grace Archives - Jodie Berndt

Parenting in Freedom and Grace (plus a book giveaway)!

09.01.2017

Ever feel like your kids’ future is riding on you? Or like you have to be perfect (or at least really good) so that they’ll have an example to follow? Or like God is watching the way that you parent…and that if you blow it, he’s gonna be bummed?

Yeah, me too.

I think I told you about the time Robbie took the SATs. He’d spent most of his childhood playing outdoors, and I couldn’t remember ever seeing him read. Did he know any vocabulary words? I wasn’t sure. And so, in a last-ditch effort to redeem my academic parenting fails and get him prepped for the test, I bought a case of lacrosse balls and turned them into flashcards. If Robbie learned even just two or three words while he played, that might help.

Oh how I wish I’d had Jeannie Cunnion’s new book, Mom Set Free, back then! She could have saved me a lot of angst (and kept me from ruining Robbie’s lacrosse stick, cuz the mesh part turned pink when the Sharpie marker wore off).

As it is, I’m highlighting and starring and underlining pages in Jeannie’s book now. My kids may be grown, but I still need all the help I can get when it comes to rejoicing – and actually relaxing – in the blessing of being a mom.

As the book’s cover proclaims, Jeannie’s heart is to free moms from the pressure to get it all right. Our kids’ future (whether they’re headed to kindergarten or college) is not in our hands, any more than it’s up to us to “make” them honest and kind, strengthen their faith, or protect them from hardship. All of those things – and so many more – are ultimately up to the Lord. He has good plans for them (ideas that are way better than ours, BTW), and as Philippians 2:13 reminds us, it is God’s job (as in, not ours) to work in them to “will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.”

Don’t get me wrong. Jeannie isn’t trying to get us to sit back and do nothing. Parenting, she says, is hard work – and it involves discipline and boundaries and consequences. But it also involves grace – huge buckets of grace! – the kind that frees us to discipline and teach and correct our children without relying on anger or scare tactics or shame. As Jeannie sees it, parenting with grace is what lets our kids know (the way that God lets us know), that even when they make unlovable choices, they are still (and forever will be) deeply, unshakably loved.

Ahhhh…there’s so much good stuff in this book. And – whoop! – I actually got to be with Jeannie this week to celebrate the Mom Set Free launch. She was a guest on the 700 Club (click here to watch her interview), and some of my young mom friends came over to my house beforehand to get her warmed up:

To see a clip from that interview, you’ll have to head over to Instagram (@jodie_berndt)…but first, I’ve got some good news. I managed to snag an extra copy of Mom Set Free while Jeannie was here, and I want to give it to someone! Post a comment on this blog and I’ll choose a winner at random (unless you are a patent attorney who thinks that my SAT-word lacrosse balls are marketable product, in which case I will probably pick you).

Seriously, y’all. I love it when I get to recommend a book that combines my two favorite things: Loving my kids and following Jesus. And Mom Set Free is chock full of great verses; I’ll borrow this one from p. 236 and leave you with a parenting prayer:

Lord, you have promised to fight for me. Help me to do what you say and just stay calm! (Exodus 14:14, NLT)

Friday Prayer for Spiritual Gifts

12.11.2015

‘Tis the season!

As you think about gift-giving this year, consider the spiritual gifts that God has given to you and your family. Have you or your spouse been blessed with leadership skills, a heart for service, or material wealth? Do your children seem particularly merciful, organized, or discerning? Do you know someone who is an excellent teacher, or who is especially good at explaining the gospel and pointing people toward Christ?

The Bible offers a whole catalog of these attributes, which are sometimes called “supernatural graces.” They’re the gifts we receive from the Holy Spirit, and they’re all designed to bring glory to God and strengthen his people.

Check out Romans 12:6-8, 1 Corinthians 12, or Ephesians 4:11-13 to learn more, and as you wrap presents for your family and friends this Christmas, ask God to help them use their Spirit-given gifts to share his goodness and grace with a world in need.

Heavenly Father,

May ____ use whatever gift he/she has received to serve others, as faithful stewards of your grace in its various forms. (1 Peter 4:10)

Amen.

Report Cards

10.08.2015

Two things happened this week to get me thinking about parenting, performance, and our perception of God’s love.

The first was that my friend and fellow parenting author, Jeannie Cunnion, wrote a terrific opinion piece for Fox News. She said that today’s kids feel “overwhelming pressure to get it all right” because their identities – and, in fact, their “lovability” – is linked to their behavior, their accomplishments, and their performance. “If I am good,” the thinking goes, “you will love me more.”

