What Are We Waiting For?

Our small group discussion this week focused on serving others, and our church is coordinating efforts to serve people in need in our local community and other parts of the world. To quote Sally Clarkson from her book Seasons of a Mother's Heart: "God's truth may fill [our] minds, and his Spirit may be at work in [our] hearts, but the process is incomplete until the passion of Jesus for the lost and hurting moves [our] hands to reach out to the people for whom he died." I think she sums it up quite well. (To see my previous blog entry on her book, click here.)

Here's a great music video about serving others I found on YouTube a few months ago. It's set to the the popular song "Waiting on the World to Change" by John Mayer, and the message is quite compelling.

A Good Woman Knows She Cannot Please Everyone

A good woman (or man) knows she cannot please everyone. That's a sentiment I first read in Nice Girls Don't Change the World by Lynne Hybels. You can read my previous post on this thought-provoking book here.

Being unable to please everyone certainly isn't a new concept that I had never heard before reading Lynne Hybels' book, but I guess it seemed to be so real to Lynne as a recovering people-pleaser that it really struck me. I know that I, too, am a people-pleaser in the process of recovery, and I still have a hard time dealing with other people's disapproval of my choices - particularly people of influence in my life. I'm not sure how to psychoanalyze myself and identify the root cause for my people-pleasing desires, but I know I've been this way for years. Maybe it's part personality - I am relationally oriented. Maybe I'm too much of a perfectionist. Maybe it's my own pride and desire to want to look perfect to others. Maybe I have some of the deep subconscious beliefs that Lynne Hybels discovered within herself. One day she realized, although she knew God's love was a gift of grace, she still had spent most of her life trying to prove she was worthy of his love. That spilled over into every area of her life until she found that she had spent decades trying to please God and others in ways they had never demanded of her. As a result, no one benefited from Lynne living the life God had purposed for her. Eventually, she concluded she could no longer be a "nice girl", always trying to please others. Instead, she wanted to be a good woman - and a downright dangerous woman who can change the world by living out God's unique purpose for her life.

Well, I recently had to remind myself of the lesson I learned: a good woman knows she cannot please everyone. My husband and I recently announced a controversial decision we have made regarding our 5 year old son's education: we have decided to homeschool him for Kindergarten. Even before we announced our intentions, we knew this would not please everyone close to us, yet I still was hurt on a personal level, when we received the strong, outspoken opposition that we had expected to receive. Although I knew the opposition would be there, I still was very distressed over their unwavering disapproval. I think I had been hoping that we would be able to convince them to take a wait-and-see approach and eventually their opinion would change. In time, I thought, I'd have their approval, but it seems pretty clear there will always be disagreement, and I need to learn to be OK with that. Like I said, I am a recovering people-pleaser and still very much in the process of learning to be focused solely on God's desires for me and not the will of others. That's tough, especially when I know that I may have to displease others in order to do what I believe is right. I'm sure there are plenty of other recovering people-pleasers out there who can fully understand my sentiments.

On a lighter note, when I was lying in bed yesterday evening, sick with a stomach virus and worrying way too much over our homeschooling controversy, Jamie, the 5 year old at the center of this saga, came in the room and sat on the bed beside me to tell me he felt sorry that I was still sick. Of course, I was touched, and I told him I loved him and loved being his Mama. He then said, "I love being with you too, Mama." Oh, how I needed to hear that.

My Little Martial Artist

Jamie, our energetic 5-year-old son, is a student of Taekwondo. Oh, yes, he's pretty fierce in his white belt with a black stripe! For the past 8 months, he has been a student at a local Christian Taekwondo University (originally founded by this man) that holds classes in our church building.

This week has been an especially exciting week for Jamie's study of Taekwondo. First, his instructors organized a Taekwondo drama demonstration for both services at our church this past Sunday morning, and secondly, he was able to attend a TKD seminar (also held at our church) last night that was led by Grandmaster Brenda Sell, the President of the U.S Chung Do Kwan Association and the highest-ranked female in the world. She holds an 8th Dan (degree) black belt in Taekwondo. Her husband, Sr. Grandmaster Edward Sell, who holds a 9th Dan black belt is the highest ranked non-oriental in Taekwondo. Jamie was so excited that he was able to meet a person who knew even more about Taekwondo than his instructors. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for him to be able to receive instruction from a Grandmaster. When he's older, I'm sure he will really appreciate knowing he took part in this special event.


