Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 253
October 30, 2013
3 Ways of Finding Fulfillment– No Matter What You’re Facing
So maybe the way to still be left standing
at the end of the day,
when you get to the end of everything,
is to never stop breaking free from the fences of noise,
to love the expanses of solitude
that you carry on the inside,
because the truth of it is that stillness with God is always a matter of focus
not of circumstances.
That is all there is:
Staying still with Him, still with Him.
Because no harvest of holiness, of happiness, was ever reaped by anyone who didn’t make a field inside of themselves to be alone long with God.
Maybe the only way to have a peace that passes all understanding
is to pass by all that doesn’t let you stand close under the arm of Peace Himself,
understanding the way Jesus keeps holding.
Maybe that’s the only harvest there is at the end of the day, at the end,
the only thing that God ever asks
is that you answer no long enough to the loud
to have time to be out standing in this field
where real yield is found in the yes to His proposal of intimacy
where you can see who is fulfilled
in the way they bow.
Missing Him? Slow down. Still. Choose interior solitude with Him… deep breath:
“God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there.
There is no such thing.“
This is Day 30.
Sometimes you miss home.
Even when you’re home.
Sometimes you miss Him.
Even when He’s everywhere.
Day 30 in a #31Days series:
Missing Him: 31 Days of Jesus – and not missing what can’t be missed.
If you’d prefer having these posts slipped quietly into your email inbox, just subscribe for free here.
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Dare to take your invitation to not miss — what can’t be missed?
Looking forward to what #31Days hold with you… and Him.
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!}
October 29, 2013
When You’re Tired of Missing Jesus {with The Printable}
Leaves aren’t ever purely green and not everything is as it seems.
You can be missing Jesus because you can be missing the blazing love under everything.
The kids and I walk through the orchard and the end of autumn…
It’s what I’m telling the kids.
That all summer, the chlorophyll of the leaf, all that green, absorbs the sun and releases food. And it this cycle of chlorophyll that cloaks the leaves’ pure colors.
Shalom kneels under the pear tree, picks herself a yellow leaf, a bit of gold for a pocket.
I’m sitting there fingering the edge of a scarlet one.
“But come the fall of the year — the chlorophyll ebbs. And the green dims.”
Shalom holds up an amber leaf.
“And there it is — the leaf’s true colors!”
Shalom whispers, bowed over her gilded leaf — “You mean this leaf was always this colour?”
Yeah, pretty wild, eh?
All this brilliance, all this burning God-love – it is always here.
Underneath things.
Under the stacks of bills and to-do lists, the musty laundry and the stress of today. Underneath the whining kid and the impossible pressures and the situation that looks blatantly hopeless. Underneath our aching hurts — are always His everlasting arms.
Life can blind and truth can hide in plain sight. But this blazing love of God for you never stops burning underneath everything.
You can miss it. You can miss Him. I’ve done it — You can complain and hurry your way into being homesick for Jesus.
Shalom throws leaves into the air. And all I can think is — If we would stop producing the chlorophyll of hurry and worry — we’d see the colors of grace, right where we are.
Life has all these blinding cycles of its own – but our God is always blazing love.
When there is an intentional slowing to whisper thanks to God — there is an incredible awakening to the burning love of God.
The ungrateful see little of His great love; but the grateful feel their heart is a shore and His love is a sea that never stops coming in.
Only a grateful heart sees God’s great love everywhere.
It’s as simple and profound as this: We would worry less if we gave thanks more.
And I pick up a pen to thank through the fall days. I count gifts.
Her little feet and my big ones, under the thinning wool-patch quilt, her reading another page of Little House in the Big Woods.
Hugging the length of a teenage girl, tucking one of those strands behind her ear.
Light in the trees, in the leaves, in us.
The chlorophyll of hardened cynicism drains.
And it begins to happen and nothing could be truer than what Pascal said: “Instead of complaining that God had hidden himself, you will give Him thanks for having revealed so much of Himself.”
The darkness ebbs.
The shadows dim –
and all the trees and all the thankful, they ignite, seeing and believing the true colours of now.
Make your own: The Thanks Giving Tree {Free Printable}
1. Print out The Thanks Giving Tree (this blazing print out of leaves will take a bit to download — several minutes, almost ten minutes here on the farm, but only two minutes for a friend in town. So… pour a cup of tea?)
2. Cut out all of the leaves. Hole punch each leaf. Slip a string through each hole.
3. Hang the leaves on a bouquet of branches in a container of your choice.
4. Each morning, pick one leaf, reflect on its verse and make the verse your prayer of thanksgiving back to God. Then set it at the base of The Thanks Giving Tree.
