Cape and Boots or Crumpled Suit?

CAPE AND BOOTS OR CRUMPLED SUIT?

Mother’s dictionary of meanings:

Dumb Waiter: One who asks if the kids would care to order dessert.
Feedback: The inevitable result when the baby doesn’t appreciate strained carrots.
Full name: What you call your child when your mad at him.
Grandparents: The people who think your children are wonderful even though
you’re sure you’re not raising them right.
Hearsay: What toddlers do when anyone mutters a forbidden word.
Independent: How we want our children to be for as long as they do everything we
say.
Puddle: A small body of water that draws other small bodies wearing shoes
into it.
Show-off: A child who is more talented than yours.
Sterilize: What you do to your first baby’s pacifier by boiling it, and to your last
baby’s pacifier by blowing on it and wiping it with saliva.
Top bunk: Where you should never out a child wearing superman pyjamas.
Two-minute warning: When the baby’s face turns red and she begins to make
those familiar grunting noises.
Whodunit: None of the kids that live in your house.

Things you’ll never hear a mother say:

How on earth can you see the TV sitting that far back
Yeah, I used to skip school a lot too
Just leave all the lights on – it makes the house look more cheery
Let me smell that shirt – yeah, it’s good for another week
Go ahead and keep that stray dog honey – I’ll be glad to feed and walk him everyday
Well, if Tom’s mother says it’s ok that’s good enough for me.
The curfew is just a general time to shoot for. It’s not like I’m running a prison around here.
I don’t have a tissue with me – just use your sleeve
Don’t bother wearing a jacket – the wind chill is bound to improve.

Well, it’s that time of year again – the day where we all come together to celebrate mothers. And I wonder as I was sharing those quips from motherhood if you could relate back to them, and recall the times you’ve had such conversations and experiences with your own children or your parents have had with you.
Motherhood, so I’ve been told, or parenthood for that matter is one of the most rewarding, challenging, frustrating, heart-warming, heart-wrenching times of a parents life.

And I believe that today of all days is one of the hardest for any Christian preacher in the church today. It’s not because Mother’s Day is a bad day, it’s not because we don’t want to celebrate and rejoice with mothers and for mother’s everywhere, but I truly believe that this is one of the hardest days on the Christian calendar because whilst it can be a day of joy and celebration for some people, for others it can be a day filled with great sadness, pain and grief, and I am aware that not everyone looks forward to Mother’s Day.

Perhaps for you,
· Maybe you have recently lost your mother … and you are experiencing the pain of your loss.
· Maybe you have lost a child … and your heart grieves on Mother’s Day.
· Maybe you are having difficulties with your Mother … your Mother wasn’t the IDEAL Mother we like to preach about … and you have bad memories of your Mother.
· Maybe you have some guilty feelings about your own motherhood … and you have children problems … or marriage problems.
· Maybe you were never able to have children … and Mother’s Day isn’t a joyous occasion for you.
· Maybe you never had a real mother … and were raised in a foster home, or by relatives.
· Maybe you were a single Mom … and have struggled with being a good Mother to your children.
The reality is that we know that not every family is like The Brady Bunch, or The Cleavers, and for some families they don’t even come close to functioning (or perhaps not functioning) like The Simpson’s. Each and every family is varied and different, and we each know from our own experience that no two families are the same.

Here’s an example of two very different mothers from two very different families.

OLIVIA THE OVERWHELMED

“The alarm cut through the air like chalk on a dry board. Olivia reached over and pressed the snooze button of grace that gave her five more minutes. She pressed it one more time, then again until she became aware of the fact that her son was standing at the foot of the bed, yelling,
“Mom, we’re late. That’s two tardy slips this week!!”
She jumped out of bed, swirled some mouthwash around her gums, and pulled on the faded warm-up suit that was lying on the floor.
“Wake your sister!” she called after her son.
Olivia ran past her husband who was stretching out his bad back and headed for the kitchen. Grabbing two toaster pastries from an open box on the counter, she threw them into her purse and began the daily hunt for her car keys.
“Has anyone seen my keys?” she cried at the top of her lungs.
“The dog had them last night,” her daughter said. “He hid them in the pizza box.”
Olivia rummaged through the trash until she found her keys, well ensconced in a cold slice of pepperoni pizza.
“kids, in the car – now!” she cried.
As she sped down the road, little pieces of cheese flew up from her key ring and stuck to her glasses.
“Kate, did you ever consider removing my keys from the pizza box before they had officially set?” she asked. But her daughter paid no attention, lost in the private world her MP3 player offered her each morning.
Olivia passed the cold pastries back to her children.
“We’ve missed chapel, Mom … again,” her son said.


