Red Roses for Empty Nesters

Not long ago, I talked with a gal who told me that when each of her children turned 21, she sent her husband a dozen red roses. “Nobody was in jail, nobody had gotten pregnant, and nobody had killed anyone,” she said. “I figured that we were done, that we’d made it–and I was ready to celebrate!”

But then her kids’ grown-up lives began, bringing with them a whole new set of issues and concerns, and this sweet mama discovered what generations of moms and dads who’ve gone before know:

You never stop being a parent.

Looking back, my friend laughs at her naiveté. Honestly, though? I think she was onto something. Sure, our grown-up kids will face complex and sometimes life-shaping challenges (“little people, little problems; big people, big problems” and all that), but the promise in Psalm 127:3–that children are a reward from God–doesn’t stop being true when they reach adulthood. And if we wait to celebrate the milestones in our children’s lives until they are tied up with a bow, all pretty and neat, we risk missing out on this gift!

If you’ve read even one or two chapters in Praying the Scriptures for Your Adult Childrenyou know that most of the folks whose stories appear in the book are still praying about the outcomes in their kids’ lives. They’ve all seen God’s faithfulness at work, and yet none of them would say that the process is “finished.” They are all–we are all–still counting on God’s mercy and his grace.

And we are counting on each other. Truly.

It can be hard, when you hit the empty nest years, to maintain close contact with other parents (I know, for instance, how much I miss the easy, organic connections with friends I made at school fundraisers, or on the sidelines of our kids’ sporting events). That’s one of the reasons I wrote a Study Guide for the book: I wanted moms and dads to be able to understand and apply God’s promises, and I wanted us to have a launching pad to discuss (and to pray) these things–both for our own children, and for other young adults who “belong” to us through the blessing of friendship.

 

(The Study Guide is free; click here to download it from the “Resources” page on my website.)

Let’s not wait to celebrate. Prayer is God’s invitation to us to partner with him in accomplishing his good and redemptive purposes, and he knows exactly what we need (and what our kids need!), even before we ask him (Matthew 6:8). So let’s go ahead and slip our hand into God’s, tethering our prayers to his promises.

And with or without the red roses, let’s come alongside other parents who are in our same season, slipping our hands into theirs with mutual encouragement, friendship, and love. Let’s lift up all of our kids, celebrating the fact that even if their bows are not all the way tied (or if, a-hem, they look swaddled in duct tape, like some of the gifts we opened this Christmas), God thinks they are beautiful.

And he is still writing their stories.

🌹

P.S. Speaking of duct tape… I apologize for the delay in this blog (I like to post on Fridays), but it took me a little while to stick the pieces of my heart back together after U.Va.’s performance in the Military Bowl. Really, the only bright spot (apart from the glittering first 12 seconds of the game), was that we lost to Navy. It’s hard to be sore about losing to a bunch of guys who love our country so much.

Congratulations, Midshipmen. And if you can deal with the bad guys half as well as you dealt with the Cavaliers, we’ll all rest easy at night.

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Too Busy for Peace? You’ve Got Options

Christmas is three days away.

Which, if you’re like me, means you are kinda busy. I’m wondering if the kids would mind if, instead of wrapping their gifts this year, I just shoved all the Amazon boxes into the family room and wished everyone a Merry Warehouse.

It could work.

First though, I have this blog to write. And you have this blog to read. And since we are all short on time (except maybe for my friend Sara Jane, who does things like fly fishing, and who knows how to quilt), I’ll give you some options.

  1. If you want a post about finding peace in the midst of the mayhem, click here for an oldie (and say a little prayer for our family, as we mark our first Christmas without Khaki):
  2. If the whole family is coming and you aren’t sure what you’ll do with everyone when the eggnog wears off, try the game we played on our family stay-cation. Put Grandma under the sheet for added fun:
  3. If you don’t want a post but you’d still like some peace, try this: Swap worry for gratitude, tell God what you need, and think about stuff that’s actually worth thinking about. Here’s a free Christmas printable to help you remember these tips:

And finally, if you’ve been dying to know who won the book giveaway from launch week, I’ll tell you: Mary Martha (what a great name) in North Carolina, Alice in Virginia, and Crystal in Colorado. Thanks so much for your kind comments, Girls!

All right y’all. Let’s get to it. And, whether you plan to spend the weekend shopping and wrapping or fly fishing and quilting, may grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord! (2 Peter 1:2)

Merry Christmas! 🎄

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Merry Christ-Mess!

I saw my friend Rhonda this week. “Your house looks so pretty!” she exclaimed. “Who does all your lights?”

Y’all know who does our lights. It’s my husband, Buddy the Elf, and this year’s blast of frigid air in Virginia Beach got him more inspired than ever. Robbie claims he “cannot work” when it is above 50 degrees (something about the warmer air kills his holiday mojo) and so, thanks to this recent bout of global cooling, we are starting to look a little Chernobyl. In a Christmasy way.

Inside, though, it’s a different story.

