Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 128
February 3, 2018
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [02.03.18]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you right here:
Meg Loeks
Meg Loeks
Meg Loeks
can’t ever quite get enough of her extraordinary
okay, greasy pans in the kitchen this weekend just got a whole lot easier
… you know how sometimes you’re just taking small steps forward? Honestly? Those small steps can look like gliding on air
Why We Should Escape Social Media (And Why We Don’t)
a glimpse of the supermoon this week that comes around only once in a blue moon
um…. if you are not highly sensitive, you likely know someone who is?
What You Need to Know About Highly Sensitive People
how a painting of Rembrandt’s was brought to full life in a shopping center? Art is everywhere
love this: this beautiful babysitter & what she did at her wedding?
‘I don’t believe in quitting’: Amputee trains for 5K to benefit breast cancer
…so this is the plan: “It’s a fantastic experience to be able to give back to people who can never repay you. It does so much for your heart and your soul” #BeTheGift #TheBrokenWay
I’m with him: when you really, really love reading books to kids
“In a really sort of a simplistic view, the goal is that if one kid would pick up a book, that maybe otherwise wouldn’t have and they have fun reading it … That to me would be a good day.”
because some messages are just really worth celebrating #BeTheGift #TheBrokenWay
Megan Aguilar
C’MON! after a mom’s plea, birthday letters poured in for this teen with autism
LOVE: a million small gestures may be all we really need
so they’re on to something here: let’s take care of each other #BeTheGift #TheBrokenWay
an extraordinary story of survival:
“Our bodies are these miracles, these works of art. And I think I used to look at my scars with a lot of embarrassment and I feel like I own them now, my scars, they show a journey that happened.”
glory, glory, glory
just amazed at what they’re doing here: “It’s all about doing something for somebody else”
#BeTheGift #TheBrokenWay
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Unbelievable. Undone. Heart completely uncorked.
The Farmer and I stayed up late last night talking about this one:
Why Every Girl (and her dreams) Counts — and what happens if they don’t
an extraordinary story: Rock climbing lets him forget he’s blind
“I no longer have that pre-conceived notion where I walk into a room and judge someone based on their looks, their clothes. It’s more about the personality, the connection…”
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
I’m telling you: Post of the week from these parts here
… 40 seconds & one astonishing little kid who left us entirely slack-jawed.
Wouldn’t have missed this for the absolute world
— because it’s flat-out changing my world:
How to Not Get Duped into Living The Fake Beatitudes
(& how a Kid in Africa Unexpectedly Moves a Whole World of Us to
The Attitude of The Genuine Beatitudes)
yes: she is able to be self-sufficient thanks to an assisted living community created to empower young adults with special needs
the journey of 82 years of separation between a mother and daughter & how they turned the world upside down to find each other
just — completely undone: February is American Heart Month, here’s the tiniest fighters:
the babies and kids who are born with congenital heart disease. These little ones are surrounded by incredible families, medical professionals and communities.
Want the gift of light breaking into all the broken places, into all the places that feel kinda abandoned?
These pages are for you. It’s possible — abundant joy is always possible, especially for you.
Break free with the tender beauty of The Broken Way & Be The Gift …
And if you grab a copy of Be The Gift? We will immediately email you a link to a FREE gift of THE WHOLE 12 MONTH *Intentional* Acts of Givenness #BeTheGIFT Calendar to download and print from home or at your local print shop! Just let us know that you ordered Be The Gift over here.
You only get one life to love well.
Pick up Be The Gift & live the life you’ve longed to
yes, yes, yes: powerfully said — Stay in the Word
THIS! Jesus Has Come
on repeat: In Christ Alone
…in the wait, whatever you lose, don’t lose heart — you never lose what lasts forever.
You’ve got to believe it: whatever is being lost momentarily, more is being gained eternally.
In the wait, if you shift the way you see — and see that the wait could make you into the person you’ve been waiting to become.
If you’re waiting on God — do what waiters do: serve.
Break free of your comfort zone and do something, touch someone, give something, help someone, pray for someone, serve someone, #betheGIFT for someone. You can’t be a world changer until you serve. In serving, you are served a feast of what you’re longing for. Because the One who loves you steadfastly, stood fast at the cross for you, so now stand fast for Him.
“Each of you should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms… Be generous with the different things God gave you, passing them around so all get in on it: if words, let it be God’s words; if help, let it be God’s hearty help.” 1Peter4:10 NIV, MSG.
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
February 1, 2018
How to Not Get Duped into Living The Fake Beatitudes (& how a Kid in Africa Unexpectedly Moves a Whole World of Us to The Attitude of The Genuine Beatitudes)
You can sit in a mud hut in Africa, talking about God and feel like an outed fraud.
The heat is unbearable. Dianah sits in a shaft of light from the only window. Her mother, wrapped in a vibrant orange shawl, sits beside her. Her brother, Noah, stands beside a curtained doorway that shudders with every gasping noonday breeze.
I’m trying not to think of how maybe it’s me that’s unbearable.
I’m feeling like a hoax when Dianah slightly moves her crutch that lays between her and mother and murmurs it like a prayer, the living and active words of the Old Book that keep her living, and the words sound the opposite of trite when she speaks them under the beat of the African sun:
“For God so loved the world, He gave — He gave His only begotten Son.”
And I nod, rung with it: God gives. God so loves that He gives. That’s what love is: Love lives given. Or it isn’t love.
What do I know about giving like God? What does my life show that I actually know about the truth: Love wins only when love gives.
You’d think that I’d focus on Dianah explaining how the pain of her dislocated hip threatened to keep her out of school until the ministry of Africa New Life found her a surgeon, a new hip, a community nurse named Rebecca who oversees her recovery and physical therapy plan, all of her school fees and complete support to keep her in high school full time.
You’d think that I’d ask questions when Dianah offers that physics is her favorite class and she’s studying for the medical field so she can give like she’s received.
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New LifeBut the honest-to-God truth of it is, I can’t stop this ringing with my own truth, the playbook that I tritely live by, and I don’t say it aloud to Dianah, her little brother, Noah, her mother — because maybe they can read it in my eyes:
Sermon on the Mounting Pressure of The Self-Gratification Gospel —
& The Ingratitude of The Fake Beatitudes:
Blessed are those who are poor for absolutely nothing, for theirs is the Kingdom of Amazon and the domain of next day delivery.
Blessed are those who mourn for more, for they shall be comforted with a comfortable life that calmly and consistently boils their souls right dry.
Blessed are those who put themselves first, striving to be great instead of ever being second to anyone, because what really matters is to be great for this vaporous nano-second, even if that means being dead-last for all eternity.
Blessed are those who keep up with the Jones’ instead of keeping company with Jesus, for theirs is a life of climbing ladders instead of going lower, to the least and the lonely and the lost.
Blessed are those who focus on upward mobility — for theirs is an eternity of futility.
Blessed are those who are meek only at being meek, for it’s the powerful who punch back, the offended who attack, and all who hate to lack any digital thing, who will inherit the soul-wounding ways of this dog-eat-dog world.
Blessed who are those who thirst for more gourmet coffee and hunger for greater accolades, audiences, applauses, greater garages, closets, and wallets, for they shall be filled with a toxic discontent that scalds the inside of their only soul.
Blessed are those who live with pure but subtle greed, for they shall see their god in things and not in faces of those in need who God made.
Blessed are those who are never persecuted for being counter-cultural, who never give until it’s a sacrifice, who never risk for the Gospel’s sake, for theirs is the message of fake good news, and the relief of no-suffering lives.
The heat under the rusting tin roof — or my own life — makes me feel more than slightly nauseous.
