Antique Daddy and I have been saying bedtime prayers with Sean since the day we brought him home from the hospital.  It’s our routine. It’s what we do.

Those early prayers were often desperate pleas for help and grace and mercy.  We had no idea what to do with a four-pound baby.  We were terrified.  We felt so very small in the bigness of the task we had been given.  We felt as though we had been sent out to fish the Bering Sea in a row boat.

The other night as I settled Sean for bed, I pressed shut the book I had been reading to him and set it aside. I knelt beside his bed and asked him if he would like to lead the bedtime prayer.  Sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn’t.

This time he turned his head to the wall and didn’t respond.

“Sean?” I asked again,  “Will you say the prayer tonight?”

After a long pause, he turned towards me.  His eyes were shiny with tears.

“I don’t want to,” he said, his voice quivering.

That was unusual.

“Why not?” I asked, concerned. “Is something wrong?”

“I’m scared,” he said quietly.

“Scared?”

“Yes,” he whispered. “I just feel so… small.”

A big tear rolled down his cheek onto the pillow.

I sighed.  He gets its.  In the shadow of our mighty God, we are indeed so small.

I leaned over him in his tiny bed and blanketed him in a hug.  I prayed over him and thanked God for my wise little boy.

I prayed that he might always view his God through the lens of humility and awe; I prayed that he might always feel so small.

Saturday morning, Sean and Antique Daddy sat at the breakfast bar eating breakfast while I played the role of the short order cook.

On the bar was a slip of paper with Sean’s Bible memory for the month of August.  It was James 2:17. With just a little prompting, he was able to recite the verse:  “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead.”

The slap of high fives and cheers echoed throughout the House of Antique.

AD asked Sean if he understood what the verse meant.

“Sorta,” he said with some uncertainty, then “No. Not really.”

After a long pause he guessed, “If the body doesn’t have a spirit, then it’s dead,” he said with hunched shoulders and palms up.   “And it can’t work? Right?”

“That part is right,” I confirmed.

“Do you know what faith is?” AD asked.

There was a long silence as he considered the question.

“Well faith is what you believe in,” he said slowly.

“That’s true,” I said. “Faith is a sort of believing, but faith is a special kind of believing.”

I picked up the salt shaker off the counter and showed it to him.

“You believe that this is salt, don’t you?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Well how do you know?”

“Well, I can see it,” he said.

“Well, maybe it’s not salt. Maybe it’s something else. How could you find out for sure that it’s salt?”

“I would shake some out and taste it.”

“Very good.  And then you wouldn’t have to have faith. You’d would know for sure, wouldn’t you?”

“So then what is faith?” AD asked again.

Sean looked at AD. AD looked at me. I looked back at Sean.

After a long pause, he shook his head and said, “I’m stumped.”

We all three sighed.

More than one man has been stumped, and stumbled, trying to understand and define the essence of faith.

Faith is a mystery.

He who calls us into a relationship of faith is the very same who set time and eternity into the hearts of men in such a way that we cannot comprehend it. (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

My prayer for Sean this Sunday morning is that the events of his life, both good and bad, will call him to enter into the mystery of faith, to take a running leap across the wide and deep chasm of human understanding towards eternity.

* * * * *

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Hebrews 11:1

The thing about giving a speech, for beginners or remedials like me, is that there is a wide canyon between what actually comes out of your mouth and how it is playing out in your head.  And it is frustrating to me, this disconnect; that I can’t make myself do outside my head what I can so easily do inside my head.

In my head, my voice is as warm and golden as melted butterscotch.  Outside my head, my voice is more akin to the sound of an angry wet cat wearing nose plugs.  Inside my head, my pacing is mellow, pauses are dramatic and gestures punctuate meaning.  Outside my head, my pacing is that of a spooked race horse and my gestures are more akin to muscle spasms.  Inside my head, my audience is nodding and dabbing tears and chuckling at my subtle humor.  Outside my head, 15 people are staring back at me like my hair just caught fire.

