All posts by Kari

God, what do you want me to know about this situation?

I was curled up under a blanket on the couch, praying for a friend who is struggling with a pattern of behavior. I felt frustrated, honestly. I’ve been praying for her for quite some time, Why is this still a thing for her? In my logical brain it seems so simple. Just stop. Right? I prayed the same things as usual, the same Scriptures, then stopped and asked the question above. God, what do you want me to know about this situation?

And then I remembered.

I remembered a time when I wasn’t free.

It feels like watching another life, it’s so remote. When I 18-20 I struggled with what we’d call an eating disorder. Both ways, falling into both ditches. First under-eating, then over-eating. And while yes, there was about a 30-pound swing from lightest to heaviest, it wasn’t the weight that was the issue. In fact, what’s hard about so many issues of the heart is we over-focus on the outer stuff, when the healing is needed so deeply within in the unseen realm.

But I remember that feeling: Why can’t I just be free? What is wrong with me? Why do I KEEP doing this thing? It was beyond frustrating. It felt beyond hopeless.

Day after day, I never felt free.

In my case, it was a slow process of renewing my mind with Scripture and slowly, bit by bit, making inward and outward choices that honored God. Getting married to Jeff was life-changing, on every level, because his human expression of unconditional love transformed my heart. But I remember even after that disordered season was over, still recognizing that something was off in my mind, and that I came by it honestly — all the females in my family line struggled with weight, food, dieting, etc. In one side of my family line, food was the go-to. It fixed things, it brought comfort, it was the answer. But in the same breath there was the desire to lose weight. Not blaming anyone, but something about that felt off.

And it was in 2012 when Jeff and I began tackling what we identified as family tendencies we wanted to change. I could see what the unhelpful go-to was for my lineage: reaching for food as a stress-release. It didn’t matter if it was a cookie or a carrot (there are no holy foods), it was that after a stressful day I would come home and reach for that, the way some people grab a beer or pour a glass of wine. It’s like Ahhhh…finally.

And to be clear, I’m not talking about hunger. It’s one thing to come home hungry and grab food because you are hungry. That’s healthy! It’s another thing to come home not hungry and grab food because it’s you’re way to cope. And the tricky part for me was it was hard to share this with anyone because I wasn’t overweight. It wasn’t like Oh I have this problem because I need to lose weight. That wasn’t it! It was, There’s something in my brain that’s reaching for this thing as my solution, instead of reaching to Christ.

At this point, Heidi was only 3, and I remember thinking, “There is no way I want my one and only daughter to inherit this. This stops with me. I’ll do whatever is takes to not hand her this thing.”

And in God’s gracious kindness, as I went to him and asked for insight, for truth, for clarity on what to do, He did it.

It’s kind of a long story how that went, and the details don’t so much matter because the prescription God gives for each situation is different, but my point is, now 12 years later, I can barely even remember what it was like to think like that.

It feels like my brain has been literally re-wired. Like I wish I could convey how completely different my brain is. God changed me.

And it happened through a renewal of my mind, slowly. It wasn’t overnight. And now, if I could tell my 18-year-old self, “Hey Kari, when you’re 44 this thing will be so gone you won’t even remember it, until God brings it to your mind” I’m not sure whether that’d be encouraging or not. 🙂 But I hope it would be.

What I’d like to tell my 18-year-old self is that these battles with our flesh, these raging storms in our minds that we face in our efforts to truly follow Jesus and live in the light, often they just take time to win.

Don’t give up because you don’t feel like you’re making progress. Where you are today isn’t where you’ll be 10 years from now. And if you make the right choice today, you are moving toward a glorious future of freedom.

This isn’t just true of phsyical temptations like food or sex, this is true of mindsets: Bitterness, resentment, negativity, gossip, anxiety, fear.

All of it starts in the mind.

And so as I turned my prayers back to my friend, I was reminded that God is not panicked by our struggles with sin. He’s not wringing His hands. He’s with us for the long haul. He’s promised to walk alongside us forever.

