Jesus Knows Its Scary to be Us

This blog was written two years ago when Katie was initially diagnosed. The tumor referred to below was eradicated with a very difficult, year long regimen of chemotherapy and radiation. Since that time, however, further tumors have surfaced in her lungs. As of this morning, she is fighting for her life. Please pray.

My mom and I were talking this morning when she told me about a young girl who is part of her church family. Katie is 15 and has stage 4 cancer. The mass is so large that it reaches from her pelvis to her sternum and is so imposing that in the ER they were unable to insert a catheter. She and her family are pursuing aggressive treatments to try and stop the spread of the disease but even that is proving difficult as her parents no longer have insurance. All of this seems ridiculously unfair. She's 15 for goodness sake and wants to be a missionary when she grows up.

As I was sorting laundry this afternoon and thinking through the unfairness of it all, God reminded me of something I heard this week in Bible Study: "Jesus knows its scary to be us." 
He reminded me that He knows this not in a omnipotent, theoretical way, but in an experiential way. He knows its scary to be us, because He created us, He loves us, but more than that, He was one of us.

Disease, poverty, hunger, pain are all common place here. Its painful to enter the world and, in most cases, its painful to leave it. We've never lived in a world without pain. Jesus, however, came from a place where none of that exists or will exist. He left the beauty of Heaven to live with us in the squalor of Earth. He chose that. He chose us.

The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. -Isaiah 7:14  

The prophet Isaiah calls Jesus, Immanuel. God with us. Jesus, in all His divinity, walked on this soil as a man enduring all the crumminess that comes with that. He knows what it is to be hungry, thirsty, tired, tempted, sad, and to grieve. He knows injustice, fear, uncertainty, and unfairness. He knows it because He lived it. Jesus knows its scary to be us.  

In most ways, the fact that the Creator God became one of us, makes the difficult parts of life tolerable, slightly easier even. More importantly, though, it teaches us that we can trust Him.We can trust Him because He cared enough to send the best, the most precious, the most sacred part of Himself so that we don't have to do it alone. As a result, we can trust His timing, His purpose, His plans, even when they don't make any sense to us.

So, while its crazy unfair that Katie is facing a very uncertain future, she's not facing it alone. Immanuel is there.

Of Monster Trucks & Missionaries

The idea was a good one. They often are. The hitch is always in the execution....

See, the big plan was to buy this book, From Arapesh to Zuni and through colorful illustrations and delightful, nightly discussion, have my progeny fall so in love with these under-reached people groups that I would single handedly produce the next Hudson Taylor or William Carey. The problem is that my three boys are not the Von Trapp children or even the Duggars. By the end of the first page, two thirds of which is taken up by a picture, my three year old was off to find his Curious George book, the five year suddenly decided it was a good time to play monster trucks and my eight year old, while feigning interest in the pictures of the Arapesh I brought up on Google, was really biding his time until he could check Amazon for a Pokeman book he was hoping to buy. The second night the younger two didn’t even pretend to listen and the oldest listened only as a way to buy a few more minutes before the lights went out.

I don’t lay the blame for this failed experiment at the feet of my children...at least not entirely. Like most American pastor’s kids, my boys live a very privileged spiritual existence; even more so because they live in the South. They own approximately 400 Bibles and Bible story books, have access to the entire Veggie Tales library via Netflix, and have enough VBS t-shirts stored away to clothe a small orphanage. The problem isn’t their lack of knowledge of spiritual things, it’s their lack of experience in spiritual things. I can’t expect them to have a passion for missions just because we read a few pages out of a book every night. Its a good start, but its just more head knowledge. The only way my boys will catch a vision for seeing a dark world illuminated by the light of Jesus is to have them experience it.

Admittedly, my husband and I are limited by our kids’ ages and our one income budget, so extensive family mission trips are not necessarily in the picture at this season in our lives, but other things are. We have the privilege of being friends with several missionaries and their families whose ministries reach from Europe to Africa to India and most of them have children the same ages of our boys. My kids can know and identify with these missionary families, not just through their picture on our refrigerator, but through letters, emails, and Skype dates. As parents, we should be praying for these families regularly with our kids, encouraging them to think of ways they can be an encouragement to them. We can engage as a family in opportunities to serve our local community: taking old books and puzzles to the women’s shelter, participating in clean up days, collecting travel kits for the homeless shelter etc. In short, if we want our kids to understand and experience the importance of reaching their world, we have to do it too.

God reminds the Israelites in Deuteronomy to teach the things of God “as they go.” As parents, we can make the largest impact on our children’s spiritual lives by living out our calling as boldly as we can, including them in it day by day, moment by moment until they become passionate sharing the good news from Arapesh to Zuni.

This post was written for Brooke and Richard Nungesser's ministry newsletter, The Polish Nuns. Be sure to check out Brooke's blog: and2makescrazy.wordpress.com to find out about their family and their ministry in Poland!

A Salute to Middle Children

My older sister and I look a lot alike.

See? Our Sunglasses are even the same...

We also sound a lot alike. A LOT. We had the added bonus of having an extremely youthful sounding mom. So....if someone were to call our house in the late ‘80’s and a female voice were to answer the phone it would go something like this....

Hello?

Patty?

No.

Kim?

No.

Monica?

Yep.

I suppose I could have stopped them before they went down the roster of girl Thiss residents, but, well, I didn’t. Sorry people who called our house. Anyway, the point is, my voice was not distinguishable from those of my mom and my sister. I didn’t need therapy over it or anything, but it was weird not to be immediately identified as me. To be thought of as someone else first. I'm over it though...really.

Flash forward thirty years...

A few weeks ago, our middle kiddo started referring to himself in the third person when I would ask him and his brothers a question. For example...

What do you guys want for lunch?

Micah wants a peanut butter sandwich! No jelly, please!

Who wants a drink?

Micah isn’t thirsty.

Where are you guys?

Micah is in his room!

Wha??!!

I finally asked him why in the world he insists on referring to himself in such strange way. His response? I have to, mom. Sometimes you don’t recognize my voice.

Well, crap.

(Sorry, I shouldn’t say that. In fact, I have another Micah story about that very word, but I digress.)

It’s true. Sometimes I don’t know who is yelling out for me and its not totally uncommon for me to say so. But still. Ouch.

I suppose there is a lesson in there about how God always knows our voice and how we never have to ask for anything from Him in the third person. 

Monica needs wisdom for parenting her children or Monica needs help to stop saying the word "crap," please. (Although I do.)

But that wasn't what I thought of when my sweet middle child reminded me that I need be a bit more careful when relating to my boys. What I remembered was that I am not parenting a tribe, but rather three individuals who need and deserve my personalized attention. Yes, there will be lots of times when it will be completely appropriate to refer to them as "the boys" and treat them collectively. However, as they mature, I need to be mindful to continue to get to know their ever changing personalities, to know their distinct voice. 

So, Happy Middle Child Day, sweet redhead. Mom loves you very much!