Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 142

the real secret sauce when life, parenting, & people are hard

Back then I said I’d never be like him.

I slammed doors to punctuate the point and to make sure my dad knew it.

You can be tall and 15 and think you know a lot of things.

And you don’t think about growing old and looking squishy around the middle and telling teenagers to just, please, turn out the lights.

You don’t think about how you can open your mouth and let the sharp side of your tongue tear the innards out of a soul —-

and there’s no way you can stuff the whole bloody mess back.

I don’t know how it happened exactly.

Or maybe the truth rightly stated is — I really don’t want to remember.

How we were late, 35 minutes late, and when I got in the van they were all waiting, all 7 of them, waiting and squashed close in a mini-van that’s far too mini for lanky Dutch teenagers.

And early summer heat and and a clock ticking loud and, one late mother who can flare into this wide-eyed, wild agoraphobia when facing hours of finger food and paper plates and BBQ small talk with absolute strangers.

It got ugly.

A kid hadn’t ironed his shirt.

Over the course of a whole hour and ten minutes of hunting down socks and doing up hair and scouring for one battered croc — and telling my jangled it’s-time-to-go-nerves a dozen times that all fear is fraud and nowhere on earth is beyond the reach of God — I had told the boy at least 5 times, that he really did have to iron that shirt.

And then, 35 minutes late, he’s in the van looking like he’s rolled with a bunch of wombats to Timbuktu and back.

Maybe I should have shrugged the shoulders?

Maybe I should have said it didn’t matter, let’s just go? But I had asked him – five times. More like 5.8975 times and in this insistent, your-mama-she-means-business-voice.

So, to a van full of the waiting and the hot and the frustrated, I say No Ma’am. No ma’am, we are not going like that. Back into the house and you have. to. iron. that. shirt.

And the kid starts wailing. At mock pitch levels. Like I’d just announced an imminent amputation of a necessary limb or the banning of all birthdays for the rest of his breathing existence.

And every nerve ending in this highly sensitive body is already feeling unraveled and gory and I don’t even want to go to this thing and I feel the iron weight of time and kids and expectations all pressing down on the lung and his howl is jet thunder in the frayed veins.

And I turn hard toward the bawling kid.

“Out.”

I’m not proud that I can hiss.

Here’s, right here, it’d be real convenient to claim I wasn’t thinking straight, that some tightening screw had somewhere loosened….

But it’s been said and I’ve laid up nights, thinking about it, and it’s true and I say it like this: No matter the jarring, a jar of fresh water can’t spill filthy water. When you’re upset, you upset what’s really in you. 

I grab the boy’s arm and lean in close to his face. His wracking sobs are hot and hard in my face.

And I’m gnawing. Gnawing on the side of lip, pulling on my mouth like I’m trying to hold something back, like I’m trying to chew through to something better than this – better than him.

How can you have held the child that came from you as an ember of very heaven and then glare blind angry and stomp him right out? Who can look into a child and forget miracle?

Me — the amnesiac mother who forgets holy all the time.

I lean in and over, gnaw like a wild thing, and the kid pulls back and wracks it out like this haunt — like this high and holy haunt.

“When … you… do… that…” His shoulders heave, chocking back all this heart water right undammed.

“When… you… chew… your lip like that?” He wipes his face with the back of his arm. “You … look… just… like… Grandpa Morton.”

And there’s no air in my lungs.

I’ve caved, in a moment everything’s caved.

Like him? Like my Dad? 

It’s like a flashing supernova, the look in a child’s eyes and there’s a flaring mirror and you see you are everything you’d said you’d never become.

You can become everything that once undid you.

I’m right tipped, upset and know who I really am and what really spills, and here is why I’ll never stop being a grace beggar, a wild Cross-clinger.

“Please… Don’t… Do… That…” The poor child can’t stop the heaving of his shoulders, his heart.

I’m undone now — undammed.

And feeling so damned.

How can grace get a hold of you — when the past won’t let go of you?  

How do you leave a legacy different than the one you’ve been left? That’s what I’ve got to gnaw through to. How do you mangle the ones you love most?

“Sor…ry… Mama… didn’t… mean… to make you… cry.” And he’s the one who can’t stop.

And I kneel down and let go of his arm. And I hold his face. That’s what I should have done, done right at the beginning. What would happen in a world where anger was your flag to reach out and cup a face?

He looks so scared and wrung and thin — every child’s a thin place.  I see God.

And that’s what comes:

If you don’t fight for joy, it’s your children who lose.

What do I want my children to remember — my joy in clean floors, made beds and ironed shirts — or my joy of the Lord?

You will be most remembered — by what brought you most joy.

The joy of the Lord is your strength and the person of Christ is your unassailable joy – and the battle for joy is nothing less than fighting the good fight of faith.

His cheeks in my palms, they’re so white, so wet.

It’s his eyes — if you’ve put the fear of yourself into a child, how is there room for the joy of the Lord? Joy isn’t an optional feature to the Christian life — it’s the vital feature of the Christian life.

Battle for joy or lose your life. Or other’s lose theirs.

And I whisper sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry… and hold hold his face close.  I tell the boy I know nothing yet, nothing.

Every ungracious moment means someone doesn’t fully yet understand grace.

And the boy crumbles into me and I hold onto him and a forgiveness I’ll never deserve and there’s a grace that can hold us, that can mold us, the way joy can bend you soft at all the joints.

And I murmur it into the thick of his hair — that even now He can still make us like Him.

The boy touches my cheek like a flag waving yes.

 

 

Maybe what we want most desperately — is relief for our unspoken broken.

Maybe what we want most — but don’t know how to quite find words for —

is healing for our unspoken broken, a gentle touch of hope for  our Broken Way.

Maybe we want someone to be real, someone to sit with us so we know we aren’t alone.

Maybe we want someone to hand us some Brave — and the truckload of grace that we’re kind of wild for.

Maybe we want someone to reach for our hand — and give us courage to dare to take The Broken Way… into abundance.

After Manchester: What They Don’t Tell You About the Real Justice Warriors

The morning after children were blown apart in Manchester and the world weeps for the evil, we wake to two Shaloms here.

Like we’re begging the world for a double measure of peace, for an absence of conflict, for completeness, fullness, wholeness — for justice.

They wake to the light dawning brave here: Our first daughter, Hope, our second daughter, Shalom, our third daughter with the middle name Shalom, the name she was given still in China, and that’s our fierce prayer for the world: the brazen hope of a double measure of peace and wholeness.

But you tell me — what in a shattered world is peaceful wholeness when bombs blast open screaming children and tensions and divisions cut us all vein deep and we all feel a bit torn apart by the injustice?

It rained yesterday, dripped long out in the orchard yesterday, and I didn’t yet know that there were shards raining down in Manchester, half a broken world away. Grieving is always happening in the midst of all this glory.

I didn’t know the names of children lost and how their mothers longed to stroke their hair back just once more, like evasive hope running the last time through the ache of yearning fingers.

Levi Voskamp

Levi Voskamp

There were swallows in the orchard after the rain, and I had watched them swoop and soar, like the weight of earth cannot hold down winged things or souls who have known love.

God is love, and God is just, and God wouldn’t be loving if He weren’t just. God wouldn’t be loving if He didn’t bring justice for a family whose 8-year-old daughter was shredded by shrapnel and evil yesterday in unsuspecting Manchester. God wouldn’t be loving if His justice didn’t protect the innocent and God is a God of justice or He isn’t God at all.

Tuck it into the hands of all the hurting: God is a setting-right God.

God is about setting right what goes wrong in bloody concert halls and down our own shadowed halls, and God is about justice for the wounded, and justice for the forgotten and justice for the marginalized and justice for a world just heartbroken.

God is about making things right and making things just — both in the soul and in the world — and those two words are the same — righteousness and justice — and they come from the very same root in His own Word, from the very same beat of His heart.

I once sat across from a man strumming his guitar at the back of an old Baptist church and he leaned one way and said.

They’ll tell you that only Christians who lean this way are the justice warriors. The ones who care about inclusion and refugees and poverty relief and equity — but they don’t care to speak much about Jesus and the cross and the only way.”

