Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 130
December 30, 2017
Because Every End of the Year Needs Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [12.30.17]
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:
Matt Trivett
Matt Trivett
Matt Trivett
kinda perfect way to exhale at the end of the year
you’ve gotta come meet him: at 89? he’s spent decades playing his ukulele for hospital patients
some great ways to give those cardboard boxes in your life a second go-around
so whatcha think? we circled ’round this one
she’s (literally) woven love into the students on her bus: “If you ride Ms. Lopez’ bus with the kids … it is like riding with a family.” #BeTheGIFT #TheBrokenWay
so you may have heard about this one? this church visited Waffle House and kinda stuns them with this…
just so good… How (Not) To Read Next Year
so we think this is one amazing idea!
police officer makes a most daring rescue of a young boy in frozen waters on Christmas day
so he’s onto something here and sharing his invention with the world:
“ask yourself what you as a person can do to help”
25 of some the best good news stories in 2017? Bring it on!
this coming year? let’s get outside
maybe one of the most creative heart-warming surprise homecomings this season? just the best
Glory: When it’s cold in Duluth, IT’S COLD! Take a look at what -20 can do!
After seeing the need, she started Operation Scarf: hats, gloves, scarves left in anonymous gift bags with a simple note to wrap needy in kindness:
“I’m Not Lost. If You’re Stuck In The Cold Please Take Me To Keep You Warm! You are loved.”
hold them close for as long as you can
How this pastor drives 1,000 miles to serve at this church? #BeTheGIFT #TheBrokenWay
tears at this one & how he’s savings lives: he wanted to be a difference-maker
what can we go do? #TheBrokenWay #BeTheGIFT
please don’t miss this one – what a story here: Upon arriving in the US in 1984 he “couldn’t speak a word of English”
now this former refugee opened his restaurant to feed the homeless on Christmas
you gotta watch: 1 whole year? in just 40 seconds
THIS right here: so he built this food pantry in his lawn for the hungry? and his town followed in a BIG way
kinda undone: a score for the beauty left behind
Post of the week from these parts here:
so who doesn’t want to do that hard thing in the New Year, do that big thing that feels like kinda an impossible thing?
Yeah, do I hear you. So, this:
How To Stop All Procrastination: Dear You Trying to Do that Hard Thing in the New Year
Simply click here for these free printables plus a whole library of free tools
love: we all need someone like this
The God I Know: He’s alive in every moment
As the year draws to a close, it will be hard to forget the difficult moments of 2017.
We’d like to help you remember some of the better ones
Break free with the tender beauty of The Broken Way & Be The Gift … (& get theeself to Target & find the Starbucks card hidden in copies of The Broken Way !)
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
so we did a lot of searching on Google in 2017: here are the top searches that shaped our year
No matter what went down last year… or will go down in the coming year: The victorious King of the ages
on repeat this week: All My Hope is in Jesus
…so in this in-between-time between Christmas & New Year’s? You are trying so hard… deep breath here and remember:
Let something steal your Joy today & you let something steal your strength.
Joy will not just happen today. Joy will not just come unbidden today. Every moment Joy must be taken. Every moment Joy must be chosen.
Every moment Joy must be RECHOSEN. Because His Joy is your OXYGEN, your strength, your brave courage. Not letting anything steal the joy today — because everything needs that kind of strength.
“The joy of the Lord is your strength” Ps 5:11.
[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.
December 29, 2017
How To Stop All Procrastination: Dear You Trying to Do that Hard Thing in the New Year
Dear Lovely You,
who doesn’t want to do that hard thing in the New Year,
who doesn’t want to get on the treadmill,
or go for a run,
or sort through the closets,
or tackle the garage, or the piles of paperwork,
or the project that’s hanging over you like a ton of bricks,
or do that big thing that feels like an impossible thing—
okay, yeah, boy, do I hear you.
It doesn’t matter a hill of sprouting beans if you’re 9 and stomping your feet or 16 and slamming doors or 40 and distracting on your phone — hard things just keep calling you because you’re meant to answer to higher and better things.
From Lore Ferguson @ Sayable, how this practice was a means to carry her through a hard year:
You’re meant to do hard and holy things because they are the next thing —- to get to the best thing.
You’re made to do hard and holy things — because there’s no other way to get to the happy and holy things.
You know how we wrote it up there on the chalkboard in the kitchen years ago, and we all memorized it? Well, it’s true, and it’s hard, but there’s a brave hope in it:
Life is Pain — and you get to choose: either the Pain of Discipline or the Pain of Disappointment.
Nothing happens without discipline. No music gets played without discipline. No games get won. No finish lines get crossed. No freedom gets tasted. And you want that.
Yeah, look, we had a kid who scored in the 99.7 percentile on the ACT, and that’s all well and good and all kinds of extraordinarily wonderful, but it’s like my Dad always said:
Brilliant doesn’t matter, if you can’t get out of bed.
Talent doesn’t mean a thing, if you let Fear be some terrorist that takes you hostage.
Potential doesn’t add up to anything, if you get addicted to perfectionism because perfectionism is slow death by self.
Listen: Fire your perfectionism and your procrastination will quit too.
Because here’s the thing:
The Presenter
You’re the Presenter.
You’ve been given a gift — and you’re the person who is trying to be present to this present moment, and do the hard work of unwrapping your gift, your talent, your vision, your God-given dreams.
Presenters want to be present to life and their calling and the joy and the work — but they know that the path is painful.
The Perfectionist Terrorist
Presenters know that the path is painful — because behind ever corner lurks The Perfectionist Terrorist. The Perfectionist Terrorist is a liar to the nth degree — he tells you that if you’d just get it perfect enough, do it right enough, be good enough —- that you’ll be liked by everyone enough.
But the truth of it is? Sometimes you have to accept that you’ll never be acceptable enough for some people. And whether you accept that as their issue or yours — is up to you.
The Perfectionist Terrorist claims to have High Road Motives, claims to want to make everything turn out perfect, but his policing pressures you and poisons you and prosecutes you, until it all paralyzes you.
The Procrastinator
So The Procrastinator tries to protect you, who is really The Presenter, from The Perfectionist Terrorist.
The Procrastinator tries to intervenes with distractions, temptations, and interruptions — or just pushes you to pull out and give up.
Honestly, The Procrastinator is just trying to protect you from the bullying of The Perfectionist Terrorist.
The Perfect Love
So Who’s missing in this struggling, messy triangulation of The Presenter, the Perfectionist Terrorist, and The Procastinator? The compassionate Words of Perfect Love.
You just need Perfect Love.
There is His Perfect Love who kicks all your fear to the curb.
There is His Perfect Love who accepts you 100% before you perform even 1%, there is His Perfect Love who speaks Protection and Peace and promises the Power of the Holy Spirit — so you can fire perfectionism and procrastination will quit too.