And even while we’re battling sin, God still graciously uses us. We’re always a work in progress, and simultaneously God works in us and through us for His glory.

So if you’re one of those still not feeling the freedom, take courage. It might be a while longer until the victory is secured, but you can be free.

I looked back over the list. I didn’t want to mess this up. Adult STL … that’s my cue. I’m the Adult on Stage Left. I just need to pay attention, remember my jobs, don’t crash into any cast member with the benches. Don’t let the backdrop get caught on the hooks. 

Heidi is currently in her 6th show with CYT and this is my 6th show working backstage. I love the job. To me, it’s such a privilege to see all the behind the scenes, even if it isn’t always pretty. 

As crew backstage, we get to see the mad scramble for Seth’s missing set-piece. We get to see how he made due without it and still carried the scene. We get to see how Zach stepped in to help when we were short-handed, how Dylan hustles to make that quick-change. We get to see little huddles of 3’s and 4’s praying for each other before the show starts. 

What we don’t get to see? 

The show.

Of course we get bits and pieces. We hear the music. We sing along offstage, we laugh at the funny lines and silently celebrate when someone nails their song. We high-five when we get a set-change done flawlessly. It’s fun.

But it’s not the same as seeing the show. 

It’s rewarding in its own way, but honestly: Sometimes it can get tiring going the same unseen task, again and again and again. Silent. Invisible. Often-times, if we’re putting something far downstage, we set pieces that we never even see used. We just have this long list of things to do, and we might not have any idea what the actual finished product looks like.

This isn’t just true for crew, it’s also true for cast. No matter what your role, no cast member gets to see the whole show. They don’t see what’s behind them. They don’t see the scenes they aren’t in. They get bits and pieces. They learn their lines, their cues, their dances. 

But no one in the show gets to see it all together right before their eyes. 

For every show, I book my own ticket to watch for the final show. It’s like my reward for a full two weekends working backstage. And by then, my own appreciation for the hard-work backstage is at its full height! By this time, even as I watch the show I’m silently praying the crew kids can make all their changes. I’m praying Heidi gets her quick-mic-change in time. And I’m awed and amazed, often to tears, to see how it all works together.

Oh THAT’s what that scene is all about. Oh THAT’s why we put that backdrop there. Oh THAT”s why it has to be exactly so and so. 

Now I see. 

There were a couple hard things today. Jeff sent me a photo of my mom and I wished more than anything she were there. Oh man she’d love this show. And my thoughts swirled to various things I was facing, and also to her life and how she navigated the hard stuff. 

So much we don’t see. 

As followers of Jesus in His Kingdom, we’re all cast and crew members. I picture angels as the audience, and we’ll join them once we’re glory. They see it. They can see what’s going on. They know why it’s so important that we forgive this person. Why we HAVE to keep our mouth shuts in certain situations. Why God puts different people in different places for different seasons. Why we’re supposed to sing this harmony but not that one. 

We’re not the Director. We do as we’re told, and trust that it’s what’s best. 

Sometimes we get weary, yes? Just me? We try to remember that we’re not the Director of this show. There is only One. And we haven’t been given a ticket just yet to see the fullness of how this is all working together. This Kingdom thing.

And so we work and wait and trust. We believe that a good Director is giving us the right cues. That if we are faithful with our part, He will work something together for good that is beautiful.

And someday we’ll wake up, and it’ll be the most glorious show. Heavenly popcorn and all our beloved people and we will get to watch as the Director of the World unveils His Show. Beaming, giddy with delight, He announces:

THIS, my children, is what I was doing all along! Watch and see!

And the film will roll. And we’ll see it in its glorious whole, we’ll see the part we played, we’ll see why it mattered. We’ll laugh and cry and go, “Oh yes, remember that time?! So THAT’s what was going on! I was so confused!”

It’s going to be good. God give us courage and grace to keep playing our part. 

After many years of slow homeschool days, limited activities, and just two kids, our season has certainly changed. I’m grateful for those years, but now with two teens we are in full-blown activity mode and throwing a couple extra kids into the mix hasn’t exactly slowed the pace.

