Tag Archives: Christian spirituality

Mothers Weeping for their Children

17 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by in God's healing love, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

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English: child Jesus with the virgin Mary, wit...

Update: Dec. 2013 — Another school shooting — this time in my home state of Colorado — and it’s Christmastime again —and another mother’s child is dead. Reminds me of just a year ago when I wrote this as a response to the awful Sandy Hook school shooting…

How can a mother be consoled when her little child is taken from her? Perhaps a mother in Sandy Hook, Connecticut hurried her son or daughter to school that morning a year ago, with a little scolding and a few reminders and a quick kiss on the cheek … only to be informed a few hours later that her child has fallen dead with her first-grade class, victims in a senseless, bloody massacre.

How can any of us wrap our minds around this? Since it is Christmas, we listen for words of comfort. We usually only hear the beautiful music, the softness of the Christmas story: angel wings, starlight, sweet-smelling hay, swaddling cloths, wooly sheep, gently falling snow, Mary cuddling the baby, cattle lowing, shepherds worshiping.

Usually in reading the Christmas story from the Gospels, we skip, gloss over, don’t talk to the kids about the part where Herod massacres all the children age two and under. Babies. Infants. Toddlers. Mothers’ children. Slaughtered. Blood running and pooling. Mothers wailing, unable to be consoled. (See Matthew 2:16-18.)

But the angels announce, “Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, good will to men,” spoken to a world where evil holds sway and often has its way … this world into which the Christ child was born. According to the prophet, his name is “Emmanuel” which means “God is with us.” The son of God, who is all goodness, light, life, love … broke into this kingdom oppressed by sin and evil. Why? To shine into the darkness. To reveal a better way that is lived by faith with hope. A kingdom of grace and love and children fully alive. A kingdom he will fully restore one day soon.

Then, when horrible deeds jar us into acknowledging the presence and power of evil in our midst, how do we respond? Even as we walk through the darkness, surrounded by those who react in fear, hate, blame, we can:

Allow the light of Jesus, the living Word, to shine his light of truth on our path, showing us where to step next.

Use the resources he has given us through his Holy Spirit, to resist and overcome evil (both inward and outward).

Let God use us to shine his light and dispel the darkness around us. We do this by prayers of faith, praise, speaking the truth of Christ, creating and sharing beauty, making music, showing love and compassion. Then, “The light shines in darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it” (John 1:5).

And when we hear the cries of tragically bereaved mothers who cannot be consoled, we cry with them, stand with them, hope for them.

We do all this because “God is with us.” Emmanuel.

~ Catherine Lawton

IN the MIDDLE of THREE GENERATIONS

31 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by in frustration to freedom, generational patterns, leaving a legacy, the healing journey

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3 chairs suspended

Photo: Alice Cecil

One night many years ago I had a dream. It was one of those rare dreams in which God spoke. It was an odd dream in the sense that it happened on a two-dimensional surface. However, the objects and people on the two-dimensional surface were three-dimensional. Picture a flat surface, like a piece of paper, with three chairs lined up near the bottom. I was sitting in the middle chair. To my left was my mother. To my right was a daughter. (Though I have three daughters, the female figure to my right in the dream was only revealed to me as “daughter,” not one particular daughter.)

When the dream began, I was talking with my mother, intently trying to communicate an idea to her, the nature of which was also not revealed. My mother did not respond, but turned away from me. I sat for a moment and then got up. The daughter said, “Where are you going?” I did not answer, but walked to my right and up the two-dimensional flat surface along the edge to the top. God was in the center at the top. I stopped at that top corner, turned and faced out. Then the dream ended.

As both mothers and daughters, we can lose sight of who we are. We are not our mothers, daughters or anyone else. Even in our relationship with God, we are in Christ (John 14:18-20), not absorbed into him. We are in Christ as the separate, unique individuals God made us to be. In our desire to please other people, we can attach our identity to them. When we do, we will damage our relationship with God and, ironically, render ourselves less effective to minister to the people in our lives.

