Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 255

When You’re Missing Hope

The earth’s cold under the finger nails.

I dig holes with a wedge of steel and around fringes of the domed sky, the clouds scud gray.

Dad had called first thing in the morning: if I had anything to do outside, today looked like the last day. Might be the last warm day to dig in bulbs, before autumn begins her blustery, muddy wrestle.

I’d nodded. Yes, Dad. Bulbs, today, will do. And last clean up of the flowerbeds. Thank you for calling, thinking of me, Dad.

I’d hardly hung up the receiver before it rang again, a friend, whose first words spoke of weather too: brooding storm bearing down.

“What do I do when I just don’t know how to go on?” Her voice cracks, flash of pain forking across skies.

I listen to expectations struck, her hopes snapped off in gale.

“Just a day to be sad, I guess,” she finishes, beaten. “Today, I’m not up to trying to fix or solve any of it. Just grieving today.” And then the quiet rain of tears. Together, we let the lament come.

Then I gather bulbs. Pull out the spade, and go dig holes, because I’m just dirt with no answers, only prayers.

“Why do we have to dig so deep?” Son’s face reddens in the excavating. Little One digs her own hole alongside mine.

“Well, Child, some things are meant to really be laid down.”

“I’m going to drop mine in now.” Son’s holding his bulb poised, looking my way for assurance.

“No!” Little One wails. “Don’t put the flower so far down in the dark!” She tries to wrest the bulb from his hand. I scoop her angst all up close.

“But it has to go down in,” I brush the hair out of her eyes, kiss tip of that pug nose. And sometimes, Child, hope’s waiting is dark.

She turns her face up towards mine and our cheeks brush. “Will we have to dig them up to get the flowers after the snow?” I squeeze her tight.

“No, Little One. When He’s ready, they will come up through the black earth as if by themselves.” We kneel down, drop a bulb into opening earth, then wait “for the forces above and below and beyond our control to work upon” all these things. Son pats the earth down and over and Little One watches.

We bury hope in a tomb of its own.

Like the faith diggers do every day. We bury our swollen prayers in Him who’s raised from the tomb. We lay our hope, full and tender, into the depths of Him and wait in hope for God to resurrect something good. Good always necessitates long waiting.

Every tulip only blossoms after cold months of winter wait. Every human ever unfurled into existence through nine long months of the womb waiting. And the only kingdom that will last for eternity still waits, this millennia-long, unwavering-hope for return of its King. Instead of chafing, we accept that waiting is a strand in the DNA of the Body of Christ.

That this waiting on God is the very real work of the people of God.

Son digs again and I drop a bulb, life warm, into depths as dark as my friend’s sadness today.

Every person needs hope planted at the bottom of their hole.

Maybe I could plant a bit of hope in my friend’s ache?

I smile all the drive over to my friend’s. Knock on the front door. Read her confusion when she opens her front door, finds me standing there.

“Gotta little spade I can borrow?” I grin, hold out a hand full of bulbs.

“I just wanted to tuck some hope into that hole today. He’ll resurrect good things out of this too– hold on…. ‘Blessed are all who wait.’”

Her chin trembles and she nods.

“They’ll be pink. Tall.” I show her hope with my hands.

“In the corner of the front flower bed? So I can see them from the window.” She manages a smile.

I grab her hand, squeeze tight.

We live in wait.

 

 

 

 

This is Day 3 in a #31Days  series of Missing Him:

 

 

Sometimes you miss home.

Even when you’re home.

Sometimes you miss Him.

Even when He’s everywhere.

 

  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 the next #31Days hold with you… and Him.

Day 1: Missing Him: 31 Days of Calling on Jesus

Day 2: What’s Missing from the North American Church

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’s Missing from the North American Church?

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 — the one we’ve been Missing –  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.

In past weeks, my heart-sister,  Patsy Clairmont shared her letter with us… and my other Women of Faith sister, Elisa Morgan, shared her letter with us. 

Today, Scot McKnight (PhD, Nottingham), a Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary, Lombard, Illinois, and author of several books, including the award-winning The Jesus Creed, The King Jesus Gospel, One.Life, and The Blue Parakeet, as well as Galatians and 1 Peter in the NIV Application Commentary series — comes to the farm porch with his letter of what’s pressing on him hard for the North American church and it cut me to the quick  — and speaks to this Missing Him .

~by Scot McKnight

Dear North American Church,

Bring the Bible back to church.

