trust Archives - Kristina Lunde

August 22, 2022 by Kristina Lunde Leave a Comment

Hagar’s Assurance: God Sees and Hears You

Dear Modern Mama,

God sees and hears you in your parenting struggles. That assurance comes from this Bible mama, but I write to you from my painful experiences of abuse, betrayal, and single-parenting.

I worked as a servant girl for Abram and Sarai long before God changed their names. An old couple without children, they treated the members of their household work force as family. I loved working for them—until they abused me. I couldn’t believe that boss-lady Sarai sent me in to be raped by her husband. After all my loyalty and hard work, they betrayed and abused me. When they found out I was pregnant, Sarai blamed everything on her husband, but she was the one who started this mess!

Sarai treated me so cruelly that I ran away into the desert, where the angel of the Lord found me by a spring. When He spoke to me by name and mentioned my mistress Sarai, I admitted that I ran away from her. The angel of the Lord then told me to go back and submit to her. He prophesied that my future generations would be too many to count.

Then He told me that I would have a son and should name him Ishmael. After reassuring me that the Lord had heard of my misery, He added some scary details. My son would be a wild man, living in hostility against everyone and everyone would be against him. Those words described how I felt: hostile and that everyone had turned against me.

No human being would know all of that and speak personally to my concerns. In response, I blurted out my thoughts. “You are the God who sees me!” “I have now seen the One who sees me” (Genesis 16:13). So I named that well Beer Lahai Roi, which means well of the living One that sees me in Hebrew (Genesis 16:14).

Although I returned hopeful, jealousy filled the household fourteen years later when Abraham and Sarah had their son Isaac. When they banished Ishmael and me, we wandered into the desert together. Hungry, exhausted, and sure that we were going to die in that barren wasteland, we sat in separate places to cry.

Would you believe that God heard Ishmael crying?! This time, the voice came from heaven and instructed me to lift Ishmael off the ground and hold him by the hand. Then God promised to make Ishmael into a great nation. I did what God asked, and suddenly I saw a well. That proved to me that God not only saw us, but He heard us.

Do you know that mine is the first account of the angel of the Lord in the Bible?! A destitute rape victim banished to raise a wild child in the desert—but God never abandoned me. Instead, He blessed me with His appearance, prophecies, and provision. (Check out my story for yourself in chapters 16 and 21 of Genesis.)

From my personal experience with God, I learned this truth that I share with you: God sees you, hears you, and knows your situation. Although I struggled to raise Ishmael, I always knew that God saw, heard, and understood me. I knew that I could trust God no matter what happened. Please recognize that you, too, are seen, heard, and known by God. He might not appear to you in-person, but you have the truth of Jesus Christ in His Word. Trust Him even in the toughest parenting situations.

Love to you from Hagar
P.S. Did I tell you about my twelve grandsons?! (Genesis 25:12-18)

May 25, 2022 by Kristina Lunde 1 Comment

The Sadiversary: A Grief Milestone

Sadiversary sounds like an anniversary, but instead of a celebratory event, the grieving person commemorates the date their loved one died. Sometimes that date may loom large and foreboding, as you fear falling apart in a fresh new way. Or, you may have expectations and hopes of closure and peace. As usual in the grieving process, your response will be as unique and individual as your relationship with your loved one. With some planning and preparation, the sadiversary can become a memorable grief milestone. Here are some thoughts to help you recognize the truth of your situation and prepare for the sadiversary in emotional, logistical, and spiritual ways.

Sadiversary Truths

In anticipating the first sadiversary, recognize that you have spent a year acknowledging and dealing with your loved one’s death. This may be yet another grief challenge, but recognize all the sorrow that you have processed and coped with already. The truth is, you already faced many painful days of grief in those early weeks after your loved one died, and you will get through this one, too. Sadly, there is no award—no prize or recognition—for your survival of one year of grief. Most people will not remember that day of death, the day when your loved one’s life ended and your life changed forever.

