with my song

He already knows

2012-02-04T15:58:00.000-05:00

Have you ever been in the middle of telling someone an elaborate story about yourself, when you suddenly realize (or perhaps they remind you) that you've already told them the story before? Or that they were there with you when it happened? And you feel all kinds of silly, because you wonder how you forgot about the fact that they already knew about it?

No? Just me?

(awkward silence) *crickets chirping*

Okay then, moving on...

Sometimes I catch myself talking to God as if I need to explain things to Him. I tell Him a story in the same way in which I'd explain it to a friend, or even a complete stranger. I lay out all the circumstances, define all the terms, tell Him about my past experiences, and explain what I'm thinking and why. I do this for His benefit, so He will understand.

And then I suddenly get that silly feeling. Because whatever it is that I'm trying to describe for Him, He already knows. When (fill in the blank) happened, He was there. He doesn't need my explanations. He doesn't need me to give Him my detailed history. He was there. And He knows what I'm thinking already, so I don't need to explain it to Him for His benefit.

Oh, there are times when I need to explain things for my own benefit. I'm an external processor, so putting things into words is how my mind makes sense of them and sorts out the thoughts and feelings and events and realities. Sometimes I need to tell God a story so that I can start to see the event more clearly, and let Him shine His light on it. Sometimes I need to tell God a story so that I can let go of it and be released from the need to tell it again. Sometimes I need to tell God what I'm thinking so that I'll hear my own words and realize that my thoughts aren't lining up with the Truth. Sometimes I need to tell God how I was hurt so that I can begin to see my hurt through the eyes of His compassion, and so I can receive healing. Sometimes I need to tell God what I'm feeling so that I can put my finger on what I'm feeling and deal with it instead of blindly being driven by it. Sometimes I need to tell God what I desire so that I can leave it in His hands and accept that I don't have control over whether I receive it or not.

But never, ever do I need to tell God anything for His benefit. He is all-knowing and all-seeing and ever present. He knows where I've been. He knows all the stories. And He knows the stories behind the stories. He knows the thoughts. And He knows what's behind the thoughts. He knows every emotion I will ever feel, and He knows what's behind those emotions.

I often begin my prayers by telling God (which is really reminding myself) what He knows already. He knows how I feel. He knows what I want before I ask. He knows how much (or how little) I love Him. I don't need to inform Him of anything. This keeps me humble. He doesn't need anything from me. I approach Him because of who He is, and because I need Him. He loves me and wants me to come to Him and surrender my life to Him, but He doesn't need me to do or say anything in particular when I pray.

It also changes how I spend my time when I pray. When I remember that God already knows everything...

I spend more time listening and less time speaking.

I spend more time laying my desires and requests before Him, and less time lobbying for the response that I want.

I spend more time sitting silently in His love, and less time trying to convince Him to love me. (Or, for that matter, I spend less time trying to convince Him of why He shouldn't love me.)

I spend more time praying with my spirit, and less time praying with my mind.

I spend more time seeking to understand Him, and less time trying to get Him to understand me.

I spend more time being empowered by Him, and less time trying to convince Him to make me strong.

I spend more time focusing on who He is, and less time focusing on who I am.

I spend more time letting Him remind me who I am, and less time telling Him who I want to be.

I spend more time receiving and less time asking.

I spend more time seeking, and less time striving.

I spend more time talking TO God, and less time talking AT God.

grace and math

2012-02-01T12:23:00.000-05:00

I've been wrestling with this grace thing lately. And I really do mean wrestling.

I thought I had accepted it. I thought I understood it. I spent so much time telling other people about it. God's grace. Unmerited favor. We don't deserve forgiveness. And we certainly don't deserve favor. But He gives it to us anyway, not because of anything that we have done, but just because of who He is. That's called grace, and it's what God does. Pretty simple, right?

Maybe it is simple. And maybe that's my problem. I've been known to overanalyze a little. Ok, a LOT. To a ridiculous degree. So when it comes down to just accepting that God loves me when I haven't earned His love...my mind just doesn't know what to do with that.

I'm a math-minded person. Give me some numbers to crunch, and I will happily go to work and enjoy every moment of the process, especially the part when I come up with an answer. THE answer. The only logical, not-to-be-argued-with solution. Simple algebra is my favorite, because there's always a concrete, finite answer. The unknown number is now known. The boundaries are set. But grace isn't like Algebra. It's not like math at all. It doesn't matter what numbers we plug into the equation, when we solve for x, the answer is always...GRACE. He loves us even though we haven't done enough to earn it. We don't deserve His love, but God gives it to us anyway. It doesn't make sense, but it's true anyway. Because God is infinite. He doesn't think like us. He doesn't act like us. He doesn't love like us.

Do you have any idea how this messes with a mathemetician's very busy mind?!

I thought I had finally come to peace with the concept of grace. Thought I had finally accepted that I was loved and valued and forgiven and favored, regardless of any good or bad behavior on my part. I was walking in confidence, because I believed that God loved me and forgave me.

And then...

Then I went and messed with the numbers. I messed up. And what the mess-up was really isn't all that important to you who are reading this. Because we all have our mess-ups. Some big ones, some small ones, some in-between ones. We all have them. Some happen daily, some only occasionally. But we all have them. And I know what mine are. And you know what yours are.

And we place numbers on our mess-ups. Big numbers for some, small numbers for others. And we don't often use the same numbers that God would use. But we do use numbers. And sometimes we try to do the math ourselves.

"I did this thing, that's pretty bad. Negative 75 points for me. And I also did this little thing.
Ok, not a big deal. Let's call that a negative 5. But I did give ten bucks to that guy begging on the street downtown last night. So that earns me back 25 points. And I went to church on Sunday even though I had the sniffles. There's another 10 points. And I read an extra five chapters in my Bible this morning. It was Leviticus, so I definitely get bonus points for that. When I punch all that into the calculator, it doesn't look too bad. I think God can forgive a negative 5. That's grace, right?"

No, I don't do this consciously. But it does go on in my head sometimes even when I don't realize it. I think I'm really relying on God's grace, trusting that He loves me no matter what I do. I think my confidence is completely in Him. But in my head, I'm still doing the math. And my confidence, at least partially, is in me and my own efforts. I give His grace enough credit to make up a small gap between my performance and what I think my performance should be. But when that gap gets too big for my mind to bridge, I get shaken. I get insecure. I get unsettled. Because while I sing "Your grace is enough for me" from the stage on Sunday morning, I start to realize that I don't believe those words as wholeheartedly as I thought I did. I thought all my faith was in God and His grace, but suddenly I realize that a large part of my faith wasn't in Him...it was in me.

I know the facts. I know what the Bible says about this...

Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture...I'm absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us. Romans 8:38-39

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. Ephesians 1:7-8

“My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9

...he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. Titus 3:5-7

God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. Ephesians 2:8-10

This truth is powerful and simple. We're saved by grace, through faith. It's not a reward for good things we have done. Just because of His mercy. And nothing can separate us from His love. NOTHING. His grace is all we need.

But this truth is also totally contrary to any mathematical equation that my human mind can think up. You mean I don't have to earn ANYTHING? Not even a little? I don't even need to keep the score close enough? Even when I fail so miserably, even when I fall over and over again, even when I can't seem to get anything right...even then, You love me and forgive me?

Sometimes it seems TOO simple. And that's why I wrestle with it.

That's why sometimes I have to step back and say "Wait a minute...God, what was that stuff you said about Your grace and Your love? I know I've heard all this before, but could you please explain it to me again? Please tell me again. Because I'm just not sure I get it yet. Not in my heart. Please tell me what's true again."

And because God is big enough to handle our questions and doubts, He patiently starts all over and explains everything to me yet again.

And then it comes down to this: I'm a math person because I like to be in control. I like to understand. If this grace thing...this totally undeserved favor from God...if this is really completely true, then I don't have any control over it. I don't control whether God loves me, or how much He loves me. He just does. Completely. The only control I have is whether I choose embrace it or not. And sometimes my math mind has a hard time choosing to embrace something that I can't control or understand. So I wrestle. I wrestle with my math mind. I wrestle with my pride. I wrestle with my emotions. I wrestle with satan. I wrestle with my will. I wrestle with God Himself.

I'm so thankful that God is big enough to handle my wrestling. And strong enough. And gentle enough. And merciful enough. And loving enough.

And I'm thankful that, even when I can't bring myself to embrace it, His grace really is enough for me.

Just get back up.

2012-01-09T17:04:00.000-05:00

My 4 year old son is one of the happiest people I've ever met. He's just wired for happiness. While most kids wouldn't get too excited about receiving clothes as a Christmas gift, he bubbles over with joy at the sight of a new pair of pajama pants, hugs them to his chest, and exclaims with every ounce of feeling in his little body "Oh Mom, FANK you for deez JAMmies!!!" He's a happy little guy, and it takes a lot to get him down.

But there's one thing that can unravel this happy little boy in a heartbeat: failure. Whenever he makes a mistake, he completely melts down. If he spills a glass of milk, it might take me five or ten minutes to console him through his heaving sobs and snot and tears, and to assure him that it's okay, he is still loved, he's a good boy, he is forgiven, everything will be okay, and accidents happen. This morning, he accidentally knocked over the TV speaker and it landed about a foot from his baby brother. There truly wasn't any harm done. The baby was fine, and he hadn't been roughhousing or anything. It was a simple mistake. But my son thought it was the end of the world. So I hugged him and held him as he cried, and reassured him with some of the things I always say. "It's okay, Son. You didn't mean to do it. Your brother is going to be just fine, and he knows you love him very much. I forgive you, your brother forgives you, and God forgives you. You'll be more careful beside the TV next time...you learned something, so that's good. Let's not waste time crying about it...it's all over. You're forgiven. Smile and go play. You are a wonderful boy, I love you, and I'm so glad that I'm your mommy. You're going to be just fine. Everybody knocks things over once in a while. It's okay. You're okay."

As I was saying some of these things today, I looked into my son's heartbroken little eyes, and I saw something. Something familiar, like I was looking in my own reflection in those deep hazel-brown eyes. Because when I fail, I feel the same way he does. Just like my son, I sometimes run head-on into the reality that I'm not perfect. And I'll never be perfect...not in this world anyway. And when I do, I feel the same way he does. For a moment, it feels like the end of all hope. All I can think about is what I've done, and who I've hurt, and how I should have done things differently, and how I want to be able to go back in time and make it un-happen. And sometimes I think of the people who saw me fail, and I wonder what they think of me now, and how disappointed they must be in me. And then I start wondering what God must think of me now. He must be so disappointed. I'm so disappointed in myself.

In those moments, I feel like I've fallen face-first into the dirt. My knees are skinned up, my clothes are all dirty, there are clumps of grass in my hair, and I realize that I'm not who I hoped I was, and not as strong as I thought I was. I'm not infallible...I'm not even pretty good at life...I'm just a dirty, bruised-up girl with the wind knocked out of her, trying to spit the dust out of her mouth.

And usually as I'm sitting there trying to brush myself off, I look around me and start comparing. This hole that I tripped into...it's so much worse than the stuff that other people struggle with. Look at those girls over there...they never fall this hard. Or if they do, it's no big deal compared to the mess I'm in. Why couldn't I at least fall into that hole over there? It wouldn't be as bad as this. No one else's failures even compare to mine.

It's at those moments, when I'm sitting there in the dirt trying to catch my breath, tears welling up in my eyes, that I need my Father to hold me and say many of the same things that I say to my son..."It's okay, Daughter. You messed up, but you're forgiven. You learned something, and that's good. You can't change what happened, but I will work even your failure for good. Let's not waste any more time crying about it. Everyone falls down sometimes. I created you, I think you're wonderful, and I'm glad you're my daughter. It's okay. YOU are okay. I'm with you. You're going to make it. Just get back up."

Because my Father is just that loving and gentle and gracious, He is always faithful to hold me close during every face-in-the-dirt moment and gently reassure me until I can see hope again, and I'm willing to get up and walk again. And sometimes He even sends other people to come alongside me and speak those same words of hope to me. "God still loves you. I still love you. I fall sometimes, just like you. See that hole over there? I fell into it twice last week. You messed up, but it's over now. You're not alone. This too shall pass. You're forgiven. You're going to make it. Just get back up."

I don't know whether everyone struggles as much as I do to stop sitting there in the dirt crying, but I imagine I'm not the only one who sometimes needs to be reminded..."Just get back up."

Today, a friend reminded me of a song by Bob Carlisle that I heard years ago. It simply says...

We fall down, we get up.

And the saints are just the sinners
who fall down
and get up.

I do not trust in my bow

2011-12-03T10:10:00.001-05:00

"I do not trust in my bow,
I do not count on my sword to save me;
You are the one who gives us victory over our enemies..."
Psalm 44:6-7

These words from Psalm 44 are underlined in my Bible, and it seems like they keep coming back to me again and again. At first read, it seems like a really simple concept. God gives the victory, not man's weapons. But when I look below the surface of these words and confront the reality of what they mean for my life personally, they seem much more complicated.

I may not be fighting for my life in a physical war, but I do have battles to win, victories that I'm seeking, and just everyday tasks to accomplish. And whenever I read Psalm 44, I always ask myself ...What is my bow today? What is it that I'm trusting in or counting on to save me or give me victory?

Usually I can find the answers to those questions pretty quickly by thinking of what brings me the most peace of mind in a situation, or what would cause me the most trouble if it were taken away.

For example...When I'm feeling overwhelmed with all the housework that needs to be done (when you have up to 8 kids in your house each day, housework does qualify as an overwhelming task), and the dishwasher is acting funny, I get really anxious. Why? Because I'm trusting in my dishwasher, as if my dishwasher alone is going to give me victory over the task I need to accomplish.

When I'm struggling to change an unhealthy habit or a sinful pattern in my life, what do I count on? Is it my own strength and determination?

When I'm having a down day, what do I count on to bring me back up? Is it my friends? Is it the sunshine? Is it Facebook? Is it my own hard-earned knowledge about how to handle a down day?

When I'm leading worship at church, what do I trust in? Is it my own ability? Or my familiarity with the songs? Is it a perfectly functional in-ear monitor?

When I need wisdom, what do I count on? Do I count on my own creative ideas about how to get to where I need to be? Or to I look to God and ask Him for His wisdom?

When my child is sick, what do I look to for peace of mind? Is it his doctor's wisdom? Is it the medication that he's on? Do I trust God's care for my child as much as I trust those physical tools that He may be using at the moment?

Our bow and sword will only get us so far. Maybe we will win some battles with them. But ultimately, it's God who gives us the victory. If we trust in our own ideas, abilities, stuff, or strength, we will eventually find ourselves in a situation where it's obvious that those things are not enough to win the battle.

Or maybe we'll suddenly be in a situation where we have no bow or sword at all. Where we're standing in front of our own personal Goliath, and we have no real weapons to fight him with. No wisdom or knowledge to go on, no talent, no medical answers, no allies to fight alongside us, no strength of our own, no preparation...nothing. It's at those times when we realize that everything...from the smallest detail to the biggest life-and-death battle...is in God's hands after all, and no human weapon or strength or wisdom is enough to give us the victory. It's at those moments when we realize that trusting in our "bow", whatever that may be for us, is always misplaced trust.

God is the one who gives the victory, and He really doesn't care whether the odds are for us or against us. Even if we're perfectly prepared for a task in front of us, if He does not give us the victory, we will fail. On the other hand, even if we are standing alone in front of a thousand enemies ready to flatten us in a moment, if God gives us the victory, those enemies will fall at our feet. He sees us. He knows the enemy that we're up against. He determines the outcome, and while He might call on us to use our bow and sword in faith, He is the one who will ultimately give the victory.

I find this truth a little unnerving sometimes, because it means that I'm not in control. But it's also so freeing...because it means I'm not in control. I'm learning to appreciate the times when I don't have a bow or sword to trust in, because they build my faith in the One who gives me victory.

through the fire

2011-10-24T21:15:00.001-04:00

Two years ago, I was ready for a new season in my life. I was just learning to walk in the freedom God had given me from so much junk in my life. I was just beginning to understand that God was making my life into something beautiful, and that He could use even me as a display of His splendor, to share His love with the world. And I was ready to get on with things. I was ready to jump out of all those past struggles into a season of...well, I might not have put it into these words at the time, but I was hoping for a season of nothing but happiness and victory. I was ready for life to be easy and joyful for a while.

One morning two years ago, some friends and I were each given a scripture verse written on a little strip of paper. Each verse was different, and they were "randomly" distributed, but they had been prayed over, that God would give each person a verse that applied specifically to them, a truth that they could claim and use as a part of their spiritual armor.

On that morning two years ago, I knew just what kind of verse I was going to get. It was going to be about victory! It was going to be about healing, about overcoming, about going into all the world and telling the good news. As the verses were passed out, I caught a glimpse of the one given to the person next to me. I don't even remember now what verse it was, but it was exactly the kind of verse that I was sure I was going to get. How exciting! If she got those awesome words, surely mine would be even more amazing...after all I had been through, surely God was going to give me some wonderful words of celebration!

I eagerly accepted my little slip of paper, and I went over to the corner to open it, because I was just sure I would have to sing for joy when I read it. I opened it up, and...

(You've probably guessed the punchline by now.)

"When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze." Isaiah 43:2

What???

I wanted to give the paper back.  Something must have gone terribly wrong. Surely the person next to me had gotten the verse meant for me.  I seriously considered going to her and telling her that there must have been some mixup, and asking if the verse I had meant anything to her.

Waters? I've had enough waters! Rivers? I've passed through plenty, and I'm done with that, thank you very much! Fire? No way I'm walking through fire. This verse didn't mean anything to me. All these thoughts ran through my head until it was practically spinning. Eventually, I came to some sort of peace with the situation by convincing myself that there was a mixup and that verse hadn't really been for me.

A week later, my dear friend's son died 30 minutes after he was born. As I held that precious baby in my arms and watched my friend's heart breaking right there in front of me, I thought about grief, and how it really does make a person feel like rivers are about to sweep over her and carry her away. And I thought about that verse that had been given to me. I didn't embrace it, I just thought about it.

Two months later, I turned the key in the lock of my mom's apartment door one night and found her body lying dead in the ruins of her self-destruction. And even in my shock, my first impulse was not to despair. My first words to my husband were "Honey, it's okay. God's got this."  Even as the words came out of my mouth, I had NO idea where that faith came from. How could I have such confidence when I was in the midst of a nightmare that should have made me crumble?

I didn't sleep much that night. Okay, I didn't sleep at all that night. As I tossed and turned, images of what I had seen and the reality of what I had learned were flying around in my mind faster than the speed of light...questions that would never have answers...guilt beyond description...memories that I wanted so badly to erase, and other memories that I was so afraid of forgetting. I was overwhelmed at the thought of what was ahead. I had many more gut-wrenching phone calls to make. I had a funeral to plan. And I had to break the hearts of my two little children by telling them that there would be no more sleepovers or fun outings with their Mammaw, who they adored more than anyone in the world.

I don't remember the precise moment when the words of Isaiah 43:2 came back to me. But in the days, weeks, and months that followed, I held onto those words like I was holding onto life itself...because those were WERE life to me. Sometimes I remembered those words specifically and spoke them out loud.  More often, I simply operated out of the imprint of faith that they had burned into my soul.

The almost two years that followed brought even more pain. I endured loss after loss after loss through the death of family and precious friends, unexpected life changes, serious health problems, lost friendships, and almost total isolation. It really did feel like I was drowning at times, like I was alone, like I was walking through fire. But somehow even when I didn't feel like it could possibly be true, I held onto God's promise that He was with me in the waters, that the rivers would not sweep over me, that I would not be burned by the fire. Sometimes I held onto that promise with confidence. Other times, I clung to it as my very last thread of hope while I desperately pleaded with God to make the pain stop.

Today, two years after I received that little piece of paper that I wanted to give back, the waters have receded around me, at least for now. I've come through the fire, and I will never be the same again.    I'm beginning to see the beauty of the story that God was writing in my life during the hardest times. And I'm more and more awed by the kindness of my heavenly Father, who knew the exact depth of the waters I was about to pass through, and who knew the intensity of the fire that I was about to walk through.

I'm so grateful for a Father who knew from before I was even born that, on that morning two years ago, I would be standing with a group of friends taking a tiny strip of paper from someone's hand. I'm grateful for a Father who made sure that I got exactly the right strip of paper....the one that contained the words of life that would sustain me and protect me in what I was about to face.

Possibilities

2011-10-21T13:01:00.002-04:00

I have always loved babies. Even newborn babies who keep me up at all hours of the night. I just love to look at them, to watch them sleep, to watch them grow. They are so new, so full of new possibilities. I look at my son, and I wonder what he will become. What will his personality be like? What will his career be? His interests? His passions? His ministry? What victories will he have in his life? What trials? What will his sense of humor be like? Who will his friends be? I love that there are so many things to wonder about. So many possibilities ahead of him.

My own life is a process of growing and developing too. It will be a lifetime before God's work in me is complete, and I pray that what He does through me will affect eternity even after I'm gone...so in the grand scheme of things, it's like He is just getting started. There's so much I don't know about where He is going to lead me, what He is going to make out of my life, what He is going to grow and develop in me, and how He is going to use me.

I used to hate the waiting and wondering. I still do sometimes. I look forward to seeing what's around the next corner. I'd like to know what God has prepared for me, what He is going to fix and grow in me, how He will use this experience or that one that I've had in my life, how He will use me to touch other people's lives. I wish I could know how this story will end, what the finished product will look like...it might really make the waiting a little easier if I knew exactly what I was waiting for.

But more and more, I'm starting to appreciate the possibilities. I'm starting to step back and look at my life, especially during the in-between-seasons transition times, and appreciate the fact that God is working on me, and even to appreciate the fact that I don't know exactly what He's doing. Because there are so many possibilities. I'm just along for the ride.

My prayer today is that I'll be more thankful for the possibilities, and less concerned with the details.

the first smile

2011-10-21T10:00:00.000-04:00

Every morning, I hear my 8 month old son babbling and singing to himself in his crib. I've been listening for him all night over the baby monitor, anticipating his cries, thinking of his safety. Even as I have slept, I've been always aware of his presence, always on guard for him, waiting in expectation (even when it's not eager expectation) of when he would wake up. So each morning when I hear him start babbling to himself, I go get his breakfast ready ('cause the kid likes to eat, and eat promptly), and then comes my favorite part of the day: the first smile. Seriously, this little guy must have inherited my tendency toward morning person-ness, because that first smile of the morning is the biggest, brightest, most beautiful thing I've ever seen in our home. He smiles so big that one eye almost disappears, flailing his legs and arms, and arching his back to try to jump into my arms even though he can't even crawl yet. Sometimes it feels as if he knows that I've been on guard for him, that I've had him on my mind all night long, and he can't wait to tell me that he loves me too.

This morning when I saw that first morning smile, I thought about my relationship with my heavenly Father, the One who loves me and cares for me above all else. The One who has been watching and listening for me the whole night while I slept, singing over me and keeping me safe, anticipating my awakening. Do I greet Him with that same bright, beautiful, eye-scrunching smile attitude each morning? Am I so excited to wake up to the sight of His face that I try to jump right into His arms and draw as close to Him as possible?

Umm...no. I don't.

And I can't say it's because I'm too sleepy, because as I said before, I love mornings. I seem to be able to get myself out of bed for any number of other "necessary tasks", like taking a shower, getting to a meeting, getting my kids ready for school, heading to the gym, or...ahem...checking Facebook for the news of the morning, or making a triple word score in Words with Friends. (Ouch.) It makes no sense to me...why can I be up and ready for all these other tasks, yet when I set my alarm to spend quality time with God in the morning, I hit the snooze button?

And even more than that, why on earth would I want to give my first morning smile to anyone else but the One who has been awake all night long watching me sleep and singing over me?

I don't share these thoughts to promote guilt and more discipline to have a morning time with God. In fact, that's kind of the opposite of my angle here. Yes, God does call for our praise, even when we don't feel like it. Yes, having that personal time with God every day is crucial to our very survival in our walk with Him. Yes, I feel more and more strongly each day that for most or all of us, at least some of that time needs to happen in the morning, before we have had any chance to interact with the world. And yes, it does sometimes require discipline, especially in the beginning until it's established as a habit and routine.

But my point is much deeper than discipline. I'm simply asking the question...why? And also what? Why am I drawn to give that first morning smile to anyone but Jesus? And what is it that pulls me toward those other things?

When I pick up my phone before even getting out of bed and immerse myself in the Facebook news of the day, what need or desire am I trying to meet? Is it the need for connection? Is that a need that the Holy Spirit would meet better in a more direct way, as I nurture that connection to my Savior first?

When I hit that snooze button two more times, is it because I truly haven't had enough sleep? (And if so, what I was I doing the night before that kept me up so late, and what was my motivation for that?) If I have had enough sleep, then what kind of rest am I really searching for? Is it the rest and peace that can only be found in my spirit through the Holy Spirit, not in my body through a "quick fix" snooze that won't bring lasting rest?