Sorting through a new catalog that came my way recently I noticed a list of “Home Bible Study” guides — and they were on all sorts of “relevant” topics and “heart felt needs” like marriage and children and social justice and influencing public education policies.

All important, of course, but something was missing.

So I decided to Google some well-known churches on sermon topics.

And I found talks on fear, getting through life’s difficulties, forgiveness, healthy families, and the topics go on and on.

They are all important, but something was missing.

The next day another catalog arrived in my mailbox from one of my favorite publishers. The same. Books and books and books about topics and topics and topics.

Something was missing .

What was missing was what struck me when the ad on my blog appeared, an ad of a book by a pastor and the book was about —  the Bible!

That’s what we’re missing today: books about the Bible, books about the Bible’s books.

Titles like Deuteronomy, Psalms, Zechariah, Luke, 2 Corinthians, or Titus.

Not books that use the Bible to talk about topics, not books that invade the Bible to cull information about what we want to talk about, not books that pretend to be biblical by adding Bible verses to something learned in the social sciences or from life’s experiences — but books that grasp our hand and lead us to the table to sit down and listen to Scripture. …

To hear what Moses said, to hear what David said, to hear was Ezekiel said, to hear what Jesus said, to hear what Paul said, to hear what Peter said, to hear what John said, and to hear what the author of Hebrews – whoever wrote that book – said.

What is missing is a belief in the Bible so secure that we can open up any book in that big book and know God still speaks.

God gave us a gift — the gift of the Bible — a gift with one postcard after another of God’s message to us.

Instead of asking the Bible to talk to us about what we’d like to hear — what we need is to be led to the Bible to hear what God has said.

If we will but listen, God will speak.

He’s that kind of God.

 

Scot McKnight

Northern Seminary

 

Scot McKnight’s thought-provoking read, the King Jesus Gospel makes a plea for us to recover the old gospel as that which is still new and still fresh.

The book stands on four arguments:

that the gospel is defined by the apostles in 1 Corinthians 15 as the completion of the Story of Israel in the saving Story of Jesus;

that the gospel is found in the Four Gospels;

that the gospel was preached by Jesus;

and that the sermons in the Book of Acts are the best example of gospeling in the New Testament.

The King Jesus Gospel ends with practical suggestions about evangelism and about building a gospel culture ….  Knowing what the gospel in all it’s fullness really is — is central to not missing Jesus. The King Jesus Gospel’s a sharpening book that was part of a sermon series for our local faith family….

 

This is Day 2 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 the next #31Days hold with you… and Him.

 

Related in the Dear North American Church Series:

The viral post that started it all: Dear Church: Because It’s Really Time

Dear Church: Let’s Everyday Just. Start. Here.

Dear Church: The Real Truth About Family Values

 

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!}

Missing Him: 31 Days of Calling on Jesus

Sometimes you miss home.

Even when you’re home.

Sometimes you miss Him.

Even when He’s everywhere.

And your heart hurts a bit for more… and homesickness aches some days at the edges …

and you’re tired of Missing Him.

Missing Him in the hurry that hurts, missing Him in the blur that blinds, missing Him in the noise that drowns.

What if there were some place that invited you into 31 Days of more Jesus?

The Jesus who draws close and whispers Abandon the worries and Abide in Me…

a place that whispers: You can rely on your performance — or on His arms.

a place that whispers: You are as free as you are dependent on Jesus.

a place that whispers: Jesus wants you and likes you and is 100% for you.

What if there were 31 Days of Calling on Jesus — and not missing Him?

Religion is learning about love. Relationship is about living loved.

If you look up… there are lights twinkling.

You could smile –

here’s your invitation to not miss what can’t be missed.

 

 

 

“Ann Voskamp on Christmas –
is like Monet on sunsets…
meant for each other.”
~Max Lucado
@ Amazon: a top 10 bestseller

 

This is the first post in a 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.

Don’t want to Miss Him this year? Long to be changed — by the new year, for the new year?

Consider my newest book, The Greatest Gift, a fresh unwrapping of The Love Story — your love story — the one you’ve been missing … and don’t want to miss anymore.

This 31 day series — is your invitation to come closer.

He’s been missing you.

Pssst…. One Way to not Miss Him today?

For the next 31 days, every single day of October?

Scavenger Hunt for God’s glory. Count  1000 ways He loves you, count  1000 gifts. Science says it makes you 25% happier. God’s Word says give thanks in everything because He knows this is how we live through everything.

