Creative Weaknesses

When I began homeschooling my oldest child, I discovered two things. First, math was torturous for her. Second, writing was laborious for her. First grade, as you can imagine, was a challenge.

I’d been homeschooled as a child, so I knew I didn’t have to do everything exactly like it’s done in a school room setting. But, we still did things very traditionally. So, I continued that with my daughter. I didn’t realize that I did not have to make her painstakingly write the answer to every single math problem. I did not know that we could work through certain activities verbally. I had to learn those things.

That was seven years ago. I’m delighted to say that we’ve learned a few things over the years. My daughter has taught me how to think outside the box. And I’ve managed to show my daughter that she can be good at something even if she doesn’t like it.

But something else has come from all of this. You see, over the past few years we have focused on strengthening my daughter’s strengths. We’ve pushed our way through basic math and grammar skills, naturally. But most of our effort has been in establishing the basics in what she dislikes while encouraging what she loves. The hope was that she’d gather a foundation that she could then turn into competency in high school and, if she so chooses, college. Yes, I want her to be able to create a coherent written response to an essay question. But, I figured we’d get to that after the foundations were established in a gentle manner.

Something else has happened, though. My precious child has learned, on her own, how to adjust her strengths and build on the foundation we’ve established for her weaknesses. She has learned how to write coherently in her own way. She has learned competency. Why? Not because I have taught her! But because she has been allowed to blossom in her strengths.

How does that apply to being a minister’s wife? Oh, in so very many ways!!

Ladies, none of us fit into a mold. We will never learn things about this “job” of ours by studying according to the mold. In fact, the minister’s wife who is a perfect hostess can never sit down with me, the hostess klutz of all klutzes, and teach me the basics of hostessing. Why? Because she speaks a different language. I cannot understand her. Things that are simple to her confound me, just like my passion for writing confounded my daughter.

But…as I develop my strengths as a minister’s wife, doing the things that come naturally to me, I can be striving to the learn the basic, practical principles of things that do not come naturally, like hostessing. And, eventually, my natural strengths as an administrator and organizer will enable me to take those basic principles and work them successfully in my own way. It won’t be the way a typical hostess does things. I’ll never have other people raving over the perfect décor in my home or a breathtaking table spread. But I just might be able to pull of a well-organized event in a welcoming environment where people can come in and just relax.

My sweet sisters, I pray that you are given the freedom to strengthen those strengths of yours! May your flourish in them! May you explore and fly! And in the process may you creatively learn just how to manage those weaknesses in a beautiful and completely unexpected way.

I Need To!

“Mommy!” I heard the call through the open window while the kids were playing outside one afternoon and I was inside washing dishes.

“Yes?” I answered.

“Mommy, I need to plant something!” The passionate exclamation came from my three-year-old son, convinced he was missing out on something because he couldn’t have his hands on growing plants. He’d been inspired lately by some of his sisters’ growing projects for science, and he so desperately wanted his very own project.

I had to laugh at him as we talked through what it was he really wanted and “needed.” But, as I listened to his excitement, I had to confess – sometimes I feel that way, too. Sometimes I just feel as if I need to do something!

I have so many passions, but it seems that there are so many roadblocks to fulfilling those passions. In some situations, I pursue those passions but grow discouraged when I see little return for my effort. Meanwhile, there are other things I try to do because I think I should, but I’m just not so good at them. You know, things that the stereotypical minister’s wife or homeschooler always does. So, frequently I find myself crying out just like my son. I find myself crying out to God to show me how I can serve in line with the way He created me.

And, He does.

What I was created to be and do might not be the things others think I should do, but they are the things I do best. The things that really bring out the passion in me. The things that let me see growth and progress. The things that excite me as much as a gardener watching her sprouts peek through the soil. By doing those things, I am strengthened to also do the things that are expected of me, the ones that don’t come so naturally.

