I remember a friend, a young mother, with three children under the age of seven, saying to me (also a young mother with four children and a busy husband), “I just wish someone would tell me when I’m doing a good job. What I really want to know is that I’m not raising juvenile delinquents!”

This lament—of not knowing how we’re doing and suspecting we may be doing it all wrong—is felt by many who are plodding through the shifting sands of family life. We have a haunting sense of our own inadequacies in establishing good family-systems. And the truth is, when we think we may be doing pretty well, many of us don’t have anyone who says to us, “You know, you really are doing a good job raising those kids.”

About 30 years ago, several major universities launched research projects to discover what made healthy families healthy. Thousands of families in the U.S. and across the world were carefully studied. The cumulated data was eventually shared in a National Forum on Family Well-Being sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services. At this time measuring tools were established to help family professionals (including parents) recognize the traits of healthy families.

The traits are as follows:

1.    Healthy Families Have Good Communication
Good communication results from a loving relationship between parents. The healthy family:

a.    Listens and responds rather than listening and reacting (reacting: projecting one’s own feeling and experiences; responding: empathizing with the other person’s feelings).
b.    Develops patterns for reconciliation (including having a good sense of timing for heated discussions).
c.    Controls television viewing.
d.    Recognizes nonverbal messages (lack of eye contact, mumbled messages, etc).
e.    Places importance on intensity and spontaneity in conversation rather than on propriety.
f.    Recognizes turn-off words and put-down phrases (a comment made in jest to one person may be an insult to another) and works on eliminating hurtful words and name-calling.
g.    Encourages individual feelings, independent thinking and uniqueness.

2.    Healthy Families Spend Time Together
Times spent together are both planned and spontaneous times, serious and fun times. The healthy family:

a.    Allows themselves time to play and relax, time to dream without guilt (laughter causes remarkable physical relaxation—humor banishes the tightness and severity necessary for anger).
b.    Prioritizes activities:
   -    Why do we want this activity?
   -    What will it replace?
   -     Will it affect our life together?
   -    Is it worth it?
c.    Values table time in conversation—the dinner meal becomes an important   part of the day (activities that infringe on this time are discouraged).
d.    Maintains a balance of interaction in its time together (discourages cliques among members while still encouraging individual members to spend time together).
e.    Doesn’t allow work and other activities to infringe routinely on family
time.
f.    Occasionally participates as a unit in activities chose by individual members—other members compromise even if that activity isn’t their choice.

3.    Healthy Families Encourage and Affirm One Another
The parents have good self-esteem and pass this on to their children by:

a.    Expecting family members to affirm and support one another.
b.    Realizing that support doesn’t mean pressure (to succeed, look good, win, etc).
c.    Giving genuine approval and support to help children develop good self-
esteem (rather than being concerned about causing them to become conceited).
d.    Maintaining a basic positive mood.

4.    Healthy Families Deal Positively With a Crisis
Children learn to solve problems by living in a family that solves problems. parents give children the hope and conviction that “when things get tough we’ll be able to cope.” The healthy family:

a.    Expects problems and considers them to be a normal part of family life.
b.    Develops the skill of knowing when a problem is a problem (doesn’t become overly concerned by annoying events).
c.    Develops a skill for identifying potentially serious problems and tackling them early, which helps avoid a crisis.
d.    Allows give-and-take in negotiation—if a problem concerns the whole family, everyone gets a chance to speak.
e.    Possesses high initiative for helping itself, but isn’t afraid to reach out for help from support groups or professionals when facing a problem too big to handle alone.
f.    Stands together in bad times as well as good.

5.    Healthy Families Have a Commitment to the Family
The husband and wife share a consensus of important values. If parents aren’t committed, neither will children be apt to be committed. The healthy family:

a.    Treasures its legends and characters—the past is preserved and passed on to future generations.
b.    Honors its elders and welcomes its babies—all the seasons of life are appreciated by others.
c.    Makes a deliberate effort to gather as a people—strong families enjoy being together and make any excuse to do so.
d.    Views itself as a link between the past and the future (family members don’t end with death—deceased members are discussed so others feel acquainted with them) and instinctively warns individuals to reach out and hold other members for as long as they have the privilege.
e.    Cherishes its traditions and rituals, thus helping the family members celebrate life and one another.

6.    Healthy Families Have a Religious Orientation
A question to ask each other: How are you doing spiritually?


How frequently, when I teach on these, parents respond by saying, “That’s just common sense. We could have listed those ourselves.” That’s true. Yet when the academic community and the social services community link their research to the efforts of family specialists, it is a comfort to know that our common sense is basically valid.

These common traits gave concerned parents specific areas where they needed to improve; but the indices of well-being also allowed parents to pat themselves on the back and say, “Hey! We really are doing well—here, here and here!”

Sometimes, when you’ve got a house full of kids, and you’re wondering how you’re going to make it through the days, it’s a good idea to pull out this list and say, “Hey, we’re not doing all bad here. In fact, we’re pretty good at some of this.”

Intriguingly, most of those research studies begun 30 years ago listed a spiritual orientation as one of the common traits of healthy families—healthy families have some kind of spiritual life together. This trait is not such a big surprise to those of us in faith-based communities: Establishing healthy families, after all, is one of God’s Big Ideas.

As you consider how you’re doing if you are in the middle of the parenting juggling act,  make a point of taking time to hear God say, “You really are doing a good job!” Then invite Him to be the Teacher who helps you truthfully evaluate where it is you need to improve. You may discover that He is a better Family Counselor than you ever dreamed.

No, despite those momentary fears, you are not raising juvenile delinquents.

Karen Mains
KM2-61

About Karen Mains:

Award-winning author Karen Mains continues to write new content for her Christian blog, "Gettin' Thru the Day." Through her Hungry Souls ministry, she serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and has started teaching a mentor-writing class.

Karen and her husband, David, have been in religious communications for decades—radio and television and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy, Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. David is completing a manuscript titled Revelation for My Grandchildren, and he and Karen are considering if this should be made into a fourth Tales book, Tales of the Revelation.

Karen is also developing a two-day training event for those interested in becoming Silent Retreat leaders, and the Global Bag Project is developing a template for Bag Parties in a Box.

This baby, our eighth grandchild, is round.

His mother had the stomach flu last night, so I received an early-morning call of desperation from my son, the father. “Mom, can you watch Eliana (aged 29 months) and Neeham (7 months) while I teach class this morning? Angela really needs to sleep. I’ll be done around 1 p.m.”

Fortunately, I have the kind of work where I can set my own hours, and while waiting for the little ones to be dropped at the door so their father could rush off to teach his Spanish class at a nearby college, I decided I was not going to try to do anything else but just play with them.

I took off Eliana’s pink winter (fake-leopard-trimmed) coat, got her started playing with the toys from the cupboard that holds stacking blocks and magnetic-footed circus people, plastic spiders in a plastic jar, easy puzzles, a big container of farm animals, and the inevitable stack of books.

Then, I stripped the baby’s brown bear snowsuit off and lifted him out of his carrier chair. My goodness!—he’s a heavy chugalug. If you hauled him around all day, there’d be no need for weightlifting exercises! “Was Jeremy this big?” I asked my daughter at a recent family gathering; she is older than her brother and seems to remember more about my babies than I do. Granted, Jeremy weighed 10 lbs., 13 oz. at birth, but did he have these thick thighs and rolls after rolls of leg fat? “Oh, Mother,” Melissa recalled, a little disdainfully (Where was my memory, after all? She would never forget such pertinent information about her children!). “Don’t you remember? Jeremy was a chunk. He was every bit as roly-poly as Neeham. You used to call him Buddha-baby.”

OK. I’ll take her word for it. Today, I tested Neeham’s sitting-up abilities. Pretty good, although his weight does tend to make him roll forward or sideways. But for the most part, the back muscles are strengthening and his balancing ability is balancing.

Two months ago, I rushed (as the result of another emergency call—Jeremy and Angela could not quite match their work schedules) over to the house to filled in for that intermediate hour where the parental tag-match didn’t work. Neeham took one look at me, crumpled his mouth into a huge pout and began to wail, What? You’re abandoning me to this lady? Who is she? What does she have to do with me? Does she do milking? Where are you going? Wha-a-a-a-a-a-a. He was not to be consoled and wept himself to sleep. At that point, I decided I obviously had not been spending enough time with my youngest grandson.

