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winter: looking hard for hope

February 5, 2014February 5, 2014 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

Sometimes the barrenness and deadness of winter gets to me. In the gray and brown bleakness it can seem that all beauty and life has faded from the world. The daylight shortens, the cold sets in, the life and bounty of summer shrivel into shades of brown, crisp papers carrying forgotten stories. And the winds blow the weightless shreds away.

And what is underneath are the skeletons. They have their own stories to tell. They have their own beauty to proclaim. From a distance and from a quick scan, it all looks like death. You have to look harder, listen closer. Slow down and draw near to really see.

Sometimes it’s good to just go out and search for it, to see in order to remember:

There is beauty here. There is life here, contained, ready to combust. There is hope here.

to my husband

February 3, 2014 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

happiest birthday today to this guy!
so thankful to do life together with you, to raise these precious kids together with you, and to continue on the adventure set before us together! i love you forever, B.

preparing for storms

January 7, 2014 MarthaKimball1 Comment

“Take more ground on the good days.”

I read those words some months ago, back in the heat of North Carolina’s summer. I have thought of them so often since then. Susie Larson, author of Your Beautiful Purpose, was writing about a concept from her fitness-instructing days. The concept is that there are days you wake up feeling somehow stronger, with more clarity, energized. Those are the days you take extra ground in your fitness goals: push harder, lift more, run farther.

“Leverage the day to your advantage…because a day is coming when you’ll feel less than stellar and it’ll be all you can do to show up for your workout. In order not to lose ground on those difficult days, you need to gain ground on the favorable days.”

What am I doing with my good days, the days where running feels easy? What am I doing with my strength, with the seasons of blessing?

The hard days just come. God tries to prepare us, He is as up-front as He can be: “in this world you WILL have trouble,” He says {John 16:33}. You don’t wait for the storm to be upon you before you start building up a strong home, a safe haven, a good foundation. If you wait, you will surely come to ruin! You run hard in the good days. You run a little harder, a little farther. You leverage that strength. You prepare for the storms that will inevitably come.

You know they are coming, they are not going to derail you.

You know they’re coming, they’re not to going to make you question why a good God would allow them. He has told you He will allow them. He has told you to take heart because even though the trouble WILL come, He has already overcome it. And so you plan to lean hard into that future grace.

And so when you feel like you have earned a rest, that maybe you can sit back a bit on your laurels, maybe this is the time to run ahead.

Don’t wait for the storms to come to start battening down the hatches. Batten down the hatches on the good days, when you’re feeling strong, when you can hardly imagine a hard day in sight. When you feel like your marriage couldn’t be stronger. Your parenting skills are pretty great. Your relationship with God is good. You’ve got this “quiet time” thing down pat. You pray like you want to. Your finances are ship shape. Your portfolio is impressive. Your job is smooth sailing.

Use that good season, leverage it. You know hard times will come. And will your faith stand? Will your marriage stand? You won’t have the strength to set a good foundation in your marriage or in your walk with God when the hard blows come. It’s then that you need a strong home already built to weather that storm.

It’s part of what is so hard and broken about this life here on this terrestrial sod. The working never really ceases. You clean the floors, and that’s about as good as it gets for a few minutes. Because part of the fallenness of this place is that left to its own devices, everything naturally falls into a state of decay. Nothing improves without our working. Without maintenance and constant, persevering attention. And without our attention, everything slowly quietly falls into disrepair.

You don’t do this out of fear. You do this out of wisdom.

You need some scripture planted deep down in the marrow of your soul for the times when you don’t know when to turn in His Word. For the times when you’re groping for His voice. {Consider joining in here with a group to memorize scripture, soul-sustaining words from Christ in the Gospel of John.}

Maybe you need to try some new things in your marriage, make some goals that include sustaining and nourishing your marriage in new ways.

You place yourself in a network of other moms, maybe some older moms too.

Maybe you seek out and build up some solid friendships even though you’re feeling pretty good and independent.

