Five minute Friday:: Care

This month has spun past full and fast. Some months are like that--each day so brim-full of people and conversation and work and weekends busier than the weeks between that you can barely catch your breath. 

I crave the process of writing like a runner craves the road. I feel so thankful that I finally get the chance to sit for five minutes on this Friday night and pin down meaning with these keys. I'm grateful to Kate for faithfully hosting this writer's party each week, even though I know her month might have been as full as mine. 

Tonight the prompt is CARE. And if you have no clue what's going on, head on over here to check out what Five Minute Friday is all about! 

{CARE}

An open letter to the woman with the 101-year-old mother:

Today you tipped a little while in my direction and spilled out some of your story. I felt honored that you would tell me, the girl a half century behind you in wisdom.

You told how she came to live with you this summer. How her house sits empty in Ohio with no one to cut the grass. How the sister in another state was caring for her, but now it’s your turn and you feel like there are days it’s just simply too. Much.

You told how she was a rock for your family, caring for your handicapped brother until even his hair was gray and he fell. Your mouth pulled in at the memory, and I thought how painful it would be to lose a brother. I told you so, and your eyes grew glossy.

You told how exhausting it is now, how you were unprepared to physically lift the woman who carried you as a child.

I don’t know what it’s like, but thank you. Thank you for caring. Thank you for dying to self for the sake of the dying. Thank you for making her breakfast each day, making her bed, making her smile.

We—the self-absorbed, the media-glutted, the youth-obsessed—we desperately need your example. We need to see love in action that is not flashy, not instagrammed, not applauded. We need to know that it’s possible to love our parents this way so that when the day comes, we will have the courage to care too. 

Photons, and a safe place for my flurried soul

There is this wonderful sentence near the end of my Bible. It's dense and heady and rich like eggnog, and I've been sipping slowly, savoring each phrase ever since Easter.

In our team devotional time, we were challenged to ruminate on the words of God, let them soak into us deeply, digest them and re-digest them until they saturate us, become part of us.

Our leader actually coined a word--part Italian, part American silliness--to describe the process: "moo-care". (moo-KAH-reh) It's from "mangiare", the Italian word meaning "to eat", and "moo", as in, well, a cow.
Eat, chew, digest.
Repeat.

Not a lovely image, but accurate. So here is the verse I've been "moo-care-ing" on for about a month.

"The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being..."

In 7th grade science, I learned about light. The photons that bounce off of objects into my eyes are what allow me to see the color and shape of anything I look at. You could say that those photons are the exact representation of whatever I see.

Without the radiance of light, the world would be dark, formless, mysterious.
Before the Radiance of God's glory in Christ, God was a mystery.

But we have seen him.

He is knowable.


"...sustaining all things by his powerful word."

God doesn't haphazardly breathe life, get wheels turning, and then turn His back.

He sustains all things. He continually breathes life into this universe, holds laws of physics in place so that electrons rotate at orbit and water drips downward and the earth stays tilted just so.

He sustains all things. The everything included in that tiny phrase of power spells safety and security to my flurried soul. Sand slips through fingers and things slip from my mind like so much sand, but nothing escapes his power and love.

All my crazy running-out-the-door moments.
All the am-I-enough wonderings.
All of me, sustained. Upheld. Plucked from darkness as many times as I return to it. Imbued with life not my own.

By the same powerful Word that once created life from nothing, He now sustains ours.
That Word was with God at the beginning,
And was God,
And now intercedes for you to God as He sits, victorious.

Me and my lovely teammates at dinner on Tuesday! 

Exciting things are happening here in Milan, y'all! I'll post another update tonight with lots of pictures.
(Today's post is based on Hebrews 1:3a)

Five Minute Friday::Glue

Today I am linking up with Five Minute Friday, a writing exercise where you set a timer for five minutes and write on a specific topic until it chimes at you to lift your fingers from the keyboard. You can join in here!