Thankfully Jesus doesn’t ever shut down — may not our thanks:

Scavenger hunt through October for His gifts so you don’t miss Him. (and enter to win a NikonD90 camera & a $100 Amazon Gift Card?)

Print October Joy Dare here!

 

 

Dare to take your invitation to not miss — what can’t be missed?

Looking forward to what the next #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!}

When Your life Feels Like a bit of a Puzzle

I crack the eggs and the pan sizzles and there’s a kid hanging upside down off the couch, trying to knit a scarf.

“Remember to use the plastic spatula and not the steel one, Mama? Remember what Dad said?”

And her curls are all hanging down touching the floor and she’s doing a row of pearl with the blood all running way too fast to her face.

I switch spatulas.

“You might want to sit up.” I try to do no harm to the non-stick coating of one red frying pan.

She’s draped off the couch arm like an oranguntun, curls waterfalling down into an overflowing basket of stacked books and balls of yarn, and how in the world can anyone’s mind find the way to hold on to knitting needles when dangling upended?

Why does a mind find despair so much easier to hold on to than hope?  

I  scramble eggs. Dash a bit of salt and pepper. The clock ticks loud behind me.

The day my Grandma Ruth had shock therapy, I had talked to her that morning and wondered how it really could, how electrical currents could zap everything scrambled into something whole again.

Her voice had been a whisper that morning, like crawling up hidden on a shelf and I had tried to coax her weary-worry down with talk of leaves turning and sun exploding in mums and yellow everywhere, so certain, and she had curled up small in the nook of me not wanting to look or hear or be anymore.

Grandma Ruth and I, we shared more than these long, bony noses.

“Oh.”

I look up from the frying pan. The inverted kid hangs paused, mid-stitch needles poking through yarn. “I must have….” She curls up like a Pilates instructor over her knitted rows.

“I must have dropped a stitch somewhere…  see the hole?”

“Can you work your way back to it?” I scramble up edges.

I was a lot younger than Grandma the day on a Toronto street corner when something didn’t tie right somewhere in me and a mind can drop right through a black hole, right through that gaping black hole that just ups and blows right through you. I stood on a street with the cars flashing by loud. How can it be so easy to lose your way Home? Anxiety can take all your innards and whisk you into this froth of scrambled mess and depression isn’t a cut that needs a bandage —  it’s a cancer that needs a battleplan.

I have stood at the stove and every breath can feel like you are losing the battle.

It’s either take captive every thought or be taken captive. When you realize life is war, you make prayer a shield and Christ your general and the victory is found in grace.

A friend I birthed babies with, she knows there’s no lone victors and every conqueror always has a team, so she reaches out to me last week. Tells me with she’s on the front lines and the negative thoughts are shelling her hard and she’s trying to hold the enemy back with the Word because the only way to ever gain ground is to get deeper into God.  I pray for her everyday and over the scrambled eggs.

I mean every Scripture wielded word. I can feel it again, how all that black and scrambling feels. The way to stand with the falling is to give them the gift of the knees because this is how His Body catches and carries each other home.

It’s there on the chalkboard, under the clicking clock, so I don’t forget, the name of a friend whose meds fail and she’s plunging into this pitch black depression. Her husband keeps holding her because the dark’s not a place you go and try to hold yourself together all alone. He whispers it close, like dew in a drought, that God doesn’t fail.

My heart’s in my throat when I tell him that I am a Cross-fool who really does believe it: God doesn’t allow pain unless He’s allowing something new to be born. And there are a thousand ways births can happen unseen to the naked eye but it’s the eyes of the heart that see the delivering mercies of God. Every breath is always one breath closer to birthing into eternity.

What I’m thinking over scrambled eggs is just that: In the Body of Christ, a mind can break just like a leg and if we don’t hide the shattering of our bones, why be ashamed of the shattering of our hearts?

I had sat through a Sunday sermon once where the preacher had laughed about how he and the wife and kids had lived a cross the street from a psych hospital — from “the loonie bin” were his exact words.

And I had sat there, 17 and scared, thumbing the frayed leather corner of my Thompson Chain reference Bible and thought of all the times I had visited my mama behind locked doors like that and I had swallowed hard and the edge of that Bible had blurred. The congregation laughed at the preacher chuckling from the pulpit.

The untold stories of the messed up people all around you, they wouldn’t make you laugh — they’d break your heart.

