Grace Falls

 

I hear the sounds echoing through the house.  Deafening.  Wrestling siblings.  And the cackles and giggles end in the wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Just like it always does.  Baby Girl emerges victorious this time.  Bubbs screaming louder than usual.  He claims an injury to his arm, pain inflicted by his older sister.  Or at least this is what I gather between gasps for air as I make out his sister’s name every fifth word.  And he’s not moving his arm. At all.  So we wait. 

Hours later, he’s still not moving it.  I contemplate the emergency room.  But it’s still not swollen.  It’s not black and blue.  And we are still paying for the staples that mended his head whole from the last injury.  So a quick conference with the Chef and it’s decided.  Wait.  And see. 

While we wait, a snow storm moves in. I watch the round flakes fall soft to the earth.  A storm always seems to start quiet.  I scan the landscape and watch the quiet beautiful falling straight from heaven.  It’s raining mercy on this dry land.  And as this frozen wonder tumbles favor, the wind moves in sharp, sure. And it spreads winter grace furiously.  When it’s all said and done, this stark white gift covers the ugly barren land clean, new.  And it gathers to fill the empty plum full.  Amazing grace is a sweet sound, but it’s also a sweet sight.  I take in the fresh landscape and I try desperately to sear my heart with the image.  This is what He has done for me.  Taken the ugly, unspeakable and made it into something beautiful, new, presentable.  The crimson stain now white as snow.  Amazing, this grace he lays over us.

 

The storm comes.  And it goes.  And Bubbs, he’s still not moving his arm.  So we head to the doctor.  The gifts are still raining favor.  An early appointment with our doctor and a clear driveway thanks to the Chef who pumps Alaskan blood and shovels while it’s still snowing.  The doctor is quick in his assessment.  Nurse-maid’s elbow.  A dislocation of sorts and a quick flick of the forearm should set it back right.  I try not to throw up on the doctor and I hear little after he says “dislocation”.  Clearly I’ve seen too many movies.  I wonder if my “Boy Mom” card is waiting at the front desk or if they’ll just send it in the mail.  I decide not to ask.

The doctor takes hold of his arm and Bubbs is already whimpering.  I take my position next to him and tell him to look at me.  I whisper all the mama things I can think to say.  I see the doctor flinch and Bubbs starts crying loud.  Dislocation located.  The doctor leaves me to my mama work and I grip Bubbs close.  And his tears are falling fast and the crying is turning to screaming and I do the only thing I know to do.  The only thing that has calmed either of my children since they were babies. 

I sing. 

Amazing Grace.  

And somehow, he thinks the sound is sweet.  A grace all its own.  And as I sing this familiar hymn, my parched soul is drenched by each carefully chosen word, quenched by the grace-ringing truth of it all. 

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.” 

And as the next line rolls off my tongue, “that saved a wretch like me”, I drink in every rich syllable, take hold of the truth again. And I beg God that I can hold on to it this time. On my own, I am a wretch.  I can do no better than that.  But grace. Amazing grace and this wretch can dwell in the shelter of the Most High.  How can this be?

 I’m still singing and he stopped heaving breaths and crying tears verses ago.  He’s calm, drinking in grace with me as I sing.  He gently reaches for his sister, whispers her name, the one that put him on that table needing his bones reset.  He extends his hand to her, extending grace.  And the amazing comes when she reaches back.  Let’s herself be held by us all.  Accepts the grace offered.

 

And I see it again, right there in that moment. The grace that falls on us, it’s not to be collected and stored but poured out fast and sure, spreading like the furious wind to those around us.  Generously give this unmerited favor that falls on us all – hand it out every chance I get.  Because after all, I am only a wretch.  And yet,  “He has clothed me in garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness.” 

Lord, may I never withhold the grace you have given.  May I never be stingy with life-saving, heart-healing unmerited favor.  Unmerited.  May I always remember the depths of the slimy pit You pulled me out of, deeper than most and still not beyond Your reach. And, Lord, when I forget these things, because You know I will, may I never forget Your grace falls still, making all things new. Amen.

