Tag: proverbs

God! Help!

January 5, 2021

God! Help!

This blog is for those moms, big sisters, teachers, coaches, etc. who have ever raised their hands up in the sky and demanded with tears streaming down their eyes, “God! Help!”

If you’ve never done that, please leave the rest of us in our private knowledge of complete crazy… nothing to see or read here… Thank you.

Now that I’m addressing those of you, who like me, know that they only get through life with God’s routine and very often injections of aid: understand that you are really, really not alone!

There are way more of us out here than you know.

But people don’t always see that. Still. That doesn’t mean we don’t completely loose it and at least internally… SCREAM for HELP!

Ever had a friend compliment you by saying, “wow, you were so calm.”

Your mind goes, “um.. what????” And you realize that only God saw your frantic desperate prayers as you grabbed napkins, wiped up your child’s blood trying not to freak out at her big sister’s just-started party while on your way to meet said child in the bathroom with unknown injury as you realize another daughter is already cleaning more blood (MORE BLOOD?? God, let me not scare her, make me calm.) on a gym mat. You realize that the frantic prayers were interpreted as deep breaths – thank you Jesus for oxygen and working lungs! Said child cries and you are thinking, “God, this injury is serious, help me!” but when you clean it and she whines, “I don’t want to go home! I want to play with my friends!”

Then there’s the serious prayer as you fight the urge of laughter-that-borders-on-insanity, “God, give me patience with this child!”

Bloody head wound clean. Check.

Bleeding stopped. Crisis averted. Check.

10,000+ frantic “God, you better help me” prayers in the span of 45 seconds while dealing with said child who doesn’t see that this is an INJURY and wants to GET BACK UP AND START FLIPPING! Double check.

Super glue, band-aid, and the older kids are like, “do we need to go?” Decision time. (This was supposed to be a food party & dinner & home is 45 minutes away plus party will be over & have to pick up actual party-goer in about 2 hours.) Stay.

Instant heart attack what feels like 5 seconds later when said injured child is about to show off her routine on bars – “DO YOU WANT TO LIVE TO ADULTHOOD??” (No, I didn’t scream that.)

But. I WANTED TO!! Instead it was “GOD HELP ME!” in my frantic brain while I think I may have jumped the knee wall to grab said child and firmly direct her back to my table in a solid seat (DID YOU REALLY JUST LEAN THAT FOLDING CHAIR ON TWO LEGS!!!???) beside me to watch her. Calm. Breathe. “GOD! HELP ME!” (Of course, that was a mental scream again.)

End the frantic night. (Thank you, Jesus!)

I’m laying in bed, praying that her head heals well and there’s no infection. Reading Proverbs for whatever chapter the day was (you know, when you can’t think of anything but Proverbs has a chapter for every day in the month?), I came across timeless wisdom that basically said (my brain translated the words to the following, it is NOT a direct quote:), “give everything to God and know that you aren’t perfect without Him.”

Truth.

Give over my worries. Give over my fears. In. Real. Time.

If I just write it on paper (or type it in a blog), that’s just words. What shows that I do trust God is in real time. When my toddlers decides to tilt her head back and scream bloody murder with a huge smirk because I’m on the phone. (PATIENCE, PLEASE!) When my boy is annoying his sisters for the bazillionth time in one minute. (Please, God, don’t let them kill him.) When an attack comes and it feels like the life-breath from my lungs is being sucked out by a giant vacuum. (Calm. Breathe. God. Help. Me.)

This is trusting in real time.

This is choosing to know that I cannot do anything without Jesus.

This is knowing that with Jesus I ca do all things. I can breathe. I can parent. I can mother. I can coach. I can love. Without Him, I can’t do any of those things.

So, yes, I know I’m imperfect. (I’m FAR from perfect!)

But…

I trust in the perfect one. I ask Him for help daily (um… thousands of times a day, in every situation I get stuck in!) and He answers with comfort, ideas, calm, and love.

Take a breath. Breathe in Jesus, breathe out, breathe in love, breathe out; now face your challenge! (As I hear a squeal from the kitchen followed by a crash… doesn’t sound like anything broke… “MOM!”) God, they are your children; HELP ME! I need to parent them to lead them to You, show me how.

Type at you later!