The second thing that happened was that I got my dad’s kindergarten report card.

My mom and John are downsizing, and as part of their domestic purge she is unloading pretty much everything she thinks her kids and grandkids might want. (And more than a few things we might not, like a c. 1978 how-to book on napkin folding that she gave Hillary at one of her wedding showers. But that’s material for another blog.)

Anyhow, I wound up with a box of old photographs and papers. In it, I found this gem:

That’s my dad, Allen Rundle. He was a kindergartner in 1944, and from the marks on his report card (also in the box), he had some growin’ up to do. I was relieved to see that he was clean, but he clearly had a ways to go in a few other areas, including walking (seriously?), using a hanky, and and…wait for it…breathing with his mouth closed.

Oh my gosh. What did my grandmother think, when she got this report? Was she like, “Allen! Close your mouth!”?

That’s how I would have been, if he’d been my boy.

But even if he had sat there, staring at me with his tonsils hanging out, I wouldn’t have loved him any less.

I mean, things like being a mouth breather (or missing a free throw, or flunking a test, or pouring the fat back into the macaroni and cheese, or any of life’s imperfections) don’t make or break our love for our boys. Or our girls. We love our kids just because they are ours.

Which is pretty much what Jeannie writes about in her article. And she brings it around to the bigger picture – the one that has to do with God’s love – by reminding us that nothing we do could make him love us any more, or any less. Because it’s not about what we do. It’s about what Christ did. He’s the one who makes us lovable.

If that idea runs counter to what you’ve always thought, you’re not alone. Most of us have been there – and as Jeannie knows, the performance mindset can make it really tough to be a parent. “I was once the mom who put unbelievable pressure on herself to be a perfect parent setting a perfect example for her kids to follow,” she confides. “And because I wasn’t accepting God’s grace for myself, I couldn’t give grace to my kids.”

I won’t steal any more of Jeannie’s thunder; click here to read the piece for yourself.

I will say that I hope my grandmother was into the whole grace thing. I didn’t want to show you my dad’s whole report card (some family secrets are better kept that way), but she couldn’t have been happy with how he scored on “Originates stories and poems.” (But maybe that’s just hard to do, when you breath through your mouth. I don’t know.)

At the end of the day, though, it all worked out. My dad shut his mouth, learned some rhyming words, and wound up at Harvard Business School. Plus, he married a gal who knew how to make a napkin look like a lobster.

What’s not to love?

Perfect Grace

09.30.2015

So Hillary is now Mrs. Charlie Blakeley, and the wedding was perfect.

Well, maybe not perfect.

Like, the top of the wedding cake slid off in the heat. (But hey, Hillary likes things a little messy and asymmetrical, so I’m chalking that one up as a plus.)

And one of my travel-weary relatives, who got to town too late to make it to the rehearsal dinner, let himself in to what he thought was his rental cottage and climbed into what he thought was his bed. Turns out, he was wrong on both counts (as both he and Charlie’s aunt discovered, much to their mutual surprise, later that night).

Oh – and a stripper showed up at the brunch (a casual affair, held on the beach, where the woman had presumably spent the night) and said that yes, she was in fact with the wedding party, and could she please have a breakfast burrito? Charlie’s mother was standing right there when the gal introduced herself – by trade, not name – to the party hosts. (I guess, after the mix up with the beds, she just figured the newcomer was another one of “those people” from our side.)

But things like these are minor details. Nobody noticed or cared. (Well, nobody except Charlie’s aunt, but I like to think hers was an extenuating circumstance.) And if I’ve learned one thing after throwing two weddings in four months, it’s that no wedding is perfect. At the end of the day (like, as in the literal end of the day, when your husband lies next to you in bed and asks if you baked that wedding cake by yourself), it’s all about grace.

It’s all about grace.

I know that (in my head, anyway) but it’s a lesson I learned all over again from watching Hillary’s cousins, the flower girls. During the rehearsal, Anna Joy and Elizabeth had been told exactly where to stand. The wedding guild gal even taped quarters to the church floor, promising the girls that they could claim them if they stood on the “treasure” the next day, during the ceremony.

Come show time, the girls nailed it: They made it down the aisle, found the quarters, and planted themselves. Everything was perfect – until Hillary and Charlie moved up to the altar to say their vows. At that point, the girls could no longer see what was happening. And whether it was out of obedience or avarice (to an almost-five-year-old, a quarter looms large), Elizabeth was definitely not willing to move her feet. She leaned over as far as she could, straining to catch a glimpse of the action, until I was sure she was going to topple.

