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Vultures and Hummingbirds

September 14, 2021 / Shari Baar / 4 Comments

A few years ago my husband and I watched a mama cow in the front pasture who had recently given birth. The little calf was laying in the green grass nearby the placenta which had recently released its occupant. Just a few minutes after the birth, Larry saw these six vultures hovering around the pasture just waiting to gobble up their meal – the mouth-watering placenta.

A little later we also saw a hummingbird fliting around some wildflowers, joyfully drinking some of the sweet juice it had found.

These two memories recently resurfaced as I finished reading a chapter from the book Winning the War for your Mind by Craig Groeschel, as he made the comparison between vultures and hummingbirds. When a vulture flies around what is it looking for? It always looks for dead things. Apparently, vultures can smell roadkill from over a mile away. Vultures primarily focus on dead things, smashed, squished or rotting – that is their specialty.

Hummingbirds, on the other hand, are attracted to sweet, life-giving nectar. As they fly, their wings flapping 20 times per second, they are continually on the search for beautiful flowers and fragrant blossoms. Hummingbirds focus on life and beauty.

What a difference in the goal of their hunts – one seeking out death and the other looking for life. Every day each bird finds what they are looking for.

Craig uses these two feathered friends to illustrate the way each of us tend to preframe our perspectives during the day. At the beginning of each day we typically have a mindset of what we expect during the day. We can choose how to view something before it happens.

It’s so easy to fall into the trap of preframing our day with the thoughts:

Today will be the same old same old stuff I face every day. Same stuff, different day. I’ll never be able to get done all I need to. I’m overwhelmed.

We expect and look for those things that bring us down, despairing and hopeless. The way of the vulture.

Thankfully there’s another way to preframe our day even before we get started. With God’s help we can choose the frame for the day – looking for the life-giving beauty, giving thanks for His care. If you know you’re in for a challenging day you could say to yourself:

Today I will experience God’s strength through my weakness. He gives me everything I need for what I’m called to do. Instead of a bad, busy day, I’m going to enjoy a good productive one.

There is not a moment in your life when God has forgotten or forsaken you. He assures us, In the world you will have trouble, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. We cannot control what happens to us, but we can choose how we will frame it. We can see our circumstances through the lens of His mercy and grace, knowing our strength comes from Him. This is the way of the hummingbird.

It’s a beautiful thing to know we are loved and cared for by our Heavenly Father who has promised to carry our burdens.

It’s also empowering to know we have a choice:

To follow the way of the vulture or the way of the hummingbird.

The God Box

August 31, 2021 / Shari Baar / 4 Comments

Dear Daughters,

Did you know that on average you make 35,000 choices every day? I had no idea, but that’s what the research says. You can choose to get out of bed in the morning, choose to smile, choose to be kind to your husband and choose to say “thank you” to the people around you.

You can also choose to worry – about what your friend thinks of you, worry about wearing the right clothes, about whether or not you will get Covid, about what your children are doing… the possibilities are endless.

To worry or not to worry? That is the question.

Our human default is worry.

We are faced with two basic choices every day. We have a choice to worry about how we’re going to figure out tomorrow

– or –

we can choose to trust God and cast those worries on Jesus.

Craig Groeschel recently wrote a book Winning the War in Your Mind, teaching about those very things. One specific example he gives is an incredibly easy and tangible way to be thinking about what you are thinking. Craig suggests making a God Box. It can be a shoebox, an Amazon box, or any other little box you may have lying around. On the outside of the box write the word God. Any time you have a runaway thought, a worry or a temptation, write it down on a piece of paper and throw it in the God Box.

You might write something like:

I’m afraid there won’t be enough money to cover the bills

I’m worried about my 17 year-old

What if our business fails?

I’m afraid of what may happen to my children when I am not around

I’m worried about my health, what if I never get better?

Will there be enough food for all?

Will my friend ever forgive me?

So, when you write each of these worries on a piece of paper and put it in the God Box, you could say:

God, I know you’re bigger than all these problems and I will trust you with them. I can do nothing to fix anything, and so I give them all to you. I don’t want to expend my mental real estate focusing on all these issues I cannot change, so I give them to you.

Once you pray and give it to God, go on with your life.

But… says Craig, if you decide you want to worry about something you’ve already put in the God box, open it up take out that slip of paper and say to God,

I don’t trust you any more with this item so I’m going to worry some more about it.