In my head, I’m also four inches taller and 10 pounds lighter and I am not wearing discount store pants hemmed up with blue painters tape.  And I look a little more like Charlize Theron.

The afternoon of The Big 5, I was sitting in a session listening to a speaker give practical and expert advice and encouragement in the fine art of oratory.  In one ear, I was feeling her encouragement and I was envisioning myself living out her expertise. I was thinking, oh yes siree, I can do it!  But in the other ear, I was hearing, “Who do you think you are? You?  Sharing the gospel? Seriously? Have you heard your voice?”

And I would say, yes, as a matter of fact I have heard my voice, I have a voice recorder! And then I would cringe and shudder and wince. Who do I think I am, indeed.

The longer I sat there, the tighter I wound myself into a big sticky ball of anxiety and doubt.

So I quietly slipped out of the session to take in a long deep breath, walk off my anxiety and to try to shake the great discourager off my shoulder.  I was in a bit of a throw down with the evil one.  And so if you saw a crazy lady coming out of the restrooms  shaking her fist at the air and hissing, “Do NOT mess with ME!” — that was me.

As I walked towards the restrooms, I saw Lysa Terkeurst and her assistant Holly pow-wowing at a little table in the lobby.  They waved me over, so I stopped and said hello.  I can’t even remember what was said, but when Lysa talks to you, she always looks fully into your eyes and beyond into your being, no matter she is just saying hello or delivering the gospel. And Holly is perhaps the wisest, sanest most unflappable woman on the planet.

As I looked into Lysa’s unblinking gray green eyes, I wanted to close mine tight. I did not want to look at her because something was already tapping on the door of my heart, asking me to up the ante on the anxiety, to raise the bar, to scrape off another layer of skin, to give more than I had.  And I did not want to answer that call.

A few minutes later, on my way back to my session, I passed Lysa and Holly again. They were still sitting at the little table, engaged deeply in conversation.  I was relieved that I could slip past them and go merrily on my anxious way back to the session, unnoticed.  I walked past them just a few steps and then something stopped me dead in my tracks and turned me around.

I walked back to the table they were huddled over.  They both looked up and smiled at me politely, even though, clearly, I was interrupting.  I hate to interrupt. I spend most of my waking hours trying to avoid interrupting or being a bother to others, hence my fear of making phone calls.  And here I was interrupting the busiest woman at the conference.

I didn’t know exactly why I was standing there interrupting, so I just blurted out, “Lysa, do you ever go to the speaker evaluation groups? You know, to hear the speakers?”

She said that she used to do that but it just made the speakers even more nervous.

Exactly. Up the anxiety ante. That was what I was supposed to do. That’s why I was standing there.

I heard myself ask her if she would be willing to come hear me give my speech.  After about two seconds of schedule checking and wrangling, she said yes.  And really, that says way more about her than me.

Just so you are clear on what transpired here, I asked the leader of a large conference, a nationally known speaker and author, who was scheduled to lead a session at the very same time I was speaking, to come listen to my piddly little five-minute speech.  And she said yes.  It would be like getting off the tourist’s bus at Buckingham palace, spotting the queen and running up to her and asking her to stop by your room for a spot of tea. And she says yes.

Up the ante, He said.  Then depend on me.

I don’t really think it was just a coincidence that Lysa and Holly were sitting just outside the session I was in. I don’t think that Lysa and Holly woke up that morning thinking they should follow me around and sit outside the sessions I was attending just in case I might need to ask them to do some crazy, unscheduled thing. I’m pretty sure not.  Not planned. Not coincidence.

After the session, I went back to my room to practice and to pray and then practice and pray a little more.  What I had to give to God was not great, I know that, He knows that, but I was going to give all I had and more. I was going to up the ante not because I wanted to, but because He asked me.

So Lysa and Holly came and listened to my speech. And I did okay.

