Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 174

how to love the people who have hurt you

Not all enemies carry arrows.

All my life I had liked to think it was only David who had his enemies.

Is it easier to say we don’t have any enemies — so we don’t have to figure out how to really love them?

And how to forgive enemies from the heart?

But who hasn’t been cheated on, talked down, lied about, pierced right through and left heart-broken on some beaten-down back road?

There are a thousand ways to bleed, to nurse wounds and bitterness, and no one knows.

I have twisted limbs on my family tree, but no one burnt the fig tree down.

Just this one little girl burned with shameful memories, dirtiness right under her skin, and how to get clean? I remember asking my mama why some relatives are called grands.

How many years have I have stood in sanctuaries and murmured that one line of the Apostles Creed? “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.” Have I really believed?

Do all the creed-keepers believe only in the forgiveness of their sins alone?

Or do they, the Christ-bearers, really believe in the forgiveness of sins and sinners?

In a culture of wholesale forgiveness?

Weren’t we once the enemies? Aren’t our enemies our kin?

Don’t we have to let them into grace?

My dad loved another woman and another woman belittled my mama while she slept in her bedroom and scrubbed mama’s memories out of her own house and I’ve done my own spiteful share of burning. I’m the fig branch that should have been hacked off.

I have bowed and said it aloud for decades.“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Who lives this?

If we only got into the Christ-faith through the door of forgiveness, how can we claim Christ as our home if we aren’t people who forgive?

Words and ideology on a page are cheap. Grace and incarnating the love of Christ isn’t.

I do want there to be another way —another way, where they pay their debt of pain. I forget that I haven’t had to pay, me bought with the blood of God.

If forgiveness isn’t central to our faith, is our faith really Christian?

A stranger drove over my sister and he drove home to his family. The grief of her gravestone drove us mad.

My little brother and I used to imagine finding that man. Does “love your enemies” have any loop holes? How far can forgiveness go?

I have known this though: An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth leaves us all starving and groping in the dark.

In the evenings, in the dark setting in, I sit and knit a bit.

There are lilacs on the table, a bouquet spraying over the vase, over the edge. A twisted old limb that somehow bore grace, somehow blossomed.

And I move them, these two wooden needles, these two pieces of wood pointed, sharpened at the ends.

I knit and pray my own wandering version through of an old prayer for old pain:

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Enemies have driven me into your embrace more than friends have.

Enemies have loosed me from earth more than friends have…

Enemies have made me a hunted animal, finding safer shelter than an unhunted animal does.

I found safest sanctuary in You…may too my enemies-made-grace.

I found greatest grace in You… may my enemies-made-grace find Your generous grace alive and radical in me.

I found fullest forgiveness in You… may my enemies-made-grace find faith and freedom in You and Your forgiveness working surprising ways in me.

The longer I walk with you, Lord, I find I have no enemies: only your gift of chisels etching me deep.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

In the shadows, there is this — the murmured prayers and the needles with pointed edges touching each other, theses needles looking like arrows.

Looking like they’re looking for loop holes out of love…

But then the needles do the unexpected —

this slipping of delicate prayers around each other slow and an act of the will, this knitting and uniting.

These strings all knotting now  close…

 

why we really need to be sharing the laughter, joy, struggles, and hope

I’ve had dinner a few times with my friends, Seth and Amber Haines, and they are some people. Rare luminaries, is really the only way to put it. These people speak bare honest words. You can find yourself just simply wanting a whole lot more of them. In 2008, it was to be a Christmas of homemade presents, of living less into the chaotic pace of the holiday, and more into the hope. That’s when an inkling of an idea emerged for Seth. “The grace of encouragement—that’s what she needs,” he thought. And so, Seth put out the call for a few good letters, letters that might bolster his wife Amber, who was in the throes of toddler rearing. You wouldn’t believe what happened next, but hundreds of letters poured in, each conveying a simple truth—the bonds of motherhood bind us together.  So many letters that showed that no matter how many times mothers feel like they’ve failed, they are still doing their greatest work. It’s an unspeakable grace to welcome Seth to the farm’s front porch today…

guest post by Seth Haines

The sun set over the western bank of trees, long arms stretching across the waters of a tiny pond.

Welcome, they said.

Workweek over and itching to exercise his boyish spirit, Isaac called his best friend—Tippa, the black, wire-haired mutt—and reached for his fishing rod.