Please take heart. The sadiversary is a grieving milestone, a marker on your journey through mourning, sorrow, acceptance, and adjustment. Someday it will not hurt like this, as my mother promised me. A widow at age 36, my mother raised three children on her own and knew what I faced. My mother told me of writing a check once, when she suddenly recognized the date as the day of my father’s deadly plane crash years earlier. Instead of a grief ambush, she felt surprised that it was just an average, normal day. Such healing seems impossible when grief is so fresh and painful, but God’s comfort and healing continues, long after that first year.

Emotional: Be Gentle with Yourself

Please be gentle with yourself. Allow yourself time and space to grieve on the sadiversary. Remember and honor your loved one in whatever way is best for you. By now, you will know what that looks like. For example, look through photos, read letters, watch videos, or play music. Be by yourself or find emotional support reminiscing with others who also loved this person. Or plan both solitary and group activities for that day. This might be a sad time, but recognize how far you have come in terms of grieving and living life again.

Logistics: Make a Plan

Make a plan so that the day doesn’t stretch out in dread before you or get filled with so many work projects that you have no time to reflect. Schedule something in honor of your loved one. My six-year-old son decided that our family should go on a bike ride for the first sadiversary, because Daddy liked to bike. My kids chose the route, biking back and forth to the house of family friends. As my little guy rode his “big-boy bike,” from which Daddy had recently removed the training wheels, I fought back tears. I recognized my son’s determination to honor Daddy as those little legs churned round and round at the pedals, a total of over nine miles that day.

Schedule something you enjoy, like an outdoor activity, a restaurant outing, or a concert—whatever makes you smile. My in-laws spent sadiversaries eating out at a Mexican restaurant, my husband’s favorite cuisine. The people you choose to spend time with do not need to know about the occasion. After I moved and my husband had been gone for years, I often scheduled sadiversary events with girlfriends. They had no idea about the significance of the date and had never met my husband, but I enjoyed having a planned activity.

Spiritual: Trust God

Recognize and remember what God has done for you in this past year of mourning and sorrow. Reflecting on your early grief may elicit pain again, but you can truly appreciate how God has comforted you. How did God encourage you? Provide for you? Remind you of His love? Help you grow in your faith? Speak to you through His word? Pray and thank God for His comfort. Read God’s Word and ask Him to guide you into the next phase of your life. Spend time writing your reflections down. You may identify progress that you did not recognize before. Trust God for His healing.

As you acknowledge this loss and honor the deceased, this sadiversary may be a grief milestone that propels you forward. May God use this day to remind you of His love for you.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Romans 15:13 NIV

April 20, 2022 by Kristina Lunde Leave a Comment

Daniel’s Mother on Child Training

Dear Modern Mama, Please consider this Bible verse as a parenting goal. God never showed me the outcome of my child training here on earth, but this is what He taught me:

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6.

The Ten Commandments

“The way he should go” sounds very broad, but go back to the ten commandments in Exodus 20 (repeated in Deuteronomy 5) to review God’s primary guidelines for life. The first three commandments focus on our relationship with God. If we set God first above all else in our lives, the rest will fall into place. That means nothing gets placed ahead of God, not even our children. (Don’t know about you, but that challenged this dedicated mama!)

God’s name deserves worship, not to be abused or taken in vain. Using God’s name as intended means that we respect Him, tell others about God, and speak His truth in love. If we focus on God and His teaching in our own lives, it will flow out from us into our children. The time, energy, and resources we spend training our children can be filtered through God’s priorities for our own lives.

With God as our number one priority, we can invest in other relationships. The fourth commandment tells us to honor our father and mother. Our children will watch how we respect our parents and elders. If kids learn to treat family members with appreciation and dignity, they will apply those concepts to other adults. The other commandments list acts of disobedience against God and other people: murder, adultery, stealing, lying, and jealousy. Child-training teaches what obedience looks like, both how to act and how not to act.

God’s Plan

My husband and I taught our eldest Daniel and his younger siblings the ten commandments as we prepared them for God’s plan. You will not find us mentioned in the Bible, but we raised our children with love and dedication, teaching them about the Lord our God, the Holy One of Israel. Our goals for our children included a disciplined lifestyle, regular prayer time, and loyalty to God—concepts based on the ten commandments. I admit being very strict about some things, especially prayer and nutrition. My Danny-boy always ate his vegetables—the other kids, not often. Daniel learned everything so quickly and he loved to pray. To this proud Mama, my Danny-boy seemed to be a born leader.