Today's word = GLUE

Yesterday was all unraveled and ragged. I flew out the door with my shoes barely on my feet and a granola bar in my hand. Seriously, God bless granola bar makers.

My house looks like a garage sale after all the good pickings have been picked over. Ever since our washing machine decided to re-create Noah's Flood two weeks ago, we've been living in a carpet-less home without baseboards or doors or basic organization. Just getting out the door is a feat of memory and agility. Where was my jacket again...? *wracks brain, bumps into furniture*

It really hasn't been too bad. Now that the thirteen rumbling red industrial fans and honking-huge dehumidifier are gone, at least I have a kitchen again. Even while the fans roared, we laughed about their white noise making it easy to sleep.

But yesterday at work my shoulders and neck creaked with painful lumps as the phone constantly rang and rang and rang and my throat grew dry from explaining. The papers piled up faster than I could sort them. My fingers clicked constantly, almost independent of my tired brain as the mental to-do list grew longer and heavier.

It felt like I was coming unglued. Can anyone relate?

I stumbled up the stairs to our homegroup meeting with only half a heart to be there. Heavy-eyed, foggy-brained from my desperate post-work nap, I willed myself to sit.

"Between the songs", they said,  "let's tell what God has been doing in our hearts". What have You been doing, Lord? I wondered. I'm so unglued and discombobulated.

As I flipped backward in the blue journal looking for scraps I'd chanced to record, I found the sweetest words. Words that had patched me together on another ragged, teary day in January.

"Cherise, you do not have less at this moment when you are exhausted and fighting a cold than you do on days when you are well-rested, healthy, and feel in control. You have Me in abundance at all times, and I am all you need."

Wonderful truth.

He is not diminished if I am depleted, and He holds even my unraveled, unglued moments together by his powerful Word.


Side note: My homegroup will notice that this journal entry wasn't what I shared last night with the group. It felt like a personal hug from Jesus for that moment, something just between the two of us for me to feel his love while I shared something else out loud. But now, in the light of a new day, it seemed  appropriate to share.  I hope someone else will feel His love in the middle of an unglued moment like mine. 

Book Review::Surprised by Motherhood

I am not a mother, but odds are I will be someday.

 

Someday my fridge will be covered with crayon masterpieces, my walls with jelly stains, and my floors with cheerios. Someday hubby and I will be entrusted with one or more miniature humans and I know deep in my gut that our lives will never be the same.  

 

Honestly, it’s terrifying.

 

Even though I love children.

Even though I get wistful over the soft curls of my friend's kids.

Even though I pray for the ones who will someday look like me and my husband.

Change has just never been my favorite, and the knowledge that two little pink lines will one day change absolutely everything--well, it scares the bejeezus out of me.

 

When that day comes, I will be so thankful for moms like Lisa-Jo and brave, hope-filled words like hers that come straight from the trenches. Which is why...I'm unashamedly doing my very first book review/promo for her!

 

Surprised by Motherhood reads like a heartfelt conversation on the couch with the author, a girl from South Africa who married a "cowboy-green eyed" man from the Northwest on the firm understanding that she would never bear his children. Ten years and three kids later, she bravely bares her heart and invites you into the messy, hilarious journey all laced with truth and wild hope.

 

 

She writes for you mommies. You, the ones who feel caught on the exhausting treadmill of life wondering, "will things ever slow down?" She believes you deserve a super-hero cape and a cheering squad and she's volunteering to wave pom-poms for you.

 

"I would throw away most of the parenting books that made me feel like I was somehow failing this most important test of womanhood—being a mother. I’d throw out the advice about what I was doing wrong or should be doing differently or should aspire to be doing. I’d just revel in the daily, sleep-deprived merry-go-round and eat a lot more chocolate cake.(p. x)"

 

She puts it this way:

This isn’t a “how-to” book, it’s simply my “you can” story.

