Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 170
June 11, 2016
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [06.11.16]
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:
Esther Havens
Esther Havens
Esther Havens
when I sit with this woman’s photos, the world stops & exhales
okay, wow — without a dock?
some nifty ideas to pass along
Morgan / thewhitefarmhouseblog
Morgan / thewhitefarmhouseblog
Morgan / thewhitefarmhouseblog
just too beautiful not to share
the straddling bus could be a part of our future
now this may just get you bouncing!
here’s one way to deal with a long traffic jam
Ruben Salgado / Instagram
remarkable entries for the 2016 Environmental Photographer of the Year
come. rest. enjoy.
10 Things Minimalists Don’t Do
an animated graphical score of Prelude in C Sharp: fascinating
Jennifer Dukes Lee
because it really is all about the light
beautiful
Brittni Daras / Facebook
why this teacher wrote personal notes to each of her students? yes, yes, yes
teen in hospice couldn’t make it to their concert – so the concert came to her
Sarah Nuxoll
4 Ways Having Cystic Fibrosis Helps Me Be a Better Mom
“I’m not a saint, angel, or hero. I just love these kids…”
How To Stay Married When It Feels Impossible Some Days: #ConsciousCoupling
“The walk has shown me that something so tragic can bring people together from all walks of life and that some good has come out of this awful personal loss.”
a heroes salute
The last living 9/11 search and rescue dog walks into vet office for last time. She would have turned 17 in August.
Be the #HotDogPrincess you want to see in the world
a local hero saves a life
Post of the Week from these parts here
Okay, this story has been blowing up everywhere — because it’s really about all of us.
And it’s more than time for us to really talk about this & getting “20 minutes of action,” people:
so many happy tears. come see why
would you dare to question who you really are?
a symphony of survival
Good Good Father: you are perfect in all of Your ways
… today’s a fresh mercy and you’re being remade & made new, and He’s cupping your chin right now & turning your face toward His and the sun:
“My loyal love for you can’t run out, My merciful love for you could never dry up. They’re created new for you every single morning. My faithfulness to you is great.” [Lamentations 3:22 MSG]
Yesterday’s packed away with grace, and Today’s a fresh day with fresh hope, fresh possibilities…
Because the thing is? What looks like it’s falling apart — may actually be falling together.
When morning breaks,
it breaks all of the mistakes of yesterday,
breaks right through our dome of dark —
so all His fresh mercies can flood in.
[excerpted from our little Facebook community … come join us?]
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.
June 10, 2016
How To Stay Married When It Feels Impossible Some Days: #ConsciousCoupling
So what if we’ve done it all the ways they told us not to?
We sat in a beat-up old Volkswagon on gravel back road and you kissed me under stars and slipped a ring on my finger and everybody said we were far too young.
Love is stone blind to time — and honestly, any passion in the heart is what has the power to turn back the hands of the clock.
My grandfather said you looked not a day over 15 the day we got married. I took that as a sign of our passion.
We didn’t know how to tell them then what we know now about marrying young: No need to invest in things to bring to the marriage, when you could invest in each other and the actual marriage.
Marriage is a commitment meant to form us, not a commitment you enter only once you’re convinced you’re finally formed.
Marriage is something that we learn, like the way we learn our mother tongue.
I’ve learned to say thank you. I’ve eaten too much chocolate. You’ve left it for me under pillows. I’ve told you to stop, stop doing that because it makes the scale tattle tale on us, and you just shrug your shoulder, grin, grab me around a thickening middle, pull me close to whisper it gentle there in my ear, that you love it when I feel soft. We’ve defied convention.
We’ve drove 13-year-old beat up pick-up trucks. 15-year-old rusting mini vans. We lived in a basement the first year and a half of our marriage. The next seven years we lived in a house with no heat to the bedrooms and we lived through Canadian winters. You still have 25 year old t-shirts from the summer we first held hands.
I still wear the same 17-year-old New Balance running shoes. You’ve asked me to cut your hair for the last 20 years. It doesn’t matter a hill of sprouting beans what anyone else thinks, your easy ways have proved it to me:
When you live plainly, your life gets rich.
