Join me over at The Stay at Home Daughter where my friend Ashley has asked me to share my musings concerning the recipients of the most important birth announcement ever.

I think we sense that we’re a little “off” and that somehow Christmas has gotten off track. We taste the dissonance. We even attempt to change. For most of us, the solution has been to get more organized, not really reform our heart’s focus.

What if we made it less about better time management and gift budgeting… and more about Jesus? I don’t want to just put a governor on my spending or make better lists or freeze meals ahead of time. I want to actually change where I focus my gaze. On what Whom I set my affections.

Some two thousand years ago, the Creator of this vast universe did the unthinkable. He stepped down from His throne where He receives honor and praise and glory unceasing. He left all of that, squeezing His infinite self into frail flesh.

I think we only sort of fathom what that meant for Him and way it changed everything for us.

Maybe this December could be about trying to fathom just a little bit more of it. Would you join me in trying?

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Their flight was delayed getting home on Sunday so they came in pretty late. But we still threw a mini-party to welcome them. Madison even waited up on the couch. Well, kind of. She fell asleep on the couch while she waited. But, it was a valiant effort.

After our little party preparations were finished, I had some time to reflect. Here are a few things I learned while the boys were away.

1. Little girls can hog more bed space and steal more covers than a fully grown man.
2. Muddy football clothes don’t need washed when there’s no 12-year-old boy around to create muddy messes. Who knew laundry could be so pleasant? And sad at the same time.
3. Having control of the remote isn’t really all it’s cracked up to be. And watching Psych or Bones isn’t nearly as much fun without my dude falling asleep on the couch next to me.
4. Women do a good job of looking out for each other when their menfolk are away. Especially when we have dark chocolate to help us.
5. You think your husband must have magical powers but he doesn’t. He just knows how to use Drano when the sink clogs. Turns out that Drano works when a woman pours it down the drain too! (Please note: just because I CAN do said Drano, does not mean I will be doing it again. He can have his magical plumbing powers right back.)
6. Bathroom humor and loud gaseous expulsions seem to happen less ( A LOT less) when boys are absent from the home.  In fact, the noise level changed dramatically with the boys gone all week.
7. Two is less than four. And your elementary teacher was wrong – the difference certainly must be way more than two. At least that’s how it feels.
8. I’d love it if my daughter became my best friend someday. She’s an awesome girl. Spending a lot of one-on-one time with her is pretty neat.
9. You can squeak by on a lot fewer groceries when the boys are gone. Well, that, AND when you have precious people in your life that invite you over while the boys are gone. {wink} 
10. Did I mention that two is less than four? Four is good. Really good.

 Little did I know it at the time, that’s not the only place I’d be sending Caleb this year. In less than a week he’ll be in another country on the other side of the globe without me! How does this tender-hearted momma feel about that?

 Come find out over at The Better Mom where I am blogging today…

So what? Well, here’s what I want to say to you, my bloggy friends. May I take a sec to challenge you to read things that are not your usual fodder? Personally, I like all kinds of books. I wouldn’t consider myself an intellectual, but I’m also not afraid of weighty works. Honestly, though, I usually read for entertainment. I love a well-told story. My favorites are actually in the children’s literature genre.

But sometimes, I think it’s good to expand our horizons and push through a book that makes us evaluate and think. Bonhoeffer was like that for me. It’s very well-written and thorough, but it still required some discipline for me to finish it.

What about you? When was the last time you read something that made you think twice? Or was outside your usual reading list? How did it shape you?

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If you’re interested, here are a few of my musings from the book…

1. Our son Caleb was particularly intrigued by any book that combined both pastor and spy into its title. It was like his worlds were coming together in some glorious new light. Put yourself in 12-year-old boy shoes for just a moment and ponder this: One can be a pastor and a spy. Oh happy day! Little does he know that there are pastors all over world who must minister “underground” because their very life is at risk every time they open a Bible.

2. There are great lessons to be learned from history. Hitler’s rise to power and the atrocities that followed are sobering. Not because it happened way back then but because that same selfish, greedy tendency is in my heart. It’s in every heart that walks this planet. Bonhoeffer summarized it well…

“Just as time-lapse photography makes visible, in an ever more compressed and penetrating form, movements that would otherwise not be thus grasped by our vision, so the war makes manifest in particularly drastic and unshrouded form that which for years has become ever more dreadfully clear to us as the essence of the “world.” It is not war that first brings death, not war that first invents the pains and torments of human bodies and souls, not war that first unleashes lies, injustice, and violence. It is not war that first makes our existence so utterly precarious and renders human beings powerless, forcing them to watch their desires and plans being thwarted and destroyed by more “exalted powers.” But war makes all of this, which existed already apart from it and before it, vast and unavoidable to us who would gladly prefer to overlook it all.” (pg. 373)

We are foolish if we think Hitler was particularly, unusually evil. “But for the grace of God, there go I.”

