Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 189
October 20, 2015
when we’re looking for a brave way to heal our relationships, our hearts & the internet
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When the woman told me she’d heard round that there were rumblings —
she said she was just going to do it.
She was just going to step out onto those fault lines, right where there were murmurings of things shifting and moving, right into whatever was being said.
She told me she was afraid.
Because who knew what they were talking about behind closed doors?
Who knew what they were saying about her, about things, about choices, about what was right and what was wrong and what should come next?
There was light all across the the floors as she talked, falling in quiet lines, laying down shadows. I nodded slow. I could hear her. Feel it. The way a heart can quake before an earthquake of words. The way you don’t know if you feel any brave left in your veins.
The light moved to the south. Now my feet found themselves standing in the shadow lines.
I turned to her and handed her a handful of words, a light I’m growing to know in the dark:
“Just —
Never be afraid to listen.”
* * * *
So I drop the kid off at counseling.
Drop the kid off at counseling at the church. Yeah, I guess that’s how you say it — but there’s no dropping. There’s a setting.
I mean, I set it up — set things up with the counselor, get ready, drive into town. Yeah — there’s no dropping off, there’s this gentle setting off. There’s this praying, this trying to remember to breathe, this letting go. There’s kissing a forehead and smiling brave.
And I’m fool enough to talk to myself out loud, while I turn out of the church parking lot, talk myself down out of this surging wave of anxiety: “The kid could tell the counselor that we’re a mess.”
Yeah? So? We are.
“But — the kid could say we’re the worst, that we’re wrong, that we’re wrecked.”
And c’mon, who isn’t, sweetheart? You never have to be afraid of the Truth — because the Truth will set you free.
You only need fear the Truth of anything — if you think Christ isn’t capable of redeeming everything. And if Christ is the Truth — then where there isn’t Truth, there isn’t Christ. Why ever be afraid of the Truth?
“Uh — why exactly did I set this whole kid/parent/counselor thing up again?”
And I catch my reflection in the rearview mirror and smile gentle —
Because yeah, remember that thing that you’re slowly coming to hold on to? You never have to be afraid of just listening.
Because yeah, too many people treat listening like it’s only a pause before their own shock and awe.
Because real listening is really a radical act of humility.
Because when you let yourself humbly listen, you let yourself be ‘holy’ remade.
Because listening is how you plant resurrection — Lazarus’s ear had to first hear before he could rise up and walk out of the grave.
When the kid comes out of counseling, I take the Brave Truth Teller for ice cream. We take the long way home, the long way around the world, and we take it real slow, right up that lonely gravel road, and park under the trees by the edge of the woods. We spoon at our strawberry sundaes.
I ask how it was, ask how I can change. I listen. Smile gratitude and nod — yes. Yes.
When a gust of October blows up over the hill and through the woods, one of the last of the flaming leaves sways down in front of us —
and we both listen for the glory of it.
The world’s wide — both the real one and the reality of the world wide web.
There are words all over the map. I tell myself that sometimes:
We don’t have to be afraid. Listening to other people’s words need not undermine the Word.
There are a million beaten paths. And no matter what words people use — everyone is just asking to be loved.
Some speak with a match, words on fire, blazing their path; some speak in circles, words unraveling as they find their way. There are some who lose their voice, too many arrows through the throat, through their words. There are some who take a deep breath of courage and speak their world and get vilified.
There’s a guy who writes things and I agree. And then sometimes I don’t. Nothing bad happens — maybe only something rare and beautiful. His words settle somewhere inside of me and shape a bit of me to be more like Christ. This can happen —
When we listen to words, not to shoot them down, but to open us up — Grace can walk in.
When we listen to words not to indict them but to inform us, they can form us into a cup of understanding. This quenches the world’s parched places.
Once, when I saw this guy pick up his phone, I thought it looked like he was holding a brick in his hand. I started to see that everywhere —- everywhere people with these bricks in their hands.
And maybe that’s a bit of how it turns out to be? Social media is a brick. Not a brick to throw. But a brick to build a bridge.