Dianah and Noah’s mother, a woman who’s lived most of her life as a Rwandan refugee fleeing other human beings who beat her with clubs, she speaks to me with her hands and a steady voice.
“We were living in a closet with no roof, when Africa New Life first found us. It was raining and we had nothing to cover us. Noah was two. I tried to hold him close, to use my body to cover him from the rain.” She nods to Noah in the doorway.
Someone hands me a picture of that day and Noah huddled in his mother’s lap in an open-air closet, exposed to the elements and the rain sheeting down.
“It is so humbling to us, because it is God Himself, coming through people, to help us,” she gestures to her mud hut and that tin roof over our heads. But it’s what she says next that reverberates like a thunder of its own:
“We never forget that people given — not because they don’t have other problems — but because they prioritize people.”
My eyes don’t leave hers.
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New LifeEsther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New LifeThis mother’s deeply and painfully aware that the people who are givers still have problems of their own — but they still give people priority.
The solution to any problem can never become more of a priority than any person.
She glances at her three sponsored children, and her voice is clear:
“Even when giving people have burdens — they still choose to give blessings.”
Noah and Dianah’s mother gestures toward her mud hut:
“You became our roof. You became our wall to lean on.”
And I nod, hearing her:
Love is a wall for the vulnerable to lean on, not a wall to lock the vulnerable out —- and love is a roof to make a safe place for the wounded, not a roof to keep the safe far away from the wounded.
And then Noah and Dianah’s mother, she shakes her head, stretches out her hands:
“I don’t have anything to give you as a reward, but I believe God does. I fully believe that every giving person will be fully paid from heaven above.”
And I reach for her hand. We freely give because we’ve freely been given grace and getting to give God’s generous grace forward is our generous reward. How can we not give generously when we have generously been given such grace?
My heart burns.
And that’s the moment when 10 year-old Noah appears again from behind the curtain — holding a yellow jerry can with a hole cut out of its center. A hollow yellow jerry can tied to a worn piece of wood. A hollow yellow jerry can tied to a worn piece of wood that has this row of nails drilled along its top edge, knotted and strung with a handful of strings.
Noah’s holding a yellow jerry can guitar that was imagined in his ingenious mind, fashioned out of the creativity of his own two hands.
Singing in his native Kinyarwanda with this high pitch ache, the lanky limbed boy strums his garbage repurposed guitar, and blessed are those who are brave enough to belong to each other and this world can be a heartbreakingly beautiful place.
I can testify to it, I can feel it: Noah sings like a boy who knows that God can resurrect the dead and rise the sun in even us.
Then right in the middle of his song, Noah breaks — and tears stream down the 10 year old boy’s cheeks like unexpected water through the desert. Noah’s singing doesn’t stop — and neither do his tears.
I swallow hard and try to read the wilderness of Noah’s face: Does one of Africa’s sons grieve hard while a multitude of his brothers and sisters live their own self-serving beatitudes?
Does Africa weep because the Word doesn’t change the world because too many of God’s people don’t actually live out the Word?
Does God cry with a boy in Africa, because His children in the church aren’t about living the Sermon on the Mount, but are about mounting our own Comfortable Kingdoms?
The last note of Noah’s song still hangs in the heat when Noah pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe off his tear-streamed cheeks.
How do you find words when you’re standing before a 10-year-old boy under a rusting tin roof in mud hut in Africa, who’s holding an empty jerry-can guitar in one hand and mopping up tears with a handkerchief that he pulled from his pocket with his other hand?
There are sermons made of moments that change your life in a moment.
Giving begets gratitude and gratitude begets glory and when we give we are most like God who so loved that He gave His only begotten Son. Love lives given.
Young Noah’s still brushing the handkerchief across his damp glistening cheeks when he upends everything with a few lightning-bolt words that come out of the clear blue sky and strike me dumb: “I just had to find a way to say thank you. I thought and thought of ways to just — thank my sponsor — and decided to write my own song, from my own heart, and sing it on my own guitar — that I just had to make with my own hands. It’s just — my thank you.“
Throats and hearts can burn and how you see Africa and the courage of her children can run a bit liquid and you can be not one bit ashamed.
When we give, those in need give thanks, and God gets glory, and giving begets glory, and we could make this the glorious story of the world. Giving begets gratitude and gratitude begets glory and when we give we are most like God who so loved that He gave His only begotten Son. Love lives given.
If there’s really overwhelming gratitude for His overwhelming grace there’s an overflow in our giving — and when our giving overflows into the lives of those in need — tears of gratitude flow in down the cheeks of everyone.
Noah with his jerry-can-guitar and gratitude-wet cheeks, he looks like a psalm, a sermon, a song of praise to me.
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New LifeI look down at Noah’s guitar. Even an empty jerry can — can sing. Even our emptiness can sing when we live given.
Even a broken life can sing the beauty of the genuine beatitudes and it resonates within me standing there, sings like the gospel truth, like a rising to the notes of Noah’s song—
The Gratitude Attitude of the Genuine Beatitudes:
Blessed are us who miss the road to riches. For less stuff, lets more of the only Savior save us.
Blessed are us who deny ourselves of some wanted things, so those in need can have direly needed things. For when we refuse to deny someone in need, Jesus refuses to ever deny us in our need.
Blessed are us who are grateful with less. For there is no other shape of greatness.
Blessed are us who never stop loving giving, because love lives given, and when we don’t love giving, we don’t get to be Christ-like. For God so loved the world, He gave, and it’s the Givers who get to takeover the world with love.
Blessed are us who thirst with those who are parched for a glass of clean water and who hunger with those who crave crumbs from our brushed off tables, for our God is Emmanuel, God with us, and withness breaks brokenness, and being with the broken in the world begins to breaks the brokenness of the world.
Blessed are us who express our inexpressible gratitude to God by giving to those made in the image of God. For when we are mostly about protecting what we have — we have less God, and mostly have a god made in our image.
Blessed are us who prioritize other people over our problems. For ours is the passion of the Christ.
Noah wanders outside his mud hut, and then I watch him stand up on this heaped pile in a garden to again sing out his heart of thanks to God’s people.
And a kid out on a mound of dirt lifts praise to God, for the giving people of God, and there’s no hiding my blinking back and this moving in the hearts of God’s people to genuinely live out the Sermon on the Mount.
Outside of a mud hut in Africa, I want to ask Noah if there was a dry corner of handkerchief in that willing and ready pocket of his?
Dianah’s radiates in the doorway, her smile like the embodiment of a genuine beatitude.
Join Us All In the Genuine Beatitudes — & Let’s All Together Support a Girl & Fill These Brand New Classrooms in Africa with kids like Dianah!
Only 500 of us will get the chance to partner with these girls and Africa New Life for their stellar education at one of the most respected schools in the country, with extraordinarily committed teachers, for their school uniform, supplies and textbooks, medical assistance, and a living hope in Jesus.
Be one of the ones who get to be a DreamMaker: Dreams ignite in us when we fuel a dream in someone else’s heart. Join me right over here to be a DreamMaker.
You could genuinely be one of the blessed & lucky ones who get to stand with the girls of Africa and help them dream. When we refuse to be part of helping girl’s dream — how do we refuse to be like Christ?
This is our chance: When we help a girl dream — we live woken.
January 30, 2018
Mind if I Pray for You?
Mary DeMuth is a masterful storyteller, mentor, and advocate for re-storied living. And isn’t that what we all need? A rewrite of our stories? Mary has learned that in telling her own story of heartbreak and healing, she opens the door for others to find healing too. Through prayer Mary is able to share her own re-storied life and reach the heart of readers. It’s her transparency and vulnerability that set Mary apart in a picture-perfect, Instagram-worthy world. Her new book, Jesus Every Day, will take you on a year-long prayer journey drawing near to the heart of God. Come, take a seat on the farm’s front porch, and join me in welcoming Mary . . .
