Prayers from a Broken Heart

I have a silver filigreed heart locket that I like to wear when I work in the Toddler room at preschool.  Inside is a picture of my oldest son when he was a baby.  I have found it is good distraction for little ones who miss their mommies, when conflict is imminent over a favorite toy, or when the day is moving too slow for toddlers who are ready and anxious for the next activity.  We talk to the baby in my silver heart, kiss him, tell him "night, night."  It is amazing to me how much peace this baby in the silver heart can bring. 

It was a gift from my mother during my son's early days.  It is also a reminder of the heartache we experienced not long after he was born.  He spent a week at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital for completely preventable reasons.  I had never known pain like that before he was born.  And my heart has never been the same since.  Prayer for me during that time was a wordless scream.  And my prayers for others now who are hurting has been transformed in ways that are hard to describe.  I hold them, I hold their pain, in my perforated heart.  And in my prayers, I find my heart pierced again by aches which have no words, only silent cries of anguish.

This past week I have worn my silver heart a lot, even on days without toddlers.  It is a comfort to me as I pray for those whose lives have been touched by unspeakable tragedy. Like so many in our community, our world changed Saturday night.  One moment we were enjoying a quiet evening at home, having just returned from celebrating the birthdays of our middle son and my husband's sweet mother.  The next moment my husband was rushing out the door, with "I love you" on his lips and pain in his eyes.  When he returned in the wee hours of Sunday morning, I learned what a whole community was trying to comprehend:  a seven year old girl from the school where he is principal had been taken while her family was attending a little league football game.  Her body was found a short time later abandoned in a creek behind the high school where the games were taking place. 

As our country joins in support of Paris, mourning the more than 100 innocent lives who were murdered by terrorists last Friday night, I join my heart with those in our community mourning little Gabbi Doolin.  I pray in hope that Love can go where I cannot, where words cannot, where only the most raw and tender heartbreak lives.  I pray for the Healing Balm that, instead of trying to fix what is irreparably broken, joins itself to the hurt and despair.  Only the Tender Mercy of a Broken Savior can travel to that place.  Jesus became flesh to dwell with us even in our most horrific pain.  And so I ask Him to.

I also seek to guard my heart.  I do not want to allow the foreign terrorists and this one very close perpetrator of terror to have the final say in my willingness to be a vessel of Love poured out.  I can see how quickly the fear and anger I feel toward this unspeakable crime can calcify my heart into an unbeating, unyielding fortress of distrust and suspicion.  I want to be careful to let God hold the springs of my heart so that His Healing Love can flow.  I certainly want to be wise as a serpent--I absolutely want to be wise to the evil intentions of those who seek only to steal, kill, and destroy.  But oh, oh I want to be innocent as a dove.  I want to focus my energy on being gentle and kind to those who need to see His Light and Life within me.  So that they can know He can heal their hurts too.  I don't want to waste the energy I have on hate.  Life is too short; life is too precious.

I have a friend who says that silver represents redemption.  I am so grateful that the memory of my darkest hour is wrapped in the silver heart I wear about my neck.  I am grateful it is also wrapped in the Redemption of a God who holds us all in His Heart.  And this is the God I pray to on behalf of the Doolin family and the Allen County Primary Center family.  This is the same God who loved us enough to send us His Little Boy, who suffered a violent and heartless death at the hands of the cruelest evil.  And this is the same God Who wrapped His dead Boy's body in the Redemption of Resurrection to give us Peace in troubled times and the promise of unspeakable Joy in Eternal Life.

It is almost time for Advent, that time of year when we prepare our hearts for Christmas, for the time when we remember and celebrate the birth of Jesus.  It is hard to imagine how anyone could want to harm a life so pure and innocent, so filled with Light.  But evil was present then.  Unfortunately it is also present now:  the Herod's are still about.  But we know that the Baby in the manger carried with Him a Light that cannot be diminished by any darkness.  His Light and Love shine through even the darkest hour.  The love and support expressed by so many in our community, so many who do not even know the Doolins but who choose to share their heartache, are proof of that.  So let us
talk to the Baby born from God's Heart.  Let us embrace Him, let our tears fall and kiss His tender face, let us ask Him to hold us in this dark, long night.  It is amazing how much Peace this Boy from God's Heart can bring.