To help us understand God’s desire for us, we can ask ourselves a series of questions: Do we want our daughters to function as unique, loving individuals? Or do we want them to be so caught up in their concern for us, for their children or for another person, that they lose sight of who they were meant to be as individuals? Do we want our daughters to live to please us or live to please God?

How then would God have us live out his desire that we be loving, unique individuals in Christ? Romans 14:17-18 answers: “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and [then] approved to men.”

Our first focus is to please God. Then the door to the approval of people (our mothers and daughters included) will open; it will open when we serve Christ out of his imputed righteousness and in peace and joy. (I did not see very much peace and joy in me in the dream when I was sitting in the middle chair.)

Many of us, who are mothers, are in the middle now of three generations. We interact with the generation “to our left” and the generation “to our right.” It is our turn to witness the peace and joy of Romans 14:17-18 to our daughters, who will one day be in our position—in the middle chair.

~ A.R. Cecil

God Works All Things Together For Good

12 Wednesday Sep 2012

Posted by in emotional needs, encouraging each other, God's healing love, the healing journey

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I was blessed the other night to see Mandisa, a Dove Award winning Christian singer, in concert at my church. As she shared her testimony about being sexually abused as a child and using food to fill the emptiness that heartache created, I was struck at how often an unresolved hurt can lead to so many other consequences in our lives. She shared that she wanted to be overweight because it caused her to get less attention from men and that felt safe. In the last few years, God has done a healing work in Mandisa to the point she has shed 100 lbs. and now can share openly at her concerts about how God is healing her from this hurt she has carried since she was five years old.

And yet, this very same hurt is what the singer/song writer uses to write such tender, poignant songs about pain. Her songs connect because they ring true. She has a gift to express how pain makes us feel, as well as to celebrate the freedom found when Christ begins to heal those hurts and the pain subsides.

So here again is another example of how God’s promise, to work all things together for good, is a promise we can count on (Romans 8:28). Mandisa’s gift comes out of her pain and God is using her every time she shares her testimony so openly. My prayer is that He would do the same with my testimony and willingness to share such a difficult thing in my own life. She encouraged me last night because, although our heartaches came from different sources and mine was my own doing, I saw so clearly how God was using her pain for good, to remind others that nothing is impossible with God (Luke 1:37).

~ Kyleen Stevenson-Braxton

To Share Is God’s Gift

04 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by in confessing our need, encouraging each other, healing after abortion, the healing journey

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Note: Many of the contributors in “Journeys to Mother Love” share about forgiving their mothers and receiving healing from childhood experiences, which has helped them in mothering their own children. Kyleen is one who felt the need to forgive herself before she could find freedom to be the mother her children needed.

Part of my personal story was first published in Deliver Me, by Diane E. Butts. When that book came out, I received an email from a fellow contributor. She commented that she and another pregnancy center volunteer had cried when they read my story. She told me, “To share your story so openly is God’s gift to you.” She then went on to talk about how most women are afraid to tell their stories. They fear judgment, both of themselves and their families.

The most unexpected thing I have discovered is that sharing my story has provoked kindness from others. Whenever I speak, there is always at least one woman who comes up and tells me she understands my pain because she has been there too. One blogger posted that he or she found me “naive.” But truly, in almost seven years of sharing my story at churches and conferences, and in print, that is the most “negative” comment I have received.

I cannot change the past. All I can do is take what I have experienced and try to use it to help others. While the message out there says abortion doesn’t hurt women, my experience says exactly the opposite. I realize that not every woman regrets an abortion, but for those who do, the pain can be almost unbearable and the consequences very real. My hope is that through reading or hearing my story, a woman might recognize herself in my struggles and realize there is hope.The first step is admitting to yourself that you have been hurt by a past abortion and there is a need for healing to occur. Once you invite God into that most tender place of failure, you will be amazed at how he can turn even the thing you fear the most into your greatest testimony.

If you want more on this topic, visit my blog at http://singobarrenwoman.wordpress.com/.