How to be part of a miracle

Disciple. You've declared yourself one of His--or rather He declared you one, and you followed. Ever since, you've been following Him all over the countryside as He starts this crazy revival. He touches the diseased, He walks among the people, He sleeps wherever His head lands. He says the craziest, most confusing, most wonderful things--and everywhere He goes, hope springs up like flowers in the sun. 

And now you're standing in the middle of a village, gulping down your fear, and you're telling the world. You're reaching out tentative hands and you're watching as His power heals those you touch. You're becoming part of something you never dreamed of, and His hope carries you like a tidal wave all the way back to His love. 

You all come back together and He pulls you away for a rest. He grins and listens as the stories pour forth, all of you with bright eyes telling of the wonder. Revival. Hope. The world is waking to the possibility of His kingdom here, now, right among them. And here you are, right in the midst.

The people find you and follow. They come and come and come, just coming, just waiting for that hope to rain on them again. And Jesus, He stands up to welcome them. 

Amazing how quickly the glow fades. We love serving You, Jesus, but enough already. Your own stomach betrays you. You're hungry. You're tired. The crowd is growing restless. It's time to be done. 

Send them away, Jesus, so they can eat. It's a reasonable request. It's been a long day. But Jesus just looks at you with that grin on His face. 

You feed them. 

There's a lot of people. Thousands of them. You suddenly remember that you're just a fisherman. 

He just stands there, waiting and looking at you. You all look at each other. Jesus, we have only this. You hold up your paltry loaves and fish.

You have only this small thing. You are not enough. 

Jesus shakes His head at you and He's still grinning. Give me what you have. Somehow you feel foolish as you hand it over. 

The crowds sit, and as Jesus just keeps breaking bread and grinning at you, you walk among these hope-starved people and you put this miracle into their upheld hands. And you wonder how you got to be a part of this at all, you, with your doubts and your insecurities and your ignorance. You give and you give, and you have enough. And after it's all over, you each pick up a basketful of much more than you started with. 

He doesn't say anything, but His look asks if you get it yet. 

He already gave you His authority. And His authority is always enough. How quickly we forget. 

You looked at the bread in your hands, and you looked at the crowd, and it wasn't sufficient. But Jesus took the bread and looked to His Father, and it was more than enough to meet all the need and overflow back into your own life. And even later, when you step out of a tiny boat in the midst of a raging storm and you look at the waves, you sink. But when you look at His face and you take His outstretched hand, you walk on water. 

He didn't call you for nothing. You haven't spent all this time following Him around only to sit on the sidelines. 

What has He called you to? He always gives you enough for whatever He asks of you. You already have His authority. Take a look at those little loaves in your hand and remember Jesus grinning at you in delight, waiting to watch you be part of His miracle. 

This is what I've been thinking about for four months

I’m not sure any of this is going to make sense.

And if it does, you might not like it. But I need to say it anyway.

It has been awhile (OK, four months, sigh), since my last post. Even as my own life has been upended and put back together again in beautiful, scary ways I never imagined, I’ve walked with friends through some dark valleys. Mental illness. Unfaithful husbands. Abusive husbands. Miscarriages. Addictions. Rebellious children. Loneliness, depression, despair, anger, bewilderment, longing. I have seen the yawning chasms of need and loss, doubt and indifference, fear and apathy. And I have watched with the rest of the world as terror rears up like a dragon and howls its hatred.

At night I stare at darkness that billows up into my heart, fear pressing in. These giants are real and large and dangerous. What can I do? What can I say? How can I stand against such need? I am small. And the evils of the world are very, very big. I try to write and it feels like throwing pebbles at a brick wall.

A voice in the darkness. A whisper to my heart.

Press in.

It’s the word God gave to us sisters when we huddled around our broken hearts, crying out our confusion and grief. It’s the word He continued to speak into my bewildered and aching soul through all the long summer and the healing time that followed.

Press in.

When the fear presses in, press into Him.

When the doubt presses in, press into Him.

When everything you know seems like not enough and despair takes hold, press into Him.

He is enough. This is what I am coming to know, and this is what I am learning to tell myself over and over when the darkness looms.

But I spend so much time thinking about things that don’t matter. I waste endless hours comparing myself to others in ways that miss the point about why we are here and what we should be doing. I am so easily consumed by the petty, the trite, and the insignificant.

I’m not saying the day-to-day details are not important. They matter more than we know. They matter because it is the moments that make up a life. And we are letting the enemy take them.

I am convinced that great darkness is coming for us. The enemy is prowling and his hatred is growing, and we forget this all too easily. We are lulled away so quickly. We chase our dreams of comfort and security at any cost. Or we know it and we are terrified, staring at the giants like we are kids with stick swords.

Mostly I have been mired in the insignificant. But in those moments when I really press in, I see it clearly. There is a war and we are the warriors and we have the weapons to fight.

The enemy is coming, is already among us. We can forget and lose ourselves in apathy and pettiness, or we can let fear paralyze us.

Or we can press in.

We can start to know—to really know our God. And knowing Him, we can begin to truly know ourselves and one another. And we can be ready.

What would it look like to press into Him continually? How would it shape my days, my relationships, my thoughts? He longs for us to know Him, and He longs to transform us. We have become so blind to Who We Are and to Who Our God Is, and we don’t really believe He is enough for us. We don’t believe that we are enough in Him. I don’t believe. Not always. But I want to. I want to know Him. I want to be transformed.

This thought fills me like fire in the bones. We must press into Him. I feel so weak and small and broken and inadequate, but the more I press into Him, the more I know His truth in my very soul.

We are His. Made in His image, glorious and beautiful and strong. What if we started really knowing and believing and living the truth? What if we lived like warriors and took up our weapons together?

Our enemy is great. But he knows full well that our God is infinitely greater. He’s the father of lies and he will never stop lying to keep us from our God.

We must press in. Our lives depend on it.

What does this look like? I don’t know yet. But I want to find out.

Will you join me?

Anything

My husband stepped down from his job yesterday.

And so the world changes just like that. The discussions and tears, the many, many words and wonderings, the prayers offered up from conflicted hearts—they have all led to this. We step out from all we have known for twelve years, and we step onto a path that is still dark to us, aside from the next small piece.  Beyond the next space of quietness and reflection, we have no idea where God is taking us. But we know He has led us to this.

Grief squeezes my heart and a part of me wants to cry out no, no, this is a mistake, we didn’t mean it. I look at all the labor, all the memories, all the faces and hearts we love, this space where we have struggled and failed and triumphed for so many years. And I don’t want to let go.

But I know it is time. I hear Ben talk about how grateful he is for what he has learned and how he has grown, but he knows there is a new call on his life. I look at what God has done in us this year, and I know He is moving us on.

It’s terrifying.

Those stories about faith are easier to believe when they are just stories. Abraham and Sarah walking away from a rich life to wander in the wild, just because God told them to. Moses walking from the wild back to face his nightmares, only to go into the wild again with a whole nation trailing behind him. David picking up those little rocks and looking into the face of a giant. Two young men walking away from their nets and their livelihood to follow a man into a life they cannot imagine.

So many stories, Lord. You give us those stories so we will know. You are faithful. You have great plans for us. You’re working all things for our good.

Imagine if Abraham had never left his home. If Moses had remained a shepherd in that sleepy corner of the world. If David had never stepped out to fight. If Your disciples had stayed where it was safe and comfortable.

I’m sure you would have accomplished your purposes anyway. But they never would have seen the power, love, wonder of their God. They never would have known you as they did in the end. And they never would have been a part of your great story.

I promised You anything. I have begged to know you. I have said I want to be part of your story. And here I stand on the threshold of an unknown future. We step out into . . . what? I have no idea, beyond the next few months. You could be leading us anywhere. Into anything.

It’s so easy to be afraid. Are we doing the right thing? What if we fail? What if we can’t find good jobs? What if we never figure out what we are supposed to do? What are people here going to say about us? What will they think? Will the things we worked so hard for—and still love—die?

But.

But I don’t want to get to the end of my life full of regret that I didn’t believe. That I didn’t follow you. And that I missed all the blessing you wanted to pour out, all the beauty you wanted to show me, all the miracles you wanted me to be a part of.

If I really believe you, then I don't need to be afraid. I don't need to wonder what's next, because I know the One who holds my every moment in His hands, who knew all the days that were written for me before I was born. I can trust you with my days and the days of those I love.

I’m ready.

I want your anything. And if this is the way, I will go.

Not dead enough

We got a bad batch of wood. 

The tree had been dead for a long time--or so we thought--and the split wood looks like it should burn nicely. That's what we need considering we rely on the heat of our wood stove for eight months of the year. But that's not what we got. 

The wood catches fire all right. The inside of the stove lights up with a promising yellow glow. But the fire gives no heat. The flames sputter as the wood sizzles and pops from the sap still lingering within. Eventually the wood burns up without ever warming our home. 

What a waste. What a disappointment to huddle before a fire that offers no warmth. What a frustration to sit in my cold house and watch all that promising timber burn itself out for nothing.

Honestly, lately life seems to resemble that wood. I often feel I am doing everything "right," everyone around me is doing everything "right," but life is a flame with no heat, a fire that pops and sizzles and never offers any true or lasting warmth. 

Am I being too melodramatic? Probably. But I can't help feeling there is some truth here. 

Be honest. Don't you ever feel, like I do, that you are just sort of smoldering? Like we're all going crazy trying to get this thing right and all we ever get is some smoke and some sparks, but no heat? And why are we going so hard, burning ourselves up for nothing? 
 
The best firewood comes from trees that are really dead, but not rotten. Our wood still holds too much of its own life to take in the life of the fire. It burns, but it burns without heat because of the sap inside.

Our wood isn't dead enough.

Bear with me here. Maybe it's a stretch to make this comparison, but I've been thinking a lot about death lately. I've been thinking about all the ways I feel stuck in life, in my faith, in relationships, and about the idea that God asks us to die to ourselves. Not just once, but every single day. 

He says the best kind of life--the only life, really--comes from death. We have to die in order to find that life. But we have this idea of death being the end. We cling to life and we try to pack every single thing we can into it before death takes us. 

But what if death is a beginning? What if we have to die to our own idea of life before we can understand God's? And what if we started looking for ways to die so that new beginnings could spring up? 

Maybe we aren't dead enough. Maybe we are trying to burn bright and hot for God, but we are clinging to a life he wants us to let go of. The old life in our core keeps us from taking on the new life of the fire. 

Maybe we are just afraid. We want the fire, but we don't really want to burn. Because then, really, what is left but ashes? And so we try to burn our own way, and the fire runs sappy with life that shouldn't be there, and in the end we are left with ashes anyway. 

Do we believe that God brings beauty from ashes, as he promises? What if we really trusted that true life comes through death after all? What if we believed our death to self would accomplish a beautiful life beyond imagining?

And if we never burn at all? We end up dead anyway, rotting away in the despair of this world, useless to everyone. 

Maybe this is a crazy metaphor. I only know that I am longing for heat. For the blaze of God's presence. I don't want to just smoke and smolder. I want to burn with him. I want to learn what is holding me back, what life I am clinging to that keeps me from going all in. 

Our God is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29). I want to be consumed by him. 

This morning I stepped into the cold darkness of the living room and built the fire as I always do. I didn't have much hope. But for whatever reason, this wood began to burn bright and hot. My living room filled with warmth, and sleepy children gathered around, and this became a refuge, a warm, welcoming sanctuary from the cold outside. 

We could be that sanctuary, I think. We could burn hot and draw in a world weary with the cold. The question is, do we really want to?

How to leave the safe place

I was five or six when I got my first bike. I wanted to ride it so badly. I can still remember looking longingly at the brand new shiny paint, the awesome banana seat, and the rainbow streamers hanging from the handlebars. In my mind I could see my hair flying, legs pumping as I raced into the freedom

of fast.

But I could also see myself falling. I looked at the pavement and thought about how much it would hurt when I crashed into it. I longed for the freedom yet feared the failures I knew I would face in getting there. And like many things in my life, the fear of getting hurt kept me from going for what I really wanted.

I played it safe. I begged for the training wheels that would keep me upright and let me have the fun without the fear. I probably would have ridden it that way forever. But it wasn’t the same, and I knew it. In my heart I wanted more.

My family wanted more for me too. And they wouldn’t give up trying to get me there, even when I fought against it. Ultimately I learned to ride a bike because my parents wouldn’t let me stay in the easy place. They took the training wheels off and they stood around me as I took off, and then they ran next to me when my wobbly wheels took me terrified down the street. They cheered. They worked harder than I did. And when I fell, they ran and picked me up and hugged me. And put me right back on the bike.

I learned to ride a bike, as I learned so many other things, because they believed in me more than I believed in myself. The people who loved me cheered me on. But more than that, they pushed me beyond my safe place.

Now I am sitting on a college campus in San Diego at a conference that a few months ago I had never even heard of. I am here because of friends and loved ones who believe in me more than I believe in myself. They are pushing me beyond the safe place.

My writing life has faltered just like my early attempts to ride a bike. I’ve stopped and started so many times. I have had a few wobbly successes, and I’ve tasted the joy that comes from chasing a calling and a gift. But my eyes are often on the pavement, and as a result I often end up there. And so I go back to the training wheels, to the safe, comfortable place that doesn’t challenge me too much.