I know some people aren’t into January and new year resolutions. Who wants to set goals when you just finished the last year and feel like you blew it? Who really wants to try again? And some people argue we should always be living in today so we don’t need to be setting goals for tomorrow. But what about stepping back and taking stock? What about seasons where we evaluate how we’re doing, where we clear our muddled vision and set sights afresh on the goal, and consider how to run for that goal well? This is what I love about January, and the freshness of a new year, and the setting of goals or resolutions.

This is what I love about a God who gave us the physical illustration of seasons, each season bringing its own “now” and each season calling us to prepare for what’s ahead. Tilling soil and planting seed in spring, months before you’ll see that harvest. Chopping and stacking wood in the heat of the summer, months before you can even imagine a cold bone-chilling wind, so that it dries out and is ready for the unexpected need. Canning and storing the yield of that harvest for the days when the ground is cold and hard as iron and no fruit is hanging from the vine.

Always, the working, the leveraging today’s strength for tomorrow’s weakness. For what unknown but certain storm is ahead.

So tell me.. what are you doing with your good days?

What God Numbers

January 1, 2014 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

“Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” {Psalm 90:12}

A new year and a fresh conviction that our time here is short. It is limited. It is set in a fixed boundary. Our days are numbered. This year? It could be our last.

The very first mention of the word “number” in scripture, as far as I could find it in the NKJV, is here in Genesis:

“Lift your eyes now and look from the place where you are—northward, southward, eastward, and westward;for all the land which you see I give to you and your descendants forever. And I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if a man could number the dust of the earth, then your descendants also could be numbered. Arise, walk in the land through its length and its width, for I give it to you.” {Gen. 13:14-17}

“Then He brought [Abraham] outside and said, ‘Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.’ And He said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.'” {Gen. 15:5}

God, promising Abraham a land, a heritage, descendants beyond number. God, proclaiming from the outset that his grace-work would be beyond numbering.

Man counts the numbers in his bank account, the numbers on the scale, the numbers of his followers, the numbers of those who work for him. Like David, counting his men, measuring his own strength, his sufficiency, his weight.

God numbers our months, even our steps. He numbers His own. He numbers His mighty works, the lives of those who will receive His grace. An innumerable number.

“The Lord builds up Jerusalem;
He gathers together the outcasts of Israel.
He heals the brokenhearted
And binds up their wounds.
He counts the number of the stars;
He calls them all by name.
Great is our Lord, and mighty in power;
His understanding is infinite.
The Lord lifts up the humble;
He casts the wicked down to the ground.”
{Psa. 147:2-6}

Then this, one of the very last times the word “number” appears in scripture (according to the NKJV):

“After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands,and crying out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” {Rev.7:9-10}

And so the first mention of “numbers” is in context of God promising a land, promising a people who will receive grace and favor. And at one of the last mentions of the word “number”we see that promise fulfilled and consummated, a people beyond number from every tribe and tongue before the throne, before the Lamb.

A promise fulfilled because God chose to send His Son, Jesus, “and He was numbered with the transgressors.” {Isa.53:12, Lk.22:37} Numbered with the malefactors.

Teach us, O God, to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom. So that we can participate in the grace-work You are doing in this world, through this particular and peculiar and set-apart people.

“Many, O Lord my God, are Your wonderful works
Which You have done
And Your thoughts toward us
Cannot be recounted to You in order;
If I would declare and speak of them
They are more than can be numbered.” {Ps.40:5}

for the hard days

January 1, 2014 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

The hard days just come. Suddenly, you realize you’re going to have one, when you thought everything was going just fine. When what was going along suddenly careens off course.

