A "Mary" Heart is designed to encourage Christian women whose days are packed full with good works expectations and needs to take time out each day to “sit at Jesus’ feet” as Mary did in Luke 10.  Mary let pressing duties, hungry dinner guests, an important speaker, and a relative with strong expectations wait in order to focus on Jesus.  Jesus commended her, saying she had chosen “the good part” and that it would not be taken away from her.   

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In February 2002, I began a experimental newsletter named in honor of the Mary of Luke 10 who chose "the good part" - listening to and waiting on the Lord Jesus instead of automatically doing good things for Him.  Mary did so in the midst of pressing needs all around her (a houseful of hungry and important dinner guests) and strong expectations from her sister.

What that meant to me ~ With five of our seven children born within 6 1/2 years it was inevitable that I would never live up to my own weighty Martha-standards, much less hit the heights of those detailed in Proverbs 31 (so how did the excellent wife stay up late and rise early, anyway?).  With babies coming, diapers mounting, standards plummeting, and worse, children fighting (and me fighting back!), I needed a new role model -- one whose housekeeping skills weren't so perfect.  If I can't do anything perfectly anymore, I reasoned, I might as well choose things that really matter and zero in on them.

Character is who we are when we can't get what we want.  It is who we are when we can't get what we think we deserve.  

This new understanding that my character was revealed when I couldn’t get what I wanted or thought I needed was my most memorable insight during those years, and I hope it continues to be the focus of my life.   My character-meter seemed to regularly dip lower and lower as new trials and expectations on me and my time mounted higher and higher.  I used to be so spiritual back in the "olden days" -- back before marriage and babies and children, and well -- back when I used to get what I wanted!

I have been so very discouraged in the past, that I want to encourage other moms that there is great hope, and that the trials that we face really and truly can be turned into a higher purpose. 

Call to Me and I will show you great and mighty things... Jer 33:3

When I became desperate enough to call desperately to Him, God did answer.  Sometimes He helped me understand a certain truth about Himself, or about myself, or about His ways, just when I thought there was no answer to my frustration or dilemma.  He desires to answer anyone who calls to earnestly to Him for help. Ps 145:18.

But, many times when I cried out to Him at the end of my rope, a tiny thought would come to mind -- an unpleasant little memory of something I had said, or done, that didn't please Him -- perhaps something I had either rationalized or excused, or had forgotten about since it seemed so small.  Sometimes I would try to justify myself or tell myself that it wasn't really the Lord bringing that sin to my memory, but just my own wandering mind.  And other times I would quickly obey and confess my sin.

These small sins seemed ridiculously insignificant and irrelevant to my trials, especially in light of all the "injustices" I had been facing!  But, each time I confessed (sometimes to someone else), the Lord brought a new insight and or fresh grace that lit up a small path out of my discouragement.  But, each time I justified myself or didn't follow through on confessing to Him or others, I continued to be discouraged, and my heart began to grow harder, tiny thin-layer-by-tiny-thin-layer.

Because God loves us, and knows that what we really need is Him (and not those things we keep asking Him for), He allows circumstances that might cause us to become desperate enough to call out to Him and depend on Him, like a little child on a strong father.  God wants us to be dependent on Him, so that we can teach our children to be dependent on Him.
I don't think I am a very good teacher, so I will not share wonderful Biblical teachings in this newsletter.  Most of us are stuffed to overflowing with an abundance of teaching these days.  I am just "one who bears witness."  I used to be discouraged, I used to yell at my children, I used to put heavy expectations on my husband, I used to think I deserved more.  But when I called on the Lord, He delivered me and showed me great and mighty things.  He brought me baby-step by baby-step (and humbling-personal-failure-by-humbling-personal-failure) from discouragement to encouragement, from death to life.

God will show each of us different things because we are each His special, unique creations and He has a special, unique plan for each of us within our own families and own worlds. But if we cry to Him, He will answer. He LOVES to be called upon in truth. He LOVES to answer.

It is messy business gaining a clear conscience! And humbling. We naturally want to be independent while God wants us to become dependent on Him.  We want to be sophisticated while He wants us to have simple faith. We want to be in control and He wants us to yield control of our lives and decisions to Him.  I have numerous (now humorous) stories of trying to learn how to humble myself when all I knew was pride and self-sufficiency.

I do not want to give the impression that I have arrived. Only recently I took flowers to a friend and asked forgiveness for saying something I shouldn't have, Yes, it was hard ringing that doorbell.  And I sometimes slip back into expectations on my husband that I had already given to the Lord (and I actually thought I would never do that again!), and have had to ask forgiveness (and how right I had thought I had been!). Trying to keep a clear conscience is not as painful as gaining one after a long absence, but it is still painful.  It is like spiritual crucifixion; it is like death to the flesh.

My prayer for each of us is to know the Lord's wonderful, abundant resurrection life and to be courageous and trusting enough in the Shepherd's ways (as the shepherdess in the little book Hind's Feet on High Places had to learn) to follow Him lower before going higher.

May His gentle Spirit lead you.

Mardy