Just Say No to Red Ribbon Week

*written August 2017*

It’s time for a DRESS UP FESS UP.
Ok ok ok…so I am ALL FOR my kids not doing drugs. OBVIE.
But must we really have a full Red Ribbon Week of dress up to commemorate this desire that nearly every parent on the face of the earth shares?

Like I am sure a TON of teenagers who were about to smoke their first joint paused for a moment and remembered that day when they wore sunglasses to school in second grade— and thought, “My future’s too bright to do this.”

I’m gonna go out on a limb here but PROLLY not.

Or better yet, can we please sandwich said Red Ribbon Week between “Wear Orange for Anti- Bullying” day, “Wear school Colors” to the fall festival, “50th Day of School” fifties dress up, HoCo spirit week, and my church Trunk or Treat?

AND let’s not forget the ACTUAL dress up holiday we call Halloween happening in a week?
My kids have literally had to dress up for school 8 out of the last 10 days… and counting. Mmmmmmm K. We need to have a little talk.

If you have only boys, you may exempt yourself from reading the rest of this. Good for you. Dress up for 50th Day fifties attire for boys = jeans, a white t-shirt and hair gel. AMIRITE?
When you have a girl— or THREE girls like I do— dress up days call for all the feels.
All.The.Feels.

And it makes me want to say All.The.Words.

When you go to school with a bunch of kids who were raised on Pinterest, you get to experience all the outfit planning, all the crying, all the special hair-do’s, all the needs for the exact right shoes. Did I say all the crying yet?

None of my girls want to be Rizzo for fifties day and wear black. They want to be SANDY. And they want their hair curled. And they want an actual felt poodle on their skirt.

Can’t I just fry them an egg for breakfast and tell them “this is your brain on drugs, any questions?” and call it a week?

And guess what— since it is 80 degrees in Alabama, we don’t have our boots out yet to “Give Drugs the Boot!”. So I get to make a trip up to the attic to find three pair of said boots. Special.
Excuse me if I am a little preoccupied trying to keep all the little women alive and fed and clothed and free of head lice. Someone give me a break. Just say NO.

Red Ribbon Week is “An alcohol, tobacco, and other drug and violence prevention awareness campaign.” Forget the fact that dress up week actually makes the parents want to do all the drugs.
Can we not just add in “Anti Bullying” and call it a day? Can we not just call it the “week we bring awareness to every single thing on the planet that we do not want our kids to do EVER”?
Because really— we do not wear orange in this family.

My thoughts are this:
LESS dress up = LESS angry moms who are LESS likely to be driven to drink by Red Ribbon Week = moms who are MORE intentional in training up their kids to not do drugs = kids who hopefully by the grace of God are LESS likely to do drugs.

Perhaps the real problem is the entitlement of my own kids in all the dressing up.

Moms of the Year, for the love, please tone it down for the sake of kids like mine.
As for the rest of you, if you see my people with a picture of a poodle safety-pinned to their skirt or with their socks inside out for “Crazy Sock Day,” I hope you can just smile and say, “That mom is my kind of people.”

I wish keeping masses of people off drugs were as simple as dressing up for a week once a year. I fear the problem is much, much bigger. And it needs far more attention than a dress up week at school.
Hopefully within the walls of our homes we can speak deeply into the hearts of our children about the decision to “just say no” to drugs. Your words and actions as a parent have far more power than fancy clothes to “out dress drugs” can ever have.

In the mean time, moms everywhere, raise your glasses to “Red Ribbon Survival Week” and let’s hope and pray those crazy hats and team jerseys (Go Dawgs!) “team up” and win the war on drugs for all our sakes.

#firstworldproblems

Confessions of a Supremacist

Racial tensions are high. Political tensions are high. The marginalized, underserved, and oppressed in this country are still marginalized, underserved, and oppressed. Most of us are watching it all unfold, feeling paralyzed to do anything to stop it or change it. Maybe we are indifferent and apathetic. Or perhaps we are more interested in pointing fingers at the other side, because neither one is doing a stellar job.
There is so much hurt everywhere I look.

I live in an Alabama town being ripped in two over the alleged rape of a college student who felt betrayed by her school, the police, the hospital, and the justice system and ultimately took her life in total despair.

This town is also a hub for human trafficking along the I-20 pathway that spans the length of the United States. Just a few weeks ago, thirty people were arrested for human sex trafficking in my town. It makes my stomach turn.