My Discipleship Curriculum

I’ve discovered something about myself. I’m hopelessly Type A with a ridiculously free spirit.  I’m not sure how those two things live within the same soul but here I am.  A big picture gal with a screaming desire for perfectly organized spaces.  A dreamer that builds plans I don’t follow.  An intensely creative spirit that pencils projects in my Day-Timer.   A detailed list maker that abandons it all at the first sign of a warm, sunny day.  It’s complicated.  Just ask the Chef.

So, when it comes to matters of the soul, these rivals battle against each other and I’m at a loss as to how to make disciples out of four-foot tall, strong-willed little humans, let alone all nations.  All these ideas floating in my brain begging to be organized into curriculum but there are books to read and songs to play air guitar to and pictures to draw and coloring contests to have and God’s marvelous creation to discover and laundry to do and meals to cook and people to love...  and would you look at that!  It’s 80 degrees.  So when do I find the time for the pen to hit the paper for a "discipleship curriculum".

And, the entire call overwhelms me to fear of failure. That I will fail to make Jesus known to my children. That I will fail to impress their hearts with His living, active word.  That I will fail to unearth these diamonds in the rough to shine for the Kingdom of God.  That I will fail to show them a lost and broken world in desperate need of the Body of Christ, of Christ Himself. 

And when I’m able to catch my breath, I breathe in deep and remember.  “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”

With thanksgiving.  Thank you, God.  Thank you for these four-foot tall, strong-willed little humans you placed in my care.  Thank you that my life’s work is this high calling to make disciples, with You by my side leading the way. Thank you that You are really the One who will unearth these diamonds.  May they shine for You.  May we all.

My first instinct, driven by the Type A part of my brain, is to search high and low for an effective discipleship program, a curriculum.  Something that tells me exactly what to say, what to do, complete with fun, field trips and authenticity built right in.  Where is that discipleship program that Jesus used?  How did the Master of discipleship do it wrapped in flesh? 

He lived. For God. Abided in Him. Had a heart perfectly positioned toward Him.  So He knew the Father’s will.   I’m certain Jesus did not have an outline or a calendar.  He had the voice of God.

And, He communed with the Father.
 

“Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”  (Mark 1:35)

“But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” (Luke 5:16)

If He was awake, He was in the Father's presence. 

As He communed, He displayed servant leadership.
 

He didn't work behind the scenes and reveal a masterpiece at the end. He invited his disciples into His life.  Come. Follow me. Let me show you what I’m up to. Let me show you how I do it.  On His way to heal the sick and lame, feed the multitudes, raise the dead…. Come. Follow me. Let me show you how the Kingdom can come. Now.

He was intimate and real. He didn't need a curriculum for discipleship.  He submitted to the Father and allowed His actions, His life to speak for itself.  He spoke the Truth and many believed.  When He took people with Him to raise the dead, He didn’t first offer a weekend conference on Raising the Dead.  He displayed His faith, His spiritual discipline, His obedience, His courage to go where the Father led Him.

 

And, above all else, He loved extravagantly.

He loved the Father without apology and without compromise. He was seen praying. He was seen healing. He was seen weeping. He was genuine and loving with everyone He encountered. He healed with His hands. He ministered from the heart. He knew the Father and His word. 

He discipled out of an overflow of His relationship with the Father and He discipled within the relationships of His followers. He ate with them, traveled with them, and didn't hide His need for spiritual authenticity with the Father, daily.  Nothing about what He did here on earth was about tasks.  It was all about people.  Brothers and sisters of His Father in Heaven who needed Him... more than they knew.

So what does all that mean to my mothering, to my calling to participate in unearthing these diamonds in the rough. This is about when my mind screams for a curriculum that my heart can use.  Study this Scripture, say this prayer, tell this story. Sieve out this moral and conclude this godly character trait.

But Jesus, aside from God’s word, had no curriculum. Only a spirit-filled life. Spirit. Filled.

So when I’m sitting in my quiet, morning spot studying God’s word and my children catch me, that’s part of my discipleship curriculum.

