Bigger Picture Moment: In the Tangles of Fear

I didn't want to go to Egypt.

I confided in close friends that I feared something big would happen while I was there -- a bomb exploding nearby or even worse atop of us or a massive uprising of voices in the streets we'd walk. I expected to get caught up in a whirlwind of chaos.

The fear wasn't unfounded. Just weeks before I left for Egypt, I had long weekend of reeling, submerged in a murky mess of emotions before I found myself dried up and laying low on rock bottom.

I didn't have an ounce of anything in me to move, to make anything out of the mess I'd made so I opened my hands and told God if He could do better than I was doing, He was welcome to try.

But He'd have to move me.

I didn't know much about God other than what I'd read in a couple chapters of the Bible ... and other than what I'd experienced during a few chance encounters as a teenager.

And something big did happen; I came home changed.

Instead of being ravaged by terror, I found myself wrapped in unexpected grace and love.

It was nothing short of miraculous for me.

Though God didn't part the water before my eyes when I stood on the shores of the Red Sea, He did flood my heart. He spoke to me through sand and waves, stars and sky and through the words of a gentle force of a man I met on that trip who just months later became my husband.

It was only through untangling myself from all of that which is determined to keep me bound in fear that I was able to move and encounter the God who I believed was and will always be, and also the God who, indeed, is.

When I went to Egypt, I found a present-tense God waiting to encounter my heart, a God who wanted to bind my heart to His and whisper his love for me through the love of the man who would become my husband.

The revelation of present-tense God changed everything for me and set my heart on a journey to know him more. My fears tried to keep my bound in stillness; and I almost let them.

And, honestly, I still do.

Last week, fear crept up my legs like an entangling vine and wrapped itself tight around my heart and mind.

I spent most of our drive to Denver trying to hack away at the vines and free myself so that I could move without feeling like my heart was going to beat out of my chest at every small exertion of movement forward.

It wasn't until I crumpled into a mess of tears as we drove along narrow roads up a winding mountain and cried hard and fast that I realized I couldn't free myself from the entanglement.

And why was I so bound anyway? Why was evil trying so hard to keep me still? The nights before John curled up next to me and petitioned God ... help, speak, unbind me. Anything. We asked for discernment for big questions that have been linger and that have left us restless.

I searched my heart and heard His voice telling me in a dream and then again when I woke that before I could move on, I'd have to let go of the old.

I'd have to trade my old friend fear.

Fear.

I've long confused the voice of fear for precaution -- given it credit for keeping me safe, my boys of out danger, my decisions grounded in the stability of safety.

In disguise, fear has convinced me that it's kept me safely where I belong --

out of airplanes

and countries

and off of windy mountain roads 

out of the wrong place

at the wrong time

and out of danger

It's such a tricky lover, fear, because in reality it's actually kept me where I don't belong

deep in the throes of worry

stuck in the pits of anguish

entangled in every what if

stuck in the lowest of valleys. 

Bound.

Fear is the very thing that stills my movement. That confines my mind. That silences my true heart cries

and binds me in the vines of valleys so that I'm banished from that mountain top where I have a bird's eye view of what's really been my safety net -- the steady streams of Grace and Love from Him who loved me first that circle the roads on which we travel.

I heard the words clear in my mind that morning before we'd left for the mountains, "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love." {1 John 4:18}

When we reached the top of that mountain, I breathed. And while I was there I remembered the God who showed me His face in Egypt the first time I dared to let Him really move me out of the tangles of fear.

And realized that same God was speaking to me from a mountain top in Colorado.

With His words, I see how He is diligently cutting away the vines of fear that threaten to keep me
bound in this narrow valley

so that I see can clearly the lay of the land from the top of the mountain

time and again.  

Everyday Life: Made New

Last year at this time, I was reeling.

Physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally -- all reeling.

The loss of two little babies from my womb to Heaven, the loss of my physical health, the loss of my mental health as anxiety flooded my thoughts -- it all left me feeling cracked and dried out, like I'd been left out in the cold all winter long.

Luckily spring and summer and fall were long months of warmth, healing and renewal.

And though we began 2013 in the midst of cold Chicago winter, it sort of felt like a rebirth to me.

The newness of the year was refreshing in a way that spring is after a long, cold winter.

The past year had been long, but in it God has brought healing to my body and my mind and my heart.

And not only has He brought healing, but he's also brought renewal.

I am not the same person I was a year ago this past December; I am not the same person I was a year ago today.

But I didn't totally notice that until we heard our pastor speak words from Luke 5:38.

"And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the new wine would burst the wineskins, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine must be stored in new wineskins."

I am a new wineskin this year. I am no longer dried out and cracked like I was; rather I have been made new.

As I sat in this truth, I realized, too, that I couldn't rightfully compare this new pregnancy to the others -- not any of the others -- because this freshly gifted baby is like new wine in a new wineskin ready to merely be stretched instead of cracked and broken.

And so my heart's cry is to trust in the Hand that's made me new, to embrace the swelling and stretching and to trust that He will not allow me to be broken.

Everyday Life: The Whispers that Get You Through

He's a wildcard.

Sneaky, charming and cute, determined -- that's our spunky 3 year old.

I can barely take my eyes away from him before he's off and into something new, and every time we think he's grown just a little bit out of his wily ways, he brings us back into the moment, the reality in which we live.

And that reality is that he is predictably unpredictable, a wildcard in the truest sense.

Saturday afternoon, my boys were outside clearing out the garage with John, and I was running out the door, bordering on being late to an appointment.

Bordering on being rushed but not yet frazzled.

Bordering on making a quick, hurried exit.

But Saturday was my sabbath rest day, so I resisted the urge to jet out the door, jump into the car and take off, waving to my boys.

I climbed into the driver's seat as I was saying goodbye to John, put my keys in the ignition when a small whisper prompted me to ask, "Honey, where's E?"

We looked around, and he was nowhere in easy sight.

I almost shut the car door and left, hand on the key, ready to turn when another whisper said, "Find him first."

We began walking past the cars toward the edge of the driveway when my friend, who was leaving at the same time, said to us just as we reached the back of my Highlander and looked down, "There's a baby under your car."

And there he was -- our youngest, our baby -- hands under his grinning chin nestled under my car, body pressed against the driveway.

Heart pounding, I scooped him from beneath the car and scolded him for playing somewhere so dangerous before refocusing and audibly giving praise.

Audibly thanking God, dozens and dozens and dozens of times, for that small, soft Voice in my brain.

And for the ears to hear.

And for answering the heart cry I pleaded Friday, totally not knowing what I was actually praying for but somehow knew was needed.

And for allowing this lesson about how rushing never makes life better to sink into my thick, hard head.

And for the Whispers quietly spoken that graciously get us through.