5. In the evening, return to the leaf and its verse and give thanks to God. And then jot down one gift you are grateful to God for on the back of the leaf.
Make giving thanks a daily habit — and daily wear joy!
6. (While it’s life-changing to cultivate a habit of thanksgiving over several weeks, life circumstances might alternatively have you jotting down thanksgiving for His gifts on all the leaves at one time, or, as a family, filling all the leaves during one family gathering.)
7. Or! Each morning, leave one of The Thanks Giving Tree leaves hanging somewhere, and on the back of the leaf, jot down why you are grateful for your spouse, your child, your co-worker, your neighbour. Use the Thanks Giving Tree to reach out and ignite your community with a radical revolution of gratitude! Joy! Dare!
Each day this month, I’ll be sharing one Thanks Giving Tree leaf on Facebook and Twitter and how we used that verse today! Join in with us! “Give thanks in the assembly!” Ps. 35:18
Related: 15 Ways to Raise More Grateful, Happier Kids
How Writing Down your Thanks is proven to make you 25% Happier!
And from our home to yours –
60 Devotionals for the whole holiday season of gifts —
with space for you to write down the legacy of your own 1000 gifts:
One Thousand Gifts Devotional: Reflections on Finding Everyday Graces
and One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
This is Day 29.
Sometimes you miss home.
Even when you’re home.
Sometimes you miss Him.
Even when He’s everywhere.
Day 29 in a #31Days series:
Missing Him: 31 Days of Jesus – and not missing what can’t be missed.
If you’d prefer having these posts slipped quietly into your email inbox, just subscribe for free here.
Email Subscription
Subscribe
Dare to take your invitation to not miss — what can’t be missed?
Looking forward to what #31Days hold with you… and Him.
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!}
October 28, 2013
What Everyone Wants More Than Anything Else: Let the Blessing Revolution Begin
So the boy flicks on the light at 4:30 am and whispers it ridiculously loud, “Mom? Apple Crumble? Am I going to get apple crumble before I go or not?”
Yeah, sure thing. Apple crumble at 4:30 am. Definitely, boy. I’m on it.
Because that was the deal and I was the one who lost the deal, so c’mon, roll like a barrel over the Falls and get yourself outta bed, girl.
Did anybody get any apples from the orchard?
“Done. On the counter.”
He’s perky for 4:30. He’s been up since 3:30.
See, he’d come home from university and then gone to church and then come home from church and he’s laying there on the couch telling me about both, university and church, and I’m standing there at the sink, cutting up onions for a pan of roasted squash and onion because this is his favorite and nothing makes you want to cook better than to lure your boy home from university.
I hadn’t gone to church.
Because the youngest boy, the 4th boy, the 5th kid, he’d somehow miraculously or catastrophically, depending how you look at it, contracted poison oak while helping the Farmer cut wood up at the back of the Hurst farm on Thursday afternoon. So Sunday morning has himself scratching himself like a mangy Heinz 57 mutt with an epic case of fleas.
He’s oozing and itching and I’m dabbing on the calomine lotion with this ratty cloth that should have been tossed a decade ago but is serving this pupose quite well actually so my domestic ineptitude again somehow is redeemed.
“I don’t get it. Why did God make poison oak?” Kai’s standing there in only a pair of two-sizes-too-small Levis, his gangly torso stretching long and spotted.
And before I can launch into other universal queries like why God made mosquitos or teenage hormones in bodies with not yet developed frontal cortexes or chin hairs that just erupt at 2 inches long and won’t be discovered till after you get home from Bible Study, Malakai has already locked, loaded and shot out the next question:
“And why pink? Why pink calomine lotion? Why not white or grey or tan or brown – why pink? Do they really think only girls get poison oak? This isn’t going to work for me – there’s no way I’m going to church looking pink.”
I’ve got hot pink calomine lotion smeared up his neck, down his chest, up his arms, across his hands.
So the fourth manly son who apparently isn’t into the pastel colors of the Don-Johnson, Miami Vice era, he and I stay home from church. He peels squash. I listen to a Tim Keller sermon.
And when his brother gets home from church first, Caleb throws himself on the couch and tells Malakai and I about Mark chapter 6. And how his stock in Tesla Motors is doing. And how his Latin teacher knows 8 languages and knows his Bible because he quoted verses this week from both Job and Genesis. And that Google stock jumped last week. And how the disciples couldn’t believe that Jesus could walk on water.
