For Instance

Two women are taking up a great deal of my thought life and prayer life right now. One has a husband who has been in and out of ICU for over three weeks and lives every moment not knowing what the next moment will bring. The other lost her husband unexpectedly this week, he was thirty-nine and they have three beautiful young children. Both of them have put words out in the social media realm that document their reliance on God in this time and there need for him right now. They know that God is where they will find their hop for the future.

Jesus came down, Word made flesh, for reasons like theirs. I imagine that they are spinning with questions of what to do and how to do it. The ministry of Jesus while he was on this Earth was to give an example of how we should live and to be an example of who God is. His words are peppered with story-based examples; parables; for instances. He knew that people needed to know what to do in their situation or the situation of their neighbors that might as well be them. His compassion for us and his knowledge of our hearts led him to for instances.

But, also, he came because sometimes we need him this instant. We can't and won't make it through another moment without help from our God. The God that is hard to reach is available through Jesus in any and every instance. There is never a minute or season that we have to go alone.

There is immeasurable comfort in the fact that my friends have access to God this instant and every instant to come; and if ever they are not sure if they are able or know how to take that next step they have a Bible full of for instances to turn to.

Sweet friends, I am praying for you.

"The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit" Psalms 34:18

This is the Day

"This is the day that The Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it". (Psalms 118:24)

But, oh my goodness, I want it to be tomorrow so much.

I am a "futuristic" girl according to Marcus Buckingham, and his book, " Now, Discover Your Stengths" and a daydream believer and homecoming queen (okay, maid of honor) according to The Monkees. 

Today is always a hard place for me to live.

Just as I come into a day, or a season or whatever is present, I am already looking down the road for the next thing. The forward glances are not in apprehension or fear, but in readiness.

I love change and new things and so, once I realize I have reached a landmark I identified intentionally or accidentally a few mikes back, I am already scanning the horizon for the next point of interest.

My fears do not come from the unknown. The unknown sounds fabulous and free.

I fear the known. I fear the place where stillness becomes stagnation. Don't get me wrong, I understand "contentment in all circumstances" and "being still." I have learned to be still and listen and I am working hard on contentment, but I was built with a forward tilt.

All of that is to say; today, as in March 14, 2014, is one of those days that I am going to have to place my own hand on top of my head and press down a little. 

Tomorrow is such an exciting day, and I am going to have to do everything in my power to remember that today is important too. 

There is some scrambling to do (I do love a good scramble) and a hefty to-do list as usual, but I know my anticipation is going to stretch me just beyond attentiveness to the treasures of this day.

I have at least five treasures that deserve my presence and my willingness to put the brakes on for minute or two.

I have much to be glad in and much to be joyful for. God made this day too.

Lord, don't let me miss it.

Open Hands

Sometimes, the best thing you can do is raise your hand and then offer it's use for a better purpose. 

Other times, the wise thing to do is to let go of whatever you are holding on to.

God uses us to further his kingdom, us.

Isn't that the strangest thing? 

To quote Genie from Aladdin, "Infinite, cosmic power......itty bitty living space"

Few humans have been effective vessels of infinite cosmic power; think Moses and get Red Sea, Elijah summoning the fire of Heaven to consume a soaked alter.

But, everyone has the same capability, everyone with open hands and a surrendered will at least.

Josh and I are catching a tiny glimpse of this principle right now. We are as shocked by the events unfolding around us, as we would be if I were casting fire and he was parting the traffic on 1-75.

Just under two months ago, we said "yes" to God.  Yes to an undefined thing, to an unformed idea; just a yes.

We agreed to start a conversation with like-minded neighbors of ours in East Cobb. 

A plan for a more formal conversation was conceived and in 5 days about 75 people, most of whom we don't know, are coming in for a closer look at this "yes" while more than 100 more are watching to see what happens.

Meanwhile, we have no idea if we have started a conversation about community kickball games or catalyzing a functioning body of Christ. Potatoes, puh-tah-toes, right?