Down to the water glowing orange, the moss-covered banks. Down to his sanctuary, the place of catfish, crappie, and largemouth bass. It was his place of refuge, his honey hole.

Lure to line, knot tied, Isaac rested his rod against the fence post and turned to his tackle box. He reached for split shot, some pliers, perhaps some scissors. The rod listed, fell, flipping the lure forward, barbed hook finding its way into the paw of Isaac’s best friend.

Cue the ruckus.

Cue the hollering of pricked dog and frantic boy.

Cue the coveys flushing from every thicket, the buzzards circling, the wild-eyed look in every boy and beast.

Cue the melodrama reserved for writers of Southern Gothic fiction—the black shadows, the clouds, the words not fit to be mentioned in public, the portents of grim endings.

All was pandelerium on the eastern edge of the property, and by the time I made my way to braying of dog and the hollering of boy, Amber was there, bending low and telling me the hook was good and lodged in Tippa’s front leg. She’d need to take the old girl to the animal hospital, she said.

“Just let me take my mucks off first and put on some makeup.”

Ian, our third-born, made his way to the commotion. Cheeks flushing, he moaned, and with hand over his mouth asked if she’d be okay. Amber hugged him, smiled, and assured him that it was only a flesh wound before making her way inside.

Isaac and I carried Tippa to the van, lifted her gently into the trunk. Beside the coloring book, the storm trooper action figure, the football—there lay Isaac’s Tippa, his hook in her leg.

“I’m just so sorry,” he said over and over, emotions leaking to the surface. “I didn’t mean to hook her,” he said.

And there was Amber, tennis-shoe clad and lip-sticked, and she hugged him. “It’s okay,” she said, voice like velvet. “Everything will be just fine.”

The two eldest climbed into the van. “I’ll see you when I see you,” she said, and the van cut a trail of dust down the gravel road as they sped toward the animal clinic.

I considered her evenness as my heart butterfly-punched my chest wall.

*****

In Scripture, I’ve read the passages about the blessings of children.

They’re great passages, sure as the sun and as believable, too.

But here’s what Scripture fails to mention—children scratch, break, and hook things, which is to say they exercise our spirits. Children test our human metal, our aptitudes for peace, patience, confidence, and resolve.

In the early years of new motherhood, I watched as Amber was winded by these exercises.

We’d had three children in three years, and her days were a whirlwind of feeding, cleaning, repairing, and playtime conflict resolution. At the end of the evening, she fell into bed, worked her way to sleep as the doubts creeped — Am I doing this right? Will I ever be a good enough mother?

Others assured her, told her she was doing fine. This was the way of early motherhood, they said. You’ll grow into the art and the practice. If you asked, she’d have admitted—she was not so sure.

We made Christmas presents for each other that year, opting to forgo the holiday rush with two toddlers and a newborn in tow. I considered the perfect homemade gift for Amber, one that might steel her legs in these days of early motherhood.

That’s when inspiration hit—I’d collect letters of encouragement from other mothers to her.

I put out the call to friends, family members, and a few bloggers. I wondered whether this sorority of motherhood might take time to write atta-girl to a mother trying her best to survive.

I wondered and waited, but I wasn’t prepared for what would happen next.

Over the next two months, hundreds of letters poured in.

Each letter represented a particular narrative, a different story.

Some stories were joyful—the happiness of new life, the beauty of raising a child to maturity.

Some stories were laden with grief—young children lost, older children estranged.

But no matter the narrative, each letter conveyed encouragement, hope, and solidarity. Each story left one resounding impression—we are all in this together.

I presented these letters to Amber Christmas day of 2008. She opened the box, pulled the letters out, and began reading them one after another.

Tears in her eyes, she read, and read, and read. You can do it, the letters said, and she believed.

*****

Eight years later, Amber called from the ward at the animal clinic. “Tippa will be fine, but they’ll put her under to remove the hook,” she said. “We’ll be a while longer, but I’ve calmed the boys down. I’m taking them to dinner, maybe to Lowe’s, too. I’ve gotten them to laugh a little. Everyone is okay.”

Even now, I marvel at her even-keeled tone.

She’s matriculated from the pre-school days, those days of the frantic there’s-no-way-I’ll-make-it-another-day.

She carries the steady wisdom that comes from cleaning cuts, mending toys, and tending to wounded animals.

She knows the trials of today will give way to tomorrow’s hope.