And if the broken would just love the broken — we’d all be closer to whole.

“You help me, Mama?” The knitting kid is sitting on the floor now, and she mumbles it, bent over this straggle of stitches sagging and missing.

I turn out the scrambled eggs and I kneel with her and I get that and it’s me: What do you do when you desperately just need someone to come help you figure this all out?

And there’s the Word-whispered assurance, “I am more than you need and I am like a mother and I am your Father and I am the Light that pushes back the black and I am making all things new — and that’s a promise that I’ll wrap right round you in any pit and pull you up and close to Me.“

That’s what I write it on these cards.

Cards shaped like puzzle pieces.

9 puzzle piece cards that envelope after envelope will all fit together.

And I send the cards to those two women, sisters like me.

Sisters with messy pieces and broken pieces and puzzling pieces that they don’t have the faintest idea how to fit together.

In the midst of all that doesn’t makes sense, the ink runs like a line to hold on to:

God’s putting together all the pieces of the puzzle and He’ll fill what’s still missing with His peace.

“Even if it’s a mess, it is still okay, Mama…” The kid who was hanging upside down trying to put it together, she smiles…

And I sit in front of the stove with its scrambled eggs —

and she keeps trusting something beautiful will come of out of everything knotted and all these tangled strings.

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Related:

Dear You: A Letter for the Hard Days

Someone you know who feels like they’re just hanging on & needs some real encouragement? I tucked Puzzle Piece Cards in the mail… “God’s putting together all the pieces of the puzzle and He’ll fill what’s still missing with His peace.”

 

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!}

The Real Love Stories… and Why There Really Are No Blurred Lines

It was the music pumping through the speakers at the optometrist’s that made me see you clear for who you are.

The lyrics kept thrumming loud when I was standing there with my thick glasses, waiting for the receptionist.

Waiting there with the Mennonite woman in her netted white bonnet and purple flowers falling down the cotton front her cape dress.

And Robin Thicke just keeps crooning it on some radio station like he’s Marvin Gaye, like he knows the wants of women.

And I’m sitting beside a Mennonite woman, us both bespectacled and motherly rounded, and I shift awkward in my chair when the song hits it grinding refrain, and there are men like you who know a woman wants a love that respects.

There are men who wear old Wranglers and drive rusting mini-vans to pick up the kids after piano lessons.

And pick up broccoli because it’s on sale this week.

And who stop those matronly vans to pick a bunch of the wild Black-eyed Susans growing in the ditch across from the township dump.

And they feel no shame bringing the tattered, untamed petals home for the woman they vowed their focus to.

Don’t ever think there isn’t something wild and untamed about this.

There’s a world that wants to force women into smothering plastic molds and whisper that she wants to be a shape and not free.

There’s a relentless refrain that wants to cage women into polished skin, into glossy boxes, into cheap ornaments and tell her that she really wants this, they know she really wants this.

There’s this beat that beats up women… and you can tell the real men from the immature boys: Real manhood never objectifies women but edifies women.

Real men actually ask women what they want.

Real men hear what women really want is their words and ideas and dreams to carry more weight than numbers on a scale.

Real men hear what women really want is there souls to be appreciated, not their skin to be assessed.

Real men like you who adore women with Einstein-hair early on Friday morning, who think nothing of finding the toilet plunger and braving the back mudroom washroom, who make pancakes on Saturday morning and, real men like you know that sharing a vowed life is the wildest affair of all.

True love isn’t found.

It’s carved.

Carved out of sacrifice. Carved out of covenant. Carved out of two dying to the loneliness of self to be made into one.

You and I, we could let our feet find each other’s under the cotton sheets and we could carve into forever together.

Before there is no more me here and no more you here —

we could let the rest be carved away until there only the glory of a wrinkled love left.

After the optometrist’s, when I came home and stood at the sink heavy with the day’s pots, and you came in the back door grinning with that handful of Black-eyed Susans that you’d picked right from the ditch?

You had grinned embarrassed:

“They’re a bit tattered though.”

And I’d touched the tattered petals. And smiled silly and unashamed at you standing there in that tattered shirt, us growing older in a life that’s carving us down — and I could see then, see it clear straight through and there are no blurred lines here.

The days can all tatter and you and I, we know what we want:

A love that keeps carrying on into the real loveliest.

