Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 155
December 17, 2016
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [12.17.16]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you right here:
Dirk Dallas via fromwhereidrone.com
Dirk Dallas via fromwhereidrone.com
Dirk Dallas via fromwhereidrone.com
when I sit with his photos, the world stops and exhales
I kinda love this gift the most
Tri Setyo Widodo
there’s something deeply calming about focusing on things like this
okay, seriously — these are #familygoals
the happiest gift of more Jesus this year:
The Greatest Gift … & Unwrapping The Greatest Gift —
and over at the The Greatest Christmas there’s a whole library of free printable ornaments, Christmas cards, gift tags, gifts boxes, scavenger hunt, and more —
our gift to you for The Greatest Christmas!
love from a stranger goes a very long way: who will we go love today? #BeTHEGIFT
Image via Jeffrey Brown/PCI Global
okay, as farmers, couldn’t be happier about stuff like this
kinda been on repeat here: because I knew you…
I have been changed for good
the #sharekindess campaign: saving thousands of lives #beTHEGIFT
Star Wars — Try Not to Cry Edition…
“You can go through what we’ve been through and are facing and be crushed — or you can be confident.” Uh — this right here, folks
you’ve got to meet her: Leanne Joyce… #BeTheGIFT
Hannah Karim
Hannah Karim
Don’t stop praying before/after pics of devastation in Aleppo #WithAleppo
you’ve gotta see who he thanks every single day
after she was evicted at 89 yrs old? the neighbour shows up and does what’s crazy perfect
“It was the right thing to do,” she said. “We’re family — the whole neighbourhood.” #BeTHEGIFT
really — it’s all about helping others on the journey with us #BeTheGIFT
If you could stand in someone else’s shoes . . . hear what they hear. See what they see. Feel what they feel. Would you treat them differently? Be kind out there — we’re all fighting a hard battle.
…so, hands down, this the most revolutionary thing that every one of us needs to pass on to our people, the next generation, all the world’s kids more than anything else:
the best gift we have got to give the next generation (and it’s not what’s popularly peddled)
never, ever, ever, EVER give up hope
they needed to know: no one is ever, ever, EVER forgotten
Sharing bits of my broken heart here? Life Today with James and Betty Robison : Brokenness
Breaking Free of being afraid of broken things – because Christ is redeeming everything
Post of the Week from these parts here:
— this little girl’s name is Sham.
And she came to us from Aleppo…
And… well, honest, I’m just all kinds of busted & this is all I could think about today:
The World-Changing Art of Not Being A Sham This Christmas
on repeat this week: An Advent Hymn
You all are giving the gift of breaking free to your people & it’s kinda blowing me away how you’re sharing breaking free— sharing the life transformation
Grab the Gift of Breaking Free into the Abundant Life
O’ Holy Night
…Today? “Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions & praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns — it’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life” Phil4:6-7MSG.
Turns out? Worry is always belief gone wrong. Because some part of your heart doesn’t believe that God will get it right.
But Peace is belief that exhales.
Because your heart believes that God’s love is everywhere – like air. It’d be quite something — for us all to breathe deep peace & exhale.
Either leave your worries with God today…or your worries will make you leave God.
~excerpt from The Greatest Gift
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
December 16, 2016
the best gift we have got to give the next generation (and it’s not what’s popularly peddled)
Ours is a love that meets each other at 3 am.
We meet each other in the dark, hands reaching…
One of hers fingering the dark for the bottle I’m bringing, the other looking for my hand, looking to grip my hand.
In the dark, night after night, her one hand holds the bottle and gulps comfort, the other, lacing her fingers through mine, yearning for and finding even more.
What do you need to give your kids, the next generation, all the world’s children more than anything else?
This is a passing world — a world that is passing away, and a world passing on its legacy, and the children are looking up and straight into us, asking the world what in this banged-up world are you all passing down to us?
One of my people carried her baby to the morgue today.
There’s orphaned children begging for their lives in Aleppo right now. There’s mothers starving in the cold and in the crossfire, pleading for their lives of their children, who keep reaching out hands too.
There’s Mary, mother of the Christ Child, carrying hope closer every day to the mire of the muck of this world and she does not turn away.
I know — everything can feel like it’s imploding, breaking and broken and busted. The world, the headlines, the powers and politics that be, the church and the debates raging everywhere.
Advent can ache and yearn for His coming and this is the way it’s meant to feel.
Stroking back a little girl’s hair in the dark, in a baffling, bruising world, I know this and I want my daughter to only know this:
The most revolutionary thing a woman can do is not let anything but the Cross explain her life.
Nothing could be more revolutionary. The Cross has been the crux and the axle and the lynch pin of history for the last 2,000 years and pull out the Cross or belittle it to a footnote in the explanation of your life, and this begins the fragmentation of your life.
This is the key, the Truth, that every one of us needs to pass on:
A woman’s most sacred responsibility is to be so comfortable not just only in her own skin, but in being in Christ, in being shaped and formed like Christ, like the Cross, being cruciform, becoming the gospel, that she becomes more interested in the ways of Christ, than in what others think of her — or what she thinks she wants.
Don’t let anyone tell you that it’s all about you, when you could be all about the world.
And the world always begins where your feet are, and the next need is.
I pull our littlest one close in the stilled dark…
How do you live the only thing that makes any sense and makes you any bit of sane?
A life focused on self-fulfillment is to your self-detriment.
Swallow that elixir down, let that never stop sustaining you, Child.
A life focused on self-fulfillment is to your self-detriment.
