Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 137
August 26, 2017
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [08.26.17]
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:
Matt Deakin
Matt Deakin
Matt Deakin
your soul needs time to be still and breathe in the extraordinary glory right here
Our kind of People: Tired Boy And His Cow Lose Out At Dairy Fair, Fall Asleep And Win The Internet
we gathered ’round this one
Three Traps for Young Moms
so did you know? 15 of the best sponge life hacks
Jill Bliss
Jill Bliss
Jill Bliss
sit with some wonder and awe at your Maker — your soul begs to worship
and ummm…she’s 80? I LOVE THIS! what is something new we can go do today?
Bob Holtzman
the world can be such a beautiful place: This photo is so much more than what it appears
just slack-jawed, Our Maker: the solar eclipse in totality in Columbia, SC
opportunities to share the Good News are really everywhere
Oddleiv Apneseth, Momentagency/Institute
this farmer? he spent 7 years building this incredible spiral ramp to his barn
you’ve got to meet her: Nancy Stevens
hey? It would be kinda a humbling joy to meet you here in October?
an extraordinary little girl on an ordinary bike
he’s doing so much in this small town
“If we would love each other and spur each other on to good deeds —
then the world’s going to be a better place.” #BeTheGIFT #TheBrokenWay
Read with brimming tears. Thank you for this, Jon Bloom: My Dark Night of the Soul
these officers are giving back and breaking down walls #BeTheGIFT #TheBrokenWay
Cherish Andrea
…why is it that we so often live distant, fragmented, and serving tirelessly to earn our keep? Maybe today is one of those days we just need to hear and know…and let this one sink in — Revel in the truth that you are seen even when no one else is looking:
why the times you feel unseen by the world, may be the best times of your life
a social experiment: homeless man does an incredible act
what makes a happy marriage? 8 solid reasons to never give up looking
To counter a narrative of fear about refugees, a community in New Haven, Connecticut, breaks bread — quite literally — with their new neighbor Zainab, an Iraqi cook. AMAZING! What if we did this everywhere? #BeTheGIFT #TheBrokenWay
… when is the last time you slowed down to listen to your body? Your life? Your heart? Heart failure has way of just kinda — doing just that. So this is the kind of big interior stuff that’s happening here:
Life After Heart Failure: How to Listen to Your Life, Your Body, Your Heart
and how beautiful is this? 7 siblings find a forever home #BeTheGIFT #TheBrokenWay
Because it’s never too late to love: Download your August G.I.F.T list & be part of the joy we all need?
We could all together kinda start a little movement of Giving It Forward Today, choosing to #BeTheGIFT, living broken & given like bread out into a world down right hungry for love right now.
Pick up your copy of The Broken Way — and break free.
Find all kinds of free tools at thebrokenway.com and download your August G.I.F.T list
on repeat this week: Build My Life
…so yeah, this summer my heart beat’s amplified so loudly in a hospital room, it’s thrum is the only sound and I blink it back in the room’s shadows, everything slowed down and stripped away to just my beating heart: Life’s not about winning some race — it’s about resting in grace.
Life’s not about growing your career, your bank account, your retirement fund, your platform, your status — life’s about growing your soul.
That is the moment I knew my heart, no matter what, knew the strongest rhythm for the best life. That is the moment I knew Christ who moves into the neighbourhood and dwells within, He beats Truth within. And He tells you to be still so you can hear the real rhythm and meaning of being.
So now I come home to fully live —
I come home, pull dandelion weeds out of the garden and pick a handful of the boisterous zinnias that Kai planted last spring and I put them in an old jar, and set them by the sink.
And I’m learning it again & again: Listen to your absurdly glorious life. Listen to the holy heart of your one sacred life. You need to take time to listen to your life — so you can make the life you need.
[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.
August 24, 2017
Life After Heart Failure: How to Listen to Your Life, Your Body, Your Heart
I had heard my heart during the echocardiogram.
Had laid there in a darkened room as the technician swept the wand back and forth across the chambers of this relentlessly brave ticker that consistently just keeps being consistent and doing it’s thing.
Laid there and listened to the rhythm of me: the swooshing beat, the atrioventricular valves closing, then the low frequency of the atria emptying blood into the lower chambers.
Then — the woosh of the ventricles pumping the blood out of the heart, the flaps of the aortic and pulmonary valves closing shorter, crisper.
I had laid there still, staring at the ceiling, listening for audible eddies. For swirling around resistant valves, for any abnormal extra sounds — that abnormality of all the extra — for any galloping, for the beating rush of the heart, like a horse’s hooves thundering toward everything that just keeps coming on.
Had the rhythm of me broken down, had all the filling and emptying of the chambers of me slipped into a sloshing chaos?
When is the last time you’ve stilled and listened to your heart?
When have you last stilled and listened long to the rhythm of your life?
When have you last listened to your body speak to your life?
Sometimes you aren’t listening to your body because you’re listening to everybody else’s expectations.
Running yourself down because you’re trying to keep up is one way to trip your priorities upside down.
Laying there under a thin hospital sheet in the dimmed room, listening only to the stillness and my heart beat echoing off walls, there it is:
The only way you can listen to your body — is not to be afraid of silence.
By silence, sanity is found. By silence, sense is made of things. By silence, satan is silenced and lives can listen to their Maker. Why — had I waited till literal heart failure to sit in a long, long stretch of clarifying silence?
You have to make time to be still — in order to make a life.
Yeah — I exhale on the hospital bed. The echocardiogram technician shifts the wand over another chamber.
You can’t be be afraid of turning down the noise of everything else in your life — so you can listen to the rhythm for your one life — and find the one you’re made for.
My heart beat is filling the screen, the small room: Swoosh. Swoosh.
Maybe I hadn’t been fully hearing God — because I hadn’t been fully listening to what was happening in my own heart?
My heart keeps drumming out its own steady, fierce beat: Woosh, Woosh.
Maybe I had needed to fall into literal heart failure — so my life wouldn’t fail?
My heart beat’s amplified so loudly in a hospital room, it’s thrum is the only sound:
I blink it back in the room’s shadows, everything slowed down and stripped away to just my beating heart:
Life’s never about being seen — it’s about seeing God. And about God seeing us and revealing Himself to us.
Life’s never about climbing ladders higher — it’s about climbing higher up and deeper into God.
Life’s not about winning some race — it’s about resting in grace.
Life is not about growing in status— it’s about growing your soul.
Life’s not about growing your career, your bank account, your retirement fund, your platform, your status — life’s about growing your soul.
That is the moment I knew my heart, no matter what, knew the strongest rhythm for the best life.
That is the moment I knew Christ who moves into the neighbourhood and dwells within, He beats Truth within. And He tells you to be still so you can hear the real rhythm and meaning of being.
So I come home to fully live.
I come home, pull dandelion weeds out of the garden and pick a handful of the boisterous zinnias that Kai planted last spring and I put them in an old jar, and set them by the sink.
Listen to your absurdly glorious life.
Listen to the holy heart of your one sacred life.
You need to take time to listen to your life —
so you can make the life you need.
I come home to cut carrots in the kitchen window’s slanting sunlight and dish up shepherd’s pie around the table and I come home to be small and love large because getting to be present to love your people’s hearts is your great gift.
Life’s not about growing in status— it’s about growing your soul.
I come home to hear rain fall steady on old roofs and pick up the remnants of dirty laundry shed off moulting teenagers, listen to the lilting glory of her laughter when she runs full tilt across the house.
None of this might ever have been at all, so why blithely miss the miracle of it all?
You’re growing a soul.