I don’t remember when I started writing, “Mind if I pray for you?” at the end of my monthly newsletters, but I do remember the frequent response:
Thank you; I needed that.
In this busy and broken world, we casually throw out, “Hey, I’ll be praying for you,” but so often the sentiment is as far as we get. (I’ve done it too.)
Having the opportunity to pray for the people I’d come to love felt like joy and breathing all wrapped together.
As I typed my prayers, I asked God to please infuse my small words with His majesty and comfort.
A lot of my prayers reflected my current worry or struggle or victory or grief.
And what I found was this: My own life in its vulnerable form connected with my readers, and my written prayers represented the cries of so many hearts.
I’ve often said that four words inform my life, particularly as an author and speaker.
Go first.
Me too.
I believe God calls us to authenticity, to share our worlds with one another.
We do that so that others no longer feel alone.
We dare to go first so that someone who’s struggling can remark, “Me too.”
We may not see our way around the next unknown bend in the road.
But Jesus does.
He walks alongside us every day, giving us the hope we need to make the next decision, love the people in front of us, forgive those who have hurt us, let go of the control that makes us twitchy, and practice the art of gratitude.
He is with us in the heartache, the questions, the dreams, and the frailty of life.
And He longs for our hearts to unfold before Him, trusting Him to act in His perfect (yet sometimes slow) timing.
Prayer is that intersection between an almighty God and our all-encompassing need.
It’s how we connect with God—not merely listing off our wants and needs like a child on Santa’s lap, but sharing our bruises, joys, hopes, and bewilderments.
Prayer is the language of a close relationship.
I’ve taken a pilgrimage of prayer to discover the nearness of Jesus. As I mature in my relationship with Him, I find myself becoming more and more content with simply praying for people.
I pray for strangers. I pray for friends. I pray for my family constantly, like breathing.
I ask permission to pray for someone and then place my hand on a shoulder. In that circle of two, I ask Jesus to please help us all face our lives, to find peace in our trials.
I pray bold prayers, seeking healing and health.
I pray timid prayers, full of ifs and maybes.
I pray wordless prayers, those times when our words can’t seem to form at the enormity of what we face.
And through it all, Jesus hears. He sees. He receives.
And He intercedes.
Closer than our breath.
It seems fitting to end with this:
Mind if I pray for you?
Jesus, I pray for the dear person reading this prayer. Would you woo them to Yourself? Would You bring peace into whatever chaos they face today? Would you show them how deeply and widely (and wildly) You love them?
Remind them in this sweet circle of two that you are there. You are available. You offer grace to approach you—no stern looks, no sighs of disappointment, no tsking or shaking of the head. Your arms, they are wide open, and Your embrace is always available.
Take my friend on a journey to deepen their relationship with You. Empower them to run to you when life careens or hope wanes.
Invigorate their prayer life. Move mountains. Unleash freedom. Heal wounds. Restore what’s been lost. Demonstrate Your love in them-shaped ways.
Thank you that you’re the empathetic Savior who understands what it’s like to walk this dusty earth, clay-footed. Thank you for making a way for them to be safe, forgiven, and welcomed—all because You left the glory of heaven for earth’s sin-scarred shore.
Oh, how You love them. Oh, how they need You. Do something new in the heart of the one reading these words.
May spiritual growth and freedom spring forth, a new river through a wild land.
Amen and amen.
Mary DeMuth is a writer and speaker who loves to help people live re-storied lives. Author of more than 30 books, Mary is the founder of the Restory conference, using her gift of storytelling to bring hope and healing to broken relationships. She speaks around the country and the world. She is the wife of Patrick and the mom of three adult children.
Trying to juggle all your worries and burdens alone? As the challenges of everyday life threaten to continually distract you, your conversations with God can start to feel threadbare—too rushed to touch on the real issues that crowd your heart. Rediscover your compassionate Savior through daily heart-provoking prayers and accompanying Scriptures in Jesus Every Day. Allow these daily prayers to release your hopes, worries, desires, and uncertainties to your Savior.
Release your hopes, worries, desires, and uncertainties to your Savior and find needed restoration and peace in His relentless grace. As you approach Jesus with a humble and honest spirit, you will discover how His mercy can absolutely change your life—today and every day, in Jesus Every Day: A Journey Through the Bible in One Year.
[ Our humble thanks to Harvest House for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
January 27, 2018
Why Every Girl (and her dreams) Counts — and what happens if they don’t
When you kneel down close and look into her face, her eyes look like tender full moons, like you could look from your world right into the mystery of her, see into the abyss of her.
Is Annette sad to be a girl? That’s what I want to know.
Annette is one of 5 girls living with her grandmother in northern Rwanda and I sit in her house made of mud with a goat tied to a rope out back.
What does it mean for dreams to live inside the mind of one small girl in this world?
In a world where 130 million girls will not go to school today because they aren’t given a chance.
In a world where, if all the girls in the world who are denied an education for the sole reason of being female, were an actual country, they would be the 10th largest country on the planet.
In a world where half a billion women can’t read what you just did right now.
Annette’s grandmother, Madeleine, her dhuku winding loosely and vibrantly around her hair, she pats Annette’s hand, and reaches out to take mine.
Madeleine has 3 daughters. And two sons, and a dead husband, and 5 granddaughters, and more grandsons, and a lost herd of cattle, stolen by violence that’s made her a refugee, but it’s her 3 daughters Madeleine feels compelled to tell me about.
“My three daughters were all kidnapped,” Madeleine looks me right in the eye, sitting on the edge of her couch, our knees touching, me still gripping her hand.
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life“All — three? Of — your daughters — kidnapped?” I mean — what can you say? To make sense of three of one mother’s daughters being snatched away, one after the other? Six-year-old Annette is swinging her legs off the edge of her chair.
If God is for us, who can be against us, but if we are not for the world’s girls, what does it matter who is for us?
For 9 months, Madeleine and her 5 granddaughters lived in a refugee camp within Rwanda. Madeleine has had nothing to eat for days at a time, went to bed hungry, but she held on to those 5 granddaughters of hers and she found Africa New Life, their church and their schools, and their philosophy: Tear down gates, set out more plates.
She found Jesus.
“If I hadn’t given my life to Jesus, I wouldn’t be alive right now,” Madeleine twists her hands in her lap and I nod, grip her hand tightly: Living fully given to Jesus is how one is given the fullest life. I watch Madeleine watching Annette.
When women surrender everything to Jesus, they win every battle that matters. We could live like this. I can see the steely, certain determination in Madeleine’s eyes.
I ask Madeleine about the stitched verses on her wall. Madeleine looks up Romans 8:31 in green thread opposite the one window. “When things are hard, I walk through the house and I see the Scriptures up on the wall and I pray,” Madeleine speaks with this worn wisdom.
Write His Word on your doorposts and you know the way forward.
Madeleine can’t read. Two-thirds of the 774 million people on the planet who will never read any words are female.
Is Annette sad to be a girl in this world?
Madeleine does have a Bible, Words that she can’t read but she literally clings to.
She tells me that after she hears a verse in church, she sits down her granddaughters, gives them her worn Bible, and tells them to find that verse and read it to her again and again.
Do women who can read words, cherish the Word like this? I feel uneasy on the edge of my chair.
Madeleine quotes what her heart knows by heart, “What, then, shall we say — ? If God is for us, who can be against us?” And my throat burns: If God is for us, who can be against us, but if we are not for the world’s girls, what does it matter who is for us?
