Archive for the 'The Solid Rock' Category
August 9, 2010 @ 6:49 am | Filed under: The Solid Rock,Uniquely Me
There were two occasions yesterday – two people, really – who made me think of grace and what it has meant to my life. The first was my blogging friend Amy who was pondering grace herself. The second was through the message during the evening service last night.
I was up late. My mind was wrapped in reflection. My heart was swathed in grace.
I was twenty-four years old – broken in spirit, weary in flesh, and heavy in heart- the night I discovered grace for the first time.
Grace wasn’t a foreign word to me. I had grown up on church pews. I had listened for years to Sunday school lessons that expounded on the magnificent grace of God. I had heard what could quite possibly be called the greatest sermons ever on the attributes of grace. Of how, though undeserved , grace flowed to God’s children, bathing their lives in unmerited favor.
I believed this. I trusted this.
But I’d never felt it.
In actuality I didn’t really even know there was anything to feel. As far as I knew, my walk with God was as good as it was going to get. Wasn’t I doing everything I knew, everything I’d been taught to do?
If, at the end of each day, I still felt empty and alone, then it must be a flaw within me, right? I looked around and saw other friends, family, and fellow church members with smiling faces and happy lives and I knew I must somehow not measure up.
Not that anyone ever knew I felt that way.
You see, I desperately wanted to be that happy, sold-out to God, smiling, “life is good and so am I” type of wife and mother that I felt others expected of me. I had grown up in a household where serving God was first and foremost. You attended Sunday services, mid-week Bible study, and any other special services that came along. In short, we were there any time the doors were open.
I’d been a memeber of the same church congregation all of my life, and my church family was an extension of me. I used them as a mirror, a way to guage my walk with God, a method of seeing how I was doing in this faith walk of mine.
There were certain things expected of people like me. I’d been taught to love God with all my heart, trust Him for everything, withhold nothing. So I prayed, I read my Bible, I even taught a room full of eight and nine-year-old children every Sunday morning.
On the outside I had it all going on. I looked the part. I played the part. I was in a marriage that appeared healthy, the stay-at-home mother of two adorable toddler boys, extremely close to my family, and I had many friends.
I talked with these friends and family. Laughed with them. Played with them.
I did everything except share myself with them.
My real self. The part that hid inside of me like some frightened child who was more comfortable in the safety of a darkened closet than out in the light where the sun can shine on her face. I hid my fears. I hid my insecurities. I hid my problems.
I hid the truth.
The truth was that I lived most days waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for the next bit of bad news that would send our family’s existence spiraling even further. I learned to stretch a dollar, stretch my sanity, and stretch the truth – each one a futile attempt to hang by my fingernails to the version of reality I thought I was supposed to be living.
I was a child of God who’d never strayed, shouldn’t life be easier? I’d been tithing since I was a twelve-year-old babysitting for the neighborhood children, so why was a mere trip to the grocery store for the bare necessities such a challenge? I’d been taught that God was the great healer and yet sickness lived in my home, slowly, bit-by-little-bit, robbing me of the dream I’d once thought was mine to claim.
I was twenty-four years old, but I felt like an old woman. Me, the girl who’d been nominated the Most Likely to Succeed by her senior class, now watched as her dreams began to disintegrate like a dandelion that is clutched too tightly. My passionate spirit and zest for life began to slowly fade to black-and-white as my techni-colored dreams now seemed secondary to the basic efforts of mere survival.
I continued to paste the smile on each morning, though, because to do less than that would be to show the world my imperfections. It would be admitting that I, who on the outside seemed to have it all going on, was in reality a scared and hurting woman who was watching every security in her life slip away one-by-one.
And then one day I couldn’t do it anymore.
I woke up that Monday morning and couldn’t find the smile to plaster into place. I cared for my kids with mechanical motions. I moved through my day with wooden emotions. As dry and hollow as I was, I knew my survival depended solely on me. I had to find a way to crawl to a place of healing and restoration.
