Simple Steps to Achieving Laugh Lines

Photo Credit

I was four or five, and tickled pink to be going to the birthday party of a friend—the most grandiose occasion of the month. Strangely, I don’t remember any of the highlights—the cake, the games, or the party favors. What I do remember with vivid sweetness is observing my friend’s mother. I was crinkling my forehead as I tried to put my finger on just what it was that made her seem so…stupendous…and…radiant as I observed her navigating the mass of knee-high children. The epiphany suddenly came to me while I watched her: her smile never left her face, and it wasn’t just any smile—it was a genuine, eye-sparkling smile.

Several years later, I was engrossed in watching another person, this time a father at my church. Naïvely, I asked my mother, “Why does he have all those lines around his eyes? Is it because he is always smiling?”

I was perplexed when Mama laughed in return. I was even more befuddled when she turned to the man’s wife and said, “Lauren wants to know if your husband has those lines around his eyes because he is always smiling!” 

The woman also laughed at this, firmly cementing my confusion concerning grown-ups’ unpredictable responses.

“I think you are right,” was all she said.

Despite the laughs, I decided that when I was his age, I wanted those lines that showed to all the world that you were the kind of person who always smiled.

Those laugh-lines of honor are not gained through just any smile, though. They are certainly not achieved by those smiles wherein your facial muscles twitch the edges of your lips up into a curve that just shows the whites of your teeth, then immediately slackens into a straight-lipped expression. They are not gained through essential expressions, sassy smirks, or brief beams.

Laugh lines come from hard core smiles—eye-lighting expressions, giddy grins, and boundless beams which meld lips, eyes, and heart into one. Smiles that appear for no reason other than a bubbling over of a joyful heart. Smiles that appear—not for the show of it and for others to see, as our smiles so often tend to do—but simply because you cannot help it and must express your jubilation somehow.

When I was five, I somehow knew that I wanted to be like that ever-smiling woman, and when I was nine, I realized that I wanted people to be able to say of me, “She is always smiling!” You know these sort of people as well, I am sure—the people who just seem to radiate ecstasy, whose countenance is always beaming, and whose words are always an encouraging balm to match the smile. Wouldn’t this be a wonderful legacy on a tombstone? “Here lies so-and-so, beloved mother, daughter, friend. She always smiled.”

I don’t discount tears, for their salty sorrow only makes the joy that comes in the morning all the more sweet. But Psalm 32:11 commands,

“Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice, ye righteous: and shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart.”

I love the imagery of Isaiah 12:3, which says,

“Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.”

Our sustenance for our spiritual life is to be accessed in no other way than with joy. A smile is the obvious expression of that joy. 

Photo Credit

I have resolutely set my mind to the fact that I am not going to be a seventy-year old patron of Botox, erasing with a prick those hard-earned laugh lines that tell everyone just what kind of person I am, just what kind of life I’ve lived. Those blank, wrinkle-free faces project a stoic person who lived their lives without laughing giddily or smiling unconsciously when the sun rose in the morning. 

Count me out. I’m smiling today!

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The Calling

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Part One

As inhabitants of the 21^st century, we stand on the shoulders of more than 40 million martyrs who have given their lives for God[1]. One such martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, lived only seventy years ago, and his legacy to the world continues to this day in the story of his life, his sermons, his letters, and his many books. Imagine now that you are comfortably seated next to a close friend of Dietrich's--perhaps Kathe van Horn, his beloved childhood governess--who tells you the tales of his early years as you browse a scrapbook of his life.

"Ahh, this is Dietrich with his twin sister, Sabine. He could be a mischevious one, that boy, though he looks quite angelic in the picture. But he had a heart of gold and loved Sabine like no other." She pauses and laughs, recollecting a particular episode. "I remember a time--they must have been about six, when there was a dragonfly flitting about. Paula Bonhoeffer told me later that he said to her, 'Look, Mother! There is a creature over the water! But don't be afraid, I will protect you!'"

"Are these the Bonhoeffer children?" You ask.

