Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 169

June 24, 2016

3 words to stop the comparison thief that keeps robbing all joy

So this kid? She’s apparently got a problem when it’s her kid sister’s birthday.

And yeah… it’s understandable.

I mean — who really especially likes it, or finds it easy, when the other kid gets the big cake?

Or the big gifts. Or all the flashing cameras on her grinning mug smiling pretty over candles?

I mean — I saw it once at a parade: women jockeying for a better position.

Turns out it doesn’t matter a hill of beans how old you are, how wise you are, or how you’re sitting pretty — the more you let yourself compete and compare, the more you forget your own calling.

I’d seen it, the women with their big handbags and big hopes: The more you push to get in front of others, the more you fall behind in being the best you can be.

I confess, I don’t remember much of the parade… but I went home with that.

I went and listened to the kid with the kid sister who had this birthday coming up. She was brave and honest and said out loud that she knew she was going to feel her tummy tighten into knots when everyone handed her sister all the presents, when her sister got the stage and the candles and the cake.

So she showed me what her and her mom had written on a piece of paper for her, for her to carry in her pocket, hold in her hand.

Just three words, scrawled on a scrap of paper:

I get enough.

I get enough.

The kid’s eyes dance:

“So I remember: I get enough cake, I get enough pretty gifts, I get enough people celebrating me too.”

That little girl holds that paper up: “I am not ever losing this. Because I can’t forget it — or that’ll ruin everything: I get enough.”

That’s right, girl — because a girl can forget. And that ruins everything.

A woman can forget that her life is enough. That her road is enough. That her calling, her story, her singleness, her chastity, her marriage, her husband, her vocation, her apartment, her house, her childlessness, her kids, her body, her health, her work is enough.

A woman can look in the mirror and find it impossible to say: I get enough.

One can forget how to believe: I get enough.

There’s enough scraps of paper in the world, that we could all tear up that myth of scarcity and write it down for ourselves, the certainty of abundance: I get enough.

One can write it on the mirror:

I get enough… because I get enough Jesus — and Jesus for me is enough.

I get enough… because I get enough God — and God in me is enough.

I get enough… because I get enough grace — and His grace to me is enough.

I get enough… because I get enough Love — and His Love all around me, for me, in me, is enough.

I get enough.

When I can’t remember that I get enough — I just have to remember to give thanks.

Eucharisteo always precedes the miracle:

Give thanks — and you get the miracle of knowing that you do get enough. You get enough God.

The disease of not-enough… is cured when you give thanks for more than enough grace.

Sometimes you need shorthand to help you remember what matters in the long run.

Shorthand for ‘I get enough’ is: 1000 gifts.

It’s been given, 1000 gifts, endless gifts, more than enough gifts:

“He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all — how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?

If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing Himself to the worst by sending His own Son — is there anything else He wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us?” (Romans 8:32, NIV, MSG)

If God already gave us the extraordinary extravagance of Jesus — He will give the ordinary enough of right now.

It’s always our relentless desire for more — that destroys more and more of us.

The more you want —- the more you will be destroyed.

But when we know we get enough — we get happy for what others get.

That, always that in the pocket: I get enough… because I get enough Jesus — and for me, Jesus is enough.

Some part of the art of life is the art of believing — that the grace in the pocket is sufficient for today, that the celebration and the feast is wide enough to encircle all of you too, that the candles light you too.

When the kid sister laughed over those birthday candles, you could see a pinpoint of light in everyone’s eyes, like the light of more than enough stars that you could see even right now, right now in broad daylight.

If we’d just pause to look up.

Heart stories of the everyday, to give a way of seeing that opens your eyes to ordinary amazing grace, a way of being present to God that makes you deeply happy, and a way of living that is finally fully alive. Come make your life the best dare of all!

(Foreign Language Translations of One Thousand Gifts)

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Published on June 24, 2016 07:13

June 21, 2016

how to be the mom who is deeply okay with not getting it all right

When one of the boys pulls off his Sunday shoes, the filthy ones ridiculously still clinging to “Sunday Shoes” status, he catches my eye and grins like he’s swallowed a canary.

“So I only wore one sock to church.”

What are you going to do but laugh with the grinning kid?

Yeah, I am that Mom…

Yeah, after 21 years, there it is:

I have been the mama who’s punished when I needed to pray.

Who’s hollered at kids when I needed to help kids.