Rich with generosity and time and loud laughter and humility and unexpected possibility and all this space to love. When you stop caring what others think may be exactly when you start doing what God wants.
I’ve wanted us and wanted you and wanted to run away, all in the same day. You’ve stopped and picked me flowers from the ditches. I’ve left the dishes splay dirty all over the counter and rubbed your back till you fell asleep right there at the table, your plate pushed back with that one cleaned off pork chop bone still left.
We’ve replanted the sweet corn together the last three years. Bad seed and bad starts have never stopped big believers like us from believing in great endings.
With your one hand on the pick-up steering wheel last week, your other hand found the nape of my neck and you let it rest on the bareness there and when you turned and said I was beautiful, for the first time in twenty some years, I didn’t protest.
I marked that moment, chalked it up right there on my heart. Right when I looked into your eyes and I smiled and winked — and I felt the miracle of this. Because it was no small thing: I let the way you see me be louder than the scale, the mirror, the media, the photoshopped magazine covers at the Walmart checkout, the mocking voices in my own head.
When a man says a woman is beautiful, her smile always proves that its the truth.
I am learning this. And your smile finding my smile, this is remaking us.
When I look in the mirror, you can see how the smile you’ve given me, has etched right into me, the wrinkles of us becoming us. Go ahead and watch Hollywood try to stay young — we will let our aging be proof that we have let life get right into us.
Go ahead and let everyone wear masks, you said we had to be real: You said we had to go for a walk and talk, when I never wanted to speak to you again. And you let me not talk the whole way down to the woods and home. But you held my hand that night under the cotton sheets.
And you asked me to walk with you every night for weeks, until I found words again. Until I found me again…. all because you waited, and because you didn’t wait to come and sit with me in my inferno and wait. You tucked my hair behind my ear when you found me at the sink.
You brought me home fudge and old crocks from the antique store because you know I love cracked things. Light can only get into broken things.
What makes a marriage better is to keep on going through the worst.
So… so what if we haven’t any of it the way they said you should — we’ve done it the the quiet way He’s made.
And maybe what’s changed our marriage, changed how we parent, changed us most, is simply that epiphany that’s come in the dark after the walks, that’s come in the whisper after we’ve turned down the cotton sheets:
Whenever you want to rant, it’s your cue you need to make a request.
Whenever you want to rant — it’s your cue you need to make a request.
I stopped raving about the state of the mudroom — I requested that shoes get to the shoe drawer… because we are only five steps more to making things better and why not always leave art for the people who come behind? I’ve stopped ranting all about what isn’t, I make requests all about what might be.
And you nod and make me smile again.
You stopped stonewalling (your version of ranting) about that big step that’s spread out in front of us — and you’ve simply requested that I pray. You’ve stopped ranting about what hasn’t changed, and you make requests to pray for what we’d love to change.
And I touch the back of your neck in the middle of the night and I can feel your smile.
When you asked me last night to walk down to the woods after dinner, we went slow, the old swaying dog in front of us, the loud kids behind us somewhere in the dark. You saw the lightning of the fireflies between the trees first -— then all their brave blinking spreading out over the pond.
We stood there in the thickening light, watching the twinkling happening in midair. You found my hand. You made me smile. You and I, we felt this.
So what if we do it all upside down and different, you in your dirt laden Levi jeans that wear our farm, and me in my beat-up old runners that keep wearing our prayers? All the things that seem impossible can become impossibly beautiful.
You and I like blinking lightning in a jar.
Related: The Daily Vow of a 10 Second Kiss
3 Habits Every Marriage Needs to Fall in Love Again
Links for 2016-06-09 [del.icio.us]
Our #1 Best-Selling Drone--Meet the Dark Night of the Sky!
June 8, 2016
About those “20 Minutes of Action”: 20 Things We’d Better Tell Our Sons Right Now About Being Real Men
Dear Sons,
When you’re the mother of four sons, the Stanford rape case — it’s not about somebody else… it’s about us.
