The Shepherd's Treasure-- A GIVEAWAY!!!!

Jack and Margaret missed out on the whole Elf on a Shelf thing, because by the time the book came out, they were well past the Santa stage.

It was probably for the best.

I don't know if I ever told you, but we downplayed Santa in our home because my husband Tim was kind of traumatized as a kid when he found out the truth about the big guy in red. He felt betrayed and manipulated, and it caused some trust issues/faith issues that took a while to work out. As a result, he asked if we could have a "Santa-lite" home, and we did.

One result was we found ways to integrate more Advent rituals into our home instead.

Last year, with a little one in the house again, I came across something that I knew would be a fun  tradition to start with Andrew, and a GREAT FIT for our family.

It's called The Shepherd's Treasure and is the sweetest way to prepare our hearts and home for celebrating Jesus's birth. 

Each box comes with an adorable plush Shepherd and Baby Jesus, and a big, beautiful hardcover book.

The book shares the story of a young Shepherd looking for Baby Jesus, and is super encouraging and uplifting. It helps kids know just how special they are.

Each day in December, the Shepherd moves somewhere new in your home looking for the baby, culminating with his finding Jesus in the manger on Christmas morning.

The kids have fun searching for the Shepherd each day, and anticipation builds for Jesus's birthday.

Hiding places can be simple (ME!) or elaborate (Pinterest). There is even a calendar full of creative ideas available on the website if, unlike me, you want to take it up a notch.

You can also order (optional) Advent Cards with Bible verses on them that  provide ideas of things your family can do together each day to share God's love with someone else.

The Shepherd's Treasure is a sweet and meaningful tradition for a family wanting to find a way to focus on Jesus as the very best gift of all!

I contacted the creators of The Shepherd's Treasure and they have agreed to give one An Inch of Gray Reader The Shepherd's Treasure (book and plush figures). It comes in a great keepsake box so it is easy to store year to year. If you don't have little ones at home, considering entering anyway and giving The Shepherd's Treasure as a gift.

Entries in the Continental U.S. only, please.

Easy ways to enter using this entry form :
1)Visit The Shepherd's Treasure Facebook page (mandatory)
2)Leave an email address for (VERY RARE) emails from me such as info about my book or speaking engagements (optional)

What's the Word?

Yesterday I hired a babysitter, Nadia, so I could write run errands.

At the last minute, a workman I've been trying to connect with came over, so I had to stick around. Our twice a month cleaning lady, Marie, was also there. So, for an hour or so, we had a full house, and Nadia and Marie had a chance to chat.

Later, Nadia said to me, "Marie says Andrew looks just like your other boy did. She says he was very clever, and Andrew is clever too. See? We don't know how God works. You are lucky. Lucky!"

The word lucky struck me as a little off, but something could have been lost in the translation. There were several languages in play as Marie and Nadia, two women of faith from distant parts of the world, admired and talked about the baby.

With my story, I don't know if anyone would call me "lucky."

Besides, lucky sounds so random.

Christians tend to use the word BLESSED instead. Blessed is a way to say, "I don't think this is random, but it also doesn't come just from my own hard work or striving." When Christians say they are blessed, to describe a new house, car, job, and, yes, even their children, it's a way of expressing deep gratitude...but it can also be problematic. This article sums that up pretty well.

It makes me think of when people say, "There but for the grace of God go I," in describing terrible things that happen to children. I get that this sentiment is a way to connect, to say, "Hey, what happened to you could have happened to anyone!" But it can also make a person feel as if she's somehow outside of God's grace when terrible things do happen.

And of course that's not true.

Words can be confusing.

In speaking to groups, I sometimes unpack my troubled relationship with the verse: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."

BLESSED?

I didn't feel blessed to not have my mom at my wedding.

I didn't feel blessed to have Margaret lose her very best friend in a stupid creek.

And I didn't feel blessed last week when Jack's precious classmates generously gave up a Sunday afternoon to meet Andrew and spend time with us. Instead, I felt stricken and depressed, missing spending day after day with these kids whom I have loved since they were 6 years old, and hurting so much that they are about to go to off to college and more new adventures without Jack.

