September 17, 2010 @ 8:16 am | Filed under: Faith Lifts,The Solid Rock,The Writing Life,Uniquely Me
A fearless beauty is something I pursue…
devotions, Faith Lifts, walk with God
September 15, 2010 @ 11:11 am | Filed under: The Solid Rock,Uniquely Me
“A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. You must break out of your current comfort zone and become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown.” – Denis Waitley
Contentment. Fear. Two emotions that seem to have no relation to one another and yet they have shimmied up to one another inside of me and have both become quite still. No pushing or shoving for a place of dominance. No arguments over which has the right of ownership inside my heart. Instead, they sit with their arms around one another as if to let me know that this is natural. It’s not something to fear. It’s something that will teach you.
I have never been more content nor more afraid of where God is guiding my life than I am right now.
I’m standing at the edge of the shore, watching the waves push new opportunities and experiences closer toward me as I dig my toes into the cool, course sand. There are some waves that I’m eager to reach for, to dive into and see what happens when I come up on the other side. These are moments when I glimpse a distant horizon – wonderous and magnificent. Anticipation pulses through me, and – in these moments – I reach for it, anxious to experience the beauty of what He has waiting for me.
These waves are easy.
Then there are the waves that I see coming from some distance away. They are giant and as they creep ever closer, it’s obvious that they will soon tower over me, swallowing me first in their shadow and then in their depth. I try to squelch the thumping of raw nerves in my veins and still the thudding of my breaking heart. These are the waves that promise the ride of a lifetime, but also carry with them the fear of the unknown. To jump into these depths means that I will follow God’s call for me and for my family, letting go of what has been my buoy and my lifeline for so long in order to go to where He is.
These waves are tougher.
I am afraid. I am nervous. I am feeling unsettled. My heart races and I have moments when I entertain the thought of crawling back to shore to complete and utter safety. To the known, the comfortable. And yet I cannot ignore the niggling in the depths of my being – the still, small voice that reminds me that You are ready for this. The past years have prepared my heart for this very moment in time. For this swim. For this wild, God-given adventure that will take me to ports of call I’ve not even thought to imagine.
I know what I will ultimately do. It’s what I always do. Because – for me – there has never been, and never will be, another choice except to follow. I will dive head first into the waves God puts before me, trusting that His great love for me will stand as lifeguard over my heart and life as I do my best to let His current take over and move me where He desires me to be.
I am content. I am still afraid. Two emotions that seem to have no connection reside like easy companions in my soul. I’m okay with them both. I uncurl my toes from the sand and take a few timid steps into the water. God’s call on my life swirls gently around my ankles as I move forward, encouraging me to step out in faith. He is waiting, arms outstretched to help me through the difficult moments. He tells me to come in, the water is fine.
I trust that.
devotions, faith, walk with God
September 4, 2010 @ 10:31 am | Filed under: Faith Lifts,Soul Food,The Writing Life,Uniquely Me
I’m at my home-away-from-home today, and my thoughts are all about life’s teachable moments. Sometimes I almost miss the simplest ones because I’m on the lookout for the biggest, grandest, most amazing display of an awesome lesson. When – all along – it lies in the quietness of the ordinary and in the beauty of the everyday.
Enjoy your day! I know I am. I am so in love with the weather – with the hint of fall in the air and the brand new promise of all that a new season brings with it. I’m like a kid in a candy store, running from aisle to aisle…I can’t decide what I like best.
But I’m definitely liking it!
devotions, Faith Lifts, living simply, walk with God
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.
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
_______________________________
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.
September 2, 2009 @ 6:35 am | Filed under: The Solid Rock,Uniquely Me
One of the great mind destroyers of college education is the belief that if it’s very complex, it’s very profound.” - Dennis Prager
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(originally journaled in early April 2009.)
The past few weeks have been surreal.
I can scarcely believe we are actually doing this. I keep waiting for the REAL me to rise up and say something along the lines of “what the…?” But there is nothing except certainty that is flowing smooth and easy inside of me.
Even as I pack the house in the late night hours when I’m all alone, moving through the rooms and hallways, I have no qualms about this decision. It’s the nighttime that is usually the breeding ground for fear and trepidation and – some nights – I keep waiting on it. But it’s a visitor that never knocks.
My logic tells me that surely I must have been konked on the head and awakened with some other woman’s rationale and emotions. This is NOT me. I worry. I fret. I resist change.
I’m emotional.