You fire your perfectionism every time you let His Perfect Love ignite you.
When you rest in Perfect Love — discipline comes easily because you’re being a disciple of Perfect Love — you’re following Perfect Love.
And Perfect Love says you don’t to have show anyone up — you just have to show up.
Perfect Love says you don’t have to impress anyone — you just have to press on.
Perfect Love says when you mess up — He’ll pick you up… and when you can’t carry on, He’ll carry you.
So dear Lovely Kid, Trying Friend, Tired You, who doesn’t want to practice that thing,
clean up that thing,
study for that thing,
sweat on that thing,
or do that big thing that feels like an impossible thing —
You can bravely do the next thing, because God’s got this thing.
Perfect Love terminates The Perfectionist Terrorist — which eliminates the Procrastinator — which liberates you, the Presenter…. to unwrap the gift of right now, your one life.
There’s snow down in the woods, all down the road this morning, the ice clinging at the edge of things —- and you can feel it if you turn your face toward the sun —-
all those hard things melting in the heat of a greater and perfect warmth.
This is The Year
to maybe purpose to —
* Embrace Imperfect.This is The Year to be held by the arms of grace, not to any standard of perfection.
* Engage Silence — not screens.This is The Year to engage silences regularly & retreat to the “back side of the wilderness.” Because when you do not need to be seen or heard — you can see and hear in desperately needed ways.
You find your true self when you look for your reflection in the eyes of souls — and not the glare of screens.
* Be still.Be small. Be Loved. Beloved.
Let yourself be loved anyway He wants to love you. God is always, always good & you are always, always, always. loved.
Be still …. & know.
* Believe in Him for impossABLE things.Believe in Him who makes the ridiculously impossible into the miraculously possible,
the unbelievable into the you-better-believe-it,
the never into the now.
Be the brave people who pray it bold in the space between the end of one year & the beginning of a New Year: BUT GOD.“Ours is the God who whispers: “With Me nothing, Nothing, NOTHING is impossible.”
Believe in Him for impossABLE things — because as long Emmanuel, God is with us & we are with God: nothing is impossible.Believe in Him for improbable, implausible, impractical, impossABLE things.
* Break idols — or they will break you.Break free, break out of ruts, break idols — or they will break you.
* Daily 3 for 10:These 3 for 10 everyday: Word In. Work Out. Work Plan.
It’s not what you do every now and then, but what you do everyday, that changes everything.Word in: Get into God’s Word for 10 minutes and let it get into you.
Work out: Work out. Even 10 minutes of moving is better than nothing.
Work plan: Write out the Work Plan — even just 3 things. And then just start: 10 minutes working the plan.
* Do Less. Pray More.More than your doing hands, God wants your bended knees.
* Let Go of the Outcome.Come completely committed to the process — and completely let go of the outcome.
In the middle of things seemingly not working out for us —- God is working out something in us.
* Learn Endurance.Do Hard & Holy Things. Break the idols of ease — or they will break you.
* Live Given.Because #LoveGives.
Because God so loved He gave.
Because Living is Giving.
* GiveIt
Forward
Today — 3 times a day.
Give It Forward Today & be the #GIFT — give an act of grace forward, 3 times a day. Be a #GIFTivst
It’s the Giftivists are the activists who believe that radical acts of generosity counter radical acts of inhumanity. #GIFTivst
* Grow Brave. Grow in GraceGrow Brave. Grow in Grace. Which is basically the same thing.
I kinda scratched the whole thing down — then slipped the SOULutions into a frame. Figuring that unless you can daily see your Life SOULutions…. the year will end up to be more of a dissolution of your life.Maybe that’s one of the keys I’d never turned: Framable SOULutions — to frame up a new year, a new you.
Simply click here for these free printables plus a whole library of free tools:
Lore Ferguson @ Sayable: how this practice from here was a means to carry her through a hard year
December 23, 2017
The Christmas Edition: Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Soul: [12.23.17]
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 Seliverstoff
Andy Seliverstoff
Andy Seliverstoff
can hardly get over the joy right here
when just one person believes in you
just kinda spot on: The quiet hero of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ (Hint: It’s NOT Jimmy Stewart)
paper-free gift wrap? bring it on!
come away for a bit?
ready to create? anyone else in?!? 13 YouTube Channels to Teach You How to Paint for Free
kinda just the most beautiful sites you may see today?
music performances in hospitals? YES —
it’s striking a chord: as researchers tap the brain to find how music heals
they needed to know: no one is ever, ever, EVER forgotten
JPC van Heijst
JPC van Heijst
JPC van Heijst
we thought these were really something: pilots have some of the most stunning views of our world
a wondrous visit to a winter wonderland
some good, good words here: For the Mom Just Hanging On this Holiday Season
bring on the dancing lights!
“All giving and getting, especially at Christmastime, becomes a reminder of the death of Jesus”
so we circled ’round this one
The Bolster Family
they left their jobs to help cancer patients in need #BeTheGIFT #TheBrokenWay
the very, very long wait: for those gifts you just can’t wait to give
after his vulnerable note & $3,000 tip at a local restaurant was discovered? he commented:
“I think the reason (people like this story) is not because of the money, but because of this shared connection.
Wouldn’t it be great if we all fed each other’s souls in a positive way?” #BeTheGIFT #TheBrokenWay
glory
kinda astonishing: this anonymous woman? wandered the aisles of a grocery store, looking for random people and insisting upon paying for their groceries. #BeTheGIFT #TheBrokenWay
and maybe one of the best gifts is?
Hard family stuff at Christmas? Yep, right there with you.
Kinda heartbroken over some unspoken broken? Yeah, that. Where in the world is a bit of the real Christmas Spirit?
Yep. How a Charlie Brown Christmas like this is just for us
I loved this one so much… kinda the best: how can we go do this somewhere in our world today?
Post of the Week from these parts here:
…maybe wise men and women do more than still seek Him — they seek to be like Him:
The Nativity That All of Us Are Actually In: A Modern-Day Nativity
…the world is desperate for unconditional, defiant, wild love #BeThatLove
is your heart bursting yet? ^^ because yeah, we all need some friends
This is an heirloom, a Christmas tradition, a wonder for the child in all of us!
Pick up the NEW Pop-Up Advent book, “The Wonder of The Greatest Gift” — with your own 14″ pop-up tree, 25 Bible-inspired ornaments hiding behind 25 Advent doors, a new family read-aloud of 25 Advent devotionals, and a star for the top of the tree!
just — so beautiful
now this is really something: 88 piano keys are controlling these 500,000 Christmas lights
Break free with the tender beauty of The Broken Way & Be The Gift this Advent… (& get theeself to Target & find the Starbucks card hidden in copies of The Broken Way !)