 

She writes for you daughters too, especially for those who feel the absence of their mothers. When she was entering high school, her own mom was entering a hospital. Now, more than eighteen years after her mother's death, Lisa-Jo understands the pain of working through the unsaid, the unexplained. Whether the absence is literal or emotional, the wounds are real and she offers her own journey in all its confusion and healing.

 

She also writes for the not-yet mommies and someday mommies, the ones of us who need someone to say, "I was scared too. Yes, it's hard--but it's glorious and beautiful and worth it."

 

“Parenting is not for the faint of heart. And it’s especially not for those type A personalities accustomed to having all their ducks in a row, all their check boxes checked, and their sofa cushions, cereal boxes, and entire lives neatly arranged.” (p. 4)

 

  It doesn't hurt that she is type-A like me. Just an added layer of commonality to make me believe dying to self in the area of perfection might actually be possible.

Grab the first three chapters here for free!

Avoiding ministry burnout

Ever heard of Perspectives? For years, I've heard stories of life-change from anyone lucky enough to take this rich, intensive 15-week course on missions. We have a joke that no one can talk about Perspectives without using the word "perspective"...because, well, a new perspective on missions, on God and even--or especially--their own relationship to Him is what everyone leaves with.

 

So when hubby and I started Perspectives this spring, I was expecting to be changed on a global scale for global mission. But this was different. This was much closer to home.

 

Somewhere in Lesson 2, I arrived at the article by Tim Dearborn entitled “Beyond Duty”. He wrote about the tendency for many churches and mission agencies to motivate people into missions using “bad news”.  It all sounded so familiar:

 

Statistics of the hundreds of thousands dying without Christ.

Photos of malnourished children in Sudan.

Overwhelming numbers of martyrs dying each year for their faith...

and on and on.

 

Not only did it remind me of sermons and mission conferences, it reminded me of my own prayers in the past: full of heavy tears and a crushing burden for the lost and broken.

 

In Dearborn’s own words, I had “worked myself into exhaustion with exhortations to give more, do more, be more, care more, serve more, love more, sacrifice more,” but I always ended by feeling hopelessly inadequate for the task.

 

Because of course, I was.

 

And then, this:

“Mission is ultimately not a human response to human need. …Lack of interest in mission…is best remedied by intensifying people’s passion for Christ, so that the passions of his heart become the passions that propel our hearts.”

 

Wait, mission is not human response to human need? *mind blown*

 

As I sat with highlighter poised, God began to clarify truth even beyond what Dearborn had written. Human-centered motivations, because they originate in finite humans, will always be limited. No matter how earnest my compassion, no matter how much I immerse myself in knowledge of the world’s needs, no matter how much zeal I fan into flame with my own will, it will all fall flat eventually because I myself am finite.

 

An Infinite Source is needed.

 

Suddenly He whisperered to my exhausted heart. Cherise, this is part of why you felt burned-out in your homegroup.

 

Me: Ohhhhhhhhh.

 

I realized that I had served and lead from a dry well of self-generated desires and passions to serve human needs rather than from a simple, pure desire to love and please my Father. When the people I served became hard to love or did not return my friendship, I fizzled. I was counting on my own compassion and love to sustain me, but (shocker!) it proved a poor source for long-term sustainability.

 

It turns out that the same incomplete motivations for global mission are just as incomplete on the home-front.

 

BUT there is a higher motive that is a deep well, never running dry! It has nurtured and upheld missionaries in generations past, enabling them to give and serve for years without thanks, without praise, without the support of community or the comforts of home.

 

It is this: The glory of His Name. His honor. God receiving the praise He deserves.

 

If I live for His praise, I won't be living for mine (and won't be crushed when I don't receive it.)

 

I have a sneaking suspicion that this will be a lesson learned over and over. 

 

The ugly truth

I've been working on a post for more than a two weeks. Every day I'd tap out a few lines, tweak them, delete them. The writing was good, but something didn't seem quite right.