Let me also tell you a little bit about the TKD demo Jamie participated in on Sunday. I know it might sound a bit strange, but it was really cool to watch! The group of students and instructors acted out a supernatural battle between good and evil set to the song The Champion by Carman. Jamie played the role of an angel who cheered for Jesus as he fought against Satan. Jamie displayed his tremendous acting ability as he covered his mouth with his hands in shock and disbelief when Jesus put his hands by his side and let Satan give him a fatal kick to the head (a symbol of the crucifixion.) Then, after a few seconds, Jesus stood back up (symbolizing the resurrection) and took down Satan and his demons one-by-one. The demo culminated with Jesus (played by Master Luckett, one of Jamie's instructors) breaking through a stack of concrete blocks, labeled SIN, symbolizing how Jesus' sacrificial death broke the bondage of sin. It was a really powerful demonstration of the redeeming work of Christ.

Afterwards, Jamie was proud of his involvement in the demo and extremely thrilled that he got to see Master Luckett break concrete for the first time! Certainly, after seeing the skills of Master Luckett (and also meeting Grandmaster Brenda last night), he has newfound inspiration for practicing his martial arts, but there's a more important lesson we hope he takes away from this experience. We told him that not only were we proud of how well he followed directions while on stage, but that we were especially proud that he had used his abilities to tell other people about Jesus. I really hope Jamie understands that is the most important thing that happened on the stage yesterday. I'll do my best to remind him whenever I have the chance.

If you want to locate a Christian Taekwondo University (CTU) near you, click here. We are thoroughly pleased with the physical, mental and spiritual training Jamie is receiving through his lessons. I highly recommend it!

Also, here is a video clip depicting the song The Champion. It is not a video of Sunday's performance, but it can give you an idea of the demo on Sunday.

WARNING: Being a Parent Will Suck The Life Out of You!

Well, I am officially exhausted. Pooped. Whipped. Whatever you want to call it.

Today has been one of those emotionally stressful days that sometimes occur in the life of a stay-at-home parent, and I am physically and mentally exhausted. My children have steadily beaten me down all day. I'm sure it was a conspiracy. "I'll have a temper-tantrum over losing a game of Chutes and Ladders, and just when I've got her all flustered, YOU start screaming and crying in your high-chair and throw your sippy cup on the floor. Make sure the milk splatters everywhere when you do it, too, OK? We'll take her down!"

This afternoon, around 4 PM, when my blood had finally hit it's boiling point and I was about to blow a gasket, I got the idea to take a long, relaxing shower in the hopes of having some time to be alone and talk to God - to re-center myself in His love. I prayed (in desperation, to be completely honest) and asked God to help me see the world through my 5-year-old's eyes. As you can imagine, we had been at each other's throats for most of the day, and I'm sure many of our battles were a result of me not understanding his thoughts and intentions. Starting to feel renewed, I began singing a song that came to mind, Your Love, Oh Lord by Third Day. Well, wouldn't you know the little sucker who was supposed to be in his bed sleeping off his bad attitude, which is almost always the result of him being too tired, had sneaked into the bathroom? I spun around just in time to see his blurry hand reach for the shower door, but a quick reprimand (probably the 100th of the day) stopped him from following through with his plan - whatever it was. So while I'm praying to be able to see the world from his point of view, he's plotting to expose me in the shower!

There are definitely moments when I wonder, "Will he ever know the lengths of my love and sacrifices for him? Will he ever really understand? Will he ever thank me?" Of course, as I write this, I am sure I'm only feeling a portion of what our Heavenly Father feels for us. Will we ever know the depth and width of HIS love? Will we ever really understand how it felt for God when Jesus, his Son, with whom he is One, took on all the guilt and shame of all eternity and died as a man in a humiliating, painful manner on a Roman cross? How many of us will ever thank him? Just a few thoughts that came to me right now as I am typing.

Well, both of the little boogers are finally in bed, and I'm TIRED. It's 9:30 PM. After a day like today, I probably should have my head on a pillow right now, or at least be watching Dirty Jobs on Discovery Channel. But, instead, I'm spending my time writing this blog entry. Now, I'm starting to think I might also be crazy.

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Lyrics to Your Love, Oh Lord by Third Day (my shower song)

Your love, oh Lord
Reaches to the heavens.
Your faithfulness stretches to the sky
Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains
Your justice flows like the ocean's tide
I will lift my voice
To worship You, my King
I will find my strength
In the shadow of your wings

The Stuttering Brain

Those of you who read my blog regularly (if indeed any of you exist) may have noticed that I've recently added a list of books I'm reading. One book, in particular, stands out as different among the rest in my list: The Lidcombe Program of Early Stuttering Intervention: A Clinician's Guide by Mark Onslow. It is a textbook detailing the Lidcombe Method for treating stuttering in preschool-aged children. I am particularly interested in this because my 5 year old son has struggled greatly with stuttering, and the exact cause of stuttering is still a mystery to this day. There are many theoretical approaches to dealing with stuttering, but all of these are based on presumptive theories relating to the assumed causes of stuttering. Lidcombe is an atheoretical method for treating stuttering. That is to say - the method is not based upon a theory as to the cause of stuttering. It is simply based on clinical research regarding methods that are proven successful in eliminating stuttering in young children - regardless of the cause.