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
never a Christmas without this one… absolutely exquisite
Undone: however long the path may seem… let’s do this for Christmas
choked. right. up. — because we all need to be loved: pass on it
a Christmas never to ever forget — when it’s shared with a friend
The Little Drummer Boy
…when it feels like life is a setup to let you down, we will whisper it to ourselves like a resuscitation:
Hope is not the belief that things will turn out well,
but the belief God is working through all things, no matter how things turn out.
You see: Hope is a defiant reliance on God keeping His Word.
The winds & the days may rage & the blaze of things may leave you feeling charred, but now is the time for faith to rise like a phoenix from ashes & we will:
Hold on to His Word for all you’re worth — because His Word is what proves God is trustworthy.
And when you know God is trustworthy — you know today & tomorrow is worthy of Hope.
When your bones know God ultimately makes good on His promises — that’s good enough reason for hope to burn in your bones.
As long as you still are, all is not lost. Being is hope, and hope is presence, and this present moment is a gift pulsing with hope.
And Advent is this baptism of eyes — like a clear washing of eyes, so that we can get to see the wonder & joy & hope again.
[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.
December 21, 2017
How Having a Little Charlie Brown Christmas Gets You into the Best Christmas Spirit of All (About Fears & Heartbreak & Hard Families At Christmas)
There’s a bunch of kids here, sloshy with hot-chocolate, who just keep playing a Charlie Brown Christmas.
And yeah, I’m not ashamed — so what if it took me a few takes? Because when I finally saw it, I was entirely taken:
Only when Linus retells the Christmas story and repeats what the angel announces, “Fear not!” — does Linus drop his blanket for the first time.
And I choke it back and swig down more of my frothy, chocolatey mug.
The first message of Christmas is “fear not.”
The birth of Jesus — banishes our fears.
Maybe the Christmas Spirit is about letting go of our security blankets.
Maybe the Christmas Spirit is letting go of the security of masquerading perfection — to be secure in a perfect Messiah who saves us from our mess.
Because the Spirit of Christmas releases us from the fear of scarcity — and gives us the security of abundance.
Moves us from the fear of not enough grace, not enough means, not enough us —- to the security of more than enough to give — because we’ve been given Him.
“We talk glibly of the “Christmas spirit,” rarely meaning more by this than sentimental jollity on a family basis. But . . . [the Christmas Spirit] ought to mean the reproducing in human lives of the temper of Him who for our sakes became poor at the first Christmas,” writes the fine man of the Old Book, J.I. Packer.
“It is our shame and disgrace today that so many Christians… go through this world in the spirit of the priest and the Levite in our Lord’s parable, seeing human needs all around them, but averting their eyes and passing by on the other side. That is not the Christmas spirit…
For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor––spending and being spent––to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others — and not just their own friends —– in whatever way there seems need.” J.I. Packer
The Christmas Spirit is about having the same spirit of Christ.
‘For God so loved the world — He gave.’ Love lives given.
The Christmas Spirit isn’t about getting gifts — as much getting to be the Gift.
Be the Gift of grace, of peace, of hope, of reconciliation.
Maybe the Christmas Spirit is letting go of the security of being right, the security of being distant, the security of holding certain people at arm’s length.
Once, on a Christmas evening, under this comforting blanket of stars poking through the dark, I threw open the door of our beat-up Ford and I took that first step toward a door that had been long shut, and it felt terrifying and terribly freeing, and maybe we only win our battles when we lose our need to be right.
I hadn’t been there in years. I have no idea how long it had been since her and I had talked with any kind of warmth.
The Christmas Spirit is about having the same spirit of Christ. Love lives given.
Every slow step toward her door, the snow crunched, like bitterly cold things that have long stung, could be crushed, giving way to amazing grace.
I’m telling you —
Sometimes you want to turn your back when a relationship gets hard — but you want to face freedom more.
Sometimes you want to continue your cold war — but you want to be part of peace on earth and in your heart more.
Sometimes every step toward peace with someone — is a journey of a million heartaches within you.
But if He can take a journey of a million light years to meet us in the stench of our manger mires — to make peace with us —-we can take one step after another and make peace across the aisle, the street, the table.
The spirit of Christmas —- is about not having a spirit of fear.
I knocked kinda feeble on her door, willing the other hand holding a gift for her not to stiffen so tense, and she opened that door and sometimes when we break into a smile, some of the pain breaks, and we breathe.
Angels still speak — and to us:
Do not fear — even here.
You can let go of the security blankets — He who comes, makes you secure.
I reached out my arms — and she reached out hers.
And it can happen: That Big Dipper tips over all of us and pours out the Christmas Spirit, and our spirits can come home for Christmas.
She handed me a plate of her pecan pie and we talked by the tree and it wasn’t Hallmark perfect but it was perfectly honest and imperfectly real and all tasted like a slice of heaven to me and I could feel it:
Maybe the Christmas Spirit is letting go — to let the Spirit move.
Maybe the Christmas Spirit — is about letting the Spirit heal you.
Maybe the Christmas Spirit —- means: Reconcile for Christmas.
I exhaled when I wrote it on a piece of paper here, taped it up over the little Christmas tree right there at the sink, and it felt like a kind of healing:
Let go of Plan A — Go with “Plan Be.”
Fear not! Even now, it’s okay to let go of the security blankets — and go with “Plan Be.”
Plan Be — lets other people just be.
When you let other people just be — and don’t try change even one of their heart beats — you become a safe place for your people. And your people can safely come home for Christmas. The Spirit of Christmas is about letting His Spirit do the changing — in all the people and us.
Simply asking how someone’s heart really is — is the gift every heart really wants most.
Plan Be — chooses to simply Be Present.
Be present to the moment as it is, to people as they are, to God with us now, Emmanuel.
Be present — and fear not. This is the gift you can have any moment.
Be present to broken hearts — because this is how you give your heart to Jesus.
The kids and I wrap up presents for those who live across fences, across aisles, across the world. The Christmas spirit only asks you to Be Present. Give yourself the gift of God.
Steam rises from hot chocolate mugs before the fire.
Live Plan Be: Be Present — Be the Gift.
We could all come home to each other for Christmas.
Heard the weather forecast this morning say they’re calling for a white Christmas.
Let it be, let it be, let it be.
What more could any of us want than a little Charlie Brown Christmas of letting go?
To let God come.
Related: 1. How To Live Plan Be: Be Present — Be the Gift
2. How to have a little Charlie Brown Christmas & kinda The Greatest Christmas of All
December 19, 2017
The Nativity That All of Us Are Actually In: A Modern-Day Nativity
About that time, leaders of all sorts and stripes, for a myriad of well-debated reasons, ordered cuts to budgets and the raising of fences throughout the Western World.