~Nancy Tart

P.S.: Those who were there, yes, I was freaking out inside. Yes, she is okay and nothing left to point at proudly and say “look what happened to me!”

Saying No to Nagging

My quest to eradicate nagging from my life

November 29, 2017

Saying No to Nagging

As the oldest of seven children, an analytical puzzle-solver who is rarely wrong (sarcasm), and a perfectionist, I also have a rather uncanny knack of nagging to get people to do stuff (I heard a sermon on the persistent woman before the judge and thought nagging was the same as her persistence.)   Since I was about ten or twelve, I started to learn (mostly from watching my Daddy while he was driving) that I don’t have to say what I’m thinking to that person’s face.  Because of this, I learned how to keep my nagging thoughts to myself around my siblings.  The younger ones who didn’t remember the nagging dictator began to enjoy my company and actually listen to me when I suggested they do something!  (This was an amazing and empowering discovery!)

Fast forward to when I’m a young woman considering long-term relationships with a fearful heart.  (I actually have to talk to a person I know nothing about? GOD!  How I am going to do this?)  I think I could actually hear God laughing, and the wind blew my Bible open to Proverbs 31.  (Anyone else remember singing that catchy song a guy sang about a “P31”?  Airplane-crazy younger me thought he was talking about a plane.  At least, teenage me realized he meant a woman.)

Have you ever read Proverbs 31?  The whole thing??  I freaked out and thought, “no way can I be all that.”

God said, “one verse at a time.”

So I started studying about the ideal woman.  (Most of the time, I laughed and journaled stuff like “I am NEVER going to be that!” and “This is IMPOSSIBLE!”)  Slowly I realized that this perfect woman just loved God first, loved her husband second, and allowed love and wisdom to rule her.  (Her business savvy totally intrigued me.)  Then came the part that is still my hardest challenge… I study by flipping to suggested parallel verses and almost everywhere in Proverbs this poor guy was saying stuff that I interpreted as “it is better to be buried in the deepest, darkest, scorpion-infested, cave that belongs to lions named “Ghost” and “Darkness” than to live in a palace with a nagging woman.”  (I thought, “CRUD!  Okay, God, this one you will really have to do for me.”)

In my study I realized that by “nagging” the Bible meant a woman asking, telling, or pleading with a man to get him to do something.  (I substantiated this by interviews with older married men I knew and they agreed.  One guy even said, “ask me once, I heard ya; say it twice and I turn my ears off.”)  I decided that once I was married, I would practice not nagging by only voicing my opinion once.  (At this point, I still “know” I’m right 99.9999% of the time, so I made an asterisk in my journal that added, “but in important matters I will remain firm.”)  I think God laughed at that too because who is to say what is important?

God’s timing is always perfect.

I finished writing my five-pages-in-my-journal decision after almost a year of study – writing everything I thought a Biblical woman in today’s world should be and listing the qualities I wanted to cultivate in preparation for being a wife and mother.  I ended it with a prayer (as I usually do when I journal) that read: “God, I think I’m ready to start my forever relationship.  If you think I am ready, please let the guy ask me out if I have met him…”

And God laughed again.  (That was written Monday, July 1st.  Louis told me we were going out on Wednesday, July 3rd.  We were engaged on July 20th & married life began on November 22nd.)

Have I conquered that nagging thing?  (NNOO!!)  My brain still talks back, but I have learned to keep my sarcastic thoughts inside, take a breath, form a perfect suggestion, SPEAK IT ONCE (ONLY ONCE, remember?  You promised God that!  – I had to argue that with my brain for the first 12 or 13 years of marriage every time.), and leave the rest to God.

This was also a HUGE trust issue for me.  (See, I like to be in control so giving that to another human even if I trust God to lead him is just bonkers to my analytical brain.)

I learned that to respect my husband meant to trust him to trust God with his decisions (our decisions) and over time, God has taught Louis that most of the time; it’s a good thing to listen to my suggestion.  (He said that, not me.  I never even mentioned this challenge until about a year ago when it was mentioned to me that “you never nag” and I had to answer the question, “why?”  It had always been something between me and God.)

Well, I guess the good thing is that Louis hasn’t lamented for people 3,000 years later to read “I wish to be in Daniel’s lion cave instead of with this nagging woman!” (At least, he hasn’t said that yet.)

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

 

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