Heartsick

I am sickened and appalled by news of the mass shootings in Colorado. I am angry, and sick, and so grieved. 

When will we see that this world has not become a better place by force of man's reason, discovery, and innovation. Mankind will not make itself better by creating it's own virtue and thinking good and fine-sounding thoughts. When I was a child, children were not killing their parents, nor parents their own children. Men did not burst into schools and coffee shops and crowded theaters and murder innocents. Acts of evil are on the rise. We are not being enlightened into a greater state of virtue.

Just as the Bible prophesied, "Sin will be rampant everywhere, and the love of many will grow cold." (Matt 24:12)..."But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power." (2 Timothy 3:1-5)

From slanderous, hateful discourse on the airwaves, to the worship of self that tears families and relationships apart, brutality in our communities, unashamed extortions in the white-collar sector, and any number of breaking news stories that continue to slap us daily with their sensationalism until we are almost lulled into a complacency of "well, that's just the way it is," hateful, horrid acts are on the rise. This is our world of mankind despising and refusing to acknowledge it's Creator. "I do not want you, God. Even if you do exist, I want to live my life my way thank you very much." Just as in times of old when another culture had fallen into depravity and "everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 21:25), it will not go well when there is a sliding scale for right and wrong.

We can debate philosophies and loiter in the ethereal land of grand thoughts and ideas, but it does not change the fact that man is born into sin. One does not have to strain to see that we have "all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Which parent has ever had to teach his child to lie? And how many of you have had to give tantrum lessons? "Repeat after me, son...Mine! Mine!" This inherent self-centeredness is just that, inherent. We are born with it. And even as adults we continue to battle...or give in to...this inner drive to preserve self, seek our own gain, to have control, to be lords of our own lives. It's not working. It never has, it never will. There is a presence of evil that desires to rule men's souls. Believing that he does not exist is just as perilous as denying God's existence.

For there is an authority to which we will all bow one day, either here or on the other side of this life. And there is also One who can free us from our slavery to sin and give us peace with our creator. His name is Jesus. A name that has been reviled and mocked from the time he walked upon this earth until now. Sent by God the Father not to just say and do amazing things, but in obedience to his Father, to take the penalty for the sin of all mankind; to die a horrible death on a cross for not only every sick and heinous thought, word or deed that has been done, but even for our seemingly passive rebellion against God and what He has declared to be right and true. He was crucified, died, and was raised to life again, our sin upon His shoulders, so that we could be free from sin and live a new life by His spirit. By His death and resurrection we can know peace with the Father in heaven who created us, now and for eternity. Jesus..."Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." (Acts 4:12) Only in His power we can battle against our sin and selfishness and let our lives reflect a goodness that is truly good. 

I may not have ever been tempted to walk into a crowded room and open fire, but I have opened my mouth and spewed out hurtful words that surely have wounded and killed the hearts of others. I am a selfish person. I am a wretched woman. And I am so thankful to know God, to have a Savior who saves me eternally, and saves me everyday...especially from myself. A Savior who forgives me and calls me to seek forgiveness for the messes I've made. How I need Him! So please...I beg you...wake up friend! Wake up world! We are not getting better on our own. Turn to Jesus. Be whole, be healed, be forgiven.

I could go on and on, but I already have... My heart is heavy with grief as I am once again forced to look upon the tragic effects of sin. 

Oh God, have mercy on us. Have mercy on our land. We are sick and so very sad today. Many are grieving and aching...free-falling into despair. Be their hope, their life, their comfort. We need you, Jesus. May we cry out to You today in humility and repentance, "Heal me, Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise." (Jeremiah 17:14) 

Goodbyes...

Today I am pondering goodbyes. I am beginning to see that much of life is about saying goodbye...and learning to do it well.