Let’s be real clear, boys — I’m never writing you a letter like the father of Brock Turner, defending any sexual assault of a horrifically traumatized young woman as merely as “20 minutes of action.”
Rape is not “20 minutes of action” — it’s a violent act with lifetime consequences and it’s time for parents to take far less than 20 minutes of action and stand up right now and say hard things to our sons right now before it’s too late.
The Stanford rape case is about having a conversation with sons about hard things and asking sons to do holy things.
Because a Stanford doesn’t begin doesn’t begin with alcohol and it doesn’t begin with partying kids with inflated egos and it doesn’t begin with 20 minutes of not using your head but your hormones.
It begins with a woman like me bringing home a man-child in her arms, one mama unwrapping that blanket and what it means to raise up a man.
It begins with one mama looking into her son’s eyes for the next 18 years and showing young men what it means to be a woman, showing every son what a woman is worth, teaching every son the value of a woman.
I brought the first of you boys home when I was 21.
I cradled you, you crying and me crying, and the essence of me ran liquid and milky and a woman poured out of herself to keep you alive. You rooted hungry and it was the roots of a woman that nourished you. It was a woman who gave you life, it was a woman who was the grace of God that kept you alive.
I held you when fever burned your forehead. And I stroked back your hair when your stomach churned and I cleaned us both up when you vomited all over everything. I opened books for you and stoked your mind and unpacked a world before you and I laid down me to make more of you and it wasn’t a sacrifice but the unexpected grace of motherhood.
We talked about life being much more than you can see, so you knew that a woman is always more more than you can see.
I kept trying to be at peace in my own body so that you would always see women as more than a body. And I always told you that I’ve only ever met beautiful people. Ugly is only a state of soul.
I don’t know if I told you boys about that night I was 19 and I saw it in my rear view mirror, how a 20-something man reached over and started fondling a terrified 14 year-old sleeping girl. How the guy shrugged his shoulders when we confronted him, like he was brushing away an annoying fly. How there were girls that whispered that he’d grabbed them too in the dark of a car when he drove them home from youth group, how there were all these shy and ashamed girls who were violated and forced and indifferently robbed.
I want to tell you, son — we were all church kids. There was no alcohol. There were no parties. There were no jocks or big athletic teams or big name college campuses with rocking parties.
There were young men who opened their Bibles and didn’t value the worth of a God-fashioned woman made for glory, young men who sang worship songs and satiated their lust by ripping off the dignity of a sacred human being, young men who said women were the weaker vessel meant let’s drink them dry and be merry.
We went to the church elders.
A handful of us girls with one teenage boy who knew what he saw and wasn’t afraid, we went to the elders and sat there with our hands literally shaking and our mouths impossibly dry and we tried to find words for what should never have to be said. My cheeks and throat burned.
And I have never told anyone what happened next, to stay silent is to let perpetrators perpetuate.
We were looked in the eye, Son, and what we were told by grown men, by fathers, those words tried to shatter God —
“Boys will be boys.”
Son. When the prevailing thinking is boys will be boys — girls will be garbage.
And that is never the heart of God.
That’s what you have to get, Son — Real Manhood knows the heart of God for the daughters of His heart.
Your Dad is one of those men. When he heard of what happened in Stanford, how it keeps happening — boys your age violating a young women with such indifference and ignorance, he said it to me quiet —
Unless a man looks to Jesus, a man doesn’t know how to treat a woman.
So this is what your dad and I want you to get, to get this and never forget it: that when God decided to pull on skin and make His visitation into the world, He didn’t show up in some backroom of an inner boy’s club or regale us with some black tie inaugural affair.
This is what God chose as best, this is where He first became one of us: God chose to make His entry point into the world through the holy space of a woman, to enfold Himself inside of a woman, to drink of a woman, be held and nourished and cared for by a woman — that’s the jolting truth of how God loves His daughters with His honor.