Come home to your life and listen to the mystery of it and press your ear up against the Word-voice of God and witness the very growing of your own soul and be still long enough to drink down all this ordinary glory and hear your heart keep beating how all is grace.
Related:
When you Go into Heart Failure and it Turns out to be a Metaphor for All The Things Right Now
Pick up our story of The Broken Way and how to love a brokenhearted world. This one’s for all of us who have felt our hearts break a bit…
This one’s for the brave and the busted and the real and dreamers and the sufferers and the believers.
This one’s for those who dare to take The Broken Way… into abundance
August 22, 2017
Why I Didn’t Want to Share with My Mother-in-law: The Deeper Stories Behind Our Whining
Sam Van Eman loves to learn. Even through his mid-life transition, he wanted to know what God might have in store for him. He receives both the blessings and the challenges as gifts and, with transparency, shares both with others. I say both because this is his ministry—inviting people into intentionally designed experienced that disrupt routine for the sake of growth in Christ. He does it playfully, creatively, and honestly, while practicing what he preaches. I’ve been in the room with Sam and you discover this within minutes. It’s a grace to welcome Sam to the farm’s front porch today…
I heard my mother-in-law’s voice downstairs.
As I entered the kitchen, I saw a dozen freshly baked pumpkin chocolate chip scones cooling on the table.
The room smelled like every room should in the fall. And those scones were all ours.
But my wife’s mom had stopped by, and Julie was quick to say that she had been baking and, “Here, you should take a couple for you and Dad.”
I love my mother-in-law, but my gut tightened at the offer, so I passed through the room.
A few minutes later I glanced at the container in my mother-in-law’s hand. I even had to steal another look because I wasn’t able to get an accurate count of the scones inside. As my family saw her out the back door, I peeked again!
She’s a lovely woman. Easy to be around, the kind of person who makes you believe you’re her best friend.
She bakes a special cake for me at Christmas, just because she knows I like it.
But the second I closed the door, I asked Julie why she had given away three, not two, scones. It came out in a lighthearted, passive-aggressive way, matching (superficially, at least) the mood of the house at the moment: singing children, dinner on its way to the table, and the lingering smell of the remaining scones.
“Mom is having somebody over tonight,” she replied.
I concentrated on the little twist in my stomach and tried to assess how to be generous while also honest about my disappointment. I couldn’t think of anything mature, so we sat down at the table.
I began to pray, “Lord, thank you for this food and all that You provide—” and then, like a good boy, I inserted, “and please help me to be generous.”
I couldn’t continue. I blurted to the family, “I don’t actually want to pray that!”
The girls laughed in surprise, and I continued, “I don’t feel generous right now, and I don’t even want to be generous. And here’s the irony:
I came down the steps thinking about Emma’s new braces and how we’ll have to cut back in order to pay for them and how we should talk at dinner about seeing this as an opportunity to bless Emma because that’s what families do—we sacrifice for each other. And then you went ahead and gave away the scones. Our scones. My scones! I felt so generous and in a flash so not generous.”
Yes, I was whining.
“When you gave your mom that twenty dollars a few minutes ago for your half of the wedding shower gift, I didn’t bat an eye. But the scones—why did that make me angry?”
Julie thought for a moment and replied, “It probably has to do with your snack panic.”
The girls laughed again, because they know my habit of keeping a snack nearby, especially when I travel.
It’s a security blanket, and it goes back to my childhood, when I didn’t have enough to eat.
I won’t begrudge God of what He provided and how that provision came to us. But I always wanted more.
As a teenager, growing tall and playing sports, I could have only half a bowl of cereal for breakfast. It wasn’t my own mom’s fault. She was raising four of us by herself, and we often wondered how food would find our cupboards.
So I developed more than a simple snack panic all those years ago.
The anger at the table was about the lingering fear that something special, something extra, something beyond what the old WIC check allowed was disappearing before I could enjoy it.
In a sense, I couldn’t afford to be generous, because in the formative years of eight and ten and thirteen, money may have been my mom’s issue, but what the money couldn’t buy was my issue.
And this night, because of a few scones, it came back.
Full cupboards, a secure job, an intact family, and still, buried beneath piety and the appearance of Christian charity, I snarled at someone I love.
These wounds and fears, they haunt us.
When Jesus invited the rich young ruler to follow Him, He wasn’t asking for something impossible (Luke 18:22). But it felt impossible to that guy.
In hindsight, I’m thankful for these raw moments. They serve as alarm clocks, as reminders of immaturity, as disruptions of routine.
And they help uncover the taken-for-granted assumptions and limitations in that routine.
We live by a mix of faithlessness and faith.
We feel hopeless and hopeful simultaneously.
We refuse love and yet also extend it in one breath.
We’ve got enough of the good to make us okay with the bad. Life is like this: vibrancy and stagnancy, renewal and atrophy, all sharing the same space.
Gregg Ten Elshof writes, “We can’t bring ourselves to say that we have no intention to make significant and noticeable progress toward Christlikeness. But neither do we find ourselves simply doing the things of Jesus.”
Kindness and claws sharing the same space.
How do I name what I cannot see—or cannot see clearly? Do I need someone to take what’s valuable to me in order to confront my conditional love? Maybe.
However small the portion of faith, hope, and love we discover, we recognize it as a gift from God.
Imagine what can happen when we acknowledge the ways this gift has been underused and also confess the ways it has been misused!
Am I willing to trust Him to provide?
Will I let Him unpry my hands from the thing I love but that also keeps me bound?
Can I learn to see these moments of fear as opportunities to grow in faith?
If yes, then bring it on, Lord.
Help me to give my scones away.
Sam Van Eman and his wife, Julie, live in central Pennsylvania with their two daughters. He serves as a resource specialist for the CCO’s Experiential Designs team, where he cocreates transformational experiences for college students, small groups, professionals, and organizations.
Sam’s new book, Disruptive Discipleship: The Power of Breaking Routine to Kickstart Your Faith, is a practical, story-driven reminder that we can’t afford to stay at our current maturity level, and that, with courage, we can create space for God to grow us in faith, hope, and love.
Filled with concrete examples of how ordinary people are shaped by disruptive experiences, this book provides a path to deeper faith on purpose. Jesus disrupted His disciples with invitations to get out of their boats, leave their nets, and follow Him. Pick up this book and have courage to discover what those kinds of disruptions might look like for you.
August 21, 2017
why the times you feel unseen by the world, may be the best times of your life
The middle minutes are the ones we all want to climb right out of. You know, the ones when the laundry machine hums in the background and the carpool line feels endless and the promotion is well-beyond our reach. The universal ache – the resentment towards those times when we’re unseen, uncelebrated, unknown – is about as familiar to Sara Hagerty as it is to each one of us. And this is where she found Him. And this is where she’s inviting us to find Him … instead of clawing our way right out into the open. It’s a grace to welcome Sara to the farm’s front porch today…
“He said He loves me, Mommy,” my daughter Hope told me as I tucked her in, her words whispered with her hand to her mouth and cupped around my ear.
Apparently, it was a secret.
And I remembered her first dance recital, not long after we’d adopted her.
She had practiced her routine in and out of class for a semester. Every one of us in our family knew the steps. She’d spent weeks pirouetting through our kitchen with a dishcloth in hand, performing with confidence on our living room hearth.
But the night of the performance, I could feel her hand shaking in mine as I walked her down the hall to her lineup. I hurried back to my seat in the auditorium as she waited for her group to be called.
I was nervous for her. I so wanted this night to be a win.
When she relevéd out on stage among twelve other girls, I, like all the other parents, narrowed my eyes onto just my child. But several beats into the routine, I widened my scope and realized she was a step or two behind. Then three. Then four.