Some of you have already heard the story I tried to blog. How a faculty member thought I was an undergrad student, how his comments jerked the band-aid off my carefully-concealed insecurities and desires for a second degree. How I felt devalued.

"Oh," he said, once he learned I worked at the front desk full time. "I see. So what are your career goals? What's the plan?"

I thought I was simply insecure.
I thought it was an example of secular "success" clashing with the things God had called me to be successful in.
I thought it would make a good blog, neatly tied at the end with something pithy that would make me sound mature.

The truth is far uglier. I'm proud.

The realization came last night like a 5000-watt spotlight, piercing past my self-deception into the muck I'd hidden from myself. I was listening to this podcast by Nancy Leigh DeMoss titled, appropriately, "A Pride Test". With each convicting question, I cried harder into my tortilla soup.

Do you think of yourself as more spiritual than your mate, your co-workers, other Christians you know?
Are you quick to find fault with others and then verbalize those faults to others?
Are you proud of the schedule you keep? How disciplined you are and how much you are able to accomplish?
Do you give undue time or attention to your physical appearance?
Are you a perfectionist? Do you feel irked with people who don't do things as well or as quickly as you?
Do you often complain about the weather, your heath, your busy-ness? (We will complain if we think we deserve better). 
Do you talk too much about yourself?
Do you get hurt if your accomplishments or contributions are not noticed or rewarded?

Pride thinks it deserves respect, and is easily injured when it isn't taken seriously. This is what I felt that day as I tried to explain and defend my career. I should have known: one of Pride's favorite costumes is insecurity.

ouch.

And it's a good hurt. I need to feel it, to look the ugliness full-on in the mirror and recognize it as me.

So here's the thing. Please don't write a comment and tell me I'm not proud. I know you'd be doing it to be kind, but it would be way too easy to believe you. Self-deception is so attractive. CS Lewis wrote this about pride:

"If you think you're not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed."

God doesn't flatter me. He aims the spotlight on the muck so that my disgust will bring me to Him, the Cleanser who already paid an ultimate price for my shame.

It's a severe mercy. But I need mercy in every form.

Five Minute Friday::Fight

A new year, and I'm linking back up with Lisa-Jo at her online writer's party, Five Minute Friday! The basic idea is this: a one-word prompt, five minutes, and the courage to see what comes out.

Ok, ok, this took me WAY longer than five minutes. It was typed between phone calls with grad students and faculty, my lunch break, and conversations with student workers. Every time I turned back to the screen, my mind had to take a minute or two to regroup.

And then the prompt was just so GOOD this time, or maybe the things it stirred were so good, that five minutes just wasn't enough to sift through it all.

PROMPT: "Fight"

Three days ago, the year quietly turned over.

In Decembers past, I have knelt on the floor with the pieces of the previous year and made better plans. The lists have gotten longer each year, the sense of failure harder to sweep into the trash. But I have fought on, doggedly. I craved a sense of control, something to fight and strive for. It scratched my performance itch, that old wound that wondered “am I enough?”

But three days ago, there were no lists. There were no pre-failure tears. There were no crowding ambitions to stroke my pride.

The birth of this New Year carried the same peace as the Birth celebrated five days earlier. A miracle.

In 2013, I was glaringly inadequate. Far from the familiar realm of academic success, the working world was harsh to this newbie who didn’t understand the sarcastic culture of unkindness in which I found myself.

Gone were the grades, the part-time job where I knew what I was doing, the leadership role that was defined and comfortable.

But I was held.

My brokenness devastated me, but not Him. At the end of my striving, there He was, the same Savior who captivated my little-girl heart. I was tired of the fight for sanity and acceptance and rest and blog hits and emotional stability, but when I collapsed I found myself caught. Caught by the arms that had already streached out to me and the world two millenia prior.

I am realizing for the first time in experience what I have long known:

He Himself is my peace.

Not my ability to bring order to the chaos. Not the cleanness of my counters. Not whether friends remember my birthday or I remember theirs.