When my children see me on my knees praying to a God who asks me to pray without ceasing, and there’s not a meal in sight, that’s part of my discipleship program. 

When K-Love is blasting in the kitchen and my children see me stop what I'm doing to lift my hands and praise this God that can’t be contained in a building on Sundays, that’s part of my discipleship program.

When we make meals for the broken, say I’m sorry, forgive each other, love each other, participate in a random act of kindness, stop in the middle of negativity to pray, explore God’s creation, help a stray dog, invite others into our home, serve at church, pray for the lost and needy all over the globe, read daily from God’s word, it’s all part of my His discipleship program.

When I bend to listen to their tiny voices full of needs, offer gentle hands, gentle words, gentle rebuke, gentleness. When I stop the tasks to see their faces, forget the law to see the miracles, when I read to them on the couch, curl up in their beds at night for pillow talk, dish out a Wacky Wednesday, leave a messy house for their favorite adventure, serve them out of love by doing a chore for them, discipline them for a foolish choice – it’s all part of this divine discipleship curriculum because it is developing the relationships that open the doors to their hearts. 

When I fall but refuse to stay down, when I cry out to the God who redeems and delivers and covers me clean in grace, when I can't breathe or speak but can let the Name above all names roll off my tongue and they see the darkness flee, that's part of it, too.
 

And when they ask questions about God’s creation or God Himself, and I have to Google it or crack open the Bible to try to answer them, it tells them how big our God really is.  Even Mom doesn’t have all the answers… and I hope they can see in me a faith that moves mountains even when I don’t have all the answers.  But I also hope that it lights a path to all the mysteries of God that can be found in Jesus, who disciples us all.

Fear.

Sometimes, I try this idea of writing simply to spill thoughts on a page, for love of the written word, using a prompt from various sources. How? I start and end a post in 15 minutes. The professionals, they do five minutes. I do fifteen.And then I share what fifteen minutes gets me. Just fifteen minutes. Unscripted. Unedited. Real.I thank you in advance for enfolding me in your crazy grace.

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Today's Prompt:  FEAR

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I lay next to him in the dark because my presence is still enough to conquer his fears.  I’m squeezed next to his tiny body on a twin-sized bed that swallows his frame and I think how big he seems when he’s moving at the speed of life.  But in the silence, surrounded by his fear, I realize how small he really is and how this spinning sphere stands still when we are trembling in the shadows. And I whisper thanks that I’m the first soldier he calls to the battlefield and I pray that I am teaching him well about the One who comes with me, the One who goes ahead of us both.  The One who lights up a room because in Him there is no darkness.

Fear… it starts small in a child’s bedroom with the nocturnal sounds and the long shadows and the dark of night. 

Over time, it grows into adult-sized worry, or even full-on paralysis, keeping God-sized dreams in the shadows of our anxiety.  As I lay there, he has no idea I’m battling fears of my own.  He called on me because he thinks I’m courageous.  He called on me because He knew I’d come. 

As we nestle together and dream our what-ifs right there in the dark where danger lurks, I start to hear Jesus’ words in his deep, tiny boy voice sharing wishes that are bigger than both of us.  A child doesn’t know how to think within walls or dream with rules and boundaries or put limits on possibilities.  A child believes all things are possible as long as you have a Friend to walk with through the darkness, past your circumstances.  

“With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26)

He finally lets go, exhales his fears to the ground as his eyelids close soft.  I watch him breathe for a minute before I get up.  As I walk the steps from his bed to the door in quiet darkness, I smile knowing I’m in the presence of a great Friend, both in the darkness and the light.  And I pray that when the darkness closes in, suffocating my dreams, I can muster the courage to speak one word.

Jesus.

 

 

The Lord is my light and my salvation - 

  whom shall I fear?

The Lord is the stronghold of my life - of whom shall I be afraid?

 

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.

 

Hear my voice when I call, O Lord;

  be merciful to me and answer me.

 

My heart says of you, "Seek his face!"

  Your face, Lord, I will seek. 

 

(Psalm 27:1, 4, 7-8)

Dance With Me

It takes a lot to halt a man.  He was made for labor.  Says so right in Genesis. 