Who’s lunged forward — when I should have leaned on Jesus.

There are dishes stacked on the counter like memories and paint smeared on the table and there are kids sprawled on the couch trying to read the same book at the same time — and there is only so much time.

I never expected love to be like this. I never expected so much joy.

I never expected to get so much wrong. It’s what my Mama’s said to me a thousand times if she’s said it to me once. “It’s not that you aren’t going to get things wrong — it’s what you do with it afterward.”

So you clear off the table and the dishes and the leftover spinach leaves and wash the paint fingerprint off the mess of chairs, and you pick up the socks and shoes strewn through the house like crusty droppings in the park.

And then you swing from the monkey bars in the almost dark with the kids almost grown and you pray that your post-half-a-dozen-babies bladder doesn’t give way leaky on you now, and you laugh so loud you hope they always remember.

There is still light.

There is hospitality — making space inside of you to be a safe place for a child.

And no matter how the craziness of this whole parenting thing all turns out: The reward of loving is in the loving; loving is itself the great outcome of loving. The success of loving is in how we change because we kept on loving – regardless of any thing else changing.

And it’s a relief, how hanging upside down on the monkey bars, things can come to you.

That maybe being the mama I want to be isn’t so much about being more, but trusting more — trusting more in the God of Hagar and Ruth and Hannah, the God who sees the angst, who nourishes the empty places, who hears the unspoken cries — and answers.

That godly parenting isn’t ultimately about rules — but having a relationship with an ultimate God and His children.

That godly parenting isn’t fuelled by my efforts — but by God’s grace.

That if I make God first and am most satisfied in His love — then I’m released to love my children fully and satisfactorily.

That maybe it all comes down to this:

My kids don’t need to see a Super Mama.

They need to see a Mama who needs a Super God.

Right to the last of the light, into the last of the light, there’s this silhouette of a mother running free and barefoot with the kids, no socks at all.

This grace on ground like this.

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Published on June 21, 2016 06:14

June 20, 2016

where are God’s people to end slavery? slavery could end — and it begins here

Turning the calendar today to see that today is #WorldRefugeeDay and the Farmer and I have humbling and exciting upcoming news to share in that regard — all of us TogEsther rising up for such time as now, right where we are, to make a mark — Christ’s mark. Turn the calendar page today too — to realize that right today there are more than 45 million people enslaved right now. Slavery is a plague that has festered and even grown, to the point where there are now more slaves – human beings, owned and brutalized by other human beings – living in our world today than ever before. Right where we are right now, for such a time as now — we can make a mark that frees the oppressed and the enslaved. Gary Haugen was chief investigator for the Rwanda genocide and now leads the world’s largest international anti-slavery organization – International Justice Mission – and they’ve been fighting slavery for nearly two decades. His vision for IJM began when he was standing in the mass graves of Rwanda; his instinct was to ask God, ‘where were you in the midst of this horrific violence, neighbor wielding machete against neighbor?’ But he quickly realized the question isn’t “where was God?” The question is, “where were God’s people? Where was the church?” As Gary and his team lead the charge to eradicate slavery in our world today, this is the question he puts before us today — Where are God’s people? Will the church lead the way? It’s a joy to welcome Gary Haugen to the farm’s front porch today.

guest post by Gary Haugen

Slavery today looks like a little girl named Mien, locked in the back room of a brothel, owned as property for paying customers to rape.

Slavery today looks like a man named Boola, trapped in a brick factory with hundreds of other men, women, and children facing the daily brutality of their owner.

Slavery today looks like human traffickers throwing their heads back in laughter at the prosperity of their trade and the power they wield.

Slave owners, human traffickers – they wake up today and every day focused and relentless in their abuse and exploitation.

But they will only prosper in their trade if they continue to get away with the crimes they’re committing.

And, for the first time – ever in human history, forces are aligning to make sure they don’t get away with slavery anymore.

For the first time in history, slavery is illegal everywhere.

Photo courtesy of IJM

Children working on Lake Volta. Not IJM clients

Photo courtesy of IJM

Slaves in South Asia. Photo courtesy of IJM

Photo courtesy of IJM

Slaves in South Asia. Photo courtesy of IJM

Photo courtesy of IJM

Slaves in South Asia. Photo courtesy of IJM

Photo courtesy of IJM

Up until recently, however, those laws were not enforced.