3. God gives us this life and we have opportunities to live well or to waste our lives, no matter our circumstances. Very few had the courage and depth of character to stand firm against the Nazi regime – especially those within Germany. Most traded success or expedience for truth. Sadly, the German church was one of the first bastions to fold under the pressure. Men like Bonhoeffer, who actually lived what he said he believed, were in the minority.  

4. If we live in light of eternity, the circumstances of this life (even though horribly heartbreaking at times) take on a new light. Take these words from his fellow-prisoner as Bonhoeffer was being led away to the scaffolds for hanging: “We bade him good-bye – he drew me aside – ‘This is the end,’ he said. ‘For me the beginning of life.’” He was going to die but he knew his death was the gateway to life eternal. And that made all the difference.

Metaxas records that the camp “doctor” at the concentration camp had no idea whom he was watching at the time but later said these words about Bonhoeffer’s last moments: “Through the half-open door in one room of the huts, I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer, before taking off his prison garb, kneeling on the floor praying fervently to his God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the steps to the gallows, brave and composed… In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.”

And, that, my friends, is why you read books outside your normal purview. So that you can be inspired and changed by another’s life.

Perhaps you’ve heard about swimmer Diana Nyad and her goal to swim 103 miles from Cuba to Florida. At the age of 62. She attempted it last month and made it nearly 30 hours before she had to stop. A shoulder injury, an asthma attack, and vomiting finally exhausted her to the degree that sheer willpower…

Ummmm. Sorry for the interuption… Want to know how I finish this one? Join me over at The Better Mom (as in, we’re all striving to be better moms; not I think I am the better mom) where I am a contributing writer. This is my first post there! Kind of excited. Kind of. {wink}

You know that prickly sensation when you’re in awe or really excited about something? That’s how I feel about leading this study.

Sort of like we might feel if we didn’t have instant messaging or tweeting or email or even phone service. And we had to wait for letters to come great distances to hear from the ones we loved. I imagine it like the early immigrants to America might have felt. Maybe a letter has just arrived from our Grandad who still lives in the Old Country. How we all grab for it and want to read it first. Instead we gather around in the living room – brothers, sisters, cousins, all of us together. And one of us reads it out loud. And maybe his Scottish brogue comes through thick in his writing and Mom has to explain this or that because our own memories of “home” have grown dim. We didn’t really mean to forget. Not really. But, truth be told, it’s hard to remember what he looks like anymore or the way his hug feels after a walk in the meadow. And the littlest among us barely knew him at all before we left.

But when Momma reads we remember. We hang on every word. And I get goosebumps as I listen to words penned by his precious hand. A bit of him. Here. With us now.

That’s how I feel about tomorrow night. It’s an imperfect analogy, I know. But, it gets at the heart of it for me.

We did receive a letter from a great distance. Only it’s not from our Grandad… No. Even better. This letter is from the very One who called the stars out by name and told the proud ocean waves where to stop. And knew me while I was still being knit together in my mother’s womb. The One whose mercies are new every morning. He who heaps grace on me. Grace upon grace. He has spoken. Written down all the things He wanted me to know for this life. Fantastic accounts of love spurned and the relentless pursuit of a Suitor. A cheater wooed back. Of a love that wins.

A letter like that shouldn’t be sitting pristine on a shelf. Friends, do you know that men died so that we could get this letter? And read it in our own language? This is a letter that deserves to be poured over. Read again and again. Slowly, savoring every word. Pages worn thin from getting it out over and over again.

I know I need the letter. Oh how I need it. Because, I’ll be honest, sometimes I forget. I forget what He’s like and how His story has become my history. Let’s face it, there are lots of other voices competing with the letter. Trying to keep me from it. Some even mock the letter. “How do you even know it’s from Him? What if it’s a fake? Or been altered by the deliveryman?”

But I know better. Aside from apologetic proof upon proof, there is the reality that His fingerprints are all over His correspondence. His heart beating with the very idea of something so impossible as grace. I need want to hear what He has to say. To be reminded afresh.

And I need to do it in the company of “family.” With my sisters. So that we can revel in the goodness and wrestle with the hard stuff… together.

I know, right? You felt it too. Goosebumps.

If you live in Northeast Ohio and you’re a chica and you would like to join us for the study, there is still time. We’ll be studying one of the most ancient stories of all – the life of Abraham as recorded in the book of Genesis. The cost if $15 for the entire 8-week session, which runs from Sept. 8 thru October 27 (7 to 8:30). Use the contact tab right here on my blog to let me know you’ll be there or to get more information. Unfortunately, online registration at the church website has closed; so this is the best way to sneak-in under the wire! Don’t worry, I know the pastor and he said I could. {wink}

The two babies before him had gone on before us. Loved with all the anticipation and joy we could give them. But never held or known. At least not in this realm.

