Is He?

I was in a worship service last night when suddenly, up on the screen pop the lyrics to a song produced by the Passion band and sung publicly by Sean Curran. The church band who was playing it was, well, EXCELLENT. The singers harmonized beautifully. I was swept up.

The song, "Bigger Than I Thought," rent my heart into many pieces. I didn't try to sweep them up. I stood among the shards, singing along, tears flowing. "Oh, wait a minute," my anxious soul whispered. "This, this is what I've wanted to say."

The gist of the song is that I can spread all of my fears out before God and He is not going away, He is not going to vilify me for lack of faith, and He is, most importantly, not impressed by the size of the miracles I need. The refrain "you understand me" floated in my spirit on and on and on.

But what if, like the song says, God is so much "bigger than I thought" He was? What if His heart is so kind that He doesn't keep score? What if He really does love me in my brokenness, in my filth, my shame and my degradation? What if He is big enough to handle all of my fears, to fix all of my issues, to hear and answer all of my prayers, to put me back on my feet again? What if He is able to restore absolutely everything? What if He is planning to? What if His heart is kind enough to pluck me out of the river of mud I've been in and place me in the river of His grace and mercy, which flows down from Heaven and is strong enough to wash all of my tears away?  What if He has plans for me that are so good I can only afford one bite at a time because the richness would overwhelm me?

This is a God I am willing to gamble my life upon. This is a God I will seek.

Soul Chocolate

Today has been really hard. I give out a lot of sound advice. Putting it into practice in my own life...well, now, do we really, really, REALLY have to go there? Okay, I will.

Yesterday I tried to encourage someone who was despondent. I really tried. We sat there in the gray of the gathering near-winter evening and I did everything I could think of to cheer them up. I went home under a dark cloud. I was still carrying their burdens when I woke today. They sat on top of my own burdens and, because I deeply love the person I was consoling, the two backpacks of grief melded into one hulking mass that kept me ten inches from the floor all day long. I tried prayer, scripture, a nap, coffee and chocolate. Still struggling. Still brimming with tears.

So much of what I believe is awfully hard to walk out. But walk it out I must. Why is it that we can see so clearly for others what we cannot integrate into our own hearts? Maybe I'm just tired. I've fought certain challenges for so long that I am simply soul-weary.

But I am still down here on earth because my assignment is not finished. Oh, and that. I was listening to a teacher as I washed the dishes today...she was saying that we have certain tasks that we will feel unfulfilled unless we complete...chin sank lower into the mire as I have struggled with feeling like I have wasted such a huge part of my life.

What I REALLY need is soul chocolate. Yes, that's an apt description. Soul chocolate. That encouragement that only Christ can bring through the power of the Holy Spirit. Somebody pray that for me today and I will pray it into your life, too. I just need to be reminded that Jesus loves me so much He went to the cross for me. He is looking forward to seeing me in heaven and He is walking with me every single day here on this earth. I need to ground out the pity party like a stale cigarette and look up. He DOES care about the details of my life here on the earth. Like I told the person yesterday, King David believed that. He said in Psalm 27:13: "I would have lost heart, unless I had believed/That I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." (Holy Bible, New International Version)

Satan wants us defeated, discouraged and degraded. Jesus lifts us up, dusts us off and makes us worthy through His blood. And it is through His blood that we rise from the ashes of our circumstances and make a joyful noise to God through our praises and our lives.

Group Think...Could It Happen to Me?

I've always prided myself on a little bit of individualism in certain signature ways.  For example, I love moccasins. A salesman in an Atlanta store informed me last year, with a note of disdain in his voice when I asked where the moccasins were, that, while they had some, they did not sell Minnetonka. That's my favorite brand. I wear them all late fall and winter and put them away with a grimace in the spring. I don't care that latch hook rug-making went firmly out of style in the 1970s, I still do it with joy in my heart.

Never did I ever expect to succumb to any sort of group think...you know, the kind of situation whereby one slides into the mindset of others on an issue or group of issues because you believe, consciously or unconsciously, that a large number of people simply couldn't be wrong. Me fall into such a silly trap? Impossible.

Well, I have been humbled. Imagine my surprise when I found out, with quite the jolt, that even my physical vision can be swayed by peer pressure. Yes. Allow me to explain.

This past weekend I went to Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I was on the loop with my sister, her husband, her daughter and two sons. We were looking for bears in particular because my niece had her heart set on seeing one. I have seen lots of bears in Cades Cove because I live 50 miles from the place and I've been quite often. We had made our way quite a distance around the scenic loop and had seen none of the animals when, as we approached the area where there is a little settlement with a mill, we saw a group of teenaged girls on the side of the road gesturing and pointing excitedly in the direction of a stand of trees.