Not long ago, ESPN did a segment here on how segregation is alive and well. The story focused on a nearly all black high school and somewhat unreasonable zoning that keeps our schools separated by socio-economic class.





I tell my kids all the time that we can’t control what anyone else does, but we can control what we do. The thing is, we first have to know ourselves and the tendencies of our hearts before we can be honest about where we need to change. And the subject of race, especially in the South, is a complicated one.

White, black, brown, green…we all should think deeply about the role race plays in our lives.
When I really stop and think about it, if I were to write my race manifesto, it is a complex and confusing thing. I know who I want to be and who I am on my best days, maybe even who others would say that I am, but I also know what God is teaching me about the sin of racism in my own heart. We all have stories and events that color the way we see other races.

I have relatives who fought for the Confederacy. That does not embarrass me. I don’t know that they personally owned slaves or where they landed on the abolition scale, but I do know that on some level they were fighting for their families and their neighbors and the safety and security of their property against an army that was burning entire cities to the ground. What my ancestors did does not define me. Slavery is an abomination, a horrible factor in the Civil War and a blight on the history of our country, but a history that we need to continually learn from.



My grandfather was an enormous influence in my life. He was a Harvard-educated surgeon who trained and took as his medical partner the first black surgeon in the state of Georgia in the 1950’s. He drove once a week to an out-of-town black hospital to care for patients and train the medical staff there. He took out the trash every week for his African-American neighbor who was housebound. When water started pouring from the roof of his mobile home into the living room, Papa bought his friend a new trailer and parked it on his land. He chose to be on the school board that integrated the schools in his middle Georgia city. He was ostracized by his white colleagues, hedged out socially, and received threats of violence and death.

My grandfather wrote a biography about his African-American friend, Dr. Delmar Edwards later in life and all the injustices he faced trying to get work and an education in the South. He also paid for numerous college educations, including the first black student at Columbus State (I only learned that after his death). My grandfather chose to do those things because it was the right thing to do, because his faith and his conscience could not allow him to do anything else.

My parents were both partially raised by African-American “maids” in Georgia, whom they loved as part of their families and who also loved them. In spite of their history, my parents do not view other races as subservient to them or “less than.” I know that is not the case for every similar situation, but it was for them.

I remember my mom going to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebration in Eatonville, a historically black community, to watch one of her students in the parade. She regularly did things like that and sometimes took us along. We went to homeless shelters and Habitat houses. I remember when she bought an impoverished student an outfit for back to school when money was especially tight for our family.

My mom and dad taught me the Biblical truth that every person is created in the very image of God, and they showed me with their lives to be as close as possible to color blind in the way I treat other people.

I have a beautiful family legacy and example of caring for the poor and the marginalized.



I spent my growing up years in Winter Park, Florida, and the black-white tensions never seemed to me to be as overt as the white-Hispanic tensions at my middle and high school. Maybe my view was skewed a bit after I was “jumped” by a group of Hispanic girls in my middle school. Even though one of my best friends growing up was Latina, from Puerto Rico, they hated me for being white.

I volunteered in college for Georgia Preview- a weekend for potential African-American students to visit the University of Georgia. I was one of only two or three white people in a sea of black people. It was the first time in my life when I felt like the overwhelming minority. I remember being embarrassed that I did not have the answers to many of their questions. Even more disturbing, I had never even thought about them. “Where does the city bus pick up? Is it easy to use public transportation to get around Athens?” “Where are the clubs and bars for black people?” “What percentage of your dorm or your classes are minority students?”

What are the stories in your past that shape how you view other races and ethnicities? They are there if you look for them.

I had a great conversation with a friend recently and we talked about how we simply can not say we are Christians and not also be about racial reconciliation in this city, in our churches, and in our own personal lives. In order to be the church, we have to be honest with ourselves first and confront the sin of racism in our hearts. We have to confess and repent so God can work.

Which brings me to my confession: I have friends of all colors and religions, AND I lock my doors when I drive through certain areas of town. I sincerely love my black friends AND I wonder how my child will handle two weeks at camp with a counselor who has dreadlocks and other kids who look so very different. I spent a year in Asia learning the culture and enjoying the people there AND I feel uncomfortable spending large amounts of time outside of my nearly all white suburbia.



