Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 143
May 6, 2017
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [05.06.17]
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 Malibu, California
Dirk Dallas via www.fromwhereidrone.com/gallery Neskowin, Oregon
Dirk Dallas via www.fromwhereidrone.com/gallery Bozeman, Montana
the most breathtaking views you may see all weekend?
so…who knew?!
They come with two suitcases from their former life, but hearts hungering and hopeful for a brand new future. A shockingly small percentage will be connected with an American volunteer, and even less will ever be invited into an American home. Learn more about how to envision and equip your church for loving the nations in your neighborhood!
Join the Refugee Highway Partnership Roundtable in Dallas/Ft Worth, TX July 26-28 and learn about how to embrace your international neighbors. Obeying the Great Commission to “go global” has never been easier!
built and powered with scrap parts and a grandfather’s love
When this art studio for the mentally ill lost their funding —
the community stepped in to help #BeTheGIFT #TheBrokenWay
now this is just really incredible
Twins give birth to baby boys on the same day, in the same hospital
a french artist’s solution to the monotonous grey in our lives
Ginny Sheller
Ginny Sheller
Ginny Sheller
a day in the life of a therapy dog
10 Tweaks To Your Morning Routine That Can Transform Your Day
this right here: capturing the beauty, complexity, hardship, and hope of foster care
Mandy Marie, Tiny Times Photography
The Story of My Daughter – Hope After Loss
just the BEST: foster family adopts 6 siblings – adding on to their family of 7
YES: A Prayer for The Marriage at The Center
“…one of the greatest deceptions is believing our marriage isn’t in danger at all. This lie can destroy more than a ministry; it can divide a home.”
beautiful triplets make medical history – and the news is all good
Joesph, 11. Photo: Aaron Cheeseman from Zebedee Management
Daniel, 19. Photo: Chris Waud from Zebedee
Jess, 21. Photo: Christopher Waud from Zebedee
so good for so many reasons: please don’t miss this one
a project that is looking past a person’s disabilities and focusing on their personalities
…yeah, I don’t know much of anything here, really, but sometimes a gentle fire unexpectedly ignites your heart:
about who’s in charge of the blogosphere: an ongoing conversation
maybe a perfect gift for a Mama you know —
who needs to know that loving her nest of people matters
“Reality was better than the dream” just — this
true friends always share in the celebration of life’s biggest moments
this young doctor and her family? an extraordinary story of hope
“…when someone needs help, I want to be there to make a difference”
Post of the Week from these parts here:
You didn’t miss how Jimmy Kimmel blew up the internet, right?
And then this happened and, yeah, okay, I could not be more undone.
Hey Jimmy Kimmel… Do You Have Any Idea How Right You Are?
You aren’t going to want to miss out on joining us in the Love Project — even a bit of spare change — so a heart baby gets to live… and a mama gets to hold onto her heart baby with her whole grateful heart. For Jimmy — for Jimmy’s kids — for all of the world’s kids, let’s do this thing. May’s #BeTheGIFT calendar prompts us today to grab a jar to collect our spare change for the rest of the month — and use it to change the world. Join us right now to be part of the global Love Project, because Love always Gives.
…and because you so want to love right now —
Download your May 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.
Take the Dare, Join the Revolution, Pick Up The Broken Way
He’s started something good and He’s gonna complete it: Believe it
…new week coming…Listen to His Voice: God is turning everything around to turn you into the beauty He knows you are.
The world will say they will love you if you’re beautiful —but the truth is you’re beautiful because you are loved.
It’s true, we may not have chosen this face or this mind or this hard road, and maybe we wouldn’t have chosen this baggage or this past or this thorn in the bruising flesh.
But those of us who look a bit more weathered by the way — may know a better way…a way with wider vistas and deeper authenticity and greater kindness.
It’s always beautifully, intimately, real & personal:
God Loves YOU. He who is Love loves you unconditionally.
Living as one truly loved and cherished by God is the cross- beam that supports an abundant life in Christ. Belovedness is the center of being, the only real identity, God’s only name for you, the only identity He gives you. And you won’t ever feel like you belong anywhere until you choose to listen to your heart beating out that you do—unconditionally, irrevocably.
[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.
May 5, 2017
about who’s in charge of the blogosphere: an ongoing conversation
Who’s in charge of the blogosphere?
That’s what they were asking up and down the streets last week, asking it around all the online watering holes.
Who gives anyone the keys to wander in to the blogosphere and tap out a few words? Who says any of us have the right or authority to be in here? Who died and made us the king of anything?
Yeah, I don’t know much of anything, except that we all need each other, that we all belong to each other, but seems like maybe God has always chosen women who felt less than, women that no one thought were enough: Tamar was harlot, Ruth was an outsider, the wife of Uriah , who became the wife of David, was an adulteress, and Rahab was a woman of the night.
And sometimes those who don’t seem to measure up, are part of changing the world beyond measure, are the unlikely who are called to be part of the unbelievable, so that God gets all the glory alone.
Yeah, I don’t know much of anything — but maybe ask D.L. Moody who was convinced: “If this world is going to be reached, I am convinced that it must be done by men and women of average talent. After all, there are comparatively few people in this world who have great talents.”
Moody had no degree, nothing but the equivalent of 5th grade, but pointed more than 100 million people to hope in Jesus, founded Moody Press, the Moody Bible Institute, the Moody radio stations and don’t ever count out those whom God has counted as His.
And Moody doesn’t stand alone: Charles Spurgeon preached to a weekly congregation of more than 5,000, preached over 600 times before he was twenty years old, and his sermons sold about 20,000 copies a week — and he had no seminary training.
Fanny Crosby wrote more than 9,000 hymns, some of which are among the most popular in every Christian denomination, and she had no formal theological education.
Hudson Taylor had no formal degree whatsoever, but the organization that he founded supported 800 missionaries, established 125 schools, and directly resulted in over 18,000 Christian conversions — and historian Ruth Tucker said of him, “No other missionary in the nineteen centuries since the Apostle Paul has had a wider vision and has carried out a more systematized plan of evangelizing a broad geographical area than Hudson Taylor.”
God enlisted nobody Gideon, gave him a nobody army that He then cut down to a ridiculous, nothing size. And then God took that army of nobodies, led by a nobody, and conquered everybody.
Yeah, I don’t know much of anything here, really, but I know that Amos was a farmer.
Amos was a farmer who knew dirt and sky, sheep and trees and yield, and he knew what it was stand in the fields under a universe of stars and give glory to His Maker.
Like Moses and David and John the Baptist before him — Amos didn’t know the halls and walls of privilege and power —he came from a long line of plain old farmers and herders and God-witnesses who knew paths through the wilderness.
