Give Us Our Lunch, Our Daily Lunch

I went to lunch with the boys today. 

I haven't been in a while.  Last fall I went several times, but I haven't gotten there this semester until today.  I would love to say that I went because it was my idea and I'm a great mom and my kids always come first in my life.  Truth is, I heard my husband tell the boys that one day before school is out he will take off work and come to eat with them.  Busted.  Couldn't I at least spend one of my Friday's (which are always my day off) feasting with those two sweet blessings?

I'm so glad I did. 

Isaiah didn't have much to say about it.  He took my presence in stride.  But the other kindergarteners at his table seemed to be happy I was there.  I got to open some applesauce and some ice-cream.  I got to hear about a play date where cookies were made.  I witnessed the eating of the lunchable tower as one child tried to stick a whole stack of alternating turkey, cheese, and crackers into her mouth, making sure she had my attention as she did. 

Noah seemed glad to have me there.  He told me about his day, how he wants to do the reading program so he can win Hotrod tickets (the local baseball team), how he still had math and recess left.  I enjoyed hearing him talk to his friends about baseball and morning meeting and whether or not they knew their phone numbers, in order to arrange play dates. 

It was a sweet time, and over much too soon.

I think about this and consider that phrase in the Lord's Prayer:  "Give us this day our daily bread."  I have often thought about that phrase as the "please meet my needs God!" part of prayer.  And there is nothing wrong with that.  However, God has been pressing me on it, asking me to see it in a different light:  "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God."
And then the Gospel of John where Jesus, the Word made flesh, says, "I am the Bread of Life."

When I say "give me this day my daily bread" what I'm really saying is "give me Jesus."  I'm asking not so much for a meal, but for a Man. . . .  Him. . . .   His words. . . .   His heart. . . .   His love. . . .  His witness in my life.  His With-ness with me.

Being with my boys today was what made lunch so special.  I was with them.  I entered their world and was simply present, to hear all about the ins and outs of kindergarten and third grade.  And every day, if I'm really honest, what I most need is to taste and see that God is with me, that Jesus is still made flesh in my life, that He is still speaking Himself into my circumstances.  Just like I showed up for lunch with my boys, He is just waiting for me to open my eyes.  Because every day He is showing up with a feast.

Manna . . . in the Market

In the last few months I have found a new spiritual discipline, a radical act of trust, bursting with the forgiveness of regular practice, the promise that if I don't get it right this time, next time is right around the corner.  And it feels like an excellent way to live into the season of Lent.

Every weekend I head to the grocery, coupons and list in hand, and I try my best to buy just what we need for the week.

Sounds simple.

It is incredibly hard.

Because it takes discipline to not buy the numerous items it takes to use the super value coupon.  Or to add another unnecessary tube of Pringles to get the extra $5 off.  Every super-market excursion is another test of my trust.  Can I trust God to provide for our immediate needs?  Can I trust Him to provide for our needs next week?  Can I only gather that which will feed my family for the next seven days, and leave the following weeks to God's future provision?

I remember the story of the Israelites in the desert.  God's instructions to them were to step outside and gather nourishment for the day.  Not for the week ahead.  Not for the month.  The extra was to be left.  Because for every day that they needed heaven's provision, it would be waiting for them in the morning dew.  But to gather more than that was to gather rot into their tents.

How often have I gathered rot into my home because I could not trust God's provision for tomorrow to be as sufficient as today's?  Truth told, I gather more because I am putting my trust not in God's goodness and faithful steadfastness, but in my own ability to provide, to gather unto myself more than enough to cover all possible scenarios, to gourge my pantry with stuff so that I feel better.  In the gourging I'm finding that I lose touch with my real needs.  When I stuff and over stuff that cart, and then bring it all home, I never feel or see or touch the place where my need meets God's ready provision.