So today (after some corrective measures in between), when he came to my house, with a sister happily stacking soft Beanie Babies on all the bookcases shelves she could reach, Neeham and I played in the sunshine that was falling this winter day on the dining-room rug. Oh, now we’re friends. Everything this lady does is funny. He chortled and chuckled over my blowing air into the crevice of his neck. He thought my ah-boos were hilarious. When I changed a diaper, he pulled his feet up to his mouth (how do babies do this?), and I couldn’t resist the temptation to roll him on one side, then back on the other. Freed from garments, he kicked his toes in glee, laughing all the while. His round bald head, the darling butt baby-bare; everything was ovoid. This was pure delight to me. Now diapered, he sat on my lap on the couch where I tested his standing-straight propensities. (“Biggie boy. That’s a biggie boy!”) Soon, cuddled in my arms, his mouth latched onto his thumb and the sucking commenced. In no time, he was sound asleep. I pressed my nose to his fat cheek—nothing on earth like that baby smell.

What a happy morning. By this time, Eliana had systematically progressed through her caravan of play—first the Beanie Babies, then the farm animals set to standing by the fireplace, then the books, etc. I carefully placed the baby in his carrier and sat my granddaughter on the kitchen counter. She demanded an apple: “Ap-pop.” I sliced and peeled one and fed her tiny bits. Eliana is being raised bilingually. She looked up at the plates hanging on the soffit and said while drawing circle with her hands, “Círculo.” This word I knew, and think she is impressive making her way in both early Spanish and early English. Obviously, I’m going to have to come up to speed with some basic Spanish myself if I’m going to understand her.

The children’s father came home at the time promised; now the baby had wakened and Eliana was asleep on the living-room couch. “Your daughter’s diaper was so wet, I had to take off the onesie. It was soaked.”

“Oh, I know, Mom,” he said with a grin, scooping them both into car seats, spreading the pink winter coat over the daughter and the brown bear suit over his son. “We are just really bad parents.” And after thanking me at least four times, he and his carload were off.

Stepping back into the now-quiet house, I picked up all the scattered toys. This familiar pickup routine only takes me a few minutes. Really, I thought, I should have thanked my son. I’d had an exquisitely happy morning and had loved the fact that Eliana is content here, loves to play with the toys, sits on my kitchen counter, eating like a little bird the tidbits of apple I popped into her mouth. How great is it to know that my grandson no longer puckers and pouts and howls when he is left with me.

It occurs to me that this is one of the primary ways of getting through the days. Find something young, babyish, and enter into play. Borrow babies from a friend if you don’t have any—they’d all love a break! Serve in the church nursery. Pick up a couple kittens; dangle a string or push a ball of yarn their way. Stop at the chicken incubator in a nearby farm in the city and take time to watch the tiny beaks peck their way out of the shell, wet feathers eventually fluffing themselves under the heat of the lamps, then little chicks waddling about, bumping into other chicks.

There is something about going back to the beginnings, something about being near newness, close to fresh starts, something about rediscovering origins. Everything is tactile with babies. We hold, we nuzzle, we press our face against their skin; we pinch and tickle and pull at their soft cheeks. We give our fingers to be grasped in their tiny fists. We place them on our tummies and nap while they nap. We crawl on the floor chasing after them; we catch their ankles and roll with them protected in our arms as they chortle with delight. This sensory interaction is some of the closest connection we adults allow ourselves. It is healing all around.

Once during an extremely stressful time in my husband’s life, he spent every Saturday morning with our first grandchild, then a toddler. They ran errands together. He would pick her up and, in these days before car-seat laws, buckle her into the front passenger seat. Her little legs were too short for her knees to bend over the edge, so they would stick straight out, gym shoes pointing up. To the bank they would go, to the post office, to the drugstore. Often they’d get their hair cut in the same salon, and always, afterwards, they would buy sugar cookies at the bakery on the same block and eat them while driving home. This happened week after week. I often thought that Caitlyn, by just being so adorably new and by just being eager to go on errands with “Papa,” probably saved his life. I am serious.

How lovely that babies are given at a time when their grandparents are in the aging process.

We are watching the film How to Eat Fried Worms a lot right now with our 10-year-old grandson Elias. Evan Almighty is another kid favorite. Right now, both these films never seem to grow old to them. I love to hear my grandchildren laugh. I promise you, if you can get back to the beginnings, back to those who see the world the ways that you have forgotten to see the world; if you can rediscover the origins, you will make it through the days. And if you can find a baby who thinks everything you do is funny, you are most blessed.

After all many things in life renew themselves, day always comes after night, the seasons are on a yearly rotation, the earth goes again and again around the sun. Old friends come back into our lives. We celebrate the holidays every year. Some things always come around again. Death and resurrection are renewable. It is all “círculo.”

Karen Mains
KM2-60

About Karen Mains:

Award-winning author Karen Mains continues to write new content for her Christian blog, "Gettin' Thru the Day." Through her Hungry Souls ministry, she serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and has started teaching a mentor-writing class.

Karen and her husband, David, have been in religious communications for decades—radio and television and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy, Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. David is completing a manuscript titled Revelation for My Grandchildren, and he and Karen are considering if this should be made into a fourth Tales book, Tales of the Revelation.

Karen is also developing a two-day training event for those interested in becoming Silent Retreat leaders, and the Global Bag Project is developing a template for Bag Parties in a Box.

A feeling of dread is a good indicator that something is not right in the day. We dread going certain places. We dread meeting with certain people. We dread certain kinds of work. Sometimes, we even dread waking up.

Dread is a good reason people narcotize themselves. We use drugs, waste hours in pursuits that have no meaning but anesthetize dread, lose ourselves in pleasures that are often harmful.

What we need to do is begin following the dread thread. What is it we are feeling? When do we feel it most? Is there any thing we can do to avoid feeling dread that is not self-destructive? Is the feeling of dread becoming a habitual default place I go? How can I take responsibility to change the dread habit?

After examining these elements, another series of questions are also helpful.

When is it we don’t feel dread? What people, which activities, what kind of work, and what kind of days give us happiness, make us feel positive and give us hope?

Then, we need to change the balance as much as it is in our power to do so.
At least, I can try to load my day with events and people and places that restore my soul and fill me with peace. For me, living in the western suburbs of Chicago, I can walk in the Morton Arboretum or fun over to Cantigny where the flower gardens seem to grow larger and more beautiful each year. Listening to a favorite musical artist—Chopin always enchants; his short piano works don’t demand high listening skills from me—helps me love my life.

Play—learning to play again—is the venue I’m experimenting with and finding a satisfactory adventure that defeats dread when it attempts to lodge in my soul again.

Stuart Brown, M.D. has conducted over 6000 play histories with people from all walks of life—serial killers, Nobel Prize winners, celebrities, public servants, and ordinary everyday folk—from that life study he has written a book titled Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul. In the book, he maintains that it has been proven humans are genetically programmed to play—more than any other creature (although studies have captured all levels of life in play activities, from amoebas to polar bears).

What happens to humans who dutifully or unintentionally program play out of their lives? What becomes of those of us who feel play is “a waste of time”? Dire things, it appears. Brown writes, “On one end of the spectrum, I studied murderers in Texas prisons and found that the absence of play in their childhood was as important as any other single factor in predicting their crimes. On the other end, I also documented abused kids at risk for antisocial behavior whose predilection for violence was diminished through play.”

When adults find time for play, the world lightens (dread takes a holiday). “When we get play right, all areas of our lives go better. When we ignore play, we start having problems. When someone doesn’t keep an element of play in their life, their core being will not be light. Play gives us the irony to deal with paradox, ambiguity, and fatalism. Without that, we are like the Woody Allen character in Annie Hall, who says, ‘What’s the use? The sun’s going to blow up in five billion years anyway.’”

So, as your following your own dread thread, check out your capacity to enter into joyful, healthy, distracting, soul-renewing play. See what it does to dreadfulness. See if it’s an aspect of life that will help you get through the days.

Karen Mains
KM1-55

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is currently getting ready to begin a mentor writing project involving teleconferencing. She will be offering an 8-month, twice-monthly, one-hour-each training program on writing personal memoirs. For more information, e-mail karen@hungrysouls.org. This program will begin in February of 2010.

Hungry Souls is also offering the new "Listen to My Life Mapping" Listening Group as well as two 3-Day Retreats of Silence for 2010.