I slide the chopped onion and squash into the oven turned up to a raving 450F.
“Oh, and a lawyer showed up at church for you.” Caleb kicks off his shoes.
“Very funny.”
“No, seriously. A professor of law. Bald. Bow tie. Said he finished reading One Thousand Gifts? last night. So he drove up here this morning.”
“So he drove up here this morning?” The kid’s pulling my leg – laughing too hard and pulling my flabby leg.
“I couldn’t make this stuff up, Mom.” He looks like my dad when he’s laughing like that.
“Hey, didn’t you land the writing award at graduation? Yeah, you could totally make this stuff up.”
“Okay, if I made it up – I make you apple crumble. If a lawyer really showed up for you this morning, and Dad comes home and says so – you make me apple crumble?” He’s a big boy begging with this silly grin and I can’t resist.
Deal.
When the Farmer walks in with the rest of the ragamuffin kids, Caleb’s still grinning silly, hopeful.
“Well.” The Farmer smiles slow.
“You know how Corey helped us cut wood on Thursday? Well, when Pastor Gary invited us all to turn around, greet someone, and shake hands – guess who is sitting in front of me?”
I shrug. “No idea.” I’ll play along for more of that smile of his. And because there doesn’t seem to be a lawyer in sight.
“Corey. Who turns to me and says, ”Oh, glad it’s you. I got poison oak and didn’t want to shake any hands – but I figure seeing as you were in the poison oak too? It’s all good to shake your hand.”
“Nice.”
“And was he all smeared in pink calomine lotion, too?” Malakai looks up from his pile of squash peel with the question that all inquiring minds are burning to know.
“No pink.” The Farmer tussles his pink-painted boy’s hair.
“But there was a lawyer,” the Farmer pulls the man’s business card out of his Bible. “A law professor, there in a bow tie.”
“See! See, I tooooold ya!” Caleb’s jumping around the kitchen like a big giddy kid who’s won the apple crumble lottery.
“He’s read and believed and found grace.”
When you believe you are the Beloved, you begin to see love notes in the impossible.
So at 4:30 the next morning, so there I am in the kitchen making apple crumble because I didn’t believe.
I’m peeling 8 Russet apples picked from out in the orchard in the dark. Peel and core and quarter and slice. Stir oatmeal and flour and melted butter. And we don’t have brown sugar, so I make it with white granulated sugar and molasses that says right on the carton “Fancy Molasses” and at 4:48 am I want to know what unfancy molasses looks like, what down-to-earth, common molasses looks like, because I have bedhead and unbrushed teeth and the world doesn’t need fancy like it needs real.
And I’m stirring a bowl of crumble for a boy and thinking about that Sunday sermon I’d listened to and Jacob coming with his bowl of game to his father looking for a blessing.
He isn’t the only one.
The apple-crumble hungry kid, the poisoned, scratching, tarred and feathered and painted-pink kid, the bow-tied lawyer, the weary woman up early in the kitchen — The wrestle for blessing is the storyline of our lives.
We are kids and professionals and beggars and old and we are the different and we are the same: We are all Jacobs looking for blessings to claim.
The whole of our life is this one unspoken prayer to God: “I will not let you go until You bless me.”
Bless me. I will wrestle You – until You bless me.
I won’t rest until I find grace, until I believe that even I am beloved.
Because the truth is:
No one can bless themselves.
We live like we can bless ourselves – but our souls know we can only rest when we know we are blessed by God.
Jacob dresses like Esau to get the blessing from Jacob. We try to get blessings from somebody — by dressing up as somebody else.
Why do we keep dressing up to bring the blessings down.
Why do we keep thinking we have to be somebody different to get the love of anybody at all.
Why do we keep thinking who we really are couldn’t be who He really loves.
Why do we believe that to be blessed we can’t be ourselves. We hide ourselves because we don’t think we can be loved for ourselves.
I’m thinking it’s that — We wear masks when we feel barely loved.
Are we missing Jesus in our days — because we go through our days missing chances to share our real selves?
That little kid dressed up in his pink paint covering his wounds and his poison, the lawyer dressed up fine in his bow tie who makes a brave and good journey to share the relief of grace, the lanky teen dressed up after church looking to make deals for a bowl of blessing — no matter how we’re dressed up – we’re all the same:
Everybody is just a brave beggar looking for a blessing.
We’re all Jacobs.
There isn’t anybody who isn’t starved for a word of blessing.
What if no one had to dress up any better, any stronger, any braver — and we just handed out words that bless to everyone just as they are in all their real and honest messiness?