I recorded my speech with a little pocket recorder I carry around with me and when I listened to it later, it bridged the mighty canyon between what I heard in my head and what actually transpired.  It was the most honest of all evaluations.

I was nervous.  I spoke too fast.  I dropped a few key lines. The faces that stared back at me were mostly wide-eyed and puzzled. The written feed back was mixed — some got what I was saying, some didn’t.  But none of that really matters.

It wasn’t about my performance, it was about my obedience.

I was called to up the ante that day, to lean a little harder on my Jehovah-Rapha.  And I was obedient.

And that is all that matters.

Back in the early 80s, when I was about 23, I landed this great job where I traveled around the country about 80% of the time teaching people how to use their new phones.

It was a great job for a young single gal.  I traveled to many of the major companies in most of the major cities, and four times a day, twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon, I gave 30-40 minute presentations on how to use the new phone system.  Basically I worked four hours a day and was done by 3:30. Suh-weeet!

The first time I went on a training trip, I went with this older lady named Connie to a large aerospace concern out on Long Island.  And by older lady, I mean that she was the same age I am now.  That hurt just a little to write that last sentence.

She gave the first two morning presentations while I observed and then I was to give the afternoon presentations.

That afternoon, in my first group were about twelve not easily amused, scowling executives extremely serious about the millions of dollars they had just invested in their new phone system.  And little old blond, wet behind the ears, uneducated me was there to teach them how to use it. I’m sure the sight of me in my $20 polyester business suit inspired all due confidence.

I knew my material. I had it memorized. I knew the phones and I knew the system and how they worked inside and out. Yet I was nervous. Connie told me to relax and take a few deep breaths and that I would do great.

I stood up to make my way to the front of the room.  I turned and looked down at her hoping for something, but I didn’t know what, maybe her calm and poise, maybe that she could somehow gift that to me.  I also hoped that a meteorite might hit the building in the next 5 seconds.  But it didn’t, so I just stood there looking at her.  She looked back at me. And blinked a few times.  Finally she made a sweeping motion with both of her hands. “Go,” she said.

So I turned and I went.

I went to the front of the room.  I stood in front of a dozen scowling Ernest Borgnines, all with their arms crossed across their fat executive bellies, some clenching unlit cigars between their teeth, all waiting for me to confirm for them that they had not wasted their company’s money on my phone system.

I swallowed hard with great difficulty.  I seemed to have no saliva.  I opened my mouth to speak and no words issued forth. Not one.

I opened my mouth again, hoping to hear the sound of my voice, hoping to hear “Hi. My name is…” But all that came out was a sad, pathetically tiny squeak.

I remembered that Connie had told me to take a few deep breaths before I started, so I did. And then I took another.

And then another.

And then I couldn’t stop myself and I began to hyperventilate.  And now instead of making a tiny squeaky kitten sound, I was making an unpleasant sound that I liken to the sound that the last of the water makes as it is being sucked down the bathtub drain.  Not the sound you want to hear in a conference room.

As I’m making the bathtub sucking sound, unhappy, scowling, and now, slightly alarmed executive faces stare back at me.

My heart was beating so hard, I could feel it in my throat.   I looked down and saw my right foot thumping like a rabbit.  My mind sent my foot a message to cut it out, but my heart was in my throat and so the message did not get past my neck.  And the fact that my heart was in my throat was probably all that stood in the way of me throwing up. So I count that as a blessing.

Somehow, I do not know how, I managed to pull it together.  I got through my 30 minute presentation. It was not great, but I got through it without throwing up or fainting and at that point, that was all that mattered.

I’ve always suspected that the executives went home to their wives that night and told them about how in the conference room at work that day was the most ridiculous specimen of a human they ever saw.

After my presentation, I sat down and the first thought I had was, “I can’t WAIT to do that again!”

It was terrifying, but it was also exhilarating to go into that dark tunnel and come out the other side. And I wanted to do it again.

