For those kinds of days {the hards ones especially}

It was that kind of morning -- hard.

Probably, you know the kind — the one where everyone wakes up grumpy and out of sorts. 

The smallest child grabs things from her brothers’ hands, sending them both into fits of irritation and her into fits of giggles. The oldest boy-child wakes confused and a little irate while the oldest girl is largely annoyed. My youngest boy is on day three of illness, and yesterday my balance went way out of whack. As my husband tries to go through with his preconceived plans for the morning, I boil over in the midst of frustration and physical struggle and throw two toys onto the living room floor while refereeing a dispute between the youngest three and then cry. And then the three youngest children, all baffled, surround me and hug me while trying to make sense of it all. 

So that kind of morning. 

During the day, it’s no wonder that I find myself struggling against the way of panic and anxiety about everything within our four walls and, well, heck, about terrorism and orphans and all the tragedy that goes on around the outside of our four walls. The whole gamut. Because in my head, at least, when it rains it pours.

As I tuck the two littles in for a nap, I pray with them, and I pray aloud a very heartfelt, honest prayer, one that’s a plea for help and one that’s a certain cry of surrender. 

Because every now and then, more frequently this past year, I find myself keenly aware that what I’m trying to carry is too heavy to shoulder. 

I am reminded of this in increasing frequency. 

Most lately, I’m reminded of it when I’m outside walking with my oldest boy-child as he memorizes a verse he wants to learn. 

“Do not worry about anything; instead pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank Him for what He has already done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand.” Philippians 4:6-7

Today I’m at the end of my rope. Today I take seriously this invitation to tell God what I need and thank Him for what He’s already done. 

I muster all my tiny faith, and I pray bold prayers and ask for miracles, small and big and in between because with God nothing is impossible or too little or too big. It all matters to Him because everything is within his matters. 

And then I come downstairs to make some medicine out of lemons and garlic and ginger -- when I hear something. 

A voice. 

A man's voice.

And his voice is saying, "we learn how to pray in our family. We know that God hears and cares. We ask Him for wisdom and help from above and thank Him for answered prayers."

For a moment, I think maybe I'm going crazy. 

Maybe I’m losing my mind. Maybe God is literally talking to me -- and then I remember the book a friend bought us in honor of our forever family celebration, and I'm certain one of the kids has sneaked this beautiful narrated, talk-aloud book into this room during nap time.

I head toward the stairs to get the book from my youngest son, because I’m certain he has it and that’s why it’s talking, but there it is, sitting closed on the front bench in the foyer. 

Normally it only talks when it's open. 

But there it is -- closed.

I open it to the first page thinking it was the words from there that maybe could have been triggered and stuck.

But nope. Not page one or two or three but page four.

Specifically page four.

And at the bottom of the page, this verse-- "Your father knows what you need before you ask Him." Matthew 6:8

God's literal voice. 

I'm taken aback, but I'm not shocked. 

God shows up in our mess, and our mess is often so often He shows. 

It’s like a companion verse to the honest prayers I just prayed.  And following is the loud and startling reminder that God already knows. 

He already knows. 

I have prayed for what He already knows, and He has acknowledge my prayer. 

And so what follows the sharing of what’s on our hearts, according to Paul in his letter to the Philippians?

Thanksgiving. 

My heart, in the midst of chaos that is my own and chaos that I cannot claim, lands there figuratively just a few days before we land on there on the calendar. 

And I’m reminded anew that we can always be in a state of thanksgiving because God ever exists in a state of giving us something for which we can give thanks. 

He is a God who already knows. 

A God who cares. 

A God who keeps giving so we too can keep giving thanks. 

Because His love for us never changes. 

Even on the hard days. 

Especially on the hard days. 

Bigger Picture Captures: Giving Thanks

I am the song that's playing on repeat, over and over again ending the last note only to begin again on the first.

I can't help but play and play again this song of gratitude, though.

It's been such a rough year.

But through the low notes, we've heard the overarching harmony of peace that comes from holding tight to the truths that God is good

and that He never forsakes those who seek Him.

Our Bigger Picture Capture prompt over at BPB was to snap a shot of Giving Thanks, and I immediately thought of a piece I created yesterday to accompany The Thanksgiving List challenge one of my church's bloggers and our senior pastor issued our church family:

"Before you make your Christmas list make your Thanksgiving list."



And so I write them down, one by one, giving thanks, making my Thanksgiving list, playing my same song, a broken record of praise.

Join us for #BPCaptures! Each Wednesday we upload our pictures to instagram and follow the hashtag to find each other's captures.

Thinking, that's All: Healed

I remember now what it's like to feel mostly normal but the novelty of such a feeling has yet to wear thin.

Because more than remembering what it's like to feel normal, I remember vividly what it's like to feel so very sick.

The kind of sick that doesn't necessarily loudly broadcast itself in exact diagnosis with exact prescription or reveal itself on the face, though those closest to me have breathed sighs of relief at the return of a healthy glow spread across the bridge of my face and cheeks and at the return of curves to my body.