But it seemed to us like the whole world was joining with us in welcoming this one. He was considered high risk for the first half of the pregnancy. Four families committed to pray with us daily until he arrived. We later found out there were others we didn’t even know about who were doing the same thing. I had friends who believed God when I was afraid to. One who gave me a mommy journal and a pair of tiny Gap overalls before we’d even made it 12 weeks… let alone gotten over the 14-week range that haunted me so. “I’ll believe God for you, Shan. You know, in the gaps. Where you can’t.”

People were so excited for us that they couldn’t stop throwing showers. (I think we had four or five!)

And, finally, he came. On June 28th, 1999, he beat the odds and he came.

Into our world and changed it forever.

BUT, I do really like the Buckeyes. Yep. I said that in the present tense. And I like Coach Tressel too. Still.

Yes, watching his “fall from grace” has been disheartening. No one wants to see a hero stumble. We want our heroes to be epic. Strong to the end. And when they fall, we question. We wonder if anyone can really be different. Does anyone really have the character and integrity we long to follow?

Those are tough questions. The kind that hit us in the gut and make us squirm. Because they mess with our paradigms and our safe zones!

But, for me,  even more disheartening has been watching the media banter and the FB posts and the blog discussions.

I’ve see two common threads as I’ve watched the fall-out from Monday’s announcement. One group of people seems intent on completely slamming the guy, his program, and everything he’s ever stood for. We are so quick to draw our conclusions. To judge. Harshly. To dismiss everything else about his long history of coaching. To assume the worst about his motives.

The other error is just as grievous. The other side of the coin are the fans who want to turn a blind eye to the whole thing. To sweep it under the rug and give him a pass because “he must have had a good reason” for not reporting his players. In my book, loyalty isn’t really all that noble when it’s diconnected from reality.

This might seem like a wierd conclusion but as I listen to the banter and watch the accusations fly, I find myself (once again) in awe of the Gospel. Why? Because it’s the one place where the truth is somewhere in between. The Gospel is the one place in all the world where we can boldly embrace two oppposing thoughts at the same time.

We can say, “Yes, what these players did was wrong.” Yes, they abused the system. Yes, this is a scandal. We can call it what it is. We can even be sad and disappointed about the corruption in college sports. Yes, it was wrong for their coach to knowingly let it go unreported. Yes, wrong is wrong and we can’t just sweep it under the rug. We don’t have to pretend it didn’t happen or say it’s not a big deal. Doing the wrong things does matter. It has consequences.

BUT, the Gospel is also the place where we can simultaneously say “There is forgiveness.” Thank God there is forgiveness and grace for the fallen hero! For all of us. Are we seriously surprised that a coach and his players would make bad moral decisions? We make bad moral decisions every stinkin’ day. Just because ours are not on the national stage with a bunch of money at stake, doesn’t make them any less offensive to God or to the people they hurt. And it doesn’t mean that everything else that we’ve ever stood for or accomplished is just a waste. We all need grace.

Assuming, of course, that I really believe in grace. I mean, truly believe it. If I do, then there is little room left for pride as I evaluate Tressel’s actions. Disappointment, maybe. But pride, no way.

I’m as sad as anyone else about this mess. It was hard for me to tell Caleb about it. (Rick was gone or I would have made him do it!) As I delivered the news to him, I just kept picturing him standing in the Horseshoe last year. In awe. His heart alive with boyish dreams that maybe he could play there someday. The truth is, those dreams are just a little sullied now. Tressel was part of that Buckeye magic for Caleb.

As I listened to Rick talk with him about it later, we were all reminded that it’s really true that nobody is perfect. Tressel has a long legacy of wins – both on and off the field. You can read about them from his players’ remarks to the stories of impact he has had on his community and on the fans around him. Here is just one story that I stumbled upon that was particularly moving. Those things are still true.

I don’t know why he didn’t report his players’ infractions. Though it was still wrong, maybe he did have a good reason. Or, maybe he was just being greedy for the title or more wins. I don’t know. But I do know that he is just a man – a mixture of good and bad. Just like you and me.

If the reports are true, it sure appears like he screwed this one up. I wish he wouldn’t have. I wish he would have lived out his OSU career untarnished.

But, perhaps ours is the greater error. We who put our faith in things that can never deliver. We who hope in people who are just as flawed as we are. We who carry around our idols and pledge our allegiance to created things. We who worship everything but the One who is worthy.

Perhaps we need to look to the only real Hero who ever lived.