When calling anyone to go somewhere with His message — God often chooses those known as nobodies from nowhere, who simply have chosen to be alone with Him. “Wildernesses can be where God woos.” {The Broken Way}
Sometimes God calls those from the backside of nowhere, because they’ve learned how to walk beside Him anywhere.
All I know was that Amos’s father wasn’t a prophet, nor were his people, nor was he connected to the powerful prophets before him and none of that mattered. Whether one is degreed or important, isn’t the most important to God. What’s most important to God is that one knows the importance of being called by God.
All I know is that Amos said: ’The lion has roared; who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken; who can but prophesy?’ Amos 3:8
When a shepherd hears the roar of a lion, how can he act as if he had not heard it; when one hears the call of God, how can one act as if she has not heard it?
Sure, others may have said to simple Amos, “Do not go around talking of God” — but Amos answered them straight up: ‘The Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, “Go, prophesy to my people Israel.”‘ (7:15-16).
God’s Word repeats it: God’s call matters more than any man’s credentials.
Walter Brueggemann was once asked, “So who were the prophets?”
And Brueggemann answered: ”Well, I think… they are completely uncredentialed and without pedigree, so they just rise up in the landscape….
I just think they are moved the way every good poet is moved to have to describe the world differently according to the gifts of their insight.
And, of course, in their own time and every time since, the people that control the power structure do not know what to make of them, so they characteristically try to silence them. What power people always discover is that you cannot finally silence poets. They just keep coming at you in … transformative ways.” ~ Walter Brueggemann
There may not be prophets of old now and the canon of Scripture is clearly closed, and there may not be a call to silence voices, but a careful gathering of concerns — but there, in the quiet corners of things, there is the legacy of Word-wielders and poets, the unlikely and uncredentialed, a quiet rising of Amoses, who have heard the roar of the Lion of Judah and cannot be silent now, wordsmiths who have experienced the charged and living Word and their tongue and their pen simply cannot be silenced now.
Who’s in charge of the Blogosphere?
Well, the blogosphere isn’t one church, with one globally agreed on doctrine, the blogosphere isn’t a pulpit with one espoused theology, and it isn’t a hospital where one goes when desperately needing surgery —- the blogosphere is a library.
The blogosphere is a library of storytellers, and while I may — and definitely do — profoundly disagree with other voices in the blogosphere — the point is:
We don’t censor a library, we learn how to venture through the library.
Because who could ever decide exactly who and what doctrine is in charge of the library? The Catholics or the Methodists or the Atheists or the Reformed or the United Informed, Conformed, and Transformed?
Advocating for all believers to be under the wing and roof and authority of local and national leaders is a wise and Biblically needful position — and many Word witnesses have long been humbly and willingly putting themselves in precisely that needed position.
Accountability is always the believer’s responsibility, and is always necessary for healthy vitality. Only when you’ve stayed under a wing, can you learn how to fly.
For the last twelve years, this farmer has, on the welcome page of this corner of the blogosphere, shared a statement of faith, linked to her faith community where our family gathers weekly around the communion table, and has shared our local church’s evangelical statement of faith.
Like many in the blogosphere, I too have sought out pastors within the larger church and asked for their mentorship, guidance, wisdom, accountability because if we lose our teachability, we lose our credibility.
But each storyteller in the library of the blogosphere may be held accountable by their leadership to a different set of beliefs, that may or may not agree with one’s own faith.
So we may adamantly disagree with perspectives in the blogosphere, but don’t we have to adamantly defend the right for those perspectives to be voiced, or don’t we ourselves risk losing the right to voice our own perspective?
If the blogosphere is a library, then perhaps what is needed is not so much deterrents to voices within the blogosphere — but rather thoughtful discernment in the readers?
Maybe it’s never about who’s in charge of the library — but about how does one search the library?
Maybe it’s never about how to control or patrol the library — but about how to hold Truth in the Library.
Maybe it’s never about how to eradicate voices from the library — but about how to navigate through the library.
Maybe it’s not about who’s in charge of the library — but who gets to choose what we read in the library? And we do — we discern and we wrestle and we listen and we pray and we open the Word and measure all words against His Word, because if someone’s truth isn’t His Truth — then it ultimately has missed the Truth.
And it’s us, the readers, who have the responsibility to bring kind, gracious and humble accountability to the blogosphere. To leave prayerful comments, add considered words, His Words, to threads, and virtual streams, so that the conversation around Truth runs like a torrent of transformation and healing beyond screens.
Who’s in charge of the blogosphere? It’s always the charged Story.
It’s always the charged Story, the electrifying Truth and the blazing light of Beauty — that’s what’s in charge of the blogosphere.
It’s the Spirit who moves like the wind that can’t be controlled by human hands, but obeys His beck and call alone, it’s Him, the Word who writes all the world’s Story, who is the Spirit of the Word, who woos His people not with flashy strategy or slick marketing or massive platform, but with the beauty of solid orthodoxy and the tried and true Cross that is foolishness to the world.
Because the dark and despair and the devil has always been overcome and defeated by this, and this alone: “by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, by the bold word of their witness” (Revelation 12:11)— so how can we always let the words of the witnesses rise?
We aren’t doctors, but those who know the Wounded Healer.
And we may not be teachers, but those who have been taught by Grace and Truth and lessoned in cruciform love and by the blood of the Lamb and how can the mouths of the evangels now be shut?
How can the starving who have tasted bread not use any and all means to share the relief they have tasted, and how can we gag the story that burns in our bones of the only One that ever loved us to death and back to the realest life?
Who died and made any of us the kings of anything? He did– and when He died, by His death, blood and destruction of death and cosmic-shattering resurrection?
He made us the daughters of kings and a people of priests, servants who go lower to wash the feet of the hurting, He made us a collective of storytellers and a circle of witnesses and somebody, tell us, how can those who have tasted and seen now not stand and testify?
We are the ones who come from a long line of storytellers and Jesus-pointers, the women who have inherited the legacy of the runners — the ones who have stood in the damp chill of the empty tomb and how can we not run so that the world may know?
Without risk-taking women witnesses, how would the world have known of the breathtaking resurrection?
How can the runners not run, the Amoses not tell of the roaring Lion of Judah, and the women not bear witness to the Only one who bears any Light and Hope through the darkest years, the ache of the blogosphere, through all the begging, waiting atmosphere?
Listen, slow and listen — Hope comes to the upside-down kingdom in ways you’d least expect it.