Irrevocable

I love this scripture in the Bible--

". . . . for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable" (Romans 11:29).

I like to let it wash all over me, to flow through my insides and wash clean the places of doubt.  I hear the immense Mercy in those words.  And Mercy is a word I have sat with a bit this week.  It is where I want to live, and it is what I want to extend because God has drenched my life in it.

I had been chatting with some of the ladies I work with, a couple of whom have children at the very beginnings of their college journeys.  One was explaining how excited her daughter was to discover a college with a major in the field she is interested in.  It is a bit of a rare find, and it is great that the school is close by.  As we talked I couldn't help pondering my own educational and vocational journey. 

The past year I have made peace with the place I am.  It is not where I thought I would land twenty some odd years ago.  But it is a good place, filled with much joy and deep meaning.  Everyday I come away with a sense that I am living my life purpose, just in a completely different form than I anticipated.

When I was still in college I began to sense God calling me into ministry.  So I finished up my undergraduate degree and packed myself off to seminary.  Tim and I married; I accepted my first ministry position as an associate pastor in a large church in Florida.  It was a bit like Abraham going off to a far and distant country not knowing his destination.  I had no idea how this ministry direction could change so quickly. 

What I thought would be a carefully designed path became a rollercoaster ride.  I began to discover that even though I certainly have the gifts and graces for ministry, I don't have the temperament that easily orders the life of a congregation.  So when I should have received my ordination as an Elder, and perhaps an appointment to my own church, I was instead working through a deferral process trying to figure out what shape ministry was supposed to take in my life.  I found relief and release as a Deacon, someone called to specialized ministry within the church who specifically connects the world to the church and the church to the world. 

And from Florida Tim and I packed up and followed God to a new destination--home to Kentucky and campus ministry. 

Campus ministry was great and awesome for nine years.  Everyday I would wake up loving my work.  During this time Tim and I added three more Wilson men to our family.  I soon discovered raising three boys is a full-time job on its own, and God once again uprooted me to a place where I could give my whole heart to being the wife and mother my family needed me to be and God was calling me to be. 

So He plopped me down in the middle of pre-school ministry.

The humor of it all is that my parents secretly thought I didn't like kids because it took Tim and I so long to have them.  I didn't spend hardly any time around small children growing up.  Honestly the best preparation for being a preschool teacher was the nine years I spent on campus. 

I am in my fifth year of serving Jesus by serving the smallest of the small.  It is a joy-filled place full of adventure.  I can never predict what my day will be like each morning:  I am never bored, and I'm often surprised by joy and the kind of  laughter that makes my face hurt. 

The shape of this ministry is so different than what I anticipated ministry would look like as a twenty year old.  However those same gifts and graces that were growing in me as a young associate pastor are alive and strong now.  Tim and I were having an honest heart to heart a couple of weeks ago.  He told me that I keep introducing myself as a preschool teacher, and I'm not.  I'm still very much the woman God has called into ministry and has intentionally placed in a preschool to serve as His minister.  I am still a pastor at heart.  It's just that my congregants are about three feet shorter than the ones I used to serve.  I am still preaching, I am still leading worship, I am still teaching the timeless truths of God's Word.  And I am still a shepherd to the most vulnerable in God's flock. 

Who knows how long this part of the journey will last.  God is always upending things and moving us to new places and spaces, teaching us new ways of living in to the call on our lives.  But no matter where I go, I take the song God sings over me and through me with me.  It is the same kind of song I have been singing from the beginning, only now I have guitar that He is teaching me to play so I can give it music too. 

Lately I have been wanting a guitar strap.  Mostly because I'm getting better at playing, and I really want to play for the kids when I do chapel at the preschool.  Since I'm a crafty girl, I kind of set my heart on making my own.  As I lay awake one night thinking of how I could make that happen, God reminded me of the Elder's stole that had been a gift when I served my first church.  It is a tapestry filled with the faces of children from all over the world, "red and yellow black and white," each one precious in His sight.  Just like an old stole can become a new guitar strap, the heart of this ministry remains the same, even when its shape changes.  And one more thing.  God also showed me that the shape of ministry now was always a part of His original design.  I didn't miss it or mess it up.  It was always in His heart for me.