Christ didn’t degrade women in His talk, but He made women heroes in His stories. He invited a woman with a coin and broom to reveal the truth about the Kingdom of God. That’s how God loves His daughters with His words.
Christ didn’t demonize women but He accepted the presence of a woman reviled by the self-righteous, He sat with the scandalous woman the righteous regarded as damaged goods, He welcomed the rejected and the immodest though he lost the respect of the religious. That’s how God loves His daughter with His grace.
When Christ stepped out of that black tomb, he still didn’t choose to first manifest Himself to prestigious officials, religious leaders, the Twelve, but instead He revealed Himself first to the women, He entrusted the veracity of His resurrection to the testimony of the women, He offered the privilege of proclaiming Christ as the risen Savior to the women, though no court at the time would accept their testimony. That’s how God loves His daughters with His regard.
So your Dad wanted you to know — when you turn the pages of the Bible, Son, let everything you read of women be shaped by how Jesus sealed His view and value of women.
Let Christ shape you and not the magazine covers of the Walmart checkout:
Real Manhood never objectifies women. Real Manhood edifies women.
Real Manhood means you don’t get drunk, and a man can get drunk on a lot more than alcohol.
Men drunk on power, on control, on ego, lose more than all inhibition — they lose The Way, their own souls. Men drunk on anything can destroy everything and real manhood thirsts for righteousness.
Real Manhood means peer pressure only makes you stronger in Christ.
That in a culture where it’s the tendency to bend, you’ll stand. That in situations where there’s tendency to look the other way, you’ll look for help. That, at times in the church when there’s a tendency to be divisive on the secondary and a unified front of silence on the painful, you’ll seek to rightly divide the truth and unify the brokenhearted.
Because if Christ is The Truth — then where there isn’t Truth, there isn’t Christ. Why ever be afraid of the Truth?
Because if you’re at peace in Christ, you fight injustice.
And Son?
Real Manhood means you take responsibility for your body.
A woman’s immodesty is never an excuse for a man’s irresponsibility. Responsible men — are response-able. This is your job. A woman has her’s. Focus on yours. Real Men don’t focus responsibility on women staying “pure” but on men not pressuring. (Truth is, none of us are pure, Son, and the onus is on you, Son, to pursue holiness.)
Your Dad and I need you to know:
Real Men never pressure but treasure. No one tries to crush a diamond.
Because pressuring a girl? Is blackmail, coercion and repeated robbery attempts. You’re meant to be a man, not the mafia. When you’re pressuring a girl for what you want — is your flag to lean into Jesus who will give you what you need.
The thing is: Real Manhood means you hallow womanhood.
A woman isn’t a toy to amuse your lusts, a thing to aggrandize your ego, a trophy to adorn your manhood. A woman is of your rib, who birthed your rib, who cupped your rib, who is meant to be gently cherished at your rib, at your side.
The culture of boys will be boys — means girls will be garbage and you were made for more than this, Son. Your Dad and I believe boys will be godly and boys will be honoring and boys will be humble.
And that teenage boy from youth group, who saw how girls were hurting and violated in shadows and shame, who stood with the wounded because he believed real men of God are men for the hurting?
That brave teenage boy, Son?
He’s now your Dad.
There are more than a few good men, Son.
Real men like their Father — who laid down His life for His daughters.
Related:
How to be the Parent You Want to Be: 40 Things a Child needs to know Before they Leave Home
Find this farmgirl on Facebook
Track with the farmgirl on Twitter
Links for 2016-06-07 [del.icio.us]
Our #1 Best-Selling Drone--Meet the Dark Night of the Sky!
June 6, 2016
how to give your kids a truly world-changing summer & not even leave home
As we’re about to unfold our own global adoption story quietly here this week, I could not be more excited about this vision for a world-changing summer by Jamie Martin. Jamie didn’t plan to create a mini-United Nations with her family, but God had other ideas in mind. With a husband hailing from England, a biological son, and internationally adopted children from Liberia and India, she watched in awe as God brought them together from the corners of the earth. But after becoming a family new questions began: How could she honor her kids’ global diversity? How could she connect them with this hurting world, helping them first fall in love with it so that one day they’ll be inspired to change it? After trial and error and a lot of prayer, Jamie found the answer was a simple one—and she shares it with us today. It’s a grace to welcome her to the farm’s front porch today…
I sat by the edge of the island, watching God show off.