She’s lived these lessons over the last eight years. She’s read the stories from other mothers, too.

Mothers—aren’t they a gift?

A father, I marvel at Amber’s resolve, and the resolve of the broader sorority of motherhood is just as marvelous.

The mother is sometimes the weak-kneed young one uncertain of the way forward. More often, though, she is the sure-footed, the one who knows the heart of her children as well as she knows the way to the Emergency Room or the Animal Clinic.

She is the light-carrier, the comfort-speaker, the bender of a child’s imagination.

She is equal parts magician, poet, priestess, and prophet.

She knows when to mete out punishment, and when dinner and a good laugh are the best medicine. And this is the wisdom that is hard won, wisdom that is passed from mother to mother, that forms the basis of a common language—motherhood.

I’ve watched Amber lean into this common language; I’ve noticed the change that comes from mothering encouragement.

She’s passed wisdom to those entering their own journeys of motherhood, too.

I see you all, mothers leaning in together. 

I hear the collective whisper—we can do it; we can do it.

This is the whisper that pushes you all, coaxes you through days of joy, days of grief,

and days that sometimes come attached with the accidental fishhook.

 

 

Seth and Amber, curators of The Mother Letters, make their home in the foothills of the Ozarks, and are the parents of four boys: Isaac, Jude, Ian, and Titus. Seth is the author of Coming Clean: A Story of Faith, which received an Award of Merit in Christianity Today’s 2016 Book Awards. Amber is the author of Wild in the Hollow: On Chasing Desire & Finding the Broken Way Home. 

The Mother Letters: Sharing the Laughter, Joy, Struggles, and Hope, comprises a collection of letters from mothers across the world. Containing encouraging words and beautiful photographs, this book is perfect for Mother’s Day, your next baby shower, or your bedside table.  A really beautiful lifeline that you will return to again and again.

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

when you’re finding it hard to keep up

They say that there are 62 lego pieces for every one person on the planet.

And I’m thinking that with that thrifted rubbermaid tub found at the Sally Ann, this house has several thousand over that ratio.

There are legos across the basement floor and under the boys’ bed and scattered ones abandoned in the bottom of drawers, remnants of pockets and dreams.

There are paint cans in the garage and a heap of laundry settling sandy in the mudroom and towers of books to plan through, for a new year of fresh learning, a new forging into unknown spaces, and there all these calendar squares crowding, like a stacking, like a piling, like everything running hard into each other.

They say that there are real people who get up early and pull on running shoes and do just that, run, run down to the corner and turn and keep going until the sweat beads like a fiery crowning and their lungs heave till they might actually explode and it’s possible to feel like this is really the exercise of your life.

I had told my mother that once:

Your whole life can feel like you are running for your very life, like you are trying to out run a tsunami of stress.

Trying to stay ahead of everything that’s nipping hard at your heels. Whole decades can be marked by exhaustion.

The pastor had preached it and I had sat there between the Farmer and the kids and tried to keep my mind focused on the words and not the whirl of to-do lists in my head. He had had us stand and recite Psalm 23. Had us say it right out loud: Surely goodness and mercy shall pursue all the days of my life.

He said that you can think goodness and mercy just follow you, but the Hebrew word for ‘follow’ is ‘radaph’ and it means to “to pursue, to run after, to chase” or, quite literally, “to hunt you down”. The word radaph, that one that goodness and mercy is doing in Ps. 23:6, it is first found in Genesis 14, when Abram discovers that his nephew Lot has been kidnapped and Abram gathers an army of 318 men and “pursued them unto Dan” (Genesis 14:14). The word ‘pursued’ there? It’s is ‘radaph’.

I come home from Sunday sermon and write it in white on the blackboard. Radaph!

Chased!

And I can feel it, how when a new week starts to run after me, the goodness and mercy of God isn’t just following after me placidly. The goodness and mercy of God pursues after me passionately. It’s what I keep thinking, picking up lost legos, errant books — like how my mama used to dash off the front porch and run down the lane after me, waving about whatever book I forgot for school — and who else is behind a forgetful, rat-race world but the chasing God?

God is so bent on blessing, He chases.

God’s not out to get you — He’s out to give to you.

And God’s blessings don’t pursue temporarily — but relentlessly.

It’s right there in His Word: His goodness and mercy pursue me not just some days — but all the days of my life.

