God

Into Dreaming

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The lizard in the rough

In my waking and my slumber may your presence fill my heart. When my eyes close let me see you clearly. When all of me is shut down and distant let me hear you shout loudly. Even when I’m unaware, you’re guiding me, warning me, comforting, drawing me near to your glory. My ever present refuge, my deliver, strength of my heart. I trust in You.

Let me dream dreams of vision. Let my passion be bigger than me. May my vigor for your purpose drive my life; a pen in the hand of a ready writer (Ps. 45:1). All I am I give to you, my desires, my dreams. Make them into something more. Make them lovely. Overwhelm, consume, edit my life until it portrays your message.

I’ll dream again and wait for you.

Proverbs 16:9 “A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps”.

Everybody Talks

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I hope I’m not becoming a talker. I’m sure you’ve met people who you can sit down with for any length of time and you quickly see that they can have a conversation with anyone and escape can be difficult. Before long they might even be having a conversation all by themselves while you are plotting a polite exit route and thinking about a million things that have nothing to do with the words floating in the air. Often, I realize I can’t even understand them anymore. They are suddenly speaking an entirely different language referencing things that clearly interest them, but have no meaning or value to me. I sit there nodding along, faking a smile, trying so hard to be a patient and Godly woman and praying they don’t find me callous.

I’ve never been good at making conversation so in part I’m thankful for the talkers of the world. I think this comes from my mixed heritage. My mother is a talker. My father is one of the quietest men on the planet. Together, they made me, a strange concoction of timidity and passion. I may not be able to start a conversation but if you get me going, look out! I can talk a person’s ear off and not realize I’m doing it until I recognize the blank stare forming on their face and I can read the thoughts behind their eyes saying, “Good Lord, how do I make it stop!”

It doesn’t help that I have an opinion about everything. I feel very strongly about what I believe and this passion can sometimes become a myriad of soapbox appearances that others can find amusing or annoying or a mixture of both.

Over the past few months, I’ve made a commitment to work on controlling my mouth a little better. The tongue can be an unruly little booger. I hate those moments when I say something and I instantly feel like I shouldn’t have said a word. I know that a wise woman considers the words she’s about to inflict on the earth around her before she speaks. I want to be a wise woman.

Proverbs 15:1-4 “A soft answer turns away wrath, But a harsh word stirs up anger. The tongue of the wise uses knowledge rightly, but the mouth of fools pours forth foolishness. The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good. A wholesome tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit.”

Scripture is very clear about how much of a mess we can make with our mouths. Proverbs 18:21 “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” I feel like this verse is often taken completely out of context and abused, but that’s a soapbox for another day. If you read the verses preceding this scripture, it’s speaking about offenses and strife. It can be so easy for us to say something that would offend someone or sow strife and animosity. This can cause others to fall into a spiritual state of emergency. Taming our tongue is important for us, for others and for our spiritual health.

James 3:2-11 “If anyone does not stumble in word, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body. Indeed, we put bits in horses’ mouths that they may obey us, and we turn their whole body. Look also at ships: although they are so large and are driven by fierce winds, they are turned by a very small rudder wherever the pilot desires. Even so the tongue is a little member and boasts great things. See how great a forest a little fire kindles! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and creature of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by mankind. But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening?”

Lord, let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to you. Let me learn to be quiet when I should. Help me to bite my tongue when anything unruly tries to take control. Help me to think of the effect my words have on others and be a woman of wisdom and self-control.

Happily Ever After

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I’m not sure where we got the idea that we wouldn’t face adversity. Many well meaning Godly men and women have grabbed ahold of principles about abundance, prosperity and healing and walk around like Job’s friends wondering what isn’t operating in a person’s life if they are going through a trying time. I hear expressions like, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” from folks who are longing for answers, for fairness from the universe. To quote The Princess Bride, (Rob Reiner, dir., 20th Century Fox, 1987), “Who said life is fair? Where is that written?” or “Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”

Every great love story holds within it the need to overcome obstacles. We grew up on fairy tales and somehow got the moral all wrong. True love conquers all. It’s true. Christ proved this on a cross many years ago. Yet, when we are young, we expect to grow up, meet a prince or rescue a princess, find a painless adventure and live happily ever after. We somehow forget that the phrase “happily ever after” denotes that there was something before the present and future that wasn’t so happy. We’ve come through all of this and now, we can begin enjoying the spoils of our victory.

Sleeping Beauty and Prince Phillip overcame a fire breathing dragon and eternal slumber before their happily ever after. Snow White spent time hiding in the forest from a murderer, was poisoned by a witch and was rescued by a team of unlikely heroes only to face death until her prince showed up before her happily ever after. Belle sacrificed everything to save her father. Cinderella suffered slavery and persecution. Ariel and Eric fought a sea witch. Jasmine and Aladdin conquered an evil sorcerer. There’s always peril preceeding the victory.