"They're punking us," I said with a world-weary air. "They want us to think there is something there." Then we all noticed a little crowd gathering down in the field near the edge of the trees. Suddenly, I saw the bear. He was a large-sized cub, unwieldy in the tree but not full-grown. I shouted. Mary saw him, too and then added that there were actually two in that area.

Soon we were all urging my brother-in-law to turn into the parking lot by the settlement and gift shop and, for heaven's sake, let us all out. We had a bear or two to photograph! There was a mini-pandemonium as folks tried to exit a slightly moving vehicle, my niece pleaded with my brother-in-law and my brother-in-law admonished someone. In a flash, my eight and eleven-year-old nephews were bounding across the field toward the trees, with me and my sister Mary following briskly behind them. "STAY FIFTY YARDS BACK. IT'S THE LAW," I said with all of the gravity I could muster.

"It's a squirrel's nest," said a man who was turning back from the scene, his voice flat.

I was stunned. Stunned. It never entered my mind that what we saw was anything other than a bear. I know what tipped me over into my pseudo reality. The presence of the small gathering crowd, all looking in the same direction. It made me see what it was I wanted to see all along. After all, SEVERAL people couldn't be wrong. One or two, maybe. Three teen girls, certainly. But a little crowd looking expectantly? Never. Except that it was, most assuredly, wrong.

Some in the group didn't give up the dream as easily as we did. My sister heard a lady ask her husband if the bear was playing dead. He dryly informed her that he didn't think that bears did that.

The point of my story, which we will be laughing about for many years, is that it opened my eyes to something we are all susceptible to, even in the spiritual realm where natural laws are very, very often suspended. We will frequently see what it is that we want to see, particularly if others are "seeing" it too.

How do we veer away from errant group-thinking about God, His world, our circumstances? By knowing who it is that we have believed, as the scriptures say. Jesus said quite clearly in John 10:27 that "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me."  (Holy Bible, English Standard Version) That's pretty straightforward. I CAN know Jesus so well that His voice is very familiar to me. And, instead of fervently urging my brother-in-law to let me out of the van to see a non-existent bear (I mean this metaphorically), I can calmly walk the path laid out for me since long before I was on the earth. I'm pumped by John 10:14, which says "I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me." (ESV)

Our experiences with God are not going to be less exciting, less colorful, less anything if we let go of expectations, stop following popular theology and look deeply at what God is showing us personally. I submit to you the exact opposite will be true. If I have learned nothing else in my fifty-one years, I know this: life with the Lord is the most interesting, fulfilling and life-giving adventure a human heart can know.

Just GO!

Scientists, explorers, entrepreneurs with lots of capital. These are the people who "boldly go where no man has gone before," to quote Star Trek (which all great philosophers everywhere always do). You and me, we probably won't do anything in our lifetimes that the outside world would describe that way. That's ok.

Sometimes for me, though, just doing the bit that's in front of me feels like I'm taking up that epic challenge. I feel like it's ME on that Starship Enterprise, hurtling into the black hole of the wide-open universe. I become afraid. I want to turn back. I'm seeking God's will, because I know that's the only safe place in said black hole, but I'm not always sure I've found it.

When I think about the astronauts who allow themselves to be flung into space, too far from earth for any of us to save them should they experience any problems, my stomach tightens. I simply cannot imagine it. I am not made of the same stuff. It's just not in there, folks. Wouldn't it be lovely to understand, to finally know fully, down to our toes, that the God of the black hole of uncertainty is holding us up. He's not holding the ship, he's holding US. I can't fall. I'm in the palm of His hand.

Psalm 139:5-6 puts it this way: "You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain." (Holy Bible, New International Version.)

As I walk the path in front of me, prayerfully seeking His will at each and every turn, I can rest assured that His grace covers my mistakes. He has me. Always has, always will.

Wake Me Up Now!

I was in the grocery store just now when a popular song came on over the intercom, washing all of us gray-haired shoppers looking for cereal out in a tide of smoothly-delivered angst. Very emotional song. Gist of it is that the singer wants to be awakened "when it's all over." I've got, regrettably, some very bad news for him. None of us is getting that opportunity. While everyone else wondered what else would make that recipe "pop," or where the Metamucil could be found,  I listened to the blamed lyrics, every word tapping the sore places in my heart.