 

Related:

3 Marriage Habits Every Marriage Needs — Because It’s Worth Falling in Love Again

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!}

Dear Church: The Real Truth About Family Values

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.

Last week, my heart-sister,  Patsy Clairmont shared her letter with us… and today, my other Women of Faith sister, Elisa Morgan, one of Chrisitianity Today’s top 50 women influencing the church and culture, author of 15 books on mothering, spiritual formation and evangelism, and former  CEO of MOPS International, writes words and wisdom on the farm’s front porch of things that her and I have talked and prayed much over:

~By Elisa Morgan

Dear North American Church,

I want to ask you to take a step of honesty.

Just for a moment. And just within your own skin. No one else needs know your answers to the questions I’m about to ask you. But will you answer them for yourself, in your own mind?

Are you a child of addiction?

Or of divorce?

Have you lost a child?

Or a grandchild?

Do you have a daughter who became pregnant as a teen?

And then a second time?

Is someone in your family or your extended family gay?

Does someone in your home today struggle with addiction to alcohol?

Or drugs?

Has someone in your family been adopted?

Or relinquished a child to adoption?

Has someone chosen abortion?

Have you experienced an eerie, middle of the night call that someone you love has been arrested?

Or injured in a wreck?

Or is drunk – again?

Did you answer “yes” to at least one of these questions, but you’ve never told anyone? Not outside of the most-trusted core group of family or friends who’ve experienced these “yeses” with you.

Do you carry about a sense of shame that silences you and shuts you off from the life you always imagined you’d enjoy as a believer, a follower of Jesus Christ?

I answer “yes” to every one of these questions. I’ve sat in

-waiting rooms,

-counseling rooms,

-courtrooms,

-hospital rooms, and

-inmate visitation rooms.

Oh…so many issues have entered our home: alcoholism, learning disabilities, cancer, legal issues, abortion, homosexuality, addiction, teen pregnancy, infertility, adoption, divorce, and death. (For more see: The Beauty of Broken.com )

It’s time to talk.

From the vantage point of survival, I can see now that I swallowed a myth that needs to be exposed for me – and for others who have also fallen under its power: that it’s possible to create a perfect family.

I come from a broken family.

When I was five and my father sat in a white easy chair in his home office and beckoned me to his lap.

He looked into my eyes and said, “Elisa, I’ve decided I don’t love your mother any more. We are getting a divorce.”

My family broke.

And like many children, I thought that somehow it was my fault.

I tried to keep my family from breaking more when I would hear my mother’s alarm clock in the morning, push back the covers and pad into the kitchen where I grabbed a glass, plunked in some ice cubes and poured Coca Cola over it. With a handful of chocolate chip cookies from the cookie jar, I made my way down the hall to my mother’s bedroom.

There I placed “breakfast” on her nightstand, turned off her alarm and began the process of getting her up and ready for work. As a single mom, she needed to work and it was my daily job to wake her up. My mother struggled with alcohol.

My mother broke. I wondered what I could do to fix her.

I determined it was my responsibility to make an unbroken family when I had a chance as a grownup to start fresh.

After all, I had become a Christian as a teenager, had been involved in ministry, even gone to seminary, where I met and later married my husband. Precious, stable, rock of a man.

I honestly believed that if I implemented “perfect family values,” then I would have a perfect family.

Problem is, I’m broken. Everybody is. Even God’s family was broken – beginning with Adam and Eve and moving forward to you and me.

No matter what we do, we all end up in broken families. In one way or another.

There’s no such thing as a perfect family. Instead of fighting this reality – and failing – God invites us to embrace it. And to see the beauty He brings in the broken.

I come from a broken family. And despite my very best attempts to produce a formulaically perfect Christian family in my second—the reality is that I still come from a broken family.

We are messy – gooey in the middle – and I love my family more than I ever thought possible, brokenness and all. I love who they are and I love who they have made me to be.

I’ve come to discover that God offers hope in the form of “broken family values”—values like commitment, humility, courage, reality, relinquishment, diversity, partnership, faith, love, respect, forgiveness and thankfulness.

He understands that no one is perfect.

He knows the unique journeys of loved ones.

He gets it that abnormal is actually pretty normal. That people mess up and yet are worthy of respect and love and are never—ever—without hope.

God holds each family close, crying with his wounded children, tenderly assembling and reassembling fallen fragments, creating us into better versions of ourselves.

God doesn’t sweep the broken into a dustpan and discard it.