This isn't about self-seeking introspection. It's about bringing truth to the places where I have been operating based on false assumptions, and sometimes flat-out deception. I want to get to the root of the problem, to tear down the walls that have kept me from enjoying that first morning smile time with the One who sings over me while I sleep. In the meantime, there are some behavior and schedule changes that are necessary for me. But my prayer is that I would be less and less motivated by discipline, and more and more motivated by a sweet, personal, always growing relationship of love with my Savior.

Something Good

2011-09-27T09:27:00.001-04:00

In the 21 months (hard to believe it has been that long) since my mom's death, the thing I've struggled with most is the circumstances of her death, along with the mess she had made of her life in her last few years.

I like for stories to make sense and be poetic, and usually to have a happy ending. Some people die after a battle with illness that they fought bravely. Some people die in the line of duty, giving their life to save others. My friend's grandpa died while listening to his pastor read scripture to him. A good samaritan was killed last week by a passing car while he stopped to help a stranger change a tire. While loss and death are always sad, it seems like those kinds of deaths at least have some meaning to them. They can serve as an encouragement to others to keep running the race of life. There's a little bit of bittersweet poetry in them.

There was a lot of beauty and poetry in my mom's life, lots of great things that she has passed on to me and my kids. But there was nothing poetic about the way my mom died. She ruined herself, destroyed her life and many of her relationships, hid behind lies to cover up her problems instead of asking for the help that she needed, and just generally gave up. And all these months, I've searched and searched for some meaning, some encouragement that could come from Mom's death. Not that I thought it would ever completely make sense, but I have just longed to see SOMETHING good...ANYTHING good...come out of Mom's death, something that could encourage or help someone else. Obviously, the fact that she's in heaven and finally at peace and out of pain and confusion is good for her...but I've been searching and praying to somehow see something in it that's meaningful for this world that she left behind.

I think I have finally found a small answer to my prayers...but it's not at all what I had in mind.

I had the opportunity to share some thoughts and some parts of my own story with a small group of people last week. The subject was being real, being transparent with God, ourselves, and others. I shared about how I used to be trapped in shame, trying to hide my scars and my pain from everyone around me. And I shared about what it was like to watch Mom destroy her life because she wasn't willing to be open about her struggles and ask for the help that she needed. She spent her whole life (especially in the last few years) trying to hide her brokenness, so she died alone in her brokenness. Lately, it has really struck me how my own life could have so easily ended up like my mom's. But the difference is that, by God's grace, I finally realized that it hurts more to hide than it does to be honest. So I'm living in the light now. I'm far from perfect, but I'm choosing, as best I can, to just be me, and to live life openly and honestly with others. Mom never realized that she was putting herself through so much needless pain by not allowing people to help her, or by keeping the help at arm's length instead of fully embracing it. She never realized that there were people who just wanted to love her and accept her, not condemn her. Or maybe she did realize it, but she just didn't have the courage, or the humility, or whatever it was that would have been required in order for her to accept that love.

As I was sharing my story, along with a little bit of Mom's, with that group, I really felt as though God's Spirit just took over and gave the talk for me. There aren't many times in my life when I have felt so filled with His power. I think He knew that I wasn't capable of sharing such a difficult thing on my own. There are still days when the thought of what Mom did to herself, the mental pictures of her body, of her apartment, of all the empty whiskey bottles, can reduce me to a sobbing, snotting mess. The only conclusion I can come to about why this time was so different is that God had a purpose for that story. I'll be sharing it again, on a much bigger scale, in a few weeks, and I absolutely believe that God is going to use that story...not just my story, but Mom's as well...to speak truth to some people who need to hear it. And by doing that, God is bringing something good out of Mom's death.

So I guess the answer to my prayer, the meaning that I've found in my mom's death is that she gave an example of what happens when we DON'T live life in the light.

I don't like that answer.

I mean I REALLY don't like that answer.

I don't like that the end of my mom's life is an instruction manual on how to senselessly destroy yourself and die alone.

But I recognize that it's an answer to my questions and prayers. And I appreciate the fact that God is bringing something good...anything good...out of something so painful and tragic. And I recognize that it is poetry, even though it's really not the kind of poetry that I had in mind.

I love my mom, and I always will. I am so thankful for the wonderful things that she taught me, the joy she brought to my life and to the lives of so many other people. I'm thankful that two of my kids got to meet her and feel her love for them, and for parts of her that I see in them. I'm thankful for so many ways in which she helped make me who I am today. I'm thankful for the ways that her life is still blessing other people.

And although I still REALLY don't like it, I'm thankful for the way that God is bringing something good even out of her death.

Messy

2011-06-07T12:46:00.001-04:00

For a variety of reasons, much of my life so far has been messy. I don't mean "stuff" messy, like a disorganized garage and piles of unfolded laundry (I often have both of those, but that's another story). I'm talking about "life" messy. I'm talking about dealing with painful, confusing issues, things that don't have clear answers, and some things that don't have answers at all. I'm talking about having problems in my life that make many people cringe, make some people run away, and make most people generally uncomfortable... Depression. Bipolar disorder. Suicide. Self-injury. Pregnancy loss. A parent's addiction and suicide. Grief. Serious illness. This is MESSY stuff. Pretty much everyone has had some messy stuff in life, but it seems like I have had heaps and heaps of it.

I used to think of this messiness as an undesirable thing that God seeks to save us all from. I hated that my life was messy. I hated the isolated feelings I got when I realized how uncomfortable most people are with the messiness I knew so well. I constantly looked forward to the next phase of my life, which I was convinced would surely be less messy (and therefore somehow happier) than this one and the ones before it.

I say this in the past tense, because something happened recently that has totally changed my perspective on this "life" messiness...

I did some laundry.

Literally.

It wasn't my own laundry. God brought a young woman into my life who, because of her own very messy "life" stuff, needed, among other things, a lot of dirty laundry washed. So I brought it home, and with each item that I washed, folded, and sorted, my heart broke a little more for this girl and the painful mess in her life. Again and again, I cried for her. I cried for her pain that I understood all too well. I cried for her mess and for my own mess. And I prayed for her messes and mine...past, present, and future. I can't begin to describe the depth of love that has grown in my heart for her as a result of such a simple thing as doing laundry. I guess there's some kind of amazing connection between serving and loving. By the end of all the laundry, this girl, whom I had known for a while, but not very well, was firmly planted in my heart.

As I was pondering and praying about all this messiness, it occured to me that I was so thankful to have the privilege of supporting this new friend in the midst of her mess. I wasn't afraid of it. I wasn't the least bit uncomfortable. I didn't feel like stepping back or running away. On the contrary, I was so eager to see what I could do next to walk alongside her and just let her know that she is not alone.

I found myself praying, "God, could you please give me a place in her mess? Please give me a chance to show her Your love, just like so many people have shown it to me over the years. I know it's only You who can bring healing in her mess, but please...could I at least watch you do it?"

What kind of prayer is that? Am I crazy? Who actually asks for something like that? Aren't we supposed to avoid getting messy? Aren't we supposed to jump over the mud puddles if we can, instead of choosing to walk straight into them?

Well, maybe I am crazy...or maybe I'm just blessed. Blessed with a life so messy that I'm not at all intimidated or put off by messiness. Being comfortable with messiness does not come naturally to most people. Sure, there are a few people who are born or somehow spiritually gifted in this way. But the only way most people reach a place where they're not afraid of messiness is by wading through knee deep poo in their own lives again and again. And the only way most people can get through knee deep poo is with the help of other people whom God sends to wade through it with them...people who have been through messes of their own...and on and on the chain continues. This is the blessing of a messy life.

And by the way...you know that prayer I prayed? God said yes.

I didn't want to miss it

2010-11-04T10:57:00.001-04:00

I went on a much-needed women's retreat this weekend and was able to spend a solid 48 hours with God, without distractions, just letting the Holy Spirit move and getting plugged back into life. In the chaos of the last year, I had become so dry spiritually, emotionally, and mentally. I guess, to some degree, that's understandable. I felt the need to keep bracing myself for whatever was coming next, and in the process, I ended up bracing myself against some good things too. I'm in a whole difference place since this weekend. One of the biggest awakening moments for me happened during worship on Saturday evening.

While everyone was singing and praying and enjoying God's presence, I noticed that one of the ladies kept getting a serious, almost concerned look on her face, going over to the window, and watching something outside. Our retreat center was kind of off the beaten path, so it occured to me that there really shouldn't be anything at all of interest going on outside, because there was no one else around. Again and again, I noticed her walking over to the window, straining to see outside in one particular direction, watching for a minute, and then turning around and singing again.

Finally my curiousity got the best of me, so I went over and asked her if everything was okay.

"Oh, everything is fine," she said. "It's just that the sun is setting, and I didn't want to miss it."

I don't think her words totally sank in all at first. I thought her appreciation for the sunset was sweet, but didn't think much more about it than that. But throughout the weekend, those words kept coming back to me. "...I didn't want to miss it."

I have seen the sun rise and set many times over the last year when I was driving in my car or out running errands. But I haven't really watched it. I haven't appreciated it. I haven't been moved to praise by it. And I certainly haven't been concerned because I didn't want to MISS it!

Because I wasn't looking or taking the time to appreciate the beautiful gift of the sunset that God gives us in a new unique way every day, I had missed it completely. Every day. For a year. How sad! And it makes me wonder what else I've been missing...what else we ALL miss...simply because we're not really watching. Maybe we have seen it all before and just don't think it's important anymore. Maybe there's chaos around us or pain inside of us that is distracting us. Maybe we just don't want to be bothered as we go on with our daily tasks. We value efficiency more than awe.
So Sunday morning, I woke up early, bundled up, and went for a walk outside to watch the sunrise. It wasn't a special kind of sunrise, it was the same kind of "common" miracle that happens every day as God holds the Earth in its place and spins it on its axis. But this one was special to me because I was watching. Because I didn't want to miss it. I watched the moon and stars, clear and vivid, slowly begin to fade in one part of the sky, as the most brilliant colors of light started to appear. For a while, stars and blackness were visible in the western half of the sky, while the glow of the day's first brilliant light was warm in the east. The sky changed moment by moment, and I didn't want to take my eyes off of it because I didn't want to miss any part of the processs.

As I watched the darkness turn to light, moment by moment, I was reminded of the ultimate display of turning darkness into light. Out of the darkness of a humanity dead in sin, God brought his Son. And the one especially bright star was only a hint of the light that was to come. When all was said and done, there was only light. Our future as God's children is ONLY light and love and glory. God displays this story every morning in the sunrise. And every evening, He again displays the contrast between light and darkness in the most brilliant way, and He gives us an opportunity to observe His faithfulness as He holds the Earth together and spins it in the same steady, unchanging way.

Life for me this year has been a process involving a lot of pain, a lot of healing, and also some pain in the healing. There have been so many unknowns, so many unexpected twists and turns. At times, it has been difficult to distinguish darkness from light, and at times, sadness and joy have become so jumbled together that I have braced myself against both. But just as God can identify every individual beam of sunlight and every star that appears and disappears from our view, He knows every detail of my life and yours, and He knows how they all fit together. And while we may not see our own lives through His eyes, we can certainly keep our own eyes open instead of closing them tight and walking through life asleep.

Like the rising sun that shines, awake, my soul! Awake, my soul, and sing!

From the darkness comes a light. Awake, my soul! Awake, my soul, and sing!

-Chris Tomlin "Awakening"

The Big Day

2010-10-17T14:40:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow is the big day...the big ultrasound with the maternal fetal medicine specialist. After 4 months of drama after drama, I'm so eager to check this baby out and see how things are going. We should find out whether it's a boy or a girl, whether it has the kidney problems that my son has, and also check for other problems. I'm so glad to hopefully answer some of the unknowns. In the past week or so, the stress of the last 4 months has really hit me. I guess being SO close to answers makes the waiting even harder. I have been having nightmares about the ultrasound, everything from getting bad news to accidentally leaving my kids home alone to go to the appointment, and I haven't been sleeping well at all. So much can go wrong with a pregnancy...especially, it seems, THIS pregnancy. God has already proven to me that He has no regard for what I think I can handle...so that pretty much leaves the possibilities wide open for how things could go tomorrow! I don't remember being this nervous for a 20 week ultrasound before, but this pregnancy has been so different in so many ways, and rational or not, I'm very nervous. Not because I don't trust God with the outcome, but because I don't look forward to the pain if the news isn't good.

I'm also waiting for the results of the blood test for the hereditary clotting disorder that my mom had. We should have results within a week or so. After talking with my mom's hematologist and again with my OB, he decided to go ahead and order the blood test even though there's a chance of a false positive during pregnancy. If the antibodies are strongly positive, I will thank God for the baby's especially miraculous survival so far, and I'll immediately start on blood thinners that will raise the chances of survival from 20 percent to 80 percent. If the antibodies are negative, it will probably be the biggest relief of my life! If the antibodies are only slightly positive, then I'm not sure what we will do. (That would be my least favorite outcome.) But again...it looks likely that after so much waiting, we will have an answer soon, which is wonderful...and kind of stressful. The one thing I have always enjoyed about my pregnancies is feeling the baby kick in my belly. But this time, every time I feel a kick, I just wonder if it will be the last kick. What if I waited just a little too long to pursue having the test, particularly the month we waited to find out whether insurance would cover it...doesn't it sound terrible that we put financial concerns over the baby's health? Part of being a parent is being solely responsible for the life of a child who cannot make his or her own choices. I hate having to make decisions like this. I trust God with the outcome, but the doctors don't ask God to make the decisions...they ask ME. I don't trust me with the decisions.

Little by little, God is changing my attitude about this baby. I have ALWAYS wanted the best for this baby from day one, I just questioned whether ME being this child's parent was best. Not to mention the fact that there have been so many legitimate reasons to be concerned for the baby's life so far, that I haven't been eager to let myself be happy about this child, for fear of experiencing another loss. This still isn't something I would have chosen...but really, is having a child EVER a choice that we make? God creates life when and where and for the purposes that He chooses. Sometimes it falls in line with our own plans, sometimes it comes when we aren't planning on it, and sometimes when we are planning and desperately wanting it, it doesn't happen. Maybe, even after what I have been through and what I have seen friends go through, I was still somehow holding onto the illusion that I somehow had control...or that I SHOULD have control.

I realize now that I don't.

And shouldn't.

the year that's just too hard

2010-09-29T11:21:00.001-04:00

By the end of the first week of 2010, when I found my mother dead amid the most unpleasant of circumstances, I think it already qualified as the most difficult year of the 30 I've had so far. Surely things would get easier from there, right?

Wrong.

2010 so far has included:

*Finding my mother dead in traumatic circumstances.

*Trying to grieve, heal from the trauma, and come to terms with all the possibilities that may have caused her death, all at the same time.

*Unwanted (and very much prevented) pregnancy. I'm thankful that I had the ability to get pregnant with my children. EVERY new life is a blessing. And quite frankly life isn't about what I want. But I'm human, and I DESPERATELY don't want this, and I'm so scared that I won't be able to love this baby in the way that a mother should love her child, and that the child will pick up on that eventually. I have heard a lot of people talk lately about how they know their mothers did not want to have them, and how it has affected their self-esteem for their entire lives. I do NOT want that for this child! I have no idea what God is doing here. I wish this child could go to a family who does very much want a child, but that's not my decision to make, so I just keep trying to grit my teeth and smile through all the well-meaning congratulations, and most importantly I keep praying that God will change me.

*Concerns about ectopic pregnancy. All is well, obviously, but that was a stressful couple of weeks! I may not have wanted this baby, but I certainly would not want the baby to die! It's hard to explain how I could feel so strongly about both of those things at the same time, but I do.

*Possibly high risk pregnancy (maybe) because my mom had a clotting disorder that runs in families. I can't be tested for it accurately during pregnancy, which means I can't start blood thinners if I have it. If I do have it and it is active, the baby only has a 20% chance for survival, and I could also die if I develop a blood clot, which I'm already at high risk for during pregnancy. This was one factor in our decision not to have any more children.

*Major marriage stress due to differing perspectives on the pregnancy and the stress of me being so sick and worthless to my family.

*Pregnancy complications, all without the support of my OB nurse mother who made the deliberate choice to destroy her life, and maybe even to intentionally end it, thus choosing not to be here for me right now.

*Complication #1: Hyperemesis gravidarum (severe morning sickness) for 3 months requiring and ER visit with IV hydration, major lack of sleep due to vomiting and heart palpitations, more medical bills we can't afford, inability to take care of my kids, violent vomiting and choking to the point that I was even worried for my life a couple of times.

*Complication #2: Pneumonia (probaby due to aspirating the aforementioned vomit) causing such severe shortness of breath that it mimicked symptoms of a pulmonary embolism (blood clot in my lung which they usually find on the autopsy, and for which both pregnancy and clotting disorders are major risk factors). Two weeks of very realistic fears for my own life, and having to make the choice to subject the baby to dangerous radiation in order to rule out pulmonary embolism. Remaining possibility of needing heart tests if shortness of breath does not clear up quickly.

*Finding out that my 3 year old son has to have another procedure on his bladder after we thought major surgery last year had fixed everything.

I'm well aware that most of this is small stuff compared to what some people go through. I'm alive. My husband and kids are alive. The baby is alive. We're all likely to stay that way for a long while. And of course, there are some really good things that have happened this year so far too. But with all the stress adding up in such a short period of time, it feels like a lot more than each event would by itself. And at this point it's hard not to wake up each morning wondering what is coming next.

One of the songs we played at Mom's funeral is called "After the Last Tear Falls" by Andrew Peterson. There's a line that says "After the last year that's just too hard, there is love."

I'm counting on it!

The ugly truth

2010-07-09T09:29:00.000-04:00

Wow, it has been a while.

The last few months have been filled with lots of ups and downs. My mom is still on my mind nearly every moment of every day. More and more often, I remember the good times and great memories, and thinking of her is comforting. But still, much of the time when I think about her, I think of the sad circumstances of her death, the difficult few years leading up to it, and the experience of finding her body. I'm generally doing well though, all things considered. Life now is very different from the way it was 6 months ago. I am very different from the person I was 6 months ago. And mostly that's a good thing, I think.

I'm feeling led to share more openly here about my mom and her death, partly because it's good for me to write about it, and partly because I have come to appreciate the value of learning about people's honest experiences. There may be close friends and family of Mom who read this blog, which is why I have been somewhat vague about the circumstances of her death. I made some deliberate choices back in January with the goal of "protecting" some people from having to deal with some painful facts. I don't know whether those choices were right or wrong, but I made them with good motivation, along with a little bit of self-protective denial. I have taken some steps to prevent a few people from finding this blog, but I'm not going to make it private. If you're someone who was close to my mom, please be advised that I'm going to tell the whole truth here and let God decide where the information goes.

The truth is that there's a pretty good chance that my mom's death was suicide. And if it wasn't a "simple" suicide, it was almost definitely a direct or indirect result of major alcohol abuse. The police officers who were at the scene knew it, but I think they wanted to protect me. They could see that I was shocked at how bad things were, and I look a bit younger than I am, so I think they wanted to try to protect me. Since Mom had a list on her refrigerator of health problems and medications and surgeries a mile long, it was easy for them to choose not to look in any other room of the house and not to mention certain details to the coroner, and not to even ask me if I wanted an autopsy. I appreciate their kindness, that they didn't treat the situation as a job to do, but as a tragedy involving real people and an opportunity to make a difference for me.

Now that some time has passed and the shock has worn off, I often wish that either they or I had made a different choice that night. Dealing with the unknowns of Mom's death is probably worse in the long run than knowing for sure that she killed herself, either intentionally or accidentally, because I'm left dealing with the consequences and emotions of EVERY possible outcome, instead of just the one that actually happened. But I have to believe that God was in control that night, and I can't change what happened now, and I'm not going to have Mom's body exhumed, so I try not to spend much time with regret.

There are still days when I try to play detective and figure out all the details. I have thought about calling Mom's bariatric surgeon to ask some questions, or going through Mom's medicine bottles (many of which were completely empty) that I think are still in a bag in our garage. I think through the details a lot. And maybe there will come a time for doing some of the detective work. But right now, I think I'm just supposed to wait and use this time as an opportunity to trust God with the truth, whatever it is. Right now, I'm processing through everything assuming that she committed suicide, but I know that may not be what happened. I have attended a support group for suicide survivors a couple times, and it has been really helpful. I guess even if Mom didn't realize that she was ending her life immediately, she definitely knew that what she was doing would soon kill her, so no matter what the exact cause of death was, the fact is that Mom almost definitely CHOSE not to go on living. That's a hard truth to take in, which is why it has been a gradual process for me. And I'm still working on it, but I think I'm moving through the process pretty well, and I'm definitely learning a LOT about God, myself, parenting, and just life in general.

Patience and Hugs

2010-04-16T10:10:00.000-04:00

I have been attempting to come up with some stuff to blog about that has nothing to do with grief over my mom's death. I've had a hard time coming up with stuff, which is why I haven't been posting very often. But I'm realizing that part of adjusting to this "new normal" is accepting that I'm going to think about Mom a lot, and that nearly everything I think and do is affected in some way by the grief that I'm going through. I don't mean that I'm miserable all the time, because I'm not. Maybe that's how I know that I'm making progress with this grief thing...I can think about Mom, and even cry about losing her, all while living life more or less as usual. It's not easy, and it's not fun, but I'm glad that I'm learning to incorporate this loss into my life instead of feeling like the loss IS my whole life like I did in those first couple of weeks.

Sometimes I get inpatient with the whole process. I want to be past the point of having unexpected crying spells at the most inconvenient places and times, like in the locker room at the gym, while shopping at Kohls, or just before walking into choir practice five minutes late. I want to be past the "fog" and trouble concentrating on big tasks, although that is definitely MUCH better than it was in the beginning. It has been over three months, a quarter of a year, which sounds like a long time.

On the other hand, it has only been three months, just over fourteen weeks. And it's amazing how much better things are than they were in the beginning. I'm sleeping well most nights, as opposed to not sleeping AT ALL in the first week or two. I don't have to force myself to eat or shower anymore. I'm taking care of my kids and some extras, and I have started going to the gym to work out three of four times a week, which is a pretty amazing accomplishment for me in itself. I may not be back up to the housekeeping standards that I (or my husband) would like, but compared to the disaster that it was in those first few weeks, the house looks downright beautiful now. I am still quite self-focused and whiny at times, but now I can also genuinely invest in my family and friends much more than I could in the beginning. I still haven't been to Mom's grave yet, but I can drive by her apartment without getting upset now. I still get a little nervous once in a while when I see something unknown laying on the floor in a dark room, but I can turn the key in the lock and come into my dark house alone at night without even flinching. I still cry pretty much every day, but that's a whole lot better than crying pretty much every hour! I still have trouble concentrating on big tasks and remembering to move the laundry from the washer to the dryer, but at least I can remember what color my car is now. Some days are much better than others, but overall I'm definitely moving in the right direction, and surprisingly quickly. So I just have to keep reminding myself to be patient.

I think more than anything right now, I need patience. Patience, and lots of hugs.

together on the grief-coaster

2010-03-30T10:43:00.000-04:00

I'm still here, safely strapped in and holding on during one of the biggest roller-coaster rides of my life. Grief is funny stuff. It's so strange how it comes and goes. Not that it's ever actually gone, but there are times when life seems to be proceeding in a pretty much "normal" fashion (whatever that is), coasting along, and then all of a sudden...BAM...the bottom drops out and I'm soaring down the next big hill on the grief-coaster. The smallest, silliest things can trigger a major flood of tears. It doesn't even have to have anything to do with my mom. A commercial on TV, a toy on the floor, or just a random thought or idea that would normally seem totally insignificant...it's unpredictable. And once I start crying...look out, because it's nearly impossible to stop.

Yesterday was an especially tough day with thinking about Mom, wondering about the circumstances of her death, and just missing her. Tears came off and on throughout the day, and I felt like an ugly cry was imminent. I was frustrated, because it has been 2 1/2 months, and I somehow feel like I should be past having days like that by now, even though I know that grief doesn't follow a timetable. Jeff was gone for the evening, so I put the kids to bed, breathed a big sigh of relief, and started cleaning up the litter trail that preschoolers leave in their wake. When I went outside to take out the trash, my neighbor was outside saying goodbye to someone. I really like Ebony, and we always exchange smiles and hellos, but we have never taken the time to get to know each other on more than a chit-chat level. But last night, Ebony ran over to me, called me "baby girl", and gave me a big hug. She said she had heard about my mom and had been praying for me. She said it has been a year since she lost her mom, and it still feels like yesterday. She said she knows just what I'm going through, and she specifically said "can't stop crying". She told me she has been praying for me and asked me to pray for her too. We really connected on a heart level without many words. I'm so thankful for her, for the connection that we made, and for the encouragement and timing that was clearly set in motion by God. The grief-coaster seems a little less frightening when I can see that there are other people riding it.