This wasn’t the first census to forge a consensus on how not to somehow, someway, make room for screaming children and begging grandparents caught in the conflict of Syria, the conflicts of the whole bloody and warring world.
Everyone in the killing fields had to flee their ancestral hometowns to have any chance to be accounted for as simply one human being who wants a chance to keep breathing, keep hoping, to keep simply being.
Daniel Etter/The New York Times
Esther Havens
keziahereandthereSo there were Josephs and Jacks and Johns who fled to any House of Bread they could find, refugees who had been vetted by at least 15 different government agencies like the State Department, Department of Homeland Security, Terrorist Screening Database, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Interpol, Automated Biometric Identification System and they took with them the women they had married, some who were swollen with pregnancy and starving for hope.
But there was no room for them in the inn.
Yet —
Was there really no room for them under skies that don’t drop bombs, no room for them in air that doesn’t scream with bullets, no room for them, made in the image of God, on the whole of this planet made by God, to not be hunted human beings just seeking refuge with the people of God?
While they were running and banging on doors and hanging on to unraveling threads of hope, the time came for a baby to be born; and a terrified and bone-weary woman Mary gave birth to her first child, a Son.
She wrapped Him in a torn coat, and laid Him in a manger, an animal feed trough, and she prayed that there was somewhere safe for her family to be seen as human —- that violence wouldn’t eat them alive.
That night there were Christ-followers, part of the flock of God, staying in countries on the edges of the killing fields, who were praying for God to move right into their neighborhood.
Christ-followers who knew that the chance that you would be killed by a refugee terrorist was one in 3.6 billion a year — that’s a 0.000000028 percent chance.
Christ-followers who know that if the people of God cannot be a place for the 28 million are child refugees facing evil violence, then the people of God cannot say they are with God.
Out under the same stars that fleeing and oppressed slept under, the Christ-followers heard the word of God from the prophet Isaiah:
“Give the refugees…
sanctuary with you.
Be a safe place for those on the run
from the killing fields.”
Show your… hospitality.
…The desert’s swarming with refugees
escaping the horrors of war.” Isaiah 16:3, Isaiah 21:13-15
Suddenly, God’s Spirit moved among them and God’s glory blazed around them and God’s purposes work mightily through them.
And the Spirit of God moved in their spirit:
“Don’t be afraid. You aren’t called to be a people of fear, but a people of faith.
You aren’t called to be afraid of some future unknown— because you abide in a known God who holds all the future.
You aren’t called to be fear driven — but to step out in faith. Christ’s love crushes all fear everywhere.
And the Spirit of God’s here to announce a great and joyful event that is meant for everybody, worldwide — yes, for the people who look differently, dress differently, believe differently, a message meant especially for everybody, worldwide, and all the better if you invite other people into your own neighborhoods to experience it:
A Savior has been born in David’s town, a Saviour has been into this world, into the hearts of His people, a Savior who is Messiah and Master and a Messenger of Welcome to all Peoples.
This is what you’re to look for: an innocent baby wrapped in a hope, and a fleeing mother wrapped in trauma and a desperate father wrapped in exhaustion, and you’re to look for the Other who doesn’t seem at all like you but is more like you than know, because:
When you look into the face of the Other, you see a reflection of the face of God. And we become the face of Hope.
When we love the other — we discover that there is no other.
What you’re to look for is the image of God in everyone —
and you’re never to stop looking like the One lying in a manger who left everything that was comfortable to offer others hope of comfort.”
Esther Havens
Esther Havens
keziahereandthere Yui Mok/PA
At once the angel was joined by a huge angelic choir singing God’s praises:
Glory to God in the heavenly heights,
Peace to all men and women on earth who please Him — Peace on earth to all who please Him by living like Him – who live with arms stretched wide open in surrendered, cruciform love like Him.
As the cranked Christmas carols crooned, as the angel choir tried to shake earth with a bit of heaven, the flock of God, out beyond the killing fields, rose and found the hoping babe, the fleeing mother, the desperate father, and saw the Son of God in them all, and seeing is believing: seeing the image of God in others is part of believing in God.
And as Christ-followers genuinely came Home to Him for Christmas and became home this Christmas to hurting people He created, the babe in the manger testifies: Hope is found in the smallest of miracles. Be the smallest yes, the smallest open door, the smallest reaching out —and believe in explosion of hope miracles.
And all who saw those following God like this, were moved to follow a God whose people said like Job: “No stranger had to spend the night in the street, for my door was always open to the traveler.” (Job 31:32)
They were moved to follow a God whose people knew that when they reached out to the marginalized and the oppressed, they were reaching out to Jesus: “For I was hungry and you gave Me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave Me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited Me in, I needed clothes and you clothed Me, I was sick and you looked after Me, I was in prison and you came to visit Me. “(Matthew 25:35-36)
They were moved to follow a God whose people lived like God: “He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those we are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 10:18-19)
Like Mary, the people of God kept all these things close to their hearts, holding them as part of their deepest truth because they knew it’s relatively easy to pontificate on how to live the gospel — and it’s infinitely harder and more necessary to incarnate the gospel in your life.
And wise men and women do more than still seek Him — they seek to be like Him.
The wise men and women still bring their life as their surrendered gift to God and know: Our theology is often best expressed in our hospitality.
The wise men and women know that in the past, the people of God may have been defined by what they are against — but, in this defining moment in history, the people of God get to be clearly defined by what God is for — and God has always been for the stranger, the sojourner, and for being the welcoming arms of the Savior.
Esther Havens
Esther Havens
Esther Havens
The wise men and women still really following Christ never forget that the Christ-child’s earliest experience on earth was as a refugee — and He is the Saviour who rescues all us of us who have been refugees, far from home and God.
Jesus whose father obeyed the angel of the Lord who appeared to him in a dream, saying “Get up and take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”
Because Herod, like a thousand leaders and Presidents and Prime Ministers after him, had commanded the killings that left babies dead in the streets — and even now, this day, in the cities near us and in the true people of God, Jeremiah’s sermon is fulfilled:
A sound was heard in Ramah, and around the world, in the heart of every child of God,
weeping and much lament for the injustices that are in us,
Rachel weeping for her children, the people of God weeping for the millions of displaced children, every child of God refusing to do nothing because:
How can we not move heaven and earth to let those fleeing violence in, when Heaven moved and came to earth to let us in?
Sometimes the way you persist in the ways of God, is to resist the ways of Herod.
Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters
Esther Havens
Esther Havens
Esther Havens
Esther Havens
And the Word became human, became real to us and real in the World, and He moved into our neighbourhoods in a thousand ways and Jesus, who once was a child refugee, comes to us in the disguise of the desperate refugee —what if to deny Him is to deny our identity as Christ-followers?