If you’ve ever had the chance to visit Hawaii, you know that’s what He likes to do there.
Miraculously, I had the beach all to myself as a full moon crept over the horizon and the crimson violet of sunset shadowed nearby palm trees.
To my right stood the turquoise guest house where we were staying, to my left the turquoise waves of the Pacific Ocean.
The kids had left behind the remains of their day’s busy work: inflatable inner tubes piled lopsided in a corner, crumbling sandcastles with plastic shovels nearby. With jetlag as their bedtime companions, they’d headed eagerly inside to an early sleep.
I didn’t try to hold back my tears as I whispered lavish thanks to the heavens for this idyllic vacation.
Love146 safehome
But Hawaii wasn’t our final destination.
In less than one week we’d board new flights and land in the Philippines, where we’d spend the summer as part of my husband’s work with Love146, a charity working toward the abolition of child trafficking and exploitation.
In less than one week we’d drive by hundreds of cardboard shacks—and those who dwell in them—on our way to Love146’s safehome, where a dozen girls live who have suffered some of the worst atrocities known to mankind.
Resting on the sand surrounded by nature’s splendor, how could I reconcile these two extremes? Hawaiian sunsets on one hand, child slavery on the other?
My own kids taught me how that summer.
No matter where we went, they were all there.
Present.
My ten-year-old daughter Trishna laughing in the ocean, or giggling with trafficking survivors her own age.
My nine-year-old son Jonathan snorkeling alongside colorful fish, or going with Daddy to buy Lego for Filipino boys who’d never had any.
My youngest, eight-year-old Elijah, digging with a mission in the sand, or gazing with empathetic eyes at the signs of extreme poverty on the streets.
Children don’t let the darkness of the world overshadow its beauty. They don’t make judgments. They just try to love—whatever and whoever stands in front of them.
You’ve seen this in your own littles, who live with awe and wonder as their daily companions—picking up a rock to examine, planting a kiss on the crease in your forehead, staring at a hawk overhead, beaming a sudden smile at a stranger.
And you know what? Almost always, the stranger smiles back. For a split second, our little one’s unconditional love brightens someone’s world.
Children start out this way, but often something happens.
We know, because it most likely happened to us, too.
Worries crowd out wonder.
Selfishness crowds out sacrifice.
Longing for more crowds out love for what is.
Problems crowd out people.
Knowing this, how can we strengthen our kids’ natural love for the world so it sticks around for the long haul? How can we grow it into their lifelong companion, one that leads them to care for others because of their deep passion for this planet and the people on it?
Thankfully, we have at our fingertips a miracle vaccine—one that can boost our immunity to the world’s distractions and heaviness. Story.
Well-chosen stories connect us with others , even those on the other side of our globe.
Build your kids’ lives on a story-solid foundation and you’ll give them armor to shield themselves from the world’s cynicism.
You’ll give them confidence to persevere in the face of life’s conflicts. You’ll give them a reservoir of compassion that spills over into a lifetime of love in action.
Parents naturally get concerned when we look at the state of the globe today. And it’s true—your children and mine will one day inherit a world filled with unique issues and problems.
But this is no accident. They have been chosen to lead their generation through its difficulties. Destined for this moment in history.
With love, faith, and compassion firmly rooted in their spirits thanks to the power of story, they’ll be able to see beyond the headlines.
Nothing will be too much for them. Our job is to fill their lives with that love, faith, and compassion today—so they can rest their feet on a story-solid foundation in their tomorrows.
This is what happens when you combine falling in love with the world and falling in love with story.
The world changes, one heartbeat and one page at a time.
I absolutely love this book! This one book, and a library, and you get to unpack the most world-changing summer with your family!
