Karen Rabbitt

Class Freedom

"Did you get enough?" Our host might ask as we celebrate American Independence day this weekend. As we gather around grills, enjoying our good food, a different party-giver might ask, "Did the potato salad taste good?" A third hostess, presiding over a meticulously decorated dining room, will call our attention to the elegant presentation of salmon canapes.

Depending on the "class" of the people we are with, we'll hear some variation of "Was it enough?", "How did it taste?", and "Was it well-presented?".  I read that analysis a few years ago and it's stuck with me. I grew up with "Was it enough?" I live now with "How did it taste?" I like to do a nice presentation, but "enough" and "taste" are still my key indicators of satisfaction.

Millions, of course, in America and around the world do not get enough. Millions more get enough and are able to concern themselves primarily with taste. A relative few live with elegant presentations of their daily sustenance.

Wherever our attitude toward our current meals, days are coming when Jesus will welcome those who love him to his wedding supper. Dressed in fine linen, we saints will rejoice at the bountiful, delicious, beautiful food spread for all. In the freedom that is real freedom, no classes exist. Every table will be laden with golden lilies, the taste will be beyond imagining, and abundance will reign.

Father, as we celebrate American freedom Saturday, may we also taste the freedom that lasts forever.

iTV Will Change our Lives

"When we install fiber-optic, it wipes out the cable companies." A phone company worker was speaking to my husband last week, as the workers were installing new lines in our area. Fiber-optic so enriches the transmission through DSL lines that internet TV is decimating traditional TV.

The future of TV is on the internet because it can be so niched. For the last fifty years, TV has been a mass market medium. It's been programming produced by a few, for the many.  We've been expected to enjoy what everyone else likes.

Internet TV, on the other hand, can be TV produced by the many for the few. But the few are not such a small group. The niche of those who've been raised by abusive fathers, for example, is large. iTV can target the needs of that group. Whether with stories, teaching, or interviewing programs like Oprah, iTV can be more responsive to the interests of specific niche groups, in a way that traditional TV cannot.

Earlier this week, I spent some time at the studios of Hopes, Goals and Dreams iTV network.  See the video trailer I made for Trading Fathers: Forgiving Dad, Embracing God.  The technology is now so advanced that the quality is excellent.

Blogs and Twitter and the other social media are changing how people connect with others. How will internet TV change the world? I don't know. How will it change your life? My life? Who can say? We are in a time of immense change in the world, comparable to the industrial revolution. Sociologists talk about the unexpected consequences of massive social changes. We live in unpredictable times.

I am grateful to walk with a stable, reliable, good Papa-God. We can rely on him to carry us through, to bring his good from these days, and to accomplish his purposes in our lives and in history. Glory.

Father, May we rest in your arms during these unpredictable days.

God-Focused Change

I spend a lot more time "butt in chair" at the computer than I used to. Even writing the book, I didn't stay at the computer as long as I do now. For those three years of writing, I spent 4 hours, from 9-1pm, a day. That, at least, was the goal, which I met often enough to actually finish the book. Yay.

Anyway, as I engage in my new full-time job of marketing the book, I'm on Twitter (@tradingfathers) Facebook (friend me, with reference to this blog) and just keeping up with all the other ways to get the word out.

I used to spend a lot of time thinking, time reading, and some time just enjoying God's creation. I have library books due soon that I haven't touched, and I'm thinking right now, I guess, but the enjoying God's beauty in creation consists of hearing the birds outside my window as I sit at the computer.

How are you doing with the changes in your schedule in the last year? Are there any? What's changed that you miss? Is there a way for us to resist and return to what we miss? Or are some good aspects of our lives just done?

Sometimes we are done with a season of our lives. Our children leave home and we're done with daily parenting. Not done with daily prayer, of course, just the daily, in person, interaction. We lose a job and perhaps we are finished with that profession or those tasks. It's time to learn new tasks. Time to retrain. Or we realize a spouse's failing health is going to mean we can't plant the garden this year. Change comes on us suddenly or slowly, but it comes.

I try to keep off the computer on Sundays, and usually Saturdays. I take bike rides, walks, and make time to read. And to remember that his creation deserves to be enjoyed. We glorify him when we use time to ponder the splendor of his works. And we remind ourselves that he is in charge.

Papa-God, may we glorify you during the changes in our lives. Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, Lord. Amen.