Maybe that’s it? Social media is not about competition, ammunition, or opposition. Social Media is about a conversation. A way to listen and hear and not be afraid.
Maybe, yeah —- Social media isn’t ammunition, but an invitation.
It’s an invitation to hear people, help people, heal people.
Social media is how we build a bridge to people. Not how we bully people.
I don’t know, so much I don’t know — but sometimes I wonder if… wonder if —
Though sometimes listening to words beautifully changes our minds, when we humbly see the Truth of the Word in the words…
Sometimes words don’t need to change our minds — as much they just need to change our hearts. Change not the way we think — but the way we love.
When grace walks in — that doesn’t mean that Truth needs to walk out. It can mean that they both sit down and listen and learn and linger long enough to love no matter what.
There are times, in the early morning rising, if I sit close enough to the window, I can hear bird songs from up in the pines, songs that I have never heard before.
And there’s time to still long enough to just listen.
Is that what angels say when they make a visitation —
Listen — and do not be afraid?
Related: The One Command that could Resurrect Our Hurting Places, the Church, and the Sisterhood of Women
Links for 2015-10-19 [del.icio.us]
and just watch who bowed their heads with him...
October 19, 2015
when your life feels all wrong & your friend’s lives look picture perfect
Recently, Sandra Byrd and her husband purchased a “fixer upper” house and have worked to restore their new home to its original beauty. She discovered that the lessons she learned through the renovation process had strong impact on her view of herself and the world around her. Grab a cup of coffee and a snack, and join Sandra as she shares those lessons in her One Year Home and Garden Devotions. You will learn to see the beauty in yourself and the world around you in a new way – through God’s eyes. It’s a grace to welcome Sandra to the farm’s front porch today…
M y good friend was about to start a new job, one that was perfectly suited to her, one which she’d acquired — from my perspective — almost without effort.
We celebrated together, first by text and afterward, in person. Then I returned home and sat down in the darkened living room.
It’s not that I wasn’t happy for her; I’d told her I was thrilled, and I truly was.
I felt a little bad about having mixed feelings, but I needed a job, too.
Why wasn’t anyone opening the doors upon which I kept knocking?
Did God love her and see her needs but not love me nor see mine?
Well, I kept knocking, though with perhaps just a little less enthusiasm as the weeks and months added up.
My faithful, employed friend encouraged me day by day, week by week.
And in time, I was hired!
We celebrated together, of course. First by text, and afterward, in person.
A few years later, her husband told her he was leaving. He promised to provide for her and their child, but not for her heart’s needs.
She was terribly wounded.
My marriage was in a steady place, and one night when my husband and I left her company I saw her looking after us longingly, maybe a little angrily. I understood that longing and my heart ached as her suffocating foggy weeks and months added up.
However I could, whenever I could, I cheered her onward till her clouds cleared.
When we’re in a dark place, it sometimes seems as though we are forgotten, overlooked, unloved.
The lives of everyone around us seem to be bear fruit, and yet we feel like a stripped stalk. It’s easy to feel we stand alone, a rejected Esau in a field of Jacobs, those that God loves.
But that simply isn’t true.
As I mulled on this, I thought about another friend, one who lives in Australia – down under!
We joke online about our upside down seasonal differences: when it’s summer for me, it’s winter for her. When I am planting, she is reaping. When I am tanning, she is freezing.
Rain falls on both of us so that seeds planted may grow. We each encounter all four seasons — just not at the same time.
And then I understood, and understanding made all the difference.
My summer circumstances often coincide with a stark time in a friend’s life.
My task, my pleasure, my privilege, is to share my sun and give her the warmth she needs.
She’ll do it for me, later, when my winter blows in and ices my world—for a season—just before spring arrives again.
This way, we’re always dividing the grief and sharing the joy — together.
What season are you in right now?
Can you offer to share your warmth?
Do you need to reach out for help?
In this way, friends make sure both are always right-side up.
So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today—to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul—
then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine, and olive oil.