Three short months ago, in addition to digestive distress, candida overgrowth and imbalanced hormones, I was on the fast track to kidney failure and the brink of developing an autoimmune disease, different systems in my body having their communications efforts jumbled and skewed, making it impossible to walk a straight line or break down proteins or convert B vitamins.

See, in my laborious attempts to heal my gut and restore the delicate gut-flora balance, I accidentally threw other delicate parts of my body out of whack; I'd failed to understand that my body is more complex than what I understood -- that it's fine tuned and created to function in the fullness of deep nutrition. That its biochemistry is detailed and specific and that years of treating my body like a simple machine had led to malfunction.

That years of making health be determined by scale number and eating with only calories and taste in mind rather than nutrition and micronutrients couldn't be fixed by a restrictive diet aimed at only bringing one of the obvious imbalances -- the candida in my digestive system -- back into a stasis.

You see, one can't just starve out an invasive opportunist like candida without, too, starving herself, her own body. That's what I didn't know when I began cleansing with The Body Ecology diet. But that's another story for another day.

Today's story is about healing. And how I can claim the miracle of being healed because honestly that's all it can be determined as.

I'd been to quite a few doctors, quite a few specialists and only one had a real grasp on the magnitude of the situation and even then there was more going on than what was easily recognized without getting into the genetics and biochemistry of my specific body.

And that's where grace comes in.

I met Ann at G's preschool; we quickly came to realize we both faced many of the same healthy eating challenges and so it wasn't a surprise when we learned we both saw the same chiropractor. Brief after-school conversations led to snippets of hearing each other's health struggles, but it wasn't until an early summer pool party that we actually had a chance to talk beyond chasing kids out the door.

By then, I knew I'd hit a plateau in healing. My body had detoxed to an extreme, my weight kept plummeting and my period was beginning to be more or a stranger than a monthly guest: it was like I could see the promised land but just couldn't cross over. I was just stuck.

In my crying out to God, I prayed, I pleaded for a miracle -- for Him to send me someone who could see the whole picture, the entirety of His creation or for miraculous healing.

He gave me both.

Ann's friend, who was in bad shape health wise took Ann with her to see a doctor -- a biochemist and trauma surgeon by training who bases her practice on caring for patients who have exhausted every other medical route and treats through integrative nutritional medicine, everything grounded in biochemistry and genetics. Ann then made an appointment for herself and encouraged me to do the same.

It took months to get in, and honestly, I didn't know what to think when I met Kerry -- I mean, she'd basically told me more about my body than any doctor ever had. And the scary thing was she was so spot on about what I was feeling and what my body was and wasn't doing that when she told me my next steps were kidney failure and developing the same auto-immune disease my mother has, I knew she as part of the answer to my prayer for healing.

I'm about to round out 90 days of treatment with Kerry, and the progress my body has made in healing from a deep cellular and biochemical standpoint is quite beautifully amazing.

****

Every week, I have the privilege of sitting down with my senior pastor to hear what's on his mind so I can transfer his thoughts onto our church's blog or our church's facebook page.

It's one of the highlights of my social media job at Immanuel.

Last week, he shared with me his excitement for our annual Thanksgiving service, where our church family members are welcomed and encouraged to take the microphone during the service and voice what they are thankful to God for.

Before we conclude our meeting he asked me if I remembered the story where Jesus healed ten lepers in Luke 17:11-19.

I nod.

"Only one came back to thank Jesus," he'd said. "Only one. Ten were healed, but only one thanked Him ... I once heard that gratitude is only as sincere as the effort we make to express it. The Bible teaches that it's not enough to be grateful in our hearts, that we should be going out of our way to express it."

I scramble to write what he's said, soaking it into my heart.

"It may have been that all ten lepers had gratitude, but Jesus talks about the one who was sincere in his effort to express it -- the one who went out of his way to express it."

The one who came back to say thank you.

****

She's checking me out, reading my body to make sure everything is firing well despite some persistent tenderness just beneath my breastbone.

After she's done, she announces that I have some inflammation in that joint beneath it that's causing the intense soreness.

But that's not the big story -- the big story is that so many of the parts of my body that were struggling to be anywhere close to balance have become either awesomely balanced are at the verge of being in a beautiful homeostasis.

Only small components of my immune system and digestive tract need to come into order along with a reduction in inflammation.

We are worlds away, she says, from where we started.

I sigh audible praise to God and express thanks to Kerry for taking the time to help figure out this amazingly complex body He gave me.

But in my heart, I know my quiet gratitude is not enough.

****
It's early Sunday morning, and we trek into church to both work and celebrate God during the Thanksgiving service.

I'm not planning to go near a microphone during the service.

But we sing loudly, passionately about the 10,000 reasons for our hearts to praise Him, and I'm pretty much jumping out of my chair moments later because a verse has been following me and I can feel it pressing up from my heart and into words and out my lips.

"Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:4-7

I give thanks.

For His word. For His mercy. For His grace. For His healing. For feeling so very close to normal again. For remembering what sickness feels like and the promise of hope that always accompanied it.

And when I come home, I can't help but pour my words of gratitude into black on white, a permanent testament to the His healing hand.

