Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 183

How To Destroy Procrastination: Dear You Who Doesn’t Want to Do that Hard Thing in the New Year

Dear Lovely You,

who doesn’t want to do that hard thing in the New Year,

who doesn’t want to get on the treadmill,

or go for a run,

or sort through the closets,

or tackle the garage, or the piles of paperwork,

or the project that’s hanging over you like a tonne of bricks,

or do that big thing that feels like an impossible thing—

okay, yeah, boy, do I hear you.

It doesn’t matter a hill of sprouting beans if you’re 9 and stomping your feet or 16 and slamming doors or 40 and distracting on your phone — hard things just keep calling you because you’re meant to answer to higher and better things.

You’re meant to do hard and holy things because they are the next thing —- to get to the best thing.

You’re made to do hard and holy things — because there’s no other way to get to the happy and holy things.

You know how we wrote it up there on the chalkboard in the kitchen years ago, and we all memorized it? Well, it’s true, and it’s hard, but there’s a brave hope in it:

Life is Pain — and you get to choose: either the Pain of Discipline or the Pain of Disappointment.

Nothing happens without discipline. No music gets played without discipline. No games get won. No finish lines get crossed. No freedom gets tasted. And you want that. 

Yeah, look, we had a kid who scored in the 99.7 percentile on the ACT, and that’s all well and good and all kinds of extraordinarily wonderful, but it’s like my Dad always said:

Brilliant doesn’t matter, if you can’t get out of bed.

Talent doesn’t mean a thing, if you let Fear be some terrorist that takes you hostage.

Potential doesn’t add up to anything, if you get addicted to perfectionism because perfectionism is slow death by self.

Listen: Fire your perfectionism and your procrastination will quit too.

Because here’s the thing:

 

The Presenter

You’re the Presenter.

You’ve been given a gift — and you’re the person who is trying to be present to this present moment, and do the hard work of unwrapping your gift, your talent, your vision, your God-given dreams.

Presenters want to be present to life and their calling and the joy and the work — but they know that the path is painful.

 

The Perfectionist Terrorist

Presenters know that the path is painful — because behind ever corner lurks The Perfectionist Terrorist. The Perfectionist Terrorist is a liar to the nth degree — he tells you that if you’d just get it perfect enough, do it right enough, be good enough —- that you’ll be liked by everyone enough.

But the truth of it is? Sometimes you have to accept that you’ll never be acceptable enough for some people. And whether you accept that as their issue or yours — is up to you.

The Perfectionist Terrorist claims to have High Road Motives, claims to want to make everything turn out perfect, but his policing pressures you and poisons you and prosecutes you, until it all paralyzes you.

 

The Procrastinator

So The Procrastinator tries to protect you, who is really The Presenter, from The Perfectionist Terrorist.

The Procrastinator tries to intervenes with distractions, temptations, and interruptions — or just pushes you to pull out and give up.

Honestly, The Procrastinator is just trying to protect you from the bullying of The Perfectionist Terrorist. 

 

The Perfect Love

So Who’s missing in this struggling, messy triangulation of The Presenter, the Perfectionist Terrorist, and The Procastinator?  The compassionate Words of Perfect Love.

You just need Perfect Love. 

There is His Perfect Love who kicks all your fear to the curb. 

There is His Perfect Love who accepts you 100% before you perform even 1%, there is His Perfect Love who speaks Protection and Peace and promises the Power of the Holy Spirit — so you can fire perfectionism and procrastination will quit too.

You fire your perfectionism every time you let His Perfect Love ignite you.

When you rest in Perfect Love — discipline comes easily because you’re being a disciple of Perfect Love — you’re following Perfect Love.

And Perfect Love says you don’t to have show anyone up — you just have to show up.

Perfect Love says you don’t have to impress anyone — you just have to press on.

Perfect Love says when you mess up — He’ll pick you up… and when you can’t carry on, He’ll carry you.

 

So dear Lovely Kid, Trying Friend, Tired You, who doesn’t want to practice that thing, 
clean up that thing,

study for that thing,

sweat on that thing,

or do that big thing that feels like an impossible thing —

You can bravely do the next thing, because God’s got this thing.

Perfect Love terminates The Perfectionist Terrorist — which eliminates the Procrastinator — which liberates you, the Presenter…. to unwrap the gift of right now, your one life.

There’s snow down in the woods, all down the road this morning, the ice clinging at the edge of things —- and you can feel it if you turn your face toward the sun —-

all those hard things melting in the heat of a greater and perfect warmth.

 

Related posts: 1. A Doable Plan to Stop Procrastination & Get Living What You Dream Of

2. If New Year Resolutions feel hopeless — & What You Want Is Some SOULutions [Free 2016 Tool to Help You See the Way Forward ALL YEAR]

3. Daily Printable Work Plan for your clipboard

4. How not to get distracted online

5. A 60-Day Journal to Practice Resting in His Perfect Love 

THIS IS THE YEAR: when New Year Resolutions feel hopeless — & you want some SOULutions [Free 2016 Printable]

Marion Schefter, she told me once how she changed a dissolving storyline in her life into a good story.

She stood in the door of our little country chapel, one arm crooked through the handles of her purse, and she told me: “Well, I just purposed. Like Daniel. You know, you’ve read it — that Daniel purposed in his heart… so I figured that any dare to change my heart — starts with a purposing in the heart.”

I looked over at Marion and I could see it clear in her eyes: Purposing to change happens where prayer meets perseverance.

