Eat, Baby, Eat!

 It’s a challenge for parents to get their kids to eat properly. From the time Baby is given his first spoonful of solids and he spews it down his chin, a mom and dad invest a lot of time and energy trying to get good foods down their child’s gullet.

As young parents, we are unsure of ourselves in our new role, and especially with a strong-willed child, it can be difficult to persist with healthy choices. We may also have to deal with well-intentioned but contrary philosophies within the extended family, which can further shake our confidence. Recently I was at a dinner party where a young mom was trying to feed a child of around 18 months. The child’s great aunt was present, a woman who had never married or had children of her own, and she stiffly stated her opinion: “I don’t see why children should have to eat something they don’t want. We get to eat what we like.”

I kept my opinion to myself. But God has put parents in charge for good reason: a child does not know what’s good for him and, left to his own choices, he would choose the tastes that easily pique his palette. Sugary treats are a good example. Nobody has to be taught to like sweets. I well recall our little Melissa as a one-year-old getting her first taste of ice cream. She just about went crazy with excitement, so eager for the next bite. And this is such great fun for a parent, it makes it easy to indulge that precious little appetite.

But sugar is nutritionally void, and as the body digests it, it must rob nutrients from elsewhere in its stores to accomplish the task. Essentially, sugar, along with other junk foods, creates a nutritional deficit, and if we are not choosing lots of other vitamin- and mineral-rich food, we will find our kids—and ourselves—down the road in a very unhealthy state.

Even worse than refined white sugar is high-fructose corn syrup, which is now the sweetener of choice for most manufacturers. Bad for our kids and bad for us. Whether it’s your favourite frappa-cappa-jappa, as my husband calls those designer coffee beverages, or baked goods or soda pop or ice cream, most people unwittingly consume HFCS on a daily basis. There are a lot of health problems burgeoning from this major shift, which began in the 1970s, but one of the most sinister is how HFCS impacts a couple of hormones, leptin and ghrelin. Leptin is the “satiety” hormone; it tells your body when it’s had enough to eat. HFCS shuts it down. Ghrelin, on the contrary, is the “hunger” hormone; it tells you when you need to eat. HFCS turns it up. Did someone say obesity epidemic?

Something else: I was quite alarmed, just a few days ago, when I read that HFCS and all its effects are passed along to a nursing baby through breast milk. And of course, it is used in many infant formulas as well.  Scary! So from the get-go, many of our little ones are becoming victims of hormonally confused appetites. And while their tastes for unnatural foods are getting primed, their interest in real food remains undeveloped. It is not uncommon for people young or old to be hesitant to try different foods. New tastes have to be acquired, and it takes time, especially for a child.

Many young parents today have grown up without learning much about food and nutrition. I remember a few years ago, a friend of one of our kids, a gal in her mid-twenties, was sitting on a kitchen stool watching me prepare dinner. “Where did you learn to cook?” she asked, rather wistfully. She went on to explain that her mom, left alone to raise two children, had had to work long hours to raise her little family, and supper every night came from a box that went straight from the freezer to the microwave. 

But even when a mom or dad really knows her or his way around the kitchen,  there is a deeper issue that needs to be addressed. You can know everything about good nutrition, but if your child won’t eat what you put in front of him, it’s no help at all.

Here’s our story: When Ben was three years old, our first garden came to fruition. We still talk about that night at supper when I placed in front of Ben a plate with, besides the usual meat and potatoes, some lovely fresh chard and beets. Ben turned up his nose at the vegetables and refused to eat them.

I cautioned Greg that the health unit, at my recent visit, had addressed this very problem, and this was their solution: put a small portion of “whatever the rest of the family is eating” on the side of the plate, “in case he wants to try it,” along with “a peanut butter sandwich or whatever else your child wants.” 

Greg looked at me hard for a moment and then said, “I don’t know about that; I think I’m going to treat it as a discipline problem,” and so saying he marched Ben off to the bedroom and paddled his bottom. I only went along with Greg’s “unscientific” methods initially because I whole-heartedly embraced God’s directive of a wife following her husband’s lead. (This principle of submission may be a cause of offence for some, but I will have to leave that for another time.)

My husband and son returned to the table, and Ben promptly finished his entire meal. He never again questioned eating what was on his plate. As the other three kids came along, they simply followed suit: they saw their older brother eating it (whatever “it” was), so they did too.

I'm certainly not advocating spanking babies like the ones in these pictures (our granddaughter Symphony; a great-nephew, Hayden; and a friend's little boy, Tayen). But some may strongly object to spanking a child of any age to make him eat his food. However, this is what God’s Word says: “Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him” (Proverbs 22:15, KJV). Or as the New Living Translation has it, “A youngster’s heart is filled with foolishness, but physical discipline will drive it far away.” “Chasten (discipline) thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying” (Proverbs 19:18, KJV). In other words, don’t let your emotions give in to his tantrums or his obstinance.

If you simply don’t agree with spanking, there is a good alternative, but it requires the same degree of firmness and determination on the part of the parent. At mealtime, serve him up a reasonable portion of everything you have prepared. He must stay in his chair until he’s done. If he insists on leaving, the meal is over. Save everything he didn’t eat in case he gets hungry before the next meal. 

Absolutely nothing else, except water. Snacks between meals are a privilege for the kid who cleans up his plate the first time around, at the table.

But I will warn you: it’s going to take a lot more time and energy to enforce this while the child learns that you mean business. A firm spanking, calmly administered, one that really smarts for a few minutes, will quickly convince your child that you are the one in charge and that you really do mean what you say.