The other children moved in synchronized motion while my beautiful girl carefully performed her routine, too focused on her steps to notice how far behind she was. Too inexperienced to skip steps to catch up.
For seven minutes, I looked beyond her slippered feet—out of sync, arms moving in one direction while her classmates’ moved in another—and fixed my mind on her story.
Cherish Andrea
Cherish Andrea
Cherish Andrea
Cherish AndreaAlongside the others, my daughter may have been out of step, but she was also stunning.
Light and joy cascaded out of her with every twirl.
She had come through the fire of loss and death and hardened dreams, and tonight she was dancing.
From my seat, I could see her counting steps, her expression serious and focused.
But her eyes were alert and glistening under the stage lights, not dull and weighted as they were when we’d first met her at the orphanage months before.
She wasn’t posing as someone she’d learned to mimic—a common orphan survival skill. She wasn’t dancing to impress others. If she had stopped to notice others, she probably would have frozen in panic.
Instead, she was costumed in God.
He was making a dancer out of a street kid.
This was a child who was learning to be loved.
“He said He loves me” weren’t words Hope had learned in a Sunday school song. They’d jumped directly from the pages of God’s Word into her heart, and they came alive in her dance steps.
This was His real love, welling up within her.
After the recital, her daddy and brother showered her with flowers and she chattered away the entire car ride home. She was the belle of the ball.
This child who’d grown up a street-smart survivor and who had been called mischievous by orphanage workers became a glowing ballerina that night.
Her costume is now tucked away in a bin labeled with her name. She pulls it out sometimes, as if she can access that night all over again through the chiffon in her fingers.
I didn’t show her the recording afterward, because it might tell a different story than the one I saw and the one she lived.
Our human eyes can betray the truth of the story we’re living.
Even I, her mother, didn’t see the whole of her that night. The God who formed her is the only one who saw it all.
To her teacher, my tiny dancer was out of step.
To the parent sitting one row in front of me, she was one of two dark-skinned girls on stage.
To the girl dancing next to her— being primed for a future in ballet—she wasn’t good enough yet to be competition.
To her mama, she was being restored.
To her daddy, she was a doe-eyed princess.
To the one who made her, she was even more. She was art.
She was fire and wonder. Marvelous and worth His blood spilled.
She was His story.
She was His to hide. To keep.
And to tell.
As adults, we often accept the language of being a daughter or a son of God and yet still struggle—nearly daily and sometimes hourly—with the internal strife of not knowing how to rest in the safety of our God’s arms.
We live with Him, under His watch and in His family, and yet still behave like orphans—distant, fragmented, and serving tirelessly to earn our keep.
The problem is not that we long for significance but that we are shifty or misguided in where we look for it.
When we crave most the eyes of others—their opinions and accolades—we break our gaze with the only eyes that will ever truly see us.
We’re hungry for the thing for which we were made: to be seen, to be known, to be celebrated, to participate in something much larger than ourselves.
But too often we settle for lesser things.
It seems easier to get a like online than it does to get quiet before God, to seek His face and listen for His whispers. Especially if we’re not sure what the expression on His face might be or whether His whispers will be kind.
To understand that a Father with kind eyes sees us, even in secret, makes hearts beat again. Long-dead hearts can come alive under those eyes.
On this particular night, Hope couldn’t yet give voice to what she was experiencing, but it was this: she was God’s secret.
And she was starting to know it.
She was breaking free from the lie that many of us believe: performance earns our keep.
To understand that a Father with kind eyes sees us, even in secret, makes daughters and sons out of all of us who struggle to know what it means to call God Daddy.
Her story is yours. And it’s mine.
When we’re hidden from the eyes of the world – behind misunderstanding or the judgmental eyes of another or … simply unseen in our 9 to 5 cubicle or behind the door of the laundry room – there is a set of eyes on us.
We’re not punishingly relegated to that hidden place or stuck. Instead, it’s here that we can finally know that we are seen. By Him. By the only set of eyes that can make a heart truly come alive.
Hiddenness is God’s opportunity to reach us.
My little girl lives in a world that might label her one way, but she is beginning to tune her ear to the one who tells her who He sees, who she truly is.
She is destined for greatness, this child of mine, because she is destined to revel in the truth that she is seen even when no one else is looking.
Destined to know the voice of the one who talks to her in the dark, even when no one else is listening.
So are we.
Sara Hagerty is the author of Every Bitter Thing is Sweet and her newest: Unseen: The Gift of Being Hidden in a World that Loves to be Noticed. She is a wife to Nate, and a mother of six – including four children adopted from Africa, one toddler who’s found his voice amid them all, and a wee-babe.
After almost a decade of Christian life, she was introduced to pain and perplexity and, ultimately, intimacy with Jesus. God met her and moved her when life stopped working for her. His Word and His whisper took on new shape and form to her in the dark.
In her book Unseen: The Gift of Being Hidden in a World that Loves to be Noticed, Sara calls us to offer every unseen minute of our lives to God. She shows us, through story and her own bleeding heart, that God is in the secret places of our lives that no one else witnesses. We’ve not been relegated to these places. We’ve been invited.
Our culture applauds what we can produce, what we can show, what we can upload to social media. Only when we give all of ourselves to God—unedited, abandoned, apparently wasteful in its lack of productivity—can we live out who God created us to be. But as Sara writes, “Maybe my seemingly unproductive, looking-up-at-Him life produces awe among the angels.” These places – the laundry room, the hospital bedside of an elderly parent, the 4th floor cubicle, are the places God uses to meet us with a radical love.
[ Our humble thanks to Zondervan for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
August 19, 2017
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [08.19.17]
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
the most breathtaking views you may see all weekend?
so did you know?! you can listen to and download more than 400,000 free classical music scores right here!
The 10 Best College Campuses Across the Country
so who knew!?!
Museum of the Bible, Washington, D.C., coming November 2017
Museum of the Bible to offer free admission when it opens in November
at 94? he’s learning that it’s hard to be lonely if you surround yourself with kids
hard to believe what showed up on this garden carrot?
everyone we meet throughout our day can make a difference: here’s to a great school year!
so what do you think? Five Reasons To Wear The Same Thing Every Day
Shaped by Time: glory, glory glory
Mikenorton (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons
so we circled ’round this one…who knew? Trees with “Crown Shyness” Mysteriously Avoid Touching Each Other
college scholarship awarded to player not for his abilities – but for his kindness
We cheering loudly for this one #BeTheGIFT #TheBrokenWay
hair stylist spends 13 hours helping this teen suffering with depression
love what they’re doing at this coffee shop #beTheGIFT #TheBrokenWay
The Damsel and the Villain: powerfully spoken
because every child, especially a child in a refugee camp, should have the chance to just be a kid
www.nicolestarrphotography.com and www.juliasway.org
can. you. even.? After heart surgery, 3 girls with Down syndrome share 1st birthday cake smash
UNDONE: After 73 years of marriage, this old man sings to his dying wife their favorite song
The Identity Crisis of My Life
Oh God, forgive any faith that’s about moral one-upmanship rather than tear-stained repentance. Busted & praying with @BethMooreLPM
they gathered 50 people and asked them one question:
just — a love like this…
While Alzheimer’s may be stealing the memory of 67-year-old Steve Goodwin, he refuses to let the disease steal his music
Post of the Week from these parts here
… so, this unexpectedly happened when I found myself in ICU with heart failure this summer:
When you Go into Heart Failure and it Turns out to be a Metaphor for All The Things Right Now
kinda undone: come see how he is choosing to serve #BeTheGIFT #TheBrokenWay
Because it’s never too late to love: Download your August G.I.F.T list & be part of the joy we all need?