The credo of self-fulfillment is ultimately to your self-detriment.
And the gospel of cruciformation is the only one that ultimately leads to transformation.
Live cruciform — shaped like the self-giving of the cross — and your life forms into fulfillment.
This is the Truth.
And the thing is? If your Truth isn’t His Truth — then it isn’t the Truth.
The truth you get to live, is, thank God, more than your own finite, fallible one — you could live the fullest, realest Truth.
Living His truth bravely — is enough.
Living His truth is everything.
The greatest gift any of us can give to the world is more than our true self — it’s our self hidden in Christ who is The Truth.
I know they’re not out peddling this, and I know this doesn’t play well, sell well, or sometimes even sit well, but you can trust it, this is what makes all things well: Humans don’t most flourish when they follow their desires — but when they follow God’s.
No one gets to be their own God — and still say they love God.
There’s only one Who’s died and been made the King of everything.
Humans flourish through renunciation. Christ begs the bravest to dare to take the broken way because there is no other way to abundance:
Self-denial is ultimately the way to self-fulfillment.
We deny ourselves to follow Jesus. We deny ourselves to serve our neighbor. We deny ourselves — to find ourselves.
In denying — there is finding.
This is a hard thing. This is a holy thing. This is the thing that will make you whole.
It will hurt. It will be like becoming Real.
I’d met a Mama who said she read and dared to take The Broken Way and she said that she too had held the curled ball of her boy in the middle of the night like I held our girl.
And she had begged the Maker of the Universe through the night watches to let the best pieces of herself be given to her boy.
How to not fail the next generation, how do you not fail our people, how to be the best us, how give forward the best of us?
What in the name of one Holy God are we all passing on, in a passing away world?
She’d leaned over the edge of the crib, her sleep-sweating boy heavy in her arms.
And when her son gently rolled down into the cradling warmth of the crib — it was right there, right there on the little boy’s cheek.
The imprint of the Cross. Faintly etched in black… from her penned wrist — passed on to his hot cheek.
“You know — you know how The Broken Way dared me to draw a cross on my wrist every day?” she looked me right in the eye.
“The way you picked up a pen, the pen you wrote down thanks for your One Thousand Gifts, and now you draw every day the form and shape of your life, right there on your wrist — a cross? A visual to live broken and given — to live… cruciform?”
I’d nodded, watched her eyes welling.
“Well, I’m telling you — I realize — this dare to the broken way— ”
She points to the cross she’d drawn with a black pen that morning on her wrist…
“This here is all there ever is to give to our people. This is the best way to live — to have anything to give…” She’s punctuating every word with a finger tapping that cross on her wrist.
When we live cruciform — we form our lives into containers that can be fulfilled — filled with meaningfulness. Purpose. Kindness.
When we live cruciform — the next generation forms into more hope.
When I lay our littlest girl down too last night, slip my hand out from under her warmth, she stretches out in the safest sleep — and there it is too, imprinted into her — passed on to her:
A Cross on her cheek. From my wrist — from my heart — to hers. The Cross, the only way forward that makes sense of insane things, impossible things, that is the most life-giving way forward through anything.
The way we are — is what the next generation will know.
In her sleep, she reaches for my hand and we hold on to each other at 3 am, our fingers crossed and brave, for such a time as this.
Give the gift of Breaking Free with The Broken Way
Dare to let the Realest Light break in this Christmas
Links for 2016-12-16 [del.icio.us]
Our #1 Best-Selling Drone--Meet the Dark Night of the Sky!
December 14, 2016
Links for 2016-12-13 [del.icio.us]
Our #1 Best-Selling Drone--Meet the Dark Night of the Sky!
December 13, 2016
The World-Changing Art of Not Being A Sham This Christmas: 3 Ways to Help Aleppo For Real
Dear Sham…
You say your name like Shem — and I sat mesmerized, watching you and our farm girl at the airport last week.
I am not ashamed to say it, Sham — I couldn’t take my eyes off the miracle of you, Sham.
You, with your beautiful Syrian features and mile wide smile, and our girl with her fair Dutch blonde hair and blue eyes, you both on North American soil, waiting together for another wide-eyed flight arrival from the Middle of the World.
Waiting this time with us, right beside us, to be part of the welcoming, to be part of the meeting of yet another family fleeing the horror of Syria — another Syrian family who would huddle their battered and scarred way to the healing embrace of our farm town that’s smaller than a blink.
But we didn’t blink. We didn’t turn away.
You’ve flashed before my eyes a million times this week, Sham, your laughter haunting my nights.
You see — you might not have been here, Sham. Aleppo could have ate you in its hate.
That’s all I could think: Our girl might not have ever wrapped her arm around your shoulder and laughed too loud, you and her both throwing your heads back and swallowing down the hope of the world.
And your home of Aleppo has became the mouth of a monster, Sham. A monster that devours indiscriminately the dreams and hopes and years and future of 11 year-old-girls.
And you, Sham, our Sham, you could have been buried in the rubble. You could have been left bloating blue and pooling away in the bloodied streets. You could be one of those bagged in the widespread civilian carnage. You could have been the face of a kind of modern-day holocaust.
You could have been smattered with a hail of gunfire, your limp body could have been dragged before a doctor who kneeled weeping before you with not any way to save you.
You’re just a girl, Sham, just a girl standing on the edge of the world — begging with all the others:
We’re just kids, kids in Aleppo, standing on the brink of the world, asking the world to let us live.
How is that too much to ask?