So this is Mercy--that God would never forget or repent of the call He places on our lives.  He never turns His back on us or His hopes for us.  We may get side-tracked or side-lined, but God never changes His mind about us.  And no matter at what point we remember who He called us to be, it's never too late to accept His invitation to live the life we were created for.  It is never too late to say yes to God's call; just like it's never too late to start learning how to use those gifts He has entrusted us with.  For all those who have given up and given in (for all kinds of reasons, some of which may not have been our own), it's time to get back what we let go of.

The Divine Serenade

Music is my true language.  Not that I'm great at it.  But it moves me.  When nothing in my life makes sense, the right song can make sense out of me. 

Over the last six months music has taken on a new dimension in my life.  I've picked up a guitar I laid down years ago. Now words and chords have woven themselves around the vibrations of my heart, leaving songs scratched on paper that speak order into the lovely mess I live in.  I love the feel of the guitar resting against my chest cavity, filling me with sound as I work the strings.  When I am numb to everything, the music reaches into my deepest heart and brings forth the springs of life.

I hear the echoes of God's love in the music. 

Over the last few weeks I have pondered this.  The image I keep coming back to is the one Zephaniah lifts up:  "The LORD, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will renew you in his love; He will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival" (Zephaniah 3:17-18). 

We have got to get over ourselves thinking we have God all figured out.  The day I first really had a heart experience with this verse I was in campus ministry, having a really difficult day.  I think I read that scripture with a "yeah, right" sarcasm smeared across my heart and mind.  I was discouraged and weighed down with burdens I could not shake, yet I had to put all of that aside because our evening worship service was coming fast.  I couldn't show up defeated.  When I walked into our small sanctuary that evening, one of our young men announced that before we started there was something he wanted to do first.  He sat me down and proceeded to do a rap he had written in my honor, a humorous tribute he wrote to show his appreciation for me.  When I couldn't feel the presence of God, God literally sang His song over me in a way I could never have predicted.

Feelings never tell us the whole story.

These last few weeks God has been showing me that His songs for His people never sing themselves out; they are continuous streams of music that emanate from His heart for His Beloved Bride.  He always has a song for us.  I believe that true transformation happens when we begin to listen for those melodies, and allow our hearts to reverberate with the music of Heaven.  I believe that when the Holy One invites us to sing a new song, He is asking us to stop trying to force our song into His ears and instead sing the song He is already singing over us.  When the discord is gone, our lives come into a resonance and power that is hard to describe but a force to be reckoned with. 

I want that.  I want my life to be a song that makes others want to sing and dance and shout and rejoice.  I want my life to amplify the songs of Salvation, resonating with power and new life and love.  I want the healing Love of our Savior to ripple out in waves of restoration, and this clay vessel I am to simply be a speaker of His Grace and Redemption.  I want His Resurrection Story to be resplendent within me, so that those who hear will become His Resurrection Story resplendent too.  I want to join with all creation in the unending hymn, "Holy, Holy, Holy Lord.  God of power and might.  Heaven and Earth are full of Your Glory.  Hosanna in the highest, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord." 

God Is In The Fire

Last week I was in the middle of Chapel telling the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego when God spoke to my heart.  It kind of took my breath away.  I was standing before our smallest children at the pre-school where I work, and I was choked up in the worst kind of way.  I had gotten to the part where King Nebuchadnezzar had thrown the Hebrew children into the furnace because they refuse to bow down and worship his golden statue.  And he looked and, lo, there were not three people in the furnace.  There were four.

And the words get stuck in my throat--GOD IS IN THE FIRE.  The tears gathered, leaking out.  My words catch as I speak them.  But I am certain God wants me to know this, as much as He wants these little ones to know the story of His faithfulness.  He wants me to know the story of His faithfulness in my life.

GOD IS IN THE FIRE.

I have been in the fire the last few weeks.  It has been hard.  I have felt every insecurity, every doubt from the very beginnings of my life, each one creeping up with the taunting audacity to suggest that doubt and insecurity can never really go away.  The lies have felt so true, the ones that suggest my life doesn't matter, my brokenness cannot be mended, my truest self will only scare the people I love away. 

One of my favorite songs from the 80's is Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire."  It's true, the fire is the tool of the enemy sent to destroy--to steal, kill, and destroy.  It was true when the enemy prompted Nebuchadnezzar to heat up the furnace and it is true now every time the enemy causes or piggybacks on misfortune, whispering lies to the vulnerable heart, keeping his prey defeated, discouraged, and despairing.