Jamie’s newest release, Give Your Child the World: Raising Globally Minded Kids One Book at a Time, features a carefully curated reading treasury of the best children’s literature for each area of the globe, as well as practical parenting suggestions and inspiration. Called “an invaluable resource” by LeVar Burton of Reading Rainbow, it includes more than 600 book recommendations from around the world, organized by region, country, and age range (ages 4-12). Introduce your children to the globe from the comfort of home by simply reading books together, then watch as they grow up to impact this world in the unique ways only they can. You have to read this book — for the best summer for your kids, right from home!
[ Our humble thanks to Zondervan for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
June 4, 2016
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [06.04.16]
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:
Flying World Pictures / Helene Havard
Flying World Pictures / Helene Havard
Flying World Pictures / Helene Havard
anyone else wanna just get away for a bit?
oh yes’m — caught in the act
Chester Englander, “Visual Listening Guide by Hannah Chan-Hartley for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (c) 2016”
…we think they’re on to something here:
How the Toronto Symphony Orchestra is enhancing the experience of live performances
just beautiful: Icelandic horses
cannot get enough of this
BookBub Blog
23 of the best bookish bedrooms – for every book lover out there
meet the couple who live and eat — with a bear
so. much. love.
Julie Alice Chappell
giving old circuit boards new life
a most unique perspective here
Dr. Randal S. Olson
planning a vacation this summer? Here’s the best cross country route – according to science
okay, so can you pass this color test?
Ginny Sheller
Ginny Sheller
Ginny Sheller
just too beautiful not to share
and could not pass this one by
Rach Stewart
Rach Stewart
Rach Stewart
exhale and enjoy what’s right here
woman graduates from the University where she was abandoned as a baby
“I really don’t believe in luck, this would have to be divine intervention.”
gather round for this one: lightning in slow motion
Lilia Alvarado Photography
Lilia Alvarado Photography
Lilia Alvarado Photography
stunning
how to capture the best summer photos
300 South African firefighters landed at the airport in Canada —
and they’re giving hope for a nation
parents share their hearts: 17 ways children with special needs change us
surprises like this? never get old
you gotta meet the newest members of New York’s bravest
“…this officer still found the energy at the end of a long shift to help man’s best friend”
at 89? This Holocaust survivor fulfills long time dream
how you can do a reset in the middle of the year: June’s the new January
teacher and student reunited
Post of the Week from these parts here:
I wish all women everywhere could read this, could really take this in:
Dear Girl, How to Stop Men, Magazines & the Media From Getting to Decide if You’re Beautiful
the blessing — of a nightmare
profound experiment:
refugees and Europeans sat and looked into each other’s eyes. Do not miss this one
JESUS Is…
#TellTheWorld
yes: Calling All Fathers
…thank You, Lord, that there’s not a tear that falls on earth that isn’t caught in heaven. We’re the brave who keep in the game because You keep us in Christ & we can stand in the midst of the impossible & thank You for a faith in a better day that passes the test of discouragement —
because You part our Red Seas & have us pass right through every ocean of overwhelm & just keep on going & loving on, in the strength of You.
We’re the people at the end of the day who can say:
Thank You for being the safe rest into which we can sink real deep & find a Peace that passes all understanding —
and a healing understanding that gives us all peace.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
[excerpted from our little Facebook community … come join us?]
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.
June 3, 2016
Dear Girl, How to Stop Men, Magazines & the Media From Getting to Decide if You’re Beautiful
Dear Daughter,
When we stood in the check-out and you leaned over and said, “What? I can’t hear you?” I could read it right then in your eyes.
Right there by all the glossy magazines screaming at you like a pack of jockeying hawkers.
If you listen long enough to all the loud voices about who you should be, you grow deaf to the beauty of who you are.
Listen — read the covers of magazines and you’d think romance is a function of cleavage and plastic surgeon noses and spray tans.
Read the glossy covers and you’d think love is a function of waist size and heel height and bare flesh flaunted for every gawking eye. Read everything in the check out line and they check you out of reality. That’s what the media is selling: X-rated Beauty. Romance Porn.