And then he leaned the other way.

“And there’ll be those that tell you that Christians who lean the opposite way — that they wince at the idea of being justice warriors. The ones who think caring for physical needs is a distraction from caring about real gospel needs — because they misinterpreted Jesus to not be passionate about justice at all.”

Are we seeking us first — or seeking first the Kingdom of God?

Are we all citizens of heaven first — or are citizens of all our own countries first?

Are we looking for worn, thin places in the fabric of society and sacrificially breaking off threads of our own lives to weave threads of time and gifts around the needs of others — so in the midst of brokenness, we can take the broken way, to bring about the wholeness of shalom.

Then that crooner with the guitar turned and looked up at the wooden Cross hanging on the back wall of that First Baptist church.

“Never remotely doubt it: God is a justice warrior. Just look at Jesus.”

Jesus’ life is just — and justice is Jesus’ life.

God’s so passionate about justice He sends Jesus to embody His passion.

Jesus, in all His righteousness and justice, is The Warrior to bring justice to a broken world, proclaim the Kingdom, announce sight for the blind and freedom for the captives — and then He stretches out His arms so wide on that Cross to absorb every sin and every injustice the world has ever known.

Jesus bears all injustice, suffers all injustice and crushes all injustice — so that His people walk in justice.

God is the original justice warrior who says:

“Quit your worship charades.

I can’t stand your trivial religious games….

I’m sick of your religion, religion, religion,

while you go right on sinning.

When you put on your next prayer-performance,

I’ll be looking the other way.

No matter how long or loud or often you pray,

I’ll not be listening.

And do you know why? Because you’ve been tearing

people to pieces, and your hands are bloody.

Go home and wash up.

Clean up your act.

Sweep your lives clean of your evildoings

so I don’t have to look at them any longer.

Say no to wrong.

Learn to do good.

Work for justice.

Help the down-and-out.

Stand up for the homeless.

Go to bat for the defenseless.”

Isaiah 1:13-17 MSG

And because God is a righteousness and justice God who is about setting-everything-right, God is passionate about personal salvation, pure holiness — and pervasive justice.

And He has wrought all of that — personal salvation, pure holiness, and pervasive justice — by fighting for justice at every single level — justice for every soul and justice for all of society.

People may confuse social justice with a social gospel —- but the thing is:

Real Gospel warriors and justice warriors cannot be confused and they cannot be separated.

Because you can’t truly be a warrior of the gospel unless you’re a justice warrior — and you can’t truly be a justice warrior unless you’re a warrior of the Gospel.

The honest to God truth is:

Caring for the physical needs of the person

never distracts from the gospel needs of the soul —

unless you’re only sharing the gospel

with the physically wealthy.

It’s a broken world and mothers weep and the mourning dove cries out in the apple tree and, sure:

You can choose to ignore justice — but it’s ignoring what God requires of you.

“What does the LORD require of you but to do justice…” Micah 6:8

Levi Voskamp

Levi Voskamp

Levi Voskamp

I can see how the Cross hung straight behind the guy strumming his guitar — how the Cross didn’t lean too far one way or too far the other way, because the whole and full way of Jesus is too conservative for the liberals and too liberal for the conservatives, so the Cross finds itself pointing true north, a third way, pointing straight to God.

It’s taking me years to discover the wholeness of shalom, of the Kingdom, of the Gospel:

If we are genuinely justified by faith, we can’t help but live out justice — and if we genuinely live out justice, this is what helps many more decide to live justified by faith.

Grace makes you just.

Grace makes you just care, just stand up, just listen, just pray, just live given, just go last so others can go first, just do hard and holy things, just live cruciform — cross-formed — so others can just live.

Grace makes you just.

And if we say we are saved by God’s grace, but God’s grace hasn’t saved us from indifference toward injustices — then maybe we haven’t tasted saving grace?

If grace hasn’t made us justice warriors — then maybe we just haven’t been slain by grace?

It’s a central evil — to not advocate for those on the edges.

“You shall not distort justice; you shall not be partial…. Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue, that you may live and possess the land which the Lord your God is giving you.” Deut. 16:19

A fine preacher man once stood at the front of his church, in front of the Cross, and he didn’t lean either way but stood straight in front of them and looked his people in the eye:

“If the church does not identify with the marginalized, it will itself be marginalized. This is God’s poetic justice.” ~ Timothy Keller

In the midst of the rain yesterday, the sun split everything falling and arched itself in full-brazen color across the world and the promise was plain for a wounded world to see:

There is hope for a world of justice,

for wholeness to be formed from brokenness,

for shalom to reign over the Kingdom of God,

and there are justice warriors who are prayer warriors and Gospel believers

who will never let fear beat down their fierce faith in all the light shattering the fraudulent dark,

who will wage cruciform love in the face of everything that takes the form of evil,

and justice will rise higher than the threat of terror, and justice will go further than the long claws of hate,

and justice will reign because there is a just God who defiantly and forever reigns.

There may be storms that rip up your world, but heaven can come down and brush a rainbow across all that pain like a sacrifice —

and make you hope for the promise of the just wholeness to come.

 

TODAY ONLY:  FLASH SALE ON NOW!!! 

2 registrations for #JUSTICE17 for only $300 ($150 each). 24 hours only! 

So grab a friend & join us & Hillsong United on June 9-10

I’ll be looking for you. This is the one gathering that not one of us can afford to miss. This is the heartbeat of God.  Do whatever it takes to come gather with us. Guaranteed: No regrets. Profoundly life-changing. 

Terrorism, violence, cultural & racial divisions. Poverty. Injustice. All may threaten to rip apart our world. But Jesus’ message – Love thy neighbor, is still our greatest call to Worship and Justice. 

The thread of each conversation at the JUSTICE CONFERENCE is within the context of a theology of justice that calls followers of Christ into a more intentional lifestyle of ‘living justly’ as we seek to live out our faith and be disciples of Jesus.

Please — you simply must join us? 

Be one of the first 100 people to register for The Justice Conference 2017 using the code word “BIBLE” and you will receive a FREE COPY of God’s Justice Bible! 

Register now – www.thejusticeconference.com/register (Limited to first 100 people using the code BIBLE)

#JUSTICE17    Simply put: I need to meet you there.

The Best Question to Ask When Things Are Going Hard

Katie Ganshert knows the brokenness in this weary world, yet lives in the hope of Jesus. Following Jesus often means not knowing what the road ahead of us might hold. It is in those unexpected turns and exits we find the deepest meaning in our marriages, in our families, in our adoption stories, and in our faith. Through her own experiences with each of these, Katie infuses grace, mercy and love into her stories. Her novels bring these stories to life, reminding us that life is indeed a journey. It’s messy and hard, full of valleys and peaks, yet it is incredible and full of breathtaking beauty. The kind of beauty that makes everything worthwhile. Her stories remind my heart of the answer to my deepest longing – Jesus. It’s a grace to welcome Katie to the farm’s front porch today…

guest post by Katie Ganshert

“I’m angry and I don’t know how to be angry.

I don’t even know who I’m angry at, or what I’m angry about.

I just want to stop getting so stressed over things I can’t control. I want to surrender.

But it’s like there’s this wall, made up of my own sin and confusion and misunderstanding. And God’s on one side and I’m on the other.”

Five years ago, my husband and I started the adoption process, and when asked if we were open to adopting a child with special needs, we checked the box that said no.

It felt like such a selfish choice. But we knew ourselves. We knew what we were capable of undertaking. And we didn’t feel like special needs was it.

Fast forward.

Our daughter has been home for two years, and in that time, she’s been diagnosed with cerebral palsy, which affects the right side of her body, and speech apraxia, a disorder that turns talking into a hard fought battle of marathon proportions.

One that leaves all of us exhausted at the end of the day, because trying to be understood, and trying to understand what someone is saying every time they speak is a mentally taxing thing.

Watching your daughter struggle to string together sounds, to give words to all the thoughts, all the questions, racing through her head? It’s not easy.

Our life turned into a string of doctor appointments and therapy appointments.