Goodbye can mean "I’ll see you soon" or “I’ll see you in heaven,” and everything in between. In the past several years this has become more poignant as I’ve been parted from dear friends that I have loved and ministered with. Some have been called to minister elsewhere nearby, some have been sent on grand adventures of faith hundreds of miles away. Others have lived out their days here on earth and have been called to their eternal home. And most recently, I have had to say goodbye…one by one…to my children and their spouses as they have followed their given paths away from home.

My preparation for these goodbyes began many years ago with “seasons” of friendship. Can you look back on your life and notice that there were people that you were closely connected with - perhaps in school, or while your children were small, on a job, or in ministry - but as time and life’s events took your journeys elsewhere, the proximity of that friendship was gone? I’m not talking about having a falling out, but perhaps more of a calling out. At first I would try to hang on so tightly and force a relationship to stay, but I began to see that some relationships were there to nurture a season of life, to truly just propel me on to the next leg of my journey. There are also some that, despite distance, will be life-long and, truth be told, I don’t think we get to pick which ones are which.

Every one of us has a journey. If I love you I will walk the stretch of the road with you that is mine to walk and when the crossroad comes, I will bid you farewell…praying that you do “fare well” wherever you are called. Your life is not mine to hold tightly, but it may have been mine to encourage for a time. And at the end of the day, I just want to be faithful to that for I am so eternally grateful for those who’ve walked those stretches of road with me. It may have been a matter of years or just a few conversations, but each life that’s touched mine has made an impact. Even those that have caused hurt and pain have been used for God’s greater purpose.

Years before my children ever had the glimmer of a calling, be it marriage or other life adventures, I began praying that I would be able to let go of them gracefully and graciously. (Grace being the operative word.) Especially being a mom-at-home, my life and “career" has been so closely identified with their lives. But my goal as a parent was always to propel them toward adulthood. Even when they were younger, to challenge them to look beyond immediate gratification and not just learn practical skills for adulthood, but begin to have a vision of themselves as, in their case, a man and as women. It was so good to choose to celebrate their milestones, to allow for rites of passage that were meaningful and intentional, but in the back of my mind was the knowledge that one day all of this must culminate in “goodbye.”

And how intensely do we love our children? I have often thought of mine as “burned into my heart"...like a brand. My heart is forever changed by having given birth and by having done life with them. The joys of victory and the agonies of defeat…and all the ordinary days in between. I love them in ways that words fail to fully capture and that is fitting, because they were never meant to be captured. True love is huge and holds it’s hands outstretched, it is never tight-fisted. My kids were created by God for their own journeys and if I love them, I will shout, “fly…fly!” even if the next minute I must bury my head in my hands and cry. I must bear the sorrow of goodbye so I can watch them stand, and struggle, and grow, and embrace all that life has for them.

And, so too with my friends. Sometimes I have seen God take a friend out of my life so that I will learn to stand without them, and stand more fully in Him. Or so that I will have eyes to see a new relationship that He’s ordained for me. Even as an extravert I can get pretty content with my little circle of close friends and fail to see someone new who is just waiting for a fresh companion. And most often, He is calling my loved ones to a new adventure and I can either focus on my sadness at having to say goodbye, or love them well through the sadness by continuing to encourage…standing at the curb-side waving with all my might and wishing them a safe and amazing journey.

As I grow older, I have begun to see the beauty and purpose behind the ebb and flow of life...and lives. It’s sole purpose is life, and life to the full. A seed must fall to the ground and die in order to bear much fruit. This is the order of life. And so often this means that my ordering of life must die, and I must learn to say goodbye in a way that joyfully says “fly!” When someone leaves there is always a hole left behind, but isn’t that where new plants are nestled? In fresh holes? The trick is not missing new blooms because we’re still staring down the road at a set of taillights. Do we acknowledge our sorrow? Of course. But we can bear it a little better each time as we come to see that life is not about hanging on to things or people.

So today as I began the day skyping with my daughter and her kids in Arkansas, then did the same with a beloved friend in California, and also learned of a dear couple who have been called on to their next adventure, I have stopped to ponder all this, to let the sadness wash over me with each goodbye, and at the thought of that "farewell" to come...and I know it's all going to be ok. Goodbye is ok, even when we love much and it hurts.