What if we weren’t about dressing up as good — but about giving the blessing now?
This changes your life and a thousand more: Only speak words that make souls stronger.
To the smoldering teenager and the bored guy pumping gas and the burdened husband slumped at the table and the volcanic kid spewing lava ugly everywhere. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God and words have the power of God in them. Words have the power to literally breathe life — to literally reshape the atoms of real lives.
Sticks and stones may break bones — but only words can curse a soul or be a blessing.
We could make it a different world: We don’t demand anyone go dressing up as good, to get our blessing now.
The morning light coming up, I hand one kid his bowl of apple crumble for breakfast.
And in all these messy crumbs, this breaking everywhere, he sits there, not yet dressed for the day —
and swallows the blessing down.
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!
This is Day 28.
Sometimes you miss home.
Even when you’re home.
Sometimes you miss Him.
Even when He’s everywhere.
Day 28 in a #31Days series:
Missing Him: 31 Days of Jesus – and not missing what can’t be missed.
If you’d prefer having these posts slipped quietly into your email inbox, just subscribe for free here.
Email Subscription
Subscribe
Dare to take your invitation to not miss — what can’t be missed?
Looking forward to what #31Days hold with you… and Him.
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!}
October 26, 2013
Only the Good Stuff: Sharing Links that Bring us Together
Missing Him – Humanity as it could be. Are we ever really strangers?
Missing Him – Will they know us by our love?
Missing Him – Keeping a promise to the end…
Missing Him – Just — stunning
Missing Him – Just — love this: A coach helps to make a dream come true. Must. See.
Missing Him – sometimes it’s the little things…
Missing Him – Free printable! Seek, journey, work, sacrifice, love, give thanks…
Missing Him – Only You can mend a heart that’s frail and worn, Lord…
{Consider turning off music by clicking the speaker bar near the bottom of the left margin?} RSS Readers and email readers, click here
Missing Him – This was posted on Facebook – smiling grateful – friends in Norway!
Begin to wake to the wonder of the small. Begin to find joy in Who really matters.
That’s all, this weekend, good friends–
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joice.
Share Whatever Is Good.
This is Day 26.
Sometimes you miss home.
Even when you’re home.
Sometimes you miss Him.
Even when He’s everywhere.
Day 26 in a #31Days series:
Missing Him: 31 Days of Jesus – and not missing what can’t be missed.
If you’d prefer having these posts slipped quietly into your email inbox, just subscribe for free here.
Email Subscription
Subscribe
Dare to take your invitation to not miss — what can’t be missed?
Looking forward to what #31Days hold with you… and Him.
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!}
October 24, 2013
If you Need a Therapy that Really Calms the Heart
The man with the wife who wouldn’t leave her house anymore, he’d told me there was only so much that he could take.
I had no idea what to say to that.
Sometimes words can’t resuscitate like silence can. So I’d nodded. And I hoped he heard my wordlessness pounding hard on heaven’s door for him, pounding hard on lungs to just inhale a bit of hope, and I’d seen it in his eyes.
Because it can feel like that: When you are giving everything you have, you can only take so much.
He’d been like a brother to the Farmer and I. We’d known him since we were sixteen. We had gone to his wedding. He had rocked Shalom to sleep.
He’d worked with my dad and we’d all farmed dirt together and we had walked whole herds of old swaying sows down gravel backroads and my mama called him her other son and she called him every other week and she prayed with him and for him and because of him. There are men of few words but of the Word.
I stood there in the light under leaves. He said the anxiety and depression just left her paralyzed all day and he missed who his wife had been, but nothing could make him stop holding her. So he was waking in the dark and working through the night while she slept so he could hold her through the waking hours when she’d forget how to breathe. The children all jumped in the leaves.
I saw it when he turned, his courage when he laughed. Joy is the way to live bravest of all.
That’s how he looked to me:
The man looked incarnational, God never sleeping or slumbering either, then holding us all through the day.
What grabs a hold of a woman and makes her fear a day and herself and letting anyone get close?
What makes joy elusive and cynicism easy and stress normal and why do women choke down pills and food and shame instead of choking out what’s wrong? What makes us scared to death to be real… so we just live dead?
They say anger makes us anxious, that anger makes us depressed, all this rage that we keep swallowing that makes us weak and sick.
This anger that we keep downing that gives us a soul ache.
Somehow there has to be this opening up, this expressing, this releasing and letting go. Somehow we have to be real and unafraid and live because there’s only this once here. Thing is, life’s got a label: Straight venting can cause steam burns.