Karen is also developing a two-day training event for those interested in becoming Silent Retreat leaders, and the Global Bag Project is developing a template for Bag Parties in a Box.

About Karen Mains:

Karen Mains and her husband, David, have been in religious communications for decades—radio and television and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy, Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. David has been working on a manuscript titled Revelation for My Grandchildren, and they are just beginning to brainstorm if this should be made into a fourth Tales book, Tales of the Revelation.

Sometimes it is hard getting through the day because we are in circumstances that just drag us down. The car breaks down, a wage-earner in the family loses a job, there are troubles with offspring. What’s more, all these potentially debilitating events seem to hit at the same town. Our emotions spiral out of control while negative thoughts conduct suicide bombings.

Dr. Dan Baker, director of behavioral medicine at the National Center for Preventive and Stress Medicine, writes in his book What Happy People Know, “Your mind, when focused on appreciating, has an unparalleled power to trigger physical and emotional healing.” Understanding that it is difficult in trying circumstances for people focus the mind positively, Dr. Baker has developed the “Appreciation Audit.”

Dr. Baker cites studies that show the brain cannot process both fear (one of mankind’s dominate negative emotions) and appreciation at the same time. So the Appreciation Audit, when practiced, is designed to create a shield in the brain against fear, hate and anger. He recommends a fundamental form of the Audit:


To be intentional about practicing appreciation can cause what the psychologists call a perceptual shift. Things are still icky, but your response to them shifts. You begin to see opportunities in the job layoff—perhaps now you’ll have the time to pursue the career you’ve always wanted to pursue. The car breaks down—thank goodness you became aware of the problem before you took that road trip with the family. A teen’s behavior is inappropriate—but this forces you to look at some parenting habits in yourself that you’re not too happy to discover. Suddenly, you have the power over yourself to change.

Dr. Baker explains: “The Appreciation Audit is a form of focused mediation, which has been shown by innumerous studies to have a powerful impact upon the balance of the autonomic nervous system, the brain’s neurotransmitter profile, the cardiovascular profile, muscular tension, and the psyche. Its effects last long after the exercise has ended, sometimes for several hours. It reprograms the mind and memory by severing the fearful, self-reinforcing thought loops of anxiety that are inaugurated by the amygdale and perpetuated in the neocortex.”

Wow—this is pretty powerful stuff! Scripture also calls us to refocus our attention, but too few of us work to do this three times a day. The Apostle Paul writes, “And now, dear friends, let me say one more things as I close this letter to you. Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned from me. … Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to get along happily whether I have much or little. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. For I can do everything with the help of Christ who gives me the strength I need.”  Philippians 4:3-13, NLT

Now there’s a man who will pass an Appreciation Audit with flying colors!

Karen Mains
KM1-54

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is currently getting ready to begin a mentor writing project involving teleconferencing. She will be offering an 8-month, twice-monthly, one-hour-each training program on writing personal memoirs. For more information, e-mail karen@hungrysouls.org. This program will begin in February of 2010.

Hungry Souls is also offering the new "Listen to My Life Mapping" Listening Group as well as two 3-Day Retreats of Silence for 2010.

Karen is also developing a two-day training event for those interested in becoming Silent Retreat leaders, and the Global Bag Project is developing a template for Bag Parties in a Box.

About Karen Mains:
Karen has written some 24 books (several of which were best-sellers), has a background in radio and television broadcasting, has been part of publishing teams, has taken journalism assignments around the world, is a national-prize-winning author, and is now exploring the science of Internet publishing.

This blog is a continuation of Blog 1-52, “The Enemy Despair—Part One.” I refer back to my book, Karen! Karen! where I write about my battle with depression earlier in my life.

There had been wispy thoughts of suicide that month—wouldn’t I be doing everyone a favor if life just ended?—which as yet hadn’t had a chance to possess me. Which would be the easiest and most painless way? These lingering vapors were only introductions to a hell through which I did not have to walk; but they fogged my mind as the blackness increased, until on some days it seemed an effort to breathe, despair had so polluted my inner air.

I hated myself for my ennui, for the dirty house, for the fact that no friends called or cared. Ugly, ugly, ugly be his name. Praise to me in my all-consuming ugliness. Think of Karen; dislike Karen. Adore this awfulness. Don’t lift your head; stay in bed today. If you struggle in this grasp you will only go deeper into the muck, the black February muck of winter.

It came with clarity and life—the thought from my husband’s sermon—he wants to destroy me. David was right, Satan’s desire is to destroy us.

Suddenly I could see the implications of my despair. The children’s lives could be ruined, their mother unresponsive to their needs and eventually resenting and hating their natural demands. Perhaps suicide, or huge psychological treatment expenses that would keep David from functioning in his ministry. It would ruin my parents if I died in this despair. The waves rippled on and on. Satan’s desire was to destroy me.

Something called to me at that moment of realization. I think its name was Love. It asked me to choose. Which did I care for most? children, husband, family, or the desperate wraith of my soul? The answer was obvious. But did I love them enough to struggle to preserve myself and them also? For the first time in my life, I consciously committed myself to spiritual warfare. I was determined that if there was power in Christ, I would find a way to escape the hold of the destroyer.

Recalling part two of David’s sermon, I realized it was my opportunity to overcome. My Christian background hadn’t counted as nothing in my life. As a child I had memorized I Corinthians 10:13:

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

I knew the words of truth; my problem was how to experience them. 

I decided I would catch the enemy when he turned the handle on the door to my soul, rather than after he had dirtied the rooms with a few days’ sojourn. The worst thing about depression is it sets off dominoes of emotional traumas. It is like the back injury that causes pain to be felt in the neck although the ailment itself is located somewhere along the lower vertebrae. Helpless to discover the source of depression now that despair’s boa-embrace had severed my nerve endings, I resolved to stop everything the moment I heard the doorknobs jiggling.

When I sensed myself sinking lower than my normal moods, I would sit still and ask, “Now what is it that is causing me to feel this way? What has someone said that has discouraged me? or what have I said that I’m embarrassed about? Do I feel that David is too busy to give me attention? Am I really resentful? or am I physically exhausted and making more of things than they call for?”

I discovered that there was always a hook on which my adversary could hang his cloak.

Once the source of my growing uneasiness was discovered, it became a matter of refusing the enemy an entry. It became an intense battle to “stand firm.” It felt literally as though I were pressing my weight against a door while something heaved and shoved on the other side. I can remember fighting against giving way to my unhealthy feelings, sometimes for hours. “I refuse the power of the enemy,” I would whisper, teeth clenched. “I refuse to give in to this thing which he wants to use to destroy me.”

I would force myself to keep on functioning. Keep cleaning, keep working. Get out of the house, go to the beach, to the zoo. If you are tired, go to bed and sleep. Don’t allow yourself to brood; above all else, keep that door shut.

One morning, after several months of this off-and-on struggle, I had been in conflict for hours. Standing before the kitchen sink, tears streamed down my cheeks and dropped into the dishwater. I was weary with the heat of warfare, and certain I would go under without reinforcements.

“Oh, God,” I prayed, “I’m trying to refuse the power of the enemy in my life. I know he wants to destroy me. I have fought him over the last few months and all this morning. You have said you won’t let us go through anything you don’t think we are able to endure. I don’t think I can endure any more of this. David says your promise is your Presence. I can’t keep my back against this door anymore. If you don’t help me, I’m gone.” For a half-hour I repeated: Help me, please help me. Oh, help, God. Please help.

Soon I noticed that the door was at rest, the knob no longer turned, and when I peeked out, the black cloak had disappeared from the hook in the outer hallway.

By some insight of the Holy Spirit, some rare precognition, I knew that despair was gone for good. Though I had experienced depression in its minor and more severe forms for some eight years, I have never tasted it again since that day. It was the first evidence in my life of the practical, redemptive power of God, of His ability to deliver us from the teeth of temptation.

I was not so naïve as to think my responsibility for personal mental health was over. There were long-range life changes I had to effect. The process of building a whole person was about to begin; the armor of my self-image had huge holes that left me vulnerable to the enemy’s fiery darts. There was mending to do, rebuilding of the chain mail, a new insignia to be painted on my shield, a sword to be forged. Yet I knew the depression was gone, defeated by my Overlord. Instinctively, I was aware a battle lull had been provided for me to spend in preparation, garrisoning, and foraging for provender.