We could all together kinda start a little movement of Giving It Forward Today, choosing to #BeTheGIFT, living broken & given like bread out into a world down right hungry for love right now.
Pick up your copy of The Broken Way — and break free.
Find all kinds of free tools at thebrokenway.com & download August’s G.I.F.T list
Just hold on — and I’ll find you
… yeah, heart failure this summer has kinda made it clear:
Life’s detours means God wants you to run right into His arms so He can reconstruct your heart.
Lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to all the blinking monitors, all I can think is:
You only get so much time before here is over. There is only so much time.
There’s only so much time to forgive, to wipe slates clean, to make things right when you’ve gotten things wrongs.
There is only so much time to make love your life.
And this I’ve come to know: sometimes when it feels like things are falling apart — we’re all just really falling into the arms of God.
[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.
August 16, 2017
When you Go into Heart Failure and it Turns out to be a Metaphor for All The Things Right Now
They say that for years I didn’t have iron in the veins.
That the whole medical team really didn’t have a clue that, just because I’ve been stumbling around with pretty much no iron in the veins, that it would throw me into heart failure this summer.
Sometimes, you can feel like you’re suddenly falling off a cliff—- and you’re really just falling into the arms of God.
Sometimes you don’t even know that your falling has already begun.
I mean, who knew that the falling would begin like this:
I just took the elevator up to the operating floor, with my paperwork in hand for a straight-forward surgical procedure of a feminine nature. How was I to know that I’d been walking around for weeks, months, years, for who knows how long — with a hemoglobin in the 60s?
Which is half of the baseline 125 it should be.
And, unbeknownst to anyone, that was causing this systolic heart murmur — that was going to be what first started the nudge off the edge.
“So —what exactly is keeping you standing right now?” the OR nurse asks wide-eyed, stands in the doorway, touches my arm, like she can help keep me upright.
I shrug, laugh embarrassed. Maybe we’re all only standing because we’re standing under a reign of grace. Maybe we’re all only standing because grace is the actual air we breathe.
Maybe, somewhere along the way, my body had just slowly acclimated to lower hemoglobin levels, iron levels, oxygen levels. Acclimated to greater fatigue.
Maybe that’s what happened: When dysfunction moves slowly, it can masquerade as normalcy.
And this is what does happen in a thousand ways, every day: Life makes boiling frogs out of the inattentive.
Before the surgery, they get me into one of those flimsy hospital gown get ups, drop 2 units of blood into my willing, needled vein, and the red drip trickles into me for hours, the thin bedsheets pulled up over my milk bottle white knees.
After the blood bags drip dry, they roll me in under the glare of the OR lights for this womanly procedure and I’m feeling like an exposed, splayed duck.
The last thing I remember before going under is the nurse asking if I was the lady who wrote about brokenness and thankfulness and just take 3 deep breaths and everything blurring together, the thankfulness, the brokenness, the remembering to breathe — then the falling into the dark.
******
Two days after the 30 minute surgical procedure, I’m home and in bed with a fever of 102.6 and doubled over with cramps. My mama, she stands in our bedroom and tells me she’s not playing anymore, she’s still my mama and she’s taking me back into ER, so go get my shoes on.
In the waiting room, I lay across chairs, head feeling too heavy for one thin aching neck, joints aching like embers burned in each socket. Mama strokes my hair back. I close my eyes.
When they get me into an ER bed, I’m a teeth-chattering mess, feverishly huddling under a stacks of warmed blankets and a nurse pokes around with a needle to start IV antibiotics in one arm for whatever infection is spreading.
Dr. Matthews orders another 2 units of blood for the other arm because I’m still registering ridiculously low hemoglobin levels and she calls out into the hallway for an abdomen and chest x-rays, and for someone to call the lab and draw blood so they can somehow track down the source of infection that is spiking raging heat through the bones.
They decide to admit.
Mama nods my way from the corner of the ER room, because she knew, because Mama always knows best. Motherhood is of mastering the art of listening — to what’s said and what isn’t. And making your whole life your response.
Rolling up to the elevator, up to the floor, to be admitted into an ICU room, I just keep thinking that maybe there’s something else to admit? Something to admit to heal a broken heart? Something to admit because maybe I’m slipping off the brink of something and I don’t even know it’s beginning? They wrap me again in another shroud of warm blankets and the antibiotics drip late into the night and I toss and turn with the feverish ache of things, staring out the hospital window long after Mama kisses me on the forehead and heads home.
I listen to the machines all dripping, watch car lights in the street, all the black sky lighting up.
Suffering can be a friend who drives you where you didn’t know you needed to go.
And there’s no way in this suffering world I could have possibly known where this all was going to go, where this was all actually headed, or falling into — but I knew it that first night:
Life’s detours means God wants you to run right into His arms so He can reconstruct your heart.
By the time the sun bleeds up the sky in rose and scarlets, I’m bent over on the edge of the bed, hacking up a horse, racked with coughing, lungs feeling like a steely vise is crushing the cavities of my lungs.
A second chest x rays shows the lungs are filling like two empty buckets under an overflowing eavestrough.
“We are — trying to figure out what’s going on here?” the doctor’s pressing the stethoscope across my back and I’m cough wracked, throat raw with the hacking and ribs aching.
“You came in here with an infection lurking somewhere from your surgical procedure that we’re still trying to find” — she’s listening to my breathing — “and we transfused another two units of blood because you’re still struggling with low hemoglobin — and your initial chest x-ray was clear?” Dr. Matthews straightens up and turns to look me in the eyes.
“Yet this morning it looks your lungs are filling up with fluid — frankly, your lungs look shockingly like… serious crap — and it looks like you have post-operative pneumonia?”
Post-operative pneumonia?
I came in with a little fever from a surgical infection?
30 minutes later the doctor’s back in my room — instructing a nurse to hook me up immediately to a heart monitor.
A heart monitor?
“We called to the city hospital — to speak with a cardiologist. Looks like you’re in heart failure. You have post-operative pneumonia because you’re in heart failure. Your heart can’t pump the fluids we’ve been giving you to fight whatever this infection is, and that’s why your lungs are filling up and your hacking like you’re dying. It’s because you’ve tipped into heart failure.”
Heart — failure?
Sometimes when it feels like things are falling apart — we’re all just really falling into the arms of God.
“We should be able to give you 10 litres of fluid and the heart of someone your age should have no issues. We’ve given you?” She holds up her fingers. “2 litres — and you’ve tipped into heart failure.”
She writes it on my chart:
Tipped into failure.
It’s right there in ink.
******
You’ve got to be kidding me — I haven’t just tipped into heart failure just right now. If you want to know the truth of it: I’ve been falling in failure for years — failing sons and failing daughters and failing kind strangers and long-suffering family and failing in bruised relationships, and busted expectations and broken hearts.
Sometimes when you kinda feel like you’re falling — it flashes before you, all the ways you’ve fallen.
The whole spinning world has tipped into a heart failure of its own.
“You’ve had such little iron in your blood for so lung, such low hemoglobin — your heart is failing and can’t handle any of these fluids,”
“We think — it’s actually years of the lack of iron — that’s tipped you into heart failure,” is what the doctor said. “Which is causing the post-operative pneumonia.”
Without iron in the veins — the heart fails.
Without the nails of Christ in the DNA — the heart fails.
And I’m lying in a hospital bed in heart failure and all I can think is: You only get so much time before here is over. There is only so much time.
There’s only so much time to forgive, to wipe slates clean, to make things right when you’ve gotten things wrongs.
There is only so much time to make love your life.