May 4, 2017
why we need to start calling each other names — for real
Ann, Julie, Sadie, Suanne…We were all given a name when we were born. As we grow our names take on more meaning… student, friend, mother, doctor, caregiver. Going one layer deeper, we take on other names… smart, creative, outgoing, ambitious. For most of us the voices in our heads, if we let them, also have a way of naming us… unworthy, ugly, a failure, incapable. As Suanne Camfield assures, “ We need to speak it into one another if we’re ever to live out our dreams.” Naming and being named—being known for who we are—determines how we take our next steps, either with fear and uncertainty about who we are, or with courage and freedom to take on the names God gave us—forgiven, called, redeemed. It’s a grace to welcome Suanne to the farm’s front porch today…
Knowing what I know now, had I not gone through with the party—a becoming party, I had called it—the regret would have swallowed me whole.
The evening was one of the most beautiful I’ve ever known.
Sadie lay slumped in an oversized bean bag, acting every minute of her thirteen years, but I knew her well enough to know it was her way of managing her own awkwardness about receiving the gift that was to come.
About twenty women were gathered who had been part of her young life.
I had given them two simple instructions: share one word of affirmation and one word of advice.
I sat in a nearby chair and gently commenced the evening, looking each person in the eye, explaining the difference they made, known or unaware, by simply being who they were and offering it into the life of a child.
I listened as one by one the women gathered in the room that night named my daughter.
Words, so many words, poured forth.
Words of encouragement: Your smile lights up a room.
Words of affirmation: You’re a leader.
Words of advice: Avoid girl drama and boys.
Words of wisdom: Whatever is pure, whatever is noble, whatever is lovely, think of such things.
Words of challenge: Be kind in the midst of your leadership and seek out those who are on the fringes, for they too need a friend.
But most importantly words of truth.
Truth that washed over her, washed over me, washed over the decades represented by each person who sat in the room because that’s what truth does.
It’s the quintessential nature of truth. It pierces. It washes. It cleanses.
It settles over us and reminds us of that which is right and lovely and noble in one another and in this world at the same time it reminds us of all that is broken with both; it threads and binds us together by reminding us of that which is universally true.
We spend much of life sharing the same fears, the same insecurities; we ask the same questions about who we are and where we fit in this world; we make the same mistakes, we long for the desires that fulfill our deepest needs.
We wonder if anyone will sit with us at lunch or invite us to the dance or if we studied enough to pass the exam.
We wonder if we will be found out. We want. We ache. We need.
We are people who possess and distort and so need the truth.
We need to speak it into one another if we’re ever to live out our dreams.
With the richness of the party draped still over my shoulders, I thought once again about how one of the great tragedies of our Western culture is that we have a nasty habit of waiting until we’re standing at someone’s funeral to speak the very truth about them that we saw all along, the truth that most made them who they are and the truth that, perhaps, they most needed to know if they were ever going to step into the person they were created to be.
Naming happens when someone has the courage to sit across a table from us, their life from ours, look us intently in the eye and name what they see.
Naming is profound; it’s an indescribable moment when the hands of time stop because someone has reached into our chest and pulled our hearts right out; they hold it in their hands (carefully, because they know one wrong word could crush it), and they whisper truth, not over it but into it, in a way that delivers a piece of who we are.
And while the words are meant for that specific space in time, for that part of who we are that needs to come alive in a singular moment, a child cowering in darkness being called into the light, they will stay with us forever and change who we are.
We will go back to them again and again, in our darkest nights when we’ve lost hope about the Stirring and who we’re trying to become, because they are the words that will remind us that who we are is visible to other people, that what we were made to do is seen, that God has uniquely gifted and wired us and that we didn’t hear Him wrong when He called us.
They are the words that compel us to carry on with our dreams for just one more day.
We also must not be afraid to give this gift of naming away.
It takes courage to step outside of ourselves and speak to the invisible, to breathe life into someone when at our core we feel like it may be snatching a piece of our own, like somehow it threatens our own name.
But we must set this aside because it’s a lie.
In naming someone else, we actually become more of who we are. It strengthens our own character, our confidence, our fortitude.
By giving a piece of ourselves away, we get something back.
To name someone is to make them known. And to know our own selves better.
I’m profoundly perplexed by the idea that, given His grandeur, His omnipotence and majesty, His eminence and glory, God chooses to call each of us by name.
That He chooses to know us so uniquely and intently and completely, in such a way that He finds the right words to pierce our souls, to speak just to us, as gently and intimately as a mother rubbing noses with her adoring child.
There may, perhaps, be no other phenomenon I find so perplexing and awesome than this about God.
He names us first.
He names us not only in our giftedness and calling and dreams, He names us first and foremost as His children.
Beloved, redeemed, forgiven, called.
Suanne Camfield says, “I’m obsessed with Jesus and the way His grace has transformed the world, my husband’s cooking, and developing meaningful relationships.” Suanne is women’s director at Christ Church of Oak Brook as well as a writer and speaker. She previously served as development director for Caris, a pregnancy resource and counseling center, and is a founding member of the Redbud Writers Guild.
In her first book, The Sound of a Million Dreams, she writes of the varied dreams that she has pursued over the course of her life. It’s not a book primarily about vocation. It is a book about being a dreamer who is shaped by God — about having the wisdom and courage to step into the places of our most vulnerable longing.
[ Our humble thanks to InterVarsity Press for their partnership today’s devotion ]
May 2, 2017
Hey Jimmy Kimmel… Do You Have Any Idea How Right You Are?
okay, so this young woman? She’s turned out to be one of my best friends. Brave as all get out, smart as a whip, walks only in leaps of faith, & if you follow her on Instagram you know how relentlessly determined she is to always find the hope, always find the humor — always find Him. My heart friend, Meredith Toering , takes the front porch today — and talks about what’s beating hard in all of our hearts today and that Kimmel piece that’s blowing up the internet….
guest post by Meredith Toering
“A murmur in his heart — skin a little bit purple.”
I sat early this morning — still in bed — checking email and there it was, quietly playing in the background, the video of Jimmy Kimmel sharing about the birth of his son.
His son, born with a complex congenital heart defect.
“Not enough oxygen in his blood… his lungs were fine — but his heart wasn’t.”
As I sat there in bed, his words pierced my heart a bit — and I had to stop working to fully listen… to watch. Tetralogy of Fallot. Pulmonary atresia. The fear he describes as the doctors explain what must come next; the photos he shares of his Brave warrior son, just hours after his open heart surgery.
I’ve been there. I’ve heard those words and felt that fear. His words drew me in… pulled my heart close, because I’ve walked those halls.
I don’t have children of my own, but I run a foster home in China for a houseful of babies who call me Mama — children, all abandoned, all with Brave warrior hearts. Our little tribe fighting so hard, all with congenital heart defects of their own.
It was his words that followed — the words that came next — that grew a lump in my throat and made the tears well.
“We need to take care of each other,” he said, as he swallowed back tears.
“No parent should ever have to decide if they can afford to save their child’s life. It just shouldn’t happen.”