So I came home and I grabbed a pen and decided… I didn’t need New Year’s Resolutions this year… I want SOULutions … for a new me. I need to purpose in my heart & let prayer and perseverance meet, let there be a plan to purposely aim for, because if there’s nothing to aim for, you’ll get it every time.

My penmanship isn’t all Spencerian swirls like Marion’s but I scratched it down:

2016. This is The Year

I purpose to —
* Embrace Imperfect.

This is The Year to be held by the arms of grace, not to any standard of perfection.

* Engage Silence — not screens.

This is The Year to engage silences regularly & retreat to the “back side of the wilderness.” Because when you do not need to be seen or heard — you can see and hear in desperately needed ways.

You find your true self when you look for your reflection in the eyes of souls — and not the glare of screens.

* Be still.

Be small. Be Loved. Beloved.

Let yourself be loved anyway He wants to love you. God is always, always good & you are always, always, always. loved.

Be still …. & know.

* Believe in Him for impossABLE things.

Believe in Him who makes the ridiculously impossible into the miraculously possible,

the unbelievable into the you-better-believe-it,

the never into the now.

Be the brave people who pray it bold in the space between the end of one year & the beginning of a New Year: BUT GOD.

“Ours is the God who whispers: “With Me nothing, Nothing, NOTHING is impossible.”

Believe in Him for impossABLE things — because as long Emmanuel, God is with us & we are with God: nothing is impossible.

Believe in Him for improbable, implausible, impractical, impossABLE things.

* Break idols — or they will break you.

Break free, break out of ruts, break idols — or they will break you.

* Daily 3 for 10:

These 3 for 10 everyday: Word In. Work Out. Work Plan.

It’s not what you do every now and then, but what you do everyday, that changes everything.

Word in: Get into God’s Word for 10 minutes and let it get into you.

Work out: Work out. Even 10 minutes of moving is better than nothing.

Work plan: Write out the Work Plan — even just 3 things. And then just start: 10 minutes working the plan.

* Do Less. Pray More.

More than your doing hands, God wants your bended knees.

* Let Go of the Outcome.

Come completely committed to the process — and completely let go of the outcome.

In the middle of things seemingly not working out for us —- God is working out something in us.

* Learn Endurance.

Do Hard & Holy Things. Break the idols of ease — or they will break you.

* Live Given.

Because #LoveGives.

Because God so loved He gave.

Because Living is Giving.

* Give

It

Forward

Today — 3 times a day.

Give It Forward Today & be the #GIFT — give an act of grace forward, 3 times a day. Be a #GIFTivst

It’s the Giftivists are the activists who believe that radical acts of generosity counter radical acts of inhumanity. #GIFTivst

* Grow Brave. Grow in Grace

Grow Brave. Grow in Grace. Which is basically the same thing.

Scratched the whole thing down — then slipped the SOULutions into a frame. Figuring that unless you can daily see your Life SOULutions…. the year will end up to be more of a dissolution of your life. Maybe that’s one of the keys I’d never turned: Framable SOULutions — to frame up a new year, a new you.

Snow’s melting on the farm here, on the last days of the year, the pines and the eaves out at the end of the barn dripping one sliver drop at a time, old things melting away.

I never told Marion Schefter what she handed me that day in the country chapel’s door.

But I was told that the tulips are coming up here on the cusp of a new hoping year —

and I’ve seen it with my own eyes, possibility like that.

 

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Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Week

Happy, happy, happy day! Sometimes? That lovely last week of the year begs for more laughter, more joy, more wonder?

Just some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate! 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 your week right here:

William Patino
William Patino

because you know you just need some space to clear your head & breathe

so who knew how polar bears slept

 kids thought this was riotous: canine + snow  = hilarious

Dudolf/Facebook

Dare you: Can you find the panda among the snowmen? C’mon

okay, the kid has some good ideas: so how would you upgrade the world around you?

really, no joke: rooftopping through Spain

no way — no way.

Alison Buttigieg

Too Much: the ‘Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards – pretty hilarious! 

 now this is unbelievably fascinating

meet Hero: yeah, just go ahead & watch how he travels here

she wasn’t really expecting this?

Ricardo Da Cunha
Paul Zizka
Ricardo Da Cunha

There’s something holy about what God does on this planet: the top 10 landscape photos of 2015

um, wow: this a one-of-a-kind LEGO motorhome complete with a fully furnished LEGO interior

hardest ear training test of all time. And this kid? Absolutely nails it

 who doesn’t want this kind of bliss

‘He Saved My Life’: Vet With PTSD Reunited With Dog Four Years Later

 because this right here? Is what it’s all about

“Most of all, I just want to pay it forward…”

maybe sometimes we all need to be rescued?

Lindsay Carrothers 

one ridiculously unforgettable reunion

Great New Year Reads & Listens

The Comeback: It’s Not Too Late and You’re Never Too Far, by Louie Giglio

Been giving this one to friends.

Perfect read to make This The Year.

Five Minutes with Jesus, by Sheila Walsh

Giving Him the first minutes of the day — makes sure He has First Priority.

Perfect for a night stand, a coffee table, a friend — perfect to change the new year.

The Joy Project: A True Story of Inescapable Happiness, by Tony Reinke

2016: Year of the Joy Project. Has a real ring to it, doesn’t it?

Deep soul encouragement right here — for your own Joy Project. (And a free e-book version of this is available right here!)

Winding Down, by David Nevue

David Nevue is my go to artist to listen to — pretty much.  (Do you listen to his music here? Just click the speaker icon up there in the top tool bar — and ta da! David Nevue music to accompany your reading here!) 