I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied. Deuteronomy 11:13-15
Best-selling author Sandra Byrd has published nearly three dozen books in the Christian market, including her latest series, French Twist, which includes the Christy finalist Let Them Eat Cake and its sequel, Bon Appétit (2008).
Highly recommending her latest book: The One Year Home and Garden Devotions. which is an encouraging, applicable, and personal read each day for women of all ages who delight in being busy at home.
[ Our humble thanks to Tyndale Publishers for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
Apple Upside-Down Spice CakeServes 12
Sandra Byrd
One Boxed Spice Cake Mix, prepared {if you have a favorite scratch recipe, use that!}
Two apples
1/4 Cup brown sugar
1/4 Cup butter
1/3 Cup Cinnamon Imperials, better known as Red Hots!™
Peel apples, then thinly slice. Melt butter in a large skillet; add brown sugar and apple slices. Brown till the slices are pliable but not applesauce!
Lightly butter and flour a 9-inch round springform pan, the kind you’d use for cheesecake. Sprinkle the RedHots™ evenly across the bottom of the pan. Layer the apple slices over it in a pretty circular pattern.
Pour prepared spice cake mixture over, and bake according to cake instructions, perhaps 5+ minutes longer than required for a 13 x 9-inch cake. The cake is done when browned, does not jiggle when moved, is beginning to pull back from the edge of the pan just slightly, and a tested comes out clean.
Enjoy… and share with a friend!
October 17, 2015
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [10.17.15]
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:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/md9/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/julis_travel_log/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/slaunay/
Tanja Brandt
Tanja Brandt
Tanja Brandt
when an artist purchases a crumbling bank — and is making this
at the 3:25 mark? the kids cracked up
Nikolai Tolstyh
change the way you frame the world #perspective
how to make an unforgettable entrance
Emily Gibson
so they are saying this may be the catch of the year!? I don’t know — what do you think?
“just a few minutes of kindness each day makes a difference” #WORD
oh, you know — no big deal
so a police officer gets injured — and a kid grabs a pen to heal him ?
glory, glory
Gabe Tomoiaga
move along — nothing here at all. nothing like, oh, a kid and a crazy dad and a lion.
extraordinary
KUSA
83 year old identical twins. Whose ending took everybody’s breath away
look, if even elephants got the memo on love?
Lisa-Jo Baker
encouragement for every parent:
Why My “Difficult” Kid is a Gift and Not a Reason for Despair
a small player with a big worth ethic – what can you go do?
Renee Tessman / KARE 11
dad battles PTSD after serving his country — so his kids does this
.staggering
Instagram of the Week
…when you step in from the slapping October rain, and find her there, leaning into her book & her spoon, circling it slow & around, there in a simmering pot of soup…
it’s her old mama who finds herself stirred.
A child offers herself to your own willing imagination, & over the years, calls new & beautiful things out of you that you’d have never known, if she hadn’t come & beckoned you into the miracle of things.
We lit the candles & heaped every bowl full tonight. The lightning reflected off the wet windows long after she’d blown the taper candles out. #1000Gifts#MiracleOfThings#Eucharisteo#BeautifulOrthodoxy
come join us on the Instagram journey?
this most incredible life-changing realization?
Fred Wills, Sr
Fred Wills, Sr
dad’s cartoons. daughter with down syndrome. celebration of life!
You are seen — and right this very moment, He goes before you
hero bride — who doesn’t hesitate one minute to get right in there
a remarkable must-see story of faith
what happens when 6 brothers — welcome home the strangeness of a baby sister
“Natasha Boyer, a single mom, woke up on Oct. 4 to an eviction notice taped to her door. She’d missed a week of work while hospitalized with pneumonia, and with that a week of pay. One lost paycheck meant she couldn’t afford her month’s rent.
The 21-year-old, an assistant manager at a local Domino’s, went to work under a cloud of uncertainty. Her almost three-year-old son spent most of his time two hours away with her grandparents. Would she need to move there and be forced to find another job?
