Stone Siblings Because Allen Means Stone

  

     Biological connection does not make a family, love does. That was in very short supply in the family and home in which I grew up in, due to the fact that my parents despised each other. They never taught us to love each other or anyone else. My mother taught us to hate everyone, my father taught us to love only ourselves. I'm not saying they indoctrinated us with that, I'm saying they lived that.

      I used to be covetous of other families whose siblings were loving and intimately close friends, while mine were only related by blood. Once every ten years or so, they'd be a family reunion of sorts for some special occasion, and I always dreaded going, because I knew what I would be facing. I was always the odd man out, and the older I got the odder I became, to them. When I was dating my now husband, I told him what they were like around me, and he thought I was exaggerating, until the first time he was with us all together at a family event. Then he understood, but he didn't understand why they were like that with me.

       Having studied the Bible as well as I have, I've seen a lot of sibling dysfunction. Let's see, there's Cain, the first murderer in the Bible who murdered his brother. Then there's Jacob and Esau, what mess they were, right from the womb! "Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated." (Romans 9:13)

       GOD didn't actually hate Esau, what GOD hated was Esau's disregard for his position in the family. The birthright was a precious commodity that carried great honor and responsibility, something Esau didn't care to have. GOD also knows how we will end in life, and who and what we will reproduce. GOD doesn't look at the ugly in the present, especially if he knows the future will be beautiful, but if the ugly is all-life long, GOD won't bother to invest in a person who will have no dividend at the end of the road. He doesn't waste His time in those with hearts of stone that will never become hearts of flesh. (Allen means stone, and how appropriate that we are named as such. Guess who's heart became flesh!)

       Then there's Joseph and his brothers, what a bunch, throwing their brother into a cistern, leaving him for dead, then later selling him off for a chunk of change. How about their total disregard for their father's heart and how crushed it would be when they lied to him, telling him that his precious son was eaten by a wild animal, and bringing back only a bloody tunic. That story had a happy ending, even though his brothers never truly trusted him or let him be one of the "in" brothers, but Joseph's heart was all flesh. I wish I could say that I would be that forgiving when it's all said and done.

       The Bible is jam-packed with stone-hearted siblings, even Jesus had a few renegade brothers who thought Jesus went mad by calling himself the "Son of GOD," when they knew darn-well, that he indeed was. "When his family heard about it, they went to get him. They said, "He's out of his mind!" (Mark 3:21) Oh, brother, can I relate to that! (Pun intended). I love Jesus response, which was basically, he dissed them in public, and they well deserved it. Jesus did not do it with malice, but with truth in love. Jesus said, in a nutshell, biology means nothing, but those who belong to GOD are my true family. Again, oh sister, can I relate to that! (And yes, pun intended, again)

       So, although, I have been envious of other families and their closeness, in a way, I'm glad that I grew up in the house of "stone," full of rivalry, at least that's all I ever felt from them. When I was twenty-six-years-old, GOD changed my stone heart to flesh, (Ezekiel 37), and as the years passed, He blessed me with eight children of my own, two more than my mother had. Coming from my background in that house of stone, I knew exactly how NOT to raise my children.

       I'm proud and grateful to say that my children rarely fight, they never treat each other hatefully. Love and lots of it, was poured all over them and taught to them from the womb. We aren't perfect, and we've had the normal issues of estranged times, but the seeds of love have been deeply planted in their hearts of flesh. They continue to be nurtured, and I am assuming GOD will grow a garden of blessings from each seed in the fertile soil of that kind of love, the ingrained one, the one straight from Jesus's heart to mine, to theirs.

     Well, I'm glad I grew up in the family I did, because it made me the empathetic and compassionate person I am today.  Broken people, loved by Jesus, help other  broken people. My legacy that I will leave is that no matter what kind of home one grows up in, GOD can heal all those broken parts and send that formerly broken person out there to love on other bruised reeds.  .

       The Bible says that children are a reward, an inheritance from the LORD (Psalm 127:1). These day, nobody wants a quiver full, but they'd rather have stuff and debt, with a sky-high mortgage, and trips, and the newest vehicles, but back in those days, a full quiver was a nod from GOD!  

 

BAIT AND SWITCH

This is a post from a previous blog written in 2017. I have since deleted that blog, but it's going in my book.

 

      I’m not an octomom anymore, I’m a chartered bus driver for my kiddo’s, only I don’t get paid. I could say I’m an Uber driver, but I don’t get Internet orders, just text ones. If I’m not picking one up at her Dad’s and bringing her to work, then going back a few hours later to transport her back to her Dad's, fetching her from her tennis matches, then I’m picking another one up from choir practice, or play practice, or bringing one of the three younger ones to either a friend’s house, girl scouts, or cub scouts. Basically, I schlep kids around.

