My Mom

Below are the words I spoke at my mother's funeral last year, after a great eulogy by my sister.  Her obituary is here: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/bostonglobe/name/gloria-mulley-obituary?id=35033664

I’m not going to do another eulogy, but I did want to share a few more things about Mom, mostly focused on her final years, when I was privileged to spend a significant amount of time with her.

As I’ve been contemplating my mother’s life over the past couple of weeks, I keep seeing images of her at home.  She loved her homes, and in so many ways, they always reflected who she was: stylish, welcoming, comfortable, and of course, very clean.  Her home was her domain, and her presence filled the place with a powerful sense of peace, love and safety.  The day that she died, I sat for a while in her bedroom where her scent still lingered and said my goodbye to that kind-hearted presence that had been with me for almost 60 years.

As you heard from Deb, Mom was a driven and independent person (dare I say, feisty?).  In her final years, she was not going to give up her home without a fight.  With her eyesight all but gone and her heart broken, she insisted on living alone in their Atkinson home after Dad passed away in 2018.  Two more stays in hospitals and rehabs and one broken neck later,  she still would not leave the home where they had spent so many years together.  As dementia advanced its slow-but-relentless assault on her mind, we finally convinced her to move in with Deb in 2020.  

After all of this suffering and loss, you wouldn’t blame her for just surrendering to sadness, despair, and defeat, but that’s not what happened. I was staying with her for a few days last year while Deb was on vacation in Florida, and shortly after she went to bed one night, I heard her voice on the baby monitor that we kept in her room for safety.  She was praying.  Feeling a little like I was invading her privacy, I reached for the volume to turn it down, but found that I couldn’t stop listening.  There was no “Please God help me to feel better” or “please, no more loss” or “give me comfort” or “give me healing” or “give me” anything, although those certainly would have been legitimate prayers.  What I heard instead was a 10-minute litany of pure thanksgiving where she named her husband, her kids, each of her grandchildren, and a multitude of other blessings before finally falling asleep.  No bitterness and no fear, but instead, a heart full of gratitude.

This was not a prayer to a distant god or some universal spiritual force.  This was an intimate and sincere conversation with someone she knew and loved and to whom she had dedicated the last 60-something years of her life.  This was someone who had prepared a new home for her.  A home where she would be reunited with past and present loved ones.  A home where there is no more pain and no more sorrow and no more sickness and no more conflict and no more disappointment and no more goodbye.  A home where my father is probably saying “welcome home, Hon” and a home where the Creator of the universe is saying “welcome home, my good and faithful servant”.  Thanks be to Him, this is a home that she will never, ever have to leave again.

Grace-oriented Parenting

I was recently asked by a friend about my view of what it means to raise children in grace, so I discussed the topic with my wife, Sue, and tried to distill the major elements of our philosophy down to a bite-sized summary. Our simple answer is that raising kids in grace means - more than anything else - immersing them in the gospel. While this may initially seem like a trite, "Sunday School" answer, it carries deep and often controversial implications. And at the risk of sounding too relativistic, the way particular people work this out in their own parenting styles varies widely, and we must be careful not to assume that our methods are the best. But that being said, here are some of the grace-related principles on which we tried to focus while parenting our birth and foster children:

• Start from a proper posture of humility. The primary threat to your children in these complicated times is not technology, social media, smartphones, gender fluidity, peer influence or any of the other dangers of secular culture - it is you. The reality of sin is that you will do some damage to your children. In humility, we need to accept this as a primary fact and indicator of our need for grace in parenting. By this grace, however, we can also experience joy in being used in our fallen state as instruments of grace to our children and be thankful for every good characteristic we see in them as a gift from God. It's really easy to slip into self-righteousness when our kids do well, but this has everything to do with God's grace and little to do with our own effort apart from him.
• Make sure that they see your sin...and your repentance. In a home full of the grace of God, setting a good example for your children is not only about behaving well in front of them - that is moralism. If you want to communicate the gospel to your children, let them clearly see your sin, your confession, your repentance, and your thankful acceptance of God's forgiveness at every possible opportunity. This is the gospel. Of course, you may need to protect them at certain ages from knowledge of specific manifestations of sin, but your primary temptation will be to hide what you should actually bring into the open. A lot of Christian parents underestimate the danger of moralism - it is an insidious and easily-ignored threat to your children's faith development.
  