Madeleine calls one of her oldest granddaughters, asks her to read Scripture for her, for us, and the young girl read words on the page for her grandmother hunched over the holy book like a fledgling waiting to be fed.
The moment is holy.
It can happen and it is happening: When a woman makes the Word her world, she changes her world and a thousand other worlds.
And one girl is passing the Word on to one woman who cannot read words, who needs Words, and this is who we are: women are made for the connected life, the given life, the community life, the together life, and the sisterhood of women is meant to be assisterhood, every woman assisting her sister.
Is Annette sad to be a girl?
If every woman committed to be part of the assisterhood of women assisting women — would any girl be sad to be a girl?
I lean in and ask Madeleine what gives her courage every day, and she nods slowly, her eyes not leaving mine, “Focus on the circumstances, you will die.”
I nod, not turning away from her: Focus on Christ, because He provides.
I cannot stop scanning Madeleine’s face. How much do we have to rely on Christ to provide — instead of our credit cards? How much do I focus on what is happening, instead of on Who is in control of everything that happens? How rich in faith is a woman in Africa, and how poor in focus are those of us who have food in the fridge tonight?
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New LifeThe rains will stop. The drought will come. The oats will run out. Madeleine will not have even 100 frank — a penny — to buy salt.
“I don’t beg people,” Madeleine speaks softly. “I only beg God — and God moves people.”
I want to turn away from her eyes. How often has the Spirit of God moved in me — and I haven’t moved? How often has God moved to answer through His people — and His people haven’t moved?
“We share everything,” Madeleine’s patting my hand, like she’s inviting me into a different kind of life, “If I am out of porridge, my neighbour will share. If I have salt, I will share my salt.”
Before she’s even done speaking, I’m murmuring Bonhoeffer’s phrase, “…The Life Together. We are called to the together life. All of us — and distance doesn’t determine our togetherness.” Who of us isn’t longing for the shared life? Isn’t that the haunting longing of our existence — to share togetherness? The shared life is how we have shares in joy.
“God Himself taught us to meet one another as God has met us in Christ,” writes Bonhoeffer. “Once a man has experienced the mercy of God in his life, he will henceforth aspire only to serve… Christian brotherhood… is… a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.”
As God meets our needs in Christ, we get to meet our sister’s needs through Christ, and if we have ever had any shares in the grace of Christ, how can we not share that grace with anyone in need?
I memorize Madeleine’s face. Aspiring to success isn’t about reaching up ladders —- it’s about reaching out and aspiring to serve.
Christian sisterhood is assisterhood — women who insist on assisting because this is how we relentlessly resist the dark and passionately persist for the Kingdom of Light.
And Madeleine circles back to her daughters, because this is what Madeleine wants me to know, in the midst of everything else so things can change something now: “All three of my daughters. Kidnapped.” Madeleine nods. “By men who forced them to be their wives. By men who made themselves their husbands.”
I turn to look for Annette’s wide-moon eyes.
Is Annette sad to be a girl in the world?
The translator sitting on the floor tries to explain what I am struggling to compute: “It is cultural in several countries here: A man sees a girl, waits for when she goes to fetch water, and then you take her. Then you come back to her parents 2 days later and say: “Hey, we took your daughter — how many cows do you want?”
Annette steps out of the doorway to scoop up their one goat.
And I face the translator’s words head on: When girls can be stolen for marriage and bought with a bunch of cows, it’s our own collective souls that are sold to buy a kind of hell.
Annette looks luminous in the doorway. I want her to run out of this house, away from these words, run through the rain, as if she can wash this all away. But where do you run away from your reality?
Madeleine’s Pastor sits down next to her on the couch, speaks clearly: “It was an atrocity.”
Maybe Annette won’t hear what Pastor Charles says next: “And girls knew that this could happen to them. They knew that one day they could go to the well to carry water and then never come back and that is the way they would be forced into marriage.”
I don’t turn toward Annette, hoping that if I don’t catch her eye, maybe she’s not listening?
The Pastor’s voice cracks: “The girl had no rights or no choice of her own — she was treated like property.”
Annette’s stroking the goat’s back, standing in the door way, watching the sky looming dark and heavy from from the north.
When a girl has no rights — what does it matter what is right in the rest of the world?
The Pastor’s words try to rise above the sound of the clouds weeping rain upon tin roofs: “When Madeleine was a young refugee girl in Uganda, a man approached her and did what was culturally acceptable — threw a ring around her neck. Automatically making her —- his.”
I turn to Madeleine, read her eyes. Madeleine was made a wife for life — the same way her daughters were. By force. Against her will.
Madeleine wanted me to know her daughters’ story, because it was her story — so it won’t be her granddaughters’ story. Madeleine’s eyes are pleading with mine.
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New LifeWhen girls are treated like pawns — it’s the world that finds itself in checkmate.
When girls have no choice — we have to make a choice to say yes to their worth, their voice, their rights.
And I try to stop something inside of me from breaking and spilling, like the sky, like the Pastor.
When girls are forced against their will — where is our will to change the forces that be?
The Pastor’s wiping a rain of his own away, “The reason men take young girls — took her, took her three daughters — is because the girls were not going to school. If girls had the opportunity to go to school…” Pastor Charles brushes his wet cheeks with the back of his hand and I catch him staring at Annette in the door way.
“The life of a girl can be different now.” He speaks louder, above the pounding rain. “God emancipates girls. God uses education to emancipate girls. In receiving an education, girls become free.”
He turns towards the door, says it like a blessing toward Annette, “The best way to emancipate a girl is to give her an education.”
And it keeps coming likes the rain and I want to drum it like the thrumming on the tin roof.
Annette’s sets down the goat, stretches out her open palm — catching water through her fingers.
Waste a girl’s dreams —- and the world starts to waste away.
When we refuse to be part of helping girl’s dream — how do we refuse to be like Christ?
Does Annette dream?
When a girl in the world dreams — more of God’s dream for the world comes true.
When we help a girl dream — we live woken.
Dream, Annette — you get to dream.
Annette turns to me from the doorway and smiles, her moon-wide eyes rising like dreams awakening in the willing.
130 million girls right now — are being denied an education. And every one of those girls counts. You could be one of the blessed & lucky ones who get to put one of these 500 girls into school.
You could be one of the blessed & lucky ones who get to stand with the girls of Africa and help them dream. When we refuse to be part of helping girl’s dream — how do we refuse to be like Christ?
This is our chance: When we help a girl dream — we live woken.
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [01.27.18]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you right here:
Andy Kerr, Hooker Lake, New Zealand
Ricardo Gomez Angel, Hirzel, Switzerland
Erwin Doorn, Klarenbeek, Netherlands
sharing the beauty of winter all around our world
looking for some good clean family movie selections? thoughtful advice right here
so yeah, we gathered ’round this one – maybe you too?
yes, yes, yes: Let’s! Be a Doris
C’MON!! Let your next step be your best step! #TeamJesus
Lifeguards Were Just Learning to Use New Rescue Drone When They Saved Boys Trapped at Sea
this young musical prodigy? he plays 44 instruments – with a goal of learning 100 by year’s end!
so check this one: a young blind student uses knitting to help her focus – and then gives her items away to help others #BeTheGIFT #TheBrokenWay
These players have come together on the field, but here’s a look at what binds them all off the field
‘Miracle mom’ who survived a bullet to the brain in Las Vegas shooting returns home
“Her gunshot wound was severe, but we as a family left it in God’s hands, and here she is”
just the best: Feeling down? This Greek couple could restore your faith in humanity
Make your Easter as memorable as your Christmas
Have you started the Easter tradition of your own 40 Day Lent/Easter wreath?