     The only tips I get is an occasional bowl of ice cream cake fetched for me. When my children were little, it was an endless eternity of butt-wiping, nose cleaning, consoling, arbitrating, dishes, sweeping, vacuuming, all while homeschooling, nursing an infant or toddler and/or while pregnant. The only thing I stayed clear of was, of course, vomit. That was their Dad’s job.

     One dreadful evening, my poor number four had the worst of the stomach bugs that plagued the house, imposing itself on all my kiddo’s. My husband was working, my darling daughter was maybe fourteen or so. I was trapped. The poor dear was wretching so bad, she could barely take a breath in between the projectile spouts of her stomach contents. I didn’t know what to do. I did what any good mother who couldn’t be near vomit would do. There I was, practically crying for her, about seven steps down in the stairwell, yelling up to her, “Honey, are you okay? Can you breathe?”

      She tried to let me know she was still alive in between wretching and breathing. I tried to let her know that I would stand by her, except several feet away, maybe even several steps down the stairwell.  “Sweetie, I’d be there holding that beautiful thick head of shimmering chocolate brown hair back for you, but if I did, I’d be vomiting all over it with you!”
The poor dear, in between wretches tried to say, 

     “That’s okay, Mom, I know.”

      My oldest is twenty-nine, the next one is near twenty-five, number three just became legal at twenty-one, number four is about to hit eighteen, the following are what I call the bottom four, fifteen, twelve, ten, and eight. They are extremely independent now and can vomit on their own without their mama. They are on clean-up by themselves, also. They close the door when they get sick so I don’t have to hear or smell it, and I just yell from my bedroom, under my covers, “Are you okay?” They assure me they are. Many times, they’ll get up in the middle of the night, do it, and somehow manage to not even wake me. Occasionally, they’ll mention it delicately to me the next morning when they ask if they can stay home from school. They even clean their own mess if they don’t make it to the bathroom, including washing their sheets.

      I used to work full-time at a pharmacy, but my now important role as their Uber driver was getting in the way of my writing and studying. Something had to go, and it wasn’t going to be my gift, or my kids, so, I turned in my name tag, hugged all my regular customers goodbye, and I’m now a part-time Uber driver for my kids and a full-time writer/Bible student, just waiting for the LORD to decide it’s time to go on the road for Him, as opposed to just for my kiddo’s.

      My kiddo’s are extroverts, thriving in school, getting straight A’s the older ones, all “4’s” the younger ones, and funny as all get-out. They got their flair and funny from me. Their dad is extremely generous when it comes to child support, but that’s about it. He stays as far as way as he can.  He tells people that the only reason he dated me of all the girls in our college group was because I was the only one who didn’t want children.  I think they call that bait and switch.  He’s happy as a lark, living as a hermit, his dream come true. I do all the parenting, he is our fiduciary!

      I consider my life quite idyllic now. I get to do all that I love to do, read, write and study. My kiddo’s had to learn to cook for themselves when I worked full-time, and I’m not about to change that, now that I have a good thing going. They’ve been doing their own laundry since they were tall enough to reach the knobs on the machines. I got tired of rewashing their clean clothes in their hampers or finding all my hard work strewn across the floors of their rooms, so I learned early to let them do their own. My job besides being their personal chauffeur is to always be available when they want to tell me what happened at school, the latest cafeteria gossip or squabble, look at their artwork, laugh at their snap-chats, or advise them on righteous living with lots of love and grace sprinkled in for good measure. We sing and dance together in my room, we laugh and are the best of mom and kid buddies that we can be, when I’m not taking away their devices for some infraction or infringement, like sneaking this or that. They always get caught, they should know by now that God is watching them all the time, and He finds a way to let me know when they are doing what kids do, try to get away with as much as they can, before they lose their device for a week or so.

      How I ever managed when I had seven in the house at one time, plus a husband and four cats is simply beyond me, but compared to then, I’m living a dream life, now. So, am I extremely contented and happy beyond all imagination? Heck no, there is that one little thing that I simply must do before I leave this planet, and that is, to change the world. It’s a small task, a small dream, but I serve a BIG God, so if He ordained it, put the dream in my heart, stuck me in the refiner’s fire with the heat turned up seven times the normal, crushed me, humbled me to the point of horrifying embarrassment, I suppose He can use me as a vessel to change the world, right?   What is it the Bible says, faith as small as a mustard seed.

     So, what’s the point of this particular entry in this blog? Simply, I’m here to tell you that you can live in the valley of the shadow of death for nearly three decades, drown in a sea of tears and despair, call out to our God daily, stay the heck away from vomit, and eventually, God will put you out there and fulfill the purpose for you He had ordained since before the creation of the world, you just have to do one little four-letter word,

W-A-I-T.

     It will come, in God’s time, in God’s way, and there is not one thing you can do to speed it up, unless you want to make a complete fool of yourself. Been there, done that. I think I’ll wait!

 

 

Are you mad at God?