Why bother?  Why care about something so trivial?  This is not covered in The Ten Commandments, and Jesus did not give instructions for grocery shopping.  But there has been that nudge in my spirit for this particular season of my life.  Not for last season, maybe not even for the next season.  But definitely for this season.   I don't believe this is a mandate to be generalized.  Instead it comes as a personal call, an invitation from my Heavenly Father, to live into our relationship of trust in a deeper way.  A practical, rubber hits the road, pennies in the pocket kind of way.  It is deeply personal.  It makes me look at what I really need.  And gives me the opportunity to really appreciate what I already have.

And maybe that is the thing God has been asking me to see all along.  When I'm just concerned with getting, getting, getting, I forget to look around at what I already have.  I forget to appreciate it.  I forget to enjoy it.  And the extra burgeouning around me dry rots from lack of use.  Couldn't somebody else have actually enjoyed the thing I forgot about?  The thing that went in my trash can because I forgot it was there and now it isn't good for anything?

The Manna way of Life keeps me close to the Blessing of the Day.  That subtle Blessing does not escape my notice because I am so cognizant of not filling my cart too full, taking only what is needed, readily enjoying that which comes to me for this specific time.  Because trust isn't only about taking the worry out of whether there will be enough.  Trust is even more about resting oneself in the Good Hands of a Provider who delights to give gifts, the kind that are timely, noticed, enjoyed, and  savored.

The Best Hearts

It's funny how things work out really.  When I first started teaching preschool last year, I was teaching everything.  I taught letters, numbers, sounds, and writing.  And Lord have mercy I had to try to teach children math.  Even the basics of moving small objects around so they can be counted makes me nervous.  I not really a numbers person.  I'm more of a metaphor girl. 

This year has been quite different in how our classrooms are set up.  The children come to the classroom I teach in to work on literacy and art.  The other pre-K classroom across the hall is where math and science are taught.  And the way it shakes out is that I get to do art.  HALLELUJAH!  I love this!  Those artistic leanings in me find natural expression as I guide little ones in the creation of boundless loveliness.

And everything has a process.

Especially when the medium is messy.  Especially when there are so many tender souls involved.  Especially when the propensity for cutting and gluing oneself is greater than what could ever happen to the canvas in front of them.

This week we made handprint hearts.  In honor of Valentine's Day.  In honor of our theme for the month: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength" (Mark 12:30).  They turned out great.  But there was definitely a process involved.  (If you doubt the wisdom of this, I invite you to unleash a room-full of four year olds loose in your home with bright red paint copiously smeared on their active, little hands.)

We did this project last year, and I remembered a few things.  First, make sure all sleeves are safely rolled up past the elbow!  And second, it is easier to do one hand at a time instead of two hands at once.  Little ones have such a hard time placing their hands in just the right way.  And third, ask them to close their eyes while you place each hand exactly where it needs to go.  Otherwise they try to put their own hand where they want it, in just the way that seems right, yet it never really lands right.  But if their eyes are closed, it's easier for them to keep their fingers together, to let you ease out the thumb just enough, and to place that print in just the right place.  Then we switch hands and do it again, laying that second print in just the right place so that a perfect heart is formed.

I don't know how many times I said, "Little darlin, you're gonna have to let me do this."  And those sweet boys and girls would squint their eyes shut and try hard at trusting me to make their hand prints into something exquisite and beautiful.  The best hearts were the ones where that child just rested his or her hand in my grasp and let me lay it down where it needed to go.   At one point I looked at my co-teacher and said, "I wonder if this is how God feels?"  Little ones always think they know best.  So do we.

And everything has a process.

The scripture painted on my heart and mind this week as I ponder God's processes in my life, in my family's life is this: 

"With all wisdom and insight He has made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure that He set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in Him, things in Heaven and things on earth.  In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of Him who accomplishes all things according to His counsel and will, so that we who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of His glory" (Ephesians 1:8-12).
 

God accomplishes everything, all things, according to His counsel and will.  So that we can live for the praise of His Glory.  And everything in God's way of doing things has a process:  Especially when the medium is messy. Especially when there are so many tender souls involved. Especially when the propensity for cutting and gluing oneself is greater than what could ever happen to the canvas in front of us.