God doesn't cause the fire.  But God is faithful to meet us there.

I'm thinking of people I know who are surviving difficulties that are hard to imagine and explain.  Grief that rends hearts with the velocity of hurricane force winds.  Tenuous circumstances that isolate.  Unwieldy messes that seem impossible.  I peek into difficulties other than my own.  I tremble to speak the truth even there, but I know it is still true.  God is faithful to meet us in the fire.  If we are courageous enough to seek Him, to not allow the lie of the enemy to deter us, we will find Him.  He will walk with us through the fire.  He often does not keep us from the flames, but He finds a way to keep us within them.  And He is faithful in finding a way to lead us out of them too.

He has been keeping me. 

A dear friend of mine likes to remind me that the only things  burned in the fiery furnace were the ropes that bound the Hebrew children.  I also know that the Hebrew children were willing to face the fire regardless of whether God saved them or not.  It was worth it to them to worship God only.  Either way, they found freedom in the fire. 

Through the years I have found it too.  God has used the fires in my life to set me free, to show me that He alone is worthy of my heart's trust.  Anything else will destroy me.  But resting in Him, even when I feel everything consumed around me and within me, I come out on the other side sturdier, purified of things I couldn't get out of my system any other way. 

I don't mean to glorify the fires in our lives.  And don't go looking for them!  Just like I said to the smallest of the smalls in my care that day in chapel, fire burns; it is dangerous!  Do not touch it!  But any encounter I have had with God in the fire has changed me.  Not necessarily the fire itself, but the encounter with God.  It's like I don't have the energy left to protect myself from God anymore.  I'm more willing to be clay in His hands.  I'm desperate even for the help only He can give.  And that help changes everything.  His help changes me.  I would never choose to walk through fire.  But I treasure every gift of God's touch that the fire afforded.

So I guess this is my way of saying we don't have to face the hard things alone.  God is with us.  Especially where no one else can be.  And God's power in a surrendered life can do amazing and remarkable things.  Let us encourage one another with this truth.

Oh To See Beyond Packaging . . . .

One of my new favorite scriptures comes from Isaiah 11:1-4.  It says, "A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.  The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.  He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth."  This is one of the passages from Isaiah that describes what the longed-for Messiah for will be like.  I hear these words and Jesus with His perfect understanding becomes clearer to me.  He comes to us seeing the real stuff of who we are, looking beyond the outward trappings to see what is most substantial about us.  Because the basis of His judgments are not limited to what He sees and hears, He is able to make righteous, RIGHT judgments.  People are just not capable of that.  We humans do not have the capacity to see all of everything.  We can only go by what our eyes and ears tell us.  And our judgments are based upon  surfacy things. 

God pointed this out to the prophet Samuel when he took up the horn filled with oil in order to anoint the new king of Israel.  Samuel looks on the oldest of Jesse's sons and says, "Surely the LORD's anointed is now before the LORD" (1Samuel 16:6).  God's response cuts to the heart of every judgment human beings will ever make:  "Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7).  God had chosen David to be king.  But everyone around David had already written David off because of outward appearances.

My problem is that I internalize the judgments of others, and those judgments live on long after the person has been removed from my life.  They don't even have to verbalize the judgment; I can fill in the details faster than the info forms parents have to complete on the first day of school.  So real or imagined it becomes a part of the story I tell myself about who I am. 

The thing is, as I grow in my faith I know these judgments to be lies.  I can even come to the place of rejecting them as the truth.  But when the enemy attacks, he insidiously whispers those lies into my awareness again, manipulating emotion so that the lie seems more real than God's Truth.

God makes judgments too.  God sees things as they are.  And while the world judges and condemns or congratulates based on appearances, God is interested in our hearts.  God sees clearly and truly the way sin has shaped us and marked us, whether the sins have been our own or those that have come against us.  God sees, and God desires to make it right.  Jesus is the One He sends to do just that.

The thing is, God never judges the outside of things that we complain about or want to fix.  You know, the things that make us one of a kind.  Those traits and tendencies, the shapes and particularities of who we are.  These are the things God celebrates in us because He put them there on purpose.  We are His wonderful creativity manifest in flesh, and everything we would disparage as not good enough (because the world didn't like it) are the very things He rejoices in.