• Find any and every way to expose kids to grace. God uses "ordinary" means to administer grace. Expose kids to every possible activity where they would encounter the grace of God at work - worship services (even as toddlers), family worship, prayer, family disasters/trials and "interventions", Sunday school, youth group, bible studies, service activities, foster care, missions trips, entertaining friends & extended family, etc.. If they resist, gently insist.
• Expect, but don't assume spiritual growth. Hold them to a high spiritual standard at all times, as befits the privileged members of the covenant family. Be patient with doubt and let them question everything, but don't make the mistake of setting their bars too low for fear of driving them away. If they choose to date unbelievers, get in there and explore with them the wayward heart condition that would allow them to think that this is OK. If they don't want to go to a Bible study or on a missions trip, find out exactly why and explain how these things will bring them closer to God. Expect God to save them, but pray for their salvation until you are absolutely convinced by their profession of faith that he has done so.
• Emphasize preparation over protection. Protecting our children is important, but much less important than preparing them to live as bold instruments of grace in a fallen world. Our goal should be to raise kids that are willing to walk into danger for the cause of Christ. The skills of being "in the world and not of it" should be instilled from birth, but many Christian parents make the mistake of thinking that protecting children while they are young gives them a "firm foundation" for dealing with the world when they are older. We think that exactly the opposite is true - exposing them to the world in manageable chunks while they are young is the best way to foster in them a concern for the lost and to help them develop the survival skills they will need as adults. The time to be most concerned about a child's spiritual protection is actually when they first leave the safety of the home (usually college).
• Pride in your children is still pride, and pride is sin. Emphasize thanksgiving for what God did/does through your children over being proud of them. I know that many parents are really just expressing thanksgiving when they say that they are proud of their children, but I'm not sure this generally translates as such to the kids. Kids can easily get the idea that they are special because of their own accomplishments & behavior, and this is not the gospel.
• Teach them that they own nothing - not even their own minds, bodies, and abilities. The joy that we can experience from being thankful stewards of God's possessions is a particularly sweet manifestation of his grace to us. From a material perspective, teach them that they should not "own" anything that they cannot freely share, loan, or give away - especially money. When a pre-schooler takes a toy from someone and says "mine", it is right to correct them with a reminder that it is actually God's toy and ask what they think he would want them to do with it. If your older children demonstrate pride in their intellectual or athletic abilities, remind them that these, too, are gifts that could have been given to someone else, but also remind them that it's good to enjoy and be thankful for them.
• Give your kids safe spaces to "rebel" - Nothing overpowers the "aroma" of grace more than the stink of unnecessary rules and overreactions to certain behaviors. For example, while use of certain "bad" words may embarrass you, they may have very little to do with the state of your kid's heart. A therapist once told me that everyone eventually goes through some kind of significant level of rebellion in their lives as a normal part of separating from their parents and developing their own particular worldview. Providing safe places and activities for children to engage in harmless mischief will help a child along this path and lessen the likelihood of a more destructive rebellion later in life.
• Loving discipline sets clear and consistent boundaries - Most parents intuitively grasp the fact that excessive, harsh discipline can do psychological damage to a child. What they don't often understand is that the opposite error of excessive permissiveness produces the same result. Children that see a clear and consistent behavioral fence under the guard of loving parents will find freedom to blossom and grow. When they don't see that fence, they will be imprisoned by insecurity and anxiety that is then magnified by the outside world's reactions to their disruptive behavior. Proverbs 3 tells us that God disciplines those he loves. As his instruments of grace in parenting, we must model the same behavior with our children.

None of this, of course, guarantees that your children will grow into strong believers and responsible adults. I know some amazing kids that have really bad parents and some wayward kids that have the best parents you can imagine. Parenting is a difficult task, and one that always reminds us that good results rest in the grace of God alone.