Now it would be really cute and happily-ever-after if I said that after that conversation, I no longer wanted to cry. But that's not how it happened. The moment I came back in the house, the ugly cry began. But at least I had the comfort of knowing that I wasn't alone. I think it's sad how we interact with people around us every day on a surface level and don't realize how much we have in common. We miss out on opportunities to love each other on a deeper level. The thing that is most touching to me as a parent is to see my kids love and care for each other. I imagine that God might feel that way about us too. I imagine that it brings him joy to see his children loving and connecting with each other.

faithful to complete it

2010-02-26T15:15:00.000-05:00

"...being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." Philippians 1:6

I remember an old song inspired by that verse. I remember sitting in church one Sunday when I was somewhere around 13 years old and listening to someone sing it. I had just begun my walk with Christ. I longed for the hope that God could change me and make me into the person that I already was yet didn't know how to become. The words of that song and that verse have come back to me time after time ever since the day I first heard them.

It's funny to think of how little I knew back then. I don't mean that I didn't know much about life, although that's true too. But what I mean is that although I knew who God was, I didn't KNOW him like I do now. There's a world of difference. I knew facts about God. I knew some scriptures. I knew rules. I knew things that God did. I memorized lists of attributes and names of God. But truly KNOWING God on a deeper and deeper level has been a process that's still ongoing. God is infinite, so there is more of him to know than I could ever imagine, and the process of knowing him more and more intimately will continue in my life until I get to heaven. I hope and pray that I'll look back on this day in 20 more years and say "It's funny to think of how little I knew back then." Knowing God comes from experience him and from experiencing life with him. The times in my life when I have come to KNOW God more deeply have often been painful times. I have come to know God's trustworthiness at times when there was no one else that I could trust. I have come to know God's love at times when I was entirely unloveable. I have come to know God's strength at times when I had no strength of my own. Today, knowing God like I do now, I am all the more grateful for that assurance that he will be faithful to complete the work that He has started in me.

I have always had an especially hard time finishing what I start. I determine that I'm going to change a habit or pattern in my life, and I make wonderful plans, and I start strong...and then in a few weeks, days, or even hours, I quit. Sometimes I quit out of sheer lack of will. Sometimes I quit because I'm frustrated or discouraged. Sometimes I just get bored. Sometimes I get tired. Sometimes I get impatient. Sometimes I'm just so darn distractible that I can't stay focused on the goal. Sometimes I start running a great race with friends on each side, but after we round the first corner, I look around and realize that they're gone, and I can't bear the loneliness of running on that track all alone. Sometimes I simply lose hope that I'll ever make it to the goal.

How grateful I am that God is not like me! God is not distractible. God does not get bored with me. God does not get tired. God does not get impatient. God does not quit out of frustration or discouragement. God does not give up on me. God never leaves me alone. God doesn't have to try to muster up the strength to go on, because God is the source of all strength. God never loses hope, because he is the source of hope. God never loses sight of the goal, because he IS the goal.

I love that God never gives up. And I love that God is never content to leave me where I am for very long. Even after some of the wildest rides of my life, God is not content to let me sit on the bench and catch my breath for very long. He knows that true rest isn't found on the bench. It's found only in HIM. Complacency is not rest. In fact, rest is not passive at all. Jesus said "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart." (Mt 11:28) He equates rest with taking his yoke upon us, and a yoke is meant for moving and working. We find rest in truly KNOWING the person of Jesus, and in allowing the Holy Spirit to constantly change us and mold us.

Through all the twists and turns of life, all the races abandoned halfway through, all the good intentions that never progress into actions, God promises to keep working on us and with us and in us. God promises to finish the good work that he started in us because that's how deeply and completely he loves us. What kind of crazy, outrageous, ridiculous love is this that keeps pursuing me, keeps changing me, keeps drawing me closer, keeps starting over with me again and again? It's a love that I don't think I'll ever fully understand. But I want to understand it. And much more than that, I want to KNOW it. I want to be filled with it to overflowing. I want to live in it, to dance in it, to soak in it until there's nothing left to do except to pour it out.

No posting when tired.

2010-02-13T09:40:00.000-05:00

Haha...so I just reread last night's post, and it sounds utterly ridiculous and melodramatic and whiny to me in the light of day. That's reason #487 why it's not a good idea to write when you're tired...specifically when you're REALLY tired because you spent the day at the children's museum, most exhausting place on earth for kids and parents alike.

I could take the post down, but I think that would defeat my whole purpose for blogging, which is to tell my story like it is...even if it is ridiculous. So there it stays.

I still do agree that what makes month 2 so difficult is that life has to go on, for me and for other people, yet my mind still isn't done processing through everything that has happened. It's hard to find the balance, to adjust to the new normal, and to know how to ask for support from my friends and family. But it's really not as bad as it felt last night when my mind was tired and overloaded.

I love blogging. :)

I still need that.

2010-02-12T21:53:00.000-05:00

I'm getting pretty sick of the ups and downs of the last 5 weeks. I'm always tired and feel like I'm constantly going and going, even if I'm not doing anything at all. That's probably because, in my head, I AM constantly going and going. Never stop thinking. I have a hard enough time getting my mouth to shut up sometimes, and it's about a hundred times harder to make my brain shut up. :) There's just so much to think about right now, and I find that I have to try to set limits on it so that I'm not hashing and rehashing stuff that is better left alone.

The last few days have been tough in the grief department. Hitting the one month mark was encouraging in a way, because it was great to look back and see how far we had come in a month. But now it's one month five days. And now there aren't any more landmarks in view ahead, just a big wide open space. I expected the first couple of weeks to be hard. I expected taking care of the apartment after that would be hard. But I have no idea what to expect in month two. I try to just move on with life as usual and not think about it. Yeah...that's not gonna happen. Because my life is different now. I ran across a blog post today from a woman who lost her mother to suicide when she was 9 years old. She said this about her mom: "My life is different because of her life and because of her death and in some ways that makes me terribly sad and in other ways I am grateful." The circumstances are a little different, but that's how it is for me too. My life is different because of Mom's life and because of her death, so just going on with my life as it was before she died isn't going to work. So right now I'm just trying to adjust to this new reality and figure out where God is taking my life now. I'm grateful that this isn't like the first few weeks when I couldn't think of anything other than Mom and her death. I can think about other things and other people now, so that's good. But it's also harder in a way, because it's not like I'm not thinking about my mom, it's just that I have to multitask now. Hence the busy brain.

Being past the one month mark is tough, because the rest of the world has moved on now, even people close to me. Not in an insensitive or negative way, it's just how life works. And it's not that they aren't willing to be supportive in whatever ways I need, it's just that they don't know that I still need it, and I'm afraid to tell them. Afraid that I'll sound needy and pathetic. Afraid that they'll find it annoying. Afraid that they'll think I expect them to fix everything. Afraid that they'll think I want a therapist when all I want is a friend.

When people were talking to me about Mom every day, or asking me about her, or asking me about how I was doing all the time, I had clear opportunities to voice the things that were helpful to voice, and to say when I was having a rotten day. Even if it wasn't easy to be open and honest, at least it was always convenient. It's a whole lot more difficult now, when there's nothing in particular happening other than that I just have something on my mind and feel like talking, or that I'm feeling extra sad and want someone to pray with me, to pick up the phone and call someone. How do I know who wants to hear it, who has time to hear it, who is just tired of it? And how do I even start a conversation like that anyway? There's no script for it. It's not like I need counseling or have deep dark secrets to unearth or anything. There are just random days once in a while when I feel like talking about Mom and about all that has happened, or feel like voicing some of the thoughts and emotions and truths that I'm dealing with, some of which are a little too personal to post here for the world to read. It's a whole lot harder to figure out how and when and where and who and what to ask, now that I don't have people all over me asking what I need anymore. And with the kids here at home and my husband having unconventional work hours, I don't even really have much chance to talk even to him. So sometimes I just need to talk, or I just need for someone to pray with me. Yes, it has been more than a month. But I still need that.

And sometimes I just need to be hugged. It sounds really trivial, but it's true. When people first heard about Mom's death, their first reaction was to hug me. And I hugged what seemed like 4,000 people at the funeral home. And even after that for a little while, friends would hug me every time they saw me, even friends who aren't generally huggers. But now, past the one month mark...no more hugs. And as silly as it sounds, I still just need to be hugged. A lot.

I still need that.

One month

2010-02-08T09:42:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was one month since I found Mom. What a difference a month has made! For the first 3 weeks or so, we were in crisis mode. Just surviving hour by hour. Then came a couple weeks of ups and downs. Life would seem fairly normal for a day or two, and then something would come up that would throw us back into crisis mode again for a day or two. Maybe this is just a rare low-hormone day talking, but I think crisis mode might finally be over for good. More and more, I'm finding that I'm able to focus more on the day-to-day stuff, I'm able to focus more on other people (translation: head out of backside), and my worship is finally getting to be focused more on who God is rather than on what he is doing for me. Not that it's bad to thank him for how he is getting me through this, but that still leaves the focus on myself a lot more than it should.

I remember wondering in the beginning what life would be like when the dust settled. I think this is what it will be like. There are still lots of things to be done. We are starting thank-you notes tomorrow, the death certificate should arrive soon, I still have people to meet with and phone calls to make, and I haven't been to Mom's grave yet. But as those things come up, at least I don't feel like I'm doing them in the middle of a major disaster.

I think even the brain-fuzz might be getting a little better. Not as quickly as I hoped, but at least I know what my car looks like now. And yesterday, I started flipping through a little book on grief that my church sent me, and wouldn't you know it, there's an entire chapter on "the fog of grief" that describes my condition EXACTLY. It even says be careful about driving or any dangerous tasks, because you're more accident-prone when you're grieving. It made my day!!! Everyone likes to think they're generally "normal", but I think it means even more me since I have been to the extremes of "not normal" before.

So here I am, one month out, and I am shocked by how quickly things have gotten better, and I trust that even though there will probably be bad days for a long time to come, most of them are going to get better and better from here on out. I love that I'm more able to get my eyes off of myself and just worship God now. That makes everything else fall into place. And I went to a superbowl party last night and had an awesome time. I certainly didn't forget anything that has happened in the last month, but I was genuinely living in the moment and having a great time. It's the first time I have been around a group of people like that since Mom died and never once felt out-of-sync, self-conscious, or overwhelmed like the world was moving 5 speeds too fast for me. I had fun with my family and friends. I laughed until tears more than once. I've cried a whole lot of tears in the last month, and I definitely like that kind the best!

"Just" pray?

2010-02-06T10:07:00.001-05:00

So I'm kind of a control freak. When someone is going through a difficult experience, I often feel powerless when there's nothing that I can do for them except pray. It's a frustrating feeling, and I know I have said to friends before "I just wish there was something I could do besides just pray." After Mom died, I got many calls and email saying that very thing. "I wish I could do something besides just pray." People wanted to do something more. They had to settle for just praying.

We have all felt like this, haven't we?

The last few weeks have totally changed my perspective on that "just" part.

I have really appreciated the "I'm praying" sentiments. But even more, I have come to appreciate the times when I KNOW they're not just sweet sentiments, when I know that the person is actually praying for me. Especially during the hardest and foggiest days when I had a really hard time talking to God for myself. (brain-fuzz) I didn't have words, so I'd just sit silently in God's lap and trust that there were people interceding for me, and even more importantly, that the Holy Spirit was interceding for me.

So many times last month, I felt like there was nothing standing between my face and the ground other than the invisible hands of so many people holding me up in prayer. Not that it's the people who deserve the credit, and not that God would have ever abandoned me regardless of who was or wasn't praying. But God chooses to work through the prayers of his children. I don't understand how, but I believe it because he says it's true. And I have seen it and felt it so many times, especially this month. There are still moments when, in the middle of whatever I'm doing, God stops me and lets me know that someone is praying for me,and those moments are such an encouragement.

Praying for someone isn't just about making ourselves feel better. Prayer really does change things. It doesn't change everything, but it changes the things that matter most. And it changes us...both the person doing the praying, and often, the person being prayed for.

I didn't sleep much in the last week or so of work at Mom's apartment. Each sleepless night seemed to take an even greater toll than the previous one, and I was at the end of my rope. I texted a friend to let her know when I was leaving the apartment for the last time, and she said she was praying and believing that I would have a wonderful night of sleep that night. I laughed it off. "Are you kidding me?" I thought. "There's no way I'm going to be able to sleep tonight of all nights!" It was a hard day.

As the afternoon and evening went on, though, a peace started to come over me, and then an incredible calm feeling that's hard to describe. And as I was singing my heart out to God during choir practice that night, I was totally joyful and happy. And as I drove home, I became more and more calm, to the point where I was eager to get home because I wondered how safe it was for me to be driving like that. I felt like I had taken a major sedative, but in a good way. And as I got ready for bed, I got out the medicine I had been taking every night to help me sleep...and then I put it back because I knew I didn't need it. I crawled into bed, and I slept like I had never slept before. It was seriously the best night of sleep EVER. When I woke up in the morning, I still felt like I could have slept for days, but it wasn't because I was exhausted, it was because I was SO calm and peaceful.

It occcured to me that I should text my friend and tell her she was right after all. It wasn't until then that she told me that there had been a whole team of people praying for me to sleep that night. Kinda sneaky. But what an awesome faith-building moment! On the most unlikely of nights, I got the best sleep of my life, and there was nothing to credit for it except God working through the prayers of good friends.

It's perfectly human to want to be able to do something physical and tangible to help someone who is hurting. And we should do those things when we're in a position to do them. But if all we can do is "just" pray, we should never feel like that is less significant. It's actually the MOST significant thing we can do. And what an incredible privilege, that the God who flung the stars into place would allow us to participate in the life-giving things that he alone can do!

"Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops." James 5:13-18

It's what we do.

2010-02-05T16:12:00.004-05:00

The most difficult thing that I had to do during all this was to clean out Mom's apartment. It was hard and painful and exhausting and overwhelming. It made me sad because it meant letting go of so many physical reminders of memories with Mom, and because it made things seem so final. It brought back the vivid images and trauma of the night I found Mom on the living room floor. I never was able to open the door to the apartment without feeling the same things I felt on that night all over again. It also revealed things about Mom's last days and weeks that were really hard for me to handle. She wasn't in a good place emotionally, she wasn't taking care of herself or her home well, and the scene at the apartment was SO unlike what I knew my mother to be when I was growing up.

The process of sorting, packing, and cleaning mom's belongings before sending them to charities seemed to drag on and on, partly because I seem to have developed a strange grief-related condition which I call brain-fuzz. I can't stay on task, and my attention span is approximately 2.3 seconds. I'm usually an organizer and a coordinator. Right now...not so much. I'm amazed at how God provided people to support and help me through the tasks that needed to be done at the apartment. Some of the help came from the most unlikely, ironic places...people who had every reason to be uncomfortable in that environment, but they chose to go and help and do the most unpleasant tasks because they knew it would help us not to have to do them alone.

And then there was my small group, the one that I had only been a part of for five months. From the first day, every one of them offered to help with the apartment. Even though I knew without question that I would do the same for them, I still had a hard time wrapping my mind around those offers, because the task just seemed too awful and too intimate. But last week, a few hours before the charity arrived to pick up the last of Mom's belongings, I knew that I needed to accept the offer and allow one of the ladies to come and help me organize, clean, and pack.

That morning was the first time that I arrived at the apartment all by myself, unlocked and opened the door all by myself, and went in alone. I could have waited for her, but I knew that it was my last chance to take control over the fear, and that if I let the opportunity pass, I'd regret it. So I went a little early and waited for my friend to arrive. I was emotional, exhausted from having very little sleep for about a week, and overwhelmed. Before she even arrived, I was already deep into brain-fuzz. I didn't know where to start or what exactly lay ahead. I just knew this was going to be a hard day. Maybe the hardest day of all.

When I opened the door for her, she zipped past me, set down her things, and was ready to get to work. If she was uncomfortable, she didn't show it a bit. She was so strong that she made me feel stronger, and also made me feel like it wouldn't matter at all if I couldn't be strong. She hugged me, we went over the game plan, and we got right to work. Correction...SHE got right to work. I had the best of intentions, but I accomplished very little, crying off and on, wandering around from task to task, and always forgetting to finish what I had started. Always working in the details, God picked a master organizer to help me that day. Seriously, she was a MACHINE. She took charge and made sure everything got done. It was such a relief not to have to be the one in charge after a few weeks of carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. I was totally embarassed at how little I was accomplishing, but she wasn't bothered by it at all, and she just kept reassuring me that that was why she was there, and she wasn't afraid to laugh with me a little about it too. So we worked for two hours, and we talked about all sorts of things. And I knew that I could say anything I was thinking or feeling and it would be fine, or I could say nothing at all, and that would be fine too. Through it all, she just kept working. She cleaned a disgusting microwave without even a blink. She helped me make little decisions that were just too much for my mind to process that day. And she did the one thing that I just couldn't bring myself to do...she peeled the letters that spelled my kids' names off of the wall of the bedroom that Mom had kept for them.

Occasionally, I'd stop to point out something in the apartment that made me especially sad. A spill on the carpet, or a pile of hoarded junk. And she was always so gentle and compassionate in her response. And somewhere during those two hours, I realized that my friend wasn't just there to help me sort and pack. She was there to walk through the experience with me. She was there to be a witness to the realities that have been so difficult for me to deal with. I can't explain why that was so important for me, but it was. I know that God set up the circumstances so that I would have to ask for help, so that Jeff and I wouldn't feel like the only witnesses to the difficult things that we found there, and so that God could make himself present to us through people.

The defining moment of the day came when, stumbling over words that didn't seem adequate, I simply shook my head and said "thank you". My friend just looked me in the eyes and gently but purposefully repeated twice....

"It's what we do."

God definitely placed exactly the right person in that place that day. He clearly had the whole thing planned out. And I love her dearly and treasure her friendship. But it wasn't about her at all, and we both knew it. I really did feel like our whole group was there with me that day, and like I was being supported by an even larger circle of friends and family in Christ. And more importantly, I felt and heard and saw God's presence in such an amazing way.

That's what the body of Christ is. And that's what we do.

five months

2010-02-05T13:29:00.001-05:00

Last year, Jeff and I started praying that God would lead us to some people at our church that we could get to know on a deeper level. In His timing and totally by His leading, God prompted a couples small group at church to invite us into their group. God made it clear from the beginning that He had put this group together, and we were so grateful for the answered prayer and so blessed as we met and began to get to know these six other families less than six months ago. Although the group had been together for five or six years, we didn't feel like the "new people" for long. It was amazing how quickly we felt like part of one big family. We have been studying, sharing, praying, worshipping, eating, and just having fun with these people for almost six months now, but it feels like we have known them forever, and they are some of our closest friends. People don't form bonds that strong in such a short period of time...this is obviously the work and perfect timing of God.

Our group has been through so much together, both before we joined the group and since then. I mean LOTS of stuff. Good, bad, joyful, painful, major stuff. I know it's not by coincidence that we're together. And I was eager from the first day to form deep relationships with these new friends and to do life with them, whatever that meant for all of us. Little did I know what was coming for me.

On January 7th, when I found Mom's body, of all the people I could have called, the first phone numbers that I dialed were those of some ladies from this group that I had only been a part of for five months. Within minutes, they had called to tell the whole group, called the church and gotten in contact with the worship pastor so that he could call me, and a few of them had called me back to check on me. One of the guys in the group, who is a police officer, was ready to jump in the car at any moment to come be with me and prepare me before the crazy rush of police and medics arrived. While I was in shock and not able to do much at all, they sprang into action. From those first moments, I never had a doubt that they would be here for us, and that it was just an earthly expression of how God would be here for us.

In the days that followed, this group of friends was our lifeline. They prayed for us, they prayed with us, they brought us meals, they stayed to eat with us, they watched our kids, they talked and listened, they called just to check on us, they came to visit just because, they made endless offers of help with the kids and with Mom's apartment, and they sent emails and texts that kept us going during the worst days. They have been here for us in every way, despite their own crazy work schedules, young children, new babies born, and trips to India. At the funeral home, at least one of them was there almost the whole time. On the day of the funeral, Jeff and I arrived early. And right after we got there, one of the ladies from my group arrived. She just wanted to be sure that we had someone with us if we got there early. Just before the service started, I got a text message from another one who was in India on a mission trip, just letting me know that she was praying for me from India. Two of the ladies sat right behind me at the funeral, and I could physically feel their prayers holding me up the entire time.

A few days after Mom died, I told the girls that I just kept thinking "What if this had happened six months ago, when I didn't have you all in my life?" One of them just smiled and said "Well, don't worry about that, we're here now." I was talking to a good friend last night. She has also been a big support this past month, and she knows what my group has done for me. But she had no idea that I had only been in the group for five months. When I told her, she was amazed and said "Wow, you sure picked a great five months to find a group, didn't you?" What she meant...and what I am totally confident of...is that I didn't pick anything at all. God set everything in motion at just the right time, knowing just what I would need this month.

In five months, God has already revealed his love and faithfulness to me through these amazing friends more times than I can count. He has been present to me through them time after time. He has used them, not just to support me through this particular time in my life, but also to remind me of an important truth about himself. At 9:00pm on January 7th, I had no idea what was coming. But HE did. And he had planned for it. Long before the need arrived, He was already providing for it in ways that I would never have dreamed. And I'm confident that He is already providing for every need I will have in the future.

Psalm 139:16 "All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."

They wouldn't leave.

2010-02-05T10:28:00.000-05:00

The night between the visitation and the funeral was by far the hardest night for me. Being overwhelmed with the support of so many people for four hours was exhausting but wonderful. And then 8:00 approached. And gradually, the people began to trickle out. Before I realized it, it was quiet. I darted back and forth across the room, straightening picture frames, arranging Mom's seashell collection, checking and double checking the music for the funeral, closing closet doors, turning off the TV, and coming to the realization that there wasn't anything left for me to do after four days of constant "doing".

It wasn't until I stopped moving for a moment that I saw them. There, next to my bewildered husband (there are some things that a man just can't figure out about women), sat two of my best friends. They hadn't left.

They didn't push. They just sat there, watching my silly pacing, and patiently waiting. They didn't say it, but I realized they weren't going to leave until I did. So we talked a little, we took some pictures, we laughed, we joked about the ugly funeral home decor. And then I had quite an ugly cry. And instead of responding with frantic efforts to make me stop crying, they just hugged me and said "We were wondering where you were." They stayed with Jeff and me until I was ready to leave. Then, nearly an hour after the visitation time had ended, they walked out with us.

I'm pretty sure that if Jesus had chosen to be present there with flaming torches and six-winged angels, it would have been just a tad overwhelming. So he chose instead to make his presence known to us through two patient friends.

Matthew 18:20

2010-02-05T10:04:00.000-05:00

I love Jason Gray's view of Matthew 18:20 "For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them." He says that maybe at least a part of what that means is that Jesus chooses to make Himself present to us through each other.

I'd like to share some of the ways in which I have experienced God doing just that.

What I have experienced in the last month...it has been so much more than I could have even imagined. The support that my family and I have had has been incredible, particularly the support from our church family and our larger family in Christ. I have received so many words of comfort that not only came from sincere hearts, but were also clearly directed by God, who knew exactly what words I needed to hear at that moment. We received so many visits at the funeral home that they had to add pages to the memorial book twice, and many of the visitors were friends and fellow believers who had never even met my mom before, but just came because they wanted to support us. Then there were the cards, the phone calls, the emails, the Facebook posts, the visits at home, the flowers sent both to the funeral home and to my home. There's not much in life that can make a person feel more alone than losing the parent who raised them, and having no siblings to share it with. But alone is something I have rarely felt this month.

My next few posts will be about some specific moments that stand out to me as times when Jesus made Himself present to me and my family through other believers. God has been with me through this entire journey, but there's something especially sweet about the way our perfect God chooses to work through imperfect people.

15 Things I Hate About Grief

2010-01-30T21:30:00.000-05:00

For the record: No, I'm not posting this tonight because I've had an especially bad day or anything. I just had to start somewhere, and these thoughts have been roaming around in my head for a while now. There's lots more to come, and I promise it's not all negative.

1. It's unpredictable. One minute I'm on top of the world. The next minute, I'm crying uncontrollably because of a coffee mug, or a car that just drove by, or a piece of lint on the carpet. The next minute, I'm yelling at my son because he woke up at 6:51 and I wanted him to sleep til 7:00. I never know what's coming! It's like the world's worst case of PMS.

2. It's hard to express. I never know quite what to say when a hundred different people ask "How are you doing?"

3. It feels like it will never end. Most people have stopped asking "How are you doing?" This makes me think that I should be feeling fine by now. I'm not.