No, in order to reach the broken in our world, God himself broke, allowing his own Son to die a broken death on a cross for us.

He brings beauty in the broken. God loves the broken. God uses the broken.

So, North American Church, what if we move away from the myth of the perfect family and toward the reality of our beautifully broken ones?

Might we then breathe air clean of the stench of shame and saturated with the grace of God?

And might others find in us, not the exhausting chasing of some impossible dream but fresh hope for the real life they are living?

A life where Jesus comes, in a broken body, to provide the beauty of healing?

I come from a broken family. I still come from a broken family.

And I’m pretty sure I’m not alone. I’m pretty sure that my story is likely yours too.

Thank God.

Because there is beauty in the broken.

 

~By Elisa Morgan

Elisa Morgan is the publisher of FullFill (www.fullfill.org), a speaker, and the reluctant but joyful author of:

The Beauty of Broken: My Story, and Likely Yours Too …

a long-awaited book I have prayed for and am deeply grateful to have speak a new, profound word from our Father into our pain. Elisa writes real and raw — and revival for the broken.

This book could change us.

Related in the Dear North American Church Series:

The viral post that started it all: Dear Church: Because It’s Really Time

Dear Church: Let’s Everyday Just. Start. 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!}

A Prayer for a Daughter

 

 

Over here today…    and I really need to connect with you over there & what’s going on in your heart

 

 

 

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!}

The Key to Staying Sane in Spinning World

So there’s a poor reason why they call ‘em spin doctors.

You know, how the newspapers and airwaves are loud with them, PR guys winding journalists and the news up, spinning some yarn, some twist on this regulation, about that siege, this regime, those rebels and my heart twists, wrung out and weak.

Sometimes I have to just lean up against a door frame, a drywalled two by four, and exhale.

Spin doctors and all these circular arguments of pundits and broadcasts and bickering kids and financial analysts and family drama between Aunt Marg and Granny Kehoe and why in the world does just getting out of bed give you a bad case of motion sickness?

And then you’ve got the dizzy of dentist appointments and errands for more ink for the ever-parched printer and piano practice for girls.

And picking up an overflowing cart of cauliflower because it’s on sale this week at Food Basics and dropping one of the boys off at the Mennonite wood shop where he’s apprenticing and still trying to get late packages out in time for today’s mail.

I can be spun sick dizzy before 9 in the morning.

So there’s this mundane going out out to the freezer and getting a can of concentrated orange juice and squeezing it out into this pitcher and then there’s the stirring, and I stand over the mouth of the pitcher and watch it spinning too, this ridiculous concentrating on the concentrate.

There’s this stirring the orange juice slow and there’s that: Concentrate means to make stronger, be more focused; concentrate means to not be diluted by distractions, to be in one’s purest form.

And then, over the morning’s Bible reading, I drink back the orange juice and read it over again and again, like a circling of it’s own: “Give thanks to the Lord, His Love Endures Forever.”

Like every thought of the psalm had to be circled, had to be held together, by the only sinew that holds: Give Thanks to The Lord, His Love Endures Forever.

I read a theologian once who said that

“God teaches us by this method of repetition through Scripture with good reason:

The human mind is incurably centrifical, forever flying off at a tangent; it must be brought back to the great central truths of the gospel, over and over.

Our minds must be made literally to con-centrate.”

The earth spins, so Scripture keeps spinning around the central point. Because the mind is chronically centrifugal. In a whirling world, we keep flying off in tangents.

Our thinking needs to intentionally con-centrate — to literally circle again and around again around the central thing.

So none of this ever gets old: the giving thanks, giving thanks every day and again, for a thousand things, the memorizing of Scripture, the verses of Romans on repeat, the sitting down to eat the dead food three times a day and then never pushing back from the table until having eaten the Living Food.

The old paths never get old — they are what renew.

No one lives Gospel-centered lives, until literally, intentionally con-centrating: circling the mind around and around Christ again.

In the vortex of life, you keep your head above water by literally con-centrating your thinking:

Centering and circling your thoughts again around the things that matter.

We are only as Christ-centred as our minds are con-centric: thoughts circling around Christ — concentrating.

The mudroom smells like wet and raunchy dog — a home scent gone mad — and the fridge needs someone with a face mask in a wetsuit to pressure wash it down.

And there were tears over a math lesson already and no one can find one dire pencil sharpener.

Give Thanks to The Lord, His Love Endures — without expiry date, without end — Forever.

