I Want To Be Like Jesus

We had a guest speaker at our church recently who said some things about evangelism that struck home to me in a new way.

I’ve always heard that as Christians, we should be like Jesus. Well, who can argue with that? We should be like Jesus, more holy, more righteous. Certainly, that’s true. We should try to live more the way God teaches us in his word.

But on this day, we studied a different way that we should be like Jesus. The speaker used Luke chapter 15 to talk about God’s love and grace. She said this probably has one of the nicest things ever said about Jesus, even though that’s not how it was intended.

Luke 15:1-2: “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

I thank God that Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them. Including me.

Our guest speaker talked about how people who were lost, people who were the worst sinners, were the ones who loved to be around Jesus. They saw in him the love and concern they needed.

Often I have not found myself the kind of person who draws people to Jesus. I may be too preachy, or as one girl said about me in college, “Kathy is really righteous, isn’t she?”

She did not mean it as a compliment. I was self righteous. I was judgmental. Of course, there are truths in the Bible which we need to stick to and teach to people as they grow as Christians. But it is not our job to teach the lost to obey morals as we see them. It is our job to teach people that Jesus loves them and wants to heal their brokenness.

In the later part of Luke 15, we read the story of the lost son and his older brother who needed a changed heart. At different times in my life, I’ve seen myself as very like both of these brothers.

The younger son took his inheritance and left home to spend it on sinful living. When he had lost all his money and had no one and nothing, he decided to humble himself and go back to serve his father.

But the father was watching for him. While the son was still a long way off, the father saw him and ran to him, embracing him and welcoming him back as his son.

Luke 15:20-24: “So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

21 “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

22 “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.”

This is how I want to show God’s love to people. I want to hurt as they hurt, care about what is on their minds, show them a father who wants them as his children.

I’ve often seen myself as like the older brother in this story. Here they were celebrating with the one who’d turned his back on his father and wasted his inheritance. The older brother said that he’d stayed home and served the father, but his father had never let him have a party. But the father lovingly explained to the older brother how their family really worked.

Luke 15:25,28-32 “Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. … The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’ ‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

Yes, the father celebrated because the lost brother had come home. But he explained to the older brother that he was just as important. Everything that belonged to the father belonged to him.

I want to be like Jesus. I want to be someone who shows God’s love, his grace, his compassion for anyone who hurts—so much that he watches for them while they are far away. I want to be part of the party when they come home.

The Old Country Church

We spent this Easter weekend with my mother on the farm in Missouri. Sunday morning we went to the country church where I grew up, for Easter service and breakfast cooked by the men.

Along a gravel road in central Missouri, miles from any town, is the Oklahoma Church of Christ, established in the late 1800’s. The current building, constructed of local rock, was built in the early 1900s.

They don’t use a sound system and band, or a computer with videos and songs and Scripture flashed up on a screen at the front of the sanctuary. Just a piano player, the ministers standing behind a pulpit, well-loved hymns in well-used hymnals, and the Bible.

Very different from my modern city church, but the message we heard, the hope we shared, was exactly the same.

Luke 23:32-43; Matthew 28:1-10; John 20:1-17.

Jesus died so that we can be forgiven. He rose again on the third day as a promise to his followers that we can live forever with God in Heaven.

His burial cloths were folded and set aside, unneeded. Just as he had the power to promise the thief on the cross that he would be with him in paradise that day, Jesus is alive today and has the power to help us with everything we need, our Lord and brother and friend.

Jesus told the women who came to the tomb that morning not to be afraid, but to share with his disciples that he was alive. We have the same direction from Jesus, to share with those around us that he is alive and wants to be their God, just as he is our God.

No matter where we are in the world, no matter our style of worship, we who have given our lives to Jesus share the same hope and joy and mission.

Matthew 28:5-7: “The angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: “He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.” Now I have told you.’”

He Touched Even Me

Jesus touched a man with leprosy.

Matthew 8:1-3: “Large crowds followed Jesus as he came down the mountainside. Suddenly, a man with leprosy approached him and knelt before him. ‘Lord,’ the man said, ‘if you are willing, you can heal me and make me clean.’ Jesus reached out and touched him. ‘I am willing,’ he said. ‘Be healed!’ And instantly the leprosy disappeared.”

This passage has always touched me. No one touched the lepers. They had to stay away from everyone else and constantly call out “Unclean”. But Jesus touched him.