I pray you are in a place where you are already seeing God work through the things you’re passionate about. But, if you’re not there yet, I encourage you to call out. I encourage you to call to God and say, “Lord, I need to do ___________!” Maybe you don’t even know yet what should go in that blank. If so, ask Him to fill in the blank for you! Whatever you do, though, don’t just trudge through your role as a minister’s wife. There will always be things you have to do that are hard for you. Believe me, I know – just initiating conversation with people week in and week out can be overwhelming for me! But, no matter what your church or life situation may be, there is a way for God to use your passions. It may not be in the form that your dreams imagine it to be, but it’s there. Cry out to Him! Ask Him to open those doors! And, wait for the fulfillment to flow.

And, just for the record – Steven got to plant a potato that spring. It wasn’t much, but my sweet son got to take care of it. And, to him, that was a pretty big deal!

Safe Place

As a teen, I had a safe place.

Her name was Aunt Barbara – not a blood relative, but part of our mission family in Jordan. She was a good friend of my parents, and all of us enjoyed her visits to our home. But as I transitioned into my high school years, she became more than just a family friend. She became my safe place.

I don’t think she set out with the goal of being a mentor or anything like that. She might even be surprised now to know how I view her investment in my life. It happened rather naturally. She was the director of both bands I played in during my high school years, and both of those bands met in the Amman, the capital of Jordan. I lived in Ajloun, a village over an hour and a half away. Once every week or two, Dad would travel into Amman to take care of business, and he always planned his trips to coordinate with band if at all possible. So, I would pack up my homeschool backpack, leave early in the morning with him, and park myself in Aunt Barbara’s apartment to do school work until band time.

These trips started in junior high, but by the time I entered high school, I was staying with Aunt Barbara for more than just band days. I remember feeling so spoiled when she and a couple of other single missionaries invited me to spend a few days with them and treated me like royalty for my birthday one year. Another time, I was at the end of my rope over issues with my sister. Mom didn’t hesitate. She called Aunt Barbara and arranged for me to go spend a week with her and recharge. I cannot tell you a single deep conversation we had, but I know we talked comfortably. I know she gave me advice and spoke wisdom into my life. I could trust her with anything I needed.

She was my safe place.

Don’t get me wrong – I had a great relationship with my parents. They were and still are safe. But we all need someone outside of our immediate family to turn to.

We talk a great deal about friendships on this blog. We talk about the struggles and joys of friends within the church. We talk about relationships with one another and how wonderful it is to truly understand each other. So, we all know that we need safe places!

I’m thankful to have several. My incredible friend Joanna is one of my deepest safe places. Even when she is halfway around the world with no internet connection, God tells her just when I need her prayers and does the same for me. We connect through Him in a way I can never explain.

There are other amazing friends both inside and outside the ministry. And then there are the wonderful ladies in my church. No, I can’t talk to them about everything, but they understand that. They offer places of safety here and there as I need it. It’s a beautiful thing.

But sometimes I get so caught up in my needs that I forget I’m not the only one who needs a safe place.

My husband needs a safe place. I don’t know how many of you are married to an introverted minister, but finding a safe place is a struggle for those guys! One of my greatest prayers for my husband right now is that he will have a safe place.

And my children desperately need a safe place!

I love how God sometimes provides even before we know to ask. I realized just recently that He has given all three of my children their safe places. My girls have their Sunday school teacher. They know she is my friend and that she and I talk about a lot, including them! But, they also trust her. They know they can be open and honest with her. She asks them hard questions, and they are willing to think for her. Sometimes they share things with her they don’t know how to share with me. God has given them such a beautiful safe place during these preteen years! What a critical time!

My son is much younger and doesn’t really have the emotional needs that his sisters have right now. But, God has still given him a safe place. A godly man in our church allows my sweet little boy to sit with him and talk to him. When Steven has something exciting to share, he always knows right where he wants to go – to this man or his wife. He is building trust and the ability to turn to his safe place long before it becomes absolutely critical. Even if God moves us before my boy enters his teen years, he will know that safe places exist.

Does your family have safe places? Have they come naturally, or have you prayed specifically for them?