Yeah — I know it’s Christmas. I know we’re all about lighting the tree and the candles right now, not bombs lighting the sky and the bodies of screaming children.
We’re all about saying yes to our kids right now — and there are kids in Aleppo who need all of our yeses right now.
Because it’s incomprehensible, Sham, that we all live in our collective home of earth and co-exist together — while children are being shot in the streets, we just quietly go about picking out gifts to wrap for underneath our trees.
Jesus hung on The Tree & died of compassion — which literally means He died of co-suffering. How can we live anything less?
What ‘s happening right now in your Syria is a humanitarian tragedy of historical proportions, Sham. Like Rwanda. Like Bosnia. And our world, we all said: Never again.
But… This is how “never agains” happen — when we happen to do nothing yet again.
We’ll never learn the lessons of history — if we fail to act as agents of change in the story now.
Sham — we can do this.
We can look you, the kids of Aleppo, in the eyes right now and do just these 3 things:
1. Donate to Relief Efforts:
Preemptive Love Coalition is on the ground, feeding fleeing families.
All of us, our little community here, we showed up last week enforce, and together we’re feeding 25, 000 fleeing Aleppo citizens a day — until Christmas Day.
So can we dare together to live #TheBrokenWay & live broken & given, like bread — and keep the meals going the day after Christmas, the week after Christmas — because this is how we LIVE Christmas.
This is how we give to Jesus — Who brings us Christmas — and asks us to GIVE Christmas.
Donate here — LET’S DO THIS THING.
2. Support Global Refugee Efforts:
Because when we’re pro-life, pro-human — we are always pro-refugees .
If we say that we stand with Christ — now is the time to stand with the fleeing.
Because the Christ Child who came to this pale blue marble in the cosmos, He was the Child who knew violence and fleeing, who knew bloodshed and bodies of children laying in the streets, and how can we celebrate Christmas and not stand with the refugee — because that is exactly what Jesus was?
Now is the time, the world needs you to stand as one of the 10,000 people needed to take a stand with the refugee by January 20, 2016 —
Sign your name as one of the 10,000 on the petition at WeWelcomeRefugees
3. and be one of the ones who Welcome, Jesus, the Refugee:
Welcome/sponsor a fleeing refugee family in the United States
or a fleeing refugee family in Canada.
How but for the grace of God go I — go all of us?
Our children are breaking in Aleppo and there isn’t one of our hearts that shouldn’t be breaking too.
I knelt in front of you at the airport, Sham, and I asked you about your name, where does the name Sham come from? And you said, “Sham. What we call Damascus in Arabic — Sham.”
And I nodded slow.
Sham. Damascus.
And I touched your cheek, Sham.
If the world doesn’t have have a conversion experience on Syria’s Damascus Road right now — our love is a sham.
We are all Saul right now.
And
Syria is this world’s Damascus Road — and if we don’t convert from our indifferent ways to make a difference — how can we say that we’ve ever encountered Christ?
Sham?
Look me in the eye, Child of this world.
Too often we have wondered how history’s atrocities took place & no one took their place to change the story.… now we know.
Not on our watch.
I watched my daughter touch your shoulder, Sham, and you leaned in, rested your head on her and I felt a conversion in that moment, Sham.
The miracle of Hope converted me, Sham — and this believing in change and hope and waging peace and warring with love — this wasn’t a sham.
Not for one holy, advent moment.
Love came down to change the world through us and this feels like the truest, realest gift a heart can ever feel.
Love,
All those whose Love isn’t a sham
P.S. 1. Donate here. 2. Sign your name with one of the 10,000 here. 3. Welcome Jesus, the Refugee, in here.
Related: How We Could Get To Be The Kind of People The World Needs Right Now
When You Want To Experience A Love Story
Dear Aleppo: What the World Needs to Tell You
December 12, 2016
Why Doesn’t God Heal People We Love?
Honestly, there are times when nothing else will comfort, but being enveloped in the arms of one that we love. When life seems to be crashing in on all sides we need to feel that connection, that sense of safety. No one understands this better than Joni Eareckson Tada. For nearly 50 years as a quadriplegic she has woken up each day unable to even get out of bed on her own. When facing intense pain, while fighting the darkness of depression she turns to the Bible for comfort. Still, even this giant of the faith at times struggles to find the truth God was trying to breathe into her. That is why she created the Beyond Suffering Bible, the first study Bible for people who suffer and those that love them. It’s a grace to welcome Joni Earekson Tada to the farm’s front porch today…
guest post by Joni Earekson Tada
It’s a question I hear a lot from the heart-broken.
And it’s a question I’ve asked God many times. I prayed and pleaded that God would heal me of my quadriplegia.
I attended countless healing services.
I was anointed with oil and followed every other scriptural injunction. But my fingers and my feet never got the message.
As a result, I have chalked up five decades in this wheelchair.
At first, I was troubled that God said “no” to my request.
But then I read an insightful passage in the Gospel of Mark.
In the first chapter, Jesus is healing many sick people in Capernaum. The next day, the townspeople again brought their sick to Jesus early in the morning.
Simon and his companions went to look for the Lord; “When they found him, they said, ‘Everyone is looking for you.’ But Jesus replied, ‘We must go on to other towns as well, and I will preach to them, too. That is why I came’.” (Mark 1:38, italics mine).
It’s not that Jesus did not care about the cancer-ridden or the paraplegics, it’s just that their illnesses were not His main focus: the gospel was.
Whenever people missed this – whenever they started coming to Him only to have their pains and problems removed – the Savior backed away.