I see sometimes what God is getting at, the broader picture He is painting with my life.  But He asks me to close my eyes and trust Him anyway.  Apparently He knows better than I do how my best efforts would put my hands in all the wrong places, and the picture would no longer be clear, and the beauty would not be His, and His Glory would not be mine to live in or live out.  I always think I know better than He does what would work and what wouldn't.  Yet after a few run-ins with the messiness of the stuff of my life, I have learned better.

The best hearts were formed when the little one's trusted me to place their hands in just the right places.  And my heart is formed best when I trust God to place me in just the right places.  I can almost hear Him whisper, "Little darlin, you're gonna have to let me do this."

I'm Melting . . .

I've been pondering the message for almost a week now.  The one whispered gently on my Sunday morning run.  The glinting light captured my attention:  Trees and ice and sunshine together raining diamond drips of water onto soft grass, newly bare roads.  The ice storm last Friday made a mess of things, but the beauty it left still leaves me breathless, even after it has all melted away.  My cold heart is melting because I saw the Melting.

Each little branch of every single tree in our neighborhood was lined in ice, and glistening.  It made the whole world look shiny.  And in the beauty I forgot all was frozen.  Then I saw the drips of water, coming fast in the warming sun. 

It's a wonder I was even able to stay on the road.  My feet kept carrying me on the three mile path, but my eyes were riveted to the right and left, trying to see the power of warmth and light bringing what was ice-covered and frozen back to life.  It struck me as prayer, the thought coming fast:  "I wonder if this is what it is like when we pray?"  I pictured what intercession must look like in heaven, when we wrap the Love and Light of Jesus around those we care about, when our hands are helpless and all we can do is let the ache of our hearts reach across chasms to comfort those we long for.  At first glance the ice doesn't look like it is going anywhere.  The frozen gleam holds fast.  But if you stop looking at the tree branches and look carefully below them, you see the truth.  That ice is really turning to water, and quickly it falls away.

I am stunned by the clarity of the Revelation:  When we sit still in the Love of God it accomplishes something in us we may not even realize.  One day our limbs and life are all locked up in a frozen captivity.  Then one day we wake up free.  Sometimes it breaks off of us all at once.  Sometimes it is the patient drip, drip, drip of our prison falling away from us. 

I am stunned when I consider its message for me.  Because I realize my life is the tree that got melted, that was liberated from a deep freeze.  One day something within me just woke up happy.  And I began asking myself the question I cannot let go of:  What is the greater miracle?  For God to give us what we long for, or for God to give us a heart that longs for what we already have? 

God can certainly do both.

The song that comes to mind was actually the one we played as our bridal party walked into the church at our wedding:

Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee, God of glory, Lord of love;
Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee, opening to the sun above.
Melt the clouds of sin and sadness; drive the dark of doubt away;
Giver of immortal gladness, fill us with the light of day!
 

Different times of our lives call for different miracles.  But we always assume the first one is the one we most need.  Like scales dropping from my eyes I realize God has given me the second one, and I am so deeply grateful.

I walk gingerly in this awareness.  Because I know that any day's needs may necessitate the other kind of miracle, the kind where I need God to do something radical, something new, something that remedies the circumstances we are in rather than the heart that perceives them.

But of course, even those kind of miracles still produce a change in us.

Because God is all about melting away prisons, drip by simple drip.

 

 

 

Waiting . . . .

I'm dusting off the weariness of winter Holy days.  The celebrations were wonderful, but coming down from such heights is always tiring.  Now Christmas is put up.  New toys are tucked away.  The sweaters that boys hate to wear are safely hanging in closets, or crumpled nicely in drawers.  And my fingers are finding their way back to the keys, tentatively opening the writing door that opens the world for me.

I like the routine, the rhythm of normal.  Back to normal.  I'm glad to be here again. 

And with familiar normal comes a new year. 

At the beginning of the new year the LORD will lift a Word up in my heart, something for me to ponder, to try to live out, to breathe life into in the months that follow.  Last year my Word from the LORD was Serve.  To serve, and sprinkle my service like salt, all over the daily bread of my life, wherever God chose to place me.  Serving has become something I never dreamed it could be, a nest of safety and comfort in a world I don't always understand, a safe threshhold from which to learn how to step into the unknown.  Serve has been a good Word to live into as I try to live it out.

