Bigger Picture Moments: I will not wallow; but I will linger

I couldn't understand at the beginning of the week why I felt out of sorts -- struggling with old problems once resolved both physically and emotionally, fighting against the giants of fear and anxiety that I once slung rocks at and hit square in the forehead, boldly announcing that I would walk in the courage of faith.

I went to bed Tuesday night and slept wild and dreamed wilder, and I woke up the next morning with a sense that all of yesterday's issues had followed me into that very day.

And I was done; I didn't want to bring the hard into the new; I wanted to leave it all where I feel like it belonged -- in the past where I didn't have to look it square in the face again.

I determined that morning that God's mercies are new, and I would see those mercies, a fresh gift whiter than the fresh snow covering the ground. I would not allow yesterday to slow me down because I refused to wallow.

Which all sounds noble and strong and courageous until you are reminded that courage and strong and noble are only born truly out of abiding.

Wouldn't it be simpler had my word for the year just been courageous? Why did I have to have double words this year? Abiding is much harder than being courageous. Abiding is actually harder than most any other things I could "do" or "be."

A friend reminded me that morning after she had read my presumptuous victory march that sometimes we deal with the same things over and over and over again until we truly are healed from the wounds we've suffered.

And sometimes healing doesn't look like we think it will look or should look or does look.

Sometimes healing looks different than what we thought.

It wasn't lost on me when she reminded me that we were standing in the same week this year that we were standing in last year when we found out of Selah had slipped into Heaven after just three short months in my womb.

My body and my mind remembered, but would I slow down enough to remember and honor and turn over the hurts and even the healing that's happened during the past year to my Healer?

And it certainly wasn't lost on me that every single big-ticket meeting I was supposed to be at this week had been cancelled.

It had been brewing for weeks, like tea bags dripping into water beneath a hot summer sun, the whisper I heard the Spirit speaking into my heart to slow down and make room for Him

more of Him.

I finally decided that Wednesday to act on it -- to make room and space for Him

and for what He wanted to do inside my heart.

I'd been asking for healing of the anxieties that swell in my heart at times and asking for healing of the physical annoyances that bother me and asking for healing for the parts of my heart that still feel tender to the touch, though they are not open and gapping and weeping.

And He kept saying to me to believe. And so I believed, and I wondered why the healing didn't come as I expected-- miraculous and instantaneous. I finally cried out Tuesday night and asked what I was doing wrong.

You see the thing about believing is that I'm having a hard time believing without really abiding.

He's been inviting me to abide -- to remove the distractions that stand in the way of truly abiding in Him so that I might believe, perhaps even so that healing might come in the very way I didn't expect it.

So, there is this:

I will not wallow in the grief or in the fear or in the anxiety.

But I will linger for longer than what is comfortable in the discomforts of those parts of life that still hurt.

And I will pick up those pieces that felt like they were sheered right off of my still-beating heart, and instead of ignoring them, I will give them to you, Lord, to do what you will.

And I will ask You to heal those wounds and realize that sometimes healing won't look like that heart being put back together in the same shape that it once was

because it is now a heart that has been broken

by the hurts of this life

... just like yours.

And I will recognize that a heart broken is still one that beats

just differently so.

I will not wallow, but I will linger.

And I will abide.

For the entire span of lent, I'll be posting extremely sporadically. Thanks for being here. Thanks for reading. 

Everyday Life: Birthing Pains

In the morning, it's there when I awake, there like a preschooler's legs and arms spread out under the cover of thick blankets somehow finding the skin of his mother anywhere she moves about in a king-sized bed.

There's an invitation. An invitation chasing me around in my dreams turned wake to take my ordinary and from it allow the extraordinary to be born.

But like most births, nothing is born without labor pain, without surrender, without an aching to bring forth fullness and life.

I play "what if" in my mind. I pray "let me lose my life to find life" in my heart. I spill cries of my heart for courage to walk in faith rather than fear.

He finds me in the morning, pursues me relentlessly, much the way my four year old persistently runs around the house until he finds me with not only his eyes but his hands, too.

There's an invitation to take His hand, walk with Him into the unknown, to go deeper than my feet could ever wander, where my faith will be made stronger in the presence of our Savior.

And I am scared.

I fight fear with faith, and I take heart because greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world.

I take heart because He told me this year to abide and to walk in the courage of faith.

I take heart because there is grace, and many days that grace comes in His pursing of my heart through the blessings He's sent to pursue my attention all day long.

They come bounding into the room where I'm lost in a mess of dinner and prayer, and the little one says, "Mom, play the song!"

I know exactly what the small one is talking about, and I oblige him.

"Mom, sing it."

I sing.

"Mom, louder! Sing it!"

I sing louder: "I know who goes before me."

The small one, he persists: "Louder!"

"I know who stands behind."