Listened to David Nevue’s Emmanuel album the last three weeks… and now, perfect, exquisite listening for the last week of the year — Winding Down.

please: make time for what you love

and never, ever, ever give up

covered in full — from a stranger THIS IS WHO WE ARE, FOLKS

the impact your words can carry? Unmeasurable

so go plant seeds of hope

POST OF THE MONTH HERE:

Esther Havens

Post of the Month from these parts here:

… because Wise Women still seek Him

& make room for the Incarnate Word.

And that’s you, BraveHeart, right about now:

“how a fearful & weary world can rejoice”

The Esther Initiative is our initiative — the initiative we as a community here at A Holy Experience get to participate in TogEsther, this is what we are doing because that’s who you GenEsthers are — you don’t miss an opportunity to be Jesus & we will not deny anyone the joy of doing this

glory

 What do these searches say about us?

And? “…it is from the struggles — that we grow“

… you can take it to that to bank, to your heartache, to your impossible:

God always ­sees—­

and He will always see to it.

That is all that ever matters:

God always sees, and He will always see to the matter.

~excerpt from The Greatest Gift

[ print’s free for you here ]

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.

when you want to feel Christmas in your weary bones

When you want to know you haven’t missed Him this Christmas…

when you wish you could find your way back — or forward…

when you want Christmas to not be over — or you sorta wish it all had been different…

when you just want to really feel Christmas in your weary bones:

~from The Greatest Gift, Unwrapping the Fully Love Story of Christmas

[Part 1: what a hurting world wants most on Christmas Eve ]

so from our crazy clan to yours…   Merry, Merry, MERRY CHRISTMAS…

Our God who cradles whole galaxies in the palm of His Hand, whom highest heavens cannot contain, He folds Himself into our skin, uncurls His newborn fist in the cradle of a barn feed trough — and we are held, saved, rescued… safe.

Emmanuel — God is with us.

This Christmas season, may you & yours feel enveloped & carried & held by Him who is always, always, always with you… 

All’s grace,

Ann xo…

Related: The Greatest Christmas.com

what a hurting world wants most on Christmas Eve

From our home & farm & hearts & all our unspoken broken….

to you & yours & all of your unspoken broken —

Merry, Merry Christmas Eve …

There are no words to express how we love you — so we slip this into your brave hands, the smallest token of our love — maybe what a hurting worlds wants most on Christmas Eve:

~from The Greatest Gift, Unwrapping the Fully Love Story of Christmas   [Part 2 Video on Christmas Morning…]

 

Related: The Greatest Christmas.com

how a fearful & weary world can rejoice

Five days before Christmas, while we’re pulling wide sheets of gingerbread out of the oven and keeping the candle wicks lit, it’s front page news on CNN.

How a guy just shy of his 18th, who gang raped a girl on her way home on a December night 3 Advents ago, he’s walking free now this Advent, this season of waiting for the holy coming of God.

The girl, she’d laid there all that chilled December night waiting for someone to come. When they found her, gurgling to survive, her intestines curled round her body like a begging prayer.

They carried her to Delhi hospital and they called her Nirbhaya — the fearless one — and then they carried her to the grave when she died 4 days after Christmas.

Three Advents later, India’s weeping for her daughters, weeping for her girls, for all her Nirbhayas, weeping in their streets for Justice to come.

And India’s a country with her own Nirbhayas, of women without fear, of women who call themselves the Esther women, Esther women who’ve travelled, some 22 hours one way, on crowded buses for days to gather in workshops theses last two years because you’ve supported them to learn the stories of women of the Word.

The stories of women like Hagar and Hannah, of Ruth and Rahab told by Esther women who are telling the stories of how God meets and sees and values girls and women and calls us all to be Nirbhayas, fearless ones, because God is with us.

Because us Esther women here have been believing in our Esther sisters there, our Esther sisters all across India learned, memorized, and recorded 90 Bible stories, stories that will be downloaded on micro-SD cards and shared with people to listen to on their cell phones — with the potential to reach more than 60 million people.”

Our Esther sisters stood in small sound proof booths set up for the recording sessions of the stories of women of the Word, booths without air-conditioning, fans or simply ventilation.

They stood in those booths with the rain pounding and the heat and humidity pounding, and these Esther women were dehydrated and some fell with heat stroke, but they worked at recording these Women of the Word stories until after midnight, before the Esther women got back on packed buses for 22 hour trips to take the Word to their sisters and daughters and mothers and neighbours — because they know that what this world needs is a rescue plan and there’s not a greater rescue than the Word Incarnate, there’s not a greater hope than His Promises, and there’s not a realer lifeline than the lines of His Word.

Those Esther Women in India went back to their sisters and they told the stories of Women of the Word — and women who had been used and abused stood up and let themselves be called His Beloved, women who had been violated stood up and knew they were valued, women who thought they were dead were resurrected to the relief of new life.

Daughters learned the stories of Women of the Word from their Esther mothers and one 10-year-old girl stands up in front of scores of watching eyes, and from memory and with expression, tells the stories from Ruth — all four chapters — all learned from the Esther women and the Esther Storytellers’ workshop.

Those Esther women stood up during the Christmas season and the Esther storytellers told the Greatest Story Ever Told from the Luke, told the Gospel Story of the God who created and could not be contained by the expanse of heavens contracting to a point and penetrating the atmosphere of this pale blue dot of a world and birthing into our agony to rescue us from our abandonment.