The kids brought the boxes down from the attic over Thanksgiving weekend and put them in the living room. Which is where they are now. Last week, I pulled out the nativity scene to get myself in the Jesus mood, but it didn’t really take. I don’t feel all that Advent-y; I mostly just feel…overwhelmed.

Even the Christmas cards–a tradition I normally love–don’t seem to have what it takes. I came up with a prototype back in November, but when the kids saw it, they gave it the ax. So I went back to the drawing board, designed a Plan B, and had them printed this week. Now, the cards are sitting in their own little boxes on the kitchen counter. If they never get sent, will Christmas still come? If a tree falls in the forest…

Speaking of. I am thinking that my problem actually might be our tree. You already know it’s too big for our house; we had to move the furniture all to one side in order to get the thing into the family room. It fit–barely–but there is zero feng shui. And if you want to watch TV, you have to crane your neck around the branches to see the whole screen.

And, positioned as the tree is in front of the room’s big double window, it literally blocks ALL THE LIGHT. I keep thinking about how Jesus came as the “light of the world,” but I am not feeling it, at least not in our family room. All we are in there is just dark. It’s like the year that my friend’s husband boarded up the windows and gift-wrapped their ENTIRE HOUSE house so that it looked like a big Christmas present. He was all happy and proud of himself; she started asking people if they had any spare vodka.

Honestly, though, I am kind of surprised by our tree’s darkness power. It has already lost so many needles that you would think it would be see-through by now, but no. On the plus side, I get a little chuckle out of looking at Buddy’s hair. My man faithfully waters the tree every night, and he always comes out with a head full of pine.

(Which explains why I keep finding Christmas tree parts in our bed.)

All of which is to say…appearances can be deceiving. Because if you rode by our house at night, you would think that a very “all together” person lived there, someone who was probably inside baking cookies and wrapping presents while Bing did his thing on Pandora. And, if you are one of those people who sometimes falls into the comparison trap (and who doesn’t?), you might even go home and start feeling badly about your own Christmas prep.

But don’t. Because, looking at the outside of somebody else’s life, you never get the whole picture.

One of the best pieces of advice anyone ever gave me was this: “Don’t judge your insides by somebody else’s outsides.” I feel like that’s especially important for parents to remember. It can seem like other people’s kids are always more squared away than ours are, or that other families have it all together in their marriages, or their finances, or whatever.

The truth is, none of us do. We’ve all got gaping holes in our lives–boxes that clutter our living rooms, cards that smack of things left undone, pine needles that mess with our heads–and we all need huge buckets of God’s strength and his mercy. We might look all fresh and festive on the outside…but inside we’re all desperate for grace.

Which is, I think, the whole point.

Jesus didn’t leave his glorious home in heaven in order to come into a picture perfect world. He came to inhabit our mess. To walk through it with us. To use it, even, to draw us to himself. To invite us, in the most beautiful way, to surrender.

Which is kind of what happened with me. I sat there yesterday, looking at all of my undone decorating and my unsent cards (and trying not to make eye contact with the tree, lest it hurt me), and I prayed.

“Jesus,” I said (and, as pathetic as this sounds, I am not making it up), “do you mind waiting a little while, while I try to put up some decorations? Like, I really want to worship you, to celebrate Advent, to breathe deeply of Christmas.

“But until I have all my Santas out and maybe cut some magnolia, I just don’t think I can do it.”

And y’all, I promise. I didn’t hear Jesus laugh–not out loud–but I sensed him smile. And I felt him whisper these words to my soul:

I can wait. But I won’t. Not for this. Not for you to make yourself–or your living room–perfect.

I came for your mess. I love you in your mess.

And I’m here.

Alrighty then. We don’t have to wait until December 25–or until we get our halls decked–to celebrate Jesus. We can enjoy him right now. We can know, in the midst of our mess, how very much we are loved.

Even (and especially) on the inside.

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Launch Week Fun!

Ok Y’all. It’s Launch Week for Praying the Scriptures for Your Adult ChildrenWhich means all kinds of fun. Like, look how happy my kids are.

First of all, thank you! Thank you for letting me test drive so many thoughts and prayers in this space. It’s been a delight to partner with you as we bring our loved ones–our kids, our spouses, our friends–before the Lord every week, and then wait and watch as his faithfulness unfolds in our lives.

And thank you for jamming up Amazon. I mean it. The book earned Amazon’s #1 Bestseller flag on Launch Day–thanks to you!–and the Mother of All Retailers ran out of stock. They say they have more, but I’m picturing (and praying for) their 120,000 new seasonal employees as they drive forklifts around big warehouses, looking for boxes marked “Berndt.”

In the meantime, I have my own stash of books and I’m itching to share! Post a comment on this blog–it can be a prayer request, a favorite Scripture promise, or just a Merry Christmas wish–and I’ll pick three winners at random, who will each get a copy of the new book. Whoop.

And there’s more.

My good friend Susan Alexander Yates (you’ve met her in this space) graciously offered to let me guest blog for her this week. I talked about praying for your child’s marriage and created a Marriage Blessing from the collection of Scripture prayers you’ll find in the new book. If you want your own copy of this prayer, you can download it here.