When I’m in a wilderness, His mercy and goodness run after me.

When I’m hurting, His grace hunts for me.

When I’m plagued by problems, His goodness pursues me.

No matter where I go, He has his two blessing men right there in hot pursuit: goodness and mercy, and no shadow of death can overshadow the goodness and mercy that shadows the child of God.

Even the discipline of the Lord can be a grace of the Lord and all the interruptions of a day can be the intercessions of Christ.

I whisper it to myself when it’s noon on the first day of the week and everything is closing in on me and I am already behind:

Whatever is chasing you — no matter what it looks like — it’s grace.

And grace isn’t what makes us feel good: grace is all that makes us more like Jesus.

I can breathe deeper. I could smile. I don’t have to feel anything pressing on my chest — I could live relieved. Like I can re-live.

Because the real truth is: God wants to bless more than we want to be to be blessed. So why run from whatever God is giving? It’s only got to be for my ultimate good and His ultimate glory.

We don’t live in pursuit of a better life — it’s the blessed life that’s in pursuit of us.

It’s there on the counter, that open journal where I count gifts, and it may feel like I’m looking for goodness and mercy, but it’s grace and mercy that finds me. 

No one chases grace — but grace chases everyone.

I feel like a happy fool making lunch in the kitchen, piano notes banging loud in the basement, washing machine humming too, and I am laughing over nothing, over everything, over joy, a love like this. Radaph on the wall, goodness and mercy everywhere —

And nothing can overwhelm me — like grace can overtake me.

No matter when you look over your shoulder, that’s what you find: God’s blessings overtaking you.

No matter what a day, a life, looks like, this is what it all stacks up to for every person on the planet: We are all chased by grace.

No matter what is hounding, the Hound of Heaven is closer — His warm breath of blessing right there on the nape of my neck.

And in the kitchen, with the timer beeping — I reach over, kiss a boy smack on the forehead,

the world full of His goodness and mercy and Glory —

and I am slowed and I turn right around.

::

: 

“Surely Your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life…”  Ps. 23:6 NLT

“Your beauty and love chase after me …”    Ps. 23:6 MSG

…. that He RADAPHs after us with beauty and love goodness and mercy — chased by grace! more of His endless, One Thousand Gifts … thanks be to God for all of His blessings.

Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [04.16.16]

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:  

Andrea Fanelli
Andrea Fanelli 
Andrea Fanelli

right now just invites you to come and exhale?

Greg Murray Photography

okay – dogs and peanut butter? we’re all smiles

TV off? Then it must be time for bed!

maybe pack your bags and go enjoy the gift of this life?

free admission for all national parks next weekend

Emily Gibson 

too beautiful not to share

just plain fun to watch:

inside a device inspired by components from an old penny arcade device

Beboy – Facebook / Instagram
Beboy – Facebook / Instagram
Beboy – Facebook / Instagram

stunning

and this? #sharingthereallycoolstuff

good words here: “What if Your Dreams DON’T Come True?”

and this? oh, just 126,285 pieces later…

hospital honors and remembers former college mascot and organ donor 

“after you pass 105, you don’t get nervous”  love this one

Bikini Berlin
Bikini Berlin
Bikini Berlin

a most amazing garden in the air

what he was able to do for his mom at 4 years old?

Cliff Grassmick

sharing so much love

how he learned to redefine who he was

Today Show

she thanks teen’s family for the heart that saved her life

The One Thing You Really CAN’T Do (A Social Experiment)

Sleepbus

a fascinating concept right here

beautiful music, stunning scenery…enjoy

Post of the Week from these parts here

yeah, sometimes you can wanna go back — and there’s just no going back.

But when it comes to our friendships, let’s move forward brave together:

4 ways to better friendships

Cultivate Kansas City

Refugees learn the business of farming as they’re rebuilding their lives 

standing side by side, day after day, working toward a cure: one amazing story

on Instagram

… and then when it was #nationalsiblingday, Little One who had no siblings, was placed sleeping into my arms & in a moment, she had a Mom & a Dad, 4 brothers & 2 sisters— & each of them had a new little sister & family is a verb, family is an action that we choose because family is not just what we are, it’s something that we actively keep on making.

Turns out we aren’t merely born into families, families are born out of our reaching out & holding on & serving anyways & giving always… Always.

Turns out it’s not only the blood in our veins that make us family — it’s the blood & sacrifice in our days that makes us a family.