I can't help but come back to Him, go out of my way, to take the gratitude in my heart and let is spill out of my lips in a song of praise. 

My song of thanksgiving, indeed.

Linking with Ann and living a covenant of gratitude. 

Everyday Life: There is joy

There is joy.

It is wild and spread out like fields of unexpected wildflowers rolling up hills and stretching out across meadows. Sharp bursts of lemon and violet polkadotting the lush greens of fields.

Photo courtesy of Corrin.

There is joy, and it cannot be stolen unless I first give it away.

Unless


I first 


give it


away. 

I steal my own joy, rob myself barren of it when I worry-wander into tomorrow while I'm still living in today.

What sense does it make to live in tomorrow's fears?

Fears that might never and will probably never unfold into realities?

Something happened this weekend, after the suffocating what-if waves began lapping at my feet

and I toyed with wading far into the worry-waters.

When I turned turned my back on that sprawling sea of uncertainty,

ran uphill,

fell to my knees

and opened my hands to the Giver of Good gifts,

I began to not just see the good gifts given, the many good gifts given, but I began to more intimately trust the Giver who keeps giving them.

I soaked up words from Ann Voskamp's book One Thousand Gifts, and I realized it was true, what she's written:

"The quiet song of gratitude, eucharisteo, lures humility out of the shadows because to receive a gift the knees must bend humble and hand must lie vulnerably open and the will must bow to accept whatever the Giver chooses to give.
Again, always, and always again: eucharisteo precedes the miracle."

The miracle, for me, is having eyes that can see joy spread out in the moment,

joy saturating the spanning seconds of today,

joy not stolen by the what ifs of tomorrow.

I've been so greedy.

I've been trying to unwrap gifts before they are given.

In my worry, I've been trying to see the potential dips and valleys that might be waiting in a new day with no more light than that of the moon; I've been trying to see the lay of the land ahead of me while its still, from my view, encompassed in shadows.

There is joy, radiant and saturating. 

And it dawns when the sun rises to shed real light on the day unfolding at the foot of the horizon, when palms are turned up and opened ready to receive the gift as the light inches higher and higher, moment by moment.

Bigger Picture Moment: Right Where I Belong {Gratitude}

The afternoon before we're to make the trek home to Illinois from Harrisburg, fat snow flakes are falling from a ceiling of haloed thickness, from puffy grey-white clouds.

And I am wondering if we'll make it home as planned. 

Forecasters sling signs of warning across the television screen and lights flicker through out the hotel hallways as I walk in the company of flesh embodying the hearts I've come to consider soul sisters.

I pray -- Oh, God, I know this is where I'm meant to be in this time and space.

And I am thankful.

I am eye-deep in gratitude to be pressed shoulder to shoulder with kindred spirits, the women I love who are journeying this motherhood road alongside me, His very presence swelling in our hearts.

But, still, tomorrow, please take me to the arms, take me to the flesh in which I share oneness; take me to the man with whom you've interwoven my heart strings.

And in the meantime, let there peace that I am right where I belong.

****

Headlights flicker, dance through the fog while sprinkles of rain tap against the windshield.

I could drive this stretch of road with my eye closed, I think, not because I know the curves as well as the ones on my own body nor because I follow them, the tires of my car pressed against this very pavement almost daily

but rather because I can feel the force of my husband's body, only less than a mile away, pulling my heart toward home.

Yes, my body is the magnetic ball being woven through the maze of streets by the force of soul attraction anchored in a well of love within the four walls I call home. 

The car nearly parks itself, and I jump-fly out of the driver's seat, headlights fading across the garage door, the backs of my legs and I fall into strong arms that are open and waiting for me, pulling me in before my feet can carry me out of the hallway. 

And, again, in a different time and space, I am right where He wants me; I am right where I belong. 

****

I wake to two small bodies pressed on each side of my own. I am the newly restored ingredient of the mommy sandwich. We lounge in bed, two boys snuggled against my skin.

There are dishes to wash, laundry piles to fold, sheets to change, breakfasts to make, lists to tackle, but for the moment, again, a different time and space, I know, I'm exactly where I should be.

So with palms turned up and wells overflowing, I give thanks for knowing that in these moments, I'm certain I'm right where I belong. 

During the month of November, we are gathering our harvest of blessings and naming them one by one, sharing the gratitude in our hearts. Won't you join us? Share a picture, words, creation or list; just come to the table with thanksgiving in your heart. 

Live.
Reflect on the blessings that were apparent to you this week.

Capture.
Harvest them!

Share.
Link up your moment at Lenae's this week. Please be sure to link to your post, not your blog. Your post must link back here or have our button in your post or the link will be deleted.

Encourage.
Try to visit at least the person linked before you and encourage her in this journey we call life.

Disclosure: Our trip to Relevant was generously sponsored by Chevy’s Driving the Midwest who has given us a tank of gas and a Traverse to get there. Our ride was also fueled by Kawa Japanese and Asian Cuisine, Dr. Reena Jacobs of The Healing Groves, Curves of Lake County, Bigger Picture Blogs and Little Lake County, each of whom have provided one tank of gas for the trip. All opinions expressed are our own.