And she really might have, had not the beautiful bridesmaid standing next to the girls noticed their struggle. She reached out her hand and pulled them forward, assuring them that it was okay to move just a bit. To me, it was like God said, “See? You can’t keep all the rules, no matter how hard you try. Nobody can. And if you try to make things perfect – standing on your quarter, no matter what – you’re just going to topple over and hurt yourself. That’s why there’s grace.”

(Lest you think I am super-spiritual or that I had this amazing deep convo with God right in the middle of Hillary’s wedding, I need to tell you one thing. The bridesmaid’s name is Grace. And what went through my head wasn’t some long theological observation. It was more like: “The girls can’t stay on their quarters. Thank goodness for Grace.” Bingo. Cue the lightbulb.)

And, in the “Lessons for the MOB” category, I’d venture to say that grace is probably the single most important thing that a bride’s mother needs. (Especially a bride’s mother who happens to be a perfectionist, like some people.) Because here’s the thing: You work like crazy to pull off a beautiful event, and you want it to be “just right.” And when it’s over, you fall into bed, happy and exhausted. You think about how pretty your daughter looked, right down to the “perfect” Tory Burch heels that you found to go with her dress.

And then, just before you turn out the light, you check the wedding hashtag…

Ahhh.

I should have suspected.

I love my girl. And I love God’s grace. Because when it comes to throwing a wedding (or doing anything in life), it’s really the only thing that is perfect.

Lessons from a Chair

08.12.2015

So one of Hillary’s wedding wish-list items is to have “soft seating” at the reception. In case you aren’t familiar with that term (which was probably invented by some jacked-up wedding planner who ran out of more practical ways to pad the budget), the idea is to drag couches and ottomans and other “soft” pieces of indoor furniture out to the lawn or the putting green or whatever, and then let your guests sit on them.

When I first heard the plan, I was in – particularly since a couple of soft seats have been languishing in our garage for the past year. I bought them for 25 bucks at a rummage sale, thinking that they had potential. Sure, one had a broken arm, the other had the stuffing coming out, and neither chair was anything I would put in my house, let alone in an elegant wedding display. But really, how hard could it be to fix ’em up? I put on a visor, grabbed a few tools, and got going.

Two hours later, I did what I imagine any good Pinterest person would do. I stopped for a cold drink and a selfie:

I know it doesn’t look like I’d made much progress. But for the record, when I snapped this pic I’d already used a drill, an electric sander, and a big saw – still in its original wrapper – that I’d found on our tool wall (i.e., the peg board that holds things like rakes, shovels and our disco lights). (I’m pretty sure the saw was a Father’s Day gift from early on in our marriage, back when I thought Robbie might one day want to build something.) I’d also gone thru about half a tube of wood glue and, in an effort to bring the whole project more into my strike zone, attacked the chair with some hedge clippers.

I’m no math brain, but even I could tell that at the rate I was going, there were not enough hours left on the calendar to finish the job. I needed reinforcements. I texted Charlie, the groom-to-be.

And an hour later, it was done.

Charlie works at a pretty swanky trim and millwork shop, where the guys get excited over things like a fresh slab of mahogany and build doors that would make Thomas Jefferson drool. I like to think that, given access to Charlie’s tools – which included a bigger drill, a couple of powerful clamps, and a compressor thing that went off at random intervals and sounded more like gang warfare than craftsmanship – I could have finished the job. But I know it’s not the tools that make the man (or woman). It’s the man that makes the tools. (Case in point: Charlie didn’t even have hedge clippers.)

And watching him work, I realized that it made perfect sense that Jesus would come to earth as a carpenter. Because basically, we’re all just a bunch of soft seats with the stuffing coming out, broken arms and legs pointing every which way. We all need fixing up. But when we try to do the job ourselves, drilling and hacking away, well. Hedge clippers doesn’t even begin to cover it.

It’s only when we realize our utter hopelessness and call in the Professional that things begin to change. God knows exactly where to drill so that the pieces of our lives will fit together, just how much pressure it will take to make us strong, and which rough edges to sand.

It’s incredibly freeing, knowing that we can relax and trust God to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. And it’s incredibly humbling, knowing that he’s doing the job not just because he can, but because he wants to. Tim Keller wasn’t talking about furniture repair when he wrote his commentary on Galatians, but his words about our condition still fit: We are more wicked than we ever dared believe, but more loved and accepted in Christ than we ever dared hope.