The new Word landing on my heart in this new year is simple:  Wait.  The LORD whispers Wait into my spirit, and I wonder what it is I am to Wait for. 

I thought by now I would have a keener understanding of my life purpose, a clearer sense of direction for the next big thing.  I have been waiting, I think.  In this place that looks nothing like the calling that captivated my heart so many years ago.  I did not grow up wanting to be a pre-school teacher.  Yet God has led me to this place where I have been waiting and wondering when it would become another thing, the thing I'm called to do. 

But something quite surprising has happened in my restless wondering about next places and future plans and bigger purposes.  My heart has found rest in the place I am at.  And this Word, which I thought I had already been doing, quietly comes to nest in the surprise. 

Wait.

As I lead chapel services for these sweet little ones placed in my spiritual care, I recognize the Word God speaks to my restless heart while I speak it to my restless pre-schoolers.  Our fruit of the Spirit for January is patience; our memory verse comes from the Psalms:

Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for Him.  Psalm 37:7

He has quite the sense of humor!  I feel His smile as I have those children sit on their hands to help them remember those words "be still."  I wonder if He is whispering to me, "Maybe you could sit on yours?"

And maybe it's not necessarily my hands I need to sit on.  Maybe it's that thing in me that is impatient for the next phase to begin, for the journey of my life to "get on with it already!"  And God says WAIT.  In my spirit I hear--

"Be still in this place where I have you, stop trying to leave it so quickly, My work here is not yet finished, WAIT for Me to complete in you thing you need most."

I believe that God gets how wiggly this season is. Everyday I am surrounded by active four-year-olds at work and rambunctious boys at home.   The being still part has nothing to do with moving around within the place He has placed me.  It has everything to do with trying to rush on to the next place.   And I get that. 

The thing is, the next place is this place. 

In the waiting something has been weighing on me.  For years before I actually became a mother, I prayed and prayed and prayed to be a mother.  I longed for it, ached for it, cried out for it.  And when it happened I was working in a full-time ministry.  I was so torn between the calling to serve the world and the calling to nurture my home brood.  I won't lie.  That tension was tearing me apart.  So when God intervened and gave me a new life, one where my heart could safely rest at home, it was a huge relief. 

As the relief has stretched beyond a few months into almost two years, I am beginning to sense that my new calling isn't so much to something else that will take me away from my sons, but rather that they are the heart of God's plan for my life.  For now.  For the time being.

I wonder about their character, their manners, their love for the LORD.  It weighs on me and I wonder where they will learn to be His more than they desire to be their own?  And I begin to see that when I can be still in the place God has placed me, I am the one God put here to teach them.  God opened a door for me to be present for them at this critical time in their lives.  How can I shut it?

It's kind of scary. 

I mean, what if I mess up?  What if I don't get this discipline thing down right?  What if I lose my patience with them every day and let them watch old Avengers episodes too many times?  What if I'm too lenient?  What if I'm too harsh?  What if I fail to show them the joy of belonging to Jesus while trying to get them to follow Jesus? 

All of my "what if's" are met by Divine chuckles.

This is what my spirit hears--

"If you will simply BE in this place where I have placed you, you will have everything you need to fulfill MY desires for this season in your life.  You will be everything I need you to be, and you will BE everything they need you to BE as well."

That scripture says it all:  "Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him."

This morning as I read my Bible and prayed God's Word, these words were nestled in the passage I was reading:  "Then you will know that I am the LORD; those who wait for me shall not be put to shame"  (Isaiah 49:23).  Amen.

The One Who Wipes Tears

On Sunday I got to sing with the praise choir at church.  It was such a beautiful gift.  During one of the songs we sang the chorus to the Christmas Hymn "O Come All Ye Faithful."  It took me back to another time and another place, singing that simple chorus.