Then Sycamore Creek Church in Pickerington, Ohio called to order a large pepperoni pizza.
Boyer’s friend and the shop’s normal pizza driver, Paula, didn’t want to make the delivery. They’d been forewarned that whoever came would hand off the pizza in front of the congregation as part of some kind of presentation. Boyer offered to go instead.
When she arrived, pizza sleeve in hand, the church pastor, Steve Markle, asked her to come on stage in front of hundreds of congregants. He asked for the price of the pizza. “$5.99,” she said. He asked what was the biggest tip she’d ever received. “$10,” she said.
“We’ve been teaching our church this last month about being generous, and so we did something special for you today,” he said. “We took up a special offering for a tip for you.”
Then he handed her a large wad of cash, totaling $1,046. She immediately fell into his arms and began sobbing. The whole exchange was caught on video.
“I was trying to come up with a way to get almost $1,000 to try and figure out how to keep my home so I didn’t lose my job,” Boyer told The Washington Post on Wednesday. “My prayers were literally answered in a matter of hours.”
Markle told NBC 4 in Columbus, Ohio that he hoped the church’s random act of kindness inspires others. It meant so much, he said, that she had a “true need” for the money.
When she got back to Domino’s, she showed the money to Paula, who didn’t express any regret that she didn’t take the delivery. Instead, Boyer said, her friend said, “You can stay now, can’t you?”
Boyer used her miracle money to pay her rent and put a little toward next month’s payment.
“It definitely opened my eyes up that there are still good people in the world,” she said. “I’ve been bitter about humanity in general … maybe I need to start going to church. Maybe this is something, God was trying to open my eyes.” ~Washington Post
[ print’s free for you here ]Hey Soul? So here’s the thing: you get multiple choice today:
Busy is a choice.
Stress is a choice.
Joy is a choice.
You get to choose. Choose well.
Deciding first thing: “My choice is You, God, first and only.” Ps.16:5MSG
Choosing Joy!
[excerpted from our daily devotions in our Facebook community … come join us?]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
Links for 2015-10-16 [del.icio.us]
...a beautiful photo series
12 Most Beloved A.A. Milne Quotes
this and more..."Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.."
October 16, 2015
Links for 2015-10-15 [del.icio.us]
now this is an amazing discovery...
Why do South Korean teachers get the rock star treatment?
really interesting...
October 15, 2015
the key to look for when you can’t fix all the things you desperately want to fix
…when I walked in the door from 10 days in Israel, I opened up this Illustrated Study Bible, NLT and literally spent hours immersed in its pages — it was like continuing a tour of Israel and God’s Word in living colour . I couldn’t get enough. And when you pick up your Bible, you may have given a passing thought to who was involved in the making of the particular Bible that you’re holding? If you’ve owned a Bible from Tyndale House Publishers in the last 10 years, there’s a good chance that Kevin O’Brien has helped get it into your hands. Today, Kevin’s opening up about his own relationship with the Bible and what makes his latest project, the Illustrated Study Bible, NLT, the most important project he’s worked on to date — a Bible that beckons you to see and hear and taste the world and the Word through the eyes of Jesus …it’s a grace to welcome Kevin to the farm’s front porch today…
S
sometimes? It all seems like too much.
Life presses in, and I am going to implode under the pressure.
It’s not supposed to be like that.
I know better.
I mean, I really know better. Not sort of, not I think so. For real.
I was in church before I was a week old. Gave my life to Christ before I started school and was always the “good kid,” whatever that means.
Sure, I had my doubts in junior high and was silently, scarily rebellious in high school.
I am by nature a skeptic.
Faith comes hard for me.
And yet I believe.
I went to a Christian college. Changed my major to pastoral studies my freshman year. Went on to seminary for two master’s degrees, and did some more grad school in theology after that.
Knowledge. Got it.
I’ve built my life on the Bible. On the idea of the Bible. On the knowledge that it not only matters, it’s true.
Really true. Stake-your-life-on-it true.