They told the story of Joseph kneeled in the straw and the shadows and how the light of God burst from the birth canal and how Joseph’s carpenter hands caught the wet fresh hope of redemption and how he touched Mary’s damp cheek because Love had come down.

Esther Havens

And one man interrupted the Esther Storytellers. He stood up and he looked over at his wife, swollen and round with their 5th child and he said:

‘I need to be more like Joseph.’

An intoxicated man who violated women, who had never once allowed his wife in all her pregnancies to ever seek any medical help, he listened to the Esther Women tell The Story We need to Stay In —- and he said:

“I need to be more like Joseph —- I want to change my life.”

The man took his pregnant wife by the hand, touched by redemption’s hand, and they went to the medical clinic — because a baby was coming and there is only One Story that has the power to forever change all our Stories.  There is only One Story that can forever raise the dead to life, that can forever resuscitate broken hope, that can forever re-member all our unspoken broken.

“What these Esther Storytellers are doing is new, this has never been done, this could change whole worlds for young women, for little girls, for the next generation,” is what the Bible translator from the Seed Company, a division of Wycliffe, and one of the directors of The Esther Project told me.

“And when this model of all women translators gathering and empowering oppressed women around the power of God’s Word — we need to be ready for what will happen —- ” Dr. Alex said.

“Tsunami. Be prepared for the Tsunami of women asking for these Women of the Word stories too.”

Women in Africa and in Asia and in South and Central America, a tsunami of girls in need.

And it’s happening. It. Is. Happening.  Esther Women on this side of the ocean are part of this rising Tsunami of Esther Women, rising from our project in India — that’s now moving from Asia to Africa and the women of Ethiopia.

Love’s come down to India, and now The Esther Project moves forward like a wave of hope to embrace our Ethiopian sisters, and is completely mobilized by our Ethiopian Esther sisters, training and empowering hundreds and hundred of women to tell stories of Women of the Word to their sisters, to raise them up into Esther Storytellers, to uplift our sisters in an area of the world where women are heartbreakingly culturally dominated.

Esther Havens

Esther Havens
Esther Havens
Esther Havens
Esther Havens
Esther Havens
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Esther Havens
Esther Havens
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Esther Havens

TogEsther, we are here for such a time as this, for a tsunami of love to push down the gates that have brutalized and commercialized and marginalized the daughters and mothers and sisters for whom Love came down.

It. is. time.

It’s time for the rain to turn to snow three days before Christmas, for Esther Women to rise up around this hurting globe, from Asia to Africa to Who knows Where Next, a tsunami of women who choose to be Esthers for such a time as now when the world is heaving and weeping for fleeing women, when a pale blue dot in the universe shares this strained hope for a Kingdom come of Mercy and Justice and Peace and we could be part of heaven and nature singing.

In a world where it would be demonically easy as women and sisters and wives and mothers to turn off the news stories and disengage and seclude ourselves because Hope for Change can feel elusive — we can link arms and hold on to one another and walk Together —- TogEsther — and make room for the Incarnate Word — because there is absolutely nothing the world needs more than the Incarnate Word.

And the GenEsthers are the ones to invest in the only thing that will last forever, transform forever, remake forever — the Word of God —- for every soul made by God.

The Nirbhayas could be all of us, the fearless ones, the ones who will not let the fraud of fear or the myth of scarcity gut out our courage or our compassion to be part of the rising of His Hope for all His Women.

Nirbhayas, the fearless ones — 

who will invest in raising up more Esther Storytellers in Asia and now Africa and the Story is only just beginning —

because this is the season for a heartbroken people whose brave, desperate cry is only, “Come!”

Come.

Come all you who are worn and weary and who long to midwife a King who will woo all His daughters to life.

Come you who every day do one thing that you wish you could do for every one.

Come now, in a world exhausted with ache, come Lion of Judah and King of Kings and Lord of Lords, come to seek and save all of us who are utterly lost without You. 

Come now Word made flesh and dwell among us. We have seen His glory — in the eyes of every one who says Yes.

There in the nativity, there in the manger trough, is the Only One, in a a breaking and broken world, Who is unbreakable… who can rebuild us… the only One worthy of our offering.  

And three days before Christmas, a weary world throws off it’s fears and all out in the streets, there’s this brave rejoicing for the Coming.

The Word comes down now —

 and how can we do anything but open our grateful hands to make Him room?

 

 

Related:

Half the Sky: When You’re Ready to ACT To Bring All Girls Back: The Esther Initiative

What No One Else Tells You About Fear & Comfort Zones & How. To. Change. The. Word. [Final Update]

 

 

What Happens When the Word Means Something To a Woman:

(Email readers —  join us & don’t miss this tenderly powerful video story)

And because the Word come down to us means something to us this Christmas:

The Esther Initiative is our initiative — the initiative we as a community here at A Holy Experience get to participate in TogEsther, the community that The Seed Company has specifically invited us to partner with them.

TogEsther, this community so believes in investing in the harvest of the Word, you’ve grown The Esther Initiative all the way from Asia now to Africa….

Last time we set a goal of $25,000 for the Esther Initiative — and you Esther people CRUSHED that goal, raising three times that much.  
That’s who you GenEsthers are — you don’t miss an opportunity to be Jesus and make the Word go forth in this old hurting world.

And we will not deny anyone from the joy of doing this: This Esther Initiative is how we can say to Jesus this Christmas: Come, Incarnate Word — we will make you room, we will make You room in the heart of women all across this globe.

Phase One for TogESTHER Africa: $60,000.