You may think that sounds like a rude thing to say to God, but in effect that’s what we’re saying when we fill our mind with worry. The apostle Peter tells us to cast all your cares upon God for He cares for you. Our thoughts seek to betray us, and doubts pop into our mind, but we have a choice whether we will worry about stuff, or live a life of trust and dependence on God.

If you don’t have a box, use a bag and call it your God Bag. Something, anything to remind you to quit worrying about things you can do nothing about.

Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we will receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. Hebrews 4:16

Love, Mom

Nightbirde

August 12, 2021 / Shari Baar / 2 Comments

Dear Daughters,

Have you ever heard of a bird who sings in the dark? I recently watched Jane Marczewski (known as Nightbirde) on AGT and was blown away by her authenticity and joy even as she suffers so much as a young 30-year-old. Jane is an amazing singer and songwriter – which is not an unusual vocation – but it is her story that is so rare. Nightbirde has suffered more in her three decades of life than most people suffer in 70 years.

Having been through three cancer treatments during the past few years (spine, liver and lungs) she expresses with raw emotions the pain she still suffers. Her husband of four years left her, so she deals with abandonment along with a body not functioning well.

Jane chose the stage name Nightbirde because one morning around 3 am she heard some birds in the tree outside her window singing as if the sun were arriving, quite unusual for birds. She then thought, If birds can sing in the dark, so can I.

Here’s a few of her words:

I am God’s downstairs neighbor, banging on the ceiling with a broomstick. I show up at His door every day.

Sometimes with songs, sometimes with curses.

Sometimes apologies, gifts, questions, demands.

Sometimes I use my key under the mat to let myself in. Other times, I sulk outside until He opens the door to me Himself.

I have called Him a cheat and a liar, and I meant it.

I have told Him I wanted to die, and I meant it.

Tears have become the only prayer I know. Prayers roll over my nostrils and drip down my forearms. They fall to the ground as I reach for Him. These are the prayers I repeat night and day; sunrise, sunset.

Call me bitter if you want to—that’s fair.

Count me among the angry, the cynical, the offended, the hardened.

But count me also among the friends of God.

It’s not the mercy that I asked for, but it is mercy nonetheless. And I learn a new prayer: thank you. It’s a prayer I don’t mean yet, but will repeat until I do.

For I have seen Him in rare form. I have felt His exhale, laid in His shadow,

squinted to read the message He wrote for me in the grout: “I’m sad too.”

I have heard it said that some people can’t see God because they won’t look low enough, and it’s true. Look lower. God is on the bathroom floor.

Yes, God is on the bathroom floor. He inhabits our groaning, our temper tantrums, our questions and our tears. He is sad with us, yet has promised to never leave us, even when others have. He can handle our bitterness and our cynical words, He simply wants us to talk to Him. He is Immanuel, God with us.

Love, Mom

You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before you decide to be happy. – Nightbirde

The Engine and the Caboose

July 28, 2021 / Shari Baar / 3 Comments

Dear Daughters,

Do you ever have days when your mind seems to be inundated with dark thoughts, intense dislike for certain people around you, and feelings of self-loathing? I have those thoughts especially on days when I’m physically not feeling well or when someone has recently disappointed or hurt me with their words.

Thoughts like these affect every human being from time to time. If you’re human you struggle with negative thoughts, for the mind is where the battle rages. The battlefield of our life is in our mind – what we think affects what we do which affects what we say and how we behave.

A few years back a good friend showed me this little diagram of a train. I admit my artistic abilities are nothing to be astonished at, but you’ll get the gist of it. If you consider this train as running through your mind – through all the neurons, dendrites and synapses (all the tiny functioning parts of our brain which are lovely words I learned in my education classes) – we can learn a great deal of why we feel like we do.

The Engine driving the train is labeled Facts. The Caboose at the end is Feelings. So what are the facts you think about? If you listen to what other people and our culture teaches they may be something like this:

I’m not good enough

Not pretty enough

Not smart enough

No one really loves me

God loves everyone else more than me

If anybody really knew who I am they wouldn’t like me

My life is hopeless

I’m a failure

I’m going crazy

I’ve been forgotten

I’m not enough. Period.

