Day 1: When we cannot abide

I had planned to post something else today. In fact, I had it all written. The introduction to my topic about abiding in Christ. But yesterday something happened that put today into a different light. A family from my little community, on a hike together in the mountains on a perfect fall day, was struck by a rock slide and killed. Five dead: mom, dad, daughter, two cousins. The youngest daughter survived because her father gave his life protecting her. The oldest son was not there.

Suddenly my little corner is reeling, grief-stricken as a community tries to grasp a whole family struck down. Faces we love. People we serve with, work with.

 

And sometimes we cannot abide. 

Sometimes the questions are too hard and the pain is too sharp and the voices we raise are too full of the agony of living on this planet where rocks fall and crush us for no apparent reason.

But though I don’t know why and though this is too hard and though I want to shake my fist at heaven and tell God a thing or two, in my heart there is this whisper.

“Let not your heart be troubled. . . believe in Me” (Jn. 14:1).

He doesn’t ask us to figure out why or laugh it off or pretend the suffering isn’t ugly and raw and painful. He just asks us to believe.

And Jesus, He knows that even that is too much to ask at times. He knows we cannot abide this life.

That’s when He abides with us.

“And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—the Spirit of truth…He dwells with you and will be in you” (Jn. 14:16-17).

He’s always in the act of coming to us. Pursuing us. Chasing us down, even. That’s how much He longs to abide with us. He came to the Garden to seek us. He bent into flesh and walked among us. He opened the tomb and showed us His scars. And He breathes His Spirit into us, right now, if we will only heed.

“I will not leave you orphans,” He says. “I will come to you” (Jn. 14:18).

This is my prayer tonight: that an orphaned brother and sister will feel the tears of their Father as He gathers them into His arms. That Christ will come to abide in this grief-shrouded place. That we will see Him, know Him, and believe in His love.

Abide. 31 Days of Resting in Him (October writing challenge)

For the month of October I am taking on the writing challenge 31 Days--31 days of writing and posting. (Check out the challenge here.) Every day for the month of October, I will (I hope!) write and post about the same topic.
Mainly I'm doing this to discipline myself and grow as a writer, but like all writers, I hope my words can be helpful to others too. My topic is on abiding, something I have long thought about and yearned to know the secrets of. I hope you will support me and check out my blog! I will be posting my updates on Facebook, but you can also subscribe to receive my posts by email. Thanks for your support. I'd love your interaction and feedback as we do this journey together!

Day 1: When we cannot abide

Day 2: A sweetness to the soul

Day 3: Don't be the moth

Day 4: How to find rest

Day 5: Do you mean it?

Day 6: How to know a good vinedresser

Day 7: The Pulley

Day 8: From your Father, with love

Day 9: Why you can rest

Day 10: The way to become real (for Abby)

Day 11: Awake, Soul

Day 12: The way to abide, part 1

Day 13: The way to abide, part 2

Day 14: Yield yourself

Day 15: The way to abide, part 3

Day 16: What it takes to believe

Day 17: Fixed on the little things

Day 18: What are you seeking?

Day 19: Seeking a homeland

Day 20: What happens to people who pray

Day 21: Right here

Day 22: Breathing lessons

Day 23: Counting the cost?

Day 24: The way to abide, part 4

Day 25: Faces unveiled

Day 26: When you want to know who you really are

Day 27: No matter what

Day 28: Four good reasons to prune your vines

Day 29: It's a relationship

Day 30: Are you missing the best?

Day 31: Five things you should know about abiding

To my children: Simple truths I want you to know

Dear Children,

When you were born I had these grand hopes of filling a journal for each of you with all my thoughts, prayers, and wisdom—lavishing my love upon you with words that someday maybe you would treasure.

I still have those hopes, but turns out that my life has been a whole lot messier than I thought. I didn’t want you to see those messes. I kept waiting for time to get it right, to make the words brimming inside me all sweetness and light instead of confusion and survival.

And now you are growing up much, much too quickly, and what you have from me instead is a lot of empty pages.

I blamed it on lack of time but maybe the real reason is fear. Moms are supposed to have it all together. (I mean, I thought my mom always had it together.)

But leaving you empty isn’t doing you any good, and if I wait to have the “right” things to say, I’ll never say anything. Messy is just how it is. And if I want you to know anything, I want you to know truth. You already see my messy every day anyway.

What I can tell you, what I should have been telling you all along, is that messy can be glorious. And you need to know this because as much as I want to shield you from hurt and yuck and loss, you will have your own messes too.

And what I want for you—what I pray for every single day—is for you to bring Christ into your messes.

You don’t have to get it all right all the time. Messing up is OK. In fact, I want you to mess up so you understand before I did that perfection isn’t possible. And it isn’t what makes me love you.

It isn’t what makes God love you.

You can never be perfect, and you can never do enough to make God love you. He loves you already, because you are His beautiful creation.

Sometimes I think I will die from loving you so much and Christ, He already did that. He died for love of you. Messes and all. And I just want you to believe that.

To believe in His love.

When we believe in His love for us, when we really hold fast to it, the messes don’t matter. God says that belief is more precious than gold (1 Peter 1:7). And “though it is tested by fire…”

It will be tested. A lot, maybe.

Then it “may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:7).

This. This is what I pray you will someday see in me. This is what I pray I will leave you. A faith that doesn’t burn up, that grows brighter in the fire and points to Jesus.

Even when you don’t see Him.

“Whom having not seen you love” (1 Peter 1:8).