The one who is the true Light arrived to shine on everyone coming into the world —
and across a dark world a thousand, thousand faces light with Hope.
Because there is a light that shines in the darkness, in us, and never can the darkness anywhere ever extinguish it.
And all around a world of nativities, candles light and hearts burn within us —
and injustices go up in smoke and the light of Christ flames on like a faith that can never be put out.
Related:
Today, right now, there are more displaced people than any time since WWI — & there are 1500 refugees who are rigorously vetted and paper ready to be matched with sponsors and … & today I was interviewed on 100 Huntley Street, inviting Christ-followers this Christmas to become a refugee sponsor. Watch the video here.
If you live in Canada and want to be part of sponsoring a refugee family: MCC Refugee Response
If you live in the US and want to help refugees: World Relief: The Global Refugee Crisis is Complex, but Making a Difference is Simple
Resource to support refugees (& our favorite candles here on the farm): SEEK the Peace candles
This is our story: You’re As Free as You Break Others Free
The Story of our Welcoming Our Newcomer Refugee Family: How We Could Be The Kind of People the World Needs
The organization I co-founded: We Welcome Refugees: Stand Now with Refugees & be a star shattering the dark
December 18, 2017
The Very Best Plan When You Are Running Out Of Time to Be Ready For Christmas
It’s on the day I forget to buy toilet cleaner in town.
The day the man at the gas pumps says it’s just around the corner, what they’re forecasting will be a green Christmas and he looks up and asks, “So… you ready for Christmas?”
And I choose to smile — okay, so it was a ridiculously thin smile — but hey, better than a thin smile instead of hyperventilating, to keep breathing and believing, and that’s the day I drive home past the cows and the stone houses and hear it playing quiet in the background on the pickup truck’s radio and it’s a bit ironic that I have to turn it up to hear the words:
No ear may hear His coming —
But, in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still
The dear Christ enters in.
No ear may hear His coming.
Because there won’t be trumpet blasts and a parade and fanfare, but a feed trough, a stinking manger bed, and a dark night.
Christmas proves it: Man may choose the path of least resistance — but God always chooses the paths of least likelihood.
I hang up coats dropped at the back door.
Fill the sink with hot water, soap suds and a begin a mountain of dirty pots.
Where meek souls will receive Him still, The dear Christ enters in.
It’s the meek, the humble, who will receive Him still — the ones laid low, the humble ones close to the earth, close to the humus, the ones bent down. God didn’t come with any buzz — He simply comes for the broken and unlovely.
Enter this mess, Christ — enter. in.
Did the man at the gas pumps see it my eyes — how I didn’t know if my heart was ready for Christmas? Does God see?
Preparing for the holidays is primarily a preparing of the heart. And the way to receive Christmas isn’t to wrap anything up — but to unwrap your heart.
You don’t have to work for the coming of the Lord — you don’t have to work for Christmas.
You don’t have to earn Christmas, you don’t have to perform Christmas, you don’t have to make Christmas. You can rest in Christ alone who makes Christmas.*
You can rest with Christ — because He will prepare your heart from the coming of the Lord.
“This is the true preparedness of heart for coming to Christ: the preparedness of coming to Him just as you are.” ~Charles Spurgeon
Exhale. Exhale and make space for this.
The water in the sink grows cool. Advent could light a lukewarm heart. Burn up everything that wraps it tight…
The Christmas tree’s been lit for weeks, a beacon, a preparing, an anticipation.
Why is it easier to make Christmas cookies than to make our hearts ready for Christ?
Is getting ready for Christmas as simple and difficult as simply sitting stilled before the cradle of Christ?
The miracle of Christmas is that you get more than proof of God’s existence — you get the experience of God’s presence.
God gives God. He withholds no good thing from you. Christ is all your good and He is all yours, and this is always your Christmas miracle.*
It’s there over the dinner table, there on the chalkboard as a prayer request: A friend whose mother’s pancreatic cancer is untreatable.
A few weeks ago, a childhood playmate writes me a note to ask me not to write her anymore.
A mother I love watches her son self-destruct and I can taste the grief in my mouth and it’s all I can taste everywhere, salty and stinging.
Turning the calendar page to December doesn’t turn life into this dance of the sugarplum fairies.
Christ shied from the sanitized — He chose the dung heaps and entered in at our stinking places. Thank God. I need a God like that. The light of the Christmas tree, it’s reflecting in the glass of the fireplace.
I came in unexpected ways the first time and I will come again in the hour you think not, so trim your wick, you there in the impossible dark, and light an unexpected flame regardless, and be ready with impossible hope — for I am coming again.
Christ doesn’t reveal the outcome of what we face, but He reveals to us His Face. This is the gift of Christmas that flickers in the pitch black.
And yet —
Love came down and “He came to His own people, and His own people did not receive Him.” (John 1:11)
Love came down — and His own people did not recognize Him.
Love came down — and His own people did not want what He offered.
The Messiah came down and He wasn’t received as the Messiah — and Love comes down down and who receives all the moments as His love?
I’ve fumed about too many of the moments of dropped coats, strewn boots, abandoned CDs. Writhed away from the moments that make my throat burn, everything race inside. There’s things, prayer requests, on that chalkboard that I’m wild to erase. There’s things in me that I am desperate to erase.
How in the world am I receiving Christ this Advent?
Advent means that we meet whatever comes to us — with this brazen belief that it is Love that Comes Down.
Love comes down to His own people — and His own people receive the unexpected and unlikely as His love.
The infant is infinite God, the Babe is bondage-breaker, the creche holds the Cosmos Creator, and the unlikely can be a means of the love of God.
We may not know the outcome but we believe that in Him we overcome — because Love comes down.
Is that how we get ready for Christmas? By readying the heart to receive the gift of every moment — no matter what the moment unexpectedly holds — as a gift of His love?
And the good things in life are not so much health, but holiness; not so much riches in this world, but relationship with God; not so much our plans, but His presence — and He withholds no good thing from us because the greatest things aren’t ever things.*
No matter the barrenness you feel, you can always have as much Jesus as you want.
Maybe I should have said that to the man at the gas pumps?
We’re ready for Christmas, not when we have all the gifts — but when we’re ready to give all of ourselves to Christ.
At the end of the day, the carols hardly play, and I stand in our messy lives and I hear them.
I light the candles at the hearth.
And I can feel how it comes.