On the bad days, when I am under attack, I struggle to love all those things that are clearly the mark of God's handiwork.  When I hurt because I'm so afraid to feel the sting of rejection, I argue with God about the stuff of who I am.  But then on the good days, I see that it is those things I am most embarrassed by, those things most uniquely me, that God uses the most.  For those who need to know they are not alone in arguing with God over the shape of who they are, I share this is for you:


This is the packaging
He chooses.
I will never comprehend
what makes my
dustiness wonderful,
and fearful even.
My dusty self
is animated
with something
far beyond me. 
I cannot argue
with My God
and His Sovereignty.

But I do anyway.

"Why this package,
 Lord? Why me?
With all this
awkwardness?"
I don't see
the beauty
in what feels
an awkward mess.
I only feel the burden
of my thoroughly
human love.
But His WORD
silences
my argument,
His WORD
crucified
like bread broken.

This perfect LOVE,
so wounded
by my own
unwitting hand,
is reaching through
my questioning doubts
claiming me again.
"As much as it takes,"
His wondrous
HEART
whispers,
His reach
retracing steps
I took away
from the pain
of being
loved and left.

And when at last
He finds
my shrinking,
hiding self,
He holds me close
to His
HEART
easing His
pain as well.

So I will let
You find me
in the hurting
that I feel,
trusting that Your
Goodness
is enough to make
me heal.
I will yield
my aching self
into Your waiting
Hands,
and I will trust
Your precious Love
that always
comprehends.

The Shape of Grace

I'm a week out from leading our church's Women's Retreat.  It was an amazing weekend.  And it was certainly good to serve the Body of Christ in just that way.  But it has taken me all week to process what the weekend meant for me.

In the very heart of serving I became acutely, poignantly aware of the way brokenness has shaped my own story.  What I realize is that the doubt and fear I struggle with is the fallout from the way darkness and loss have written on me.  I am grateful for reminders of how far God's love has brought me.  But the remembering can be so real that I forget I'm not that same girl anymore.  That I don't live in that same place anymore.

This week I have been incredibly thankful for my loves who ground me.  The man who holds me--when he doesn't quite understand what I'm feeling his arms around me make the feelings less potent.  The boys who hang on me--their humor and energy and blatant need of me have the power to pull me out of the past, bringing me back to the present.  And my littlest one, who so much desires for me to be a part of his world, who longs to be a part of mine--when the enemy feeds me lies, he reminds me of my worth as a human being.

It's hard to write these things.  People often believe and expect the ministers God has placed in their midst to be somewhat inhuman, immune to the heartaches and trials that everyone has to endure.  Truth is, every person regardless of status or position is still a member of the human family.  We all have our faults and imperfections.  We are all dusty from the ground we were made from.  I'm not going to pretend it isn't so.  When Spirit fills me to speak words of Grace to an aching soul, my soul is aching too, yearning for a word spoken to me. 

This week I've come away from serving the Body to simply being part of the Body.  I have been listening so intently for that Word coming to my own unfinished self.  Yesterday my littlest boy asked me to play with him.  I suggested coloring.  We pulled out markers and colored pencils and got to work.  With color fluid beneath my fingers, taking shape upon paper, God began speaking to my heart.

The darkness of our lives doesn't have to break us. 

What I see is that it is the very darkness I thought would destroy me is the darkness that gave shape to God's Grace in my life.  His Story unfolding within me.  I want it to be pretty.  So often it's not.  But it is hauntingly beautiful.  For every dark moment, every memory that penetrates my present, there has always been, and always will be, Grace that fills in the gaps of my need.  I'm afraid of my insufficiency.  But every time, EVERY time, God's Goodness has met me in the middle of my need, drawing me to safety, showing me Salvation.  Every time.

I want to say I'm no longer tender.  But I am.  I feel the ache.  I want to say I'm feeling someone else's pain.  But I'm not.  The ache is my own.  God doesn't ever have a problem with that no matter how much I do have a problem with it.  I am choosing to walk through this day holding His Hand, trusting that His Hand is at work making this story, my story, His Story within me, beautiful. 

And someday I will see the full picture of Grace in my life.