Anger can kill you if you bury it — or if you don’t give it to God.
Venting hurts your-self, Biblical lamenting heals your-soul — bravely expressing pain while unwavering in the unrelenting goodness of God.
A woman I know, she Hannah-prayed for a decade for a miracle to split and divide and multiply right in her. It happened, the impossible happened, and us old women laughed at the wonders of His grace. When bleeding stained joy at 8 weeks, she clenched herself knuckle white, wild to release nothing. Us old women begged God, begged for a baby to unfold out of our pleas, begged for all this bleeding to stop in the name of the One who let blood already.
She whispered to me:
“I was sobbing last night, wrestling to hold this baby with an open hand… I couldn’t sleep. Until I started Thanking Him. For everything. It was the only thing that calmed my heart…”
The boys are piling oak leaves up like a soft place to land.
And I saw it — when Shalom had reached over in this carefree childlike abandon and grabbed his hand and held his hand while she talked his ear off, how something in him slumped grateful.
I had wanted to weep for the grace of it, the faith-love of a child, and how a man needed it.
When you are giving everything you have and you can only take so much — Christ kneels close with arms stretched open wide: “Let Me take the rest.”
Paul hadn’t just suggested it — he commanded that we must:
… “be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess. 5:16–18).
And there’s this wife who can’t get out of bed and a man breaking for her, breaking himself for her, and a woman trying to open her hand to a God who may take away the deepest prayers and parts of her, and we’re all breaking here, we’re all choking down all this hurt, and how in the name of glory is there this command to be joyful?
The boys are jumping in everything falling now.
They are jumping in light, in shadows, jumping in everything that’s given away and let go and has been lost to the wind.
Praying continually, this thanks in all things, this is what fulfills the commanding ache for joy always.
Giving thanks in all things is how to pray continually — and this is the way to get to the joy. This is the way to do God’s will for your right now.
Thanks to God is what that calms the wild heart.
Anger makes us sick and weak and bound and the therapy is in the thanks.
Thanks therapy is God’s prescription for joy.
This isn’t trite — this is treatment. Breathing oxygen to live, it can seem ridiculously simple too. Jesus always leaves the option open for you to choose: “Do you want to be well?”
Sometimes we hurt so bad, we can’t even think to say yes, we forget how to mouth thanks. I stand with the man who just keeps holding a woman, who just keeps breathing thanks for her until she remembers and breathes on her own.
We stand there together watching the kids picking up everything fallen, throwing their hands to the heavens with everything falling, everything such a mess, a beautiful mess, and their laughter like light.
And in all the leaves, all in the mess, it’s right here:
Everything that falls, turned back to thanks, unlikely therapy turning a fallen world.
All the way up the hill after, Shalom held his hand.
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!}
October 23, 2013
What if You Really Lived Like Your Life Is Your Art?
This woman? Jesus is using her to change the world in a million little, profound, ways. Not to mention, she is winsome, brilliant, and beautifully down-to-earth — and reminds me of the most captivating old soul? I just love Emily Freeman of Chatting at the Sky, and author of Grace for the Good Girl: Letting Go of the Try-Hard Life, and A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Meant to Live, and she comes to the farm porch today with words that stir deep things:
The traffic in the sunroom is bumper to bumper.
He lines up cars along the wall, across the carpet, weaving them under the chairs. A few years ago it was trains instead and I made him clean them up before bed.
But now it’s cars and I let him leave them there overnight because the days of heavy traffic in the sunroom are numbered, I know.
I take notes on the things that give them life, watch the way they play – how he loves to build and line cars up in traffic, the way one cradles her dolls, the way another reads until her eyes are too heavy to open.
I believe what is most true about the shape of our souls begins to show up on the floor of the sunroom, lining up cars bumper to bumper.
What is most true starts in the rooms of the dollhouse and the pages of the storybooks and the cold linoleum of Grandma’s kitchen.
What is most true began to grow underneath the tire swing in the backyard of that little white house with the gravel drive, when we played with kittens and dreamed of flying.
But growing up smoked the innocence out of us – a lot of pain, a little trouble, some heartbreak woven into our souls – and we have lived through burdens of our weary world, carry the scars of rejection and brokenness.
I think of my grandfather who finally stopped drinking, but his sobriety came too late for his kidneys. He was mostly a grump before he died, but he encouraged me in my writing as a young girl. I think he may have seen something in me he recognized in himself but couldn’t quite touch. There were shadows of his design, whispers of his giftedness that I’m sure spoke to him in some way, but his demons drowned them out.