And if we always believe for a fact that we’re never enough of anything, where do our feelings and emotions lead us? I don’t know about you, but my path becomes dark and lonely, I become easily offended by others and eventually, hopeless. Or I work hard at proving to others and myself that I am enough, that I am worthwhile. Either way, we become as a wave tossed by the ocean, no anchor, no stability, floating along on the bleak sea of others’ opinions of us.

If our feelings drive our train we’ll start trusting our emotions to rule our life and in time we’ll crash and burn. If we allow the engine containing facts of what other people think about us become the driving force of our life, we will quickly sink into despair.

But if we let that Engine of Facts be filled with the Truth about what Jesus says about us, we will become a different human being. Here’s just a few of the things Jesus says about you:

I am God’s child.

I have been bought with a price – I belong to God.

I have been adopted as God’s child.

I am free from condemnation.

I have not been given a spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind.

I can find grace and mercy in my time of need.

I am confident that the good work God has begun in me will be perfected.

I cannot be separated from the love of God.

If these Facts become secure in our Engine of Life our caboose of Feelings will become hopeful, joyful, peaceful and loving. Our emotions will become sheltered, safe, stable, anchored by hope, constant and steady.

There is no human being in the universe who can be our rock. People will always disappoint us, our husband, our children, our friends. Humans are simply imperfect created beings unable to fulfill our every need, and they were not made to fulfill our needs. No one can live up to your expectations, and the inverse is also true – you are not able to live up to anyone else’s expectations. Only our Creator – who has proven His love for us and spoken about it repeatedly in the Book of Life – is able to be our Rock, our Redeemer and Rescuer.

We can either let emotions pull our lives as an engine pulls the train, relying on our fickle feelings from hour to hour

-or-

We can let the Facts of God be our engine and our emotions to follow behind where they belong.

Let me add one Major Detail: If you rely only on your own willpower or strength to change your thoughts, you will fail. But don’t give up – Look up! Changing your thought life doesn’t come without a battle. In other words, there will be a battle in store for you if you truly desire to replace the lies you believe with God’s Truth. But because Jesus has offered His Spirit to live inside you for the asking, it is a war that can be won. Christianity has never been about behavior modification – it’s always about transformation from the inside out.

Love, Mom

Love & War

June 29, 2021 / Shari Baar / 2 Comments

Dear Daughters,

I had never noticed that the Bible begins with a marriage and ends with a marriage. In their book Love and War, John and Stasi Eldredge point out that the epic story of human history, spanning thousands of years, begins in Genesis with a garden and a couple. As God unfolds the beautiful, frightening, mysterious story of His love, there is not some lone hero standing against the world, but a man and a woman – a marriage.

In the book of Revelation, the end of the world as we know it – after a very long battle – there is finally a feast, a wedding feast. The wedding here is between Jesus Christ and his bride, the church.

In a sense, marriage is the Kingdom of God. It is meant to bring glory to God because God is love and where there is love, there is God. (Mother Teresa) When we love each other in our marriages, forgive when there are offenses (and there will be offenses every day), sacrifice for one another, never give up hope, always persevere in the difficult times of life, we are modeling what the love of God is all about.

The bottom line story of the Bible is Love. God loves us and He wants us to love one another. Sounds simple, but as we both know, it’s not. Why? Because this beautiful love story is placed in the middle of a dreadful war.

Think of all the fairy tales you love. One of my favorites is The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Anderson, later made into a Disney movie. If you remember, that love story is placed in the midst of a war as well. Ursula, the sea witch, was doing everything she could to keep Ariel and the Prince from marrying, making a mockery of love. In the end, the Prince and Ariel did marry but not without a battle of heroic proportions.

Think of the famous girls and boys in other adventure stories you have read: Shasta and Aravis in The Horse and His Boy, being driven together by Aslan the Lion. Hansel and Gretel holding hands together for safety in the dark woods, Beauty and the Beast learning to love so they can both be free. People all over the world love those stories. Why? Because we want to live stories like that as well.

The honeymoon of Adam and Eve barely started when the serpent successfully snaked in with a plan to break everyone’s heart. His deceptive lie hissed, You can live without God and because that lie was embraced, there was broken fellowship between the humans and God. It was the beginning of distrust, blaming, shaming, and betrayal. Satan’s plan has not changed one iota since; he comes only to kill, steal and divide.

But in this, the world’s darkest moment, love shone through. In spite of chronic unbelief on our part, God pledged to love and pursue us. He did this through the great Prince, Son of the King, Jesus Christ. Christianity is truly the most preeminent love story the world has ever known.