MONICA THE MAGNIFICENT

The alarm cut through the air like an amplified bugle call. Monica sat up in bed and reached for the appropriate button. The clock had delivered more than a simple wake-up call; it was the start of another mission. In her mind she could hear music. It sounded like a combination of the theme song to Mission Impossible and the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah. Fully awake now, she bounded out of bed and headed for the shower. She was grateful that some companies had finally wised up and combined shampoo and conditioner in the same bottle, for she certainly didn’t have time to do both. Her hair was cut in such a fashion that with a simple flip of the head it fell into a neat, shining bob. She sprayed her face with the new foundation in a can, applied a touch of blush and lip gloss, slipped into her suit, cape, and boots, and headed for the kitchen.
As she squeezed fresh orange juice and prepared bacon, eggs, and waffles for her husband and two children, she pressed play on the cd player above the stove and a warm, comforting voice began to read a passage from the Bible. At the end of the third Psalm, the voice moved to the New Testament and delivered the Sermon on the Mount with compassion and conviction. Two hymns later, it was time to wake the children.
Hannah and Peter bowed their heads and prayed before complimenting their mother on such a delicious and nutritious breakfast.
“Good morning, Light-of-my-life!” Simon said as he kissed his wife on the cheek. “What’s on your schedule today?”
“Well, after I take the children to school,” Monica said, “I’m meeting Gloria for coffee. She is having a few problems in her m-a-r-r-i-a-g-e. Then I volunteered to take lunch to two of the shut-ins in the church. After that, I’ll collect the dry cleaning, shop for groceries, and pick up the children from school. I’ve invited your boss and his wife and three children to come over for supper.”
“What a woman you are,” Simon said, running his hands through Monica’s clean, shining bob. “How do you do it all?”[1]

I wonder which one of these women you identify with more. Are you the kind of woman who has her routine down pat – you’re super organised, always on top of things, a gifted multi-tasker? Or are you more like Olivia, running behind time, hair barely combed, doing everything you can just to get through the day?

Or perhaps, you’re more like me… I tend to sit somewhere between the two extremes of these women. I live some days like Monica the Magnificent, in the cape and suit role, determined to show God and those around me that no matter what the problem is, I am only a bugle call away. I’ve also been like Olivia the Overwhelmed- feeling some days like all I want to do when the alarm goes off early in the morning is to switch it off, snuggle back underneath the doona, and pray that a bus would come and run over the bugle and the world would go away and leave me alone. I think the truth is, if we were to all take a look over our lives we could probably say that we’ve all been one or the other of these characters at different times in our lives.
As I take a look around at the women in my own life, I discover that they fall into one of two categories: They are either content or discontent. Sounds simple enough… but I wonder what side of the fence you fall into with your own life.

We women sometimes have a very difficult job finding contentment. We often find ourselves living our lives for others. We tend to put others before ourselves and make sure their needs are met before our own. We spend our lives looking after our households, our husbands, our siblings, our children, our friends, our neighbours, our parents, our grandchildren, the list goes on and on and on, and so often women wind up feeling exhausted, feeling over whelmed, and feeling like they mean nothing… and friends, sadly, we’ve only got ourselves to blame.

We tend to measure our own self-worth on how others view us, on how we look and feel, on what we do, and in all honesty we’re so far off the mark that this kind of view leaves us feeling exhausted, broken and worthless… because at some stage or another we’re going to realise that we can never please everyone, we can never meet everyone else’s needs, and that we can never measure up to other people’s expectations… and it’s usually as we come to realise this that our lives fall in a heap and emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually we tend to fall in a heap and ‘hit rock bottom’… And if we’re constantly trying to measure up and be someone who we’re not, then is it6 any wonder we’re constantly tired?

The truth is, none of us could possibly run our lives like Monica the Magnificent. We’d be burnt out by the end of the month if we tried to live life that way. We’d constantly have to reach higher standards and we’d always be trying to please others… and no-one can live life that way forever.

On the other hand, no-one could live life like Olivia the Overwhelmed constantly and not face that same level- you’d be burnt out from constantly running and you’d be exhausted by just trying to keep up with daily living.

And you want to know why we can’t live our lives like this? It’s because we have not been created this way. When God created us, He never implanted within us an internal clock that never needs refreshing. He never put within us a long-life battery that never needs recharging, He never gave us instructions that we needed to please everyone and do everything in order to be of value. We were not created to live our lives constantly comparing ourselves with others, constantly measuring our own lives against those around us,. No. When we were created, God created us to be content with who we are as we live our lives and see ourselves as God sees us- as wonderful, as beautiful, adored, one-of-a-kind, priceless and precious children on THE King.

