True Rest (please forgive the format, the site is doing WEIRD stuff that I cannot conquer!)

Ecclesiastes 2:22-26

 ²² What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun? ²³ All their days their work is grief and pain; even at night their minds do not rest. This too is meaningless.²⁴ A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, ²⁵ for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? ²⁶ To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God.

Ok King Solomon, I know you were old when you wrote this; but did you ever drink a big old cup of woe on this chapter!  As king, Solomon had the opportunity and resources to pursue the rewards of wisdom, pleasure, and work.  But his weary tone of Ecclesiastes suggests that late in his life, he looked back with regret. I think that is true for most of us.

Ecclesiastes shows us that in Solomon's journey he was searching for the meaning of life.   I don't think that is unique. We all, esp mothers and wives, want to make our families happy.   We become committed to that job with fervor only to find that some days feel like failure. We worry, we plan, we strive; and yet every night when the toys are picked up, tomorrow's clothes are laid at the foot of the bed, homework is done, baths are complete and all your chores are done:  life reminds you that it won.  Solomon felt the same way.  I have read Ecclesiastes many times and just recently a certain phrase leapt out at me like a lion!  Did you catch it?  "even at night their minds do not rest." 

So, let me get this straight:  the son of King David, the wisest man in the world at the time, the ruler of a kingdom, a man who loved God, a visionary, could NOT stop his mind at night?  Almost every night when my children were young, I could not turn off the check list scrolling in my mind.  "I need to go to the grocery store tomorrow for crackers.  Cade needs his hair cut.  Faith needs new pointe shoes.  Jacob needs new sheet music.  Friday we have spelling tests.  How do I get both boys to baseball on Saturday because Clint has to work?  I need to book Cade's birthday venue.  What are we going to do for vacation this summer?" 

I could not turn off my mind and just when exhaustion forced me to release it:  someone would wake up or the alarm would go off and here we would go again.

Let me just use Solomon's own words to encourage you oh wise one: "For with much wisdom comes much sorrow, the more knowledge the more grief!"  
Ecc. 1:8

We must be brilliant!

 I don't care who you are, what your position is in life, your age, your gender or even you IQ: we all worry some and have difficulty turning off our brains.  (King David and King Solomon certainly did)  I have even found an article on economist.com titled "What the World Worries About".  How sad is that? We all worry, we all have checklists, we all have moments when life is overwhelming, and we all have times when we wonder "what is it all for?"  

Check out King David's last words to his son, Solomon: 

I Kings 2:1-3 When David's time to die was near, he told his son Solomon, "I am going the way of all the earth. So be strong.  Show yourself to be a man.  Do what the Lord your God tells you.  Walk in His ways.  Keep all His Laws and His Word by what is written in the Law of Moses.  Then you will do well in all that you do and in every place you go.

King David, who is attributed to writing 73 Psalms, was worried & stressed as well.
 (None of us are immune to it) 

Psalm 4:1  Give me relief from my distress, have mercy on me and hear my prayer.  
Psalm 6:6-7 I am worn out from my groaning, all night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears.  My eyes grow weak with sorrow.  
Psalm 18:6 In my distress I called upon the Lord; to my God I cried for help.  From His temple He heard my voice, and my cry reached His ears.

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• I googled:  "leaders of the world and stress" and I got 367 million hits

• I googled:   "mothers and stress" and I got 68 million 200 thousand hits

• I googled:  "college students and stress" and I got 86 million 400 hits

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Let me tell you what was going on in King David's life when he wrote many of the Psalms:  His son Absalom had rebelled against him because he desired to be king, there was a civil war, Absalom was killed, David's grief followed, he faced rebellion of friends, at one point in his life he was in exile because Saul wanted to kill him, David sinned against God with Bathsheba, had her husband murdered, then the two had a baby that died.  David had a country to run and keep safe from intruders, he at times feared for his own life, he was responsible for returning the Ark of the Covenant, his people suffered pestilence and sickness, he became quite ill, he feared his enemies and sometimes even his friends, and his responsibilities were immense throughout his life.  His checklists were huge, important and sometimes life threatening. 