His son, my dad, is an alcoholic too. When Mom would take me and my sister to church with her, Dad would stay home, drink a few beers, turn the music up loud, and stand in the living room of our little Indiana home.
And with the music drowning out his voice, he would talk in a loud whisper like a teacher, intellectualizing on things in the news, or politics or sports. He didn’t know why and he couldn’t explain it. But it was in him to speak out.
It didn’t make sense at the time.
But looking back from where he now stands as a twenty-five-year-sober believer in Jesus? With a long career announcing on the radio? With years of experience as a teacher and mentor and small group leader in churches?
Now the actions of that confused alcoholic seem a little less confused and a lot more ordained.
His art was not something he came up with later in life once he got his act together. Hints of his art were coming out of him before he even understood it.
Yours does that too.
It starts when we’re young and builds as we grow – and the it is the art, and the art is the reminder that we are made in the image of creator God. He bore his image into us and we bear his image into the world whether we mean to or not.
But what if we joined Him and did it on purpose?
What if, instead of seeing those childhood dreams and desires as meaningless, what if we began to uncover the ways we come alive and consider how these might be ways Jesus wants to come alive in us?
What if the art we make – whether the work of our hands, the words of our mouth, the simple movement towards others in our ordinary days – what if these are the ways Jesus wants to show Himself to a weary world?
What if the art you make and live is a daily grace God has in mind for someone else?
And your way of living art is one of the million little ways God wants to show himself in the world?
The person of Jesus lives in people like you. He has made his home within us. How might he want to come out?
Don’t despise the small way, the ordinary day, the little way of Jesus.
Dare to respect his work, his making of you, and consider how he might want to show himself through the unique filter of your personality.
I think of my son, playing cars on the sunroom floor.
What would happen if I began to pray for a vision for his future – for the courage to write his own stories, for the faith to survive his own shattered dreams, for the eyes to see Jesus no matter the cost or circumstance?
What if someone had done this for us?
May our loves never leave us, at least not for long.
May our passions not be buried so deep by our pain and brokenness that they become impossible to recover.
May we know God and in turn, know ourselves.
I am smitten with God’s message in Emily’s latest book, A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Meant to Live. Simply put, it’s a book about how to be you. And live the life you were created to live. It about how to live life like an artist, not a checklist. In some ways it expands the word art, because most of us automatically think of painters and sculptors and drama instructors. What if we begin to recognize the art in our ordinary days? It’s freeing, inviting, and profoundly holy truth.
DaySpring’s Bloom Book Club has also just selected A Million Little Ways for it’s newest read! There are videos and blog posts and discussions and we can all read the book together and have a free virtual book club as we read! All you have to do to be a part is show up or you can subscribe to the book club updates you can right here. Here’s more information about the book club complete with the schedule.
Emily extends a daily invitation on her blog for women to create space for their souls to breathe.
This is Day 23.
Sometimes you miss home.
Even when you’re home.
Sometimes you miss Him.
Even when He’s everywhere.
Day 23 in a #31Days series:
Missing Him: 31 Days of Jesus – and not missing what can’t be missed.
If you’d prefer having these posts slipped quietly into your email inbox, just subscribe for free here.
Email Subscription
Subscribe
Dare to take your invitation to not miss — what can’t be missed?
Looking forward to what #31Days hold with you… and Him.
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!}
October 22, 2013
Why You Really Should Smile Right Now #SmileProject
When a nurse calls early and says she has the results of the chest x-ray, I’m standing in the kitchen.
A kitchen of muffin tins and cracked eggs and two frying pans and the bacon already gone.
She puts me on hold to get the file.
I scratch away at the glass splattered stovetop with a razor, as if there’s this way — this way to cut things right down to the bone of things.
The nurse gets back on the phone and talks about those x-rays I had over the weekend.
And I’m wondering why in the world getting breakfast for three starving teenagers, two bottomless boys and a curly-haired tomboy, and a hard-working Dutch farmer, leaves one kitchen looking like something eggy and oiled exploded volcanic?
This stovetop is going to need more than a razor.
“But your doctor looked at them this morning and it look’s like, from your chest x-rays…”
To continue reading … and I’d love to connect with you here…
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!}
October 18, 2013
Sharing Whatever is Good: {Sharing Links to Love the Internet Again}
If you read one thing today — read this.
Missing Him — How often do we miss Him because we don’t say “Yes” to someone:
Orphan teen stands up in church to ask for a family
Missing Him — take a 5 minute mini-vacation,
take a deep breath and glory in His the whole earth full of His Glory:
Surreal landscapes from around the world. Absolute. Must. see.