4. It doesn't affect only me. It can make me one grumpy Mommy and wife, and I hate seeing how it affects my husband and kids.

5. It turns my brain into mush. I can't stay on task to save my life! My attention goes from one shiny object to another right now. On Thursday, I spent a full 10 minutes trying to remember what my car looked like, and then trying to find it in the Olive Garden parking lot.

6. It's personal. No one else can do my grieving for me. I'm stuck with it.

7. People generally aren't very comfortable with grief. Many people who ask "How are you doing?" don't really mean it as a question, but rather just a statement of sympathy. They expect and appreciate an obligatory response of 8 words or less that is positive in tone. They don't want to hear an actual honest answer, because it makes them too uncomfortable.

7 1/2. And then there's the fact that death itself isn't a comfortable or accepted topic of conversation. If I have to use the term "passed away" one more time, I might throw up. I know it implies that death isn't the end of the story, that a person has gone on to live in heaven, and that's a great thing to focus on. But that's not the reason we use the term. We use it because we don't want to say dead. In earthly terms, my mom is dead. In earthly terms, we are ALL going to die. If we can't even bring ourselves to use the words, then how can we ever be prepared for it to happen to us or the people we love?

8. It makes me do things that I wouldn't normally do, and say things that I wouldn't normally say. This can be both good and bad. Either way, it's kind of strange to know that something can affect me that much.

9. Busyness or distractions create a nice escape, are very necessary, and do make me feel better at the time. But when the time comes to get back to reality and resume the walk through grief, it feels MUCH worse than before. It's like the bear hunt...Can't go over it, can't go under it, can't go around it, gotta go through it.

10. There are times when it feels like the whole world is watching, wondering whether I'm going to make it through. That's a lot of pressure. And I feel like I have to preface every negative thing I say with disclaimers like the one at the beginning of this post.

11. Because it's so personal, it causes me to spend a lot of time in self-reflection. (Dangerous.) And that makes me have a hard time staying engaged with the lives of my friends and family. It makes me self-centered. I hate being that way. I know it's understandable to some degree, and for a short time, but it's hard to know where the line is drawn. My biggest fear in all this is that I won't ever be able to get my head out of my own backside. If you're one of my friends and you're reading this, please accept my permission and my plea to hold me accountable in this.

12. I can't always control it. I like to be in control, to have a plan and 8 contingency plans for every situation, to accomplish everything I set out to do, and to know exactly what's coming. Grief just can't be controlled like that. That's annoying.

13. It has forced me to ask for and accept help from other people. That's not a bad thing, but it's also not always a comfortable thing for me. And it leaves me constantly wondering and worrying over whether I've asked too much, or whether people think I'm a total wimp.

14. It makes me feel incredibly vulnerable. Having just experienced a loss that I didn't expect or plan for, I am acutely aware that at any moment, I could lose someone else. It's not worry, just a vivid sense of vulnerability and smallness.

15. It makes people hesitant to share openly with me. When I talk to someone about how hard it was to clean out Mom's apartment, I fully expect that it will get them thinking...thinking about their own lives, about all the stuff that they can't take with them, about what it will be like to lose their own parents or to go through a loved one's belongings. It's okay to tell me that. You're not being selfish. I want to be reminded that this experience isn't unique to me. Yes, I know I talk a lot, but I really do like two-way conversations best! Yes, I may have a bit of trouble following you (See #5), and I apologize in advance for that, but I WANT to hear what you are thinking, and what's going on in your life in general.

Just thankful

2010-01-29T22:12:00.000-05:00

Just a quick post to say that I'm still here, and I am SO eager to get some time to write, because I have so much to write about! But for now, I'll have to leave it at this: God has been SO good to me. I am just amazed at all the ways in which He has provided every little thing that I have needed to get through every moment of the last three weeks. I'm overwhelmed with thankfulness right now. The last few weeks have been so hard, but God just keeps sending blessing after blessing. He works in the details, and His work is beautiful!

Just some thoughts...

2010-01-25T11:43:00.000-05:00

Just some random thoughts to share today...

First...I think the most significant lesson that I have learned from my Mom (this is one of those learn-from-her-mistakes lessons) is this: Let people into your life. Freely! Don't hide. Don't lie. Don't make yourself into a different person depending on who you're around. Don't play it tough. Don't grin and bear it alone. Don't hold back anything out of fear, guilt, bitterness, judgement, or insecurity. Let people into your life. I'm not saying we have to live life with our hearts turned inside out for the world to see. But we should never lock the doors of our hearts from God, or from people who love us. Take the risk. Let people into your life. Easier said than done, even for a people-oriented person such as myself. It seems especially hard at times when my life isn't a very fun place to be, like right now. I think it's at times like these when I have to be especially careful and deliberate about keeping the doors open and being real and open with people. Not just one or two people, but a whole circle of friends and family, on whatever level is appropriate for each situation. The last few days have been really rough for me, and it's at times like these when I feel those old tendencies toward living a closed-up life trying to creep back in. But thankfully, God has made me quite stubborn too, so NO WAY am I going to let the enemy take me down like that again. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Not going back.

Which, I guess, brings me to my next thought... The FEAR of something is almost always worse than the thing itself. I have been so stressed the last few days, with all the emotion of the last few weeks feeling like a very heavy weight, wondering how much longer I'd be able to "keep it together". I think I'm realizing that the fear of "not keeping it together" is probably a whole lot worse than the reality of whatever "not keeping it together" means (and I'm totally not sure WHAT it means). As Beth Moore pointed out in the Esther study video I watched last night, God gives us grace according to our NEED, not according to whatever imaginary problems our minds think up. So I know that God will give me the grace and strength to do and be whatever I need to do and be right now. Anything beyond what He provides for is obviously unnecessary worry. Not to mention the fact that "keeping it together", in the way that I think I was envisioning it, probably isn't necessary anyway. So what if I cry. So what if I need a day or two to regroup and rest. So what if I have to ask for help with things I'd prefer to be able to do myself. Does it really matter all that much what people think of me and how I'm handling this? It is what it is.

Which brings me to my last thought for today, a frustration that I have shared before. Having been through the severe depression that I went through REALLY makes times like this a lot more difficult than they should be, for a couple of reasons. First, there's the obvious wide-open door for satan to say all sorts of discouraging and fear-provoking things...to try to make me afraid that I'll get knocked that far down again. This really doesn't work much with me, but I have to be especially guarded against it. Then, there's the bigger issue of other people's perceptions. I really try not to worry about what other people think of me. But I know how people's minds work. I know that when I honestly share that I'm having a bad day, some people will immediately assume that it's more than just a bad day. I know that if I cry, some people will think I'm going to have a breakdown or something, whereas if someone without my history cries, they would just dismiss it as sadness. I feel like the eyes of the world are on me right now, watching and wondering if I'll be able to stand up under all this, many of them thinking that there's no way. That's probably about 1/4 self-centered worry and about 3/4 frustrating reality. But even if there is truth in it, it doesn't matter, because I can't control other people's perceptions anyway. And I feel like it's important to be honest, not just for myself, but maybe so that other people can take something from my experience that will help them when they're facing something similar. A dear friend of mine just went through a very painful loss, and I remember thinking how amazingly strong she was...not in spite of her grief, but actually BECAUSE of it, and particularly because of her honesty in sharing her thoughts and feelings during the hardest times. Her honesty is what I saw as strength in her, and I've been determined from day one of this experience to face it with that same strength and honesty, no matter how hard it is. I refuse to sugar-coat anything, because I never know who might need to see that it's okay to say that this sucks. :)

Taking a break

2010-01-22T16:26:00.000-05:00

This week has been especially hard and REALLY exhausting. I've spent a lot of time at Mom's apartment, and while it isn't quite so traumatic to be there as it was a week ago, I still hate it. Mom had only lived there for a few months, and she hated the place. So on the positive side, at least I'm not having to say goodbye to my childhood home, or to some place where I made great memories. I probably only saw Mom happy there once (on Halloween when we took the kids over to carve pumpkins with her). The apartment has a unique smell that I have grown to hate as much as Mom did, especially now that I associate that smell with the smell of my mother's decaying body. (By the way, having experienced that smell, I don't even want to imagine the horror of the people in Haiti that are experiencing it magnified a thousand times over everywhere they go right now.)

Another thing about the apartment is that it is full of reminders of Mom's very difficult last few years. She was a very different person over the last 5 years or so than she was for the first 25 years of my life. I knew that long before Mom died, but we have discovered a whole lot more information in the last 2 weeks than I ever knew before, and it just makes me sad. And mad. And every negative or painful emotion you can come up with...I've been through them all, and I'm not done yet. Right now is the time to get the work done, to take in all the information, to process it, to say what needs to be said, to get the answers that I feel I need to have, and to decide which answers don't matter. Stuffing all the information and emotion into a box, never to be dealt with, is not a good idea. I've been around the block enough to know that. This is just something I have to go through, and right now, I feel like I have everything I need to get through it, it's just a matter of time. But of course, being at the apartment brings all those overwhelming thoughts and emotions to the forefront and magnifies them a bit. It's necessary, and God will use it for my good, but wow...it really hurts. Soon, I'll close and lock the door of that apartment for the last time. And while that isn't going to change anything that has happened, and it isn't going to make me forget anything, I think it will be an important turning point. When all is said and done here, the memories of my mother that I will hold onto for the rest of my life, the ones that I want to pass on to my children, are the good ones. I love my mom. I have lots of wonderful memories, and I am desperately determined to cherish them forever, and to remember the lessons that I have learned from my mom, both the lessons that she taught me directly, and the lessons that I have learned from her mistakes.

So here I am, right smack in the middle of the emotional process, and the physical process of clearing out the apartment. Today, I decided to take a day off from going to the apartment, since I will be there with some relatives for much of the day tomorrow. Although I have been sleeping pretty well since the funeral (much better than other family members I have talked to), I was awake most of the night last night. So today I am really dragging, and I've decided to take the day to rest and do nothing productive. Thankfully, the kids have been remarkably well-behaved today. This afternoon, I laid down on the couch, turned on the TV, and just rested for a while. I think it's what I needed. Maybe this is that sabbath rest concept. Or maybe I'm just procrastinating. Whatever. :)

Yes, I'm okay.

2010-01-19T13:24:00.000-05:00

I have plenty to say. Which isn't unusual for me, but I mean right now, I have a LOT to day. Talking about all that's going on is so important for me right now that once I get started, everything just sort of spills out. (If you're someone who has recently made the mistake of asking "How are you doing?" only to be bombarded with much more information than you were looking for, please accept my thanks and apologies. :) All the talking really has helped.

But I'm getting to the point where I feel like I have so much to say, yet I don't have anything NEW to say. I'm like a broken record. Yes, this really stinks. Yes, I'm sad. Yes, I'm working through all sorts of other unpleasant emotions. Yes, I'm exhausted. Yes, I feel overwhelmed. Yes, I'm still crabby as heck. No, that's probably not going to change any time soon. But yes, I'm okay. I really, honestly am okay. I don't FEEL okay, but honestly...who would? I really think I'm doing as well as can be expected right now, considering all that has happened in the last 12 days. I never thought this would be a picnic. Overall, each day gets a little bit better in almost every way. I will be SOOOOO glad in 5 days or so when all of my work at Mom's apartment will be done. I will be even more glad at the end of the month when the charity and moving and cleaning people are done with their work and the apartment is officially no longer Mom's. I will be even more glad when I get the official death certificate in the mail and have that experience over with. I will be even more glad when I get through sorting and decluttering all the stuff in our garage and house (some ours and some that we brought from Mom's but haven't found places for yet). There are lots of little steps to take and things that need to be done and worked through, and with each one, there's a bit more closure.

On today's list:
I gave the kids their first bath in a week.
I moved Mom's TV cart and our TV into the kids' playroom and reorganized the room so it would fit.
I just ate the very last kaiser bun from the sandwiches at the funeral luncheon.
And when I get done writing this, I'm going to put in some laundry so that I can stop wearing these jeans that I have worn every day for almost 2 weeks.

It's all about the little things that seem like big things to us right now. We're getting through them one at a time. And yes, we're okay. :)

I'm just not nice right now.

2010-01-18T09:06:00.000-05:00

I feel like I should wear a T-shirt that says "Sorry, I'm just not nice right now." (Actually, I can think of some more adjectives that would more accurately describe my demeanor at the moment, but I'll refrain from sharing them.) The kids take the worst of it. I think if I hear the word "Mama" in a whiny voice one more time, I'm going to scream. Jeff and I are both totally out of patience for the kids. And to make matters worse, they're a little more high-maintainance than usual, because they're grieving too. And there's no way we can avoid the subject or distract them, because the reminders are everywhere. Flowers from the funeral, photos everywhere, toys and things from Mammaw's house that keep appearing, etc. It's extra hard for Jeff and me right now, because we're dealing with losing my mom, plus some difficult life issues with regard to Mom (sometimes you find out things when you go through a person's belongings that you really wish you didn't know), plus family dynamics, plus getting things out of her apartment, plus all the everyday stresses and things that need to be done that are totally unrelated to Mom's death. Right now, the things we're finding difficult to do are the everyday things. I don't think the kids have had a bath since the funeral (that's on the list for tonight), and the house is a disaster. We're so thankful for our wonderful friends who have been bringing us meals, because there isn't enough room in our minds to even think about cooking or planning a meal.

Not that everything is negative and dismal right now. I'm so happy today to be "working" again, if you can call babysitting the world's cutest little red-headed toddler "work". She is part of our family, so it's good for me, and for the kids, to have her back. And it helps a little with my patience problem too. :)

I'm finding strength in just leaning on God, and it builds my faith even stronger to take a step back and see how He's holding me up. The only loss in my life that has compared to what I'm experiencing now is when I lost my baby 5 1/2 years ago. When that happened, I completely fell apart, ran as fast as I could away from God, and was on the brink of suicide for quite a while. When I found Mom in her apartment last week, it was completely different. As I was turning that key in the lock, deep down knowing by that time what I would probably find on the other side of the door, I prayed for God to hold me up, and I believed that He would. I don't think I exchanged actual words with God during those first moments, but I clearly remember that my attitude was one of complete trust and faith that He is GOOD and more than able to bring me through anything. My first phone calls and texts after finding Mom were to a few close friends who I knew would hold me up in prayer. I knew that God would provide all the earthly support that I needed. I really trusted Him for everything, and I still do. I know that is evidence of His work in my life, definitely NOT anything that I could ever take credit for, and it's encouraging to see how much He has changed my heart and mind. This all feels like too much right now, and I know it is too much for me alone, but not for the God who put the stars in the sky, who measures the grains of sand in a bucket. (That's one big bucket!) Strength will rise as I wait upon the Lord. And as for the kids, I'm pretty sure that Jeff and I just need to keep doing the best we can, and God will make sure they get what they need too. We'll all get through this, and we'll look back from the other side in amazement at all the ways in which God sustained us and blessed us with every good thing, even in the most unlikely circumstances, and even sometimes in the most ironic and unlikely ways.

Done for today.

2010-01-16T22:38:00.000-05:00

There have been lots of times in the last week or so when I have felt surprisingly strong. This isn't one of them. People keep telling me I'm so brave, but I feel anything but brave today. I spent several hours at Mom's apartment today, had some conversations with family members about her belongings, sorted through a couple tubs of Mom's stuff here at home, and now I'm at my limit. I'm just done. I'm crabby, I'm tired, I'm overwhelmed, I cry at every little thought, and I feel like throwing something at the TV because everyone else in town is so excited about this major football playoff game, and I can't seem to make myself give a darn who wins it.

I kind of figured that there would be days like this. And I figure that I'm going to go crawl into bed in a few minutes. And in the morning, the alarm clock will go off, and I'll read a few words of hope from the Bible, and my kids will crawl up into the bed, and we'll get ready for church, and somehow I'll be ready to face another day.

I love that His mercies are new every morning.

"In the morning, O Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation." Psalm 5:3

One Week

2010-01-14T21:54:00.000-05:00

At Mom's funeral, we were reminded that life is short, and that life is uncertain. I'm reminded of that especially tonight. It has been one week, to the minute, since I found Mom in her apartment. The day, up to that point, had been a fun day of spending time with my husband and kids, playing out in the snow, and making snow ice cream for the first time. And then in an instant, everything about that day changed. Just another reminder to live every moment of this life to its fullest. Leave no life-giving thing unsaid. Love with abandon. And don't waste a moment, because you never know how many more moments you will have with the people you love. Those words sound cliche, I know. But when thinking about the situation I have been faced with this week, or, on a much bigger scale, the tragedy that began in Haiti in a single moment of what had been an ordinary day, I just can't say it any other way.

Still Standing

2010-01-14T08:54:00.001-05:00

I'm still standing. Can't really explain how, but I know it is certainly the supernatural work of God. It's so strange to be back at home after days of running around every which way. I feel very overwhelmed with all that still has to be done. We have to get what we want from Mom's apartment before the rest of her things are donated to Goodwill and a local charity for women and children. We have to clean out her car and get it back to the dealership. We have to disasssemble the bulletin board full of photos and return the photos to the family members who contributed them. We have to send a bazillion thank you notes. And somewhere in the middle of it all, we have to spend time loving on our kids, planning their birthday party, paying bills, doing laundry, cleaning our house, and all those day to day things. I suspect that the full reality of the loss will sink in a little bit more once all the the "tasks" are done. I wonder what life will be like when all the dust settles?

I'm happy to report that I have slept pretty well the last 2 nights. Bedtime is the hardest time. I wish the sun could stay up all night. But once I get to sleep, I sleep calmly through the night. I haven't had any nightmares this week, only one beautiful brief dream moment as I awoke on Monday, the day of the visitation, in which my mom said "Well...I love you." and hugged me. I could even smell her White Linen perfume (in which, by the way, I drenched the room at the funeral home). :)

This is one of those times when it really stinks being the only child of a single mom. It was just the two of us at home for as long as I can remember. For the past 30 years or so, I have known my mom better than anyone else in this world. I hate it that there are memories of Mom that I alone hold. That feels like a big responsibility, a heavy torch to carry. Through this whole week, my husband, Jeff, has been here walking through things with me. He was a son to my mom, and she made sure he knew it. He has shared in every experience of the week, and I can't even describe how much better that has made things for me. But now, as the dust begins to settle, as the "doing things" part nears an end, I see the parts of the grief process that are mine alone to go through. No one else was there during the talks that Mom and I had at home when I was growing up. No one here can help me remember the little details that seem so important right now. No one can remember whether the bronzed baby shoe is my Mom's or mine. No one else on earth remembers the day I hid my forbidden Garbage Pail Kids cards in the bottom of my bubble gum machine and my mom found them. No one else was there the day I went out to the car to find my mom sitting there with her shirt pulled up over her head, holding an ear of corn in each hand, snickering "I am Cornholio-Mom, I need TP." I don't think I ever laughed so hard in my life! It has helped so much to have so many people around this week, to hear stories about mom, to hear how much she was loved, to hear over and over that my friends care about me and are praying for me and supporting me. Now most of the people are gone, and, as promised, this part is especially hard.

But...I'm still standing. And I will keep on standing, leaning hard into the arms of God, who was there while every memory, happy and sad, was made.

Today

2010-01-12T07:39:00.000-05:00

Today is the day, the end of the beginning of my grief. My mom's funeral. Last night was Mom's visitation. It was all so overwhelming. The hardest part for me was seeing Mom's body. Even though I am the one who found her (she had been passed for several days, probably since shortly after we last spoke to her), I wasn't really prepared for that. She looked NOTHING like herself. Which kind of made the situation seem more surreal. I would have had no idea it was my mother if I hadn't known. I'm sure there's some blessing and protection in that for me, but it sure was hard. The casket was closed after immediate family arrived. By far, the hardest part of this ordeal for me so far has been the experience of finding Mom in her apartment. It was not a good scene, and the images bombard my mind all day and night. I wonder if I will ever be able to turn a key in a lock, or walk into an empty home (mine, Mom's, or anyone's) or a dark room and not feel the terror and dread that I feel now. I wonder how long it will be before I can sleep at night. I wonder if I'll ever sleep with all the lights off again.

It was truly wonderful to be showered in love and support as we were last night. So many of our friends came just to show Jeff and me support, and words are so inadequate to express just how much love and comfort I felt. Daughters aren't supposed to be burying their mothers at 30 years old. I really don't like feeling sorry for myself, but I saw the depth of the tragedy in the eyes of the people there, some whom I had never even met, and I know it's okay, right now, to step outside myself and feel compassion for this daughter, only child of a single mother, who is losing her mother far too soon. My heart is broken for my grandparents too. Parents should never have to bury their children. The sadness is setting in for me.

My heart and mind are much more at peace than my body is right now, though. Last night when I tried to lay down in bed, even though I wasn't feeling particularly worse than any other day, I got so restless, ready to crawl right out of my skin. My legs still won't stop moving, and I'm shaking. It's as though the grief is too big for my emotions, so it has spilled over to my body. A friend pointed out on Sunday that our bodies were never created to experience loss or pain or separation. God never intended for those things to be a part of His creation here on Earth. That's why loss does what it does to us.

I know this will all just take time. And I know I'm not alone. I am amazed at my husband and how loving and strong he is. I'm amazed at my grandmother, who has just lost her only daughter, to whom she was a single parent for much of her life. I'm amazed at my whole family, really. And more than anything, I'm amazed at the strength and comfort of my God. He is my rock, my fortress, my deliverer. I feel so ready to crumble at any moment, but I have never been more sure that I won't.

It is well

2010-01-08T18:41:00.000-05:00

Last night, I went to check on my mother after not being able to get ahold of her for a few days, and found that she had died. She had some major health problems, and I honestly knew that the day was coming and had rehearsed it in my mind many times, but when it actually happened, it still felt like such a shock. The last 20 hours or so have been a blur. I'm exhausted. Sad. Dreading the next week. Dreading telling my kids. But so thankful for the overwhelming support we have. It is well with my soul.

Still here...

2010-01-01T20:48:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted in a while, not because I haven't had anything to say...actually, I think it's the opposite. So much to say, but it takes time to get all the thoughts into words, and I can't seem to get focused long enough to do it, especially with all the December busyness. I keep starting an entry, saving it, and by the time I come back to finish it, it's kind of outdated. But I'm still here, and I plan to make time to post over the next couple of days, and to get into a better routine of posting now that the holidays are over.

Thanks for taking the time to read this stuff. I really write it mostly for me, and it cracks me up that anyone else is even interested in reading it. It's fun knowing that there are actually people out there who want to read my stories. I don't know who all of you are, but I'm thankful for you, and I'm praying that you will each be blessed in a special way in this new year.

Speaking of the new year, here are a couple verses that I have on my mind as we move into a new year...

"Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus" Phillipians 3:13-14

"One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, and to seek him in his temple." Psalm 27:4

being real, and getting a do-over

2009-12-08T13:07:00.003-05:00

Being real is tough sometimes. But I'm learning that it's the only good option. As we approach the end of a year, it seems that being real has been the theme of 2009 for me. Not that I have done it completely all the time, but I have come so far this year in learning how to take off the masks and just be me, rather than trying to be the person that I think people want to see. And generally, it has involved an intentional choice on my part. I've just had to make the choice to be real, to be myself, and to tell it like it is.

It hasn't been easy. Sometimes it has been downright painful. But I have no regrets for just being myself. There's no better way to do life. I don't want to appear to be anything more or less than what I am, I just want to BE the person that God made me to be. Learning how to do that has been a process for me, and it's certainly not finished yet, but it sure has started in a big way! I'm especially grateful for the new friends God has brought into my life this year, people with whom I can safely be myself. And I'm grateful that He has enabled me to choose to be real with them and to grow real, authentic relationships. In the past, I really didn't know how to do that. Just another evidence of God's ongoing redeeming work. I'm so thankful that He will never be content to leave me the way I am, but that He is always stretching and growing and changing me.

In the spirit of being real, I will share that, quite frankly, I feel terrible right now. I had to go on another round of steroids for my breathing problems, a much higher dose. And it's really messing with my moods. I feel sad, sick, distractable, and worn down. I can't sleep, but I still just want to lie around and do nothing all day. I'm in a funk, and even though I know it's just a temporary thing caused by the medicine that I'll be done with in a week, it's still quite unpleasant. That's probably partly because it brings back such unpleasant memories. I remember when I used to feel SO much more than just a little depressed and funky. So I have to make a deliberate effort not to go into panic mode and get discouraged that I'm feeling discouraged. And I have to be all the more careful to take care of myself and make the choices that will keep me where I need to be mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

For years, I struggled through the severe depression and mood swings. And I did learn lots of lessons (mostly the hard way) about how to deal with those things. I certainly didn't learn how to get myself out of depression completely, but I did learn some ways to cope better. Mostly simple stuff, like making sure I eat well, take vitamins, get plenty of sleep, and take a shower every morning even if I don't feel like it and don't plan to leave the house. I learned how important it is to be intentional about staying connected with other people, even more than usual at times when I feel like staying isolated. I learned how crucial it is to keep reading and studying scripture, even if it has to be in small chunks because my attention span can't stay at it for long. And most of all, I learned how important it is to stay in communication with God throughout the day, and to take specific times to spend alone with Him, sitting at His feet and talking, singing, and listening. It's amazing the power and peace of mind that come during times spent with just me, Jesus, and my horrible guitar skills. (Unfortunately, I can hardly sing at all right now because of the trouble breathing, which makes that difficult!)