He. The Prince of Peace. The baby who folded small into a teen mom and yanked Heaven into our messy world so strangely.

He still holds the helpless (me), still accepts the unacceptable (me again), and still meets my mess with love.

My brokenness will only find wholeness when I rest in the hands that were broken for me.

My ceasefire can only come when I believe the fight he won was sufficient. Before 2014 begins, it is finished.

And I can rest from the fight.

 

 

"I'm doing good"

What makes a day "good"?

As a bank teller, I am constantly asking customers how their day is going. Of course, ninety-nine percent say "I'm good", I'm doin' fine", or something similar. Social norms put us on auto-pilot and keep everything clean and shiny.

For years, I've tried to avoid the plastic smile in favor of authenticity. Fake might be pretty, but it keeps us insulated from real friendships. Who relates to Barbie anyway?

So early on, I swung to the other extreme. (Hint: extremes are usually bad.) It made for some pretty awkward conversations with perfect strangers.

I like to think I've learned from my mistakes, that I know when to bare all and when to be polite, but I still have slip-ups.
But lately, I've been convicted that my desire to be authentic and "real" sometimes drives me to cross a fine line into simple griping. Or (gulp!) even gossip.

Which brings me back to my first question: What are the qualifications for a "good" day--one that I don't gripe or complain about?

Must the day be nearly perfect to be a "good" one?

Maybe my standards have been too high. Maybe a good day shouldn't have to be so perfect, measuring up to the "good" days of last year, or even last week.

A sweet young mommy-friend of mine has come to a similar conclusion. These days, exhaustion is the norm in her world. So are spit-up stains and tantrums and diapers and all the other normals that mommies of toddlers and infants endure. Three years ago, before kids, the lack of sleep alone might have translated into a no-good-very-bad-day.

So, she has wisely adjusted her standards. A "good" day is a day when her children are loved. It is a day when there was sleep before, no matter how little. It is any day when her heart is focused on thankfulness, on loving, on Jesus.

Good is a choice.

I will still share the hard things with friends. I will still show the reality of my life because shared comfort brings closeness.
But because Jesus is good, and He is with me, I choose to believe that today is good. 

Sodom's Crime

Death is a taker, not a giver. The taking it has done this week in Boston, and last night in West, TX, have made me sit weeping in my car for the moms, the spouses, the kids who are reeling in the aftermath.

Always receiving, but never giving, salt seas are dead too.

Dead and briny, like the tears in Boston and West after the taking.

Salty and barren like a little ghost town once called Sodom.

Sodom. We always peg it for its sodomy. (Ever wonder where the name came from?) Yes, Sodom had sexual sin, but that was not the crime that fit them for destruction.

The crime was taking-without-giving.

They hoarded wealth like a salt sea hoards water.

Small-town Sodom was full of gluttons. It was full of excess, of waste, of shutting eyes to the poor and plugging ears against compassion that would cost them comfort.

I had never known this, never realized that this was why God destroyed it, but there it was, in the middle of a rant against Israel, (who apparently was worse than Sodom!):

"...this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. ...So I removed them." (Ezekiel 16:48-50 ESV)

Sound like any place you know?

I'm not bringing this up so I can stand on my soapbox against America's wealth, her ease and prosperity, or her greed.  No, I'm bringing this up because I'm guilty.

I have shut my eyes. I have closed my ears. I have snapped my checkbook closed too many times when I knew He would have counted it as a personal gift to Him.

When I receive without giving, I am like like a salt sea: deader with every drop.

"Truly I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me." (Matt 25:45) - Jesus

He, the Ultimate Giver, is supremely alive.

I received and began to live. Now when I give, His life is expressed sweet, full. I have life to the full.




As I was chewing on the passage in Ezekiel, I started journaling a prayer out of desperation and frustration with how similar I was to Sodom. This poem was the result.



