Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 193
September 16, 2015
Links for 2015-09-15 [del.icio.us]
Yes: "As great as He is in his majesty and holiness and eternality, it is the greatness of his mercy that truly leaves us in awe..." @davidcmathis
For Those Who Remain in Syria, Daily Life Is a Nightmare
"...perhaps four out of five residents had already fled what was once a bustling community..."
September 15, 2015
why you really need the best kind of story
Ann Spangler has a fascination with and love of the Scripture that have resulted in many books that have opened the Bible to a wide range of readers. Once a skeptic, Ann devoured the Narnia Chronicles and then read Lewis’ Mere Christianity. These books played a major role in her conversion. Through them she began to suspect that God was real, that He was better than she had imagined, and that He was offering her the chance to know Him. With barely a scrap of faith, she prayed that He would accept her life and reveal Himself to her. Since then, she has never looked back, never regretted the decision to follow Christ though it meant repenting of a whole lot of sin. Ann believes the best books are also honest books, and as an author she tries to be real about her own struggles and challenges, realizing that if God is going to do anything with her books it will only be because He specializes in revealing Himself through brokenness. It’s a grace to welcome Ann Spangler to the farm’s front porch today…
T he story captured me, almost against my will.
As a frizzy-haired, pot smoking , former college dropout, I had recently finished reading the Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien and was looking for another captivating read.
That’s when a friend lent me the seven books in the Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis. “Just be careful,” she warned. “The writer’s a Christian and his beliefs kind of seep into the books. Still, it’s a great story.”
Glad for the heads up and determined to fend off any religious messages that might be lurking within the pages of the story, I spent the summer finishing my course work and reading about the adventures of Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy as they explored the land of Narnia.
Despite my resolve to guard my heart, I couldn’t protect it from the light that kept streaming in whenever I read those books.
During an otherwise dark period of my life, joy kept sneaking up on me, with the subversive suggestion that there was a secret at the heart of the universe I had never suspected. Curious about Lewis and his beliefs, I began to read his apologetic works and eventually committed my life to Christ.
A traditional Jewish saying highlights the connection between God and storytelling by saying, “God created human beings because He loves stories.” Perhaps the opposite could also be said. “God created stories because He loves human beings.”
At the risk of putting words into God’s mouth, one might also quote a character in a Virginia Woolf novel, who remarked, “in order to make you understand, to give you my life, I must tell you a story.”
Surely the Bible is the story God is telling us so that He can pour His life into us.
But it’s not always easy reading.
Some of the stories strike us as bizarre. The genealogies can be tedious. We’re clueless about the culture.
But the more I’ve read the Bible, the more I’ve come to love it, especially its stories and the cast of characters who populate them. Certain of these have become so real to me that I consider them my spiritual ancestors, as though I’ve been mysteriously grafted into their family tree.
I can identify with their struggles to believe God and follow Him regardless of their own weaknesses and difficulties.
Take Sarah. She could be my great, great, great-beyond-counting grandmother.
Like her I had a child late in life (of course she was 90 and I was only 46 when I adopted my first child.) Like her, I’m a work in progress with a heart that’s sometimes filled with more shadows than light. Like Sarah, I struggle to hold on when God’s promises seem to take an agonizing amount of time to reach their fulfillment.
What I love most about her story is the laughter that’s threaded throughout it.
When God hears Sarah laughing at the outlandish promise He makes—that she will bear a child in her old age— He poses a question we must all answer: “Is anything too hard for God?”
Subsequent events provide Sarah with her own answer.
When Isaac is born, she finally gets the great celestial joke, that God always wins and that we win too as we place our trust in Him. So she names her son, Isaac, which means “laughter.”
Wouldn’t it be great to have a child named laughter? Every time you were tempted to worry about him, his name would remind you of God’s ability to triumph no matter what. We all need more “Isaacs” in our life.
When I traveled to Israel a few years ago, I had the privilege of visiting Sarah’s tomb in a region of the West Bank that is often off limits to tourists. I could hardly believe my good fortune not only in visiting her grave but in standing so close to the place where she and Abraham had pitched their tents and encountered God.