But we are now proving that when those laws are well enforced, slavery cannot survive.

When slave owners are held accountable, slavery goes away. For the first time in the long story of mankind – there is a generation alive on the planet that is capable of seeing slavery truly swept into the dustbin of history.

But in a fallen world, again and again, governing authorities charged with enforcing the law and protecting the vulnerable fail to do their God given duty and they do not restrain evil.

In response, as we’ve seen throughout the arc of history, what does God do? God raises up the prophetic voice of his people – to go to the Pharaohs, to go to the kings, to the parliaments, to the presidents of the earth and demand that they use their God-given power to let the oppressed go free.

And maybe this time, in regard, to slavery – the God of history is preparing to do so for the last time.

But.

The people of God cannot raise their prophetic voice if they are themselves asleep.

And so we believe, in this singular moment of history, it is time to awake the slumbering giant of the church again.

In recent years, there have been rumblings in our church pews and ministry conferences about slavery and human trafficking – but on the whole, the vast people of God have not reawakened from their 19th century slumber.

The vast majority of people still believe slavery is a thing of the past.

What if — you who are uniquely placed within your own church simply, lovingly, awoke your church to the prophetic call to end slavery?

Of course, this is all the more powerful if we all do it together and if we do on a day and a place where sometimes Christians are sleepiest – like Sunday, in church – and to do it this September!

It’s simple. I want to invite you to start the conversation at your church about dedicating one Sunday to Freedom – and to do it together with other churches on September 25th.

Now the church is a giant … and it’s asleep – so this won’t be easy.

But what I know is this: millions of everyday Christians have done this before in other eras. And we want to give you everything you need.

My team at IJM and I have prepared Freedom Sunday materials for your church to help with everything from crafting the sermon message, creating multimedia and worship experiences, putting up signs – you name it.

When you sign-up to host, you’ll receive step-by-step instructions for starting the conversation at your church and for putting to use all the free resources we’ve created.

Jesus has rescued each and every one of us, and as we follow Him in this world, He’s beckoning us to join His work of rescue.

By His power, we are going to wake up the church with Freedom Sunday in September until the sleepiest day and the sleepiest place has become the most wide-awake day and the most wide-awake place – and the people of God are out of bed.

As long as there are millions of people for whom Christ died who are in slavery, there is going to be a Freedom Sunday.

A Freedom Sunday — until all are free.

As Frederick Douglass preached on Fourth of July over a hundred sixty years ago, “Let the people of God array their immense powers against slavery and slave-holding; and the whole system of crime and blood would be scattered to the winds.”

That day did not fully come for Frederick Douglas in his day –

but by the grace of God, for the first time in history, it may come in ours.

But until it does, we’re not going away, until all are free.

Gary Haugen is CEO and founder of International Justice Mission. Gary has been recognized by the U.S. State Department as a Trafficking in Persons “Hero” – the highest honor given by the U.S. government for anti-slavery leadership. He is the author of several books, including Good News About Injustice (Intervarsity Press) and, most recently, The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence (Oxford University Press).

IJM has prepared Freedom Sunday materials for your church to help with everything from crafting the sermon message, creating multimedia and worship experiences, putting up signs – you name it. Let’s please start the conversation at your church about dedicating one Sunday to Freedom – and to do it together with other churches on September 25th.

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Published on June 20, 2016 06:57

Links for 2016-06-19 [del.icio.us]

Sponsored: 64% off Code Black Drone with HD Camera

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Published on June 20, 2016 00:00

June 18, 2016

Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [06.18.16]

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:

Christine Anderson
Christine Anderson
Christine Anderson

And after this week, anyone else in with me? Let’s exhale and take a long walk…

just really love this

some very thirsty lionesses paid a visit

City of Parma
a bird found a new home… yup, right there

have you heard about his 8th grade graduation speech?

This week’s Sticky Note for Your Soul:

The world needs prayer warriors who don’t see prayer as the least we can do but the most we can do. And then get on knees & pray us through. Shared tears are multiplied healing…God never lets the last line of any story be shattered pieces.

FREE daily printables to cheer you on!

Simply fill in your email here and the whole library of free printables and tools unfolds right before you:

Sign-in/Subscribe here for immediate access to the whole library of free printables, framables & free tools!