If We Let Him

"I simply could not put it down."

"You are a great storyteller."

"I found myself wishing you wrote novels because your descriptions are stellar."

As I enjoy the comments from readers of Trading Fathers, I rejoice at God's goodness. Several times in the last several years, I despaired of finishing that writing. I was sure I was not a good storyteller. I could not tell it in a compelling way. And, did my selection of scenes tell the story adequately? I didn't know.

Pushing through all those self-deprecations required faith, hope, and love. Faith that God himself had called me to the task and would therefore give me the help I needed. Hope that the story could be a means of grace to many others. And love enough to risk spilling my guts.

I have a wonderful life. The heart is deceitfully wicked, who can know it, Jeremiah reports (17:9), so I'm suspicious of my discernment about my motives. However, as far as I can tell, I did not need to write Trading Fathers. I wanted to write it. But seeing my name in print on the cover of a book does not validate my existence.

Sure is fun, though. Fun may not be the right word. Powerful, rewarding, satisfying.Grateful to add my story of pain and redemption to the multitude of stories that display God's glory in the earth.

He is a redeemer. He takes the worst pain Satan can create in a life and brings his healing, hope, and peace. If we let him.

Come Holy Spirit. Let your compassion, your suffering with us, lighten the loads we carry.

 

Father-Themed Book Author Named Writer of the Year

Saturday, we'd finished eating the chocolate mousse at the closing banquet for the Write-to-Publish conference, one of the oldest and largest Christian writing meetings, when Lin Johnson, the director, stood up and began to read:                                     

The winner of the Writer of the Year award truly satisfies the reader's cry, "Take me there." She uses uncommonly vivid sensory detail to transport her readers—to scenes from her difficult years of childhood abuse through to her adult life of struggling to relate to both her earthly father and her heavenly Father. Yet her sensitivity to "how much pain to share" and her careful balancing of "stories of hurt" with stories of people who showed her little glimpses of unconditional love along the way, keeps this memoir uplifting. Trading Fathers:  Forgiving Dad, Embracing God is beautifully written. And it's a valuable resource to help readers--whether they've had similar backgrounds or not--learn hope, healing, and forgiveness, as she has, by God's grace.

The winner of the 2009 Writer of the Year Award is:  Karen Rabbitt

I had hoped, but I did not expect, to win. Thank you, Jesus.

The Voice of the Father

At Write to Publish while my daughter is still visiting with her son, Calvin, I missed this actual event yesterday. But I can see it in my mind's eye:

Our daughter is sitting in my floral recliner. My husband, Jerry, is crawling with Calvin toward the kitchen. Jenn's husband, Chad, is driving their truck camper out from Colorado to pick them up for a week-long camping trip to Wisconsin. Jenn has just phoned him. When she puts him on speakerphone, Calvin does an about-face, grinning with joy, speeding toward his father's voice.

What an image. The power of the voice of the father. Don't we all long to hear the sound of our Father's voice?

Father, today, may we rejoice at the sound of your voice. Come to us. Speak to us. We are hungry for you.

Wide Open

Wide open. That's how my grandboy holds his mouth when he's ready for the next bite of oatmeal. He couldn't stretch his lips any farther. He's a focused eater. He may stop a second to point at a bird that lands on the windowsill, or point to his sippy cup for a drink, but he stays with it. He knows what he needs and he is ready.

His mouth looks just like the four mouths of the robins just outside my friend's door, nested in her asparagus sprengeri houseplant, outside for the summer. When I saw them the other day, I couldn't even see their bodies, just their mouths, open to the sky, ready for mama robin.

How do I learn to be so wide open to the one who feeds me? How do I stretch my mouth to receive with abandon, all Jesus wants to give me? "Taste and see that the Lord is good," the psalmist says (Psalm 34:8) Though I know much of his goodness, there is always more with Jesus.

These images, of babies with wide open mouths, remind me again of need to be hungry. I need to be a focused eater of the word of God. A consistent seeker of his presence and power. We get distracted by a world out of control, old pain, new fears, and endless tasks. Right now, let's stop for just a minute, and practice opening our spiritual mouths. We need his food. Let's be ready when he brings nourishment.