The warmth and the flame and this slow unwrapping of everything bound …
* excerpted from The Greatest Gift
Related: Everything to make you breathe easy & have the best, most memorable traditions for The Greatest Christmas
Resources:
The Photography Gift Book from the farm — that’s giving deep joy & makes everything into a gift
December 16, 2017
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [12.16.17]
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 & your people right here:
Dirk Dallas via www.fromwhereidrone.com/gallery
Dirk Dallas via www.fromwhereidrone.com/gallery
Dirk Dallas via www.fromwhereidrone.com/gallery
take it all in? the most breathtaking views you may see all weekend?
this one will tug at your heart: a special gift of love right here – for a really special friend
because sometimes? yeah, we all need to be rescued...
how she ran to offer help? serving at the top of her game
whadya think? NASA’s new tire design?
Iris Scott
Iris Scott
Iris Scott
because creativity is possible for all of us in unlikely ways: these stunning oil paintings? all created with her fingers
sit down — can you believe this?!? a story for every one of us right here #betheGIFT #TheBrokenWay
just really beautiful: this former St. Jude’s patient grows up to give back to, and get engaged at the hospital that saved her
glory, glory, glory
thank you for this, Jon Bloom: We Do Not Know What God is Doing
“The Lord has shown me that my value and my identity comes in Him and in Him alone. That’s it. Not in my materials, not in other people, not in what other people think of me – truly in Him alone.“
@estherhavens for @quarkexpeditions in Antarctica
@estherhavens for @quarkexpeditions in Antarctica
@estherhavens for @quarkexpeditions in Antarctica
kinda undone: they say it best
YES: just tears at what this school crossing guard is doing for her students #BeTheGIFT #TheBrokenWay
“…he deserved to be loved with no fear attached…”
…yeah, sure, holidays can feel more like warring days and peace on earth can be sung on the street corners right now, but I’m thinking most of us would be mighty happy right now with this:
We All Want it: This Is What Finding Some Real Peace REALLY Means
(Because it’s Not Escaping To Somewhere Else & We All NEED it Right Where We Are)
a girl and I here watched this a few times. Really – this is just kinda the best. #ChristmasTogether
Post of the week from these parts here
I kinda finally found my voice — maybe we all kinda are? #MeTOO
Dear Predators Who Don’t Know (Or Maybe Do) That They are Predators:
(And How to Not Raise Another Generation of Predators)
I want to be different – I want to be changed
This is an heirloom, a Christmas tradition, a wonder for the child in all of us!
Pick up the NEW Pop-Up Advent book, “The Wonder of The Greatest Gift” — with your own 14″ pop-up tree, 25 Bible-inspired ornaments hiding behind 25 Advent doors, a new family read-aloud of 25 Advent devotionals, and a star for the top of the tree!
yes, yes, yes: Praise God — from Whom all blessings flow…
Break free with the tender beauty of The Broken Way & Be The Gift this Advent… & get theeself to Target!
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
(& check out your local Target’s Best Books of 2017 for a copy of The Broken Way!)
Somehow, our little book together, The Broken Way ended up named to Target’s list of the best books of 2017 (!!!)
I might not be able to get there today — but YOU can, you can go see our brave book in Target and be a safe place for your Ann-girl’s heart on all those pages … so how about we make this fun? Let’s have… a GIVEAWAY.
1. Head to the Target nearest you — and grab a copy of The Broken Way… (or two!?)
2. Snap a snazzy selfie with the book, and post it on social media with the hashtag #TheBrokenWayinTarget so we can find you — and you’ll be entered into a giveaway to win one of TEN (10!) of these GORGEOUS fairtrade, handmade in Uganda, Sseko Leather Bucket Bags…. because, you know, #TheBrokenWay is all about buckets and having an empty bucket list…a life lived poured out and given and finding itself the most abundantly fufilled.
So — ready to DO this?
Let’s kick off the holidays just a little bit early, starting in three… two… one… GO! I can’t wait to see your smiling face at Target with our book, can’t wait to see all of us! (Can’t wait to get one of these 10 leather bags into your beautiful hands!)
You all help make me brave — & we all get to be broke & brave & beautiful together.
this video everyone is talking about? Truth from a recently injured quarterback…wow
a powerful, powerful story of forgiveness: please don’t miss this one:
“I didn’t write this story, I didn’t start the story. But I can write the ending through forgiveness.”
A winter waterfall lullaby. I sorta can’t stop watching this. It’s like a soul exhale. Filmed by Levi Voskamp, filmed during our walk in the woods. Just: do nothing at all for a few sceonds but watch & let Peace really meet you & make it well with your soul
Kinda choked up — that we could all kinda love each other like this, this Christmas — because it’s all about loving “the other” — no, I’m not crying, you are!
Is someone chopping onions, or what? That we get to be this to each other.
Man. How do we get to be this to each other. Seriously. Isn’t us all being the gift to each other, kinda the greatest gift of all?
Yep. Just this. For all of us, right now.
…stay with it — stay with doing hard & holy things, stay with believing Him for ImpossABLE things, stay with brazen Hope, just stay with Him through it all in this season you are in.
Where your hopes haven’t happened yet? The Spirit of God hovers now. Where it’s dark & it’s deep? Your Divine Helper hovers close. Where it’s formless, it’s not hopeless, because you have a Father who hovers near, His love spreads over you like wings.
Let the weary world rise with the thrill of the unwavering knowing: When we’re tempted to fill with despair, Hope whispers that God will fulfill His promises. God’s making a way, because He is The Way.
[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.
December 14, 2017
We All Want it: This Is What Finding Some Real Peace REALLY Means (Because it’s Not Escaping To Somewhere Else & We All NEED it Right Where We Are)
I think of that later, how his hands look like they are worn with peace, the way he’s won a good life by forging peace no matter the heat of things.
His hand had reached for mine in the woods.
When the world grows warring loud, a walk in the woods calls the weary away.
Maybe all we all want for Christmas is some heart-lifting peace.
Snow falls like manna through cedars. The woods looks like Narnia and yes, it’s winter, but not always winter only: Christmas is coming. The second week of Advent settles in. The Peace candle’s been lit.
Because, yeah, sure, peace on earth can be sung on the street corners right now, but most of us would be mighty happy with even a blink or two of peace just on the internet?
Or maybe just some peace in the kitchen with those well-meaning human beings who are actually tied and knotted forever to us by blood lines or covenant promises but are kinda struggling to navigate their way through a tilted and spinning world without side-swiping an innocent bystander or two.
Holidays can feel more like warring days.
They say that: Peace is trusting that God won’t let things fall to pieces. The opposite of peacefulness is anxiousness. And the word in Greek for anxiety is merimna —- which means pieces.
Anxiety is a function of divided attention. When we divide our attention, we make ourselves anxious.
Our lives fall to pieces when we give anxiety the power to shatter our peace.
Inner peacefulness requires single-mindedness.
Centre on Christ.
Peace isn’t matter of circumstances — it is a matter of focus.
Singleminded centering on Christ gives a singular peace.