"Mom, I can't hear you. Sing it louder!"

"The God of angel armies is always by my side."

"Keep singing, mom!"

"The one who reigns forever, He is a friend of mine. The God of angel armies is always by my side."

"Yay! Mom, that's good! Keep signing!"

"Whom shall I fear?"

and He persists.

"Whom shall I fear?"

The song ends, but the answer lingers thick in the air, following me, pursing me, like little legs chasing me around my bed at the dawn of morning

like little legs chasing me throughout the day

like little voices insisting I sing.

Loud.

Louder.

Loudest.

In the evening, it's there when I lift my voice, when I turn my eyes onto the Extender of the invitation rather than the invitation itself, and I snuggle in knowing

that when we are pregnant with hope,

when we are extended with faith,

when we are full and round and filled with the understanding of the very nature, the very sovereingty of the Invitation Extender

the invitation doesn't seem quite as daunting

and

courage is born out of birthing pains.

One Word 365: I'm Putting Down the Eraser

"A new year is not about starting over; it's about starting what is next." Josh Petersen, pastor

Today, this New Year's Day, I'm putting down my eraser. 

Today, I'm not looking at 2014 as a slate that's been wiped clean, erased of the grievances and problems and stress of the year past, as a book that's open and waiting for life to fill it with all things better, all answers right.

Today, I'm reflecting on where I've been, at the encouragement of one of our pastors, and I'm remembering where I got it right, where I got it wrong and how God has met me in both during the past year so I can move forward into 2014 with the hope of a new chapter starting and the assurance of God walking with me into the unknown just as He walked with me this past year. 

This year, I'm not trying to erase the hard from 2013; this year, I'm remembering it so that it might cause me to remember that I don't walk alone into this new year. 

By human standards, a good portion of our 2013 could be deemed eraser worthy. 

Last year, I was so excited to embrace my word, rejoice, for the entire year. It came to me just before we found out we were expecting the baby we had long prayed and hoped for.

Last year, on New Year's Day, when I settled on that word and then we later saw the double pink lines on a pregnancy test, I was so certain 2013 would be a year filled with joy and rejoicing. I was brimming with hope!

If you know our story, though, you know that 2013 was a hard year to rejoice. Our baby, Selah, went to heaven when I was just shy of the second trimester mark, and losing her left me feeling quite broken. Physically my body reeled from the stress of the miscarriage and a virus that attacked the nerve that controls my balance. God is good, though. And when He gave me the word rejoice, He knew what He was doing.

Selah's life, for me, was the pregnant pause I needed. Just like the word Selah is used in the Psalms as long pause of waiting, a song of love to The Lord, so has Selah's life been to me.

I learned as I grieved her what it meant to be able to rejoice in the midst of suffering; I learned what it meant to praise God in the times of goodness as well as what it meant to praise Him in times of grief. God also taught me how to rejoice through the lives of the children I hold in my arms everyday. Our boys have given me lessons in choosing joy through modeling what it looks like to live a life of joy and through showing me what it looks like to choose the alternate. 

I learned to rejoice in my physical limitations as I healed physically and emotionally, and I learned to rejoice, give thanks for the slow healing that is still not complete. 

I have rejoiced in God's good gift of marriage to a man who is sold out to His maker, and I have rejoiced in the blessings of the beautiful Church, family and community.

This year, I have praised Him, too, for brokenness and how brokenness often is bound up in beauty and beauty woven into brokenness. As we grieved Selah and gave thanks for the beautiful boys we have to raise here on Earth, God began to break our hearts for what breaks His. As we mourned our child, we also began to grieve for children who don't have parents, and this lead us to hosting a beautiful, fun-loving, compassionate young girl from overseas for a month this winter. 

We see God's fingerprints all over this experience, as though we were hand chosen for each other because, I believe, we were. 

I rejoice in the brokenness that has lead to beauty. I rejoice in the beauty that was born of broken.

As the weeks have dwindled in 2013, I again began praying about my word for the new year. Only this time, I felt like I wanted to run from it instead of embrace it. 

Courage. 

It's been following me since October when I attended a retreat about walking in the courage of faith. 

Scripture after scripture, friend after friend have pointed me to this word ever since. The tipping point occurred last Sunday as I listened to the message Pastor Josh gave about moving forward and remembering the past instead of trying to erase it. He went to the book of Joshua and pointed out where God told Joshua to be strong and courageous for The Lord would be with Joshua just as He was with Moses. 

God reminds Joshua to remember a hard past to give him the courage to go into the future knowing that just as God had walked with Moses God would walk with Joshua, too.

That morning, I walked away from the service ready to choose courage ... Except for that I wasn't. I was still scared. 

Because if you choose courage, aren't you just asking for situations in which you need to be courageous?! And, honestly, I've had enough of that!

If I would have taken an eraser to 2013, I wouldn't have been reminded of how beauty comes from broken. 

