Crochet Like a G

G as in grandma, or in my case, Grandmama. We, my siblings and cousins, called my grandmother Grandmama until we started having babies and she renamed herself "G". She said it was to avoid confusion because my aunt's grandmother name is "Mamama," but I think it was because she was a little bit gangster.

When I was little, there was a corner of her living room that was stacked high with yarn and crochet projects. She gave handmade blankets, pot holders, dish cloths, and slippers for Christmas and birthdays. I still have a pink afghan she made. I think it was part of a set she gave to all the girl cousins. I've been thinking about her projects and how they used to be in everyone's houses when we were kids. Crocheted articles were just a given in the family and it made me a little sad that those handmade things disappeared over time. Coincidentally, I was also looking for something to do with my hands to replace my habit of mindlessly scrolling through social media. I often find it necessary to have busy hands.

My first afghan.

I was briefly interested in learning from her way back then, but it was a very long time ago that she taught me to chain and single stitch. Thus, I went to Pinterest and Google and I've started teaching myself. I made this blanket. It's too small and a little wonky, but it's also beautiful and it makes my heart happy to see my kids snuggled under it on the couch. I've started a new, more complicated project and it is teaching me a lot. One of these days it will be finished and Dave will have his very own blanket.

We are a pretty creative family, but I think most people are, even when they don't give themselves credit for it. I like to write, draw, paint, cook, crochet - all obvious creative endeavors. I'm also pretty good at dissecting a business  process and using software to make it fancy and magical - not obvious, but creative nonetheless. Dave generally channels his creativity into words - poetry, prose, teaching, finding the most appropriate (inappropriate?) song lyrics to relate to a Bible passage, and sometimes speaking in Pig Latin for days at a time. Occasionally, he can be convinced to build something and sometimes he'll draw or paint if we're all doing it.

Family Project

Ella does all the things - writing, music, painting, drawing, cooking, and anything else you might classify as "arts and crafts" and always has. An assignment with a creative element is her cup of tea and she is completely uninhibited when making things for her friends and family - bookmarks, birthday cards, art for the walls. When we moved into this house, I gifted her my cabinet of art supplies and she has made good use of them - much better use than me in the last few years.

Luke is less obviously creative, becoming frustrated while painting, but killing it when he draws a comic strip or rigs up a zip line for his stuffed animals or designs a hamster transport out of Legos. He might be the funniest one of us and he can write a very detailed and crazy story. He wrote and presented a poem during Easter lunch - I think he has Dave's talent with words. I've also learned to ask clarifying questions like "What part of this plan makes you think you need my permission?" and give very clear instructions like "You can try it, but you can only jump feet first." As I write this, he is designing a putt putt course in our yard.

This quarantine has given us the time and just the right amount of boredom to practice our creativity, sometimes together, sometimes at risk to our limbs, sometimes stretching into hours of quiet time while we lose ourselves in it. It feels good to lose myself in a project again, and maybe that project might end up draped over the couch or hanging on the walls. Maybe my friends will get pot holders for Christmas.

Help Me Be Still

I’m reading the book of Job. It is not my favorite because it’s hard to accept that God allows a faithful and righteous man to lose everything. I don’t like to think about that, but Job is the first of the books of wisdom in the Bible, so I read it because there is stuff in there that I need to know. Also, as hard as it may be, it never hurts to take a good look at myself and admit that I don’t measure up to Job’s faithfulness. 

I’m only six chapters in this time, but it struck me this morning that Job has some serious wisdom for friendship and ministry. As the story goes, God points out Job’s faithfulness to Satan and Satan challenges God like, “Yeah right, of course he’s faithful, you bless everything he does.” Then God allows Satan to plague Job so that Satan can see that Job is always faithful, in good times and in bad times (that’s a whole lesson in itself, but not the one that struck me today). Satan takes everything from Job, his livestock, his property, his family, and his health. 

Job is s.u.f.f.e.r.i.n.g.

This is when Job’s friends come to visit. They also know the Lord, and they begin to question Job’s behavior. They suggest he has sinned and that God is correcting him for something. You can go read the whole conversation for yourself in chapters 4 and 5, but Eliphaz, the first friend to speak, really piles on. He says smart things, but that is not what Job needs to hear in his grief. His words are hurtful and Job has the guts to tell him so in 6:14-15, “To him who is afflicted, kindness should be shown by his friend, even though he forsakes the fear of the Almighty. My brothers have dealt with me deceitfully like a brook”. In my words, Job said, “Hey, my friends should be comforting me, not lecturing. You looked like a cold drink of water coming to refresh my soul, but really you are a dried up stream in the desert, leaving me thirsty and hopeless.”