Racism is rarely tipped so far to one side of the scale or the other like we saw in Charlottesville last weekend. It creeps in the little pockets of our minds and the places in our hearts that feel too difficult or too comfortable to confront, and it festers there. This is probably true for all races toward each other on some level. I have black friends who feel afraid when they are in an all white neighborhood, for totally different reasons.

When our sin stays in the darkness it manifests into fear and apathy and numbness to a problem we don’t fully understand and don’t know how to fix. If there is any silver lining to these tumultuous times, it is that we can only work to heal the wounds we know about. We can only deal with sin when it is brought out of the darkness and into light.

I may never truly understand what it is like to be black, or Hispanic, or Asian, or in a religious minority. I am not pretending I do. All of this hate spewing out of Charlottesville, and even angry counter-protesters vandalizing has me thinking about my own heart, about all of our hearts.
It feels like the weight of the world is on my shoulders. You may feel the same.

There is nothing intentional or overt about my racism. There has never been a time in my life when I have felt hate in my heart toward anyone because of the color of their skin. And yet living in the South, the physical separation of races feels like an insurmountable divide at times. It affects every part of our living.



The white majority often zones schools and builds neighborhoods and starts churches to insulate itself from people who are different. Sure, we give lip service to wanting diversity and sometimes even write checks or donate food to care for the underserved to satisfy a nagging in our hearts, but most don’t really invest the time to build bridges and friendships with people who look and live so very differently than we do.

Who do we break bread with? Who do we invite into our homes? Who do we want our kids playing with? With whom do we worship?

Do we see the poor as projects or as brothers and sisters?

I want my kids to be exposed to all different people AND I also have unfounded fears and uncertainties about it. On some level, life feels safer and more comfortable on my side of the tracks— and the prosperous ease and pride that go along with that are separating me from the heart of God. There can be a silent understanding even among Christians that we do what we deem best or safest for ourselves and our families and if that means holding onto covert racist thoughts or feelings, then that is a respectable cultural sin.

Doing what is best for ourselves contradicts the Scriptures and the life of Jesus. Jesus would be considered a minority in our country ethnically and religiously. He was mocked and beaten and marginalized. And He took the actual weight of the world and all of its problems onto His shoulders and carried it to the cross with Him. Before any torch was lit on Saturday in Virginia, Jesus died for it. The problem is a race issue, but at the heart, it is a sin issue. And sin touches all of us.



I am asking God to pry open the deep places in my heart and my life that offend Him and His people. It is painful. It is embarrassing. And just maybe no matter what color we are, we all in some way can relate to pushing away the people not like us- whether it is racial or ethnic, socio-economic or religious, those with disabilities, or those we find less desirable.

Laying ourselves bare before God and before each other is a difficult process. But if we truly want to evoke change, if we truly want God to heal us, we have to see our brokenness first.

It is no accident that God made all of us to look different. And it is no coincidence that people from every tribe and tongue and people and nation will be gathered around the throne in heaven. If I had to guess, white middle class Americans will be a serious minority there.

We have to passionately pursue the heart of God so we know what breaks His heart. We need to go there with Him and be honest with ourselves and with each other. He already knows. And He wants to carve out the gross, distorted places of our beliefs and norms. He wants to change us all from the inside out. If we tear down statues but have hearts of stone, what have we accomplished?



Just after the sky went dark over two thousand years ago in Jerusalem, Jesus rose from the dead and conquered racism and every other sin for all of us. It may feel like the sky is dark now- and actually it will literally go dark on Monday all across the United States (in case you haven’t heard!). But on Tuesday the sun will be unobstructed.

I pray that the light of the Son finds a way into the darkness of all our hearts.
So yes, I am a supremacist. I believe I am supremely flawed. I believe that God alone is supremely holy and just and loving and able to do much more than we ask or imagine. I know it is supremely painful to invite Him into the dark, disgusting places of my heart and begin to sanctify them. And I believe that we are supremely incapable of transforming our cities and communities without the hope of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is incredibly challenging work to truly love our neighbors as ourselves, but it will be supremely worth it because it glorifies a supremely worthy God.

Psalm 99:2 “The Lord is mighty in Zion; He is supreme over all the nations. Everyone will praise His great and majestic name. Holy is He!”