The Lidcombe approach, although it has been thoroughly researched and shown to be very successful with children under the age of 6, is not the typical stuttering treatment a child would receive here in the United States. Only a small number of clinicians here in the U.S. use this approach. Lidcombe was developed primarily in Australia, and is a popular choice for clinicians in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom. It is a bit radical in it's direct approach, yet it is very simple to implement. It is pure operant conditioning, based upon B.F. Skinner's model of reward, punishment and extinction. With Lidcombe, to summarize briefly(read the book to really learn how to use it), the parent (the clinician simply teaches the parent how to implement the therapy, and then subsequently attains objective measures of treatment progress) in both structured and non-structured conversation offers the child acknowledgment and praise when statements are uttered fluently (i.e. stutter-free) and acknowledges the "bumps" when a child stutters unambiguously, followed by a request to try the statement again. One key factor in making this pleasant for the child is that the positive verbal contingencies must outnumber the negative at least 5:1. This whole idea of directly addressing the stutter with a child flies in the face of many past passive approaches, which were to never acknowledge or address the issue with the child for fear it will make them self-conscious and therefore struggle all the more. In fact, many experts thought the idea of operant conditioning for stuttering was completely abhorrent when the research first began in this area. Yet, for some unknown reason, it works! Perhaps very young children have enough brain plasticity to figure out on their own how to control the stutter once they are encouraged to do so.

Here in the US, one is more likely to receive treatment that is based somewhat on the demands and capacities model - changing conversational and environmental stressors to promote fluency - as well as fluency shaping techniques - teaching stutterers to elongate vowels and and speak with relaxed, slow speech. These techniques have shown success with stutterers, but there are quite a few who are not helped by these methods of treatment. Of the number of children who spontaneously develop stuttering in the preschool years, a full 20% will never recover - despite therapy - and will go on to become adult stutterers. Boys are more often affected than girls, and the risk for boys to become lifelong stutterers is 4 times greater than that for girls. Many of the 80% who recover, do so spontaneously without therapy. That indicates that the failure rate for therapy is much greater than 20%. As the mother of a 5 year old boy who stutters, I know the odds are not necessarily in his favor, but I refuse to give up and settle for one approach that only has shown limited success. I am committed to learning all I can about the supposed causes of stuttering, and I plan to implement this Lidcombe operant therapy at home while my son still receives more traditional therapy once a week at our local elementary school.

Another area in which I plan to do more research and reading regarding stuttering help is in the relatively new field of educational kinesiology (Edu-K.) This is the study and application of natural movement experiences to facilitate learning. It focuses on the performance of specific physical activities that activate the brain for optimal storage and retrieval of information. It has been shown to help with ADD, ADHD, Sensory Integration Disorder as well as basic focus and concentration in both children and adults. I theorize that stuttering has both behavioral and physiological components. It only makes sense, then, to try to treat both. I first began to look into this area when I read in a journal article, What Causes Stuttering?, by Christian Buechel and Martin Sommer. The article explains that PET scans and fMRI imaging have shown in multiple studies that the right hemisphere of the brain is hyperactive in adult stutterers when they produce stutter-free speech; wheareas the left hemisphere is more active when producing stuttered speech. This leads to the hypothesis that the right hemisphere language areas try to compensate for a deficit in the left, and that perhaps the 80% of people who recover from stuttering are those who are able to use their right brain hemispheres for language production. This discovery prompted me to ask, "Is there a way to improve right hemisphere functions and cross-communication between the two hemispheres of the brain?" Indeed, there are exercises and activities that have been shown to improve cross-communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain as well as other aspects of brain function, and I plan to learn more regarding the research in this field. I have a few books I've ordered on the way. I'll update my blog when I learn more.

I've told my husband I am on a mission to help our son overcome his stuttering. He has already shown significant improvement in the past few months - most of it before we started traditional therapy, and I have my theories regarding his seemingly spontaneous improvement. Hopefully, I will have more information to support my theory once I have read more about Edu-K.

