Agnus Dei

 

In freedom you choose a woman; 

and you then bind yourself, 

by vows before God and witnesses, 

that you will love, honor, and cherish her 

till death you do part.  

You promise to forsake all others. 

No body can stick to such vows in his own strength. 

“The arm of flesh will fail you.  

Ye dare not trust your own,” 

as the old hymn* says.  

Those who overcome do so not by force of will 

or strength of superior character, 

but by the blood of the Lamb.  

Sacrifice was required of His love for us.  

Nothing less than sacrifice 

will be required of us 

if it is our serious intention 

to love for a lifetime. 

Elisabeth Elliot

The Mark of a Man, 

Authority Means Sacrifice, pages 106-107

*old hymn- 

Stand up, stand up for Jesus

Stand in His strength alone;

the arm of flesh will fail you,

ye dare not trust your own; 

put on the Gospel armor, 

each piece put on with pray’r;

where duty calls, or danger,

be never wanting there. 

Words: George Duffield, 1858

Corem Deo means to live in the presence of God.  

By Christ’s example, I pray our sons will live to love sacrificially as He lived, by being willing to lay down their lives to love their brides. 

As Katherine walked down the aisle towards Luke standing at the foot of the cross, Luke’s family friend/musician/song composer David Ward, played Michael W. Smith’s, “The Tribute/Agnus Dei” at the piano.  It was a beautiful symbolic song for reminder as L❤️K would  make vows in the presence of God and many witnesses, a picture telling of love willing to sacrifice for one another as Jesus, Our Sacrificial Lamb, gave His life unto death for His Bride, the Church. 

Always and Forever, we are thankful for Christ’s example of sacrificial, redeeming, enduring love. 

Agnus Dei

Behold!  The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! 

John 1:29

Photo:  Susan Dixon Photography LLC

The Breaking of the Dawn

 

There’s a slow train 

Pulling through the dessert

The colored cars pass quietly from sight

Between the highway and the long horizon

Precious dreams pass away with the light

My brother’s and my sisters’ faces linger

The hours of our childhood, grave and gold

Driving through these solitary places

Memories of their gentile kinship

Touch my soul

The hawk wheels away as we pass here

The clouds billow up and fly on

Down the road some hard turns

Are going to shake us

Ride with us 

Through the breaking of the dawn

Worry for my loving mother

The dimming years

The trials she has known

Her heart so kind and so weary

Keep her safe one more night

‘til I get home

How I long to be right there beside her

And bring everything back to before

We’ll arrive with the first light of the morning

Keep her safe, let me hold her once more

The sage and Joshua tree remind me 

Of the miles to go

The journey that we’re on

In the still, sweet air of the desert

We will ride

Through the breaking of the dawn

By: Elaine Rubinstein and Fernando Ortega

Yesterday, I heard this song on my Spotify playlist.  It captured me!  

I don’t remember hearing it before, but I enjoy Fernando’s music, so it was likely included because it’s one of his songs. 

The words of the song tell a story of a journey home to be with a treasured mom.  Does the story hint of time being short, threatened, possibly lost? 

I searched out the story...it begins at 28:23

At Home with Fernando Ortega.

Fernando’s friend, Elaine, left CA many years ago to return home to NY to be by her mom’s side after she’d suffered a stroke.  How sad!!  Her journey was long, reflective, and very anxious, because it was before the day of pocket phones and FaceTime conversations that made connecting fast and easy. Back then there were only telephone booths, landlines, and expensive long distance calls, a time when pastime memories became present living, tender moments. 

No wonder there was curiosity built in to the end of the song, and as every new day breaks, we cannot know what lies ahead.  

Fernando shared in his Youtube recording “At Home” the story of his own mom, who suffered pain last year that Easter Morning (during Covid, 2020).  He shared how she wanted to be taken to the hospital, and how he and his siblings discouraged her from wanting to go, because they knew by taking her, Covid restrictions would mean they would not be allowed to stay with her, that she’d be there alone.  