*written August 2017*

Five Years Sad

There are more sunbeams breaking through the dark storm clouds now, and there are more days when I think of Dad and smile while keeping the sadness at bay. But I can say with confidence there is no magic in five years of learning to cope without my dad. My therapy is the same- the blank screen and my fingers pounding the keyboard. The words tumble out with the tears. 

I silently scold myself sometimes for the surge of grief on the milestone dates. Five years today. The circumstances of today are not different than every day for the last five years, but there is something about the anniversary that forces you to remember- the phone call, the shock, the details of the day. 

The week after Dad died, I asked my friend Cabell whose husband Mike went to be with Jesus several years before— “Will it always feel like this?” I was sitting at our dining room table, the one where we ate countless meals together and laughed a thousand times, and I wanted so badly to know that I wouldn’t always feel such intense heartache and piercing pain. My eyes, swollen and fountains of tears, were blinded beneath the curtain of grief. 

Cabell’s answer stuck with me and as the years go on, her wisdom abides like balm in the deep crevices of my healing heart. She said grief will always be with me but it won’t always be so crushing. Right at first, grief is this huge boulder that presses on your chest and makes you feel like you can’t breathe. It is so cumbersome and heavy that you feel like you can’t carry it. The boulder is so consuming it is all you think about. 

After a while, the boulder becomes a big rock that still takes such effort and pain to carry, but you can begin to move through life while you tote it around. It is still obvious to others you are carrying it, but it starts to feel manageable.

Then finally, grief is like a pebble in your pocket. It may not be so obvious to others, but it is always with you. You constantly carry it and are aware of its presence, but you can breathe and start to live life. 

Five years ago, I was crushed under the weight of the boulder. Today, I have a large pebble in my pocket. 
 

Five years ago, grief was absence. The absence of the hugs, the laughter, the love, the long walks, the rides in the truck through golden pasture, the absence of baseball on the TV, the vase of roses in the kitchen, and the missing notes of encouragement. 
 

Somewhere along the way, grief becomes presence. The presence of memories that I took for granted before, the presence of love from friends and family, the presence of the pebble always in my pocket. The presence of his absence.
 

There are still many moments that pierce me straight through- like when my daughter takes the softball pitching mound for the first time, when my youngest cries because she doesn’t remember him, the anniversary of his death, his birthday, Christmas, well, every holiday really. 
 

But five years later, my same tear-filled eyes see more clearly through the grief. I see God’s goodness in the presence of hope in my life. Not the kind that says in five years, I will feel better. Not the Americanized version that thinks, “I hope he can see my kids grow up.” 

It is the intangible kind of hope grounded in faith that the Scriptures talk about. The kind that says God will wipe every tear from every eye and death will be no more. 

Hope is the cry of the Christian heart. 

Hope is the reason the angels proclaimed good tidings of great joy for all people. Not only because the Savior would be born, but because He would die and then raise from the dead. He would conquer death for all of us who place our faith in Jesus for our salvation. Without the hope of Christ, I would still be suffocating under the weight of the boulder. 

Charles Spurgeon once said, “I have learned to kiss the waves that throw me up against the Rock of Ages.” Learning it is the key, and it doesn’t happen overnight, or even after five years. 

The white caps in my life have felt unmercifully unrelenting at times in the last six plus years. The waves have pummeled me, crushed me even, but God has lifted my face to the hope of the Resurrection, that on the last day, we will be with Him. Heaven is so much sweeter to me now, partly because my dad is there, and mostly because God is there. 

I love God so much more than I did before. I kiss the waves. 

Five years later, I am no less sad about my dad dying. But I can tell you that Jesus is bigger, His grace grander, His mercy sweeter, His sacrifice more beautiful to me. And I can tell you that it is all true. Every letter of the promises of God in His Word are true- they speak to His goodness, His love, His abiding presence, His tender care for those who love Him and who are suffering. 

He is my Rock- the same one I was bruised against and the very same solid Rock I stand on now. 

Five years sad. Ten years sad. Lord willing, fifty more years sad. I am somehow learning to be content with the sad knowing that Christ has made me eternally glad. Christ suffered and died so I can have everlasting joy. Not a bad trade.

Thank you God for your mercy in my life, for your mercy toward my dad. Thank you for taking Dad home to be with you forever. Thank you for making a way for me to see him again. Thank you for not leaving us here in our grief- that you Yourself are well-acquainted with grief and sorrow. Thank you for suffering more than any person has ever suffered because you love us and desire for us to be with you. Thanks for someday turning all our mourning into dancing.