In Jesus's upside down view of the world, however, grievers ARE blessed.

Why? Not because they are free from pain, or they receive some sort of material or physical reward for the hell they've been through, but because they will receive comfort, often in the form of love from others, and always in a spiritual way from God himself, who never leaves us alone in our pain.

Time after time I have been comforted in my grief. I now know this verse is true.

And I think every baby is a blessing, an undeserved gift for which to be grateful. But I don't know why some people who desperately want children are not able to have them. Is it random? Is it luck?

Back to the babysitter's words. Am I lucky to have a baby in the house when I'm 47? Andrew's surprise appearance certainly defied great odds.

Am I blessed? Yes, if being blessed is really another way of framing the word GRATEFUL. And does it ease some of the pain of losing Jack that Andrew, with the exception of his eyes being almond-shaped to Jack's round, looks just like his big brother? Does buying little boy clothes again, wiping a baby boy tush, and getting Jack's wooden trains out of storage feel somehow redemptive and healing?  It sure does. That's what the baby sitter was getting at.

Lucky?

Blessed?

I'll go with comforted.

For I do still mourn, and I am comforted. God can do that, and I believe Andrew is one way He's doing it in my life.

Anna's Interview with J. Todd Billings, Author of Rejoicing in Lament

When I lost Jack, I brought to my mourning my identity as a Christian, a mother, a writer, a wife, and a motherless daughter. J. Todd Billings is a Christian theologian, and when he was diagnosed with incurable cancer at age 39, he grappled with his diagnosis and his future through the lens of father, husband, theologian, professor, and Christ-follower. After reading his rich book, Rejoicing in Lament:Wrestling with Incurable Cancer and Life in Christ, in which he shares how the Psalms became a refuge for him, I asked if I could interview Todd for readers of An Inch of Gray. I hope you will enjoy meeting him:

Anna: Tell us about when you were diagnosed, and what that diagnosis means for your life?

Todd: I hate waiting in doctor’s offices with nothing to do, so I had brought a rough draft of a document for work. I crossed out a phrase, circled another, and corrected a misspelling. I was in editing flow. When my doctor walked in, he greeted me as usual, but I was still curious about why he had called me in. Every respiratory infection within miles had been latching on to me, so he had run a number of tests. Would there be a new antibiotic regimen?

Instead: Multiple Myeloma, an incurable cancer. It had already eroded the inside of my bones in my skull, arm, and hip. When the receptionist called with a referral after the appointment she whispered the diagnosis into the phone – apparently frightened to speak the words. I later found out that I was stage three out of three according to one of the main ”staging” systems for Multiple Myeloma. At the age of 39, I was three decades younger than the average diagnosis age for the disease. 

I received this diagnosis in 2012, and since then I have been poked and prodded with toxins, steroids, chemo, and a stem cell transplant. But the hardest part of the diagnosis has been what this means for my life as a spouse and a parent of young children. My wife Rachel and I had just celebrated our tenth anniversary. We have two children, and their ages were one and three. They are incredible gifts from God: we had tried to have kids earlier in our marriage, but were unable. Yet, God blessed us with a daughter, adopted from Ethiopia. Then, months later, Rachel was able to get pregnant. Why would God take away the father of my children during their childhood? When I discovered that the median lifespan for my diagnosis was around 4-7 years, I immediately thought: that only brings my daughter to 7 to 10 years. What does it mean to raise my three-year-old with the expectation that I would only have a few years with her? My grief and fear led me to prayer.

On the one hand, God doesn't owe me a long life. I'm incredibly grateful for the many gifts and blessings that he has given -- it's more than enough for one life. Yet, the questions still sting: why would God allow my kids to lose their dad? In Rejoicing in Lament, I explore how I turned to the Psalms which bring grief, confusion, and protest before the Lord in the context of trust. For the sake of my family, I joined the Psalmist in complaint: “He has broken my strength in midcourse; he has shortened my days. ‘O my God,’ I say, ‘do not take me away at the midpoint of my life, you whose years endure throughout all generations.’” (Ps. 102:23-24) 

Anna: How did you come to rediscover the Psalms of lament? Why is your book called “Rejoicing in Lament”? 