If we don’t put our foot down about our children eating what’s put in front of them, they may well remain picky eaters all their lives. Greg and I are not above challenging young adults who are guests at our dinner table. I remember a young man eating with us, another friend of our kids, and when I offered him the appetizer, a delightful creamy beet soup that I make, he said, blowing off soup and grammar all in one short sentence, “Me and beets don’t get along.” Well, Greg told him the story of Ben and the beets and chard. The young man then deigned to accept a small serving of the soup. He tasted it cautiously, ate it all up, and then asked for more. Never too late for a firm hand on fussy eaters!
                 

This is the loop parents get stuck in: The child refuses to eat a proper meal. The parent worries that the child must have something in his belly and reverts again to junk food so that the child will not “go hungry.” So the belly gets filled—somewhat; the edge is taken off the appetite; and the child is confirmed in his narrow, willful choices and moves toward a state of malnutrition.

We carry quite a responsibility as parents. Our child is completely under our control—or should be!—regarding what he puts in his body, at least for the first several years; and this is when life-long food habits are established. It is our soul—our mind, our will, and our emotions—that determines what foods our child is offered. This is where we must not let our “soul spare for his crying.” We must choose well for him or her. Think in terms of 25% meat, 25% complex carbs—like brown rice or whole-grain pasta, and 50% vegetables. This is a good rule of thumb for adults as well.

We would never dream of putting any other fuel in our car or truck than what it is designed to use, even if we drive an old clunker. And we certainly fill the tank when we should so that we don’t run out of gas. Surely our bodies deserve at least as much respect as that, considering they are the vehicle that God has given us to move around in—and in which, amazingly, He chooses to ride around with us. “What?” says His Word, “don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?” (1 Corinthians 6:19).

As Christians, we must continually allow the Spirit of God to work through our own spirit and to rule over our soul—concerning what we eat and what we teach our children to eat. Nutrition is not magic: it doesn’t happen just because we put something in our mouths. Our bodies absolutely need certain nutrients, and if they are not present in the food we serve ourselves and our families, then everyone’s health is going to suffer.

I’m Nothin’ Till Somethin’ Loves Me

When I was a teenager, my sister Polly, a year and a half older than I, made this philosophical statement: “Everyone is basically insecure.” I accepted it as fact; never questioned it. The wisdom of her age was worthy of my respect.

I still think her observation is true, except now I might qualify it by saying “almost” at the beginning of the sentence. I have to allow for exceptions, because my husband is very secure, and he says he has always been that way. “It’s because,” he explains, “I always knew I was loved.” Throughout his childhood, he felt free at any time to go and hug his mom and bury his face in her ample waistline, no matter what she was busy with.

Something else that happened when I was a teenager: a girlfriend gave me a gift on my birthday, a figurine, a woebegone little fellow with a soft shock of synthetic, black hair. He held a sign that read, “I’m Nothin’ Till Somethin’ Loves Me.” I always liked that little guy, and I kept him for a long time.

When I was 24, God revealed His great love to me and my life was forever changed. His love made the difference. Now when I looked at that little guy, I thought of the love of God. I had begun to study the Bible faithfully, the King James Version, and one day I came across Romans 5:8: “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” If that little guy was asking a question, here was the answer.                   

I spent some time musing on this subject in an unpublished manuscript called Marriage by Faith:

We all have a need to know we are loved…. We all need to be in relationship with others, whether in marriage, in meaningful friendships, or in community. And yet I believe that, for most of us, the default setting with which we were born tells us subliminally that we are unlovable and alone.

Unlovable and alone.

I believe this is a reflection of what came down to us through Adam from the Fall. No matter what our belief system or lack thereof, there is an overshadowing uneasiness, a feeling of unworthiness, a deep loneliness, a sense of abandonment, a fear of never quite measuring up.

It’s not that God has left us alone: remember, He came after Adam and Eve, calling to them, “Where are you?” But the separation caused by Adam’s choice to act independently of God left a genetic stamp of isolation on all of us.

This is what is so vital about the mystery of Christ dying on the Cross. In this unfathomable provision, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19). Ever since, reconciliation has been an established fact for the whole world; it only remains for each of us to understand that and accept it. Until we do, this deep sense of isolation pervades and prevails. It is a measure of our true state.

When we are reconciled, individually, to God, we find tremendous relief from that loneliness, and we know without a doubt that we are deeply loved. But as we grow in God, we find that we don’t stay in that easy place of security; rather, that God is continually at work, stripping off layer after layer of wounding and demonic lies and accusations, to render us able to truly enter in to the security of His love.

Speculating on the thoughts above, I was intrigued to come across a quote of C.S. Lewis that addresses the same thing:

“Apparently, then, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honour beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache” (The Weight of Glory).

I’ve been reading a book called More by Todd Wilson. He tells the story of a beautiful golden retriever they had. Initially obedient and compliant, she began to chew up carpets and furniture while they were away at work. When they finally went to a vet for help,

The veterinarian quickly diagnosed the problem. Separation anxiety. … (A)lone and isolated… (h)er loneliness overflowed into bad behavior.… (D)eep longings to be returned to her master … produced unhealthy behaviors.

He then draws a parallel between that dog and us.

We are all born with a form of separation anxiety. The quiet, persistent, often unrecognized gnawing of the pain of separation from our heavenly Father produces equally unhealthy behaviors in each of us” (Page 34).

“I’m nothin’ till somethin’ loves me,” said the little guy with the sad face. Twenty-five years after he was given to me, I had a friend make me a plaque with a platform for him to stand on. Because his message now seemed incomplete without the quote from Romans, I had her inscribe it above his head: “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” I loved the message it proclaimed: our problem and the solution.