I could imagine her laughing as she eavesdropped on the conversation God was having with Abraham, assuring her 99-year-old husband that she would bear him a son.
It is not hard to envision her exclaiming: “After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?” (Genesis 18: 12, NIV) Standing in that place, so close to where Sarah had once lived, I could imagine the scene.
Wicked old. That is Sarah. Her skin hangs like sackcloth, wrinkled and rough. Yet hers is a face that still makes men look, so beautiful it once charmed kings.
Some might think her a fool for all the non-stop laughter. Her body shakes with it. But she is no fool, only a woman who can’t stop marveling at what God has done.
Though her husband is more than a hundred years old and she not far behind, she’s pregnant with his child. Who wouldn’t find that funny? Two old sticks kindling a fire!
But then it comes—another sharp pain snaking down her leg. Ow! The added weight is hard to bear, and loose joints make her wonder whether she will lose her balance and topple over.
Though the baby is so ripe she can hardly bend, she never complains. How could she since the Almighty has answered her prayers?
Sarah laughs again, this time because the baby is kicking, his feet thumping rabbit-like against her belly, telling her he’s ready to get going.
But how can a ninety-year-old woman survive childbirth? But Sarah has not forgotten the promise God made, first in a dream to Abraham, and then last year in broad daylight when he visited them both at their tent near the great trees of Mamre.
“Your wife will have a son.”
Listening at the door of her tent to the stranger’s promise to Abraham, she begins to laugh. “After I am worn out and my husband is old, will I now have this pleasure?”
And laugh she did and laugh she would until the day her son Isaac—whose name means “laughter”—is finally born. She and Abraham laugh together.
The joy rises up strong and wild and even were she to try she cannot push it down. “God has brought me laughter,” she says, “and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me. Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.”
And so it is that in her old age Sarah comes to understand that God has a sense of humor.
Despite every shred of trouble and every evil circumstance, she knows that in the end He will prevail, laughing His enemies to scorn.
That’s how I see Sarah at the age of ninety.
Cradling a child in her arms and laughing at the days to come because she finally gets it—that her loving, all-powerful God is not only in charge of the universe but that He is in charge of her small world too.
Had she been alive to hear the words of the prophet Jeremiah, I’m sure she would have nodded her head in fierce agreement as he proclaimed:
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29: 11, NIV)
Ann Spangler is an award-winning writer and the author of many bestselling books, including Praying the Names of God, Praying the Names of Jesus, and The One Year Devotions for Women. She is also coauthor of Women of the Bible and Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus and the general editor of The Names of God Bible. Ann’s fascination with and love of Scripture have resulted in books that have opened the Bible to a wide range of readers. She and her two daughters live in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
In Wicked Women of the Bible Ann Spangler tells the stories of twenty wicked and “wicked good” women in greater detail. At the end of each story, Ann provides a brief section including additional historical and cultural background as well as a brief Bible study. The fascinating stories of these women of the Bible reveal a God who stoops down to meet us where we are to extend His love and mercy. Highly recommending Wicked Women of the Bible for every woman seeking to know Him more.
[ Our humble thanks to Zondervan for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
September 14, 2015
what no one knows that you really need to hear
It’s when you came up behind me and put your arms around me in the kitchen last night while I was making food for your Dad.
The way you laid your head on my shoulder and you held me, mama in the daughter arms after all these years.
I reached up and laid my hand on your cheek, and it only takes a moment and mother and a daughter aren’t far apart anymore.
You know we come from a long line of women who have struggled in their own skin, right?
Girl, you’ve come from this long line of women —
Women who shunned anything silk or feminine because they never wanted a man to notice them because men did things you didn’t want them to and took things that weren’t theirs to take.
Women who wore bulky sweaters and baggy pants and walked around hoping a lot of yardage might make their souls invisible and avoided mirrors like an allergy that might make it hard to breathe.
Why is it that any reflective surface makes a woman see pounds and deflating ugly?