I grew up going to church every Sunday and made the decision to become a Christian when I was seventeen. In college, I became involved with a campus ministry. They offered worship services, large and small group Bible studies, and classes on serious Christian topics—women’s issues, Old Testament prophecy, and more. They offered the opportunity to learn to do ministries—visits to hospitals, nursing homes, prison, others.

I knew I was getting a good Christian education. I developed a strong knowledge of and commitment to the Bible. Most of my social time was spent with other students involved with this ministry. I wrote about the Bible for my classes, and I witnessed to people. I was charged.

I was proud.

It took growing up, venturing more out into the world, a few bumps, temptations, some growing stress, and a lot of mistakes for me to finally realize I was really a sinner. I was unclean.

I’m not going to describe to you all of my sins. It doesn’t matter. I just finally realized I wasn’t God’s gift to Missouri.

I needed God’s grace.

I hit bottom, more than once, before I could come up. I have suffered from depression since I was very young. God has given me great healing in this area, but I experienced times when I was buried in it, as crushing as if I was in quicksand.

I have gone through times when I let Satan convince me that I had never been saved. Other times, he made me sure that even if I had been saved, I had gone too far away to be able to come back to God. Satan told me I had committed sins that God could never forgive.

I now believe that God has spent many hours crying over my lack of understanding about how much He loves me.

I wish I could say that I went through an earth-shaking, immediate, miraculous recovery.

God has shown me more miracles than I can count, but I didn’t let the change happen all at once. He used my family, many other people, His word, a torrent of tears, and multiple years to bring me to a strong belief that He does still love me.

When I open my ears, and listen to God speak to me throughout His word, He shows me so many people in the Bible whom He touched. They were in trouble for many reasons; all of them were sinners. But He found them, and He touched them. He touched even me.

Tenderly, God showed me His love for specific sinners in the Bible, including some who were already His children: David, the adulterer and murderer; Peter,, one of His closest friends, who denied Him; the woman at the well; the thief on the cross; the woman caught in adultery; Paul, persecuting the church.

The Lord gave them the privilege of helping him and his children. He called David a man after his own heart, Acts 13:22. The woman at the well brought many out to meet Jesus, John 4:28-30. He asked Peter to feed his sheep, John 21:15-17. He sent Paul to rescue the gentiles, Acts 9:15.

When I was young, I believed I could draw people to God by my knowledge and fervor. Now that I am older and weathered, I pray that I can be kind to others who share similar sins and struggles as mine.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4: “All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.”

I have often felt so unclean by sin that I don’t see how anyone can bear to touch me, especially God. In 1 Timothy 1:15 Paul says that he is the chief of all sinners. I have often said that I am his closest deputy.

But the Bible says that God forgives me. He accepts me as his child. He loves me. Psalm 103.

And when I still worry if God can accept me, he reminds me that his love and forgiveness continue.

Lamentations 3:21-23: “Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning.”

Benjamin and Time Travel

I wrote this story about my son Benjamin in March, 2013.

Hey, here’s a time travel program, Benjamin thinks as he scrolls around the internet. I wonder if it works.

Oops, I didn’t mean to hit enter there.

Benjamin feels himself being pulled backward, off his chair, out of the dining room, fast, fast, down some strange hallway.

Now he’s outside and whoa! He’s riding a horse, and the horse is galloping. “Whoa, horsie, sloooooow down!”

But the horse doesn’t slowdown—it gets faster.

Benjamin has only ridden horses at camp, and always pretty slowly. He grabs onto the mane and prays he won’t slip off.

Oh, no, he is falling off—no, he’s being pulled backward down the hallway again.

He stops in a busy sounding room. People are laughing and calling out to him, “Yay, Benjie! Yay!” And he’s laughing like a little kid. What’s going on here?

Oh, he’s at the St. Baldrick’s Day place downtown when he’s just six, getting his head shaved. This time travel thing keeps switching him. Where next?

Now he finds himself in a dentist chair. He’s four or five, and he’s getting one of his many cavities filled. Well, he wouldn’t mind being taken out of this one.

And out he goes, fast, fast, down another hallway.

Next, Benjamin finds himself sitting on the ground with a young Einstein, who is working on the “E equals MC squared” problem. Benjamin has to explain this very slowly and patiently before Einstein finally gets it.

Oooooohhh.