"Yes--they're all there but Susanne, the youngest. There's Dietrich with his mother's golden hair, second from the left. Such bright children they were. No surprise, too, considering their parents. Karl Bonhoeffer was the preeminent psychiatrist and neurologist in Germany. Mrs. Bonhoeffer came from a long line of impressive ancestors: an aunt who served as a lady-in-waiting to the Crown Princess Victoria, her father a chaplain to Kaiser Wilhelm II, her grandfather a famous theologian appointed to a post by Goethe, and another grandfather was an artist and a count. Mrs. Bonhoeffer's mother took piano lessons from Liszt and Clara Schumann, and passed her love of music on to her daughter. Mrs. Bonhoeffer was a wonderful Christian lady, she was--she taught all of the children at home until about 1913, when they moved into Berlin."

Kathe sighs a bit at the next picture. "There's Dietrich on the left there. How World War I changed them all. They lost Walter to that war, and the country lost its dignity. It was a hard time for them all. Nevertheless, they got through it, for sure. They had no choice! I always said those children seemed destined to build upon their ancestors’ greatness: in their beautiful home, first in Breslau, then in Berlin; in their careful cultivation of humility and unpretentiousness; in their love for music and fine arts; and in Mr. Bonhoeffer's demand for clear, logical, controlled thinking and dialogue. Every child was exposed to the best Germany had to offer in friends, travel, education, and culture. They were bound to be remarkable."

You wonder, "Was Dietrich very different from the others?"

Kathe chuckles. "Not really. But he certainly distinguished himself when he announced his intentions to be a theologian! It was a dangerous thing to make public in a family that would question his every motive, pick apart his qualifications, and challenge his choice."

“It was very rare for a young man of this academic elite to decide in favor of the study of theology. The study of theology, and the profession of theologian, were not highly respected in those circles. In a society whose ranks were still clearly discernable, the university theologians stood rather apart, academically and socially[2].”

Kathe continued, "In only three years, Karl-Friedrich, one of Dietrich’s three older brothers, was appointed to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, where he worked as a physicist with the likes of Albert Enstein and succeeded in splitting the atom. This genius, who received invitations from all over the world to study and work, was especially displeased with his brother’s choice of the humble profession of theology.

"But once Dietrich had decided a thing, it was decided—he probably had mulled over the idea for many years before daring to announce it to his family. In fact, one time he said, 'From the time I was thirteen years old it was clear to me that I would study theology. Only music caused me to waver during the past two years[3].' He was certainly an accomplished pianist--could have made a career of concertizing and teaching if he had wanted to."

"Wasn't he handsome in his college days?" Kathe asks, looking at the next picture with some sadness. "He spent a year at Tübingen, and the rest of his time at Berlin University. He achieved his doctorate at the age of 21! I never could have done that...but of course, I was inordinately proud of him, and kept up on his comings and goings as best I could.  

"I remember one summer--1924, I think--Dietrich and his brother Klaus spent in Rome. My but they had stories to tell when they came back! He was especially intrigued by the Catholic church, I remember him telling me. Now, mind you, he wasn't about to become Catholic. But he was honest enough to point out what the Catholics were doing right and bold enough to point out their error.

“It is hard to overestimate the importance of the Catholic church’s value for European culture and for the whole world….With admirable power, it has understood how to maintain unity in diversity, to gain the love and respect of the masses, and to foster a strong sense of community….But it is exactly because of this greatness that we have serious reservations. Has this world [of the Catholic church] really remained the church of Christ?...Has it not blocked the only path to salvation? Yet no one can ever obstruct the way to God. The church still has the Bible, and as as long as she has it we can still believe in the holy Christian church[4].” ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Did he begin to teach after he graduated?" You ask.

"Well, not yet. He was too young even to qualify! But he was a busy one, that boy," Kathe continued. "He ministered to a German congregation in Barcelona, Spain, qualified for lecturing at Berlin University, and then traveled to America. It was there that his life changed forever. He came back from America a much different Dietrich than when he left. While he was in New York, he studied at the Union Theological Seminary, but that certainly didn't impress him."

“There is no theology here,” he said. “They talk a blue streak without the slightest substantive foundation and with no evidence of any criteria. The students…are completely clueless…they are unfamiliar with even the most basic questions. They become intoxicated with liberal and humanistic phrases, laugh at the fundamentalists, and yet basically are not even up to their level[5].”