Our family’s best way to prepare for Easter…
And right now? There is a 10% discount on all orders for one week, ending on Saturday, Feb 3 with the code: EarlyforEaster
love this…in so many ways
How the Broken Way Led Us to Today
glory, glory, glory
Fifth of June Photography
Disabled by Design — My Abundant Life Without Arms
so you’ve got to meet them: Reyna and Daniel. One beautiful story right here…
Dear Kid — and dear you trying to be brave and face hard things… believe in the impossible, because it’s true:
How To be Brave and Face Hard Things: (hard habits, procrastination, parenting, and hard storms)
a story of undying love
how God saves
this kind police officer? sits to play the piano for a 93 year old whose home was burglarized
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Post of the week from there parts here:
… it’s kinda mind blowing the unexpected way dreams come true — especially when things are hard.
Just — deeply moved:The Unexpected Way to Make Dreams Come True
How this beautiful young family rebuilt their life after losing two children
“It’s ok to let yourself be sad…but also remember to work on being active…”
YES: There is Good News
so when we heard about this amazing deal we had to share:
Don’t miss Sunday’s Kindle Gold Box Deal!
Be the Gift is just $1.99 on Kindle! This offer is good tomorrow ONLY! January 28!!
Tell a friend!?!!
I know the Lord — and He will make a way
… your voice, your heart, is always wanted and never, ever forget: you always belong.
Christ didn’t degrade women in His talk, but He made women heroes in His stories. That’s how God loves women with His words.
Promise you’ll never forget this either? God first revealed Himself to a woman as the God Who Sees — because God needed every woman to know that she is seen, she is known, she is beloved.
God made the answer to the world’s very first problem, the one of aloneness — to be a woman. And every woman is here not to one-up one another — but to help one another up.
Just promise — that you’ll never, ever forget:
God made sure every girl born knew she was never less than.
Girls are a whole world more than pretty faces & pretty hair — they do hard & holy things & change the whole world.
Rise, Esthers, & don’t be afraid to risk like a girl, be fiercely fearless like a girl & change the world like a girl.
And today? We want nothing but Jesus — because we’re brave enough to believe He is our everything.
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
January 25, 2018
The Unexpected Way to Make Dreams Come True
When I meet her for the first time on a humid Sunday afternoon, she wears a black blouse with black lace short sleeves and a white peter pan collar, like she is from never-never-stop-working-for-dreams land.
She is a girl and she is made to be a star: brilliant.
I can tell the moment I meet her: She is a girl and she is made to rise, she is made to blaze, she is made to be a refrain that breaks chains, she is made to be a wind at her sister’s back, and she is made to be a light that lingers as long as it takes, a morning star that can’t put out the fire flaming in her bones.
She is a girl and she is a galaxy of dreams.
Her name is Claudette, and she is the first born in her Rwandan family, and her youngest brother is Claude, the last born.
These are stories that bookend dreams coming true and there are sworn testimonies: Africa’s heavy with the scent of miracles.
I fly to Africa with one of my boys to witness how the Father of stars ignites His daughters.
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Claudette’s voice sounds like a dark, slow river when she talks, liquid, deep, gentle.
Every time she braves words, I have to lean in to hear them.
Our daughter Hope would later text me: “Three years ago, it took me being with Claudette three afternoons before she warmed up. She’s stunning — and listen for it: she has the very best laugh.”
There are women who laugh at the days to come because they simply keep coming to Jesus.
Hope is right. Claudette laughs when I am slack jawed that she is studying English, French, Swahili, Kinyarwanda: “You are genius!”
Her laugh sounds like a night song rising through rocks: “I just work hard.” And I grin with her, because girl’s right: Genius is a patient determination.
Dreams ignite in us when we fuel a dream in someone else’s heart.
Genius are the girls who see every day as the genesis of new hope.
Genius are the girls who are generous.
Genius are the girls who never give up but always live given.
I show Claudette a photo of her and Hope jumping skip rope from that afternoon when they first met three years ago, like they are girls made for the skies. Claudette leans over the photo — then covers her mouth, laughing shy, but I can still hear that deep song of hers.
Three years ago, Hope came home from her summer of interning with Africa New Life, and she threw in with Africa New Life’s second-to-none, sold-out-to-Jesus schools, some of the absolute best in the country, to sponsor Claudette’s education.
Today Claudette sits beside me and tells me biology is her favorite subject and she’s bound and determined to become a doctor.
Natalie Green for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Esther Havens for Africa New LifeClaudette tells me that her little brother, Claude, is sick and there is no doctor, no funds, no medicine, no care for him and she stays awake night praying that he will live.
Claudette says she stays awake late at night studying. I watch how Claudette keeps folding her hands in her lap.
Sometimes God makes us who pray, the brave answers to our own prayers.
Sometimes the story we want written in the world — begins with allowing ourselves be written more into the world’s story.
Sometimes the key to things changing — is to let ourselves be made into the key.
Claudette straightens the hem of her shirt and tells me that 4 times a year, she must write all her exams, across all subjects, in English, and she must be able to answer any question on anything ever learned in that subject over the last 3 years.
And I nod, witnessing: Claudette is a girl, made to be a star: brilliant.
Claudette is one of the world’s future women, the devoted who is determined to make a difference by being different.
Claudette is Africa.
Claudette is Africa, like each of these 500 hundred brilliant girls who need educational sponsorship is the glory that is Africa. Only 500 of us will get the chance to partner with these girls and Africa New Life for their stellar education at one of the most respected schools in the country, with extraordinarily committed teachers, for their school uniform, supplies and textbooks, medical assistance, and a living hope in Jesus.
I watch Claudette’s eyes, the way she looks up and looks straight into mine, and it’s what her eyes say in that moment that explode something in me: The story told about parts of the world will profoundly change, when we let parts of the world profoundly change us.
We can be women who lift each other, love each other, belong to each other, women who fully receive each other, and deeply believe each other and always perceive dreams in each other.
Claudette smiles and reaches across the table, takes my pen and she writes it in my Bible laying on the table. She writes her name beside the verse she carries on the tip of her tongue, in the forefront of her mind, in the chambers of her brave heart:
“Don’t panic. I’m with you. There’s no need to fear for I’m your God. I’ll give you strength. I’ll help you. I’ll hold you steady, keep a firm grip on you.” (Isa. 41:10)
Her name’s right there in ink beside the verse — claiming His Truth as her only Truth.
And she grabs my hand, flashes this smile, and it can feel like a supernova in the lungs, the epiphany of it:
We can be women who lift each other, love each other, belong to each other, women who fully receive each other, and deeply believe each other and always perceive dreams in each other.
We can believe our God is the WayMaker, the DreamMaker, and the RiskTaker and that’s exactly who He calls us to be for our sisters.
He gives us strength to be a strength, and He helps us to be a help, and because He has a firm grip on us, we can grip someone else’s hand and help them hold on to hope.
Dreams ignite in us when we fuel a dream in someone else’s heart.
I look up at Claudette — she can’t stop smiling. I run my hands across her name written right there in His Word. And I nod and grin back.
When we trust His Word, we can write the story we’ve been waiting for.
Claudette’s eyes look like a constellation of sisters all saying yes.
Claudette is Africa, like each of these 500 hundred brilliant girls who need educational sponsorship is the glory that is Africa.
And only 500 of us will get the chance to partner with these girls and Africa New Life for their stellar education at one of the most respected schools in the country, with extraordinarily committed teachers, for their school uniform, supplies and textbooks, medical assistance, and a living hope in Jesus.