(And an anonymous donor has already kicked us off with a donation of TWENTY ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS!)

So our Esther Sisters in Africa — who are hungry for the Incarnate Word and stories of Women in His Word meeting Him — need only 2,000 of us to be their Esther sisters and donate $20. Are you one of the 2000 GenEsthers?  Who will invest in and declare the value the Incarnate Word this Christmas?

 

Be one of the ones to stand as a GenEsthers saying YES to His Word for His women this Christmas? Let a weary world rejoice.

How No Ache or Fear or Division Can Steal our Merry Christmas [with Spoken Word Poem: “An Advent Lament & a Brave Merry Christmas”]

The old guy had said that there’s a Love that holds this whole shebang together —

even when, especially when, everything & everyone feels a bit banged & busted up.  

He’d turned & said just that to me, right there in the airport terminal.

Complete stranger. Never met the guy before. He wore his blue jacket like a badge of quiet respect, glasses, warm smile, ebony skin.

And we were both just sitting there on those blue vinyl seats, looking up at the news flashing loud across the screen they had hanging from the ceiling there at Gate G21, like the whole world was suspended right there in this waiting.

In this painful, expecting waiting and the piped in Christmas carols trying to drown out the news.

Someone told me that this Advent has felt more like a Lent — a grieving.

People streamed by hauling their luggage under Christmas lights. All of us feeling the staring of the overweight baggage of a year that just ached at the seams.

You don’t have to close your eyes to see how the news has been screaming for months. The Syrian Civil War robbed us all of another 30,000 lives this year, now more than a quarter million faces erased from our planet since the war erupted.

ISIS wielded their bloody knife at our world and we recoiled and curled around our freedoms to believe. Paris reeled and we prayed for peace and San Bernardino wailed for their lost and children drowned in the Mediterranean looking for refuge and someone to take them in as they fled war. 

The music’s echoing down to our gate, singing something about how it’s the most wonderful time of the year, singing it all through the airport terminals, like they forget that we’re all terminal, forget that we’re all grieving, forget that we’ve got people we love fighting, fighting each other and fighting cancer under blinking, twinkly lights by these radios that just keep spinning all these Christmas tunes that can seem all out of tune to the howl of our pain.

How in the world does a weary world rejoice? 

We may not know why God doesn’t stop all the different kinds of suffering — but we definitely know it’s not because He’s indifferent.

God is so moved by our being entangled in suffering — that He moved Himself into our world and entangled Himself in the suffering with us. God with us.

God knows suffering.

He chose to be born in the middle of a genocide.

God knows suffering. He chose to be born as a refugee.

God knows suffering. He chose to come from a place where people said no good thing could come from.

God knows suffering. He chose to be poor. He chose to absorb pain. He chose to be powerless.  

God penetrates the ache of our world through the willing yes of a poor, unwed teen. In both the Incarnation and the Resurrection, God reveals Himself first to the dismissed and disregarded and dissed.

God chose the first witnesses to both His nativity & to His nailed hands alive to be the very people who suffered because they were regarded as suspect, small, sketchy.

Because the point is: Christmas is the end of division. Christmas is the beginning of the end of all suffering. Comfort,  comfort my people, says your God. 

The road’s been weary, but we can rest beside the road, beside the boarding gate, beside each other, and listen to how the angels sing. 

Christmas is the end of thinking anyone is better than anyone else, because Christmas says that everyone needed Christ to come down from heaven and carry every single one of us, every single step of the way back to heaven.  Christmas says that we all need rescuing, we all need a Savior.

Christmas is the end of racism, elitism, egotism. Christmas is the end of thinking, “Oh, them.” Christmas is the end of us vs. them — because it is now us with Him. God had to come for all of us.

Every single one of us Gate G21 and all the beautiful people carrying their bags under the Christmas wreaths, all us travellers under the Christmas lights of soaring doves and a whole blinking globe strung up there from the ceiling, all us attached to Someone Higher.

This is what His glory does —- Like a river, His glory in the highest runs down to meet us who are at our lowest, those left out in the field, those who’ve lost our flock, lost our way, lost our hope, His glory in the highest always runs down to meet us who are at our lowest.

This is what lets us sing like the angels did.

And it strikes me then, and yeah, why not just go ahead and straight up confess it, because it’s happened and way too often: One of our kids forgets (? really? how do you forget? okay, that’s their story and they’re sticking to it!) — they forget to shower out of the barn after chores, after feeding hogs, tending sows.

So yeah, more times than I can count, we end up sitting there on Sunday morning, right there in the middle of the spit and polished congregation and Sunday preaching — with one of our kids smelling like the barn. Smelling to high heaven of manure stink and hogs.

Which is the exact same stench as the Christ Child’s family after they left that reeking stable and wandered into the town square with all the people. 

And if it were you standing next to Christ’s family how would you have felt about them? How easy would it have been to be offended by their presence?  

What if Christmas was about seeing Christ in that family member you think just stinks —- seeing Christ in that neighbour you’re tempted to be offended by, in those politics you’re offended by, in the people you’re offended by, in the point of view you’re offended by? 

What if Christmas gave us the Gift we need to walk through suffering, live for justice, lay down prejudice?

What if Christmas demonstrated how to overcome suffering and evil with good, demonstrated how God overcame the world’s suffering and evil forces by willingly laying aside His power and becoming a helpless babe, demonstrated how the strong turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, seek peace — quietly lay themselves down so that there might be peace on earth and good will toward men.

The greatest gift we can give at Christmas time is the greatest gift we can give to anyone at anytime — and that is the gift of Grace.

