Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 246

How to Begin Forgiving Our Parents: Becoming Human

Today, an author, friend, another mama of 6, living not off land, but sea, a woman of deep wisdom and whom I hold in the highest esteem — Leslie Leyland Fields is on the farm’s front porch with a needed story on forgiving our parents:

 

My father had a stroke. Three weeks later, I flew down from Kodiak to be with him, just the two of us. He was in a rehab facility by then. I flew into Orlando, rented a car, and drove to the facility, wondering who I would find, what would be left.

The last time I saw him, a few months before, he had all his faculties. He walked painfully slowly with a walker, but he was upright and cogent, though he never said much.

He barely spoke to me my entire life, or to any of my siblings. I had seen him three times in 30 years. I knew something was wrong with him, though I had not yet found the name for his detachment, his inability to love others, even his own children.

What would be left of him? And was there any chance to build a relationship even now, near the end of his life?

I inched down the hallway as I approached his room. I peered around the doorway and saw it was a room for two. A figure lay curled on the bed, and then, through a half-open curtain, I saw another man in a wheelchair. I entered tremulously.

My father was lying on his side, curled knees to chest. He was wearing shorts. His jaw hung open, all his teeth gone now. He was much thinner, yet his legs were solid still, muscular.

What do I do? What do I know about this—visiting the sick, the elderly, a father?

I felt as if I was supposed to know, but I didn’t.

Do I wait?

I had come five thousand miles, and my time was short. I didn’t want to wait. I inched closer to the bed, deciding . . . yes, I would wake him, if possible.

I touched his shoulder through the thin jersey, lightly, and watched his face. I held my fingers there for a moment, and he blinked; then eyes opened.

He looked directly at me without moving his head. Seeing me, his eyes filled with tears and, still looking, he began to weep, a silent, shaking weeping, his whole body shuddering as he sobbed, his head still lying on his hands.

I froze. I had never seen my father weep—or even teary or sad. He seldom showed emotions.

I was torn in half. My face crumpled.

I kept my hand on his shoulder to comfort his racking body, and there we were, bodies touching, both shaking in silent sobs, our faces lost in sadness and grief. I knew he could not speak or name the sorrows that shook him, but it seemed to me we wept, the two of us, for his life, for his long, sad life, for his breaking body, his tangled mind, and a tongue that was now nearly stilled.

I cried that I had not seen him sooner. I cried for thirty years of absence from his life. We were crying for all that was lost to us both.

Later, I could not but wonder at this: the stroke had rendered him more fully human than I had ever seen him. I had not expected this: I saw my father through eyes of mercy and kindness. And I was sad as well.

Did it really take a stroke to render him worthy of pathos?

________________________________

Look across now at whatever terrain separates you from your father, your mother, your mother-in-law, your stepfather, even your grandparent. Is it possible that someone is there on the other side of the road, someone like you, stripped, knocked out, unable even to ask for help? Might that person be wounded also?

I am not insisting as you look that you feel a flood of emotion, as I did in those moments. I am not even insisting on warm feelings. Instead I am inviting perspective.

As you look into your parents’ lives, consider the words of Jesus on the cross as He struggled for breath, His body so bloodied He was unrecognizable. He had done no evil, no wrong at all, ever.

Yet He was executed as a criminal. Jesus hung there, pinioned like a dove, and uttered the most startling words ever: “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.”

You may not be able to pray that prayer right now, but consider where it leads us.

It schools our hearts in empathy and “trains our spirits in compassion,” as Eugene Peterson has written. More than this, he continues, it allows “for the possibility that ‘they know not what they do.”

How many of our parents intended the harm they caused? How many acted in ignorance and are ignorant still? How many are stuck in their woundedness, unable to see, to move?

This is what we’re doing now. We are training our spirits in compassion.

When we do this, we discover or remember again the frailty of our parents, the burdens they bore, the weight of their own parents’ sins upon them.

We discover their inherent worth as human beings. And we’ll find something even larger happening. When we truly see them in all their fullness, we become more alive, more awake, more fully human ourselves.

 

Forgiving our Fathers and Mothers  by Leslie Leyland Fields & Dr. Jill Hubbard. Copyright ©2014. Used by permission of Thomas Nelson.

 

Photos of Leslie with memories of her father, by Leslie Leyland Fields

My friend Leslie Leyland Fields is an award-winning author of eight books, a contributing editor for Christianity Today, a national speaker, a popular radio guest, and a sometimes commercial fisherwoman, working with her husband and 6 children in commercial fishing on Kodiak Island, Alaska where she has lived for 36 years.

 She knows how many of us struggle with the deep pain of a broken relationship with a parent. Through compelling personal stories from Leslie Leyland Fields and Dr. Jill Hubbard, combined with a fresh look at the Scriptures, Forgiving Our Fathers and Mothers: Finding Freedom from Hurt and Hate illustrates and instructs in the practice of authentic forgiveness, leading you away from hate and hurt toward healing, hope, and freedom.

 

Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

How to Get Through Snowmaggedon & Everything Else that’s Burying You

‘Look, the only guys that watch the radar like this are the guys who fly.”

“And the guys who farm.”

Yeah, okay, I’ll give you that — I nudge him — farmers and the flying guys always watching the sky.

The Farmer sitting there in his worn-out Wranglers and tattered t-shirt looks up from The Weather Network and that radar swirling across the screen like a snow windmill.

“Looks like more’s coming.”

Yeah, always more coming. What are they calling this? Snowmaggedon?

I slop up some cesspool from the bottom of the fridge, reciting it to myself: full of grace and truth, verse 14.

Then this week’s verse, there’s the crescendo: “And from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace” — gift upon gift.

Flip over the laundry. Sure, John could have written, rightly, that we’ve all received “truth upon truth.” But what he writes isn’t that. What he writes is the scandalous: “grace upon grace.”  Grace gets the emphasis.

John would go on to write truth or a derivative thereof a total of 55 times in his Gospel. There is never a minimizing of truth.

But the thing is: If truth isn’t full of grace —- it was never truth in the first place.

If truth isn’t formed by grace — then it forms into an untruth.

Grace gets the emphasis.

Boys bicker. Fingers point. Teenagers huff and puff like wolves about to blow some hog house down. Tensions over what happened, when, to whom, what is the truth, have me tauter than some fence wire strung up for a bull.