This story is not over, it is still unfolding right now, even as you are reading. The terrible clash between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness continues. At the core of this age-old struggle, there is one overarching question that is being raised: Can a kingdom of love prevail? God vows that Love never fails, (1 Corinthians 13:8) but the world laughs and the devil laughs. Sometimes we laugh too. It sounds so naïve. Love seems so weak when compared to all the evil around us.

Your marriage is set in the midst of this story, the age-old beautiful story of God pursuing His people; it is a story of redemption, a story of love. But that story is opposed, because we have an enemy who desires to see our marriages and families divided. His goal is to bring bitterness and strife.

It seems that if we as married couples can’t find a great battle to fight together we’ll start one with each other. For years I saw Dad as the enemy of our marriage. He wouldn’t agree with me on how to raise you girls, on which movies to watch, how to discipline, decisions on spending money….and on and on. So I fought with him, fighting for my opinion to win, my view to be the right view. Not surprisingly, this did not improve our marriage.

Then God finally opened my eyes to see the spiritual battle that was going on, a battle that could only be fought effectively with prayer and love. You know the verse, Love your enemies, pray for those who hurt you…? Well, when I finally started doing what this verse says, a ray of hope sprang up in my heart. I started trusting God to do His work, instead of me trying to change things. And that is precisely when things started to change.

Oh, how I lament the years that I tried to do things in my own power, but God is so gracious. He patiently waits for each of us to come to the point of giving up on ourselves and giving in to Him. He never coerces, never pressures, but simply pursues and encourages us through his Spirit.

We are prone to wander, forget, and go back to old patterns, but for that too God is patient, forgiving and filled with grace, always urging us to get up and try again.

God loves you as you are, not as you should be. (Brennan Manning)

Love, Mom

Exploring My Strange Bible

June 8, 2021 / Shari Baar / 2 Comments

Dear Daughters,

Have you ever tried to read the Bible and got bored with it? Has the Bible seemed like a randomly collected book of stories and facts, a few wise sayings mixed in with some really strange prophecies? Yeah, I have too. Many of us believe that the Bible is either a divine instruction manual dropped from heaven or just a few inspirational quotes mixed in with some strange and disturbing stories. Some of us think it’s just an old book that has no relevance for people today. I used to read just the parts I liked and ignore the sections that were puzzling or offensive. But all that changed when I was introduced to the Bible Project.

Tim Mackie, one of the founders, calls himself a card-carrying Bible nerd and wants others to also be amazed at how brilliant and wise the Bible actually is. From page one in Genesis to the last word in Revelation, the Bible is a cohesive, unified story all pointing to Jesus. Tim’s early podcast, Exploring My Strange Bible, speaks out loud what many of us have actually thought: the Bible is too hard for me to understand, I’ll just leave it to the experts.

Back in 2014 Tim and Jon made two short 5-minute videos summarizing a few books of the Bible and posted them online for free. Jon’s passion for visual storytelling combined with Tim’s PhD in Biblical and Hebrew studies made accessible many seemingly confusing parts of the Bible. I’m quite certain I have watched at least 100 of their short videos, and every one I watch expands my appreciation and love for this book.

I had no idea that certain themes introduced on the first page of the Bible – such as the tree of life, the talking snake in the garden, the change from chaos to order – are coherent, beautiful and trustworthy themes, each one beautifully developed throughout all 1,000+ pages of the Bible.

The 40-some authors of the Bible, writing over a period of 1,500 years, must have been guided by God’s Holy Spirit. There’s no other way this book could consistently weave the same theme throughout. The writers, ranging from kings to herdsmen, were carried along in crafting their words, yet each writer has a specific personal style. As this picture suggests, it’s hard to see where God and man’s words stop or start, they simply worked together as a partnership. There’s no other book like it in the entire world.

I remember thinking in the past, If I were God, I would have whitewashed some of those stories, cleaned them up and tied them up with a neat pretty bow. But God is not interested in cover-ups and lies. He wants us to know that He can turn any chaotic and seemingly hopeless situation into good. He is the Champion God of great reversals in our lives, restoring and redeeming what has fallen into chaos. Anyone who is willing to let Him do His good work in them is invited to ask. God is a gentleman and will not force His way into anyone’s life, but He’s always at the door waiting to be let in.