Did I ever tell you that I once followed a recipe in Seventeen magazine for DIY mousse? And went around with this sticky mess of hair that had sugar shaking out of it all day like a medical emergency case of dandruff.
And all the years the other girls were jaunting about in pink jelly shoes?
I had to wear black orthopedic shoes for an aching spine and have you ever tried to make black orthopedic shoes look right with white shorts? Numbers on tags have seemed like undeniable proof of ugliness.
And standing in a room full of primped women can make the self-hate gnaw right up your blushing insides.
Swim suits can taunt mean and clothes can mock loud and I’ve stood in front of mirrors and looked right in those eyes and whispered it out louder: Loser.
The boys always called me barn-board straight Annie.
Being a woman every day can be this mind field in self-maiming thoughts.
I’ve cut my skin with glass and blades and words and hated myself enough to write down a plan to die.
Remember that part in that book you read, our Hope-girl? When Annie told us how she’d yelled at herself in the mirror that she hated her and she found a roll of duct tape and tried to tape herself thin?
And she wound all those sticky expectations and the tape so tight around her middle that she couldn’t breathe?
Every woman should breathe peaceful in her own beautiful skin.
I’m seeing it in you — how you are being brave and laugh easy in who you are and no glossy, media-induced, photoshopped lies can steal away your God-given joy in being you.
Your soul is made to perfectly fit your skin… and you glow.
The way you’ve been going around here smiling, you make me think this, daughter of mine, that women could be this to each other:
We’ll tell our daughters at the sink and at the mirror and at the door, that your Father made you fearfully and wonderfully and uniquely and you are the perfect-sized you for a God-sized plan.
And we’ll say it in the dressing rooms and to the shaming thoughts behind closed doors and we’ll say it to every woman who hides: that God’s daughters fit in any swim suit, dress suit, shimmering suits, because they are suited up in the armour of Christ —
and no arrows from the media or the past or ourselves can harm us.
We will be sisters to each other and we won’t ever judge another sister and we will see each woman’s face as pure God-masterpiece because it’s the truth and we’ll tell each other what every woman needs to hear: You have the prettiest eyes.
Because it’s always first the eyes, always first the perspective and the way we see, and if the eyes have light, the whole body is full of light. We have to help our sisters see who they are in light of Christ — so radiant.
So we’ll say it a dozen time a day, to every woman who we meet because it’s the truth and she needs to hear it and no matter if she has a man saying it, she has sisters speaking into her scraped and bleeding places: You are so beautiful — so soul beautiful.
And we’ll watch our sisters’ eyes light — always first the eyes.
And we won’t ever let one of our sisters ever forget and we won’t leave even one woman behind:
The curve of a smile is a woman’s most perfect curve — and the only tag that matters is the one that says Robed in the Righteousness of Christ.
It may not be easy to be a woman in this world. But it is always perfect to be a woman in His hand.
Hope-girl? When we held on to each other late in the kitchen last night?
We are the women who let go all the woman-baggage that came behind and hold onto each other and affirm in the firm grip of Christ and did you hear me stand there in the kitchen and whisper to you what I heard the Father whisper about you?
You are a treasured possession, and love is being lavished on you and you aren’t ever rejected but loved everlastingly and over you, over you — God sings this everlasting love song.
It’s the last thing I thought of last night after you grinned and hugged me good night and I turned the lights out —
how when a woman smiles she shatters the dark.
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Related: Dear Women & Daughters: When You’re Tired of Media Voices Telling You What Beauty & Love Is
September 12, 2015
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [09.12.15]
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:
Oleg Bartunov via APOD
Dave McGlinchey
Joseph Brimacombe
exhale and enjoy the wonder of this rare phenomenon
Gabi Stickler
Gabi Stickler
Gabi Stickler
can’t help but smile a mile wide at this
Morkel Erasmus
10 remarkable finalists in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year
okay, maybe get out of the way?
Adrian C. Murray
Adrian C. Murray
Adrian C. Murray
enjoying the last days of summer – beautiful memories
maybe the best belly rub you’ve ever seen?