Progress came by the drop and we worked hard for every ounce. Celebrated every ounce. Prayed for every ounce.

And then one day? That progress disappeared.

Eating, swallowing, sounds she’d been able to make just one week before … gone. Taken away. Like smoke in the wind.

Enter those words up above—a text message I sent to my friend as I walked in the dark, beneath rain-soaked clouds, a storm all its own swirling in my soul.

I didn’t understand. Why was this happening?

It felt cruel. The opposite of answered prayers. And my heart was raging.

In my anger, in my frustration, in my confusion and fear, I was grappling for why. Consumed with why.

It’s an insatiable question—why. The kind you can ask and ask and ask without ever getting your fill.

And in all of that struggling—in all of that grappling—I lost sight of who.

We may never know why something happens—why this circumstance, why this outcome, why this dratted, discouraging setback. Those aren’t answers easily found.

But who? Who is all around.

In every breathtaking sunset, in every star-strewn sky. In rain drops that fall on thirsty land. In the sun that rises, chasing away the coldest, longest of winters. In the pages of the well-worn Bible I hold in my lap every morning.

This God—His way is perfect; the word of the Lord proves true; He is a shield for all who take refuge in him. For who is God, but the Lord? And who is a rock, except our God? The God who equipped me with strength and made my way blameless. Psalm 18:30-32

My sinful, selfish, ugly way — made blameless.

That is who.

No matter the circumstances of the moment …

He is peace in the storm.

The lifter of my head.

A God who sings over us.

And raises the dead.

Maybe someday, my daughter will be a speaker or a singer, and I’ll look back at all this hard, and stand in awe.

Maybe someday, the woman struggling in secret, heart rent every time she sees another pregnancy announcement on Facebook, will have a house brimming with children.

Maybe someday, the marriage that finds itself in tattered shards will be restored, stronger than it ever was to begin with.

Or maybe not.

Oh, maybe not.

Those are kinda terrifying words.

And yet, we don’t need hindsight to know God is good. We already have hindsight. On that cross. In that empty tomb.

You are good and you do only good; teach me your decrees. Psalm 119:68

This God is no stranger to the hard road. This God walked the hardest road for us.

And whatever road we’re walking one now—then somehow, someway—that road is good. There’s not just breadcrumbs of good for you on it; the road itself is good.

It is for your benefit. My benefit. Her benefit.

In this hard, He is doing something holy. He is doing something transformative. Even as our hearts rage. Even as they break.

This upside down road, where His power is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9), where troubles are an opportunity for great joy (James 1:2) because troubles usher us into His presence, and in His presence, there is fullness of joy. (Psalm 16:11)

This is who.

A God who does not forsake. A God who is not cruel. A God who is not stingy with grace.

Not a sparrow falls outside of His care.

When we find ourselves walking through a dry and weary land where there is no water, shaking our fists at why …

Fix the eyes on this God.

Remember and rest in who.

Maybe comfort isn’t found so much when we ask “Why is this all unfolding here and now?” — maybe comfort is found more when we rest in Who is enfolding us all here and now. 

 

 Katie Ganshert  is an award-winning author of several novels and works of short fiction, including the Christy Award-winning A Broken Kind of Beautiful and Carol Award-winner, The Art of Losing Yourself.

Life After is  Katie Ganshert’s most complex and unforgettable novel yet. A fiery explosion claims the lives of passengers on Chicago’s transit system. As the sole survivor, Autumn Manning is haunted by the lives of the victims. When forces come together to bring her face-to-face with reminders of devastating loss, she must decide what path to take forward.

The stirring prose and authentic characters pose questions of truth, goodness, and ultimate purpose in this emotionally resonant tale. A powerful summer fictional read that may be kinda perfect for the searching heart.

[ Our humble thanks to Waterbrook Multnomah for their partnership in today’s devotion ]

 

The #1 Key when deciding How to Make a Home

This woman is nothing short of brilliant. Seriously. I just absolutely love Tsh Oxenreider. What would you say if your spouse suggested selling your house, putting your furniture in storage, and taking your three kids under age ten on a nine-month trip around the world? And My friend Tsh Oxenreider said? “Thank you for bringing it up first.” She loves exploring the world’s untold amount of tiny places, and was delighted to share this with her kids. But no one was more surprised than her that traveling to 30 countries in one year taught her, above all else, about home. What it means to call a pin on the map home, to stay put and bury deep roots, to know and be known. YOU HAVE TO READ HER BOOK AND WHAT SHE DISCOVERED!  She discovered, in fact, that this is how we humans were made to live. To live into the ordinary, the liturgy of weekly rhythms, the boring. It’s how we were created. It’s a grace to welcome Tsh to the farm’s front porch today…

guest post and photos by Tsh Oxenreider

I find it fascinating that in all our exploring of the world’s nooks and crannies, my three kids most loved the times we settled down and stayed somewhere awhile.

A year after we returned to the States, I can ask one of them their favorite part of our year, and their answer is usually “the month we lived in Sydney and fed chickens in the backyard,” or “the month we lived in France and built Terabithia.”

We bring up memories from the Great Wall of China, the Daintree Rainforest in Queensland, and the Eiffel Tower, and after a few minutes of reminiscence, they turn the conversation, preferring to talk about the houses that accompanied them:

Remember that loft in France with the Star Wars chess set?

I loved Chiang Mai—we each got our own bed.

Remember the triple bunks beds in Uganda?

I totally wish we could have chickens like in Sydney.

I didn’t travel around the world with my family to “find myself”  — but I was curious what I’d learn about home.

Can home be anywhere? Is home where I’m originally from? Where I’ve lived longest? Do we even need a place to call home, so long as we have each other?

Some people live “location independent,” making the entire world their home—they’ll park for a while in one neck of the woods, then when the wanderlust itch needs scratching, they’ll pack up again and move to a new spot. Could this be a feasible way of life for us?

The single most significant thing we gained when we paused for a month or more in Thailand, Australia, and France was community.

By staying in one place for a month or longer on our travels, we burrowed into our surroundings and invested in neighbors, even if only for a little while. We stayed put—in a nomadic sense, anyway—long enough to cultivate relationships unshielded by the next great thing to see, the next place on our itinerary.

The nuns at Our Lady of Mississippi Abbey say that by taking a vow of stability, they are “resisting all temptation to escape the truth about ourselves by restless movement from one place to the next.”

Resisting all temptation to escape the truth about ourselves. That’s an easy thing to do in our rapid-fire world.

*****

We’re not Benedictine monks, and twenty-first century life is what it is. But as our kids get older, we’re surprising ourselves with our unassuming, quiet draw to stability.

On our trip around the world, Kyle and I kept the question of home in the backs of our minds and the forefront of our conversations.

When a locale proved itself pleasing enough, we’d ask each other—Could we move here? Could this be home? If nowhere pulled strong enough, our default was a return to central Oregon. That was our assumption, in fact, until the last month of our journey.

In tiny Uhldingen-Mühlhofen, Germany, Kyle and I went on a date to a neighborhood pub, and along with talking about the kids and their year of nonstop travel, we talked about home.

I don’t remember who brought it up first, but we shocked ourselves with a mutual admittance that of all the places in the world, we thought my hometown of Austin might be calling us back.

Late that night, we listened to drunk Germans sing in the background and we stared at lights reflecting over an inky-black Bodensee while we brainstormed what a return to Texas would look like.

Kyle said, “I don’t know why, but no matter where we are in the world, Austin has this magnetic pull. It’s like we’re supposed to be there.”

A month later, we got rid of another half of our belongings waiting for us in a central Oregon storage unit, packed the rest in a truck, and signed a rental agreement in the north Austin suburbs.

…turns out, we didn’t move here for convenience, culture, or our taste buds.

We moved here because of people.

There were just enough old friends and just enough family to pull us back here, and together with a church we now love, we’ve unearthed what we found in a sliver of a fraction in Thailand, Australia, and France: community.

Terry Pratchett says, “Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” This comforts me, here in Texas.

We will always travel. In fact, we’ve got more trips on the horizon, both scribbled on calendar squares and in daydreams for the kids’ teenage years. Our move to Texas was on the condition that we’d spend a sizable chunk of our summer months in Oregon, as much as we could help it.