I know this may be hard to swallow, but the Bible specifically says that all who follow Jesus can expect hardship.
Paul told the new believers in Galatia that, “we must suffer many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God.” (Acts 14:22).
After calling Christians heirs with God and coheirs with Christ, Paul adds, “But if we are to share His glory, we must also share His suffering” (Romans 8:17). No one goes to heaven who does not first share in Christ’s sufferings. Peter says to hurting people, “For God called you to do good, even if it means suffering, just as Christ suffered for you. He is your example, and you must follow in His steps” (1 Pet 2:21).
Those are hard verses to read; no one wants to gag down such truths when their heart is grieving on behalf of a suffering loved one. When God doesn’t heal, it raises questions that really challenge our faith. But consider these answers to a few common inquiries about healing.
Does God want us to pray for healing? Yes! Just as we cannot box God in and say he always heals, we cannot box him in and say he never heals. This is why the Bible encourages us to pray for healing (Jas 5:14).
Should we fully expect God to heal? All healing from every affliction always comes from God’s hand. But in view of the fact that the kingdom of Christ has not yet come in its fullness, we should not automatically expect complete healing. Why should we arbitrarily single out disease – which is just one of sin’s many results – and treat it in a special way as something that Christians shouldn’t have to put up with? And the emphasis on earthly problems in the New Testament tells us we’re going to have to put up with plenty! (Mark 10:30; John 16:33).
Does it show a lack of faith if people are not healed? No! The focus of our faith should always be Jesus. Although Jesus wants what’s best for His followers, “best” will not be an easy life with no sickness or pain. God’s idea of best may include physical hardships that drive us closer to Him.
Why does God heal some people and not others? We cannot know what God has not revealed. God may occasionally grant miraculous healing as a gracious glimpse and sneak preview of the coming age when the eyes of all blind people will be opened, all deaf will hear, and every lame person will walk (Isaiah 35:3-6). When people are healed miraculously, it should encourage us to look forward to the time when healing will be for everyone.
What should our response be when God doesn’t heal us? When bedsores afflict me as boils did Job, I will say with him, “Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?” (Job 2:10). And when I feel bound to my wheelchair as Paul was to his chains, I will say with him, “For you have been given not only the privilege of trusting in Christ but also the privilege of suffering for him” (Phil 1:29).
Joy Craves a Crowd
Does all this anguish and hardship have an end?
Well, misery may love company, but joy craves a crowd.
The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit long to fill the hearts of thirsty people who are spiritually dehydrated from a lack of joy.
The Father is gathering an inheritance who will join Him in the river of joy that is heaven. He is heaven-bent on gathering glad souls who will make it their eternal ambition to worship His Son in the joy of the Holy Spirit.
God is love and the wish of love is to drench with delight those who have stepped into the fellowship of sharing in His Son’s suffering.
And soon, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are going to get their wish.
Perhaps sooner than we think, God will close the curtain on sin, suffering, disease and death, and we will step under a veritable Niagara Falls of thunderous joy.
I may have suffered with Christ on earth, but one day in heaven I’m going to reign with Him.
I may have tasted the pains of living on this planet, but one day I’m going to eat from the tree of life in the pleasure of heaven.
There we will feel utterly at home, as though it were always this way, as though we were born for such a place— and we were!
In a way, I hope I can bring my wheelchair to heaven. I know that’s not theologically correct, but I hope I can wheel it up to Jesus, hold His nail-pierced hands and say:
“Jesus, see this wheelchair? You were right when you said that in this world we would have trouble. This wheelchair was a lot of trouble. But the weaker I was in it, the harder I leaned on you. And the harder I leaned on you, the stronger I discovered you to be. Thank you for giving me this bruising-of-a-blessing. My wheelchair showed me a side of your grace I never would have seen otherwise.”
Then the real ticker-tape parade of praise will begin. And all of Earth’s redeemed will join in the party. Christ will open up our eyes to the great fountain of joy in His heart for us that is beyond all that we ever experienced on earth.
And when we’re able to stop laughing and crying, the Lord Jesus really will wipe away our tears.
I find it so poignant that at the point when I finally do have the use of my arms to wipe away my own tears, I won’t even have to. God will wipe them away for me. And He will do the same for you.
So pray for your loved ones; yes, even for His healing.
But also pray that there will be a following in the footsteps of Christ, daily leaning on grace through every darkness and disappointment.
For although God hates affliction, He permits it to accomplish something far more precious than the comforts of this world can ever offer:
Christ in us, the hope of glory.
There is not one of us who gets a pass from suffering. Whether it’s sleepless nights with an infant, concern over a loved one, a physical disability, chronic pain, illness, depression, the list goes on and on we all need comfort. The Beyond Suffering Bible tackles the tough questions, not giving the pat answers, but pointing people to the goodness of God and what He has to say amidst critical questions about suffering.
Visit beyondsufferingbible.com for samples of the Bible and to explore its features all specifically designed to help reader engage in God’s Word.
If we are to fully grasp what suffering is, and what we must do with it, we have to spend time digging in Scripture and this Bible is your shovel. Go deeper into how God can use our suffering in ways we could never imagine — this Bible is for every heart that’s known brokenness….
[ Our humble thanks to Tyndale for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
December 11, 2016
Light the Candles. Advent Readings. Third Sunday: JOY. [VIDEO experience]
Join us on the farm with lighting the candles for the Third Sunday of Advent? Reading via email? Just click on the video below or right here
Disclaimer: This ain’t all together or professional slick or anything… Just a simple, homemade video, taped by our Hope-girl, because God pressed it hard on our hearts to make a space for folks who may not have a community to celebrate the wonder and beauty of Advent? If you’re looking for an updated, fresh story, professional version, it’s our humble joy to serve you here
Don’t miss Him this year? Hush the hurry & find the holy?