(And P.S., the prayer card is two-sided, with the prayer on the front and the Scripture references on the back. If you want to frame it as a Christmas present for your spouse, your married children, or a even a new bride, Amazon offers a great selection of clear stand-alone frames; one of my favorite styles is here.)

(But don’t ALL of you order today. I don’t want to make those forklift people any more crazy than they already are.)

And finally… Maybe you saw this pic on Fox News.

Annesley says I blog about her too much (and lately, she’s right), but when I got the chance to write a post for the media moguls so that they could give folks some Good News this Christmas, I couldn’t help myself. Y’all know I’ve made some pretty jolly mistakes (the sweater, the posture brace), but money-wise, this one was the worst. If you missed it on the Fox News site, here’s the story.

And again, you all. Thank you. Thank you for your friendship, your encouragement, and your prayers. May the Lord continue to encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word. (2 Thessalonians 2:17)

You are loved.

 

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The Tree Hunt

It’s only a week after Thanksgiving, and my social media feeds are blowing up with pictures of people and their Christmas trees. Some were cut (fresh) on a farm. Some were harvested (less fresh) in a parking lot. And some were purchased, pre-lit, with a coupon at Michaels. In every case, the kids look happy, the parents proud, and the trees very much Above Average.

For us, though, not so much. Our Christmas tree is mostly just…big.

And I blame Auburn football.

Because there comes a time, in every fan’s life, when you just need a win. And when your own beloved team manages to rack up a breathtaking total of zero (as in, ZERO) points in the big Thanksgiving Weekend rivalry game, you go to Plan B. You grab your orange-and-blue pom-poms, write “Go Tigers!” on your orange solo cups, and start yelling “War Eagle!”

Which is exactly what we did on Saturday night. It was great fun. Until the Tiger fans stormed the field and Robbie suddenly realized how late it was. We’d spent all our tree-shopping time watching football, cheering for a team we know nothing about. “Everybody in the car!” Robbie commanded. “We have got to go find The Tree!”

Like lemmings, we obeyed. Getting the Christmas tree is a time-honored Berndt Family Thanksgiving Tradition. And, darkness be danged, we were up for it! War Eagle!

What we were less up for was driving all over Virginia Beach, looking for a place that was open. We finally found a lot with the lights on, but it was clear that the tree handlers (who, as they will remind you, WORK ONLY FOR TIPS), were tired. And cold. And probably a little bit tipsy. (They offered us our choice of beer, wine, or whiskey while they looked for their chainsaw.)

Less than ideal shopping conditions, to be sure, but our family is nothing if not doggedly determined to enjoy the Christmas Tree Hunt, no matter how long it might take. We chose the second tree that we saw.

“How much?” I asked.

When the guy told us the price, Robbie left. I found out later that he’d gone to an ATM but, not realizing that that was his negotiating strategy, I started to bargain.

“That seems like a lot,” I said. “Haven’t you ever heard of Black Friday?”

“Yes,” the guy said. “But that was yesterday. Yesterday you could have gotten a really good deal.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Like 75% off. But we marked all the trees up to $400.”

(I am not much of a whiskey gal, but I was starting to think that I could be.)

I haggled the guy down by ten bucks, and when Robbie came back with the cash we asked one of the handlers (the one who seemed the most sober) to snap the obligatory family pic. Which will probably become our Christmas card, especially since Geoff (who shopped via Facetime) looks so good:

(Next year, I call being Geoff.)

Anyhow.

We got the tree home, put it in water, and went to bed.

At first light, Robbie went outside to take a look at our prize. I hadn’t even started the coffee when he returned.

“We must have been drunk.”

I went out to the driveway, still clad in my bathrobe. I could see Robbie’s point. We had not, actually, taken the tree guys up on their refreshments offer, but we might as well have. Because somehow, stone-cold sober and by the light of an iPhone, we had purchased a Beast.

But Robbie is nothing if not doggedly determined to redeem even the most loathsome tree, and he went to work. He got out the measuring tape, the clippers, and the twine. (He planned to tie the thing to the wall, lest it reach out and kill us.)

And by golly, Robbie got the Beast up. Before church, even. And I realized (not for the first time) how much I love my man.

Less enamored, though, was I with The Tree. It really did sort of spook me, looming as it did over the sofa. Like if you accidentally turned your back on it, you’d be sorry. But later that day, when the kids finished climbing the bookshelves…

…it looked better. Less threatening, somehow. And when somebody pulled out my favorite ornament and strapped it on The Tree’s belly, I knew it would all be okay.

Because if you have to have a honker piece of nature camping out in your family room for six weeks, you want it to say something good. Something uplifting. Something that’s bigger and more powerful than even the most ogre-like tree.

Merry Christmas, Y’all.

(And to all my U.Va. friends, please don’t judge me. I promise that, if you squint hard enough, the Tigers kind of look like our guys. #Wahoowa.)

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