I knew I could no longer do it on my own. My mumbled and routine morning prayers just weren’t doing it for me anymore. The scriptures I read each day were now just words. It was like when a sick person takes in food, but the body no longer knows what to do with it. The nutrition is wasted, rejected by the very body that needs it for survival.
I made myself go to that Monday night prayer meeting. I pulled into the church parking lot with a nervous flutter in my stomach, got out of my car with legs that threatened to drop me, and walked into the side sanctuary entrance of the old church.
I didn’t talk to anyone on my way in. I didn’t look around to see who was there. For the first time in my life I didn’t try to keep up any pretenses. I no longer cared if those around me got a glimpse of my imperfect life and my imperfect reactions to that life. I was hurting, I was alone, and I knew that if there was anything in this life for me I had to find it that night.
I knelt between two pews instead of at the altar. Hot tears began to sting my eyes and face as I got honest with God. The pain, the betrayal, and the lonliness that I’d held bottled up inside of me for so long exploded into the air around me as I surrendered life as I knew it.
All the broken pieces of me that I’d so carefully hidden finally broke free for good, drying up and crumbling into fine bits as I lay face down on the floor in between the pews. I have no idea how long I was there, or who came and went around me. But when I could cry no more, when no more words would come, when the screams of my spirit were now just whispers, I felt it.
Grace.
With a quiet reverence it moved through me – body, soul, and spirit. All my preconceived notions of grace and what it was or wasn’t were immediatly displaced. Never had I known such peace or tranquility. The fact that it descended into that pit of darkness, found me, and then relentlessly rescued me was – and is – the greatest single moment of my life.
I’ve never been the same since that Monday night.
I have lived life differently from that moment on. I’d like to say that my troubles disappeared, I no longer hurt, and all sickness ran away, with tails tucked between their legs. But that’s not grace, is it?
Grace is feeling the peace of God in the midst of those troubles. In the depths of that hurt. In spite of all sickness. It’s the realization that no matter the baggage, no matter the time you’ve walked with God – whether it’s two days or two decades – life has a way of dealing you cards you’re not prepared to play. It’s then that grace intervenes…if we’ll let it.
Grace dwells in imperfections. In brokenness. In the pieces of our souls that we discount the most, grace can do the most good.
July 24, 2010 @ 6:37 am | Filed under: 5 Minutes for Mom,The Solid Rock
I blogged over at 5 Minutes for Faith. Here are my thoughts on joy!
July 22, 2010 @ 6:08 am | Filed under: The Solid Rock,The Writing Life,Uniquely Me
There is nothing that sucks the joy out of creativity – that inate ability to build and mold and design amazing things from the God given instinct that dwells deep in one’s bones – than overthinking. Over-analyzing.
Writing by instinct and getting it right can only happen when my heart and head align with His will. When my own will is supple and pliable, the molding process is relatively painless and the creations seem to flow.
It’s like riding a bike. You don’t read directions on it. You don’t read a book about it. And when you hop on that bike, you don’t recite left, right, pedal, balance, steer. You just do it. And the more you don’t think about it, the better it all seems to go.
And soon, you’re soaring fast, and with flair. Like pastel handlebar streamers whipping in the wind and colored beads in the spokes humming their rhythmic beat with each seamless rotation of the bike wheels.
I try to trust my instincts because they’re good and hearty instincts. I don’t want to worry about ruining the talent or stifling the creativity because I know that would be the worst possible use of my abilities, as limited as they feel some days. But that’s not the woman I want to be. Nor the writer.
So I’m writing like a woman who just simply doesn’t know any better right now. Putting it all out there. Little bits in this synopsis. Chunks of my heart in that manuscript. Layers of who I am in all of it.
Will these words ever see the light of day?
I don’t know the answer to that.
There was a time when that doubt alone was enough to stifle the creativity. To cause me to second-guess, summoning about six kinds of self-doubt that all but clogged the veins of inspiration.