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” 

Even before the fall, man was made to work, to move, to find purpose with his hands.  The fall only made his work harder.  So when a man is laid up on a couch for whatever reason, my heart can’t help but ache.  Because it takes a lot to halt my man.

Man was made to take care of the garden he was given.  Protect and provide.  And it was not good for him to be alone.  What if he gets sick?  So God ripped bone right from his flesh to provide him a help-meet. 

“But for Adam, no suitable helper was found.  So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.”

As a helper.

Wrapping my tiny little mind around this mighty big God who created men for labor and women as helpers in the midst of a you-can-do-anything-be-anything, me-me-me culture is nearly impossible.  God’s intentions get lost in a world that believes equality comes by way of dominance and supremacy.  My surroundings tell me I can be CEO, President of the Board, of the country!  My surroundings tell me I should want to be those things. Certainly more than a helper.

But God wants my surroundings to be full of Him. And He wants me to see things differently.  So He has been showing me His purpose for man and woman, His perfect design as He created them and established them in holy matrimony right there in Eden, walking with them for a breath before the fall. Equal but different. 

I see the pure perfection of what he intended, the beautiful dance He set to music… before that fateful encounter with a slimy serpent who unleashed a belief that helping is worth something less than the actual labor, that helping doesn’t involve labor. 

I’ve done labor.  But my labor was in vain.  I built a career holed up in a high rise of pride surrounded by concrete hearts looking down on the path my feet were meant to walk on.  I’ve had the burden of expectations, the pressure of performance, the responsibility of provision.  I’ve walked the lonely road full of people who want more of you than there actually is, feeling the weight of my failures as I pass by each one of them. I’ve seen the darkness of a world that infects the space where Holy dwells.  And it started eroding my woman heart to help anyone but myself.  Because my heart was only full of myself.  And I needed a Helper.  Someone to help me see what is true and sure.  All this made me think maybe my husband could use help to see it too.


God, He chooses different paths for each of us.  And He knew I couldn’t find Victory on a path like this, on a path where I was fighting to be the victor.  But, for those who are asked to turn the soil, it can be a hard, dark place.  After one small bite from a forbidden fruit.  Painful toil.  Thorns and thistles.  And somehow we are to bear fruit. How did this happen?

“When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.”

Right there in the abundant orchard communing daily with God, at the last perfect moment of human existence, it was Eve who influenced man to eat from the tree.  Woman. The helper.  She helped us all right out of Eden. Man is to blame too.  I get that.  But the influence of woman in this moment was greater than what man knew to be true about God and His commands.  It was like a needle scratching across a record in the middle of a beautiful waltz.  It threw everything off.  And we’ve been straining to hear the rhythm through the noise ever since.

I have sought desperately to understand the godly husband and wife in the midst of the culture we live in.  The message that tries to engulf me is in direct opposition of what He intended.  Being a helper might be about laundry or dishes or dinner or child rearing, which our culture seems to frown upon. It might even be about my contribution of labor.  But, really isn’t it about my influence?  Isn't that how I can help most?  While my husband is out turning the soil and enduring cuts from the thorns and thistles, isn't this when I can be the most helpful, tending to his wounds with the salve of God's word?  By making sure my voice echoes what is sure and true, what is godly.  By influencing him to be the man God intended him to be? Because it’s not about me at all.  Or him. It’s about God.  

It's a rare source that implores me to do this, to serve my husband in a way that would bring out his godliness.  But what would happen to our generation of men if they had godly wives by their sides influencing them and building them up. Whether in heels at the office or bare foot in the kitchen. What if I was supporting his efforts and encouraging his dreams… so the word of God spread.  What if I, the helper, the woman, his wife, surrendered all that I am to God, let the Holy Spirit run wild in me and within me birthed wisdom that turned into influence for the glory of Christ.  What if I could influence him away from the forbidden fruit towards the very heart of God?  What if…

This subject has way too much theology wrapped up in it for me, the average Christ-follower, to neatly unfold and understand, let alone wow you.  And it’s full of controversy I don’t mean to engage in.  I’m just wrestling through what it means for my marriage.  What it looks like to help my husband, to influence my Chef for the kingdom of God... so the word of God spreads – to our children, to their children, to our neighbors and beyond.