The good news is, that we are confident we can't screw up or stop what God is doing, as long as we hold it in an open hand.

 There is a trembling in the wait. What's next could be any number of tasks at any level of effort, but our "yes" stands.

We would love your prayers for whatever is coming.

Volunteer

Calling is a tricky beast.

It is a hard to "prove" to others and even yourself. I suspect that it is recognized mostly in retrospect. 

A pretty smart guy has done a lot to shape my perspective on calling.

His name is Andy Stanley, he's a great teacher, great leader and even better boss. Somewhere in a book about people living out their calling there is a picture of Andy standing in front of the hundreds of thousands of people that he has reached through his life's continued work. He is a guy that is most definitely functioning inside his calling.

But that is not what he has to say about it.

When he is asked when he was "called" to ministry, he says that he wasn't.

He says he volunteered, and God took him up on the offer.

That's the amazing part about God as it most directly relates to how we live our life. 

He can do anything through us, but he's not going to force us to.

Ultimately we have been given a dangerous amount of freedom.

We have complete freedom to waste our lives; to show up at The End shrug and say, "here I am", or for us to throw up our hands now and say, "here I am, Send me!" 

I keep using the word calling on this blog, but I really have no clue what it is I am called to do, I just know that everyday I plan to keep saying, "send me."

In my first women's Bible study, our leader asked all us what our plans were for our lives. I had one precious tow-head toddler I spent my days at home with and I said "I'm going to be a professional volunteer."  It sounded pretty pathetic compared to the goals and coming accomplishments of some of the women in the room, but it just sort of popped out of my mouth. I was more than a little embarrassed by my blurting, but I blurt a lot and It was a familiar shade of blush that colored my face.

I like my answer more now. 

I can't wait to see what I have volunteered for.

Adventure

I made a new friend recently and she said,

"It's funny, I went through a season where I thought I wanted a nice, quiet life. Now (a few years later) I look around and my life it is wild and a daily adventure. The last thing I want is a quiet life"

Amen and amen.

I want adventure. Crazy, wild adventure.

I've got the crazy covered; in the form of four kids and a husband with an unpredictable creative industry business.

Sensibility tells me that this is enough; "Look for the adventure in your daily life", but I've never been all that sensible.

The book I'm working through, Restless, asks you to think back to different seasons of life and pick a moment when you felt the most satisfied and happy. 

The moment when I felt that way as a little girl, I was misbehaving, big time misbehaving.

My best friend, Julie and I used to play out grand adventure in her backyard and one day we were two runaway girls that find an abandoned mountain cottage (her treehouse) to live in (think Heidi meets Swiss Family Robinson). Never did two little girls have so much fun sweeping sand off a wood floor or arranging purple blossomed weeds artfully in a broken plastic vase. We were free agents in the Alps or Appalachians or wherever we were.

Julie, lapsing out of character for a minute, mentioned that she had never seen real mountains. We lived in Tampa at the time, the biggest hills being sand dunes.

"Let's go. I'll take you"

And within minutes I was back in my own bedroom around the corner wildly packing a satchel with essentials like my porcelain doll and Clue (our favorite game). She was doing the same at her house and she managed to squeeze her "The Jets" cassette in her bag. We met at the corner with just over two dollars between us; our first stop was the 7Eleven near the entrance of our neighborhood. We were going to need food, of course. Don't think we weren't be smart about the the thing. 

I can still remember how absolutely exhilarated we felt hurrying down the sidewalk towards the open road. Our real abandoned cottage was waiting for us and we had so much adventure ahead of us.

We were wild a free and ready to go anywhere our "color-your-own" Keds would lead us.

They led us about half-a-mile away from home where the sound of the screeching tires of a black convertible mustang stopped us in our tracks and a very angry Julie's mom escorted us back home

Julie went to tears in the front seat, I fell into side-splitting laughter. The consequence of this disobedience was sure to be terrible, but I was too thrilled to worry about that.  

We were grounded for a whole week from seeing each other; an eternity for us, but I did not even care. 