If we try to measure our lives by any other standards than those given to us by God, then we will never measure up. We will never be content. We’ll never quite reach the mark.

Author Steve Brown tells a story that sums up this very notion:

He writes, “"Someone tells of a king who was discontented. In fact he was so anxious, he couldn't sleep, rest, or think. He called his wise men and asked them what he could do.
One very old and very wise man said, "Find a man in your kingdom who is content, then wear his shirt for a day and a night, and you will be content."
That sounded like a good idea to the king, so he ordered some of his servants to search for such a person.
Days blended into weeks before his servants returned. "Well," said the king, "did you find a contented man?"
"Yes, sire," his servant, replied.
"Where is his shirt?" asked the king.
"Your majesty, he didn't have one." [hurdles, glitches p. 162]

If we want to be content in life, then we’ve got to realise that ‘stuff’ will never make us feel content. People will never make us feel content. Work will never make us feel content, until we realise that the only way to be content is to see ourselves the way God sees us and live our lives according to His purpose.
Stuff cannot make you happy. Things, will not make you happy. Elvis had three jets, two Cadillac’s, a Rolls, a Lincoln Continental, two station wagons, a Jeep, a custom touring bus, and three motorcycles. His favourite car was his 1960 Caddy limo. The top was covered with pearl-white Naugahyde and the body was sprayed with 40 coats of special paint that included crushed diamonds. Nearly all the metal trim was plated in 18-karat gold. There were two gold-flake phones, as well as a gold vanity case with gold electric razor and gold hair clippers, an electric shoe buffer. The limo also had a gold-plated TV, a record player (kids, ask your parents what that was), an amplifier, an air conditioner, its own electrical system, and a refrigerator that could make ice in precisely two minutes. But, as you know, Elvis died a lonely and deeply unhappy man.
It’s not just a male thing, of course. When Diet Coke was available only in the U.S., Christina Onassis would monthly dispatch a jet to the U.S. at the cost of $30,000 round trip to pick up fresh cases of “the real thing.” Friends who were too busy to spend all their time with her were paid $20,000 to $30,000 per month to be her pals. Yet, Christina Onassis died an unfulfilled and profoundly unhappy woman

You see, contentment comes not from what we have, not from what we do, but contentment is all about our attitude towards ourselves and towards God.

Paul tells Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:6-11,
“godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many grief’s. But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness."
Paul gives wise instruction to Timothy. He tells Timothy that we start with nothing and we end with nothing. So, contentment is not about what we accumulate, it is about living with satisfaction one day after another.

Contentment is a state of satisfaction that is anchored to our confidence in God that results in a joyful celebration of life.

Paul also warns Timothy. When we focus on "stuff", all kinds of things happen. First, we become more susceptible to temptation. Then we find we more are willing to compromise our principles to get what we think will make us happy. Eventually, our appetite begins to dictate our values rather than the other way around. Discontent inevitably leads us away from God.
But let's be honest. It is hard to be content in the difficult times. We look around and see others who seem to be doing better than we are and we feel "cheated". It is hard to feel satisfied, confident and joyful when,
others ridicule us
when we are falsely accused
when the medical test results are not encouraging
when someone gets promoted to the position that we wanted (and felt we deserved)
when our plans are suddenly changed
when loss comes barging into our life
when a loved one tells you they are walking away
when a financial investment falls on it's face

Contentment Comes from Learning to Appreciate What you Have

“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.” Socrates

So how do we discover true contentment? We can see true contentment modelled in the life of a dog. We have a kelpie puppy at home, she’s seven months, and it never ceases to amaze me that no matter what happens throughout the day, she always seems so content with life. So, I think we can all find the meaning of true contentedness from observing the life of a dog:

The Lessons
Never pass up the opportunity to go for a joyride.
Allow the experience of fresh air and wind in your face to be pure ecstasy.
When loved ones come home, always run to greet them.
Spend as much time as possible with the ones you love.
When it’s in your best interest, practice obedience.
Let others know when they’ve invaded your territory.
Take naps and stretch before rising.
Run, romp, and play daily.
Eat with gusto and enthusiasm. Stop when you’ve had enough.
Be loyal.
Never pretend to be something you’re not.
If what you want lies buried, dig until you find it.
When someone is having a bad day, be silent, sit close by and nuzzle him or her gently.
Thrive on attention and let people touch you.
Avoid biting when a simple growl will do.
On warm days, stop to lie on your back in the grass.
On hot days, drink lots of water and lie under a shady tree.
When you’re happy, dance around and wag your entire body.
No matter how often you’re scolded, don’t buy into guilt and pout…run right back and make friends.
Delight in the simple joy of a long walk.