We can love deeply and learn to say goodbye, because sometimes they are the same thing.

For Better Or For Worse

Sometimes we forget that our vows before God were “for better or for worse.” We so quickly want to just cave when the going gets tough. And yet what we need to do is to dig in. Not dig in with stubbornness, anger, or exasperation, but to dig in deeper to the Lord - to His truth; to find humility and that God-love that does not seek it's own. We were never promised a life free of pain and suffering. We were called to share in the fellowship of Christ’s suffering, but with great hope in His redeeming power. We need to dig deep into the heart of God and seek not only His promises, but His will for what our life, our hearts, our attitudes should be in Him.

It is so easy to keep that list of wrongs growing ever longer; to rehearse it daily in our minds; to use it as a merciless weapon just because we can. And yet we are called to take on the image of Christ, of our God who keeps no record of wrongs, who demonstrated His love for us in this: that while we were yet sinners, died for us. For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross with all its shame. And His joy? It was that we would one day be reconciled to the Father, and be enabled to have relationship with Him. Do we ask the Lord to give us a vision for our spouse that can be the joy set before us? Do we ask the Spirit to fill us with the ability to be patient…long suffering…to suffer long for the sake of what He can surely do to heal their wounds, to smooth their rough edges, to redeem all things in their lives to Him?  Will we suffer long…claiming the hope that nothing is impossible with God, that He who began a good work IN US BOTH will be faithful to complete it? The only variable to this equation is: Will we be faithful to remain while He does this work?

I have come to know that whenever relational pain has ripped me apart, God always met me there and filled the grief and despair with His holy presence, with such deep love, and with strength far and above my puny faith. When I was suffocating in fear, He brought me out into a spacious place and gave me His breath. He is a God of immeasurable mercy and grace. So often as He has wooed me and healed me by this very grace, He has persistently whispered, “And what of you daughter? Why are you so unwilling to show this grace to your husband? You want it all for yourself, but you don’t want to see your un-lovingness and your un-loveliness.” “But, Lord, “He did…he said…” If you really gaze upon Jesus and His Father, that perfect picture of oneness, neither stands as the accuser. There is only one accuser and his name is Satan. Jesus Christ did not bear the punishment for our sin so that we could be conformed to the image of Satan, our enemy, the accuser. Jesus is our eternal advocate. He lives forever to intercede for us. His love truly did cover over the multitude of our sins, of our spouse’s sin, our children’s sin…the whole broken world of sin.  

His life in us can give us the ability to do the same. Instead of doing battle with our spouses, we can do battle for them. That battle will be a willingness to look at our own lives and shortcomings, places of need, of hurt, of hardness and to let the Lord come in to do some digging, and pruning, and sowing of good seed. And that battle will also be fighting for the sake of our spouses and their areas of weakness, blindness, wounding. Life is hard. Don’t we all just treasure someone who will fight for us? Fight alongside us? Someone who will persevere and not give up on us? They may not even know yet that we are fighting for them because the chasm has grown so wide that oneness seems only a fairy tale. But fight we must. Fighting in prayer…sometimes radical, pleading prayer, and sometimes just quiet persistent prayer. Fixing our eyes on Jesus continually, so that they will not be on that list of wrongs that the enemy wants us to daily remember, and persistently battling to take captive thoughts of bitterness, selfishness, and despair.

We want happily ever after instead of for better of for worse, but the reality is that anything of strength and beauty in this broken world of ours gains it’s stature through trial, buffeting, and pressure. A strong tree has grown deep roots to be able to stand against the storm by withstanding years of wind and heat, perhaps even parching drought. And an athlete’s strength and ability has come from hours and days and seasons of hard training, sore muscles, even injury at times. This means discipline and self denial and that is hard, but denying self is what we are called to.