When the Babylonian invaders kidnapped my Danny-boy and took him captive to their pagan nation, I became distraught. I never got to say goodbye, nor did I ever see my son again. Little could I imagine that God had orchestrated this for His good and His glory. I often thought of my forefather Israel. He saw his son Joseph again in that strange land of Egypt, decades after Joseph was presumed dead. Losing a son like that breaks a mama’s heart, but I had to keep going, raising my other children and still trusting God.

Sometimes, dear Mama, we will not understand God’s plan until we get to heaven. God may launch our precious children from home long before we are ready to release them. Yes, I questioned God, His purpose and His ways, but ultimately I realized that the Lord my God is worth trusting even when I don’t understand.

God’s Parenting Lesson

Check out my son’s book, the biblical book of Daniel. You will learn that he continued to live out the priorities my husband and I taught him. My Danny-boy faced a lot of adversity as a captive in a far-away pagan land, but our Holy One of Israel blessed and protected the Israelites in exile. Despite much opposition, my Danny-boy and his friends shone like bright lights in the darkness, living out their love for the Lord our God. Looking back now, I understand Isaiah’s writing:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8-9

And so, dear modern mama, I want to encourage you. Keep training your child in the way God directs, according to the ten commandments, because you may never know what God has planned for them.
Love to you from Daniel’s mother

March 31, 2022 by Kristina Lunde Leave a Comment

Ten Leprous Men and Their Walk of Faith

Our Wednesday night children’s lesson, taken from Luke 17:11-19, focused on Jesus healing the ten men with leprosy. Pastor David told the Bible lesson in his casual interactive style, involving kids in acting out the story. Adult volunteers didn’t usually get a character assignment for the drama, but this time everyone joined in. Portraying the leprous men, adults and kids cried out from a distance, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Pastor, acting out the part of Jesus, answered, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And then we started walking . . .

How many times had I heard this Bible story?! Children’s lessons often focused on the one man who came back to say thank you for the miracle. Other presentations pointed out the grateful man’s nationality as Samaritan, people rejected by the Jews as outcast half-breeds. Samaritans who received healing and demonstrated faith in Jesus challenged Jewish expectations of the Messiah. Again and again, Jesus the Messiah healed, taught, and expanded people’s understanding of His power and purpose. And this Gospel account still does that today, if we open our hearts to Jesus’ teaching in His Word.

As a people freed from slavery and learning to become God’s nation, the Israelites received instructions in Leviticus for their safety, health, and relationship to God. In addition to butchers, interpreters of the law, and sacrifice intermediaries, the Levite priests became experts on infectious diseases. Detailed dermatology lessons (Leviticus 13:1-46) helped priests examine and pronounce the afflicted person as unclean (e.g. spreading rashes, raw flesh—what we call contagious) or clean (e.g. baldness, a healed rash). Leviticus chapter 13 taught priests when to isolate and re-examine, while the next chapter (Leviticus 14:1-32) described ceremonial cleansing procedures for people declared clean. As recorded thousands of years ago, God gave instructions to keep the Israelites from spreading disease, long before our science-based infection control procedures (e.g. gloves, lab tests, microscopes—even basics like soap and running water).

Ten men with infectious skin disease, translated as leprosy in most Bible versions, stood at a distance, as dictated in Leviticus. Rather than the obligatory cry of “Unclean! Unclean,” these men called out to Jesus for mercy. In compliance with the levitical code, Jesus sent them to the priests. He never pronounced them healed, but the directive to show themselves to the priests meant that their healing would be confirmed.

As we walked around the room acting out the biblical drama, this passage became an object lesson for me. Trying to insert myself into that their walk of faith, I thought of the march to the temple. How long do we have to walk? Are these lumps, ulcers, and discolorations disappearing? Does my back/foot/hand/head look better yet? My self-examination might last the entire trip!