Seminal Sermons

"The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.  Jesus said to them, 'Take off the grave clothes and let him go.'" John 11:44

Either Gayle Erwin or Dick Foth spoke on this text thirty years ago at Urbana Assembly of God. I still remember the point:  it's the body of Christ who is given the responsibility to "take off the grave clothes." Jesus didn't take off Lazarus' wrappings after he raised him from the dead. He charged those around him with the task of unbinding Lazarus' graveclothes. At an art museum in Lafayette, Lousisiana a few years ago, I saw a small sculpture of Lazarus, fresh from the tomb, exalting, but still bound round with fabric. He obviously needed help to get out of those dead clothes.

The speaker that day encouraged each of us in the congregation of several hundred to help each other recognize and remove the shroud of our old thinking.  I"m grateful for that group in the seventies, who helped me recognize lies the enemy had planted in my early traumas. That teaching, of course, was one of many on the topic of loving each other, but that specific imagery has stuck with me, as I, too, have helped others remove the wrappings of habits that bring death rather than life.

Do you have a seminal sermon that comes back to you at important times in your life? An image, a thought, a feeling, even, that continues to guide your choices today? Something someone said at a time of transition, when we are particularly open to new ideas? Maybe a friend spoke God's words to us when we were finishing graduate school and seriously depressed. A time when we faced a tricky surgery, anxious about the outcome. Or like me at Urbana Assembly, a nurturing pastor's good words that laid the foundations for our spiritual lives. If you do, I'd love to hear it.

Father, thank you for those who have spoken your word to us and those who help us release the old lies. You, alone, are truth.

Unfathered?

"A good coach makes an athlete see what they can be, rather than what they are. The same is true of a good father." George Foreman, quoted in the current issue of Today's Christian magazine, one of eleven short quotes the author, Michael W. Michelsen, Jr., lists in a sidebar to the main article on fatherhood. Mr. Foreman also has a book, Fatherhood by George (Thomas Nelson, 2008).

Did you have a father who helped you to see your own potential? Someone who said, "You can make the team." "You'll do well in college." "You'll have a good marriage--you stick with your commitments." If you had a coach/father like that, you probably don't struggle with debilitating performance anxiety. Your father has built into you an expectation that you have the ability and persistence to succeed.

If we did not have that kind of parenting, we need to 1. grieve our losses and 2. trade fathers. After a period of mourning, we need to trade our earthly father for our Papa-God. More than anyone on earth, our Forever Father can help us see what we can be, rather than what we are.

The unfathered among us feel, and believe ourselves to be, lacking ability for the tasks set before us. I've been very aware of that in the last few weeks. Writing a memoir is one thing. I didn't think I could really do that. By grace of Papa-God, it's done. Now, I'm struggling through to believe I can publicize and promote this message God has given.

The core of the message is God is a good father, no matter what we feel or what it looks like. I need to be inspired again, and I will be. Inspired to see what I can be, by grace. By the lavish grace of a good papa. Glory.

Papa, open our eyes to who we can be, who you have made us to be. You are a good father. Thank you.

Through Whose Eyes?

"...call me Mara, for the Almighty has made life very bitter for me. I went away full but the Lord has brought me home empty." (NLT) In the first chapter of Ruth, Naomi speaks to her friends upon her return to Bethlehem from Moab, where her husband and two sons have died.

Ruth, her Moabite daughter-in-law, has relocated with Naomi, vowing to make "your people, my people; your God my God." Naomi seemed glad to have her company and yet quite unaware of Ruth's value to her or to God's plan. Ruth was young and strong, able to glean food for them both. And Ruth, in God's timing and God's way, became the grandmother of David, from whom Messiah was descended.

And yet, in the middle of the journey, Naomi, in the manner of us all, could only see through her own eyes. In her eyes, the basket she carried was empty. In God's vision, the basket was ready to be filled. 

How often we walk in short-sightedness, aware only of the empty basket we carry. We see the fruit all around us that we think we need to fill our emptiness. How do we learn to see what God sees? How do we believe God is even now, picking the fruit to fill our baskets?

How do we believe, in the midst of teenage angst, that God means to give us meaning and purpose? How do we grasp the goodness He means to pour out on us in the midst of the divorce? What helps us hold on to Papa-God's hand when the doctor says, "I'm sorry."

We can gather hope from these characters in God's story who speak without knowledge, just before God fills their empty baskets with his purpose. We are all in the middle of our stories. And we are in the middle of God's great story of creation, redemption, and glory.

Papa, give us eyes to see and hearts to behold the goodness you mean to pour out on us.