Many have been the lessons in knowing I’ve learned since that day; many have been the failures and successes. When I grow weary, my knees aching, my arms weary, when my vision seems blurred—I think back to the sink and my tears splashing in the water, back to my plea for God’s Presence, back to the instant knowledge that He had truly and finally vanquished my despair.

This buoys me, sustains me, lifts me up. It is my personal miracle of the Red Sea crossing, my water gushing from the rock, my pillar of fire by night. God’s promise is His Presence.

Karen Mains
KM1-53

About Karen Mains:

Karen Mains, along with her husband, David Mains, leads Mainstay Ministries. Through their years in broadcasting, both radio and television, they also spoke internationally and between them have written dozens of books. Consequently, thousands look to them as spiritual coaches. Karen’s heart of compassion for those who are struggling and suffering has motivated her to look into her own life experiences and share what she has learned with those who need a word of encouragement. Through her writings, Karen continues to be a spiritual coach other Christian men and women.

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:
- Preparing to teach an eight-month mentor-writing course on writing personal memoirs.
- Promoting the Global Bag Project and hosting fundraising "Bag Parties."
- Training retreat leaders for future Silent Retreats.

One of the things that makes it hard for many of us to make it through the days is that old human enemy—despair or depression or a soul-souring discontent. Thinking about this made me turn to some writing I had done earlier in my life. Often I try to catch the pain when I am really in the pain. It’s just too easy, when life becomes beautiful again, to remember how bad the bad days were.

This from my book, Karen! Karen!:

Having heard my husband David’s sermon on temptation repeated numerous times, I could almost deliver it from hear myself. The text was from The Living Bible, 1 Peter 5:8. Be careful—watch out for attacks from Satan, your great enemy. He prowls around like a hungry, roaring lion, looking for some victim to tear apart. Stand firm when he attacks. Trust the Lord.

The sermon’s three points were simple enough: “1. Satan’s desire is to destroy you. 2. Your opportunity is to overcome. 3. God’s promise is His presence.” I had even edited his sermon manuscript into an article form.

It wasn’t until one long February (it is not the shortest month of the year for some of us) when the winter slush, the interminable gray Great Lakes skies overcast my own spirit for twenty-eight days, that I realized I was in some icy solstice of the soul, looking my adversary in the face. With a start, I realized—he did want to destroy me, and through my destruction wreak havoc in the lives of the children, and ultimately damage my husband’s vital ministry. His desire was to destroy me.

I can’t remember exactly when the depressions began, and by “depression” I mean a debilitating gloom of the psyche which renders one nonfunctional. I am not referring to vague feelings of discontent, or to having a lousy mood. I mean waking in the morning and barely being able to lift one’s head from a pillow, feeling the heavy hood of some medieval falconer blinding my soul’s eyes, his rope tethering my emotions. I mean facing the day with dread because the minor functions seem to be impossible. Making beds and doing dishes and combing one’s hair are vehicles for a confusing desperation. The made bed looks lumpy and welted, corrugated with wrinkles. The washed dish is spotted and sooted, the dishwasher slime. Combed hair is a web of cobstrands, dusty and lusterless. The mirror reveals splotches and ugliness.

Why try? Don’t do it again. Everything you turn your hand to is failure. You are a failure. Your very breath is stale, stale life.

There truly was a pit of darkness into which I was descending.

It seems amazing to me now to realize that my own husband and family were unaware of my descent. Yet unless one has experienced desperation, it is easy to overlook the symptoms in others.

When the mood had done its work, I was released, springing vitally into life, into the sweetness of each breathbeat, into the glow of the children’s eyes and the beauty of my husband, into the world of people and activities. The darkness was forgotten and I learned to keep the despair to myself, because I didn’t know how to speak of it, nor did I realize where it was tunneling.

Early in our marriage a pattern seemed to emerge. Married at 18 to a man seven years older, I stepped from the shelter of my family to the shelter of my husband. There was little time for balanced personality development; my adult maturity had to occur within the confines of our marriage, and within a few years my growing room was crowded by cumulative pregnancies and the responsibilities of child-rearing. I began to experience crying jags, inarticulate effusions of frustration that left my husband helpless and myself drained.

“I can’t do anything well!” I would weep. It was true; a little bit of this and a little bit of that, detours into crafts, but no discipline into art. Stepping from the refuge of my father’s home to the refuge of my husband’s, there had been no time to develop to develop specialties, and I lacked the personal fortitude to become anything’s master. This was an area of vulnerability of which the crafty prey-monger took note.

Through the years I began to experience periodic, though unpredictable, visitations. Something was gnarling my twentysomething-year-old being into ugliness. Admittedly, there was a part of me that loved these orgies of self-pity, so in a way I opened the door of my spirit to a malignant artist painting his meaningless impressions in my inner chambers. Seemingly without cause he would come, this lover of despair, stretching his stays from afternoons to days, until he embraced my soul for weeks before going. Finally on a desperate February day he wearied me fully, and somehow David’s words, which I had heard so often, broke through the clouded gloom.

To be continued … Blog 1-53. See how Karen applied her own husband’s sermons to a brutal battle with the enemy despair.

Karen Mains
KM1-52

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is a bestselling, nationally award-winning writer who is the Co-Director of Hungry Souls ministry. Consequently, Karen has become a spiritual coach to thousands who look to her work for its authenticity, passion and practicality. Right now, Karen is developing a template for a 3-Day Retreat of Silence, as well as working with a team to develop program for the training of retreat leaders for silent retreats.

Karen will also be teaching a mentor-writing-format teleconference course on "Personal Memoir Writing."

She also continues to be involved in Global Bag Project efforts, including hosting "Bag Parties."

What if you could take a dose of medicine that would cure non-clinical depression, crankiness, anxiety, personality complaint disorders, feelings of deprivation, as well as love neuroses? Would you take it? Furthermore, if this medicine was free, had no negative side-effects, caused no drowsiness, did not interact dangerously with other medications, was safe for children, and could be used despite pre-existing diseases of the heart and thyroid, high blood pressure and diabetes, would you use it?

Then, what if you discovered that the cure affected by one dose had measurable impact, and that by taking daily doses, like vitamins, you could keep the cure working?

Is there such a wonder drug? There certainly is. It is called thanksgiving. Being grateful. Giving thanks. When I was a younger woman, with four small children, a husband who was an inner-city pastor, and insufficient funds to manage all this, I decided that my gratitude aptitude was deficient. So I spent three months journaling only prayers of thanks—no requests for those three months, no “gimme-gimme-gimmies”—just a growing list of things God had done for me that I added to each day. The phrase “all good gifts come from God and from Him are all things given” has become a breath prayer, begun long ago, that I repeat over and over. I find myself whispering it in my soul almost unconsciously.

What are the results of developing this “attitude of gratitude”?

The systematic study of positive emotions within psychology only began in the year 2000 due to the fact that this field was mainly focused on the negative impacts of distress. Since then, scientific research has gathered evidence from controlled studies indicating that grateful people experience higher levels of well-being. They are happier, less depressed, less stressed (were you aware that an estimated 90% of health problems doctors see are stress-related?). Grateful people are more satisfied with their lives and social connections. They feel as though they have greater control of their environments, they are more intentional about personal growth, have more purpose in their lives, can reach out for support from other people when they need to do so, and when hit by negative circumstances they can reinterpret and learn from them (this is called resilience, a substantial indicator of emotional and psychological health).

The list of proven impacts from giving thanks goes on and on, and is so lengthy we will end here (except to mention studies indicate that grateful people sleep better!).

As a personal observation, I will testify that the impact of practicing gratefulness was so tremendous on my personality, lifting me from the default position of the icky catalog in the first paragraph, that I have practiced it since every time I turn to work in my prayer journal, which except for rare occasions, is daily. I generally find at least a dozen things I’m grateful for each day. But more than a dutiful practice of developing a helpful habit, I find that now, after decades, there is an inner joy of giving thanks that seems to be going on inside me all the time that I notice only when I turn my attention inward. Perhaps this is what writer David Steindl-Rast, in his book Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer, meant when he said, “Prayer is grateful living.”

So if you are really having trouble “gettin’ thru the day,” try thanksgiving. That lovely Scripture from the Psalms is short and sweet, easy to remember; “Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.” Psalm 106:1b, NIV.