But the thing is? It does.
Almost two years ago, my little Ruby went in for emergency heart surgery in the middle of the night. We rushed her to the hospital and paced outside that ICU… paid the required $15,000 in cash upfront… and waited anxiously for her to come through surgery. And while we wore a path down one side of the hallway, a Chinese father paced the other side.
I didn’t know him yet, but I remember his tears. I’ll never forget the way hopelessness looked, as it etched it’s way across his face.
After surgery, I was allowed back into ICU, to be with my baby, and in the bed next to Ruby in that Chinese ICU, a tiny six day old baby lay.
I didn’t take much notice of him at first, just another baby on a ventilator among the rows. Not until I overheard the doctors discussing his case — the quiet words reaching my ears.…
“The surgery… they said today it’s too expensive. His parents can’t pay. They have sacrificed everything they have for his ICU costs here, but it’s not enough. We can’t do the surgery without the funds…so they are going to have to choose.”
They are Going. To. Have. To. Choose.
My heart broke. Those parents. Without health insurance. Without the cash in hand for the cost of a unfathomably expensive surgery. Knowing full well that, if they were to choose to abandon…to walk away from their son — their baby Jia Qi, there are systems in place to care for the orphan. But where are the systems for the family? Who will stand for them?
I walked out of that ICU and saw the tears streaming down that new daddy’s face.
I shook his hands and asked him if that tiny baby — the one who needed surgery — was his son. The way his hands shook when he held mine, his slow nod… told me everything I needed to know.
He would do whatever it took to save his baby’s life. Even if that meant saying goodbye.
The thing is… I have this house full of broken-hearted babes, the bravest and most beautiful souls, because of this very thing, of exactly what Kimmel said:
“No parent should ever have to decide if they can afford to save their child’s life.”
The devastating reality here — is that so many do.
For so many families across this globe — they have to choose.
Due to a lack of medical insurance, poverty, and unaccessible or unaffordable medical care… parents are forced to make the most heartbreaking decision in the world:
Will you bring your child home to die… or choose to abandon your precious child, hoping beyond hope that they will be taken for medical care?
Placed outside a hospital, orphanage gates, beside a river or a public square — hoping that they will someday be one of the few who are adopted to the West. Choosing to abandon, desperate for their baby to somehow receive the lifesaving surgeries and care that they need. Care — that they are unable to provide.
Abandoned — not because of a lack of love… but because of DEEPEST love.
Abandoned — not because of a lack of family… but simply because of a devastating lack of resources.
Children abandoned — because it was the only way to save their life.
My heart-broken blue little babies, so much like the son Kimmel described, left outside hospitals — often with notes, “Please — we have done all we can but we have no more money. Please, someone? Save my baby. Give her a chance to live”.
That Chinese father, being forced to make that decision that Kimmel rightly said no parent should ever have to make — that father sparked a movement that we call our Love Project — and it is my very heartbeat.
Working with local hospitals to identify at risk families. Equipping them — and partnering with them to provide the financial means for medical care. Arranging the medical care. Standing with and for these brave families — who want nothing more than to simply remain a family.
Orphan prevention. Family preservation. This is it… this — right here.
I grasped his hands and told him that whatever it took — whatever the cost — we would find a way…
True religion is this — caring for orphans and widows in their distress. We are called to stand for them — for the orphan. For the widow. And always? For the family… so they never ever have to choose.
So, hey, Jimmy Kimmel — you’re right. You’re really kinda heartbreakingly right.
There’s a whole world of desperate parents who would agree with you. “We need to take care of each other. No parent should ever have to decide if they can afford to save their child’s life. It just shouldn’t happen.”
A Love Project where we all belong to each other — fight for each other — and stand with each other.
So that no father ever has to choose. So that no child’s heart remains unhealed.
So that no family is ever shattered.
And so that no heartbreak ever wins.
Meredith Toering is Oklahoma-born — transplanted to China. Her heart beats hard for heart babies around the world, and as the International Director of Morning Star, she not only advocates for surgeries for orphans with complex congenital heart defects, she champions the Love Project that financially provides heart surgeries for babies of families who could never afford heart surgeries — so that families can be kept intact and babies can LIVE! She is, hands down, absolutely one of my favourite people on Instagram and joining her in the Love Project to help broken hearted babies — is one of the most fulfilling, meaningful JOYS we’ve ever had.
You aren’t going to want to miss out on joining us in the Love Project — even a bit of spare change — so a heart baby gets to live… and a mama gets to hold onto her heart baby with her whole grateful heart. For Jimmy — for Jimmy’s kids — for all of the world’s kids, let’s do this thing. May’s #BeTheGIFT calendar prompts us today to grab a jar to collect our spare change for the rest of the month — and use it to change the world. Join us right now to be part of the global Love Project, because Love always Gives.
Download your MAY 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 MAY G.I.F.T list
May 1, 2017
you know how hurt people, hurt people? How to stop the cycle of hurt
So, for Lauren Casper, living with her five-year-old autistic son, Mareto, is a lot like playing the telephone game. He blurts out little phrases that have their origin in something he saw or heard, but by the time they make their way through his mind and back out of his mouth they’ve transformed—often into beautiful truths about living a simple, authentic, love- and joy-filled life. It’s a grace to welcome Lauren to the farm’s front porch…
Their laughter kinda pierced the air and cut straight to my heart.
It was the sound of several girls, about eight or nine years old, making fun of a little boy.
My little boy.
The Mama Bear inside of me began to growl, and I glared darts right at that group of laughing girls. It didn’t much matter since they weren’t looking in my direction.
They were focused on Mareto, who had noticed the girls and become curious. He’d run to play closer attention to them, but he had gotten distracted by the mulch on the ground and bent to pick it up.
As he reached out his shirt rode up his back, and the top of his diaper peeked out above the waistband of his shorts. The girls noticed.
Their laughter was only interrupted by their even louder exclamations to each other. “Look! That kid is wearing a diaper!”
I was furious.
Mareto heard their laughter and didn’t understand it was at his expense, so he popped his head up and smiled. Then he took a few steps toward the girls, stood before them tall and happy, and said, “Hi, I Nato!”
I stayed in the background watching the exchange.
The girls grew quiet and curious.
They watched him — and then noticed me.
They smiled a few times, tried to understand his excited chatter, and then eventually moved on to play a game of hide-and-seek. Mareto was content to dig in the mulch and play on the slide with his sister.
I’ve thought a lot about that exchange, about Mareto’s brave response and how it immediately shut down the girls’ teasing.
I’ve thought about his innocence and sweetness and how relieved I was that he didn’t know they were making fun of him.
And I’ve thought a lot about their reaction . . . and mine.