Missing Him — slowing down for Autumn:
Autumn Essentials {free printable}
Missing Him — why to get outside with the kids this weekend:
Missing Him — the world holds wonders we miss all. the. time.:
Missing Him — maybe if we all became curious and slowed down and asked questions?
Radical new ways for children to learn, grow, and thrive
Missing Him – the kids and I keep singing this one as we clean up/dance around the kitchen:
Jesus wins! Don’t miss Him...
Cancer battle? Family struggle? War with the past? Hard week?
In Jesus, we are always on the winning side:
Turn it up loud and play it again. Perfect Friday song.
From Natalie Grant’s just released new album: Hurricane
{Consider turning off music by clicking the speaker bar near the bottom of the left margin?} RSS Readers and email readers, click here
Missing Him — and finding His grace and His love every time I whisper thanks.
Perfect FREE printable for the fridge: Give Thanks
Missing Him — and finding Christ in unexpected people:
The End of the Mythical “They” – And the differences melted away…
(We’d love to join you, welcome you to the table at IF:LOCAL )
Missing Him — and finding His grace in one person today — and telling them.
Pick just one person to thank this weekend? Really. Do. It.
We find Him — when we start actively seeking Him out in practical ways of loving.
Maybe an unexpected person? One of the mythical “they”
Expressing gratitude to those you love — and who need love {free printable notecards}
If you watch one thing today —
Make it This.
We’ve watched it 3 times together as a family — and I have it on repeat in my heart.
Maybe share with one person? So they don’t miss Him either.
{Consider turning off music by clicking the speaker bar near the bottom of the left margin?} RSS Readers and email readers, click here
That’s all, this weekend, good friends–
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joice.
Share Whatever Is Good.
This is Day 18.
Sometimes you miss home.
Even when you’re home.
Sometimes you miss Him.
Even when He’s everywhere.
Day 18 in a #31Days series:
Missing Him: 31 Days of Jesus – and not missing what can’t be missed.
If you’d prefer having these posts slipped quietly into your email inbox, just subscribe for free here.
Dare to take your invitation to not miss — what can’t be missed?
Looking forward to what #31Days hold with you… and Him.
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!}
October 17, 2013
The 3 Secrets that Turn Your October Around
‘After the keen still days of September, the October sun filled the world with mellow warmth…
The maple tree in front of the doorstep burned like a gigantic red torch.
The oaks along the roadway glowed yellow and bronze.
The fields stretched like a carpet of jewels, emerald and topaz and garnet.
Everywhere she walked the color shouted and sang around her…
In October any wonderful unexpected thing might be possible.”
― Elizabeth George Speare.
And all that felt true this morning, passing under the leaves heading home.
The trees down through the woods filled all summer with sun and now they spill with it.
The trees of the fields, they dance now with the glory before Him.
In October, what is real is seen: even the trees burn with primeval fire for their Maker and First Love.
Now is not the time to be demure in joy.
In October any wonderful unexpected thing might be possible.
Joy isn’t ever in a season, but in the way we see.
His Grace, His mercy, His love — saturating everything.
This is Day 17.
Sometimes you miss home.
Even when you’re home.
Sometimes you miss Him.
Even when He’s everywhere.
Day 17 in a #31Days series:
Missing Him: 31 Days of Jesus – and not missing what can’t be missed.
If you’d prefer having these posts slipped quietly into your email inbox, just subscribe for free here.
Dare to take your invitation to not miss — what can’t be missed?
Looking forward to what #31Days hold with you… and Him.
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!}
October 16, 2013
Dear Church: Why It’s Okay to Really Need Each Other
In the heat of Uganda this past July, I wrote a letter, a post, I keep returning to, igniting with, a post that’s gone far and wide and sort of went crazy, A Letter to the North American Church. That’s what’s fiery in my bones… The church is the beautiful bride that Christ is returning for and I am passionate about the church, committed to her growth, her relentless flourishing, her certain thriving, preparing herself for His soon-coming. How do we, the church, grow and strengthen into the ready and beautiful bride?
I quietly have asked many of my friends to pray for the church over the next several weeks, and share with us here their own Letter to the North American Church.Recently, my heart-sister, Patsy Clairmont shared her letter with us, as well as Elisa Morgan’s incredibly powerful letter on Broken that deeply resonated and Scot McKnight’s letter ringing hard… and today, another Women of Faith sister, Anita Renfroe, shares profound thoughts on the farm front porch:
I saw Martha Stewart a total of 6 times yesterday.