Journey with us? Through all of December with The Greatest Gift , named the Best Devotional of 2014 & NYT bestseller (free download of 25 ornaments with the book) — or the brand new family read aloud edition, The Evangelical Publishing Association’s Best Inspirational Book of 2016 & NYT Bestseller, Unwrapping The Greatest Gift — a fresh, all new unwrapping of The Love Story — your love story … … God starting a Christmas revolution, us all turning toward Jesus.
And if you’d rather a professionally recorded, beautiful DVD Christmas experience here on the farm? There’s the professional, all-fresh material of The Greatest Gift DVD Experience to truly hush the hurry and find the holy in December: 4 weeks of Advent: 4 holy sessions. Taped on the farm. At the woods. In the barn. By the manger. Come away from the whirl. Come into the candle light. Into the snow falling. Into the quiet of the barn & the depths of His Love.
Sit in the straw, in a circle of flickering candles, and feel the illuminating awe of God’s Word through the unfurling of the greatest love story ever told — Christmas’s full love story, right from the beginning of His-Story, like you’ve never quite heard it told before.
Next Sunday, come join us? The Love Candle …
Related: The quiet joy of having The Greatest Christmas : How to Have the Best Christmas … and where to find our wooden advent wreath
December 10, 2016
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [12.10.16]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you right here:
Meg Loeks
Meg Loeks
Meg Loeks
if your soul needs to inhale some joy this season?
Your week looked like this too, eh? (okay, so what if we did watch this one 3 times)
Qusar district. Photo: Lyokin Photography. Time Lapse: Farhad Ibrahimzade.
look up — really, you’ve got to see this
share the JOY: wherever you are
okay, this is kinda a crazy novel!?
hired as a package deal: a veteran and his dog yes
what this hospital staff did for a patient? #BeTheGIFT
Oncology nurse writes apology to her patients because…
loving this — there is always, always HOPE
This day was bad at the start, the middle and the end. But then this happened.
how moms see themselves vs how their kids see them
Want to preach Gospel to yourself every day through December?
Free Stress-Free Holiday Sticky Notes for Your Soul
right here: No Stress Holiday Manifesto
and he’s got it just right
…nothing slows us down through Advent like this 24 Day Advent Wreath —
because there’s no missing Jesus this year
bringing smiles to tens of thousands: a boy & his dog
this Christmas? okay, no shame: The farmer & I watched this one twice with the kids
Because? THIS IS THE REAL DEAL — Reality, right here ^
William Anders, NASA
Kinda a great history lesson with the kids:
The 100 Most Influential Photos of all Time
because we all need someone to believe in us #TheBrokenWay
You’ve gotta read this: Two Kinds of Buckets
just beautiful: To Worship You I Live
All in here, folks — ALL IN: The Ministry of Giving a Rip at Christmastime
the happiest gift of more Jesus this year:
The Greatest Gift … & Unwrapping The Greatest Gift —
and over at the The Greatest Christmas there’s a whole library of free printable ornaments, Christmas cards, gift tags, gifts boxes, scavenger hunt, and more —
our gift to you for The Greatest Christmas!
this one kinda blew our mind? yeah, indeed: a BIG God
The oldest know Pearl Harbor survivor at 104: he received a welcome worthy of a hero
Mary, did you know?
Post of the Week from these Parts:
I had to wait a long time to tell this story,
to find any words at all.
Finally it all came now… & kind of undone in a way that makes everything whole:
“The Secret Truth that Cures Feelings of Abandonment —
& what has to be said about Advent”
You all have our little book about breaking free on the NYTimes Bestsellers list for week #5?
You all are giving the gift of breaking free to your people & it’s kinda blowing me away how you’re sharing the love — sharing the life transformation of what’s the most beautiful way, as kinda the most beautiful gift — all His
please, PLEASE — don’t miss this one
“God whispers to you with a love that wraps around you like a gentle arm:
‘Wherever you are, I will always come find you. Whatever you’ve done, I will always keep looking for you until my eyes see you, till my hands of healing reach you, till I can hold you close again to my heart.’
No matter what the day holds, no matter how the season of your life unfolds, God holds you and enfolds you.”
from: #UnwrappingTheGreatestGift
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
December 8, 2016
6 Ways To Speed Clean to Clean-Enough for the Holidays [& The 1 Habit That Changes Your Morning & The Whole Day]
My Mama said you can’t hurry clean —- just like you can’t hurry love.
And I’ve been spending about, oh, the last 20 years trying to prove the good woman wrong.
In a (long) moment of apparent brain blur, I tracked down, paid good money, and hauled home one impossible puppy.
Because clearly, in a house of full of more than half a dozen kids, a full-time farmer, 1000 honking pigs, and more dirt than you can possibly imagine, we did not have enough insanity.
No, we needed a beast to rip apart every stinking garbage bag across the entire garage because the UPS man needs some disgust to tiptoe through at 2 in the afternoon.
We needed a canine to drag coats filthy into the flowerbeds, to line our walkway with the entrails of mangled shoes, mauled hats, and chewed up water bottles (Where? Where does he find these?) and, you know, we needed a dog to tear apart the BBQ cover to bits so now the naked BBQ looks like a tool chest right there on our front porch.