All fear is the lie that God’s love ends.

Untie that lie.

Untie that lie that strangles you by circling your life with Truth: Give Thanks to The Lord, His Love Endures –

endures cancer, teenagers, laundry, infertility, sleepless nights, debt, despair, betrayal, broken dreams, toddler tantrums,

a thousand pressures — His love Endures Forever.

So say it again, like a refrain on repeat.

In the whirl, circle thoughts around gratitude to Christ.

Live concentrically.

Go in circles around the right things.

The way out of confusion is to concentrate: circle around Christ. Simplicity isn’t a matter of circumstances — it’s a matter of focus.

Concentrate on Christ — and life becomes pure, concentrated joy.

Go ahead, let the cynics and skeptics can roll their eyes; everyone has the free choice to spin crazy.

In the midst of the spinning, there is a doctor:

Give Thanks to The Lord, His Love Endures Forever.

And I wash off the counter, soak up this ring, this circle of juice.

And there’s light over the fields and Hope’s playing her scales and on a blurring world, I’m thinking how there’s this other refrain…

how life tastes better when concentrated.

 

 

 

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: Sharing Links that Feed the Soul

… fav follow on instagram: @saraparsons

3 Things I Wish I knew Before We Got Married

How A Man Finds His Calling at 80

The Whole Earth is Full of His Glory:

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Man Gives Away His Home to a Family in Need

Beauty in the Becoming:

… back by overwhelming request:

Our Favorite Heirloom Family Christmas Tradition — that blesses the least of these

Half Price Right Now at LifeWay

Best FB Note ever?

Love like this:

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That’s all, this weekend, good friends–

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

Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joice.

Be the G.I.F.T.

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!}

Why You’re Never, Ever Really a Failure

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 blogger — and the . 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…

 

The coffee shop is quiet except for the sound of voices at the table across from me and I can’t help but overhear.

An older man says, “Most people think failure is here.”

He taps one edge of the table.

“And that success is here.” He taps the opposite edge.

Then he places both of his hands in the center of the table. “But failure and success are really here. Side by side.“

The young man he’s talking to nods and the mentor continues, “Don’t try to avoid failure completely. Or you’ll never be successful.”  

His words ring in my ears and my heart as I take another sip of coffee.

Every time I get ready to try something new I hear the question, “What if it doesn’t work?”

And the answer is, of course, “I’ll look like a fool.”

Over time I’ve come to believe this—that’s not a good enough reason not to do it. 

Sometimes looking like a fool comes with the territory of God-sized dreams.  

Noah built an ark.

Moses wandered in the desert.

Jesus hung on the cross.

And those who watched shook their heads and muttered words like “failure” and “fool.”

Little did they know.

Is that you today?

Have you stepped out in faith and wondered why you feel like a fool?

Have you come across failure like a roadblock in your path?

Keep going, friend.  

Instead of fleeing from the feeling of being foolish, lean into it.

King David did this when the Ark of God entered Jerusalem. He danced in joy with lots of abandon and little clothing in front of the people. His wife scolded him for what she saw as inappropriate behavior for a person of his position.

I love his response: “I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes.” Where most of us would apologize and try to defend ourselves, David essentially says: “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

He realizes that defending his honor is not his job and that God gets the most glory when we humble ourselves.  

If you’re not willing to look goofy in the eyes of others at some point, you will never make it to your God-sized dream.  

And what seems like your most foolish moments may turn out to be your wisest.

As Jim Elliot said, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

It turns out when you feel lowest, you may actually be higher than you can even know.

From that unexpected place, you’ll be able to see what true success means.  

Feel it.

Know it.

Reach out and touch its nail-scarred hands.  

Don’t give up. Or give in. Or compromise. Or quit.  

You’re going to make it.

And it’s going to make you…

not into a fool,

not into a failure,

but into a victorious follower. 

 

 

 

 

Wise Holley’s new 40-day devotional, Opening the Door to Your God-sized Dream speaks the language of the heart.

A companion devotional to her best-selling book, You’re Made for a God-sized Dream, a book encouraging readers to discover and pursue God’s purpose and plans for their lives, Holley’s new devotional is like a key: 40 days of making it a habit to step up to the fears — and let a wild and refreshing faith open the door to your God-sized dreams, right where you are.

Refreshing, reviving — life re-making. On my nightstand right now — and breathing courage and joy into the days. Open your the door too?

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!}