His brother took her, and she was examined and admitted, and they hoped she’d be observed and released that night or the next day.  His brother camped out in the parking lot to be closer and available to her, in case a turn of events allowed him to get in to see her.  The hospital kept her for a week... one examination led to another, and still more tests,  ... until her release at the end of the week.  Three weeks following her return home, Fernando said he and his siblings surrounded their mother’s bedside and held her hand, thanked her over and over, sang to her, and told her how much they loved her;  they held her close until she died. 

He hesitated and said it was very hard... and he misses her “every minute”.

While I empathize and hurt for Fernando and his family as they grieve their mom’s absence, I’m thankful he is comforted to know she’s with Jesus! 

But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, 

which shines brighter and brighter until full day.

Proverbs 4:18, ESV

Photo:  The break of dawn on the morning of our 33rd anniversary, September 25, 2020. 

Jesus, Draw Me Nearer

Jesus, draw me ever nearer 

as I labor through the storm.

You have called me to this passage, 

and I'll follow though I'm worn.

May this journey bring a blessing, 

May I rise on wings of faith;

And at the end of my heart's testing, 

with Your likeness let me wake.  

Jesus, guide me through the tempest, 

keep my spirit staid and sure.

When the midnight meets the morning, 

let me love You even more.

May this journey bring a blessing, 

May I rise on wings of faith;

And at the end of my heart's testing, 

with Your likeness let me wake.  

May the treasures of the trial 

form within me as I go;

At the end of this long passage, 

let me leave them at Your throne.

May this journey bring a blessing, 

May I rise on wings of faith;

And at the end of my heart's testing, 

with Your likeness let me wake.  

Words: Keith Getty and Margaret Becker

I came across a couple of treasures the other day...

Ohh, the providence, ...

the handwritten words, 

timely delivered, 

token, 

a season,

free flowing.... 

❤️

We Marvel of Jesus

 

While I am thankful for this season that the LORD has given spouses to three of our children, I am also reflective and sometimes very emotional for how quickly my season with them came to an end.  The silence in our home is so very loud these days.   

Some say, “You need to get out more!”  While that may be true, I know of few escapes that have caused me to forget the joy and privilege I have cherished these last 30 years in my home as a wife and mom. The fleeting years of having children at home have made an indelible mark on my heart!!  I’m thankful one remains!  I am very grateful to be able to focus more on him and love him!!  Dad and I cherish his loving tenderness, his very considerate and intentional conversations about very valuable thoughts he is pondering.  His long hours at work sometimes limit our time together, which then demands his need for sleep.  We’re thankful for the time he willingly gives for us to be together!!  Soo very thankful!! 

I love to read, so when I happened upon this letter in a blog last week, my heart skipped a few beats!!!

It reverberates the sentiments of my heart as a mom.  I’m soo very thankful the LORD has allowed me to find and read a young mom’s heart.  He has affirmed my call to pray for my family!  He has given me a multi-generational desire to persist and watch for the LORD’s sanctifying work to be accomplished by His grace in our lives.  

In time I trust my children will come to understand how my love for them has only multiplied and deepened with their absence.  My heart swells with humble gratitude that God chose me to nurture and love them. My love for them was not and is still not always pure, but He reminds me daily how He endures to love me and demonstrate His changeless faithfulness to me!!  I pray our children will grow to understand us better as they become parents, LORD willing, and they learn the value of fearing the LORD and telling the next generation of His work of redemption:  by His death, burial, and resurrection power to help us love and extend grace and faithfulness to one another!!  What a blessed privilege and treasure we have to be living testaments of the Gospel, and not just because we have a Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in our midst!  😂

God is at work, and He is telling our story! 

❤️ 

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

Sweet babies,

You mean more to me than you can dream possible. I don’t expect you will understand just how much I mean that until you hold your own hopes and dreams in your arms, kiss their boo boos, clean their endless diapers, wipe their tears, cheer for their successes, weep over their sin and brokenness, and rejoice at a flicker of spiritual hope.

Your father and I prayed and longed for your arrival and have stood in awe of your growth and individual personalities.

God has called me not to mother the entire world of children but to mother you. He designed you, in all of your silliness and wiggles. to be exactly who you are. He designed me to be exactly who you need.