   

But one year when we were between homes, a shed in which we were storing our belongings was broken into and a lot of things went missing, including that dear little guy. The plaque was still there, however. For years I kept my eyes open for a figurine that could replace him. 

Then one day in a dollar store, I saw a statuette of a little girl that fit the bill. For a toonie, she was mine. I made her a new sign and set her up on the plaque, on the wall in our main floor bathroom, where visitors could contemplate her and her message in private.

But the glue I used to fix her in place was weak. The day came when Greg bumped the little girl and she broke loose, fell, and hit the ceramic floor, knocking a large hole in her skirt. Some days later, I painstakingly glued the pieces back, one by one, into her dress. But some of the bits had gone missing; even once I had replaced every piece Greg had salvaged, there was still a hole left. The sign she holds covers it nicely, though, and I think the evidence of “the fall” is fittingly symbolic. We have all been hurt and damaged. However, once we have found the love of God, the scars are no longer signs of brokenness but, rather, proof of our healing.                         

Tired Momma

I had a text from a young mom a few days ago, asking me about some health issues. We agreed to meet in town the next day for a face-to-face. Her chief complaint was what she called mood swings, suddenly flying off the handle with her kids. We talked about thyroid and candida, my two pet peeves, and I found myself zeroing in on the latter. I had her fill out a questionnaire, the results of which certainly seemed to indicate that she has a problem with overgrowth of this opportunistic yeast/fungus; so we talked about a strategy to begin to tackle this issue.

But underneath it all seemed to lie a more foundational problem: this poor mother was terribly sleep-deprived. Her youngest child is just seven months old. He has got into a routine where he naps off and on, all day long; then at 1:00 a.m., he wakes up to be taken into his parents’ bed to nurse. After that he’s wide awake for the next four hours—and so are the parents.

I hesitated to express any opinions or advice, as I am trying to learn to not answer questions that I haven’t even been asked. But I certainly went home thinking about it. I recollected the time when Ben, my first baby, was seven months old and Greg and I drove out to my parents’ place in B.C. to celebrate Christmas with them. Ben and I were still on the schedule we’d been on ever since he was born: awake at 1:00 a.m. to nurse, fuss, burp, and sooth, to finally settle him once more shortly before he awoke again at 4:00 a.m. to start the process all over again. My father, a doctor, was concerned about how little sleep I was getting, and he talked to my husband about it. Greg didn’t say anything to me until after we had returned to Wetaskiwin.

“I didn’t say this to Nancy,” Dad had apparently told Greg, “because I don’t think she would hear it from me, but I tell all my moms by this age to make their babies sleep through the night.”

Greg thought we should try it. I was dubious, but I was also, as “a good Christian wife,” of the conviction that I should follow my husband’s lead, and that God would see to it that Greg was given the necessary wisdom if I honoured God’s chain of authority.

The plan was that when Ben woke in the night, we would let him cry himself back to sleep. It was kind of brutal, that first night. Mother-instinct had me yearning to comfort my unhappy baby. But I stuck to the plan, with my husband’s sleepy encouragement. The crying went on and on—for an hour. And then suddenly, all was amazingly quiet. He didn’t wake up again that night.

The second night was almost as bad; Baby cried nearly as long. And then the third night, he slept through. We never looked back. As our other children came along, we were much firmer in our direction with things like this. We saw that I could do a much better job of mothering all day long if I didn’t mother all night as well. I don’t recall exactly when we began to give Baby Lindsay the “opportunity” to learn to sleep through the night; probably at around six months. Melissa began to sleep through the night of her own volition when she was only ten days old! Rachel was more typical, like Ben and Lindsay, but she had to fall into line here too, even though in every other way she was not a fall-in-line kind of girl.

As I pondered the young mom I had just been talking to, I wondered if my experience and advice would be helpful to her or if my methods would be considered out of date. That would be a pity though. One hates to see every generation trying to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. Wisdom, gleaned from God’s truths, has no expiry date. There is no new thing under the sun. God says the older women are to teach the younger, among other things, how to love their children.

I sent a text to my daughter-in-law Margaret. “Hey, what would you suggest to the mother of a seven-month-old, who’s not getting any sleep because Baby naps off and on all day and then comes to bed to nurse in the middle of the night and then is wide awake and keeps them awake for four hours at a stretch?”

She answered: “Brian started doing this when he was a baby, so I kept him up as long as I could during the day, even when he was grumpy and tired. I shortened his naps during the day as well. When it was bedtime I fed him a lot! And he slept longer; then he also would wake up once a night and go right back to sleep.”

Then I consulted with Google as well, searching “self-soothing techniques baby.” I gleaned here that between four and six months of age is a good time to begin allowing Baby to learn this important skill. If he is eating some solids by this point, it will help carry him through the night. I know this was the case with Baby Ben.

Some schools of thought are dead-set against any kind of self-soothing. “My baby needs me. He will be more secure, more confident that we will always be there for him, if we pick him up every time he cries.” The mother has needs, too, that are fulfilled in the short term by this philosophy. She feels powerfully affirmed as a mother when her baby needs her and when she can and does meet that need. But if she is up all night trying to assuage the immediate whims of her baby, what is the trade-off, the price to be paid during the day, when she is so exhausted that she flips into a rage with the baby and the other children, or slides into a depression, just because life becomes so overwhelming?

Also, if she gives in and caters to every whimper, assuring him subliminally that she will always be there for him, she is teaching him other things that don’t work well in the years to come. This is what he is learning: “The world revolves around me. Every need I have should be fulfilled, right now. Mom and Dad will always make sure that life is not too hard for me.” (Some of us spend most of our lives trying to unlearn these things.)

