Month: March 2010

David Powlison wrote a book entitled Seeing With New Eyes: Counseling and the Human Condition Through the Lens of Scripture.  Of course, I find this topic fascinating, having been a counselor in the secular world for almost 10 years.  This book could be such a help to counselors and ministers alike.  He has a chapter in the book called X-ray Questions.  It is a list of 35 questions that include scripture references, to be used in some form by the counselor.  I have decided to write in my personal journal on one question each day, being as honest as I can.  This is no easy task, because we can lie to ourselves quite easily, I’ve found, and to truly answer these questions is humbling, and at times embarrassing.

So I’d like to write out the list of questions for anyone who is interested.  If there is any feedback or insight that you would like to share, you can comment, or email me at andimeade @ hotmail dot com.  Also, I’m not going to include the scripture references, so if anyone would like those please contact me as well.

1.  What do you love? Hate?
2.  What do you want, desire, crave, lust, and wish for?
3.  What do you seek, aim for, and pursue?  What are your goals and expectations?
4.  Where do you bank your hopes?
5.  What do you fear?  What do you not want?  What do you tend to worry about?
6.  What do you feel like doing?
7.  What do you thing you need?  What are your “felt needs”?
8.  What are your plans, agendas, strategies, and intentions designed to accomplish?
9.  What makes you tick?  What do you organize your life around?  What food sustains your life?
10.  Where do you find refuge, safety, comfort, escape, pleasure, security?
11.  What or whom do you trust?
12.  Whose performance matters?  On whose shoulders does the well-being of your world rest?
13.  Whom must you please?  Whose opinion of you counts?  From whom do you desire approval and fear rejection?
14.  Who are your role models?  What kind of person do you think you ought to be or want to be?
15.  On your deathbed, what would sum up your life as worthwhile?  What gives your life meaning?
16.  How do you define and weigh success or failure, right or wrong, desirable, or undesirable?
17.  What would make you feel rich, secure, prosperous?
18.  What would bring you the greatest pleasure, happiness and delight?  The greatest pain and misery?
19.  Whose coming into political power would make everything better?
20.  Whose victory or success would make your life happy?  How do you define victory and success?
21.  What do you see as your rights?  What do you feel entitled to?
22.  In what situations do you feel pressured or tense? Confident and relaxed? What are your escapes?  What do you escape from?
23.  What do you want to get out of life?  What payoff do you seek out of the things you do?
24.  What do you pray for?
25.  What do you think about most often?
26.  What do you talk about? What attitudes do you communicate?
27.  How do you spend your time?  What are your priorities?
28.  What are your characteristic fantasies?  Daydreams?  What do your night dreams revolve around?
29.  What are the functional beliefs that control how you interpret your life and determine how you act?
30.  What are your idols or false gods?  Whom do you serve?
31.  How do you life for yourself?
32.  How do you life as a slave of the devil?
33. How do you implicitly say, “if only…” (to get what you want or avoid what you don’t want)?
34.  What instinctively seems and feels right to you.  What are your opinions, the things you feel are true?
35.  Where do you find your identity?  How do you define who you are?

This is quite a list!  I would definitely recommend only taking one question at a time.  The answers will most likely surprise you.  More on some of these specific questions to come.

As I write this, it’s 6am, and Justus is sitting beside me in his chair, smiling.  My little boy has the sweetest smile.  We have really been appreciating his smiles and sweet nature, especially as we have had concerns about his health.  The circumference of his head has increased at a rate that is more rapid that normal.  On Tuesday he had to have a CT Scan.  It is heartbreaking to see your little baby stuck in this big machine, and all you can think about is that you want to change places with them.  He was an angel, never making a peep, and it was over quickly.  As we waited in the waiting area for the results, Justus caught the attention of all who passed us.  We got the results quickly, and were so relieved to find out that what they were most worried about, a condition called hydrocephalus, he does not have.  However the scan did detect more fluid than normal possibly pushing on the frontal lobe of his brain, and so he does have to continue on with more tests and evaluations with a neurosurgeon at the Children’s Hospital here in Denver.  His appointment is on Good Friday.  As I was writing the date down, a song popped into my head: “All shall be well, yes all shall be well, the love of God will never fail, and all manner of things shall be made well.”  I looked over at my little boy, who at the time was being lovingly forced by his big sister to take his pacifier, and I thought, how true that song is.  All shall be well.  My little boy, my precious son, belongs first to God, and then to me.  And the Lord loves him in ways I cannot fathom.  And the love of God never fails.  Of course I cannot take this to mean that Justus will have no health concerns, although I can and do pray for that, but I do take it to mean that God’s perfect will shall be carried out and His perfect love will never fail me or my son.  And that is the secret to peace that passes understanding.

These are the views outside of my front and back window.  In one window, you can see the shadow of Callie Grace’s Easter stickers, which look quite funny against the snow.  However, the snow is breathtakingly beautiful!  It’s amazing how we can get so much snow, and life just goes on here in Colorado.  People go to work, to school, nobody changes their plans!  The snow covers everything, making the whole world look clean and covered in diamonds.  This is much the same way I imagine Jesus covers me, and it is a wonderful reminder of this.  However, I’m so thankful that the love of God is permanent, and the snow isn’t!

With two feet of snow expected here in the foothills of the Rockies, I have to admit it.

I’m homesick for the South.

Not that I don’t feel certain that we are where we need to be, and not that there aren’t many, many things to love about Colorado.  It’s just, this is my first spring in my entire life that I haven’t been in the South.  I miss the excitement of seeing the first daffodils and the first fire flies.  I miss the anticipation of the pool opening – I have yet to see a single outdoor swimming pool here!  I miss the green you start to see everywhere, with other splashes of color mixed in.  I miss the knowledge that the snow is behind you by mid-March.  I miss the sound of the crickets and the first feeling of warm breezes.  At times I feel that I am in another country, not just another state.  There is a wild, open beauty here that I’ve not experienced before in my life.  I’m in no way saying that Colorado is not a wonderful place to live, but when things are so different than what you’ve always known, it’s bound to have some effect on you.