Unfortunately, although I learned how to do all of the above, I had a really hard time following through and doing the things that I knew would move me in the right direction. I'm SO thankful that God stepped in with a miracle to take away my struggle completely. But I have thought from time to time how I wish I had done things differently, and how there's a part of me that would appreciate an opportunity (preferably on a MUCH smaller scale) to make the right choices. Not that I would EVER want to struggle like that again, and I certainly do NOT expect to ever struggle like that again. But I have thought that it would be nice to somehow have a do-over.

I think right now is one of those much-smaller-scale do-overs for me.

So how am I doing? Well, a heck of a lot better than in the past. But not great. I'd give myself a C at best. I'm working on it. And I'm taking comfort in these words from Psalm 63.

"O God, you are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you,
in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.
Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.
I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands.
My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise you.
On my bed I remember you;
I think of you through the watches of the night.
Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings.
My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me."

at the feet of Jesus

2009-11-30T09:39:00.000-05:00

It has been a rough couple of weeks. I have some crazy respiratory illness that makes me feel like I'm drowning and cough like I'm dying. Besides just being sick, I don't do too well taking medicine of any kind, so I just feel all sorts of messed up right now. Steroids and breathing treatments keep me up half the night, then coming off of steroids makes me feel depressed and lonely for no reason. Add in an all-night Black Friday shopping trip, some holiday family dynamics, and a good dose of humility that God handed me last week, and...well, you get the idea.

The thing that has really gotten me down, though, is that in all the craziness, I haven't been taking time to just sit at the feet of Jesus. I have prayed, mostly for other people. I have read my Bible, though definitely not enough. I have done my Bible study, though not every day. But the time of just sitting and listening to the Holy Spirit with no agenda, of talking to God about how I'm feeling, of just BEING with Jesus...that has gotten pushed aside.

God, in His grace, has given me a pretty short leash. I don't know if everyone is like this as much as I am, but if I neglect to take that time at the feet of Jesus, life can snowball out of control pretty quickly. I feel it, I see the effects, and other people see the effects. It might sound silly, but I NEED my time with Him in order to just function. Jesus is my crack. :) Maybe that makes me weak, but I don't really care. I know what works, and I'm grateful that God tends to allow the consequences of not spending time with Him to catch up with me pretty quickly, so that I don't have the opportunity to get too far off track. And I know that God longs for that time with me as much as I long for that time with Him. How incredibly amazing is that...the king of the universe wants to just sit and spend time with ME...sinful, messy, self-centered ME. I just can't get over that!

Which begs the question...how in the world could I ever let that gift go to waste? How could I ever let the stuff of earth compete for the allegiance I owe only to the giver of all good things? (Sorry, I have an uncontrollable Rich-Mullins-quoting habit.) Seriously...knowing who God is, and knowing who I am on my own, and knowing that He not only allows me to be in His presence, but desires me and loves me...how could I be so ungrateful as to let an entire day go by without taking advantage of the incredible privilege of just BEING with Jesus? And yet sometimes I do. I don't get it. My humanness is as amazing as His grace...just in totally opposite ways.

I'm so grateful for a God whose love and grace go beyond my comprehension, who day after day chooses to pursue this selfish, arrogant, headstrong, sinful girl and call her beloved friend, chosen daughter, oak of righteousness.

Random thoughts from a very eventful week...

2009-11-20T14:36:00.000-05:00

Random thoughts from this week, in no particular order:

1. Irony must amuse God, because He sure uses it a lot.

2. Our own experiences color everything that we see...every person, every situation, every encounter.

3. Sometimes our experiences make us see something more clearly. That clarity can help us avoid making the same mistakes over and over, it can help us know what is best, and it can help us help other people.

4. Sometimes that clarity makes the things we see hurt more. It's okay for things to hurt.

5. We need to be careful that our own experiences don't cause us to make assumptions before getting all of the information.

6. Within less than a month's time, two people close to me have experienced my two worst fears. God did not give me front row seats in both of their lives by coincidence. So I have to ask...Lord, what in the world are you doing?! What are you trying to teach me that's SO IMPORTANT that I couldn't have learned it in an easier way?

7. Auditions are awkward. Especially auditions for ministry. Necessary. But awkward. And the post-audition wait is even more awkward.

8. God allows us to go through times in our lives when we have absolutely NO control. It's good for us, but it sure doesn't feel good! At no time are we more aware of our weaknesses, of the things we wish we had done differently, and of our smallness in contrast with God's hugeness. We can choose to worry, or we can choose to accept the reminder of who is in control of our destiny.

9. When you love someone, you are willing to take risks and do the hard things to do what you think is best for them. Even if you're wrong. That's why they're called risks.

10. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Not to dwell on anger or sadness about them. Not to beat my head against the wall striving and struggling against them. Just to accept them and surrender the control to You.

11. I have two preschoolers. When there is some "injustice", they want it fixed immediately. If I'm in another room and can't come running to the rescue immediately to return a stolen toy to its rightful owner, or to set the record straight, they get very upset. I tell them that I'll be there in just a minute and to trust me, I will make things right. But they have such a hard time trusting me to do that and waiting for me, even if it's only a 30 second wait. Wow...I am SO like that with God sometimes. I want him to set every injustice straight right this very second. Sometimes I need to chill out and let Him be God instead of getting bent out of shape when something is unfair. He is a JUST God and a PERFECT Father, and ultimately, He will make things right and the truth will be known.

12. God, grant me the courage to change the things I can. Courage and boldness. Lord, when you put your words in my mouth, let me never keep them there, but give me the courage to speak them, regardless of circumstances.

13. Lord, give me the courage to stand up and speak for those who are not in a position to speak for themselves. Give me the courage to say what You want me to say, even if it might change someone's opinion of me. Jesus stained his reputation when he chose to recognize and accept people like Zacchaeus. Give me that same attitude...generous love that doesn't care about the approval of man.

14. It may be true that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, but fear itself is pretty darn scary. It's definitely one of Satan's most effective weapons. It usually comes in the form of psychological warfare...it all starts with one thought. And that one thought can come totally out of the blue, with something as mundane as a knock at the front door or a stuffy nose. If we don't fight back with TRUTH, Satan will use fear to steal, kill, and destroy. The stakes are high.

15. The worst feeling in the world is knowing that you didn't make the most of an opportunity, or that you missed one completely. Don't miss your moment.

16. With Christ in us, we're a whole lot stronger than we think we are. We can survive things that we never thought we could.

17. The second-worst feeling in the world is the one that you get when another person holds the keys to some important part of your life...your freedom, your dream, your ministry, or your future. Ultimately, God is the one in control, but it sure is hard to remember that when you can see the keys in someone else's hands.

18. People really need to be educated about what mental illness is and what it isn't. Just because someone cries does not mean that there's something wrong with them. Jesus wept, for goodness sake! Crying does not equal depression. Feeling things deeply does not equal instability. When you're diagnosed with a mental illness, there's some unwritten code that says that you no longer have the right to cry or show emotion. It's ridiculous.

19. Don't use the cute Mickey Mouse bib when the baby food menu of the day includes carrots.

20. God, grant me the wisdom to know the difference between what I can change and what I can't change, between what is my job and what isn't my job, between my part and your part. Sometimes we meddle and mess with things that aren't ours to touch, exhaust ourselves, and smother people, and we call it love. Other times we put up walls, keep our distance, hoard our love, judge people, and refuse to give people another chance, and we call it having boundaries. The key to knowing where to set boundaries is to take our direction from God, not from our emotions or from the needs that we can see. God is the one who assigns us our jobs. How sad when we refuse our assignment, or when we spend all our energy doing someone else's job (or even God's job) and don't have any energy left to do our own job.

21. Eco-friendly water bottles are annoying. You can't get the lid off without squeezing the bottle and getting water all over yourself.

22. If we're judged enough times by enough people, we can be tempted to give up and live down to their expectations.

23. When we're doing something in which the stakes are high, especially if we're doing it for the first time, we need people around us to support us. We should not hesitate to reach out and allow people to encourage us, advise us, and give us the insight that can only come from another perspective. Even if they can't run the race with us, at least they can cheer us on.

24. Wow...I really did walk up those stairs. I didn't know I could actually do that!

25. I am SO, SO grateful for the wonderful friends that God has given me. I am so blessed.

Sometimes this stinks.

2009-11-16T15:39:00.003-05:00

I like neat and tidy. I like things that end on a positive note. This post won't be that. Don't say I didn't warn you.

In the last year, I have grown so much, and I have started living the victory that God has given me. There are certainly lots of cracks in my life, but the major places of brokenness that held me down in the pit of despair, depression, shame, and defeat have been miraculously healed. I'm moving forward with a passion to know God more intimately and to give all that I am to Him with abandon. He is revealing His plans for me step by step as I walk in faith, and the journey is exciting. I can look back at all that God has brought me through and brought me out of, and I can truly rejoice and praise Him for the victory. And for the first time, I can freely and joyfully share my testimony of all that God has done in my life with other people. This is FREEDOM. This is LIFE. And I love it! All in all, I'm grateful for the story that God is writing in my life. I'm learning to embrace it more each day, and more importantly, I'm learning to embrace the One who is writing it more and more each day. I've said before, it scares me to even think of what my life could be if God hadn't allowed me to fall so deep into the pit. God has given each of us a special story, and I like the one He has given me. I'm excited for each turn of the page, to see what He will write next.

But sometimes my story makes life really frustrating. Because the fact is, people don’t always understand who I am now. I’ve learned this the hard way. Some people can’t understand. Others prefer not to understand. Some people just don't believe that God can do what He has done in my life. Some people have an impression that if a person was broken once, then they’re broken for life. They think that if a person was once dysfunctional, dishonest, unhealthy, needy, or weak, they will always be that way. Once broken, always broken. Or at least once broken, always breakable.

If we're honest with ourselves, we can probably all think of times when we have made those assumptions about people. I know I can. And I understand the reasons, I really do. It's not natural for cycles to be broken. Sometimes the things that we struggle with do remain as areas of weakness for us for a long time afterward. But that’s not always the case. Sometimes healed really does mean HEALED. Nothing is beyond God, and in His Kingdom, the trade of death for life is an everyday occurance.

I have learned the hard way that, although I really do love and appreciate people, and I have become quite a people person in my new life of freedom, I have to be so very careful not to accept other people’s perceptions as my reality. I know who I am. God knows who I am. That’s what matters. People’s opinions, judgments, and ideas about me, whether they’re good or bad, don’t ultimately matter. If someone thinks I’m the most amazing woman to walk the planet, it doesn’t make me any more healed, any more valuable, or any more amazing. If someone thinks I’m a liability, or that I'm wrong about the healing that has taken place in my life, it doesn’t make me any less healed. I am who God says I am.

But sometimes it still gets me down. Sometimes it still really bothers me when I realize that because of who I was, someone is not able or willing to see who I am now. We all want to be understood and KNOWN. That’s why Psalm 139 is so comforting for me, because it’s a reminder that God knows and understands me. I don’t have to defend myself or worry about being misunderstood. He knows the truth. But sometimes...I just want PEOPLE to understand too.

There have been many moments when I have realized that a person’s reaction to something I have said, or a person’s way of relating to me, is affected by my past, and that they might always see me as broken, or at least breakable. Sometimes people, either intentionally or unintentionally, feel that it’s just safer to invest in friendships with people who have never been as broken as I was. No one has ever said this to me directly in those words, but some have expressed it in other words or actions.

We all have those times when we start to get a little paranoid about people...when someone we know has a change in behavior, and we start to assume that maybe we have offended them in some way...maybe it's all about us. In reality, it's rarely about us, but our human nature always suggests that it is and rehearses the worst case scenario until the enemy has stolen all of our joy and peace, and then we find out that what was really going on didn't have a thing to do with us, and we just feel silly. Of course, as we mature, we learn to stop this process early on, and we learn from experience that it safe to assume that it's not about us.

Here's the problem for me...sometimes it really HAS been about me...and usually that has been related to incorrect assumptions that people have made about me based on my past. Just a few months ago, in fact, I was hurt very deeply by someone close to me in a situation like this. They made judgements and assumptions, probably because of my past, and it caused them to totally misundertand and misinterpret my actions. Not only did it end a friendship, but it has also changed some of my other friendships, caused a lot of tension, and caused me to have to step back from a ministry opportunity that God had been calling me toward for some time.

After something like that, how in the world am I supposed to NOT assume that stuff is about me? It's not like I can look back and reassure myself that it's never about me...because the truth is that sometimes, it IS about me...and it seems like that happens more often because of my past. God knows the truth, but sometimes people just don't.

So, like I promised...no neat and tidy box, no happily ever after. Just...
Sometimes this stinks.

One moment of thankfulness

2009-11-16T10:58:00.004-05:00

My husband went to Cambodia on a mission trip a few months ago. He took over 2,000 pictures. He has told me stories about his trip. He has described the details of the sights and sounds and smells. But I don’t for a moment think that I really have a full understanding of what it’s like to BE in Cambodia. I haven’t smelled the smells. I haven’t eaten fish soup for breakfast while sweating through my clothes. I have seen the pictures of the children begging, but I haven’t touched them or tried to walk with them hanging on me and mirroring every step. There’s a level of understanding that I just cannot have until I have the opportunity to actually go there someday.

The same goes for lots of experiences in our lives, especially the painful ones. I try very hard not to presume that I really know where a person is coming from unless I have been where they are. Let’s face it, two people almost never have EXACTLY the same circumstances, so there will always be limits to what we can understand about each others’ experiences. But often when we have been in similar situations, we can understand on a much deeper level than we could if we only had that person’s description to go on.

For me, childbearing and motherhood issues are one example. Miscarriage, adoption loss, death of an infant or older child, infertility…all of those experiences involve loss and have some similarities. I can understand and empathize with friends who are grieving with any of those things because of what I have been through. I have been there…and if not exactly there, I have certainly been to a place very nearby, with some of the same sights and smells. So even though there are differences and limits to my understanding, I can generally “get it”.

What I had almost forgotten is that many, many people have not been to any of those places with regard to loss or motherhood. And if they haven’t been there, they really can’t “get it”. I think because of the time that has passed since my loss and brief fertility problems, I had forgotten just how clueless most people are, even well-meaning people. I had started to assume that most people must have the same innate understanding of the circumstances that I do. SO not true. People who have been there…or at least who have been someplace similar, or who have closely shared life with someone who has been there…can understand to a degree. But others? Their understanding is severely limited. This does NOT mean that they can’t be supportive and compassionate and caring, and in many ways their support is all the more meaningful because they really have to stretch themselves and make an effort to empathize. But there are things that not everyone can understand. There are things that can go unspoken between people who have actually had the experiences. I have been reminded again and again lately of how my experience with losing my first child and struggling for that short time to get pregnant gave me a perspective that I couldn’t have gotten any other way. I have known it before, and I have even written about it here before.

So why am I writing about it again?

Because I did something for the first time last night. I actually thanked God for allowing that pain in my life. Not just for the perspective, but I actually genuinely thanked Him for the experience that made the perspective possible. I had accepted it a long time ago, but I don’t think I had reached the point of being truly thankful for that experience until last night. I’m not glad that it hurts, but as crazy as it probably sounds, I am thankful for it. I don’t know whether this is something that God desires every type of grief, but it’s almost like this is the next step in the process of grief for me…moving from acceptance to thankfulness.

It was a quiet moment that happened in my heart, and it left me pretty much speechless. No one else knew that it happened, but I’m confident that it was a moment that was recorded in God’s book for all of eternity.

Reflections on TWLOHA day

2009-11-13T23:22:00.001-05:00

Wow! The past couple of days have been SO emotional for me with this whole "To Write Love On Her Arms" thing. I know the act of writing on oneself with a Sharpie marker probably sounds a bit silly, and certainly nothing to get emotional about. But for me, this day has been a defining moment, and an experience that I'll always remember. It has been a deeply meaningful time of reflecting, celebrating, and standing in awe. There was something so freeing and joyful about writing LOVE on my arm, right on top of the scars that remain from cutting myself. And as a bonus, I got to share the experience with at least a million other people all over the world, people who, for very diverse reasons, feel that this cause is important. Some have fought depression themselves, some were writing over their own scars, some were writing to try to convince their own souls to cling to hope, some were supporting friends who are struggling with depression or addiction right now, some were simply moved by thinking about the pain of those around them and wanted to do something to help. Recently, God brought a new friend into my life who has experienced some of the same struggles that I experienced, including self-injury. She is walking in freedom today also, and it was so sweet to share this day with her, and we even took turns writing Love on each others' arms. It was a powerful moment that I will never forget.

I cut for the last time about 3 years ago, and although it was a struggle and temptation for a while, I am absolutely 100 percent FREE from it now. There's a part of me that can't even comprehend how in the world I used to do that to myself. It just doesn't make sense. Time and healing have made me forget in a way, and I'm grateful for that. But this week has brought back some of the memory of what I thought and felt while I was cutting. There are two things that I remember very clearly.

The first is that I felt totally powerless and hopeless. I did not believe that rescue was possible. I thought I had gotten myself in too deep. When I would pick up the razor blade or the knife, I truly felt as if I had no control over my actions. As time went on, I started to need to inflict more and more serious injury in order to silence the emotional pain that I was in. And it scared me. I saw before me a future of hurting myself with increasing severity until ultimately I would die. Getting out of that prison was never even a consideration for me. This week has brought back the memory of just how certain I was that I would NEVER be free. So to stand here now, truly and completely FREE...words can't describe the overwhelming joy, relief, and awe that I feel.

But me he caught—reached all the way
from sky to sea; he pulled me out
Of that ocean of hate, that enemy chaos,
the void in which I was drowning.
They hit me when I was down,
but God stuck by me.
He stood me up on a wide-open field;
I stood there saved—surprised to be loved!
Psalm 18:16-19 (The Message)

The second thing I remember is feeling so completely alone and ashamed. It seems like maybe times have changed a little bit now, so that more people are aware of self-injury, and there are even a few people who think self-injury is trendy (although I'm confident that people who think that way are VERY FEW). But for many years after I started cutting, I actually had no idea that anyone else did it. I thought that I had invented this sick, horrible practice all by myself. I did whatever I could to hide what I was doing, which in hindsight I'm grateful for, because I didn't end up with very many scars in visible places on my body. I was so ashamed, not because of what I was DOING, but because of WHO I WAS. Oh, if only I had known that I was not the only one! Maybe I would have reached out for help sooner. I know there's always a risk involved, especially with young people, that bringing too much attention to a poor choice such as cutting could make it seem popular and could even draw some people to try it. But honestly, having been there, I can tell you...I started cutting even though I had no idea that anyone else in the world had ever done it before. NOT saying anything about self-injury is MUCH more risky than responsibly sharing the truth about it at the appropriate times. I wish I had known. And for the rest of my life, anyone God chooses to send my way is going to hear this from me: Rescue IS possible. There IS a way out. HE is the way out. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there IS freedom.

So that's my perspective on To Write Love On Her Arms Day. This week has been amazing, emotional, and unforgettable. I pray that God will use me to write love on arms and hearts, to place my palm on the wounds of this world and help stop the bleeding.

The gospel in one word is LOVE.

To Write Love On Her Arms

2009-11-13T11:59:00.001-05:00

Recently, I discovered a movement called "To Write Love On Her Arms". The full story and vision can be found here http://www.twloha.com/vision/. To Write Love On Her Arms is a non-profit movement that was started, quite unintentionally, several years ago by a group of friends. Their 19 year old friend Rene's life was a blur of drugs, alcohol, depression, and self-inflicted wounds. In one of her last desperate moments before seeing treatment, she carved profanities about herself into her arm. Hours later, she was turned away from a treatment facility because she was too great a risk and in need of detox that the center couldn't provide. In the words of her friend, "For the next five days, she is ours to love. We become her hospital and the possibility of healing fills our living room with life. It is unspoken and there are only a few of us, but we will be her church, the body of Christ coming alive to meet her needs, to write love on her arms."

Rene's friends then began selling T-shirts to help pay for her treatment. They had no idea that so many people would be touched by their vision and that they were starting a new and life-changing movement. The movement is love. The vision is of the body of Christ reaching out in love to people who are hurting. People from all over the world have gotten involved, catching the vision. People of all faiths, all backgrounds, and all ages...all coming together to spread hope, to let people know that they care, and to share the hope that rescue IS possible.

Rene's friend writes about the last of the 5 nights with Rene before she was accepted into treatment. "She hands me her last razor blade, tells me it is the one she used to cut her arm and her last lines of cocaine five nights before. She's had it with her ever since, shares that tonight will be the hardest night and she shouldn't have it. I hold it carefully, thank her and know instantly that this moment, this gift, will stay with me. It hits me to wonder if this great feeling is what Christ knows when we surrender our broken hearts, when we trade death for life."

It doesn't matter what your story is. On our own, we have death. With Jesus, we can have life. He simply asks us to surrender our broken hearts and follow Him. What a beautiful moment when a person chooses to trade death for life, running into the open arms of Jesus.

For some people, trading death for life doesn't just happen in the spiritual realm. For some people, like myself, it's about life and death here on earth. I am so in awe that my God is indeed mighty to save, and that he rescued me from death and traded my death for life.

Depression is a difficult subject to talk about. It's difficult to put into words, and, quite frankly, it is uncomfortable in so many ways for most people. Other kinds of brokenness (most of which spring from depression), such as self-injury, addiction, and suicide, are even more difficult to talk about. For many people, it's easier to put a label on someone, to avoid them, or to feel a vague, distant sense of pity for them, rather than to actually get involved. But the body of Christ is called to ACTION. He has sent US to BIND UP THE BROKENHEARTED. We are to be the hands and feet of Jesus. Sometimes that requires us to get messy and to do the uncomfortable things. Yes, we absolutely need people who are specifically trained in treating some of the problems that people face. But that does not excuse us from all obligations to people who are hurting, no matter how uncomfortable their brokenness makes us feel. We are responsible to actively hold out LOVE to them. We are responsible to speak out, to choose to become educated, to care not just in thought or in word, but also in deed. God chooses to do much of His work through people. He worked through people in my life.

Don Miller says we're called to hold our hands against the wounds of a broken world, to stop the bleeding. I will never forget the day that a dear friend did just that...she held her hand against my physical wounds, my self-inflicted wounds, to stop the bleeding. As much as I'm sure she would have preferred to be anywhere else at that moment, she approached me with love and compassion. She communicated love to me, rather than shame or disgust. Of course, not all of us will be called on to do what she did, but we are ALL called to respond to the brokenhearted with love and compassion in ACTION, whatever that means in our specific situation.

Today, November 13th, 2009, is a special day of recognition called To Write Love On Her Arms Day. People all over the world are writing the word LOVE on their arms today, and sharing what it means with the people around them. It's a simple thing that can change so much. Maybe someone will see or hear about this simple thing and cling to the hope that love is possible. Maybe someone will be inspired to take a look at how they can show love. Maybe someone will be curious about the source of all this love and will look to Jesus. Maybe the only person it will change is you. Please give some thought and prayer today to how you can be the hands and feet of Christ in a world full of real people who are in need of real love and real hope. If you feel led, write the word LOVE on your arm, and share it.

Asking vs. Believing

2009-11-08T17:38:00.002-05:00

I’m just catching onto a really important concept. It’s a work in progress in me, so I’m not sure if these ideas will make sense to anyone yet, but I think it’s important to speak what God is doing in me and make a record of it so that it’s not forgotten, and writing here is one way that I can do that. So here goes...

I have known for a long time that I should take any need or desire I have to God in prayer. But I have usually done so with a sheepish, timid, pleading attitude. “Lord, please give me strength for this.” “Lord, please give me direction for my life.” “Lord, please heal this.” “Lord, please use me for Your glory.” I would ask these things as if I didn’t really know whether God wanted to do them.

Now there are some things about that attitude that are exactly right. I always need to remember that God’s ways are higher than mine. I always need to remember that the answers to my prayers depend on HIM and His goodness and wisdom, and that what seems good to me might not actually be the BEST thing. I always need to keep reverence for God. HE is the holy one. All that I have comes from HIM, because of HIM, for HIS glory.