Because time here will run out one day and one day your heart will stop it’s brave beating and there will be no more time to love here, to change the story here, to make your life say what your heart feels.
I can’t breathe.
I just — want to go home. Is there a more powerful word known to the heart than Home?
I want to go home and hold my babies, sit around a campfire, turn s’mores over the flame, I want to sing Count Your Blessings off tune around the circle and give Him thanks for all that’s been, look into eyes, all their eyes, and witness the light. I want to hear the zinnias stretching up in the kitchen garden and rock on the front porch swing with a posse of kids and one fine farming man, and hold them all with all of me until the stars come out and the Big Dipper tips over the farm and baptizes us all in a flash of ordinary glory.
Dr. Matthews tells the nurse to book me for a CT scan, another ultrasound, another set of chest x-rays, an echocardiogram. She’s hooking heart monitor leads to my chest.
Dr. Matthew’s orders all IV antibiotics to cease and the nurse has me instead swallowing down a cocktail of oral antibiotics because the old ticker’s failing in pumping any of these liquids. And there’s the order of a twice daily dosage of Lasix, prescribed for congestive heart failure, for the fluid accumulating in my lungs, the pulmonary edema that’s causing the rapid shortness of breath.
I keep struggling to breathe.
Literally — the nurse holds up an Incentive Spirometer and asks me to take the tube and suck air into my lungs like I’m drinking from a straw and I try to inhale and it feels like a catalytic explosion tearing through my chest and my eyes leak for the pain. My heart rate keeps blinking on the monitor like it knows that all the heartbeats of a whole life add up to a blink.
Because your life can change in a moment, it’s all your moments that can’t be missed.
I lay awake all night coughing and choking wildly on the past. For five long nights, I look out a hospital window, sit on the edge of a hospital bed, screens blinking and tracing my failing heart and I cough up at stars:
How do you find a way to forgive yourself for all the ways you’ve failed and fallen? How do you find a way to forgive yourself for all the life not lived well because you’re still learning what it means to love well?
And I’ve blamed instead of owned, controlled instead of calmed, faked instead of forgiven, dismissed instead of peeling back everything and lavishing attention on souls just yearning to be seen.
When you’re in heart failure, you start to think of how your heart’s failed how many other hearts.
When you’re in heart failure, your broken heart just yearns for more of Christ’s.
I don’t care what the heart monitor is reading — I can feel my heart breaking.
Maybe we all only fear one thing: failure.
And then four words come out of nowhere, out of the past, out of the heart of the cosmos, and looking up into the night sky over a little sleeping country town, looking up at fiery blinking lights birthed from the star nursery of God, those four words keep my struggling heart beating, keep echoing through the chambers of a million aching questions and regrets:
Jesus, friend of sinners… Jesus, friend of sinners.
There can be failing and falling — right into His arms.
And it may seem like an obscene, gory fact of pre-modern times for a prehistoric people, this archaic notion of the shedding of blood, and yet I witnessed it: Blood was shed for me. It was hanging there in a bag, meandering down into my arm.
This is the glory of the universe: Sacrifice always saves.
Sacrifice always saves the broken and the divided and the wounded and the busted and the hurting and the falling and all the failing. Sacrifice always saves.
I had heard them ask that too, in murmuring and rumblings, in hallways of academia and sophistication and modernity, “What’s with all the blood? Why can’t God just forgive? What’s the deal with this whole idea that ‘without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins?’ ”
Maybe, somewhere along the way, along my own failing, falling way, that is what’s grown painfully clear in a busted world:
Forgiving can only happen where there’s a dying.
Forgiveness always requires a grave.
Forgiveness always means giving something over to death.
This is the way it always has been and always will ever be, just go ahead and ask anyone who has limped down the hard roads:
Without the dying of things — there is no forgiveness of sins.
Without the burying of expectations, grieving what was and what will never be, letting go of self-righteousness of being right, letting go of dreams, letting go of retribution and resentment and rage and laying to rest a million hemorrhaging hurts — there is never the freedom of forgiveness.
Forgiveness always means the very real death and burial of hatchets and hopes and hurts so that healed relationships can resurrect.
All the honest in an angry and hurting world know it and will testify: All forgiving means suffering.
And the depth of God’s forgiveness of us means He suffered so deeply He shed blood for us.
God so forgave the wrongs of the world, that He bled for the rebirth of the world.
It doesn’t hurt so much to breathe:
Jesus is here with the busted, His Presence is closer than your breath, and His shed blood transfuses you with the steely hope and brazen courage to live the cruciform way, and He has union with you, intimate communion with your heart, and because you are His beloved, this begins healing all the brokenness.
Your failures can be forgiven — because forgiveness always requires a grave. And you have Jesus who went down to one so you could rise.
Your failures are completely forgiven — because forgiveness always means giving something over to death. And you have Jesus who gave Himself over to death so you would never have to wonder if you’re really loved.
Your failing heart is never failing — because when God claims you, He doesn’t fail you.
You can’t fail — because God never fails you.
And I wouldn’t know it later, until after I was discharged from the hospital with a litany of pills and a warning from the doctor that the heart would need echocardiograms to track function and that the body would need 3 months of recovery from infection and post-operative pneumonia and heart failure.
I wouldn’t know till I get home, heart ringing with that one lifeline: “Jesus, friend of sinners” — that it’s a line of a long forgotten song:
“ … There is a Friend who won’t let go
There is a heart that beats for You
There is one name by which we are saved
Jesus, Friend of sinners… Jesus, Friend of sinners.”
And that is the cruciform iron that can run through the veins of this wounded world, that forgives you for all you’ve done and all you didn’t do, that can make you stand and not fall and not fail.
Every failure in the hands of your Saviour can be made into a kind favour for your heart.
There’s a Saviour who can turn even failures into favour.
There’s no failing unless there’s giving up.
And He forgives us when we think our failing — is stronger than His unfailing love for us.
Never doubt that His unfailing love is stronger than any failing.
And —- If there’s enough forgiveness for even us, there’s enough forgiveness for even everyone.
When the rain falls heavy on the roof overhead, on my first night back home, I wake and lie there listening. Home. We always, one way or another, get to make it back Home.
And there is always enough time to love — to forgive — to begin again. There is always enough forgiving grace.
And I lie there in bed, listening to the washing away of all the grime of what was, and growing what could be, even now, and the thrumming beat of it all, beats on with my broken heart.
And there is returning strength even in the middle of our dark night.
August 14, 2017
After Charlottesville, The Question We Absolutely Have to Answer: Who Is Willing To Pick Up Their Cross?
It’s been a devastating weekend. And someday, Lisa Sharon Harper and I will share our story, the startlingly holy way we met and how God moved in one of the most tangibly powerful ways of my life. But today, I want to simply still, and pray, and be overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit and listen to the wisdom of my sister, Lisa Sharon Harper, who bravely took up her cross and walked for shalom and justice in the streets of Charlottesville this weekend. Now is the time to quietly and prayerfully lean in to our brothers and sisters of color and take a posture of humble and attentive listening— listening even if it’s hard to listen, listening even if there may be disagreement, listening even if it’s uncomfortable — and ask the Holy Spirit to lead us in ways of repentance and healing and reconciliation and Christ-exaltation. Listening not to defend and listening not to debate, but listening to deeply digest the experience and perspective and prayers of your brothers and sisters in Christ — and ask God to move us to not chop up our crosses, but pick up our Cross, and live the cruciform life of the upside down Kingdom that brings shalom in the face of everything.
It is the most humble grace to welcome & listen to Lisa Sharon Harper from the Farm’s front porch today:
guest post by Lisa Sharon Harper
On Saturday, August 12, in Charlottesville, I was faced with a choice: “Would I pick up my cross?”