There is a hymn on the Hymns for Kids CD that Callie Grace listens to countless times a day.  It’s called Count Your Blessings, and the chorus says “Count your blessings, name them one by one, count your blessings, see what God hath done!  Count your blessings, name them one by one, count your many blessings, see what God hath done.”  I love this song, I love the reminder that it brings, and how happy I am when I do count my many blessings!

But I think it’s still okay to admit to being homesick occasionally.

I imagine that most parents have the same problem I have – going to the store and walking out without buying something for their kids!  And this is not Callie’s issue, it’s mine.  She doesn’t have to be with me, and even if she is with me, I show far more interest in buying her things than she does in getting them for herself.  It will be the same thing with Justus, but right now Callie is at the stage where she is excited about everything, and it’s so much fun to watch her with a new toy.

Yesterday I heard her say “puppy” for the first time, and so while at the store today, when I laid eyes on this puppy, I had to buy him for Callie Grace.  She has taken an instant liking to him and carries him wherever she goes.  As you can tell from the picture, she also has tried to feed him her cheerios.  So kind. 🙂 And thankfully this gift for her doesn’t make any noise, so I shouldn’t have any regrets at 2am when I’m stumbling in the hallway with Justus and land on a little wind-up bunny that says “whee!!!”.  Not that I would know anything about that….

I’m reminded of Matthew 7:11. ” If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

Callie Grace loves her bear, and decided to put him in Justus’s swing and cover him with her blanket.  She then proceeded to swing him in a manner that made me thankful he wasn’t a living being!  I’ll have to watch and make sure she doesn’t try to show her love quite as enthusiastically when Justus is in the swing.

Philip and I have been discussing words that we don’t want to say around Callie and Justus.  This is especially important now that Callie is repeating so much of what we say.  So far we’ve ruled out saying stupid, hate, sucks, and of course any curse words, not that curse words are a normal part of our vocabularies!

So basically we love everything and everybody.  Hmmm….

This makes TV watching around the babies rather tricky, since even commercials have many words I don’t want them to say.  I always thought I’d be more discerning from day one about what I’d watch on TV around the babies, but then when Callie didn’t sleep for the first 3 months of her life, I logged in a lot of hours on the couch in front of the TV in the middle of the night (thank goodness for the invention of the DVR, or I would be the owner of multiple vacuum cleaners I bought on the Home Shopping Network!).  This is really an excuse, and not even a good one, for not being more careful.  I was thinking about this as Callie came running into the living room when Law and Order came on – she loves the opening music for it!  It’s just so easy as parents, or maybe just as humans, to make the easy choice that requires no sacrifice or change on our parts.  Maybe it’s just that now as a parent I’m more aware of my propensity to make the easy choice, because it’s not just my life that my choices have a significant impact on.

At times I wish that the Lord had called me to the mission field overseas, somewhere where having TV and worldly influences on my children wouldn’t be such an issue, but instead I have to make a conscious decision on a regular basis regarding my words, actions, and choices.  Not that people in the mission field don’t have these issues as well, I think they must just come in a different form.

At least the form my issues have come in doesn’t include living without electricity, plumbing, Facebook, and Starbucks!  However, I am having to learn to accept the fact that I am in a mission field that includes mountain lions, snow, bears, coyotes, snow, elk, and of course, snow.  That’s wild enough for me.

Today we had a family outing to the mall.  That may not sound like much of a big deal, however the mall is “down the hill”, as the locals say, but it’s a mountain to me!  Also, here’s a list of what it takes to take a 3 month old and a 16 month old out for half a day: 4 bottles, one bottle of milk, formula, a juice sippy cup, a banana, diapers – size 2 and size 4, wipes, extra outfits in the event of an accident, burp cloths, bibs, cheerios, books, cookie monster, a pacifier, blankets, coats and hats (layering is a big deal here in Colorado), Silly Songs with Larry, a double stroller, two car seats, random toys that hang from said car seats, and many prayers for safety when I’m turned around in the front seat, trying to hand Callie the book that fell or give Justus his pacifier as we’re headed down “the hill”.  I must admit to getting both kids ready and out the door, in the car and out of the drive when I realized I forgot to put my own coat on, and I can’t remember if I brushed my teeth or if the door to the back porch is locked.

And yet, this is the best time I’ve ever had in my life.  The sight of Callie Grace sitting in her booster seat, eating french fries and watching the carousel, Justus in the stroller, staring at a duck and smiling as usual, Philip sitting beside me, holding my hand and getting me refills of Dr. Pepper, Callie saying “hi!!” to everyone we pass, these are things that I treasure, that I will miss so much in such a short time!  It’s so important to remind myself of this in the moments that overwhelm me, in the moments that I feel like I’m just trying to get by and get to the next day.  What a waste of precious time that is!  I’m certainly guilty of it, and I daily pray that the Lord will bless me with the ability to appreciate these days, these little things, and to let go of the things that don’t matter, like Callie eating cheerios from under the couch and Justus using a pink burp cloth that was Callie’s because all of his blue ones are dirty (sorry Philip! 🙂 ).

Right now both kids are asleep, Justus swaddled and in his bed, Callie in her crib with her two bears, her blanket and pacifier.  I have a stack of books to read, laundry that needs to be done, and bottles to wash.

So I’m going to sit on the couch and watch Law and Order with Philip.  It’s the little things that are precious.