Turns out? Parenting isn’t quite as overwhelming when we simply understand how to serve in this minute. Sometimes figuring that out is hard. Sometimes what serves best is simply our open arms & the close beat of our own breaking heart.

Love breaks & gives away your heart. Every time. And her little heart broke in my arms — sad & grieving & confused & overwhelmed by all the unknown & unexpected.

And I rocked her close, our tears all a mess together, and I whispered to her the only thing there ever is to hear: “Shhhhh… It’s okay, it’s okay… You are safe. You are Beloved. You Belong. Believe.”

She felt like kin, our hearts beating sort of brave & unbrave side by side.

  “when you don’t feel like you’re enough: our year long story — and a new chapter coming”

“when you feel too broken to be chosen” 

 #1000Gifts #adoption

[ our unlikely adoption story will unfold quietly here, in excited bits & pieces, & over at Instagram, as we travel to China this week  & as we find our way through the next several months, trying to find words to a little miraculous story He’s writing ]

she shares nutrition — for the soul

what he does? and why he’s now a believer

I’m alive! — because He lives

[ Print’s FREE here: ]

 …sometimes it’s ridiculously hard to know how to live through the stuff we’re facing & you know, maybe this is it, just these three things:

“Be cheerful — no matter what; (1)

pray — all the time; (2)

thank God — no matter what happens. (3)

This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live.” 1Thess5:18

There’s everybody’s map through our Friday —

Be cheerful, prayerful, thankful — to keep the day from becoming: awful.

Today’s total game changer: There is always, always, always something to be thankful for.

[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.

Links for 2016-04-15 [del.icio.us]

Sponsored: 64% off Code Black Drone with HD Camera

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

4 ways to better friendships

It was after Mare Griebe* said she was done with me, that I knew.

Mare, she had taken me to my first youth Bible study.

She delivered the thick folded notes from the first boy who ever asked me out.

And I had flown half across the country to be her maid of honor, then again, ten years later to hold her first baby. We talked lactation and I helped with latch and I thought we’d never fall apart.

We were in grade 9 when she had played me my first Keith Greene song: “So you wanna go back to Egypt.” It was the eighties. We had teased bangs  and thick glasses and co-joined lives.

Sometimes you can wanna go back — and  there ain’t no going back.

She had called last winter. Left a message on the answering machine. I didn’t get around to calling her back. I folded laundry, made pots of soup, dozens of loaves of bread. I had read history lessons, taken out the garbage, paid bills, checked math homework. I had found a pair of red shoes, picked up knitting and a camera and a lot of lego. Planted a garden, attended meetings, returned emails.

But I didn’t return her call.

Your days never fail to betray your priorities.

Late spring, the wheat field about in head, I sent Mare a note. A letter slipped in with a package of books, wrapped with a string of raffia. I tried to reach out. I had drawn a heart in the card, there by my name. I tried to explain. Sometimes your excuses accuse you. 

It was as the wheat turned gold that Mare wrote back.

Just a digital message, a few pixels long:

Your life is busy. I’m good.

God bless. Have a nice life.

Mare

Was she saying what I thought she was saying?

I had read the lines over  again, hardly breathing, pixels crumbling away, all that history between us.

I wrote to ask? I wrote all summer. Every week, just a few lines of love.

Just because someone decides to move out of your circles, doesn’t mean that they move out of the circle of your love.

I sent another card. Another package.

Mare never wrote another note.

I wish I could go back. Wish I could return a phone call. Wished I’d stayed up a bit longer, let something else slide. Wish I had made a friend know she’s a priority.  What can ever be more of a priority than a person? 

Friendship is the only thing that will show up at our funerals. 

I had failed Mare. You can cut ties, but you can’t cut time’s ties. Time and story bind us in ways that can’t ever be severed and this is the call — to honor the ties that bind. Relationship is the currency of all reality  and our God is a love body and He hates amputations and He sutures our wounds together with the silver threads of community. 

It was after Mare Greibe never wrote another word that I knew:

It doesn’t matter what you get done if you’ve undone a heart  — and there are no real accomplishments apart from relationship. I pray  that someday I learn not in synapses but in marrow and in bones.

Somtimes you just wanna go back… 

I had walked the fields as the wheat came off in late summer. Walked across the fields before the combines, before the harvest, the wind blowing, the wheat waving goodbye.

