All things family-related. My husband and me, the children we made, the grandbebes that thrill us now. Our whole great big, loud, messy family. Love! *sigh…
Last night Rocky says, "Jovan and I have an announcement to make," and then he passes out Averi's baby announcements (designed by Aunt Stormie). So-yes, Averi has been around for 3+ months, but they've been a little busy!
NOTE: You can see a poster-sized, beautifully framed black and white of Rocky and Jovan looking at their newborn on the wall near the "baby department" at Platte Valley Medical Center on I-76 in Brighton, CO. Yes, they are such a beautiful family, they have become the hospital's "poster-child."
I was once a mommy. Then the babies grew up. Now, I'm "mom."I raised 5 kids and lived to tell about it, I like to joke. Then some of my kids made me a "Grandmother!" How royal, how regal.
Tara and Dave gave me Hunter. Stephanie and Tristan have given me Gavin and Guinivere and Gemma. Most recently, Rocky and Jovan presented me with Averi. I am so blessed. And grandparenting is truly the reward, the great gift of God as age chases us down. The grandbabies are the spring of new life as you enter your second half.
Oddly enough, I'm still working on the mom thing. Everytime you think you have it figured out, the relationship evolves and changes and you have to learn all over again. I look at Tara and Stephanie and Jovan and they each have such unique qualities and are so much better at mothering than I ever was. How did they know how to do it so well?
Stephanie is the picture of calm and gentle. She disciplines with such grace and love, with quiet confidence. Tara has devoted so much time and creativity to Hunter, providing such a wide range of experience to him. Jovan's face when people ask her how she likes being a new mom is a vision, as she almost becomes speechless saying, "I love it so much, words can't even express.." and looks adoringly at the baby in her arms.
If I had it to do over, I'd be so much better at being a mom just from the things I've seen in these women, my daughters.
But, let us not be melancholy. Tomorrow is Mother's Day and I think all moms should honor their children on that day because we couldn't be moms without them! So to Tara and Stephanie, to Tredessa, Rocky and Stormie, thanks for letting me be your mom when you were born, as you grew and especially now, as I continue to learn how to do it right with adult kids. And thanks for the people you've brought on board, additions to my collection: husbands, wife and grandkids. I love the whole kit-and-kaboodle of you.
So, on mothering adult children, I'd like to share a scene from the cheesy overbearing-mother-movie, "Because I Said So" where Daphne Wilder (Diane Keaton) gives this explanation for her hovering, smothering, meddling behavior when her daughters were telling her she had to change (Diane Keaton alternates between crying and whining to screaming and freaking out; it is the best scene in the movie besides the really cool cakes they show):
"Fine, but I just want you girls to understand some things about motherhood. OK? OK? I mean it is THE most impossible love. You tell me when it ends? You tell me when it stops? All I know is – it's absolutely fine for me to teach you how to walk and talk and then you grow up and you head off in the wrong direction toward a cliff and I'm suppose to just stand there and wave and go, 'Well, kids, good luck, it's mom, I'm here,' WELL I CAN'T DO THAT! What am I supposed to do, huh? Am I just suppose to put my feet up at the end of the day and say to myself, 'Well, you know, they're on their own and she says she's fine, ' WELL YOU WON'T BE!"
I hope I am not that bad! Ha!
Happy Mothers Day to my kids 'cuz you made me one…MOM
I love you, mamala! I love you bunches. I love you because you first loved me and gave a lot of your life for me (not as much as Jesus, of course, but a lot).
There are so many things about you I wish I had gotten:
your jawline and facial features…can you leave those to me in your will?
your ability to love church people, and churchy people even when and especially when they didn't deserve it.
Your refusal to accept offense and let it live in your heart. You are, above all, the most forgiving person I have ever met.
your sense of joy at simple things, like a bird on the fence or a butterfly in your garden
your compassion and mercy and how you always, without fail, believe the best about people, even when the evidence says otherwise
You are guileless. You are absolutely without guile.