And I will rejoice in what I see.

"The Kid"

Last weekend while Tim was away on a business trip, I picked up some movies from the library to watch with the boys.  One of them was Disney's "The Kid," starring Bruce Willis.  I had seen it quite a few years before, and I remembered thinking it was a good movie.  When I saw it in the stacks I couldn't resist.  So with the picnic blanket spread on the floor, popcorn and drinks close by, the boys and I settled in to watch.

"The Kid"  depicts one of those "what if" scenarios that comes to life for a very successful image consultant.  It tells the story of a man who seemingly has it all who is visited by his eight year old self, someone whom he has worked very hard to forget.  As the story unfolds, this man discovers that "having it all" isn't the same as being the person he dreamed of as a kid, and that the things we have or the status we occupy does not equate with true success.  Furthermore he discovers that the eight year old boy he was (and the one that is still hiding inside) needs some wisdom that he alone can give. 

The movie leaves the onlooker with a poignant question to consider:  If you had the chance to talk to your eight year old self, what would you most want to say?  What does that eight year old most need to know about his or her world that you alone can share?  It's given me opportunity to consider what I would say to my own eight year old self, the one that still shows up from time to time as I navigate through life.

I turned eight in 1980.  Ronald Reagan had just been elected president.  I often went around singing the song floating around my school about Jimmy Carter to the tune of the Oscar Mayer song, not because I knew anything of politics, but because its what all the kids were singing:

"My president has a first name; it's J-I-M-M-Y.  My president has a second name; it's C-A-R-T-E-R.  I love to hate him every day and if you ask me why I'll say, cause Jimmy Carter has a way of messing up the U.S.A." 

Probably the first thing I would say to that eight year old is that you can't believe the playground songs.  I still know next to nothing of politics, but I do know that Jimmy Carter is a man who tries to live out his faith in practical ways.  He has dedicated himself to making a difference for others, especially those who do not have access to the resources many of us enjoy.  His work with Habitat for Humanity exemplifies his selfless dedication.

Just like Jimmy Carter was the president nobody wanted, I was the kid in class that teachers dreaded.  I cried a lot as a kid.  Partly that's because I'm wired that way.  A lot of it was because my Dad was gone from my life after my folks divorced.  And even though my mother remarried to a wonderful man, the rift in my spirit was deep.  I walked around dazed and heartbroken most of the time.  When I was seven I was diagnosed as a border-line dyslexic.  I didn't really understand what all it meant, except that learning happened so slowly.  What other children could do in minutes seemed to take me hours.  I was the awkward, shy girl who cried all the time, was painfully slow, and could not grasp basic concepts like reading and arithmetic.  In third grade, students who did not finish their work did not get to play outside at recess.  And if they still didn't finish their work, teachers paddled.  I was often embarrassed by the tears I could not stop and humiliated when each day, each class, there was work I could not finish.


This week as I led chapel for my preschoolers, I told the story of Samuel anointing David as the new king of Israel (I Samuel 16:1-13).  Samuel was drawn to the oldest of Jesse's sons saying to himself, "Surely the Lord's anointed is now before the Lord."  God's response to Samuel's assumption is pointed:  "Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart."  Good words to live by when we are tempted to sing common playground songs and tempted to believe conventional wisdom.  I've learned that it takes a whole lot of faith to see things God's way.  This is so true as we respond to the world.  It is harder still as we learn to see ourselves through God's eyes.

I can feel the awkward struggle in my spirit as I imagine what it would be to stand in the presence of that girl.  Just like Bruce Willis struggled between wanting to dismiss his former self and wanting to improve his former self, I feel the tension within as I think back to the girl that I was.  The neediness, the helplessness, the sadness are all things I've tried to separate myself from over the years.  But I sense that she needs to hear words of hope and life that I alone can share, because I alone know the story that makes her who she is.  Speaking words of faith and hope, this is what I want to say:

God has a plan for all those things you don't like about yourself.  What you would have discarded in an instant, so that you could be like everyone else, God kept around for a reason.  Your tears are gift.  Because you are so inescapably familiar with your own pain, the pain of others does not scare you.  You can feel what they feel, you can share the burden of their heartache.  And because grief and heartache will not destroy you, you can be a testament to others of how God's strength can be make perfect in weakness.  So see, your weakness isn't a bad thing after all.