(I wish I were kidding — The BBQ is Red and is designed to look like a Craftsman tool chest — don’t ask. The Farmer won it— and because we have no back deck, there the red BBQ now sits like a toolchest, in all it’s redneck glory on the front porch, the dog smugly sleeping in the shreds of the BBQ cover I’ve counted on to give us some semblance of normalcy).
So, okay, my Mama may have had a point — right there at the end of her wagging finger — how in the name of all things sane can you hurry clean and a whole lot of love?
Well, Mama, this ain’t my first rodeo —
And after twenty years of homeschooling six crazy kids and getting to be wife to one fine, albeit greasy, gritty, farming man— these are a few of the things that I love — because they have proved (to some arguable extent) you can hurry clean — and don’t go telling any mama for one New York minute that doesn’t mean a whole lot of love, love to ease the mind.
6 Things Mamas Love As They Hurry The Clean & the Love
1. Rolling Shoe Drawer
Walk in that back door and roll that sucker out, toss in the shoes, and roll that drawer back in. Sanity — You’re welcome.
Shoebox: Self-built. One plywood box. Beadboard front. Rubber wheels from the country hardware store where we just walk in, find our wheels, holler put it on The Farmer’s bill, and truck it home to happiness. Top the rolling box with a wooden step. Call it, not merely good, but a lifesaver. Mudroom goes from complete chaos to what we like to call authentic farmhouse.
On top of Rolling Shoe Drawer? Two wire baskets.
One Basket for Outgoing: a book to return to my Mama, egg cartons to go to my sister and her flock of hens. One Basket for Incoming: Hats. Mainly a lot of farm hats. This little trinity back in the mudroom, rolling shoe drawer, two baskets — has definitively lowered my blood pressure.
2. Kid Lockers
That, well, aren’t really lockers at all. They are drawers. 6 spice drawers. Along the kitchen island.
I find kid stuff anywhere? Goes to your drawer. You can’t close your drawer? Time to clean your drawer.
Kids glasses, keys, wallets, combs, papers, hairbands, batters, headsets — I find it, I’m not hauling up to your bedroom — just slip it in Kid’s Locker. Be it Spice drawers, hanging pockets, pull baskets, bona fide lockers, whatever the cubby may be, I’m thinking these are a few of the things every speed cleaner needs: Kid Lockers for Home.
3. Just 5 Steps More
It’s an ongoing refrain here, my ridiculous, relentless Mama symphony rising above the domestic cacaphony: 5 Steps More!
5 Steps more will get that away. 5 Steps More and the clothes are away, 5 Steps More that dish is in the dishwasher, 5 Steps More that book is on the shelf. You are strong enough and you have time enough — for just 5 Steps More. You are just 5 Steps More away from a cleaner house.
Because the thing I keep saying and believing and living is: We get to make Art for the people who get to come behind us.
We get to make beauty, we get to leave loveliness, we get to make art for all who come in our wake — so they get to wake to wonder. So whether it’s in the kitchen, at a screen, with colleagues, with kids, in the house: Make Art. It brings glory to the Master.
And that Art happens? By getting everyone consistently on your 5 Steps More soundtrack.
4. 30 Minute Love SHAK
This is the Key, the absolute non-negotiable must-have Key.
Every single day — for us, it’s right after dinner clean up — every single day, set the timer for 30 and every single person under your roof, does a 30 Minute Love SHAK — that would be 30 Minutes of Surprising Home Acts of Kindness.
Yeah, sorta of like Intentional Acts of Kindness — but for your house. In your house.
And true — it’s technically, not surprising. But! If you think of it as surprising! As a way for all of you to surprise all of you with… clean bathroom! clean floors! clean counters! clean table! Then — it’s like random acts of kindness — for our own family! By your family.
So the deal is: Do Surprising Home Acts of Kindness — Love SHAKs — 30 minutes of random cleaning, just 30 minutes of every single person who lives here seeing something that needs to be cleaned —- and everybody cleaning as quickly as they can.
The point of everybody working together at the same time to surprise everybody? Everybody models the kindness of cleaning for each other, nobody gets to say what they’ve got going is too important to get in on loving each other, real progress is made because everybody is working fast and together, spurring each other on — and we all get to say we are on the same team.
Because if we don’t have 30 minutes a day to do what I call “Clean Your Own Bowl” — then something is very wrong with our days. For us personally, we don’t have a housecleaner here because this I believe:
There is serious work done in our soul when we ‘clean our own bowl.’
When we clean our own cereal bowl, our own fish bowl, our own toilet bowl — when we take time to clean our own bowl — the inside of us is being cleaned of pride and self-importance and ego.
Around here, we live or die by our 30 Minute Love SHAKs. (Accompanied by soundtrack of your choice. Just crank it.)
5. If It Doesn’t Make You Smile — Make It Leave
That’s Bottom Line. On everything. Papers? Take a picture and let it go. Too many books (if that is possible)? Community library and let them go. Closets? Keep letting things go.
The decluttering habit of letting go fosters the spiritual discipline of letting go.
And the question of what you will keep in your house is actually the question of how are you going to live your life.
A life of simplicity is had by simply letting go — on every level.
Have Less. Be More.
6. PRETTY MUCH INSTANTLY MADE BEDS
Yeah — kinda.
Honestly, it’s been a hard, wrestling, growing year.
Maybe someday I will tell all of those stories, of all that’s been going on quietly behind closed doors here and deep in real and messy hearts.
Sometimes being brave enough to speak of your unspoken broken is how God starts to speak more than enough healing .