Love, Mom

Stumbling Blocks or Stepping Stones?

May 26, 2021 / Shari Baar / 4 Comments

The only difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones

is how you use them. ~ Unknown

Dear Daughters,

Disruptions.

It’s a word no one likes, but it’s a reality of life. You know how you sometimes have a day planned, a picnic scheduled, a vacation intended, a wonderful life you imagined, a marriage you had hoped for? And then something comes up to change your plans. Sometimes it’s a physical or mental ailment, other times it’s rainy when you want sun, a car accident occurs, postponed flights annoy, a microscopic virus disrupts life, and then there’s always those people who make life difficult.

When Dad and I married 45 years ago I had my long-range plan in place – to live a peaceful yet challenging life on a dairy in Idaho. As you know, only four years later my nostalgic plans were disrupted when Dad and I answered the call for him to become a pastor. Moving cross-country to Michigan was not how I expected my life to unfold.

Living in four different states and 12 different cities, disruptions have become a way of life for us. They have not become any easier, but we have grown accustomed to making new friends – again and again.

We are often offended by disruptions. Schedules and busyness can become addictive, making us feel like we are in control of our life. We bring the kids to soccer practice, make sure there are clean clothes for tomorrow so we don’t have to dig some out of the hamper, try to have something edible on the table for dinner, get the homework done, try to have a little quality time with our husband….and the list goes on.

If you remember Bilbo Baggins the Hobbit, he was a person whose life was completely disrupted without his permission. He was called on a journey he wasn’t prepared for, didn’t sign up for, never remotely volunteered for, and really was not at all interested. But Gandalf came, brought him some friends and comrades and off they went into unknown, uncharted territory. In the end, Bilbo grew up. He did things he never thought himself able to do. He became courageous, brave, bold, daring and creative.

Or think of Dorothy. She too was taken on an adventure unexpectedly because of the tornado. She had not chosen to be carried in her dream to the land of Oz, but once there she made friends with Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Man. On the journey with them she learned compassion, bravery, and how to become a warrior.

When God disrupts our lives with whatever circumstances he chooses to use, we are not typically grateful. We would prefer to order our own lives, follow our five, maybe ten-year plan for our life. We like to be comfortable, doing things that make us happy. However, God wants us to learn to love others as we love ourselves.

I was surprised 20 years ago when I read Victory over the Darkness by Neil Anderson and learned that God’s basic goal for my life is character development: being and becoming the person God wants me to be. Really? That’s it? It sounded too simplistic. I thought it was doing all the right stuff, being a fairly good wife and mother, teaching all my students to sing and play the piano.

Yes, those things are important, but the bottom line is that God wants you to become more loving, patient, joyful, peaceful, faithful and kind. Nobody on earth can keep you from becoming that kind of person. And that’s precisely why there are distractions, disappointments, trials and disruptions in our lives.

We often interpret the hardships in our lives as, Why is God mad at me? Perhaps we need to see them as,

God loves me enough to mature me.

Helen Keller, the woman who was both blind and deaf, wrote:

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet.

Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened,

vision-cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved.

So, we have a choice. We can choose to see our tribulations as stumbling blocks, get angry about them, whine and complain about them. Or we can accept disruptions as stepping stones and embrace the changes and challenges that come into our lives, knowing Jesus will use these incidents to grow us up.

I don’t know of any parent who wants to keep their children in diapers. We want our own children to mature, and God our Heavenly Father wants maturity for us as well.

For each person, the specific story of circumstances will be different, but the Larger Story is always the same:

The goal of our instruction is love. (I Timothy 1:5)

Our disruptions can be seen either as stumbling blocks or stepping stones, the choice is ours.

Love, Mom

The Chosen

May 18, 2021 / Shari Baar / 2 Comments

Dear Daughters,

Several years ago a friend of mine posted a new TV series called The Chosen. Again and again I would see his posts, commenting on how much he enjoyed it and encouraging others to watch. I remember thinking to myself, I’ve seen several Jesus/Bible movies and have never been impressed with them. Most of the characters looked like Americans, Jesus was always white and handsome, the plot lines seemed anemic and the dialogue stilted. The Jesus in the movies never seemed real to me; he seemed other-worldly, not at all connected to his humanity.

