By Holly Culhane
It was an ordinary Sunday morning in 2021 when my husband and I walked into a small, dated school gymnasium in northern California for the first time. After our move to the area nearly four years earlier, we had been on the hunt for the place God had for us to worship formally each week, the place to build relationships in a small group, and to find an expanded church family.
We knew immediately this group was different. College-age students seemed to randomly see us in the small parking lot and asked if we were looking for where the church met. High-school-aged students, confident in their love for Jesus and for others, greeted us warmly, introducing themselves.
Even the church service was different. After every sermon, an elder or pastor facilitated an open discussion about the topic of the sermon and the Scripture passage covered. The questions varied from “Would anyone like to share how this message spoke to your heart?” to opportunities to dig deeper into the meaning of the passage. Even the young ones joined in. I’ll never forget the day one of the pastors asked a question and an 11-year-old sitting amidst adults and other pre-teens shot up his hand to give his answer, to read the passage, and to participate. Doug and I smiled at each other.
This church body was anything but ordinary.
There was no nursery for the littles, no separation by age group, and they had a potluck lunch every Sunday after church. A time to connect, to check-in, love on each other, and break bread together. Everyone brought whatever they had. No sign-up sheets. No plans…. and sometimes, no protein!
As with any new environment, we chose a place to sit each week and, oddly enough, did so deliberately after a time – on the left, near the speaker for Doug’s hearing – and near several families with a bunch of littles, who all stayed with them throughout the service. And they adopted us. Into their hearts, into their families, and into their lives.
That is where I met Jenn Palmer, the author of the blog “Choosing This Moment” with a focus on finding the beauty in the everyday. And, oh, how she does just that… in the ordinary happenings of life. Her words about her experiences with motherhood have touched me deeply and ring true of what it looks like to be a shepherd-mom.
So… in honor of every kind of mom everywhere – adoptive, foster, surrogate, chosen, biological – I would like to introduce you to the extra-ordinary… in the midst of the ordinary. A four-week challenge to celebrate the moms in our lives who have shepherded us well in the commonplace and an opportunity to witness shepherding principles at work, even – or especially – in the familiar.
This week, join me in exploring…
He Hurt Me Sometimes, Or, On Loving Others Well.
The other day, Emmeline and I were playing a little game that has become a staple in our home.
“Who loves Emmeline?” I asked her.
She grinned.
“Mama!” she said. Then, in quick succession, “And Daddy and Katie and Abby!”
I waited for her to finish the series, but she just looked up at me, satisfied with her response.
“What about Miles?” I prompted. “Does he love Emmeline?”
“No,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “He hurt me sometimes.”
It’s tricky, this whole idea of loving others, and being loved by them in return.
We live in a fallen, complicated world, and we hurt each other sometimes.
There are, of course, the times when I act out of anger, or frustration, or exhaustion, when my humanness gets in the way of my love, when I give in to selfishness or pride.
There are the times when my broken places rub up against your broken places, and the result is ugly. Heartbreaking. Damaging.
Perhaps hardest are the times when I have no idea what it looks like, practically, to love someone in a given situation.
Do I speak out, or keep silent?
Do I intervene, or step back?
Do I hold on, or let go?
I don’t always get it right. In fact, far too often, I do the exact wrong thing.
No matter how desperately I want to love the person in front of me well, I hurt people sometimes.
As much as I want to tell you that our school days are all bright shining faces happily gathered around the table, diving into truth and goodness and beauty together in perfect harmony and peace, I can’t.
Take last Friday for instance.
Before we were even able to start our opening prayer, we had screaming and tears and a phone call to Dad to help everyone calm down.
Here’s what happened, as near as I was able to sort out:
Abby had chosen her seat, the one closest to where I sit at the head of the table. When Miles tried to claim the chair next to her, she put out her hand, saying she was saving it for Emmeline (thereby shattering my illusion that this was a problem we’d avoid in a homeschool setting). When he ignored her, Abby stretched more and more of herself across the chair, and he did the most obvious thing in his mind: he forced his way in and he sat on her.
Cue the aforementioned chaos.
Afterwards, once everyone was calm enough to speak without crying or yelling, I talked to Miles about how he hadn’t listened to his sister, how he hadn’t respected her space, how, as a result of those things, he had hurt her.
He looked at me, confused.
“But I wanted to sit NEXT to Abby!” he said. “I wanted to sit next to her because I LOVE her!”
I’m a bit like Miles at times, this sweet six-year-old boy of mine who just wants to be close to the people who matter most to him in the world.
I forget that the ways I want to show love might not always be the ways that others want to receive it. I become so eager to demonstrate that I am there for them, there with them, that I fail to consider their (voiced or unvoiced) desires and needs. I don’t always know what it actually looks like to love the person in front of me.
Like him, I want love to be simple, straightforward, easy. But in this broken world, it’s not.
The game I play with Emmeline, the one in which I ask her who loves her, is one we play often now, in many different circumstances. It wasn’t always that way.
When we first began asking Katie who loved her like this, it was after an incident of discipline or correction. Our goal was to offer a reset, to say that, though there had been an issue we needed to address together, we were good now. We wanted to remind our kids that, contrary to how it might feel to them in that moment, our correction was, in fact, a sign of our great love for them.
(We even do this, still, with Katie. She thinks she’s too old for such things, but I don’t think you ever outgrow the need to be reminded that you are loved.)
Kids being human, as they are, it can sometimes take a while for us to get the answer they know we’re looking for in such situations. On more than one occasion, I’ve gotten a sullen, “Nobody!” when I’ve asked who loves them or, better yet, a listing of every single person they can think of, down to distant relatives they’ve never actually met, with the deliberate omission of the offending parent.
But eventually, we do get there. Even if they don’t always believe it, at least not in the moment, they’ll let us know that they know we love them. They’ll say the words out loud.
“You do.”
And usually, when we’re on our A-game as parents, we don’t leave it there. We respond with a tickle, or a hug, or a smile, depending on the kid and the moment, and say, “That’s right. I do love you, so, so much. But who loves you the very most?”
And they nail the answer to this one, every time (except for when they’re being especially onery):
“God! God loves me most!”
Paul tells us what love looks like, of course, in one of the most famous passages in the Bible.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.
It’s a tough list.
It’s the absolutes that trip me up. I’d feel better if Paul left a bit of wiggle room. “Love tries to be patient” or “love is not easily angered when it has had enough rest” or “love sometimes trusts.” I think I could commit to those.
As it is, there’s only one Person who gets it right, every single time, without fail.
Which is, perhaps, the point.
When we run up against the limits of human love, maybe the answer is not to conclude that love is absent, but to keep pointing ourselves back to the one who loves us the very most.
When it comes to loving others well, I don’t always get it right.
But praise God, He does.
It was there. Did you see it? Provision, Protection, and Presence. The kind a shepherd-mom who loves Jesus demonstrates to the young ones in her life. I pray it touched you as it did me. Take time to meditate on the truths of this blog and praise God for whomever the mother was in your life who lived out these principles for you and exhibited forgiveness that you could model.
DIGGING DEEPER QUESTIONS:
- Jenn mentions that she forgets the ways she wants to show love might not always be the ways that others want to receive it. Do you know how best to show love to each of those you shepherd?
- From the list mentioned in 1 Corinthians 13 (Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.), in which of these areas are you the weakest? How will you focus on strengthening those areas of demonstrating love?
- Which of the list are you strongest in and why?
This is Part 1 of a four-part series.
Click here for Part 2.
Click here for Part 3.
Click here for Part 4.