My first response was protective anger—natural for a mother, I suppose.
I was ripping those girls a new one in my head and hoping they caught my glares. But I know how girls are at that age because I was one once myself. A parent’s scolding would have only made them angry, and they would have walked away to continue their teasing in private—their words growing harsher as they made each other laugh.
But when Mareto simply introduced himself with kindness and a smile, the girls were baffled.
It was clearly not what they expected, and the element of surprise led to curiosity. Their mean laughter transformed into confused but genuine smiles of interest.
I could tell they knew Mareto was different, and that they felt a little guilty when they eventually walked away. But I could also tell they sort of liked him. That’s what love does in the face of cruelty. It surprises, confuses, and then teaches.
Mareto’s innocence makes him incredibly brave and loving, and the differences between him and other children give him endless opportunities to display that love. Mareto always assumes the best of others and doesn’t expect to be hurt. I want to be more like Mareto.
I still cried later that night after I tucked Mareto into bed, but somehow I knew he was going to be okay. The world might not always be kind to him, but he would be kind to the world . . . and teach everyone what love looks like.
My first instinct in the face of meanness isn’t love; it’s self-defense.
And sometimes self-defense looks a bit like hurting someone else the way they’ve hurt us, doesn’t it?
The process always entails someone hurting me, me hurting them, and both of us walking away angry, resentful, bitter, and maybe a bit ashamed.
When the harried mother accidentally cuts us off in traffic because she’s late to the doctor, we honk and wave our arms in frustration. Maybe she rushes into the doctor’s office feeling mad because some jerk on the road honked and yelled at her, so when the secretary tells her that the appointments are running about forty-five minutes behind, this mom sits in the waiting room, steaming. When she finally gets to see the doctor, she’s angry and lets him know.
An hour later the frustrated doctor walks into a room and isn’t as kind and gentle and compassionate as he should be when he delivers a crushing diagnosis to the parents waiting with fear in their eyes.
Do you see the cycle? Hurt keeps on filtering through everyone until someone stops it.
Someone has to be brave enough, or innocent enough, to swallow his or her pride and respond in love.
Love changes the trajectory of life.
I believe this is what Jesus was talking about when He said that the greatest commandment of all is to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and the second greatest commandment is to love everyone around us as much as we love ourselves. He finished by saying that everything—the law and all the prophets—hinges on us loving God and loving each other.
The world is held together by love. And if that’s true, then the opposite is also true: The world falls apart when we don’t love God and each other.
This is why love wins.
We don’t have to know someone’s story to love them well. It should be enough to remember that they have a story, just as we do.
Hurt people hurt people.
And we’re all hurting.
Hurt keeps on filtering through everyone until someone stops it.
There’s only one answer that can break the cycle: love.
Love holds us together, heals wounds, restores relationships, and changes things.
The whole world hinges on us responding in love.
Lauren Casper is the author of It’s Okay About It: Lessons From A Remarkable Five-Year-Old About Living Life Wide Open. She is a top contributor to the TODAY Parenting Team and has had numerous articles syndicated by The Huffington Post, the TODAY show, Yahoo! News, and several other publications. She also has the joy of serving on the Created for Care team, a nonprofit ministry dedicated to serving foster and adoptive families. Lauren and her husband, John, have two beautiful children adopted from Ethiopia.
Mareto has a number of scripted phrases he says over and over. They seem silly at first, but as Casper has thought about them over time, she’s realized he is actually sharing important life lessons. From “it’s okay about it,” a simple reminder that even when things are painful or difficult, things will be okay because of the God who promises never to leave or forsake his children, to “you’re making me feelings,” which teaches the importance of leaning into one’s emotions and, in doing so, sharing a piece of oneself with loved ones—Mareto’s simple yet profound wisdom is a reminder to embrace the broken beauty of life, to believe in a God bigger than human comprehension, to love others even when it doesn’t make sense, and to find joy in unexpected places. For all those looking to recapture the faith, simplicity, wonder, hope, courage, and joy of life, It’s Okay About It provides a guide to look inward and live outward, to discover the most wide open and beautiful life possible.
[ Our humble thanks to Thomas Nelson for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
April 29, 2017
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [04.29.17]
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:
Hidenobu Suzuki
Hidenobu Suzuki
Hidenobu Suzuki
start the weekend with a walk under blooms?
it’s worth it to pause for a moment of glory
some of the best waterfalls? #GetOutThereThisWeekend!
at 69? he left the city for greener pastures — a city senior starts a farm
okay, dare you to try this, this weekend? when a complete stranger offers to pay for your groceries
#BeTheGIFT #TheBrokenWay
Traci Lynn Photography
maybe the best thing you’ll see all day?
we all need each other like this — choked me up…. wanna be like this
Pamela Sachem via Bored Panda
Pamela Sachem via Bored Panda
Pamela Sachem via Bored Panda
portraits of people’s passions
how would you be photographed?
today? maybe go #LoveWhatMatters
“If there’s anything you see that might be a flaw, look deep to see the good in it,
because there’s goodness in everything and a purpose for everything.
“I’ve always said to trust God’s plan, and every little bit of us is part of that plan.”
she never let her disabilities stop her from doing her passion
these students honored their teacher: “You encourage every student who is stuck, put down and broken…”
know a teacher you could thank this week?
Together for Adoption Canada…it would be a joy to meet you here!
May 12-13, 2017, Centre Street Church, Calgary, Alberta
where food is served with a side of hope
#BeTheGIFT #TheBrokenWay
@mackenna_newman via Twitter
could you love this more? he brought his desk to her
the whole earth is full of His glory!
What I Want Parents to Know: It’s OK to Stare at My Son
The Life Changing Secret to Reading the Bible? Can’t stop thinking about this
so good: A Better Way to Think About ‘Self Care’
reunions like this? never, ever get old
the kid no one ever picked for their team? is now everyone’s hero
this teacher started to travel the country to make sure the lonely children feel loved
THIS: “everyone has the ability to change someone’s life“
… need a Cure for Burnout? Yeah, right there with you.
Wasn’t expecting the relief of this unlikely, unconditional cure:
where following God through the hard stuff has led them (don’t miss this one!)
#BeTheGIFT #TheBrokenWay
Post of the Week from these parts here
how to survive in a world of loud critics & judgers — including the repetitive one in your mind
Take the Dare, Join the Revolution, Pick Up The Broken Way
always on repeat in these parts: Find You Here
…just for today — DO. NOT. WORRY. “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.” Matt6:34MSG
Just for today: Be a prayer warrior–not a panicked worrier. You either leave your worries with God . . . or your worries will make you leave God.
Worry is just the facade of taking action — when prayer really is. Keep breathing deep and give your worries to God — He’ll give you His peace.