Wanderlust is never truly quenched—as C.S. Lewis famously penned, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”

The more I travel, the more I’m at peace with the unslakable satisfaction of wanderlust. Its very nature exists on the promise of something better around the bend, and the stamps in my passport have proved to me my heart will always yearn for something better. And better.

And better, yet. It’s as though I were made for another world.

***

Am I at home in the world? Yes. Its waters and forests, megacities and villages, bus lines and bicycles make it feasible to find a reasonable escapade anywhere.

When I travel, I’m at home in the world —  so long as I’m with the people I love most.

But I still need a home in the world.

I’ll backpack with gusto until my back gives out, but at the end of the day, I need to hang up that backpack in a closet, check my mail, and sip a drink with my next-door neighbor, watching the sun set from the backyard.

I need to water my neighbor’s plant when it’s her turn to travel. I need to pick up my husband’s prescription refill from the pharmacy who already knows his needs. I need to harp on my kids to clean their rooms for the third day in a row. I need to lose my phone in the same couch, and stir soup simmering on the same stove in the same pot.

Trappist monk Thomas Merton says this about Benedictine monks: “Stability becomes difficult for a man whose monastic ideal contains some note, some element of the extraordinary. All monasteries are more or less ordinary. Its ordinariness is one of its greatest blessings.”

Travel has taught me the blessing of ordinariness, of rootedness and stability. It can be found anywhere on the globe.

It’s courageous to walk out the front door and embrace earth’s great adventures.

But the real act of courage is to return to that door, turn the knob, walk through, unpack the bags, and start the kettle for a cup of tea.

In our rituals of bread-making and wine-tasting, tucking our kids into bed and watching stars flicker from a chair on the back patio,

we are all daring to find ourselves at home, somewhere in the world.

 

GET YOUR HANDS ON THIS BOOK! TRUST ME: THIS IS A FIVE STAR SUMMER READ!

Tsh Oxenreider is the author of several books, the founder of the community blog The Art of Simple, and the top-ranked podcaster of The Simple Show. Her passion is to help big-hearted people live simple, unconventional lives.

At Home in the World is a travel memoir about home, where Tsh tells the story of wandering the world for nine months across four continents with three kids, one husband, and five backpacks. She chronicles their global journey from China to Singapore to Australia, Uganda, France, Croatia, and beyond, as they fill their days with mouth-watering food, breathtaking sights, train schedules, world-schooling the kids, and the awareness of all the world teaches about itself, its inhabitants, and the places we call home. 

Really —  THIS IS ONE ABSOLUTELY ONE UNFORGETTABLE SUMMER READ! 

[ Our humble thanks to Thomas Nelson for their partnership in today’s devotion ]

Forget the Popular, Feel-Good Way: Be Brave Enough for the Narrow Way [About Temptation, Courage, Holiness & Real Joy ]

Iwas once tempted beyond measure.

(I mean, c’mon, who are any of us kidding here — we’ve all been tempted beyond measure a thousand, countless times.)

But don’t bother whipping out the measuring tapes because, yeah, this kind of temptation defied being contained or numbered or tamed.

It was a temptation that wooed my wounds in the middle of the night, that curled around my membranes in the dark like tender comfort that ended up cutting off shavings of my heart, that consumed my thoughts like it could slurp down my resolve like a slushy in the middle of a late-spring heat wave south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

There are temptations that can feel more like they will be completions.

I let my dreams wander like a lost bird winging and circling for its own kind of home.

You can feel like if you just give into what you want — you’ll be given the joy you’ve always wanted.

That’s the popular tripe they’re hawking out on the streets and Facebook streams these days, and I confess, I once just about bought that pre-packaged little sound byte of pop psychology, bought it hook, line and sinker — because it didn’t come with any warning that it might just gut your life.

I didn’t know until my heart almost bled itself dry, that there is really only two choices when begging temptation is looking you square in your twitching eye: There is either the pain of self-denial — or the pain of self-destruction.

I think about that a lot now, how many years later, return to that, when temptation beckons me with the lie: “Take, eat, and see that the comfort is good.” Pain of self-denial — or pain of self-destruction. Heaven is forever, and here is a blink, and narrow is The Way to joy for always.

Now, I know, they’ll tell you that there ain’t no such thing called temptation anymore, only repressed self-limitation.

They’ll tell you that the idea of temptation is antiquated, isn’t an issue for those who are educated and sophisticated.

And I want to say: Just don’t say you’re a follower of Christ if you’re actually just following your own heart.

I mean, someone once told me she had found the courage to walk away from her life and follow her heart’s desires.

And I watched her face, how light moved across her like the way late May sun and spring clouds move across the fields, and I loved her, but love doesn’t mean agreement, because love means sacrifice, and I didn’t find words then like I’m slowly finding words now, the ones I learned through my own bloody battles out in my own hurting fields, and I say them like a long limping:

Do we follow our heart’s desires — or do we desire to follow Christ? 



 Courage isn’t about doing what you want in life. Courage is about laying down your life. Otherwise it’s not courage— it’s self-gratification. Don’t label it anything else.

Courage is always about selflessness: Less self.

Which ultimately means more holy happiness for your soul.

These aren’t mere words to me — they are divine lifelines that have made me weep for the cost of them.

I wanted to cup her face — wanted to ask her if we both could try to find the realest brave together, find brave where two old rugged beams cross and Real Love showed us how to feel holy joy.

Because those that seek to be happy must first seek to be holy. There is no true happiness apart from true holiness.

Yeah, I know, if you want to be popular & please people, make your life preach happiness. But, really, if you want to profoundly please God, make your life preach holiness.

“Holiness, not happiness, is the chief end of man,” urged Oswald Chambers.

Because: holiness is not a single attribute of God — but a synonym for all of who God is.

He is love — but His love is a holy love, His grace is a holy grace, His justice is holy justice, and His spirit is Holy Spirit.

And the call to holiness is a trinity of it’s own: “separation from sin, dedication to God, transformation into the image of Christ.” (James H. Aughey)

This is hard — but we do hard and holy things.

And though holiness may not be the goal of the majority, it is the mandatory way of those entering the narrow gate of eternity.

This cost of holiness is worth staking all of your life, because the expanse of eternity depends on this.

This is worth whatever it takes — because our forever intersects with our choices now.  

(So don’t trust any author’s words about happiness or holiness unless you’ve opened the Word and know they line up with what the Author of the Universe says.)

Yeah, I once was tempted beyond measure. I laid awake in the dark until the light came.

And it turns out: Nothing kills temptation or self-loathing— like the freedom of already being crucified with Christ.

I traced it with a fingertip, that cross I pen everyday on my wrist, the way a child writes on her hand what she must remember, what she can’t afford to ever forget.

All that we’re tempted to do or all that we’re tempted to self-loathe — has already been nailed to the cross, all that we could self-loathe has already been washed away by grace.

I sat in the light of everything, sat up in the light of it all, and this is the love story that I’m riveted by, that I never want to get over:

The things we wish we could change about ourselves — have already been exchanged at the Cross.

When we need radical change — we need only to look to where radical exchange has already happened — at the Cross.

Cruciformation is the essence of transformation because it’s at the cross where radical change happens — our brokenness is exchanged for His wholeness.

This is what gives courage:

Think cruciform — and His right thoughts form your heart…. and your wrong thoughts take the form of His heart — crucified.

This is what destroys temptations:

Whisper cruciform — and in that moment you’re dead to all the brokenness that keeps you from breaking free.

Whisper cruciform — and you’re dead to addictions and wrong ambitions and ugly sedition.

Whisper cruciform — and you’re dead to what wants to kill and destroy you.

Only to the extent that we let ourselves die over and over again — can the abundant life be found in us.

Only to the extent that we let ourselves be formed cruciform over and over again— can our lives be fully transformed.

This is what transforms everything:

How can you be transformed by the renewing of your mind? How do you renew your mind?

The mind is renewed in Christ — when the mind returns to the Cross of Christ. To the Words of Christ, the Ways of Christ, the Wooing of Christ.