Most parents would be quick to agree that they don’t want their child entering adulthood still swaddled in this kind of immaturity; the question is, when should the harsh truth be allowed to come upon them? Well, it begins when Baby is expelled from the womb, and from there the journey of independence begins, however slowly.

Baby must learn, along with the rest of us: The world does not revolve around me. Not every need I have is going to be met when I think it should. Life is hard, and nobody can shield me from that raw fact.

It will be up to the individual parents to decide as a couple what their philosophy is, but perhaps it helps to realize that no matter when you begin this separation process, it’s going to be painful, to the child, and to the parents—most especially to the mother. Her emotions will shape her philosophy as long as she allows them to do so.

It helps tremendously for her to learn to look to her husband for guidance here, to offer him the respect of taking to heart what he says, and to pray for him—and believe—that God will impart the wisdom he needs. By all means, she should pray for wisdom for herself as well, but there is another dynamic, a force to be reckoned with, when she learns to fit herself into God’s design in the wife-husband relationship.

Spiritual Interference

It’d been a week of continual spiritual battle. Things going wrong; discouragement and anxiety threatening at every turn (after telling at least two people in the past month that I simply do not suffer from anxiety anymore); and a heightened awareness of the enemy, regarding whom God has said, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8, KJV). And so very early Saturday morning, I sat down in the front room and turned on the lamp, intent and expectant about meeting with God on the matter. I know that the verse above goes on to instruct us, “Withstand him; be firm in faith [against his onset]—rooted, established, strong, immovable and determined” (AMP).

A verse came to mind: “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds” (2 Corinthians 10:4, KJV). Having a good idea of where it was, I flipped through my Amplified Bible until I found the place. Beginning partway through the third verse, I read aloud, changing a few words to turn it into a prayer: “Lord, by your help, I will not act according to the flesh—on the low level of worldly motives and as if invested with only human powers. For though I walk and live in the flesh, in a physical body, I am not carrying on my warfare according to the flesh, the old unredeemed nature, and using mere human weapons.

“For the weapons of my warfare are not physical (weapons of flesh and blood), but they are mighty before God for the overthrow and destruction of strongholds, inasmuch as I refute arguments and theories and reasonings and every proud and lofty thing that sets itself up against the true knowledge of God; and I lead every thought and purpose away captive into the obedience of Christ, the Messiah.”

I found myself in the tangible presence of God through declaring His word, and I continued to sit, reading special bits here and there, praying for various people as they came to mind. I was reminded of the reality of spiritual warfare, that the enemy and his interference are real. I was reminded, too, that God is much greater and actually allows challenges and even attacks to come against us so that we will draw closer to Him and also exercise our spiritual muscles. In less than 24 hours, I was going to need all the muscle my faith could muster.

One of the things I had been working on in recent days was editing a term paper for Melissa. She is in Tokyo for the second-to-last semester of her master’s degree. (The students are encouraged to get professional editing help on these major assignments, so this is not cheating!) I had done a first edit, gone over it with her in a long phone conversation, and then sent the edited version back to her. She still had several parts to revise and complete, pictures to insert, and so on. The paper was due Monday morning, Tokyo time. As we compared schedules to figure out how and when to do the final edit, I realized I would have to do a couple hours of intense work in the middle of the night, very early Sunday morning my time. Then I would need, I thought, about an hour on the phone with Melissa. I am usually up for a few hours in the middle of the night anyway, so it wouldn’t be that much of a stretch.

I went to bed in good time Saturday night and was asleep by 10:00. Three hours later I was awake. I texted Melissa and she responded immediately, saying her work was complete and she would email it right away. By 1:30 I had fixed a snack and was settled at the computer. I went to work, correcting typos, suggesting some better word choices, and rearranging some sentence structures. Focussed and intent, I plowed through the pages and was done about an hour and a quarter later. Popped her a text, asking her to call. She didn’t respond.

I got my bowl of porridge and went and sat in the front room with my Bible. That didn’t last long. I was trying to stay serene, but I was starting to get really tired and frustrated. I tried phoning, then sent another text message. No luck. I messaged her on Messenger and WhatsApp, and I emailed her as well. Nothing. I couldn’t believe this. It was our last chance to do this, and my internal battery had very little charge left.

I felt God telling me to get on my knees and use the time to pray. I flipped open the church Facebook page on my phone and began to pray through the various prayer requests. The social media site was a good tool to keep my tired brain on track. But every few minutes I would find my mind wandering and fretting, wondering why Melissa wasn’t calling. Each time I would hear God clearly say in my heart, “Stop fretting. It’s a waste of energy. Use this time to pray.” Over and over He prompted me to get back on track.

By the time Melissa phoned, it was a few minutes before 4:00, over an hour after I had started texting her, and I was drained. It was difficult to not let my frustration speak. She apologized as she told me she had been at a Sunday evening church service with a friend and gone for a bite to eat afterward. She sounded cheerful and refreshed.

I emailed her the edited copy and waited until she saw it in her inbox. Then the phone went dead. She texted: “I think my WiFi just died.”

“Oh dear!” I replied.

She said she was going to walk to the train station to see if there was WiFi there. Then she added, “Weird that I can still text though.”

Yeah, that was weird.

I prayed against what I perceived to be interference from the enemy. I waited. Five minutes went by; then the phone rang again.

She was seated on the concrete floor of the station, back against a wall, computer in her lap, and phone in hand. She opened the document. But we had been connected less than a minute when suddenly I couldn’t hear her anymore. I called and called her name. The call still appeared to be connected, but for all intents and purposes the phone was dead. Just as I touched the end-call button, I heard the whistle of a train. If only I had waited another second.