I’m so looking forward to that day- because my dad sure could dance! 

And thanks to you reader- for your love and care for me and for my family over these five years sad. You have in many ways been the hands and feet of Jesus to us. We will never forget it. 

To Die For

Three pillars of our culture built the foundation for pursuing the American dream. 

Planning. Wanting. Ability. 

If we plan well enough, if we want something badly enough, if we throw our full ability behind our cause, we will succeed. 

It all sounds shiny and hopeful and very American. 

Over the last thirty plus years, these same three gifts of the American spirit have mutilated and twisted into weapons of destruction. We misused our influence to stand only for ourselves and our interests, exposing our deepest personal and societal shortcomings. 

Any deviation from our plan must be rejected, and unwanted turns and inconveniences are immediately destroyed. The relentless pursuit of our plans, wants, and abilities has led to tragic loss of life. Millions of Americans have been killed. 

I’m talking about abortion.

Unplanned. Unwanted. Disabled.

Three words unveil our deepest cultural idols. They show us what we value most because we justify killing for them. 

We use our plan, our wants, and our abilities as the guidelines to define the worth of people, our own children even. We claim tolerance of everyone as long as they stay out there and don’t invade the life we always wanted, as long as they fit our plan, our desires, and present without defect.

Unwanted, Unplanned, and Disabled are the primary reasons deemed acceptable to end innocent human life in the greatest nation on the face of the earth. They are literally to die for. 

The message we are sending is this: When my life becomes inconvenient or hard or not according to my script, I have the right by whatever means possible to end the life of another person, my own child, all for the sake of my plan, my want, my ability or the disability of another.

We fail to value and affirm the sanctity of human life and every area of our nation suffers as a result. We wonder why women are sexually assaulted, children abused and gunned down in their schools, hate crimes committed, kids bullied at school, human beings trafficked into slavery, and a host of other unfathomable atrocities. 

The truth is we diluted the value of all life and treatment of all the vulnerable when we legalized abortion. If I don’t like someone, if someone makes me uncomfortable or inconvenienced, if they are disabled, I can expunge them. 

This is how our logic plays out, like it or not. We don’t suddenly land on the moral high ground when we start raising the children we deem wanted or planned or able. We are drowning in a culture that celebrates killing as a solution to our difficulties. The feminine gift of growing life is now a celebrated chamber of death. Abortion is no longer rare…women are encouraged to SHOUT their abortion. 

Many of my pro-choice friends are appalled by Donald Trump’s alleged mocking of a disabled reporter, but they rally and march for a woman’s right to murder her child simply because he is disabled. They will disavow hate crimes because the perpetrator is racist or sexist, but they defend a woman’s right to kill just because a baby is inconvenient or not what she wants. 

The pro-life movement is not simply anti-abortion. As a nation we must be pro-life by caring for the immigrant, the refugee, the disabled, the marginalized...but many of these people are labeled inconveniencing, unplanned, unwanted, and disabled. How can we love them well if we don't value the lives of all who are labeled this way? 

I understand abortion is a complex issue, and I am barely scratching the surface here on the poverty, abuse, rape, and hopelessness pervading our culture that make abortion a plausible option for so many. But I would suggest that hard circumstances, even wrongdoing, does not justify another wrong. 

The solution to your poverty is not murder. 

The solution to your rape is not murder. 

The solution to your abuse is not murder. 

Sin always leads to death, but Jesus came so all might have life and have it abundantly. 

He was talking about our babies, too. 

Scripture teaches us that our offspring are a blessing and an inheritance from the Lord. When we abort our babies, we are like the prodigal son who squanders his inheritance and ends up eating from the pig trough, when God made us for a banquet feast. We exchange the truth for a lie and sacrifice our greatest blessings- our inheritance- for empty things. 

All of us are deeply flawed and sinful. All of us. 

But God wants us. He planned us. And He is able to accomplish a good work in each of us.

Our only hope is in the One who perfectly plans everything unplanned, who satisfies all our wants, and who is able to do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine. 

This is a matter of life and death. We can not be silent.

This is why we march. 

My fingers are marching on my keyboard since my feet can’t be in Washington, DC for the March for Life today. 

