Medicaid for Children

Whenever Mark colors in his animal for class, he always adds “scars”. He sits at the table, legs wiggling and mouth moving. There is always a running narrative during this process, such as, “This is where the hunter slashes him, uhg!, before he escaped…” “This is from a bee bee gun, bang! that did no damage to his vital organs.” “These are blood drops on the ground!” Red marker begins to overwhelm his picture.
“Mark, please don’t pound the marker tip.”
“Oh, sorry Mom. I got a little carried away.”
Yesterday, he was finishing “scarring” his fox while narrating. Then he started drawing band-aids over the scars while saying, “Medicaid! Medicaid!”
“Medicaid?” I questioned.
“Yeah, it’s a band-aid with medicine.”
“Oh really, who’s going to pay for Medicaid?”
“Oh, everybody does Mom. Everybody. Medicaid! Medicaid!” he chanted while finishing his fox.
Today’s animal was a yak. “oh, I can’ take it, ugh!” was the running narrative, “Bang! A bee bee gun. Bang! A real gun! Oh no, he’s dead.”
“Dead?” I inquired.
“As a doorknob,” answered Mark, “see the Xs on his eyes?
“What about Medicaid?”
“It’s too late for this guy, Mom.”

Robot Children

A facebook friend recently shared this song lyric by William McDowell:
“I won't go back, I can't go back to the way it used to be before your presence came and changed me! :)” This got me thinking….and responding:
“I love this. It's the idea of ‘If Christ hasn't changed your life, have you met Him yet?’”

Does your life change if you take the Jesus out of it? Is your life the same without Jesus?
If he isn’t your life-changer, if he isn’t your “I can’t live without Him” piece of the puzzle then perhaps you haven’t really met Him at all.

I worry for these kids growing up in our churches, thinking they know and love Jesus but putting him on like jewelry and not knowing what it means…what it means to be without Him and what it means to be with Him…what repentance is, and how even good kids are “undone” without His salvation. and when I worry…I pray..

Another article I recently read is about why some “good kids” go and some “good kids” stay. Common Traits of Youth Who Don't Leave the Church. One reason for staying was “They are converted.”

I look at my kids, ages 10, 8, and 7 year old twins. Yes, they are good kids. They know John 3:16 and the Lord’s prayer from memory. They have each asked Jesus to “come into their heart”. They are Christian kids. While that is all well and good, we parents seem to think it’s a sealed deal. Our adult perspectives are permanently planted in our own walk with Christ. But as our children age into adulthood, it’s our responsibility to explore with them why we believe what we believe and challenge them to make their own choices.

As much as I would like to, I cannot prevent my daughter’s first broken heart, but I can teach her to turn to He who heals the broken hearted. I cannot MAKE her a Christian anymore than God, who fashioned Adam and Eve, would MAKE them obey him. He did not want robots for children and neither do I.

I am still learning that I cannot be anyone’s Holy Spirit, but I can pray for the Spirit to draw my children, and I can live what I believe, share what I believe, and hopefully challenge my children to accept those beliefs as their own.

A Girl's message to all Christians

Friday's Five Things

1. Marcus’ laughter and dance this morning over finding the poptarts in the pantry all by himself, “Oh yeah, who’s the greatest? Oh yeah, that’s me! I’m takin’ over the world!”
2. Delivering God’s word with cookies this week.
3. The giggling of the children as they watched “Shaun the sheep”.
4. Dinner date with the love of my life and good adult conversation.
5. Reading to the kids each morning this week.

For my cousin Elaina

Where to Go

What do you do when you feel
like you don’t matter?
When no one needs your supposed encouragement? What do you do?
Where do you turn? When friends really don’t
have time to get together or
your opinion is scorned? Where do you go?
I go straight to the source. Not the source of
the pain, not my reactions to another’s actions, but
straight to the source of the one who made me.
The one who held up the coin with Caesar on it and asked, “Whose image is this?”
Whose image am I? Who made me?
Who formed my very hands in the shape of His own?
My unique hand, all my own, all His.
That’s where I go, straight to Him.

Matt Kish created Moby Dick in Pictures, a huge project that is now a book. He dedicated himself to one piece of art every day. One piece of art (crayon, paint, pencil, etc.) One piece of art every day
for every page of Melville’s classic, Moby Dick. It’s not a short book, but a huge complicated tome
still perused in high school and college classes today for its themes of hate and revenge gone awry. It’s about obsession.

Five hundred and forty three pages. Five hundred and forty three days. For a year and a half of his life, Mr. Kish created art every single day. Every single day, he created. Christmas, New Year’s, not feeling well, power outage, moving, didn’t matter. Obsessed by the characters’ journeys, by their stories, by Ahab’s obsession, he created.

Moby Dick in Pictures. Wow, amazing. It’s not so much the actual pictures, which are fascinating to look at, simple and multi-faceted at the same time, it’s the colossal commitment that draws us in to Kish’s world. We, human failings, with half-yearly not so resolute resolutions. We admire a man’s obsession to this book.

If only I was so inspired….not with Melville, but with God himself. With the very word of God—that I could not escape it’s daily call….not that I am creating art every day, but I am created in His image, saved by His grace to reflect His glory to mankind. I am showing Christ every day and I must be in God’s word every day. I am, in a sense, painting pictures and creating art.

As I thumb through the pages of the book, I wonder where the original art resides..543 pieces would take up quite the space…are they in galleries or does Mr. Kish have them stored away somewhere? Where are they really? Other than in the artist’s heart and here on these pages?
Where are my daily art works? Those ones inspired by my time in God’s word? What would they look like? Would they collect dust or change lives? What would Tracey Westphal in Pictures look like? Let me create this one instead, Jesus Christ in Pictures.