Eulogy for James Mulley Jr

Below is the eulogy I gave at my dad's funeral on July 20, 2018:

A couple of people have counseled me this week to let grief have its way with me.  Grief, it seems, is its own best remedy.  So I’m going to take their advice and not try too hard to hold it together.  I may need to pause from time to time, but don’t worry, I’ll get through it.

These are a few of the things that I admired most about my dad:

His contentment.  Dad was a thankful man who rarely complained about his lot in life.  It wasn’t that he was unduly optimistic - just that he simply accepted and found genuine satisfaction in God’s provision in all aspects of his life.  He exhibited this virtue well beyond the obvious category of material possessions.  When, in my younger days, I would confess my envy of those who surpassed me in athletic and intellectual ability, he would simply say, “My son, no matter how good you are at something, there will always be someone better at it. Do the best you can.”  As this teaching sunk in over the years, I believe it enabled me to do just that, and to be thankful for it.  Sometimes the simplest things would bring him the most pleasure, such as napping in the sun on the lanai of the condo in Florida, playing solitaire on his computer, and organizing his stamp collection. In his final years, months, and days, he even accepted the reality of his failing body with grace and peace. Fittingly, his last word to me was “OK”.

His persistence.  I have known few people in my life that were as persevering and hard-working as my father.  Some of my favorite memories are of him working on various projects around the house. He was always building or fixing something, engaged in his labor with such intensity that he wouldn’t even stop to wipe the sweat dripping off the end of his nose.  In the two years that we worked together at General Electric, his colleagues could not stop singing his praises to me. Two of my favorites were “Jim accomplishes more in 8 hours than most people around here do in a week - best 9-to-5 guy I’ve ever seen” and “Wait, you’re Jim Mulley’s son??  Seriously, Jim is the nicest guy I have ever met at GE.”  The stories he told us about his years of negotiations with the Navy and Air Force became the stuff of legend in our family, and he never really shook these old habits in retirement.  One of his favorite activities down in Fort Myers was going to yard sales.  I always felt sorry for some of the people that we met - he could practically steal things from people while making them think they got a great deal. The world measures career success in terms of the prestigiousness of one’s job, but I think a better measure would consider the total distance covered in a career. Some of us were privileged to start our careers standing on the shoulders of people like my dad.  He was barely a teenager when he started riding a bike around Boston delivering camera film.  After being honorably discharged from the Navy in San Diego on his birthday in 1949, he stuck out his thumb and hitchhiked across the country in three days, went to bed, and the very next day started shoveling coal into a furnace at GE’s gear plant in Lynn.  Forty-two years later, he retired from a white collar management position in the same company, only to return again as a consultant for the next fifteen years. He was unstoppable.

His marriage.  I can honestly say that my parents had the best marriage I’ve ever known.  Dad often counseled us in our marriages to “never let the sun go down on your anger” (a quote from the book of Ephesians).  My performance in this regard has been spotty at best (just ask Sue), but his was almost perfect.  Case in point: Just a few weeks ago when I was with Mom & Dad in Florida, I heard them bickering in their bedroom just before turning in for the night.  The battle eventually went silent for a few seconds until Dad said, “I love you, Honey” to which Mom responded in kind.  My brother Jim overheard a similar conversation a couple of weeks before that one. Fittingly, these were also the very last words that he spoke to Mom before passing away.  For our entire lives, my siblings and I have had a front row seat to an advanced course in energetic-yet-loving conflict resolution.  Dad only ever had eyes for one woman.  Even after 68 years of marriage, the affection he showed for my mom was enough to make newlyweds blush.

And finally, his faith.  I’d like to start with some history of the legacy of faith in our family.  It’s a summary of details that I have heard over the years from Mom and Dad and various relatives.
Sixty-something years ago, a woman strolled into a church in Everett, Massachusetts with two children in tow.  On that Sunday, and many that followed, she heard a familiar story, but this time it lit a fire in her heart.  It was the story of an infinitely powerful and infinitely loving Father who created the universe with such beauty that it filled her with wonder.  A story of a suffering Son who took the penalty for her sin so that she could be right with the Father.  A story of a Spirit that could give her comfort beyond her wildest expectations, even during the extreme suffering she experienced near the end of her short life.  This is an excerpt from a letter she wrote to my father in late 1964 as she was dying from cancer: “God is so good to me. I am unworthy!  I have no fear. I feel the loving arms of our Savior around me and peace I’ve never experienced before! How wonderful it is to say ‘our Savior’”.  She was speaking of course, of Jesus Christ, for whom she was consumed with love and reverence. Her name was Dorothy Howell, my Aunt Dot and my father’s sister.  Though she passed away when I was only two years old, God used her in a powerful way to change the spiritual course of our family for all eternity.  Through her witness, my Mom & Dad and many others came to love God as she did.

