All posts by Kristen Mudrack

I Want Them To See Jesus

marriage

“I want to have a marriage just like you and Daddy, someday.”

I want my kids to say that, someday.  And no, this isn’t something you’ll be hearing soon, so just squash those rumors before they begin.

But I want my kids to say it.  And in order for them to say that, I need to show them a marriage worth imitating.  I need to show them Christ’s relationship with the church.  I need to show them Christ’s relationship with me.

In this fallen and broken world, my sinful and selfish nature wants to rule.  I am wired to do things for me, because I want to, and because I think it’s okay.  When Christ came into my heart to rule as king in my life, all of that changed.  Not my sinful human nature – no, I war against that every day.  But He took my sin and my shame and nailed it to a cross and called me to a higher place: forgiveness and grace.

He forgives me when I don’t ask for it.  He gives me second chance after second chance after second chance when I’ve screwed up twenty times over.  He covers me with a grace that I do not for one minute deserve.

And that is what He has called me to do in relationship with my husband.  That’s what He’s called me to model to my children, to the people around me – be they students or coworkers or friends.

I want to be a wife after God – one who seeks her husband’s good over her own, and one who seeks God above all.  I want to be a wife who loves unconditionally and forgives without expecting anything in return.  I want to freely give grace because it has been freely given to me.

I will not do it perfectly, but that is what I want my children to see.  Humility.  Grace.  Forgiveness.  Love.  In short, I want them to see Jesus in my marriage.

Not Good Enough

Testimony

I’ve been staring at this blank screen for a while, trying to come up with something to write.  Every time I start something, I erase it and start over.

Why?

Because it wasn’t good enough.

“Good enough?” the voice in my head says.  “Even what you’re writing now isn’t good enough.  Why should anyone read what you have to say?  What do you have to say, really?”

The voice in my head is loud.  It’s drowning out a lot right now.  Especially the voice of God.

When I started this blog several years ago, it was a free WordPress site called swimmingforhim.  I started it because I needed a place to write down my thoughts, and somehow people just started reading them.

Fast forward to about 4 years ago while I was in graduate school.  My friend and I were leading a women’s Bible study, and we wanted to do a study over the summer, but be able to do it at our own pace via email.  We searched for a study that we liked, but we couldn’t fine anything, and eventually my friend suggested that I write the study for the summer.  After my initial laughter, I decided to give it a try, and so wrote my first study on the fruit of the Spirit.

Somewhere between then and now, I decided to turn my worpress site into something bigger – an actual ministry.  So, I changed the name, I changed the site, and so was born All For Him Life.

When I started, God directed that I would write studies and blog posts and if their only purpose was to help one person, even if that one person was me, it was worth it.  It was good.

Not just good enough.  Good.

What are you doing today that the voice in your head keeps telling you isn’t good enough?  Is it your job?  Your method of parenting?  Your writing?  Your relationship with your spouse?

Don’t listen to that voice.  Instead, take your request to God.  He will direct your steps and help you to see the purpose in what you are doing, and remind you that you are good enough.  He died for you, didn’t he?

So even when – no, especially when – you’re having trouble seeing how what you’re doing for the Kingdom is good enough, lean on Him, let Him be the loudest voice to remind you:

You are enough.

Live Differently

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How do I make sense of it?  How do I accept that life can be cut off so abruptly – by a gun, by a car crash, by cancer, by any number of things?

Doctors likes to assure us that our life expectancies are high, that we’ve got time, that we’ll live to see our grandkids.  That we have time to decide what we really want to be when we grow up.  That we have time to grow up.

Do we?  Do we have time to put things off until tomorrow, or wait to say something until the next time we see that person?  Do we really have time?

Somehow, we’ve been conditioned to live like tomorrow is guaranteed.

But it’s not.  We are not promised tomorrow.

Living like tomorrow is promised means that we don’t always say “I love you.”  We don’t always resolve our disagreements quickly.  We procrastinate. We don’t visit family or friends when we can.  We don’t stop and smell the roses.  We don’t enjoy each moment we have.

Just because we aren’t guaranteed tomorrow doesn’t mean we don’t plan for the future, invest smartly, save for retirement, or try to do everything today.  We still have to have a long-term goal in place.  But it does mean that we live differently.