In order for gratefulness to have lasting effects, however, you will have to make gratitude an attitude—it can’t just be a one time dose that you take. Even pharmaceuticals prescribed by doctors sometimes need a week or two to kick in before they have positive impact. Since it takes at least 30 days to break a bad habit as well as to make a good habit, begin by listing all the things you can find for which you are grateful. Try to add to your list every day. I promise, the practice of gratitude will help you defeat the demons that beset you.

Steindl-Rast talks about the person who does not believe in God. If you are in that category, please hear that gratefulness works for people like you just as it works for those who attempt to be devout believers. “Even people whose worldview does not include a divine Giver to whom their thanks can be directed often experience deep gratitude in those moments. They experience it no less strongly than others, even though their gratefulness gets mailed without an address, so to say. In any case, we know from experience that whenever we are truly awake and alive, we are also truly grateful.”

Gratefulness is a medicine that can help you make it through the days. And unlike sleeping pills, soporifics, it actually wakens the inner slumberer, the dormant sleeper, the inattentive snoozer missing the beauty in each moment and the meaning that is in all of living.

It is a medicine that, unlike some, goes down smoothly.

Karen Mains
KM1-50

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:
Karen Mains is part of an international team of men and women heading the Global Bag Project, a microfinance enterprise for women who live in developing areas of the world. The idea is to sell reusable shopping bags, made by Third World bag-makers, to provide sustainable income for them. Visit www.GlobalBagProject.com if you are interested in learning more.

She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

Furthermore, Karen is creating a teleconference curriculum on “Personal Memoir Writing” to post on her Web site, www.KarenBurtonMains.com, in an attempt to create a distance learning mentor writing project to help other “Wannabe (Better) Writers” get published.

This blog is about—guess what?—getting through the day.

I ask people, “How ya’ doing?” And so often I hear the same response. “Jes’ gettin’ thru the day,” people answer. “Jes’ gettin’ thru the day.”

Believe me, I know where these folks are coming from. In some circumstances, getting through the day is almost more than any of us can do.

However, at my age (67), I’ve learned a few lessons and have advanced, for the most part, from “jes’ gettin’ thru the day” to attempting to live each day as though it is a minor work of art (some days are major works of art). And yep, some days are just plain blah!—but not many, not many at all.

After years of being in ministry, and after conversation with friends who are on local church staffs, we concluded that some 80% of the people in congregations are facing problems too big for them to handle. For these people, getting through the day is a major undertaking.

Perhaps, some of the things I’ve learned and am still learning, some of the things I’m facing and will face, and some of the life lessons I’m activating, will help that 80% who just don’t know how they’ll make it from day’s beginning to night’s end, not to mention the nights in between.

The first thing I know—I positively know—and have taught to my children, all of whom are adults now and married with children of their own, is that we all have a choice. We can make this a good day or a bad day. We can make it a good life or a bad life.

“Look,” I’ve said umpteen times during the child-raising years. “You have a choice. You can choose to make this a bad day or you can choose to make it a good day.”

As hard as this may seem for those facing horrendous situations, this is a basic interior attitude over which we do have control—we don’t have control over most of the bad things, minor and major, that happen to us. We do have control over how we will respond to it.

If you’re part of the 80% just getting through the day, how are you going to make it a good day, despite the circumstances? Do you want to choose to make it a good day? Or are you going to let all the woes, the worries, the injustices rob and cheat you of a good day and a good life?

Love to hear how some of you defeat the darkness on this most personal of levels—choosing to make it a good day.

Karen Mains
KM1-47

Karen Mains is a national-award-winning author of more than 26 books. She is involved right now in helping to create a microfinance women’s pilot project in Kenya—the Global Bag Project, which seeks to sell reusable shopping bags made to provide sustainable income to help bag-makers around the world lift themselves from poverty. Her book about the refugee crisis in the world, The Fragile Curtain, won the 1982 Christopher Medal, which is awarded to works that uphold the highest values of the human spirit.

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is creating a teleconference curriculum on “Personal Memoir Writing” to post on her Web site, www.KarenBurtonMains.com in an attempt to create a distance learning mentor writing project to help other “Wannabe (Better) Writers” get published. Additionally, she and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

Also, Karen is preparing for the upcoming (Advent) Silent Retreat, which is still open for registration (see the Hungry Souls Web site for more information; click "Retreats of Silence").
 

Yesterday morning, I and my grandson, Elias John Mains, skipped church. It was an exquisite September day, the ground kissed with early light; David, my husband, is overseas in Kenya. A busy week had prevented me from making time for my seasonal gathering—clipping tall swamp grass, beaded dock and fuzzy cattails that I combine with artificial sunflowers from Hobby Lobby and realistic-looking but plastic pumpkins for the arrangement on my front porch.

It’s all too easy to cram grandkids into our adult schedules and something told me that the holiest way I could pass this morning with this grandchild was to go out into the fields and gather—Elias is delighted with the natural world. “Let’s go clip cattails,” I said.

“Oh, Nina,” he said. “I love cattails!”

So we did. We found stands of tall grass, clipped enough to fill the natural wood basket I had hauled home one year from West Virginia. We found the cattail pond, stopped at McDonald’s for breakfast, then parked our car to take a walk down the Prairie Path—the old Chicago, Aurora & Elgin train line that has now been turned into a pedestrian path for strollers and joggers (and for bikers and for the few horseback riders who still exist in our area). We brought the hand-clippers and began snipping enough late summer weeds, some blooming and some past bloom, sections of curling vines and interesting branchets—field daisies, rose hips, all wild things happily living their cycle of life out in the proper season of life.

These all were for a bouquet—Elias pronounced the T. After several false pronunciations, I corrected him and explained that bouquet was a French word and in France, the consonant at the end of the world was not pronounced. “We have a lot of foreign words in our language because people have brought their words with them when they came to America,” I explained. “We think they are English words, and sometimes we speak them in English ways, but we have become so used to them we forget that they are not really English words.”

“Oh, like placate,” Elias responded. He had been studying Julius Caesar in school. “Yes, that is a Latin word, and in Latin, it would be pronounced pla-ca-te,” I explained. Who could have imagined that this walking in the exquisite morning world would have included a discussion on etymology with a nine-year old? This is why I love spending time with children; they are always so much smarter then we think they are.

We watched a flock of Canada geese fly overhead and form a V-wedge. We noticed grasshoppers hopping in the sunshine. We clipped enough for two bouquets (pronounced the French way now)—one large bouquet and one smaller. Elias is a chatterbox with many intriguing thoughts bouncing around in his mind—a startling good mind. So, I love to get him alone, relaxed, and without distractions. I never quite know where our conversations are going to go. Tracing our way back the Prairie Path, he slipped his hand into mine and we carefully watched for bikers who were now more frequent as the day aged. “Biker behind us,” Elias warned. “I saw a flash of metal.”

When we returned home we went to the back patio and arranged the larger plants in the earthenware jug and the smaller in the Chinese teapot—Elias took joy in filling the containers, and I slipped in some late summer roses from my garden.

“They look good, don’t they Nina?” Yes, indeed. Our hodgepodge of late summer cuttings looked great. I hoped I would have time to gather a larger, more spectacular group sometime in the week. “You know, Elias. Everything God has made is beautiful in its own way.” And that is true for those who have eyes to see, who take the time to attend, and who care to step in the rhythm of life, each season at its turning, each month in its appropriate calendar place, each week, each day—morning, noon and evening.

Each creature—animal or plant or human—is beautiful in its own created way.

I am a person who finds the Presence of God in the natural world. I am enthralled, filled with awe, full of praise in my garden, at the seaside, before a grand mountain and walking along the Prairie Path in Illinois with a nine-year-old grandson’s hand in mine.

It is beautiful.

Come to this dance that is life, join in the steps, join hands with others who walk beside you and sing the praises of the One who teaches us the steps. (And if you can, take a child’s hand as you do.)

    I danced in the morning when the world was begun,
    And I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun,
    And I came down from heaven and I danced on the earth
    —at Bethlehem I had my birth.
   
    Dance, then, wherever you may be.
    I am the Lord of the Dance said he,
    And I lead you all, wherever you may be
    And I lead you all in the dance, said he.

Karen Mains
KM1-46

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is creating a teleconference curriculum on “Personal Memoir Writing” to post on her Web site, www.KarenBurtonMains.com in an attempt to create a distance learning mentor writing project to help other “Wannabe (Better) Writers” get published. Additionally, she and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

Ken Medema, the Christian musician, is blind. When I heard him sing this song decades ago, I was moved by the meaning of the text. I am still moved. I hope this dancing metaphor has stimulated strong images and associations for you. Today, please consider the question: Who is it who is extending the invitation to you to dance?