And the soup you made tastes like fish, and sour.
And the bread in the breadmaker is a flop, something went horribly wrong, and its barely cooked or edible (and how can you mess that up?)
And its a small failure but it wipes you out.
And you cry and your husband holds and says he’ll make dinner.
And you hear the news that the car is dead.
And the numbers in the budget won’t crunch down any further.
And you’re clinging hard to Jesus, to that simple sentence that is packed with power, that “perfect love casts out fear” {1 Jn. 4:18}
And you’re not feeling power at all. And it doesn’t feel like perfect love at all.
And you realize for all your clinging, you are not so much holding on as you are held.

And there comes rushing in the hope: nothing can shake this one truth. Nothing can change it. The mountains might crumble and fall into the sea, but this one truth will remain: I am His, and He is mine.
Forever and for all eternity.
And if by faith, and by quiet surrender, I let it be, it can be, enough.

In this life I will have trouble… but He has overcome the world.

I will suffer, but I don’t have to fear suffering, because I will survive it to glory and I know the sure end.
I know my sure end.
And it can be enough.

There’s nothing as effective as pain and need to wake one up, and I want to live awake.

I want to live awake to the reality that my tight-fisted grasping for control isn’t possible. And in knowing that comes rest because I cannot hold onto my life, but I am HELD. My life and all that concerns me is held in the hands of another–and He is good. He is love. He is out to give me ultimate joy and life. And He says, “Do not fear for I am with you” (Isa.41:10) and He promises that His presence with me is enough.

Provoke not your children to wrath

December 27, 2013December 27, 2013 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

“‘Provoke not your children to wrath.’ Easily said; but how are we to avoid it? Strife between old and young seems inevitable. Today the world changes fast and inconceivably fast; in pastoral and agricultural times, what a man knew was of use to his son, but in the industrial age Father’s knowledge is out of date before the son is half grown up. We should be more than human if the result were not bitterness and conflict. Then too there are just too many people on this teeming and screaming earth for us to welcome a new man with whole-souled enthusiasm. Our God-given biologic nature, which rejoices in parenthood, and our fallen self-seeking nature, which hates it as the creator of responsibilities, are at war with each other; and if we cannot make peace with ourselves, how shall we make peace with our children?

The ideal solution, of course, would be to remake our jerry-built, precarious society into a sound and safe one. But, let’s admit it, we don’t know how; and if we knew, we have not the power; and if we had the power, as long as we are sinners we should lack the love. There is only one thing a man can really remake–himself–and that only with the aid of God’s grace. Laws and organizations and schools are good things, creches and social services and youth groups may be admirable things. Yet–a reminder obvious, trite, but necessary–none of them can replace the love the guidance of father and mother. Our problem then, pending reconstruction of the world, is to reconstruct our lives so that we give our children as much warmth and attention and time and teaching as the present world will allow.

At least we might give them our leisure. Let us drop the disastrous cant that persuades women, often against their own hearts, that they have a ‘duty’ to neglect their children for civic affairs, or broadening cultural activities, or even, heaven help us, for ‘realizing their creative potentialities through self-expression in a rewarding career.’ Let us drop too the curious theory that the care and teaching of children are entirely women’s work, and that their father should have as little to do with them as possible. Most of all, let us remind the innumerable Americans who don’t seem to know it that begetting and rearing a family are far more real and rewarding than making and spending money.”

– Joy Davidman, Smoke on the Mountains

Three

December 24, 2013 MarthaKimball2 Comments

It was New Years of 2010, the very fresh first of the year, when I had the first hint of your arrival. You hadn’t been conceived yet, no, but God whispered to me hints that a great joy was coming to me in this year, something He couldn’t wait to give me. I had no idea it would be you, I was thinking on a much lesser scale. But in April, near Easter, I found out I was pregnant with you. We weren’t planning to be pregnant, we were beginning to long for it, but we were scared about our financial situation and just apprehensive about all the changes and uncertainties that would inevitably come with children.