The next time was a little better, I didn’t hyperventilate, as much, and the time after that it was a little better. By the second week, I could give those presentations in my sleep. Over the next several years I went all over the country giving the good news.  You’ve got new phones!  And I’m here to teach you how to use them!

Most of the time, the response was, “I like the old phones. What was wrong with the old phones? I know how to use the old phones. I don’t like the new phones.”

I gave presentations to groups of 3 and groups of 20 and groups of 100 or more.  And I became very comfortable with public speaking.

But that was 20 years ago, and now I’m back to square one again.

This past weekend, I was in North Carolina at the She Speaks conference to relearn how to move through that dark tunnel to square two.

This time around, I’ve got a different kind of good news.

Why, you might wonder, is Antique Mommy missing a pair of socks? Well I’ll tell you. They were knocked off this weekend in North Carolina at the Proverbs 31 She Speaks conference.

I don’t even know where to start in describing the awesomeness that was this weekend, so I’m going to mention just a few highlights and then I’m going to go lay down for a few days.

In absolutely no particular order:

~ Keynote speaker Jennifer Rothchild. Amazing doesn’t even begin to describe this woman. She had 600 women and a number of men spellbound for more than an hour as she told her story. I can’t quit thinking about her and her powerful story and the way she tells it. I may have trampled a few sisters trying to be first at her book table.   If you ever hear her speak, you will not be the same.  I will not do injustice to her big story by trying to tell you about it in this small space.  Go to her site and find out about her.

~ An amazing demonstration of the unity of the body of Christ seldom seen,  anywhere really.  This is the thing that stands out for me about this organization and this conference and I think why I love it so much.  There is no A List or B List.  There is no preferential treatments or anything that separates anyone from anyone else, no favoritism shown that James talks against in Chapter 2.  There is no division among them, just everyone working together to encourage and build each other up.  600 women encouraging and cheering each other on, all on the same team.  That makes my heart burst.

~ Cheri Keaggy – I have loved her since I first heard her music when I returned to my faith back in the 90s.  Her music was a big part of that season of my life.  She is an amazing singer, musician and woman of faith. And tall. I had no idea.  I assumed she was short like me.  I stopped her in the hall and told her I would die if she didn’t sing “Make My Life An Altar.”  She looked full into my face giving no indication she thought I was nuts.  She didn’t sing it and I didn’t die. But I still love her.  Not in a stalker-y sort of way. Well not overtly stalkerly.

~ The Proverbs 31 team - How this small band of sisters put on such a well run, thoughtful, meaty, organized conference for 600 women is beyond me. All are approachable, available and know everyone’s name.  And that amazes me because many days I don’t even know my own name.

~ A lovely lady with great big aqua green eyes rimmed in gray who made it possible for me to attend this year.

~ That the busiest woman in the whole place would leave a session she was leading to come hear me give my little speech just because I asked her to.  It’s slightly more involved than that, but too involved to lay out here at this moment. Soon.

~ Seeing my sweet bloggy friends, some of whom I had met before and others not, but in all, a list which is too long for the mental bandwidth I have available at the moment.

~ My 570  new friends.

I’ve got more stories to share, but just now I am so tired I want to cry.  I’m going to go wrap myself up in my little boyfriend and then my big one.  It’s good to be home.

Day by day, drop by drop, the world seeps in and crowds us out.

His daddy and I are in a race against the clock to lay a firm and level foundation that will last him a lifetime and withstand any storm.

Because already, there is a storm gathering in the distance.

We see it. We hear it. We know it is coming.

He’s interacting with the world more and more these days, independent of us.

He’s already heard the most corrupting lie ever told:  Everybody does it.

We try to teach him to stand apart with confidence, to not be Everybody.

We try to teach him that it’s better to be wise than smart.

We try to teach him that it’s better to be kind than accepted.