But…there are some things that God has already promised to us in His word. And I have completely and utterly failed at accepting my authority as a child of the King and claiming those promises in my life. There are some things that we need to pray about, not just asking, but KNOWING and BELIEVING that God will give them to us. Ask and you WILL receive. Seek and you WILL find. Knock and the door WILL be opened unto you. If God has promised me something, whether it’s a promise directly from scripture for all believers, or whether it’s a specific promise given to my through the Holy Spirit (and I’m confident that it is from the Holy Spirit because it keeps with God’s character as revealed scripture), then I don’t need to ask sheepishly. In fact, asking sheepishly in those situations is NOT using faith…and without faith, it is impossible to please God. (Ouch.)

I absolutely disagree with an across-the-board “name it and claim it” philosophy. We can’t claim a promise that God has not given us as truth. We can ask God for our favorite snazzy car, and He might or might not grant that request. But we can’t claim that as a promise or assume that it is His will (unless God really did promise you specifically a snazzy car…but I suspect He doesn’t make that particular promise very often). And even promises that are written in scripture weren’t necessarily written for ALL believers. They may have just been for one specific person or group, and unless God chooses to give those words specifically to us through the Spirit, those types of promises aren’t ours to just claim outright. I think discernment about things like this is REALLY important, because if we claim something that God hasn’t actually promised us, we’re probably going to be disappointed, and we might confuse a lot of people in the process. I have seen that happen before, and the consequences can be really damaging.

BUT…there are things that God has promised to provide for us in scripture that so many of us allow to go to waste every day. God has given us free will. We choose what gifts we will accept. We choose whether we’re willing to open our eyes to the truth. How sad it is when we choose not to accept and use the gifts and privileges that Jesus bought for us on the cross!

So here’s how all this is working out in my life right now. I used to ask God for direction, hoping that He would grant it, not too confident that He would make me able to understand it, and terribly afraid that He wouldn’t. Now I am BELIEVING God to be faithful to His promise that if I trust in the Lord with all my heart and lean not on my own understanding, acknowledge Him in all my ways, He WILL direct my path.

Interestingly, I find that the more I plead with God to please give me direction, the more frustrated I become about it. Yet when I choose to BELIEVE God to fulfill that promise given in scripture, I am totally released from frustration about it, because I KNOW that God will do what He has promised. I am finding that the prayers that are most effective in my life are the prayers of BELIEVING, rather than the prayers of ASKING. This is a totally new concept for me!

Here’s an example…I have struggled with insecurity and self doubt for…well, pretty much forever. It has held me back from SO MUCH that God has set out to do through me and in me. Recently, I kind of hit a wall with the issue of insecurity. I came to the conclusion that this wasn’t something that I would ever be able to fix or figure out on my own. I know all the scriptures about who I am in Christ. I have more head knowledge than most people about the subject, because it has been such a big issue for me. But there comes a point where the head knowledge isn’t enough. I knew that I needed a boldness and a power that can only come through the Holy Spirit at work in me.

So I took it to God…which was GOOD. But I took it to Him in a sheepish, pleading, asking way…with desperation but not faith. And, as usual, I got frustrated and discouraged about it. I was at a women’s ministry conference this weekend, and I spent a lot of the morning yesterday alone with God in prayer about my insecurity and lack of confidence. I knew that I couldn’t just make boldness and power happen in my life. I knew it was up to Him. And I was worried that He wouldn’t give it to me and that I would always be limited by insecurity. After spending the time alone with God, I voiced my frustration to two of my friends just before we went to our seats for the last worship and teaching session of the weekend.

Worship was awesome, and then it was time for the lesson. Go ahead, guess what the topic was…

Boldness.

Now God has done this type of thing enough times in my life that I shouldn’t be surprised anymore, but I seriously could hardly believe my ears! I was laughing out loud at just how specifically God was speaking to me, confirming pieces of truth that He had been giving me all weekend. I quickly began to get the idea…God was saying to me “It’s time!” The season of waiting and asking and expecting is over…it’s time to receive it. When the speaker, Judy Jacobs (who is, by the way, an amazing woman of God), said “Please open your Bibles to Isaiah,” I knew exactly what passage she was going to ask us to turn to. Isaiah 61. If you know me, or if you have been reading this blog for a while, you know just how important Isaiah 61:1-3 has been in my life. I have been praying those verses (especially verse 3) every day since God directed me to those words for my life six months ago. And there it was, right in front of me. It starts with…”The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor…” and it ends with the “oaks of righteousness" verse. (See my post from last month called “A planting of the Lord.” if you want the story) What more boldness and authority could I possibly need than to have the Spirit of the Sovereign Lord on me?! The other verse that was used in that lesson was Acts 1:8. “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you…” Power…boldness. And I heard in my mind… “Do ya get it yet?” How many more times would God have to tell me?

I had been asking for boldness. But what I didn’t realize until yesterday afternoon was that I didn’t need to just ASK for boldness, because God has already promised me boldness and power in His Word! I just needed to claim the promise and choose to accept it and allow God’s Spirit to work in me. So I claimed that promise. I BELIEVED God for power and boldness that can only come through His Spirit.

I did another thing too, and it’s SOOOOO important. I started speaking God’s promise. Another thing that God has been teaching me over the last month or so is the importance of speaking His word. (Again, I’ve heard this concept come from more than one person at several different times…if it’s repeated, it’s important!) A friend of mine gives a really powerful lesson on this subject.... Hebrews 4:12 says that “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any double edged sword.” And Revelation 1:16 describes Jesus holding in his hand seven stars, and a double-edged sword coming out of his mouth. The word in the original language for “double-edged” actually means “double-mouthed”. Why that imagery? Think about it this way…two mouths. One is Jesus’ mouth. The other is our mouth. God’s word is living and active when we speak it. I have always been timid about speaking God’s word out loud in the past, but I am finding that speaking it brings boldness and power, and it’s THE most powerful weapon in my spiritual arsenal!

So I believed God for boldness. I spoke God’s promise about power and boldness. And guess what…God’s Spirit in me has given me…BOLDNESS! It’s not just something I feel. I can hear that my voice has changed. Other people have made comments to me that confirm that the power and boldness of God’s Spirit are showing in me already. I’m living in a whole new place of authority in my position as a child of God. And I’m learning SO MUCH about what it means to believe God for something, rather just to ask for it.

Be Still

2009-10-28T11:42:00.000-04:00

Being still is probably the hardest thing in the world for me to do.

I’m a thinker, a doer, and a communicator. If there are people around, my mouth is rarely still. Facebook is my dream come true because it’s so easy to communicate with people. And even when my body is still (which is far too often), my mind is NEVER still. Never.

I also like to be in control. Who doesn’t? But I mean I REALLY like to be in control. I like to have the next 60 days of my life planned out to the minute. I like to know exactly what will happen when, and if there are unknowns, I have to have a contingency plan for each possible scenario. (If this happens, then I’ll do this…and then if this happens, I’ll do this…) It’s really quite exhausting sometimes to be personally responsible for making sure the universe continues to run as planned. And it’s really sad for me to watch my 3 year old daughter follow my example and begin to take on the same need for control that I have, asking constant questions about what is going to happen next, what color sippy cup I’m going to give her at lunch in an hour, what shirt she’s going to wear tomorrow, and not being able to take “don’t anticipate” for an answer.

Now as far as the control thing goes, I have come a loooooooong way. That’s one way in which I know that God has used my past struggles with depression and bipolar disorder for good. It helped “break” me, in a good way. If I had always been strong and capable, I don’t think I would realize that being in control just isn’t always an option. In the last year or so, I have made major progress in giving up my need to control things. I certainly haven’t arrived yet (just ask my husband), but I’m getting there.

But being still…that’s where I struggle the most. Quieting my mind…it’s not easy for me. I so often need to be reminded to just be still and know that He is God. Sometimes I need to listen to God instead of talking to Him. And there are times when I need to stop communicating altogether and just BE STILL.

I can make a thousand excuses for why I don’t stop and be still more often. And it definitely is difficult to fit times of actual quiet into my life considering that I’m at home with toddlers and preschoolers all day every day. My house isn’t quiet. I wouldn’t trade this time at home with my children for anything, but sometimes I long for a 30 minute commute to work in the car all by myself. But there certainly are many opportunities for quiet that I choose not to take advantage of. And even more than that, I do think it’s possible to be still in the midst of whatever situation we’re in. Being still is more an attitude of the heart than it is an external condition. It’s choosing to quiet my mind, even if my ears are bombarded, as they are right now, with the sound of screaming children jumping on a mattress trampoline in the living room, and even if my mouth is busy explaining for the fifth time that day why everyone has to wear pants at the kitchen table. It’s about choosing to just STOP and allow the Holy Spirit to guide my thoughts and actions, rather than running my mind in circles and acting on what I think is the thing to do.

Apparently, I needed a reminder to be still this week, because I have the flu. (Yes, it is “the” flu.) As I laid curled up on the couch yesterday underneath a mound of blankets, shivering from chills and feeling utterly miserable and alone, as the kids ransacked the living room right before my eyes, it occurred to me that there was really nothing that I could do except be still. I was feeling overwhelmed at having to take care of my kids without the help of my husband, who had to work all day and all night, and there’s no one else to help us since we’re quarantined. I had NO control over the situation. All I could do was just be still and know that He is God, and know that His grace is sufficient for me. In a way, it was kind of freeing. I spent a lot of time yesterday just resting in God’s presence and allowing Him to sing over me. I had to take care of the kids. The house was anything but quiet. My body felt miserable. But I was still. And it was good.

Prisms

2009-10-25T22:12:00.009-04:00

When I was little, I remember that my grandmother had a prism hanging in her window. Outside the window was the sun’s white, beautiful, perfect, breathtaking light. But when that light was reflected (actually, I think the correct term is refracted, for my fellow science nerds) through that prism, it became a rainbow, throwing every color of the spectrum to every corner of the room. It was beautiful and mesmerizing, because I never could quite figure out how a little piece of glass could do that.

As I got older, I learned that the colored lights are actually all a part of the sun’s white light. The prism stretches the light, so to speak, and separates the different wavelengths of light so that we can see all of its individual colors. It’s still the sun’s white light, we just see each of its unique attributes with such beauty after it passes through the prism.

Yeah, I know you’re wondering where in the heck this is going. Work with me here…

I never cease to be amazed at how God uses people (imperfect people, I might add) in the lives of other people. God is light. He is the one and only source of pure light. And yet he so often chooses to reveal Himself more fully to us through the prism of people. Each person refracts and reflects His light in a slightly different way. We see different colors, different attributes and truths about our God, in the unique people that He chooses to use in our lives.

Right now I can think of so many specific people in my life who have shown me God’s compassion, His persistence, His patience, His faithfulness, His unending love, His depth, His kindness, His strength, His beauty, His healing power, His peace, His gentleness, His honesty, His mercy, His integrity, His closeness, his comfort. I can think of specific people who have shown me the joy of the Lord, the hope that comes from Him, the courage that He gives, the faith that He grows in us. In my mind, there are names and faces attached to each of the attributes I mentioned. Some were very close, some were just acquaintances, some I have never even met face to face. Some have been in my life for 30 years, some have only passed through for a brief season. Some have always been positive people in my life. Some have helped me learn irreplaceable lessons through negative circumstances. Each one was perfectly unique, revealing a different color of the spectrum of God’s character.

There’s just something about a human touch…It is God who created us and who supplies all of our needs, and yet He Himself declared that it was not good for man to be alone. He created us to love Him, and He created us to love and interact with each other. He is the author of our stories, individually and collectively, and He weaves us all together in ways that we can’t even comprehend. Tonight, I’m pondering all the ways in which God uses people…imperfect earthen vessels…to reflect who He is in such beautiful and unique and special ways. He uses us to reveal His light in all of its glory to human eyes…to display His splendor.

I am thankful beyond description for all of the people whom God has placed in my life in order to reveal Himself to me. And I am especially thankful tonight for the unexplainable deep bond that God places between certain hearts for His special purposes…heart friendships…divine appointments. His works are wonderful, and I am so blessed.

I am also thankful beyond words for the privilege of being used to reflect and refract God’s light into the lives of others. This week especially, I have had several opportunities to give and receive encouragement that would never have been possible if not for some incredibly difficult struggles and experiences in my life. I can speak with a measure of authority into some people’s circumstances ONLY because I have been to certain places in my own life before and have experienced God's work in certain ways. I can receive certain blessings and encouragement through another person ONLY because he or she has been to certain places in life and experienced God's work in certain ways. I LOVE how God weaves our lives together and uses each of us with our imperfections, failures, victories, burdens, gifts, wounds, scars, messes, strengths, hang-ups, frustrations…He uses US to bend and separate His light into all of its individual parts so that we can see the beauty of it more clearly. I LOVE that He does that!!!

If today was MY last day...

2009-10-25T15:29:00.003-04:00

I promised my personal response, so here it is...

If I found out that I had a very brief time left to live here on earth, here’s what I would want to do. Some of it, I’m already doing. Some of it, I’m working on right now. Some of it seems like a distant dream.

I would stop wasting my time on things that aren’t important. I’d probably never play another game of Bejeweled Blitz. And, not that sleep isn’t important, but I certainly wouldn’t ever try to squeeze out the extra 9 minutes with the snooze button again.

I would read more, and I would share what I was reading with other people.

I would leave fear completely in the dust. Fear of failure would not be an obstacle in my life. I would step out in faith to do the things that I felt God was calling me to do, without waiting for 25 different forms of confirmation from Him. I would not hesitate.

I would no longer be paralyzed by indecision and insecurity. I would obey Jesus the first time. He wouldn’t have to ask me twice. I would take risks. Instead of waiting to be invited and ushered through an open door, I would pursue my God-given dreams with abandon, asking God to close doors that aren’t in His will for me.

I would call the people whom I have wronged and tell them that I’m sorry. I would call the people who have wronged me and speak words of love and forgiveness, regardless of whether they think they need them. I would call the people who have blessed my life to say thank you. I would speak the words of encouragement to people around me that I often want to speak but don’t out of fear that I’ll sound silly. I would hug people more.

I would look people in the eyes and stand up straighter.

I would pray with people in the grocery store checkout lane. I would ask strangers about their relationship with Jesus, and I would tell them about mine. I would seek out a person who has lost all hope and tell them about God’s love. I would pray for every driver I passed at a 4-way stop.

I would visit a stranger in prison just to tell them that I love them and God loves them.

I wouldn’t be self-conscious about crying. Or laughing.

I would ride in the car in 40 degree weather with the windows down and the radio blasting the worship music.

I would write a song and not care whether it was perfect. Then I’d sing it for someone.

I would seek out people who are struggling with the same things I have struggled with in my life, and I would speak love, comfort, and hope to them.

I would bind up the brokenhearted, and proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.

I would wear my comfy, cozy pajamas more. And my fuzzy socks.

I would put up the Christmas decorations in July and go Christmas caroling.

I would speak the Word of God out loud everywhere I went, throughout my day.

I would ride Diamondback (the tallest, fastest, meanest roller coaster)…and I would put my hands in the air. (Hey, I actually just did this!)

I would tell Jesus how much I love Him all day long. And I would show Him my love by doing what He tells me to do.

I would trust God, and I would trust people.

I would praise Jesus with dancing and jumping, and I wouldn't care what anyone thought about it.

I would tell my husband and children how much I love them. I would have patience with them. I wouldn’t get annoyed and angry about things that don’t really matter. I would speak only life-giving words to them. I would read the Bible with my kids, even if they are too young to understand it. I would keep our home in better order so that my family would be able to continue what I started.

I would write down everything I can about all that God has done in my life.

I would live in the miracle of the moment. I would not anticipate.

I could probably go on for days like this, but you get the idea.

I really was serious in my last post. I want some audience participation here! I know somebody out there is reading this, and I want to hear what you have to say. If you found out tomorrow that you had one day (or one month, or one year, etc.) to live, what would you do differently? What would stay the same about your life? Please give it some thought and prayer, and send me an email or post a comment here.

If today was your last day...

2009-10-24T16:58:00.004-04:00

I have a little issue with perfectionism, and also the inability to be concise. So my goal is to come up with some post-able material in the next 15 minutes and post it…whether I like it or not. Let’s see how this goes…

A theme that keeps being repeated in my life lately is the concept of just how short life is…and how we need to live each day as if it were our last day. I recently picked up the book One Month to Live by Kerry and Chris Shook, and although I have only read the first few pages so far, it has been quite a perspective-changer for me. People who are diagnosed with terminal illnesses generally make major changes to their lifestyle very quickly. They shake off their fears, take risks, realign their priorities, say the things that previously went unsaid, do the important things, reach out to others, and generally appreciate life and appreciate the people around them in a new way. They LIVE life. But the authors of this book said that there are a few people who, when they are told they only have a short time to live, truly don’t change how they live very much…because they were ALREADY living life. For them, not much changes.

My aspiration is to be the second kind of person…the kind for whom not much would change if I were told tomorrow that I only had a year, or a month, or a day to live. This is, without a doubt, the road less traveled. God has given me so much. He has set me free from so much. He has done for me more than I could ask or imagine. With all the years that I spent toying with suicide, it’s nothing short of a miracle that I am alive today. And the healing that God has worked in my mind and my emotions is nothing short of a miracle. I am NOT going to waste what God has done for me.

I absolutely love hearing other people’s stories of what God has done in their lives. We’re all so different, with different personalities, backgrounds, experiences, struggles, and victories. I LOVE that God didn’t make us all the same. We each have something perfectly unique to contribute to the people around us, to our world here on earth, and to the kingdom of God. Each of our lives reveals something unique about God’s character and His ways. We each have a unique song to sing. I am the ONLY one in all of eternity who can sing my song. You are the ONLY one in all of eternity who can sing yours, and you never know who might be blessed by hearing it. And we never know how long we have left in this world to sing our song. Tomorrow may be too late.

So I’ll leave you with the question…

If today was your last day, what would you do differently? And what would stay the same?

Please leave comments, or send me an email (there's a link on this page) if you’re not comfortable posting publicly. I really want to know! Yes, YOU. Please answer me. I’ll post more of my own response soon.

So there you have it…a 15 minute post. I’m not checking for spelling or grammar, I’m just gonna post it…spell check, don’t fail me now!

Beauty in the Suffering

2009-10-21T10:14:00.005-04:00

One of my friends will be giving birth to a child in a few weeks after having lost a child to miscarriage a year ago. Her loss was heartbreaking, and now she will have the joy of bringing home a son. Another friend, after enduring the heartbreak of infertility, is eagerly awaiting the arrival of her first son through adoption. I lost my first child to miscarriage and was devastated by the pain. Now I have not one, but TWO wonderful young children at home.

In these stories, it’s easy to see the beauty that comes after a season of suffering. The stories seem to have nice, sweet, storybook endings, and that’s great. But there are two problems with stories like these.

The first problem is that we often want to ignore the messy parts of the stories and focus only on the happy endings. People love to fix other people, to stuff their problems into a neat, tidy box and toss the box into the “solved” pile. Maybe that’s why we tend to say such incredibly stupid things to people who are suffering. There’s a “this is bad, BUT in the future it will all be okay” mentality that is anything but comforting to someone feeling the sting of pain.

The second problem is that sometimes we come up against suffering that doesn’t fit into a box. And it makes us realize that no matter what the future holds (in this earthly life, that is), there’s no BUT that will make pain go away.

Another dear friend of mine gave birth to a son two days ago. For four months, she and her husband have known that their time with their son here on earth would be short. They got to spend 32 minutes with Gabriel before his spirit went home to heaven.

32 minutes. Take a minute to let that sink in. Then let me add that this is 32 minutes more time than she got to spend with the last son she gave birth to.

The birth of this precious baby boy is a blessing. He is amazing and adorable beyond words, and his life is something to be celebrated. But his death…it’s a pain beyond description for his parents, grandparents, and siblings. This is the kind of pain that throws us all for a loop. We can’t describe it, we can’t contain it, and we certainly can’t fix it. There’s no way to dress it up and make it anything but what it is…pain. And no amount of beauty will change the fact that this suffering took place. There is no BUT that will make it all okay someday.

So what do we do?

Well, for one thing, I’d like to suggest that we accept the wake-up call. I would like for us all (myself included) to stop pretending that we can fix suffering with a few greeting-card style words…because we can’t, and when we try, we often just end up causing more pain. I’m just as guilty as anyone of thinking that I need to have some profound words of wisdom for someone who is hurting, when all they really need to hear is “I’m sorry” or “This sucks”. Let’s not do that anymore, ok?

I’d also like for us all to stop pretending that the joy that comes in the morning makes the tears insignificant, because it doesn’t. It’s not about "suffering BUT beauty". My first child died before I ever even got to see the shape of her body on an ultrasound. NOTHING, not even the two wonderful children that I have to raise now, could ever make that pain worth it. Nothing. It will NEVER be okay. It will never be okay that my friend’s son died so young. She and her family and those who love her are enduring a kind of pain and suffering that is beyond comprehension. It will never be okay. There is no BUT.

There is, however, an AND…

Suffering AND beauty. Beauty IN the suffering.

It’s not about the happy ending that comes AFTER the suffering, because let’s be honest…there isn’t always a happy ending until we get to heaven. It’s about the beauty IN the suffering. It’s difficult to see sometimes, but it’s there.

First, let me tell you what, in my opinion, the beauty in the suffering is NOT…

It’s not the hope that life will be better tomorrow…because it might not be.

It’s not the promise that nothing this painful will ever happen again…because it might.

It’s not feeling happy during the pain, because…who does that?

It’s not in knowing that you’ll look back on this later and feel that it was all worth it, because you might not.

It’s not in the vague words “this is God’s will”, because although those words may be true, they are rarely comforting in our limited view of life here on earth.

So what exactly is the beauty IN the suffering?

It’s how God weaves all of our stories together so that we can support and comfort one another as we go through similar circumstances.

It’s the knowledge that the God who created the universe sees us in our most desperate moments and weeps with us. Emmanuel, God with us.

It’s the bond that develops between those who have shared the same pain, even though they never meet in more than words typed on a computer page.

It’s the ability that God has given us to feel one another’s pain, and the mystery of how we can each experience healing in the process.

It’s in tightest, longest hug between two friends who don’t need to say a word.

It’s the peace that passes all understanding that guards our hearts and minds at times when nothing else could.

It’s the courage and strength to persevere despite impossible odds.

It’s the hope we have that there will be no more tears in heaven, and that Jesus bought eternal life for us, so death does not have to be the end of our story.

It’s strength that we gain from such a hope that allows us to endure the unendurable.

It’s the Facebook status update from a stranger “My heart is breaking for someone I don’t know.”

It’s the flood of emails from people, many of whom don’t even know the person they have been praying for, showing concern and love.

It’s the love of Christ showing through people who step out to do simple acts of kindness…delivering a meal, providing childcare, doing laundry, cleaning a toilet.

It’s the words of a mother in heartbreakingly painful circumstances: “I have never felt such peace in my life…”

It’s the love of a father gently washing the hair of his newborn son whose spirit is already home in heaven.

It’s the sacrifice of praise from a broken heart to a God who heals and redeems.

I’m going to take my own advice and try to resist packaging all this up into a nice neat little box. Pain is only PAIN. God is only GOOD. I don’t understand the mystery of it, but I trust Him, and I’m asking Him to keep my eyes open to see the beauty in the suffering.

Heal the Wound

2009-10-14T16:35:00.005-04:00

Sometimes a song says it all.

Until 5 months ago, I had so much shame about my past. Even though I knew I was forgiven, I was still ashamed of the things that I had done and thought. I was so relieved to have been set free from the depression and hallucinations from the bipolar disorder, and from the addiction to cutting myself. I was happy. But I still felt haunted by my past. I felt tainted, like I would never really be able to get away from the past, and I just tried to accept the fact that I couldn’t change it, and I tried to forget about it. I thought that was what forgiveness meant…just moving on and getting as far away from the past as possible. I wanted everything to be erased from my memory, and it was always frustrating for me that I just couldn’t make that happen.

I did move farther and farther away from the memories of what I used to be. And I was living life, and I was happy. But still, in the back of my mind, was a sense of unworthiness. If I could keep my mind off of the past, I felt better. If something about what I had done or who I had been crossed my mind (which was often), I felt ashamed, embarrassed, and sad. It really held me back from taking risks and being radically obedient to Christ.

I have scars in several places on my body from cutting myself, including some on my arm that are exposed when I wear short sleeves. Those scars were the biggest source of shame for me, because I knew they were permanent. Nothing I could ever do, no amount of forgiveness, could make them go away completely. They were a constant reminder that the consequences of some of my actions could never be erased. I’m well aware that no one notices them except me. They’re really not that big or noticeable, but to me, the scars on my arm felt like neon signs proclaiming to myself and to the world everything that I had done and what a mess my life had been. I was very self-conscious about them, and there were certain circumstances where I wouldn't even wear short sleeves.