Real life isn’t so different. I know so many men and women who have overcome tremendous odds in life and fight on. These men and women are the true heroes: The young man I know who lost both legs in a motorcycle accident who lives his life on prosthetics and lives to the fullest in spite of the circumstances, The wonderful woman at my church who suffers from MS yet volunteers consistently, offers a smiling face to those who walk in the door despite the pain she suffers consistently. The mother of seven I call my friend whose newborn twins battled RSV shortly after birth leaving one of them with cerebral palsy. She is light and life where others would falter. There’s the lovely lady I know who is battling cancer who through the agony breathes words of life and love to all those she encounters. There’s the woman I know who lost her baby at 26 weeks gestation and despite the heartbreak, she’s strong. She teaches toddlers the love of God every Sunday. She is a warrior. These are heroes. In their eyes true joy is evident.

My life was not always easy. I grew up in poverty. My family fell apart. My stepmother battled alcoholism and paid with her life at a very young age. My father was a thousand miles away. I married an addict, who abused me emotionally for years and chose substances and other women over me. I went through a divorce. But I am a fighter and refused to give up or give in to the pain. The journey is far too precious for that. My happily ever after didn’t depend on my circumstances. My happily ever after began the day I met Christ. He has carried me through every moment and blessed me abundantly in the midst of them all.

For me and most princesses, there is a happy ending. I have met my prince, I’m carried in the arms of a loving savior. I’m blessed with incredible children and the joy of building my very own fairy tale with my family. Everyday, I pinch myself to see if I’m dreaming. I’m blessed and I’m overflowing with joy. But I know the rains will come. Not everyday is perfect, but real contentment can be found in the middle of the worst situations through the love and refuge of a comforter, Emmanuel, God with us.

Paul was stoned, shipwrecked, beaten with rods and so much more, yet he fought on with joy! It seems to me that bad things may happen to bad people sometimes, but they definitely happen to good people also. Into every life, rain will fall on both the just and the unjust. It’s how we handle the adversity that matters. Jesus Christ is our joy and we can begin our happily ever after right now.

Christmas

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Here lies a wandering world, numbed by silence and lulled to slumber in the bed of their own consequences. Hearts yearning for “something more”, frustration and longing for love and satisfaction gripping them with fists of disillusionment. “I thought my life would be different.”

Glimmer of hope, Jupiter crowned in Regulus, star to cut the darkness brightly. King of all wrapped in cloak of skin, divinity set aside in submission to meager mortal. Love beyond comprehension. Inconceivable wonder. (You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.)

Care and protection of the Godhead assigned to lowly frame of girl and boy. Unspeakable mystery. “Be it unto me according to your word.” Prophecies of old fulfilled in one. Odds too numerous to imagine. Proof through faith and Science of a living God who set the heavens in motion for this moment.

Christmas tree, gift of God, hanging sinless in agony for the very ones who scourged him. Forgiving and zealous for the waiting world. Accepting the blame for our mistakes. Tree of life, glorious cross. Beauty from despair, newness from death. Lasting satisfaction and peace given freely from scarred hands of mercy.

I am eternally grateful.

Photo by Gino Santa Maria

Photo by Gino Santa Maria

Need

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I watched a newborn baby snuggled tightly to her mother’s chest in perfect peace amidst the noise and chaos all around. I sang with all I had in worship to my father, the author of all I am, the one we so often forget to acknowledge. We pursue Him in word and song, praying He will meet us where we are. We pursue the strength of His arm to sweep in and lift our heads from the weight of the burdens we insist on carrying.

The baby before me needs her mother’s arms to carry her. She gains her sustenance from her mother. Without her parents or someone to care for her, she will not survive, let alone thrive. Yet we act and live as if we are somehow independent.

My prayers changed in that moment.

I don’t want to long for an encounter with God or for His strength to meet me and carry me through moments I cannot handle on my own. I want to NEED Him! I realized He is faithful to meet us in the place of our need. I pray that I will need Him in everything. I pray I will worship Him from a deep knowledge that without Him, I cannot hold my own head up. Without Him, I am thirsty and hungry. Without Him, I am bound by the impossible weight of this world. Without Him, I am weak and broken.

In Him, I am alive. In Him, I can breathe deep and inhale the wonder before me. In Him, color awakens to brilliance. In Him, shadows flee, questions have answers, light and hope fill the places once occupied by darkness. In Him, I love and am loved. In Him, there is joy unexplainable. In Him, I live and move and have my being. Everything I need, He has given. My desires become captured by beauty and purpose. Meaning takes on new meaning.

