Guarding the Gates

Today I am strong in the power of the Lord. Satan has repeatedly attacked me with memories of past sins and present shortcomings, both in my own mind and through the mouths of others, but today I shut him off. Like a faucet. I'd wrench off the knob if I could, but God will require that I press into Him and trust Him to overcome that idiot. God will provide the shield around my heart. Any voice that tells you that you are the sum of all of your sins, shortcomings and failures is NOT the voice of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit gently convicts. It is a conviction laced with HOPE, because it carries the promise that He will do the heavy lifting if you'll let him. Discouragement comes in when we begin to listen to what the Father of Lies (Satan), as the scripture specifically depicts him, is saying about ourselves and our situation. If you are in Christ, you are a new creature. The old has gone, the new has come, according to my Bible. I was recently reminded that I need to guard the gates of my heart. I am a news-junkie. I love all of the newsmagazines that feature dramatic who-dun-it crime stories. I have decided that, for me, those stories are now off-limits. They fill my mind with the things Satan is up to in people's lives. If I am bored, I will seek a life-affirming challenge to fulfill my wandering mind (with God's help). I want to overhaul the spiritual atmosphere in my home by playing praise music and speaking the Word over my life and my husband and children's lives. I'll tape scriptures up all over the house if I have to. God's plan for me is good. I will cling to that. I think it's interesting that I started this blog post with the sentence "I am weak in body and spirit today." As I typed on, my cursor went back to the beginning and the negative sentence disappeared. I got the message.

What Really Matters

Lately I have been reading the Caring Bridge posts of Cheryll Scruggs, mother of the beautiful model/blogger/online fashion magazine editor Lauren Scruggs who was hit by a private plane's propeller on December 3rd and gravely injured. Lauren lost her left hand and her left eye. The Scruggs family has been plunged into a time of deep intercession, keeping a prayerful vigil at Lauren's bedside as she struggles to recover. The result has been a moving story of faith against the odds and daily miracles as Lauren, who probably should not have survived, continues to amaze doctors with her progress. Cheryll recently made a plea to Caring Bridge readers that they not spend time focusing on what is not important. "It's not worth it," she writes. How true this is. There are certain sins that I am well familiar with in my own life. I know that I fail to control my temper. I know that I am not always careful with my language, a shocking admission for a Christian woman, but there it is (incidentally, this admission is accompanied by shame and an acknowledgement that I can do better if I will let God help me). I know that I frequently fail to do the very things I know the Lord wants me to do, when He wants me to do them. Lately, however, I have felt God calling me to analyze my life even further. I believe in healthy boundaries in relationships. Sometimes, though, I have carried that standard into the realm of selfishness, pettiness, and childishness. Love means not always having to be right. Love means giving up the notion that I will always be treated fairly. Love means always turning away from the idea of making other people feel the way they have made me feel. The Bible tells us to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Nowhere in scripture does God endorse the idea of doing unto others as they have done unto you, or, as is often the case with people like me who reject before they can be rejected, doing unto others before they have a chance to do unto you. How does all of this rumination tie into Cheryll Scruggs' posts? Well, the notion of focusing on what really matters strips away a lot of the petty pride issues that lead to unrest, anger, and broken relationships. I would never want my last conversation with a loved one to center on some meaningless comment they made to me or how they have overlooked me in some small matter. How would I feel if my last conversation on earth with one of my children was an angry tirade about a math grade or a messy room? These are points to ponder. It's interesting that we cannot grow as Christians without feeling the Holy Spirit tap us on the shoulder and remind us that it's how we react in DIFFICULT situations with difficult people that determines how much we love God. The Bible makes it clear that if we do not love, we do not know Him.

Good Morning World!