Sharif Mirshak, Parafilms, Montreal
some the creatures that make up 98% of the oceans’ biomass? Must see
smiling at this reunion
Newspix / Newspix/REX Shutterstock
okay, you won’t see this everyday…
live interview…. interrupted by a visiting blue whale
Modifeye
Modifeye
Modifeye
linger here for a bit?
Captivating photography that involves playful use of proportions, wildlife and unique concepts
and the splendor of this full blue moon in Australia?
he selflessly pays tribute to a late soldier every day – even though they never met
“It was the least I could do for him.”
don’t give up before the miracle happens
God’s mercies are new every morning – not as an obligation to you, but as an affirmation of you.
“God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out,
His merciful love couldn’t have dried up.
They’re created new every morning.
How great your faithfulness!
I’m sticking with God (I say it over and over).
He’s all I’ve got left.”
Lamentations 3:22-24MSG
Like this graphic? Simply click here for the whole library of free printables and tools:
how he’s creating smiles at 78 years old?
how an inmate offers to help save the life of this judge who sentenced him?
“I come to church a lot, I found God.
So, I thought maybe if I could do something for someone else, I’d do it.”
honoring the last known living search/rescue/therapy dog who worked at Ground Zero
It’s never too late to start; never too late to challenge yourself to do something different.
come away for a bit? for a virtual tour showing the splendor of Iceland…
his selfless act of kinds? what if we all did this?
…and he nails it: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
Monday Night, September 14: IF: Pray 2015
We look around this world and see immense brokenness, difficulty, pain, and suffering. The headlines in the news, pain all over the Middle East because of ISIS, and it kinda feels like the sky is falling. We’re going to come together with our people, in our places, and we are going to pray- as a generation of women. Let’s humble ourselves and ask God to open our eyes to the places that He wants us to rebuild. We are going to beg Him to use it for His glory. Because like with Nehemiah, we believe that we can be a part of rebuilding all that is broken in this world.
Your people + Your place
Click here to learn of the 3 ways for you to be a part of IF: Pray
September 14 – Pray with us
and the miracle of this? never gets old, ever
… we’re right now in the middle of the world’s worst refugee crisis since WWII. 60 MILLION people.Jesus said: I was a stranger & you welcomed Me in. Did we? Or did we say we were too afraid?
We thought He was the enemy so we didn’t. And He will say: But — didn’t I ask you to Love your enemies?
We thought that God hadn’t given us enough to share, so we lived through a lens of scarcity, and not the truth of abundance or generosity. So, no, actually — we didn’t welcome Him in.
And He will say: So you actually did not believe My grace was sufficient? You didn’t believe that My Perfect Love drives out all fear?
So I was thirsty and you gave Me nothing to drink? I was hungry & you gave Me nothing to eat? I was a stranger — and you really did not welcome Me in? Please… tell Me you welcomed Me in? (Matthew 25)
A CALL TO ACTION: Tomorrow, We Welcome Refugee SundayThis Sunday, tomorrow – September 13, 2015 we are inviting all churches and Christian Leaders to take a moment in your services and gatherings to discuss the incredible humanitarian tragedy.
Sign up to register for We Welcome Refugees Sunday and receive tools for your Sunday Service
and what if we always greeted each other like this?
“I know my Redeemer lives. I know my Redeemer loves me.”
Jesus — friend of sinners, break our hearts for what breaks Yours…
Right about now, you can hear it crystal clear,
There’s a Freedom that rings & it won’t be silenced —
Freedom that rings for the heroes who run straight into burning buildings & crisis & need,
Freedom that rings for a nation of neighbours, that rings for the Helpers & the Responders & the Givers who stand up to give a willing hand.
Freedom that rings loud because there is no dark that can ever stare light down, there is no destruction that can ever destroy redemption, and there is no way we will ever forget.
The greatest freedom we have
is the freedom to come right to God at any time, all the time,
and there’s no dark anywhere in this world that can ever stop hope from always rising.