We try to teach him that good choices lead to goodness.

And every day that passes is one less day we have to  shore up the foundation of his life.

Our prayer for him is not wealth, health and happiness.

Our prayer for him is that goodness and mercy follow him all the days of his life.

I love going to the store early in the morning because there are usually no lines and it’s clean and quiet, plenty of good parking spaces.  Early shoppers know how to grocery shop. They understand and adhere to aisle etiquette. They know what they are doing.  They are my people.

But this is not about grocery store etiquette. This is about how good intentions wear off around 9am.

On a recent early morning shopping trip, I passed through the bakery area where I saw a mom-type person reach into the doughnut case, snag one with the tissue paper and scarf it down in about two bites.  I do not judge her, because who among us has not been overcome with doughnut fumes and passed out in the self-serve case?  She had probably gotten out of bed an hour before with the best of intentions to make it a better day, to do better, to treat her body like the temple that it is.

But by 9:30, the morning sun had scorched her good intentions. Resolve dissolved.  I get that.

Two aisles before I even got to the photo department, I heard a voice – intense and purposeful and rising like a thermometer.  When I turned the corner I saw a harried mom with four kids hanging off the cart. She was trying to work the self-service photo print machine and her four kids were trying to work her last nerve.  And then she lost it.  She bellowed at the source of her exasperation and melted down into a puddle of what appeared to be good intentions.

She had probably gone to bed the night before promising herself that today would be a better day, that today she would do better, today she would be the kind of calm and reasonable mom parenting books promise you can be.

As I was heading towards the checkout with my few things, I met up with a man with sad eyes and a red bulbous drinker’s nose.  He wore a defeated expression.  He bowed awkwardly and kindly waved me into the line ahead of him, although I had several things in my cart whereas he only had a case of beer.

“Thank you so much sir,” I said. I looked into his eyes and what I saw was the cruelest kind of sad – self disappointment.  Had he gotten up a couple of hours earlier with the best intentions to make it a better day, to do better? Yet here he was buying a case of beer at 9:30 in the morning.

Beer is not my thing, but sometimes it’s the doughnut. Or the promise not to yell or be snippy and short with people I love. Or any number of short comings from a long list.

Like those people, I wake up each morning telling myself that today I’ll make it a better day, today I’ll do better. And then the sun rises in the sky.

The early shoppers, the ones with the good grocery store etiquette and a cart full of busted best intentions, they are my people.

Daily, my good intentions fail, but His compassions for me don’t. And therein lies my hope.

* * * *

“Because of the Lord”s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” ~Lamentations 3:22-23

Water.

Every drop as ancient as the earth itself.  Having possessed every form from ice to vapor, every drop has been swirling around and around the earth since before the moon was born.  It is the most corrosive element on the earth.  It will continue to carve and sculpt the rocks and rivers of the world until He sweeps it all away.  It cleanses us, it baptizes us, it is in every cell of our body.  It is our tears and it is the private ocean of the womb where life begins.

Water.

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. ~ Genesis

Way back in 2000, AD and I had just moved to the home we live in now.  At that time, we were doing a lot of church hopping in an effort to try and figure out where to park it on Sunday’s.

To make a short story long, also at the time I was taking a seminary course on the Gospel of Luke from a friend of ours who is a professor of theology at one of the southern Christian colleges.  The class was comprised of eight or ten young men hoping to become preachers. And me. Not hoping to become a preacher. I was just there in my never ending quest for knowledge and something fun to do. I know.  Knowing that makes you want to party with me, doesn’t it?

One day, a particularly handsome young man with a terrific smile turned around and asked me where I attended church.  He was the first and only of my classmates to acknowledge my presence.  “You know,” I said, “That is a really good question.”  And then I told him we had just moved to the area and that we weren’t settled anywhere.  He invited me to his church where he was the youth minister and several Sunday’s later, we went.  At the time, this was a church without a church. It was basically a bunch of folks meeting in an office building and that was wildly appealing to us because we are renegades and offbeat.

