about all the daily tasks that seem so mundane my mind figures them insignificant. Four years of college, magna cum laude, and today I'm sopping up urine in our never-ending quest to potty train our son. As someone who spent several years in the working world, I can attest that it's easy to long for days in which I can look back and point to projects having been accomplished and the occasional "atta-girl" thrown my way (and I do stress "occasional"). But every once and a while, I get a reminder that our everyday contributions do make a difference, if only in our relationship with God. I think of all the times I trudged bleary-eyed upstairs to nurse my infant children in the middle of the night. In those quiet moments when I'm rocking a tiny baby in the darkness, God meets me. And somehow the next day the sleep deprivation pales in comparison to coming closer to the Lord. It's vitally important, Voskamp suggests, to live in the moment, taking note of the minutiae: "Time is a relentless river," she writes. "It rages on, a respecter of no one... I can slow the torrent by being all here."
- "Joy and pain are but two arteries of the one heart that pumps through all those who don't numb themselves to truly living." - So many of us have the notion that pain is something to run from or even deny once it has caught us, fearing that pain is evidence of weakness, failure or sin in our lives. But Scripture tells us that pain is a part of being alive and that we should expect it. "All new life comes out of the dark places," Voskamp writes. Be it a newborn baby emerging from the depths of the womb or Christ bursting from a tomb that couldn't contain Him, she stresses that suffering delivers grace. Quoting renowned Christian author C.S. Lewis, she adds, "If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it's not so bad." But here in America, maybe our quest for perpetual bliss has been among our biggest problems. When we reach a state of discontentment we wonder why we're unhappy, figuring something must be wrong with us. Maybe there is (chemical imbalances are real), but then again if the unhappiness stems from circumstances, maybe we're simply experiencing life. Could it be that God can use that circumstance to draw us closer to Him, to grow us to become what we couldn't have imagined without Him? Are we pushing away opportunities to be the people our Creator had in mind when He blew breath into our lungs because we're experiencing sadness? Think about this: Luke 22 says that Jesus was in such anguish in Gethsemane on the night before His crucifixion that His sweat fell as drops of blood to the ground. Fulfilling the Father's will was going to be excruciating (a word coined to describe crucifixion), but that pain and His blood absolutely were necessary for salvation. What must some of us go through in this life to do the Father's will? Answers will vary from person to person, but one thing is clear: living for Christ means dying to self.
- "That Serpent, he's slithered with the lie that God doesn't give good but gives rocks in the mouth, leaves us to starve empty in wilderness and we'll just have to take lessons from Satan on how to take the stones of the careless God and make them into bread to feed our hungry souls." Another commentary on affliction and our common responses to it. The temptation Jesus encountered in the desert while He roamed hungry, thirsty and physically exhausted poses the same question as our own temptations. How will we respond? Do we turn inward and hide? Do we satisfy our desires because we're only human? Jesus responded with the same resource we have today - Scripture. And that speaks to us of the answer to having a full life today: "by every word that comes from the mouth of God." Study it. Know it. Proclaim it.