Be one of the ones who get to be a DreamMaker: Dreams ignite in us when we fuel a dream in someone else’s heart. Meet me right over here to be a DreamMaker.
January 24, 2018
The secret to stopping the anxiety spiral
Alli Worthington is a girl whose life for too many years was bound by fear – fear of something happening to the kids, fear of failing, fear of rejection. Until God took her on journey of discovering a new fierce faith and finding practical tools to use every day to fight back against fear, worry and anxiety. It’s a grace to welcome Alli to the farm’s front porch today…
guest post by Alli Worthington
I used to think living under the weight of fear, anxiety and worry was something we all had to struggle through.
That fear was just part of life, like laundry and those random hairs that grow on our chins, we just have to deal with it.
However, all through scripture we are encouraged over and over again to fear not.
I believe God in His gracious mercy repeated this command as an encouragement because He knew fear is the tool the enemy would use to try to derail us, distract us and depress us.
As I dove into the truth of scripture and began uncovering the practical tools we can use to overcome what weighs us down, I discovered something fascinating.
Both big fears and little fears work to steal our peace and our happiness.
Every day worries can be as crippling as catastrophes, but we are not powerless. We can overcome them!
Let’s dive into a certain everyday anxiety that tries to steal our confidence and how we can fight back and win every time.
Do you ever feel nervous before a meeting or event?
Do you ever worry about that upcoming social occasion and secretly wanted to just stay home?
When I feel worried or nervous about a situation, I use this little Fierce Faith mantra to keep me on track.
Show up.
Be real.
Love others.
Don’t quit.
I developed this mantra because when I feel fear getting the best of me, I tend to want to run and hide, put on my mask, bite the heads off of the people I love, and sometimes just flat-out quit.
Let me explain.
Show up
Don’t let the fear of failure keep you from showing up.
When we struggle with the fear of failure, the idea of hiding at home under the covers can sound really good. Sometimes half the battle is simply showing up.
One time I got a phone call from the principal at my son’s school, asking Mark and me if we could come in for a meeting. I had no idea what he wanted to talk to us about, but of course I assumed I was in some way failing as a parent. What else could he possibly want to talk to us about? It’s terrible how our minds go to the worst possible place so quickly.
I can laugh at it now, but at the time, I tried to come up with every possible reason why I couldn’t go. I prayed something would come up and I wouldn’t be able to go.
“There is nothing to fear here. You are going to show up to that meeting. Now get going!”
It might seem silly, but my “show up” pep talks to myself are inspiring in the moment. Positive self-talk for the win!
And as it turned out, the principal just wanted to talk to us about being a part of the fundraising team at school the next year. All that worrying for nothing (which is the way it usually turns out)!
Be real
Don’t let your fear of failure keep you from being who you are.
My defense mechanism when I feel nervous around others has always been to look around, see what everyone else is doing, and make like a chameleon to fit in.
If I feel certain I am going to fail as my true self, my logic has always been, why not be someone else, or worse yet, everyone else.
It wasn’t until around age thirty-five that I began to wake up to the fact that my fear of failing in social situations was making me disconnect with who I really was and who God had created me to be.
I had to decide to be my real self with others and live out of a place where I liked myself and hoped others would too.
Turns out, it was my uniqueness that opened doors for me professionally, allowing me to live out the calling God had for me. God doesn’t make us quirky or interesting for no good reason.
He gave me, and He gave you, your unique personality to share with the world around you.
To this day, though, when I feel tempted to try to make myself more like someone else to avoid that fear of failure, I tell myself, Be real, Alli. Be real.
Love others
Don’t let the fear of failure cause you to treat others badly.
For me this is a reminder not to let my own fear or worry cause me to be short-tempered with others.
My goal is to love others well, even when I’m a mess inside. I don’t want fear to control me and turn me into a big ball of nastiness to others.
This is the hardest for me behind closed doors with my family. It’s way too easy when I’m staring down a work deadline or even planning a happy celebration to snap at the kids, be demanding to my husband, and make everyone’s lives miserable.
I believe God in His gracious mercy repeated this command as an encouragement because He knew fear is the tool the enemy would use to try to derail us, distract us and depress us.
When I’m tempted to treat others badly, I repeat my battle-plan mantra: “Show up, be real, love others, don’t quit.”
Don’t quit
Don’t let the fear of failure, or anything else for that matter, cause you to quit. We can only truly fail when we quit trying.
I find the temptation to quit occurs most often when I am in the middle of a project or job, fearing I will fail, and I decide that quitting (and being labeled a quitter) is so much better than failing (and being labeled a failure).
Like I said, fear is not rational and does not cause us to think clearly.
Have you ever said to yourself:
I didn’t know it was going to be this hard.
I can’t do this anymore.
I’m not good enough.
What was I thinking when I thought I could do this?
You are in pretty good company. The secret is to strengthen yourself not to quit.
When we remember to show up, be real, love others, and not quit, we don’t have to control anyone else or the outcome of what we do.
We get to bring our best to any situation with courage and love.
The results are up to God; He just asks us to be who He called us to be, love others, and do our best.
Alli Worthington co-founded multiple companies and has helped individuals, small business owners, and Fortune 500 companies be more successful. Alli’s no-nonsense, guilt-free take on business, family, and balance lead to appearances on The Today Show and Good Morning America.
She is the author of the new book Fierce Faith: A Woman’s Guide to Fighting Fear, Wrestling Worry and Overcoming Anxiety and also Breaking Busy: Finding Peace and Purpose in a World of Crazy.
Alli knows all about the ways a woman can be hard on herself. In Fierce Faith she shares her own fear struggles with humor and honesty—while offering real strategies for coping with life’s big worries as well as those little everyday worries.
Sometimes Jesus’s call to “fear not” seems like the hardest instruction to follow. Some days you faultlessly juggle everything that is your life—kids, husband, house, job, church, friendships, school, pets, appointments, and on and on. Other days the very thought of which ball you’re going to drop puts your anxiety level through the roof. You’re afraid you’re forgetting something. And you are: God’s advice to fear not. Her goal is to help women live the life they were created to live.
[ Our humble thanks to Zondervan for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
January 23, 2018
How To be Brave and Face Hard Things: (hard habits, procrastination, parenting, and hard storms)
Dear Kid — and dear you trying to be brave and face hard things:
I know it seems the unbelievable impossible— but really — it’s going to happen one day to you too.
Turns out you can blink and find your mother’s very words rolling right there off the tip of your tongue.
True Story.
So hear me out on this, okay?
(I know, I know — How in the world does it turn out that you become your mother and really, how do her words migrate decades later into your mouth? It’s a great cosmic mystery of the universe.)
And this is true too — it turns out you can blink and find yourself standing there looking at a younger version of your eye-rolling self. I see me in you.
I know, it looks like I am too wrinkled and beat up to get it — but try this: When you look at me, before you roll your eyes, use your imagination: I was once a something-teen-year-old too.
I could once whip my eyes around like you and sting the soft side of my own mama, and yeah, being a teenager can be a bit like being a random sniper.
Took me a long time to know that — actually, I didn’t come to know it. I came to feel it.
So when you got off the phone the other day and turned to ask me if you could go with them too, because, c’mon, everyone else was going? There were my mother’s words right there in my mouth, my own mother on my lips:
“Look, I could tell you that you could go… but I love you too much.”
And you did what I did — you rolled your eyes like you could just roll me down. And in a blink, I’m you, rolling my eyes at my own mother just like that.