    She asked me to dance and I’d never tried dancing before.
    I had visions of everyone laughin’ us right off the floor.
    No, I protested, it just wouldn’t be any good.
    She gently insisted and finally I told her I would.

    Unforgettable, she was a fresh breath of Spring on a cold winter’s day.
    Unforgettable, she taught this singer to sing in a whole new way.

    Well, he asked me to dance and I’d never tried dancing before.
    I had visions of saints and angels laughin’ us right off the floor.
    No, I protested, it just wouldn’t be any good.
    He gently insisted, and finally I told him I would.
   
    Unforgettable, well, He was the coming of Spring on a cold winter’s day.
    Unforgettable, for He taught this singer to sing in a whole new way.

    The coming of Spring on a cold winter’s day…
    taught me to sing in a whole new way…

There is a moment in every Christian journey when the reality of Who is extending this invitation just hits us between the eyes. This One wants us to be in step with Him—not just pacing to theological formulations and ecclesiastical schedules. He holds us and there is rhythm in the motion, laughter in the pure joy of stepping together, love in His eyes.

I hope, if you have not, that you will reach that reality soon. Someone has extended a hand to you.

Karen Mains
KM1-45

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is currently involved in a mentor writing project involving teleconferencing. She has just finished a cycle with six “Wannabe (Better) Writers” and is brainstorming the effectiveness of her “Personal Memoir Writing” curriculum with that group. She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

The film Signs, starring Mel Gibson, is a profound meditation on the loss of faith. Employing the plot device of an alien invasion (not my favorite narrative arc), the story looks at the Hess family, which has been shaken by the brutal accidental death of its mother and wife.

Graham Hess, the father, an Episcopalian priest, has forsaken his calling and no longer believes, but the alien visitation forces him to look at issues from God’s perspective. The one scene in the film I find breathtaking is where the Hess family spends a night of terror in their boarded up farmhouse. When the attic is breached by an advance alien contingent, the family of father, uncle and two children retreat to the basement. This trauma sets off a severe asthma attack in Morgan, the son. The father holds his son, the child’s lungs swelling as he struggles for breath and life. “Breathe with me,” the father says. In and out, in and out, they labor for breath together. “Don’t be afraid, Morgan. Breathe with me. You and I are the same. Together, breathe with me.”

If you haven’t already seen this already, you need to rent this video.

During a time when I was meditating on Christ’s words from John 15:4, “Remain in me, and I will remain in you,” I thought about the Apostle John with his head on Christ’s breast during the Last Supper. When your head is that close to the body of another person, you can hear the heartbeat, feel the pulse; you are aware of breath being inhaled and exhaled.

I realized that when I pray, I should be resting my head against the breast of this One. I should hear the heartbeat, feel the feathery aspiration on my face. Not only this, I remembered Christ’s words from John 14:20, “I am in the Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” When my head is on the breast of Christ (through meditation and prayer), my being tucked within His embrace, Christ’s head is also on the breast of God. The Son is enfolded within the embrace of the Father, and I within the embrace of the Son. Breathe, they say to me through the Holy Spirit. And in prayer we breathe together; in and out, in and out. You and I are the same. Don’t be afraid. Together. Breathe with me.

Sometimes life strikes blows. Terrors over which I have no control torment me. I fight for enough air. If I can just remember this sacred rhythm, one so subtle it is easy to forget, but if I can just remember to become one with Christ who is one with God, then it is as easy as breathing in and out, in and out. I have moved into the heart of the perichoresis koinonia, the theological term that infers that the Trinity is a fellowship of Three Holy Dancers; we have moved into the deepest part of the sacred Dance, where God is.

Karen Mains
KM1-44

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is currently involved in a mentor writing project involving teleconferencing. She has just finished a cycle with six “Wannabe (Better) Writers” and is brainstorming the effectiveness of her “Personal Memoir Writing” curriculum with that group. She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

Falling asleep each night has been called “the little death.” In a way, we practice for the final death that will eventually beckon to us all. Night after night we give ourselves to God and relinquish the failures and successes, the frustrations and delights of each day into His hands. The childlike prayer many of us once prayed holds profound meaning despite its simplicity:

Each night before we fall asleep we should prepare our souls to meet God. We tuck away the cares and concerns of the day and, like Christ, we find ways to pray, “Father, into Your hands I commend my spirit.”

I have noticed that when I put my soul to bed each night (in contrast to watching videos, reading secular books in bed, or just flopping down exhausted) my rest is more tranquil. If I wake, I wake in prayer. Then I even slip into morning prayer more naturally. It is a 24-hour cycle I fight to establish and maintain.

Arthur Paul Boers writes in The Rhythm of God’s Grace, “Evening prayer is a small death; we surrender ourselves into God’s hands. The morning is a small rebirth and resurrection. We often give thanks for a new day and its opportunities. This dying and rising is relived in each daily cycle. Thus, as we observe the morning and evening rhythm, we also have opportunity to live deeply and enter into the most basic and important truths of our faith.”

A book of Daily Offices, or fixed-hour prayers, helps us establish this evening/morning rhythm. I love this nighttime prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. Perhaps it will be useful to you this evening.

“Watch, O Lord, with those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight, and give Your angels and saints charge over those who sleep. Tend Your sick ones, O Lord Christ. Rest Your weary ones. Bless Your dying ones. Soothe Your suffering ones. Shield Your joyous ones, and all for your love’s sake. Amen”

Rest well tonight, beloved ones. Learn the sleep cycle practice of putting your soul to bed with God.

Karen Mains
KM1-43

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is currently involved in a mentor writing project involving teleconferencing. She has just finished a cycle with six “wannabe writers” and is brainstorming the effectiveness of her “Personal Memoir Writing” curriculum with that group. She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

Today is Tuesday. One crucial question we need to learn to ask is: How are we going to make Sunday the best day of the week? What do we need to do to make sure we are ready to observe it with a Sabbath heart? Establishing this rhythm of looking to Sunday in the middle of the week makes the whole cycle of the week richer. Here are a few quotes from the book Seven Days of Faith by R. Paul Stevens. Perhaps they will serve to frame your thinking.

“For many people, even the attempt to experience Sabbath can become work. The church unwittingly encourages the toxic mix of compulsive ministry and utilitarian spirituality. … Hardly ever is a person commended for refusing an office. Doing is considered more important than being. Sunday is often the most hectic and stressful day of the week, the least restful.”

“Sabbath and leisure have much in common: they are both personally restorative, enjoyable, non-utilitarian, and playful. But there are significant differences. Leisure is a matter of personal choice; Sabbath is a divine law (Exodus 20:8). Leisure is perceived as avocational; Sabbath is vocational—part of the response of our entire persons to the call of God. Leisure is directed mainly to self, while Sabbath is directed more to God. Therefore, leisure is more concerned with pleasure than meaning, while Sabbath is more concerned with meaning than pleasure. Both are aesthetic, but leisure tends toward hedonism while Sabbath invites contemplation. In sum, leisure is more often a diversion from Sabbath than a means of experiencing Sabbath, and this I think is reasonable to call it pseudo-Sabbath. It cannot give us a day of rest.”

“Sabbath seems to be a waste of time, but in reality it is the redemption of time.”

“In the deepest sense, we do not keep Sabbath; the Sabbath keeps us. Sabbath was intended to be the leisured but intentional experience of reflection on the source and goals of our life on earth. Therefore, it keeps us turned toward God and heaven bound. We make ourselves available to the gift of Sabbath precisely because we are not capable on our own of sustaining our orientation toward God and our heavenly direction. So we are left with a biblical irony: we must explore how to enter that rest. Some form of Sabbath is not an optional extra for the New Testament Christian. It is fundamental to spiritual health, and even to emotional health.”

My experience in attempting to keep Sabbath in a basically Sabbath-less world has taught me that these observations are true. Keeping Sabbath keeps us, but because it is such a countercultural activity, we have to keep keeping at it. This holy rhythm all too easily slips out of our grasp. How frequently myself thinking, “Oh, we’re losing our Sabbath-practice again!” So some time on Wednesday/Thursday, I remind myself to plan the weekend—not what gardening I will get done, or what event we might attend, but first of all, how we will make Sunday the best day of the week. Then all the rest can follow.