And remember that there is so much more at stake than our own personal happily ever after. We are to be witnesses to the world of a mighty and holy God that, according to our verbal testimony, breathed the universe into existence by His very word, and yet we live our daily lives denying His very character and strength when we so easily give up on the people in our lives and the covenants we’ve made. We need to realize that that cry of “Lord, I can’t do this!” is not the sign that we now just walk away. It is the cry of surrender and the realization that we can’t do it in our own strength. We were never meant to. God is so big. We need instead to plead that He be big in our eyes, in our lives, in the lives of those around us. And we need to be willing, by the gifting of the Holy Spirit, to suffer long, to be patient. To be still and know that He is God.

All I can say after decades of learning to surrender, of fighting for God to win and to reign and to truly be my Lord, is that I could never have imagined knowing Him so intimately.  And this has not been in spite of, but because of the many journeys of pain, of suffering long in faith, in obedience, learning to tuck in ever closer to Him. And I never even dared to hope that He could bring healing to my heart, to my husband’s heart, and especially to our marriage. At the end of the day I even had to surrender “happily ever after.” All I wanted was Him; to know Him in sweet unbroken fellowship, and that meant obedience in everything, no matter what. And as a balm of promise, He gave joy in the deepest places of my soul even while I persevered through pain. I am so thankful. And I know without a doubt that He is more than able to keep His promises and that He is ever worthy of trust. He is waiting to pour forth power, strength, mercy, grace, wisdom and love upon the lives and relationships of His children.

A life verse that God gave me well before I knew just how much I would need it is Proverbs 3:5,6… ”Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will keep your path straight.” I come back to this over and over again…especially the “lean not on your own understanding” part. God is the only one who really knows the depth of our hearts and our situations. Lean on Him for your marriage, seek His promises for yourself and for your spouse. There is a world out there watching to see if God is who we claim He is. If we won’t trust Him ourselves, wait on Him, live a life of long-suffering...ever hopeful, and allow Him to do what only He can do, they will never see from us any reason to put their trust in Him. It is He who is to be glorified by our lives. By His power we can persevere, because - for better of for worse - He will never leave us nor forsake us.  

Give us faith to believe your promises, Lord. Teach us to walk in Your commands, realizing that obedience…even in baby steps…is the only way to see our faith grow and give You room to work Your daily miracles of redemption in all our hearts and marriages. You are more than able. Amen.


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For some additional thoughts on marriage: Perfect Love

Now I See

Lately I don’t see so good. (Bad grammar intended) Ah, the joys of growing older! My first collection of reading glasses made their appearance several years ago and have since been replaced by more powerful models. "We need morrre power, Captain!" (Thank you, Mr. Scot.) Blessed with perfect eyesight until sometime in my forties, I have found my diminishing ability to see things up close to be, well, frustrating. If only my arms were longer…

I still reach for the nail file and start in with my shaping only to realize that I cannot see what I’m doing…at all! I’ve mastered the art of holding an item as far from my face as possible while tipping my head back a little farther and scowling down at the teeny, tiny, sort-of-coming-into-focus writing. And my true transition to paying by debit card alone began about the time that I started scrawling out very blurry looking checks...blurry to me, anyway. Who has time to fish for glasses in the check stand?

This morning I simply wanted to find my little zirconia earrings. They were somewhere in that handful of tiny baubles floating in the small greenish ring bowl on top of my bedroom bookshelf…at about chin level. Needless to say as I peered at this collection of silver balls and sparkling studs all I saw was a cluster if shapes and glitter, kind of like when you squint at a disco ball. Everything is just vaguely…shiny. So with a sigh I picked up the bowl, and held it down, and tipped by head back, and scowled…and finally found what I was looking for. But all the while I’m thinking, “I can’t believe I have to do this!”