You are beautiful just the way you are.  You hate your slowness.  You hate how everyone disregards you because of it.  You feel overlooked and discounted.  But you are slow by design.  You are not dumb; you are not stupid.  You have an intuitive kind of intelligence that perceives what others miss.  You see what others are blind to.  What you sense brings clarity and light to difficult situations.  You take your time to know things, but this extra time sifts through what is false and what is true.  So when you know, you know for sure.  And because you need, and take, the extra time to look, you see God's hand where others may not.  God works through this in you.

Your differentness will make a difference others can't make.  You feel deeply, and even though it takes a while, you learn well; the lessons life teaches penetrate into the core of who you are.  God has crafted you especially as a vessel of His compassion and wisdom.  To be an "old soul" walking around in an eight-year-old body is not a bad thing.  As the years pass you will see how God works through all the things you think are wrong about you.  You will be gentle because you know what it feels like to be treated with severity.  You will be encouraging because you know how empowering it is to know someone else values you.  You will be kind because you know the damage harsh words can cause.  And you will see easily the brokenness of others that hides in plain sight.  When others are not equipped to speak a word of hope to a broken soul, God will send you.

These are the things I want to say.  Gosh, after all these years, it is still hard to really receive them, to let their truth seep into my soul and do its healing work.  But I think of other eight year olds who may need to hear just these things.  God has opened up a door for me to volunteer in an under-resourced part of town through The Foundry Christian Community Center.  On Monday afternoons I show up to help with their afterschool program.  I can't help but wonder what if.  What if someone could have been there in this way for me?  What I do know is it is my way of giving giving back to the eight year old kid inside.  So she can see none of her tears were wasted.

HOPE IS--

An opening,
a new morning,
beginning so quietly
that its dawn is
barely perceptible.
But the new morning
God calls forth
comes as certainly
as the darkness of the night.
Darkness,
no matter how black,
cannot stave off Day
when God has ordained it.

Hope rises,
quietly,
gently,
slowly unfolding
in the long night
of despair.
God will not be mocked;
The faint glimmer
of light
cannot be
diminished.
It grows
with painstaking
slowness,
barely a whisper,
a breath,
yet steadily
growing,
glowing,
illuminating--
all of the treasures
our God
of goodness
has provided
in the dark.

How does your garden grow?

I sat in the living room of my grandmother's home, in the worn chair, with the soft yellow light of a lamp shining on us.  It was my time alone with my grandma.  In those minutes ticking by so quickly, while boys and husband and all other relatives were occupied, I sat with her and poured myself out.  I told her of the gnawing sadness.  I tried to put words around it, the gaping hole in my spirit where emptiness stared up at me every day, mocking me, asking me to prove my worth, laughing at me because I stared back with no answer, just a haunting longing for more settled in my gut.  I told her these things.  And I wept in her living room with the soft glow of yellow lamp light surrounding us.  My grandmother says to me--in the way that only wise people who have had many years to consider such responses can--"Your most important job is to be a mother right now.  There will come a time when you will do more."  She told me not to despair, to trust that the fulfillment of longings placed by God always makes its way around to us, to know that the work of my hands in this moment is so important.  It is work that I alone can do.

Since then I have pondered her words.  And I have held them in my heart with the picture a friend shared on social media of me and my son.  I was volunteering at a summer camp that our church was hosting for children on the West side of town.  I brought my own children with me.  They participated as campers while I helped out.  We began each morning working in the community garden, a hands-on learning opportunity that teaches what makes for good growth and harvest.  And on this particular morning my son and I were digging so that a new garden bed could be cultivated.

I'll be honest and say I hate the picture.  My hair is ugly, my legs are pale, my skin looks jiggly.  But I also know this picture is more than just the image of the moment when I look unkempt.  It is a holy moment--a time shared with my son doing something good together, something that makes a contribution to a community larger than ourselves.  I have carried the image in my heart all summer.  As I meditate on the metaphor I realize, "Where else will my son learn what it means to give himself to goodness so that his contribution can bring forth goodness for others?"