Good morning, world. Today I take what the Father has given me and I submit it back to Him. I may be starting over a little late in life, but, then again, I may only be halfway through this life. Perhaps the rest of my life can be lived in front of my children in a state of total submission to Christ. Today I consciously take off the coat of Self. I lay it aside. I bow down before the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, bending under the shower of his mercies. I am so thankful for the opportunity to serve Him full-time! I ask Him to work today in my heart to transform me to His image. May all of my fulfillment come from Him alone. May my heart be so full of my love for Him and His for me that everything else that happens is gravy on the top! That's where real living begins. How blessed it is to know this...how much more so to live it every single day. Lord, I will see You in the sunrise. I will feel You in the beat of my heart. I will see You in the faces of the people whose lives I touch today with perhaps nothing more than a warm smile or a kind word in passing. I will love you with my life today.

The Unseen World

I have seen so many deer up close and personal here in Williamson County, Tennessee, one would think the sight would have lost its magic. It simply has not. The sight of the beautiful, graceful creatures is as appealing in an urban landscape, where it takes my breath away to see something so large, and yet so wild and gorgeous, tipping around in our man-made world full of exhaust fumes and Blackberry phones as it does to see them feeding in a cluster on a gently rolling Tennessee hillside. So it wasn't very odd for me to look up the exact hour that the sun should be setting last Sunday, pack up my camera, and ask my husband to go for a deer-appreciation tour (can't call it a "deer-sighting" tour, because that would imply that we might not see some, and I nearly ALWAYS do).A tiny bit past our subdivision, we turned onto Royal Oaks (the worst speed trap in town, but that is a story for another day), a short four-lane road lined with office complexes and turnoffs for two subdivisions. Just before the turnoff for Home Depot, three deer were feeding in the limited cover off to the right. My expedition was successful before it had even begun, yet God had much more in store for my road-weary heart. We headed off in the direction of Arno Road, sailed on through the countryside past Page Middle School, where my youngest child is a sixth-grade student. As we passed under 840, I had the feeling the tour was not over, though I would have been happy with what we had already seen. Sure enough, a mile or two down the road, I gasped out loud. To my right I saw eight deer grazing in a field. My husband noticed the ninth one, who was on the fringe. She was a snow white albino. We pulled into someone's long, winding driveway and I pointed my camera at her at a range that would have yielded an excellent photo. "No SD Card" was the message that popped up. I later discovered that the card was in there, just not fully engaged. My husband took some shaky, blurry video with our old-fashioned video camera. To say I drove home excited is an enormous understatement. According to sources I found on the internet, only one in every 30,000 whitetail deer are born albino. I went back Monday night at dusk and saw her again. I trespassed again, this time boldly driving halfway up another gravel drive, the owner looking at me from the back of his tractor as I popped out and took photos of the doe. She eyed me warily from her cover. My photos were terrible. My lens did not magnify enough and I did not hold the camera steady enough. Tuesday morning dawned in a gauzy, foggy haze. I knew I would see her again, and I did, in the same area. As I drove away from the albino doe, my heart overflowing with the wonders of nature, I hoped God was not finished showing me his hidden world. Coming down Lewisburg Pike in heavy, fast-moving traffic, I saw a large coyote in the big, open field behind Sullivan Farms, an 800-plus home development in Franklin. He was bouncing up and down on his prey, which was unseen. I swerved into the mouth of another subdivision opposite him and crossed the busy highway with my camera in one hand and my cell in the other, my sister on speaker hollering "What on earth?!?" I took his picture several times, his yellow eyes trained on me cautiously. After scurrying back across the highway, dodging on-coming cars from both directions, I got back into my car and headed into Sullivan Farms. The coyote headed up the hill toward the subdivision. He was on a small ridge just above the sidewalk at the front of the neighborhood and I got out again. We locked eyes again as I snapped his picture several times. He started to trot away from me. I drove into the first street he would come to and took his picture as he started to run across the street in front of me, toward a row of homes. I pulled out, hit the main neighborhood parkway and pulled into the next street. He looked at me again and took off behind a home and into a creek bed. In my 43 years of life, I have only seen a coyote up close two times. The only other time was about five years ago, in the same neighborhood. A large coyote ran across the street in front of my headlights. He, like the one I saw yesterday, was larger than I expected a coyote to be. I hear the local coyote packs howling at night, have heard them for years. But the sight of one in the daytime is a rare, special treasure for nature lovers like me. It was like, on three consecutive days, God opened a window into his beautiful, intricate, hidden natural world and let me look in. With the onset of winter, a season in which I usually suffer so terribly with depression, I may just have found my way of escape from the sadness that normally envelops me. There is another window that I plan to look through this winter. That is the window into the unseen world of the supernatural, which is opened only to those with a close connection to God through Jesus Christ. "Postcards from heaven," my term for events which I know are messages to me from God, are frequent occurrences when I am walking in repentance and open gratitude and humility. This will be my most effective defense against discouragement and despair this winter season.