My parents’ faith became the rock upon which our family stood, a beacon of hope that constantly lit our paths and led us back home, an anchor that kept us from drifting into danger, and a magnet by which God drew us into relationship with himself.  Through our sorrow and happiness, our rebellion and compliance, our failure and success, Dad’s stubborn faith in God was a safe haven that enfolded us in truth and love.  Like his sister before him, Dad was so ready to meet his Maker face to face, and now he has.  Fittingly, his last words to my daughter Elizabeth were “If I don’t see ya, I’ll see ya in paradise”.  We look forward to that day.

James Mulley Jr. (no middle name), 1928 to 2018 to Eternity.  Thanks be to God, a life well-lived.

The Call

As always, our hearts skip a beat as the caller-id reports “COMMONWEALTH OF” (we still have one of those old school land lines with a tiny screen). We let it bounce to voicemail and take a few minutes to collect our thoughts. Despite years of experience, we still get the jitters every time the call comes. We’re ready for another one, but we still need a moment to cozy up to that familiar conviction.

We return the call an hour later. She’s two years old. We get some of the details, hang up, discuss things a bit, and call back again. “OK, bring her over,” we say.

Our hearts break anew as her exhausted form appears at our front door with nothing but a teddy bear, a security blanket, a few articles of clothing in a trash bag, and a face full of wide-eyed fear. Her eyes, underscored with dark circles, scan us with the intensity of someone four times her age. She hangs close to the social worker, but isn’t really sure who to trust.

Barely a half hour later, my wife Sue (the “toddler whisperer”) has somehow managed to become her new confidant, but she’ll have nothing to do with me. The next day, her guard comes down long enough for a brief smirk when I make her teddy bear “talk”, but she still keeps her distance. After a short protest, she lets me read her a bedtime story on the third day. A week later, she’s sitting in my lap and giggling as I tickle her. Two weeks later, she’s laughing out loud as I give her a piggy-back ride around the house.

Two months later, the dark circles are gone and she looks much healthier. Until this point, the exploratory mischief of the “terrible twos” was not even on her radar. Now she can press parental buttons with the best of her age group. We feel an odd mixture of impatience and joy as we watch her explore the boundaries of the emotional and behavioral safety fence surrounding our family. Within its confines, she is taking huge gulps of love and security that are purging the fear from her system. She is blossoming into a “normal” two-year-old.

Six months later, she insists on being the one to give thanks before dinner every evening, launching into long prayers about everything and everyone. At their latest meeting, her attorney is flabbergasted by the improvements in her emotional health. Like most parents of a three-year-old, we celebrate her progress with profound satisfaction and offer our own silent prayers of thanksgiving.

But hugs and kisses are the still the exclusive property of her “real” mom and dad. We don’t want to replace them, but we long for more of her affection – for her sake as much as our own. Although her unwillingness to attach is certainly understandable, we want more for her and more from her. We are invested.

We see gradual improvement over time. She’s still not all that affectionate, but she does manage to return most of our hugs with enthusiasm. She is glad to see us each day at pre-school pickup time and even brags to her classmates about us. We offer up more prayers of thanksgiving as her teachers tell us that she is becoming more considerate of the other children with whom she interacts.

A month before she leaves for her adoptive home, we are playing soccer in the back yard. She suddenly stops and says “Rich, I wanna tell you a secret.”

“OK, I’m listening,” I say.

“I need to whisper it,” she says.

So I bend down with a look of earnest anticipation and place my ear next to her mouth.

“I love you,” she whispers.