For more information and all the cutting-edge theories and research regarding stuttering, check out the blog, The Stuttering Brain, from which I borrowed the title for this entry. I also have included it in my list of blogs on the left-hand column of the page.

No More Nice Girl

I recently read the book, Nice Girls Don't Change The World, by Lynne Hybels. It's a fantastic little book that challenges a notion that many women (particularly those raised in the church) have readily accepted, which is that God requires them to always be a "nice girl" -- living as a people-pleaser and never breaking the mold or ruffling any feathers. This book was born out of Lynne's personal journey of learning to no longer settle for "niceness." Instead, she battled herself out of depression by learning that God wanted her to become a "good woman" and live out His purpose. Here is her definition of a good woman:

The opposite of a nice girl, I learned is a "good woman." Being a good woman means trading the safe, passive, people-pleasing behavior of niceness for the dynamic power of true goodness. It means moving from the weakness and immaturity of girlhood toward the strength and maturity of womanhood.
Whereas a nice girl of any age lives out the script she learned as a child -- a script too often grounded in powerlessness -- a woman acknowledges and accepts her power to change, and grow, and be a force for good in the world.
Whereas a nice girl tends to live according to the will of others, a good woman has only one goal: to discern and live out the will of God.
A good woman knows that her ultimate calling in life is to be part of God's plan for redeeming all things in this sin-touched world.
A good woman knows she cannot be all things to all people, and she may, in fact displease those who think she should just be nice. She is not strident or petty or demanding, but she does live according to conviction. She knows that the Jesus she follows was a revolutionary who never tried to keep everyone happy.
That picture of a good woman made me want to be one. It made me want to grow up and trade the innocuous acceptability of niceness for the world-changing power and passion of true goodness.

What to Do With Jesus

Yesterday was Palm Sunday and the beginning of the Passion Week, which culminates with Easter Sunday, the celebration of Jesus' resurrection from the grave. The week is appropriately given the name "Passion" because it's a time to celebrate God's passion for us! God is passionate about us, but we must decide if our passion also lies with Him.

If you read the various accounts of Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Matthew 21, Mark 11, Luke 19, John 12) on what we now celebrate as Palm Sunday, you see how the villagers who greeted him honored him as the King of Kings. They waved palm branches in exaltation and placed their cloaks over his shoulders and upon his donkey as if they were royal robes. Many laid their cloaks across the road, as a royal carpet, honoring their King as he returned to them. They praised him shouting, "Hosanna!" - a greeting reserved for kings returning from war. Jesus was not and never claimed to be an earthly king, yet he is the King of all Kings and Lord of all Creation. The crowds who greeted him on Palm Sunday in Jerusalem worshiped him, and gave him the glory and honor he deserves.

Only a few days had passed before he encountered two entirely different crowds. First, he was brought before the Jewish high priests and the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Council. (Jesus was a Jew, so he lived under their governing authority and was brought to them to be charged with blasphemy, as they had already conspired against him.) When Jesus refused to deny his claim to be the Son of God, they charged him with blasphemy and declared him worthy of execution. They spit upon him, slapped him and mocked him saying, "Prophesy, and tell us who slapped you that time, Messiah!" He then was presented to Pilate, the Roman governor. Pilate addressed the large crowds outside, asking them what he should do with Jesus. Pilate was willing to let Jesus go free because he felt he had committed no crime. However, the crowd yelled, "Crucify him!", and Pilate (being the wimp that he was) handed him over to be crucified, even though he believed Jesus was an innocent man.

So Jesus, in a matter of days, received glory and praise from one crowd of people and rejection from another, yet no matter how he is ever received, he's still the King of Kings. That fact will never change. Everyone who has lived ever since has had to make the same decision as Pilate and the crowds: we all have to decide what to do with Jesus. Either we give Jesus the glory and honor he deserves in our lives, or we can can shake our fist at him and reject him. There's really no in-between. Many people try to find what they feel is the "moderate" approach to Jesus and say they believe he was a great teacher and a good man. But let's face it: a good man and great teacher doesn't claim to be the Son of God if he really isn't, and a liar certainly doesn't submit to death by Roman crucifixion and refuse to deny his false claim. There's really no way he could have been just a good teacher or a good man. Jesus was either a nut, a bold-faced liar or he really was telling the truth. There's just no room for the "good teacher and good man" perspective in there.

Here is a short video, The Jesus Rant, that puts Jesus into historical perspective. It's very brief and well worth the time. Unfortunately, I'm not able to embed it here in my blog, but it can still be viewed by clicking on this link.

Additionally, a great book on the deity of Jesus, is More Than A Carpenter by Josh McDowell. It's a best-seller and was written by a former skeptic.