Living differently means taking every chance you get.  It means saying, “I love you” every morning before you leave for work.  It means taking the time to talk to those around you and offer your shoulder to cry on, even when there are tests that need to be graded.  It means giving your kids more time to crawl on top of you and tickle you.  It means living each day as if it was your last.

Tomorrow is not promised.  It’s a gift.  When you unwrap that gift every morning, give thanks.  And then go live it to the glory of God the Father.

Pray For Someone

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It was a warm, summer evening many years ago when I first went to a live Casting Crowns concert.  I had been listening to their music for years, but had never seen them live.  I was so excited – but I had no idea what was in store for me, or what this concert would begin.

My family set up our lawn chairs at the outdoor venue and waited expectantly to hear my favorite Christian group perform.  And yet, from the first note they struck, it wasn’t a performance – it was worship.

They were leading worship.

Somehow, the stage wasn’t about them.  It was about pointing the crowd to God.  At one point near the end of their set, Mark Hall began singing the worship song We Fall Down.  He asked that we lay all of our burdens down at the feet of Jesus, and that we lift up someone up in prayer that they would do the same.  At that point, I felt moved to walk around a couple of chairs to my younger brother and to lay my hand on him and pray for him, that he would surrender all of his life to the Lord and His leading.

I didn’t think about that concert again until a few years ago, when my brother and I were at another Casting Crowns concert.  He leaned over to me and asked, “Do you remember our first Casting Crowns concert?”

“Vaguely,” I replied.  “It was at Alive, and our whole family was there.”

“And you prayed for me,” he added.

I hadn’t even remembered that until he brought it up again, but that prayer made an impact on him.  He remembers it.  He remembers that his big sister prayed specifically for him.  He remembers more of what I said than I do.  But my measly little prayer that day did more than I ever could have imagined.  We’ve been to many Casting Crowns concerts together since, but none sticks in his head so much as that one.

Pray for someone with them today.  Not just in private.  In person.  Out loud.  And ask the Spirit to lead you.  You never know what God might do with it.

Picture Perfect

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By Kristen Mudrack

I’m not a huge fan of pictures of myself.  I tend to want to be the one holding the camera instead of on the other side of it.

You see, I tend to not like the way I look in pictures.  The picture was too posed, or the light wasn’t right, or I look fat, or I’m not smiling, or any other such excuse I can come up with.  But usually it’s because I don’t like the way I look.

I have this image in my head of what I should look like.  In short, perfect.  I should look put together, happy, and healthy, even if that’s not actually true at that moment.  I think I got this notion from looking at social media – where we all put the best of ourselves out there.  The perfect selfies and the happy status updates – they don’t always reflect real life.  When did we become so good at pretending?

Pretending that everything is okay, even when it’s falling apart.

Pretending that we’re always happy, even when we’re struggling.

Pretending that we’re always healthy and flourishing, even when that is the furthest thing from the truth.

In social media today, we put forward the best of ourselves.  We want people to see the best image of us, not the struggling, frazzled, often overextended person that we actually are.  Now, there are things you shouldn’t share on social media.  For example, that you’re angry with your significant other or a confidential matter that has been shared with you.  But neither should we always be the perfect version of ourselves.

Pictures show that more than anything.  I have pictures from college during times that I was on steroids and sicker than ever before.  I can tell, in those pictures, that I wasn’t feeling like myself.  I have pictures from trips with my family and friends that show beautiful landscapes but also dirty, muddy, sweaty, happy faces.  I have pictures from my wedding that show unbridled happiness as never before.

The more I stand on this side of the camera, the more I realize that I love these pictures.  Even the ones where I look terrible.  Because they show the real me.  The messy, dirty, imperfect, happy, sad, healthy, sick, real me.

What do your pictures show?  Do they show the real you?  Or the you that poses for the camera?

Empty

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I’ve been searching for inspiration all day.  Something to write about.  And I’ve come up empty.

Although, I guess that is something.

How often do we search and search and search for something, and even when we think we find it, still feel somehow…lacking?  It’s maddening to many people when they try and try to find fulfillment in movies or in fame, in success or in their kids, in how high they can climb at work or how much money they can save.  But none of those things will satisfy us.  None of that will ultimately fill the void in our lives that only Christ can fill.