This is hard, really hard.  And, it’s complicated, truly complicated. It’s relationship. And very little about relationships is easy.  Sacrifice and humility are certainly required.  Because most of the time my flesh wants to scream, “I want more!”  But my spirit knows better.  My spirit knows to spill continual thanks straight to heaven. Because this is more.

My spirit knows to offer constant, sweet whispers in the Chef’s ear too, regardless of our circumstances or how I feel in the moment.  Because opportunities for influence hardly ever come when I am in the mood.

"I love the way you love us. You are an amazing man. I see God in you and I know He has amazing things for us. Not amazing like the world sees amazing. Better than that.  God is holding us in the desert, in this land between. Our manna is still falling all around us. Don’t lose heart. Let’s worship Him in this desert. Dance with me in the kitchen?"

When the storms of life hit, when the anxiety is high and the checking account low, when the waves are crashing all around us but we can’t find the streams in the desert, this is an opportunity for influence. And I can influence us to the forbidden fruit.  Or I can influence us to worship God in the desert as we slow dance in the kitchen. 

May I always choose to dance. For the glory of Christ. So the word of God spreads.

Enter In

We were on our way to help.  We were just taking food to fill bellies and loading a car to empty a house.  A house once filled with love and family is now barren, probably empty a long time ago.  And so we are on our way.  The kids in the car full of their questions.  My heart divided.  Broken for this marriage, for this family, but full of joy at these big questions from small people that display such curiosity and compassion for their brethren, fellow image-bearers of God.

“Where are they moving?” 

“Indiana”, I respond.

“Do they speak English in Indiana?”  He asks so innocently.

“Yes”, I assure them as I giggle under my breath, “it’s still in the United States.”  So worldly, these littles all of five and seven.

“Oh, good.” Relief holds her words in a soft, gentle voice. “It would be hard enough to move to a whole new place, but having to learn a whole new language, too?!?”   Yes, sweet girl.  Hard. Enough.  I don’t tell her my sweet friend is learning a new language.  Hope shattered is a new language no matter how many times you must learn it.  But I leave the silence alone and we sit with our thoughts, their compassion.

Compassion.   Bursting right through the heart seams.  Preparing to enter in… into another’s mess, another’s path stretched out, one we cannot ourselves fathom walking down.  And with this compassion comes questions, so when we enter in, we understand the hearts around us a little more, handling them ever so gently, maybe without words.

It’s in these everyday moments of life that the lines between teacher and student are blurred and crossed and blended.  They are teaching me right there in the car how to bend, how to prepare to come into a mess.  Not to fix it, restore it, make it all better.  These are the things my soul screams to do, but only God can do that.  They are teaching me to ask questions and prepare my heart to enter in, walk right into the mess, get my feet dirty while washing the feet of the broken.  Not entering in never crosses their minds. It's not a matter of not going, it's a matter of knowing the size of the mess.

Their simple questions remind me how to go to the hard places and just do what we can do.  Feed bellies and empty a house.   We cannot do any more in this situation.  We can only do what God asks of us. When we leave, the marriage will still be shattered, hearts will still be burdened, this family will still be broken. 

This is what Jesus asks of us, this is how He loves.  He bears our burdens.  He comes alongside us in the most desperate of times, when our hearts are more than broken.  He breaks with us, cries with us. He enters the mess, the dead center of it, no matter the size.  And He asks us to do the same for each other. But He does not thwart the Father’s plan to save us the heartache because He knows the glory that waits on the other side of broken, on the other side of messy.  "Take this cup, but Your will Lord."  Your. Will.  Oh, those words are so hard to utter, yet deep down, we know it’s His will from beginning to end just as it is in the middle of the mess.  And we wouldn't want it any other way.