So Listen. Listen. What if Christmas was about drawing close enough to listen to each other’s pain? 

Let the ear hear the Advent laments of those who can’t breathe for their sadness.

The act of hearing each other destroys all fearing each other…  And the discipline of listening is the quickening and the signalling of the repositioning of the great commissioning of the Kingdom to Love the marginalized because this is where the Word writes the greatest words.

God comes to the suffering and the marginalized — because this is where the Word writes the greatest words.

Let the shield of our eardrums be beat into the cupping edge of a gentle plow because if  we’re always defending our point of view,  we’re always missing the point that could point us toward growth.

Let us listen to one another in the depths of our suffering and sadness — and  only speak words that make souls stronger. We know what words can do — because we know what the Word has done.

We know and won’t forget that Christmas is more than a story about sleigh bells jing-jing-jingling — Christmas is the beginning of the story where death itself gets killed. 

We know & won’t forget: Christmas is the story that turns around the story of suffering in our lives. 

We know & won’t forget:  Merry Christmas in it’s original language means all oppression is dead.

Bethlehem’s  the opening of the shock and awe of God to end a long war against all suffering & oppression & wrong.  The promised seed of the woman, Jesus, will snap that snake, crush the skull of that snake, heal us from the insanity of sin and suffering and destroy that snake.

Infinite God comes as an infant and we won’t forget it: Dragon slayers can come looking like small beginnings. 

And He is the One Who comes to make His blessings flow, far as the curse is found — He comes to make His blessings known to you, far as the curse is found near you.

Advent means “expectation” and hope is our expectation, peace is our anticipation, and He is our transformation, and everywhere right now, even amongst us:

In the midst of our lament & our suffering we will be the humble and the brave who “prepare  the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. And every valley shall be exalted & every mountain & hill shall be made low & the crooked shall be made straight & the rough places plain. And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”

And all of us together will reach out —

and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed. 

All of us together will make space for Jesus to come into our centre and be God amongst us, God remaking us, and all of us together will not detach ourselves from the suffering of others, from our own suffering,  but we will be the peacemakers,  the Kingdom keepers, the wounded healers, because He came to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found — which means Christmas belongs precisely right where the curse is found. 

So we sing those carols loud throughout the airport terminals, light those candles around our tables like we’re torching back the night and we whisper it brave: Merry Christmas — take that dark night of our trouble. 

Merry Christmas —

Take that hopelessness, take that misery, take that despair.

Because Merry Christmas is an insurrection & a resurrection.

Because Merry Christmas is an insurrection against all our night & a resurrection of all His Light into all our night.

When we’re called to board our flight, I nod my thanks to the man in blue with the ebony skin, his words ringing in me — there’s a Love that holds this whole shebang together — even when, especially when, everything & everyone feels a bit banged & busted up — 

and I fly home and the Farmer and I and the kids stand with a congregation and sing it:

‘Oh Holy Night…  Truly He taught us to love one another, 

His law is love and His gospel is peace. 

Chains He shall break, for the slave is our brother. 

And in His name all oppression shall cease ….

A thrill of hope — the weary world rejoices.’

We come home and there it is before the hearth and I can feel the heat of it in all our hearts:

there in the candle light of that one wooden rotating carousel nativity, there in all this globe of spinning,

Jesus there, holding us all together at our centre through the night, every whirling turning of the nativity like this brave, bold whisper:

Merry Christmas!

 

An Advent Lament — that proclaims a Brave Merry Christmas…

That lets us grieve — and yet believes 

[Email readers join us here for the video of this Spoken Word Poem]

Written & Performed by Amena Brown & Ann Voskamp.  Filmed & Edited by Nayt Cochran & music by Tony Anderson. Produced by

Photo credits: 1, 2, 3, 8

Photos 5, 6, 7: From Compassion’s Gift of Christmas Tour by Stephen Proctor

Light the Candles. Advent Devotionals. Week 04. LOVE. [VIDEO experience]

Disclaimer: This ain’t all together or professional slick or anything… Just a simple, homemade video, taped by our Hope-girl, because God pressed it hard on our hearts to make a space for folks who may not have a community to celebrate the wonder and beauty of Advent? If you’re looking for an updated, fresh story, professional version, it’s our humble joy to serve you here

Join us and not Miss Him this year?

Hush the hurry… and find the holy… consider journeying with us through December with  The Greatest Gift , named the Best Devotional of 2014  & NYT bestseller  (free download of 25 ornaments with the book) —  or the brand new family read aloud edition,  Unwrapping the Greatest Gift, — a fresh, all new unwrapping of The Love Story — your love story … … God starting a Christmas revolution, us all turning toward Jesus.

And if you’d rather a professionally recorded, beautiful DVD Christmas experience here on the farm? There’s the professional, fresh, all-new material of  The Greatest Gift DVD Experience to truly hush the hurry and find the holy in December:  4 weeks of Advent: 4 holy sessions. Recorded on the farm. At the woods. In the barn. By the manger.  Come away from the whirl. Come into the candle light. Into the snow falling. Into the quiet of the barn & the depths of His Love.

Sit in the straw, in a circle of flickering candles, and feel the illuminating awe of God’s Word through the unfurling of the greatest love story ever told — Christmas’s full love story, right from the beginning of  His-Story, like you’ve never quite heard it told before.