Benjamin finds himself lying in a trench in France during World War I. Many shots are going on around him, and for whatever reason, Benjamin has his head raised out of the trench. He quickly lowers it snugly into the dirt and prays he’ll be able to get out of this one fast too.

But he’s not sure this next place is what he would have hoped for.

He’s on a horse again, on a very bumpy road. Other riders are coming up quickly behind him.

“He’s got it! Hurry up, catch him!”

They sound like rough English accents from maybe the 1700’s. If he had to guess, he would think they are robbers, and they seem to think he has whatever they want.

“No! No! I don’t have it,” Benjamin yells.

“He’s Lyin’. Hurry up. Get him!”

This time, Benjamin wants the horse to go fast. He leans forward, grips the mane in terror, and yells, “Faster, horsie! Faster!”

Ooooohhhhh. He’s being pulled backwards again…

Bang. He ends up on the floor in his own dining room. Ping-Hwei sits in the chair beside him.

“Ping-Hwei, Hurry, unplug my computer,” he gasps.

Benjamin lies on the floor, trying to get his breath back under control. I hope I’ll have the chance to work on that time travel program before using it again.

Our Golden Anniversary

I started writing this last August, close to our anniversary. Lately, I’ve felt the need to add to and complete it.

No, we haven’t been married fifty years.

When our kids were little, we told them it was their golden birthday when they were three on the third, five on the fifth, twelve on the twelfth and so-on. On the 27th of August, in a couple of weeks, Murray and I will be married twenty-seven years.

If we make it to fifty, that might be our “Can you believe we lived this long?” anniversary.

We only knew each other five or six months when we got married. We were engaged less than two weeks.

Our first year of marriage was quite a tumble as we finally got to know each other.

But we were happy. We had plans—school, careers, children. I knew we would be different from most couples. I knew even after we’d been married for a while, even after we had kids, we would hold on to our romance.

Laugh.

Sigh.

Life became complicated. We grew busy. We certainly didn’t always agree on how to handle the kids. The world slapped us in the face with some pretty hefty problems.

We were Christians. We did not believe in divorce. We would stick it out, but we were not the sweethearts we’d been in our early years.

For our 25th wedding anniversary, we planned to take a trip to Nashville. That would be fun.

Two months before our anniversary, I suffered a brain injury and spent six weeks in the hospital. Our lives were turned upside down.

My memory of those first six weeks is sketchy, but I remember thinking how wonderful Murray was being to me.

Every morning he came to the hospital to spend the day with me. He didn’t go home until I fell asleep. A neighbor asked him if the people in the hospital didn’t get tired of him coming there all the time. Murray said, “I don’t care.”

“We have abandoned her into the hands of our sweet Lord Jesus,” Murray told our family and friends during the first couple days, when they didn’t know how it would go with me. When they knew I would live, but not what my recovery would look like, Murray was sure we would manage it, as a family. He told a member of the hospital staff, “When I said ‘I do,’ this is one of the things I said I'd do.”

We praise God for how well I have recovered. I have not retained many of the terrible effects which a great number of people with brain injuries do.

Certainly, I do still have a number of results from the injury. I am no longer able to work outside the home. My balance is not predictable. I have lost a significant amount of hearing. I have memory problems, and the strangest words come out of my mouth sometimes. Yet we are thankful. We know it could have been so much worse.

God has brought many good things from this tragedy. One of the most beautiful is the change in our marriage.

I want to cry when I remember how I treated Murray before the accident. He would call me at work, and as soon as I heard his voice, I was terse. I had things to do. I didn’t have time to talk. Now, when he calls me at home, I “usually” remember to smile, and let him know how happy I am to hear from him.

Before the accident, I found so many reasons to criticize him. I can’t claim I’m anywhere close to perfect, but I work hard at biting my tongue. I used to spend so much of our time being irritable, not being loving. Now I work to remember to smile, to hug him, to hold his hand, to say “I love you.” Most of the time, it’s not that hard of a job.

Murray tells me, “You are the wife I am happy to have.” He takes my hand and tells me, “I want you to know, nothing’s changed.” He holds me in his arms and says, “Oh yes, this is the good stuff.”

No, we’re not perfect. We still fight sometimes, and we still say things we’re sorry for. But as our twenty-seventh anniversary draws near, we know our marriage is a gift of gold.