Quiet Relief Near-Daily Quiet Relief in one Weekend BundleSIGN-IN »

teaching on the book of Ecclesiastes

Signefotar
Signefotar
Signefotar

extraordinary beauty

Still in love after 85 years:

“The secret is to go on loving each other and go on being faithful to each other, and we’ve gone through life very very happy.”

profound compilation from the NYC Drone Film Festival

Emily P. Freeman

With June as Your Teacher

June reminds me how important it is for us to be like children, to practice setting down our agendas and being with our Father for no other reason except because we are loved.

2 years of filming in 2 minutes — hop on!

Katarzyna Załużna Fotografia
Katarzyna Załużna Fotografia
Katarzyna Załużna Fotografia

beauty like maybe you’ve never seen?

calling all new dads: just do the next thing

after her wedding? she saves a life

how he’s giving back

meeting the officer who saved his life

Catherine Rae Photography
200 strangers reached out in one extraordinary way

Happy Father’s Day

This is historical

…kinda thinking — we never needed this more than we do right about now.

Fill the mall. Be one of a million standing for Jesus in DC on 07.16.16.

Moments of historic change? Marked by historic gatherings. Together 2016 is the day our generation will meet on the National Mall to come together around Jesus in unified prayer, worship, & a call for catalytic change.

We’re coming together with as many people as possible — people who believe Jesus changes everything.

If you believe ‪#‎JesusChangesEverything‬?

Be there –bring the family & tell the world: #JesusChangesEverything. Ours will be joining yours.

never underestimate the power of words

For Orlando

Thank God that Love is mightier than Hate

that Belonging to Each Other is mightier than the firing of guns

that Listening to each other is mightier than stereotyping each other…

Hold You

many selfless helping hands

He is Here…and He is King

I lift my hands to believe again

[ Print’s FREE here: ]

…so, here’s the thing, God — just thank You for spreading

Your protecting shield over us at the end of this day.

Shielding us from the worry that keeps on pressing in,

from the fear that creeps in from behind,

from the dark that seeps up the edges.

Thank you that right now, even now, You “spread Your protection over [us]… You cover [us] with favor as with a shield.” Psalm 5

Just, really — thank You for shielding us tonight, so we can rest

and not be worriers —

because You are our protecting Warrior.

For Worry is practicing the absence of Your presence.

In Jesus’ name,

Amen.

[excerpted from our little Facebook community … come join us?]

‪ Dare to fully live!

That’s all for this weekend, friends.

Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.

Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again

Share Whatever Is Good.

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Published on June 18, 2016 05:42

June 16, 2016

when the daily grind of everything grinds you down: Finding Faith in the Routine

I just absolutely love the Lucado family and how they love — how they’ve loved our family. Love how they are real about the daily grind. It’s the biggest assault on Jenna Lucado’s faith. As she picks up scrambled eggs her thirteenth-month-old has thrown on the ground for the 5,122nd time, doubt creeps in. “Really? Jesus came to give us ‘abundant life’? This feels more annoying than abundant.” As she made the same ole grocery store route and buys the same ole brand of cereal and stand in the same ole checkout lines, questions tap on her mind’s door. “Does God really see me? Is He really with me, in this boring, routine moment?” Routine has a way of imprisoning our thoughts to what is in front of us, and we forget about the promises ahead of us. Monotony can weaken faith more than catastrophe. Maybe it’s not the monotony of life but the loneliness of life. Maybe it’s not the routine but a rocky relationship. It could be watching the evening news, challenges at work, the hardships of life that weaken your faith. It’s a grace to welcome the wisdom of Jenn Lucado to the farm’s front porch today…

guest post by Jenn Lucado Bishop

As I partnered with my dad, Max Lucado, to write Ten Women of the Bible, I quickly discovered, when it comes to faith struggles, that you and I don’t have to look any further than the women in the Bible to see we are far from alone.

Take Sarah, for instance. Love her.

Could sit with her for hours at Starbucks relating to her issues.

She and Abraham walk through marriage tension, a move to a strange place, war, infertility. And though they experience holy revelations, miracles, and dinners with the Trinity, those events do not come as quickly as we read them in Genesis.

Long stretches of waiting and the daily grind test their faith time and again.

“From the time God first called Abraham to his next appearance in Genesis 17, twenty-five years have passed since he first promised to make Abram and Sarai into a great nation.

Abram is now ninety-nine, and Sarai is not much younger. She knits, and he plays solitaire. He has lost his hair. She has lost her teeth. And neither spends a lot of time anymore lusting for the other.