Lord, I pray that I would be consumed by a passion and a need for you. I pray that I would continue to decrease making more room for your glory in my life. There is no greater joy. I am enamoured and captivated by you. As I seek you and find you, I realize that I can’t get enough of you.

White Washed Tombs

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I took a drive today to a place I once lived. Something once so familiar now screams of distance and abandon, of days long past and reminders of how far I’ve come.

Even the sky is dim framing the homes fallen to disrepair, forgotten or ignored by the “noble” ones; still occupied by dreamers or those who’ve given up, a little of both, who am I to say?

The middle of the street interrupted by medians that were created a few years ago by those seeking to rejuvenate or beautify the otherwise dismal. Live oaks and palm trees stand like proud pillars lending shade to the mass of flowers beneath. Anything to train the eye to ignore the reality and focus on the seemingly lovely.

Money spent to cover up instead of resolve. Funds allocated to appearance instead of wholeness and recovery. An attempt to buy hope for the broken instead of introducing the need to the one who IS hope, the answer, the truth.

Maybe that’s what we’ve become. White washed tombs who hide our need behind proud pillar smile and flowery words. Broken and bound within but perfumed and covered by manicured skin and rote responses, “I’m doing great! How are you?” “Blessed and highly favored” though the words lack sincerity and genuineness.

My heart breaks for the broken ones, the ones hidden behind showcases of beauty. Can we acknowledge the need and do something or do we drive by and focus on the flowers? Am I willing to allow my eyes to see? Am I broken for others and pouring out in prayer and kindness? Am I offering my hands and my heart or am I content with the covering?

Not just on the street among the drug bound and needy, but in the grocery store when I see someone who needs a smile and a word of encouragement. To the cashier whose day consisted of complaints and busy people. In the church where the people so often hide who they really are for fear of rejection (struggling with secret sin but too afraid to admit it and find healing)? Do I walk by and join the others, refusing to go deeper into the fray? Will I not be moved to compassion for another?

Am I a white washed tomb, who appears to have the answers but never provides a solution? Am I real? Do my words show the genuineness and compassion of a loving, infinite, savior and comforter who longs to mend the broken-hearted and restore the weak.

Lord, break my heart for what breaks yours. Here I am, send me.

Refresher

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Your word, oh Lord, awakens my soul

Like water washing over the tired and dusty crags that shape the landscape of my heart

I searched within and found myself wandering, lost somehow in the maze of my mind

Like a light your thoughts toward me jumped from page, to guide, shining the path toward safety

In you, I am refreshed

In you, I am free

In you, the smile forming on my empty lips is genuine and easy

O Lord, open my lips, And my mouth shall show forth Your praise. Psalm 51:15

Gotta’ do what you gotta’ do

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Whoever said pregnancy was magical must not have dealt with morning sickness. I have, in my four pregnancies, experienced varying degrees of first trimester ickyness. This time hasn’t been too bad until the past week or so. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that folks ask how I am feeling and up to this point, I’ve been able to say that I’m feeling great despite a little fatigue and the occasional nauseated moment. So since I was bragging, I am getting hit with the big guns. I am not feeling so good these days! Even as I sit here and type, I feel more and more rumbly in my tumbly. I’m sure this post will be cut short and revisited before it becomes complete as a result of this.

I realize that this is a completely normal part of a healthy pregnancy so I try not to complain about it too much (though my husband may disagree with me about the quantity of my whining). I also know there are little things I can do to stave off the nausea. The most effective is for me to eat something which always makes me laugh when I think about how ironic that is. When I feel the least like eating and the most likely to be unable to eat, I must eat in order to feel human again. What an awful trick?!

Like so many other things in life, the principle holds true that sometimes we need to do what is good for us regardless of whether or not we feel like it. My kids rarely jump out of bed first thing in the morning bursting with excitement about another day of school, but they need to go in order to grow. I rarely revel in the thought of a tough workout (try NEVER these days), but if I want the results I go for it anyway. I rarely find my kids begging for more zucchini or broccoli (except for my oldest who is abnormal and prefers veggies to meat at ALL times) but I know they need healthy foods to be healthy so they eat them anyway. Sometimes, I don’t feel like spending an hour in prayer or a little extra time in the word, but without prayer and study, I cannot maintain my spiritual health.

I am sitting here at lunch time trying to determine what I’m going to try to ingest to calm my queasy midsection and nothing sounds appetizing but I either eat or I continue to feel miserable. What we need may not always match what we want but that doesn’t mean we won’t end up with the desired result. God knows exactly what we need and what’s best for us. Instead of trying to beat the system and get our way, maybe we should just do what we know is best and get rid of the ‘icky’ for awhile. Sometimes we just gotta’ do what we gotta’ do.