In a blink, I’m 13 all over again and begging Mama — telling her I’m going to about die if she doesn’t let me go to Tina Moreau’s 13th birthday party. Tina’s sleepover 13th birthday party. Tina’s co-ed sleepover 13th birthday party.
Apparently my mother didn’t care if I died. Or had a hissy fit or if my whipping eye rolls resulted in said eyeballs detaching at 98 miles a minute from their sockets resulting in serious injury to anyone in close enough proximity.
Mama just said there was no way her daughter was sleeping over in the same room of sleeping bags where Shawn Petersen and Dougie Boursma were slapping their pillows down too.
Sure, I told her I didn’t even like those goobery boys, I wouldn’t talk to those boys, there was just no way I wanted to be the weird kid out, the weird kid with strict parents [20-year-later insert: the kid with the only sane parents] who wouldn’t let her go to the co-ed sleepover birthday party.
And my own Mama? Mama just said I could huff all I wanted to, but nothing was going to blow down her mama-clad resolve.
Then yeah, she said something about loving me too much.
And, yeah, I’d rolled my eyes.
You may have a better huff than I did, really. And yeah, you can definitely fling around to the window sharper than I could, turning that cold shoulder faster than the speed of light.
But, girl, have you got any idea how I remember wanting to go once too, because all the other kids were going, and being told that the I was loved too much to go (insert eye roll here)? I know it seems impossible, but believe the impossible thing: I know what it’s like to be in a 15-year-old bod and think your mother’s a cretin from a cave who gets some hideously sick joy in crushing all your necessary plans.
So here’s the thing — and it’s true for every parent and every teenager and true for the guy procrastinating and the woman struggling to change old habits and every single one of us going through hard things:
I know there feels like there’s only one of you. The you right now. The one who Feels All The Things.
But believe the impossible things, because it’s true: There are two of you, really.
The Short-Term You — and the Long-Term You. The Now-You — and The Becoming You.
The Immediate You. And the Ultimate You.
And if I only loved the right now Immediate You — and let The Immediate You come and go and do whatever she wanted, whatever made her Feel All The Good Things, whatever made her happiest, I wouldn’t be loving the Ultimate You.
Please hear what All The Parents finally figure out, what I finally realize my own mama was saying:
This isn’t fun for me.
There isn’t one fibre in my soft, pulsing mama heart that likes seeing the Short-Term Immediate You Hurt.
But I love the Long-Term Ultimate You too wide and deep and long — the you that can ultimately be — that I’m willing to take the ire and anger of your Immediate Self right now.
I’m willing to take your anger and your eye rolls and feel the sting of it all on the soft insides of my mother heart.
I’m willing to let my own Immediate Me hurt with your Immediate You — us both hurting together —- because I love the Ultimate You and am committed to the Ultimate You and I won’t sell out the long-term Ultimate You.
Sometimes the short-term Immediate You cannot have what she wants — so that the long-term Ultimate You can be who she wants to be.
Sometimes the short-term Immediate You won’t feel loved —- because this is about ultimately loving the long-term Ultimate You.
Sometimes the short-term Immediate You can’t have immediate gratification — so you can give the long-term Ultimate You what is ultimately best.
There are two of you — the Immediate You. And the Ultimate You. Who are you going to ultimately focus on?
So when I told you all that the other day?
When I put my hand on your shoulder and you bit your lip hard to dam everything back?
When I told you that this is what a mother does — Though it kills me to see Immediate You hurting, I ultimately love the Ultimate You. Something burned, filled, my throat, and I felt my own dam give way a bit.
Because there’s this Father, our Father.
Because all of us have things in front of us that are hard and they hurt.
You and I both have this Father and it literally killed Him to see us hurting — and I need to believe it:
When my own Short-Term Immediate Self is hurting, my Father’s hurting with me .
When my short-term Immediate Self is hurting, my Father’s ultimately hurting with me and ultimately healing me and ultimately remaking me and ultimately loving my long-term Ultimate Self.
“His love letter forever silences any doubts: “His secret purpose framed from the very beginning [is] to bring us to our full glory” (1 Corinthians 2:7 NEB).
He means to rename us—to return us to our true names, our truest selves. He means to heal our soul holes.
From the very beginning, that Eden beginning, that has always been and always is, to this day, God’s secret purpose in everything— our return to our full glory.” ( One Thousand Gifts )
Your Father can’t ever do anything other than love our long-term Ultimate Self, the one He’s secretly working everything to bring to full glory.
He can’t do anything less than want our Ultimate Self to be it’s ultimate best.
So when you turned from the window, the phone still there in your hand, turned that bruised shoulder of yours and looked in my eyes, looked to see if you could trust me and this ultimate love that doesn’t feel even one iota like love?
I cupped your face and looked right into your pooling eyes and in that moment, more than any other moment, I felt the burning believing of it with you, I believed with you in the unbelievable impossible—
And you can find your Father’s very words rolling right there off the tip of your tongue, feel the tender grace of it right there on your lips:
Just Trust Me.
January 22, 2018
Small stuff, Big stuff, and the Power of Beautiful Belief in Marriage
Barbara Rainey views life through the lens of design, color and beauty. For 28 years her art was coaxing love, faith and the beauty of the fear of God in the hearts of her six children. Having co-founded and helped lead FamilyLife with her husband Dennis for over 40 years, including the delight of sharing the FamilyLifeToday radio platform, Barbara looks back on those years with gratitude for all she learned from Jesus as He faithfully guided, loved and taught her along the way. Her life has always been His and she adores Him more today than ever! It’s a grace to welcome Barbara to the farm’s front porch today…
In high school, I discovered watercolor painting. It was love at first sight.
I eagerly invested time and supplies to become like seasoned watercolorists whose extraordinary works of art I admired.
Though I was passionate about this medium, I soon discovered it wasn’t as easy as it looked at first.
Too much or too little water and paint that bleeds into other colors can create what artists call mud.
Coaxing purity and luminosity from paint and paper took more practice than I ever dreamed.
I saw hints of another kind of purity and transparency when I began dating my husband.
The invitation to be known and loved, to create beauty on the clean white paper of marriage, was what I’d longed for all my life. I eagerly said “I do.”
A year ago my daughter said “I do” with similar excitement.
Her gorgeous autumn wedding was preceded by a couples shower, generously planned by friends and family. Most married 5 years or less, the attending couples shared their newly acquired wisdom with Laura and Josh.
Collectively, their repeated advice was “Don’t sweat the small stuff.”
Last to share were our son, Samuel, a marriage therapist, and Stephanie, his wife of 16 years.
Samuel later told me he and Stephanie had locked eyes knowing their words would flip the other wisdom upside down, nodded their agreement, and advised in unison, “Do sweat the small stuff!”
Who was right?
This morning I walked into our kitchen to find my early-rising husband cleaning the island, his favorite landing strip for backpack, file folders, keys, and mail as he flies in the house after his day at work.
Never mind that his office is literally three steps inside the front door—the kitchen is where his wheels touch the ground.
Years ago, I made my request for a tidy island known.
After it went unanswered for far too long, I made a choice. I decided I’d rather have my husband and his messes than have a perfectly clean island. He mattered more to me than the messes he creates. (As if I never create my own. . . .)
I decided not to sweat the small stuff. “Love covers a multitude of sins,” wrote Peter the disciple (1 Peter 4:8).
Literally seconds later, I saw three empty plastic water bottles on the clean side of the island. I asked if I could help and throw them away. He said no.
Instantly my heart became judgmental, silently accusing, Seriously?! We have multiple Yeti mugs and too many insulated water containers already. Unbelievable.
And then I heard a prompting, “You have idiosyncrasies too.” Yes, Lord, You are right.