“Twenty-five years. A lot has happened during that time. The couple has overcome scandal in Egypt. Their nephew Lot has been captured and rescued. Then there was that whole Hagar-and-Ishmael ordeal. But still, no son has been born, no promised heir . . .

“Occasionally, I’m sure Abram would think of God’s promise and give Sarai a wink. She’d give him a smile and think, Well, God did promise us a child, didn’t he? And they’d both chuckle at the thought of bouncing a boy on their bony knee.

“God was chuckling too. With the smile still on His face, He began getting busy doing what He does best—the unbelievable.

But first He had to change a few things, beginning with their names. ‘I am changing your name from Abram to Abraham,’ He said, ‘because I am making you a father of many nations. . . . I will change the name of Sarai, your wife, to Sarah. I will bless her and give her a son, and you will be the father’ (Genesis 17:5, 15–16 NCV).

“Abram, the father of one, would now be Abraham, the ‘father of a multitude.’ Sarai, the barren one, would now be Sarah, the “mother of nations.”

It was another assurance from God that the promise would be fulfilled. Somehow, the couple chose to believe it and never give in to doubt.”

But how?

How did they not give in to doubt?

How does Sarah maintain faith during the scary times, the hard times, even those dreaded, routine, in-between times?

Well, let’s look at a few things her faith was not —

First, Sarah’s faith was not perfect.

At one point, she tells her husband to sleep with her maid to rush God’s plans.

Ever choose your plans over God’s?

You aren’t alone. Sarah, the mother of nations, of God’s people Israel, blazed her own trail too.

Second, her faith was not without doubts or questions.

“After I am worn out and old, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?” Sarah chuckles (Genesis 18:12 ESV).

Ever question or doubt God? You are in good company.

Along with Sarah, Mary from Bethany asks, “Lord, if you had been here . . .” (John 11:21 ESV).

The Samaritan woman questions, “You have nothing to draw with . . .” (John 4:11 ESV).

Esther doubts, “But . . . I have not been called to come in to the king . . .” (Esther 4:11 ESV).

And finally, Sarah’s faith was not based on her own strength.

Her faith, my faith, your faith cannot be self-mustered or forced. It is a gift from God “so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:9 ESV). Ever feel as though you are gritting her teeth, pulling up your bootstraps, doing whatever it takes to squeeze a little faith out?

Then let’s remember it was God who called Sarah.

It was God who gave her the faith she needed.

Her only job? Receive it.

“By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised” (Hebrews 11:11 ESV).

Her only job? Receive it.

Whether it is a Starbucks date with a teen girl, a book she has written, a simple text to a friend, or her speaking career, Jenna Lucado is always looking for a chance to share God’s love with God’s daughters. She is the author of Redefining Beautiful—What God Sees When God Sees You; From Blah to Awe: Shaking up a Boring Faith; and her latest Bible study, Love Is…

If your faith is weakening because of dark days, confusing days, or even drowning-in-dull-routine days, then take a second. Pause. Pause to consider Him. Consider the Faithful One. He’s called you, chosen you. He’s proven faithful in your past and will prove faithful in your future. He gave you faith and will give you more. All you have to do is ask. And when you ask, get ready! He will graciously give you the faith to continuously consider Him faithful even after twenty-five years of waiting, like our friend Sarah. In Ten Women of the Bible, a 10-session workbook, Max Lucado tells some of his favorite accounts of these ten women—Sarah, Abigail, Esther, the Samaritan Woman, Mary Magdalene, and others—and describes what set them all apart. Ten Women of the Bible is absolutely five star and ideal for both individual use and for study in a small-group setting.

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

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Published on June 16, 2016 06:32

June 15, 2016

Links for 2016-06-14 [del.icio.us]

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Our #1 Best-Selling Drone--Meet the Dark Night of the Sky!

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Published on June 15, 2016 00:00

June 14, 2016

when the world wonders where God is & if He shows up when everything looks impossibly broken

… because today we blink and she turns an impossible 11…

When we buy her two pygmy goats for her birthday, who knew how big faith could get?

We bring them home in June in a mini-van with no air-conditioning.

Two miniature goats neighing back and forth — on the laps of two boys making jokes about something warm running down their legs.

“We do need to name them,” the birthday girl announces.

She strokes one goat’s speckled stretch of neck, flakes of whiteness falling down a throat of silky night….