#LetFreedomRing #
[excerpted from our devotions in our little Facebook community … come join us?]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
September 10, 2015
how to not miss your one life — or overcommit the one life you’ve got
When Susie Larson first interviewed me on her show Faith Radio, I knew I had met kin. I’m an intense introvert — I’ll answer a ringing phone less than a handful of times a year. But when I get off the phone with Susie? Absolutely energized. Because she speaks of Jesus — exudes Him, loves Him, knows Him, exalts Him. No one ushers you right into a sacred, God-saturated place quite like Susie Larson. And her latest book, Your Sacred Yes — is a book I’ve been counting down days to crack open and drink deeply from. Susie’s insights help: discern the best use of your time and gifts, confidently pursue God’s unique desires for you, stretch your faith and deepen your impact. I cannot recommend Susie Larson or her words to you highly enough — this woman is a gift to the church. On the farm’s front porch today…
I
have a question for you: Are we missing it?
Have we as God’s people—who endure this crazy-paced culture—given away a mindset that looks for and enjoys the presence of God?
Have we allowed the precious gift of expectancy to slip through our fingers?
How often do we cup our hand to our ear and listen for heaven’s song over our lives?
Are we so bogged down with life-draining commitments that we’ve forgotten how good a belly laugh feels or how rich a time of quiet prayer can be?
Do we relegate praise and worship to an hour on Sunday and thereby miss out on singing at the top of our lungs every other day of the week?
Has it occurred to the majority of us that God longs for us to take more life-giving path than the one we’re on?
Sometimes we over commit for all the wrong reasons (pride, insecurity, fear, hastiness).
Other times we have the best of intentions for giving away our time (a good cause, a great need, there’s nobody else).
Either way, we need to ask ourselves some probing questions:
Do the vast majority of our yeses increase our faith and fill us with a greater expectancy of how God is moving in our midst? Or, do they drain us to the point that we find ourselves weary, simply rushing from one thing to the next?
Are we captive to our commitments, or free to respond to God’s invitation to do life with Him?
Is our current path a catalyst to increasing joy and faith or does all of our rushing make us more prone to worry and fear?
When we assess honestly the time we give away to our various commitments, do we find behind it all a divinely inspired soul growing in grace and strength? Or are we a spent and weary soul, losing steam by the day?
Nothing drains us more than signing up for things God never asked us to do.
Yet, all too often that’s exactly where we lose our way.
When we live shackled to others’ opinions, expectations, and requirements, we give away our yes because of a lie. We commit to things in order to save face, and as a result, we miss out on God’s invitation to fully entrust ourselves to Him.
Days will fly by and sacred moments will continue to elude us until we decide to hit the brakes and take inventory of what’s driving us.
Sadly, once we’ve secured our eternity, far too many of us live like the rest of the world.
We rush from one thing to the next.
We worry about the same things the lost world does.
We enslave ourselves to the same things many others are addicted to. We commit ourselves to lots of things—many of them good things, but things God never asked us to commit to.
When we forget—or become too busy—to tap into the provision and power God has made available to us, we find ourselves weary, rushed, earthbound people who merely react to our circumstances.
From the outside looking in, we look like everybody else—tired, overworked, and underjoyed.
But Jesus invites us to live as joyful, secure, expectant people who respond to the nudges of the Holy Spirit within us, who live awakened to the adventure of faith God invites us to, and who believe that as kingdom people, everywhere we place our feet, the spiritual atmosphere changes, because Christ-in-us has led us there.
When we miss the greater promise written over our lives, others miss out on something God intended to give them through us.
Someone once said, “A thousand people wait on the other side of your obedience.”
How do we redeem our moments and eternally invest them?
We pray, “Lord, give me eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to do Your will.”
We refuse to run through our days without a sense of God’s presence. We cultivate a lifestyle of prayer
We accept our limitations and dare to say no if God hasn’t given us a yes
We tackle our everyday tasks with a heart of faith, trusting God to multiply our efforts and show us His heart for the things He’s given us to do
We embrace an expectancy that as we abide in Him and steward what He gives, more will be given to us and through us, when we’re ready for it
Consider this an invitation to break free from the bondage of others’ opinions, over-commitment, and the un-appointed obligations that drain us dry and steal our joy.