Karen Mains
KM1-42

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is currently involved in a mentor writing project involving teleconferencing. She has just finished a cycle with six “wannabe writers” and is brainstorming the effectiveness of her “Personal Memoir Writing” curriculum with that group. She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

I like the thought that Dorothy Bass introduces in her book Receiving the Day in which she states that, for Christian women and men, part of the rhythm of stepping well in life’s dance is learning to set established times aside each day for attention to God. Doing this, day after day, she maintains, not only helps us to see life more clearly but also to discover that we ourselves are being seen. “The idea of doing something with regularity arises from the concept of the regula, or rule,” she writes. “A monastery is governed by an official written rule that serves as the basis for the covenant among community members, making possible a certain way of life and expressing the convictions implicit in that way of life. Rules do their work amid the humblest details of daily life: they direct what time to get up, how to eat, what to do when a stranger comes to the door, and more.”

Since I have been concentrated in this blog on examining the sacred rhythms in my own life, I decided to count up some of the regular practices that have become rhythms in my day. I discovered these below:

1.  Putting a going-to-bed pattern into place so that I don’t just flop exhausted
onto the mattress, but instead, close the day in God’s presence.

2.  Meeting with my husband David on the mornings he is home to read the   Divine Office and also trying to observe this at noontime and late afternoon.

3.  Memorizing Scripture and repeating it to myself when I in the middle of the night.

4.  Attending better to the moments in the world that remind me of God’s creative genius—although I am still jerking myself to awareness. I’m trying to rush less and enjoy more!

5.  Attending Sunday worship service with regula—sometimes we minister during the week in meetings where worship is a central focus. Once, we counted that we had been in 8 worship services! It is easy not to go to church on Sundays when your week has not been at all like the average churchgoers.

6.  Working to re-establish a good Sabbath practice. I’m trying to end Saturday and begin Sabbath/Sunday by attending a Vespers service a nearby church holds at sundown on Saturday. To bed early, rest well, church on Sunday. My question to myself is: How can I make Sunday the best day of the week? My intent is to gather good worship music. We’ve built the classical-music library, but I need to find that church music that stirs the soul for background to the Sabbath experience.

7.  For 38 years I have kept a prayer journal; this is a rhythm that is so familiar, it is easy to overlook it.

I think you get the idea: Intentionally looking at the rhythms in our lives helps us to see where we are “in step” and where we are “out of step.” What are the regular rhythms you have in place or need to put in place so that you can pay attention to God? It is an amazing thing to not only see Him with the eyes of the soul, but to discover that you are, indeed, being seen by Him.

Karen Mains
KM1-41

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is currently involved in a mentor writing project involving teleconferencing. She has just finished a cycle with six “wannabe writers” and is brainstorming the effectiveness of her “Personal Memoir Writing” curriculum with that group. She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

What do weddings have to do with Sunday/Sabbath practices? Two weddings in my family—a cousin’s and our youngest son’s (age 31)— several years back caused me to think about how good marriages on Earth are a sign of the covenant agreement God makes with His children.

The New Testament teaching is that Christ, the Lamb of God, will marry His Bride, the Church, at His Second Coming. And our relationship to Him now is similar to that of betrothal. In the Middle East, a marriage began (sometimes years before the actual ceremony) with formal betrothal, in which a man in the eyes of the community was as good as married to his betrothed. This arrangement, though unconsummated, could only be dissolved by divorce such as when Joseph realized that Mary was with child without any intimacies with him and he “resolved to divorce her quietly” (Matthew 1:9). Betrothal was considered complete except for the privilege of sexual intimacy.

But when finally the time for betrothal was ended, and the wedding ceremony was near, the bridegroom would leave his house which was the center of the festivities, and with all his friends—musicians and celebrants and dancers—he would make his way to the bride’s house, where a simple marriage ritual took place. Then, taking her by the hand, he would bring her back to his house for the wedding feast, which would sometimes last for days.

All earthly weddings foreshadow the eschatological reality that one day our Heavenly Bridegroom will come and gather His Bride into His household.

Consequently, practicing the Sabbath principle is like the engagement ring a woman puts on her finger to remind herself and the watching world that she is taken. In a sense, we Christians wear the Sabbath ring (and polish it each week) to remind ourselves of the consummation in which our Lord will come for His bride-to-be, the Church.

Sunday, celebrated with delight, captures a taste of the distant future: Indeed, it is a prophetic practice of what eternity spent in Christ’s presence will be like. We are betrothed to Christ and as married to Him as though we had taken wedding vows. How dare we pull dour faces and downcast eyes. According to the Levitical law, no fasting was allowed on Sabbath. The one psalm specifically assigned in intertestamental times to Sabbath worship, Psalm 92, is a song of thanksgiving, sung in festive mood with musical instruments, “…to the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre.”

In 18th-century American, Jonathan Edwards preached that the Sabbath, “a pleasurable and joyful day, was an image of the future heavenly rest of the church.” So let us become accustomed to resting in the arms of the Beloved. Let us frame our Sunday/Sabbath practice in such a way we will be ready for that eternal rest of which Hebrews 4:9 promises: “So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.”

In truth, when the Bride is finally is brought into the household of the Bridegroom, every day will be Sabbath. Eternity will be a Sabbath without end. As we place this wedding ring of Sabbath upon our finger now, it is a sign that we are betrothed to Him, awaiting the consummation of a final marriage act; we are remembering God’s act of creation, His bold impregnation of souls with spiritual nativity; we are looking forward to a final re-creation, a perfect world in a perfect time, a utopia that can no longer be spoiled by infidelity.

In truth, this marriage celebration will be the ultimate wedding in the family.

This marriage metaphor makes sense to me; it resonates deeply within and makes me look forward with anticipation. Remembering the divine prototype and its earthly parallel, I am more than eager to “observe the Sabbath and keep it holy.”

Karen Mains
KM1-40

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:
Continuing to promote Hungry Souls, a ministry that is a laboratory for those who seek to develop spiritual growth tools that work. Designing a Webinar that will mentor writing wanabees. Wading through research data gathered from participants in Listening Groups. (Karen has been a spiritual coach to many through her years of ministry and is excited about the replication potential of Listening Groups.)

Also, Karen is preparing for the upcoming (Advent) Silent Retreat, which is still open for registration (see the Hungry Souls Web site for more information).


Making Sunday Special by Karen Mains
(inside-flap copy, hardcover edition)

Whatever happened to the spirit of Sabbath-keeping? Many Christians in this secular age have reacted so strongly against secular rules for Sunday that they retain no sense of its spiritual, sacred opportunity. This lively yet practical book by noted Christian leader Karen Mains calls us to restore the sacred meaning of the Lord’s Day—a choice that will make for a richer, fuller life.

Making Sunday Special is available for purchase through Sunday Solutions, the Webstore of Mainstay Ministries.

In Jr. High I was not allowed to take part in the social-dancing classes offered by the Physical Education department. Between the position of our church, my father’s work as a faculty member in the music department at Moody Bible Institute (considered the “West Point of Fundamentalism”), and my mother’s involvement as executive secretary to the director of a conservative mission-sending organization, everything weighted me with the preordained conclusion that good Christians don’t dance. I sat out the unit while my peers learned to do-si-do and allemande left. As classmates hastened to the gym in happy herds, I sat alone in study hall.

Several years back, I had good reason to “sit this dance out.” A backache sent me home early from the office on a Friday afternoon, and in the middle of the night, I woke with one thought original and unbidden: I bet this is shingles. Sure enough, the mirror revealed a few patches blooming on my hip, and the charming Convenient Care Center doctor confirmed that, indeed, the herpes virus had been chomping its way along a neural path on the right side of my body and was popping to the surface. She started me on antiviral medication immediately.

“Oh, we’re sorry you have shingles,” commiserated many former sufferers. “They are so painful.”

But due to early treatment (and my inexplicable early inner self-diagnostic), the patches that bloomed on my skin after the first all began to fade. (Those that popped out before medication all blistered and scabbed over and itched and sent off alarums of pain when touched.) Consequently, I tucked down into the guest-room bed, hunkered beneath a feather comforter, and drugged myself into happy slumber with regular doses of Tylenol 3. Being a good Christian woman with a life full of godly projects, endless hospitality events, mentor-writing projects and endless trips on the road, speaking and teaching, this was the best sleep I’d had in decades, and my dreams were not crowded out by a mind so busy it organizes even when I’m resting. I considered this enforced interval one of God’s good gifts to me.