“Nanny is the whiter one.” She grips Nanny’s inverted skunk neck, ridge of black running down her spine. “And you… “ she turns to the smaller goat in Joshua’s lap, “You are Ninny —- the darker one.”

Ninny — shadow of Nanny…

We aren’t the owners of 2 pygmy goats for 24 hours when Shalom flies in the backdoor, flings herself on the couch.

The kitchen sink’s a mama’s watchtower and I dry off my hands. “Shalom? You okay.”

“Mama,” she sits up, brushes her mess of curls from her face.

“Mama –“ her chin’s quivering “—do you think goats make good dinners for coyotes?”

My eyebrows arch.

Her dam breaks. “Because Nanny’s gone, Mama — Nanny ran away.”

She’s a heap again on the couch, shoulders shuddering.

Kai throws open the back door, “Shalom?”

He says her name like Shome, all the letters running together, the way you can make peace out of whatever you run into.

“Shome? Caleb’s looked all through the field. And back through the bush. And he can’t find Nanny anywhere.” He’s standing in the kitchen with his hands on his hips, telling me how it is.

“Mr. Shannon, he’s had all those sheep, and he told Caleb to leave Ninny at the back door of the barn and she’ll cry for Nanny — ” he looks around to find Shalom ” — and then Nanny will come home, Shome.” He makes her name sound like home, and Peace is always our Home — because Peace is a Person, not a place, and He always says come dwell in me. Shalom can’t hear him for her weeping.

He goes to the couch, kneels down beside her, tries to find her under that mopsy mess of blonde.

“Remember Nanny’s wearing a collar, Shome? And the collar’s got our telephone number on it.” He whispers it close to her, rubs her back.

“Someone will call us, okay?”

“Only if coyotes read phone numbers before they just dive into a little goat dinner,” Levi mumbles it from the kitchen.

Before I can say anything, he pushes himself, all the hurt in his chest, right out the back door.

After dinner, after the stories about searching through the woods three miles to the east and three miles to the west….

After recalling again how skittish and scared Nanny is, after the glaring down of a son who suddenly needs to discuss the current state of coyote populations…

After wiping cheeks again, all still hopeful, after the lights are out, Shalom, she prays.

“God, you say that you hear us before we cry and I’ve cried a lot today, and I just know you are catching all our tears in that bottle of Yours and maybe that bottle sometimes sound like rain? God — please don’t let the coyotes hear our Nanny crying. And please — bring my Nanny home.”

Standing in the dark, looking out to the light, the hallway light, I don’t know how God answers all the begging prayers.

The begging prayers of the grieving and the aching and the broken and the impossibly hurting.

The begging prayers of mothers who’d like to wring death’s thin neck and make that child well.

I don’t know how God hears the wail of the woman howling raw for that one man to come love her right. The ache of the daughter rejected by the icy parent. The choking breath of the man crushed hard by a weight of debt.

There is this thrumming everywhere — the tears falling, a hard rain into His bottle and He has to hear. Shalom holds me tight, our hearts beating harder against each other in the dark.

She whispers it, “God does loves us, doesn’t He, Mama?”

And I nod and this is always the question and maybe this is all our faith really is — Faith is this unwavering trust in the heart of God in the hurt of here. Unwavering trust all the time though I don’t understand all the time.

God is always good and we are always loved.

Loved enough to be shaped into goodness of Christ Himself.

Shalom buries her head into my shoulder and I run my hands through her hair, this slow untangling of everything, and I can hear His thrum.

Nanny isn’t at the barn in the morning.

Breakfast is quiet, heads bent over bowls.

“Think she’s somewhere in Martin’s woods still, Dad?” Shalom wiggles her chair closer to the table.

The Farmer reaches over, squeezes her hand, murmurs it hardly, “Let’s read, okay?”

He turns to the only place we can turn and he opens his Bible onto the table and Peace is a Person and we enter in the place of His Person. We listen to Him, Presence everywhere, and He can be our walls and our roof and the peace that makes us breathe relief and deep.

I do remember to breathe. The Farmer runs his hand across the thin Scripture page, this making ink of truth into the skin of his life. How do we walk our six breaking heart kids into faith in the Unseen Heart?

How can we give them what we are only slowly coming to hold: God’s purposes are not for me to understand His plans: His plan is for me to understand Who He is.