It was so worth it. 

Adventure always is worth it and so is all the risk that goes along with.

Quiet and simple equal boring in my book, maybe that's just me. Maybe some people are called to a quiet life.

Give me adventure and the sweaty-palmed adrenaline that goes with.

I know the good-girl answer is to look for adventure in my daily life, in the diapers and extracurricular activities, but that will leave me the girl in tears because the consequences of those adventure outweigh the risk.

I want to look for adventure in post-Christian wilds of Western Europe and amongst unhygienic and wild faithful the of third-world, and I want to be laughing the whole way.

Doing

Deep down I am just the biggest nerd on the inside.
I really do love to study and read and learn stuff.
I get a genuine thrill from connecting dots that were loosely connected.

Studying the Bible could keep a body busy for the entirety of it's earthly existence.
And it would be a good existence, but not a great existence.

I look forward to opening the Bible every morning and reading it; meditating on it and making it relevant to my days.

God wants more from me than delighting in his Word.

He wants me to stop studying the Bible and to go do the Bible.

And you know, the Bible all boils down to one thing: Love.

Love God; love others.

What if beneath all if these beautiful layers of scripture and scholarly transliteration, the red letters are meant to be taken literally?

Are we missing that?

I only know the names of the inhabitants of three families that are direct neighbors, and I know nothing else about them; except this:
they are having a human experience too and their experience is bound to be as full of  need for Jesus as mine.

Reading my Bible in the dark morning is not loving them.

The freedom that we have been given from the law is overwhelming, his commands are simple:


"Love me, love people"

"You can demonstrate your love for me by loving your neighbor"

"They will know you by your love"

If we are following Jesus, shouldn't we just do what he did?

He loved.

He didn't just write a check.

He didn't build them a bigger church ( he actually tore it down, right?)

He didn't sit in the temple and read and write about the Law; he was too busy loving people.

He got down in the dirt with poor people, he held hands with the sick and the dead, he dined with the hated and embraced the shamed.

He loved.

I love Jesus.
I am not loving my neighbors.

Maybe this is literal too;
"But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourself...
  the one who looks into the perfect law...being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be      
      blessed in his doing." (James 1:22-25 ish)


Lord, make me a doer.
Help me see people the way you see people.
Show me where you are needed, 
and then Lord, love them through me.

Lies

I am working through a new bible study called Restless, by Jennie Allen.

It is about recognizing the themes in your life, the triumphs, the suffering and pulling them together to see what the whole story looks like and what it could look like.

It's is an all-in book. The assignment where I had to journal through seasons of suffering left me a shuffling, sack of a wife and mom for the rest of the day. I am loving and hating the book all at the same time.

The description on the back of the book includes this little sentence;

"What would happen if God got bigger than your fear and insecurity, and you spent the rest of your life running without reservation after his purposes for you?"

That question has been bouncing around in this brain for a while. It sent me to Austin, Texas to work it out at tables with women who were wrestling through the same thought.

God has always been bigger than my fears and insecurity.

He's designed me to accomplish the plans that he has for me, and he has already given me everything I need to make it happen.

The rub is that I have an enemy disguised as rejection and fear of man, and this God-breathed enmity between us isn't going to stop.

In fact, the harder and faster I run towards that to which I have been called, the louder the whispers are going to get, "who does she think she is?"

Those words hunt me down and find me with every step I take closer to God.

I don't think those words will ever stop seeping into my thoughts, but I can keep going because I know how this story ends.

The author of these lies will be defeated, he already has been as a matter of fact. And his testimony about me has no authority in the Kingdom of which I am already a citizen.

I am guessing that I am not the only one who had bought into so many lies about themselves that they forgotten who sold them.

There is a way to shut down the lies;

“If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples,  and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John (8:31-32)


These lies are the things that hinder and have to be thrown off. Choosing to believe the lies over God's truth is a sin that snares.

We can't run this race with that sort of weight on our shoulders.
Throw it off and start running.