But now I simply write.
I have gained this real, amazing confidence in just putting it out there and doing my very best to create without too much thinking. Without too much censoring, too much second-guessing.
I am a woman who is governed by passion. By love. By the simplistic things in life.
But more importantly than all of these I must be governed by His will and that beautiful principle of….becoming what I’m meant to be.
It’s all about those God given instincts. Not necessarily about getting every word right every time.
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In other news, I’m off today for an exciting few days with the cousins!
It’s our annual girls-only summer trip, and I can hardly wait! Last year, we left my place, drove for two hours, finally stopping for lunch in an amazing little cafe that turned out to be only forty-five minutes from my house! Don’t ask…WE DON’T KNOW !
But it’s those moments with these women (and their precious daughters) that make these trips something that I look forward to for months in advance!
So I’m off to appreciate a few more of those {apron} ties that bind in the best possible kind of way!
Chapter 4 of MELROSE MIRACLE will be up tomorrow though – tune in!
July 19, 2010 @ 6:23 am | Filed under: The Solid Rock,Uniquely Me
Seasons change. Life changes.
Babies are born. Kids grow up. Elders pass away.
Changes in the seasons are evidenced by the air we breathe and the scenery that surrounds us.
Life is changing, that much is for sure, and I’m working hard to accept each new change with the grace and dignity He would have me to. Change is like turning a page on a fresh book…and each new chapter is beckoning me, calling my name.
I’m a daughter, and I’ve felt a subtle shift these past days as I’ve ached to shield my mom from the pain of loss and grief. She is the mother, and yet I have mothered, wanting nothing more than to protect her…knowing all the while that there is simply no such thing in these circumstances.
I’m a mother, and yet this chapter, too, is changing. I used to hear my name called regularly to kiss a skinned knee or soothe away those things that frighten in the still of the night. Now I’m called and it’s their voices –so familiar and yet now so deep and manly–asking me how I’m doing. We’re balancing family nights with talks about life.
The thing that doesn’t change is the fact that God stays the same. No matter what is going on, He is there.
He stands guard over the seasons.
He will protect and shield my mother in ways that I simply cannot.
He will continue to guide my children, watch over them, be with them, even when they’re far away me.
Whatever changes I face, I trust that God is already there, waiting as I walk through each step. He guides me, loves me.
And with each change I’m learning to trust Him more.
July 12, 2010 @ 6:07 am | Filed under: 5 Minutes for Mom,Faith Lifts,The Solid Rock
I 
blogged at 5 Minutes for Faith on Saturday.
Join me here to read about spaces of grace!
June 28, 2010 @ 6:13 am | Filed under: Soul Food,The Solid Rock,Uniquely Me
I try to write down my day’s agenda early in the morning, before anything can possibly happen to alter… The Plan. I do love a good plan, and when it comes together all smooth and delightful, well – that is one good feeling!
It throws me off to have it wrecked before midmorning. So the past week has been a challenge in flexibility and in “going with the flow.”
All of which is good for the soul.
Or it at least sounds as though it should be good for the soul anyway.
Instead of doing a load of whites on Monday, towels on Tuesdays, spending 3-4 hours writing each morning, I’ve been learning the art of simply sitting. Sometimes I sit and wait for my grandfather to eat. Sometimes I wait for him to finish a story. Sometimes I wait for him to wake up. Sometimes I wait for him to walk with slow, halting steps across the room.
And sometimes I wait for nothing more than another moment to learn a little more about this man who loves me so much.
Although this might not be the week to ask him just how much he loves me. I’m the one asking him multiple times a day if he’s drinking enough water, or if he’s hungry. I’m the one handing out medicine and cautioning him to use his walker and that I think it’s time to take a breathing treatment.