It’s time to reclaim our days so that our moments matter in the greater scheme of things. Both our nos and our yeses matter to God because He loves us best and He’s the one who can make the most of our days and our moments.
Jesus invites us to walk intimately with Him, to abide with Him and in Him in such a way that our life abounds in life-giving fruit—solid evidence that we’re connected to a supernatural Source.
He invites us to experience His kingdom power mightily at work in us, through us, and all around us.
That’s the invitation.
Life is a gift. Time is a treasured commodity.
When we open our hands and give what we have to Jesus—be it our moments, our gifts, our time, or simply room and space for Him to show up—we find life to be a sacred journey.
When we do life with a consistent awareness of God’s presence in our midst, we find joy.
And that’s the place where healing, fulfillment, and abundance happen.
Jesus invites us to live purposeful and passionate, focused and free.
It’s time to grab hold of our moments and cherish our days —
the way Jesus cherishes us.
Susie Larson is a talk radio host, national speaker, and author of ten books.
This is the book I’ve been waiting for. When Susie first told me about this book 2 years ago — I begged her to get the words down, because as a mama, a wife, a neighbour, a friend — I desperately needed every word. This is the book that hands you healthier, wiser new rhythms in this new season.
The Read of this Fall Season: Your Sacred Yes are daily life-giving, powerful hope for all of us.
[ Our humble thanks to Bethany House for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
September 9, 2015
when change is hard …. & it’s hard to say goodbye to a season
… so, somedays you need ice cream. And some crazy laughter and long sunlight and you need to really just get outside and feel life and breathe… And there days when change is painfully hard. This heart friend and renowned photographer gets it — Heather Avis, with the next glorious installment of our Unwrapping Life (have you checked these out? Your soul & summer will exhale its thanks to you) so…
guest post and photos by Heather Avis
Y eah… I am a bit of a health nut.
I’m the girl who slathers her kids in essential oils,
Blends up smoothies with heaping tablespoons of bee pollen and hemp seeds,
Makes mashed potatoes with cauliflower instead of the name sake potato,
The list goes on.
Then summer arrives with its top down, music blaring — and something in me gives.
Summer time is ice cream time.
This sugary, milky, treat which is not often found in our freezer, makes its way to our table during the weeks of summer.
On most summer evenings you will find my kids a sticky, sugary mess of delight.
I love the summer season.
And more than for it’s ice-cream, blasting sun and long days. There is something so easy and delightful about summer.
But I’ve learned in my life that even for us Southern California girls, the summer season must come to an end.
No matter how desperately I want to bask in the summer sun all year long, the last scoop of ice-cream will fill the last cone and a new season, one of kale and asparagus, will find its way to my table whether I like it or not.
What I am learning, no, what I am living, more and more with every summer, autumn, winter and spring is Jesus is Lord over every season. All the time. No matter what.
As I sit in the joy and ease of the last of summer I have learned I appreciate it more because of the other, more difficult seasons I have had to endure.
Seasons of infertility and my children undergoing life saving open heart surgeries.
Seasons of incurable sickness and the bitter chill of the unknown.
Seasons so cold, warmth can only be found when I cling to The Father.
As I watch my kids enjoy their ice cream in this summer season I thank God for the seasons that were. I thank God for enveloping me in the warmth of His faithfulness when I found myself having to navigate the valley of the shadow of death.
As I wash sticky fingers and kiss sugary faces I thank God for the seasons ahead.
I thank God that as I lift up my foot to step into the next season, He is graciously placing it down exactly where it should fall.
Exactly where it should fall.
As we lick the drips on the last of our ice cream cones here, I thank God for the kale to come —
knowing I can only experience the true goodness of one season —
because of the other.
Heather Avis is wife to her handsome and hardworking man Josh, and mother to the adorable Macyn, Truly and August. After working as an Education Specialist she found herself as a full-time stay at home mom when she and her husband adopted their first daughter, Macyn, in 2008. Shortly thereafter, in 2011, they adopted their second daughter, Truly. And in 2013, their son August was born and came home to be theirs.