Courage

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My kids and their cousins ready to conquer the world of canoeing

My daughter is working on an essay about Courage. She asked me the other day to name someone I found to be courageous. The problem wasn’t that I couldn’t think of anyone, it was more that I can think of so many acts of courage that happen daily. To name one courageous person seems difficult in the light of so many who have given their lives in sacrifice for others or who face great odds to accomplish great things.

 

Honestly, I didn’t think too much more about the subject until this morning when I opened II Samuel chapter 4:1 “When Ish-bosheth, Saul’s son, heard that Abner was dead in Hebron, his courage failed, and all the Israelites were troubled and dismayed.”  Then dropping down to verse 4 “Jonathan, Saul’s son, had a son who was a cripple in his feet. He was five years old when the news came out of Jezreel [of the deaths] of Saul and Jonathan. And the boy’s nurse took him up and fled; and in her haste, he fell and became lame. His name was Mephibosheth.” 

 

Later in the chapter, we find Ish-bosheth napping (not exactly an act of heroism) and he is killed upon his bed. Poor Mephibosheth is crippled for the rest of his life because of one woman’s fear which proved to be completely unfounded in the end.

 

Fear causes us to do dumb things. It can cripple us if we allow it to. We fear what others think of us so we do nothing or we hide. We fear rejection so we don’t connect with others. We fear being hurt so we put up walls around our hearts. We fear failure so we keep our ambitions to a minimum. We’ve heard it said that the only thing we should fear is fear itself. Maybe there is an element of truth to that. When I read II Samuel 4, it is pretty clear to me that the results of fear or the lack of courage led to destruction and death.

 

So what is real courage? I think David gives us a pretty good example. In I Samuel 30, David and his men came home to find that their wives and children had been taken captive. David was “greatly distressed” (verse 6) “But David encouraged and strengthened himself in the Lord his God.” Then he did the most courageous thing of all, rather than reacting blindly, verse 8 “David inquired of the Lord, saying, shall I pursue this troop? Shall I overtake them? The Lord answered him, Pursue, for you shall surely overtake them and without fail recover all. 9 “So David went…”

 

Over and over again, we find David in overwhelming circumstances with enemies coming after him and armies surrounding him. Each time we see the same words, “David inquired of the Lord” True courage is found in true faith. David strengthened himself in the Lord and knew that without the Lord, he could do nothing. In each situation he waited for the voice of God to speak into the circumstance and then he acted in obedience. Philippians 4:6 “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.”

 

Courage isn’t just the absence of fear. Courage is the knowledge that despite the circumstance, God has is under control and His plans are good.

 

Lord, let my first reaction to every situation be to inquire of you. Then give me the courage to do what you tell me to knowing that You are good and You will never leave me. I am completely secure in Your hands and completely able to accomplish whatever you set before me with You leading the way. Thank you that you choose to do great things through vessels of clay and dust. Thank you that you can be glorified in any circumstance when we are courageous enough to get out of your way and walk in obedience.  I love being yours!

Reinvented

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In rural, southern Ohio somewhere there is a band of stuffed animals and baby dolls who were once taught the word of God. When I was a little girl, I was convinced that I would be a preacher and a singer. I would play church with my stuffed animals in the backyard. I would lead worship, then read my bible aloud to them, then expound and teach them everything a teddy bear and bunny could need to know about the kingdom of God. At the end, I’d have an altar call and pray for them and for everyone else I know.

I was at a Women of Faith conference last week and Brenda Warner said when she was five years old she stood up in front of her church and announced that when she grew up she wanted to be either a preacher or a stripper. I guess it’s not who we think we’ll be but who we end up being that matters.

There are moments, when I can’t help but look back over my life and see the good and the bad. I’ve made so many mistakes and I’ve wasted so much time. There were times, I was so far from that little girl with dreams of changing the world, one teddy bear at a time.

Still, here I stand, determined that today will mean more than yesterday. Tomorrow will be a new beginning with new mercies and new opportunities. We have a choice to look back and mourn for what could have been or to pick up and do what we can with today.

I know there are those who look back and think that the past somehow disqualifies them from doing something in the present. I used to be one of them. The truth is that the past molds us into the person we are now and we are the ones chosen to accomplish that which God put in us to do. Through the grace of God, I see things differently than others might because of my experiences. I can use that vision to propel me toward the goals and dreams God put in me.

One of the greatest tools of our enemy is the ability to convince us that we are too messed up to accomplish our dreams or that it’s too late or that we aren’t good enough. As I listen to the stories of others I realize more and more that I am not the only one whose overcome great odds to become something beautiful.

God enables the willing. He isn’t constrained by our ideas of what it means to be “good enough”. He not only loves us in spite of the rubble. He is a master craftsmen who builds us into His image using the pieces we thought were irreparable. He simply waits for us to present ourselves to Him. Now is our greatest opportunity.