That’s the thing about the check-out line: The media’s fuelled by changing the definition of beauty, romance, and love from what is true to what is trendy.
Media tries to define you with likes as a measure of your loveability.
Media votes you on or votes you off, as if a woman’s worth is a popularity contest instead of being permanently won by function of being made in the image and likeness of God.
Be defined by Real Love — or you’ll go looking for love in the pages of some cheap novel of romance porn, some plot line that is artificially augmented and harlequin liposuctioned, you’ll go looking for love under the warmth of some guy’s hands, you’ll go looking for love in the size of your jeans.
Listen for the small voice who is Love who cups your face close and names you Beloved, listen to “hear His voice, and He calls His own sheep by name and leads them out.”
Listen to the Voice who says, “I love you so much that when the wolves come to devour your real identity — I become a lamb Myself. I sacrifice Myself for you, so you never have to sacrifice yourself to the gods of this world.”
Listen to the Voice who says, “I am the Shepherd that when the wolf comes to consume you with lies, I would rather lose my life, than let you lose your value.”
Listen to the Voice who says, “I will never drive you to photo-shop expectations or to the dangerous cliff of conditional love —- because I’m never the One driving you, I’m gently leading you. I lead you, no matter where you are, I am with you, leading you.”
Listen to the Voice who assures: “I am making your good decisions work for good — and I am working your bad decisions into the best loving plan for your ultimate good.”
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 are beautiful —- but the truth is you are beautiful because you are loved.
Because I love you.
Because He who is Love loves you unconditionally.
Please hear me, Girl: The world has enough women who know how to do their hair. It needs women who know how to do hard and holy things.
The world has enough women who live a masked insecurity. It needs more women who live a brave vulnerability.
The world has enough women who are trying to do it all — spending everything they’ve got to be found in the crowd. It needs more who are doing the only thing that is necessary — spending time at His feet, being found and known by Him.
Look at the bent woman ahead of us in the check-out, her gnarled and arthritic hand counting out the potatoes she’ll bake tonight for the old man leaning against the cart. That is the quietest reality that hushes all the media voices: We need more women who would rather be beautifully sacrificial than perfectly artificial.
Don’t let Hollywood define it; let the pages of Truth define it: Romance is a long sacrifice.
Say that quiet to yourself at the mirror, over the stove, over the toilet bowls, and let your soul feel the caress of God who knows: Romance is a long sacrifice.
And then it will happen to you, like it happens to all the women who are soul beautiful and loved:
For a beautiful countenance — count blessings.
For beautiful lips — only speak words that make souls stronger.
To carry yourself with poise — carry each other’s burden.
For the most beautiful shape — simply live with one hand receiving all as gift, and other hand giving away the gifts. You becoming the shape of a gift —
Becoming the shape of a Cross.
Go ahead, Girl, run your hands wild through your hair and smile unashamed and be at peace in the fullness of you and pour your beauty out like an alabaster perfume:
Beauty doesn’t live in your skin
Beauty lives in the lining of your heart.
June 2, 2016
when it feels like your dreams are kinda dying
When I sat across the table from Laura Story, she just laid it out there: If you had told her ten years ago that her husband’s illness would end up being their greatest platform for ministry, she would have run screaming in the other direction. No one asks for a platform of pain or a stage of suffering. Her husband’s brain tumor and resulting disabilities have been a challenge for them, both physically and spiritually. Laura has often wondered why God chose her to walk through this trial so publicly and, many days, literally on a stage. She says her faith is small. But she’s found the truth God whispered to Paul in the jail cell—a setting he hadn’t asked for either: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). It’s a humbling grace to welcome Laura to the farm’s front porch today…
When Martin and I walked through his medical trials, we saw a lot of things die.
Our vision for our future, dreams for each other, and idea of a perfect family.
Sometimes they died all at once. Other times, they slowly withered away.
When they did, I thought they were gone forever. But what I’ve come to understand is that occasionally God allows a dream to die so that we can see His power greatly displayed.