James 1: 16-17: Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

A few months after our golden anniversary, when I hadn’t worked on this story for quite a while, I was going through a terrible time of moodiness. I self-diagnosed my problem as coming from menopause. I cried and got upset so easily, about things that happened in the past and present.

I got into a huge fight with Murray—I cried and screamed and couldn’t stop—over something we could have handled with a decent discussion at my more reasonable moments. After that day, I went through days of being furious with Murray, about so many things, about just about anything, about nothing.

One night after I’d gone off at Murray about something, I was in our room crying and praying for God to forgive me and help me. A couple of minutes later, God answered my prayer.

Murray knocked on the door and told me a friend had called and wanted me to call her back. He could tell I was crying and asked if he could help me. I didn’t answer, so, courageously, he came in.

I said to him, “I’m so mad at you, and I don’t want to be, and I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

He held me, and tried to say it was all his fault, but I kept crying and going on about how bad I felt about everything and how I’d diagnosed it as being from menopause.

I told him that I remembered something that happened right after we got married. We were driving and fighting, and he’d pulled the car off the road and stopped. He put his arms around me and said, “I’m so mad at you right now, and I love you so much.” I told him that’s how I felt right now.

When I’d calmed down some, I said it was a good thing that God had brought that memory to me, about the fight so long ago, because that was a statement we could use on each other for the rest of our lives: “I’m so mad at you right now, and I love you so much.”

Several more months have passed now, and I am struggling through days. Not usually screaming and crying, but unsure of what I should do with myself, and having a hard time making myself get out of bed and do simple daily tasks. I’m sure this will pass, but I don’t know when or how.

Murray keeps hugging me, and holding my hand, and saying, “I’m so in love with you. I want to cry, I love you so much.”

God has given me a treasure so much stronger than gold.

Making Room for Five

This story was published in the Winter, 2014 issue of DIALOGUE magazine.

When we were first married, my husband, Murray, told me that he would like us to have two biological children and then adopt one with special needs. I had always wanted to have as many children as possible, so I was glad to agree.

Rebecca was born shortly after our third anniversary. That was almost 24 years ago. I have a clear first memory of her arrival a little after five o’clock on a Wednesday evening. As I held the newborn on my chest, a bunch of friends from church came to visit us in the hospital after Bible study.

“She looks just like you,” everybody kept saying to Murray.

“Don’t worry, Kathy,” a friend joked. “They change a lot in the first year.”

Murray worked as an occupational therapist, and I was in graduate school when Rebecca was born. I took a semester off, then went back to school to finish.

A few months before I graduated, Murray suggested that we have our second baby right away, before I started back to work. Sarah was born when Rebecca was sixteen months old.

As I was lying in bed with the newborn Sarah in my arms, the doctor who had delivered both girls sat beside me and said, “Well, Sarah, you look just like your sister—which means you look just like your father.”

Sarah was born in January, and Caleb joined our family in December of that same year. But let’s back up a little. Since college I had been involved with a children’s home mission in Taiwan connected to my church. Before I became pregnant with Sarah, we received a newsletter from the Taiwan mission, mentioning a little boy who happened to be blind. Murray suggested that maybe we could adopt him, and we wrote a letter to the couple who ran the home. As months flew by, we found out I was pregnant. I graduated, we moved closer to Murray’s job, and we forgot all about it.

When Sarah was less than six months old, a letter finally arrived from Taiwan. The couple there said that they had several wishes for the family who would adopt the little boy and, Of all the families who had asked about adopting him, we were the ones who satisfied all those wishes.

I can remember Murray crying as he read the letter to me.

The little boy had a Chinese name, but since he was only two, we had the opportunity to choose an English name for Him. For the next few months, we talked non-stop to Rebecca about her new brother, whom we called Caleb.

When Murray picked up Caleb and brought him home to me, I took him in my arms and said, “Caleb, I’m your mama.” When Rebecca woke from her nap, I asked her, “Rebecca, who is this?”

“Caleb,” she replied. At that moment, our new son was almost three, Rebecca was two, and Sarah was eleven months old.

We were done having children, right?

When the kids were four, five and six, our minister spoke one Sunday morning about how much help we could do if a bunch of families in our church each adopted a child who needed a home. Murray took no convincing; I took little.

We contacted the county agency that dealt with adoption, and just for fun, we also contacted the home in Taiwan.

The folks in Taiwan said they had no babies who needed adopting, but there was an older boy, about 12, who had been abandoned.