I wouldn't have been reminded that the God who reigns over all creation also comes impossibly, intimately near.

Still, I was hesitant to choose courage. So God gave me a second word that I'd need to in order to be courageous: abide. It came to me anew a few days before Christmas and then again Christmas Eve when my in laws gifted me with a beautiful painting centered around John 15.

After praying and talking with a friend, I realized that abiding is the only way I'll be able to walk in the courage of faith … with whatever awaits us in this new year.

And honestly, I don't have even a tiny inkling of what will unfold.

But I'm looking at God's faithfulness taking it one tiny courageous step by one tiny courageous step at a time.  

Motherhood: When You Want to Run Screaming From the Mission

Call it the perfect storm.

I went away on a retreat last Wednesday and then headed out for a conference early the following morning; I didn't return until mid morning Monday because of an unexpected delay, so my family was out of its groove for a good six days.

Nonetheless, I was SO excited to come home. I missed my boys, and even just thinking about their sweet little voices while I was gone made me teary. I missed John, too, and I wished he were with me often.

And then I arrived back, and all chaos inside these four walls I call home ensued. The boys, in rare form after a weekend of special everything with their dad and grandparents, were out of routine and out of sorts.

And they have been driving me out-of-my-mind insane.

Which is ironic, because I spent this weekend deeply pondering motherhood and how it is an unexpected joy in which I never could have guessed I'd find so much purpose and fulfillment and meaning. Before I met John I was pretty set on becoming a journalist who covered foreign affairs and wrote eye-opening feature stories about the faces behind those front-page news headlines. One of my college professors told me that if I stuck with journalism, I could be a Pulitzer Prize winner. And so that was a dream that called to my heart and was the epitome of fulfillment to a young heart that pulsed justice and understanding.

This past weekend during the conference in beautiful Chattanooga, I was reminded of a conference I attended three years ago. Back then I had given up on my dream of foreign reporting and pulitzer prizes and traded them for writing a best selling book and becoming a big blogger with a big following.  But something happened at that conference that radically changed my definition of fulfillment and success; during a Q&A session at the conference three years ago, Sally Clarkson said something that resonated deeply: "The greatest books I have ever written are {the names of her children}."

I was reminded of this because during our travels this past weekend, I thought I'd lost a precious necklace during our travels to Chattanooga, a necklace I'd received at that conference, hand-stamped with the word love and John 13:35: "By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."


As I frantically searched for it this past weekend, I shared the story of how the Spirit, heavy and persistent, buried that image, that thought, that mission of motherhood deep inside my heart.


That thought, that verse, it fit together inside my heart and it challenged me into an understanding that this job of motherhood was, indeed, important and beautiful and meaningful and lovely and pleasing to God. I accepted mothering as my primary career for this season at that conference, gave it to God and I've asked Him often since to bless it abundantly and awesomely.

I've thought of that almost daily as I've mothered my boys, the necklace I often wear around my heart a reminder of my mission -- to write beautiful books of love on the hearts of my boys and have it show through their lives.

That mission -- after the search for that necklace -- was fresh on my mind as we looked in the Bible at what it means to walk in the courage of faith.

I was challenged this weekend to remember that we must walk in the courage of faith in all of our life missions so that we can have life and have it abundantly.

And also so that we can live in the freedom of God's promises to His beloveds instead of as slaves bonded in fear and worry. If our faith is to run deep and true and real, we must be strong, take heart and choose to steady our minds on the Truth of His word instead of the fears and worries of this world.

I was challenged to dig deep into His word and apply it in my life in all situations, to all of my missions -- even the beautiful and sticky and complex mess of motherhood included.

That includes raising my children in a world that is broken and full of hardships and sadness.

That includes not walking in fear but rather faith as we continue to pursue growing our family in whatever way will bring God glory.

And that includes remembering that my children are His children first ... that I am His child before I am anyone else.

I needed this  -- these specific course-corrections for the Bigger Picture Mission and this specific mission. Because a mission played out in fear instead of faith probably would end in crash-and-burn style ... I needed to be reminded of the best practices of writing so that I could best write {according to the Great Editor and Chief} the books of my boys -- books others will read by watching their lives as they grow and become adults who do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with their God {Micah 6:8}.

I needed it for the big picture of my motherhood mission  ...

and for the mission of mothering just this week after the perfect storm of unusual bred enough chaos to send me running and screaming back to Chattanooga, where the missionary was on a refueling from the mission field.

Instead, though, I press on toward the goal, practice bravery, take heart.

And take tonight off of bedtime duty so that I don't actually go legitimately crazy.

{Also, I found my necklace. It wasn't lost; I actually left it at home in my 4:45 a.m. departing time stupor. And I'm glad I did because of what it brought to mind. I guess there's something good about 4:45 a.m.}