One of the most memorable days of my life is February 8, 1973, when I became a mother for the first time. There was much joy and a little bit of “I hope I know what to do with this child.”

Our first son was bottle fed, and it was a lot of work – washing bottles, sterilizing bottles, mixing the formula just right, warming the bottles to the perfect temp, feeding the baby, burping the baby.  It was almost a full-time job to keep our son fed. We followed all the books and gathered all the information, so we would know exactly how to feed him.

Within just a few days, I realized something was off. The formula that Michael was drinking seemed to pass right through him. There was a lot of mucus in his diaper, and things did not look right. (Just telling it how it was.) This problem happened right after every feeding. Maybe I didn’t know what I was doing after all.

At his one-week-old checkup, Michael really had not gained any weight. I explained to the doctor what was happening. The doctor explained to me that the problem was the formula we were using. It did not work for Michael, and he needed to try soy milk. We adjusted, and in no time at all, things changed for Michael, and he began to thrive.

I had been relying on a formula that I thought would surely bring about the desired results.

Sometimes, I think we have our Christian walk down to a perfect formula. Don’t tune me out as I attempt to paint a picture. We often try to boil it down to simple formulas.

1. Marry another Christian + Pray together = A happy marriage.
2. Pray every day + Read the Bible = A good Christian.
3. Pray for the sick + Anoint with oil = All will be healed.
4. Give money to God’s work = No financial issues.
5. Worship music + Lifted Hands = Always being cheerful and joyful.

Our faith walk is more than formulas. It is a FAITH walk. I believe that faith sometimes involves wrestling with God. Faith, at times, is a struggle when life does not quite work out like I thought it would. Faith is clinging to a God I cannot see and a God that I sometimes do not feel. Faith is overcoming my thoughts when those thoughts want to contradict that God is a God of love, as I see so much pain in the lives of my friends and family. Faith is continuing to pray day after day and month after month and seeing no change in situations.

Let’s not confuse knowing formulas with knowing Jesus. Let’s not confuse following the rules with having a deep, intimate relationship with our Heavenly Father. God and the Christian faith cannot be contained by human formulas. Though some of the things in the formulas above are good spiritual disciplines, they should go hand-in-hand with the understanding that faith is a daily walk with a God who can be trusted even when the formulas do not seem to be working. 

I want to move beyond a vending machine prayer life. If I can just put the right spiritual coins in, I will get what I ordered. If I have the perfect words, or the correct posture, or spend enough time in prayer, then things will happen. God has reminded me recently that prayer is much deeper than a formula. Prayer is an intimate talk with the One Who loves me deeply.

Habakkuk 3:17-19 states it so well:

“Even though the fig trees have no blossoms,
    and there are no grapes on the vines;
even though the olive crop fails,
    and the fields lie empty and barren;
even though the flocks die in the fields,
    and the cattle barns are empty,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord!
    I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!
The Sovereign Lord is my strength!
    He makes me as surefooted as a deer,
    able to tread upon the heights.”

The prophet’s words describe complete economic devastation. Absolute loss. There were no grocery stores. If you could not grow your food or raise your flocks, then you starved. I asked myself after reading this, “What if God never turned around some of the things for which I am praying?” Some of them concern people I love who are facing situations that only God can change.

I think that is how Habakkuk must have felt. Yet, he said, “When all the formulas do not seem to be working, I will look to my Sovereign Lord to be my strength.  He will not let me stumble! He will make me surefooted. I will be a person with a “yet” praise.”

I might not understand all things, but that will never interfere with the love relationship between my God and me. Sometimes my formulas, while they are good, might not bring the change I desire. “Yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation” (Habakkuk 3:10)

In recent months, I have seen a deluge of advertisements from gyms and personal trainers. Each person pictured shows us what a beach-ready body should look like. Each of them is forty years younger than me and their pictures seem to boast of ten percent body fat or less. Each displays a beautiful six-pack of abs, perfectly tanned bodies, and smiles with perfectly straight, sparkly white teeth.  If I join their gym, I can look the same way!

As we say in the south, “It a’int never gonna happen!”

About a decade ago, I used to say, that when standing in front of a mirror and looking at my side view, it looked like one biscuit had popped out the package of canned biscuits. I am not personally admitting to anything, but it is possible to graduate to two or three biscuits! In the mirror, I see a woman with lots of white hair staring back, or new lines appearing on my face. At age seventy-two, this is not the body I signed up for!

Society tries to press us into a beauty mold of what we each must look like. We are to work hard on the hair, the face, the body, the clothes, and the teeth. This is what you should be striving to accomplish.

I actually believe those things are important. We are to take care of the physical temple with which God has blessed us. I exercise several times a week, and I am working on healthier eating. Truthfully, I will never look like the model on the billboard and trust me – I never smile, showing my sparkly white teeth, when I lift weights or spend thirty minutes on a bike or an elliptical machine.

I am now endeavoring to allow God to post a proper billboard in my mind. Every day, I need to see God’s billboard for it will teach me not to focus on the flaws I see, but to focus on thanks for what I do have at age seventy-two. If I only see the flaws, based on society’s billboard, I will never feel good enough.

Today, I give thanks to God. I have breath in my lungs. My heart continues to pump oxygen-rich blood through my veins. My legs work when I get up in the mornings. My husband and I can still take care of ourselves and remain independent. I can still get on an airplane and travel a thousand miles and speak God’s Word for a weekend. My lips can still give God praise and share the Good News of Jesus Christ. I can see laughter lines around my eyes and thank Him for the fun times I have experienced over the years.

My plan is to continue exercising for my physical health, but even greater is that I want to exercise daily a heart of thanksgiving for what God has given me. How about you? Who will take a thirty-day challenge and join me in thanking God every day for what we do have? Mark the date – May 21, 2024, and each day thank God for breath, a new day, family, and a host of other things that are so easy to take for granted. This week, try being grateful on purpose – and see how that changes your life. Write it down. Repeat it often. Thanks be to God!

“It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to the Most High. It is good to proclaim your unfailing love in the morning, your faithfulness in the evening.” Psalm 92:1-2

Mother’s Day has just passed, and it always causes me to reminisce about my own mother. She was truly a treasure.

Pictured are two women who overcame in life. This is my mother and my grandmother attending my wedding. My grandmother lost her husband when he was only forty-seven years old, and she was still raising most of her nine children, and she had no money. I am not sure how she made it, but she did.

My mother was one of kindest people on the planet. She did not have much materially but was loved by so many, because she was so kind and caring. My father was a stern, self-centered man, and never treated her as she deserved. She pretty much raised her eight children by herself, kept house, cooked, and put up with so much, including a man who was often drunk and scary.

Let me share a memory of my mom. My mother had a leg amputated because of diabetes that had ravaged her body. She stayed in the hospital a while, and I still remember the moment she came home. It was difficult to get her into the house, and once she was inside, it was a rare moment when I saw my mother cry. Oh, I know she cried internally a lot, but kept it from us. She was faced with the reality that life was going to be even more difficult with only one leg.

Mom soon adapted and returned to the things that she felt needed her attention. Most of her children lived out of town, so the day-by-day routine became hers again. My father had to get up at five in the morning to get to work. Daddy liked a cooked breakfast, and my mother had always gotten up to prepare it for him. He never cooked for himself, cleaned house for himself, or did much of anything for himself. After Mama’s leg amputation, Daddy still did little for himself. 

My mother would get up at 5:00 a.m., lift her body into the wheelchair, roll into her small, crowded kitchen to cook for my father. The diabetes had also taken a significant part of her vison, yet she would find a way to cook. Daddy would eat and leave. Mom would clean up the mess and go about her day trying to get things done. She also had a hot meal on the table for Dad, who would come home for lunch every day. 

My mom went to her grave at age sixty-three, still not complaining, and still struggling to do the best she could. It can bring tears to my eyes now to picture her. She had a heart attack as she tried to cover my dad, who was already in bed and was cold. She wheeled into the room to cover him and that was the last act of kindness she would ever do.

In 1970 while I was in college, my mother called to tell me that she had accepted Jesus Christ as her Savior. I was a student at a Christian university, preparing for a life of ministry. Needless to say, I was so excited.

I am still excited when I think of the day Mama called to confess her salvation. Why am I excited? Because now Mama has a beautiful home with her Lord and Savior. Mama can get around without a wheelchair. Mama is not overtired. Mama is enjoying life to a degree she never came close to experiencing on earth. (And I think she is probably hanging out with my son Bryan.)

So, on this Mother’s Day, I honor Ailene Ruth Wells. What an example of grace and kindness she was. What an example of endurance she was. I did not realize until I became a mother just how much she sacrificed for her children. I cannot wait to see her again on a great reunion day in Heaven.

Mama, thanks for a life well-lived.

“Her children rise up and call her blessed… ‘Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.’” – Proverbs 31:28-29

One of the things that we do as grandparents is try to support our grandchildren in their activities. We go to plays, choral presentations, grandparents’ day, class programs, graduation from kindergarten, elementary school, high school, and on and on. We want them to know that we are there for them, and that we are proud of them.

More than anything, we attend a lot of sporting events. This is soccer season, and there are weekly games of energetic boys and girls kicking the ball, running down the field, and blocking the goal. It is fast-paced, and everyone gets into it. The adult fans can be quite exuberant.

In the game this past Saturday, there was much excitement. It was a close, competitive game. I watched as the coaches told players where to stand, encouraged them to run after the ball, clapped for them, and corrected them. That is what coaches do. They give guidance to the players. Coaches empower their players by putting them in a position to be victorious.

On the sidelines were lots of fans. They were all yelling, many shouting commands to their own children telling them how to play the game. “Jack, move down the field. Jude, shoot the ball, shoot the ball. Score, score!” 

The coaches were shouting to the players what to do, and the parents were commanding them to do the opposite of what the coach was instructing. I watched as some of the kids would turn when a fan yelled a command, then they would turn and hear what the coach was saying. Some of their faces seemed to say, “Who do I obey, the coach or the fans?” I watched as one little guy tuned in to the coach and tuned out the fans. He had to fight to hear the voice of the coach over all the other voices speaking.

Walking out life as a Christian is remarkably similar. Whose voice will we listen to in this hour? The voice that we listen to is the one that will determine the decisions we make and the paths we take. There are so many voices yelling in our ears. We must tune our ears to THE most important voice for the believer.

The Bible says that we are in a spiritual battle with the world, the flesh, and the devil (Ephesians 2:2-3). All three are whispering to lead us in the opposite direction of where God wants us to go. When I say whispering, I am not saying one will hear an audible voice, but an inkling to make a certain decision or walk a certain path.

How do we tell if the voice we are hearing is the world’s, the flesh, the devil’s, or God’s? By knowing the truth that comes from the Word of God.

We are in a time that Christians cannot be lazy about studying God’s word. It is our final authority on how to play on the field of life.  Our values do not come from movies, influencers, politicians, or educators. Our values come from hearing the voice of God recorded in His Holy Word. Our thoughts, our values, our decisions are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds through God’s Word.

Paul wrote to the church in Rome, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing, and perfect will” (Romans 12:2 NIV).

According to Romans 12:2, renewing your mind means interpreting life through the lens of God’s Word and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, rather than through the lens of experience, woundedness, trauma, preferences, or the opinions of others.

I don’t use The Message bible very often, but I do love the way Romans 12:2 is paraphrased in The Message: “Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You will be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”

So, whose voice are you going to listen to today? If we listen to the right voice, we will make the right choice.

“Blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD” (Psalm 40:4, NIV).