Our daughter Claire was born premature at 25 weeks and weighing less than 2 pounds! Today she turns 5!

We are so proud of her. She is a TREASURE!

This was so much fun last week, we have to do it again!

Serenity has posted about her “nest” before, a stash of books that follows her from room to room. I have one too; we get it from our Dad. His has become more of a library now, spilling from his side table onto wall-length book shelves and into boxes in the garage.

My favorite place to read is on my bed because it is in closest proximity to my books, it is comfortable, and it feels like a little escape in the middle of my busy house. Dan and I have enjoyed pulling our bedroom ensemble together over the years. It started with a left-over canopy bed from my parent’s downsize. Then my brother-in-law actually found a drapey, ivory canopy on a clearance sale in Omaha. More clearance sales found the gold comforter and shams. We paid full price for the deep red sheets (at Shop-Ko), but most fun were the pillows from Ikea in Chicago. My bedside table is cleverly organized (my husband may debate the use of “organized” here, but I promise it’s true) into three basic piles: school books, fun books, and God books. I love them all, and you never know what kind of mood you’ll be in when you crawl into bed at night. Or in the middle of the day.

I probably should review books here once in awhile. There are several must-reads for Rare Rocks. Isn’t it interesting how telling our book choices are? And nothing shapes your early identity like reading (or the lack of it!). But, anyway, today’s fun is just about where you read. And I read here:

American Lit may have paid off this week, Friends. Up until this point this particular class had me asking questions like, do I REALLY want to be an English major? But this week we read the early American novel Charlotte Temple by Susanna Haswell Rowson. I loved its old-fashioned boldness to preach through its story. I realize this is unacceptable in today’s literary world, but Rowson was only accepted as a writer in her day because she did promise to deliver a solid Christian message. Ironic.

Anyway, this is the tale of a young Charlotte convinced by the romantic promises of a dashing soldier to leave her boarding school and elope. Her tragic tale apparently ends in her death in childbirth after being abandoned by her supposed Prince Charming. Not so charming now. Rowson early in the novel (we only read an excerpt) even writes directly to the “sober matron” or mother who will read the book before her daughter. That’s how obvious the message is, but the writing is enchanting and the story is surprisingly transcendent. Of slimy guys who talk girls into doing things they don’t really want to do, Rowson says, “I wish for power to extirpate those monsters of seduction from the earth.” My sentiments exactly!

Here is my favorite line after Rowson describes the predicament Charlotte has found herself in. It is Rowson’s way of saying, Be a Rare Rock!

“…kneel down each morning, and request kind heaven to keep you free from temptation, or, should it please to suffer you to be tried, pray for fortitude to resist the impulse of inclination when it runs counter to the precepts of religion and virtue.”

Yeah, do that! : )

In my Disciplines of Life class today we decided that practically every relational problem we ever encounter could probably be solved with a good dose of humility. Think about it. The only person we have to please in this life is God. He is our only Judge. (And He made provision for us with the best Defense Attorney ever, so we can’t lose!) But pride makes us speak up and defend ourselves in an argument. We don’t have to tell God we didn’t have a bad attitude…He already knows our inner heart. He knows our motivation. We counter because we want everyone else to know we are right.

If we were really living just to please Him, it would never bother us when someone misunderstands our intent and accuses us falsely. It would never bother us to work hard on something and not get any recognition. It would never bother us to be seen in public with someone ugly or odd. It would never bother us to be caught without our house clean or our make-up done. None of that would bother us because we wouldn’t be worried about what others thought; we would depend on God for our feedback.

Humility would allow men of differing opinions to fellowship together anyway because it doesn’t matter who is right. Humility would allow us to serve one another without checking theological backgrounds. Humility would allow us to love without condition.

Think of someone you know who is humble. How do you know? When you figure out what kinds of actions or words make them appear humble, mimic that. Our class decided to stretch our humble muscles today and see what happens in our souls.

Our pastor shared this insightful analogy with us today. The ministry center where we live is surrounded by farmland. This year the crop is corn (sometimes it is soy beans). After a long drought this summer, our corn is not looking very good. It is too short, too thin, and, apparently, down. He asked us, “Did you notice that the corn is down?” Many of us are not agriculturally minded, even though we live in farm country, so he went on to explain.