THAT is what struck me. How often do we respond to grief with questioning and correction and solutions? Humans like to fix things. I know I do. I like to know all the answers and tell what I know, and I like to fix things. But, I also know that in the deep, dark grief that has threatened to swallow me whole, I didn’t want correction and solutions and answers. I wanted someone to sit with me and just let me be hurt for a minute. I wanted someone to say, “I love you and you are going to be okay” and “You have a big, beautiful life and you don’t have to live in this grief forever.” 

I wanted comfort. 

I’ve thought about friends who have comforted me - friends who sat through quiet lunches while I was traumatized by Dave’s cancer diagnosis and treatment and just let me be quiet, friends who listened without judgement to how hard it is to go on with life after cancer changes everything, friends who prayed with us and cared for us when hard, soul-wrenching things happened at King’s Home, friends who know my deepest, most personal wounds and just love me without telling me what to do. That is friendship. That is ministry. See, I know that God is always with me because His spirit lives in me, but His spirit lives inside other believers, too, and sometimes a soul needs another physical soul to sit with it in its grief. Sometimes we need to feel God’s presence in the quiet of another soul who is willing to just sit and listen without fixing, to reassure us that we are loved and we have worth. 

Job needed a friend to be compassionate, to care for him, to comfort him, and thank goodness he had the guts to say just that because I needed to be reminded that sometimes I need to stop trying to fix things. Sometimes, my job as a friend is just to be still and let my friend feel God’s presence in their grief. 

The Shovel and the Sword

“Those who built on the wall, and those who carried burdens, loaded themselves so that with one hand they worked at construction, and with the other held a weapon.”  Nehemiah 4:17

One of the things that I often pray over my family is Nehemiah 4:17 - that we would be aware and on guard, protecting our family in prayer even as we do the daily work of life.

For months I’ve been praying for families. I’ve been asking God to restore broken and hurting families, to restore Godly leadership at home. To draw fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, back to Himself and teach them how to lead and live in a way that glorifies Him and heals this hurting world. I know that He does these things because I’ve watched Him restore my own, little by little, year by year since cancer snatched us right to the bottom of a deep, dark pit. 

I’ve been reading Nehemiah this week because that just happens to be where I am in my current trek through the Bible, and I cannot help but see some parallels with what is happening in the world right now. Nehemiah, a Jewish man and the cupbearer for King Artaxerxes, went to work sad one day because some of the Israelites who had returned to Jerusalem from captivity were in distress. The city walls had been torn down and burned so there was no protection for them. After talking to God about it, Nehemiah shared his worry with the king and the king sent him to Jerusalem to repair the wall. 

When construction started, their enemies began to harass and threaten them and the workers became afraid that they would be attacked. Nehemiah did two things: he reminded them that God had sanctioned the work and would protect them and he stationed armed guards around the work. His response was both faithful (“Remember the Lord, great and awesome...” v. 14) and practical (he set a guard v. 16). When the walls were finished, more Jewish people returned from their captivity. All the people gathered to celebrate the completion of the wall, and Ezra, the priest, read the book of the Law. The people  stood up, recognizing the importance of the reading of God’s word in their holy city after their return from exile. 

Now, it wasn’t all easy-peasy after that; the people had spent years in captivity in a pagan culture and developed some practices that went against all of God’s plans for them. Nehemiah had a big job of reinstituting the Jewish culture, retraining God’s chosen people to be holy before God, but he kept up the work, hard conversation by hard conversation. 

While I read and think on this story, I can’t help but reflect on this forced return to our homes, the cancellation of extra-curicullar activities that keep us busy and separate from our families. I’m not knocking the extra things we do to make our lives full - the Lord knows we spend 4 nights a week out of the house during soccer season and I firmly believe sports are good for my kids. 

But y’all, we’ve been given a chance to rebuild the walls around our families, to shore up the weak spots and rehang the gates, to protect them from a world that never stops trying to kill, steal, and destroy. We have an opportunity to retrain ourselves to be a holy people, to seek and trust God. Will you? Will you do the work, with a shovel in one hand and the Sword of the Spirit in the other?

Can you tell us what it means?

"Can you tell us what it means?"

I knew when I heard her sweet voice asking that question through the phone that God wanted me to pay attention. Something about it resonated in my spirit and I made a mental note to think about it again later. That's how I often hear God's voice - like an echo of what I hear or read or even think deep in me. It's hard to describe with words but I can almost physically feel it. I'll go ahead and acknowledge that this probably makes me sound crazy, but I don't care. I spent a long time trying to figure out how to hear God, and I will tell it because I know plenty of people who are still working on that.