To adapt Keller’s point for the soft-seating crowd: “We are uglier and more broken or unstable than we ever imagined, but in God’s hands we are exquisite workmanship, more lovely and valuable than we could ever dream. And he’s making us fit for a purpose.”

That’s the message of grace, in a nutshell.

Dog Hair and Grace

02.03.2015

Some women love it when their man shows up with jewelry, or maybe tickets to a Broadway show. Me, I’m more of a “hair of the dog” kind of gal. As in, literally, the hair of the dog.

As in: Get it out of here and I will love you forever.

Now, I’m not knocking new baubles or an evening out. (Seriously. I’m not. Sometimes Robbie reads these blogs, and I’d hate for him to get the wrong impression.) But anyone familiar with Gary Chapman’s love languages will know what I am talking about when I say that Acts of Service is a big deal to me. And I am confident that, on Maslow’s lesser-known Hierarchy of Services, “Getting Rid of Dog Hair” ranks right there at the top.

But this particular act of service is, at least in our house, a quixotic endeavor. As you know if you saw them in their Christmas finery, we have two dogs: Khaki (a fat, stubborn Lab) and Max (a scrawny, good-natured Golden). Between the two of them, they probably shed about 17 pounds of hair per day. I am not, by nature or nurture, much of a “dog person,” but I don’t think I am being mean or unfair when I say that this habit is not attractive.

Because here’s the thing. It doesn’t matter how often I vacuum or how vigorously Robbie furminates (which is, I believe, an actual verb), there is no way we can vanquish the dog hair completely. To the casual observer, the house may look clean (and if I knew you were coming over, I would put the dogs in the laundry room and run a lint brush over the couch that Khaki probably thinks is named “Get off!”), but it would be a temporary illusion. Look closely (or, heaven forbid, actually pet one of the dogs) and you’ll see the harvest.

Dog hair – and stay with me, here – is like sin.

I mean it. Sometimes you look down and you realize that you are covered in it, and that you have to go back upstairs and change before you go out in public. Sometimes, it’s a little more hidden; only you know what’s lurking on the grill under the refrigerator. And sometimes, it’s just that one tiny little piece and you pluck it off of your black pants and you think you are good…until you spot another one.

I’ll be honest. I get depressed about the dog hair. And I would get depressed about my sin, too – except for this one (a-hem) saving grace: God has taken care of it for me. That’s basically the message in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, a group of people who thought they had to earn God’s love and acceptance by following all the Jewish laws and religious customs. “Not so!” Paul says (and I am paraphrasing here). “It’s not about what you do. It’s about what God already did.” God knew we couldn’t do it on our own, so he sent Jesus (and you gotta love the term Paul uses) to “rescue” us.

I’d go on, except that Tim Keller makes the case for grace much better in his book, Galatians for You. “The average person on the street believes that a Christian is someone who follows Christ’s teaching and example,” Keller writes. “But Paul implies that’s impossible. After all, you don’t rescue people unless they are in a lost state and a helpless condition! Imagine you see a drowning woman. It doesn’t help her at all if you throw her a manual on how to swim. You don’t throw her some teaching – you throw her a rope.”

I don’t know if Keller is a dog person or not (he probably is, because he seems well-adjusted), but I am sure he would agree with me on this: If we spend our lives trying to live up to some sort of “moral cleanliness” – if we vacuum and furminate until we think our house is “pretty clean” (or at least “cleaner” than so-and-so’s) – we’re doomed to a life marked by guilt, insecurity, and exhaustion. We won’t be able to do it.

If, on the other hand, we turn the dog hair of our sin over to God, trusting in him as the Ultimate Furminator, we are golden. We can grab hold of the rope and relax in the security of God’s unmerited favor and love, knowing that nothing we do (or don’t do) will ever change the fact that he is absolutely crazy about us.

God is crazy about us.

Dog hair and all.

(Bonus material: You really can’t get rid of your own sin. And trust me on this one: If you have a Lab, you will never get rid of your dog hair. You will have to move. But if you have a spare 35 bucks and you want to try your hand at furminating, or if Acts of Service is your primary love language and you have a husband who doesn’t mind tilting at windmills just to show how much he cares, click here.)

Friday Prayer for Knowing Christ

12.26.2014

Christmas is a time of growth, a time when the soil of our hearts may soften and we sense God’s presence in new and often unexpected ways. As you think about the people you love and what they need during the coming year, sometimes the simplest prayers are the best: