The Gift of Story

She comes just when I need her, as she always does.

It is the middle of the morning, and already I feel the lonely day stretching ahead of me. My husband is in Romania on a mission trip, my friends are preoccupied with their own busy lives, and my children seem to perceive me as a heaven-sent robot here to meet their every demand. I tuck my heart away with a sigh, ready to dig in.

I pick up the mail and there it is, the square yellow envelope with her name in the corner. Just looking at that name makes me smile.

I tear open the envelope and out she comes, little bits of her heart overflowing with love. A treat for each of the kids and a silly card for me and this, this gift that has to be one of the best I have ever received.

A book for her friend who loves words, full of her words of gratitude…for me.

Page after page of her living love. As I read, I picture her in her house in Texas, taking the precious time to capture our friendship on these pages. Stories flow: the day we met, both of us lonely and in search of a friend. The bond that grew between us in that little Kansas town, a rare friendship that soon became the deepest I have known. Our shared love of the mountains and many outdoor adventures together. Grieving with one another over miscarriages, heartbreaks, disappointments, moving away.

Reading her memories is like holding a piece of her heart. Each page of this gift hands me the treasure we all long for: to know we are loved. Cherished. Valued. Remembered. The laughs bubble up and the tears flow as her words reach out and pull me into what I had forgotten was there.

I remember a recent conversation with my husband. We had just returned from the funeral of a friend where story after story had been told of his life, his love, those he touched with his gentle heart. Wouldn’t it be great to attend your own funeral and hear all those things said about you, we thought.

Or maybe we should say them beforehand?

That’s what Staci did for me today.

I often tell my students that there is nothing like the power of story. We all crave a good story. We are bound together by the stories we share. And isn’t it true that we always seek to know our part in the story, to find our place, to know we have an indispensible role?

Too many of us think we have no part in the story.

We feel forgotten.

But our story has already been written.

“You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed” (Ps. 139.16).

There is One who loves story. And His story includes each of us. We are an indispensible part of making the story happen. Each character is carefully planned.

“He determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:26-27).

He wants to be our story, and He wants us to live our stories together. I think the beauty of our entwined lives makes Him glad.

Today He used a friend to remind me that my story matters.

Whose stories matter in your life? Do they know? Have you told them?

Lessons from a Horse Trough

As I stood at the coral fence with my daughters, admiring the horses, I noticed the mud under the gate. And then I saw the water trickling out from the bottom of the trough in a tiny, steady stream. What a shame, I thought. Why would they waste water like that?

Then I noticed that the trough was full to the brim. A spout hanging above poured a continual flow of cool, fresh water into the trough at the exact same rate as the water exiting below. Aha. Fresh water.

A horse stuck its nuzzle in and drank deep.

Fresh water is so much more satisfying.

And if the water gushing so faithfully into the trough stopped, its flow interrupted by neglect or drought or diversion—the hole in the bottom would still be there, and the water would drain away, leaving emptiness.

The trough is designed to hold only fresh water.

But an empty vessel cannot give.

The life cannot flow out unless it is flowing in.

We come with holes, too.

We can let the life leak out, drain away, leaving emptiness. Or we can be filled with the only source of constant life—and we can become lifegivers ourselves, drawing the thirsty.

A constant stream of life pouring in, flowing out.

Reflections on Motherhood

In recent days I have shared in the grief of a young mother giving premature birth to twin boys, one already dead, the other breathing in her arms for a few precious hours before joining his brother. I have watched my friend’s devastation as the plans for adopting a little boy suddenly fell through at the last moment. Another friend with a similar adoption heartache received the doctor’s news that she is unlikely ever to conceive. And another mother with four grown children had to bury her only son after a tragic accident.

And isn’t it true that for all of us mothers—those with living children, those with children who have died, those with children they dream of one day holding, and those with children who will never know the mother who loves them—the love is always intertwined with heartache. The letting go begins the moment we begin to love.

And this, I think, is the picture of the God whose love and heartbreak tinge this world. The One who dreams of us, labors over us, loses us to rejection and selfishness and confused seeking after anything but Him—this God opens His heart and allows the love to break it, all for the joy of holding us again someday. In this hope He pursues and blesses, speaks and breathes over us day after day, pouring Himself out over and over in quest for us. He sacrificed all. He held nothing back.

And so I am learning that motherhood is sacrifice. It is opening my heart completely to those who may reject me, who will certainly wound me, and who may never know the depth of my love. It is choosing to believe that it is worth it to give all.

I think of those who long to be mothers and find encouragement in the words of Adriel Booker:

Will you remember that your children, your role, your name—Mama—is not something you’re entitled, but something released to you as a gift?

Why do we enter so willingly into certain heartbreak? For love, of course. And because, mothers or not, giving and nurturing life is the greatest gift. There is no joy like holding your baby for the first time, like those little arms around your neck, like hearing the first “I love you.” There is no greater joy than watching a child embrace faith and grow in wisdom and strength. We find fulfillment in emptying ourselves for another.

Unfortunately I fail my children. I wound them too. I often close my heart to them, turning away from the hard. It is hardest to forgive myself in these moments. But the God whose heart I have broken promises to “gently lead those who have young” (Is. 40:11) He is gentle with me. He understands.

I can only pour myself out when I am filled with Him. I can only let go when I trust He will step in where I fail. I have His promise regarding my children: “He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart” (Is 40:11).

We too are His lambs. The mothers who suffer the most are those He holds the closest. We can find comfort in knowing that what seems invisible here is written large in eternity.

What they say is true: we cannot understand what our own mothers sacrificed for us until we become mothers ourselves. Thank you, Mom, for daily pouring yourself out for me. For being willing to suffer on my behalf. For the thousands of meals and loads of laundry and wounds overlooked and hurts healed. For the days you chose me when you longed to be somewhere else. For the countless prayers you prayed. For knowing I would never understand what you daily gave and gave up, and loving me anyway. For living out a faith that has weathered many storms and still bears up under sadness. For choosing hope. For supporting me now that I am a mother, for always standing by me in love and not judgment. You could have spent your life in many ways, but you chose to be a mom. And being your daughter is truly a rich gift.

A Prayer for Lent

Abba, 

 

I am not sure I completely understand this season of Lent. Wikipedia says that Lent is “the penitential preparation of the believer” for Holy Week. We take time to stare our sins in the face to more properly understand the significance of Your sacrifice. We fast and pray, repent and deny ourselves, to draw near to You, to take our journey through sorrow and penitence to celebration and new life.

So far I have failed spectacularly in my devotion. I entered into Lent only half-heartedly, half-committing and half-following through. I have denied You much more often than myself.

My failures underscore my utter need for You. I cannot even repent without Your help. Our inability to really do penance reveals our need for the grace that is the cross. We continually try to turn this life into a chance to earn Your sacrifice, to show You how sorry we are and make up for it with our devotion. Trouble is, we are never devoted enough. Your disciples will always be found sleeping.

Even in my worship I need You to fill me. I cannot enter into Your presence until I still my heart and let You come. When I fill my life with busyness and words and work and worry, I deny You the chance to be God in my life. I do not trust You with the moment, so I turn from it. But when I am still, when I stop and enter the moment, then I know You are God. And I see that You are singing my life-song and waiting for me to open to You.

I want the hard times to make me more faithful, not less. I want to fast from my idols not to earn You but to see more of You, to still the desires that clamor all day long. Can one fast from worry?

This journey is about letting You love me, accepting the cross that I did not earn. letting go of the pride that holds You at arms’ length.

I want to plunge into You, to wear You like a cloak that covers all of me, shelters and warms me, keeps me safe and soothes the naked sinful shame of me. I want this Lent to lay me bare so I might feel You on my soul skin, the enfolding love on the chaffed unfaithfulness.

The Anti-Quiet Time

Sometimes it's all you can do to get through the day without a meltdown. I have felt that way for weeks now. I keep thinking guiltily of the dust collecting on my prayer journal, waiting patiently next to the couch where I love to meet with God in the mornings. I haven't had my "quiet time" in a very long time now.

I won't say I don't feel guilty about that. I won't say I don't miss those times, so important for grounding me in my day, putting the focus where it needs to be. And someday (soon, I hope) I know I will have those times again, because they are important to me and to God. I long for them.

But I'm learning something surprising in the midst of just surviving. I'm learning to let it be OK. God is still here, and I can still have rich times with Him. In fact, I'm learning that minute-by-minute prayers draw me to Him throughout the day. Our relationship is portable. It doesn't have to be confined to the couch. Of course I knew that, but I don't know how much I have ever really experienced it.

He didn't say, "Be sure you spend X number of minutes in prayer and study each day." He did say, "Abide in Me." To abide is to dwell, to rest, to make my home there. Sometimes that might mean getting a delicious hour on the couch to talk with Him. These days it means lifting my heart in a silent plea when I am trying to be a good mom and wife while working three part-time jobs. It means crying "help" when I'm about to lose it with a child. It means asking for strength to stay up and work when I long for sleep. It means thanking Him throughout the day for these things I GET to do. It means opening my eyes to the reality of His presence and the overflowing blessings He brings.

I'm learning to grab each moment I can get with Him, like this precious nap-time break or the quiet when I stepped out of the house this morning into the falling snow--just for a moment--before jumping into the day.

Those who abide will bear much fruit. I want to learn the secret of that ongoing conversation with Him, the moment-by-moment awareness of His presence. I have a long way to go, but I'm learning.

Awake, soul

I stand on the trail under a sky so blue it could break my heart. It hovers above me with such profundity, the canvas of eternity. The mountains seem to hurl themselves deliberately into it, demanding attention: Look how beautiful I am! Below my ledge of earth the river laughs cold and clear, catching the weight of glory pressing down and throwing it back again, sparkling into the air. The earth shimmers this day. I can feel it worship.

I was not prepared for this. I pull out my heart-list of complaints, the shadow-burdens I have been collecting all week. I try to tell God my miseries, make Him understand the bitterness I feel. My words fall flat, pushed back into my soul like a song sung against the wind. Even my tears feel false and forced, an insult to the day.

I pray. Oh, to feel Your arms around me. To dance in Your presence. To know Your joy.

Do you really mean it? the river seems to say. The mountains grin at me. I am missing the joke.

I give up. At the coffee shop, I plug in my headphones, open my Bible.

The weight of all that worship out there presses down on me as the words pour into my ears:

Oh God, let Your fire fall down

Let it fall, let it fall

We welcome You with praise

We welcome You with praise

Almighty God of love

Be welcome in this place

Let every heart adore

Let every soul awake… (Chris Tomlin/Passion, Here With You, 2011)

And the earth cries out to me even as it cries up to Him, yearning upward toward the love that reaches down with the holy joy that says, Nothing else matters. Only this. This love, this moment when you stop and listen and let Me love you.

Let your heart adore.

Let your soul awake.

And God takes my bitter-list and gives me a new one:

Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits:

Who forgives all your iniquities,

Who heals all your diseases,

Who redeems your life from destruction,

Who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies,

Who satisfies your mouth with good things,

So that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. (Ps. 103:1-5)

Forgiven, healed, redeemed, crowned, satisfied.

And oh, can’t you let go of yourself for once and fling yourself into this day of praise, forget yourself in the crushing wondrous holy joy of Him?

I smile. My heart does a little jig. I don’t understand why I suddenly feel so happy. So loved. But that’s the glory of this love that surpasses comprehension. Inexplicably, I know I am His.

More importantly, I know He Is. All of Him. All of it is true: all the power, all the promise, all the raging, pulsing, heart-shattering glorious love.

Bless the Lord, O my soul…

Resting in the darkness

The screaming lasts for hours sometimes. Standing in her crib, calling for mama, daddy, even brother, whoever might come and release her from the agony of bedtime. My comforting words, spoken over her in quiet whispers in the dark, do nothing to soothe her eighteen-month old anxiety.

Does she cry because she feels alone? Doesn’t she see the soft, restful place I have made for her is supposed to be a haven, not a cage?

Can’t she understand that I am doing what is best for her?

I want to tell her she will feel so much better if she just rests. I want her to understand that though she can’t see me, I am right there, bigger than the darkness. I can hear her. My love is always watching over her, and I would never, never let anything happen to her.

But in her childlike mind, she does not understand the darkness and the silence. It is not what she wants, and she throws herself against it. She does not understand that what I have in mind for her is even better than what she has in mind for herself.  

She must rest in the darkness in order to truly enter into the day.

She must let go of fear and anxiety and trust that I am there, that I have not forgotten her, that my love hovers over her, unseen in the darkness but as real as the blankets that warm her.

I sigh and muster all my patience and whisper it again, “Just rest. Just rest.” And isn’t this what my Father keeps whispering to me, the words in the darkness that I cry out against, the love that wants to soothe me to peace and trust?

“But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.” Psalm 131:2

The action lies with me. To still and to quiet. I can choose this, because I know who is with me in the darkness.

The Truest Kind of Healing

I didn’t know the man, but I had heard that tone in his voice before. Joy. Awe. The previous week he had asked the elders of the church to anoint him and pray for him, and now he was almost dancing in his excitement to tell us how God had brought him relief from his disease.

His words pricked my heart. I had been prayed over once or twice before, and I knew many people who love me had prayed many times for healing from the arthritis that has twisted and swollen my body.

But I didn’t really believe it.

Honestly, I was resigned to my disease. I called it “mine,” made it a part of who I was, saying I knew God had a purpose for it in my life. And He did. God has used it in many ways already to teach me much about myself. My selfishness. My idols. And, most of all, my deep, deep fear.

Fear is the disease that keeps us from faith.

This disease was my thorn in the flesh, and I accepted it as such. People prayed with me and for me, but in my heart I expected nothing to change. This was what I deserved, after all. And I would do my best to bear the cross with integrity.

I didn’t go to the elders because why should I embarrass God like that? He and I both knew this disease was mine. Sure, He could heal me if He wanted to, but I didn’t really think He wanted to.

And then this man stood up in church and his words pierced. And the message that morning was about how we are chosen, set apart, called out for a special purpose. When we give ourselves up to God, we give up our rights. We become gloriously His.

And God spoke to my heart. What right do you have to not obey Me? Why do you trust man and not God?

The truth pressed into me. I I did not ask because I did not want to be disappointed. I did not want to give God the chance to fail me. So rather than give God a chance, I turned to doctors and medicine and the cures of man.

Trembling, weeping, I walked to the front where a group of elders and deacons stood waiting.  I want to be faithful. To give God this disease once and for all. He can heal me or not, but I want it to be His, not mine, to use as He will.

His, not mine.

They prayed, and a wondrous thought came over me in a rush. He CAN heal me. And for once, I knew it as a certain truth.

“God has a word for you. ‘Do not fear. Trust in Him and do not be afraid.’”

Like the arthritis that had twisted my body, fear had twisted my soul.

It remains to be seen whether my body is completely healed of arthritis, though I do feel better than I have in a long time. Maybe this is because of the real healing that is taking place.

My real sickness is the fear that keeps me from faith. Maybe God will heal me physically in order to prove His point, that He is faithful. And maybe if the physical healing does not come, He purposes to use the pain to accomplish a deeper healing, one that truly frees. If He heals me physically, will I be more awed than if He heals me from the scars of my fear?

I only know that when I obeyed, released my disease and with it my fear, God plunged me into His love. I do not have to be resigned to what I deserve. When I accept grace, I receive healing beyond what I ever imagined. I never knew before that receiving that unfathomable love would require a step of obedience.

The healing I really need is to experience His love for me. And I cannot receive love with clenched hands.

This morning it washed over me anew. Wondrous grace. Unsearchable love. Does He really love me enough to heal me, to just take the pain away, just like that?

My feet don’t hurt. My fingers on the keyboard are light. And in my heart a peace is blossoming, unfolding to the brightness of His love.

How to have a happy New Year

“I think I’m going to be happier this year.”

The conversation stopped and everyone looked at my friend. “Their jaws dropped,” she said of her husband’s family. Since “no one keeps their New Year’s resolutions anyway,” they had decided to make New Year predictions instead. Discussing politics, the economy, and the general state of the world, their forecast so far had not been bright.

“Then I said I thought I was going to be happier. They didn’t know what to say after that.”

How to be happy in a world choked with worry, fear, hatred, confusion, loss, selfishness, pain? How to decide ahead of time that this year will bring joy?

“I’m going to be thankful.”

There it is again, that word. Thankfulness seems too simple to be so powerful. Then again, there is a great difference between saying words of thanks and possessing a thankful heart.

A thankful heart, I am learning, does not have room for fear and worry. A thankful heart receives what is given without asking for more. Rather than wondering what tomorrow will bring, it is filled with wonder for today.

The more I thank Him for the wonders in my life each day, the more I find myself trusting Him. “His mercies are new every morning.” I find (wondrously) that I believe that. When the chaos of the day begins to settle and I finally stop and still, I am amazed to feel the warm comfort of peace within. I give thanks. The peace takes hold, spreads, smoothing out the wrinkles of stress and worry.

This is why my friend can predict a year of happiness. A thankful heart puts God in the spotlight, and God does not fail. Thanking Him for this moment, this present joy, this current place of provision, takes away the stranglehold of tomorrow’s uncertainty. And moment by moment, that faithfulness sustains me. Giving thanks roots me to now, to the God who holds me in His hand this moment. As I see that moment after moment He is still there, I learn to trust.

“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness” (Col. 1:6-7).