Grace gets the emphasis.

It’s the last time John writes the word grace in the gospel of John, there in verse 16. Why not ink the truth of more grace?

The actual Greek of verse 16 is  χαριν αντι χαριτος (ka-riv anti kar-i’-tos)… Grace anti grace.  The word anti is a Greek preposition with several meanings, but scholars generally believe that the truest rendering is upon.  Because He was full of grace and truth, from Him we all received grace upon grace, grace on top of grace, one gift stacked on another gift.

That’s what The Amplified Version reads: “gift [heaped] upon gift.”

There’s more than 3 feet snow down the back walkway to the barn. John didn’t have to write much more about grace because he wrote the last word on grace: that it would always keep relentlessly coming —- Grace heaped upon grace. Gift heaped upon gift Always more coming.

No matter what is on the radar — there’s always more grace coming.

The spruce trees hold their limbs out for more of what’s coming.

I stir sauce on the stove, stare long out the window, snow falling on cedars. Think about what it means to wear grace.

“There is no more wonderful word than grace,” Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones, the great British Bible teacher, said: “It is not merely a free gift, but a free gift to those who deserve the exact opposite.”

Mercy is about not getting; Mercy is God not giving us what we deserve.

Grace is about getting; Grace is God giving us gifts, exactly what we don’t deserve.

Grace isn’t merely a free gift to the good enough — it’s a free gift to those who don’t deserve any gift at all.

Is there a verse anywhere in the Bible like this? To write over the to-do lists and the too-late-darn-it-all-already-messed-that-up lists, words to stick to the fridge, write on the walls, right up your arm:

Because He was full of grace and truth —— from Him we all received one gift after another.

So that is why Paul says, “His grace is sufficient for us.”

This isn’t Snowmageddon — this is Graceageddon.

Graceageddon. It won’t stop coming, covering your mistakes, covering you in love. There’s got to be more than 5 feet out there in the orchard?

Jesus can save you single-handedly. So rest your weary hands in His.

You can believe in grace a lot — but you only start living when you believe in grace alone.

You don’t have to pull yourself up by the bootstraps — you just have to let Jesus draw close.

The snow’s quiet. Everything hushing now. You can feel that drawing close.

The kids are out there somewhere in all this white. Probably that guy named Simon’s out there somewhere too.

That guy who just walks in the snow. Walks miles in the grace that keeps coming down. He goes in circles. Yeah, do I get that.

He makes art. What we all do.

Simon lets his feet make art with every step. Just in the canvas of grace right in front of him.

Sometimes your art will only be seen from the sky, from the perspective of heaven.

The wind will come. Simon’s art will be blown away. Simon knows this.

He still makes art with everyday fallen grace. Simon still creates art knowing it could be gone the very next day.

Then why bother?

Because there will more grace given tomorrow. For more. Always more coming.

There will be more meals to cook tomorrow. More dishes, more laundry. You’re going to have pick up coats and boots and papers and books all over again tomorrow. You can still make art with everyday fallen grace. You can still create art knowing it’ll be gone the very next day. Because there will more grace given tomorrow. To make more. Always more grace coming.

Grace upon grace. And for all the mistakes.

We’re all living in Graceaggedon.

Christ is this endless front of grace —- enough grace for every screaming mother and every addicted father, enough grace for every using teenager and every abusing past and every useless day.

And it won’t stop coming: enough grace for all the raging five-year olds and all the regretting 70 year olds and all the cheaters and speeders and deceivers and for all of us who are all of that.

Enough grace for loving the kid who makes you want to throttle yourself, enough grace for the road that stretches out relentlessly in front of you, enough grace for every temptation, every testing, every trial — and then more will just keep on coming.

Grace is the front that just keeps coming. Grace gets the emphasis.

I exhale.

Christianity isn’t about good people taking vitamins to be even better.

It’s good news for bad people who are sick and tired of failing to get better.

We get grace! Gift upon gift, grace upon grace, covering mistakes — a daily canvas to make art that is always seen from heaven — art. that. is. eternal.

Grace is the only relief that never stops coming for you. Grace is the only love that will come through anything for you and has nothing to do with you do. Grace keeps falling to catch the falling.

You can see it out the window, you and the farmers and the guys watching the sky— how the snow keeps keeps coming straight down.

That’s what all this is: Graceageddon. Grace is one-way love that just keeps coming.

Flakes fall, down of angel wings.

You can feel that in the midst of any storm, snow soundlessly falling.

Grace is weightless. Even here, you could fly.

 

 

Bible Study for the Rest of Us: Every Wednesday in 2014, Lord willing, we’ll unpack that wk’s #TheJesusProject memory verse from the book of John:  Scripture Memorization for the Rest of Us

Next Wednesday, we are memorizing and unpacking the 5th verse of #TheJesusProject: ”Do Whatever He Tells You.” John 2:5

Related:

1. Print Out all #TheJesusProject Memory Prints from the book of John here: Scripture Memorization for the Rest of Us: #TheJesus Project

2. Week 1 of #TheJesusProject’s Study: The #1 Organizing Tip Nobody Tells You

3. Week 2 : How to Get Through the Dark Places: #PullACliffYoung

4. Week 3  How to Live When Life Just Hurts

5. .My own stumbling way of living “gift upon gift.”

( because someone asked? Malakai’s happily ridiculous cow hat )

Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

What to Do When You’re Told “No”

Some women make your heart breathe a sigh of relief. My Word-sister Holley Gerth, who loves words, baked goods and connecting with the hearts of women, does just that for me in the deep places. She does so as a best-selling author, life coach, and encouraging blogger. Holley makes her home in the South with her husband, Mark, and she’d have you over for coffee anytime. A grace for us all to share coffee with her today on the farm’s front porch…

 

We live in a world of words.

Yet out of millions of syllables and sentences two little letters seem to hold the most power: “no.”

We fear no.

We avoid it.

We misunderstand it.

But being able to say and hear “no” are essential to surviving and thriving, to loving and being loved, to following Jesus.

Our living Word actually said the word “no” a surprising amount. Usually to what looked like excellent opportunities on the surface…

“No” to becoming King. {John 6:15}

“No” to offers of instant satisfaction, wealth and power. {Matthew 4:1-11}

“No” to coming right away when Lazarus became deathly ill. {John 11}

It’s the last one that causes me to pause most. The other two seem like simple spiritual choices. But the third?