Related: The quiet joy of having  The Greatest Christmas : How to Have the Best Christmas 

Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [12.19.15]

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:

Mary Anne Morgan
Mary Anne Morgan
Mary Anne Morgan 

if your soul needs to inhale some beauty

Random Acts of Kindness Foundation

“I didn’t know if I was going to post this or not, but I decided to. I borrowed this idea from another RAKtivist, to write a thank you card for the flight crew and have other passengers sign it. It was SO rewarding to see other normal passengers participate in improving someone’s day, and the happiness from the flight crew. Travel, especially flying can be a hassle, and this really just made me so happy. I plan to do it at least once a trip…

People need to know they are appreciated.”

and this made us smile – Daffy … in her festive foursie?

okay? so… uh… who took that cookie off the counter?

William Patino 
William Patino
William Patino

all of this splendor in a 10 day journey through Iceland

“Know that I am God … Step out of the traffic! Take a long, loving look at Me…” Ps.46:10MSG

it’s the best time of year to be united again…

Kimberly Grandinette / Facebook

 who was expecting this?

rescued- – she’s now a thriving mama

Jessica Bowe 

sometimes you’re at the right place at the right time — and it’s all pretty wondrous

yeah… waiting on love

viralfhd

Okay, the Farmer & I were pretty stunned with some of these:

some of the most amazing historical photos most likely never seen before

and then it was the last line of this piece that hooked me:

“When women move forward, the world moves forward with them.”

 pretty wonderful, eh?

Marcus Vasquez

the best small town’s for Christmas

O’ Holy Night

Kid having a bad day. And the Prime Minister’s walking by:

Sometimes, all you need is someone to listen

Prisoner dads. Their Kids. And that feeling of being embraced by your father… can last forever

Join me on this podcast with Susie Larson as we talk about the true meaning of the season 

go ahead and let your heart split with the happy here – a must see

“they have so much love for us” Exactly

glory

wrapping up the last of the gifts here —

one gift that is One Thousand Gifts …

The Greatest Gift … &  Unwrapping The Greatest Gift —

giving all the happiest gifts, gifts, gifts,  of more Jesus this year

 Also GIDDY to offer: 25 FREE Full-Color Christmas Story Ornaments — that tell the only Story that shatters all the dark.

crazy JOY to the world…

Jonathan Rodgers

Spotted on Instagram

never a Christmas without this one… absolutely exquisite

free 25 No-Stress Manifestos for every day of December,

“You are trying so hard. And yeah, I get why you want to set the to-do list out front & center today. Or that huge problem that has to be overcome. But let’s just exhale slow and simply set up the day with this gentle soul-talk:

I will focus on Jesus today, 

just Jesus. 

Simply set your focus on the Lord — He’s got you today & you. can’t. be. shaken…”

Free Stress-Free Holiday Sticky Notes for Your Soul, right here: No Stress Holiday Manifesto

we can have eyes, but not really see. see the gift? powerful

… fear can sneak up right behind you & lock you in one strangling chokehold. And then?

Then you can turn around & CRUSH ALL THAT FEAR. 

sharing some unconditional love with a grieving family

so a bit of what I did this summer:

Read the One Thousand Gifts Devotional out loud for you  — so I’ll read to you while you’re in the car, washing dishes, or out taking a run …. 60 Days, 60 Day Devotional, 60 Days in the New Year: I’ll read aloud & we’ll do life together & He’ll change the new year…

and then we wrapped up One Thousand Gifts in a brown leather-like edition …. (maybe for some men in your life?)

how these kids gave up what they wanted for Christmas – because family matters

O Come, Let Us Adore Him…

This is the face of a refugee. A 10 year old Iraqi Christian refugee. The kids watched twice.

though it’s been a hard year — yet… even this

Mary, did you know? This child that you’ve delivered, would soon deliver you?

.. turns out? Worry is always belief gone wrong. 

Because some part of your heart doesn’t believe that God will get it right.  

But Peace is belief that exhales.

Because your heart believes that God’s love is everywhere – like air. It’d be quite something — for us all to breathe deep peace & exhale…

~excerpt from The Greatest Gift

[ print’s free for you here ]

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.

when your heart’s aching for a bit of a Christmas Miracle in the midst of a lot of mess

That one doctor thought it was a bit of a miracle before they even cracked open the chest and cut a way at his heart.

Because who in the world figures out you’ve got a tumor plugging up an entire cavernous heart chamber when you’re blithely driving kids to hockey on Tuesday night?

Or fine-tuning a tractor engine on Thursday and sitting in the front pew on Sunday?

Maybe you only figure out your heart’s failing when you yell at the kids over state-of-disaster floors?

Or when you feel like a first-class Christmas failure in the age of Pinterest, or when you and yours never get through the holidays without a whole mess of family drama — and don’t ask me how I know.

Sometimes the only thing you know by heart is that your heart knows it hurts.

So when the general practitioner in the small country clinic had suspected a tumor in the Farmer brother’s heart?

The city specialist could only say he couldn’t really believe it — how had the country doctor guessed it right — that he could only think of it as a bit of a miracle. People say that when miracles happen: “I can’t believe it! It’s a miracle!” But that’s always the best place for miracles: God meets us — right where we don’t believe.

When our believing runs out, God’s loving runs on.

They roll the Farmer’s brother into the operating theatre to do surgery on his heart and that tumor at 1:27 in the afternoon.

We can’t think. We watch the clock. The Farmer calls his Dad down in Florida. They pace together.

My mother calls. We pray. I keep glancing up at the minute hand, the way it keeps ticking.

Ticking.

“Did I ever tell you what Max said?” Mama’s got to be eating something. I only hear her nhuh huh.