I’d stood on the fence line. I’d stood at the edge of that field.

Jonathan and David,  they had walked fields.

Jonathan and David, they’d met in the fields where the heads of grain leaned into one another. Leaned into one another and listened and wind blew.

Jonathan — to be a Jonathan for just one woman?

Friendships never just happen — they are forged.

And it’s either the fire of the forging or the searing of the severing.

At a fence post, I had cupped my hand to hold a few kernels of wheat.

Maybe somehow He could do it in me? I could pray to be a Jonathan —

To be a friend that curves her heart into this safe cup for all words and feelings to spill,  the good and the grit, the grain and the chaff all mixed.

Then in faithful silence to always sifts for the good —

and with a whispering prayer —

blow all the grit that chafes away with a breath of grace.

*name changed:: :: :: :: ::

:: :: :: :: ::

4 Ways to be a Better Friend

1. People are the Priority:

What’s more of a priority than a person? 

2. Live Maskless:

Bare your faults and the foibles and messy laundry room. The only way to see into another soul — is to be transparent yourself.

3. Speak Life:

Share freely of your feelings because this may just free us  — of the prisons of protection we’ve bound ourselves in.

Only speak words that make souls stronger — and speak ill of no one and well of everyone. 

4. Get together:

Put on the kettle. Set an extra plate at the table. Call her and ask her if she wants to go for walk. Write a letter. Pick up the phone.

 

the best secret about making a home

Sometimes in the middle of the night, her hip would graze his and his arm would find her waist and she would lay awake in the middle of their life.

She didn’t know what would come next and how it all would unfold, but that new mercies always would.

He made it simple. Raising, teaching, the children, wasn’t.

And the meals she always had to keep figuring out, and the laundry that toppled over, and the floors that kept growing mess. The way her mind and heart would wander, crumble at the edges, and she would reach for steadying in her Maker. The way she’d get lost– and remember to breathe.

But this, this making of a family, it was not a calling to dismiss but a calling to make disciples.

A calling, that which keeps calling you and you never stop listening for, that is what a calling is, the way He keeps speaking: “This is the way, walk in it.”

So she made soup and matched socks. She scrubbed out the tub. She awoke: One always gets to decide what is mindless work and what is soulful work.

She would decide.

She decided for art, to make her life art. She would make it all art — it all would be art, worship, a gift back. It all would preach Gospel.

And he, he too had these simple ways that steadied her, there in the dark, always in her dark. The way that he talked and moved his hands and worked and held her: he knew how to keep it simple.

Just keep the focus simply on Christ — Walk Forward. Keep company with Christ. Love always. Bend low.

In the midst of everything that went wrong, that was all. They would see everything as the ugly beautiful —  because Christ is redeeming everything.

Together, they would make a life of by doing hard but holy things.

She would light candles. She would murmur thanks.

She would touch him often and gently.

And there would be that:

The best place to make a home is in the state of amazing grace.

 

 

 

Related:

A Life Plan when Overwhelmed: Sanity Manifesto Printable

How Not to Miss your Real Life Calling

A Video in which I wrestle this out

Links for 2016-04-12 [del.icio.us]

Sponsored: 64% off Code Black Drone with HD Camera

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

abiding even when you can’t get alone

Yes, I really do get it…kids bickering? Schedule jam-packed? Dishes and laundry both piled up high? Demands at work? Perhaps it’s time we pressed pause. As a mom, sometimes it just seems impossible to do that. Our lives and our kids can be so demanding. But we need to care for ourselves too. Time with Jesus is crucial to mothering our children and loving our families. If we don’t fill up, we have nothing to pour out. So how do we find time for Jesus when life’s demands seem to be taking over? Ruth Schwenk has some good good thoughts on how we can resist the rush, halt the hustle, and find calm in our chaos. It’s a grace to welcome Ruth to the farm’s front porch today…

“Remain in me, as I also remain in you No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.” John 15:4

guest post by Ruth Schwenk

A few weeks ago I arose earlier than everyone else in hopes of stealing some alone time to read my Bible.

As I settled in on the couch with my hot cup of coffee and Bible, I heard the tap-tap-tap of little feet making their way down the stairs.

For a moment, my heart sank.

So much for my alone time!

But then I was instantly grateful for that sound, for those were the sweet feet of my youngest daughter, the child whom God had formed and entrusted to my care.