Someone Jesus loved was dying. Yet he said “no” when asked to come immediately and instead waited two more days.

When He made that choice —  it hurt the hearts of Mary and Martha.

“Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”{John 11:21}.

When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” {John 11:32}

Two friends Jesus deeply cared about were essentially saying to him, “If you had said ‘yes’ then we would not be hurting and disappointed right now.” Jesus felt the pain of that “no” in his humanity.

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. {John 11:33}

Saying “no” hurts—even when it’s God’s will. Especially when we have to say it to people we love and then watch pain that might have been prevented enter their lives because of it.

It’s remarkable to see how Mary and Martha responded in this incredibly difficult situation. They wondered why Jesus didn’t make a different decision, they shared their disappointment, they showed their grief.

Yet they did something wildly courageous too: they received the “no” without turning against the one who said it.

We wrestle with the same as believers in God and friends to each other: Can we hear “no” and still believe we’re loved? Can we reply with grace in the middle of our desire to have a different answer?

Real friends love your “no” as much as they love your “yes.”

Mary and Martha received a “no” when they wanted Jesus to come right away. But that “no” led to the resurrection of Lazarus—a miracle beyond what they could have imagined when they first asked Jesus to come.

I wonder if Mary, Martha, Lazarus and Jesus embraced and wept again when they were reunited. But this time the tears would not have been from sorrow.

Instead the tears would be the kind we shed when we see how God can transform even a painful “no” into a glorious “YES!”

It’s a divine mystery: When we say and hear “no” freely, we give God room to work, to amaze us, to give us back to each other again.

And even when love says “no” along the way, it always leads us to a greater “yes” in the end.

To the relief that, really?

We’re going to be okay.

 

 

 

With her trademark positive encouragement and probing questions for self-reflection, Holley encourages women to spend less of their lives regretting and more of their lives truly living. She shows them how to guard their hearts against despair and look to the future with confidence, remembering that they are part of a greater plan and nothing can stop God’s purposes for them. 

Refreshing, reviving – life re-making. On my nightstand right now — and breathing courage and joy into the days. You’re Going to Be Okay: Encouraging Truth Your Heart Needs to Hear, Especially on the Hard Days. This book is fresh hope for every woman.

Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

[After the SuperBowl] Why It’s Good to Think About Losing This Week (Because This is How You Win)

In the middle of a stiff winter wind, she asks to go to the beach.

That’s where she says she wants to celebrate the turning of her calendar year.

To stand on the frozen snow and turn her face directly into whatever is coming this way.

We’re the only ones there.

Nothing can mean nothing, and everything means something. Yes — everything.

We walk the long boardwalk, our footsteps echoing hollow. She will be 61 this year.

We stand on iced sand hemmed with white snow and she says nothing, just gazes out at bared waters. I don’t ask her what she’s thinking.

The sunlight seems paled, hardly there in the numbing cold.

I do watch the way her hair moves in the wind, white waves of their own.

We wander down to where the waves crashes on the stones. The water breaking its way on the unwavering.

Does her silence say this, that this was the way to live? The water lets go again and again on the granite, this oceanic surge of song, this symphonic crescendo. Is there anything more beautiful than the wild surrender to the rock?

The song is always found in the surrender.

Mama knew there’d be days like these, when I’d see. How many more years do I have Mama to walk the winter shore?

Her hair is whiter than winter and is this the season we’re already in? I want spring again. I feel like the child, our shoulders touching here at the sea.

There’s a whole lifetime of memories here at the lake and how many Sunday picnics of fried chicken have we had right up there at the lighthouse?

She’d serve extra helpings of green coleslaw and I’d pump the swing high and I could see how we might soar straight out over the lake. There’s a time when you think nothing will end.

I lean into her and she leans into me, and we’re warmer like this, close. Doesn’t there have to be more than a decade left of this? And there doesn’t have to be anything. The waves keep breaking. Couldn’t she stay until she’s 117?

When you wake to losing someone, you win love.

When you realize that what you have, you will lose —  you win real eyes. You win grateful joy.

It comes across the water and I turn to face it directly:

It’s only when you realize everyone you love will one day leave you— that you really begin to love. I reach over for Mama’s hand and she does that, she squeezes mine softly and that says more… most.

Someday, it is possible, I could stand here on my own 61st. I can close my eyes and almost see that.

How then she will be the memory already flown across the waters. How the song will sing on and I will hear notes that were long hers.

And it comes, a wave over me: How I will miss her.

That may be it: The way to experience a moment of unlimited elation — is to take a moment to imagine unexpected limitation.

Close your eyes long and imagine days without sight. And you open them to a brighter light. Imagine no water. And the next cold glass quenches like desert rain. Envision life without the loveliness of those you love — and you see how much you love.

Her half smile there in the wind, it makes me half hurt, her pure worn beauty.

There’s a way to wake up and not to live numb.

The way to love life is to imagine losing it.

He who loses his life finds it.

The water keeps giving away to the shore.

One day, all this will be gone.

The sun, it seems so strong now, bright across water.

Mama, she lets the wind blow her hood right back and I don’t feel numb and there is a theological term for this– all this:

Grace.

Fullblown grace.

Standing there, her and I,  we watch as it comes straight across the waters–

as it comes directly this way.

Us here and and alive and in awe that any of this is at all …

This wind awaking everything.

 

 

 

 

Happy February! Research shows counting just 3 gift-blessings/day increases happiness by 25%… Why yes, please!

Come on a scavenger hunt for God’s gifts every day?

Why bother?

Why bother keeping a gratitude list of His gifts?

Because if you keep a gratitude list, you:

1. Have a relative absence of stress and depression. (Woods et al., 2008)

2. Make progress towards important personal goals (Emmons and McCullough, 2003)

3. Report higher levels of determination and energy (Emmons and McCullough, 2003)

4. Feel closer in their relationships and desire to build stronger relationships (Algoe and Haidt, 2009)

5. Increase your happiness by 25% — (Who wouldn’t want a quarter more happiness!) (McCullough et al., 2002)

Who doesn’t want all that? Just three gifts a day. 

“… that habit of discontentment, it can only be driven out by hammering in iron that is even sharper —

The sleek pin of gratitude.” ….

~ {One Thousand Gifts}

 How to Count Gifts?