“Well, yeah, Max clapped the Farmer’s shoulder and said we really might be the only pig farmers he’s ever met and we laughed. And at the end, he prayed over us just like you’d think Jesus would.

I told the Farmer that on the way home — that it’s not very often that you meet someone and walk away thinking: “He was so much like Jesus.”

“Uh huh?” Mama’s got to be eating almonds.

“But it’s that story Max told — ”

Can I get through this without choking up? Max’s Texan drawl was as smooth as the back of my Grandma’s Oil of Olay hand.

And he said that Taylor Storch’s family had headed to Colorado for a little skiing. That the 13 year old had laughed loud coming down the mountain. That Taylor had fallen — crashed — down a straight rocky slant of the earth.

By nightfall, she was gone, slipped off this earth and Home.

Her parents, Tara and Todd, signed papers to give away Taylor’s still-warm heart.

Mama’s quiet on the other end of the line.

She’s watched them a dig a hole in the earth for her own girl.

“Max said they ended up giving Taylor’s heart to a woman in Arizona whose heart was failing so weary that she couldn’t get off the couch anymore — Patricia Winters.” There’s snow falling out the window.

There’s been ugly sin this week and there’s been dead weary and there’s been more than a few moments I haven’t known how to go on.

“Taylor’s mama had only one request.” I lean against the window sill, head against the cool pane, tell my Mama what Max had said, how he had shown us a photo of Taylor with her mama.

How Taylor’s mama had called Patricia Winters and asked her if she could come hear her heart.

“Oh my.” Mama murmurs what only a mama can feel. The clock’s ticking on the wall.

And Max had told us how Taylor’s mama flew from Dallas to Phoenix and knocked on Patricia Winters’ door and Patricia Winters walked right past the couch and she opened the door and she opened her arms and she welcomed them in.

And Taylor’s mama fell into her arms and the two mothers just held each other, Taylor’s heart beating right there next to her weeping Mama’s.

And then Patricia Winters reached over and handed Taylor’s Mama a stethoscope.

And she laid that stethescope up against Patricia Winters and she could hear it, right there in Patricia as clear as a beckoning bell:

Thrum. Thrum.

Taylor’s mama could hear it loud and long, right there in her ears… Thrum.

Like a thunder vibrating right through her — Thrum.

Her daughter’s still-beating heart.

“Oh… I can’t…” Mama chokes out the words. “I can’t even imagine.”

Can’t imagine. Can’t Believe…  Miracle.

And then Max had asked us slow and quiet. “What was Taylor’s Mama really hearing?”

“It indwells a different body, but that heart is the heart of her girl…. ” Max said. “And when God hears your heart, that’s what He hears — the still-beating heart of His Son.”

The clock’s ticking on the wall.

Doctors will be cutting into the heart of the Farmer’s brother right now.

“Mama?”

“Oh — I’m here.” Her voice’s breaking up. “Just — listening.”

Ticking. Beating.

“I was thinking this week — you know when we were in the hospital with Levi?”

I turn from the window, turn the sink tap on, fill the sink as if I could fill an ache. “You know — she was the first one to come visit?”

I don’t say who the she is. Mama knows.

“Yes.” Mama doesn’t have to say anything more.

She knows who I mean, how it it’s been over a year and a half. That cards and letters get returned and invitations go unanswered or declined.

The strangest pain that never goes away is estrangement.

“She loved us, Mama… and I don’t know what went so impossibly wrong but I know that I miss them impossibly…”

Mama whispers it like she wishes she could make the words do more, “I know…. ”

The sink water’s not much better than lukewarm.

“I sure wish I knew how to fix this — I shake my head, turn the water hotter. “Because I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

In a heart beat.

I stop. Hands in hot water.

I can hear it in me.

Thrum. Thrum.

Me with a tumor, me with heart blockage, me with a failing heart…

That’s the point:

Your heart can’t forgive the tactless no-so-great Aunt.

Your heart can’t forgive the words that should never have been said, your heart can’t forgive the remark that was more like a blade and left a mark how many years later. Your heart can’t forgive the step-mother, the side joke, the backhand, the over-the-top family that just gets under your skin.

Your heart can’t forgive. That’s why He gave you His.

When you don’t think you can forgive what she’s said about you —-

When you don’t think you can forget what he’s done to you —

When it’s His heart beating in you — you can forgive in a heart beat.

I look up from the sink.

The Christmas tree is there by the fireplace — and it’s right there, what all the hard relationships, gatherings, families need at Christmas:

The Tree is where God’s grace does heart transplants:

God takes broken hearts —- and gives you His.

I would tell Mama that later.

That they cut a 3 inch tumor out of the Farmer’s brother’s heart.

That only four days later the Farmer drove his brother back home to his own farm.

That they prayed thanks for startling grace.

 That it’s really true: Right where you don’t believe…  is where  God meets with a miracle. 

That miracles can really happen in a heart beat.

 

 

 Jesus/Manger photos credit

Related:

when your heart needs a Christmas miracle of its own: The Greatest Gift and Unwrapping the Greatest Gift

Free Printables for December: 25 No-Stress Manifestos Sticky Notes For Your Soul along with all kinds of free tools & ornaments at The Greatest Christmas

Advent Week 1: The Video Devotional for the First Sunday of Advent: Hope 

Advent Week 2: The Video Devotional for the Second Sunday of Advent: Peace

Advent Week 3: The Video Devotional for the Third Sunday of Advent: Joy

Video Devotional: How to Have the Best Christmas