Being a mom is a calling to selflessness. In a real sense as moms, we not only have kids, but our kids have us.

They have our attention.

They have our devotion.

They have our affection.

They have our energy.

They have our time.

For all the joy that motherhood brings, the give-and-take can leave many moms feeling weary, overstretched, and empty. We have to be careful that we are receiving as well as giving.

We have to be sure to find our strength from the right source.

How do we stay strong and able to give?

How do we continue giving ourselves to those precious little ones who need us?

Where does power come from to keep growing a healthy and God-honoring marriage in this busy season of life?

How can we take care of all the tasks at home and in our daily work?

The answer isn’t always getting away; the answer is abiding more deeply. Right where we are.

“If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:31-32

Jesus said that those who abide aren’t just those that are with Him; those who abide are in Him. Those who abide, believe in Him, and they hold on to or cling to Jesus’ word. The abiding sets them free.

We can’t be like Jesus on our own. It isn’t natural for any of us.

We can’t imitate Christ without being joined to Christ. To “abide” literally means to “stick to.”

We believe His Word, love His Word, keep His Word, hope in His Word, and are sustained by His Word.

When we abide His life becomes our life.

While every mom needs to get away for some peace and quiet, our real joy and strength comes from abiding in Jesus.

As busy mamas abiding can seem impossible at times. We give and give and give, and we must be sure to fill up, so we have something to pour into those around us.

The task of being a mom is too big and overwhelming to try to do in our own strength.

If we don’t fill up, we will quickly dry up.

Now there is no formula for keeping our personal quiet time with the Lord a priority, but leaning into God’s calling on our lives and grabbing those moments with Him when we can is vital.

Although I know the importance of a quiet time, now four children later, I can still struggle to find those times alone with God. And the truth is, sometimes my quiet time looks just like that morning that Sophia tap-tap-tapped down the steps to join me.

“Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” Hebrews 4:16

Be encouraged that God has promised to give us mercy and grace when we need it most. Our children will grow, but we will never outgrow our need to abide in Christ.

Lean into your calling, but don’t neglect to abide deeply with your Father.

Run to Him.

Hold on to Him.

Meditate on His words.

As the bread of life they are, let them be your sustenance.

And even in the times where there is just no way you can get alone with God,

or get away for some quiet,

don’t forget He invites you to abide wherever you are.

 

 

 

Ruth Schwenk is the creator of TheBetterMom.com, and along with her husband, Patrick, FortheFamily.org. She is a pastor’s wife with four energetic kids, a lover of coffee, and dreamer of big dreams. A graduate of Moody Bible Institute, Ruth and her husband have been full-time ministry for over fifteen years. Ruth has co-authored two books with Karen Ehman — Pressing Pause and Hoodwinked. 

Pressing Pause: 100 Quiet Moments for Moms to Meet with Jesus offers us a calm way to start our day, to refresh in Jesus and drink deeply of His presence so that we’re ready to pour out love, time, and energy into the people who matter most to us. These 100 encouraging devotions for moms will help to begin each day with Scripture, drawing on God’s power, ingesting His Word, and learning practical ways to love and serve more like His Son. I’m reading these pages gratefully — and thinking it’s a book my whole family will thank me for reading (warm smile). 

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

the 5 questions to ask to get out of a hard time — and change your life

So if we’re being honest here —

after the snow melts, after the ditches begin to fill with this hardly murmur of pussy willows —

it feels like parts of who we are —- have just ebbed away, grey and muddied and gone —

and I can’t find them… can’t find us.

Kara has flown from her cancer to the other side, absconded.

Elizabeth has a gravestone now; she is nowhere here now, and how, how in the world, can that be — and, sure, I could wait a few months to talk to her again, a year, even two — but how long, how long does this stretching, sore silence between us have to go on now? How can the loveliest have lives so brief?

My sister-in-law tells us that her grandfather is in Kathmandu. Calls to him aren’t getting through. He hasn’t called. You see it on the news in eery color: Mountains have crumpled and thousands howl, digging their dead and broken ones out from underneath the rubble.

The earth under them can’t stop its tremors of grief.

I can’t stop having to heave my way out of nightmares of what I saw and heard in Iraq.

I can’t stop feeling a bit lost, disoriented. The worst grief is a hidden grief that cannot speak.

Let the world keep going on loud and sure of all the things it knows — there are some of us who need time to feel all the things we didn’t know till now.