~ Print out the whole year of Joy Dares – put on your fridge, have it at the dinner table, over the kitchen sink. Have a family scavenger hunt for His gifts everyday and enter to win a Nikon D90 camera

~ Check out the free #1000gifts App … for iPhone or iPad… the (free) #1000gifts app is like your own mobile gratitude journal to snap photos and record notes of your gifts from the Giver. So many so loving it. 

Blog your 1000 gifts, or tag #1000 gifts on Instagram, or join us on Mondays and link up to the list on your blog, or record a legacy of your 1000 gifts in the One Thousand Gifts 60 Day Devotional

And, if you’d like to be entered into the monthly draw for a JOY BASKET  (including a $100 Amazon gift card), share your gifts everyday in the Facebook Gratitude community and come the end of the year (after recording only 3 gifts a day/1000 gifts) … be back here to enter for a Nikon D90 camera! Give thanks to Him in the assembly!

Giving thanks in everything because we fiercely believe that Christ can redeem anything.

Join us? And happily change everything by keeping your own crazy list of One Thousand Gifts? Dare you to Joy! Take the dare to Fully Live!

1. Grab this month’s Free JOY DARE Calendar with 3 daily prompts to go on a scavenger hunt for God’ gifts … {or write down any gifts you choose. Use the free app.} 2. Count 3 gifts a day and you have over #1000gifts in 2013. Jot them down in the numbered One Thousand Gifts devotional journal — The Farmer’s writing in his with a red pen and daily – the numbers in the journal already there! Motivating… 3. Share your gifts everyday in our beautiful Facebook community to enter everyday for the monthly $100 Amazon draw (or link to your blog post with your list of gifts). 4. Count #1000gifts in 2014 and enter to win a Nikon DSLR camera with lens. Slow Down. Savor Life. Give thanks. Believing something is one thing. But the Best only comes when you decide to Be Living it. Please, jump in, make your life about giving thanks to God! — Just add the direct URL to your specific 1000 gift list post… and if you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other in our refrain of thanks by sharing the community’s graphic within your post.

Give thanks to the Lord! His Love Endures Forever!

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Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

Only the Good Stuff – Links that are Multivitamins for the Weekend

20 of the most amazing places on this beautiful planet of ours

Yours, LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. ~1 Chronicles 20:11

The Absolute Must Read Post of the Week

Pure Inspiring: When Pancakes Taste Best

Owning less and living more

The Post I Keep Coming Back to all week:

What To Do When Your Resolutions Seem Like Failures Already

The One Simple Thing A Parent Can Do … a love like this? Chokes up.

Those people who are always on time? How do they do it?

I read this one aloud to the kids:

The 4 important habits of punctual people

One Person can Change a Culture:

How one company surprised everybody in the midst of the storm 

And a Whole Lot of People Can Really Change a Culture:

What We Can Do in the Midst of Storms

Wow: How to have a happy home

Need some creativity and efficiency in the kitchen?

And we thought is was only fairytales?

Stop. Chasing. God.

The Read on the top of the Stack here on the Farm …

Can not put this one down … a breathtaking read:

Chasing God

Post of the Week Here:

How to Make Time and Space for the Life You Want

#GameChanger #LifeChange

Breathtaking:

“…the whole earth is full of His glory.”

Isaiah 6:3

Who loves like this?

Greater love has no one than to lay down our life for our brother… or sister.

{Consider turning off music by clicking the speaker bar near the bottom of  the left margin?}

An inspiring young man with Down Syndrome opens his own restaurant?

By His grace, we can do hard, amazing things…

{Consider turning off music by clicking the speaker bar near the bottom of  the left margin?}

This. is. amazing. grace.

{Consider turning off music by clicking the speaker bar near the bottom of  the left margin?}

[ We'd love to have you join our community on Facebook for daily morning devotionals?

Or follow ridiculous farm happenings on Instagram?  ]

That’s all for this weekend, friends. 

Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.

Give Thanks. Love well. Re - joice.

Share Whatever Is Good. 

Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

How to Live when Life Just Hurts [#TheJesusProject3]

The logic took on skin.

The Logos, the Logic, the Word, the Lord, moved right into the neighbourhood, moved right on into the house.

What are the chances that He’d get right up under my skin?

An old girl can hope? Pray? Both. Both would be good.

They say a bunch of them have seen His glory.

But I’m the girl you can count on to be out-of-fashion late, the one who forgets dentist appointments, who shows up at the wrong place, wrong time, hopelessly schedule-challenged, and oh yeah, do I miss Him a lot of the time.

They’ve seen Him a lot, have they?

My eyes can ache, stress cataracts, filmy faith.

Somebody else, some glossy saint, may have seen His glory, the Shekinah come down in some blinding blaze, but likely I was scraping burnt egg crud from the stove top again, like picking at a bad scab every morning, and I missed Him. Again.

And the Word became flesh

and dwelt among us,

and we have seen His glory,

glory as of the only Son from the Father,

full of grace and truth.

They say that this is the verse that encapsulates the essence of the  book of John.

Divinity and humanity indivisible, incomprehensible, in Christ.

They say that this is one of the most important verses in all of Holy Script. This is the radical happening. That earthiness meets holiness under a sheer sheath of skin? It could happen again.

They say that the word dwelt means “to tabernacle.” The Logos, the Logic, the Word, wrangled Glory into into an envelope of thin skin and pitched His tent among us. The pillar of cloud, the pillar of fire, pulled on a skin?

Take that to the bank and live your life on wealth of it:

Your God’s not absent, distant, impotent.

Your God’s vigilant, infinite, omnipotent, and intimate.

He made dermis His tent and lit the flesh with a pillar of glory — then walked among us? With cheekbones and stubble and hands that could hold you? Came and dwelled among us and knocked on the front door and asked if He could come in? Localized glory for your localized pain.

He pitched His tent and camped right in the middle of us.

Jesus could come camp right in the middle of you. Glory.

They say that. That He’s the Word, and when you read His Word, you behold His glory.

Behold His glory. Theaomai His glory. Theaomai from thaomai — “to wonder.” Not a glancing — but a gazing.

I know — Who has really beheld Him, seen Him grave-bust a few cadavers lately, cast out a few raving mad demons here in the last week?