But then are things I got from you I wish I hadn't:
fear that there won't be enough money for steak. I laugh as I write that even now – remembering all the times I watched you struggling to balance the budget, telling me, "There isn't going to be steak for awhile." And though we ate very well at every single meal, thank-you very much, I kept waiting for the night we'd come around the table to…nothing. It never happened, but I have a really strong love of steak meals, which I think may have come from that.
your poor eyesight and EEE-wide feet
your penchant for inventing your own set of cuss words like "oh, crap-a-dap!" When I now say, "Oh, blast!" Or "boogers!" People ask, "Why don't you just go ahead and cuss?" To which I reply, "Oh-I am!"
But I am so glad that I got these things and I learned this stuff from you, mom:
the first 2 words I ever knew how to spell: Bible, from the song, "The B-I-B-L-E," and salvation from the song, "Oh You Can't Get to Heaven without S-A-L-V-A-T-I-O-N"
my first taste of longing for heaven when I was like 3 or 4
country music, my dark secret is that I do love it
good family photos, the ones you've given me and my desire to collect and create more
lots and lots and lots of family photos – if one is good, 342 (of the same event!!) is better
how to be my kids' biggest fan (you are thoroughly enthralled by every single one of your children, honestly and truly head-over-heels-enthralled)
that a good letter, written by hand and sent in the mail, is a treasure from your heart to the recipient
your example as a wife
God is all, trust Him
The transition in relationship from the mom who raised me to the mom who is the woman I most admire and trust above all in the world came when I opened the card you tucked into my hand just before I boarded a plane in November of 1978, after coming home to tell you the hardest thing I ever had to tell you and I read this message: "I want you to know, your hurts and your troubles are my own." I hold that thought in my heart. It has en-couraged (literally put courage in to) me many, many days of my life since then.
I love you, mamala! Happy, blessed Mother's Day to you, the best of them all!…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Write and mail more letters to my mommy.
Happy Birthday to my firstborn daughter. Happy Birthday, infectuous and joyful daughter of the King! Happy happy days for you, anointed psalmist and voice for your generation, truth exhorter and encourager to so many. Happy celebration of your birth, sweet Tara. You've been light and life to me since the day you were born. I couldn't have fathomed, at 19, what on earth I was getting in to – becoming a mommy. I didn't have a clue what to do or how to do it, but they put me in a wheelchair as I was dismissed from the hospital, placed you in my arms (along with a bill for seventeen-hundred and some odd dollars – you were such a bargain!) and we left together: a clueless woman and a trusting baby, nuzzling close, breathing new life into my heart. And in all the years that have been and in all the years we have ahead, for this I am grateful: You are a good daughter. I am so pleased with you. In spite of me, and maybe, I hope, just a little bit because of me, you have turned out so well!
I think of the poem, which I will only partly include here, that Lord Byron once wrote about his cousin (do you remember when I painted some of this poem on your bedroom wall, because these effortless, flowing words, though written 150 years before your time, so fittingly described the woman I knew you were becoming?):
She walks in beauty like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes…
And on that cheek and o'er that brow
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent
The smiles that win, the tints that glow
But tell of days in goodness spent
A mind at peace with all below
A heart whose love is innocent!
I am praying for you and these are the gifts I hope you will open today:
An understanding of your pivotol role in God's great story on earth. I hope you'll come to really grasp that fact that you are not living out some individual plan for your life and hoping God will let you in on His stuff, but that He actually created you to be in HIS life, HIS plan. He knit you in my womb, writing the days of your life in HIS book before you were even one day old. You are a woman in the ongoing redemptive story who has been called to be a voice in your generation. Get bold. Speak up and speak out. His words are in your mouth. And when you sing, oh my, anointed woman – the whole wide world is waiting..so take your mark on His stage…
Time in the Presence and that you may be filled with all the fullness of God! As you get to drink in the anointed preaching and teaching and worship in Dallas this weekend, as you get to spend time with others who have your heart and and same raw passion for the things of God, as you spend time seeking God's next steps for your life, may iron sharpen iron, may the deep call to your deep. I pray that the mighty, powerful and intensified Presence of God will fill you up, from the inside out. I am calling out to God to fill you with ALL His fullness (Eph. 3.19), even though as Anne Ortlund pondered around the time you were born, "How do you put the ocean in a teacup?" I have no idea, honey, but I am praying it for you, anyway! Will I even be able to look at you when you get back? Or will your face be like Moses' after getting a glimpse of God? Ha!