So in the midst of the hard and unspoken broken — this has come along and changed our mornings — and brought a scandalous amount of peace to the start of the day.
Bed against a wall? (We have 2 of those) Never any bed-making stress again: One Zip — and the bed is perfectly made. Bunkbeds? (The kids always wanted 1 of those). Never any bed-making stress again: One Zip — and the bed is perfectly made. Bed on the floor in a loft or on a platform? (We have 1 of those on the floor of a teeny crawl loft) Never any bed-making stress again: One Zip — and the bed is perfectly made.
And you know what?
Made Beds matter.
This isn’t causation but the odds are stacked pretty high in favour of made beds:
“71 percent of bed makers consider themselves happy; while 62 percent of non-bed-makers admit to being unhappy. Bed makers are also more likely to like their jobs, own a home, exercise regularly, and feel well rested, whereas non-bed-makers hate their jobs, rent apartments, avoid the gym, and wake up tired.
All in all, bed makers are happier and more successful than their rumple-sheeted peers.”
Gretchen Rubin, author of “The Happiness Project,” makes the case that making the bed was “the number one most impactful change people made. Because? Turns out that making your bed is what they call a keystone habit. Keystone habits are those habits that are a catalyst for other good habits — which is exactly what I want to have happen for the kids.
And that commencement speech at the University of Texas, by Navy Seal William H. McCraven? Who offered this as his #1 Big Life-Changing Habit for graduates,
“If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.
If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day…. It will encourage you to do another task, and another, and another.
And by the end of the day that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed.”
These One Zip Instantly, Perfectly Made Beds? Is a stress-free habit that is contagious and the catalyst for whole bunch of other good habits throughout the day.
Because a made bed is the gift of not only stress-free mornings — but contagious habits throughout the day —- and then welcoming evenings.
The dog ripped coats out of the garage here yesterday and it’s torn up across the front lawn right now, a welcome banner of sorts for the mail lady this morning.
And the mess will get cleaned up today, the cleaning will happen today, we will make art and clean our own bowl and tend to our Love SHAK, and walk 5 steps more and we will have made beds because that’s a guaranteed making of better days — but Cleanliness isn’t next to godliness like Love is.
It’s the love we weave into the cleaning of the house, the matching of the socks, the working of our hands, that survives fire. It’s our love that we fold into our work that survives fire.
Sure, your mama said you can’t hurry love — but you can fold love into the work of your hands and you can make the hands work smart — and you can have more time for love.
You heard they’re saying that the sky will light up like fire tonight and the light will dance real slow across the sky?
There can be time for that.
“I’d wondered why in the world we have lives of to-do lists? Because this has changed everything, offered restored clarity:
To-do lists can become “to-love” lists.”
The anger that simmered for years over the kid paraphernalia that littered the house and to-do lists that imploded—wasn’t it always my fear of being broken?” ~ excerpt from The Broken Way
“When the fear of not being enough haunts your days, isn’t it, under everything, a fear of brokenness?
This falling prey to performance and perfectionism and negativism — was really a fear of falling into brokenness.” ~The Broken Way
Here’s to picking up what we need to BREAK FREE
Resources:
yeah, that video of one-zip instantly made beds
December 6, 2016
the secret truth that cures feelings of abandonment & what has to be said about Advent
They say they found Him wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger, but I have absolutely no idea how they found my daughter.
I wasn’t there.
I have no idea if they found her naked or swaddled in something or if she was lying on anything between her and the dirt, or if her bare back indented the granular earth.
I don’t know how they found her that late summer day, but thank the Lord someone found her. Thank God someone heard the wails of our daughter not from a feed trough, but from a filthy ditch — at least that’s what the paperwork said.
That our daughter had been found in a ditch by a river, found at four days old and less than 4 pounds, and someone carried her the 4 miles to the police station, as if she had committed a crime in breathing, in being, and this world is a heart breaking world.
I flew 10,000 kilometres across the arc of the world last spring, stood by that river in China where they found her and I hold her and her brave and broken beating heart next to mine.
I only go back there now a thousand times in my mind. Because in some ways, she begins there for me, and all these questions begin there for me, all the answers I have found…
How does a world, a heart, not make room — and why do answers to that question make a heart, a world, hurt, and what if there are answers that haven’t yet found me?
The wind didn’t move through the trees that day. I know this. I stood there watching for even a sigh through the leaves. I had stood there watching for a coming.
And I had heard the thrumming heart of her and it’s like a murmur, this cry against abandonment that beats like a drumming in our daughter’s broken heart, that echoes like a howl through the chambers of every single one of our broken hearts:
If I broke into a thousand pieces — who would come and pick me up?
If I up and lost my way —- who would come look for me until all of me was found?
If I forgot who I really am — who would come make me remember my real name?
This happens, these things happen. You can get to the middle of your life, the middle of a season, and be met with a haunting of questions that refuse to be hushed.
Now is Advent — and Jesus comes.
Jesus comes and when there’s been a breaking into a thousand pieces, He picks up the pieces of you, the pieces you’re tired of being brave and saying aren’t even broken and He whispers: What feels broken and falling all apart — I’m making it all fall together.
He is taking the broken things and making better things.
Now is Advent and when you’ve up and lost your way in the wounding loudness of things, Jesus comes and He looks for you and He won’t let you stay lost and He won’t stop coming until —
Jesus finds you and whispers: You most find yourself when you find your joy in Myself.
Our heart is restless until it finds its rest in the fully accepting embrace of Christ.