Never Thought to Ask

This post by Ann Hibbard was originally published on the former Arkansas Ministers’ Wives blog on February 28, 2010.

A couple of months ago I got a new netbook – you know, those adorable little mini laptops in all sorts of neat colors. There’s a lot about my Itty Bitty netbook that I just love. It’s fun. It’s portable. And it perfectly meets all of my needs. Well, at least, now it does.

You see, I blog a good bit. A lot of my blogging is for my own enjoyment. Writing relaxes me and gives me an outlet for thought and ideas. But, my most important blogging, although fun, is not for my own enjoyment. My parents live in the Middle East and don’t see their grandkids very often. Some of our dearest friends live at least four hours away – others halfway around the world. So, my most important blogging is posting updates and pictures of our kids for our loved ones.

The key word there is pictures.

For two months, Itty Bitty has not been very helpful when it has come to pictures. My camera is intentionally set on a high resolution setting which is great for the quality of pictures but not great for uploading onto blogs. So, I frequently need to decrease the size of pictures. Our family desktop has a great program for that purpose, one which is way too large for the diminished processing of Itty Bitty. I knew we didn’t need to spend money on a smaller program. So, I’ve just limited my photo blogging to times when I could edit and downsize pictures on the desktop.

The other day I just happened to make a comment about it to my brilliant husband – not a request to fix it, just a comment about it. And, of course, he swooped in to the rescue with a perfectly sized freeware program to do just the amount of photo editing I needed done on Itty Bitty.

You see, I never thought to ask.

As a pastor’s wife, I know I move through life in much the same way. There is a dear pastor’s wife in our association who has been in the ministry for a very long time, and I know I could learn so much from her. But, I’m sure I would never think to ask for some of her most valuable knowledge. And, to be honest, she might never think to share.

That’s where just spending time together comes in. Whatever ministry capacity your husband may be fulfilling right now, I need you. I need to learn from you. I need to walk with you. I need to get to know you. Both for what I can learn from you and what you just might be able to learn from me. It may seem awkward at first to get to know each other on a blog before meeting face to face. But as we begin to share and interact, we’ll find that we’ve done just that – really gotten to know each other.

Will you join me, just to chat? After all, as we chat from day to day and week to week, we just never know when we might find the answer to the questions we never have thought to ask.

Stop!

Do you ever just want to stop and do nothing? Because it is so ingrained in our stubborn minds and lifestyles that we have to keep going, we rarely feel able to just stop. I struggle with this greatly. I need to be doing something. I’m learning, though. I’m growing in my ability to stop more regularly. I’m learning just how bad it is to push so hard that life flies by in a blur. I still have a long way to go, but here are a few tricks I have adopted to force me to slow down.

• Choose to snuggle. I’ve never been one to play well with children. Even when I was a child, I preferred a good book to play. So, I have a very hard time playing with my children. But, I love to snuggle. Sometimes I just make myself sit down with one of my children, even the ones that feel much too big for my lap!
• Schedule date times. Notice the “times.” Date time with a spouse is usually pretty obvious, but what about the kids? We often schedule those date times sporadically. Even if they are regular, they might not be frequent.
  • Once a week the kids are banished to their rooms no later than 7:00, and I spend an evening with my husband. We rarely go out, but we enjoy some activity at home. Whatever we do, I do not pull out my knitting bag or my phone or any other distraction. And this isn’t a “kids are grown” activity either. We started this when our children were five, three, and three months. In six and a half years we have rarely missed a week, even if we had to move our time to a night other than the scheduled Friday night. Our children have learned what date night means for Mommy and Daddy, and we protect that time with great intentionality.
  • Each week I also set aside three thirty-minute time slots for date times with my children. Obviously, as a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom, I spend more time with them than that each week, but those time slots are very intentional. Each child gets my undivided attention and does not have to share me at all during that time.
• Make myself __________. The blank might be filled with reading, sewing, writing, napping, or whatever. If it’s about me and my enjoyment, I have a tendency to put it off. I read for the kids’ school, but not for my relaxation. I sew obligatory projects while my own projects sit unfinished. I write for work, but not for my own enjoyment. I skip a nap because the day’s schedule is tight. Sometimes I have to make myself just slow down and do something unrequired! It often takes a bit of trickiness. For example, I became a reviewer to get myself back into reading. I make it a point to pick books that I want to read, but the review schedule makes me actually take the time to do it. Even though it’s technically required, it still ends up refueling me. And the more I have gotten back into the habit of reading, the more I have done it for my own enjoyment.
• Don’t schedule every single moment. In fact, I have to plan unscheduled times. Then I have to be okay with doing nothing.