I read a BLOG entry on the internet this week of a young man who ahs found for himself what it means to be truly content. His journey has not been an easy one, and yet at such a tender age I think he’s learnt a lesson that so many of us still strive to reach for everyday. Let me share his BLOG entry with you just now:

All Things Considered, May 7, 2007 · "Why don't you 'act black'?"
Since my middle school years, I've been asked this question more than any other. It seems to me that too many people have let society program into their brains what should be expected of me, a black person, before ever interacting with me. But I believe in being who I am, not who others want me to be.
On my first day of high school, going into math class, two of my classmates pointed and laughed at me. I initially thought my fly was open, or that something was stuck in my teeth. But as I took my seat, I heard one of the students whisper, "Why is a black person taking honors?" So my fly wasn't open. An honors-level class had simply been joined by a student whose skin was an unsettling shade of brown.
Many people think my clothes should be big enough for me to live in, or expect me to listen exclusively to "black music." In seventh grade, a group of my peers fixed their cold stares on my outfit: cargo shorts and a plain, fitting T-shirt. They called out to me, "Go get some 'gangsta' clothes, white boy."
In one of my Spanish classes, as part of a review exercise, the teacher asked me, "Te gusta mas, la musica de rap o rock?" Do you like rap music or rock music more? I replied, "La musica de rock." The look of shock on my classmates' faces made me feel profoundly alienated.
I am now in my junior year of high school. I still take all honors courses. My wardrobe still consists solely of clothes that are appropriate to my proportions. My music library spans from rock to pop to techno, and almost everything in between. When it comes to choosing my friends, I am still colorblind. I continue to do my best work in school in order to reach my goals; and yet, when I look in the mirror, I still see skin of that same shade of brown.
My skin color has done nothing to change my personality, and my personality has done nothing to change my skin color.
I believe in being myself. I believe that I — not any stereotype — should define who I am and what actions I take in life. In high school, popularity often depends on your willingness to follow trends. And I've been told that it doesn't get much easier going into adulthood. But the only other option is to sacrifice my individuality for the satisfaction and approval of others. Sure, this can be appealing, since choosing to keep my self-respect intact has made me unpopular and disliked at times, with no end to that in sight. But others' being content with me is not nearly as important as my being content with myself.

Independently produced for All Things Considered by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman with Viki Merrick.

So, on this Mother’s Day, as people all over our country pause to think of their own motherly influences I their lives, and as Mother’s, Grandmothers, Aunts, Sisters, daughters and women all over the country reflect on their own journeys, I would encourage you take a look at your own life and find your own value and your self-worth not from worldly standards, but from how our heavenly Father sees you – as precious and lovely, beautiful and special, as unique, precious and one-of-a-kind… after all, Jesus loved you so much He gave His life for you. He know you were worth it and He loved you that much. Find your self-worth and contentment in Jesus today.

And whatever you do today, I want you to know that you are a A WOMAN OF WORTH. YOU HAVE ONE LIFE AND ONE CHANCE TO MAKE IT COUNT FOR SOMETHING....YOU’RE FREE TO CHOOSE WHAT THAT SOMETHING IS, FIND YOURSELF WORTH IN CHRIST ALONE AND KNOW THAT YOU ARE CALLED TO DO WHATEVER YOU CAN,...WHENEVER YOU ARE...WHENEVER YOU CAN...FOR AS LONG AS YOU CAN WITH WHATEVER YOU HAVE TO TRY TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE...BECAUE THIS IS WHO YOU ARE..! ! ! - When you look at your life, view yourself as unique individual Make your life count. .Know that your life has a purpose that can only be found in Christ Believe that you did not come into this life just to take up space but you were put here to make a difference and to shine as the woman God created you to be. Know that your purpose in life is to make the world a different and a better place by being comfortable and accepting of who you were made to be, and of who you are in Christ. Believe that your life and being content with who you are will greatly influence the quality of life of those around you.

CONCLUSION
And know that true contentment can only be found in Christ, and in Christ alone. So start by turning to the Ruler of life, Jesus. Receive His grace, believe His promises and trust His providence in your life. And as you turn your eyes upon Jesus, you will find "that the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace." And when that happens you will begin to enjoy the "moments of life". You will leave worries about tomorrow with the Lord and you will accept every situation as God's wise classroom for your growth and development. And when this happens you will find that in good time or bad, pleasant or painful . .. . you will be content.

[1] I’m Not Wonder Woman But God Made Me Wonderful, © Sheila Walsh 2006, pg’s ix - xi