There are witnesses: I’ve seen Him raise the depressed dead right out from under 180 count cotton sheets, right out from fountains of deadening alcohol and greying, rotting marriages, and I’ve seen faith that’s not fake, that pulses through old girl veins.

I’m fool enough to say I’ve felt it.

I’ve got this bracelet engraved with “Jesus” that’s pressing constantly into my skin. There are metaphors. There are things happening that you see and so much more happening that you don’t and we could all stop saying it right now: “It is what it is.” Because all is not as it seems. It is more. It is always infinitely more.

It’s a thing, to open the Word and feel glory in your hands, like Shekinah in your palm, and you can ingest Words, sparks of glory, and they can get into your blood, run your veins, enliven you, revive you, remake you. This is the daily incarnating.

We beheld His glory and were held.

Somedays you’d really think it, but who knows if you know anything:

Seems there are a whole lot of men who see more glory in ESPN and superbowls than in Christ, in supernatural hope. They prefer pigskins.

Somedays you want to keep throwing your pearls before swine.

Because no one in any dung pile is too far gone from God.

His arm will go anywhere, to redeem anyone, from anything.

That changes any temptation to judge or reject.

That keeps you over the egg crud on the stove praying for your own blurry scales to fall off.

So that’s the thing:

The Shekinah glory abode in the Tabernacle.

Then the glory of God tabernacled in the skin of Jesus.

The grace and truth of Jesus now tabernacles in you.

Localized glory moving throughout the world.

So we beheld His glory? We didn’t only read of it? Didn’t only read of it in parchment thin paper that crinkles in first light or on bluing screens of hacked FB memes?

We didn’t only hear of it? Didn’t only hear it from preacher’s lips or belted from the pulpit or through the static of some all night radio program? But we beheld it?

Faith beholds glory, Faith sees Glory. That’s what Spurgeon wrote:

“Faith is sometimes assisted by Experience and Experience sees His glory.”

Experience sees the glory of the thousand times He’s rolled away our etched-in-granite sins; experience sees the glory of His blood scrubbing away the stained filth underneath our fingernails, experience has seen the glory of His will gently covering our raging, ranting one.

Experience sees the glory of Jesus’ arms when they slip under ours and lift us above the rising waters there at our thin necks, and it’s experience that sees and feels and tastes the salty glory of His whispered words holding us closer: “I hold you. Fear not. You will not drown.”

We have beheld Him… and we are held.

There is exquisite fullness of grace and truth in this, the fullness of those arms holding you.

I had scratched it down in One Thousand Gifts, what Piper had said:

“If you want to really see Jesus’ divine beauty, his glory … then make sure you tune your senses to see his grace,” urges theologian John Piper. “That’s what his glory is full of.”

And I had written:

“Grace then  — that is what the full life is full of, what God’s glory is full of.

To see His glory, name His graces.

Retune the impaired senses to sense the Spirit, to see the grace.

Couldn’t I do that anywhere? Why is it so hard? Practice, practice.

Practice at that stove, old girl with that scraping razor in your hand. Behold His glory — name His graces.

Practice the retuning of your impaired senses to sense the Spirit, to see His glory, old girl who could throttle kids whose muscles keep giving out and they can’t get coats to hooks and boots to closets and clothes to drawers and you feel like you can’t stay above the drowning waves.   

The salty glory of His whispered words hold you closer: “I hold you. Fear not. You will not drown.”

Behold His glory — and your raging heart will be held. 

You can feel it coursing through you, what Spurgeon wrote:

“These eyes have never seen the Savior, but this heart has seen Him.

These lips have never kissed His cheek,

but the soul has kissed him and He has kissed me with the kisses of His mouth, for His love is better than wine.

Think me not enthusiastic or fanatical when I say that the children of God have as near access to Christ to day in the spirit, as ever John had after the flesh.

So that there is to this day a rich enjoyment to be obtained by those who seek it, in having actual fellowship with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ.”

And the old girl at the cruddy stove weeps a bit and is not ashamed. She is only a longing.

I once saw a picture of a girl.

She’d taken chalk and drawn a picture on the concrete of her mother, so she could see her mother right there.

And then she’d taken off her shoes, like she knew it’s all holy ground, and she’d crawled up to where the heart would beat —  and she’d fallen asleep next to a love like that.

Her mother drawn all around her.

There is a way of seeing, so that you can behold Him right here.

I clean the stove, the kitchen, with no shoes on.  Who needs shoes? There is glory in the light, in the crusty frying pan, even in impossibly caked-on egg splatter.

There is a way to live that sees how He is drawn all around you. Glory. 

And we are held.

 

 

Bible Study for the Rest of Us: Every Wednesday in 2014, Lord willing, we’ll unpack that wk’s #TheJesusProject memory verse from the book of John:  Scripture Memorization for the Rest of Us

Next Wednesday, we are memorizing and unpacking the 4th verse of #TheJesusProject: ”Because He was full of grace and truth, from him we all received one gift after another.”

Related:

1. Print Out all #TheJesusProject Memory Prints from the book of John here: Scripture Memorization for the Rest of Us: #TheJesus Project

2. Week 1 of #TheJesusProject’s Study: The #1 Organizing Tip Nobody Tells You

3. Week 2 of #TheJesusProject’s Study: How to Get Through the Dark Places: #PullACliffYoung

4. My own stumbling way of living that sees how He’s drawn all around us

Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

How to Find Time & Space for the Life You Want [Pt.2] #MakeYourOwnSpace

My Mama told me that there’d be days like this.

Days when it feels like the heat of Hades is burning blazes up your backside.

And just when you grip that blessed doorframe and the exit out, somebody slams that door hard, scrapes your fingers into a bloodied, mangled mess, and your left flailing like a fool in the heat and the hurt.

Yeah, a whole lot of days like that.

Four boys scrap loud over the last scrap of bacon. My inner cochlear and introvert shrivel up.

Who in the busted world threw six garbage-empty egg cartons back into the fridge?

(Really, there were six: I counted. Six empty cartons tossed in on top of the cauliflower and broccoli. I have no words for the profound mysteries of life.)

There’s a crusted lava of eggs splattered across the stove top. This takes 12 minutes to scrape off with a razor. I know. I set the timer. 12 long minutes of this scraaaaping tuned a bit like a squealing fork across a Corel dinner plate.

Tolkien talks back to me every time I set a timer:

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Yeah, yeah, I’m a slow learner in a life going by fast – Every day, every moment, you only have one decision to make: what will you do with time.