As we made our way to the door of the cafeteria where the believers assembled, I was greeted by a tall silver haired woman with piercing dark eyes.  There was something about her presence that was all business but at the same time oozed a sense of fun and ornery.  As she handed me a bulletin, she looked me in the eye and introduced herself. She had a charming west Texas accent.  Her name was Glenna.  She said she didn’t believe she had seen me before and asked about me.  As we talked briefly, she blocked out the buzz and flurry that happens before a church service and focused completely on me. In the short space of time that we spoke, I knew that I had found a friend. I didn’t know yet that I had found a mentor.

Since that Sunday, Glenna has been my friend when I needed it, my mother when I needed it, my sister when I needed it, my babysitter when I needed it.  She has brought me meals, she has prayed for me, she has cried for me, she has listened to me, she has defended me, she has comforted me and she has made me laugh.  She has given me advice when I needed it and not given me advice when I needed it but didn’t want it.  She has encouraged me when I needed it and she has called me out when I needed it. I don’t think I’ve ever asked something of her that she said no.  Every woman needs a Glenna — a mentor, another woman to guide and nurture her in a way that girlfriends and mothers can’t.

I didn’t go looking for a mentor that day, but I sorely needed one.

A lot has happened since that day in 2000 and Glenna has been with me the whole way.  Glenna and her husband Skip continue to mentor AD and me in so many ways – especially in our faith and in our parenting.  But beyond that, they mentor us in the example of their lives. In their every day walking around lives, they are Christ to everyone they see, everywhere they go, every day.  And that not only mentors us, it inspires us.

* * * * *

Do you have a mentor? If so, how did that come about?

Yesterday my friend Lysa TerKeurst was in town to do a taping at a local television studio.  In the afternoon, before the taping, I popped over and met her and Holly at their hotel for coffee, although there wasn’t any coffee. Lysa is off coffee and has managed to go on with her life in a meaningful way, but I am not.  And I could have used a pot cup. I was in my afternoon slump.  But I do want to report that I did not lie down and curl up on the sofa in the hotel lobby, even though I sorely wanted to.

Okay, so then later that evening, my friend Donna at Way More Homemade (who is super on top of things and not only knew about the taping but scored us some tickets) and my other friend Jennifer (that’s four friends I have if you’re keeping tally) and I went over to the studios to be part of the audience and watch Lysa be interviewed and talk about her book.

And she was compelling as always and funny and talked about the kind of stuff that stirs up unnamed things in your heart.

At the end of the taping the host asked if anyone in the audience had any questions for Lysa, and my friend Donna popped up out of her seat.  Not to say, “Please Lysa, tell me more about Jesus” but “Where did you get those shoes?!”

And in fact, Lysa did have on the cutest blue shoes you ever did see that matched her sweater exactly and it was not lost on anyone of the female persuasion in the viewing audience.  But her shoes in no way took away from her message because when we look at Lysa, we see the Lord. And then her awesome shoes.

Everyone in the audience received a copy of Lysa’s latest book What Happens When Women Say Yes To God. And since I already have a copy, I had Ms. TerKeurst autograph my copy so I could give it away to you!

And it just so happens that Jennifer and I are reading through this book together over here (or click on the little gal with the Yes heart in the right sidebar). We are only on chapter five, so if you’d like to jump in that would be awesome and you would be so welcome.

If you would like to win this book, which I love even though it is challenging me and giving me unrest on some issues (in a good way) leave me a comment telling me what you are saying yes to today.

I’m saying yes to doing less so I can experience more in a more meaningful way – God, my family and my friends in particular.

I’ll draw the winner at the end of the day so I can get this off in the mail to you tomorrow.

* * * * *

We got a winner! Kay Sisk ~ commenter #58, writer of romance novels and self-described small town Texas gal.  Congrats Kay!