Rescue me from wealth
the consuming
and grasping 
and wasting
of things
unnecessarily bought
and garaged
and shelved
while their bellies bloat.

Save me from success
the endless striving
comparing 
and lifting
of self
unconscionably proud 
discontent
and anxious
lest the accolades stop.

Ransom me from passion
for those worthless
and emptying
pursuits
unbearably hollow
preoccupying
distracting
from the Life that truly lives.

Five Minute Friday::Broken

A Christan radio station recently made an Easter comment that resonated with me. They said that Easter was about breaking: a broken world, a broken Body that redeemed us, and a broken curtain that used to separate us from a Holy God. (Ok, torn, but I guess that's what we call broken fabric.)

I feel broken. In many ways I am a person who needs fixing, like a broken lamp, shattered by anger or careless mistakes. 

I am also emotionally broken when I see the brokenness it took to fix me. And right now, on the Saturday between sacrifice and victory, I feel a kinship with the heart-rending brokenness his followers must have felt as they sat, fearful, their dreams shattered the day after He died. 

They waited, broken. But isn't waiting the thing to do in our brokenness? To wait on the One who heals?


Want to join or just want to know what Five Minute Friday is all about? Head over to Lisa Jo's blog and find out :) And while you're there, be sure to visit & leave some comment love for the other bloggers who linked up! 

Women's Retreat

To those of you who prayed (about a month ago! Ha!) that the Women’s Retreat would be restful—thank you! It was sweet rest for my heart, even if I did sacrifice sleep to talk with friends.

The theme of this year’s retreat was “Thrive”. Most days I feel like I’m surviving, but not necessarily thriving. Like Thoreau, I long to “live deep and suck all the marrow out of life”(Walden). I want to thrive, but what does that even look like?

In our fast-paced culture, thriving is often interpreted as “having it all”—money, looks, friends, vacation time, smart kids—whatever defines success in your section of the country. But numerous studies show that having more stuff and living larger and faster doesn’t necessarily equate to more happiness. Instead, we stress ourselves out and have to see therapists. Or drink coffee.

And does personal happiness give good measure of a life is well-lived? This definition fits my selfish tendencies just fine, but as a Christian, I know that there is a higher goal: Christ Himself. To know Him, his person-hood, his agenda, his love for people and the Father—this is great end and delight for which we were made.

And Jesus was pretty blunt: to follow him, we have to lay down our lives. Since He set aside His own personal comfort to rescue me, I’m foolish if I think I can follow him without doing the same.

Ok, but didn’t Jesus come to give us “abundant life”—the life that is truly life? (John 10:10) Obviously, he doesn’t define “the good life" the way we do in America. 

As we sat under the low-beamed ceiling and paper daisies strung for the occasion, wise women in our church began to flesh out a relational side of this whole elusive “thriving” thing for us. Here are some of my take-aways: 

A thriving life is one built solidly on relationship.
   With God
   With myself
   With others

Relationships are built upon time, trust, personal security, and the repeated, courageous decision to unwall my heart. 

These elements create communion, which begets community. And community is--despite the pain of past wounds--the natural state of man, the soil in which we thrive. 

Security in my relationship with God will greatly affect my ability to feel secure in friendships with other women. 


Practially, personally, (and hopefully less Hallmark-y), these tell me, "Okay Cherise, pursuing friendships is meaningful. Don't give up. It's worth it, even if friendships hurt sometimes."

Because I have wounds. Rubbed raw by insecurities, re-opened by perceived slights, the wounds are deeper and fresher than they should be. And it takes grace and courage--tenacious, faith-propped courage--to make that coffee date, that phone call.

And relational pain is part of the package called living. Jesus said some straightforward things about that too: "In this world you will have trouble, but take heart; I have overcome the world."

I came away from the retreat feeling like a fresh wind had blown through my musty thought patterns, loosening their hold and giving me renewed hope in friendships. I am loved. And I needed the reminder. 