But the reality is that I’m calm and certain, in a way that I just can’t explain. In less than two weeks I will walk out of this house – this style of living – and I will walk into an apartment over an hour away. We will know no one. I will stay many, many nights by myself while Mike is on the road. I am leaving behind the concept that “bigger is better” and the theory that as I get older, my “things” should become bigger, nicer, finer…
I sit here tonight and wonder what happened to the woman I was. When I look in the mirror as I brush my teeth, I look the same. But I no longer recognize the inner woman. I don’t know her. I think I should be afraid.
But I’m not.
I go to bed with peace and awaken with a quiet excitement.
I don’t know what to expect, but I do know that I should be expectant.
(Two weeks later…)
Tomorrow the movers will come.
By this time tomorrow night, I will be preparing to spend my first night in Commerce. In an apartment. In a community that is so unlike any I’ve lived in before.
Boxes are packed and labeled. Many will go with us into our new home, but even more will go into storage. We are losing over 1400 square feet of living space with this move, so – in ways even we had not anticipated – simplicity is truly finding us.
It’s a funny thing. Sometimes the very thing we ask for, pray for, finds us and takes us by surprise. Very seldom is it packaged the way we’d imagined, or presented in a way we’d recognize.
But it is a gift, nonetheless, presented by Him, simply because we requested it.
There have been so many mini-miracles (is there such a thing? are they all huge, and that is why they are miracles…?) to transpire over the past couple of weeks that we have almost been amused. I’m pretty certain that I have both, laughed out loud and broken down and cried, because it further solidifies that this move is the one thing that needs to be done.
Even in the moments when my logic kicks in and I run through the mental list of just why this is a crazy move, and just who probably now thinks we’ve lost our minds, and where I’m headed…even in those moments I can’t ignore the obvious.
Too many things have aligned in short order. Too many people have unknowingly been a part of this plan. Too many past prayers and nights and days spent in restlessness -knowing that I was in the big middle of the deep, learning to swim and tread water, and yet not being able to see the other shore. In a crazy, crazy, definitely unforeseen way, I’ve reached the banks and I’m crawling ashore. It’s certainly not where I’d pictured myself washing up. The beach is not white and sandy like I prefer. The water is not crystal clear and cool to the touch. It’s not paradise. It’s not my dream.
But for some reason that I am still helpless to explain, it has become…home.
Tomorrow I go there.
life lessons, living simply, walk with God
May 20, 2009 @ 10:09 am | Filed under: The Solid Rock,Uniquely Me
What in the world…?
I pulled my cell phone from the charger a few days ago and stared down at it. I had just one bar. How could that be?
For the third time in about as many days I noticed that my phone was steadily losing its charge. Adding stop in to get your phone checked out was pretty much the last thing I wanted to put on my ever growing to-do list.
I was puzzled. The phone was not that old, nor had the battery been giving me any previous problems.
I’m a creature of habit, nothing if not predictable. Every night for the past year that we’ve been living in this house, I have plugged my phone into the same spot to charge overnight. Without fail. If I’m home, then my phone is on the charger.
So my frustration stemmed mainly from knowing that I’d soon have the hassle of making the stop at the phone place, and not so much from anything else. I plunked my phone into my purse and moved to finish my chores before heading out to run errands.
It was sometime in the next half hour or so – as I pushed the vacuum cleaner across the carpet in my bedroom – when it hit me. I snapped the off button on the vacuum and practically ran over to where my charger lay.
I had to get down on my hands and knees to follow its cord around the small table and behind another piece of furniture until…
I gave a gentle tug and the entire cord popped out in front of me.
IT WASN’T PLUGGED INTO THE POWER SOURCE.
As I sat there on the floor, holding the charger and feeling quite stupid at this point, God began to speak to me. In those few minutes of alone time in the big middle of mundane chores and household duties, He layed out an object lesson for me that I don’t think I’ll forget anytime soon.
This is how you become when you go too long without being plugged into my power.
The guilt was immediate because I knew exactly what He meant. The past few weeks had been harried ones. The pace had been frantic, the burdens quite heavy, and the emotions have run rampant.
And yet – in the middle of all this – I guess I felt I had enough “stored up” energy to power me through it all. I prayed, but the words were hurried and my heart wasn’t always all the way in it. I made enough of an effort to spend time with Him that I guess I convinced myself that I was indeed fine. Just like my phone, I was plugged in as far as I could see.
But…
I WASN’T PLUGGED INTO THE POWER SOURCE.
Not the way I should have been. Certainly not the way I am used to. And definitely not the way I needed to be if I want to continue to be the wife, mom, friend, leader, etc… that I know I am called to be.
It’s been several days now and I cannot pass by where my phone lies being charged without thinking back on this lesson. God stopped me on that day and in that way that only He has with me, He slowed me, soothed me, and redirected my thoughts. My intents. My heartbeat.
He, very simply put, energized me.