Still, for twenty years I have been haunted by a question a professor asked after I had given a short sermon in a preaching class: “Kevin, you clearly have the text. My question is, does the text have you?”
How do you answer that question? How do you know?
Life, not the classroom. That’s how.
My second son was diagnosed with autism at 4 years old.
What do you do with that?
Does the foundation hold?
Do I really believe?
Did I simply get over my rebellious phase and follow the path that a good firstborn child follows or did something capture me?
I have asked myself that question a lot over the past decade. I have wondered in silence and loneliness—and very much out loud as well. I have had my doubts and defeats, stress and helplessness along the way.
I cannot fix this. Not by a long shot.
I cannot fix it for my son or my wife or my other children. I cannot fix the past or the present or the future.
But I can trust.
I can hope.
And I have since the beginning, since the day that we first heard the word “autism” attached to Nathan’s name.
The day I came face to face with the reality that I actually do believe this stuff—God has captured me. But the pressure remains. Autism hasn’t magically vanished.
I have all this training in the Bible and it can still be hard for me to catch a glimpse of what God is up to sometimes.
Still its truth has worked its way down into my very soul.
Sometimes in surprising ways. Like the day we first heard “autism” and I didn’t panic. Didn’t cry out, “Why me?”
I was able to simply say, “That’s Nate.”
Not because I am better or more spiritual or even just numb. But because I actually believe this stuff.
I believe that God is who the Bible says He is. That He is for us. That He wants us. That He is big enough to take care of the things that we cannot see past.
Hebrews 4:12 tells us that the word of God is alive and powerful.
I have known this all my life. I have caught glimpses along the way.
But it took Nate’s diagnosis to truly open my eyes to just how powerful God’s Word really is.
To open my eyes to the fact that this living word points me to the Word—the one who doesn’t just save me from or for some future moment but in the messiness of the here and now.
In the mundane routines of life. In the expectations and failures and hopes and dreams and, yes, even in autism. This message has sunk down into me, however imperfectly. It matters.
I want to help people to see what is going on in its pages, to drink deeply of its message and hear its call. Ken Taylor, who created The Living Bible and started Tyndale, was often asked what the best Bible was. His reply was always the same: “The one you read.”
It’s often easier for us to say we believe the Bible than to actually read it.
We half remember Bible stories from our childhood (and would be shocked at what is really in—and not in—them), we struggle over hard names and wonder what the point of Leviticus is anyway.
Sometimes it just feels too hard.
Study is for people who went to seminary and who know Greek. It’s stuffy and boring and takes the mystery and wonder out of our faith.
It doesn’t help when people like me with years of training are tempted to turn the Bible into a textbook. You know, the kind of book you are supposed to read but don’t? The kind that bewilders and puts you to sleep?
It doesn’t have to be that way. It shouldn’t be that way.
The Word of God is alive and powerful.
We need constant reminders. Nate has been one for me. But even so, it’s easy to get caught in the routine, the day to day.
For the past couple of years I have gotten to be a part of an amazing project. We started with Taylor’s simple premise and asked ourselves, what would it take for people to want to study the Bible?
Not textbook study. Love-letter study.
The kind of study that sinks down in so that when life happens we have an anchor, not an answer.
What if we used color and photography, images and art to open our eyes to what God is up to?
I got to be a part of a team that went through the entire Bible asking what we should (and could) illustrate well.
I got to rediscover the wonder of this thing we call the Bible, watching firsthand as each of us caught a glimpse of the breadth and the depth of God’s love for us. Remembering that this is His world, that He invites us to be a part of it.
He carries us home when we wander, tells the father of an autistic child that yes, He can handle this, too.
I want to help people understand what the Bible is all about.
Because in all of my crazy, messed-up life, in all of my knowledge and doubt and fear and wonder, I believe it is true.
Somewhere in the middle of it all, I also got a reminder that the process is never done.
Every day I have to open my eyes in wonder.
Open my eyes to see the wonderful truths in your instructions. Ps. 119:18
This is a Bible that you will not want to put down. Literally,
I cannot spend enough time in the Illustrated Study Bible.