I have seen you begin to understand deep spiritual truths. You have shown me what it means to live with integrity because to you, if it is right, we do it.

You are teaching me patience, gentleness, forgiveness, and reconciliation in a way I have never known. Your dad and I both attest to the fact that nothing in our lives has ever taught us more about our own sinfulness and the gracious patience of our heavenly Father than your lives.

God has used you already to shape and change the people we are dramatically.

I often get caught up thinking about your future. I have seen so many children who grew up to lack love and respect for their parents. I have seen so many friends and family members who don’t want to go home for holidays and desperately seek to move far from their families.

Rightfully, I don’t want that! I have prayed and prayed that God would grant us beautiful relationships as you grow older. I have begged that your future spouses, should you have them, would be welcomed by us and also love to come “home” to us. I have longed that you would think you have the best parents in the entire world. I have hoped that you would ache to return to our embrace. I have dreamed that you would not remember my short temper and quick responses. I have even prayed that God would shield you from my many inadequacies.

But, I have to tell you sweet children, my prayer has changed.

I still hope that you desire with your whole heart a relationship with both your dad and me for as long as we live. I hope you call and stop by every single day. I hope you and your future spouse and children, if God gives, would feel the absolute welcome of our open door. I hope you never question our love for you or desire for your good.

But I don’t want you to be shielded from my failings. I don’t want you to grow up to think that you have the best parents in the entire world. I don’t want your hearts’ affections directed toward me.

I want you to see my inadequacies, sin, and failure for what they are. I want you to know that your mother is both passionately in love with you and deeply affected by the fall. I want to recognize and never excuse my quick answers and short temper. I want you to see that your mother is flawed.

But, in seeing my short comings, I want you to see Christ. I pray that you would recognize, not my lack of failure, but His abundance of grace! I want you to see my sinfulness and marvel that Christ would forgive and redeem even me. I want this for you so that you never fear you are too far from turning to His grace. I want you to always know that you can run to Christ.

Someday when I draw my final breath, I don’t want you to think, “my mother was so good!” I want you to think, “Jesus was so good to my mother!”

So today I will repent to you even though you don’t completely understand. I will ask Christ for forgiveness in front of you, not so that you grow up thinking, “my mom is great because she knew when she did something wrong.” But so that you will grow up thinking, “my mom messed up a lot but Jesus was always there to offer the mercy she so desperately needed.”

May the finite nature of my motherhood point you to the infinite Father you have in God

I don’t want you to see me making excuses for my sins. I want you to see me acknowledging them so that I can model a life of repentance before you.

If you grow up to follow Christ you will honor and respect me because that is commanded in Scripture. But I desperately ache for that to be because of your much higher love and honor and respect for Christ.

I long for the day that you become not only my children but my brothers and sisters in Christ. It is then that we will share an unshakeable bond. It is Christ Who will unite us in a way that cannot be broken.

So, as long as God gives me life, my embrace will be here for you. You will always have a place with me!

You are in a perfect position to see my sinfulness more so than almost anyone in the world. I pray you would also see my life of repentance more so than anyone else in the world.

I want you to grow up to make much of Christ, not much of your mom and dad.

We are vessels, very broken, very weak, vessels to display to you the grace, mercy, and forgiveness of Christ. As Christ extends that grace, mercy, and forgiveness to us may you see just how amazing He is!

May you never think, “wow! My mom is awesome!” May you always think, “wow! A Savior who would work in my mom’s heart like that is awesome!”

I love you more than you can even imagine at this point in your life. You literally hold my heart with you and walk around with it everywhere you go. You are treasures from Christ that I adore.

I pray earnestly that my love would only mirror in the smallest way the love of our Savior so that one day soon you would turn to the same Christ who so readily forgives and restores your mommy.

I am weak but He is strong!

Love you forever, 

Your mom  <3

Katie, aka-Katherine Deckert operates www.hospitablehomemaker.com

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

May You, our hearts, never doubt you are loved and prayed for! 

May the LORD direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ (2 Thessalonians 3:5).