I was in the fall semester of my first year in seminary.  Tim and I were attending a Mark Lowry concert.  Oh he is such a funny man!  After an evening of laughing our heads off, the comedian brought a single chair on stage, sat down and sang "Mary Did You know."  It was the first time I had heard that song.  As he finished he invited the other musicians who had shared the evening to join him on-stage as they led us in worship.  We stood shoulder to shoulder singing "O come let us adore Him," over and over, the splendor of God's gift to us heavy on our tongues.  The worship just kept pouring out.  Can you tell it was an extraordinary moment?

It became a moment I got lost in.

Let me just say that my experience of God's presence in my life has often been through my thoughts, my feelings, and all the neurological stuff that connects the two.  I especially see Him in the ordinary.  And while I'm very expressive about all that, it's wrapped in the usual, the expected, the everyday experience of being alive.  God just helps me see it in an unusual, unexpected, and rare way.  I'm just not the girl that has mystical experiences.  And if I was going to have a vision, this is not the one I would go looking for. 

Sometimes visions come looking for us.

Standing there singing those sweet songs, I closed my eyes as I often do.  In my mind's eye, I "saw" standing before me a robed person, sturdy, substantial.  But I could not see the face.  Just hands outstretched before me.  As I looked at these hands I saw that they were pierced.  I knew immediately Who was with me.  We stood there holding hands:  His hands holding mine; my hands grasping, and touching, then tracing the scars in His.  I was so overcome I began to weep. 

For all of my life up to that time, I knew God's Presence.  I could sense the Invisible Power of God's being all around me.  And the Holy Spirit was familiar too, empowering my love, my speech, my service.  But this Jesus?  So hard to relate to.  Somehow the physical manifestation of God's glory was too difficult.  And it's not that I didn't try.  I gave my heart to Him a hundred times growing up.  I just couldn't make the connection.

But there I was that fall evening in the middle of a Connection I never imagined.  As I wept, so overcome with emotion to be in the presence of Jesus, those nail-pierced hands began to wipe my tears away.  "No," I said, "there are too many!"  The words that entered my spirit came gently:  "There are never too many tears for Me to wipe away."

And that's it.

Eventually the music ended.  The concert was finished.  We all went home.

I had no idea at the time what lay ahead.  The coming year would bring despair like I had never known.  A dark depression would settle over me, choking out joy, leaving those around me wondering whether I would emerge.  Oh the tears.  So many tears.

During that difficult time I wondered often at the vision God gave.  I was angry that all I got was Jesus wiping my tears.  I did not get miraculous deliverance.  The pain was real.  The tears were real.  Healing seemed so elusive.

I understand so much more about healing and miracles now, years later.  Tears and tears later.  What a sweet gift that vision was.  Because what I now get, is that the tears we weep are part of God's mercy washing through us, helping us go through what is impossible to go through.  He designed us to be able to move through unspeakable heartache and pain without getting lost in it.  Simply by crying our way through it.  And as we weep He heals.  And helps.  And He is there wiping away our tears, and saving them.  There is not one that falls to the ground, escaping His notice.

Christ's very own words to us:  "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted" (Matthew 5:4).  We have His promise of comfort, in the very middle of our grief.  Do we have the courage to allow His comfort to come?  Do we have the courage to feel the heaviness of hurt, and pain, and disappointment?  Do we have the courage to allow the waves of loss and heartache to pass through us?  Sometimes the only way out is to cry. 

When I reflect on Lot's wife, I believe this was her problem.  She kept looking back.  Instead of letting go, and weeping out the pain of having to leave her home behind.  She kept looking back.  Refusing to release a life she could no longer have.  And so she became imprisoned in the very salt that was supposed to be her deliverance.  If only she had wept as she walked.  She could have found new life.

I have thought of the vision God gave me that fall often since the shootings in Connecticut.  I have wept as I consider the indescribable pain those families are experiencing.  And I look at the sweet faces of those kindergardeners passing through my facebook news feed, thinking of my own kindergardener playing in the next room.  Sweet Jesus have mercy.