Sometimes all we see are the messes. And we wonder if He is even there. But He is there. Always. And maybe if you expect the pain and brokenness to come, if you are not surprised when life knocks all your plans to smithereens, you will more easily find hope in the brokenness. You will see the gifts He gives and gives to show us the way to hope. And you will see that God can use you more after you are broken than before. Because your brokenness shows you how much you need him.

His plans for you are so much better than your own.

I don’t relish the messes, and I’m not looking forward to more of them. But I am looking forward to watching you grow toward Him. I’m praying every day that you will see His blessings winding and weaving about you, holding all the broken pieces together and creating something beautiful. 

A little kingdom of one

God. 

It's all the prayer I can manage. This morning my heart is clogged with resentment and weariness and fear. I’m reliving painful moments and even inventing new ones just to prolong the resentment. And I finding that I want to be frustrated and angry, not just with the present situation, but with all my circumstances.

I’m fuming.

And then I read the devotional where the guy says he was irritated with his wife because she got in the way of his getting what he wanted. [1]

No fair, God. I was enjoying my pity party.

But you’re right. I want things. I want a lot of things, and to me they seem like good things. Even necessary things. And when people or circumstances get in the way of getting those things, I get grumpy.

Really, really grumpy.

Tripp writes about David, the author of Psalm 51. Some things had gotten in his way, too. So he just removed them.

Trouble is, removing the people and circumstances wasn’t the problem—it actually created much bigger problems, problems that were soon going to heave his world apart.

The problem was David’s heart.

The problem was David wanted things. Things that were all about him.

And David, realizing his problem—or rather, having his problem pointed out to him (isn't that just how it is with us?)--was quick to run back to God. Quick to confess that his heart had gone amuck.

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions” (v. 1).

His confession (you should really spend some time studying it; it's remarkable) isn’t the groveling of a slave before its master, pitiful words meant to ward off wrath. It’s the homecoming of a prodigal. The turning back of a son to his Father.

David humbles himself before the Father he trusts. He remembers God’s “unfailing love” and “great compassion.” This is the God he loves. The God he has spent hours and days with. The God who has rescued him over and over, who pulled him from the mire, who raised him up and made him king. He has sat at the feet of this God. He knows this God.

He trusts this God.

David turns from his own ways because he knows that God’s ways are better.

“True confession always results in living for something bigger” (Tripp).

The question hangs there, looking at me.

Do I trust that His ways are bigger?

Do I believe God’s love is unfailing? That His mercy is better than my agenda? That He will take care 

of me better than I take care of myself?

Well, that would require knowing God. Actually being with God. A lot.

“And so David, once obsessed with the temporary and impure pleasures of his claustrophobic little kingdom of one, now becomes excited with and engaged in the transcendent purposes of God’s big-sky kingdom” (Tripp).

Little kingdom of one.

OK, God. Really, I get it.

I say that I want to go deeper, know You more, and yet my hands keep clutching the familiar. Maybe those things I want and think I need are exactly the things keeping me from knowing You.

In worshipping his kingdom of one, David feared losing God himself.

“Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me” (vv. 11-12).

Do I fear losing God more than I fear losing my desires?

Grant me a willing spirit. To sustain me when my desires rear up like dragons and tell me to turn away. Make me willing to sacrifice my broken spirit, my contrite heart (v. 17).

Then I will teach transgressors Your ways (v. 13). Then my lips will open to speak Your praise (v. 15). Then You will delight (v. 19).

When it’s not all about me.

When I can look through the frustration and see You.

And I see that I do not know how to do this, not at all, and I go back to David’s plea.

“Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me” (v. 10).

You create. You renew. I only come and sit at Your feet.

Unclutch these hands. Help me raise these palms to You. If I cannot release this little kingdom, take it away, again and again, until I finally have You forever.

---

[1] Tripp, Paul David. Whiter Than Snow: Meditations on Sin and Mercy. Crossway, 2008. 

Saying yes

Dear Ben,

Today marks 13 years of saying yes.

That day in August we worshipped together, sang our hearts full with all of our friends and family. Do you remember? We knelt at the communion cup and tasted His sacrifice, marked our marriage by remembering. And you gripped my hands and promised me forever. 

Choose was the word we used that day. “I choose you.” We vowed to keep choosing.

It was easy to choose then, and it seemed like it would be easy forever. We felt that no one else had ever been this in love.

I remember in those early years wondering how love could get any better. I relished the newness, not wanting anything to come into our sacred place. I held tight to what we had, unwilling to change.

But things did change, as they always do, our lives carried forward on this unstoppable current, and our new love was bumped and battered and bruised and almost—almost—broken.

But you kept saying yes.

You chose.

And now I look at what time is making of our love, this once-fragile thing that is being shaped and polished and toughened. And I laugh at the girl who thought new love was the best love. This love—this choosing that has been tested by suffering and change and grief—this love is shaping me, too. Polishing. Toughening. And it is shot through with laughter and memories and hopes and joy, such joy.

And we are learning that it is never easy. We have failed one another again and again, and the world has failed us, and the things we thought our life would stand for are so much harder to take hold of than we ever thought.

But our choosing started with worship, with remembering and thanksgiving.

And that is what will keep us strong.

Worship.

Remembering.

Thanksgiving.

And that cup we held together 13 years ago, may it overflow into our choosing. May the melding of our lives be the gospel. May the Love that holds us together flood into our lives and remind us that all is glorious grace.

And joy is a choice too, and we will keep choosing joy.

I will keep saying yes.

All my love,

Julie