[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.
April 28, 2017
looking at God’s creative, redemptive work through the eyes of a mother
When she was pregnant with her third child, Catherine McNiel was all too aware of the gap between her daily life experiences and the classic practices of spiritual formation. And yet, each day was chock full of creation, nurture, service, sacrifice, and perseverance; all taking place within the womb of the Creator’s life-giving song, undergirded by His Spirit. Over time, Catherine began to look at God’s creative, redemptive work in the world through different eyes—the eyes of a mother. It’s a grace to welcome Catherine to the farm’s front porch today…
guest post by Catherine McNiel
It beckons to me, this quiet sacred space.
“The Convent of the Blessed Virgin Mary” reads the arched sign above the door.
There’s precious little peace and quiet in a mother’s life, but here I am, standing unexpectedly at the entrance to this chapel. The open doors draw me in. I don’t even try to resist.
Once inside I take a deep breath. My spirit wills my body to relax, my mind to leave thoughts of shopping lists and toddler discipline at the door.
I take it all in, accept the invitation, and welcome the surprise of solace.
Protestant that I am, I fumble uncertainly with the holy water at the doorway. I’m so grateful for this gift of sacred space, I don’t even know how to approach it.
I begin walking through the gorgeous, empty room. No cacophony of children, no piles of work to do, no phone beeping and twitching in my back pocket. Instead, light and color, candles and incense, tapestries and stained glass. The bread and the wine. The loaves and the fishes.
I study the stained-glass windows. Each one in order, leading to the next, telling a story. The first shows the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary, telling her she has been chosen of God, explaining what is to come.
The most unexpected of surprise pregnancies. Yet Mary responds with surrender and submission: “I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38, esv).
This grips me powerfully, from one pregnant woman to another. We have so little control over our lives, over the things we hold dear. Everything irrevocably changes over a few drops of monthly blood—or the lack of it.
Our task is to listen, wait, and accept—to surrender. In the hidden womb of the spirit this is the beginning, or the end, of everything.
In the second window, Mary holds the newborn baby Jesus.
What isn’t depicted in the sharp lines of the glass is the extended story, but I can readily fill in the details. The hours that came before the serenity. The knife-edge between life and death, the blood and the water.
What an astonishing thought: This messiest of human moments is when God breathed His first breath.
Then, the third window. Mary and Joseph finally find their son, who ran off to teach in the Temple.
I see in her face the anxiety, relief, bafflement.
My spirit cries out with the realization of the task now ahead—giving up, letting go, humbly realizing that this child is no longer primarily an experience of her own, but a person and identity all his own.
For Mary, and for mamas everywhere, we give birth to a new soul —and then must begin to fade into the background. But we treasure up all these things in our hearts.
At the fourth glass I’m stopped in my tracks. Mary, watching her son on the cross, watching and weeping. The look on her face is easily recognizable.
She confronts a mother’s ultimate fear—the pain and suffering of her child, the breaking of the body and life she so carefully built and nurtured. She cannot know the redemption that lies ahead—only that this is the son who learned to walk clutching the hem of her dress.
Entranced by these stories of color and glass I find myself near the altar, standing before a life-sized statue of Mary. She holds her baby, Jesus, who reaches for her face; Joseph standing at her shoulder. They seem close enough to touch.
I wait, transfixed, trying to understand what it’s all about. Such a familiar scene—the most familiar scene—man, woman, child. A family. Mary, looking so much like the mother, wife, and woman she is . . . with God playing on her lap.
I am struck by the scandalous, beautiful wonder of it all. The everyday intimacy of family.
The real-life, flesh-and-blood quality of God’s work in us: His birth, life, and death.
God’s most powerful acts, His Incarnation and redemption, did not break out of these most human of actions and identities—but rather worked within them. For the first time, I look upon God’s work through the eyes of a mother.
The convent’s images drove into my heart a message that has never stopped resounding.
Mary and Jesus will never be duplicated, but what strikes me is how ordinary it all seems.
The Messiah she carried, God-made-man, was unlike any other—but His redemptive acts were communicated through the common, everyday vernacular of our bodies.
From the confusing, exciting, terrifying news that she had conceived, to the agony and ecstasy of birth, through the years of wondering and worrying, to the moment she wept as she held her Son’s dead and broken body in her arms.
Can I wrap my mind around the fact that these acts of pregnancy, labor, nighttime feedings, and skinned-knee-kissing are the same doorways God walked through to enter the world? Never.
All at once I see the two stories I know so deeply, side by side.
The gospel story my soul has been drinking in since cradle roll, next to the story my adult body has inhabited for a decade. Unexpectedly, motherhood becomes the purest window I have to see that when God touched mankind most dramatically He used the same life seasons given to each one of us.
To reveal Himself He came to earth not on a bolt of lightning or on a cloud, but carried in a womb, born of a woman, knitted into flesh and blood—incarnated.
To redeem us, this same human body was broken, His flesh torn, His blood spilt—death.
Surrender, and birth.
Surrender again, and death.
So very, very physical.
So absolutely creaturely. And God’s redemption played out within them, among them, and through them.
This means that the sacred does not float ethereally beyond the reach of mortals.
The sacred has mingled inseparably with the mundane.
Catherine McNiel survived her children’s preschool years by learning to find beauty in the mayhem. Now, she writes to open the eyes of weary moms to God’s creative, redemptive work in each day.
In her book Long Days of Small Things: Motherhood as Spiritual Discipline, Catherine invites exhausted moms to awaken to the spiritual value God places naturally in their very physical day-to-day roles and tasks. When there isn’t enough quiet or time for a quiet time, He always sees you. He designed this parenting journey, after all. He understands the chaos of motherhood. And He joins you in everything―whether you’re scrubbing the floor, nursing a fussy newborn, or driving to soccer practice. Catherine invites you to connect with God right here, in the sacred mundane of every mothering moment. Rich, soul-inspiring practices for moms who have neither quiet nor time — connect with God right here, in the sacred mundane of every mothering moment.
[ Our humble thanks to Tyndale for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
April 27, 2017
1 Real Cure for Burnout
So this symphony lover invites me to a concert, a box seat, up over the orchestra.
It’s cold. Chicago. The violinists warm up. The whole northern hemisphere keeps trying to warm up to spring.
From anywhere in the building, you can see the guy up front, the conductor.
Somebody’s ironed his black threads pretty smooth. His hair – not so much. It’s this perfect balance of grace.
The lights dim, papers stop rustling. A thousand smart phones are rendered dumb. The conductor raises his arms and in one moment it’s like he’s pulled a million strings and the music rises — and there it is, clear as a spotlight:
The only way to lead a symphony is to turn your back to the crowd, the critics, the court.