But when that test read positive, I couldn’t stop jumping up and down for joy and screaming and screaming to your Daddy. We couldn’t contain our joy and excitement already. And we had NO idea how much more would be in store for us. My pregnancy with you was good and fairly easy. You were so small. You came so fast, so unexpectedly fast. It was two days before Christmas, I arrived at the hospital, had a couple of contractions, and I was ready to push. Two or three pushes later and then, there you were, all of a sudden, laying quiet on my stomach, reaching for me, blackest scowled little eyes gazing for the first time at me quizzically. I couldn’t believe you were mine. Were you even real?

And our hearts nearly burst for joy. We would never be the same. Altered, forever. Perfectly planned for and formed before the beginning of time. You had aunties and uncles and grandparents bursting at the seams to get their first glimpse of you, and no one was prepared for the way you would steal our hearts. It was the best day of my life, by far. It was the most joy I have ever tasted this side of heaven. It was perfection, if there ever could be perfection. We brought you home at nearly midnight on Christmas Eve, just as a heavy snow was beginning to fall. You slept in our bed and we slept the best sleep together. We woke up, it was Christmas, and our little world was covered in a fresh white snow. Snowed in! We didn’t have any gifts that year to open, we had been so busy preparing for you, but we had been given the greatest gift. Our hearts were full.

And thus began our journey with you, sweet Phoebe. In the three years since then, there are no words to describe the way God has used you to bless us. We have never known such deep love. We have never felt more fierce and protective and passionate about anything. We have never been more humbled, more desperate for Jesus, more aware of our brokenness and faults. Daily God teaches us more about Himself through you and the process of raising you. There are a thousand ways we feel inadequate to be your parents, to have been given the gift of a child in general, when we know so many who are so much more worthy who have not yet been given the gift of a child. And yet, we will never cease to praise our heavenly Father that He gave us YOU. That He entrusted us with such a precious, brilliant ray of light.

That’s what your name means, light.

This past year with you has been a blast. My momma’s heart aches and aches to see you growing and changing and transforming right before my very eyes. I want to hold onto these days, hard and exhausting as they can be at times. This is my favorite season of life thus far and I never want it to go! But, I know it’s impossible to hold on. Already I’ve had to let you go in a thousand small ways. And I know there will always be more to come.

This year you discovered being a little woman, a little chef in the kitchen, the “very goodest mommy” to your baby dolls, nursing them, feeding, and putting them to sleep. You discovered your independence and you’ve been struggling to figure out how to express it in a way that’s okay. You’ve learned more about obeying and respecting. You’ve overcome a fear of swimming/water and now it’s one of your very favorite things. You’re still afraid of food 🙂 and we will keep working on that in the year to come. For pete’s sake. You’re the sweetest big sister, and almost always are gentle and kind and loving to your little brother. You love birthdays, no matter whose it is, you love candles and cake. You are the most encouraging little girl, always so excited to see others (I remember taking you into the grocery store and you exclaiming loudly, “Hi, everyone!!!”) and to give hugs or pats on the backs to any children you see. You love going on “adventures” with mommy and daddy, and you wake up every morning asking me, “mommy, what are we going to do to-morning?” and at night you snuggle in bed, suck your fingers/hair and say, “mommy, what are we going to do tomorrow?” We always say, “we’re going to wake up, eat break-past, get dressed, tie our shoes, JUMP in the car, and go…… to….. (do such and such).” And in the morning you know exactly what the plan is and you can’t wait to get going. You’re really big into privacy right now, and love to come ask me, “mommy, can you give me some pribacy?”

I could go on and on. But I’ve heard pictures are worth a thousand words. So here are some of my very favoritest moments with you this past year. Your daddy and I love you forever and ever, no matter what. You’ll understand one day when you hold your first baby for the first time. We are so proud of you and we adore you, quirks, imperfections, beauties and all. Thanks for being born and making every Christmas the very best time of year for a million little reasons.

Happy 3rd birthday my little girl.

Love,
Mommy

happy first birthday

December 20, 2013 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

My sweet, sweet boy.