I am comforted when I remember the words of scripture:

You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle.  Are they not in your record?  (Psalms 56:8)
 

These tears we cry mean something.  Of course they mean something to us.  But they mean just as much to Him.  JUST AS MUCH!  His promise to us is that we never weep in vain.  Every tear that escapes our eyes, allowing us to release the pain, leaves its mark in His heart.  He remembers each and every one, and every reason that caused it to fall.  And He saves them for us.  For that day when we will see that He makes all things right, all things new:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.  And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I head a loud voice from the throne saying, "See the home of God is among mortals.  He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes.  Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away."  (Revelation 21:1-4)
 

Until that time, all we can do is keep weeping, knowing that in His keeping our tears are helping us find our lives again.  And we must keep praying.  Every night when I put the boys to bed I pray Jesus's prayer over them.  Those familiar words fall fresh on my heart in this season:  "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven."  I pray those words because I know.  This is not the way it's supposed to be.  This kind of loss, this kind of pain.  It's not what God's Kingdom looks like, and it's not what God's will looks like.  Our tears are testimony to that.  And I will keep on praying until my Sweet Jesus comes to make all things right, all things new.

 

Great Reversals

One of the things that I have often pondered is how God shapes our hearts and fashions us for the work He calls us to.  Have you ever noticed that He doesn't automatically give us aptitudes and attitudes for the job?  I've learned over the years that instead He crafts our circumstances and desires to form us in just the specific ways He needs.

Ten years ago I was heartsick and heartsore, longing to be a mother.  The irony of it all was that parenthood did not interest me for so long, until one day it mattered more than anything.  And Tim and I discovered that becoming parents was not going to be an easy journey.  I was about five years into ministry at the time.  I remember entertaining the thought that perhaps God gave me a mother's heart so I would be a better minister. 

Here I am ten years and three boys later, swimming in a sea of testosterone. 

I'm not in full-time ministry for the time being.  I know this is by God's Hand.  I wonder at His plans for me, even as I learn to be joyful where He has planted me.  Plans and Plantings are not always the same thing.  Sometimes one is part of the crafting and forming for the other.  So I wonder in this time of being Planted, Crafted, and Formed:  Did God give me the heart of a minister so I would be a better mother?

Over the past few months I have wrestled with the reversals in my life.  All those years I spent in full-time ministry I struggled to bear up under the expectations of others.  But recently, in the absence of those expectations, I also discovered a deeper truth.  I had wrapped up my identity in the ministry part, failing to know or see or value myself as a child of God first, without the wrappings.  So I've been learning all kinds of valuable lessons about what it means to be me, simply me.  Without title, or vision, or purpose, or drive.  What is most important is close-by, wrapped in the intimate details of feeding, correcting, washing, and loving.  No mission statement.  No vision statement.  Just the faces of little ones who look to me to order their days with love.

I've noticed that Christmas also is wrapped in Great Reversals.  God's sense of humor is that I am deep in the study of Daniel and Revelation during this Advent season.  My heart and mind and soul are full of this picture of Jesus, Son of God, revealed in His Glory and coming to us in His Power, the consuming Fire of His BEING that we often dismiss, ignore, fail to see, or just plain deny.  It's easy to have Jesus in a manger.  Harder to see Him hang on the cross, but still it's manageable.  But oh we avoid seeing Jesus coming as the Consuming Fire, the King who Conquers darkness with Inescapeable Light.  There is absolutely nothing manageable about this King of Kings and LORD of Lords whose tongue is Sword and who reigns with an iron Sceptor.  Oh Mercy!

This is my personal study.  Then I go to lead chapel and preach the Word to preschoolers and Jesus is once again a baby, precious and sweet, and sleeping peacefully in Mary's arms.  At the same time that God fills my imagination with Jesus the King, God purposefully shows Him delicately wrapped in the swaddling clothes, cradled by a manger.  This is the King at rest on Mary's breast!  THE KING!!!!

In our world people of power only occupy places of power.  And if the place is not powerful they do not occupy it.  Powerful people, in the worldly the context, refuse to sit anywhere less than what they believe they are entitled to. 