Something inside me unhinges.
The only way to lead any kind of symphony is to turn your back to the critics – the ones across the street, the ones in your family tree, the ones in the front row and the ones down the hall.
To turn your back to the ones who are assessing your kids, evaluating your address, weighing your work, judging your merits — or lack thereof.
I am sitting there and it’s like my own taut strings are played and it’s like a haunting: sometimes the critic you have to turn your back to is the inner one.
God’s Word says that righteousness is about finding favor in somebody’s sight.
Turns out that you can live your whole life trying to get your righteousness from a thousand different places instead of in Him.
Turns out that righteousness is really about being acceptable. And sin is really about what you let determine your acceptability.
Turns out that you can spend your life looting the world, looking for acceptance, only to find that all that made you feel acceptable — were phony fakes of the real thing.
That’s why it never lasts. That’s why you get up everyday still desperate for something, someone, to keep saying you are somebody. That you are somebody who is okay enough, who is acceptable enough, who is more than good enough.
Sin is really about what you let determine your acceptability.
The conductor’s focus never wavers.
The symphony only happens, the symphony only makes music, when you are brave enough to simply turn your back to the critics and your face toward the place where the music’s made. I close my eyes…. Music’s only made in the place of acceptance —– accepting the beautiful reality of the notes.
That’s the thing: We all get to choose where we set up the stage of our lives — before the Crowds, the Court, the Congregation, the Critics (inner or otherwise)-– or the Cross of Christ.
“All except One will assess your performance.
Only One will accept you before your performance.
Pillage and loot the world for all it’s worth, but only in Jesus is there 100% acceptance before even 1% performance.” ~The Broken Way
What if kids got that, right down in their DNA?
What if parents got that in the marrow of their weary bones?
What if creatives and visionaries and dreamers and makers and leaders felt the unleashing release of just that?
What if the beautiful reality of His extravagant, lavish, ardent, complete acceptance became your everyday reality?
The stream of notes are surging up between my fractured places, a bond along brokenness, and that’s all I can think:
What if your complete acceptability in Christ — became your complete identity no matter what?
The entire symphony crescendos, a wave breaking free.
The conductor never turns. The moment any thought slips outside of Christ and you’re back in court: judged Performance before any hope of Acceptance. The music keeps rolling over him, rolling over us, the whole place reverberating with this euphonic glory.
And I don’t know why I think of it right then, maybe only because everything’s quaking with this thunder of notes, but my father had told me once that in every sound system, in every speaker, there are these large magnets.
He had turned one of those heavy magnet over in his worn hands, the magnet as large as his etched palm — and he had told me that that if a speaker had no magnet – it would have no real sound.
There is only real sound, there is only a powerful speaker, there is only felt reverberation, there is only music – when there is a magnet attracted to the ultimate source of acceptance.
When identity is not drawn from a performance – but drawn toward a Person, the person of Jesus – this is the place where a life makes music.
If your performance is fuelled by a need for acceptance, that is what burns your life out.
But when His already acceptance is the very fuel of your performance – this is what ignites a life into an unending flame.
Profound acceptance is the catalyst of any profound performance.
Now you can give the performance of your life — because it’s based on the completeness of your acceptance: Which means the liberation to dance.
Which means an erupting relief of grateful joy moves you.
Which means there’s this symphony of movement — that moves and changes the world —
your whole world.
Cure for Burn Out?
For all of us who have ever limped under the weight of never being enough,
grab the lifeline of The Broken Way
and experience the symphony of the abundant life —
the relief of a cure for burnout.
April 25, 2017
how to survive in a world of loud critics & judgers — including the repetitive one in your mind
So there’s these headlines screaming like your head isn’t aching loud enough just yet.
Some guy said something and all the talking heads wanna make his head roll.
You know the story — maybe we’re thinking different names, different towns, different details — but yeah, same story.
They drag all kinds of the limping and lame and guilty right out into the court of public opinion and sentence us all to the noise of more judgement.
Down the back roads home, I’m thinking about the people flung into the centre of the circling critics. Across the fields to the west, there’s dust. Everywhere, they’re scratching back for the seeds.
Everywhere, there’s people waiting for Someone to scratch words in the dust and make the critics yield.
Like this kid who calls me when I’m nearing home on Old McNaught Line and tells me straight up that the Guy in the sky or wherever He is, is an angry God and she can’t take it anymore because He won’t take her at all.
She’s messed up again, she’s failed again, she’s a train wreck again, and what is the point whenever everywhere you look there’s pointing fingers, especially when you look in the mirror.
I pull over to the side of the road.
The world quiets. Slows.
Sometimes the way to get to the places that matter is to slow down.
I’m all ears and she’s loud and shattered on the phone and, yeah, I hear her. I get it.
A horse and buggy pass, carry on quiet. Somewhere down the road, there’s a kid who’s blown it.
Some guy who thinks he’s fallen for good this time.
Some woman who feels failure deep down in her marrow.
Somebody who feels bone weary of wearing some affixed scarlet letter, some burning brand of judgement.
There’s a whole world of people who feel like the church is a bunch of stone hurling Pharisees.
And there on seat beside me is this ring of dog-eared papers, some lines that I’m trying to etch right into me, memorize by heart, the woman with a bad case of chronic soul amnesia.
“He stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” John 8:7
Yeah, all roads, all events, all cultural commentary, they all lead back here. Jesus stands here.
The woman caught, the guy judged, the kid dragged out, they all get flung out in front of the god of opinions that’d like to trap and judge God too.
The horses out in the field beside me keep walking on. I tell the girl on the other end of the line that she can keep pressing on.
Because the thing is? This is how Jesus handles the condemned and their critics:
Jesus unsettles the comfortable and He comforts the unsettled.
The woman caught in adultery is grabbed by the Pharisees who are caught in the idolatry of smugness and Jesus kneels in the dirt, puts His finger to the dust and that’s what Jesus does: Jesus unsettles the comfortable and comforts the unsettled.
This is what Jesus always does: He unsettles the comfortable critics, the smug judgers, the pious and proud — and He comforts the unsettled sinners, the unwanted strugglers, the undone stragglers.
Who knows what the Man kneeled and scratched in the dirt — but His eyes looked up and into the wounded and wrote hope:
You’re guilty but you’re not condemned.
Whatever you’re caught in, I make you free.
Whatever you’re accused of, I hand you keys.
Whatever you’re judged at, I give you release.
In the midst of trials, Jesus guarantees the best trial outcome:
you’re guilty but you get no condemnation.
There’s more sun coming up over the woods. The horses in the field right there turn round at the end of the field. The dirt’s working up into an open seedbed, loamy and ready.
Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you.” But he said more, more not to be forgotten: “Now go and sin no more.”