Not in person:
Once on a morning talk show, then in Walgreens smiling from the cover of her mag in full Halloween makeup.
And on another aisle on boxes of vitamins for hair, skin and nails (what?), in a sidebar ad on Facebook for decorating tips, mentioned in a tweet about best cupcake frosting recipes, and finally in a mailer pushing magazine subscriptions.
It was a lot of Martha in my world.
Not that I’m anti-Martha, especially since she did a little prison time (which, in my humble opinion, may have knocked off a little of her superior sheen in the best possible way) but I have no idea how she’s so…(?)…ubiquitous.
Her marketing team must not sleep. At. All.
I feel as if she’s “in my life” because there’s a lot of passive interaction with her.
And in that way, she reminds me of a lot of some of the churches of North America.
Some of us, we do Sundays together in a dark room with only the stage lit, so we really can’t see each other. We emerge into the outdoor sunlight, fumbling for our sunglasses, trying to adjust to the glare.
We greet a few people we already know, then successfully retreat to our lives of passive interaction with our church, attempting to create small pockets of community in a culture that has done everything in its power to deny that we should ever need community at all.
It’s practically in our DNA. “We’re independent! We’re self-sustained and self-contained! We’re home, alone, staring at an screen commenting on other people’s lives.”
We enter our WiFi’d caves where we have been culturally conditioned to cocoon, not commune.
Which is all well and good until you hit an inevitable rough patch and you find yourself, alone.
The question is: How can we re-create 1st century community in our zero-dependence culture?
When the New Testament church described in the book of Acts met together in homes with meals and prayer it was not an elective exercise — it was pure survival.
They had no idea if they were going to be run out of town, crucified upside down, fed to lions, torched or starved. They desperately needed each other to survive and live out this gospel that Jesus had begun.
If you grew up in pre-1970s rural America community was a matter of the due course of life. A sense of deeply connected life happened because of geography (people didn’t move that often or that far away), proximity (you had firsthand knowledge of their lives because you were near enough to witness it), longevity (you knew the same people for decades), financial interdependence (you needed each other to buy or sell your goods or services), and you were able to interact with your community on multiple levels (your attorney coached Little League, your 3rd grade teacher was a volunteer fireman).
If we now lack the live-or-die passion of the book of Acts or the long-term proximity of pre-industrial/pre-isolationist North America — can authentic community be petri-dished? Can it be really be effective as long as it’s elective?
But this is what I’ve also seen: When we are with people whom we did not choose to sojourn an unseen future, clinging to a common belief that God is loving and gracious and sovereign in all things — in that place where we witness each others’ lives up-close-and-personal, triumphs and tragedies hit us with the same force and we are left to make sense of the aftermath of both.
It could be about inviting the neighbors to our tables and building homes together and praying together and getting life under our fingernails together and we could come out of cocoons and commune.
It could be about us all being the church and choosing community is more than small groups on Wednesday nights: community is doing life with the people living next door to you.
It could be about us not missing Him — because we aren’t missing each other.
This is where grace intersects reality – where needs are met – where our stories converge.
Where hearts are known this side of heaven.
I remember the day I first heard Anita Renfroe sing “I am the Mom, the Mom, the Mom…” and how the kids memorized the song and it would sing it at the most appropriate life moments.
I just love this woman’s real heart. With her unique brand of estrogen flavored musical comedy and blend of sass, edge and slightly offbeat takes on All Things Female, audiences at her comedy concert tours, viewers of Good Morning America appearances and the YouTube masses who enjoyed her William Tell version of everything a Mom says would say that Anita just tells it like it is.
Some would say she just says what everyone else is thinking, but won’t say out loud.
Laughter is soul medicine and gathering a bunch of women together to listen to Anita Renfroe on DVD would create some soulful, real community that might just do your heart real good?
Aching for real community in your church, for your church in your community? We’d love to join you, welcome you to the table at the IF:Gathering — please prayerfully consider joining us, your community by connecting with IF:Local here – Find your city here? Hosting a city? Let us make a banner for your city here?
This is Day 16.
Sometimes you miss home.
Even when you’re home.
Sometimes you miss Him.
Even when He’s everywhere.
Day 16 in a #31Days series:
Missing Him: 31 Days of Jesus – and not missing what can’t be missed.
If you’d prefer having these posts slipped quietly into your email inbox, just subscribe for free here.
Dare to take your invitation to not miss — what can’t be missed?
Looking forward to what #31Days hold with you… and Him.
Photo credits: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13
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!}
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