I went upstairs and peeked quietly into the bedroom. Greg was awake, his iPad screen lighting up his face. “My call with Melissa has just been cut off for the second time,” I said. “Would you pray with me? I think we need to take authority over the enemy.” I paused. “Before we pray though, I just want to renounce my anger and frustration. I also renounce self-pity. Lord, I lay this all down. Thank you for the privilege of helping my daughter with this. Thank you that I have the opportunity to use the gifts you’ve given me to serve someone else, especially her.”

Greg prayed with me against the powers of darkness; then my phone, still in my hand, rang again. “Hi honey,” I said, waving at Greg and heading back down the stairs.

We were on the phone for two hours. (Thank God for free WiFi calling!) It was shortly after six o’clock when we wrapped up, both very pleased with the results. Now I just had to email back to her the copy with all the changes in it. She would tidy up a few details and then, at school in the morning, print it and turn it in.

I was so fatigued that I was trembling. I had been up—and working intensely—for five hours. My brain was reeling and trying so hard to hang in for just a few more minutes. Because I was so exhausted, I made a point of speaking aloud, to both Melissa and myself, everything I was doing, to keep myself on track. As a result, I know exactly what I did, as I can still hear my words.

“Okay, honey,” I said, “I’m going to save it and close it so I can attach it to an email. Okay, saving, control s,” and I carefully touched the two keys. I opened a new email to Melissa and attached the file. As I always do, I opened the attachment before sending, to make sure it was the right document. The first thing my eyes fell on was the title of the paper, which was the first thing we had had to correct. It was no longer corrected.

“Oh no,” I said quietly. I began to scroll down the pages. All the highlighting was there that I had done between 1:30 and 2:45, all the spots I had wanted to go over with Melissa. But none of our corrections showed. “Dear God, help me,” I murmured.

“What’s happening, Mom?” Melissa asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Just give me a few minutes.” I went into the document’s properties, which showed me its history, when it had been created, accessed, and saved. Yes, 1:30. That was when I first received it from Melissa and saved it on my computer. Yes, 3:57. That was when Melissa finally phoned me back and I’d saved and sent her my changes and suggestions. Yes, 6:10. That was just a couple of minutes ago, when I’d saved all our work of the last two hours.

I clicked on the 6:10 version. None of the changes we had made together were showing. None of our two hours of work had saved.

“It’s okay, Mom,” Melissa said. “I can probably remember most of the changes. You need to go to bed.”

“Honey,” I answered, “we need to pray.” I got up from my stool and began to pace around my little office. “Devil,” I said, “You may not steal this work from us. You are a thief; that’s what Jesus called you. You come to rob and kill and destroy. You cannot take this from us. We are not ignorant of your devices. We command, in the Name of Jesus, that you put it all back.

“Melissa,” I said then, “I’m going to go get Dad.”

Greg was still lying awake. I quickly filled him in. He declared his authority in Jesus, over the enemy, and began to pray in the Spirit. When he spoke again in English, he said, “God’s Word is forever settled in heaven.” Then he added, “I think that’s a ‘word.’”

I didn’t get the significance of that scripture in this situation; it just seemed to me to be a powerful proclamation of God’s power, authority, and eternalness.

I went back downstairs and sat down in front of my computer, looking at the mess in front of me.

“What are you going to do, Mom?” Melissa asked.

“I’m going to start over,” I said. “I’ll be able to remember as I go through it.”

“You can’t, Mom. You’re too tired.”

I closed the 6:10 document. I opened it again. Greg appeared in my office. He sat down on a chair, praying quietly. I looked at the text. What?

That first word in the title was correct. What?! I scrolled timidly down, checking each highlighted part. I’d left the markings so Melissa could easily see where the changes had been made. When she was all done, she would be able remove all those different colours and markings with a few clicks. Now these highlights allowed me to quickly see each change we had made together, and wonder of wonders, all our changes were intact.

I thanked God profusely, all my gratitude inadequate to express my relief. “Melissa, I’m going to save it under a new name so there’s no confusion,” I told her. When I’d first saved it at 1:30, I had added “Mom’s Edit” in front of the name of her file. Now I hit “Save As” and changed the title to “Mom’s Final Edit.” I attached it to a new email and sent it off to Melissa. We waited until it had arrived in her inbox and she’d opened and checked it; then we said our goodbyes.

“Would you come back to bed and hold me until I fall asleep?” I asked my dear husband.

“Yes,” he said, “I was planning to.” He knew I was going to need that. I crawled gratefully into bed and into my husband’s embrace. My body and soul were distraught with fatigue, now that the battle was over. With a great sense of relief, I entered into rest under the spiritual covering that God has provided for a wife through her husband. I fell into a deep sleep and never even stirred when Greg disentangled himself and got up to go to church.

Part II

Throughout that day, once I got up again, I found myself pondering the scripture Greg had used: “God’s Word is forever settled in heaven” (Psalm 119:89, KJV). Later, when I was making supper, I told him I wanted to ask him about it. “But,” I said, “first let me tell you what I’ve been thinking, and then tell me if it lines up with what you sensed about it.

“God creates by His Word, by speaking things into existence. What He creates does not pass away, and neither does His Word. We all, by virtue of the fact that we are created in the image of God, carry a degree of that power in our words, and a degree of that eternalness. Not that that essay was a spiritual article per se, but both Melissa and I centre our lives on God, walking and talking with Him, so there is an eternal component to what we think and say and write. Although the enemy tried to lie to us and trick us into believing that he could steal our words, he could not, especially when we called his bluff and asserted our authority in Christ over him.”