I will march in my heart, in my prayers, and in my conversations. I hope to march on from today with compassion in word and deed and ultimately in truth. 

Will you march with me? 

#whywemarch #istand4life

“Compassion is overcoming convenience and hope is defeating despair.” 

- Mike Pence, VPOTUS

****************************

If you are reading this and have had an abortion, this is not meant to shame you or to inflict additional pain or guilt. There is hope for us all only in Jesus who covers all of our mistakes and shortcomings in His perfect blood. He died on the cross for our sins so that we would no longer live in bondage to our past and present imperfections. We have freedom in Christ when we trust Him, when we repent, when we follow Him. He give us confident access to the Father, God, who has great plans for our lives. We all sin. We all fall short. But with Jesus, we can walk in newness of life and He will use our stories for His glory. Will you trust Him with yours? 

When Life Happens

One quiet night in Bethlehem over two thousand years ago changed everything.  Jesus is the right for every wrong. He is the answer to every woe. He is the light in every dark place. He is the joy in every kind of sorrow. Christians rightly rejoice in the birth of our Savior during the Christmas season.

As I was gazing at a nativity the other day, I started thing about Mary- the teenage unwed virgin in a strict Jewish culture who found herself pregnant and afraid and unsure of how all of this was going to play out. How would her fiancé react to this news? What would her family think? This was not part of the plan.

The Lie

Almost nothing is as life altering as having a child or for some, not having a child. Both bear witness to our complete lack of control. There is nothing we can do.

Whichever want is not being met, facing a “planned” or an “unplanned” pregnancy or not being able to have the baby we so desire, our tendency is to shake our fist at God as if to say, “I know better than you!”

We believe the lie that we are, or should be, in control of our own lives, our own wombs. “My body, my choice.”

In truth, God can be so unAmerican sometimes. Our pursuit of happiness is not utmost to Him; our pursuit of holiness is, and God is relentless in doing whatever it takes to make us more like Him. 

I have walked with close friends through infertility and adoption and those who have been faced with an unplanned pregnancy. These are hard roads. The resounding and often painful truth behind procreation is that none of us ever control or decide when we conceive or adopt a child; It is only God.

Every pregnancy or adoption is unplanned by us, and always planned by a sovereign God. We may plan and chart and implant and use cutting edge science toward that end, but it is ONLY God who plants the seed and causes growth. 

“So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.” 1 Corinthians 3:7 

The Choice

Let’s look at Mary, the mother of Jesus, and her choice in the pregnancy she did not plan.  

“But the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the throne of his father David, and He will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; His kingdom will never end.’

‘How will this be,’ Mary asked the angel, ‘since I am a virgin?’ The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.’ 

‘I am the Lord’s servant,’ Mary answered. ‘May your word to me be fulfilled.’ Then the angel left her.”  

John 1:30-38

Did the angel knock on her door and say, “Hey, by the way, umm Mary? Can God use your womb to grow His only Son Jesus? Will you raise this child that you didn’t plan to have? I know you are not sexually active, and I know it is your body and all, but could I borrow your uterus? Pretty please?” 

No. The angel said, “You WILL conceive and give birth to a son…The Holy Spirit WILL come upon you…the power of the Most High WILL overshadow you.” God even picked out the name. Talk about not being in charge of your body.

Mary would be the prime candidate for an abortion in today’s world. A single, unwed mother, who would be disowned by her family for having a baby and who would have no way to support a child. 

How does Mary respond? Mary chose life because God chose it for her first. She submitted to His choice instead of rejecting His will. She reacts with obedience and trust, willing to endure cultural shame and fear of the unknown for God’s plan and God’s glory. 

Even though God was in it, it was not glamorous. She rode on a donkey for miles and miles while nine months pregnant. She had her baby in a barn and he slept in a feeding trough. No epidural, no hospital nurses, no ice chips, no nursery. 

The Son of Man had no place to lay his head, and later she watched Him suffer and die. God would serve Mary the most bitter pill any mother could have to swallow. And yet God was in it all, was there with her, was glorified, and the faith He gave her to endure it all was enough. Where God calls us, He equips us. 

The Plan

God gives lots of air time to two unborn babies in the first chapter of Luke. He could have skipped to the birth, but the unborn matter infinitely to Him. 

There is great value in their stories from conception and birth into life and to death. God had a plan before their parents ever planned or conceived them. 