So here is REAL POWER showing up in the manger bed, sung to by a humble peasant girl, guarded and reared by a carpenter, a day laborer.  The only truly POWERFUL MAN is born not into prestige and position, but without either, in any imaginable form we could recognize.  In fact, His beginnings are so humble, and so particular in their humility, we would totally miss them if God hadn't sent the heavenly messengers to spread the Word.

I've pondered this juxtaposition of Majesty laying in a manger.  It challenges me in a way I've never been challenged.  Because it does what nothing else can do.

It makes my own experience of particular humility--Holy.

God chose the lowest common denominator as His resting Place, so that every place and every person would know they are included in His Plan.  Every one of us.  Every place we find ourselves.  Every station of life.  Every noble and ignoble pursuit we find ourselves in is the birth-place of His Presence when we invite Him in.  Oh Sweet Jesus!  It is so hard to issue the invitation!!!!  We want Him to take us to His Glory and instead He reveals His Glory by showing us His Poverty!  We want Him to make our lives great, and instead He asks us to die again and again to self, that thing in us that covets greatness for ourselves.  He refuses to be made over in our image and continually asks us to be made over in His.

Here is what I have learned.  The sleep is much sweeter in the manger than it is in the palace.  And when we let Him lead us to that simple place of resting in His Hands we too can sleep in Heavenly Peace.  Because the KING of Kings, born in a manger bed, is the only ONE powerful enough to give us Peace that surpasses anything positions of power can give.

Renewed

In this heart
of who I am
is the beat--
the rhythm--
of a woman
longing
to dance
in breathless wonder,
in love with life,
shining
and
radiant
and
walking strong,
head up high,
hope - full,
hope - bringer.

Oh she is in me!
Oh she is!

I hear her
faint whisper
as I whimper,
"Jesus let her out--"
Oh Sweet Jesus,
that's who You
created me to be,
NOT
this mess that I am now.
But I believe she comes
FORTH
from the messiness of life,
the messiness of birth,
being born again
into the plans
my Sweet Jesus has.

So wait upon Him,
sweet reflection of
His Heart
within me,
shining with
the brightness of
His Glory,
reflecting the
Radience
of Him.

And as I am waiting
I know--
I am being
renewed.

How He Loves Me

In the midst of digging through Christmas decorations, I found it.  A box I had forgotten even existed.  I spent about an hour pouring over its contents, piece by piece, memory upon memory, falling in my lap.  Each old photo, card, and letter told a story, held a glimpse of a part of my life long past.

The ones that meant the most to me included a letter from my Grandpa Harrison, written to me late in my college career while I was active in campus ministry, seeking after God with all my heart.  To my knowledge it is the only letter I have from him.  He is with Jesus now.  And then there was the one written by my father, after he helped me move into my very first apartment on the campus of Lexington Theological Seminary.  It was full of a father's encouragement, but more than that.  It held the blessing and prayers of one farther down the road, who had also followed God's call into ministry, speaking hope into the new journey of another just beginning.

There were pictures from my graduation from college, graduation from seminary, and all those adventures I had as a young associate pastor in my first church.

I looked at that young woman, so full of promise, so full of dreams.  And then I went and looked in the mirror.  I don't look so young anymore. 

I walked through the rest of yesterday with a faint sadness tugging at my heart. 

I've finally put my finger on it, that sting.  It is the question that I have trouble answering:  Did I live up to the letters?

This season is so hard.  I never dreamed that God would ask me to surrender everything.  I never dreamed that the Holy Fire I felt when I knew I was serving Him in the way I was created to, would make its way to the altar.  Nor did I reckon on having to surrender passion and purpose as well.  I sometimes wonder if I was mistaken all those years in campus ministry telling young people God had a purpose for their lives, something they were made for, something that would bring them great joy.  Was I lying and didn't even know it?

I wonder at my purpose now.  I see it in those three angel faces that call me "Mommy."  I know that I only have one chance to be their mother, to share with them my heart, to be the instrument God desires me to be in forming their hearts.  I only get one shot.  And it means the world to me to be here.  So I don't want to blow it. 