The unsettled who are comforted and the comfortable who are unsettled, both need that more: “Now go and sin no more.”
You can see it all down the road, these farmers with their horses, trying to get their corn planted into the dirt.
And I whisper it to me, to the girl on the other end of the phone:
Grace always grows.
The Grace that grows the Tree to cover sins —-
is the Grace that grows a soul toward obedience.
Though Pharisees may disdain uber-grace as a cop-out and the sinners may choose easy-grace as their shoo-in, but honestly, the thing is:
Grace isn’t a paltry thing but the most powerful thing — the very power of God — so don’t ever underestimate it:
Grace doesn’t ever negate obedience — but Grace always initiates obedience.
Grace enough to cover your sins, is always grace enough to grow you toward obedience.
The order of Christianity isn’t: Go and sin no more and Jesus won’t condemn you.
The order of Christianity that re-orders everything is: Neither does Jesus condemn you — so now go and sin no more.
God didn’t give His Commandments and then lead the people out of Egyptian captivity.
God always leads people out of captivity with His love and then captures their hearts with His commandments.
I exhale with her exhale on the end of the line.
He’s not merely useful to me — He’s ultimately beautiful to me… His beautiful and relentless love that makes a soul relentlessly beautiful.
The horses move down the field like a bold grace and it’s like the trees of the fields might sing it, the spring sky descend with it, like the whole filthy earth might break open to proclaim it, grow it:
God gives you grace and acceptance before you overcome your sin.
Because it’s His grace and acceptance that let you overcome your sin.
You don’t overcome your brokenness to have God’s love.
It’s God’s love that has you overcoming your brokenness. ~The Broken Way
And there on a side road at the end of April, I suddenly feel like don’t have anywhere to go if it’s not on this road.
Like I’m laid low and broken open to receive —
His no condemnation is the seed of all my transformation.
Habits only change when we take them to the Cross of Jesus, not to the court of judgement.
Only when you go to the Cross first & hear no condemnation, can you go to the mirror and see deep transformation. ~The Broken Way
This is the only one road to take all the way home.
So yeah, headlines, go ahead and turn a bunch of aching heads, roll a bunch of breaking heads, but Jesus wrote something else into this dirty earth and I can take Old McNaught Line all the way home and the girl at the other end of the line can keep walking on, feeling it, knowing it, how Jesus unsettles the comfortable and He comforts the unsettled and she can hearing the singing hope in her veins like an emancipating spring:
Jesus doesn’t condemn you, Jesus is condemned for you.
Stones will be thrown, but Jesus takes them for you.
Spears will be hurled, but Jesus offers His side to shield you.
Battles will come, but Jesus will be nailed to the wall for you.
You don’t have to overcome your brokenness to have His love.
It’s His love that has you overcoming your brokenness. ~The Broken Way
This is the only one road to take all the way home.
Just past old Ephraim Martin’s, if you look straight toward true north —
you can see the willing lambs laying there at the foot of the Trees.
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
April 24, 2017
when hard days & all the unspoken broken piles on: how to keep breathing
You know, loss is inevitable; all of us will experience its agony. And yes, we can find strength through God’s Word but sometimes the pain can blur the text. What if you could experience the Word of God like you were there? Experience the words come to life. The Breathe Audio New Testament will take you as close to that experience as you can get this side of heaven. Brenda Noel, visionary of this vibrant recording, understands how listening to God’s Word can transform hearts. Even while facing immense personal loss she continues to communicate through the spoken and written word of the unspeakable love of God. It’s a grace to welcome Brenda to the farm’s front porch today…
From the earliest days of our marriage, I longed for and prayed for a large family.
My dream of love-filled, chaotic Christmas mornings came true when my only son presented me with the six most precious grandchildren on earth. They lived hundreds of miles away, but miles can’t affect the love of a grandma.
Each phone call was a treasure and each visit a joy of epic proportions. Is there a treasure of more worth than a ringing phone followed by six little voices yelling in unison across the miles, “I love you, Mimi!”?
Fourteen years of ever-increasing grandparent bliss came to an abrupt end with a sudden and bitter divorce.
Anger, hatred, and vengeance tore my world apart when my ex-daughter-in-law definitively declared my husband and I were no longer allowed any contact with our six little loves.
We had no rights or recourse.
The pain was beyond what words can convey. A good portion of our prayers were simply tears squeezed from broken hearts. “Why?” “What is the purpose?” “How can we I go on?”
It was six years before the first of our babies was old enough to re-establish contact. The sound of her voice on the phone bathed my shredded heart with a life-regenerating balm.
Over the next two years, two more of our precious ones came of age and chose to come back into our lives.
As I was in the process of directing the portrayal of Paul in Romans 8 of the NLT audio New Testament, Breathe, , the fourth contacted us and came for a visit.
It was the first time we had even spoken to her in over ten years.
I listened in as the words of Paul, voiced by Kurt Naebig, sprang to life . . . and the words of God, penned by Paul, sprang to life within my heart:
God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God (Romans 8:28).
Three of our grandchildren have chosen to relocate to be close to us and one visits and calls on a regular basis. But there are still two who have grown up outside our world.
The twins were only five years old the last time we saw those sweet little faces. It has been twelve years since we held them close.
We do not know the purpose in our lives or the lives of our grandchildren for the years of separation and pain.
But as I heard Kurt Naebig read Romans 8:28, I was impacted again with the fact that God has a plan for my life and my grandchildren’s lives.
True faith stands through times that seem hopeless, secure in the knowledge that all things work together for good.
Even when traumatic loss rips all sense from life —
the Holy Spirit strengthens us, prays the prayers that are too agonizing to voice on our own —
and allows us to walk forward, ever closer to the glory revealed to us through Jesus.
There are days when success is remembering to just breathe.
Just breathe deep…. and inhale the grace and goodness of God.
And then — exhale the stress and the strains of life.
There is a way to breathe — that exhales worries and inhales the Word.
It’s a strange grace — how in the spaces between the words of His Words — our soul finds the space it desperately needs to finally breathe.
Breathe at the beginning of the week? From the Breathe Audio New Testament: Romans 8:15-39
https://s3.amazonaws.com/a.voskamp/BlogFiles/Frameables/Romans8_15ff-2.mp3
Brenda Noel is a writer/editor and partner in ECHO Creative Media.
And the Breathe Audio New Testament, is a remarkably vivid listening experience that will transport you into the world of the Bible. A cast of over 100 actors, an original score, and stunningly realistic sound effects combine to create a true “you are there” experience for the listener. Step into the vibrant audio presentation of the entire New Testament, scripted according to the New Living Translation — because your soul needs to just breathe.
[ Our thanks to Tyndale for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
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