We search for that fulfillment in so many ways, every day.  And we search for it in good places.  We want to be fulfilled in our marriages, in our families, in our work.  We are honestly working for good things.  But it’s not enough.

We can strive and strive and strive to be the best wife possible, the best sister imaginable, the best ministry leader that we can – but without God, it is nothing.  Without Christ at the center, it is meaningless.

So I guess that’s my challenge for me and for you today.  Go to God.  Sit at His feet and lay your burdens on Him.  He can handle it, I promise.  Ask Him to fill the void in your life, the places where you feel empty and inadequate, and watch Him work.  And then go do what He’s calling you to do – be a wife, a mom, a friend, a teacher, a sister, a daughter.  Get up and go, having been fulfilled by the only one that can do so.

Two Doors Down

Faithful, God's love, Live Like Jesus, Prayer

By Kristen Mudrack

Perhaps the hardest thing about moving is making new friends.

And I don’t mean friends you can hang out with and have a good time with.  I mean friends that you can share everything with – the exciting things, but also the hard things – in your marriage, your kids, your eating habits, your exercise (or lack thereof) habits, your fears, and your dreams, your quiet times and your prayers.  Those friends don’t come overnight, and they take time.

When I lived in Michigan, I had that group of friends.  I didn’t have it immediately – it took a couple of years.  But I had a group of women who I could share anything with, and they could too.

Then I moved.  Twice.

I still have those friends, but they aren’t a quick car ride away anymore.  I still can tell them anything.  I still talk to them regularly.  I still count them among the people who know me best. But it’s not the same.

When I moved to TN, God knew that I’d need a friend or two, and he provided.  The day I moved into my new apartment, leaving my fiance back in IN, the other new professor in the department and his family moved in too.  Two doors down from me in the same apartment complex.

In talking to each other that day and in the days to come, we discovered that we had all grown up in the same area, attended similar churches, and so much more.  Their four year old daughter came over to my apartment and “helped” me unpack the day I moved in.  Their two year old now knows me as ‘Tisten’ and runs to hug me every time he sees me.  We started having dinner together once a week.

When Cody would come to visit me, we’d go over and play with the kids and play games with the whole family.  The kids loved Cody because he could do magic tricks with cards.  Now this family is our closest friends here in TN.  We share much together, and they even made the trip out to our wedding.

God provided more than I ever could have imagined in this family – friends who we hope to be near for many years to come.  I love this family, and am privileged to get to live life alongside them.  Two doors down, in fact.

Time

Bible Study, Read Scripture
By Cody Mudrack
The other day while at lunch with my wife and a couple of friends, I asked, “What time is it?” I then checked my pocket watch my wife bought me for a wedding present. My wife checked her watch and our friend checked his phone.
“It’s 12:08.” I said.
“It’s 12:23.” my wife said.
“Uhh, it’s 12:15.” our friend with the phone said.
“So which one is it?” I questioned.
“Probably the one with the phone.” my wife replied.
My wife and I checked our phones and sure enough, our friend was correct. Somewhere down the line our various time keeping devices got off. But our friend’s phone wasn’t off at all. His phone was connected to the internet and displayed the official, correct time.
God is much like the internet connected phone in this case. How often do you and I take time to re-calibrate our life by reading the Word and praying so that we may see what God says is correct? How often are we in prayer inviting God into our daily quest? Had my wife and I daily checked the official internet time and set our mechanical devices to it, our watches wouldn’t have been off. I invite you to daily read God’s word and spend time each and every day in prayer.
The pastor of our new church we found in Tennessee invited the church to read the whole Bible in a year. There’s a great app for doing this; it’s called ReadScripture. It has videos and the text for every day. My wife and I have decided to do it and we read together every night before bed. If you think that it’s already too late to start and you’ll just be behind, just remember what our pastor told us, “You’ll just be further behind in the future.”

Behind The Falls

Live Like Jesus, Prayer

Last summer, I spent a few days at  Niagara Falls with my parents and my then-fiance.  We’re a camping family, so we hooked up our very old pop-top camper to my dad’s new-to-him car (which, by the way, had no air conditioning) and drove our way to the Falls.

I’d been to the Falls once before, on a family trip many years ago.  I don’t remember much about that trip – I’m pretty sure we stopped on the way to visit a college for me to look at.  And it was just a quick, get out of the car, look at the water, and then get back in the car kind of trip.  This time, I fully intended on seeing every aspect of the Falls that I could (from both Canada and the US) and enjoying the time with my family.