He sang that he wants to be wiser and older when said awakening happens, if you please. Again, no dice. We don't get to skip what we got right now, and we will have to make do with whatever we've got in our current psychological toolbox.

All of this pop culture/grocery store intercom philosophy was flooding over me in the wake of some serious, heavy-duty theological ponderings and readings I had dipped my toes into just before hopping in my red beetle and jumping down to Ingle's in a few scoots (I had ADHD back when they called it "blatant lack of self-discipline"). I was wrestling with some very deep concepts, wondering how to integrate them into my spiritual survival chest.

The crux of the matter is that we all came from God and we all have the opportunity to return to Him, if we accept the sacrifice His son Jesus Christ made on the cross. We have unique, individual destinies on this earth and we can chuck everything to learn what they are and lean into Him to see them fulfilled in His power. All of the intricacies of spiritual warfare and the deeper things of the Spirit will be fed to us bit by bit, as we are able to digest them, by the Holy Spirit. Sometimes I want to jump to Ph.D. in the spiritual realm while extending the commitment of a preschooler. Lord, please help me to do better!

If I want to serve God with absolute abandon and complete commitment to His purposes in my life, I will have to expect that there are concepts and secrets that I'll only learn as I diligently pursue Him. The Bible does not say that those who seek Him find Him when they look for Him in some things, some of the time. What it DOES, however, say is this: "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart." (Jeremiah 29:13, Holy Bible, New International Version.)

That means EVERY day, in ALL things, with ALL I have ALL of the time. Wake me up in the morning after I've rested well all night. I don't want to wait until it's "all over" and I've missed what I'm here for!

A Lot of "A Lots"

There's a t-shirt/cottage industry that sprung up around, I think it was, a woman who called in to the Ellen DeGeneres Show. She said she loved Jesus but she drank a little. I have always cringed when people mention it because I don't like to use His precious name so casually! However, the point made by this simple statement has resonated with me for YEARS. I usually substituted cussing for drinking when applying it to myself in my head, since I essentially gave up social drinking twenty-five years ago.

The point of the silly little joke gone wild/universal isn't lost on me and, sadly, has applied to my life in more ways than one. Except for the "a little" part. I find myself doing certain things "a lot"...things that seem to negate the "I love Jesus" part.

I'm a little down today because of my big mouth. I can't seem to get the voice in my head that criticizes others to come into line with what I know the Bible teaches about love. I am so saddened by this fact. I have deep hurts that come raging to the surface with little provocation and vicious statements roll off of my tongue. It's not good. It's not godly. It's got to go.

I love the line from a song recorded by  Chris Rice  that goes something like this: "Freedom from myself will be the sweetest rest I've ever known." I think he was talking about when we reach heaven. Can I ever relate. I've got other strongholds that have got to be shown the door, too, but this issue of my mouth, it is serious business.

I have done some thinking on the topic and want to encourage anyone else who is fighting the same battle to embrace the scripture that tells us to take every thought captive. If we keep our minds continually on God and His work, His perspective, His unfailing love for us and others, it will be much harder to be vicious verbally. If our thoughts turn dark, we can make the conscious effort to hand our minds to God for Him to sort them out and set them right. Our thoughts lead our emotions, which lead our mouths. Ultimately our actions will go down into the ditch, too! Good news! They can come up out of the ditch. Thank you, Lord, that You take me by the hand, brush off the filth of my sins of resentment, anger, rage and bitterness and set me on a level path where my ankles will not turn,. Thank you, Lord, for never giving up on me, even when I want to give up on myself!

What Do You See?

I took that photo just above Telluride, Colorado about three weeks ago. The sheep gathered in that pasture were oblivious of me and my little iPhone with the pink case. That device, however, captured a beautiful moment in time. The snow on the mountains in the background is like a lace doily. The animals in the foreground look so peaceful. And they were!

Sometimes what we see through the lens of our camera is even more special than we realize as we hurry to capture it. I remember when I took multiple pictures of my nephews and niece by a stream, only to discover a few minutes later as we were walking home that a ray of light was coming down toward each child, as if to touch them. Three separate rays.

I wonder if our everyday life experiences are exactly the same. This morning I asked God if He would speak to me today. He seemed to answer that He is in "every turning leaf, every butterfly swarm." I saw a butterfly swarm a couple of hours later at a spot where my son had seen them a couple of days ago. Gorgeous, splashy monarch butterflies, bursting up from in front of my vehicle like flying flowers.