So I never looked into it – until a month ago. Recently, because another friend of mine was so enthusiastic about how she loved the series and had watched some episodes several times, I finally decided to give Season 1, Episode 1 a try. It was titled

I Have Called You By Name.

Completely different from any movie I’ve ever seen about Jesus, it opens with Mary Magdalene as a little girl, then as an adult wrestling with her demons. It shows the every-day oppression of living under the Roman occupation, the hierarchy of the Jewish religious system, and the day to day grind of being a fisherman.

As with any good movie, I had a lot of questions and wonderings about different scenes so of course I had to watch it again. But the most amazing thing for me is the character of Jesus and how his humanity is portrayed – how he loves people in the red quarter, how he carves toys for the little children, how he celebrates with joy and dancing at the wedding feast of his friends. The honesty and vulnerability of Jesus is refreshing. He is not intimidated by the religious folk, the poor, the cynical or the Romans.

On the other hand, the disciples are depicted as the self-centered, hard-to-get-along-with people they were. Seeing the backstories of the characters helped me to see them as actual human beings who were deeply flawed, argumentative and obviously misunderstanding the entire mission of Jesus. The apparent animosity between Peter the fisherman and Matthew who ruthlessly collected his taxes, was shown for what it was. And yet, Jesus called them both to follow Him. There were spats among the disciples – who was the greatest of them and arguments about how the whole traveling troupe should be managed. There were biases toward classes of people and speculation about ideologies, mistrust of each other and definite opinions about life in general. Peter, the guy who seemed the most opinionated of all, constantly gave Jesus helpful hints about how the ministry should be run.

I had never thought about Jesus continually traveling, setting up camp each night, preparing food, walking miles of dusty roads and constantly facing multitudes of people seeking healing, facing intense criticism from the religious folk and being entirely misinterpreted day after day by everyone around Him.

The official statement about the series:

The Chosen is based on the true stories of the gospels of Jesus Christ. Some locations and timelines have been combined or condensed. Backstories and some characters and dialogue have been added. However, all Biblical and Historical context and any artistic imagination are designed to support the truth and intention of the Scriptures. The original names, locations and phrases have been transliterated into English for anything spoken.

The Chosen gets two thumbs up from me, and a huge thank you to my persistent friends for challenging me to watch the show.

Love, Mom

Sometimes We Fall Apart

May 10, 2021 / Shari Baar / 0 Comments

Dear Daughters,

This morning I finished the last page of my planner, my oh-so-valuable Things To Do notebook. I typically use one each year, glance through it when it’s full, then throw it away. You probably have something similar – the daily lists and reminders, temporary information that’s important for a time, and then it’s not.

As I was scanning through my notebook, I came upon the schedules for giving Lorazepam and Morphine to Grandpa, the timing for his breathing treatments, the list of Hospice workers, names of the amazing people who came in for the night shift and short statements about his general condition. Suddenly my mind and emotions were swept back to those last few weeks of Grandpa’s life.

It’s been almost a year since he passed and six months since we’ve moved back to Michigan, but immediately and unexpectedly today I relived all the grief and heartache of walking toward the horizon of the end of his life on this earth. It was a sacred time a year ago, yet perplexing in how to give him comfort as well as those who gathered around to help. I was reminded anew about how important it is for us to have a community of support, to give encouragement and do what we cannot do. I’m reminded of the saying

It takes a village to raise a child,

but I think I can complement it by saying

It takes a village to escort a life to the end.

I know my statement doesn’t have quite the ring as the original, but it’s the best I can come up with – plus it’s true.

I used to feel young compared to Grandpa and Grandma (I looked quite spry in comparison) but now that I am around all of you, my daughters and your beautiful families, I don’t quite feel that way anymore and I continually marvel at all your energy and youth. But it’s ok, God has given each of us a time to begin life on this earth, a time to carry on and a time to leave.

I also came upon a beautiful song today, capturing all the emotions I was feeling. So I listened and wept over all the memories – the hard, the beautitful, and a combination of all the others. The chorus verbalized everything I was feeling:

It’s okay to cry
It’s okay to fall apart
You don’t have to try
To be strong when you are not
And it may take sometime to make sense of all your thoughts
But don’t ever fight your tears
‘Cause there is freedom in every drop
Sometimes the only way to heal a broken heart is when we fall apart

It’s okay to cry, fall apart, and be weak. In fact, maybe that’s how we can live life to the fullest. Freedom comes in our honesty to admit we hurt, to admit we miss those who have gone, and admit we need help. After all, it takes a village…

Love, Mom

The Beautiful Exception

April 29, 2021 / Shari Baar / 2 Comments

Dear Daughters,

Did you know you can choose to be unoffendable? Being offended is what comes natural, it’s our human default setting. If someone makes us mad, or maybe just disagrees with us, our first impulse is to be offended.