The way to take captive every thought is to make every thought cruciform.

Because cruciform is shorthand for what our heart always needs: the gospel.

And the thing is: Cruciform is the form of the Gospel.

This is what is holy happiness:

What frees you to really fully live — is to let yourself be fully crucified with Christ.

The form of the Cross — is the form of self-giving love, the form of a surrendered will, the form of open hands, the form of a transformed mind.

Love wins — only when it’s givenness & not selfishness — otherwise, it’s not love.

Cruciform is the form of anything that wins. Ask Jesus.

Cruciform is the form of my new identity, the form of my never-failing security, the form of my needed serenity.

Everything abundant is embodied in the form of that Cross and don’t let any self-help or hip personality tell you any different.

Because Jesus says?

Jesus says: “Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self.” Mark 8:34

Self-help is no help at all. Embrace suffering. Embrace the Cross-life — so you can have the abundant life.

Cruciform is the ultimate form of the Christian life — and when our mind forms that one word, cruciform — we re-member the right form of everything — and everything begins to transform.

Preaching cruciform to yourself is what transforms your soul — your world, your joy.

This is holy joy.

I was once tempted beyond measure — and I felt it in the dark, how He stretched out one arm — and then stretched out His other arm — and the universe reverberates with the cry of His heart:

Look at My outstretched arms: I love you beyond measure. And my arms, my Way, my Love, is more than enough.

Jesus is enough. This the love story that woos your wounds, that binds your broken heart to His, that heals the aching hurt of all the unspoken broken.

There is a Way bigger than your wants — and that size difference means you can never miss out on holy happiness for all eternity.

The love of Jesus who wants you — is more fulfilling than anything than you want.  

Your Jesus wants you more than your wants — and don’t you want to be wanted for forever the most? 

I once watched a bird unfold its wings and give itself to The Way the wind and Spirit beckons — and when it took to the sky, outstretched, a cross-formed shadow moved like grace across our fields and beyond the narrow gate.

You could see it:  Its joy knew no bounds or measurement as it soared toward those holy heights.

 

Dare to take the narrow Broken Way.

Dare to live cruciform and let your world transform — into abundant joy.

Dare to be the brave you’ve always wanted to be.

 Dare to take The Broken Way… because there is a Way bigger than your wants — and the love of Jesus who wants you — is more fulfilling than anything than you want.  

 

Dare to take the way that says yes to your Jesus who wants you more than your wants — and don’t you want to be wanted for forever the most?  

 

For Crying Out Loud: Who is Ready to Really Stand up for the Value of a Woman? #SheIsPriceless

Kristen Welch and I are sorta, kinda, soul sisters? As I serve on the board of directors of the ministry Kristen founded, Mercy House Global, I get to see it first hand again and again, what we can all do together to change the world for women, if we say our brave yes.  — and I am all in here with Kristen, with Mercy House Global, and togESTHER — we are the Esther Generation. Called for such a time as this, right where we are, to change the world for our sisters….  I absolutely love this woman with all my heart — a grace to welcome my soul sister, Kristen, to the farm’s front porch today…

guest post by Kristen Welch

Her daughter got pregnant at 14.

“She was in the sixth grade,” she tells me.

She wasn’t promiscuous or disobedient; she was desperate. I didn’t ask what it was like to let your little girl sleep with old men for food because the tears rolling down her cheeks was answer enough.

I kinda wanna cry out loud.

Her pregnant daughter is now a young momma, rescued and thriving at the maternity home in Kenya, supported by Mercy House Global.

Our family started the non-profit more than 7 years ago for survival prostitutes, for girls just like this daughter.

I sat in this mother’s home a couple of months ago in Kenya, with my 14 year old next to me and I could barely breathe. My family crowded into a space smaller than our bathroom at home and we squinted in the dark to find a place to sit.

When our eyes adjusted to the light, we cringed as bedbugs crawled all over us.

This momma told me how her son was still owned by a neighbor down the sewage-littered road in the slum. He works all day and most nights—not for money, but for food.

I wondered if she knew we call this slavery.

She told us how she boiled corn and tried to provide for her seven children after her drunkard husband ran off, but month after month she came up short and had to make desperate decisions to keep her family fed.

I didn’t know what to say or what to do, but I knew that we had to do something or her daughter and grandchild would never be able to come home.

I won’t lie; as I scratched my crawling skin in the stifling heat and could still feel the glares of men staring down my daughters as we walked to her house, I couldn’t wait to leave her home. I didn’t feel brave at all and longed to return to my normal.

But as soon as I thought it, I heard the words thunder in my heart: This is her normal.

I closed my eyes and silent tears slid down my cheeks. My God, this is 75% of the world’s normal.

It’s a truth that’s easy to avoid: a small percentage of us have most of the world’s resources to last a life time, while a large percentage of the world don’t have enough for one day.

It’s so easy to get absorbed in our own little world that we completely miss the way the rest of the world lives.

And I can say it because that’s what I did for a very long time. But I dare you, I beg you to here this truth:

your normal isn’t the world’s normal and the greatest deception is that you believe that it is.

This way of life is normal for millions and millions of people.

Before we left that house, I pulled out my phone to show her pictures I’d taken of her daughter and granddaughter at the maternity home the day before. She tenderly touched the screen and wiped her eyes, her pride was evident.

Then I showed her this picture of her granddaughter and I couldn’t stop the tears then.

You see, her granddaughter was named Kristen after me. Baby Kristen made Agnes and I family forever.

I grabbed this moms hands and I squeezed them tight and I whispered in her ear, You are not forgotten. You are valuable. You are priceless.

We left her home and found a place to shake out our clothes and we cried over lunch with the heaviness of the world’s normal.

We already offer small business and parenting training but our small team racked our brains on taking the next steps to provide new jobs and a central workspace for the desperate mothers we had visited that morning.

Teachers and a work space had been hired before our plane landed on US soil. And we worked backwards to figure out a way to buy looms and kilns and ask God to provide one more time.

And although Ann wouldn’t want you to know this, she texted me in a dark moment when my faith wavered and said:

“We would like to provide looms and kilns for women you are working with. God doesn’t call us to a convenient life—He calls us to an important life…We aren’t meant for self-gratification, but eternal greatness…and greatness is giving our lives away. Thank you for giving us a chance to serve with you, Kristen. Maybe someday I can sit at some looms and by some kilns—and hear how God has made miracles happen—and we will tell those stories, sister.”

I wish you could have seen the look on this mom’s face when we told her she had a job and would begin learning how to make ceramic beads.

It was priceless.

And that’s why we are inviting you into her story and women just like her because when we give our lives away, we are given unspeakable joy.

Every woman everywhere deserves to know that she is loved and valued by the God who created her. She is priceless like a treasured pearl.

She isn’t a commodity to be bought and sold, but she has been paid for by the precious blood of Jesus.

Tell her she is priceless. It’s the goal of the dozens and dozens of ministries we work with who work to remind women of this truth.

We are joining our hands around the world and raising money for 8 non-profits who exist to empower women in oppression and poverty with She Is Priceless, a Global Giving Day.

We are donning our pearls (#putonyourpearls), taking selfless selfies, giving sacrificially and standing up to say we see these injustices, these desperate women who are begging God for provision so they don’t have to make desperate decisions.

Will you please join with us and read these words over women around the globe?

Will you give to one of the organizations we are partnering with–working in hard places, with the most vulnerable?

Will you please join with us today and boldly declare with your time and resources we see you and we are here to say, you are not alone. He is with you.

Because women around the world–including you–are priceless.

 

 We are joining together to remind the world —
that every woman matters.

“She Is Priceless” Is A Campaign To Make A Difference In The Lives Of Oppressed Women.

Mercy House is teaming with eight organizations that are on the ground changing lives.

A pearl is a healed wound.  An oyster protects itself from irritation and suffering and the result is a priceless pearl.  The women supported by this campaign have endured unthinkable suffering in their lives and often feel forgotten.  

Might you join us? 

Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [05.13.17]

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:

Meg Loeks
Meg Loeks
Meg Loeks 

Motherhood is a hallowed place — because children aren’t commonplace #MothersDay

mother on #MothersDay

who knew? 10 Facts About Brain Work Which Prove We’re Capable of More than We Imagined

family camping trips might never be the same #MothersDay

you caught that?

you gotta come see how this town is stepping up to give back #BeTheGift #TheBrokenWay

um. wow. Mamas and their mini-mes #MothersDay

Lewis Miller / Instagram
Lewis Miller / Instagram 
Lewis Miller / Instagram 

kinda love how we can all start a beauty revolution: how one floral designer is taking his talents to city streets #BeTheGIFT

at 10 years old? you’ve gotta see how she’s offering those in need love and comfort

#BeTheGIFT #TheBrokenWay

Rooted in Love Photography 

just about nothing will stop this 2nd-grade teacher from finishing her lesson plans:

not even giving birth to her fourth child #MothersDay

priceless: the best surprise

just 8 days after his mother’s passing, he’s called to the plate — and does this #MothersDay

a world without moms #MothersDay

thank you, Mom #MothersDay

this right here? YES, yes yes! #BeTheGIFT #TheBrokenWay

8 Ways to Celebrate Mother’s Day If Your Mom Has Passed Away #MothersDay

because surprising your mom? is always the best #MothersDay

I kinda couldn’t have loved this more. No shame: choked up #MothersDay

we kinda need to talk about this

Post of the Week from these parts here

So if we’re being gut honest here? We don’t really want the cards or the flowers this weekend…

the most life-changing thing a woman can do for herself this Mother’s Day: What a Mother Really Wants 

God Didn’t Wait for You to Believe

they’re giving everyone a reason to smile every time a baby cries #MothersDay

grin: texts from mom #MothersDay

… honestly, sometimes moms fall short. And even that can kinda be made into the most beautiful thing of all:

Kept going back to this: When Moms Fall Short: The Club of the Velveteen Moms 

Because He lives – I can face tomorrow… 

just like ma #MothersDay

the special bond between a mother and child #MothersDay

Thank you moms for being there in every normal, mundane moment. Happy Mother’s Day

 

Take the Dare, Join the Revolution, Pick Up The Broken Way

Spirit of the Living God

[ Print’s FREE here: ]

So… could someone just wrap up … a bit of Grace for us today?

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?]

‪ Dare to fully live!

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. 

When Moms Fall Short: The Club of the Velveteen Moms

I’d left Mama sorting through pictures strewn across her table like the past had come calling.

Why is the past never how you thought you left it?

That photo of my brother and me in our toddler bowl cuts and plaid pants, grinning over a tower of spice bottles looked like the mid-70s exploded psychedelic and plaid on everything, and I laugh right out loud.

Hope remembers three miles out of town that she’s forgotten her glasses on Mama’s counter, so I turn around.

It’s grace that allows you to make U-turns, even if time doesn’t always.

When I slink back into Mama’s kitchen for the glasses, Mama’s at the table, head in her hands, weeping.

“Mama?”

I touch her shoulder and she nods, looks away out the window.

Sometimes the most painful thing is to turn your face into another face. A face can unveil too much of a soul’s information. Too much, too fast.

“It’s okay, Mama . . . it’s okay.” She crumbles into my arms.

Sometimes you can hear it —the resonance between the drumming of your own pulse and the pulse of grace rising up to you from the darkest places.

“It’s okay.” I soothe, stroking her hair. There is no fear in letting tears come.

Sadness is a gift to avoid the nothingness of numbness, and all hard places need water. Grief is a gift, and after a rain of tears, there is always more of you than before. Rain always brings growth.

An old card lies open on the table in front of her. It’s my handwriting from grade school, this blotting inky scrawl, cramped and haunting from decades ago.

“I don’t know how to tell you,” it reads, and I’m trying to remember who this kid was, what she’d felt. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I am sad and angry.”

I wrote this? What in the world? I pick the card up.

“I am angry for all the times I felt abandoned. I am angry for all the times I felt failed.”

I don’t remember writing the words, but I remember feeling them.

“I am sad I said even this because I don’t want to let anyone to see how bad it hurts. I don’t want anyone to know how much it all hurts. I am sad for what is. I am even more sad for what isn’t going to be now.”

Oh, blazing Gehenna.

How did this end up here, now? How did she find it? And how can you up and break your mother’s heart on a drowsy, humid Sunday afternoon with a note from thirty unsuspecting years earlier? How can a creased and smudgy piece of paper gore a mama right through for all she wasn’t and can never change?

Mama reaches up to touch my hand resting on her wracked, hunched shoulder. She chokes it out. “You can’t know how . . .” She bites her lip like a steadying, like a woman reaching for a hand. “How I’m far more sad for what won’t ever be now.”

She looks up, braves my face, everything fluid grief. “I’d do anything to get back there and do it all over again. If only . . .” She turns away again, squeezing my hand tight. Her fingers smudge the inked cross on my wrist.

Oh, Mama. That may be the saddest string of words that’s ever been strung together: “If only . . .”

I can taste the words in my mouth. Who doesn’t know “if only . . . ”?

If only there was time for me to go back for do-overs of my own, say different things to the kids, only speaking words that make souls stronger, somehow live better, love realer.

If only grief hadn’t driven my mother a kind of hurting crazy into psych wards all through my childhood.

If only my sister’s skull hadn’t been crushed like tender fruit by a delivery truck in front of all our helpless eyes.

If only I hadn’t kept a stuffed closet full of a thousand ugly sins.

If only . . .

But there’s no way back.

Maybe life always tastes a bit like regret. Whatever you do or don’t do, there is no way to never taste it.

And though you may have to taste regret, you don’t have to believe in it, you don’t have to live in it, like rowing a boat that only goes backward, trying to find something that’s been washed out to sea. It’s God’s sea. And that means all is grace.

Mama’s cheeks are wet. I’m standing there like a fool looking into my own sadness over what can’t now be—because I haven’t been all I could have been.

She’s my mama, and I’m her daughter. And now I’m a mama, and we both have never stopped laboring, wondering if we will ever fully know deliverance into abundance.

There it is again: I remember how she once forgot me after piano lessons and I walked three hours home in the dark of a snowstorm blowing straight into my face.

And I remember how I was once the mama who left a child, thinking he went home with somebody else , who left a store and drove straight out of that town without him, and abandonment is always a soul’s worst fear.

We got the call that, before they closed down the store for the night, they found our boy fighting back tears amidst stacks of used Charlie Brown comic strips. Sickened, I was the mama who wanted to enfold our boy in a begging apology and the deepest comfort I know: even when life abandons you, you are in the arms of God.

I was the kid who called my mama a witch and made a plan to run away.

And I’ve been the mama who’s called my kids monsters and turned around as an adult and ran away for the day to my mama’s.

Mama and I, we’re sitting here at her kitchen table, kids waiting out in the van for me to come with the forgotten glasses, and I can see the suffering right there in Mama’s eyes, what she’s doing to herself.

I know because I’d just been the busted and broken doing it myself.

How do you beg people to love you when you least deserve it, because that’s when you need it the most—and what if that’s exactly what God does?

Mama doesn’t have to say anything because her eyes are saying it all—she’s listening to the lies that began in the beginning, that started in the Garden, that hissed with masked innocence, “Did God really say . . . ?”

Lies that can look you right in the eyes and you can feel the hiss slithering right up the nape of your neck: “Just look at you—you’re a mess, you’re a failure, you’re damaged goods. You aren’t ever going to be good enough, smart enough, together enough, liked enough, wanted enough, do anything that counts enough, and your God isn’t good enough to turn the bad of you around.”

You can feel too broken to be.

There can be a lying snake curled between your neural membranes and his lies can run poison in your veins. Sometimes our deepest suffering is that voice in our head.

“Mama?” Her cheek feels like wrinkled silk. “Please hear me. All that was intended to harm, God intended all of it for good. All that’s been, no matter what was intended to harm you, God’s arms have you.”

None of us is ever too broken. “Give our Lord the benefit of believing that His hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete,” assures Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

“Mama? You and me?” And words come out from some long-ago place. “All that’s been is what makes us velveteen. All that’s been is what makes you beautiful, makes you love, makes you real. Remember real, Mama?”