That walk required faith from the ten leprous men—faith that Jesus healed them. Jesus supported the priest’s authority to distinguish clean from unclean and to validate the miracle. No matter what evidence of healing the men observed during their journey, they walked in obedience to Jesus’ command. By faith, the ten men believed that their presentation to the priest would result in a clean examination. And by faith, the healed Samaritan man returned to give thanks to His Savior.

Lord God, please forgive me for my arrogance in thinking I cannot learn anything new from a familiar Bible passage. Thank you for the example of the ten men with leprosy, especially their walk of faith and obedience to your command. Please help me to believe and act on the truth of God’s Word, even when the journey is long and my faith is weak. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
[Originally posted February 2022]

March 31, 2022 by Kristina Lunde Leave a Comment

Mary’s Encouragement for the Mama of Imperfect Children

Dear Modern Mama,
Every mama needs to be validated, so I write to encourage you. As a long-ago mama from biblical times, I know that your life is very different than mine. Yet many aspects of motherhood remain the same: we love our children, serve them with devotion, and pray for them.

My first pregnancy happened in my teens. Engaged to my dear Joe, we were both virgins and planned to change that on our wedding night. The entire situation only makes sense if you know my firstborn’s story. It started with a surprise visit from an angel who told me what would happen. I knew about the Old Testament prophecies, but never dreamed that I would be part of their fulfillment.

Check out the account for yourself, in the first two chapters of Luke and Matthew. Those chapters do not describe all that Joe and I dealt with, from experiencing our community’s shame to obeying God’s unfolding plan. My story seemed unbelievable—an angel, the prophecies, my virginity—so we did not fight the accusations people made about us. Our role involved submission and obedience, even when we didn’t understand why and how God directed us. Those first few years of parenting involved so many moves: Nazareth, Bethlehem, Egypt—it’s all a blur now. To move so often in my day was unusual, but my Joe and I followed God’s directions.

Whether you deal with teenage pregnancy, household moves, undeserved community disapproval, or anything else, I encourage you to draw close to God and let Him guide you. Your life is part of God’s plan, even if you have no idea what God is doing. Believe me, I had to learn that too. God is worth following, even if people shame you, try to kill your child, or hurt you in other ways. I experienced all those things and more, but I tell you the truth: God will guide you through anything you face.

My personal motto became the words the angel said to me: “For no word from God will ever fail” (Luke 1:37). I hung onto those words every time I did not understand, which happened a lot. Joe and I experienced so many unusual events. We knew we needed to obey God and trust in what He said. I tried to take it all in, internally savoring and reflecting on everything that happened.

In the Bible, you will notice that I never preached or told people about my perfect son. Luke chapter 1 records my personal praise song to God during my pregnancy. Other than that, you don’t read a lot about me. Like I said, my job as God’s servant involved my mothering role. No one but me can say their child is perfect. That does not mean I had an easy workload! The imperfect kids came soon after Jesus, and then Joe and I dealt with discipline, misbehavior, and other challenges. All the while, I stayed busy with diapers, meals, household chores, and chasing kids. (Of course, you know all about that, but we did not have the luxuries you do: indoor bathrooms, running water, and toilets.)

As you know, a mama’s job involves lots of hands-on work. I encourage you to use those precious days, months, and years to teach your kids about God’s word and His son. As part of God’s plan, we mother and love our children, thereby becoming a role model of our heavenly Father’s love for us. You may never have a huge platform or speak to crowds, just as I never did, but your children will always watch, listen, and learn from you. My firstborn son proclaimed His story, not me. Instead, I fulfilled my God-given role by raising my children to honor the Lord.

Thank you for loving your kids as part of God’s plan and purpose for them. Our children are a blessing and a life purpose from our dear heavenly Father. May our Lord give you strength and stamina to raise your kids, no matter what challenges you face in parenting.

May your soul magnify the Lord and may your spirit rejoice in God your Savior (Luke 1:46-47), during this Christmas season and always!

Mary, the mother of one perfect child and a bunch of regular ones

[Originally posted December 2021]