You came into our lives at just the right time. We were filled with wonder and apprehension about a little man joining our family. Phoebe would always hug my tummy and kiss it and say hello to you, and say “he’s so tiny!”

What a warm snuggly little man you were right from the start. You were all chub and pudge, just a little butterball to hold and kiss. We were so thankful for you, and awed once again by the miracle of birth.

Your mommy loves you so much. I’m so proud of you for the sweet little boy you are. And I enjoy you so much, your snuggles and kisses, your laughter and tender little spirit. Your careful ways and little sensitive nature. I love how you wake up happy and jabbering away. How you say “Hiiii!” when you hear a door open. How you laugh whenever you hear anyone laughing. How proud you are that you can clap or take a few steps. The way you race to the bathroom the second you hear the tub turn on. How you say “tractor” or “gentle” or “uh-oh.” This year has been such a fulness and a joy to have you, little man. And my heart aches a little to see it go. To know that soon you will be walking and running, soon your little words will turn into little phrases, then sentences. That you’ll be off exploring this great big wild world, keeping up with your big sister. My little baby is turning into a little boy already! Happy 1st birthday sweet boy. I pray for many, many more with you. And I love you so much, forever and ever.

Love,
Mommy

Oh, Christmas tree!

December 9, 2013 MarthaKimball1 Comment

This month is so full and busy for us. There’s more celebration packed into it than we hardly know what to do with, BUT it is wild joy. Both of our babies were born near Christmas, two years and three days apart. So we have birthday festivities amongst all the Christmas festivities. Between holiday parties, family gatherings, parades, gingerbread house making, extra church celebrations, etc., we find ourselves having to be pretty intentional about how to slow down and savor this month and all it holds! We can get overworked, exhausted and irritable in a hurry if we aren’t careful.

With every weekend packed for the whole month of December, we headed out into the freezing cold on November 30th to chop down our Christmas tree. If it didn’t happen then, it just wouldn’t have happened. Both babies were pretty sick so we were in and out as quick as could be.

A little tree farm we just love.

^ Setting off to find our tree… ^

^ showing me her ribbon to tie on the tree ^

^ can you tell I love this red barn?? ^

^ so sick and yet smiling, as usual ^

^ found the one ^

^ and busy right away with decorating ^

A tree inside all covered in lights and color and memories makes us all so happy!

When you don’t want Jesus

December 2, 2013 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

What if at the bottom of it all, at my deepest core, I don’t really care about Jesus. I don’t really want Jesus.

What is wrong in my heart that the greatest gift could become of so little consequence in my estimation? What is wrong in my heart that some new clothes, books, or a device are more appealing to me than Jesus? What is wrong that I could be more excited over birthday and holiday parties to come, over planning for events and chopping down a Christmas tree and decorating the house, over Christmas cards and music, than Christ Himself? What could have caused such a shift that what is priceless and perfection and the answer for my every longing would be lost under the pile of material things? (Things supposedly done in the name of celebration over the Savior’s birth.) That when the words “He is the greatest gift“ are whispered to my soul, my soul isn’t satisfied? Or exhilarated? That I don’t feel much of anything. Maybe it’s just me.

This is why I need Advent this Christmas. This is why I need the journey, the slow and steady and deliberate plodding from the Garden to the Manger to the Cross and the empty Tomb. Because my heart is bent away from God. Because lesser things continually come in and slowly, quietly, choke out the good things. Because I want to see Him again, anew, as the greatest gift, as the best and highest and most precious thing this Christmas season. Because I don’t want to miss Him and I don’t want a Christmas I can buy. Because I want my heart at its core to want Jesus. Because “the greatest gift we can give our great God is to let His love make us glad” (Voskamp, The Greatest Gift).

May He be found anew and treasured more highly than all else!

“We must be sure of the infinite good that is done to us by our Lord Jesus Christ, in order that we may be ravished in love with our God and inflamed with a right affection to obey Him, and keep ourselves strictly in awe of Him.” -John Calvin

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