Anyway.

I have been in Missouri for the week at a training class for my new job. I have a new job; Dave has a new job. We don't work at the King's Home anymore so I've been again asking God to show me my purpose since I am no longer in full-time ministry. Our schedules have worked so that I was able to participate in our daily devotion via phone every morning and this morning after Luke read the Bible passage, Ella asked, "Can you tell us what it means?" I went through it verse by verse so I could explain it to them, and here I am 12 hours later, thinking about it again.

There are so many things I want to teach them:

- work is good

- it's okay to do hard things

- drinking water makes you feel better

- you don't have to be like everyone else

- what others say about you isn't your business

- reading makes you smart

- do things just because they're fun, even when you're grown

- don't take yourself too seriously

- you can learn anything

- kindness is so much more important than achievement

Basically, I just want them to know all the things it took me 37 years to figure out, and I want them to know it right.now. Completely realistic expectations. No pressure at all. See bullet number 8 above.

What I think I want to teach them most of all is how to have their own relationships with God.

"Can you tell us what it means?"

Just the asking of the question tells me that she is primed to learn. She could have skimmed over it or rushed through it so they could leave for school, but she genuinely wanted to know. The way the question stuck deep inside me tells me that this is my purpose right now - that it's okay that there are only two of them and that they have always been mine. I'm supposed to do my part to prepare them for whatever their purposes may be.

The Man-Cub didn't ask any questions today, but he asks plenty and he soaks up the stories and spouts them back at us at the most random times. On the drive to church Sunday morning we were discussing why we have appetizers when guests come for dinner and I explained that they are to hold us over when we are hungry until the meal is ready. He chimed in, "Yeah, like when you are starving and you are praying to God to send the ravens to bring the bread because you are too hungry - that's when you need appetizers." That's a reference to God hiding and providing for Elijah after he proclaims  the drought in 1 Kings 17 plus a little dinner ettiquette. Biblically accurate with life application, just the way we like it.

Thorns

This morning, Tasha, our three-legged-dog, decided to do her own thing instead of following me home from dropping the kids off at school. I waited for her and called her a few times, but she went the opposite direction so I left her and walked laps around the lake. As I approached the footpath to school, I could hear her yelping - not the rude, impatient high-pitched bark she does to go outside, but consistent yelping that reminded me of the kid in A Christmas Story yelling "Don't leave me, come back!" Clearly, she was in trouble, so I slowed down and searched the brush beside the road for her. When I found her, she was chest deep in a thorn thicket on the downward slope of the hill. Stuck. If she had four legs, she might have been able to get out, but she was stuck.

I thought about leaving her because it was her own fault she was stuck in a thicket. If she had followed me home like she normally does, she wouldn't have been stuck. Those thorns were thick, and there were little ones like razor blades and inch long ones that looked ready to rip me to shreds. She just kept whimpering at me with sad eyes, so I stomped into the thorns to get her out. I was bared-legged and bare-armed and the bushes were thigh high, so the best I could do was stand on them so she could go over them. She slowly made her way up and over the thorns and then waited on the other side to make sure I came out. I don't know what she thought she would do to help me if I got stuck, but at least she waited. I came out bloody and impaled with splinters. She went to the lake for a recovery swim.

As I walked home, I thought about how I often go my own way and find myself stuck in a mess, needing rescuing. How God could look at me and say, "You should have followed me, get your own self out of the thorns" but He didn't. He comes to my rescue every time. Jesus literally wore thorns for me. I am just as handicapped by my sin as my dog is by her missing leg, and I need rescuing when I go astray but I have a God who will stomp into the thicket and make a way out for me.

I was humbled this morning by a dog, some thorns, and Jesus.

Why We Do What We Do

I shared this at the King's Home Hear the Hope banquet last night - modified slightly for reading instead of hearing.

The role of the father at King’s Home is vital because so many young people in our world have never had a healthy father in their lives. Psalm 68:5-6 tells us that God is a “father to the fatherless” and he “sets the lonely in families” – and that’s what the King’s Home youth program does. As much as possible, we provide a home and family, a place where at-risk teenagers can rest and grow to become better versions of themselves.

I am Amanda Roper and this is my husband, Dave. We are house parents in one of the girls’ home, and we currently have 7 girls, ages 13 to 17, and two biological children, ages 6 and 8. When we were asked to speak about what King’s Home has meant to us, I meant for Dave to do the talking but God just wouldn’t stop pouring words into my mind.