When I first heard of Brant Hansen’s book Unoffendable, I was offended. I always thought it was good and healthy to be angry at some things – like sex trafficking, child pornography and civil rights abuses. Sure, I know Jesus taught us to love others, forgive people who hurt us, be patient with those who irritate us. But really, is that what he meant for every day? Every time someone cuts me off in traffic, anyone who doesn’t agree with my political or religious views, or people who are simply mean? Aren’t we supposed to be angry with those who sin, who don’t live like we live?

Today’s cancel culture teaches us – If you aren’t like me, if you disagree with me – I will cancel you out of my life and never speak to you again.

When I study the life of Jesus, I am amazed. He never cancelled anyone. Nor was He ever shocked or surprised at human behavior. He knew that we are all basically selfish, He knew the fallen human heart was just that – fallen. So maybe, just maybe we would do well to live the same way. We all know what’s in our own heart so we can imagine every other person struggles with the same exact stuff. Different details, different day, different location, different people, but basically, we all skirmish with the same emotions as every other human on the planet.

Because I battle bitterness toward people who have hurt me, I imagine others do as well. I struggle with forgiveness, so I know others also struggle when I hurt them. When we can accept it as a fact – that people are self-centered, untrustworthy, unfaithful and prone to selfishness – we don’t need to be shocked any longer and can learn to adjust our expectations accordingly.

Now this may sound quite pessimistic and like Debby Downer talking. But we need not any longer be surprised at human behavior. If we simply remember that people will react in ways we don’t like, we can plan for it and choose a better way. We can replace the shock and anger with gratitude.

Yes, the world is broken, but don’t be offended by it. Instead, thank God that He’s intervened in it, and He’s going to restore it to everything it was meant to be. Yes, the world is broken, and selfish is our default setting. Brant Hansen

It takes the miracle of a new heart to become unoffended. We see anger in the grocery store and at the bank, rage on the roads and annoyance at home. Offense seems to be the fashion, outrage the popular trend. But to be perpetually shocked and offended at others is exhausting. Brant suggests that we might start living with realistic expectations and choose to be the exception – to be those who are not offended.

So, what if we started being the exception? The Beautiful Exception.

Imagine the results of speaking kindness after being insulted.

Imagine the beauty when we pray prayers of intercession for our enemies instead of words of accusation.

Imagine the reaction if we searched and spoke of the good people do instead of highlighting the evil.

Imagine trusting God to take care of the people who have hurt us, to let Him do the work and mete out the justice we are incapable of giving.

Imagine someone cuts you off in traffic and you choose to replace that shock and horror with gratitude, to forgive them and actually pray for them.

And then when a person generously lets you merge – give thanks.

Imagine when your UPS driver drops off a package, you open the door and shout out thank you! (something Dad is really good at)

Imagine your life becoming less stressful because you give up your right to anger and offense.

We need to remember, always remember when Jesus was reviled, spit upon and mocked, he never came back with similar words, but instead as he was hanging from the cross, prayed for his enemies, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” And if Jesus lives in us, we have the power to forgive, to give thanks during difficult times and trust our Father to do what we cannot.

Way back in the beginning we were created as images of God, so we can rule as He ruled, with a servant heart and hands of peace.

We draw people to Christ by not loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely, that they want to know with all their hearts the source of it. Madeleine L’Engle

And as Brant Hansen sums it up:

When we recognize our unsurprising fallenness and keep our eyes joyfully open for the glorious exceptions, we’re much less offendable. Why?

Because that’s the thing about gratitude and anger: they can’t coexist. It’s one or the other.

One drains the very life from you. The other fills your life with wonder.

Choose wisely.

Let’s be the Beautiful Exception.

Love, Mom

Branches and Trees

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Vultures and Hummingbirds

The God Box

Nightbirde

The Engine and the Caboose

Love & War

Exploring My Strange Bible

Stumbling Blocks or Stepping Stones?

The Chosen

Sometimes We Fall Apart

The Beautiful Exception

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