Jesus warns His disciples: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” (Mark 8:34-35)
Just before walking onto the street, organizers of the Charlottesville Clergy Call walked us through the changing dynamics of the situation.
There would be four times more white nationalists in Charlottesville than previously projected.
One quarter of the clergy they thought would be there actually showed up. If we stepped onto the street we were risking arrest, injury or death—from the police or the white nationalists.
We knew what we were walking into.
We knew that we might not come back.
I was hesitant and torn and almost didn’t do it.
I imagined the devastating loss my mother would feel upon hearing of my death in Charlottesville. I felt guilty for leaving her alone just before her second knee surgery. How would she make it through? I imagined not being present to witness my nieces and nephews and family.
It was as if all that is most treasured in my life flashed before my eyes as the rest of the clergy walked out onto the street.
I sat in silence and begged God for a definitive word.
God spoke: “Be present.”
That was the call: Be present; even if it means being present on your way to the cross.
I hugged some friends who were staying back to support in other ways and asked them to pray for us.
I walked through the door and joined the rest of the clergy on the street. (The rest you can see in video footage here and in pictures here.)
The night before at the Mass Prayer Meeting, we were asked to reflect on why we are doing this.
We were handed paper and pens and asked to write down why we are doing this—and to share it with someone in case something happened to us on the street that day. The answer to that question could be answered definitively. Here is what I wrote:
“I am here to walk in the tradition of my ancestors and bear the truth of God that we, too, are made in the image of God. I am here to bear witness that I was created to take up space in the world—to be, to live, to thrive, to lead, to love and to be connected with all.”
What strikes me now is that to bear witness to my right to live, I had to be willing to die.
This has been the cross that people of African descent and Native American people have borne for more than 500 years on US soil.
Ever since the demon called Colonization led Europeans to claim the land, enslave, then remove its original inhabitants, then enslave and exploit people of African descent to work that land and build their country in the name of colonizing them (read Black History of the White House, p. 195, by Clarence Lusane) have had to risk death to bear witness to our right to live.
It has been the cross that Latino and Asian-American people have born for the past 200+ years since colonization stole land from Mexicans and declared it was now “America” and Chinese men were exploited to build the railroads and fill empty slave cabins in the shadow of emancipation. Yes, Chinese men were the next wave exploited to build the U.S. economy after the Civil War. Now Muslim and Sikh and LGBTQ people risk death to proclaim their right to live—to take up space, to flourish.
The demon Colonization claims human flourishing for its own exclusive pleasure.
The colonizing spirit declares the self to be fully human—to have the right to steward the world—and all else either an asset, a burden, or an obstacle—to be eliminated on the way to the self’s exclusive “human” flourishing.
Colonization is the soil from which our nation sprung.
Colonization’s truth and rightness are the underlying assumptions upon which our entire way of life rests.
Colonization created the political construct of race, itself, for one purpose: to secure the exclusive right of dominion for folks deemed white by the state.
Colonization’s logic morphed from British taxes to black poll taxes and plantations converted to prison farms to Nixon’s Wars on Drugs that criminalized heroine (primarily a rich white woman’s addiction) then focus police in black neighborhoods to disrupt the black vote and secure a new generation of free black labor to build military weapons and sew Victoria Secret undies for 45 cents per day.
The logic of colonization led to the genocide, removal and missionization of Native American peoples.
It led the U.S. government to break every single treaty it ever made to the native people of our land, snatching land it promised Native people they would hold in perpetuity.
Standing Rock was such a land until President Trump authorized a pipeline to run straight through ancestral burial grounds rather than disrupt white neighborhoods. A federal judge declared Trump’s authorization illegal in June, but oil flow continues.
The same colonizing logic that led Republican strategist, Lee Atwater, to scheme the Southern Strategy has led Republicans to let the Voting Rights Act of 1965 rot since the Supreme Court defanged it in 2013 and Trump advisor, Stephen Miller to defend a new GOP bill that would drastically reduce legal immigration.
And the same colonizing spirit permeates the white church. It’s the spirit that led white parishioners of St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church to segregate new black parishioners into the balcony and catalyzed Absalom Jones and Richard Allen to lead a walk out of St. George’s to establish St. Thomas African Episcopal Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Church, respectively.
Today the colonizing spirit leads Christian conferences to flash all (or nearly all) white speaker lineups—without a blush, promote white worship music as the gold Christian standard around the world, and build mega churches in the mold of mega malls and amusement parks that serve hundreds of thousands music and scripture disconnected from parishioners’ local contexts and needs.
This is the spirit that led the majority of the entire white church to vote for a man who promised to “take our country back.”
We can’t get around it.
The spirit of colonization drives white America, always has, and the church is no different.
This truth nearly drove me to despair today. As I poured through the tags and messages from well-meaning white evangelical leaders. They called Facebook followers to listen to leaders of color like me. Some wrote blog posts distancing themselves from Trump and outlining steps Christians can take to fight racism. Others simply shouted encouragement on Twitter… and it was appreciated.
But tears fell from my eyes three times today when I asked myself one question:
Will their followers vote differently next time?
Will my friends’ followers vote in a way that ends mass incarceration and modern-day prison slavery next time? Will they vote in a way that welcomes immigrants to our nation and gives undocumented people a way to stay and thrive? Will they vote in a way that preserves the economic safety net for poor people and moves healthcare further; providing healthcare (access to long healthy life) for all? Will they vote in a way that makes congress protect every American’s right to vote?
I knew the answer. I know the answer. They won’t.
Why? Because when talking about the gospel, my white evangelical friends tend to leave that stuff out.
In the evangelical worldview, if it’s gospel, then it’s essential. If it’s not gospel, then it’s extra-curricular.
So, exploitation of people and voter disenfranchisement of people and breaking up families through mass deportation is extra-curricular. And facing down the colonizing spirit in the white church is … well, extra-curricular.
An evangelical since 1983, I went through a deep transformation of my understanding of the gospel when I embarked on a pilgrimage that led me to confront my own colonized mind.
I had been viewing the gospel through the lens of people that benefitted from colonization. But that simplified, defanged, disconnected gospel made no sense when I considered this question: “Would my ancestors who walked the Trail of Tears (according to family oral history) and slaved in South Carolina and Virginia (according to slave schedules, wills, and census documents)—would they consider a gospel with nothing to say to their actual colonized lives “good news”?
When I saw my colonized gospel through their eyes the answer was clear: No.
Then I realized something even more profound: Every word of every book in the Scripture was written by a person who was colonized or under threat of colonization by empire.
The good news of The Bible must be considered good news to the colonized!
One thing gives me hope. The cross—originally an instrument of persecution for those who dared to denounce colonizing empire.
The cross stands at the center of our faith.
The cross calls us to renounce and denounce any spirit that would lead us to marginalize, minimize, ignore, exploit, or erase the image of God among us.
It calls us to choose loss before we serve ourselves at others’ expense.
The cross calls us to deep interrogation of our hearts, our theology, our daily practices, and all assumptions that lead to the crushing of the image of God on earth.
“Pick up your cross and follow me,” Jesus said.
The only hope for our nation is that Christians will listen to Jesus.
From Ferguson to New York to Germany and South Africa Lisa Sharon Harper leads trainings and helps mobilize clergy and community leaders around shared values for the common good.
A prolific speaker, writer and activist, Ms. Harper is the author of several books
Lisa is the author of The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right and the founder and principal of FreedomRoad.us (launching online Fall 2017) — and currently? I’m personally reading The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right and Lisa and I are discussing and working through the book together. Join us?
