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. 

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.  

Everyday Life: Twice

Twice.

I've stumbled twice now unexpectedly into grapevines during the past week.

Which wouldn't mean anything normally except for that this summer it sort of means everything.

Right before the beginning of the year, I landed in the text of John 15, and I just could not get away from it, both literally and mentally.

That text -- it's such a word picture painted so vividly about how we must abide in the vine if we are to bear good fruit.

And it kept following me -- this call to abide in the true Vine in the garden with the Gardener -- in devotions, in the church pew, in others' blog posts, in conversation.

And then one day this spring as I was working on a book about being fruitful and bearing ripe fruit and being kind to ourselves I heard a loud whisper redirecting.

All this talk about fruit, but how does fruit even grow?

In the garden, abiding in the Vine.

We are to live The Vine Life


And so The Vine Life was born.

The first chapters came easily, but since their completion it's been hard-coming in ways that writing normally isn't for me. There's been this stretching and this twisting and this growing and this journeying in the writing of this book that's left me ... tired. Tired and wondering exactly where to go next.

So tired and so wondering that about two weeks ago I put it aside, tabled it so I could pray, clear my head, refocus.

We took a daytrip last weekend to visit my uncle in Chicago; while the boys watched Star Wars on his big pull-down movie screen, I sneaked off to the back porch to sit beneath sun.

And there in the middle of alive and vibrant Chicago just outside the back door of my uncle's second-story flat there were these vines sprawling out across the wooden deck, thick and deep, luscious green bearing growing grapes.

There. In Chicago -- in the thickness of city hustle and busy and concrete a small garden sprawling across the deck, bearing fruit.



There in the most unlikely of places.

The Vine and the fruit in the city.



I meditated all week long on the Vine and the grapes and the fresh greenness wondering if it was divine inspiration to keep writing ... but I didn't pen another a word, still vying for clarity on the next chapters. 

Sunday afternoon we visited the Chicago Botanic Garden to rest and remember His goodness and provision during our Sabbath rest, and we veered casually into the vegetable garden.

Again, I came face to face with more grapevines spread out across the overhead trellises we'd meandered into.



The boys wandered off down the path and John followed after he noticed I was totally transfixed. I stood  there lost in more God-whispers beneath the sprawling vines marveling at their beauty, their strength, their vigor and their shear abundance.




And in the stillness of a late Sunday afternoon in the home stretch of June, I stopped wondering.


I abandoned thoughts about perfect order of chapters and which stories to share


and gazed incredulously at the answer He'd given me not just once


but twice: 

The Vine.


And so in the broken silence, I write


I abide. 

This week, we're sharing our moments at Jade's

Bigger Picture Moments: For the Worse

It's been hard for him.

These past nine or so months have grown him, too.

I haven't been the only one who feels as though I were stretching outside of my very own skin's capacity.

Though it seems like I've been the one whose been forced-chosen to ungrasp my clenched knuckles from so much, we've both let go of a lot.

Time together as a family, as a couple.

Opportunities and weekends away.

Small pockets of late-night connection as I've slept and he's battled a strong-willed toddler.

Two tiny babies from inside my womb.

And sometimes I feel like he's sort of lost the woman he married while in the thick of all her spontaneity and fun-laced ways, found himself left with someone who has a list of nos that run the trunks of century-old trees ... someone who can't even go out to dinner on a whim anymore because she must first scout out the contents of the menu.

But in the loss, in the for worse of what seems worlds away from the better, roots have been established.

We stood tall through the beautiful times of our engagment and job changes and births of babies, and now, too, we've sunk our roots into firm Soil and weathered storms of illness and loss and grief and anxiety and time spent growing together while being apart.

There's nothing flashy and romantic about the protruding of roots creeping into Solid Ground while the skies rage.

There have been days where we've come together only to utter prayers before tired eyes close, succumbing to sleep. Moments of deep-seated frustration in the boiling over of pots and helplessness in the melting of a crying, shaking body falling into open arms. Exhaustion in digging deep to find more of yourself to give to rambunctious little boys when her arms can't even hold the shovel.

But after the pounding of the rain softens and the thundering of fronts breaking the apart air fade to rumbles in the distance and the whipping of the wind gives way to soft breeze there is a beautiful calm that emerges in seeing that the tree is still standing strong-armed with thick branches and budding green with new life.

There is a growing peace found in the roots of abiding, together.

Share a picture, words, creation or list; just come to the table with the beauty in the simple moments of the week.. 

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

Capture.
Harvest them!

Share.
Link up your gleaned moment this week at Alita's! 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.
Visit at least the person linked before you and encourage her in this journey we call life.

Thinking, That's All: A bump

A bump.

It's likely unworthy of any attention or special notice, my favorite nurse says as she examines the slightly stretched, raised skin on one side of my nose.

It's not hugely obvious, but it's there -- a bump that should probably be checked out.

I leave the office with each hand clasping that of a little boy, a recommendation card for a dermatologist slid into the back pocket of my jeans.

As we step outside of the office and our faces meet sunshine, my boys unlock their fingers from my own and are running wild in two seconds flat.

And so is my mind.

I scramble to capture all that has broken free.

I buckle little behinds into car seats and wish that my fleeting thoughts were as easily bound before I settle on one thought.

Could we just have a break? 

My heart and mind long for simple days spent wrapped up in the moments that spread out easily before us, free of tangled thoughts and unrest and dis-ease.

We've known these days, gifts we carelessly unwrapped and tossed aside for each new one that came perfectly wrapped in the new ribbon of each morning's sunrise.

We gobbled them up, gluttonous almost, devouring a harvest in which we'd barely toiled, just barely uttering thanks as the sun set daily behind the horizon.

What did we know then of love that came easily without sacrifice

of health that bloomed like clockwork leaves on trees

or of thankfulness for simply another day

of the Gardener's goodness.

My skin is all sorts of stretched out thin from growing and growing and growing during this time of His planting and sowing seeds of gratitude and trust into our hearts, into our minds.

Breaks don't come during the growing season, and I know, I admit, that I surely want to bear fruit come harvest. 

There is a wrestling in breaking out of the tight-wound bud. And there is stretching in growth, in maturing, in coming to full bloom.

I abandon wild-grown thoughts instead giving my attention to the wild love strapped into two car seats behind me.

We talk about everything and nothing, and I cannot remember the details beyond smiles from the tender attention of a mother to her sons.

He weeds and waters and suns and grows through the clumps, the bumps of dirt, and there's a resignation of details on my part about what He'll use to fertilize and pull those weeds replaced with simple prayers of thank you and a begging to not leave me this way.

And He won't; because this is the kind of love that tends carefully with out break without abandon and without fail.