I wonder if we sat still longer, journaled more, prayed and reflected longer and with more purpose, if the smallest of our day-to-day encounters and life happenings would begin to look like the pieces of a life puzzle or the bricks in the foundation of a beautiful life that God is constructing for us? I wonder if we would cooperate better in the building process if we acknowledged this? I think we would see a shadow of the bigger picture if we tried to tune in to Christ.

Posting the following disclaimer is as natural as breathing to me. I have been told that writing is my God-given gift. I want to give it back to Him, and that's why I write this blog. I am a ridiculous work-in-progress. I am horrifically off the mark quite often. Even worse, I will start my day in the Spirit, only to find myself in the middle of a temper tantrum that frightens me! I do believe in sanctification and maybe, at nearly fifty-one years of age, I am making some progress. I've been humbled by life enough over the last several years to feel that I have a shot at it at least! Please know that I do not write about the Christian life because I feel qualified to. Not at all. It is because I do not know how not to. Jesus is all I know.

Pathways

Pathways and lanterns. Two design elements you'll find strewn throughout my home. You could jam the two metaphors and you'd have me hankering for a light for my path. I see a warm, lit lantern as a type of lighthouse, too. While I don't decorate with lighthouses, I enjoy looking at images and artwork featuring them. They show up in in nearly every type of coastline scenario you could imagine. I've seen them pictured amid a riot of flowers in my favorite colors, the sea idling beneath them in the glistening sun. I've seen them portrayed as rocks standing tall as wildly churning waters nearly engulf them. I've seen them proud and plain, elegant and New England to the hilt, or small and humble vestiges of a by-gone era nestled near a fading ocean, looking lonely as evening draws near. There is a lot you can do with all three of these images. They evoke joy and sorrow simultaneously as I arrange, add candles, tilt my head and sigh or run my hand longingly across a statuette or framed print. I often swallow hard and gather the skirts of my heart to move back into what can be a mundane, colorless day.

So where are we without dreams? Where are we without that one thing or things that makes our hearts beat faster, makes us feel full without food? We were made for passion, created for adventure. Our souls crave diversity, open to creativity, breathe in those things we are best at, those things that add panache to the song that is our daily life. God programmed us that way! We are His masterpieces, after all, the crowning achievement in His creation. His sons and daughters.

If you love nature, take pictures. If you enjoy poetry, write some! If your heart is drawn to children as a moth to a flame, volunteer at church and nurture some! Make something happen. People who are perpetually unfulfilled have something to hide. That something is the steadfast act of ignoring their very design, of boxing their potential, of caging their beating heart so tightly it seems to gurgle rather than pulse. They've become the masters of excuse, plodding from duty to duty, hating life and failing to understand why!

If you don't know what God is calling you to do with the rest of your life, get on your face before Him and find out. Pull out a journal and write down what He says. Then. Do. It. All. You'll never live another unfulfilled moment.

Fresh Water

Fresh water. A spring bubbling up from deep in the earth. Metaphors for the new life in Christ. We make it all so complicated when it really boils down to this, this idea of the unpolluted life. Jesus nailed our sin to the cross and He also clears the springs of our hearts when we invite Him into our every day. How does He do that? When we offer, to the best of our ability, our whole life to Him, He directs the things we read, what we say, who we listen to and what we watch. The whole of our existence flows in the river of His purity and love. It buries our past sins, our guilt, our shame and our wounds. We rise like the new creatures that we most assuredly are.

Feel you have failed at taking hold of this? So do I. I take heart in the fact that God knows I'm weak, that He knows I bring zero to the table on my own. He loves me anyway. He wants me anyway. Very hard to take in, yet WE MUST! We are not rejected for our failures, for our shortcomings...rather we are justified right in the middle of them. We are given robes of righteousness courtesy of the very high price Christ paid at the cross.

Our enemy spends every moment of every day working to cheat us out of the freedom Christ's sacrifice bought us. He tells us we are not paid for, that we must do, be and achieve more and more to be good enough for God, for His love, for His fellowship. When we finally realize that, as His deeply loved children we are blood-bought saints destined for intimacy with our Father and for a joy and peace-filled soul, then we can move on into every good thing He has planned for us!

Pools

 Wax has memory. When you burn a candle for the very first time, the liquid wax pool at the time the candle is extinguished leaves a decisive ridge. Every time you burn  the candle after that, the melted wax pool will never get larger than the imprint of the first burn. Memory.

If the wax pool is small, no matter how deep it gets, the full potential of fragrance release into the room is never realized. This may seem like a very small matter to you, but to candle snobs, it is very big indeed. I give or throw away candles I cannot smell. I purge them from my existence. They are frustrating reminders of a purchase gone bad.