“That’s right,” he said. And then he added a bit ironically, “And it was a Word document.”

I was eager to write about the whole experience, but now I had doubts coming in: Had I just been so tired that I opened the wrong document? Was the spiritual side of it all just in my imagination? So when I finally got to my computer again, about 24 hours after my intense editing session with Melissa, I did not start to write; instead, I prayed: “Lord, I really need to know if my original perception of this incident was correct. I don’t want to write a testimony of Your power and goodness that isn’t really even true. I need You to show me somehow if I am mistaken about this. Did the enemy really interfere with my technology?”

I decided to carefully go over the various versions of the document as well as the emails that had gone back and forth between Melissa and me. First, I thought, I will open that 6:10 document. Early Sunday morning, when I had first attached it to an email and opened it to verify it, it showed none of our edits. After we three had prayed and I’d closed and reopened it, the changes were all there. So now I checked the versions. There was the one saved at 1:30, before I did any work on it. It was saved again at 3:57, just before I sent it to Melissa so we could work together on the spots I had highlighted. And the 6:10 version, which I’d saved before trying to send all our final changes to Melissa . . . was not there. What? That was not possible. I had definitely saved it and then closed and opened it several times, after which I’d saved it again using the “Save As” function, renaming the file before sending it off at 6:30 a.m.

Thoroughly mystified, I now began to check the record of emails. There was only one from Melissa, in which she’d sent me her document at 1:09 a.m. That was the one I’d saved at 1:30. And then after I’d made my own changes, I’d sent it back to her at . . . I opened up my Sent Items . . . And there was nothing there. The only email showing during that time frame was the one I’d sent at 3:27, frustrated, after waiting 45 minutes for her to respond to my text saying I was ready to get to work with her: a brief and rather frustrated “Hello?”

And yet when she had finally called, I’d saved and sent my document at 3:57. But it simply wasn’t there. This wasn’t possible. I texted Melissa:

“Very strange. There is no evidence of my emailing you the document around 4:00 a.m. when we began our edit. Does it still show in your inbox?”

She answered, “I don’t see it.”

And yet she had sat with her backside on the cold, hard concrete of the train station floor for two hours with that very document on her laptop, while I had sat bleary-eyed in my office, and we had edited that document together, the document which now appeared to have been neither sent nor received. I was satisfied now that God had clearly shown me, there had been some serious spiritual shenanigans going down. I felt free now to write the story about this other-worldly interference.

As if God felt I needed further proof of this kind of meddling, there was another weird incident about 48 hours later. Again I was up very early in the morning. I sat down to read my Bible. Picking up where I’d left off last time, I didn’t get any further than one verse. It made me think of Melissa. She had texted the night before, asking for prayer. The essay was safely turned in, but she was so frustrated and discouraged now with the third member of their group, who had not at all been pulling his weight in the preparation of their final presentation.

The verse I read had a powerful application to Melissa’s unruly emotions in this struggle, so I decided I should send it to her. I began to dictate a text: “I am having a reading along with my porridge before heading back to bed. I am in Mark 8:34, the Amplified Version. ‘If anyone intends to come after me, let him deny himself—forget, ignore, disown, lose sight of himself and his own interests—’

The next phrase was “and take up his cross,” but before I could record it, the screen on my phone went black, then returned to the desktop. I was immediately in warfare mode: “I cut off your interference, devil, in the Name of Jesus. Ha, devil, you just make me believe in the reality of God all the more, and once again He will show His power over you. And furthermore, you are only serving to convince me that this is an important message for Melissa.”

Although I might have been tempted to be frustrated, what I was trying to send Melissa was the very antidote to frustration. The irony was not lost on me, and I refused to fall into that trap. I patiently began again. I got as far as I’d got the first time, then again, just before I said “and take up his cross,” again the screen went blank and returned to the desktop. This happened not just twice, but a third time, a fourth time, and a fifth time. I continued to pray against the enemy and to guard myself against discouragement and frustration. Now I changed my strategy. I dictated a short phrase and sent it right off, then another one and another one until I finally finished what I wanted to say—and what I felt God wanted me to say.

In the end, this is the message I sent: “‘If anyone intends to come after me, let him deny himself—forget, ignore, disown, lose sight of himself and his own interests—and take up his cross.’ Melissa, I am thinking of the frustration and discouragement you were struggling with last night, and the things I have been facing this week. Let’s not wrestle with these things, these negative emotions, these sometimes-demonically-fueled temptations; let’s deny them place, forget them, ignore them, disown them, lose sight of them. And take up our cross . . .

“Even sending this message has become a battle and a lesson—” and I explained what had happened.

“God seems to be showing me, ever since Sunday morning with you, how the enemy can mess with our technology. That’s why I’ve had to send the message in little chunks, sending each bit before it disappeared, praying and taking authority. Whew! Sometimes nothing is simple.”

Of course, I shared this with Greg later.

He doesn’t like to go about bashing the devil like a redneck firing a shotgun randomly into the night with no idea of where or what the threat actually is. He’s trying to learn to wait on God for a sure word, like a single bullet that goes straight to the heart of the matter. Neither does he like to give the enemy any more attention than is absolutely necessary. “The devil has nothing in us,” he said, “unless we give him place. In these situations, the issue is not what devices the enemy might come out against us with, but whether we’ll exercise our faith in God and let Him give us the victory.”

God has said in His Word that no weapon formed against us shall prosper (Isaiah 54:17a, KJV). He did not say, however, that no weapon would ever threaten us. Indeed, in the same passage He says, “I create the blacksmith who fires up his forge and makes a weapon designed to kill. I also create the destroyer—but no weapon that can hurt you has ever been forged (Verses 16-17, MSG).