Now is Advent and when you’ve forgotten who you really are, Jesus comes, He comes and makes you who are in Him remember your real name:
You are My friend… Hear Me — You don’t ever get rejected.
You are justified… Hear Me — You don’t ever get any condemnation.
You are complete… Hear Me — You don’t ever have to prove anything.
You are forgiven… Hear Me — You don’t ever have to beat yourself up.
You are chosen… Hear Me —You don’t ever have to feel like you don’t belong.
And I’d looked down at little Shiloh, standing beside me in her finding place, in the long grasses beside a river and I kneel down beside her and tuck this little wisp of hair behind her ear and whisper:
Little One?
Little One?
You weren’t abandoned in this place to be forgotten — you were placed in this place to be found.
That place that may feel like abandonment —- is placement.
And what may have feel like being thrown away — is about being placed because a way is coming always.
And there was the echo of the heartbeat of the Father for all His children, and there is a feeling of this:
That place where you feel abandoned by everyone —- is really where God has placed You to be met by Someone —- Him.
That place that feels like abandonment —- is placement.
That place where you feel thrown away — is about being placed because His way of healing wholeness is coming for you always.
You are never abandoned in a place to be forgotten — you were placed in this place to be found.
I’d knelt in the long grass with her. Pulled her close.
And “sometimes God takes us into the wilderness not to abandon us — but because He wants to be alone with us.
Wildernesses can be safe because we are always safe when we are always with Him.
Wildernesses can be where God woos.” (~excerpt from The Broken Way)
Beside that river where she was found, I had cupped my daughter’s little face in my hands: “I was always coming, Little One — always coming.” Her eyes looked like an answer. Looking long into the eyes around you is always the beginning of answers.
And He is always coming for you, Brave One — His healing, breaking free ways are always coming for you.
And now she stands in front of our Christmas tree, her eyes, her face, lit with all this light, and she holds up the fabric nativity scene that my mother hand quilted with long strokes of her needle, her thread always coming, and she hold up Mary: “Mama!”
She runs over to me, thrusts Mary into my hands: “Mama.” She pats my cheek, like I could be like that willing girl.
Can I live given to God? You can live given — surrendered — wherever you haven’t surrendered or given yourself over to fear.
And there is never any need to fear anything: There is no abandonment — only placement.
Placement for His coming ways, placement for His coming arms, placement for His coming purpose, placement to be an Esther, to be in this place for such a time as now.
And then she turns and reaches back for Joseph:
“Papa!” She holds the quilted Joseph above her head, like she knows the banner over her is love and she laughs like music: “PAPA!”
And then her clubbed, bluing fingers reaches for the manger, and she cups the wrapped quilting in her creased palm, and she holds the newborn in the cradle out to me like an offering — and I’m waiting for her to whisper — Jesus?
And she whispers it like a hushed secret: “Me.”
“Your baby, look, Mama! —- Me!” she pats my cheek again.
And I nod, and smile, and she’s confused and she’s not and there are answers when you don’t expect them.
“Yes, You — You, made in the image of God.”
I may have questions about what her birth mother looks like … but no matter who she looks like — she bears the image of God.
No matter how anyone looks — you know who they look like: they bear the image of God.
The most belligerent relative, the most difficult neighbor, the most resistant kid, the most different foreigner, stranger, other —- is Jesus in the manger, in Christ in the crèche, is the image of God.
And when you give to the least of these, when you hold the least of these, when you welcome in the least of these, when you live broken wide open and given to the least of these: you give to Jesus.
I take the little Baby Jesus from her hand.
Yes….. All there is to see is Jesus — for you to see Jesus in every person — and every person to see Jesus in you.
Now is the time of year where there are lights to see and plays to see and family and neighbors and community to see — and all there is to see is Jesus. For you to see Jesus coming in everyone and everyone to see Jesus coming in you.
Now is the time we don’t only look for Jesus coming to the stable — we look for Him around every table; we don’t only look for Him coming to the crèche, we look for Him in every crisis.
We don’t look for Him coming only to the manger, look for Him in every mess; we don’t look for Him coming only in the barn — we look for Him coming through brokenness.
Advent is about looking for the coming face of Christ — in every face that comes to you.
There is never abandonment — only placement… and we are all placed by Him for each other, so no one has to feel abandoned.
Light the candles but never let anything less than the heart be lit:
Advent isn’t so much about hushed waiting, as much as it’s about heart breaking with the things that break God’s heart, about a heart breaking in repentance… a heart breaking over the darkness and crying for the light to break in, for Advent to come and the Kingdom of GOD to break in to us.
Never let anyone shrink your Advent down to only lighting candles — instead of you breaking into flame, because our God is holy fire and His people ignite light that breaks into a wildfire of change that breaks the captives free.
In the spring, I knelt beside her, beside a river in China where she was found, and in winter I kneel beside her, beside a Christmas tree where the light is finding us all in the dark, that is finding us because there is never any abandonment to be forgotten, only placement to be found. And Christ keeps coming to find and remind and remake and rename, and we could keep finding Christ coming in every face, finding Christ coming — not only through the world to us, but coming to the world through us.
Come, Jesus, come to us with our broken hearts — and come through us to a world of broken hearts.
The lights are blazing brave, coming through the dark everywhere right about now.
And they’re calling for snow to fall all day tomorrow, swaddling us in white.
It’s coming now, tomorrow, always coming — like a quiet abandonment to the arms and will of God who never abandons or fails.
Break free with The Broken Way this Advent…
“This book WILL wreck & transform you in the best way..” ~Lizz M
Dare to light the break in this Christmas
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