This same boy was there sitting at my kitchen table as my husband and I discussed where God could be leading me.  He looks at me with big eyes and says, "Mom, you already have a job!  Taking care of us three crazy boys!"  His eyes get watery after he says it.  I take him in my arms and tell him that being his mother is my most important job in the whole world.  I tell him that this will always be first for me as long as he and his brothers need it.  And they are still going to need it for a while.  I'm not going anywhere.  But here.  Home.  With my garden full of sons.

Unraveled

The things I least want to write about are the things I most need to write about.

Ok, I said it.

A few weeks ago we had our annual women's retreat for our church where I got to be the speaker.  Because of unforeseen scheduling conflicts I didn't think it was going to make.  But through an extraordinary door of Grace our group was able to attend with the number we had registered.  Our time together was wonderful; it was everything it needed to be.  God's Mercy was evident.

Our retreats typically begin on Friday night and end on Sunday morning.  We have three sessions scattered throughout with a huge chunk of free time on Saturday.  One of the offerings available during this time is to receive a massage from a licensed massage therapist.  For the first time since we began having retreats, I got one.

The room was quiet, soft music playing in the background.  The woman offering the massages greeted me warmly.  I got situated in the chair, and she got started.  Within the first minute she found the place in my shoulders where I carry everything--grief, strain, disappointment, heartache, failure.  As her hands got to work she said, "Baby, you've got to give it to the Lord."  The irony was not lost on me.  I tell God stories to help others do just that.  I have a theological degree and years of professional experience in guiding hearts to the place of surrender.  And for all my knowledge and ability I can't be free of my own burden.

Her hands moved along the muscles, moving and manipulating them, working out the knots.  Still she kept returning to that one spot.  "I think I can fix it," she said.  I just surrendered to the process, knowing the opportunity was rare, willing to let her try.

"Can I go deeper?" she would ask.  "Yes," I answered, and she would penetrate deeper into the knotted tension in my shoulders.  I could hear the popping noises as she worked.  Again she would ask, "Can I go deeper?"  Again I would give my consent, each time consciously relaxing my arms and shoulders and body to her grip, imagining myself as putty beneath the strength of her hands as she kneaded the knots away. 

The time was over much too soon.  I left with the admonition to drink lots of water and that I might be sore later on.  When all was said and done I went back to my bed and slept for two hours.

The soreness never really came.  For a couple of days I felt so good, free of pain I hadn't known I was carrying.  It's like I had gotten so used to the knotted tension held within my body that I just accepted it as normal.  I didn't know I could experience life any other way. 

Her words to me keep echoing inside my heart and mind:  "Can I go deeper?"  The thing my body experienced beneath her hands is the same thing my soul has experienced in the presence of God's Spirit for the last six months.  Since December the LORD has awakened longings lying dormant within me.  Awakened them, then left me awake in the disparity of my dreams and crushing reality.  I have had no framework for understanding God's work, just a screaming sadness I could not shake.  Each experience taking me deeper into pain I did not know was there. 

There is something about grief.  It is possible to experience deep loss, not just the death of someone we love, but forms of dying that surprise and confound us because there is no body of a loved one to watch over.  And because there is no outward evidence of loss, it is too easy to pretend we didn't lose.  But grief remains.  And either we deal with it or we are held captive by it. 

Our retreat was all about how Jesus sets the captives free.  I am learning that release from my own captivity can sometimes be a painful thing.  Sometimes its easier to pretend the cage holding me isn't there--I can make my home in the space around me and learn to be content within its boundaries.  But the nagging feeling that I was made for more--meant for more--won't go away.  It hurts because I have no idea what more looks like, what its shape is.  I just know that while it includes and encompasses the life I already have, it is greater than what I am living.  And then I wonder, "Am I just deluding myself?  Is there really more?"  Why would God wake me up to want something that is never going to happen?

The trust part of me believes that freedom lies on the other side of submission.  I cannot name or even describe clearly the process He is bringing me through.  But I believe by faith that it is accomplishing within me something I cannot accomplish on my own, that this ache is honing something important in my character that He needs me to have.  And maybe it's something I need me to have, a virtue or grace that will spell freedom over my life which cannot be gained any other way.

The only thing of value that I believe I bring to the process is a willingness to let God have His way, to surrender to the process, even in the pain, as I yielded my body to the hands of a woman who knows where the knots are and knows how to unravel them.  I guess in the end this is what the LORD is always seeking to do--unravel us from the knots we tie ourselves in.