There was a time, a good long time, that I could see things up close. Now I have to stand back or do that stretchy arm, tippy head, scowl down your nose thing. My 12th grade English teacher has unknowingly found revenge. I used to sit in the back row of Mrs. Thompson’s class and offer to hold her book “back here” for her whenever she started tipping head and stretching arms. Good thing she liked me. (Actually, she was my favorite teacher. My inner word nerd blossomed under her enthusiasm for expounding on our weekly vocab words, mapping out the culture of Chaucer, diagramming sentences, and making us pump out yet another essay. But I digress…)

Tonight as I felt for the black pair of specs on my nightstand and crept out of the bedroom to begin another night of insomnia I saw something I hadn’t seen before. Not a real thing, but a flicker of a thought that captured full attention. My journey of sight to blur to holding it away and seeing again parallels my inner journey of seeing. So many years spent immersed in life, children to be raised, issues to be pressed through. Mulling around in that crowded stand of trees and trying to find my way. Only seeing what was right in front of me. But now as I’ve grown older there has been a knowing that standing back from all those things, gazing upon the whole forest, gives the keenest sight.

I have loved each new decade of my life better than the last for this very reason…or reasons: insight, perspective, context. And with those a deeper knowledge of the God who knew me before time and formed me in my mother’s womb with these very eyes – sort of greyish, but sometimes looking green or blue depending on what I’m wearing. You have to look at the whole to see their color. It’s His amazing grace that has taken me from blind to “now I see.” These are good thoughts on my countdown to fifty. The next decade is days away. Though my eyesight is going, I can praise Jesus that my vision is getting better.

IRRITATING

So how does a nice girl like me get so surly on such a lovely spring day?

(bats her thinning lashes)

I mean, I was just sitting there minding my own business, eating an apple with peanut butter. So far, so good. Granted, I had missed my sweat producing, stress-reducing workout this morning. I was all good intentions and black stretchy pants, but my black-clad bottom stayed on the couch a bit too long lingering over coffee and status updates.

So I made up the fictional Lazy Bottom Lounge “where middle-aged women come to drink coffee, laugh it up, and swap aches & pains. And where dust bunnies come to retire. Open most days from whenever I get up till about 4pm. Please call ahead,” posted the aforementioned silliness on Facebook, then went to a friend’s house for fellowship & prayer. She even gave me coffee & a low-fat, whole wheat banana muffin. (She’s a dietitian, you know, and every recipe will have the fat squeezed out before baking! …I love you, Diana!!)

Friends, prayer, coffee, yummies. What a great start to the day! So what happened?

I came home, it was all sunny and warm, and I was lunching on my usual apple snack when I felt this subtle chafing inside, like some sort of attitudinal heartburn. Then time slipped by, again, and I found myself throwing on non-gym clothes and sprucing my wavy day-before-hair that picked up some extra bounce from last night’s pillow perm. “Gah! I look pale and dead!” Blush, blush, blush! A touch more cover up on the dark circles. Throw on my favorite green jean jacket…yada, yada…and I’m off!

Yes, I’m off. In more ways than one. Off kilter. Off balance. In a hurry and secretly wishing that I could stay home at the Lazy Bottom Lounge and be silly in my comfy workout pants, or finally fold the sheets in the other room, put away the laundry from two days ago, and get my bed made before 3. I could even chase a few dust bunnies with the Swiffer that’s been prepped and ready for action since last week or just take a walk in the sunshine.

But I had places to be and people to see and worthy things to do. So I held my tongue and was outwardly fairly patient. Nothing that needed doing was hard. No one I was with was difficult. Yet even the offer of coffee and goodies at the end of the journey didn’t stop the simmer of irritation. This is not the kind of bubbly that gets you a Miss Congeniality award.

Do you ever have days like that where you’re thinking, “What is wrong with me?!”

A. Am I tired?

B. Am I a jerk?

C. Have I been hijacked by mid-life hormones? …or

D. All of the above, so

E. Will someone please just take me some place quiet where I can’t hurt anyone?!

And can I take a nice long nap…until May?

