God's Pursuit of Me
To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love. - A.W. Tozer
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Everything
Sometimes I think it is ironic how often the stuff of my daily life reminds me of Biblical truth in some random way. And then I remember. Everything is spiritual. A couple of years ago Kevin and I heard a speaker named Rob Bell teach at a funky little club in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. His speaking tour was entitled “Everything is Spiritual”. And I really believe it is. Remembering that truth actually brings much more meaning (and importance and accountability) to my daily existence. If everything truly is spiritual, then I guess it does matter how I respond to my children when I am exhausted. Or which words come…
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Friday Morning
Yesterday morning I broke an unwritten Keigley household rule. I turned on the television first thing in the morning. Let me ‘splain. Because Wilder had eaten breakfast off his normal routine, Kevin had already left for work before I was able to take a shower. I really wanted a shower. “Hey guys? Who wants to watch Curious George?” You might call it poor parenting – I call it buying a half hour of my life. My aspirations actually reached beyond the cleansing shower. I had just purchased some eyeliner (don’t tell Riley!) and I wanted to experiment. While in Virginia Emma had given me brief instructions on applying eye liner.…
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Something About Love
Piper has a little friend. His name is Beckett. Piper is not always very kind to Beckett. Beckett will be standing still. Minding his own business. Being happy and content – a model citizen. Piper approaches out of the shadowy background. She walks behind her young companion. And then, without provocation, Piper two-hand shoves Beckett. It’s awful. I am so embarrassed by her behavior. Ashamed. What in the world? Why would she do that? I scoop her up and take her off to the other room for some baby discipline. But I don’t stop loving her. When we are done with the discipline, I don’t turn away from her affection.…
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Give Me A New Law
While helping Bergen get dressed one recent morning, I experienced a momentary lack of sanity. I asked this four year old boy, “What do you want to wear?” Well, Hawkeye wasn’t exactly sure what he wanted to wear, but he had a pretty good handle on what he did not want to wear. The conversation went almost just like this . . . “How about this shirt, son?” “Ummm, too many buttons. “ “What about this one?” “Too big.” We finally picked a shirt that was neither too big nor featuring too many buttons. On to the shorts. (I was already in this deep, I just kept right on digging…
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Read This Book
Turn My Mourning Into Dancing by Henri Nouwen I’m thinking about buying this book in bulk and handing it on the street corners. Seriously. It’s that good. (At least, it’s that good to me right now. And I know books are like that. They seem like miniature miracles when the words hit you when you most need them. ) This book is about suffering. And hope. It is about pain. And grief. And grace. And it is about seeing God in the suffering. Nouwen says, “We do not nurse the illusion that we can hopscotch our way through difficulties. For by trying to hide parts of our story from God’s…
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What You Want
One morning recently London approached me and out of the blue stated, “Mom, God just doesn’t do what you want.” What? “What do you mean?” I asked. “Well, last night I prayed for God to shut the door and I waited and He just never did it.” I didn’t laugh. Because I didn’t think it was funny. I thought she was right. Sometimes God just doesn’t do what we want. Period. I didn’t try to convince London that God does do just what we ask. Because I don’t think that’s true. And she is young, not dumb. I didn’t try to explain that her demand was illogical. Because to her,…
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The Day For Fathers
First. My Father. When I was a kid I thought my dad had the same super powers that every kid thinks their dad possesses. You know, eyes forever roaming the world that can quickly pinpoint ME hitting my brother across the back with my Cabbage Patch Kid. The Long Arm that could reach all the way into the backseat of the station wagon while driving the death-defying curves of the back roads up the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Disappointed Look when my report card comments revealed the classroom sins I thought I had kept hidden. The Ability to Magically Produce Money out of the air when I really wanted…
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Four Weeks
My Littlest Son, When I discovered that I was pregnant with you, I was . . . . surprised. Not entirely excited. Worried. In shock. I didn’t tell anyone for a long while. Your daddy and I really thought that your big sister Piper was the last little Keigley we would bring forth into this messy world. We were clearly wrong. And then I was so sick. The doctor and Daddy and I thought you wouldn’t survive. Oh, but small one, you are a survivor. And more than that, you decided to thrive. (God decided.) Let me be honest, my little Wilde Fox. Times at our house were not exactly…
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Tears, Glorious Tears
At this house, it seems as if someone is always crying. Little Mister Wilder cries when he is hungry. And he cries when he can’t manage to flip his thumb in the correct direction and maintain its position in his own minuscule mouth. He cries at four a.m. and he cries around seven thirty as well. If his diaper change is taking too long, tears ensue. When the food that should stay in his stomach flows out of his mouth and around his head, he cries about that as well. For Piper the tears are born of genuine frustration with her current lot in life. She wants to go outside…
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Greener Ideas
I’m not a radical environmentalist – whatever that is – but I have been trying to trade in some of my earth-harming habits for some greener choices for a few years now. For me, it really comes down to what I believe about God more than what I believe about the earth. To make it simple – God made the earth. He made people and told those people to take care of the earth. So here I am. And if I am doing a less than stellar job of stewardship, than I am basically saying I am not concerned with the gift and responsibility God placed on my head. There…
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My To-Do List
I like lists. (And the photo of Mosely has nothing to do with that. I just think everyone should look at my kids more often. ) As a kid I made loads of lists. Lists of my favorite names (I was collecting them even back then.) Lists of my favorite books. Lists of places I liked to eat, places I wanted to visit, stuff I liked to collect. I had lists of my stuffed animals’ names and everyone I could remember having ever met. (Seriously.) I typed my lists out on my cool Smith Corona typewriter. I loved that little piece of technology. All this to say, it is no…
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Little Red Wagons
I like word pictures. I like analogies. (Kevin likes metaphors.) I think it’s all the same way of saying – we like words. Anyway. I just heard a good word picture on the radio this week that I am going to shamelessly steal and use as my own. (It was said by some former basketball star of the olden days. Whatever.) The idea was this . . . Everyone has baggage that follows them around, baggage that they are carrying from the past – hurts, wounds, preconceptions, ideals, opinions – the stuff that makes us say what we say and do what we do. Our explanations, if you will. The…
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Read This
Read this …… it’s better than anything I could put up here anyway. All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.I never had a selfless thought since I was born.I am mercenary and self-serving through and through;I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn. Peace, reassurance, pleasure are the goals I seek,I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin;I talk of love – a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek –But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin. – C.S. Lewis