It’s strange: You can want nothing more than time, and use nothing worst than time.

The timer screeches. There’s no stopping time.

I read this story to the kids. I do this a lot, read true stories to kids, a mother’s vocation is to hands the kids inspiration. Malakai’s chin’s digging into my shoulder.

I shift the dented shoulder, Malakai shifts and dents deeper and I read to him, and his little sister sprawled across the back of the couch and Hope knitting another cowl for blizzard gear and Levi who is supposed to be doing math but has got one ear tuned in in, read how there were these ragamuffin kids who lived off on an island drifting near the coast of Thailand.

Yeah, literally lived off the island: the island was this outcropping of rock — and they lived off stilted houses clinging to the side of the rock, stilted houses over water, the village of Ko Panyee.

And all around Ko Panyee, around these communal tvs with cocked rabbit ear antennae, these barefoot kids sat cross legged and concentrated on endless games of football.

You can watch life.  Or actually play life. And only one way wins.

So after a while, the whole feisty tribe of kids stood up and decided to be more than life-spectators: they were going to actual life-participators.

The rowdy bunch of kids made their own football team.

At which point, the rest of the islanders/stilters made fun of them.

Because there was this, oh, one small problem –

“Look around you…” the villagers of Ko Panyee laughed at the kids.

“Look at where you live.”

Look around you — look at where you live.

There’s a pile of laundry on the couch and dishes in the sink and there are books splayed everywhere like a clowder of sunning cats.

And I choke hard when I read that one line:

“In a village floating on water — space can be hard to find.”

In a life like this — space can be hard.

In a life standing on thin stilts over waves — space can be hard to find, space to think and dream and make and read and do and become.

An island of time can be hard to find to do new things and change old ways and stretch into different territory and give like you are called and grow into someone like Him.

Space can be hard to find and time can be hard to come by and how do find the way to do hard things?

And all the football-hungry kids wilted into this clump: “We had a team — but no place to play.”

“Where we live — space isn’t something that we had.”

Where we live — space for new visions isn’t something that we had.

Where we live — space for new ideas of ministry, new dreams of being, new ways of living, isn’t something that we had.

Where we live — who has space and time for popcorn on Tuesday nights ands rowdy rounds of UNO with kids, who has space and time to bring a pie to the shut-in down the street, space and time to disciple that lonely kid at church, space and time to create art.

Who has space to invite the neighbours over for dinner, invite a new dream to the front of the line, invite a new habit into lives that are so full, they already teetering on stilts over water?

Where we live — space isn’t something that we had, time isn’t something that we have.

One ragamuffin kid in a greying-white tank top stands up:

“We figured out we would have to create our own space.”

We figured out we would have to create our own space.

And I’m struck if that’s how it really is?

God gives us everything we need for space — but we will have to make space.

God gives us all the ingredients for time — but we will have to make time.

God gives us everything we need to live — but we will have to make a life.

No one just gets space. 

No one just gets time.

God gives you the raw materials — but you will have to make your life.

So there are these kids on a village floating over water, without even one inch of solid ground to play football on — who look at what they’ve got — and they make space.

They figured out they would have to start collecting scraps of wood from around the village. They figured out they would have to gather up what wasn’t lean, what hadn’t been fully optimized, what hadn’t been creatively envisioned.

They believed: What they needed had been given — they would just have to see it and make it.

They figured out they would have to make space with salvaged planks.

When I get to the part where the kids start tying old rafts together and nailing down the salvaged planks? It’s hard to swallow, something in me burning — something like hope.

After school, and after chores, and after dark, they nailed together what they could salvage, the raw materials of their life reconfigured.

Until they had nailed together a floating, wooden, football field.

Malakai and Shalom laugh this cheering glee.

Yeah there were nails sticking out of the wooden football field, and sure, it is tipsy, a football field bobbing on rafts and barrels, and yes sireee, when they dove for the ball, they often found themselves in the water. They found themselves playing wet and on a slippery wooden, nail pocked field.

So your space won’t look normal, and so your space won’t be comfortable, and so your space won’t be standard or steady or safe. Make your space and play anyway.

That’s what they did: Those kids from the floating village of Ko Panyee played in the space they had made with what they’d been given.

But even then, when the letter came from the mainland, inviting them to a football tournament, they just didn’t know if they had what it takes.

But that is just the thing:

You don’t have to know if you have what it takes.

You just have to know that you will take what you’ve been given and make something of that.

Those kids from the floating village of Ko Panyee played in that mainland championship.

“We were nervous…. ” the kids wrung their hands a bit. Real grass? Real ground? Real football? “But once we got playing — we realized we were better than we thought.”

They realized that their space that was unconventional had made them a force that was unstoppable.

The nails in their field had made them nimble. The unevenness of their field had made them unflappable. The small goals they had to work with on their field had made the big goals on the real field easier to score, easier to win. They made it to the semi-finals.

Then it began to rain. Their shoes filled with water. They were down by two by half time.

They gathered and tried to reorient — what could they make of what they were given?

They took off their shoes. They knew how to play with little. They knew how to play in slippery spaces. They knew how to make something good with what they were given.

The kids of Panyee who lived over water, the kids who made space over water for their dreams, they scored two goals in the second half — and. evened. the. score.

And a crowd of kids on the farm grin a mile wide, feeling it in their bones, how there is space in this world for any God-given dream, for any God-given goal, God always providing the raw materials to make real space, to make real time.

I’m grinning like a fool with them, me their mama who wants to tell them there will be days like this.

Days when you will just have to salvage time planks. Because you don’t get space and time. You get given the materials to make time and space. Days when you will have to make space.

Days when you will have to make your own field — and then go be out standing in it.

Yeah, I can see it from the couch, hear it, how the clock is ticking like a miracle about to detonate…

But I can see that too –

There are hands on the clock but the hands on clocks are always bound hands:

You are the only one who gets to decide what you’ll do with your time.

 

 

 

 

{Consider turning off music by clicking the speaker bar near the bottom of  the left margin?}

RSS Readers: Gather the kids and click over to the post here to watch this very short video of True Story of the Football Players from Panyee… and then #MakeYourOwnTime #MakeYourOwnSpace

Related:

How to Live Your Life When You Only Have So Much Time Left 

Resources:  Clock on the wall

Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

How to Live When You Only Have So Much Time Left [Pt. 1]

Yeah, who knows how long we’ve got?