In John 11, Jesus was traveling with his disciples when He received a message from His friends, Martha and Mary, that their brother, Lazarus, was sick.
Though they don’t say so directly, the implication from the women was that they wanted Jesus to come to Bethany and heal him. But Jesus stayed where He was. It took him four days to return to Bethany, and in the meantime His friend Lazarus died.
The sisters were upset that Jesus hadn’t fixed their brother. Jesus understood their disappointment.
But He was about to show them that death had no power over Him.
He was about to show them He was the resurrection and the life.
He was about to reveal that He was the enemy of death who alone could defeat it.
Jesus prayed, thanking God for hearing Him, and then commanded Lazarus to come out of the grave.
To the surprise of the crowd, Lazarus shuffled out still tightly wrapped in his burial clothes.
Jesus did His greatest miracle yet, but on His own timetable.
Mary and Martha’s urgency hadn’t stirred Him. And His love for them had never changed. He alone could see the future and knew the perfect time and the perfect way to answer their prayers.
So, what does the story tell us about when unexpected trials come our way?
Like Mary and Martha, we can call on Jesus to heal those who are sick. But if Jesus doesn’t show up like we think He should, we can’t conclude that He doesn’t hear us, doesn’t care, or doesn’t love us.
Nothing Lazarus’s sisters said or did changed Jesus’ timing. And the only thing Jesus asked of Mary and Martha is the only thing He asks of us. Their role and our role is the same.
Believe, and be witnesses to the glory of God.
This is also what Jesus wanted for the crowd that day. He waited four days so that all the Jewish mourners who were gathered would know that Lazarus was truly dead.
This wasn’t some kind of trick. Lazarus wasn’t napping. There was no spirit or soul circling his body, waiting to re-enter it. Lazarus was four days dead—stinkin’ dead.
And through the power given to Him by the Father, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.
The crowd was there to believe and witness God’s glory.
Jesus doesn’t raise everyone from the dead.
But He does raise believers from the dead to spend eternity in heaven with Him and God the Father. And sometimes, like the crowd gathered that day in Bethany, we are surprised when we see Jesus raise things we thought were already dead.
Jesus takes dead things and revives them.
He is the life. He is the resurrection.
And it is through our belief in Him that we will see the glory of God.
Jesus has the power to resurrect the things we’ve let die—our hope, our healing, our family, our mind, and our body.
And though He doesn’t promise to restore everything until we enter Restoration, occasionally we get a glimpse of things we let die being revived.
And in that moment, we see the glory of God.
Laura Story is a Bible teacher, worship leader, GRAMMY award-winning singer/songwriter, and bestselling author. “Blessings” was certified GOLD in 2011 and inspired her first book What If Your Blessings Come Through Raindrops. Laura recently released a new book, When God Doesn’t Fix It; Lessons You Never Wanted to Learn, Truths You Can’t Live Without. She has a graduate degree from Covenant Theological Seminary and has served as a worship leader at Perimeter Church in Atlanta since 2005, but her greatest joy is being a wife to Martin and the mother to Josie and twins, Ben and Griffin.
In her newly released five-session video-based study, When God Doesn’t Fix It: Learning To Walk in God’s Plans Instead of Our Own, Laura says, “There were so many things Martin and I had to let die during our brokenness. Martin’s desire for a job. My hope to have kids and stay home with them. Or the simple prayer that our path could be easier. Sometimes we had to let these things die more than once. Like Mary and Martha, I wanted things to happen my way and in my time. But when I stayed focused on my shortsighted view of the situation and absorbed by my own grief and loss, I missed seeing Jesus—the resurrection and the life—who was standing with me the whole time. He had given me so much, including this wonderful ministry. So I let go of my dreams again, because I knew I wasn’t the one who could fulfill them. And I didn’t want to spend another minute chasing dead dreams when Jesus offered me eternal life.” A perfect summer refresh study.
[ Our humble thanks to Thomas Nelson for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
June 1, 2016
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