Todd: For as long as I can remember, I have read the Psalms each evening before going to bed. But in all honesty, I often skipped over some of them. “Will the Lord reject forever? Will he never show his favor again?” Ouch, I’m in a good mood, I don’t want to pray this Psalm! These are hard questions emerging from pain, anger, and protest. Are we really supposed to pray to God with words like these? 

Yet, after my diagnosis my turmoil was deeper than I could be aware of at any moment. The Psalms – including the Psalms of lament – became a refuge. Eventually, I came to see how even the most raw questions of the Psalms are signs of trust. “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” When it feels like the pain will never end, we cry out – “how long, O Lord?” When we feel abandoned and forgotten, we ask “will you  forget me forever?” When we fear that God is withholding his goodness, we ask “how long will you hide your face from me?” I’ve asked others to pray these Psalms with me. For although God has not promised to fix my cancer, he has promised to be with us in the midst of suffering, to hold us in his hand. And in Jesus, even death does not have the final word.

My book is called Rejoicing in Lament with a double-sense: taking joy in rediscovering the healing balm of biblical lament, and also rejoicing in the midst of lament. I’ve not only shed tears of grief, but tears of joy in my cancer journey. Ultimately, this is a book that shows how lament can go hand in hand with gratitude and hope. 

Anna: You wrote that God’s story is bigger than your cancer story. What has this meant for you?

Todd: That idea came to me from a card that I received from a fifteen-year old girl in my congregation with Down syndrome. It was a few weeks after the diagnosis, and I had already received numerous cards. But this one was different. She colored a card for me and wrote:

“Get well soon! Jesus loves you! God is bigger than cancer!” 

As I read this, tears streamed down my face. She did not say, “God will cure you of this cancer,” or “God will make this mess disappear.” No, God is bigger than cancer. The fog is thick, but God is bigger. 

That theme became the heart of Rejoicing in Lament: I tell my cancer story as an entryway to rediscovering the much larger, more compelling story of God in Christ. I believe that God’s story does not annihilate our own stories, like our cancer stories. But it transforms them as we are incorporated into God’s larger story. While the book expresses many unanswered questions and raw cries, ultimately it is a testimony to the astonishing grace of God that meets us even in the darkness.

Thank you, Todd, for sharing these words with us today!

J. Todd Billings teaches theology at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, MI and is author of three award-winning books. His most recent book is Rejoicing in Lament: Wrestling with Incurable Cancer and Life in Christ (Brazos, 2015). You can follow him on Twitter (@jtoddbillings) or find more of his writing on www.jtoddbillings.com.

Weekend Plans

I'm heading off the grid for a little while to work at a church retreat Thursday through Sunday. If you have read Rare Bird, you know I haven't been sure if/when I'd be ready to help lead church retreats again. This time felt right, so I said yes. Could you please include me in your thoughts and prayers this weekend, that God will use my story to help others? Also, that I'd have enough stamina to deal with the long days and nights? Thank you!

Bonus:

I will get to leave my kitchen and puppy-patrol!

I think they will be fine without me.

Always Learning

Shortly after Rare Bird came out, a friend from my kids' old school invited me to lunch.

We mainly knew each other from the car pool line and quick hellos at school concerts, but I knew enough about Lori to know she is a big pray-er. In Christian circles we call this a "prayer warrior." I knew she had been praying about Rare Bird for more than a year, as well as praying for our family in other ways, because I had asked her to.


You see, Lori's knees hit the floor before her feet do in the mornings. And she doesn't just say, "I'll be praying for you," she does it. It doesn't matter if you are in the Target parking lot or the aisle at church, she will pray for you right then and there, and I love that about her. She is also very real, approachable, and easy to talk to.


When we met for lunch, Lori brought her journals from the time of Jack's accident.