Kevin O’Brien‘s work on this Bible is astonishing, bringing you a visual library to accompany God’s love letter — it feels like each page is a piece of art that is intellectually rich and visually unforgettable.
The Illustrated Study Bible brings Scripture’s message to life by giving you an entirely new visual study experience. The who, what, where, when, and why of the Bible come alive with stunning photos, illustrations, infographics, and full color maps integrated seamlessly with background material, study notes, and theme articles. The Illustrated Study Bible draws us closer to God by opening our eyes to Scripture’s living, powerful message. A visual, artistically and aesthetically beautiful, life-transforming experience, the Illustrated Study Bible is a remarkable invitation to a feast every soul is hungry for.
[ Our humble thanks to Tyndale for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
October 14, 2015
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yeah, that
You Are Not Enslaved to Your Past
Yes: "Christianity means change is possible. Deep, fundamental change." @JohnPiper
October 13, 2015
when things are pressing in and you’re pleading for some answers
I sat across from a woman who just kept looking up at the ceiling to keep herself from falling apart.
Looked at the ceiling like she was looking for answers from somewhere on high.
Looked at the ceiling and told me that she loved God and she hated God and right now was best of times and the worst of times and — that’s when she dropped her eyes hard like a gavel and half-demanded an answer—
and why does God strangely bless us when we’re half-estranged from Him?
It came out of her in one breath, like the exhale of a life.
And I waited.
Looked into her, not quiet knowing how to breathe. Sometimes the proof that God exists is that lightning doesn’t strike but quiet grace rains straight down.
Sometimes it’s incomprehensible grace that shakes you awake.
And when she bent her head low, chin to chest, and she breaks open like a rain and there was no hiding it, I went around to her, and I held her.
I held her.
Because six years can be an exhausting eternity when you’re in that ring dodging the horns of job loss and long hours and looming bills and accounts disappearing invisible.
When you need a new septic system, a new alternator, a new dream — and a possible one this time because the old one’s been busted and crazy glued one too many shattered times.
When everybody else has found their niche and their address and their way and you’re wondering if Someone has lost your number because you keep waiting and your’s never gets called and why does it feel like everyone else is moving ahead and everything in your world is falling behind and apart?
I hold her and sometimes it is best to re-break so you can heal right.
Arm around her, around the shoulder-wracked sobs, I can feel her finally feeling, feel all the weariness letting go, all the wounds bleeding clean, and this is where healing begins.
Why is it always much easier to forget that He loves us?
Why is it always much easier to forget that He likes us?
Is this is why we need to keep counting, counting blessings like gifts, counting all the ways He loves?
It’s true, it can seem much too easy — juvenile — but doesn’t the kingdom of heaven belongs to those who come like a child and counting a thousand gifts adds up to joy but I guess anyone can decide they don’t want joy? Naaman, he didn’t want to wash seven times in the river either.
Sometimes the great thing that heals us is doing a small thing again and again.
It isn’t a week after I held her that I hold our Levi, the one with pneumonia. And he’d known how the Spirit exhales and he had called to me in the dark, in the still of the lateness and the lights all out, “Mama? Moooom?”
And I had come to the boy thinking fever and his bottle of pills and a glass of water and he had coughed hard, shoulder wracked, and then he’d said it raspy, “They sang this line at Sunday evening church and I knew when I heard it that I had to tell it to you, Mom…”
He’s called me to come for this?
And he coughs like he’s breaking open, breaking like a storm, right into the crook of his bent arm:
“If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.“
And he rolls over into his pillow. Rolls into sleep holding his chest hurting hard. He’s sick. He says it hurts to breathe. But he’s called me in the middle of the night because that’s what’s urgent:
If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.
Why does He strangely bless us when we’re half-estranged from Him?