 But look at some of the beautiful words he penned during it all:

Psalm 37:7 Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him, do not fret. 

Psalm 20:7  Some trust in chariots and some in horses but we trust in the name of the Lord.

 

Psalm 55:1 Give ear to my prayer, O God, and hide not yourself from my plea for mercy! Attend to and answer me, I am restless in my complaint and I moan. 

 Psalm 57:1 Be merciful to me, O God, for my soul trusts you.  And in the shadow ofyour wings I will take refuge until the storms of destruction pass by. 

Psalm 125:1 Those who trust int he Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved but abides forever. 

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No one is immune to a racing mind when the day is done.  But as Christians we have an "off switch." 

THE SHADOW OF GOD'S WINGS IS YOUR SAFE PLACE, YOUR OFF SWITCH IF YOU WILL.

There you are untouchable.   

There you are safe. 

There you can breathe. 

There you can turn off the world.

There you can find grace in reality. 

 

The Baby of the Family

I have said this about my other two children, our kids could not be more different.  God
wants us to celebrate how he made them and rejoice in their differences.  Like we have a choice....but this last one of mine has been a roller coaster ride because he is SO DIFFERENT than how he was as a child.  When you have a baby you notice their demeanor, how they react or respond and you think you know how they will be as an adult.  WRONG.  Don't count those chickens yet!

 Jacob Nolan Gregg was born on January 25, 1996 and he was the most 
BEAUTIFUL BABY I had ever seen; and I had given birth to an "angel baby" 22 months earlier.  He had olive skin, green eyes and the perfect full lips.  Hair as black as coal and, you know what I mean mommas, the perfect shaped head! 

 He was easy going with two older siblings who were active.  He kind of rolled with the flow as he lived in his car seat.  He LOVED to be at home and I think it was because the little guy was driven all over the place!  When he was at home he was an active little ham!  He made silly faces and always fessed up if he made a mess by taking my hand and leading me to said mess.  He loved being dirty, anything related to sports, and whatever his sister and brother were doing.  Even when Faith started dance classes he would practice with her!  She threw some pretty fancy tea parties which he gladly attended when Cade was at school.  He would hesitantly slip on heals and a tutu until he got the goods and then out of those he would come! He was a surprise baby and one of which I could not have been more happy about.  He definitely put the explanation point at the end of our family!

1.  He was a fierce little baseball and football player and ran like the wind!
2. He and his best buddy, Jonathan, loved karate and they succeeded in getting all the way up to a brown belt.  (I told him I would buy a black belt to save him from a beating)
3. He loved to play outside, swim, go to our ranch and hunt with his daddy.
4. He played golf, rode his bicycle and scooter all over the neighborhood and when he got some birthday money one year he bought a unicycle.  Mastered that thing in no time and added to the collection.
5. He later got a giraffe unicycle and rode that 6 foot thing all over the neighborhood waving and astonishing people.  He was a mess!   He still is, but in a different way. 
6. In junior high, he had torn his ACL and could no longer participate in baseball and football. He was fine in the summers, but when school started his buddies were in sports.  It changed things around here, his sister was busy and his brother had an active life with friends and a job.
7. I tried so hard to have his friends over often and maintain relationships with them but as they became more involved with sports, he became more introverted.  He golfed for a while but then gave it up because of all the walking and his knee swelling.
8. Not to say that he was a just a lump of clay that sat around all the time, but he was not the fun-loving, goofy kid he had been just a year before. Where was my baby?
9. Hebecame introverted and I did not know what to do with that!  I had a
   showman in Cade, and a performer in Faith and all of a sudden here is
   this kid who was on track and now I could not even find the train! 
10. When he was 13 or so, his dad asked him to back his GIANT 4 wheel drive truck out of the garage and Jacob did not want to; but he was obedient and dad insisted he could do it.  Jacob, had moved the truck out of reverse while talking to his dad and forgot to put it back....drove straight inside the house! KID YOU NOT  But to be fair he did say he didn't want to do it! ( Please note:  this happened on a Thursday and I had a wedding shower Saturday morning in THIS VERY ROOM) 
    