I hadn’t known: Grief is like caged fear. And if you let enough tears come and not be afraid, the tears can wash away the walls, and you will breathe again. It will hurt. You may never fully recover.

But who wants to cover over the memories of them and all the ways their love opened us up? Wherever our hearts are broken open, their love lives on forever in us right there.

And that’s the thing: It’s the broken hearts that find the haunting loveliness of a new beat — it’s the broken hearts that make a song that echoes God’s.

Pay no mind to anything that tries to tell you different: Grief is the guaranteed price we pay for love.

If you stood on the side porch, as the light deepened and the last of the barbecued pork chops grilled on the flame, you could hear the frogs in the pond down in the fringe of woods.

He and I, and that last girl of ours, we walked down our back gravel road to hear their serenading. I had never known: If you hold the past too tightly, your arms have no room for the present — no room for the gifts of now.

It carried us to the woods, like an epiphany making an opening, making a way through: There’s a way to let the burn of your pain become a fuel for your way.

The snow’s melted in the trail up through the center of the woods. We have time to witness the change.

We have time to go to the water to pray.

Let the world race madly on: There are geese on the pond. There are two shelled islands of turtles, making a wake out across the water. The frogs are singing; there are those who make time to hear them before it’s too late.

I met a guy last week who told me that he carried around five questions that had ploughed a way through grief, through life for him. He had held up his hand and touched each of his fingers, his thumb: “These Five Questions changed me more than anything anyone ever told me.

And if you don’t make time to work out these answers, don’t be upset if your life doesn’t work.

If you want to make sense of life, you have to make time to ask yourself these.”

Grief and sadness and lostness had made me desperate for a way out — had made me desperate to lean in…

What is my greatest fear?

What is my greatest motivator?

What is Truth?

Who is God?

What is Success?

Unless you ask yourself the right questions, your life will never live into the right answers.

I sit at the water’s edge. Sit with those five questions. You could see the turtles sit in the grass, slowly blink. The arch and curve of the neck of the goose rises and retreats — a question finding its slow way. The frogs croak, like swallowing golden light.

The greatest motivator can be fear. This will kill you.

The greatest fear can be that grace and God will run out and there won’t be enough — we won’t be enough. This fear is a fraud. Let go of the lie.

All fear is executed with one line: There is enough. All fear shrivels when you serenade it with one refrain: There is abundance. There is always more — because God is always here. There is enough. God is enough — and He makes everything enough.

What is Truth?

Truth is God. That was there all across the glassy quiet of the pond: Without the lens of the Word, the world warps. The only reality is relationship. The ultimate reality is relationship with Him. Because Truth is God — if you don’t make time for intimacy with Him, the lies of everything else make you insane.

When you make islands of intimacy with God, you can survive any storm.

You can smell resurrection here across the pond. You can smell life coming up through the dead grass. You can smell the rain of grief watering growth. When he bends over her shoulder there, and she looks up, and his smile’s right there, there’s a scent of rising.

Who is God?

God is Love. And because God is Love, He gets to define Love: Love is not always agreement with someone, but it is always sacrifice for someone. Love is always for us. God is always good and we are always loved. That defines everything. Everything.

And Success is showing up and kneeling down. Success is faithfulness, success is faithfully showing up, success is faithful obedience, success is service, success is kneeling down to serve and going lower and decreasing, so He is lifted higher and He alone increases: Success is showing up and kneeling down.

Around the hem of the pond, I’ve touched something beyond.

Loss is the door to change, and change is nature’s glory. And grief and questions and lostness don’t beg us to wrestle — they beg any wisdom in us to make time to sit down with them and make them sharers of all the unspoken broken.

There are a handful of questions that are always waiting to take our hand and find a way through.

When the goose finally takes leave of the pond, when she rises, we’re standing there and we can hear it —-

the exhale, the rush of relief of her wings.

 

 

 

Free Resource: Take a handful of moments today… and let a handful of questions — The 5 Key Questions — take your hand & lead a way through your hard thing.

 

When you are in the Library after signing in,

1. Simply scroll down to the Free Tools section. You will see the ‘Five Questions That Will Change Your Life’ in the top left corner of that section.

2. If you click on that? A new window will open with a graphic. Just below the graphic you will see the word ‘Download’. When you click on Download — it will download the document onto your computer – then just print.

Subscribe/Sign-up 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 »