Somebody answer us that.

Somebody get up on your tipsy soapbox and wring just that out of a grimy, holy world.

Flip over your neat little nursing chart and scan the scans of our broken hearts that somehow just keep on beating brave and you run your finger along all the fracture lines and just tell us that — how long have we got.

Tell us that we’ve got more than a few days –

That it looks like we’ll make it through the next seven sunrises, even though we’ll likely not even notice the miracle of it, but we’ll still get to drive in late to church again next Sunday, and there’ll be burnt soup after service that we’ll swallow down, and there’s a chance we’ll be glad of the tasting and seeing and for one widening moment, we might even wake to how good He is.

Or tell us that we’ve got at least a few months to a few years, that the cells won’t start going haywire somewhere in the body until the kids at least get close to 16, till we almost get them to edge of the nest and know that their wings will hold, that they could take to the thermals and ride, that they could beat a thousand feathers through a thousand storms and get to the other side, that we all be together on the other side.

Or tell us that it looks like we’ve got at least a decade left — or maybe don’t.

Maybe if you told us that we had ten whole spins around the sun left, we’d be duped into thinking there was time to fritter away the breathing with flipping channels or flipping fingers or flipping lids, as if that ever made the living better instead of distastefully bitter.

Yeah, go ahead and rattle the door all you want, but there ain’t no one who is going to tell you how long you have. You’re going to have to figure out how to live without knowing when you die.

You’re going to have to get it: Death may be certain, but when it comes is uncertain, which is what makes the living gloriously uncertain — a choice.

Who knows if you’ve really got time to clean out the garage, or to read this endless news feed, or to pick up and move to Haiti and live your dream of spending the fleeting time holding the hands of forgotten ones.

The road ahead would seem obvious if you knew how much road ahead there was.

No one tells you that. No one tells you if you have just enough time to laugh till your belly hurts, one more time with the beautifully strange people you love, if you have time to pull their neck close and whisper hoarse in their ear that there aren’t enough words to say what a love like this has done to you.

No one tells you if you have enough time to try to change the world or just enough time to try change your own story.

If you knew how much time you have to live, you’d know how to live.

But that is the thing: You don’t know how much time you have to live — so you have to make time to make the life you want to live.

No one can tell you how much time you’ve got for what matters. Only you can tell how much time you’ll make for what matters.

Everyone knows they will die. They just don’t know when. So forget about the when. Who cares when you die. The real question is: when will you start to live?

You already know: You will die.

So the only question that remains is: Will you live?

Will you risk impossible things today so you remember how much you love the rush of real oxygen in your lungs, adrenaline in your veins?

Will you forget thinking there is no way out– only a way through? Sometimes the only way through is not taking the next step — it’s taking a wild leap of faith. Take it. Do it. Live it.

When will you lay there just to listen to the sound of him breathing in sleep beside you?

When will you memorize the way her hair feels as you stroke it back from her brow? When will you bend over the cup and inhale the steam of tea and breathe in living? When will you have time to walk in the woods with no place to go but looking up?

When will you be done with the armed way of living, the harmful way of living — when will you drop the arms you’ve crossed in front of you like some cynical shield, steeling you from really feeling?

When will you join the brave and move the crossed arms into open hands, into open hands to receive and really feel the glory that is called life as it falls into them –

How syrup saturates the pancakes and wind can lift your hair at the roots and how you can feel grounded just by inhaling. How tears can fall like rain and wash your wounds right clean, how those wounds are beauty marks that make you one of the medalled warriors. How there is common grace everywhere but it is startling uncommon to taste it on the tip of your tongue or feel it pulse through you.

The question isn’t: H ow long have I got to live?

The point is simply: You got to live. You get to live.  Today.

There is snow clinging to window panes today.

There is breathing that can cling to sheer Glory today. Sheer Grace — sheer God.

Yeah, who knows –

What would happen if you treated everyone you met today as if they only had 12 hours left to live?

Somebody could answer their day with that.

I can hear it from the kitchen sink —

The hands on the clock ticking like a miracle about to detonate into sheer glory.

 

 

 

Related:

Part 2 of “How to Live When You Have So Much Time” Tomorrow

How to Keep Going Through All the Dark Places

Resources:

Clock on the wall

Join us? And happily change everything by keeping your own crazy list of One Thousand Gifts? Dare you to Joy! Take the dare to Fully Live!

1. Grab this month’s Free JOY DARE Calendar with 3 daily prompts to go on a scavenger hunt for God’ gifts … {or write down any gifts you choose. Use the free app.} 2. Count 3 gifts a day and you have over #1000gifts in 2013. Jot them down in the new numbered One Thousand Gifts devotional journal — The Farmer’s writing in his with a red pen and daily – the numbers in the journal already there! Motivating… 3. Share your gifts everyday in our beautiful Facebook community to enter everyday for the monthly $100 Amazon draw (or link to your blog post with your list of gifts). 4. Count #1000gifts in 2013 and enter to win a Nikon DSLR camera with lens. Slow Down. Savor Life. Give thanks. Believing something is one thing. But the Best only comes when you decide to Be Living it. Please, jump in, make your life about giving thanks to God! — Just add the direct URL to your specific 1000 gift list post… and if you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other in our refrain of thanks by sharing the community’s graphic within your post.

Give thanks to the Lord! His Love Endures Forever!

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Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

Only the Good Stuff: 15 Links to Refresh

Wanna take a break from the winter temps? Enjoy these brilliant photos

“Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom.” Psalm 145:3

10 Unconventional Habits to Live Distraction-Less

A follow up to last week’s video about the hearing impaired football player –

A young girl reaches out to him …

Her letter — and his response? 

How Inactivity Reshapes Our Brains 

“Why Reading Books Is Fundamental — at the NYTimes“

Building on his severely autistic son’s strengths -

An inspirational read for every one of us

“The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.”

An inspiring three-year study on ‘common-good Christianity’ is changing our communities

Yes, let’s. What Jennie said.

On the Stack here at the farm — this book is a siren for this generation

Jennie Allen’s book Restless: Because You Were Made For More

Post of the Week here:

This man’s story?

Well — no one was expecting this.

Absolutely life changing.

Could be the year to pull a Cliff Young.