Mama looks up at me.

Mama murmurs it quiet. “What is real?”

What does it mean to live real, to love real, to be a real believer, to be a real live-er?

How many times had she read the story to me as a kid? The Velveteen Rabbit.

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day . . .

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you . . .”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

What is real? Real living, real believing, real faith?

Real living doesn’t always feel like living; it can feel like you’re dying. It can feel like you are breaking apart and losing pieces of yourself—and you are.

Because when you let yourself love, you let parts of you die. Or you aren’t really loving. You must let your false self be broken, parts of you that you only thought were necessary.

You must embrace your union with Christ, bravely surrender and trust that what’s breaking and being lost is never the eternal, needed parts of you, but always the temporal, needless parts that were getting in the way of you becoming real.

Tracing those two intersecting penned lines on my wrist, it’s like everything’s being worn down to the essence of real: the cross.

“My Velveteen Mama.” I touch her cheek.

“The miracle of real happens when you let all your suffering create love. When you let the pain make passion. The passion makes you real, Mama.”

I’m talking to her, but I’m the aching, busted one preaching gospel to myself, trying to find the way myself. I’m reading her eyes. Holding her wrinkled cheek in my hand. “I want you to be okay.”

Mama nods—closing her eyes a bit like a dam to hold it all back. “Want you to be okay too, girl.”

“But you know what, Mama?” I kneel down in front of her. Look up to her, her hand gently patting mine, her lips pursed trying to stop the tears.

“You’re teaching me how to feel safe when I’m not okay, how to feel safe when I’m un-okay . . . how to feel how I’m beloved even when I’m broken.”

The penned cross on my wrist is touching Mama’s wet cheek.

“It’s a needed thing, to be brave. But maybe there’s a broken way of being safe enough to be real and un-okay. Maybe the bravest thing is to be real enough to say we’re broken and unbrave — and trust we’re still loved in our broken and unbrave.”

One of Mama’s white curls falls in front of her eyes. I tuck it gently behind her ear.

“Mama? You are the bravest when you speak your unbraveness. You are the safest when you are the realest. When you are the realest about your brokenness — that is when you can know you’re most beloved.”

I kiss Mama on the forehead and I can feel her press forward into me, into grace.

You are the most loved not when you’re pretending to have it all together; you are actually the most loved when you feel broken and falling apart.

And maybe I’m just beginning to see?

I wipe the smudged cross off Mama’s cheek.

“Anybody can shove their pain into a vault of numbness,” I whisper it to Mama and the bustedness in both of us. “Anybody can pretend, masquerade in their cheap masks. But the brave feel their failures and abandon all efforts to lock out suffering. The brave let brokenness come.”

You’ve got to go for broken. Go for broke. Something holy is happening in my broken places. Let all this suffering become love.

“Don’t run from suffering; embrace it,” Jesus beckons. “Follow Me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, My way, to saving yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you?”

I stroke Mama’s cheek, whisper it again like a lullaby, rocking us mother and child, rocking us two old mamas. “It’s the brokenhearted passion that’s like His that’s making us real, Mama.”

Passion is a willingness to suffer for whom you love.

Passion isn’t about desire but surrendered givenness.

Passion isn’t about what or whom you want most, but for what or whom you most willingly sacrifice.

Passion—its broadest meaning is “to endure,” “to undergo.” That’s the point, the sharp point: passion is literally about being willing “to undergo,” to go under your cross and carry it for love.

Isn’t that all there is? Carrying your cross is about carrying your pain in such a way that it makes it into love.

“Mama?” I lean in. “You didn’t know how to make our little Aimee come back.” She drops her head so I can’t read her face. “You didn’t know how to stop the voices that said you were a bad mother. You didn’t know how to make your marriage survive. You didn’t know how to let go of the lies. You didn’t know how to go on—but you didn’t grow hard in the midst of it.”

You bore the pain and didn’t turn away. You were patient with the pain. You were passionate enough, willing enough to suffer, to let yourself be broken into velveteen real.

Sometimes it isn’t your fault. Life breaks us. The fall breaks us. The brokenness inside of us breaks us. These failures and relapses and suffering and sacrifice and service, all our little-deaths, this is the painful grace that can make the willing velveteen real.

“Remember that time I called you from the airport?” She smiles in spite of herself, tries to brush me away with her hand.

“Three hours before my flight, I’d dug through my bag but it wasn’t there—my passport. And you found it in my desk.” The light looks worn down to golden across the table, across her silver hair.

“You dropped everything, dropped all your plans for the day, and flung out in the middle of that blizzard.”

She smiles, wipes her eyes.

“You drove those ridiculous two hours to the airport, detouring around how many closed roads and accidents?” Her laugh lilts a bit, and I love her even more.

“And you didn’t even change out of your pajamas.” I touch her hand. “You leaned out your snowy window, waving that passport like a victory flag.

And you were the most beautiful velveteen Mama I’d ever seen. You re-membered me. That’s the gift you gave me, Mama. You loved me more than you.”

She runs her hand through my hair, and Mama, she can only mouth it: “Thank you.”

Mama and I are ringed in this fragile koinonia, this broken giving and receiving.

“Mama? Your heart’s beautiful—especially the broken edges where you let the love get in.”

She leans forward, kisses my forehead like, healing grace.

“You and me, Mama? We’re becoming the Velveteen Real Mamas.”

I carry home Hope’s found glasses, finally seeing.

 

~an excerpt from The Broken Way, for all the women becoming Velveteen Real

 

Maybe what we want most desperately — is relief for our unspoken broken.

Maybe what we want most — but don’t know how to quite find words for —

is healing for our unspoken broken, a gentle touch of hope for  our Broken Way.

Maybe we want someone to be real, someone to sit with us so we know we aren’t alone.

Maybe we want someone to hand us some Brave — and the truckload of grace that we’re kind of wild for.

Maybe we want someone to reach for our hand — and give us courage to dare to take The Broken Way… into abundance.

the most life-changing thing a woman can do for herself this Mother’s Day: What a Mother Really Wants

Yeah — if you’re being gut honest here — you don’t really want the cards or the flowers.

Or what gets wrapped up in shiny paper, or stuffed in a bag with wrinkled tissue paper, or anything that gets tied up and presented with these dangling tendrils of curling ribbon.

What you really wanted is to be extraordinarily, obviously, good at this. At this mothering thing.

You wanted to be the best at this.

You wanted to take the podium and gold medal in mothering — not take a million timeouts behind some locked bathroom door, turn on the water so no one hears you sobbing at what a mess this whole shebang is, and how you’d like to run away. Ask me how I know?

Honest? You wanted to be more.

You wanted to be more patient — you wanted to never lose it, to always have it together, to keep calm and that is all, always, — and yeah, take their tantrums with a grain of salt instead of throwing one of yours that turned out to be a first class tsunami and a tad bit more dramatic than theirs.

You wanted more flashes of wisdom in the heat of the moment when you had no bloody idea what was the best thing to do, when you flung up an S.O.S. prayer, made The Call on the deal that was facing the kid and you —- and the kid hated you for it and you crawled into bed feeling like a heel who always gets it wrong when everyone else gets it right.

You’d about give your eye teeth and your left arm for more time. More time to get it more right and less wrong.

More time so that you could that leave that one more thing that ended up not mattering a hill of beans in the long run, so you could take the time to lay there in the dark with them after prayers and talk about the deep things that only come in the exhale of last light out, and rub their back till they fall asleep.

Somebody — how about just more time — and internal permission — to surprise with more spontaneous “Mommy-Holidays!” in the middle of the week and go for ice cream and the park and the beach and the woods. More time to not hurry them, badger them, nag them, or manage them like some to-do list that needs to get stroked off, done and tossed before tomorrow’s starts again — but just more time slow down, smile into them, simply enjoy being.

You want a do-over.

You wanted to be better.

Never once did you ask to come stumbling into this with all this baggage — all this mess that your parents sent you packing with, all these unhealthy-coping mechanisms, all these triggers, all this unspoken broken.