May the LORD make you increase and abound in love for one another... (1 Thessalonians 3:12).

Always, and forever more,

❤️ Your Mama~

Photo: Susan Dixon Photography LLC

Yours, Till Heaven, and Then...

 

In a letter to Susannah, Charles wrote:

"May your virtues be perfected, 

your prospects realized, 

your zeal continued, 

your love to Him increased, 

and your knowledge of Him rendered deeper, higher, broader,

—in fact may more than even my heart can wish, or my hope anticipate, be yours forever. 

May we be mutual blessings;

—wherein I shall err, you will pardon; 

and wherein you may mistake, 

I will more than overlook. 

Yours, till Heaven, and then,—C.H.S."

A Prayer for Parenting and Grand-Parenting

 

 

Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep. Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Psalm 127:1-3 (ESV)

Dear heavenly Father, yet again we turn to you as the designer and builder of all things, including the lives of our children and grandchildren. Thank you for reminding us that our children are a gift, not a project.
At times you’ve had to use a gospel wrecking-ball on my parenting style, in order to build something more lasting and beautiful. That process continues. But even when I’m overbearing or under-believing, disengaged or too enmeshed, I am thankful to know that you remain faithful and loving.
Continue to rescue me from relational “laboring in vain”—assuming a burden you never intended parents to bear. Father, only you can reveal the glory and grace of Jesus to our children. Only you can give anyone a new heart. You’ve called us to parent as an act of worship—to parent “as unto you,” not as a way of saving face, making a name for ourselves, or proving our worth.
It’s the height of arrogance to think our “good parenting” accounts for the best of what we see in the lives of our children; and it’s a lie from hell to assume that our “bad parenting” is the sole reason for the things that break our hearts. Free us, Father, free us, and forgive us. Oh, the undue pressure our children must feel when we parent more out of our fear and pride than by your love and grace.
Since our kids are your inheritance, Father, teach us how to care for them as humble stewards, not as anxious owners. More than anything else, show us how to parent and grandparent in a way that best reveals the unsearchable riches of Christ. Give us quick repentances and observable kindnesses. Father, we want to love and serve our children, “in line with the truth of the gospel” (Gal. 2:14). So very Amen we pray in Jesus’ faithful and powerful name.

An article: A Prayer for Parenting (and Grand-parenting) by Grace, Faith, and Love, by Scotty Smith

Copied and pasted from The Gospel Coalition 

September 26, 2015. 

Bless My Sons

May he have the faith of Abraham
May he have the boldness of Paul
May he have a heart like David
Always seeking God,
Always seeking God.

Father God, bless my son
May he grow to be a man of God.

May he have the wisdom of Solomon
May he have the patience of Job
May he be a leader like Joshua
Always full of hope,
Always full of hope.

May he have the faith of Abraham
May he have the boldness of Paul
May he have a heart like David
Always seeking God,
Always seeking God.

Father God, bless my son
May he grow to be a man of God.

May he have the courage of Daniel
May he have the love of John
May he know Your voice like Samuel
Always obey God,
Always obey God.

May he have the faith of Abraham
May he have the boldness of Paul
May he have a heart like David
Always seeking God,
Always seeking God.

Father God, bless my son
May he grow to be a man of God.

Words: Rita Baloche

August, 1993

Note:  I don’t recall if we received this music cassette as a gift, or if I purchased it myself, but whatever the case, it became the MOST treasured of cassettes that I’d play at nap time and bed time for our boys.  That season passed soo quickly!  This was our  routine musical meditation as I rocked them for a few minutes  before putting them down for rest. I still think of these songs.  As they come to mind, I pray for my sons as they are now grown and starting families of their own. 

I didn’t rock Luke as a babe, but we have given him the treasure of our hearts, our “Itty Bitty Baby Girl”, so I welcome and embrace him as my own, and I pray he’ll come to trust and embrace us as the in-law parents God ordained he receive when he took our daughter to be his wife.   

Yes, their’s a girl version of this cassette as well that we purchased and played for “Katherine, Our Katherine”, when she was a babe and toddler. 

I highly recommend this music for young children as they rest and drift off to sleep.