August 12, 2017
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [08.12.17]
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:
Eric Ward @littlecoal
Eric Ward @littlecoal
Eric Ward @littlecoal
maybe pause to take all of this extraordinary in right here?!?
have you hugged your people today?
so much love: “It was the perfect representation of what love is. It was unselfish. It was 98 degrees and he’s sitting next to the pavement, which is also warm, and he’s feeding his wife ice cream because she’s disabled.”
#BeTheGIFT #TheBrokenWay
…because we all needs friends like this — to love through the difficult
we found this fascinating: how airlines schedule flights
Have Smartphones Destroyed our Generation?
Can’t stop thinking about this: “The more time teens spend looking at screens, the more likely they are to report symptoms of depression.”
so? did you know?
come see how this anonymous group is giving to their local school – hoping to spark something similar initiatives for others struggling communities #BeTheGIFT #TheBrokenWay
an unexplained gift
Practicing, Believing, and Walking in Faithfulness thank you for this, Sally Clarkson
newborn clings to mom in first moments of life — tears here
sharing some fun & creative ideas here!
compassionate police officer gives a young man a second chance
Derrick Lin
Derrick Lin
Derrick Lin
some very creative small life fun ‘at the office’
they only see ability – no disabilities, as they reach new heights
great idea: Online Tool Aims To Help Connect Christian College Freshmen
what a beautiful way to live
long for some quiet? this one’s for you: The 12 Most Breathtaking And Secluded Places On Earth
She doesn’t know how to tell her friends that her father is in jail. But one organization gives kids like Kayla a chance to just be a kid again – and to let her know she’s not the only one.
this police officer worked part-time jobs to raise enough money… to do this
“It’s more than about being an officer, it is about being a person, a person in a position to give back”
#BeTheGIFT #TheBrokenWay
this right here? just wow: “He sacrificed his own spot to give it to me. Something that’s pretty rare nowadays.”
they’re bringing dignity to the homeless by building this in their parking lot — love pouring out
#BeTheGIFT #TheBrokenWay
kinda undone: what a story — what a journey
because our beauty doesn’t come from the external
“It’s definitely a privilege to be riding…or even living.”
Her 2nd chance is the ride of her life
you’ve got to meet her: Dr. Audrey Evans — a woman who cared
Because it’s never too late to love: Download your August G.I.F.T list & be part of the joy we all need?
We could all together kinda start a little movement of Giving It Forward Today, choosing to #BeTheGIFT, living broken & given like bread out into a world down right hungry for love right now.
Pick up your copy of The Broken Way — and break free.
Find all kinds of free tools at thebrokenway.com and download your August G.I.F.T list
on repeat this week:
So… could someone just wrap up … a bit of Grace for us?
If we’re being honest? What every mother wants, her most unspoken need — is a truckload of Grace.
Grace that buries her fears that her faith wasn’t enough, and that her faults were too many. Grace that washes her dirty wounds and wounds the devil’s lies. Grace that says she doesn’t have to try to measure up to anyone else because Jesus came down — and He measures her as good enough, as worthy enough, as loved more than enough.
That is all … believe it today: You don’t have to be awesome and do everything. You simply have to believe that the One who is Awesome loves you through 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.
August 11, 2017
How to Feel In — Instead of Always Feeling Like An Outsider
“I’m just sick of being the least important person at the table.” Jerusha Clark was struck by this statement made by her teenage daughter after school one day. We’ve all experienced a time when we’ve felt left out, excluded, and less than “good enough.” Jerusha reveals how God never meant for us to focus on whether we are “enough,” whether we measure up in our own eyes or in the eyes of others. He made us—every piece of us—to be just as He is. Jerusha discovered this while exploring Jesus’s seven powerful “I am” statements recorded in the Gospel of John. We welcome Jerusha to the farm’s front porch as she shares the rest of the story…
“I’m just sick of being the least important person at the table.”
My remarkably perceptive teenage daughter sighed heavily, tossed her backpack in the trunk of our Explorer, and slammed the passenger door.
Though I’m a woman accustomed to using words to sort out my thoughts and feelings, though I’d taught my daughters to make sense of life with words from the time they began uttering sounds, in this instance I was struck utterly dumb.
My vibrant, intelligent girl . . . the least important person at the lunch table? Why? How? Where can I get hold of these foolish teenage girls who are hurting my baby?
And why in the world did memories of being picked last, not getting invited to that party, and overhearing whispering “friends” who quickly stopped talking when I walked up swim into my consciousness? Wasn’t I over all that nonsense?
I picked my other daughter up from middle school some time later. Hot tears glistened in her blue eyes. When I asked, “Is there something wrong?” I got the immediate “It’s nothing . . .” response.
Not buying it, I pressed in: “Please tell me what happened . . .”
That’s all it took to burst the dam of tears and tension.
“Savannah doesn’t even talk to me, Mom. Every day she says hi and gives a hug to everyone else in our group, but she acts like I don’t even exist. I’m already on the outside because I don’t play soccer. I don’t know why she doesn’t like me. It’s like I’m invisible and it just hurts . . . a lot.”
I wished so much I could take away my daughters’ pain.
I hoped I could give them some encouragement. I knew I could pray for and with them. I absolutely trusted that God would walk them through these heartaches, just as he had done with me through the agonizing years of adolescence.
At the same time, I was uncomfortably aware of one thing I could not do—tell them that it would be totally different when they became adults.
Women can be downright mean.
And I’m not excluding Christian ladies from that statement. Some of the most exclusive cliques I’ve come across are those in Bible study and church circles. There’s nothing quite like being rejected by women who claim to love “the least of these.”
To some extent, you and I and all people yearn for acceptance and approval.
Some mask this desire with a gruff, “I couldn’t care less” exterior; others numb it by being cold and cruel.
But most of us, and women almost invariably more so than our male counterparts, spend exorbitant amounts of time and energy trying to make relationships work.
I used to believe that wanting to fit in was strictly a negative thing.
As a Christian, I reasoned, only God’s opinion should matter; what other people think should have no bearing on how I feel or what I do. While there is wisdom in thoughts like these, the truth is more complex than this kind of “all or nothing” paradigm allows.
God created us for relationship, both with Him and with others. Fellowship is an eternal reality designed by our loving Father, an original glory that predates the fall.
When I cross over, I will not be in an individual heaven populated only by the Holy Trinity and myself; neither will you.
Instead, we will dwell forever in perfect unity with people from every tribe and every nation.
Every single one of us will be eternally “in.” If you ask me, that sounds pretty good.
Jesus said, “I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture” (John 10:9).
Jesus speaks these words after performing a miracle that incensed some and amazed others.
In John 9, He heals a man born blind. Furious at Jesus’s rising popularity and undeniable power, the religious leaders vow “that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue” (John 9:22).
The Greek word used here, aposynagōgos, is a compound verb connoting excommunication. Don’t imagine this means, “You can’t come to church here; try the one two miles away.”
This term indicates absolute exclusion from the social and spiritual fellowship of the community. “Cast out,” “cut off,” and “abandoned” would be appropriate synonyms.
To these people, at this moment, Jesus declares, “I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture” (John 10:9 NASB).
In essence, Jesus told the excluders and haters, “You cannot stand in the way. I am the way in, and whoever I receive has complete access, total freedom.”
To every woman who has been on the outside, anyone who’s felt rejected and judged, Jesus proclaims today,
“With me, you’re always in.
Come; find freedom in Me.
Be strengthened by what I provide and go back out into the world, confident in who I’ve made you to be.
You may come back in any time you like — for the door is always open to those who are Mine.”