But at the same time I struggle with the thing I believe other mothers struggle with:  I just don't get over-the-top-excited about packing lunch boxes.  And I remember what it is like to live in the sweet spot where inward desire, meaningful purpose, and fulfilled calling meet.  I was there not so long ago.

Did I miss something?

Last night I lay in bed, silent tears tugging at the corners of my eyes, daring to spill.  Tim was saying such sweet words to me.  I interrupted him with my "But . . . ," telling him of the ways I no longer feel worthy of love.  He said to me simply, "You are telling me how you feel about yourself.   I'm telling you how I feel about you."

His love trumps my self-doubt.  Self-pity.  Self-concern.

Love wins.

I believe God was showing me something through him.  All those years of serving, I believed God loved me because my service made me worthy of love.  And the truth is . . .  Oh how He loves me.  And He chooses a plainspoken man to show me His kind of Unconditional Love, a man who adores me, who sees me as beautiful, who is proud to be my husband, who finds joy in in my arms.

Today was better, easier.  When I feel lost in the randomness of ordinary, understanding the why of it helps.  And sometimes locking us in ordinary is the only way God can get through to us, to get us to be still enough to understand His truth--that Love loves.  And it is His Love that makes us lovely.  Not because of what we do for Him or for anyone else.  Not because of what we accomplish.  We are beloved because He loves us.  Little ol' us, without the bells and whistles of anything noteworthy.  Learning this little Truth is horrible and wonderful all at the same time.  Oh, how He loves us so.

The Mystery of the Meantime

It's hard to know what to write about.  My daily experience repeats itself--I have no real sense of anticipation or direction.  I am just waiting.  And I can't even name the thing for which I'm waiting.  I mark days, noting how working days number themselves, melting into weekends, moving steadily towards the next season, holiday, bump or break in routine.  I am lost in the familiarity of it.  My life is this tick-tock progression.  And I wonder at God's plans for me.  Is this it?  Is there more?

So it's hard to write.  Usually the words flow from a deep place that has been kindled into Life, seeing a greater Meaning, and Opening, and Expansiveness that infuses my ordinary with something quite different--Other and Unknown.  And the Revelation thrills me, stirs up all kinds of joy within, making this living less daily, more amazing, each drop of life so unique and special and altogether Gift.

But something entirely different is happening now on the landscape of my soul.

Sheesh! This is hard. 

I'm watching my life tick away, each grain of sand floating through the narrow funnel of the present, so quickly becoming the past.  And I mourn the passage because I think I missed something somehow.  I want to be joyful and amazed again.  Joy and amazement escape me.

But the Faith part of me says there is value in the boredom of waiting.

Because the stretching out of this waiting time, this interim is really shaping something in me that cannot be shaped any other way.  In the innermost part of my character I am seeing those uglier parts of my being, that only come out when the more "spiritual" parts are not being entertained.  They come forth and show how far from Glory I really am.  The only reason Glory exists in my life is because Glory comes near.

My prayer has been, "O God, do so thoroughly what You have to do in me so that You only have to do it once."  Perhaps I shouldn't have prayed such a prayer.  Because the me I love most is lost in His thoroughness.  I wonder if I'll ever see her again. 

But the Faith part of me says there is a more substantial her coming.

The woman God is shaping in this meantime has more depth, more trust, more clarity, more knowing, more yieldedness, more real hope to share.  This peson God is shaping in me is less concerned about accomplishing and more concerned about getting out of the way of God's accomplishing.

I'm not there yet.  I'm not her yet. 

But this meantime refining is helping me to care less about what I do for God and more about just belonging to God.  It's who I am and nothing else matters.  I'm learning that.  The irony is that in the desperate boredom I'm learning more about God's Glory than any wonder He has ever shown me.  Because He absolutely will not bend to my will.  He is Holy.  Oh so Holy.  There is nothing to distract me from discovering how profoundly different I am from Him.

And this is the discovery in which I must rest, waiting for Him to lift me up.  Knowing He loves me.  Just as I am.  Imperfect. Waiting me.