She had something to share, but hoped I wouldn't think it was strange. I assured her that not a whole lot seems strange to me any more. Losing a child is the ultimate in strange.


Lori opened her journal and read about how God spoke to her during her prayers one morning a few days after the accident, telling her, "Go where they found him, and I will meet you there." She knew God was talking about Jack. I asked her what that was like; did she hear an audible voice? She replied that it was a clear knowing inside of her that God was speaking to her. I like thinking about how just as a sheep knows the shepherd's voice, we, too, can recognize the voice of God, especially as we spend more time with Him and know his nature.


The problem was, Lori didn't want to go to the creek. She resisted. Our small community was wracked with grief and confusion, and she didn't want to go to the spot where Jack was found. It was too sad, too hard.


She put it off, but one day, upon driving over the road where Jack's body was found, she pulled over, parked, and walked down to sit in the (dry) creek bed, the steep banks looming up on either side of her.

"Okay, God, I'm here and I'm ready."


And she waited.


She said God showed her a few things pertinent to her own life and her family, but nothing about Jack. Then she looked up toward where she knew our neighborhood was, and the direction Jack's body had traveled. At that moment she saw a large bush hanging out over the side of the creek, in front of a big bend. In that bush were three cardinals, which to her had been signs of God's faithfulness during a very difficult time in her life. At that moment, God spoke to Lori's spirit again, saying,


"Before he was there, he was with me."


God was sharing with her that before Jack's body was trapped and stuck, he was already in God's presence. What Lori experienced that day mirrored what I feel in my heart, and what others have shared with me.


She also felt God was telling her the words, "Sacred Ground" about where she sat.


Lori didn't explain why she hadn't shared her journal with me three years earlier, and I didn't ask.


I just figured there must have been a good reason. That is one difference between the Anna today and the Anna of three years ago. I have started to embrace mystery, and let go of having all the answers.


I don't get to choose to have Jack safe and alive with us to adulthood.
I don't get to choose which prayers get answered in the way I want them to.
I don't even get to choose how and when comfort comes to me!

You see, with my conservative faith background,  Lori would have been the ideal, even expected, messenger to deliver God's comfort to me, and I would have surely put her story in my book.


But she didn't share it. Not then.


Yet still the comfort came. Through the Holy Spirit.  Through blog readers around the world. Through a dear friend whose spiritual side had seemed wacky to me. Through dreams and visions. Through symbols as seemingly insignificant as clouds, blue jays, songs on the radio, and now, three years later, the hearts I seem to find everywhere around me.


I believe that if God wants to tell us something, in this case an assurance that Jack was with his Heavenly Father almost immediately, His message will get through. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."


I wonder if  this was a case of my being stretched, personally, so that when the time came for me to use my broken heart to start reaching out to many other grievers, I would be able to listen to their experiences solely with love and not skepticism, even if their experiences differed widely from my own. Perhaps it was so that I would have to trust that the examples I put in my book would be the right ones to touch readers in a way they needed.

I don't know. It's a mystery.


But I am grateful to Lori, who listens to God. I am grateful to God, who finds ways to get through to us again and again. And I'm grateful to YOU, for being here with me.

Heart Issues

Four year old Margaret started to cry in her booster seat. I looked in the rear view mirror. “What’s the matter?” I figured a tag was poking her, her socks weren't "just right," or she was hungry. With a defeated, gaspy cry, she answered, “Sometimes…sometimes I just have a hard time loving Jesus.” Woah. This was not even close to anything I expected to hear.

I had no immediate answer for her, so I turned it over to Jack, in the “way back” of the minivan. I didn’t know if he’d been listening, but I said, “Jack, is there anything you could say to Margaret?” I was used to his surprising us with wisdom and a near-adult understanding of issues. Maybe he had learned something in school that would give her comfort. I don’t know, but I knew I had nothing.