Time to Confront My Old Nemesis: Old Man Winter

Some days are just hard to get through. I think you know what I mean. They are gray, emotionally. Certain hard realities hit you straight between the eyes...your children will grow up and leave, you're going to lose your parents one day, other things you cherish are slipping through your fingers like sand on a beautiful summer day. Today was like that for me. If I were not a Christian, I would call what I am feeling a "midlife crisis." But I know I will live forever. Winter is just a ferocious, hateful foe. I fight a bitter war with it every year. I hate the barren trees, the gray skies, the temperatures so frigid you don't want to open your door. I hate everything about winter, except snow days with my kids home. I love to make hot chocolate, fire up the gas logs, watch the school closings rolling in on the local news. I like knowing they'll be excited when they finally wake up and I tell them they can just go on back to sleep. I love the way my house looks with a blanket of snow on the roof and landscaping. Our neighborhood becomes magical to me, the homes, already so cozy-looking to me, each one entirely of brick and each a bit different from the next, take on a story-book quality under all of that silent white. I also love winter Sunday afternoons with my husband at home watching his westerns while I intermittently remark on the poor quality of the acting. It's fun. It's comforting. I  like coming home to a warm house after running errands and getting into and out of the car so many times I feel like a popsicle. It's nice to throw on sweatpants and curl up with a good book under a warm blanket. These little things are the bright spots in a bleak seasonal landscape. I keep telling myself I am going to find new things to do in the wintertime to stave off the horrible depression that always comes sailing in long about now. I get so tired of doing battle with it. There's got to be a way to build a little moat around my heart and keep that bloodsucker out. I will form a battle plan for this winter soon. It's just that it always seems to sneak up on me, lurking right out of sight behind Christmas, a wonderful time when I get to see everyone I love. Prayers welcomed!

We Need Him...and He Loves Us.

Yesterday I watched what amounted to a beautiful, moving video greeting card for Billy Graham on the occasion of his 93rd birthday. I happened to be channel surfing, and there it was. I have never really watched him speak, as I know he is an evangelist and I have been a Christian since the age of four. But there, interspersed between the birthday messages from actors, professional athletes and Graham family members, were snapshots of his commanding altar calls and messages from over the decades. In that arresting voice that has called millions to faith in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit, Billy Graham said things that moved me to tears. One thing stands out, and I hope it will for the rest of whatever days I have left on this earth: (I am paraphrasing from memory) "I would like to go to my mountain house and live there and have a small church. But God has called me to be a warrior to five continents and that is what I will be until He gives the command to stop." Tears streaming down my face I sat on my couch and envied Billy Graham. I envied his devotion to Jesus Christ. I envied his complete commitment to obeying God's call. I watched, mystified and understanding all at the same time as grainy, black-and-white video portrayed the masses streaming to the alter. In another clip Brother Graham preached in a prison yard, heads turned up in anticipation, while others watched from barred windows. It struck me that all of humanity in its diversity and wilfullness, each one of the billions of us who have ever lived, has a God-shaped hole in our hearts and we yearn for Him. The message of grace and forgiveness is not only welcome in the prison yard, where sin led to physical imprisonment, but also in Manhattan and L.A. and Hollywood, where emotional prisons built by condemnation, guilt and feelings of unworthiness have isolated hungry souls from God. What Jesus did cannot ever be replicated. We need Him, and He loves us.