"What did he think of the churches?"

Kathe pauses to recollect. "Honey, he had the same opinion of American churches as he did of the university...until he happened upon the black churches, that is. He felt right at home there with Dr. Adam Clayton Powell Sr., the pastor of one of those churches. Rich doctrine and a passionate and intimate relationship with Jesus Christ--that man had it all. Suddenly, Bonhoeffer, the stoic theologian who steadfastly defended Biblical doctrine and held to a Biblical worldview had to face a hard truth: 'I know that at that time I turned the doctrine of Jesus Christ into something of personal advantage for myself[6],' he once said. In fact, I don't know but that he was saved after his time there in America."

You question, "Did he get some sight-seeing in while he was in the States?"

"Did he?" Kathe laughs long and hard. "He had so many escapades he wrote us about. Driving all the way to Florida and then taking a boat to Cuba. Trying to learn to drive--he must have failed that driver's test test three times! Finally, he and some friends took a cross-country trip to Mexico so they could see the Catholic situation there."

"Eventually, though, he came back to us. That picture is of him in 1932 with his boys--his confirmation class that he taught and loved. I also remember, not long after he returned, a sermon he preached that caused quite an uproar. It was during a sermon on the German patriotic day of Reformation Sunday, and Bonhoeffer delivered a scathing challenge to the church on Revelation 2:4-5."

“Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place—unless you repent.”

"Bonhoeffer condemned the congregation for their festivites when the church itself was in such dire straits. '"We do not see that this Church is no longer the Church of Luther," he said. He called it "unpardonable frivolity and arrogance" for them to blithely appropriate Luther’s famous words, "Here I stand, I can do no other," for their own ends—as if these words applied to them and the Lutheran church of their day….He seemed to want to warn everyone to wake up and stop playing church[7].'"

Kathe stopped, unwilling to go on. Perhaps it was because she knew that on that day in 1932, with the Nazi party already looming as the second largest political party in Germany, Bonhoeffer already sensed the impending terror descending upon the church and Christians of Germany. While he may not have been ready, he was certainly prepared—He had God on his side, and that was enough.

[1] Long, Justin. More Martyrs Now Than Then? Examining the Real Situation of Martyrdom, John Mark Ministries, http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/2904.htm.  

[2] Gerhard von Rad in I Knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Zimmerman, Wolf-Dieter, and Ronald G. Smith, editors, translated by Kathe G. Smith (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 177.

[3] The Young Bonhoeffer: 1918-1927, vol. 9, Dietrich Bohoeffer Works, translated and edited Hans Pfeifer et al. (New York: Fortress Press, 2002), 60.

[4] The Young Bonhoeffer: 1918-1927, vol. 9, Dietrich Bohoeffer Works, translated and edited Hans Pfeifer et al. (New York: Fortress Press, 2002), 528-529.

[5] Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928-1931, vol. 10, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, edited Clifford J. Green, translated Douglas W. Stott (New York: Fortress Press, 2008), 265-66.

[6] Bonhoeffer, A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, revised edition, editors Geffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson (New York: Harper One, 1995), 384.

[7] Metaxas, Eric. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy: A Righteous Gentile vs. the Third Reich. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010, 122.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Photograph Credits:

Bonhoeffer and Sabine

Bonhoeffer and Siblings

Bonhoeffer and Family

Bonhoeffer at Union

Bonhoeffer and Confirmands

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What's Wrong With This Picture?



Photo Credit

The room is empty, so let’s take a peek around. The bed is unmade and rumpled; a half-drunk mug of coffee sits on the dresser. There’s a stack of books on the nightstand, all excellent volumes. A biography, a manual on macrame, a textbook—at the bottom of the stack is a Bible. The alarm clock next to the books is set to an early hour. A calendar with a spray of pink roses on it hangs from the wall. Half the dates are furiously circled in red pen, and most days have several scrawlings in the tiny squares.

The portrait of a busy life is what I place before you, and with that in mind let’s play the game “What’s wrong with this picture?” As a child you found giraffes where lamp posts should have been and bananas where mouths belonged in zany pictures. Giraffes and bananas just don’t belong in those places in our reality. So if our reality is Scripture, where does busyness belong?