When we make space in the PACE of things — we find PEACE. They say that.
Make SPACE in your Pace to find PEACE.
I say that to myself, again and again, crunching through the hushed snow.
They say that too: The way to weather life every day is to get out into the weather every day. A half hour walk in nature can change the nature of all the other hours. Apparently doctors and the Healer Himself prescribe creation to recreate broken places.
We walk in the woods for hours. We’re a broken, limping people, and there is light in the trees.
Peace can be a startlingly ugly thing.
Peace is biting your tongue hard, because when you have to choose between winning and being kind, you choose kind. Because kind is always winning.
Peace is made when you give people a piece of your heart instead of a piece of your mind.
We are all the walking blind if we live an eye for an eye. These could be the holidays that are holy days because we do it a different way.
Peacemaking is about making yourself into a screen door whenever someone difficult walks through your door — so no harmful words can slam into your heart, but everything hurtful sails right on through.
Keeping the peace doesn’t mean you keep quiet, it means you quietly tell the truth with a grace that brings peace.
Keeping the peace means you keep good boundaries.
And keeping the peace doesn’t mean repressing your needs but pressing into the need to be like Him.
This flips the entire peace paradigm and process:
Peace isn’t a place, Peace is a Person. Peace is not a Place you escape to out of your every day life, but a Person you walk with every day.
And that person is Christ and the Christ-life always looks cruciform.
The Peace Makers are always the ones who make their lives look cruciform — cross-shaped.
Peace Makers know it: The only way to reach the life you want, you have to keep reaching out. That the answer to a whole host of problems in us, is to keep reaching out.
The cruciform life is as profound as living a life that’s about keep reaching out.
The best way forward is never outrage but outreach.
Peace only happens where we wage peace: love bomb when it’s least expected, shock and awe with amazing grace, intentionally strategize with acts of kindness. The world changes when we aren’t just peace keepers but peace makers.
Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone — means you can’t do it all but you can do all that you can do.
Finding some peace is more than closing the bathroom door and drawing a bubble bath or jetting off to some beachside resort for a week of sun therapy. Finding some peace is about living a life you don’t need to run from, but living a life you want to run into.
If you find yourself having to regularly run away from your life to get some peace — it’s because you are disconnected from the actual Person of Peace who meets our embattled places with peace, and shows us the way to embody peace in all of our battles.
Finding some peace means you stop being the victim in your life and let the hard and holy ways of Christ give you victory over the hard things in your own life.
(VIDEO ABOVE ^ by Levi Voskamp, filmed during our walk in the woods: do nothing at all for a few sceonds but watch & let Peace really meet you & make it well with your soul)
Peace means making a life that doesn’t look good on Instagram but looks good before God. Real peace is about giving up a life that merely looks good — for a life that actually is good.
You win real peace when give up winning every battle — so you win the war that matters.
Peace often means —
There is no peace unless you give up pieces of yourself to gain more of the life you really want. Exhale and let go.
Peace happens when everything & everyone who seems against you — brings out the best in you.
Brings out Christ in you, because He is the best in you, and He transforms you cruciform and Love lives given.
Peace is not the absence of problems, but the presence of God.
Every step through the snow, I think of those ten steps toward the shalom life:
Label less, Love more
Pace less, Pray more
Worry less, Worship more
Consume less, Create more
Complain less, Care more
Grip less, Give more
Snap less, Smile more
Harp less, Hear more
Rebuff less, Reach more
Fear never, Forward always.
Every step forward through the woods, all this stays close and we stay close to the water, to the stream’s moving waters, making a way through the snow. The best way forward is never outrage but outreach.
It’s strange how that is: Everyone wants world peace, but who does what’s needed for peace in their own world? Under their own roof? In their own heart?
Exhale. Reach out.
The snow falls soundlessly in the woods like it’s falling on listening ears.
All through the woods, snow falls like it’s making a new world, and peace like a river makes the only way for the soul that is well with the soul.
Related:
Nothing gives Peace through every day of Advent like this: Check out The Greatest Christmas.
December 12, 2017
Dear Predators Who Don’t Know (Or Maybe Do) That They are Predators: (And How to Not Raise Another Generation of Predators)
It may have taken us awhile for us to find our voice — but don’t you dare ask us why it took us so long.
When someone takes something from you that doesn’t belong to them — they take your voice too.
I’m finding mine. We are all finding ours.
When someone takes something from you that wasn’t theirs, they try to give you shame — and count on that shame gagging you for years.
But never doubt it: Silence for years about an assault does not, and cannot hush, the truth of that assault.
When someone gropes your body, they grab a bit of your soul, the part of you that speaks, and it can take years, decades, for you to gather up the pieces of your voice and slice the silence with truth.
But The Truth always finds it voice — because the Truth is like the lion of Judah and you will hear it roar.
You may have taken something that wasn’t yours — but now I get to tell a story that is mine.
I didn’t want you to touch me.
You reached out and your fingers felt along my skin and I shrunk back and tried to play dead, like the way they tell you to play dead when you’re being mauled to death by a bear, and a part of me has been soundlessly dying for years.
You took something from me that I didn’t want to give. Read that again: You took something from me that I didn’t want to give. Do you have any idea of the pain behind those string of words? It wasn’t yours to touch, it wasn’t yours to take, it wasn’t yours to trespass.
What makes a man think his hungers trumps a woman’s humanity?
What makes a man think that his desires trumps a woman’s dignity — that a man’s wants trumps a woman’s needs?
Women are not prey — they are persons.
The moment that any one sees someone as less human than themselves, is the moment more evil scars all of humanity.
Do onto others as you would have them do onto you — is the only way we can do no harm.
Hear this righteous roar: We are not some cup of tea for you to swig down, we are not five bucks for you to swipe and get a high for getting away with it, we are not some quick feel to make you feel good, and we are not a piece of meat for you to devour to satisfy your insatiable appetite for power.
We are not prey — We are persons.
What can be so violating about sexual assault is that it’s more than only an assault on a body — it’s an assault on a sacred soul.
Skin is the outer layer of the soul — and touching someone’s skin is touching someone’s soul.
And no one should touch a consecrated soul without having consent.
If you don’t have consent with words — it doesn’t matter what messages you think anyone is sending.
Asking for consent sends the message that her womanhood trumps your wants.
And this is the thing: Consent isn’t so much about an equal sense of permission as consent depends on the equal distribution of power — or there’s intolerable violation of rights.
Power can be the most powerful duct tape — to silence someone’s voice, someone’s needs, someone’s rights.
And you didn’t ask if you could take a bit of my body which is the thin membrane of my soul. And if you never ask and you take it without consent — it’s not okay, just because you didn’t hear the no I was screaming in my head.