King’s Home has meant a complete life change – Dave had a successful law practice and I was ten years into a career in IT when we packed up our children and moved into a house with teenage girls. Dave and I used to spend approximately 60 hours a week apart and now we are together most of the time. We’ve had to learn how to work side-by-side and communicate well, and we can appreciate each other’s gifts now that we see how we use them day in and day out. We live where we work now, so my commute went from two hours a day to 30 seconds. I used to sit at desk for nine hours a day, and now I hardly sit down for 16. One morning not long after we started this job, I walked out of my apartment at 6:30 am to relieve my boss’s boss who had covered the overnight shift. I had traveled with my boss, and with his boss, but I had never greeted either of them in my living room in the morning. This work is a strange hybrid of full-time office job and stay at home parenting wrapped up with an administrative team who supports us and tells us how to fix it when we’re wrong.

It has given us an opportunity to show our children a life of service – as James says, to “be doers of the word.” It’s about teaching – how to shop on a budget, how to be appreciative, and how to serve. It’s about how to cook, and be considerate, and how to tell the truth in a kind way. Sometimes it’s about teaching them how to receive the truth so that they can the people that God wants them to be.

We celebrate with them when they make good grades or get good news, and we hold them accountable when the NEVER have any homework and their grades show it. We take them to the doctor and we attend their school meetings. I’ve been to so many wisdom teeth extractions that the nurse in our oral surgeon’s office greets me with a hug and calls me by name.

This work is about making sure they have the things they need and some of the things they want. It’s about figuring out how to squeeze $800 worth of groceries into a Volkswagon Passat in the Sam’s Club parking lot, and about teaching them Bible. I love it when I’m teaching our devotion time and they ask me question after question. Most of the time they are hungry for the Word; sometimes they reject it, but we do our best to teach it anyway, trusting God’s promise that His Word never returns void. We take them to church and we spend countless hours praying over them.

The job is hard, the hours are long, and the exhaustion is real, but having a front row seat in their lives as God chips away at their frozen hearts, smooths out their rough edges, and fills their broken places is worth it. And, there is the bonus of reliving our own youth, too. We go skating, shopping, bowling, and tailgating. Last year we took them to church camp, the beach, and to an indoor water park in Ohio – and if you haven’t been to youth camp as an adult, you’re missing out. We joke that is our retirement job because some days it’s hard to believe we get paid to have this much fun.

We are officially called Family Teaching Parents because our job is to teach, but we do a lot of learning, too. We learn the latest slang, the latest makeup trends, and the latest music. I’ve taken a crash course in Type 1 Diabetes and I’ve learned how to cope when 10 children are calling my name and asking all the questions until I fantasize about living on a deserted island. That usually just means I need a nap. We are learning how to love them even when they try to prove to us that they are unlovable. They are not unlovable, despite what their past tells them. I am learning patience and how to respond gently, how to listen without fixing and how to remove weepy mascara stains from my clothes. Sometimes they really just need a hug and a good cry.

We love them to the best of our ability, acting as stand-in parents while they are with us, and then we let them go. Some stay three weeks, some six months, and some much longer. Some of them never wanted to be at King’s Home, and some aren’t ready to leave when they go – and we are learning to say goodbye in both circumstances.  I sometimes feel anxious at the thought of one of them leaving, worried that I haven’t done all that I’m supposed to do for her, but I’m learning to trust God with the timing. Their presence in our home is never an accident, so while we have them, we do our best to fill them with good things – medical care, education, social skills, God’s word – we pour and pour and pour into their lives. Then, we give them space to decide for themselves what do with it – much like you probably do for your own children. At the end of the day, only God can change the heart and we know that He does and that He is actively changing hearts at King’s Home – the teenagers and our own. 

Sweet Georgia Brown

We said goodbye today. Twelve years is a very long time to love an animal. 

We knew she was sick when we went to bed last night, but we hoped it was just a stomach thing and she'd feel better today. Friday morning she had walked three laps and behaved like her normal happy self. 

This morning, I woke up to find Dave sitting in the bathroom floor with her. Her breathing was very labored and she refused to get up. I think we both just knew this was it for her, but we decided to take her to the emergency vet just to make sure it wasn't some freak illness and we'd done everything we could. Dave had to carry her to and from the car. I've never seen a 70 lb dog look so small. 

We got to the vet in time for her to assure us that she was dying and that there was nothing else we could have done to help her. She said she likely had a tumor on her spleen that burst, and that she sees that so often in old Labs. The staff there were awesome. They gave us space to love on her in the busy ER and made an impression of her paw for us to take home. 

We will miss her, but she had a long and healthy life, and you just can't ask for more than that. 

Godspeed, Georgia. You were the very best.