Then He seals this promise with a grand proclamation (KJV): “This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD.”

Early-Morning Thoughts from God

Purging a stack of papers that has sat on my desk, mostly untouched, for many years, I came across some rough drafts of articles that I never did complete. Here is one that caught my eye. It was written in 2005.

This morning as I awoke, as I passed from sleep into consciousness, in that brief moment before my brain fired up and began to run, God spoke to me in the stillness. It was a precious thought, and an important one. I dwelt on it for a few minutes; then my mind ran on to other things, and within a few more minutes, I couldn’t remember what God had been talking to me about.

I apologized to the Lord.

Suddenly I had a mental image of 14-year-old Rachel, caught up in the fun of her own world, distracted, and my being frustrated with her because she has already forgotten to do what I’ve just told her, or worse, hasn’t even really heard what I’ve said.

“I’m sorry, Lord,” I whispered again. “Is that how You feel when I don’t heed what You say?” I knew even as I spoke that His responses toward His sons and daughters are much more patient and loving than mine.

“Lord, please, will you tell me again what You were saying?” Lying still and keeping my mind quiet and my heart wide open, I wait. Nothing comes. Too bad.

I get up and start my day, determining that I will go and sit by the pond and have some quiet time before I allow the day to carry me away. I take with me a Bible and a book. It’s the book I end up reading: Jesus Freaks, by a rap group, DC Talk, and an organization called The Voice of the Martyrs. The book is a stirring compilation of stories of believers who have died over the last 20 centuries for their faith in Christ.

I devour a number of stories. It’s time to quit now, but I will read just one more. And there, at the end of the story, on page 69, are two quotes that remind me of exactly what God said to me first thing this morning.

It seems God is limited by our prayer life—that He can do nothing for humanity unless someone asks Him (John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Movement).

When a believing person prays, great things happen (James 5:16, NCV).

I remember now: God was impressing me earlier this morning with the importance of praying: on my own, and as a couple in the way Greg and I sometimes do, taking the time to “cover all the bases,” as we put it, praying about everything and everyone that comes to mind until there seems nothing left to pray for. In those times, we feel spurred on by the conviction of the power and importance of our prayers: We are in a spiritual war, and the things we seek in prayer sometimes have to be won like spoils taken from the enemy after a battle.

It stands to reason, then, that if we don’t pray, there are some things that just aren’t going to happen. This thought, of God’s limiting His intervention in human affairs to the confines of His people’s prayers, is not intended to put a burden on us. Rather, when we are ready to embrace this responsibility, we will find it to be a joyous and powerful privilege. You may not be up for the fight every day; I’m not, but I’m working at it.

And this “covering all the bases” way of praying does not mean endless, repetitive prayer lists; it means listening to the Holy Spirit, praying as He prompts, and not quitting until you get the release from Him—the peace and assurance that for now you are done.

“Pray without ceasing,” says God’s Word in 1 Thessalonians 5:17. When we read this verse, we wonder how we can possibly do that—be praying all the time. But not all prayer is warfare; far from it.  We can be in a continuous state of prayer by keeping our hearts and minds turned toward God all day long, listening for His voice and responding as we go. Often our prayers are just our side of a conversation with Him. He is continually speaking to us, if we will just learn to listen. King David brings out this thought in at least two of his psalms:

Thy thoughts toward us: … would I declare and speak [them], they are more than can be numbered. (Psalm 40:5, DARBY)

How precious it is, Lord, to realize that you are thinking about me constantly! I can’t even count how many times a day your thoughts turn toward me. And when I waken in the morning, you are still thinking of me! (Psalm 139:18, TLB)

This describes what happened to me this morning: as I awoke, I heard Him thinking thoughts toward me, speaking to my heart. Early-morning thoughts from God.

Sometimes prayer is just our response to that inner voice. Sometimes it is a venting of our needs, our fears, our petitions; sometimes, certainly, an outpouring of our joy and thanksgiving. Other times it means heeding a call to the battle of intercession.

It’s a sobering thought that John Wesley expresses above, in a nutshell: “God is limited by our prayer life.” But God’s Word says it too: “Ye have not because ye ask not” (James 4:2, KJV). Stop and think about that for a minute.

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In rereading this old article, I bring away several layers of significance. First is the marvel of God’s talking to us, that He would take the time to intentionally impart His thoughts to us—to me. And then, when through my own carelessness, inattention, and distraction, I lose what He imparted to me, He so graciously runs it by me one more time. 

Not that He made it easy: I waited and prayed, then read several chapters thoughtfully, still waiting and listening. It was as though He was asking how important it was to me, how much effort I was willing to put in, to hear His voice again. He has said, in Jeremiah 29:13, NKJV, “You will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” 

How astounding that He had placed the words that I needed to jog my memory in the very book He knew I would pick up and read that morning, and that I decided to read that “one more chapter.” The words that I read there helped me to retrieve my earlier thoughts.

Second is the thoughts themselves, the internal reminder of the importance of prayer and the concept of His choosing to partner with us through prayer to bring the Kingdom of God to earth.

 And third is the timeliness of finding this old article, just when—with the challenges life is throwing at us right now—I need to be reminded of God’s intimate involvement in our lives and the importance of prayer in connecting our needs with His power.

A Cup of Tea with Jesus

It seems that so frequently lately, I have felt prone to a creeping anxiety and depression, not physiologically as was my difficulty for many years, but emotionally and spiritually. As I examine the anxiety, when it comes, I see that almost all of it has to do with relationships with people: me with them, them with each other, or them with God. A thought came to me early the other morning, that God is all about relationships, about healing and restoring them. This is His primary concern, His top priority, reconciling us first to Him and then to each other. He is the God of all reconciliation. (See 2 Corinthians 5:18-20.)