Jerusha Clark is the author or coauthor of several books on spiritual growth, women’s issues, marriage, and mental health, including the bestselling Every Thought Captive, and Your Teenager Is Not Crazy (coauthored with her husband, Dr. Jeramy Clark). She also enjoys teaching at churches, retreats, schools, and conferences.
In, Every Piece of Me: Shattering Toxic Beliefs and Discovering the Real You, Jerusha Clark invites women to join her in embracing the life and truth of Jesus’s seven powerful “I am” statements recorded in the Gospel of John. She invites women to join her in embracing the life and truth of these words, relishing the freedom of an identity fixed on Christ alone while leaving behind fear, bitterness, busyness, and toxic thoughts that steal our joy and limit our power.
[ Our humble thanks to Baker for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
August 7, 2017
the secret that wins the battles you are in
Often we think we are the only ones bombarded by the fiery darts of the Evil One laced with the poison of rejection. That sinister voice that convinces us that we are unloved or unwanted is a familiar foe that too many of us battle. Marian Jordan Ellis knows the battle with the voice of rejection all too well, but greater still, she knows the Voice of Truth. It’s a grace to welcome Marian to the farm’s front porch today…
guest post by Marian Jordan Ellis
The waves of accusations crashing against my mind began something like this:
“No one loves you.”
“You don’t have even one true friend who cares about you.”
“You are unwanted; you always have been, and you always will be.”
“The world would be better off if you were dead.”
The waves of this particular mental assault began about three weeks prior to a conference my ministry hosts for women.
Every year we experience various attacks leading up to this event. I’m accustomed to the typical annoyances, such as cars breaking down, logistical setbacks, and random illnesses.
But this summer, the battle was so sinister that I didn’t realize I was under attack until it engulfed me.
I got hit by wave after wave of rejection.
By rejection, I mean immense feelings of being unwanted and unloved.
Irrational thoughts plagued my heart and mind that didn’t have a basis in reality. These thoughts seemed real and wouldn’t leave for weeks on end.
The condemnation began as a gentle ripple, but it grew into a massive swell that left me sobbing hot tears on my bedroom floor.
The words “No one loves you” ripped through my heart and echoed in my mind as the days grew closer to the event.
As much as I tried to resist, I could not stand against these lies.
I simply could not believe the truth. My mind swirled with accusations, and my heart was engulfed with the searing pain of rejection. I couldn’t believe nor receive love from God or anyone else. My mind was bombarded with the voice continuously.
Here’s a fact: the Enemy knows our weak spots.
This particular attack was not a new tactic. As a little girl, this was the biggest lie I believed about myself. Due to a variety of wounds from my childhood, a lie formed around my heart that I was unloved.
But as a grown woman, I had experienced the deep love of Jesus and walked through an intense time of healing from my past wounds.
The love of God transformed my life, setting me free from the past and the lies of the Enemy. I was a new creation. Without a doubt, I knew I was the beloved of God and lived in this identity for many years. I walked in freedom from insecurity and rejection.
But then, even though I didn’t realize it at the time, I let my guard down and was not standing firm against the Enemy’s schemes.
To say this mental onslaught came out of the blue is an understatement.
At the time, I was blessed with an incredible family, strong friendships, and the sweetest marriage.
When the tsunami hit, I could not be reasoned with; I felt completely unloved and unwanted. My whole identity was under attack. Not standing firm against the lies, I believed the accusation that I was rejected.
My heart brimmed with a pain that would not relent. Satan’s fiery darts ripped through me, and every relationship was tainted with his sick suggestions. I felt rejection at every turn, most of which made no sense whatsoever.
My mind was so clouded that I couldn’t see clearly.
Let’s just say that I didn’t stand firm. I fell for every dark and sinister accusation.
Here’s the deal: If I had been counselling someone else experiencing these types of negative thoughts, I would have instantly recognized it as an attack and prayed for the individual.
But in the midst of it myself, I couldn’t discern that my thoughts were lies and not based in reality.
That’s the thing about deception: we don’t easily recognize that we are being deceived.
My fears seemed so real, especially when random circumstances appeared to validate and point to the veracity of the taunts.
For example, I would accidentally be left off an invitation list, or a close friend would forget to call me back, or my sweet husband would make a simple remark that I would completely misinterpret. I’d overhear my team whispering about something, and the voice would convince me it was about me. Crazy junk.
Wave after wave, lie after lie, the accusations pounded against my heart.
Not to sound dramatic, but at times the voice whispered that the world would be better if I didn’t exist.
As the conference finally began, the attack only escalated until I was crying alone in the shower so no one else would hear me. My mind was a battlefield. And while I was fighting this intense spiritual battle, I was trying to teach others God’s Word and lead this conference.
Then, on the second night, I experienced a profound breakthrough that left me forever changed. As we entered into evening worship, we sang many familiar songs of praise.
There is nothing in the world like worship to break the power of the Enemy. He hates it when Jesus is lifted high.
That night, the presence of God was very evident in worship. Then my friend, the worship leader, began to sing “Good Good Father.” The profoundly simple chorus proclaims the goodness of God and our identity as His beloved children:
You’re a good, good Father It’s who You are.
And I’m loved by You It’s who I am.
As she led us in the song, the room broke out in praise and the Spirit of God moved. I sang these words as though my life depended on it, proclaiming truth from my heart.
I proclaimed my true identity in Christ.
I proclaimed God’s love for me.
I proclaimed God’s goodness.
As we worshipped, I felt God’s love for me as His beloved daughter. The more I experienced it, the more I felt my mind, body, will, and emotions take their stand against the lies of the Evil One. The darkness covering me began to disperse, and I could see the Light! Why? Because worship wins the war!
Truth defeats deception.
Worship sends the Enemy running.
Declaring the truth of my identity in Christ broke the power of the Evil One over my mind.
The storm clouds lifted, and I experienced freedom from the Accuser for the first time in weeks.
Where my heart had known only rejection and condemnation, I experienced the deep love of God and the assurance that I was His beloved.
The power of the Enemy to deceive and harass me ceased as I lifted high the goodness of God and proclaimed with authority my position as His child.
I stood, arms held high, feet firmly planted in the love of the Father.
I have no idea how long that emotionally painful attack would have continued in my life had I not discovered the power of standing firm and proclaiming God’s praise in the face of attack.
This truth is seen in scripture as God’s people faced their own enemies. God taught King Jehosophat this powerful secret: worship wins the war!
You will not have to fight this battle. Take up your positions; stand firm and see the deliverance the LORD will give you, Judah and Jerusalem. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Go out to face them tomorrow, and the LORD will be with you. (2 Chron. 20:17)
Victory is found in Christ alone. He fights for us.
Our job is to stand firm, proclaim His praise and wait for the deliverance.
I can tell you one thing for certain: Satan and his minions will not stick around when we lift up God in worship.
Nothing sends the Enemy running faster than truth proclaimed as we worship our good, good Father…
Marian Jordan Ellis is a Bible teacher, an author of several books for women, and the founder of Redeemed Girl Ministries. Ellis holds a master’s degree in biblical studies from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and speaks at conferences and universities around the country.
In Stand, Marian explores what it looks like to be faithful in a crumbling world. She addresses questions such as, How do Christian leaders share God’s good news in a culture that wants to silence their voices? How do parents hold on to hope when their children are more in love with the world than with Jesus? How do Christians battle the voices of shame and insecurity?
Stand looks at the stories of real people—from Scripture and from today—who chose to stand firm and “win life.” Jesus promises that the evil of this present world is not our future reality. You need to read this: Stand offers inspiration and practical tools to stand in your faith, your convictions, and your trust in a God who never fails.
[ Our humble thanks to David C Cook for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
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