The praise of your husband, who has found a good wife. As DC Talk told us, "Love is a verb" and you're a good lover. Dave's heart can safely trust you. I know he knows you were God's best for him and vice versa. Who could have guessed what God had in store? I am so thankful, I'll tell you, for the wonderful husband God gave you, the perfect man for you. I am praying you'll be able to hear, experience and receive the love he offers you and know it is true and real, always.
Grace to be the mommy Hunter needs. You were God's best choice for this little boy – this amazing, smart, funny, ornery, raspy-voiced, hugely-vocabularied little boy. You and Dave have created a talker/thinker/worshipper. And that little man loves his mommy. You are his safe place to fall. You are home to Hunter. You are his shelter and hiding place. And that is a big job, but I know and God knows, you are equal to it. So I pray you'll always mother him with the same force of favor and love with which God has fathered you.
Gentle warrior-friends to protect your innocent and giving heart. It can be easy to take for granted a person who is so open and forgiving and tender-hearted and I pray as your mom, I never will. And I pray that your family will always see and respect and receive your gifts. And I ask God today to send you people who will stand with you, stand in the gap for you, surround you in prayer and provide shelter when you need a quiet place to be restored. I pray that in the many ways you have provided that for others, it will come back to you.
I am so pleased with you, baby girl, I bless the day you were born…Mom
NOTE TO SELF: Spend more time with this woman – she is amazing!
pictured: Tara with the men in her life; at age 3 with her daddy; 2 shots of Tara with the love of her life, Dave; and Tara with her son, Hunter (who is 3)
I have this understood deal with my family: if you go – I pray. I have to. That's my part.
I did not comprehend the wisdom of God in this when He "invited me" out of the rat race almost 2 years ago (my day job) via pain, loss of identity and brokenness (God was actually resisting me – check out James 4.6 if you, too, are feeling resisted). But I get it a bit more now. There was something much more needful!
So this week, they are going, and I am praying: Dave is in South Africa leading worship and preaching it up and establishing ministry centers; Tara and Steph and Stormie are heading to Dallas with their "revivalist" hearts, seeking God's instruction at Jesus Culture (getting Him out of the church and into the world); Mary Jean is in Toronto doing street ministry, walking among the homeless and hurting; Tristan is faithfully at work at Dare2Share, part of daring teens to to share the Good News; Tredessa is in Kansas City at a Living Waters Conference, being trained to bring healing to people in the "broken places" by the power of the Holy Spirit; Rocky will lead hundreds in worship this week, while he and Jovan instill a God-love into tiny, baby Averi. My husband is out there teaching civilians and military alike, with broad influence over the corporate DTC world.
So, in addition to being a wife, a mom (even though they are grown-I'll always be their mommy) and a Nonna, right there alongside my ministry/mission work with Worship and the Word Movement and working behind-the-scenes for Heaven Fest, I am standing in the gap in intercession for my family. I will remember them before the Lord, I will call out their names, I will cover them in prayer and agree with what God has to say about them by praying His Word over them.
If they go, I pray. That is the deal…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF:There is nothing else I could do that would be of more value to my family, keep on praying…
I have held back, I have resisted the strong urge, I have said to myself, “No! Wait until May 10 – wait until after the final frost date,” but I have the gardening itch! I made my first seed and supply purchase last week, even though I will grow most things from seedlings, I cannot restrain myself from the joy of showing my grandchildren how putting some seed into soil will create something wondrous!
A few weeks ago Gavin and I were talking about how it is almost time to garden daily. He remembers with me that great fun and success we had with it last year when we first planted in cups then later into the garden his Gavin’s Fancy Gourds, not far from Guini’s Birdhouse Gourds and Hunter’s Great Pumpkin Patch, right across the yard from Baby Gemma’s Sweet Baby Watermelons.
As I was explaining how, even though the weather seemed very nice, we still had to wait to plant most things due to crazy last-minute snowflakes and cold nights, he brightly exclaimed, “Nonna – I have a good idea!? How about we go put some ketchup in the ground and grow some tomatoes!??!”
I have to give him props for remembering the tomato-ketchup connection.
The grass is greening, the soil has been turned, it really is spring!…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Introduce Averi to the soil…what shall we grow together this summer???
pictured: gardening fun last summer, Guini at top, Hunter, Gavin, Gemma. Averi at the bottom, the newest seed…
Happy Birthday, baby-girl and grown-up woman of God. Happy Birthday gentle spirit, humble and true. Happy Days always for you, beloved baby-of-the-family, but great caretaker and servant-of-all. You walk in the shadows and are a mystery to some, but not to your mommy. I see the big things. I see the heart. I see the blessing you have poured out and poured out to so many. I watch for the harvest because after casting so much bread upon the waters – in not many days, it will come rushing back in a free-fall of overwhelming-Niagara-sized blessing over you! This is God’s promise. I am watching for it.
Every day of your life you have been a gift to me. When I think about the way you choose to carry our burdens at times and how you silently work behind the scenes to lighten loads, through the large lump in my throat, I thank God for you, again and again. I couldn’t find what I really want to give you at Target or Wal-Mart, but I have some things in mind.
These are the gifts I hope you will open today:
the great grace of God for your life, my Stormie! You were born into a powerful force of favor and have been gifted and enabled to to do what God has called you to do and to be what he has called you to be. Grace is raining over you. Let it reign over you, too. Receive it. Splash in it. Be graced! It will be your unending sufficiency.
beauty for ashes. I know you have already felt pain so deep you could barely breathe. I know you know the sting of loss. I wish I could give you the gift of never being ripped apart, but I can’t. I wish I could save you from any and every pain and broken relationship, but I can’t. But can I remind you there is a Balm in Gilead, an oil of healing and the promise of God to exchange the things of pain for the things of life and joy and abundancy?? So, go ahead – put on the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Praise looks good on you, Stormkins!
the unending love of your family. You are so very well loved in the family, Stormie. Your role is so important I cannot fathom us without you. Your nieces and nephews all know that “Aunt Stormie” is a special one indeed. Please let us love you back with the same measure you show your love to us, day in and day out – because that will be enough love to fill your life always.
the hope of a lavish and extravagant love relationship. “He” is out there. We may not know him yet, but I look forward with you to the day that you’ll be loved and cherished by the man of God’s dreams for you. I wait with you for the moment we know that there is one who would not only lay down his life for you and love you with the same passionate, sacrificial love with which Jesus so loved the Church, but that this man will live to love you. From once upon a time to happily ever after; from everlasting to everlasting, the one God has planned for you. I am praying for him, even today, before he has even discovered you.
the song of the Lord. I pray that His song (via your beautiful voice) will burst onto the scene very soon. I see your eyes light up and I hear your spirit rejoicing in the music and worship of the God of the Universe. Even when there is no apparent sound, your heart rising in worship is loud and anointed and undeniable. I am still waiting for you to go public with the song that is rising. Sing, O Daughter of the Living God. Lead the people in the song of the Lord for His delight, His acclaim.
your true self as you see your reflection in His eyes as you walk ever-so-closely to Jesus. In Christ is the deepest and truest of you. May he captivate you and hold you prisoner in the freedom of His indescribable love and mercy. Who is Stormie that God is mindful of her, that He cares for her. You have made her a little lower than the angels and crowned her with glory and honor. (Ps. 8.4-5 paraphrased)
Open these today, my Stormkins and have a happy, happy birthday!…Mom
NOTE TO SELF: Bless the day she was born. Bless that icy-windy-stormy day in Sioux City, Iowa when this priceless gift to the world was born!
pictured: Stormie in 1st grade; Stormie with her little orphans in Venezuela
Today's section (this was written 4-11-08) was labeled "Keep the Unity of the Spirit," Ephesians 4.1-6, which I will not include here for the sake of space, but here is my version of it.
O, I wish I could learn to be like Paul-who, while in a Roman jail cell, writing this letter, had the full understanding that they couldn't hold him captive because he was already a slave to Jesus Christ – captured by the Captivator!
So, I, the Lord's prisoner (your wife, mom, Nonna), urge you (wholeheartedly appeal to you), family, – live your life with the character and dignity befitting people whom the God of the Universe has looked at, considered, called and set on a path for His glory. Never take lightly your place in the Kingdom – just day in and day out – do what you hear our Father saying in all humility and with purpose.
Don't puff up. Don't try to prove your call – just BE who God has called you to be. Stay low (lift Jesus up).
And in family relationships (the Church, yes, but remember-you're BLOOD and SPIRIT – an unbelievable connection), be very gentle with each other's hearts – make some allowances because Love (the God-love in your hearts) can cover a multitude of sins. So stay patient and be quick to mend brokenness between yourselves. Because, here is the deal: as believers, you have a responsibility to pursue unity and peace with all vigor. The Spirit of God has created a beautiful oneness in a covenant (binding agreement) of peace.
Don't let anything rip that apart because everyone involved will bleed to death. So stay together.
So for you, my husband and children and grandbabies and all who are to come – remember this: in whatever way we've been called, we're all a part of the one –
One Body, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, we share one Father – who is calling us, urging us to be one.
Don't cause division. Don't be divisive.
Keep, with everything you are and think and do, the unity. Be one. Stay together.
Get into the Word and let the Word get into you!…J (mom)
NOTE TO SELF: Watch for the challenge of this revelation. Guard the unity, in peace.
I am currently using a JOeRNAAL Tredessa got me from South Africa to write, word for word, the entire book of Ephesians and then to "personalize it," re-writing it as I receive the Word as my own. Ephesians has long been my favorite book of the Bible so you'd think I wouldn't have been surprised to just be realizing: Paul wasn't writing a "book of the Bible" when he wrote this. He was writing a letter (later recognized to be inspired by God through him) to the household of faith at Ephesus, people he loved, the people he really wanted to see GET what God had done for them and how God saw them.
It has turned my personalizing of this book into my chance to use Paul's now-paraphrased words into a letter to my own family. Here is a sample. Eat it up – it is for you, too, dear reader!
"For by grace you have been saved through faith,
and that, not of yourselves;
it is the gift of God, not of works
lest anyone should boast." Ephesians 2.8-9 NJKV
*************
It's really, dear familia, by the forceful-favor called GRACE (this powerful wind of love and goodwill that blows over and through you, the God-given power to do what He has called you to do, to be who He has called you to be) that you have each been healed-cured-delivered-rescued-given new life and a fresh new heart (aka SAVED) through your trust and confidence and assurance in God and all that He says (your FAITH) – not at all through your own efforts or your ideas, or desires, even. It is all from our mighty and awesome Father God – just an outpouring towards us, a gift! It's His idea. And by the way – don't try paying Him back by your works or talents and gifts. You cannot allow yourself ever to think you had anything to do with what He has done!
Anything God could say in 27 words or less through Paul, I can say in 127 words or so…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Stay in the favor-force. Receive the gift. Jesus already paid it.
On March 23, 1959, a young girl gave birth to “baby boy Bigham” in Topeka, Kansas and gifted him to a large family where, at 5 days old, he was adopted and became “David Allen Rhoades.”
I hadn’t been born yet, but I am so thankful to God for the twists and turns and dead ends and interstate highways that brought him into my life so many years ago. With all my heart I believe God designed us for each other.
Yesterday I told him I couldn’t imagine my life without him. I think I would be just like Mary in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” who, when George Bailey had been granted the wish, via an angel, of seeing what life would have been like had he not been born – saw that the wife he’d known as beautiful and vibrant and loving and playful, without him was an old-maid-librarian, afraid of her shadow, afraid of him as he tried to approach her. So much of who I am is tied up in the love Dave has freely given me all our years.
So-I thank God for His wonderful plan, for including you in my life. But also, honey, I thank-you for choosing me above all others and for the times you have seen the best of the real me and coaxed it out of me. I am grateful you let me be the mother of your beautiful children and that you trusted me with your heart. You are ever and always my best friend, my lover, the one I desire. As we enter the second half of this marriage, your birthdays will continue to be “happy birthdays to me!”
I love you, Dave…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Love him, cherish him, stay in his corner.
pictured: My oh-so-adorable husband as a baby; Dave at Bible College, where we fell in love; Dave-my-lover more recently.