These anxious thoughts come with the sense, the conviction, that I must pray, but there is a lethargy there with the anxiety, and a hopelessness, that prevent me, discourage me, before I even start. I must recognize the discouragement as a ploy of the enemy and refuse to be held back from prayer. But then, even when I pray from this place, my words seem pithy and unsubstantial; they seem to fall to the ground powerless. They feel like “the vain repetition of the heathen.” A religious exercise. An ineffectual, obligatory gesture.

I realize that I must get with Jesus, truly get into His presence, and then really make my needs known to Him so that then He will garrison my heart and mind with His peace, as He promises in Philippians 4:6-7. So that afternoon, I determinedly block some time aside from the cares of this world and all my temporal responsibilities. I make a cup of tea, a rare event, using a big fresh sprig of peppermint from my garden, and sit down on the couch to visit with my Friend.

The first thought that comes to mind is this: Isn’t it kind of rude to sit down for a cup of tea with a Friend and not even pour a cup for Him? It reminds me of Graham Cooke, who says that He always pours a cup of coffee for Jesus as well as himself, and that he’s convinced that one day he will find that other cup empty at the close of their conversation. I get up and pour another cup of the tea, placing it on the coffee table a couple of feet from mine.

I settle back. I close my eyes, breathe deeply, and acknowledge and welcome Jesus’ presence. Immediately a great peace descends and settles around me like a gentle cloud of glory. It is such a relief, such a refreshing, that tears of gratitude come quickly to my eyes. It is so glorious, I wonder why I don`t do this every day. I breathe deeply once again.

I open a little old book I have recently found on our bookshelf: God Calling. I’ve never read it before. I turn to today’s date. The title of the reading is “Live in the Unseen.” It begins with a plea: “Our Lord, the God of the troubled and the weary, come and save us.” And then God speaks, through the words of the authors, two anonymous “listeners.”

I am your Saviour. Not only from the weight of sin, but from the weight of care, from misery, and depression, from want and woe, from faintness and heartache. Your Saviour.

Remember that you are living really in the Unseen—that is the Real Life.

Lift up your heads from earth’s troubles, and view the glories of the Kingdom. Higher and higher each day, see more of Heaven. Speak to Me. Long for Me. Rest in Me. Abide in Me. No restless bringing Me your burdens and then feverishly lifting them again and bearing them away. No! Abide in Me. Not for one moment losing the consciousness of My Strength and Protection.

As a child in its mother’s arms, stay sheltered and at rest.

Such a fitting reading. It deepens the peace I am feeling, and I am so at rest, even though I’ve only been sitting there for about two minutes. And then I hear the front door open. My husband is stopping off home, much earlier than he expected. My heart drops with disappointment. I am always glad to see my husband, but I have entered into a special place with Jesus, which seems as fragile as it is powerful, fragile in the same way that the Parable of the Sower tells us the Word of God, mighty and eternal though it is, can be choked out of our hearts by the cares and distractions of this world. I don’t want to be distracted right now.

“Oh Jesus,” I whisper, “please don’t let me lose this place.”

I get up to greet my husband. I find that he is extremely stressed, something he rarely succumbs to. Already running a month behind schedule with construction projects for various farmers, right in the middle of harvest time, now all kinds of things are going wrong. He comes and sits beside me on the couch.

“Let me read this to you,” I say, picking up the little book. “It’s very appropriate.”

He lifts his hand as though to block the flow of words. “I can’t listen to anything right now,” he says.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” I ask, even though he is a dedicated coffee drinker. “I poured it for Jesus,” I explain, “but He doesn’t seem to be drinking it.”

“Maybe it’s too hot,” he says, trying a sip.

“He prefers His lukewarm,” I say.

We both laugh. We have no idea how He likes His beverages, but we know He’s been very clear about how He likes His people: definitely not lukewarm. (See Revelation 3:16.)

After a few more minutes, Greg is able to listen to the devotional. We talk about it for a bit, and somehow, in the course of that short time, our burdens are unconsciously yielded over to Jesus. Then Greg drains his cup, gives me a kiss, gets up to leave, and says, “Thanks for the tea.”

“Jesus wasn’t drinking it anyway,” I answer.

Alone again, I marvel that the supernatural peace and quietness still surround me, undisturbed in spite of my solitude having been interrupted.

Oh, but I did, Jesus seems to saying.

What?

I did drink the tea. Remember how I said that when I was hungry, you gave me food; I was thirsty, you gave me a drink; I was sick, you visited me; I was naked and you clothed me; I was in prison and you came to me. And when I was questioned, “When, Lord?” then I said that whenever you did it for anyone, in My Name, you did it for Me.

You were “in Me”; you were “in My name,” moving in My Spirit. When you gave your husband that cup of tea—which was sitting there on the coffee table in front of him only because I had told you to put it there—and he drank it, I was drinking it too. Nice peppermint, by the way.

A holy mystery for sure. I glimpse it, but I won’t say I begin to understand it. Or maybe I should put it this way: my mind doesn’t grasp it, but my spirit does.

When I got up and left my place on the couch, I carried the peace with me. It occurred to me that I never had got around to laying out all my concerns and burdens to Jesus. He had simply shown up, reminding me of how real He is, and how sufficient. That was all I really needed.

And it was what Greg needed as well. When he got home late that evening, he told me that that short tea break on the couch had straightened out his whole day. It had broken the stress off him, readjusted his perspective, and filled his world with peace.