He responded quickly, “Well, I always knew that about you, Margaret…” Uh oh. Not what I’d been hoping for. Little boy Jack doled out judgment, not comfort, giving his sister the absolute last thing she needed. Maybe Margaret didn’t seem as devout as he did at all of six years old. Maybe he’d seen her do one too many shimmy dances  and donkey kicks during nightly prayers. Who knows? But in that instant, I saw in Jack’s response the response of so many people, the assumption that he could see into someone else’s heart.

I redirected the conversation, but not before saying, “You know what, Margaret?  Sometimes I have a hard time loving Jesus, too. I can’t see Him. It’s hard to love someone I can’t touch and feel.” I was 31 years older than Margaret, but in that moment, in her vulnerability, I knew she spoke a truth shared by me and by many.

And Jack’s reaction, although shocking at the time, reminds me of how often we judge, thinking we have a window into each other’s hearts. Thinking it’s our place to determine how devoted someone else is, rather than focusing on our own heart condition.  It's uncharitable, and unbiblical, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s (4 year old sister's) eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

I suppose, perhaps, that people think I have a strong faith. But just last week I had a really hard time loving Jesus. I begged Him to help make an impossible situation better, but it felt like I was speaking into the darkness. I told Him I trusted Him, but it was just so hard and scary. Much of what was going on felt far too close to almost 3 years ago when our world came crashing down, when our prayers weren't answered in the way we wanted.

And yet He came through. Man, did He come through, in powerful and miraculous ways! But what I've learned, and am still learning, is that He somehow comes through even when things don't turn out the way we want. Even when we are neglecting to address the planks in our eyes. And even when we have a hard time loving Him.

Under the Yucatan Sky

 The stars shone more brightly than I’d ever seen before. We were so far from a city, a town, or any electricity, that we were able to make out individual stars against the inky black sky in a way that I was unable to do at home in the suburbs of D.C. I stood surrounded by Mayan women in traditional embroidered cotton dresses. I wore one too against my sunburned skin.

It was our last night in this remote Mayan village on the Yucatan Peninsula. For one week of our two week trip, we’d been mixing cement, gravel and water on the ground, hauling it in buckets to the church rooftop, and pouring it on top of the cinderblocks and beams we'd put there. The villagers had taken years to build the walls of the building out of rocks and cement, but they didn't have the resources to put a roof on the church. The process had to be done quickly, all at once and at great expense, whereas the walls were built over time, rock by rock.

It was 1985 and this was my church youth group’s first international mission trip. I was the youngest participant at 15. It had been a week of hard work, laughter, and inspiration, and next week we’d head to a different village to do it again. Sleeping in a hammock in a thatch hut, turning over my steel toed work boots each morning to shake out wayward scorpions, and belting out Barry Manilow tunes while hoisting buckets of concretet overhead gave me an experience of a lifetime.

My best self showed up here. Not my vain, petty, self-conscious self. But a girl who could look beyond her physical comfort for just a little while, and be connected to God and His people. Trench latrines didn't bother me, and showering fully dressed outside in the rain during afternoon thunderstorms made me feel cleaner than my shower at home. I felt born for this.

Standing among the short Mayan women, I felt tall even at just 5.5. But I also felt small. For the first time I was experiencing a world beyond my suburban lifestyle, and I was experiencing God beyond Sunday School classes and youth group.

I was among people who believed in God’s provision, in miracles, and the transforming power of faith not as an add-on to their regular, busy lives, but as the cornerstone. Their everything. Not for a week, but every day.

I thought of the church walls as a metaphor for a daily life of faith, little by little, growing and reaching toward the sky.

As we stood outside that night, looking at the dark sky, cuddling the swaddled babies one last time, we said our goodbyes. Even though I would come back year after year, it would not be to this village ever again. The women said something in Mayan, and someone translated it into Spanish. One of the Spanish speakers in our group repeated it in English, “Until we meet again in heaven, Until we meet again in heaven.”

And I couldn’t fathom in this great big world that I’d see these new friends again. I wasn’t even sure that’s how it all worked, but I knew that they loved God, and I loved God, so we were connected.

 Under the Yucatan sky.