I decided to sweat the small stuff this time.
This small attitude of superiority in my heart, if ignored and not confessed, would become a veil between us, clouding the transparent purity of our hard-earned marital intimacy.
Dennis and I are not beginner artists anymore. Experienced, yes, but not exempt from ongoing difficulties in creating the beautiful art of our marriage.
Our union is our own unique painting of God’s image in us—the mysterious sketch of Christ and the church. This high and holy art must be nurtured daily.
And so I chose to confess my small but potentially hurtful attitude, knowing it wasn’t pleasing to the One I love most, my divine Artist. My husband never heard the brush of dark, ugly paint that almost made mud.
The small stuff ruins daily intimacy and oneness. And it adds up over time, dulling the Light of the World, Who longs to be seen in us.
For a long time I did not understand how easily His light can be hidden, nor did I understand how brightly He can shine when the dark big stuff comes uninvited to our lives.
Finally, I remembered a principle of art: The light of pure paper or white paint shines brightest when it is contrasted with the dark. Master artists use deep, dark colors next to, even touching the lightest lights.
In marriage, it means trusting the Master Artist when He executes this technique to reveal more beauty and luminosity in your marriage and in mine.
Over our forty-plus years of marriage, we have experienced more dark paint on our canvas that I ever imagined, including near-death experiences, handicaps in our children, a decade-long prodigal, financial setbacks, the death of a newborn granddaughter, and many agonies known only to God.
The big stuff, the dark swaths of deeply pigmented paint, can kill many marriages.
But the truth is that hardships and suffering often reveal transparency already dulled—oneness already compromised, the light of Christ already hidden behind layers of silt.
When the small stuff of marriage isn’t diligently attended to, then big-stuff crises provide plenty of reasons to quit an already muddy marriage.
Marriage, like watercolor painting, is much harder than we thought. Singer-songwriter Andrew Peterson penned these words about his marriage: “It was harder than we dreamed of, that’s what the promises are for.”
The promise of “I do” that I made, that my daughter made, that you made matters.
But here is the best promise of all: “Nothing is too hard for God” (Jeremiah 32:17).
God knew we’d need this promise from Him, because our promises fail. In His amazing grace He repeated this vow eight times, one for each day of the week plus an extra to make His point clear.
No marriage, no spouse, no circumstance is too hard for His redemptive resurrection power.
Our marriage has been harder than we dreamed but so worth it in the end. Because we haven’t stopped believing in each other or our Savior, we’ve beheld the beauty of God’s transformational power.
I want to shout this truth from the rooftops, to proclaim it as loudly and widely as I can: The art of marriage is worth the effort, worth the work!
Like Jesus, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, we too can find great joy and fulfillment, even happiness, in marriage if we believe in God like Jesus did.
When a spouse decides to quit, it’s a refusal to believe.
He or she is saying to God, “You aren’t powerful enough to fix my spouse and my hard circumstances.”
Quitting on wedding promises is ripping up God’s glory, throwing the mud of unbelief on His painting in you before it’s complete. It’s refusing His arm of love reaching for you!
Oh, where would we be if Jesus had given up?
Where would we be if He had quit?
The good news is He didn’t!
I’ve seen miraculous proof in thousands of marriages stained with the most egregious sins, yet resurrected by a God for whom nothing is impossible.
May you courageously, tenaciously believe in Jesus’ resurrection power for your life and marriage, in the small stuff, in the big stuff, and till death do you part.
Barbara Rainey and her husband, Dennis, are founders of FamilyLife and have spoken at Weekend to Remember conferences around the world. Dennis and Barbara have authored more than two dozen books, including the bestselling Moments Together for Intimacy and Moments Together for Couples. The Raineys have been married for more than forty years and have six children and nineteen grandchildren.
Bestselling author Barbara Rainey understands the challenges newly married couples face. In this insightful book, Letters To My Daughters: The Art of Being a Wife, she offers sage advice on the art of being a wife. Through heartfelt letters, she answers the tough questions and addresses the realities of marriage, sharing personal stories and even mistakes.
This is the gorgeous, glorious whole story that you’ve always wanted your daughters to know about marriage — what you’ve always wanted to know. I’m telling you: these pages are nothing short of a masterpiece of blazing brilliance, true beauty, and tried and true insights from one of the most respected voices who has deeply lived the words she gracefully writes.
[ Our humble thanks to Bethany House for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
January 20, 2018
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [01.20.18]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you right here:
Mary Anne Morgan in Half Moon Bay, CA
Mary Anne Morgan in Half Moon Bay, CA
Mary Anne Morgan in Half Moon Bay, CA
when I sit with this woman’s photos, the world stops & exhales
a different kind of ironing – who knew?
10 things to know if someone you love is suffering from depression
Ashraful Arefin
Ashraful Arefin
Ashraful Arefin
so this is the 3rd best moment of his life: and we really liked his first 2
from homeless to the best server in her city: and she’s telling her story
the research is in? so what does it take to live to 100 and beyond
calling all book lovers – anyone else wanna go here?
6 national parks. 1 highway
Facing a fatal illness, this couple is making their wedding a massive fundraiser —
“If you don’t want a registry and you don’t want that toaster on the top of the fridge sitting there for months before you open it up, think about the different cause areas that you are affected by, and maybe turn your registry into a donation platform.”
a thousand thank yous, Compassion International
Imagine if: everyone did this
Our friends at Wycliffe Bible Translators’ have reached out to offer us a newly released FREE (for a limited time) 7-day devotional — Called to Community.
We’re all part of God’s global community, whether it’s in your neighborhood or across the world. Be inspired by this free 7-day devotional highlighting the stories and impact of people in the Bible who embraced their cross-cultural community, even when they were in danger or enslaved!
Wycliffe Bible Translators is the largest scripture translation organization in the world, with a widespread mission network internationally and in the US. They endeavor to have begun a translation of the Bible into every language by 2025 while fostering Christian community, providing educational material and fellowship resources.
Please click here for this free 7-day devotional: and discover your purpose in God’s family. Tell a friend!
come and experience the book that shaped history
hundreds welcome her back to school after her 15 month battle with cancer just so beautiful
glory
Keep Coming Back To This:
How to Love Your Own Reflection
simply the best? friends that see no color
I think he’s onto something here: for the last 12 years? he’s been holding babies in the ICU
5th graders stepped up: because the time is always right – to do something right
Break free with the tender beauty of The Broken Way & Be The Gift … Want the gift of light breaking into all the broken places, all the places that feel kinda abandoned?
These pages are for you. It’s possible — abundant joy is always possible, especially for you.
And if you grab a copy of Be The Gift? We will immediately email you a link to a FREE gift of THE WHOLE 12 MONTH *Intentional* Acts of Givenness #BeTheGIFT Calendar to download and print from home or at your local print shop! Just let us know that you ordered Be The Gift over here.
You only get one life to love well.
Pick up Be The Gift & live the life you’ve longed to
When you feel ill-equipped for the tasks you’ve been given? Yeah, this right here.
Great is Thy Faithfulness
Jesus was the only man of perfection — and He was a man of sorrows. He perfectly understands your heartbreaking sorrow — and stands heartbroken with you in it. Sometimes God allows what He can hardly stand — to accomplish more than we understand.
“It is what it is” — isn’t the whole story.
All is not what it is — it is always more.
What seems like your story — is but a line in the whole story. You discover Jesus is really enough — when you discover Jesus is really all you have left.
And this can heal a bit of our hearts: There is a Storyteller who writes Himself into the story and makes our souls well, because He walks with us until the story is finished in His perfect time, and His perfect way, for His perfect glory — so our souls are always well.
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
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