And I lay my hand on our boy’s back. He doesn’t know that I know that song — because I don’t always live like I know that line. And it’s for the cough wracked boy and the sob wracked sister and a time wracked world swathed in this atmosphere of amnesia:
God’s mercies are new every morning — not as an obligation to you, but as an affirmation of you. It right there in there in the sky every morning: Every sunrise proves the burn of His passionate heart.
The car can fail today and the kids and the dog and the fire detector and the dishwasher and the doctor and the whole free democratic world and it’s entire economic system but the mercies of God cannot and will not fail and His faithfulness is not merely great– it is unwavering.
And the God who so loved this cracked world that He gave, He hasn’t ever stopped giving, and He won’t stop giving today and it’s His very mercy that gets us from one moment to the next and we’re all walking around in an atmosphere of brazen affection.
Why does He strangely bless us when we’re half-estranged from Him?
Any Grace at all is always the most amazing of all.
I rub Levi’s back.
And that’s the answer I will tell him in the morning, tell him in the new mercies of the morning, the answer I will tell the woman asking why is it so hard to live loved?
That the word in Romanian for thank you, it is mulţumesc [multsu’mesk], a contraction of the Latin phrase ‘multum est’ meaning ‘it is much’.
That the word in Romanian for thank you is “It is much.” Like “It is enough and it is more than enough — it is much.”
A woman from Romania, she’d told me: “How much my life has been crippled by anxiety, guilt, self-condemnation and all the ugly rest! All because I hadn’t known I was so utterly cherished by God.”
All because I hadn’t know much I was loved God.
Why is it so much easier to forget that He loves us? So much easier to forget that He likes us?
Mulţumesc. Thank you. Say it — and then the remembering: It is much.
His love is so much.
When I feel like I’m sinking, there’s a way to know that I’m sinking in an ocean of grace… Count. each. gift.
And that’s what the Romanian sister had written me, “It’s such an astounding joy to find the way out of the vicious circle — I am up to #1500 now… ”
Multumesc. Thank you. And I remember: It is much. His love is so much.
Nothing is too much to handle when I think about the so much from His hand.
And the way out of the pressing “too-much” — is to whisper thank you for the providential “so-much”.
Levi breathes. He breathes pneumonia hard. And this world is hard as nails and Christ knew it and that’s why He came.
He strangely blesses the half-estranged — because the half-estranged are His beloved.
It is much — and that is the answer for every question in every language.
And Levi inhales. It is strange and for all the breaking ones and so-much real:
We inhale and we live loved —
the healing coming with each breath in all this ocean of grace.
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Related Post: The Problem of Evil? The Greater Problem of Good?
Many have asked about the 18 translations of One Thousand Gifts for family and friends?
… and this in English… with Romanian subtitles:
October 12, 2015
why we all need to exhale today
When I met Deidra Riggs, I wanted to sit real quiet and listen to her wisdom for hours. That’s Deidra — she lives this idea of Jumping Tandem with God — huge leaps of faith — and she makes these safe places to ask tough questions and to figure out — together — how to tear down the walls we have built to keep one another at a distance. She’s really something else. She writes about life as she sees it; about race relations in the Body of Christ; and about living with courage, even when you’re scared to death. Most of the time, she’s just trying to figure it out. But always, she’s saving a place at the table for you. It’s a grace to welcome the profound wisdom who is Deidra Riggs, to the farm’s front porch today…
words and photos by Deidra Riggs
Sometimes, breathing is the only prayer we can pray, and God hears our sigh and once again breathes the breath of life into us.
We exhale, and it seems like such a little thing. But some days, it is everything.
It is communion—intimate and more than breathing oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide.
It is sacred and it is holy: this agreeing with God that we need God, for all of everything, and His joyful entering in to our lives and ourselves and our very souls to make us one with Him.
We are gulping and breathing and sighing and gasping, and we realize our deep, deep hunger inside.
The biblical account of creation reveals an extremely intimate relationship between humanity and God.
Out of silence and darkness, God speaks, creating light and water and wind and waves.
God populates the earth with creatures that gallop and slither and hop across the ground.