    
    
    
    
11. Jacob barely made it through high school.  Not because of grades because he is a brilliant young man; but because he had no hobby.  We tried, but when your focus is sports and you can't play and video games is not an obsession, you don't have much to go on.  He became in introvert to an extent that worry and pray was all I did for him. 
    
12. He was angry. Wanted me to home school him. Wanted to change schools.  And he was not a "sharer" of why.  He was miserable and that made me miserable.  He didn't want a job, his friends (except for one) was questionable and that friend played football.  When your children hurts, you hurt.  When your children won't talk to you, there is NOTHING you can do.  And trust me, I tried it all!  Bribery, love, reason, asking others to help, friends, pastors, parents, family etc.  No use. I now had an introvert who hated his life. (That was so out of my realm)
13. Then, Jacob's junior year a friend's son, whom we loved like family, took his own life.  It was the most horrific thing to see that family go through the affects of depression on their child.  Also, learning as a family to live a new life without him.  
14. But you add the above to a child who seems to be teetering on some sort of depressive/teenage edge; your mother's heart becomes scared.  Every time he doesn't answer a phone call or text your heart dies and you have to get to him asap.  
15. But you know what?  I lived in I Thes. 5:16-18   Rejoice always; pray without ceasing;  in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.  I mean constantly!  Driving, cooking, getting ready, folding clothes, and even waking up in the middle of the night to pray for him. It made a difference...
16. His Senior year, after not having taken piano for 10 years, but having a love for classical music, he decided to take lessons again.  I got him in with a friend in less than a week.  He FINALLY had something to occupy his time and mind and fill his heart.  He studied like a fiend, took to it like a fish to water, & I actually saw joy again!
17. Within months he had surpassed what she could teach him because he was so hungry for the theory of piano, so he got a new teacher.  Then he wrote his own classical piece and we paid to have it recorded.  And in a year he was taking from a composer. He had found his "thing", his "heart", his "joy" his "missing piece".  And let me tell you, he is brilliant.  In three years....he has gone from playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star 10 years prior, to Beethoven and  Stravinsky and writing his own compositions.
    
     Then one Sunday night he goes home to find his room mate dead....  
    

    
    
18. John 16:33 "I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. Take heart; I have overcome the world"
    The Bible doesn't say we "might" have tribulation, it says we "will", and boy have we.  No, not directly.  We are not the families with the lost sons and broken hearts.  But when your child seems to be hanging on the edge of the cliff and you can barely reach him with your fingertips...he is slipping... and slipping....and you don't see the will to hang on in his eyes? That is terrifying. 
    

 You desperately want to go back to an easier time and try again.  Tell him everything is going to be ok, but you know it's not.  In this life we will have trouble. He has lost two wonderful people at a young age in four years and he will never be the same.  

(And they will not be the last ones to go)

I see blessings in the pain. I see grace in the reality. 

 I see blessings for each family we love who have lost a son.  

2 Cor. 12:9-10   But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.  That
is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in
hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. 
For when I am weak, then I am strong.

We have had much counseling over the last four years.  We have had tears of sorrow and tears of joy.  We have had failures and triumphs.  His life has been a learning process BIG TIME! And we are not out of it (which is another blog) because my son is not sure about Christianity, about God, or salvation.  He was raised that way but life and others have influenced him and his thinking.  So, I continue to pray because itis all I can do.  My favorite hymn has always been "Come Thou Fount" and it means more to me as a mother of young adults than it ever has....

"Oh God, tune his heart to sing your grace!"