It seems that everyone I talk to lately agrees: their lives are not just busy, but crazy-busy. Is it the American way of life? Or is it wrong to be so busy, to want to fill up our short time here on earth with as much as possible? Jesus is our perfect example, is He not? The phrase “Jesus went” appears over and over in the Gospels. He went from one city to another, traveling to approximately 47 different places in three years of ministry! Preaching, healing, discipling, and performing miracles were all part of His schedule.

Does Luke 10:40-42 contradict Jesus’ day-to-day life? 

“But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached Him and said, ‘Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me.’ And Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.’”

Absolutely not. For not only was Jesus’ teaching perfect and inerrant, but His schedule was also a perfect and inerrant one. We do not know much of His schedule for the first thirty years of His life, but we can see that Jesus accomplished much in the three short years of His ministry. And we know that everything He did was perfect, in the perfect order, with perfect balance and priorities.

Was He busy? Our word for “busy” comes from an Old English word meaning, “careful, anxious, busy, occupied.” No, Jesus was not thus busied. Instead, Luke 2:49b says,

“Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” 

Jesus was not busy with His own concerns, but with those of His Father’s. And He always found time for what was important:

“Now it came to pass in those days that He went out to the mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God. (Luke 6:12)”  

A full schedule is not an unscriptural one. But a schedule full of our own business, and business that crowds out time alone with the Lord needs reevaluating.

What’s wrong with this picture? Every year as I evaluate my schedule I find new things wrong, places out of balance, and things to change. I never get any less busy, but when I am prioritizing what Jesus prioritized, I don’t live a life of “running around like a chicken with her head cut off”-style madness. The room may still be slightly messy, the alarm clock will still be set to an early hour, and books will still be piled up on the nightstand…but the Bible will be squarely on the top of the tower. 

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

September

September...the month to acclimate into a new schedule and the routine of homeschooling. To have your autumn and enjoy it too. While there has been much acclimating and newness this month, there has been very little schedule and predictability. We have had a fantastic month, but it has been anything but routine and extremely busy.

It began with Lauren and I getting our studios (the fancy music-teacher term for "all of our students and their families") scheduled for the fall. Although we teach some through the summer, there are always those who want to take a break, and we had many new students joining us this year. With the additional hours, though, we knew we needed to find a new place to teach. (Not only does our house not have an out-of-the-way room in which to teach, but for Lauren and I to each teach 8 to 10 hours of lessons would require people coming to our house four days a week!) Thankfully, God used a friend of ours to help us get into a church. So now we are happily teaching all day Tuesday and the afternoons of Thursday (which explains the sometimes-late Tuesday posts. If I can't get something up before nine, then I have to wait until the evening). Everyone is pretty well organized and new music books have been ordered, so now we just have to start thinking about the Christmas program!

Next, Mama got together the school plan for Susanna, Micah, and Jonah, with our input. We are overseeing and teaching all the subjects for all three of them, though being occupied two days a week with music means that Mama is also busy working with them. I am excited to read through the American Adventure series with them (sadly no longer in print), which I read through as a child for fun. These kids are somewhat more reluctant readers, though they're all good at it, so the books have been incorporated into the school schedule for reading and history. 

Written from a Christian perspective, the series follows a fictional family and their descendants from Holland in 1620 to Seattle in 1945, and along the way a lot of valuable American history is learned. If you do decide to check them out, just proceed with discernment, though, because there are a few books we skip or censor, though the vast majority of them are meritable.

Hospitality is something we've been working on this month, and I have thoroughly enjoyed it. What a ministry it is not only to the guests, but also to ourselves! We love getting the house clean, cooking delicious food, getting to know people better, and playing games until the sun goes down. What better way is there to brighten your corner?

We enjoyed getting to know this family!