Waiting Quietly

"Let all that I am wait quietly before God, for my hope is in him...My victory and honor come from God alone...O my people, trust in him at all times. Pour out your heart to him, for God is our refuge." (Psalm 62: 5-8, NLT). Someone I love more than life itself assaulted me with some of my failures and shortcomings, as loved ones sometimes do in a few, short moments of anger. That quickly, I felt the life drain from me. I felt a hopelessness creep in that drowned my joy. I felt the weight of regret of lost opportunities and years-long failures in certain areas of my life. I felt, as David did in the Psalms, as if the cords of death were entangling me. Though my husband discounted some of what was said to me (the part I shared with him), I felt so heavy of heart. I crawled to my Bible. I knew that, though there are people who love me, God is my only hope, the only one who will never leave me, never forsake me, never cast me aside, never devalue me, NEVER HOLD MY PAST SINS AGAINST ME! Pretty quickly, I found comfort in the Psalms. It is wonderful to know that any time I come into the presence of God, he has found me valuable, he is loving me, he is honoring me, he is cherishing me. "You satisfy me more than the richest feast," David says of God in Psalm 63:5.  "The godly will rejoice in the Lord and find shelter in him," he says in Psalm 64:10. I believe that is an emotional as well as a physical shelter. "Because you are my helper, I sing for joy in the shadow of your wings. I cling to you; your strong right hand holds me securely," he observes in Psalm 63:7-8.  David found that being transparent with God kept everything right between them. "Come and listen, all you who fear God, and I will tell you what he did for me. For I cried out to him for help, praising him as I spoke. If I had not confessed the sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. But God did listen! He paid attention to my prayer. Praise God, who did not ignore my prayer or withdraw his unfailing love from me," he exults in Psalm 66:16-20. That's what I am counting on, both now and in the future, which stretches out before me, as uncertain as it is for every human being. I am BANKING on that unfailing love. I know that, if the whole world goes out, GOD will COME IN. He will bless, he will affirm my value, he will forgive my sins, he will restore the dinged up places in my heart, and, best of all, he will love me UNFAILINGLY. No human being will ever do all of those things. I am thankful that I will be rewarded for seeking God ("There truly is a reward for those who live for God; surely there is a God who judges justly here on earth." Psa. 58:11). He cares for EACH of us. I will continue to draw near to him. "His name is the Lord - rejoice in his presence! Father to the fatherless, defender of widows - this is God, whose dwelling is holy. God places the lonely in families; he sets the prisoners free and gives them joy. But he makes the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land."( Psalm 68: 4-6) If I am in a sun-scorched place, I can know for sure that I can search my heart, submit to God, and he will lead me to a fruitful, well-watered place, hearing and answering my prayers.

No Risk, No REWARD!

In evaluating my life at 43, I find so many things about my current way of doing things to be totally lacking. For years loved ones have asked me to stop looking at life through an "all or nothing" lens. This is the reason I stopped writing. I couldn't get a Pulitzer Prize so I pursued nothing. Same thing with socializing. I hit a few dead stops, let the dining room get dusty and stopped shopping for serving dishes. Finally, I allowed my depression to rob me of just about everything. I became (for the first time ever) a homebody. For so many years, I would get out, even if I was carrying a toddler who got into everything, absolutely every day. At least once. Now, with my kids in school, I have gotten into the habit of staying at home all of the time. Time to make a change. My depression has a spiritual dimension, and is rooted, at least in part, to isolation caused by an aversion to rejection and failure (sometimes a failure that is only perceived) which leads to running into a safe place. No risk, no disaster. I need to re-write that line in my head to read "No risk, NO REWARD"!!! While on a coffee-sipping/deer sighting tour (saw three beautiful deer in an open field, all three of which summarily fled as soon as I parked and popped my lens cap) this morning, I thought again of how I will begin to live again, begin to take risks again. I hope I never forget all that Satan robbed me of in these last, oh, 10 years or so at home during which I became paralyzed by disappointment and fear. I am going to become a woman of prayer and faith again. I will choose to see problems as challenges, opportunities for God to show himself strong on my behalf while I watch in amazement, dazzled by his love and care. If my blog posts seem to be redundant lately, please bear with me. I have to chew on things before I pack my bags and roar out. It's just my way.