God fills the sea with eels and whales and starfish and catfish. God creates trees that bear fruit and grass that reaches into the soil and up toward the heavens.
And then, from the ground, God crafts humanity.
The entirety of God’s love toward us tells this story of God Himself—all-knowing, all-powerful, all- and ever-present God—bending toward us, reaching out in our direction, coming toward us before we even knew there was a difference between up and down.
God loved us first, before we could rack up points or accomplishments or ever-increasing feats of genius to impress God and make Him want to love us.
We keep reaching, reaching, reaching up as if there is some ladder we should climb. Our vain attempts at getting God’s attention and improving our rank belie the truth that God is love, and because He is, He couldn’t help but love us first of all.
God stoops down and bends over us, even now, just as He did the day He scooped a handful of clay from the earth and made of it a human form, letting the soil pack itself around His cuticles.
Genesis tells us the story of creation, numbering the events in categories we call days.
All manner of living things were crafted from the spoken word of God.
Living trees and flowering plants and birds that fly and fish that swim and cows and dogs and ducks and llama; each one birthed into being by the Word of God and released into the world to make more of the same and to fill the earth.
But we’re the only ones over whom God stooped low and pressed His knees into the earth and welcomed dirt beneath His fingernails and shaped us with His very hands.
Ours are the bodies, created in His very image, beneath which God slid His hands while heavenly fragrances hung in the air and stars danced in the universe.
We are the ones God Himself lifted toward His heartbeat, and we are the only ones into whom God Himself breathed the breath of life.
Did you just inhale?
Almighty God. He is the first and the last; the beginning and the end.
This very same God bowed low to form us, and He also lifted us to Himself to give us life.
We are the children of the living God.
We didn’t do a single thing to make that true.
We didn’t score extra points or run the fastest race. Before we were created, God chose breath for us. He chose it from the beginning, and He continues to choose breath for us; for you. He reaches out to us, and He lifts us to Himself, giving us form and filling us with life.
There are days, or nights, or long stretches of weeks or months or even years, when breathing is the only prayer we’ve got.
The breath of our lungs, given to us from the beginning, and offered up as an act of worship. We inhale, and then we exhale. Each breath signs our names on the dotted line of dependence, whether we’re thinking about it, or not.
We inhale so we can keep on going. And then we exhale, marking the cessation of the striving and the seeking; the end of struggling and the sweating to be noticed and to win and to arrive.
How long can you hold your breath? Eventually, you’ve got to let it go.
We let go so we can live. It is a sweet surrender.
Here is a magnificent and true dichotomy: we cannot truly surrender to the Holy Spirit without the Holy Spirit first breathing surrender into us. It is a surrender unto surrender.
We want to live a life of significance, but we can’t live it until we release our hold on it.
A life surrendered to the Spirit of God is a life lived with open hands, palms turned upward in letting go. We have to let go so we can live.
We either want God, or we want significance. This is the crux of the matter.
There is no need for building ladders to the sky or jumping through hoops to be noticed by God.
The path to a life of significance leads to a dead end without the breath of the Holy Spirit to infuse us with the character and the image of an almighty and everlasting God. This is the God who loved us before we first gasped for air.
Surrender to the work of the Holy Spirit and you will come alive.
Exhale, and you will live. It is our direct reminder of the Holy Spirit at work in this world and on our behalf.
It is our immediate reminder that God is always reaching toward us and lifting us to Himself to breathe life into our long reach for a life that matters for something.
Breathe.
God will meet you there and receive your one, beautiful, miraculous breath as an act of worship —
and as a surrender of yourself into His purpose for your life.
I’ve read Deidra’s new wonder of a book and wrote a forward to all her wisdom — one to get on your reading list for sure: Every Little Thing: Making a World of Difference Right Where You Are. In this empowering book, Deidra calls you to accept God’s invitation to join Him in making a difference right where you are, regardless of your current life stage. For when God calls and we look over our shoulder and answer, “Who, me?” God always emphatically answers, “Yes, you.” Cannot recommend highly enough.
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