It doesn’t inspire me too much, either. And I doubt that it inspires anyone else.

I still don’t know exactly what caused my friends to decide that I needed to do this. But they did. I am amazed and overwhelmed that they went to such lengths to get me here. I’ll never forget the complete shock of opening that Christmas envelope and reading the words, “You’re going to the Storyline Conference!”

Knowing that my friends love me enough to dream this up, to scrape together the money to put me on a plane and send me to San Diego, makes me feel . . . believed in. It’s like being on a bike, surrounded by a community who says, “We love you and we know you can do it!” And now that I am here, I’m starting to believe them a little bit. With them running next to me, hands extended as I wobble along, I feel like maybe I want to try to go beyond safe. To plunge into the freedom of flying, knowing they will be there to pick me up when I fall.

So many of you are part of this journey. Thank you for believing in me. Thank you for reading this blog and sticking with all my inconsistencies and hesitations. Thank you for encouraging me. I feel overwhelmed with the blessing of such love and support. And I feel a responsibility too, in a good way. I think—no, I know—that God is calling me to write. I am not sure yet what or why or how. But you all have helped to confirm this calling.

I hope it will start here, with this blog. I hope God will just take it and use it somehow. Mostly I just want to plunge in and follow Him. I hope you will keep encouraging me, and I hope you will hold me accountable. I don’t want to just add to the noise. I want my words to do for you what you have done for me. I want to help hold you up and cheer you on as you wobble along on your own journey. After all, you have a calling too.

I hope I can be a part of it. Let’s go beyond the safe place and jump into this story all the way.

A perfect love

“You don’t have to be afraid,” I smooth back hair and hold my four year-old daughter close, trying to smooth back frustration at once again having this conversation.

“But what if a fire comes while I am sleeping?” 

This is the routine, the endless series of what-ifs that keep her locked in fear. Fear of fires in the night, fear of thunder, fear of strange insects, fear of being left alone.

I try all the arguments I can think of to calm her. I appeal to logic. I give her facts. Nothing works.

“Don’t you know you can trust me to take care of you?” She shakes her head. I give up and simply hold her until she is asleep.

On vacation at Disney World, we go to a spectacular light show. A voice over the loudspeaker tells us how Mickey Mouse will overcome his nightmare and conquer evil with good. Mikayla hears only the one word, “nightmare.” Burying her head in her daddy’s chest, she refuses to watch. She misses the princesses, the gorgeous dancing fountains of light, the flowers and fairies. We describe the wonders and urge her to look. Eyes squeezed shut, she misses the beauty for fear of the darkness.

How do I help her? What do I say? The truth is, I can’t protect her from every danger, as much as I want to.

And do I really wonder where my daughter’s fear comes from? Must I really ask why she dwells on the anxieties, why the things that might happen rob her joy of the things that are?

I have my own fears in plenty that keep me from rest.

We fear the things we cannot control. We worry about the what-ifs because we don’t have a plan, a way to keep out the pain and danger and loss.

I search for Scripture to pray, a verse to claim for my daughter’s tormented heart.

“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love” (1 Jn. 4:18).

There is no fear in love. When we know we are loved, we trust. The more perfectly we are loved, the more fully we trust.

Human love fails. My love for my daughter, strong as it is, cannot always protect her. A few minutes before the light show at Disney World, as we rushed through the crowds to find our seats, I lost her. I turned to help my other daughter, and when I looked again, Mikayla was gone. Those five minutes of searching and screaming her name felt like eternity. And after we found her, though we held her close the rest of the night, she lived in fear.

But there is a perfect love. A love that does not fail. Ever.

And perfect love casts out fear.

David, hotly pursued by his enemies, prayed, “When I am afraid, I will trust in you.” But in the very next verse he remembers the strength of His God and adjusts his prayer, “In God I trust and am not afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?” (Psalm 56:3-4)

The more we know God’s love, the less we fear.

A perfect love takes every pain and works it for good (Rom. 8:28). A perfect love makes beauty from ashes and joy from tears (Is. 61:3). A perfect love turns suffering into purest gold (1 Pet. 1:7).

When I choose fear, I tell God His love is not enough.

I tell Him that I do not trust He can take me through what looks impossible to me.

But I don’t have to be able to see the way through the darkness of uncertainty. I only have to trust that He can.

“He who fears has not been made perfect in love.”

When I understand that He can, He wants to, and He will, I begin to know His love.

There is only one way to be made perfect. There is only one path through fear. And those who know His perfect love, they are able to love more perfectly. 

“For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith” (1 Jn. 5:4-5).