The angel appeared to Elizabeth’s husband, Zechariah in Luke 1:11-17.  

“Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”

Mary visited Elizabeth in Luke 1:41-44 and “When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed: ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.’”

Let it not be lost on us that the first person to recognize the Son of God was an unborn baby. 

John leaped for joy in his mother’s womb! He had emotions and physically responded to the presence of unborn Jesus. God again gave a name to the child and had a plan for his life even before conception. The unborn baby, John, whom we know as John the Baptist, was filled with the Spirit of God.

The Body

Our bodies are either created as objects of our possession for our glory or they are vessels of grace for God’s glory. There is no middle ground. 

“The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.” 1 Corinthians 10:26

“Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.” 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (NLT)

You do not belong to yourself. Your body is not yours; therefore your uterus is not yours.   A baby inside of your uterus is not yours, either. To believe that our bodies or even our children belong to us is a well crafted lie. His body, His choice. 

Mary easily could have scoffed at God. She could have rejected His ownership and control over her body in the name of “choice.” She could have seen her body as her possession for her own glory. Or, she could submit herself to God’s control of her body, which is already His, to use for His purpose and His glory. 

For the believer in Jesus submitted to God’s will, we know deep down that we never know better than God. His plans are always good, even when they don’t feel good. His plans are always for hope and a future, even when life feels hopeless and the future looks bleak. 

We cannot see the whole picture, but we can put our trust in the One who sees all, is in all, and works all things together for our good and for His glory. All things! The wonderful things, the inconvenient things, the painful things.

Yes, even a baby. Especially a baby.

We don't need an angel to come down and tell what to do when we are afraid or when things don't go according to our plan. God gave us His Word and He gives believers His Spirit. 

There are only two choices for all of us- one leads to life, one leads to death.

We can learn from Mary's example that the answer to poverty is never death. The answer to inconvenience and unwanted circumstances is never death. The answer to disability is never death. We can look at humanitarian efforts all over the world and see that this is universally true. 

Fear and pride and disobedience lead to death. 

Submission and trust and obedience lead to life. 

Mary chose life for the Author of life. 

She rejected death for the One who would conquer death. 

She bled for the baby who was born to bleed- not on the cutting room floor, but on a cross, giving His life as a ransom for many.

And the very best news is that Mary's crying baby Jesus will one day wipe away every tear from every eye. No woman will ever feel the need to choose between life and death for her child. 

I realize this is not exactly a Christmas message. This is not a popular post by any stretch. It likely stirs up deep emotions in you. But as we reflect on Christ at Christmas, we must consider why He came- not to destroy life but to bring life. Not to give us autonomy apart from Him, but to bring us under His loving and perfect lordship. 

His Word is clear: The wages of sin is always death. The way to God is always the path of life. 

God rescues. God reconciles. He is Himself the light of LIFE. Jesus said,”I have come so you might have life and have it to the fullest.”  

Choose life for yourself in Jesus. Choose life for the unborn whom God created with great purpose and love. This is when true, abundant life happens. 

Jesus is the GREAT JOY that has come for ALL people. 

My prayer this Christmas is to let every heart big and small, born and unborn, have the chance to prepare Him room. 

Come, Thou long expected Jesus
Born to set Thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us,
Let us find our rest in Thee.
Israel’s Strength and Consolation,
Hope of all the earth Thou art;
Dear Desire of every nation,
Joy of every longing heart.

Born Thy people to deliver,
Born a child and yet a King,
Born to reign in us forever,
Now Thy gracious kingdom bring.
By Thine own eternal Spirit
Rule in all our hearts alone;
By Thine all sufficient merit,
Raise us to Thy glorious throne.

-Charles Wesley

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If you are reading this and have had an abortion, this is not meant to shame you or to inflict additional pain or guilt. There is hope for us all only in Jesus who covers all of our mistakes and shortcomings in His perfect blood. He died on the cross for our sins- all of them- even the ones we struggle to forgive ourselves for- so that we would no longer live in bondage to our past and present imperfections. We have freedom in Christ when we trust Him, when we repent, when we follow Him. He gives us confident access to the Father, God, who has a great plans for your life. We all sin. We all fall short. But when we submit to Jesus, we can walk in newness of life and He will use our stories for His glory. Will you trust Him with yours?