This adoption took a little longer since Ping-Hwei was older. The workers there wanted him to visit us first before they started adoption proceedings to make sure we, and he, really wanted this.

I remember the first day Ping-Hwei walked into our house to join our family. He went straight to the kitchen, pulled the handle off the faucet on the sink, and said something to us in Chinese. We all had a lot to learn.

I knew we were done now. Four kids was definitely enough.

About six months after Ping-Hwei came to be with us, we received a Christmas card from friends at the home in Taiwan. They mentioned that they had a new baby who was blind and needed a home.

Murray said nothing. I said nothing. A couple weeks later, I said, “You know, maybe we could adopt that baby.” Murray just smiled.

I tell Benjamin that God definitely wanted him to be in our family. By the time we called Taiwan, they’d already started adoption proceedings for the child they’d told us about in the Christmas card. But … there was another baby boy, just three weeks old, also blind.

If we had called them right after we got the card, we might have that other little boy in our family. Instead, that June, almost exactly one year after Ping-Hwei arrived, Benjamin, not quite six months old, joined us.

One of the delights about adoption, according to Murray, is that the husband gets to have morning sickness as well, but I told Murray not to expect any more children as Father’s Day presents.

Many people had questions about how I managed, but Murray completely trusted that, even though I am blind, I could care for the children. For nine years, I was a full-time stay-at-home mom and primary caregiver. I am so grateful for the gift my husband gave me. What an adventure it’s been!

If God is Real

This weekend I attended a women’s conference with our church. We’d been planning this for almost three months, but as the event drew closer, I started to sour on it.

It’s cold. I don’t feel comfortable in large groups. I just wanted to stay at home.

But I had promised. I’d even said I’d lead small group discussions—another thing I felt uncomfortable about—so I went.

What a wonderful gift.

The conference was sponsored by a group in Austin, Texas, shown online throughout the United States and in other countries throughout the world. The theme was, “If God is real, what then?”

We focused on the story of Joshua from Numbers 13 and 14 and Joshua 1. Only two of the twelve spies believed that God could help Israel conquer the Promised Land. Unfortunately, Israel decided to follow what the other ten spies told them, that they would not be able to conquer the great nations there.

No, by their own power, they could not. In the end, God showed those who remained that through his power, they could accomplish what he promised.

Women shared what God had done in their lives despite the difficulties they faced—depression, cancer, abuse, loss of children, lack of self worth. The honesty these women shared began to touch my heart.

For most of my adult life, I’ve always kept busy—work, graduate school, raising a family. This was good for me, for it would have been easy to believe, being totally blind, that I was not capable. I did have this fear. But, as long as I had active work to do, I was able to convince myself that I was doing important things.

Two and a half years ago, I had an accident which caused a severe brain injury. Suddenly, I had multiple disabilities—hearing loss, memory problems, difficulty finding words and forming complete sentences, lack of energy, trouble with balance and orientation. I could no longer work. I could not travel independently. I couldn’t even do many household chores.

I felt—I often still feel—useless.

One of the things I learned early from the women this weekend was that I can’t do anything useful. I have to depend on God to do it.

Of course, this has always been true, but I never had to face it like I do now.

One of the main topics discussed this weekend was that God gives each of us a purpose—bringing more people to a saving relationship with Jesus. This even includes me, with all the disabilities I seem to love to dwell on.

I can’t fulfill this purpose on my own, but I know a God who loves to do what appears to be impossible.

“But what can I do?” I wondered. I’m still not sure. But one of the speakers touched me deeply with her story.

She did not grow up with a good relationship with her father. The idea of God being a loving daddy made no sense to her. She once asked a wise Christian how she could understand that, and this was the response she received. God is the one who is the father. It is his job to show her how he can be a loving daddy.

On my own, I can’t find what I am still able to do for God, for the people in my lives. But I have a God who is able, and so willing, to show me how I can be used by him.

I’m not able to do the same things I used to do, physically or mentally. Another speaker from the conference reminded us that when Joshua was getting ready to enter the Promised Land, God reminded him that Moses was dead. It had been through Moses that God had led the people of Israel before, but it was time to move forward. God was going to do things a new way now.

I realized I need to accept that I can still do important things for God, just in new ways, with God holding my hand and giving me the strength and ability. I am excited to find what God has planned for me.

For more information about the wonderful ministry behind this weekend, go to ifgathering.com.