When you walk up to the Falls, you can feel the mist on your face.  You can see the mist rising from far away.  But not until you reach the edge do you really get to see the majesty and beauty of this water.  Four of the five great lakes flow into the Falls, but that’s not what makes it impressive.

To me, it’s the roar of the water, the sheer power that falling water has.  It’s loud, and wet, of course.  Water has been revered by many religious groups for centuries.  It’s necessary to keep you alive, and makes up much of your body mass.  But the water from the faucet or the shower pales in comparison the power that water has falling over the rocks at Niagara.

There’s a place on both sides of the Falls that you can go behind the falls, or straight under it.  If you thought it was loud before, think again.  Standing just feet from the curtain of rushing water, you can barely hear yourself think.  There’s a reason most people who go over the Falls don’t survive.  They are powerful.

But what makes them so powerful isn’t the distance that the water falls, or the volume of the water that flows over the side.  It’s what happens before the fall, and underneath the water, that matters. The majesty and beauty of the falls only comes because of what is underneath all of the water rushing down the river before hand.

If you walk back along the water coming to the Falls on the American side, you see rocks causing the water to flow faster and in a different direction.  You see uprooted trees and trees growing sideways to direct the flow of the water.  Years of erosion have made the silt, sand, and mud on the bottom of the lakes jagged in some places and smooth in others – but you can’t see that.  It’s hidden by the water.

The rocks and trees and sand and silt are what make the water flow the way it does, and what makes the Falls so powerful.  It’s all the stuff you can’t see that makes what you can see so beautiful and majestic.

We’re that way too, aren’t we?  God has to work on the stuff that people can’t see on the inside before we can be the glorious and beautiful image of Himself.  Before the waterfall can be powerful and majestic, what’s underneath the surface must be shaped and molded in just the right way.

How is God working on your rocks and trees and sand and silt to make you the waterfall that everyone wants to see and wants to talk about?  His image can only be made perfect in you when you let Him work on the inside, the hard stuff.  The rocks and the trees.

I pray that in this new year, you allow God to work on those things that the world can’t see, so that what the world does see is Him.

Hope in the Lord

hope, Uncategorized

Of all of the things that God asks of us – faith, prayer, loving our enemies, community, following his will – I think hope can be the hardest.

Hope is the hardest when there is nothing – and I mean nothing – that you can do.

Hope is hard when a friend or family member hours away is diagnosed with cancer, and you can’t go to doctor’s appointments or chemo treatments with them.  You can’t take over dinner or clean up their house for them or watch their dogs or their kids.  You’re far enough away that you feel pretty much helpless.  All you can do is pray.

Hope is hard when you hear of a friend’s marriage falling apart but you aren’t supposed to know – you found out by accident – so you can’t say anything or help in any way.  You can’t prod or pry because then they’ll know you know.  All you can do is pray.

Hope is hard when a friend loses a baby to miscarriage and you can’t be there in person to comfort her.  You can’t hold her hand and cry with her because you live too far away.  All you can do is pray, and call, and pray some more.

So many times we tie hope to what we can do, what we can accomplish to help make something better.  We’re hopeful that it will turn out alright because we can do something to help.  Even if it’s just cooking or cleaning or calling – we can do something, so it will be alright.

But that’s not how hope works.  Hope is so much more than just believing that everything is going to be okay.

Because sometimes it’s not.  Sometimes it’s not okay.

But even in the midst of it not being okay, we still have hope, because our eyes are fixed not on the temporal, but the eternal.  Or, that’s the way it should be.  We’re supposed to live kingdom-focused lives, lives that honor and glorify God, not man.

Hope is still there in the midst of the funeral.  In the operating room six hours after the surgery was supposed to be over.  In the middle of chemo.  In the middle of an ugly divorce after infidelity.

The world doesn’t understand hope, because our hope is in Christ.  Our hope doesn’t fail, doesn’t end, and doesn’t depend on what happens in this life.

When you feel like your hope is fading, or when you can’t do anything to help, turn to the Lord in prayer.  Prayer isn’t nothing.  It’s everything.  And ask God to focus your life and your eyes on the eternal hope, on His faithfulness, and to live in that faith.

Hope in the Lord.