With cross-country, theater, dance, ballet, voice lessons, and teaching literature, on top of our at-home lessons plus toting around two littles, life feels very full.

Thankfully, seasons that stretch us force us to grow. Here are four helpful habits that help us through our busy season: Read the rest over here! https://simplehomeschool.net/4-habits-that-help/

“Mama, are you overwhelmed?”

It was Justice who asked, looking up at me inquiringly, his little mouth carefully pronouncing the word he’d clearly heard before.

I smiled down at him, “No sweetie, I’m happy.”

And I was. But I knew why he was asking it. I had been overwhelmed. Way overwhelmed. And through over the course of a few weeks, the Lord was showing me how subtle this temptation of overwhelm really was.

Temptation? Overwhelm is not a temptation. Temptations are things like sex and second pieces of cake. Right?

Sometimes. But sometimes our temptations are so much more subtle than that.

It started on our drive up to Spokane. Leaving my family to go away and speak for a weekend is at lot of work. It’s a lot of work to prepare to speak, and it’s a lot of work to prepare my family with everything they need for me to be gone. But this time my family came with me and I discovered the only thing that’s more work than leaving them at home to go speak is bringing them with me to go speak. 😉 I quickly became grumpy and frustrated, and my thoughts, most-certainly not taken-captive, began to run amok something like this:

I’m never doing this again. It’s impossible, this is way too much work to do all of this, I just can’t do this anymore. I’ll let people know when we get back that I’m not going to be speaking anymore.

Ha. Of course even as my thoughts went there, I thought of the wise saying from a woman who has endured more hardship than I can imagine:

Don’t decide to give up running while going up a hill.

Of course.

Last week Dutch had a hard cross-country race. I was worried that he was injured, his form was odd and he didn’t have his usual grin. Gratefully, it was just a hard race. It was hot. It was smoky. He’d had a harder-than-usual training week and he was just plain tired.

But within a minute or two he had his breath, was feeling good, and back to his usual smiling self.

Turns out it was just one hard race. Turns out he’s only 4 weeks into running this much and he could really use more training. Of course.

Can you imagine if, at about 4K into that hot and smoky race he stopped and said, “You know, I don’t think cross-country is for me. This just isn’t my sport. Turns out it’s not as fun as I thought. I’ll go ahead and just let the coach know that I’m done for the season.”

Of course not.

Ok, so what does this have to do with overwhelm?

Overwhelm is the first step toward quitting. It’s a form of mental quitting. Instead of saying, “Wow this is harder than I thought. I’m going to need _______________ (stamina, new strategies, patience, more sleep, etc.). I wonder what steps I can take to be more prepared for this,” it’s telling yourself, “This is too hard, this is ridiculous, no one should have to do this.”

Now of course one caveat: It could be that you’re not called to do the thing. Dutch did piano and baseball as well in years past. He gave it a year or two, and it truly wasn’t his thing. Great. Move on.

But most of the time I’m overwhelmed by things I really am called to do, I just need more training.

Back to temptation.

It’s a temptation to let yourself take that mental step into quitting. It’s a cop-out. It’s a way to blame circumstances which completely robs us of our opportunities to grow.

If Dutch quit he’d never become a faster runner.

If I just quit speaking or homeschooling or whatever God is calling me to do, I’ll never walk in the good works God prepared for me in advance (Eph. 2:10).

I just sent Dutch off to practice with his two water bottles and peanut butter pretzels. He’s learning his rhythm, and I am too. I’m learning that I can’t plan things that take me away from the kids during the days we’re doing school. I’m learning that dinner-prep really needs to be done in the morning. I’m learning a nightly house-reset makes mornings so much better. I’m learning a 4pm snack for the littles goes a long way in keeping us all sane during that difficult pre-dinner window.

Instead of giving in to the temptation to overwhelm, instead of the mental throwing-up-of-the-hands and saying “This is too hard,” I’m trying a deep breath and asking, “What do I need in order to manage this better?”

Shall we try it together?