As I moved farther and farther away from the past and began to consider what God wanted to do with my future, it occurred to me that God was perfectly capable of miraculously healing the scars, just like he miraculously healed my mind. He could make them disappear if He wanted to. So I began to pray and pray and pray that God would take the scars away. I decided that when God erased the scars, I would take that as the sign that He wanted to do something good with my life. So I waited and waited, and I prayed and prayed, and eventually I started to get discouraged that God wasn’t answering.

Meanwhile, my family and I were getting established at a new church. Since we got married 7 years earlier, we had attended churches with anywhere from 25-100 people per Sunday. But this time, God had led us to a church of 4,000. Yes, I said 4,000. Although it wasn’t our reason for going there, I felt that God was blessing me with a fresh start, a new chance to be in a place where no one knew about my past. I looked at it as a reward from God and a sign that He really didn’t hold my past against me. No one here would ever even have to know. I should just forget too.

In December of 08, I joined the worship choir at church. I absolutely LOVED it. But just like before, the process of helping to lead others in worship forced me to be accountable for the words that I was singing, so it did make me feel a bit vulnerable. And then there were the new friendships that were developing as my husband and I got more closely connected at church. I should have known that sooner or later the hiding would have to end. Still, I kept praying that God would take away the scars on my arm. It seemed so important in order for me to really move on and forget about the past. I convinced myself that when God took away those scars, I would relax and move on with my life without regrets.

Then, as it often does with me, it all came down to a song.

I mentioned earlier this week about the women’s ministry event at church where we washed our slates clean and then wrote down our dream for our lives without shame. Well, the reason that I finally dared to write something down on that board was because this song was sung that night. I am amazed at how the lyrics seem to have been written just for me, and also at how God kept me from ever hearing the song until that night when I was really ready to listen…

Heal The Wound (by Point of Grace)

I used to wish that I could rewrite history

I used to dream that each mistake could be erased

Then I could just pretend

I never knew the me back then

I used to pray that you would take this shame away

Hide all the evidence of who I’ve been

But it’s the memory of the place you brought me from

That keeps me on my knees

Even though I’m free

I have not lived a life that boasts of anything

I don’t take pride in what I bring

But I’ll build an altar with the rubble that you found me in

And every stone will sing of what you can redeem

Heal the wound, but leave the scar

A reminder of how merciful you are

I am broken, torn apart

Take the pieces of this heart

Heal the wound, but leave the scar

Don’t let me forget everything you’ve done for me
Don’t let me forget the beauty in the suffering

Another what if

2009-10-14T08:33:00.005-04:00

There have been so many “what ifs” scattered throughout my journey over the last several years…things I just don’t have answers to. Most of them used to come from looking ahead to the unknown, and most of them have involved fear. In the beginning, there was…What if I spend my whole life like this? What if I kill myself…will I go to heaven? What if they find out what I’m really thinking…what will they say? What if God runs out of patience with me? What if I get sent back to the hospital…will I even survive it next time? Those are some weighty questions, and at the time, the fear was paralyzing.

These days, most of the “what ifs” come from looking back, and most of them don’t bring fear, just curiosity, often gratitude, and a bit of wonder. What if I had made a different choice? How would things have turned out? What if God had not been merciful to me? What if He hadn’t placed that person or that opportunity in my life at just the right time? What if I had succeeded in killing myself? I don’t spend as much time on what-ifs as I used to, but I’m a thinker, so I do ponder them pretty often.

But there’s one “what if” that really messes with my head and my heart, and it does absolutely terrify me sometimes.

What if God had NOT allowed the bipolar disorder in my life?

While we live in a broken, sinful world, I fully believe that God is sovereign, and He filters every experience in our lives through His loving hands. I don’t fully understand it, but I believe it. God could have shielded me from that experience. He could have intervened and kept me from making the terrible choices that took me so much farther down into the pit. He didn’t. And I am SO incredibly grateful for that…because when I go down that “what if” road, it takes me to a very scary place. Without what I went through, I would NOT know Jesus like I know him today. I would not understand the depth of my own depravity without Him. As it is, I really struggle sometimes with thinking that I can accomplish things on my own…I shudder to even think of how headstrong I would be if I didn’t have that vivid picture of who I used to be to look back on. It really is frightening to me, the thought of what my life could be if I had not spent the time in the pit. I would probably still be hiding from the world, thinking that I needed to be perfect in order to be loved or valuable. I would probably be going through the motions. Probably not dead, but not really living either. I would probably be doing things my own way, instead of seeking to do them God’s way. I was so stubborn and strong-willed, and God, in His mercy, knew exactly what it would take to get me to see myself the way I really was…and to get me to see Him the way He really is. I KNOW without a doubt that every positive change in my life, every victory, every broken chain is there ONLY because of His mercy, grace, and power. And I know that, on a heart level, because I know the person I used to be.

Someone commented to me recently that she appreciates how I am always so openly broken when I come before God and when I receive communion. God works most powerfully in our brokenness. But brokenness is not easy for most people, because part of being a human after the fall, and especially in our American society today, is a sense of self-sufficiency. “God helps those who helps themselves” is what my great grandmother used to say. And I agree that God doesn’t just want us to lie around and passively play possum with all the woe is me, I’m feeble and frail stuff…He wants us to be radically obedient and bold. But we can only do that when we accept His power to work in us, and we can only do that when we understand our brokenness without Him. Apparently I’m a slow learner, because it took a 20 year long, very personal, hands-on lesson to teach me…but I get it now.

I wear my emotions on my sleeve, and I can’t hide my brokenness before God even if I want to. He saved my life. He pulled me out of the pit when I could not have gotten out myself. He is the only reason I’m alive and the only reason that I have a life worth living. How could I NOT be broken before Him? How could I NOT deeply feel my own brokenness when remembering how He sacrificed His life for me so that I wouldn’t have to end mine? He was nailed to a cross and bled for me so that I don’t have to cut myself every day and bleed to get rid of my guilt and shame! By His stripes, I am healed.

In Luke 7, there’s the story of a woman who lived such a life of sin that no one wanted to associate with her. When she met Jesus, she fell behind him at his feet and began crying. She used her hair to wipe the dust from Jesus’ feet with her tears. The disciples were irritated that Jesus would allow such a woman to touch Him. Jesus told them a parable about two men who owed money to a lender. One owed a small debt, and one owed a large debt, and neither could afford to pay, so the moneylender canceled the debts. Jesus asked which of the men would love the moneylender more. Obvious answer…the man who had been forgiven the greater debt. In the same way, this sinful woman loved Him much…she was forgiven much. Not that there is EVER a limit to how much anyone can love Jesus, regardless of your story. Redemption is not a matter of math. His blood paid a price for each of us that NONE of us could have afforded to pay. What I’m saying is that I see and feel the enormity of what Jesus did for me, the significance of His sacrifice, much more easily than I otherwise would, because of how deep down in that pit I was when He pulled me out. It’s not a struggle at all for me to see how lost I am without Him. It’s easy for me to understand because of what I went through for all those years. That’s why I couldn’t hide my brokenness even if I wanted to. And that’s why I am so very thankful that God allowed the pain in my life.

If God handed me the keys to the time machine and gave me the choice to go back and change things, would I? Honestly…probably yes. That’s why I’m SO glad that He holds the keys.

Something Beautiful

2009-10-12T22:39:00.003-04:00

Lord, here I am again

Wondering how I find myself here

In this wasteland I know so well

These dirty hands, they bring

Nothing I'd ever take pride in

Here's my repentant heart once again

The good that I want to do

Lord, this I do not do

But hopeless as I seem

You promise to redeem

Lord, use me

I surrender

Make me a display of Your splendor

My heart's longing

My desire

Is to be refined in Your fire

Lord, take the ashes of my shame

Bring healing as I speak Your name

Lord, make my life

Something beautiful

You know my life

And You've seen all there is to see about me

Still You clothe me in righteousness

you say "Arise, my child.

Shine for your light has come.

My glory rises upon you now."

You've broken all my chains

Now only truth remains

So let my life proclaim

The wonder of Your name

Your Word has set my heart ablaze

I live to give You love and praise

And I'll forever stand amazed

At what You can redeem

Lord, use me

I surrender

Make me a display of Your splendor

My heart's longing

My desire

Is to be refined in Your fire

Lord, take the ashes of my shame

Bring healing as I speak Your name

Lord, make my life

Something beautiful

A planting of the Lord

2009-10-12T22:09:00.009-04:00

Where to begin? The last 4 days have contained at least 6 months of “bloggable” material. My heart is so full of praises, and so full of Jesus himself, that I feel like I just might explode. I seriously don’t know where to start, so I’m just going to pick something and run with it. Take a potty break and grab a cup of coffee, my friends…this is gonna be a long one!

I went on the Discipleship Walk retreat this weekend to work and serve other women. My appointed role on the weekend was to help with some of the logistics and do some of the behind the scenes grunt work so that other women could participate in the lessons, testimonies, and chapel services. I was so excited to just be a servant, to take care of the details so that the ladies in other roles wouldn’t have to think about them. I went into the weekend focused and eager, expecting to have a great time, but knowing that the weekend wasn’t about me, and expecting to give more than receive. A year ago, I attended the retreat to receive what God had for me. Now I was working, and it was my time to give.

I had it half right. Yes, I worked my little tail off. Yes, I slept 8 hours total in 3 nights. Yes, it was exhausting. Yes, I gave. But that part about the weekend not being about me? Well…here’s the thing about God…He loves and treasures His children so much that He ALWAYS has something to give us if we’re willing to receive it, no matter what the circumstances. He is able to do more than we could ever ask or imagine, and He delights in pouring out blessings on us. When we give, He fills us up to overflowing so that we have even more to give. How cool is that?

To understand what God did for me this weekend, you need to know a little of the timeline for the last few years of my life. If you have read this blog from the beginning (which was just last month, so it’s not too much to catch up…but be forewarned, being concise isn’t my strong point), you know that I struggled through bipolar disorder, primarily severe depression, for many years, teetered back and forth on the edge of suicide, and was altogether a hot mess mentally, emotionally, and (even though my heart did belong to Jesus) spiritually. The picture wasn’t pretty. You know in the movies, there’s the stereotypical psych patient curled up in the fetal position rocking back and forth listening to the voices in their head? Yeah…that was me. Except it wasn’t a movie, it wasn’t a joke, it was my life. There were lots up ups and downs along the way, but overall, I lived a life of ruin and despair, even though I had accepted Jesus and was following Him and desiring to live my life for Him. Eventually, my symptoms were decently controlled with medication, but it required constant adjustments, often very high doses, and miserable side-effects. Here’s a general idea of what happened from there…

2004: gradually tapered off meds so that I could have a baby, got pregnant, had miscarriage, re-started meds, grief and devastating depression, decided to go back on meds unless and until I got pregnant again, began year-long wait trying to get pregnant

2005: Finally got pregnant, went off all meds in 2 days (awful), still struggled but now without the help of meds…not fun

2006: had daughter, still struggling but hesitated to start meds, by the time I was ready to start them, I found out that I was pregnant again (Surprise!) so I never did, still struggled with depression, but it became less and less

2007: no more depression or other symptoms at all, son born in February, decided to stay off meds until I needed them

By 2008, I knew that God had healed me. But I still lived in debilitating fear of what could happen next. I wasn’t really living…just going through the motions, trying to hide who I was from everyone. I never said that God had healed me...not to God Himself or to anyone else...because I was so scared…what if it all came back later? What if I lost everything and everyone that I loved? What would people think? The world says that there is no cure for bipolar disorder. The goal of treatment isn’t even to completely control the symptoms, just to make them more manageable and to educate the patient about how to deal with them, and there is NEVER an option of being able to go without medication. So I was terrified of all the “what ifs”. I wanted to know for sure that I would never struggle like that again. I thought that in order for God to really love me and be able to make something good out of my life, I needed to be strong enough to beat bipolar disorder, and I was so scared that it might come back and knock me down again.

Then came my Discipleship Walk in October of 2008, exactly a year ago. It was that weekend when God made it abundantly clear to my head, my heart, and my spirit that He loves me. He sees me and knows everywhere I have been. I remember during one of the chapel services, God kept speaking to my heart that He was there and had always been there. He was there during every painful experience of my life. He cried every tear with me. That weekend was a huge turning point. Being so sheltered and covered in love and prayer for those 3 days created an environment in which God worked in such an amazing way in my life. I discovered that I had built walls around me that were so tall and thick and strong that I couldn’t tear them down, even though I had built them myself…and it was that weekend, one year ago, when I asked God to tear down the walls for me, and I chose to let Him be the one to protect me. That weekend, the pride of wanting to be strong and perfect on my own, and the fear of not being able to do it on my own, were blown to pieces. In their place came heaping portions of humility, love, and freedom. Of course I couldn’t do it on my own…I wasn’t created to do it on my own! God didn’t just want to give me strength, He wanted to BE my strength. After that weekend, for the first time, I started declaring what God had done for me to myself, my husband, and a few friends. I claimed the miraculous healing that God had already done in my life instead of choosing to let it go to waste by living in fear and pride. I knew that I was healed and that I was FREE. God worked out so many tiny details of that weekend so that I knew He was speaking directly to ME. One of the most amazing moments was when each person was handed a card with a random scripture verse on it. This was my verse: “The Lord is my strength and my safe cover. My heart trusts in Him, and I am helped. So my heart is full of joy. I will thank Him with my song.” Psalm 28:7 Needless to say, that verse is written on my heart.

I came home and started living very differently. I didn’t live in fear of the bipolar disorder anymore. I still had my problems…and still do…but I generally stopped trusting myself and started trusting God more and more, and I rested in God’s love for me and let Him be my strength. I started seeking Him with a new intensity. I set a goal the day I got home to read through the whole Bible in the next year before my 30^th birthday, and I followed through and did it. In many ways, it feels like my life started a year ago.

So although my focus was on serving and loving others, being back there at Discipleship Walk this weekend, one year after this journey began, was very personal and very emotional for me. Being back in the same room where I sat and cried out to God a year ago during that chapel service, where sisters in Christ prayed for me and showered me with love…it was overwhelming and indescribably amazing. Thinking of how far God has brought me in a year, of how he lifted me out of that pit and was so faithful to stubborn, self-destructive me, even when I didn’t recognize or acknowledge what He had done. He is so faithful, so GOOD, so kind, so gentle, so compassionate…and if He has done all this for me, He is more than able to do the same and more for ANYONE. If God can make something good out of my life, He can make something good out of ANYTHING…even out of NOTHING.

This has been my heart’s desire and plea for my life, particularly in the last year. I want so desperately to be used by God. I want my life to bring glory to Him, and I want His love to flow through me to the people around me. I think every woman is born with a desire to be beautiful. And of course, there are lots of things I wish were different about my body…LOTS of things. But much more than my appearance, I have such a desire for the life that I live to be a beautiful story, to reflect that beauty of what God has done in me. Five months ago, I was at a women’s ministry event at church, and the lesson was on guilt and shame. I really didn’t think that there was going to be much in the lesson for me personally, because I had already accepted God’s forgiveness and moved past feeling guilty for things that I had done in the past. But as I listened that night, God revealed to me just how much shame I still lived in. I was treating this incredible gift that God had given me as a shameful secret, not wanting to take the risk of sharing it with people. And I had accepted that lie that, because of my past, God couldn’t really use me for anything important. I thought I had ruined my testimony, and that because of it, my usefulness in the body of Christ was severely limited, that it was better for me to be seen and not heard. I knew I had been saved by grace, but I thought the story ended there. That evening, the words of Isaiah 61:1-3 were written on my heart.

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,

to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,

and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the LORD
for the display of his splendor.

That night, each woman was given a small chalkboard and a piece of chalk. We were asked to write down the things for which we needed to be released from guilt and shame. Then we went forward and washed the slate clean as a symbol of how our sins are gone because of Jesus’ sacrifice. I thought it was a nice activity, but nothing earth-shattering, because I already knew I was forgiven. But what came next…oh, what came next has changed my life. After we got back to our seats with our clean chalkboards, we were asked to do one more thing…write on that board what we want God to do with our lives now. I was taken aback…it never occurred to me that God wanted to replace the guilt with something else…that He could actually use my life and make it a beautiful story…that He could use even me to share love with other people. I hadn’t dared to dream that dream. But now, faced with that blank slate and all of its possibilities…the truth was almost too sweet to take in. I searched my heart for words to express the dream to which I had never dared to give words. God gave the words to me. On my board, I wrote “Isaiah 61:1-3” and “display of His splendor”. Those words from God became living and active in my life that night.

Every single day for the past 5 months (often many times throughout the day), I have prayed the words of Isaiah 61:3. They perfectly express the desire of my heart and the heart of my desires. Lord, let me be an oak of righteousness, Your planting for the display of your splendor.

I have been claiming the truth of that passage of scripture in my life. It’s God’s promise to me, and as I run the race of life, I see it in front of me, urging me on. But while we’re running the race in this world, we get hurt. We get battered and bruised. And that can make it hard to keep running with confidence. Heading into this weekend, I was weary from running toward a promise that seemed to keep moving farther and farther away as I approached it, and I was running with the pain of wounds from a recent event in my life. I was feeling tentative and unsure of myself, and it was so difficult to keep running.

Saturday, as I was walking alone to the chapel to prepare for the next service, I was looking up, savoring the beautiful blue sky and the tall majestic trees in their blazing fall colors. I noticed that, although I could feel a breeze blowing on my face, the trees were all perfectly still. It was as if the trees were standing still in anticipation and awe of what was about to happen, and I was praying for a great move of the Holy Spirit during the upcoming chapel service. And then I saw it. A single leaf began to fall from the tallest point on the tallest tree line near the road. God placed a desire in me to follow that leaf and not let it out of my sight. It took quite a long time to flutter to the ground. God said “Pick it up.” So I did. I thought maybe there would be something special about the leaf, but it was just an ordinary leaf, slightly scarred, but still perfectly intact. I carried the leaf into the chapel with me and put it in my pocket. The only person there was one of the women on the leadership team for the retreat. Very clearly, God impressed upon me that I should give her the leaf. It seemed like such a ridiculous request, and I thought she might think I was a little nuts, so I waited several minutes, asking God repeatedly to confirm to me that this was really a direction from Him and not just some random idea from my head. This is a common problem for me…so unsure of myself that I question even the Holy Spirit in me. Finally, as I realized that time was running out before the rest of the women would be arriving for chapel, I sputtered out the words. “Hey…do you have pockets?” She did. “I have no idea why, and we might never know why, but…please put this in your pocket.” I handed her the leaf. Without questioning, she looked at the leaf and then put it in her pocket. (I was kind of hoping that it would mean something to her right away so that I’d have some confirmation that this was from God, but no such luck.) After the chapel service, she came and asked me if she should still keep it in her pocket. God hadn’t given me any change of plans, so I just shrugged and said yes, just leave it there I guess. I was puzzled over the whole thing, really hoping that we would get an answer about why in the world that leaf was so important.

That night, she came up to me and said “I want you to know what I did with my leaf today. I put it in my Bible, and every time I look at it, I will remember you.” And she proceeded to speak some beautifully encouraging words to me. I was touched, of course, but I was still a little confused about the leaf. It seemed like there would be a bigger answer than that, some great revelation.

But as she turned and walked away, suddenly the truth hit me, and it took my breath away. "Oaks of righteousness…a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendor”. I’m pretty sure that it was a maple leaf, but whatever, the meaning was perfectly clear. God went through all that, having me follow the leaf, pick up the leaf, then take the risk of giving it to someone else and potentially looking like a fool, and waiting all afternoon and evening for an explanation, and having someone speak those words of encouragement to me and tell me that that leaf would make them remember me with such love…God orchestrated every detail of that in order to get His message to me in a clear and tangible way. I wouldn’t have really gotten it if I had just made the connection when I saw the leaf in the first place. No…I needed to hear the words spoken out loud to me in order to really hear them. Not to mention that fact that I needed to have my faith in the body of Christ restored after some very deep wounds, and I needed to be reassured once again that trusting people and being myself is worth the risk. And I needed to be reassured that God IS fulfilling the promise that He gave me through His word. I needed to be encouraged to keep running no matter what.

As soon as I had a chance, I called my friend back over and told her that I had been praying that verse from Isaiah every day for 5 months. And of course, there were tears and hugs and praises for Jesus and amazement at God’s goodness. That night, the evening before my birthday, I returned to my room to find a birthday card on my bed from the leadership team. When I opened it, the first signature that caught my eye was that of the friend to whom I had given the leaf. She had written: “The Lord has implanted you on my heart this weekend, Erika…” I quickly did a little math and couldn’t figure out how they could have possibly gotten this card signed and delivered to me since our last conversation. I RAN into her room and asked her when she had signed the card. Her answer…she signed it in a hurry that morning, hours before the leaf fell from the tree. I showed her what she had written, and there was yet another moment of awe and wonder. Another friend who was standing with her grinned at me and asked, "Do ya get it yet?” I laughed and said that I can be a little hard-headed sometimes and God has to tell me things over and over. But I’ll take God’s repetition here as an indication of just how important His message to me was. In the words of Pastor Gary Johnson, “If it’s repeated, it’s important!” This was so important that God was not going to give up on this one until I REALLY got it.

I can’t seem to write a post that doesn’t contain song lyrics, but since this one is already so long, I’ll post them separately up above. It’s a song that I wrote over the summer…the song of my heart.

Guard your heart

2009-10-08T07:25:00.001-04:00

I’m leaving this afternoon to work at a women’s Discipleship Walk retreat for the weekend. A year ago, I attended Discipleship Walk, and it was a major milestone in my walk with Christ. God works in different ways for each person, but for me, it was completely life-changing, and many other lives have been changed as a result of the work that God has done on weekends like this one. So to have the opportunity now, almost exactly a year later (and as a bonus, on my 30^th birthday), to go back and be some small part of making this retreat happen for 18 more women is so amazing, exciting, and also humbling.

Any time God is preparing for a major move in people’s lives, the enemy gets a little ticked off and starts meddling with the lives of the people who will be involved, and with their families, jobs, and other circumstances. It’s the spiritual equivalent of having a target on your back. At our team meetings, we were continually reminded to be fervent in prayer for other members of the team, and for the ladies who will be attending this weekend. As the weekend grew closer, the reminders turned into pleas, and the leaders kept impressing upon us just how important it was to bathe this experience in prayer so that the enemy wouldn’t get a foothold in any person’s life. Monday, as our last meeting before the weekend was concluding, one of the leaders spoke out some final words of advice... “Guard your heart this week!”

Throughout the week, those words have kept coming back to me. And I have, most definitely, guarded my heart. I have been so cautious, so aware of anything in my life that could give Satan an opportunity to distract me, discourage me, or take me down. I have been so focused, and my eyes have been opened to see things that are happening on a deeper spiritual level. I have been so fervent in prayer, so determined, not wanting to look to the right or left, but keeping my eyes fixed on Jesus. I have been running with perseverance the race marked out for me. I’m looking toward this weekend with eager expectation to see what God will do.

So my question is…WHY in the world don’t I do this ALL the time?

And, maybe more importantly, WHAT would happen if I did? If I covered every common, everyday routine event in my life with prayer this fervent…what would happen? It’s not necessarily about the amount of time spent in prayer, but the attitude behind it. If I lived each day fully committed to pressing on toward the goal for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus…what would happen?

I don’t know, but I hope and plan to find out!

My heart will choose to say...

2009-10-06T22:08:00.005-04:00

I turn 30 years old on Sunday. Now I don’t know whether everyone does this, but I have been introspective to the point of ridiculous cheesiness about my birthday this year.

I’ve never really understood the whole lie-about-your-age-and-dread-getting-older way of thinking. Maybe it’s because I have been blessed/cursed with a face that makes me look younger than I really am…embarrassingly younger. Not once, but twice in the last three years, I have answered the front door and been asked, "Is your mom home?" But honestly, I really don’t give any thought to trying to keep looking young, and I really don’t mind the thought of wrinkles or age lines or whatever they’re called. Even the gray hair that has been creeping in for several years already doesn’t bother me.

So I was thinking…WHY doesn’t this stuff bother me? Why do I actually look forward to starting a new decade in my life? Maybe it’s partly because I screwed up the last 3 (particularly the last 2) pretty badly, so of course I’m glad to start a new chapter in my life. Maybe it’s partly because, while I don’t look forward to the physical process of aging or (eventually) death, I have no fear about what my eternal future holds. Or maybe it’s because, although I am FAR from perfect, my life over the last few years has taken such a dramatic turn for the better in so many ways. For possibly the first time ever, I’m heading in the general direction of where I want my life to go, and I’m walking more closely with Jesus than I ever have before. I still get off course, make stupid attempts at shortcuts, and occasionally don’t know where in the heck I am, but at the end of the day (or sometimes the end of the week or month), I generally make some forward progress, and I trust the One who is leading me down the road.