Jesus, thank you for entering in. Thank you for teaching me, my children how to do the same, how to go to the hard places with our brothers and sisters and hold them in the hurt, knowing we’ve done what you have asked and it’s all we can do.  And thank you for comforting us all in knowing that we cannot restore, we cannot reconcile, we cannot heal.  Only you can.  And you can do it more beautifully than we could ask or imagine.

"For where two or three come together...

...in my name, there am I with them.”

Matthew 18:20

Great memories are made when gathered around the table.  I TOTALLY believe this!  I love a table full of invited guests, a soft whisper of welcome that encourages the laughter capable of seeping into the heart’s natural barricades, loosening the mortar with each belly roll, beckoning us each to slow down, rest, relax with ourselves as much as each other and etch deeper into the memory banks. 

Great relationships are built this way, too. Gathered.

Among women, relationships, well they can be best built when gathered in the kitchen, surrounded by a mess bigger than the one that lives inside us.  Something happens when women cross into that space where meals are made instead of eaten.  What is this sacred ground?  Where connections are made simply because women hang aprons of service around their necks.   Something about the conversation coupled with the labor that bakes up grace among us.   

I don’t know how men do it – relationships.  It usually involves nature… something about the stillness of the woods and they build relationships in silence.  Seems men can have hour long conversations without uttering a single syllable. 

Women don’t work that way.  We need the words to see the heart.  The kitchen unites us.  Gives us common ground like it’s done for women across generations and cultures since the beginning of time.  Gives the soul a space to speak.  We sling joy and bend in humility as we open our hearts to the possibility that we need women, sisters in our lives.  When the cold floor hits our feet, it freezes the judgments and the comparisons and warms us to the idea that perfection is best left out altogether.  In fact seeking perfection in ourselves and expecting it in others is a recipe for disaster.  There is no space for expectations, only grace.

These moments in the kitchen are the tie that binds us in our womanhood, talking out our differences and glimpsing each other’s beauty, learning from each other, laughing through the trials of life, bearing each other’s burdens, finding a part of ourselves we aren’t afraid to unfold and knead a little, settling in to our true self through the acceptance found within this grace space.

There is just something about women gathered in the kitchen, either preparing the meal or cleaning up after it that births relationships fresh from nothing. It’s natural - maybe as natural as men sitting in the woods not saying a word. 

The Year of Relationship | Part Two

From Part One:

 I’ve taken notice of the dynamics of human relationships.  The complete irony in it all.  How we need God more than anything, how we need each other, how life was never meant to be done alone (you know, no man is an island?), yet we pretend we don’t need a soul, we pretend we can cover it all on our own, and so we hang a curtain of perfection in front of our imperfection and expect to find a multitude of relationships overtaking us like a tidal wave.

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So when I say “we”, I mean me.  I pretend(ed) I didn’t need anyone, that I had it covered.  I hung the curtain of perfection in front of my imperfection.  I dangled this picture of the ideal me (whatever that is!) and expected a tidal wave of people to accept the real me.  A problem at its most fundamental level… where does ideal meet real and what impact will it have.    And what is the life span of a perfection curtain, anyway?

“Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, ‘What do you want?’” (John 1:37-38)

What do I want... I want to grasp Christ, yield to His will and shadow Him into eternity, all while caught up in Our head-over-heels relationship.  And while I am left to wander here on Earth waiting for Him to come for me, I want to find authentic relationships with authentic people. Waiting companions.  Because my relationship with Christ can grow exponentially as I cultivate relationships with His people, as I hear their stories, and see what our God has done, is doing.  As I practice this art of loving like Christ.

But this authenticity is found in imperfect people who open that little window to their heart allowing me to peek inside, trusting me to be gentle. Truthful people that stretch me to give and grow more than I thought possible.  Grace-filled people that I can do life with confidently no matter how imperfectly, who take me at my worst and encourage me to be my best, who accept me instead of expect from me. Joy-filled people.  Maskless people that draw me closer to the living God because they are made in His image and in them I can see a little more of God’s nature, His character, His story.  Broken people with whom I am passionate about reciprocating these life-giving virtues.  People I genuinely want to walk alongside and experience life with – from burdens to belly rolls – because I was made for this.  We were made for RELATIONSHIP. 