And now, after working on a day when I would have greatly preferred to do nothing, I’m off to enjoy some down time with my family. Then, I’ll sew a bit. And then I just might go to bed early. Yep, that sounds pretty good to me!

How can you intentionally stop over the course of the next week?

Not Alone

I stared at the email, hesitant to push “send.” It was just another blog post. I had submitted many blog posts before to various group blogs. Yes, I always felt a bit nervous, but why should this one be any different?

It was different because I just knew that once this blog post was published, I would be ostracized by the homeschool community. Oh, I knew a few people who agreed with me, but we all quietly kept to ourselves. We never let the truth be known. How could we? It seemed everyone disagreed with us! Not only that, everyone thought anyone who felt like we few, poor, pitiful souls just had to be crazy!

But I was committed. I had promised to write the blog post. So I clicked send. “Top Ten Reasons I Hate Lapbooking” was on its way to be published, and my reputation among homeschoolers was on its way down the drain.

Okay, okay, you can stop laughing now. Yes, in the grander scheme of things, a blog post on lapbooking is not that big of a deal. I have to admit that maybe I overreacted, just a wee bit. But, I can’t deny that I was nervous. Lapbooks, all the rage in homeschooling circles these days, are essentially science project displays created in miniature and broadened in scope to cover any subject being studied. I see dozens of homeschooling questions on Facebook every week, and nine times out of ten someone suggests lapbooking as at least part of the perfect solution to any homeschooling problem. Yet here I was, throwing my dislike for lapbooking out there for the world to see.

A few weeks later, the post published. I held my breath as the comments began to roll in on both the blog and the Facebook page.

“Thank you! I thought I was alone!”

“I totally agree!”

“They drive me crazy!”

I smiled. I laughed! And I relaxed. I wasn’t alone. For the first time, the lapbook lovers were in the minority as people who agreed with me came out of the woodwork! Suddenly I felt free to dislike lapbooking!

No matter what social circles we frequent, there will always be ways we feel alone. Now that it’s all out in the open, many of us freely admit that we are ministers’ wives who do not play the piano, but there was a time when no self-respecting minister’s wife would dare admit such a thing out loud! So, what is it now? What truths about ourselves do we hide, convinced that if we were to admit the truth we would be ostracized?

Some truths are as lighthearted as my dislike for lapbooks, but others feel much more serious. They involve our abilities or lack thereof, our homes, our marriages, our parenting, our hearts, our spiritual struggles, or even our husbands’ struggles. We get so caught up in the fear that our churches will find out the truth that we hide such things from one another as well. “Besides,” we argue with ourselves, “surely no other minister’s wife struggles with this. No one else could truly understand.”

Let me share a little secret that I have learned over my thirteen years as a minister’s wife:

You are not alone!!!

I encourage you to be brave. Share your struggles. Maybe not in a public forum such as this, but possibly in a more closed group. Form a Facebook group with a few ministry wives you know. Start a monthly dessert night with some ministry wives in your town. Get together with ladies like you and then be willing to take that first step of sharing.

I won’t lie to you. It’s scary. I also won’t tell you that I’ve conquered that fear because I still struggle with it. But, I have stepped out there several times already, and I intend to continue stepping out. And I can tell you that when I have stepped out in the past, I have never been alone. I have never been the only one.

Oh my sister, you are not alone! I pray today that God will give you irrefutable evidence of this truth.