     

 My former best friend of over twenty-seven years would continue to say to me, “Kristina, how can you be mad at God. Stop, I’m afraid for you.” She was the dearest woman in my life, and never were there two more opposite sisters who weren’t related by blood, but by Christ. We met in Massachusetts the very first year I became a born-again Christian and became very close. Less than one year later, in 1991, we took this picture, assuming it would be our last Sunday together. She left MA to begin a new life in Kentucky a few days later. Little did I know, three years later, the Lord would be moving my family less than one-half mile away.  

       We grew up in completely different environments. She grew up in a loving home with Christian parents, going to church every Sunday, hearing and learning all the wonderful Biblical stories. She has treasured memories of church camps, youth group meetings, and feeling loved by Jesus.  She says she always felt like the different one in her family, the black sheep, as some would call it. That is the ONLY thing we have in common.  She felt that she was the “rebellious” one, and I felt like I was the tender one, picked on, the vulnerable walking target. I grew up in a cold, hard, “survival of the fittest" environment with two parents who hated each other.  Their divorce was so nasty, that if they were presidents of different countries, they would have annihilated each other, and their citizens, us their children.  Did they do it on purpose? Of course not, my parents did the best they could with what they knew, with what they grew up with themselves.  Neither of them grew up in a Godly home. Their parents did not grow up in a Godly home, and so on and so on.

       My best friend was taught the fear of God, a properly balanced reverence for God. I was taught to rebel against authority, because authority was oppressive. My mother blamed my father for everything that went wrong, even if he had nothing to do with it. If the toilet backed up, it was his fault, even if he hadn’t lived in the home in three years, it was still his fault. So, imagine growing up hearing that, what’s a girl to do, but to blame her Heavenly father for everything that has gone wrong? The first twenty-one years of my life, as a born-again, forgiven sinner, I spent angry at God.   The stuff just kept hitting the fan, no matter how hard I tried to be a “good” Christian.  All the bad stuff was the Sovereign God’s fault, my husband’s stroke, our living at the below the poverty level, losing our daughter to estrangement in a bitter dispute, her staying away five years, the over-taxing burden of trying to raise eight children. I mean after all, I had them for Him, or so I thought. I gave my heart, soul, and life and all my endeavors in dedication to God, yet I lived in oppression for almost three decades. What did our loving patient Father do? He let me get more and more angry until I walked away. 

       So, did I have a right to be angry at God? Some would say yes, and some like my girlfriend would say no.  What does God say?  I think He best answers that question through the greatest king who ever lived, the man known as “the man after God’s own heart,” David.

       I cry aloud to the Lord; I lift up my voice to the LORD for mercy. I pour out before him my complaint; before him I tell of my trouble. When my spirit grows faint within me, it is you who watch over my way. Psalm 142: 1-3

       David spent thirteen years, give or take, running from a mad king who grew more insane by the year. Get this, an entire army for thirteen years could not find one man and execute him. Why? Because he was God’s man. Believe me when I say this, unless God is finished with the plan He has for your life, you are immortal for the time being, and no one can take you out of this world, until the will of God has been completed. Not only are you immortal, so to speak, but if the Lord planned it, the Lord will accomplish what He knows you will do. You can’t mess it up so bad as to not get the work done. He will complete it in you, regardless of where you are right now in life, walking with God, or still angry at God. If He planned to use you to further His Kingdom, He is going to use you, mark my words, rather, mark His words!

     

       So, hypothetically, I’m David, I’m in the cave of Adullam, I’m tired, I’m worn from running from the crazy king. I was anointed the next king over Israel by the last great judge and prophet, Samuel. I’ve been promised riches, blessings, a throne, respect, a kingdom and peace, and I’ve been living with rag-tag soldiers, four hundred of them, by this time, all looking to me for guidance, and all I can think is “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Lord, when is this going to end? Is it going to end? Where are your promises? Are they coming at all? Did you really promise them? Was Samuel as deluded as King Saul?”

       God’s answer to David did finally come, and it wasn’t until hundreds of years later. This prophecy was written about the future coming King, Jesus, but it could very well have pertained to David, also.

         Before I was born the Lord called me; from my mother’s womb he has spoken my name. He made my mouth like a sharpened sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me into a polished arrow and concealed me in his quiver. He said to me, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will display my splendor.” But I said, “I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing at all.    Yet what is due me is in the Lord’s hand, and my reward is with my God.” Isaiah 49: 1-4 

      Are you hiding in a cave? Do you think all your work has been done in vain? Could you also be that servant spoken of in Isaiah 49? Does God understand our frustration? Does God understand our hurt and confusion?   The unequivocal answer is YES! 

       Because I couldn’t understand the Infinite God with my finite mind, frustration, hurt, anger, and despair drove me away.  I was away from God for three years, and all during that time, I wanted nothing to do with Him. As I mentioned previously, until God accomplishes His pre-ordained plan He has for our lives, He will eventually and gently lead us back to his loving arms and grow us up until we can understand why all that has happened.     So, is it okay to be mad at God? The answer, no, but Grace says,

“The I AM understands.”