Invisible Gardening

Buried in darkness, the germ of life waits in secret. So much potential packaged so tiny, lost in the loam, out of sight.

Under the heat lamp and the peat and the dark, the first finger of growth presses through membrane into the earth and tiny fibers take shape. Cells add themselves to each other feverishly, exploding quietly.

But above the lamp, I hover. I'm impatient. I see none of the growth below, and the dirt is just dirt, and I wait.

You might have noticed that I haven’t blogged. Normally, I’m not one to lack words, but the creativity seemed buried as well this Christmas. In many ways, my heart has been like a seed in one of my peat trays, growing invisibly, even to me. 

Most mornings I’ve had to take a deep breath, releasing my desire to perform and achieve and produce, trusting that even in the darkness, the Gardener was doing something good in me.

Out my back door lies a freshly dug hole, wide and shallow. My biceps ache, but I’m happy. In the hole rests a new wooden box I made, open to receive compost and the baby plants that now stretch green toward my desk lamp.

So much preparation, weeks in advance of any growth.

For the past few months, I have plugging away doggedly at the things I know are good for my heart. I’ve been reading a challenging book, asking myself the challenging questions, choosing to be vulnerable. And honestly, the lack of visible growth been frustrating.  I’m a more patient gardener than I am a garden, it seems.

But last night, a friend told me that I seemed less anxious and more trusting than I was in the fall. A tendril of green that I had overlooked!

Even when our hearts feel like bare dirt, He is good, and He is at work.

2 > 1 (Two are Greater Than One)

Have you ever visited Enchanted Rock?

The giant pink granite boulder rises 425 feet above the surrounding landscape, and is a popular site for campers, hikers and bird-watchers in the area west of Austin.

In the past three or four years, it has become a Thanksgiving tradition in my family to scale the monolith early in the morning, just in time to watch the sun spill golden over the earth's edge. This past weekend, I made the traditional climb with my parents, my sister, her husband, and my own sweet love--the first triple date the six of us have ever had!

Laced, jacketed and gloved against the dark cold, we left the sleeping campsite and drove an hour to the base of the mound. By the time we arrived, the coming dawn gave hint of the graceful, curving mass looming above us. We started walking.

Because all was dome, there were no edges to fear, but the higher we climbed the more we fought against Lady Wind. Our ears became aching holes on the sides of our heads and I wished for a scarf.

Then, halfway up, Mom almost turned back. She had stolen a glance behind her, and suddenly realized just how high she stood above the tiny trees and cars below.

Dad and sis quickly took her arms and gently, steadily encouraged her forward. One step, then another, and another. I was so proud of her when we all reached the top!

To be honest, I have had many moments of near-retreat just like Mom's. The mountain may have been less visible, less touchable, but no less real. I remember the many sharp twinges of terror and fear that have threatened to paralyze me, the overwhelming urges to lay down, and simply...quit.

I am so thankful for people like my parents and my husband who laced their arms through mine and lent me the courage to take another step.

"Two are better than one, 

because they have a good return for their labor. 

If either of them falls down, 

one can help the other up. 

But pity anyone who falls

and has no one to help them up." (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10)

Doing the dare

Last week, the week of thankfulness, I began the joy dare. I resolved to notice the gifts He gives and make the noticing real through writing.

In the silent moments at work usually filled with mindless boredom or discontent, I wrote.
In the seconds before the green light as the car hummed, I wrote.
And let me tell you, it felt good. Fresh wind through my thoughts, carving new channels of thankful joy.

Here are a few of my jotted thoughts. Hope it encourages you today to notice the true, the lovely, the admirable, and whatever is excellent or praiseworthy.

1. Piercing sunrises that stop the heart with their beauty

2. Floor-to-ceiling windows at work that let the outside in

3. A unique wedding ring that allows me to brag on my husband often. ;)

 4. A chance to hike in the gray dawn with my love.

5. The cheapness and yummy-ness of oatmeal. 

6. Quiet pockets of wilderness next to the office

7. Firesmoke, laden with happy memories of past campouts

Thanksgiving :: A Hard Discipline

Honesty time, ya'll.  Last Friday night, I had a world class emotional breakdown. (Or, as my friend would call it, an "EBD".)