Heather currently resides in Southern California where between oatmeal making, diaper changing and dance parties she is writing her first book and checking in with her wildly popular hit Instagram account @macymakesmyday, to share the awesomeness of all things Down syndrome and adoption. She cares fiercely for the underdog and believes the beauty of Jesus is found in the most seemingly uncomfortable places. She’s a hugger and would love nothing more than to sit across a table from you sipping an Americano and delving into all things awesome. You will also find Heather on Twitter here. Honest? She’s one of my favourite IG streams — me and tens of thousands of others just loving how this family sees life: @macymakesmyday
Links for 2015-09-08 [del.icio.us]
yes, yes, what she says right here... @dukeslee: "But where do we begin? Maybe? Right here."
The Hopeful Reality of Church Scandal
@LoveLifeLitGod: "The Scriptures are replete with passages about the refining work of God, both in the lives of individual believers and in the church as a whole." yes, this.
Europe's refugee crisis, explained
@VOX... please thoughtfully, prayerfully consider... what is happening is historic... and how we respond matters.
September 8, 2015
What Opening Up Our Doors Taught Me That No Sermon Ever Could
Growing up, Emily Wierenga never wanted to be a mother; she knew it would mean dying to herself, and this disillusioned pastor’s daughter wasn’t sure she was ready to give up everything for someone else. All she wanted was to be seen, heard and loved. This changed when she moved home at 26 to care for her mother who had brain cancer. It was the beginning of her own death, and the seed of a deep longing to live for others. A few years later, when Emily had babies of her own, Jesus whispered in her ear—“Will you give even more? Will you take in two more children whose mother can no longer care for them?” And so, for the next 12 months, Emily and her husband had four boys under the age of four—and peace, identity and purpose were found in the letting go, in learning to trust her Father’s love. Emily shares this story in her new memoir, Making It Home, and she shares it here with us. It’s a grace to welcome Emily to the farm’s front porch today…
We are downstairs by the woodstove, the fire making its warm, crackling sound—the phone rings.
We let it ring a couple of times. I slowly reach for the cordless.
“Hello?”
It’s Ashley, a girl I met ten years ago through Young Life. I lost track of her for a while, but learned recently that she had two small boys and had taken them with her when she left her boyfriend after he’d pushed her down the stairs.
She was trying to juggle school while finding a place for her and the boys to live.
And life was unraveling.
“I can’t do it,” she says, crying into the phone. “I can’t do it anymore, Emily. I can’t be a mom.”
I swallow. It’s the same thing I’ve thought about myself a thousand times.
I tell her it’s normal, that every mom feels this way. “No, Emily, this is bad. Trust me, I’m not a good person right now.” I ask her to take a few days and pray about what she wants to do, and then call me back.
“Okay,” she says.
But even as I hang up the phone I know I need to go into the city.
I need to bring those boys home.
Trent’s eyes catch mine over the heads of our sons.
“I’ll make supper tonight,” he says, because he knows. The torn, exhausted look of someone trying to pull another person out of quicksand.
Soon there will be double the number of snow boots in our entrance and double the beds and double the runny noses.
I never wanted to be a mother, growing up.
Being a mom meant spending yourself, always. It meant sacrificing your body, all varicose veins and weary. It meant wiping noses and bottoms and putting Scooby-Doo Band-Aids on knees. And now my heart has stretch marks.
I don’t have time to figure out the answers. I just have time to make beds and find car seats, and God will take care of the rest. Nothing surprises Him, and even as we cling to each other He is making room for a miracle.
* * *It has been one of those weeks of wrestling with the angels.
Of working out on the elliptical while the kids are napping, of listening to music and weeping, of speaking to a God who is more in love with us than I ever imagined. Praying one night for these little ones coming, and the next night for my boys and wondering if we are doing the right thing.
I see the lights of our car as it pulls into the driveway and we all stand in the doorway of the house, the glow from the kitchen behind us, and I hope we look welcoming.