The corn is brown and dry. Most of it is bent over, as if a big hand had come along and flicked it so hard that it snapped right in the middle but didn’t break. It is just hanging over in an upside-down v shape. Evidently this year the stalk is basically hollow and can’t support the weight of the ears. This happens during a drought because even though the corn isn’t getting enough moisture, the stalk knows that producing ears is what corn is supposed to do. It’s the name of the game, Charlie says. So that stalk just gave everything that it had to make ears of corn, to the point that it emptied itself completely. The stalk spent so much energy on producing the ears that now it can’t even hold them up. That is a picture of self-sacrifice and deliberate emptying of self.

My husband just returned from a leadership conference and that was the message he came home mulling over. Not in farm terminology of course. He is inspired to give more of himself to our family, our church community, and the world at large. He says Jesus gave everything away: his time, his love, and his revelation. We should do the same. So, while Charlie preached this morning, Dan and I took that analogy as a personal reminder to be generous givers. We’ll just look at each other and say, “The corn is down.”

On Monday I spoke at high school devotions on the topic of Mary’s act of worship and service toward Jesus when she anointed his hair and feet with perfumed oil. It is my favorite passage in the Bible. After the message, one of the teachers brought me a copy of Watchman Nee’s “The Normal Christian Life.” He had marked out the last chapter for me to read because it went along with what I had spoken about.

Wow. It was awesome. I’ve never read this whole book before, but this chapter was just incredible. It speaks of our opportunity to be like the worship Mary offered to Jesus at the time. Remember, the disciples (led by a negative comment from Judas) even chastised Mary for “wasting” something that could have been sold and used to feed the poor or something else useful. Nee’s point in his book is that we should be willing to waste ourselves for Christ in the same way. We should not see a quiet or even suffering life as a failure, but we should see ourselves being wasted in the eyes of the world.

Gary Thomas, in his book called Sacred Pathways, describes several different spiritual temperaments. One is the contemplative and Mary is a perfect example. He suggests devotional acts of secrecy if you want to feed the contemplative in you. One option is to write a poem or letter for God and then burn it. That way you know it is just for Him and no one else.

I live in the middle of a cornfield and it is tempting to believe that I have been overlooked. I don’t feel overlooked by God but sometimes I think others may be saying about me, “She should really get out into the real world and DO something BIG for God.” And maybe I should. But for right now, I’m happy serving my students, caring for my children, and learning to love Jesus more. I’m O.K. being “wasted” right now. It’s all for Him.

My daughters are learning about Jesus in Sunday School. A few weeks ago they acted out the portion of Scripture where Jesus calls His disciples to follow Him. In their pre-school world this was great fun involving hand motions and walks around the room. They laughed and giggled telling me all about it, “I told Claire – follow me – and she gotted up and we skipped to Teacher!” In real life I don’t think discipleship hardly ever involves skipping. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a deep book on the subject and cost is the key word in his title.

I’ve always found the cost to be pretty high. A friend of mine was recently accepted to West Point and began her summer in boot camp. While the rest of her high school friends were sucking the fun out of their last summer before college, Charity went straight into Hell Week, or something like it. Reports to home included the horror story that she had been in trouble one day for smiling too much. We were instructed to send her mail only if it was in a plain white envelope with her name and address in a very exact manner. The instructions alone seemed so complicated that I gave up even thinking about sending her a note – I wouldn’t want my Hallmark stamp to get her 20 push-ups or something!

But just as I really started to worry about sweet-spirited Charity in such an unkind environment, I had a vision of her graduating from West Point in a bright uniform and shiny hat. I remembered the honor that it was to be a West Point cadet and I felt proud. Sure, what she was facing was difficult and intense, but what she would receive – the honor, respect, and admiration – would be worth it.

Charity is paying the price right now, the cost of discipleship, but in a few years she will reap the benefits. She will stand out in the world as a Rare Rock. I’m going to remember this the next time I want my discipleship process to look more like skipping and less like plain white envelopes. I’m going to remember not just the cost of discipleship but also its reward: a walk around the room of life with Jesus!