In my thirty-something years {ahem}, I’m only starting to discover what it means to be one of these people and that finding one?  Well these authentic people are rare gems… absolutely worthy of the search, the risk, the heartache.  An inordinate amount of effort is required and every last drop of it is well spent when you unearth one of these precious stones.  And if I spend the whole of this one life looking only to never find, I want to know I did every last thing I could for the search.  That my lack of finding wasn’t because I was pretending to be perfect or pretending I didn’t need anyone while I was dying inside, but that I labored and clawed and turned over every rock.  That I gave everything of myself and offered what I had, that I opened the window to my heart trusting them to be gentle.  That I pounced on every opportunity God offered.

As I continue to travel the treacherous road full of twists and turns that lead to God’s natural and true design for relationships, I am discovering some things about me that are hard to face.  And just one of many is the priority I have given to relationships, or lack thereof.  This is a mess I have exposed about myself.  A mess I am hopeful God can drench in His beauty. 

As I go from here, I go as me.  Not any derivative of an ideal.  No masks of protection or what is most likely to impress.  Just me. The real me, gripping my Savior's hand.  I trust You Lord. I trust Your ways.  And I trust that the way You made me was with intention and purpose… for RELATIONSHIP. 

Hang on tight, heart.



The Year of RELATIONSHIP | Part One

RELATIONSHIP.  That was the word He gave me this year.  At the end of 2010, I asked, begged, prayed, pleaded.  I had a lot of ideas of what my word should be for 2011.  He didn’t pick any of those words.  I could have made it anything I wanted.  But that wasn’t the point.  I needed to know what the Maker of Heaven and Earth thought it should be because He is the One that sees it all.  My vantage point isn’t broad enough or high enough to navigate eternity’s waters.  And, as it turns out, there really was no other word for this year.  All the words I had in mind He summed up in His one… RELATIONSHIP.  It was the year of RELATIONSHIP.

Our years are worth naming, aren’t they?  Our years are what we have that amount to this life spent here in this place wrapped in time and imperfection and each one gives us something different, brings something new to the table, takes something away, chisels the hard character stone, shapes us a little more for this heavenly ground we are edging towards.  God is purposeful with each one.  He doesn’t waste anything and our years aren’t a waste.  So each one is worth remembering because He remembers every minute, He knows every second. 

I’m not talking about family vacations or important milestones.  I mean how He reveals more of Himself, shows us more of His glory, draws us closer to His heart... refines us in the fire to come forth as pure as gold.  The way He has with us every year, how we mature in our faith, how He teaches us His ways, how He sheds the scales pasted over our eyes one layer at a time… slowly, intentionally.  If He ripped the scales like a Band-Aid, quick and cold, we would be blinded from the pain and overcome with hopelessness.  But that’s not how our God works.  He is gentle.  He takes His time. He caresses our heart to encourage the growth.  He wants us to lean in firm, fold up in His lap and engage in His story. He has next year’s plan prepared, and the year after that, and after that and one day we’ll see how He intricately fit them all together, how He piled our years one on top of the other and engineered our path straight to His eternal glory.   

Things we want to remember, we name.  And for me, 2011 was the year of RELATIONSHIP and I certainly want to remember.

So here I am… the year of RELATIONSHIP almost in my rear view mirror, but my bags are packed full of keepsakes to carry with me into the years to come.  And, I am already starting to see how 2012’s name will fit right into this landscape… but that’s a story for next year.  What have I learned this year, here in the year of RELATIONSHIP? 

I’ve taken notice of the priority we give human relationships.  The complete irony in it all.  How we need God more than anything, how we need each other, how life was never meant to be done alone (you know, no man is an island?), yet we pretend we don’t need a soul, that we can cover it all on our own holed up by ourselves in our oversized houses that we hardly let poeple see because it's not presentable, and we hang a curtain of perfection in front of our imperfection and expect to find a multitude of relationships overtaking us like a tidal wave.

Well, that's just for starters... I'll be unpacking my thoughts over the next few... weeks?