If you are praying about Pulling a Cliff Young this year?

This Free Printable’s  for the Fridge

No Words….. Choked. me. up.

{Consider turning off music by clicking the speaker bar near the bottom of  the left margin?}

I think he’s pretty close? [warm smile]

{Consider turning off music by clicking the speaker bar near the bottom of  the left margin?}

This is on repeat here on the farm

{Consider turning off music by clicking the speaker bar near the bottom of  the left margin?}

“Because the mirror that you hold is false…”

Yes — let’s “SHINE”!

{Consider turning off music by clicking the speaker bar near the bottom of  the left margin?}

That’s all for this weekend, friends. 

Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.

Give Thanks. Love well. Re - joice.

Share Whatever Is Good. 

Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

A Secret to Happy

Someone mentioned that this one reminded them of Cliff Young? To keep #PullingaCliffYoung. Just desperately needed this smile for a Friday… :

Right after I read the story, I go looking for an old horn to screw right to the wall.

There are things worth the proclaiming.

And after I find one, I walk around the house with the horn in hand trying to figure if it looks best on this wall? Or the back of this door? The Farmer raises his eyebrows.

“A horn on a wall?” He’s grinning boyish. Joshua is playing scales. Levi’s reciting Latin chants. Shalom and Malakai are arguing loud over a game of chess.

“Because you’re thinking it’s not quite loud enough in here yet?”

“You!” I tease, poke him in the shoulder, him broad like a beam that carries half my world.

“Does it look right here?”

“I think I’ve got a wall out in the barn it might look perfect on.” He winks, shields himself with his arm to fend off the next poke.

“But if you knew the story….” He nods, knowing, smiling, “Uh huh.” Stories can turn around whole hard hearts. Jesus walked backroads and spun stories and turned around lives and the axis of the cosmos.

I tell the story at lunch.

“So I read it a book  … True story.“ I pass down the squash. “A man drove a stretch of highway past this tattered cardboard sign that read:

“Honk if you’re happy”

And who doesn’t roll his eyes at such naivete? As if the world is this strange hybrid of Pollyanna and Sesame Street — if you’re happy and you know it, honk, honk — when it’s really just a strange new, old world, broken and a mess.”

Shalom offers me her glass and I pour her water.

“But there’s this one day when he drives past the sign with his little girl, and on a whim, he beeps the horn.

And every day, when he passes the sign, his daughter begs him to do it again, and pretty soon, every time he’s on this stretch of highway, this jaded man, cynical man’s anticipating the sign. Anticipating honking his horn. And do you know what he said?”

I want to make sure I get it right. I push back my chair, to get the book off my night stand.

Flip through the pages… There.

“And just for a moment… I felt a little happier than I had before — as if honking the horn made me happier…

If on a one-to-ten scale, I was feeling an emotional two, when I honked the horn, my happiness grew several points… In time, when I turned on to Hwy 544, I noticed that my emotional set-point would begin to rise.

That entire 13.4 mile stretch began to become a place of emotional rejuvenation for me.”

I lay the book down on the table, reach for the water pitcher.

“See what happened to him? The sign said, “Honk if you’re happy. And he discovered that the act of honking the horn — it made him happy.”

“Honk, Honk!” Malakai grins at the end of the table.

His mouth’s full of food.

I love him wild.

::

“So who puts up a cardboard sign beside a highway: “Honk if you’re happy”?”

I have to get to the rest of the story before the table erupts into a fest of honking Canadians.

“This man’s got to find out. So he finds a house on the other side of the trees that line the highway —- and he goes up to the door and asks the folks if they know anything about the happy sign?

And the man at the door welcomes him in and says yes, yes, he made the sign.” Malakai’s grinning, his cheeks right full.

“And this is why he made the sign: Because he was sitting there everyday in his house, sitting there in a darkened bedroom with his young wife who was terminal, sitting there watching her every day, as she lay there waiting to die.

And one day when he couldn’t really take it anymore, he painted up that sign and stuck it out by the road. Because, he said —- I reach for the book again, to find the right page, to get the words right:

“I just wanted people in their cars not to take this moment for granted.

This special, never-again-to-be-repeated moment with the ones they care for most should be savored and they should be aware of the happiness in the moment.”

I look around at all their faces ringing the table, the jewel of them slipping around me in this space.

Light’s falling across the table.

Hope’s one strand of loose hair is it’s own gold.

Something inside of me trumpets loud and long.

I can only whisper the end of the story.

“At first, after he put out the sign, there was only a honk here and there. His dying wife asked what that was about and the husband explained how he’d put the sign out there.

After a few days, there was more honking and more… And the husband said that the honking…”

I look down again at the book but everything’s blurring. Finally the line surfaces…

“.. that the honking, it became like medicine to her.

As she lay there, she heard the horns and found great comfort in knowing that she was not isolated in a dark room dying.

She was part of the happiness of the world.

It was literally all around her.”

The happiness was literally all around her.

God is literally all around us.

So much light’s falling across the table.

“I think that horn of yours, it will look best in that doorway.”

The Farmer winks.

And when The Farmer heads out to the shop after lunch, I call after him — Remember to bring in a screwdriver! So we can hang the horn.

And he waves back to me as he runs across the farmyard.

And when I’m standing in the kitchen, wiping off the counters, I hear it clear, from the farm pickup parked out in the laneway, out by the shop: Honk! Honk! Honk!

I laugh! He’s out there honking the horn of his truck!

I turn to the window, laughing…. He’s happy! Happy…

And I reach for my pen laying on my open gratitude journal there on the counter.

“Honk if you are happy” is in reality: “To BE happy — honk.”

And “Give thanks if you are joyful” is in reality: 

“To BE joyful, give thanks.”

And I write it down, “The farmer honking a horn — and that grin of his.”

This has become like medicine to me. 

::

Shalom waves to the Farmer from the window. He’s waving back at her.

She sings the words quiet to him, “Honk if you’re happy!” and she knows he can’t hear.

But all the world is heaven’s clarion and even in the dark, we are surrounded by it, all the happiness of the world.

I keep the journal close, the thanks ready.



Because literally —

 He’s all around us.

 

 

 

excerpted …

one of my absolute favourite heart-medicine reads from the 60 Day Devotional:

 One Thousand Gifts Devotional: Reflections on Finding Everyday Graces

Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}