Last weekend, we took a quick trip to Spokane area to help host a Christian Heritage Homeschool Kick-Off Picnic. We enjoyed meeting many lovely families and had a superb day of fellowship with them. Thus, the picture at the beginning of this post of everyone competing in a relay. Our time spent with the friends hosting the picnic was also a blessing, and we were refreshed by their church and the fun afternoon at their house. Of course, we had to jaunt over to Grandma and Grandpa's house on Lake Coeur d'Alene, and even got some jet skiing in before we headed home on Monday.

l-r: Micah, Jonah, Mikaela, and Papa, with Melanie and Lauren in the background. We were putting our brains together for a trivia quiz!

More quiz takers!

We are back in our symphony again after taking two concerts off. After five years of getting to know all the symphony members, it has been fun to have Sarah and several friends from church join our ranks! We are relishing playing in a group setting again.

So now, one garage sale, two symphony practices, a date (with Jonah), and a funeral later (that is, the summation of the past seven days), I have caught you up on September! We are looking forward to going to a superior science museum on Wednesday, helping a friend move on Saturday, a Polish Festival, a work party, the opening weekend of Courageous, having another family over, a symphony children's concert and community concert, and the Foundations of Life conference over the next few weeks.

Fall is anything but routine, that's for sure!

Man Courting

Photo Credit

There’s an old Ma and Pa Kettle episode of which I have memories as grainy as the video was. But the hilariousness stuck in my head: the family had wormed their way into a predicament in which they described their farm as elaborate and extravagent in correspondence with an important person whom they wanted to impress. Of course, the day came when this person set out to pay them a visit, so the Kettle family found themselves in a dilemma. They scrambled to work on their only option: fix up some impressive facades to give their farm a much-needed facelift. Barn, outbuildings, the works—all outlandishly made of cardboard. They looked strikingly real until they all melted away in the rain that inevitably fell the day the visitor came, and the outrageousness only made the situation all the more hilarious.

I hadn’t thought of that episode in a long time, but last Sunday when I read Ephesians 6:6, I began to meditate on that idea of a façade. In that verse, Paul writes,

“Not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.”

Using Strong’s concordance, the original language conveys the idea, “Not with sight-labor as man-courting, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the spirit.” There are numerous crevices in my life that this verse sheds light on, but the internet specifically leaped into my mind when I heard this verse.

The internet is full, and I mean jam-packed, of cardboard facades. The internet is, by nature, focused on eyeservice and sight-labor since people only see of you what you want them to see, and not what you don’t want them to see. The internet is innately centered around man-pleasing and man-courting as comments, followers, friends, likes, and re-tweets become the number one priority, the judge of our success and worth. We laugh at the foolishness of the Kettles. But when it comes right down to it, strip away all the computer screens, grandiose words, and retouched photos from this vast world wide web, and you’ll be left with people, now empty-handed, all sinners in need of grace, and most of them guilty of eyeservice.

You’ll also quickly discover just how short-lived and temperamental men-pleasing is. The internet is easily training us to care too much what other people think, to purr when we’re petted and hiss when we’re kicked. I have to honestly ask, if our activities on the internet were not focused on men-pleasing, would petting elate us so much or kicking hurt so badly?

“So Lauren, what are you saying? That the internet is evil? That you recently got burned by an internet acquaintance?” None of the above, actually. But the result of all my thinking lately has finalized some conclusions in my mind.

1. If I am trying to impress people online, then I am literally trying to stamp my image on them. By definition, this is humanism. I must repent of this sin and impress on others only the image of Christ, pressing His words deep into their hearts.
2. Man-courting is so transient, so shallow, so unsatisfying. Encouragement, edification, and fellowship are all godly motives, but I must take care that my motive does not slide into the realm of currying favor and earning popularity.
3. If I am a bondservant of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, then my blogging and internet activities have to be in obedience to Him, with the goal of pleasing only Him. What social standing have slaves? None at all, except what the Master gives them. Therefore, if we blog about what God has been teaching us or share a praise to His glory, it is to His glory alone, and the response or lack thereof is in His omnipotent hands. Even if no one reads what I wrote, that matters not a whit if I am writing it as a bondservant of Christ, doing His will from my heart.

Ask yourself with me, “Do my reactions and activities on the internet reveal a heart focused on sight-labor to court the fawning of others, or a heart unreservedly enslaved to the will of  

 God?”

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.