Shalom prays hard that night. We don’t know where Nanny is under the stars. Maybe the hardest praying are the prayers that let go. We all exhale into sleep. The Farmer tells me in the dark of morning that the chances of that 8 week old goat surviving two nights in woods….

The third night I stand at the window and say nothing, only looking out into the unknown that is known. I can hear the baying howls of the packs, bleating hearts turned towards the moon.

Joshua says it behind me in the shadows at the top of the stairs and says what no one is saying anymore.

“I know God is going to bring Nanny home.”

And now I am terrified.

God is no genie and when He took the nails He said He was no puppet on a string and I don’t turn from the window, but say it to the night, to Joshua somewhere behind me —

“And what if He doesn’t?”

What if He doesn’t — what if He doesn’t do what we plea, what we pray, what we believe He can and will do and should do?

And the three men before fire, they whisper the startling answer in Daniel, the answer of all of holy writ and writhing humanity: “And even if He doesn’t” –

Even if He doesn’t do what we beg, we are still His beloved.

Even if He doesn’t, He still is.

Even if He doesn’t do what we will, His will is still right and His heart is still good and the people of God will not waver.

Real prayer has eyes on Christ, not the crisis.

Even if He doesn’t – He does give enough — Himself.

Even if He doesn’t – He does still love us.

“If He doesn’t — I will still believe. Still believe — in Him.” In the dark, Joshua finds words to a life creed.

I put my forehead to the window, Nanny out there somewhere – or not. Maybe Joshua who is the one coming Home? And I half smile: That which we fear might happen to us — might be the thing to produce deep faith in us.

Why be afraid of anything — when He’s using everything?

God is answering all our prayers: No one enters into the real joy of the Lord in spite of the hard times —- but squarely through the door of the hard times.

When I turn to brave Joshua’s eyes, he’s already opened up the door to of his room — gone and stepped in….

It’s the fourth night without Nanny when the Farmer drives a pickup full of kids home through the countryside all slow.

They all look off into fields and they all talk of crops but it’s Nanny they’re all looking for and not speaking of.

The sky grows green, sickened and grey, just to the north, and then rips open black.

When they walk in the back door, it’s raining hard just across the highway. “Now that storm’s crazy close,” the Farmer says it at the sink. “Pouring hard in the next mile and quarter – but the laneway’s dry here.”

The phone rings.

“Listen!” Malakai stops everyone with his holler, hands up, waiting for the voice to leave a message on the machine.

“Who is it?” Shalom whispers too loud, patting the Farmer’s arm.

“Mr. Wideman?…. “ He steps towards the study and the voice of the Mennonite farmer from 3 miles north of us crackling on the machine… Everyone listens…

“Did you hear him?” Shalom spins around.

The Farmer shakes his head, confused, reaches for the phone, “Mr. Wideman?”

“No… no, it’s not raining here — but we can see it’s dark back your way.”

Kai rubs his hands giddy and Shalom keeps looking up at the Farmer, waiting for more, and Joshua, he’s still and ready in the doorframe. The Farmer turns on speaker phone so Mr. Wideman speaks to the whole bated breath room.

“No rain there? Well, it’s sheeting hard here – and it looks like, from the number on the collar here, we’ve got your goat. ” Shalom’s all white lightning, that smile.

Levi cocks his head, grinning — “Did the coyotes have takeout this week?” Kai laughs.

“Yes – we did lose a goat the beginning of the week. But—“ the Farmer puts his hand on Shalom’s head and the Father touches the daughter and she flashes all joy.

“But — how did you catch the goat to get our phone number off her collar?”

“Looks like the rain drove her up under the eave – “ Mr. Wideman speaks in a slow thick Mennonite accent.

“And she jumped right up here on the kitchen windowsill to keep from getting wet.” Kai’s eyes grow big, catching all light.

“We just had to look out the window. And there was your phone number — right there on her collar.”

Shalom’s happiest thunder clapping.

Joshua stuffs his hands down into his pocket — but nothing can stuff that smile.

And God allows a goat to run away and He lets the coyotes howl outside the back door and He drives in a storm three miles to the north of us to drive one Nanny goat up to a kitchen windowsill up under an eave, so a Mennonite neighbor can read our phone number right there off her collar so he can call us, and God uses everything to call us out of apathy.

It might have looked different.

It was supposed to, it could have, and it may next time — yet even if He doesn’t.