And slowly, out of the dark of the garage emerge two tiny little boys, the taller one holding the shorter one’s hand. They both have backpacks and they look so small between the drifts of snow as they walk the path to our house.
Aiden says “Hi,” in a sweet voice as they slowly make their way to us. I bend low when they arrive, look in their eyes, say, “We’re so glad you’re here. You can call me Auntie Em.”
I peel their winter jackets from them, their faces too old for their bodies. We show them their beds. Sam in a playpen in the den; Kasher in a crib in the nursery, Danny on the top bunk in Aiden’s room, and Aiden on the bottom.
We put them in their pajamas, brush four boys’ teeth, say prayers and sing “Jesus Loves Me” beside each of their beds and hold them close so they won’t feel alone.
Trent and I sit upstairs on the couch in the dark. Side by side. Waiting for Immanuel to come and save us.
* * *Sunday mornings are a panic, feeding four little boys in their Thomas PJs and putting them on the potty and changing them into four wrinkled pairs of dress pants and four dress shirts.
And we stumble into the pew at church, a family of six with bed heads and penitent hearts.
We are a full house, and there are toys and boots and mud and soup-stains, and sparing the guinea pig from sticky hands and rising countless times in the night when all of them get sick, which is all of the time, and trying to be like Jesus when we’ve had no sleep.
And every once in a while Trent and I look at each other across a mess of tousled heads and we see the person we want to be: the one hiding beneath the grime of the day-to-day, the one that weeps for all the children who have no one.
“I love you,” we say, tired, to the other.
I know the first few months will be the hardest, like bringing home a newborn who feels like a stranger and then one day you wake up and he’s become family.
We pray a lot with them, teaching Danny and Sam how to bow, and they do it over snacks and dessert and for their mommy too.
And I am relearning prayer, the way it is a kind of desperate plea when no one is listening and me.
I recall how the boys crowded around Trent after bath time for a Bible story, ages four, two, one, and six months, all in Trent’s lap, and it becomes my prayer. All of it.
That this boy will know the fullness of God’s love, and that this love will become his Savior, here in the dark.
And one day, one week after they arrive, I am doing crafts with the boys, painstakingly gluing Danny’s hundredth fuzzy ball to his creation, wondering why God has asked me to do this, a woman like me who has big ambitions and very little patience, when Danny looks at me and he says, “Emily, you’re doing a good job.”
I am learning that being a woman is about giving until it hurts, and then receiving so much that my soul might break.
Because we create with our words, with our hearts, with our minds, even when our wombs are empty.
Even when she physically can’t conceive, a woman is always birthing.
Always in labor.
Always loving, because there are people growing around us, and because of us.
There are husbands. There are someone else’s children. There are friends and guests and all of these require the gentle surrender of a woman’s time and passion.
And in turn, the Lord turns and tells us,
“Well done, my good and faithful servant.”
Even sometimes through the voice of a child.
Emily T. Wierenga is an award-winning journalist, columnist, artist, author, blogger and founder of The Lulu Tree. Her work has appeared in many publications, including Relevant, Charisma, Desiring God, The Gospel Coalition, Christianity Today, Dayspring’s (in)courage and Focus on the Family. She is the author of six books including the travel memoir Atlas Girl and speaks regularly about her journey with anorexia. She lives in Alberta, Canada, with her husband, Trenton, and their children.
In her latest book Making it Home, Emily takes readers on an unconventional journey through marriage, miscarriage, foster parenting, and the daily struggle of longing to be known, inviting them into a quest for identity in the midst of life’s daily interruptions. Highly recommending Making it Home: Finding My Way to Peace, Identity, and Purpose.
Sign up for a FREE Making It Home webcast on peace, identity and purpose featuring Liz Curtis Higgs, Holley Gerth, Jennifer Dukes Lee and Jo Ann Fore (with Emily Wierenga as host), 8 pm CT on September 10. Once you sign up here you’ll be automatically entered for a giveaway of each of the author’s books!
[ Our humble thanks to Baker Publishing Group for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
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