And if you did ask to take from someone and you never heard a clear answer — then you clearly need to stop. Because it’s never okay to take anything from someone when you first haven’t taken the time to hear their voice.
Situations can silence — and that’s exactly when you can’t take advantage of the situation.
You never have permission to touch anyone unless their words have given you permission.
And if you used physical strength or emotional manipulation or differential power to get what you wanted from someone? No matter what words were said, you assaulted, stole, robbed, and violated and denigrated. Forcing a yes out of anyone still means too much force was used.
Hear our roar: If you took what someone didn’t want to give, but it can’t be indisputably proven in court — that doesn’t mean for one second that you didn’t violate and denigrate that person.
And this is always indisputable:
No person’s unwanted touch — can touch how another person is wanted and valued.
No person’s power can deprive any of us of our personhood.
And no person’s assault on any of us can assault anyone’s worth.
No person’s unwanted touch — can touch how another person is wanted and valued.
The people of God’s hunger for power may make them more tolerant of immoral behaviour, but the God of the people, He’s hungry for holiness and proves that real power makes people behave more like Christ. And Christ didn’t denigrate women, but venerated women.
Christ didn’t abuse power as a means to satisfy Himself, but He laid down power and used grace as a means to sacrifice Himself and save the world .
This is the roar that whispers through the fractures of brave hearts: Even now, when you are seared by past, love can still find you, even when you terrified of trusting again, of feeling again.
The preyed on, they can turn and rise, and be the ones to feast on healing love and banquet on grace and taste the courage of now.
Related:
35 Things We’d Better Tell Our Sons About Harassment, Assault & “Boys will be Boys”
About those “20 Minutes of Action”: 20 Things We’d Better Tell Our Sons Right Now About Being Real Men
How to be the Parent You Want to Be: 40 Things a Child needs to know Before they Leave Home
Dear Kids: Why Wait till Marriage — What No One Tells You & What I Wish Someone Had Told Me
Letters to the Wounded
December 11, 2017
How to Stop the Fighting Under Your Roof & Have a Bit of Peace & a Whole Lot More Love
Rarely have I encountered someone with the humble determination September McCarthy shows in her journey of motherhood. As she follows the Lord’s call to equip her own children to build His kingdom, she gently shares her hard-learned lessons and hard-earned wisdom. September understands the challenges of nurturing our children as Christ-followers, and her insights have been a breath of fresh air in my own moments of frustration and surrender. Her heart beats for God, the women He has called to be mothers, and for the children we laugh, cry, and pray over. It’s a pleasure to welcome her to the farm’s front porch today…
guest post by September McCarthy
They sat on the sofa watching me with disbelief as I wrapped their hands together with a sock.
Honestly, it was all I could find, and it was conveniently stuffed in the couch cushions.
It seemed appropriate at the time.
I think any onlooker would have thought that I had lost my mind. A desperate parent will pull no stops when we are over-the-edge tired of hearing our children quarrel.
There they sat inching their bodies as far away from one another as the stretch in the sock would allow.
I was so tired I had to turn my back to the kids as my stern look of anger gave way to a smile.
Maybe in some psychology book there is a term to describe what I was doing. I’m not sure. But it was my last resort to make a point.
And it did.
We had a long talk while their hands were tied together.
Their angry eyes began to soften and the slight curl of a smile emerged at the edges of their lips. Always a good sign.
If peace had to come like this, then I was willing to try it. After all, the Bible says, “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9 NIV). And if parents aren’t peacemakers, I don’t know what we are!
Did my children argue, squabble, or have conflict after this? Of course they did.
The sock incident only changed the direction of that morning; it didn’t change their hearts.
And so, over the years, I realized that my children need to understand and learn one big lesson:
Love begins in the home. If you cannot love your family well, then how will you love others?
The thing is, our children cannot love if they don’t understand what love looks like in a day, in the middle of a conflict, or when they do not care for the actions of their siblings.
Motherhood has so many intentional moments, but pulling the root of selfishness up and out in your home is one of the hardest, most painful jobs there is. It takes work that will require plenty of sweat and tears from you.
Your heart will ache as you see your children’s different personalities clash and the conflict that ensues when they cannot put their own agendas aside.
Love cannot reside where selfishness is rooted. It’s our job to teach them every day how to put on patience, kindness, and self-control.
It’s easy to lose sight of the ship when the fog rolls in.
I remind myself of this when life overtakes me and I cannot figure out how I found myself trying to diffuse sibling rivalry or handle a conflict that festered with my teenager way too long.
If someone could just help me navigate through this muddy time, I think, it would all go away. But conflict can be just under the surface and will pull us under if we don’t learn how to navigate through it.
All relationships take work and time. We have applied these very basic and biblical rules to the communication in our home, and they have helped us walk through some serious issues and discussions that would have been much easier to avoid and let fester…
Our Four Family Rules to Better Communication:
Be honest
Keep current—don’t focus on the past
Attack the problem, not the person
Act—don’t react
Like it or not, we are the models for godly or good behavior in our homes.
Our family and those who know us are our audience.
We often overlook the influence of our own tongue in the home.
Our words influence the steps of resolution we take or don’t take to work through a conflict.
It is possible to have a home that permeates peace.
Mothers, imagine the power over the nations, the generations, if you are willing to model and speak peace into the very fiber of your home and your children. It will be life changing.
Mothers have the power to shift and stabilize the atmosphere of their families and can turn a day right side up or upside down.
Women can ignite happiness, spark anger, diffuse arguments, and lift the fog of discouragement in any atmosphere.
Mothers are mood makers, and it is our job to set the tone in the lives of those we are given to steward.
It may seem daunting, but it is truly a gift.
Don’t feel as if it’s a huge weight of responsibility or something you are required to do.
Your home will become who you are, and your family will shine forth this atmosphere wherever they go.
Love stands tall.
Love will always trump conflict.
September McCarthy believes every woman needs someone to speak into her life with understanding and truth. She encourages women in each season of motherhood through her blog One September Day and her ministry Raising Generations Today. As a speaker and writer, her vision and mission is for the generations. September lives in rural Upstate New York with her husband and their large family.
Do you ever wonder if your efforts as a mom make any difference? Take heart. Whether you’re struggling through sleepless nights with your toddler or endless battles with your teen, September McCarthy’s story offers practical insights and powerful inspiration to encourage you on your own mothering journey. In Why Motherhood Matters you’ll find sweet anecdotes and gentle guidance for those moments you need both a breather and a lifeline. These pages are like a breathing coach. And each page is a delivery—into more and more of the grace and heart of your Father. Motherhood matters—because what matters like sculpting souls with your Father? Motherhood is an incredible labor of love—and in the scope of eternity, it matters more than you know.
[ Our humble thanks to Harvest House for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
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