I wonder if God is frustrated by our own small wax pools of influence? I mean, He created us, He knows our full potential, and He sees those of us who are flopping and floundering and drowning our purposes in tiny wax pools of doubt, indecision and fear. Some (not me) are working very, very hard. They are boldly making inroads into their destinies, using all of the natural talents God gave them. Some of those people are still burning small pools. "Wait a minute," you're now thinking. "I'm one of those people. I am accomplished. I am using my talents. I haven't hidden ANY in the ground." Good for you. Good for you.

I've come to realize that the large, fragrant wax pools come from vessels that are emptied out spiritually. Poured out on God's altar. In-filled daily with His anointing. Goes lots deeper than musical ability, writing talent, superior intellect. It has to do with being fully yielded to the Spirit. Trust me, I am only dipping my toe into these waters yet. I'm fully aware that I have, figuratively speaking "miles to go before I sleep," as Frost wrote in his epic poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." I'm a very tiny babe in these woods. I don't even want this emptying out and filling in to the degree that is necessary. I'll admit it intimidates my selfish flesh to a degree I cannot begin to describe.But I want to want it and I pray for the Spirit to make it my passion. To change me to the degree that I do not recognize myself at all. Only He can. Only He can. But it's possible. I know it is because I would not feel the unmistakable call if it were not. No.

In Memory of Carson James Davis

I never met Carson. Well, perhaps in my dreams...those not remembered. I met his cousin in my remembered dreams...the child I miscarried at 42. My dreams are vivid and remind me that the veil between this life and the next is very thin, sheer at times.

My husband's nephew and his wife lost Carson recently. A handful of days from his due date, his ethereal soul passed into eternity, leaving behind a beautiful shell that was delivered by doctors and placed into the arms of his grieving parents and grandparents. He was photographed and caressed, but his spirit was already with God.

What this little boy will never know is sin and heartache, loss, struggle, and disappointment. What he will know none of us earthbound beings can say, though we are absolutely certain that it is wonderful beyond imagining. He was fully innocent and is now physically with his heavenly Father.

I heard someone say once that babies grow up in heaven. That remark rang true to me. God is their Father and they know no lack as they grow. When we encounter them on the other side, they won't be a static, unknowing infant. They will be fully alive and continuously developing as a unique person.

The experience of carrying Carson and eagerly anticipating his entrance into the world, into her world, is not wasted for his mother. No, Carson has an eternal soul that is now with God. He is more alive today than he was in the womb. His mother and father were the God-ordained conduits for his existence and they will meet him one day. It will be a joy-filled reunion sparkling with beauty and other-worldly love. God will envelop them as they embrace. He brought them together on earth and He will reunite them in the hereafter.

When we lose a loved one on this finite, fallen earth, we feel shattered beyond repair because we cannot see, feel, or hear them. We cannot talk to them, sing with them, enjoy with them. We cannot hug them or cry with them. It's difficult beyond expression. Words fail and tears fall. But God. He is our Rock and Redeemer and the assurance of our becoming reunited with those He has put into our lives. He is absolutely faithful and He will do it. And in the in-between time He will count our tears as they fall.

Psalm 56:8 (New Living Translation)
 "You keep track of all my sorrows.
You have collected all my tears in your bottle.
You have recorded each one in your book."

Daily Unfolding

The candle in the picture is burning on my coffee table as I sit here, my laptop on my lap. Two points of light. I love it. My favorite type of candle, however, is the three-wick candle. After all, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit burn in my heart like the points of flame and they release a beautiful fragrance into my life. 

If God really flows through our lives, we will feel His presence every single day. We will always know that He is with us, that He is above all and in all and working through every single circumstance. I'm so relieved that I know Him and that, as the scriptures teach, I CAN hear His voice. I can. It's so completely fulfilling and utterly enthralling. 

This morning I felt led to go into a particular gift shop. I saw the words "Beauty is Everywhere" on one of the gifts. Got in the car and heard Toby Mac singing about how God is in everything, all day. I asked God why He wanted me to have this particular message at this particular time. I thought He answered me "Because it is true." It is true. I remember once when He very clearly told me over and over again that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. I was very confused as to why that particular point of scripture was being brought to my attention again and again and I suppose, after today's event, that the answer is that it is simply because it it true. 

When God tells us to do something, we will be utterly miserable until we do it. We will be as unfulfilled as the rest of the world is, grasping for pleasure like a castaway on a deserted isle seeks food, shelter and water. We were built for the adventure of pursuing and knowing God and being used for His specific purposes. It's a daily treasure, a daily unfolding.