Ah, May. Mid-life is approaching. At least the numerical marker that is the traditional and much joked about top of the hill that you’re now going over. (No pushing!) But surly, and cranky, and tired? Seriously? Being irritated is just, well…irritating! And I’d rather be silly, goofy, or even the butt of some you’re-getting-old joke than “surly.” Surly is for weathered-faced bandits or the mean old hag in some Dickens novel. I might be getting old, but I’m not that old. I’ve just never pictured myself as surly.

I’m pretty much a certified goofball (the only certification I have). I am a klutz in the kitchen (there are witnesses). I love making up silly puns and sillier faces. I speak in various accents whenever appropriate (or inappropriate). And I am prone to pursue laughter (yours and mine) even more passionately than dark chocolate. Cross my “eyes” and hope to die…

Ok, maybe that wasn’t the best choice of words.

All I can say is, this girl is not going down without a fight! Crankiness…be gone! Surliness…get a life! Hormones?! Don’t make me come over there! Don’t make me use my mom voice!

There are some former kids from a youth camp many years ago that can tell you how scary my mom voice is! Ha! Can I get a witness?

Wow. What am I saying? (pause)

Maybe I have been cranky all along. (longer pause)

Now THAT is irritating.

Messy Days

Here I sit, glued to this old worn kitchen chair exchanging text messages with my sick, exhausted, pregnant daughter who is 2000 miles away. This seems such an unnatural place, sitting with cell phone and laptop in my ridiculous fleecy blue bathrobe with nothing to do but pray and send words of encouragement. 

Why am I here and not there? There is where I want to be. Hugging my daughter. Chasing her daughter so she doesn’t have to. Helping them settle into their new temporary home. My heart and my hands are so restless today.

And the irony does not escape me. Today I long to be a doer. This one who loves to just “be” is aching to do, to actively and physically be “mom.” Will this transition ever be easy? Kissing boo boos seems almost holy, sacramental, today. Taking that precious little one in my arms, washing her wound, applying a balm of Neosporin and a sticky Band Aid, all the while the emotional and spiritual flow of love doing the real healing, the heart-comforting. 

Oh God, I miss the beauty of that simple act... 

I’m so far away.

My new job is to ache, and to wait, and to pray. This seems harder work than what came before, though I’m sure it only seems so. My mind can recall that vague impression of young motherhood when everything was truly a new thing that brought new fears. “Oh God! What do I do now?” And I know there were days when I longed to be far away from the daily grind of caring for my children’s needs 24/7. Rarely a day off. Always on call. I could never have known then just how awkward and heart wrenching it would feel when that became the norm, not just a vacation.

I suppose I share all this for many reasons. It’s as real and on my heart as anything inspirational or humorous may be on any other given day. And these difficult days are part of the journey. 

Do we share only the happy and the uplifting? In reality, I hope this will be uplifting. Perhaps this is your journey too. If it is, this is my written hug to say, yes, other women have days like this. You’re not alone. Some are experiencing this transition with less angst, or at least they seem to be. Does that mean they’re doing it better? No. They’re just doing it differently. Some may be running from the flood of emotion. I don’t run anymore. I have found that I can rest in the Lord’s promise, 

“ When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. 

When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown.” 

Isaiah 43:2 NLT 

I actually used to be terrified of the water, and of these days of uncertainty and change, but I have found the Lord to be faithful. 

He calms my fears.

Though the floodwaters are high today, I know I will not drown. I will ache, and wait, and pray. It may not look pretty and I may not do it well, but I won’t fight it. 

“Wait for the LORD; 

Be strong and let your heart take courage; 

Yes, wait for the LORD.” 

Psalm 27:14 NASB 

I love this rendering.
 “Let your heart take courage.” 

I have a choice today in the waiting. 

I can let my heart take courage. 

On a messy day like today the Lord is saying, “I have courage for you, precious one. Be encouraged.” And I am. My tears are gone and peace is returning. The balm of His love is healing. 

Whatever your mess today, I pray you will be encouraged too.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, 

so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” 

Romans 15:13 NIV