But I’m also the one on the receiving end of some really great stories and the one who’s caught a twinkle in his eye a time or two. I’m the one who’s seen frustration, anger, and sadness – manifested by unshed tears- all swiped away hurriedly by shaking, wrinkled hands, and this completely melts me.
These days don’t call for The Plan or any plan. These days ask simply for acceptance. For each moment to be acknowledged and embraced because it exists and it is important.
Not all days work out according to The Plan, and perhaps that’s what makes each morning’s new mercies even better.
daily agendas, living simply, plans
June 12, 2010 @ 9:40 pm | Filed under: Pure Sunshine,Soul Food,The Solid Rock,Uniquely Me
“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” ~Dr. Seuss
It was Tuesday night and my deadline was today at noon.
I’d already typed in a zillion-and-one different thoughts over the course of the day, only to go back later and delete them all. I stared a blank computer screen and tried to focus.
No, this wasn’t for a story idea. Or an article for a magazine. Or even a blog post for Faith Lifts.
What held me in the throes of agony was a speech.
In just four short days I would stand before the 2010 graduating class of NCCA and tell them -
Tell them what?
It wasn’t that I didn’t have ideas. Oh no! It was more like I had too many.
How do you stand before a group of excited kids and try to impart a bit of the knowledge and wisdom you’ve gleaned along the way? Can that kind of advice/revelation/sharing really be done in a fifteen minute speech?
I finally decided that I wasn’t going to find the answer that day. So I went to bed.
And, as I do every night before I drift off, I deliberately shut out all the other things in my head and on my heart. I turned them all over to Him and began to relax as the stresses of the day slipped off my shoulders.
My last thought as I went to sleep was that I wished I could share this with the graduates.
The next day I knew what to say.
Life is either simply complex or complexly simple. I like to think it’s the latter.
And so this afternoon I stood behind the podium, looked into the eyes of the graduates, and said this:
“ I would ask of you today that you always listen for One certain voice. As you move forward into your college years, your careers, or your ministries, you’ll hear a lot of different voices.
Voices that will vie for your time, your energy, and your loyalty. At the end of the day – as your head touches your pillow and your eyes close in exhaustion – there is only ONE voice that truly matters.
If you can keep the voice of God as your focus in the big middle of everything else you have going on, your life will be a very simple, very happy, very productive one.”
It’s a lesson well learned.
It really is that simple.
commencement speech, graduation, life lessons
September 28, 2009 @ 6:47 am | Filed under: The Solid Rock
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” –Matthew 6:25-27
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It’s hard not to worry.
There are many things that cause us to worry. Children, money, careers; true enough, but there are other things, sacred things, things we give up everything for, things that must be true lest we cease to exist.
And those things, they make us worry. They make me worry.
Until I hear the whispered promises. Spoken softly into my ear as I huddle in close, not needing anything more in those pure, quiet moments except His arms, His voice, His love. The liquid music infuses, filling me with a warmth that outdoes the coziest quilt on the coldest day of the longest afternoon of winter. It is steady, sure and does not hesitate.
And along with words, I begin to remember.
I remember the birds, above my head, soaring with no judge or jury, no education or instruction, save the whisper of the God of the universe, saying simply,”FLY.”
I remember the splendor of the flowers, soon to rise up and start their reign on so many ill-managed lawns and forsaken plots of ground. Though they have not received their due care or concern, they cannot – will not – disregard the simple command of the One who breathed life into all the earth, “GROW.”
And so I say to myself today,
Fly.
Grow.
Believe.
September 24, 2009 @ 6:20 am | Filed under: The Solid Rock,The Writing Life
Sometimes I think we look at Bible stories and imagine the characters in those stories to have been perfect in their own imperfect-ness, if that makes any kind of sense.
Though we read about their shortcomings, their weaknesses, their failures, it is almost always the moral of the story – or the end result – that we walk away with. These are the parts of the stories that we tuck like nuggets into that secret place in our souls where we capture the essence of what it is we think we are supposed to be. Or supposed to do. Or supposed to accomplish.