I am speechless.

Her bumpy journey from fear and suspicion to love and trust was just one of the amazing transitions we were privileged to witness during her stay with us. Arriving as a wary and withdrawn toddler, she left as an outgoing and expressive pre-schooler. Despite its shortcomings, our family was an instrument of positive change in a formative period of a little girl’s life. No, it wasn’t easy, but rarely so are the most meaningful experiences in life.  So when the call comes again, we will probably shake off the jitters just as in many times past. We are foster parents.

Of all social institutions, none is more powerful and influential than the family. A little love and stability go a long way in the life of a child in crisis, and at this moment, at least one such child probably lives within a few miles of your home. Take a walk through your home today. If you find an empty bed – or a place to put one – imagine it occupied by a sleepy-eyed foster child who is just waking up to a life of renewed hope.

Advent devotional - John the Gymnast

"And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb." Luke 1:41

Proximity to Jesus was a big deal when he walked the Earth. Scholars and others within earshot of his preaching listened in speechless wonder. People climbed trees to see his face in a crowd and tore roofs off of houses in pursuit of his healing power. The mere brush of his robe could end a chronic illness.

Although the gospel writers aptly assigned him the title of "Baptist", John's in utero acrobatics in the presence of Mary and Jesus deserve at least a bullet on his spiritual resume. His "leap" in verse 41 may not seem like an extraordinary detail until Luke underscores it with a second mention in verse 44 as a leap "of joy". Even as a six month old fetus, John was apparently instructing us in the character of praise.

Let us be reminded of our own proximity to Jesus as we anticipate the celebration of his birth. John was no nearer to him than we are now. Through the soul-encompassing work of God the Spirit, God the Son occupies your very heart. With every dollar we spend this season let us remember the price he paid to draw us close. With every gift we receive let us give thanks for the gift of our future presence with him in glory. Feel the joy and peace that energizes us when he is the focus of our praise.

Like John the Gymnast, we have every reason to leap.

Advent Devotional - The Privileged

"The LORD has taken away your punishment, he has turned back your enemy. The LORD, the King of Israel, is with you; never again will you fear any harm."  - Zephaniah 3:15

For two and a half chapters, the prophet Zephaniah spews a blast of verbal flame.  Judgment, destruction, and horrific disaster await Israel and all its neighbors in response to their idolatry and pride - a vivid backdrop that makes the encouraging words of 3:15 all the more soothing to our frightened ears.  How the faithful remnant must have clung to this promise that the LORD would be with them and restore them.

What they would have given to be us.  Imagine if they were able to look back to a point in history when this promise was ultimately fulfilled. Consider their amazement upon reading of a baby king, born in poverty, who would be revealed as God himself come to Earth.  How cut to the heart they would be to hear the detailed account of how He took away their punishment by taking it upon himself.  What praise would fill their hearts as they beheld, with newfound clarity, a love so extreme as to blow away all previously-held notions of power and might.

Sisters and brothers, consider how privileged you are to have heard this story of King Jesus. He will be with you forever.

More than Zombies - Reflection on Ezekiel 37

Let's face it, Ezekiel's vision of the valley of dry bones in Chapter 37 is downright spooky.  Placed by God in a virtual sea of human skeletal remains, Ezekiel witnesses a gory reconstruction of bones, tendons, flesh, and skin in response to his prophesying, complete with "bone rattling" sound effects.  And then the bodies all lay there, not breathing, which strikes me as even creepier than when they were just dry bones.  But God, the Grave Robber (credit to Pastor Derek Baker for that one), is not finished.  At his command, breath of life blows in from the four winds and brings this vast army to its feet, brimming with vitality.

Such was his dramatically stated promise to Israel and to us, his church.  Living our lives apart from God, we are as good as dead.  But as we put our trust in him, God the Holy Spirit breathes life into us, filling us with a power that decisively triumphs over the deadly effects of sin.  Even as we agonize over that destructive habit that drags us down, that grudge that fills us with unrighteous anger, those words that we wish we hadn't said, and the constant reminders of sin and death all around us, we are nonetheless comforted and strengthened deep down by his presence.