And then I had another thought…and this one really bugs me. What if the reason I’m so pleased with life right now is that God has given me so many of the things that I want? Here’s an example…

Five years ago, my husband and I decided to have a baby, got pregnant the first month, and had the kid all but signed up for college before the pee on the stick was dry. Happy times, until…you can probably figure out the ending, but I seriously did NOT see it coming at the time. Ultrasound after ultrasound, blood work, OB visits, many weeks of uncertainty followed by devastation and grief, more weeks of waiting for my body to figure things out and miscarry (it never did), so there was a D&C and laparoscopic surgery, which caused a terrible infection and severe pain (one in a million complication, lucky me). Then came a year of trying to conceive again, with no explanation as to why it wasn’t happening, and considering the possibility that I might not be able to conceive a child again. And even worse, facing the demoralizing reality that even if we could come up with the money to adopt a child, I might not be deemed qualified to adopt because of the bipolar disorder, and I wasn’t willing to risk that kind of rejection. I was also under considerable stress, because I had my first full-time classroom teaching position. Thankfully, my students were the light of my life and gave me an opportunity to share some of the love that I would have shared with the child that I lost, but still the pressure of the job definitely added to the challenge of coping with the loss and enduring the wait for a child to raise. These were NOT the best of times, and the stress of it all sent me plummeting into the deepest depression I had ever experienced, and I struggled just to keep my head above water.

So what has changed? Well, after a year, I did get pregnant, and I have a healthy, beautiful 3 ½ year old daughter in the midst of her “terrible 3’s” that I wouldn’t trade for the world! And then, just so God could have a little chuckle on my account, I got pregnant again by surprise at the very first…uhh…opportunity after my daughter was born, and I now have a 2 ½ year old son who can melt my heart with his smile. By no means to these two amazing children replace the child that I lost, or take away the pain and grief that I still feel for that child who is waiting for me in heaven, but I’m truly in awe of how I have been blessed, and I love being a mom.

So back to my question…am I happy with where my life if going just because God eventually gave me what I asked for? Just because I have children to raise? Or just because I have a husband who loves me? Or just because I have a warm house and a soft bed to sleep in at night? Or just because I have what I consider to be the most amazing friends and church family in the world? Or just because God has healed my mind and taken away the bipolar disorder?

God knows every corner of my heart, and I am praying that He will search out any part of my faith and my joy that isn’t rooted firmly in HIM alone. If I had none of the things mentioned above, God would still be God, He would still be GOOD, and He would still be more than worthy of my praise. I never want to become so comfortable and pleased with what I have that I judge God’s character, or that I judge my own life, only by the things that I see in front of me.

Before my miscarriage, I sang on the church praise team. I’ve always been a worshipper and a singer, so it was something I absolutely loved doing, and it eventually helped me regain my focus on Jesus after going through the loss, although I stayed away from church altogether for a while. When I first started singing again, I was very numb. I sang the words and went through the motions, but my heart wasn’t really in it. (Yes, I’m aware that it’s not really okay for someone who leads others in worship to say that, but it’s true.) But there was one song that always got to me. It was literally painful to sing it, because I didn’t really mean it, and God would remind me of that fact every time I sang it...so I hated singing it, especially up there in front of all those people who I was sure could see right through me. Much to my dismay at the time, the worship leader, who didn’t know how I felt about it, chose this song approximately every other week. For two years. God would not let me hide, so my only option was to choose to learn how to sing it and mean it. I pray that I will NEVER forget it.

Blessed Be Your Name

In the land that is plentiful...

Where Your streams of abundance flow…

When I'm found in the desert place…

Though I walk through the wilderness…

When the sun's shining down on me…

When the world's 'all as it should be…

On the road marked with suffering…

Though there's pain in the offering…

Blessed be Your name

Every blessing You pour out

I'll turn back to praise

When the darkness closes in, Lord

Still I will say

Blessed be the name of the Lord

Blessed be Your name

Blessed be the name of the Lord

Blessed be Your glorious name

You give and take away

You give and take away

My heart will choose to say

Lord, blessed be Your name

(excerpts from Blessed Be Your Name by Matt Redman)

He says it was no accident.

2009-10-02T23:06:00.004-04:00

I was grumpy tonight.

Not mean grumpy, just grumpy. I spent the evening running errands in preparation for a very busy weekend. I was stressed and tired, and everything seemed to be taking longer than I thought it should. To top it all off, I had a good friend on my mind who is going through incomprehensible pain and grief right now, and I just can’t understand why in the world God is allowing such a tragedy in her life. As I ran my errands, God and I were having some words over it…and I was grumpy.

After a long and not entirely successful stop at Meijer, I headed for the checkout, only to discover that everyone else in town seemed to be at Meijer in the four checkout lanes that were open. A woman in a motorized wheelchair saw me scoping out the lines, and she kindly suggested that I get in line behind her, because she had just looked at all the other lanes and said this one was by far the shortest and fastest. So I did, the annoyance of having to wait in line adding a little to my grumpiness.

I tend to be the type of person who smiles at and talks to people in checkout lanes, so the woman in the wheelchair and I struck up some chit-chat, pondering the absurdity of an 8:30 Friday evening trip to Meijer and wondering out loud what all these people were doing here. Just chit-chat. I was drawn to this woman. After a couple minutes, I learned that her name was Shirley. She seemed to be spunky and determined, and her very, very short grayish hair hinted that her determination had been hard-won. And then…

“I had to come. I had to get out of the house.”

Hmm…wonder where this is going. I wasn’t sure I was really up for this tonight of all nights, but of course, I asked her why. She started telling me about her family. She lives with her son (who is disabled), daughter-in-law, and grandchildren. I was moved by how honestly and freely she shared some very difficult struggles that are going on in their home. Suddenly I realized that I was no longer eager for the line to move, but I was trying to squeeze every moment out of this encounter. And then...

“I’m a miracle woman, you know.”

Again, of course, I asked for details. Shirley shared that she is 6 months in remission from a cancer so deadly that the last person she knew with this type of cancer died 9 days after the diagnosis. It’s so difficult to detect, she said, that it’s usually stage 4 before it is even discovered. With a gleam in her eyes, she told me how she had become ill with pneumonia, and in the process they had accidentally caught her cancer at stage 1. She had endured a long course of treatment with chemotherapy, and they had radiated her brain to protect her from tumors. She laughed as she happily told me that she had lost 50 pounds, though it wasn’t during the treatments, it was afterward that her stomach decided that enough was enough. She was quite happy to recognize a blessing that had come out of her struggle, and she looked healthy and strong.

Shirley had an energy about her, a sense of boldness, determination, and unabashed appreciation for life, even on this evening when she, too, had left home grumpy. I just knew that God had placed me in that spot at that moment for a reason. I kept thinking of the words "for such a time as this”. Then I very clearly heard God prompting me to ask her if I could pray for her…right there in the checkout lane at Meijer.

Now I know God has really been calling me out of my comfort zone lately, but this was getting a little ridiculous. I hesitated and asked God if He was REALLY sure.

He was.

”Umm…this might be the strangest thing that anyone has ever asked you in the checkout lane at the grocery store, but…can I pray for you right now?” (squints eyes and waits for rejection)

“Of course you can!” So I took her hand, and we prayed…right there in the checkout lane. I thanked God for Shirley, her healing and her story, and for the blessing that she is to her family. I asked that Shirley would return home with peace tonight and that God would work good things out in their household. I was very aware that my words were ordinary, and I didn’t know whether they would mean anything at all to Shirley, but I knew that God heard and would make sense out of them somehow. When we got done praying, Shirley flashed her spunky smile, thanked me, and said…

“I have always had a very strong faith. Now it’s time for me to share it with the world.”

She said that she thinks it’s important to share her story, because you never know who might need the encouragement.

I told her that tonight, it was me.

We continued talking as we waited for a few more minutes. She shared more about her family and her miracle healing with gut-wrenching candor and honesty, but never bitterness. I told her I was so glad that she never gave up. She didn’t seem to think that giving up had ever been an option. As the cashier rang up Shirley’s groceries, her husband pulled up in his motorized wheelchair. They were a little too far away for me to hear their conversation, but I could tell Shirley was telling him about our conversation. (I think he might have been watching us from a distance for a while.) And I heard her husband say the words, “It was no accident.” Wanting to make sure I had heard, Shirley grinned and excitedly shouted back to me…”Did you hear him? He says it was no accident!” I grinned back and agreed. After another set of smiles and thank-yous, we went our separate ways, but Shirley’s words kept echoing back to me.

“Did you hear him? He says it was no accident!”

Yes, my wonderful, gentle, all-knowing, loving Father. I heard you loud and clear.

choices and sin

2009-10-01T13:08:00.000-04:00

After reading about the experiences in my last post, I imagine that some people might react with sympathy and pity for poor Erika and what she had to endure. So this is a good time to address the issue of sin, and the choices that I made for myself. It’s not a happy topic, but it’s so important. I don’t for a moment look back at my life and think that I never had any control over my situation. In fact, some of my close friends have discovered that if you try to suggest the “poor innocent little Erika” viewpoint in response to my past, I can get a little cranky…so if you know me, take my advice and don’t go there. Yes, there were definitely times when my body, mind, and spirit were so oppressed and sick that I couldn’t think or choose for myself. But the overwhelming majority of the time, I had choices, and even when it was difficult to make the right choices, they were mine to make.

I have said before that my mental illness had lots of causes and factors. I imagine that the same is true for everyone who struggles with depression or any mental illness. Brain chemistry, genetic predisposition, physical health, spiritual health, spiritual warfare, personality, emotional coping skills, thoughts, beliefs…I could go on and on, but you get the idea. It’s complicated, and I’m very skeptical of anyone who claims otherwise. We are complicated. After all, we were created by a God whose understanding has no limit. (see Psalm 147:4-5) I suspect that, for each person, the combination of factors that causes depression is a little different. So on the issue of sin, I can only speak for myself. I have no idea who (if anyone) will read this blog, and I would be devastated if anything I said here did anything to discourage someone who is experiencing depression right now, or to bring any false guilt or shame on them. Part of depression is the tendency to feel guilty and ashamed for no reason at all, or for things that aren’t your responsibility. If this is you or someone you know, PLEASE hear me when I say…sin does not play a part in all depression or mental illness. PLEASE hear me when I say…No matter what you’ve done, God looks on you with love and compassion, and the blood of Jesus is MORE than enough to cover anything you’ve got! And PLEASE hear me when I say…God is in the business of changing minds and hearts, and He will never give up on you! That’s part of my reason for sharing what God has done in my life…because if His grace is sufficient for me, then I promise it’s MORE than enough for anyone!

Although I do believe that my depression at times became so severe that I wasn’t always in control of my thoughts and my actions, I can point to so many times in my journey when I made choices that set me up for a fall or sent me deeper and deeper into the pit. I generally had other options in front of me, but I chose what seemed easiest, most familiar, or most self-serving. I always had the choice of whether to ask for help and be honest about what I was thinking and feeling, but I rarely did it. I chose to hide the truth. Jesus said “the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)

I rarely made good choices when it came to where I placed my trust. I generally chose not to trust people. The Bible says that love always trusts. (1 Cor 13:7) There were a few people whom I did trust along the way, but I generally leaned on them TOO heavily, relying only on them rather than on God. Again, sin. (see Psalm 118:8) I chose to trust myself sometimes, and to trust God rarely. The Bible says “He who trusts in himself is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom is kept safe.” (Proverbs 28:26) And we’re instructed “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” (Proverbs 3:5)

For a long time, I really didn’t make any effort to expose the lies that I was thinking and believing about myself. The truth was placed before me by some amazingly caring people that God placed in my life, but I never sincerely asked God to help me understand it, because I didn’t want to accept it even if it turned out to be true. It was more comfortable, I thought, to just stay where I was. Changing the way you think is NOT usually an overnight process, but I chose not to even begin the process or ask for God’s help until I was already pretty deep into the pit.

I also made some really terrible choices about how to cope with the emotional pain that I was experiencing. I did whatever I could to just make the pain stop in the short-term, and some of the things that I chose to do were incredibly self-destructive. They were sin. And the dangerous thing about sin is that the more we allow it into our lives, the more space it takes up. Satan is a lot of things, but stupid is NOT one of them. He aims right for the weak places in our lives if we leave them uncovered, and if we make the choice, just one time, to allow sin into a particular place, it widens the crack a little more so that we have less and less defense, and soon we find that the seemingly insignificant foothold that we gave to the enemy has become a powerful stronghold. At least that’s how it happened for me. One example: When I was 12 or 13, I began cutting myself as a quick-fix to momentarily ease the emotional pain and to feel some relief from the guilt that I felt (both actual justified guilt and a vague emotional feeling of guilt). Unfortunately, as sin always does, it left me a lot worse off in the long run…feeling MORE guilty, ashamed, depressed, and tortured than before. But by the time I figured that out, it was nearly impossible to stop. It quickly became a powerful stronghold and addiction. I fought that addiction well into adulthood, and it’s only by the grace and power of God that I can say that it is completely gone from my life now.

So here’s the big question…what if? What if I had made all the right choices? Would I still have struggled with depression? Well, only God knows for certain, but I’m pretty sure the answer is yes, it still would have been a struggle for me in some way. It’s possible to experience depression, even very serious depression, without being in such complete mental, emotional, and spiritual torment. But regardless of what the outcome might have been, I can’t change the past, so I’m not going to sit around fretting about it. Been there, done that. It made me miserable and got me nowhere. Jesus paid the price for ALL of my sins when He became sin for me and gave his life on the cross. There’s nothing more to be done except to live a life of repentance and love for Him.

I heard this song for the first time several months ago, and it has become one of my favorite songs, and sort of an anthem for my life right now. As is becoming my custom, I’ll leave you with some lyrics…

It’s time for letting go of all of our “if onlies”

Cause we don’t have a time machine.

And even if we did, would we really want to use it?

Would we really want to go change everything?

Cause we are who and where and what we are right now,

And this is the only moment we can do anything about.

So breathe it in and breathe it out,

And listen to your heartbeat.

There’s a wonder in the here and now.

It’s right there in front of you,

And I don’t want you to miss

The miracle of the moment.

(from the song Miracle of the Moment by Steven Curtis Chapman)

my future decided

2009-09-30T21:43:00.000-04:00

So I feel like I’m supposed to share this story, although I don’t really know the reason for it. I have been trying to come up with a “point”, some great Biblical lesson or eloquent rhetoric, but I’ve got nothin’. Yet I still feel like this should be shared, even if it’s just for the sake of me writing it.

When I was 16, I was hospitalized in the psychiatric ward for several weeks because I was so deeply depressed and suicidal. I’m grateful that I was physically safe from myself while I was there, but the experience was terribly traumatic for me. I remember the humiliation of it all so clearly that I feel like throwing up just thinking about it right now. I remember the body cavity searches and the viewing holes in the bathroom doors so that the staff could watch me at all times. I remember having to eat with only a spoon, not being allowed to use a spiral notebook for a journal, and having to take the shoelaces out of my shoes so that I wouldn’t have any way to hurt myself. I remember having to sleep on a mattress on the floor in front of the nurses’ station until I earned the privilege of sleeping inside a nearby room with the door open. I remember being called an addict when I persisted in asking for some Advil for really bad cramps, and I remember having to open my mouth and show that it was empty after they gave me any medication. I remember the courtyard that was completely enclosed with bars and fencing, even overhead. I remember looking into the padded isolation room, and I remember seeing a room with a couple of patients strapped into their beds with restraints. I remember watching the nurses and security guards tackle a girl who tried to run from her unit, inject her with a sedative, and then carry her away. Even at the time, I understood the practical reasons for all of those things, but that didn’t make them any less terrifying…in fact, I think it made me even more scared, because I realized just what a desperate and helpless condition I was in. I share these details so you’ll have a little picture of just how much of a nightmare that stay in the hospital was for me. In my mind, it was the worst possible fate, worse than death, and I associated it with complete worthlessness, helplessness, and loss of control. This, I told myself, was not the life of a precious, beloved daughter of the King. This was a life of utter ruin. For years afterward, I had terrible nightmares and post-traumatic “flashback” experiences related to the stay in the hospital, and although I have come a long way since then, I still have them occasionally.

Although I was never very open in talking with the staff, I generally followed the rules and was overly cooperative while I was there, just desperately wanting the experience to be over. (Unfortunately, that didn’t work to my advantage, because apparently they know that generally only teenagers who are really depressed actually follow rules, so my stay ended up being longer than most.) But there was one nurse in particular, C, with whom I did not get along. C was intimidating, and I avoided her whenever possible, always praying that a different person would be assigned to me for the next talk session. I remember her giving the group a talk one day about how if we didn’t get our act together and start making better choices with our lives, we would end up right back there in the hospital, and those of us who were nearing age 18 would go to the adult unit next time, and this unit was a picnic compared to the adult unit. Nice pep talk. On the day that I was discharged, C, apparently trying to motivate me to make better choices in the future, looked me straight in the eyes and said, “You’ll be back.”

In that moment, her words, “You’ll be back,” were seared into my mind and my heart. She intended them to serve as motivation so that I would not let them come true. I accepted them as inevitable truth. Despite good intentions, that nurse had spoken a curse into my life, and I was held in its grip for years. I had no doubt that my future would lead to more stays in the hospital, and eventually, to ending my own life...it was just a matter of time. It became my identity. I lived a defeated life that was focused on minimizing the pain, trying not to let the world figure out who I really was, and trying to just be good so that my life wouldn’t be a total waste. Even at times when I wasn’t depressed and life was going well, I still accepted what I thought was my sure fate. It’s strange seeing these words on the computer screen right now, because it’s so obvious that they’re ridiculous lies from Satan, and it’s hard even for me to comprehend how I didn’t recognize that for so long.

Because of what I believed about my identity, growing and maturing in my faith and relationship with God was a very slow and inconsistent process. I did grow, but it was many years later before the truth about who I am in Christ, and who Christ is in me, began to sink in. I remember in high school psychology class, we learned about cognitive dissonance, the concept that a person can’t continue to hold two contradictory attitudes or beliefs for very long. So as I began to process the truth that I was a daughter of God, and that He had a plan for my life to prosper me and not to harm me, I had to face the lies that I had believed for so long, and the fear that came with them. Part of the process for me included actually visiting the hospital where I had been all those years before, because I had such a fear of that place that I couldn’t even drive near it. With the support of an incredibly patient and compassionate friend, I went and stood outside of the building and cried out to God to speak truth to me and help me believe it. The curse was broken, Satan was stomped on, and I experienced a whole new kind of freedom starting that day. It wasn’t the end of my depression by any means, but it was a big turning point in my walk with Jesus.

Looking back on the hospitalization and remembering how completely ruined I felt isn’t fun, but honestly, now I can look back at that experience with complete trust that God was with me even there. I think that’s really important, to choose to let the light of truth shine in the most dark, desperate places of our memories. I take great hope in knowing that no part of the path that I was on turned out of God’s reach or His love, because I know that same truth applies to my future too.

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39

And as He stands in victory
Sin's curse has lost it's grip on me
For I am His and He us mine
Bought with the precious blood of Christ
No guilt in life, no fear in death
This is power of Christ in me
From life's first cry to final breath
Jesus commands my destiny

No power of hell, no scheme of man
Can ever pluck me from His hand
'Til He returns or calls me home
Here in the power of Christ I'll stand

(From the song In Christ Alone by Stuart Townend/Keith Getty)

fear

2009-09-28T11:58:00.000-04:00

Can you imagine living without fear?

That's the question Beth Moore asked last night in the Bible study on Esther that I'm doing with my small group. It took a while for that to really sink in, but my conclusion is…honestly, no. I don’t think I can even imagine that! I don’t think I’m alone when I say that fear impacts nearly everything I do. I hate that fact, but it’s true. I often refuse to take risks, I hold back from giving my all, I worry, and I choose familiarity and comfort over the unknown places that God calls me to. I know I’m not alone in doing these things, but that’s not an excuse. The most frequent command given in the Bible is DON’T BE AFRAID. And doing anything less than what God commands is sin. I don’t point that out in order to add shame to the fear, I’m just saying that if we just passively accept fear and make no attempt to face it in the light of truth, then we’re not being obedient followers of Jesus. Stinks, doesn’t it?

When I do face a fear and step out of my cozy little box, I am always blessed, and I am always glad that I took the step, even if there is pain involved (which there often is). It really is such an awesome and beautiful moment when we step out onto thin air according to God’s direction and trust that He will place solid ground under our feet. I've seen it happen so many times, and I've experienced it myself, and I know how amazing it is. So why, then, as soon as the next scary unknown step comes along, do I turn into a wimp again? You’d think that I would know by now that I have nothing to fear. Seriously, NOTHING.

When my friends come to me with worries, I always have the same conversation with them. We have labeled it the “worst case scenario” game, and my friends find it quite annoying. It’s simple…Start with the fear, decide what you’re afraid could happen, and then follow it to the end result. I’m afraid that this will happen, because then this could happen and then this could happen, etc. When you arrive at the end, the “worst case scenario”, ask yourself…If that thing happens, is God still God? The answer, of course, is always yes. And if God is still God, then our past, present, and future are perfectly secure, so we really have nothing to worry about. (Or, in the words of David Moscrip, “Oh well!”) Simple concept, but applying it is SO difficult sometimes!!! Last night, Beth Moore was talking about facing our fears, and she recommended, almost word for word, my “worst case scenario” game that I thought I had come up with myself. Clearly, God is telling me that I need to take my own advice!

When I started this blog, I took a leap so far out of my comfort zone that I can’t even see it anymore! Although I am completely confident that this is the right thing to do and the right time to do it, to say that it’s scary for me is a serious understatement. Here’s one more quote from the video last night… “You may be one brave decision away from the most important turn in your entire path.” Writing this blog is wonderful and exciting and freeing for me, and I definitely have a sense of destiny, that I’m finally stepping out and making one of those brave decisions that marks a crucial turn in the path of my life. But the enemy is doing everything he can to try to take me down with fears and insecurities. I want to continue to be obedient to God, not just in doing the things that God calls me to do, but in HOW I do them…with boldness, courage, and a heart abandoned to the God who has designed my destiny.

Random thoughts on strength and weakness

2009-09-27T15:11:00.000-04:00

“Wonderfully Plagued” was the title of the sermon that my friend gave this morning, and I just can’t get the topic off of my mind. The sermon was about God’s strength being made perfect in our weakness, which is a huge theme in my life. The concept is pretty simple: God can use us despite our weaknesses…and sometimes even because of them. God uses our weaknesses to do things that our strength never could do. In the Bible, we find example after example of people who shouldn’t have been “useable”…Paul, David, Moses, Gideon, just to name a few. My friend suggested that God may have chosen to use the people he chose to use so that we, thousands of years later, can look back and say, “Hey, if God can use that guy, why not me?” I wholeheartedly agree. It wasn’t by coincidence that God chose a murderer (Moses) to lead the Israelites out of slavery, or an adulterer (David) to establish Israel as we know it. It’s hard to comprehend how the mind of God can see through all time, but I know that He had me in mind when he chose to use those people and then write about them for future generations to read. After many (many) attempts to live in my own strength, fix my own problems, and make myself into the person I wanted to be so that I could be useful to God, I finally understand that it just isn’t possible, and that God is the one who will either make me stronger, use me in my weakness, or both.

I was fully healed from the bipolar disorder roughly 3 years ago. There was no magic moment for me when I suddenly went from disaster to victory…or if there was, I’m not aware of when it happened. The problem was that even after I was healed, I didn’t accept it for quite a long time. Why? Well, mostly I was scared. I wrote earlier today about the fear, and the “waiting for the other shoe to drop” mindset. I was not willing to step out and say, to myself, God, or other people, that I was completely healed, because…what if? So although I was not depressed and had no other symptoms, I was still living in defeat.

So what changed? Well, long story short, God finally got through to me and showed me that my fear was really about pride…wanting to be strong and in control and able to fix myself and know for sure that I would never struggle again. But God doesn’t want me to be strong. He wants to BE my strength. He wants me to trust that His strength is perfect in me, not just believe that He’ll teach me how to "be better". I’m not in the place where I am in life right now because I’m strong. I’m here because I’m weak, and I KNOW I’m weak, and I trust God to work through that.

I usually don’t have trouble trusting God to give me strength for the gigundo God-sized things in my life. If the bar is set so high that it’s obvious I can’t make it over, I tend to close my eyes, reach my arms out, and jump, trusting God to grab ahold of my arms and lift me over the rest of the way. I do, however, find it incredibly difficult to rely on God with the things that don’t appear to be too far out of my own reach. If it looks like there’s any chance I could do it myself, I’m probably going to try to do it myself. And I’m probably going to fail. It makes no sense…why would I ever want to try it on my own? But I do. And I really screw it up sometimes. But I’m learning, more and more often, to seek God FIRST, and to surrender the little strength that I do have to Him so that He can use His own strength to work in me. God and I are not a team. He’s the one doing all the work, and He can work in spite of, or because of, my weaknesses if I’ll just be a willing vessel.