"For Nothing is Impossible With God" and a GIVEAWAY for You

I know this week has been dark and hard and maybe a little hopeless feeling. Some of us may be thinking, will the darkness blot out the light? What does the future hold for our children when there is so much evil around us?

I think of Jack's favorite Bible verse, "For nothing is impossible with God." Luke 1:37.  It reminds us of our little boy and his big faith. We have it on the blue ribbon magnets on our cars and in our hearts.

It comes from the story of the virgin birth. How strange it all sounds: a baby would be born to a teenage virgin, of no stature or fortune, and this baby would grow up to take our sins upon himself so that we could have eternal life. Huh? Sounds impossible.

We'd always read it like, "Nothing is impossible for God." If God can pull off a virgin birth, and our salvation, you can see why Jack believed God could do so much in his young life: help him make friends, get a hit in baseball, and live out his big ideas and values in a world that didn't seem to appreciate them all that much.

This verse told Jack that despite the concerns of his days, God had him covered!

A few months after the accident, when the shock started to wear off and the pain seeped into my bones, my heart, even my hair follicles, I started thinking of the verse a little differently. To me, it now meant, "For (even with God) nothing is impossible." Oh dear. Even when you walk with God, things that seemed impossible, are possible, like a safety conscious child dying (DYING!) in a creek on a wet, balmy night in suburbia. Or in a kindergarten classroom. Or at a marathon. Or in a sinkhole.

Any illusion of control I had for my family's safety and future was gone. Holding tightly to my plans and expectations was as fruitless as trying to carry water in my cupped palms while scaling a cliff.

What once seemed impossible within the structure of our simple, fairly predictable lives was indeed possible, and I didn't like it. Not one teeny little bit.

On September 8, 2011 I had to let go of my misconception that if I loved enough,  prayed enough, and worried enough, my family would "be okay." This realization came to our family that day, but I think it comes to all of us at some point or another.

Later, a friend and I talked about Jack's verse. What did it mean to us now? Surely God could have saved Jack. He can do the impossible! Reviving a drowned person is not too difficult a task for God. It should be easy! What is breathing life back into a boy's lungs compared to forming the universe? And if Jack had been revived, having had a near death experience, he and I could have taken our show on the road. We would commit ourselves to speaking out for God, sharing hope of heaven and the beautiful miracle of Jack's survival. Doesn't that sound like a much better plan than leaving Margaret an only/lonely child?

But God didn't do what He surely could do. And I've had to let go of trying to understand why, at least for now. At least for today.

And Jack's verse changed for me, slightly, once again. "For with God nothing is impossible." The task in front of families who have lost children seems impossible.  Truly. To wake up each day. To function. To forgive. To breathe. We can try to do the impossible without God, in our own strength, out of unbelief,  hurt, bitterness or even anger that He has allowed these terrible things to happen in the first place. It is tempting, believe me.

Or we can let go of the control we never had and let Him help us in our current, impossible situation.

And we can trust God to make something beautiful out of something terrible. I don't know how that works, but I think it can and it does. And if I've learned anything, it's that He stays close to the brokenhearted and performs miracles, even if they aren't the ones we would have chosen.

And we can recognize that while we can't control everything, we can do something. We can offer ourselves up, even in the smallest ways, to share the light with others by continuing to care for people, by showing up when things look hopeless, and by doing good in the face of great evil. Not because any of it will guarantee our children's safety, but because it's the right thing to do.

********************

I've been waiting to send a reader a "Jack's Promise" Pendant from Holly Lane Designs. This week it seemed like we might need to remind ourselves "For Nothing is Impossible with God." Tiffany Scott, my favorite jewelry designer, used a Mobius strip, which represents an impossibility that is somehow possible! She also chose it because Jack loved puzzles and brainteasers almost as much as he loved God and Legos. Jack's verse is carved into the silver. My sister wears hers on a silver chain with a small crystal teardrop.  If you would like to enter to win this pendant, just write "Luke 1:37" in the comments. Giveaway closes Monday, April 22 at 10 pm.

Jack's Promise Pendant:

 

My sister's neck.