Every abrasion of my heart felt like it had just received an alcohol bath, all my failures were hanging out on the line for the world to mock, my eyeliner was at clown proportions from tears, and the last thing I wanted to do was eat a cheerful Thanksgiving dinner with my homegroup. The last thing on my mind was thanks.

But I went. Mainly because I was bringing the salad. Teeth clenched, expectations nonexistent, I gripped the glass bowl and stomped out to the car.

And...of course, the pecan pie and laughter and paper football shenanigans softened my crustiness.

Give thanks in all circumstances.

Seriously--this is a hard lesson!  Can there be anything more difficult than thanksgiving when the car won't start? Does anything rub more against the natural grain when you and your hard work feel invisible and unwanted, when the card declines, when the future is murky, when your energy bottoms out and you get a paper cut on top of it all?

I'm learning that discipline can be a mercy, that the very thing that puckers my mouth may settle my stomach, that obedience is always best, even if I go kicking and flailing. Thankfulness--like love--is a choice, not a Norman Rockwell painting or giddy emotion.

I've read about a life brimming with "eucharisto thankfulness" in Anne Voskamp's book. I know that no other life is fuller, even if poverty is the discouraging reality of the bank statement, the pantry, or the social calendar. But if I'm going to stick to honesty, I have to admit I'm out of practice.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds...

So here we go: I'm going to practice this week. I'm taking the Joy Dare, and I hope it extends past Thursday.

God-Glasses

Did you know that James has often been called the "Proverbs of the New Testament"? Neither did I, until last week.

Perhaps it is because James is intensely practical, much like Proverbs. While the Apostle Paul spends a great deal of time expounding on doctrine and the mystery of our union with Christ, James cuts right to the heart of our complacency in short, concise phrases. "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says."

I find it humorously ironic that in one of my homegroups, the topic is James; in the other, it's Proverbs. Hmm...a theme? 

As we plopped elbow-close on the floor, discussing and laughing, my friend said something about wisdom that startled me into new understanding.

“Wisdom” she said, “is seeing things the way God does.” “Like God-glasses?” someone asked. We all laughed, but the picture fit. *

We are born with faulty vision; distorted, warped. In our eyes, evil can look like good, people are devalued, and our own self-importance can inflate like an over-filled tire. We need some corrective lenses.

If wisdom is about accurate sight, then it can’t be merely a collection of facts and tips about how to behave, like a cheat sheet to whip out of your pocket when you don’t know what to do. I like systems that make sense, which can be codified like math. But God’s wisdom can’t be reduced to a code of conduct, though some have tried. If I use a cheat sheet enough, I might develop street smarts, but never true wisdom.  God says that “as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:9)

OK, but how do I get his way of seeing things into my own head? I was wondering because I, like James, can be intensely practical.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Psalm 111:10)The words suddenly scrolled like a newsflash across my memory.

 Someone once explained to me that if we see God accurately for Who he is—majestic, resplendent in untrammeled power, fiercely beautiful, Judge of hidden secrets—this true sight will produce in us the healthy respect and awe he deserves. To know him is to see him. 

Knowing produces accurate sight.
Sight produces accurate fear.
Fear is the beginning of wisdom.

When I set heart toward Him, resolving to spend time with Him, honor Him, know Him, my vision will clear toward Him first. I will see Him as He is, and the clarity will travel outward, like ripples on a lake.

Yep, it goes against every insta-fix instinct. Every urge to reach for a cheat sheet. Wisdom, like the relationship with wisdom's Source, takes time to foster. But it will be worth every moment.

*My friend got her definition of wisdom from a class taught by our Pastor, R.M. #tryingtocitesourcesbetter :)