What you really want, desperately, wildly, in spite of everything — is for them to remember the good…. to remember enough of the times you whispered, “I Love You” … to know how many times you broke your heart and how how hard you really tried.

All you want? Is for them to feel a deep sense of safety, that they are safe to trust people, safe to dream large, safe to believe, safe to try, safe to love large and go fly — and you need to know that you haven’t wrecked that. That they feel the certain, tender embrace of your love —- in spite of all the storming times you acted unlovely.

So… SomeOne?

Could someone just wrap up … a bit of Grace?

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.

Grace embraces you before you prove anything — and after you’ve done everything wrong.

“Grace holds you when everything else falls apart — and whispers that everything is really falling together.”~The Broken Way

Grace loves us when we are at our darkest worst — and wraps us in the best light.

What happened in the past can’t change it, and nothing in the future can intimidate the reality of it — and it’s what your soul aches for the most —- and it’s the realest true:

You are always sufficient — because God always gives you His all sufficient grace.

You don’t have to be afraid —

because you have a Father.

You don’t have to know how to do it all.

You just have to choose to be all here, right where you are.

His grace meets you in the moment — and you will miss it if you are worrying about future moments.

Lock your thoughts in this moment — and you get to live the freest of all.

When you focus on living only in the grace of this moment — is exactly when you get the grace of a momentous life. Live in the moment — and you get a momentous life.



That is all …



“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.” ~The Broken Way

And when the mothers sat with that….

When the mothers sat with that, when they gave themselves that, when they opened up and unfolded all this Grace…

when they were given it …

and when they let it completely enfold them —

all these wounds healed in a thousand unspoken broken places.

 

Maybe what we want most desperately — is relief for our unspoken broken.

Maybe what we want most — but don’t know how to quite find words for —

is healing for our unspoken broken, a gentle touch of hope for  our Broken Way.

Maybe we want someone to be real, someone to sit with us so we know we aren’t alone.

Maybe we want someone to hand us some Brave — and the truckload of grace that we’re kind of wild for.

Maybe we want someone to reach for our hand — and give us courage to dare to take The Broken Way… into abundance.

 

the key to handling interruptions in your daily schedule

It is rare to find a friend who step through the barriers of social pleasantries and enters a deep place where only soul sisters can be found; my dear friend Kay is one such person in my life. While distance separates us; our hearts are united in our Father’s heart — this woman is a mentor, a prayer warrior, and one of the best heart listeners I’ve ever known. Kay is a deep well of wisdom, commitment to our Savior, and compassion for the most vulnerable in our world. She has written a book for pastors’ wives called Sacred Privilege – but honestly her words will strengthen and challenge all who read it. It’s a grace to welcome Kay to the farm’s front porch today…

guest post by Kay Warren 

I don’t know how many of you are to-do list makers, but I am a compulsive list maker.

I’ve got them everywhere—on scraps of paper, on big pieces of paper, on my computer. I’ve even been known to scribble them on my hand. I blame my mother.

What I have discovered is that life never cooperates with my to-do lists. Ever.

You’ve got your day planned. You know what’s supposed to happen. You know who you’re supposed to talk to, you know who you’re supposed to see, you know what tasks you’re supposed to accomplish. You’ve got it all set out.

Then life and interruptions come and what you had planned to do just doesn’t get done, just doesn’t happen the way you think it should.

I can get really upset about that.

When my kids were at home, I used to tell them, “Woe to the child who messes with Mama’s schedule. You are asking for serious trouble.”

I’ve since learned it is a sign of immaturity to get uptight when my schedule doesn’t go the way I want it to go.

On the reverse, it is a sign of growing godliness when you are flexible and bendable as life comes your way.

When we put Psalm 31:15, “My times are in your hands,” into practice, we reduce the stress in our lives. This verse becomes a prayer. “My times are in your hands, God. You are directing my life. You know the things I’m supposed to get done.”

So if interruptions come, if things go differently, I can either get all bent out of shape and angry at the people who interrupted me or the situations that messed up my schedule, or I can flow with the changes in a gracious way, believing that God has my times in His hands.

Mark 5:21–43 begins with Jesus on his way to heal the dying daughter of Jairus, a synagogue leader. It’s an emergency situation. As Jesus heads to Jairus’s house to heal the dying child, a woman with a chronic health problem—the Bible says she has been bleeding continuously for twelve years—approaches Jesus to touch His clothes. She believes if she does so, she’ll be healed. She touches the hem of His robe, and He instantly knows and turns to speak to her.

Anyone in an emergency situation knows you don’t stop for non-emergencies—you put all of your energy into taking care of the life-and-death situation first. We call that triage.

But in an astonishing response to the woman with a non-life-and-death condition, He pauses, talks to her, and heals her.

That just doesn’t compute to me. Here is a girl who is near death. In fact, while Jesus lingers with the woman, Jairus receives word that his daughter has died.

Shouldn’t Jesus get it in gear and madly rush to revive her?

Instead, He stops and talks to a woman who isn’t dying, who isn’t in an emergency, who isn’t in a critical situation.

You have to ask the question, why did He do that? Why did He allow someone to interrupt Him and even detain Him in the middle of a very serious situation?

Scripture is never random or meaningless, so there must be deep truth hidden in this odd, seemingly illogical, if not unkind (to Jairus and his daughter) encounter.

I wonder if the principle we should grasp is this: sometimes the interrupted is not as important as the interrupter.

Did you get that?

We often act as though our plans for the day, our agendas, are sacred—untouchable and completely uninterruptable.

But God might know something we don’t and allow us to be interrupted, which often completely destroys our carefully constructed to-do lists.

Evidently, there are times when the interrupter—a child, a friend, a stranger, a situation—is more important than the interrupted—me.

Honestly, I don’t like that. I still want my schedule.

But the truth is God knows what my day should hold. God knows what your day should hold.

He knew before you got up this morning what was going to happen to you today.

He knew the emergencies. He knew the things that weren’t emergencies but that were going to masquerade as emergencies. He knew the things that were going to come into your life and were going to derail you from what you thought you were supposed to do and who you were supposed to talk to and what you were supposed to accomplish.

I don’t have the answer other than to say that too often we assume the interruptions are not important. Too often we think we know what today is supposed to hold and that an interruption can’t be as important as what we had set out to do.

What I’m trying to learn to do is to pause and say, “Okay, God, my times are in your hands. You knew what this day was going to hold before I did, so this interruption—child, husband, phone call, unexpected demand on my time—is in your hands. Don’t let me make the arrogant mistake of assuming that my schedule is what must be honored, not the interruption that you bring.”

Don’t mishear me. Every interruption that comes your way is not important.

Sometimes interruptions come because we live in a broken world and bad things happen.

A three-car pileup on the road in front of you isn’t necessarily a good interruption.

But with every interruption we have the opportunity to go to God, to seek His face, to talk to Him, and to hear His voice.

He’ll either let you know that the interruption is part of what He has for you today or give you the insight to be able to sidestep the interruption so you can get back to the task or goal at hand.

In either case, He’ll give you the grace to know that everything is in His control no matter what. 

 

 

Kay Warren cofounded Saddleback Church with her husband, Rick Warren, in Lake Forest, California. She is a passionate Bible teacher and tireless advocate for those living with mental illness, HIV&AIDS, and for the orphaned and vulnerable children left behind. She founded Saddleback’s HIV&AIDS Initiative. Kay is the author of Choose Joy: Because Happiness Isn’t Enough and Say Yes to God and coauthor of Foundations, the popular systematic theology course used by churches worldwide. 

Life in ministry offers meaningful opportunities to play a significant part in God’s work, to witness and participate in the beauty of changed lives. Yet it also carries the potential for deep wounds and great conflict that can drain the joy out of service. Is it worth it? It is more than worth the risk--it’s a sacred privilege. In Sacred Privilege, Kay provides encouraging principles and life lessons drawn from more than forty years in ministry, along with intimate personal stories, that will give you the confidence you need to lead and live well. A deeply helpful, needful, soulful read.

[ Our humble thanks to Baker for their partnership in today’s devotion ]