Sitting on the sidelines while the dance swirls around us can be a good gift. We hear things the music often drowns out; we pay attention to thoughts that active rhythms often prohibit. We sleep; we dream. Bobbing in and out of sleep; taking Claritin, ibuprofen, the antiviral, and codeine; and dosing my skin with calamine, I heard this word: “Write. Write out into the culture.” And as if to verify this, articles began forming themselves in my mind, all slanted to a secular readership.

A friend, who has been out of work for nine months, called to commiserate with me that I had been laid low with shingles. I found myself saying, “Oh, please. I needed this rest. Maybe you should look at this period of your unemployment as a gift from God. Do in it the things you don’t ordinarily have enough time to do.”

The interludes in the dance that is our life—when the music changes, or the silence intrudes—can be life-altering. They can be inconvenient, embarrassing, annoying or painful, but after we’ve lived awhile, we begin to understand that they are never outside of God’s intents. Sometimes, we need to stop dancing.

Karen Mains
KM1-38

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:
Continuing to write for her new Christian blog, with topics relevant to Christian women and men in today's contemporary world. Planning upcoming mentor-writing sessions. Preparing for the upcoming Silent Retreat (see the Hungry Souls Web site for details).

Making Sunday Special by Karen Mains
(back-cover copy)
Author Karen Mains challenges readers to celebrate Sunday with a SABBATH HEART—to make the Lord's Day so special that there are three days of anticipation ... and so meaningful that it continues to nurture for three days afterward.

MAKING SUNDAY SPECIAL is brimful of creative celebrations that take the hassles out of the Day of Rest and restore "the rhythm of the sacred"—practical exercises that will help you fall in love anew with the rest day and with Christ, the Lord of the Sabbath.

Making Sunday Special is available for purchase through Sunday Solutions, the Webstore of Mainstay Ministries.

On the last night of our pilgrimage to Spain in 2003, before flying out of Madrid early the next morning, a group of us took the Metro to attend a tablao, a flamenco show, the highly structured folk art from Andalusia. We listened as song, dance and the music of the guitar were blended together in the passionate rhythms of southern Spain. By nature oriental, flamenco dance differs fundamentally from other well-established European dance forms. Complex rhythmic patterns are created by a sophisticated footwork technique (with the rest of the troupe providing clicking or clapping accents), and the dancers wear special shoes or boots with dozens of nails driven into the soles and heels.

Flamenco dancing, even when a man and women dance together, is highly individualistic. One young man, dressed in black, sat on stage through two-thirds of the performance, and when he finally took his place at center stage, commanding our attention with a remarkable interpretation of anguish, and defiance, and anger, we in the audience were somewhat relieved that he had a place in the troupe.

In contrast, the Sabbath dance, one of the weekly rhythms of observance built into Christian practice, is not individualistic. It is a communal expression that includes infants and children, the newly married and the recently divorced, grandparents and teens, the disgruntled and the enthusiast, new believers and wise saints.

We enter into the rhythm of Sabbath for the sake of the whole Body (not to satisfy our individual preferences—what a surprise!), and when one of us sits out “the performance” like the young man waiting to take part in the flamenco, the whole is diminished. During this weekly holy event, enacted 52 times a year, earth is connected with heaven in some way that is different than the rest of the days. That connection can only be accomplished through this communal dance. Tragically, it is estimated that some 12 million believing Christians in the States are sitting out “the performance.”

Although observing Sabbath is more than going to church, it includes the obedient
practice of showing up for “dance classes,” week after week, year after year. “Let us not give up the habit of meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another…” Hebrews 10:25.

One summer, in between churches, David and I (well, mostly I) sat out the Sabbath dance. Sorrow and fatigue had slowed me; I was hesitant about the missteps of disappointment, but in my heart I wanted to be passionately engaged in a local church, my shoes driven with nails so that I could pound out the melody of redemption in time with fellow believers, all of us flawed, failing, sinful, striving and neglectful, but despite our human ineptness, helping each other become formed in the image of Christ, making a whole that is more, much more than the sum of its parts, touching together—in barely explainable ways—the realities of heaven. I long deeply to be part of the communal pattern once again.

One Saturday night, I put together a Lord’s Day Eve meal; we lit the Sabbath candles, read the Vespers service together, then went to a new church on Sunday, as husband and wife, taking our small part in the “work of the people.” Hopefully, the grand Sabbath waltz, for me, was beginning again.

Karen Mains
KM1-37

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Getting the ordering procedures set on Web sites so readers can once again enjoy the books of Karen Burton Mains. Making Sunday Special is one that has been out of print for a decade. In it she looks at the restoration of the Old Testament pattern of Sabbath-keeping and explores joyful ways of incorporating that practice into our contemporary busy world.

Karen is also continuing to develop and expand this, her Christian blog. Additionally, she is designing a Webinar that will mentor writing wanabees. The topic of that Webinar will be Personal Memoir Writing. See www.KarenMains.com for more details.

About Making Sunday Special
In this insightful, encouraging and delightful book, bestselling author Karen Mains challenges Christians to celebrate Sunday with a Sabbath heart—to make the Lord’s Day so special that its impact launches a weekly cycle of reflection and growing anticipation. Making Sunday Special will help you and your people restore the biblical “rhythm of the sacred” and then fall in love again and again with Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Sabbath.

Making Sunday Special is available for purchase through Sunday Solutions, the Webstore of Mainstay Ministries.

One answer to my prayer for discipline to get myself physically in shape for the years of aging ahead has been a delightful new walking partner. This woman, who lives in the housing development across the street, meets me each weekday morning, and we do either our “short” walk (30 minutes), “high” walk (on the nearby Prairie Path; ~40 minutes) or “long” walk (3.25 miles; today we did that walk in 69 minutes—a vast improvement over when we started!).

At a certain point on the way back, we stop chatting, and one of us moves unselfconsciously into a season of prayer, making the time exceedingly rich.

A couple weeks ago, my walking partner mentioned she had memorized some passages from Scripture as an antidote to anxiety. I said, “Oh, I’d love to hear that.” She quoted two whole chapters from Acts! Everyone should have a walking partner like this. In addition to holding each other accountable to physical exercise, I can foresee myself scrambling to match memorized Scriptures with her. (I quoted four verses from a Colossians passage; she quoted another chapter—this is going to keep me on my mnemonic toes for sure!)

At one point a few years ago, our Mainstay staff had gone four pay-periods without paychecks. It was a very tense time for us. So I was observing a partial fast—a small meal every two days—and holding a noontime prayer vigil daily in the kitchen. At times like these, we begin to ask, “Are You walking with us, Jesus?” One day, I sat in silence and asked, “What is it you have to say to me, Lord? Is there something I need to hear?”

I thought I heard the inner Word, “It is coming.” So I turned to Scripture for verification, flipping the pages to Psalm 70. “Come quickly, LORD, and help me,” the psalmist cries. “I am poor and needy; please hurry to my aid, O God. You are my helper and my savior; O LORD, do not delay.” (vv. 1b, 5, NLT)

I am old enough to know there is a rhythm to the seasons in our lives. Some seasons we prosper; some seasons we taste poverty and failure. The human assignment for us all, as far as I can tell, it to learn to “dance,” to step in time to the orchestra of abundance and to step as well—learning the hidden lessons—to abasement. People in all economic levels, at all stages of education, in all work professions seem to experience these life-cycles. Our walking if filled with hills and valleys.

Frankly, I don’t know if I heard a sure inner Word on that day when I looked at these Scriptures. Nor do I know, if I did, what “it” is—“it” could be anything! “It” could be success, or “it” could be failure—both extremes hold perils. But I do know that many saints of God have trod the way of desperation before me and give testimony to the fact that they have experienced the Presence of the Unseen Who has been walking in step with them during their trying times. I really have two walking partners. One is the human woman who meets me in the mornings. The other is divine, and He meets me at points all along the day—low walks, short walks, “high paths,” and the long three-milers.

Of course, He is walking with me. If I notice it and think about it, no matter the condition of the path, we are in step.

Karen Mains
KM1-32

Other projects involving Karen right now are: Working with teams of Christian women to design training material that will teach retreat leaders how to conduct retreats of silence. In addition, she is designing a Webinar that will mentor writing wanabees. The topic of that Webinar will be Personal Memoir Writing. Details are on the Karen Burton Mains Web site, www.karenburtonmains.com.