The reality is much more human, and it is that element that I think about this morning.
I love how Moses’ story ties into this. God heard the cries of the Israelites and He desired their freedom, so God invited Moses to join Him. It really didn’t matter what Moses thought the plan for his life was. What mattered most was God’s plan for Moses’ life.
So many of us today have a preoccupation with knowing God’s will for our lives. I know I’ve struggled with this before – some days, I still struggle with it. There are some areas where it is very evident that God is at work (like with my family), but there are other areas where it appears God is silent (like with my writing.)
What I am trying to remember is that God’s focus has always been on getting His people to come into line with His will and with what is on His heart, so that we (I) can adjust our lives (my life) to Him, rather than having God design His plans around us (me).
And what is God’s plan? God is, and always has been, actively drawing people to Himself.
This should liberate me; should free any reckless, nervous thoughts about the future. Because this alone means that I do not have to come up with plans for God, or design ways to achieve kingdom goals.
He is at work, and when I join Him – right where He is, I am in perfect alignment.
devotionals, life lessons, walk with God, writing
September 15, 2009 @ 6:22 am | Filed under: The Solid Rock
“I used to have a comfort zone where I knew I wouldn’t fail. The same four walls and busywork were really more like jail.” — My Comfort Zone
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I glimpsed the elderly woman as I pulled into the parking lot of the department store. Obviously somewhat crippled, she hobbled slowly, with one of her arms tucked in an awkard position against her chest. My heart clenched just as it has been doing more and more often these past few months. I can’t explain these moments but it’s as though all of my senses are – for the briefest of seconds – keenly aware of all the most minute details.
Even as she walked into the store and away from my view, I had a feeling I had not seen the last of her…
My dad is the kind of neighbor everyone loves. Sometimes I can’t help but be entertained that – at near 70 – he’s constantly mowing the yard of an elderly neighbor or sitting on the porch of a much younger one, taking a little advice. The business of age seems to mean nothing to him; he sees people, not their mile markers in this life.
My great aunt is a woman who listens to God’s voice. If she feels God stirring her heart she jumps in the car and just GOES. Many, many times I’ve had a hard, challenging day and she would just shows up. In recent years, it’s been the phone call…the one that often lasts a looooooong time. But it’s the ending of these phone calls that I know I’ll always remember: “Okay, hon – I’ll talk atcha later.”
I’m surrounded by people who consistently minister to others. I marvel at them. Admire them. Want to see this same thing in me. These are folks who aren’t afraid to pray with people, and – when seeing a heart that needs a lift – simply don’t care about anything else in that moment except doing what they can to meet it.
Their plans don’t matter in comparison to God’s plans.
From the outside it looks effortless. But I know that there was a time when moving in these realms must surely have required that they move outside the borders of their comfort zones. Even the most confident, self-assured person has fences and borders that protect the raw edges that we don’t want anyone to see or touch. And yet people with a heart for God’s children don’t derive their confidence from their own abilities, talents or even their own personality. They absorb what’s being funneled from the hallways of Heaven and put it to use on Earth’s dusty pathways.
I’m trying to be like that. I’m trying to listen and just do what I feel God’s asking. I’m also learning to be brave – to pray with a friend RIGHT THERE. To make the call. To write the words. Daily, it seems, there is something – either a person or a situation – that challenges me to step beyond the point of personal comfort and venture into another’s life. If I have learned anything over the past few months it is that I want to do as I’m asked.
But I can’t say that it’s always easy for me…
I wasn’t at all surprised last night when – in the ladies dressing room – a fitting room door opens slowly and the elderly woman from the parking peered out.
“Can you help me?”
I stepped inside.
My new friend may have thought the next ten minutes were about someone lending her an extra hand, an extra eye, a great conversation – but I knew the real truth. She was helping me. Helping me to venture further from my place of safety on the sidelines, and to walk bravely into a world that is not at all about me.
But ALL about Him.
